I feel like a tutorial could really help the game out

[JosePapp]

Sacrilegious, i know. A little context first:

I have over 1000 hours between don't starve and don't starve together, so i clearly wouldn't be the target demographic of such a thing. However I do have half a dozen of friends who bought the game due to my recommendation, and at our first attempt to play together they all quit after we somehow made it to spring.

They had gone all the way through winter around twice before that, but it was only due to my constant babysitting, and one of them being somewhat more competent due to more experience. Eventually they quit and didn't play again until a week ago, with one crucial difference: i made a world in creative mode to show them the basics of the game. 

I didn't spoil much, i just taught them how to kite basic mobs, like hounds or horrors, gave them a few free recipes for their cookbooks and taught them how to find gold and prototype stuff. However this made them a heck of a lot more interested in playing and one of them even started playing around on his own to learn more. Turns out he just needed the headstart.

So TLDR/ my suggestion is, maybe ease in new players to how some things work and that way they'll be more hooked to the game and reach the later stages not more easily, but rather more consistently. It would even benefit us veteran players by allowing the devs to really focus on the later portions of the game since the bottleneck wouldn't be as present.

 

[maxwell_winters]

2023 roadmap mentioned making the game more accessible to new players. One art implied the implementation of an in-game guidebook. If you think about it, 2022 updates already set the process in motion. Loading screen tips, recipe cards and the relaxed game mode which most people here didn't like.

[JosePapp]

10 minutes ago, maxwell_winters said:

2023 roadmap mentioned making the game more accessible to new players. One art implied the implementation of an in-game guidebook. If you think about it, 2022 updates already set the process in motion. Loading screen tips, recipe cards and the relaxed game mode which most people here didn't like.

Yeah, i used to have a bit of a gatekeeping mentality as well but i think that guiding the player would destroy a lot of artificial difficulty in favor of presenting better challenges for all of the player base 

[ButterStuffed]

I’ve had similar experiences too, though I’ve yet to go out of my way to guide them.

The only system the least experienced of my friends were able to figure out on their own was farming, since the learning curve is substantially more forgiving and they can feel like they are contributing even while they are figuring it out.

The systems my friends have yet to figure out is combat, fishing and cooking.

Combat I’m guessing they just don’t want to be a burden, since learning to fight involves a lot of dying.

Fishing just doesn’t tell you anything about how any of it works at all, so that got abandoned almost immediately after any of my friends looked into it.

Cooking they’ve “figured out”, but most of the time they just throw random stuff in there resulting in a net loss, since there is no feedback on whether their recipe was good or not.

[Karitha]

This our job I think, the community's job for that kind of games.

I'm thinking of making Turkish tutorial series without spoilers that use base creatures for kiting, base foods for eating etc.

I don't know if subtitles will help out but I would share for you guys in future.

[Mike23Ua]

Okay so a few things to note: 1# Relaxed Mode exists, it’s as close to babysitting mode as your going to get. And #2 (this one’s most important) in your options menu for game settings there are several nifty toggles here that do a variety of things, for starters- you can increase the amount of quick crafting tabs you have available from default to 9- do this ASAP so you can dedicate entire crafting tabs to Winter/Summer/Weapons&Armor/Healing items/Boating- YES I freaking said boating… Put at the very least Grass Boat Kit & Oar in a dedicated boating tab (you and your friends will thank me later) and finally… the biggest most noob friendly feature to ever exist is available in options- you can toggle the craft UI to show EVERY Craftable item in the game, even if you don’t have the resources or have done requirements to unlock it.. you can still view everything you can craft right there in one menu- this actually made me realize that holy **** there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t ever crafted yet. 

It’s important that you do this: because when looking at your Craft UI everything is now neatly put into its own category of helpfulness (example you’ll see EVERY available Method of dealing with Summer/Winter) if that’s not a “Tutorial” for you… I don’t know what is.

[GuardDuty]

 

3 hours ago, Karitha said:

This our job I think, the community's job for that kind of games.

I'm thinking of making Turkish tutorial series without spoilers that use base creatures for kiting, base foods for eating etc.

I don't know if subtitles will help out but I would share for you guys in future.

Newcomers to the game are not familiar with the game's forum or may find it challenging to navigate as it mainly serves as a feedback platform for the devs. Nevertheless, there is a severe lack of content on YouTube that caters to new players in DST.

[Last_epilogue]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Okay so a few things to note: 1# Relaxed Mode exists, it’s as close to babysitting mode as your going to get. And #2 (this one’s most important) in your options menu for game settings there are several nifty toggles here that do a variety of things, for starters- you can increase the amount of quick crafting tabs you have available from default to 9- do this ASAP so you can dedicate entire crafting tabs to Winter/Summer/Weapons&Armor/Healing items/Boating- YES I freaking said boating… Put at the very least Grass Boat Kit & Oar in a dedicated boating tab (you and your friends will thank me later) and finally… the biggest most noob friendly feature to ever exist is available in options- you can toggle the craft UI to show EVERY Craftable item in the game, even if you don’t have the resources or have done requirements to unlock it.. you can still view everything you can craft right there in one menu- this actually made me realize that holy **** there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t ever crafted yet. 

It’s important that you do this: because when looking at your Craft UI everything is now neatly put into its own category of helpfulness (example you’ll see EVERY available Method of dealing with Summer/Winter) if that’s not a “Tutorial” for you… I don’t know what is.

You are correct, but I really don't think the "relaxed mode" is helpful currently. It simply puts the game numbers and percentages easier, but there's a problem: new people don't know what to do. They don't know use a torch at night, they don't know build a science machine for tech. Noobs tend to go around, maybe make an axe, and pick up whatever they see--eventually die to night/spider/whatever.

I really hope the Wilson update could do,
like saying "it's going to be night. I need to craft a torch!"
or "gold! If I make a science machine, I could unlock more techs!"
or when inspecting rock "I need a pickaxe to mine it!"

They didn't do that. Hope they would do something similar in future.

[Mike23Ua]

I mean.. there is Literally a freaking Crafting update that Klei dedicated an entire monthly game update towards that put EVERYTHING in the game in its own pretty little crafting Menu.. With not only viewable resources required to craft said item, but also a brief description of what the item does…

If a newbie can’t figure this much out then I mean no offense when I say this: But they’re very clearly playing the wrong type of game.

And these items are even filtered into categories of usefulness Snowflake for Winter Items, Sun for Summer Items, Umbrella for Spring Items..

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. 

they even removed Fashion Googles from needing to prototype anymore- so NOW you can get a hat that gives the same amount of sanity restoration values as a top hat, without needing to fight spiders to obtain silk for it.

I don’t feel like the game is in desperate need of a Tutorial or Step by Step Guide.

[gamehun20]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

without needing to fight spiders to obtain silk

Doesn't fashion goggles require pig skin?

[Mike23Ua]

10 minutes ago, gamehun20 said:

Doesn't fashion goggles require pig skin?

Yes but you can get that by taking a hammer to pig heads on a stick which are plentiful around touchstones or in Merm swamps, or by hammering down the Pigman houses- no fighting anything required.

In addition, you can also give that pig skin to the pig king in exchange for gold.

[gamehun20]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

In addition, you can also give that pig skin to the pig king in exchange for gold.

But what new player is going to know that pigs will trade pig skin

[BezKa]

.

[JosePapp]

15 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I mean.. there is Literally a freaking Crafting update that Klei dedicated an entire monthly game update towards that put EVERYTHING in the game in its own pretty little crafting Menu.. With not only viewable resources required to craft said item, but also a brief description of what the item does…

If a newbie can’t figure this much out then I mean no offense when I say this: But they’re very clearly playing the wrong type of game.

And these items are even filtered into categories of usefulness Snowflake for Winter Items, Sun for Summer Items, Umbrella for Spring Items..

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. 

they even removed Fashion Googles from needing to prototype anymore- so NOW you can get a hat that gives the same amount of sanity restoration values as a top hat, without needing to fight spiders to obtain silk for it.

I don’t feel like the game is in desperate need of a Tutorial or Step by Step Guide.

How would a new player know about fashion goggles restoring decent sanity?

Do we really think new players will use hostile flares to farm clops or swap characters non stop?

I think it's funny these are the kinds of arguments we get when balancing new mobs or items (like cookie cutter shells, which used to always drop before) when the average new player struggles with keeping warm or having a light source.