The issue with 'Turn planar damage/defence into increased stats'

[Szczuku]

I've seen some people complain about the new mobs and items being a sort of a 'Create a problem, then offer players a solution'-type of scam. Or that it simply foreshadows a bad future content, filled with tough mobs that are resistant to 98% of the weapons and armor we currently have.

Some said that this new mechanic should be simply turned into increased numbers. That the brightshade sword should deal 100 damage, instead of having a portion of it pierce. "It's an endgame weapon, it should be able to decimate earlygame mobs"

The issue is that, since Klei has been neglecting any form of progression and the world changing over time, a weapon that can melt through early game mobs, would inevitably melt through 90% of the current mobs in the whole game. 100 damage means killing a spider in one hit- cool, sure, spiders are pushovers anyway. But it also means killing a beefalo in 10 hits, 1.5 of the usual kite.

You can probably see how this would negatively affect the game. Since Klei doesn't seem to plan on updating the seasons to make them more interesting, or the ocean, the main gameplay loop is to magabase or fight raid bosses. And giving players weapons that can destroy said bosses would effectively make the gameplay loop more boring, as the potential of an interesting battle is overshadowed by it lasting only half a day. RIght now, even at day 1000, I can still feel almost the same tension while fighting the Dfly as I did when fighting her for the first time during 2nd autumn, simply because my armor and weapons are, more or less, the same.

I'm not saying that this mechanic is perfect. Future content's mobs definitely shouldn't have planar defence on top of 1000 hp. In fact, a planar defence on top of 350-500 hp would probably be managable for regular weapons, not creating as big of a cut-off point in the progression, where you have to abandon your old gear as it is simply useless against post-CC mobs.

And sure, the new mechanic should be communicated to the players... at all. If a character gets hit with planar damage while wearing regular armor they could say something like 'It pierced my armor!'. And the brightshade sword's description could be changed to something like 'Partially pierce through even the toughest defences'.

But I think this is one of the better ways to create new, tough enemies without giving the player overpowered weapons that turn every mob thus far into a pushover.

[Maxil20]

Do people not realize weapons normally go up in damage in increments of 17? I feel like the brightshade sword would be much more “in-line” with traditional progression if it did 85 damage (51 damage + 34 planar) in terms of where you get it. It would still allow you to hit some neat break points, but it wouldn’t directly give you insane amounts of power (heck, it would even scale worse on players that do work on trying to buff up on as much damage as possible.)

Reguarding the meaning of “trivializing beginning mobs”, we technically have that in the form of the enlightened crown. The crown’s sanity aura boost basically means that most mobs that can endure more than 2-3 hits will be taken down significantly faster with the crown on, and you will quickly heal the sanity that is lost if it’s usual day to day combat. The only time it really falls off is with constant fights (like the ruins) or bosses (like DFly), but even then it can still shine pretty well if you pack some banana shakes or dried kelp beforehand.

In terms of it “telling” the player things, I like the idea of changing the sword description to better reflect on that perk. As for the armor, I feel it would be neat if there was a unique sound cue that indicated you were being hit with a planar damage attack (and perhaps a muffled version of the player was wearing armor that resisted it).

As for planar defense on mobs, I can’t really say much as I really don’t like the mechanic myself. I feel like it punishes solo players way more then multiplayer ones, especially taking into account planar damage doesn't scale whatsoever.

[Gashzer]

Dst combat is really old at this point. The new planar damage and defence mechanics is needed to keep things fresh.

Currently you can just use a hambat for 99% of fights. Its a pretty early game weapon with infinite durability that rivals darks swords and thulecite clubs in usefulness for alot easier acquired resources.

I like the way the planar damage ignores damage boosts. This balances wolfgang and wanda abit for the more late game challenges and rewards skilled wes players with regular damage output. If they just gave the brightshade sword 100 damage wolfgang would become godlike.

Players need to be challenged to use new gear to solve new problems. I like the idea of character quotes about armour being pierced and regular weapons doing less damage.

[deemo_]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Currently you can just use a hambat for 99% of fights. Its a pretty early game weapon with infinite durability that rivals darks swords and thulecite clubs in usefulness for alot easier acquired resources.

It’s really funny that a bat made of meat and skin does basically the same amount of damage as a nightmare-infused club made out of an ancient and incredibly strong material. Obviously the club has the tentacles to make up the damage, but still.

Personally, I think planar damage and defence are okay additions to the game. Klei isn’t gonna add 17 new bosses and 50 new enemies with planar defence, so I don’t understand the points that “old weapons and armour are becoming useless”. There’s most likely gonna be a few new enemies and maybe a boss or two that utilises planar defence and this is where the new equipment will shine. Also, the armour looks really cool. 

Obviously the new equipment does need tweaking to make it worthwhile outside and inside of fighting enemies with planar attacks and defence, but that has been said to death already.
 

[GodIess]

The new weapon is aimed at new enemies that will appear in the next updates. Even now, each boss has its own priority weapon, for CC it's shadow swords, for horrors it's glass cutters, for normal enemies it's a tentacle spike or a spear. and so on. therefore, I completely think that this is a well-thought-out thing. this weapon is well suited to the late game as it does not allow you to easily farm new mobs with normal weapons, forcing you to use new weapons and protection

[BB Marioni]

i prefer reduced damage over higher hp, thank you. With dmg reduction, it opens up more options rather than just choosing the "highest damging weapon". This gives more viability to damage options that are not reduced and would normally be considered useless. For example, burning an enemy is usually not a great idea due to its very low dmg, specially against high hp enemies. For the new plant mobs, burning them actually comes close to hitting them with a basic weapon. I love creative ways on dealing with enemies in this game as it's technically still a survival game and not an rpg game where the only way to fight an enemy is count your hits and kite. That's just boring for me.

[user1464576869]

I don't have much opinion about planar, but since the subject came up, I am very exhausted that it feels like DST weaponry has near zero progression. No matter what armour and weapon I use they are all feel equally weak but still ridiculously exponentially expensive for single digit changes. It's especially daunting when there's gear that takes entire seasons to prepare for and gather and then it breaks in a single evening if you intend on using it casually on something like spiders.

In some way it's an interesting choice I respect for it's unique characteristic.. no matter how far you progress so to say, spiders are still fought with the exact same vigour and tools just out of fear of wasting stronger weapons' potential, and sometimes there just is no potential anyway. Even minecraft has started putting a roof on top of it's own progress with netherite being indistinguishable from diamond. But something about this whole thing feels so frustratingly claustrophobic. I haven't been excited for a single minecraft or DST update in terms of exploration, survival or combat for decades/years respectively, and I think it is because the roof of damage is felt so badly.

I have no idea what the philosophy is behind it. But it feels like weapons are too afraid to change a tiny meta and cause complete chaos. Maybe planar is some great mathematical plan to switch that up. I don't really see math that well. But if it's the other way around that planar will just keep the roof intact and lock progress behind arbitrary colour-coding, spider tools for spiders, pig weaponry for pigs, etc etc. Whatever.. Again, it's interesting that someone is trying it, see what kind of game and gameplay comes out of it, but so far it has been no fun.

EDIT: With a big fat guess. All of it probably stems from multiplayer? With things like endless worlds and dedicated servers that has new players come in and out in generations. If there is progress and changes to be made how do you get by as a new survivor. But then arguably that's an engaging challenge to jump directly into a new level and desperately scrape your way into stability, meanwhile progress itself surely incentivizes people to stay for once. Or maybe there's some grand idea about non-progression trying to keep players trapped playing the game forever simply in hope of reaching some sort of apotheosis where the real game would begin. Like an MMORPG. But instead it's an forever struggle over nothing because any reward is also a closure and a potential out of the whole system. Shrug.

[BB Marioni]

on the note of reduced damage, beefalo armor please? haha. even just a 30% reduction on damage received by your mounted beefalo would already be amazing.

[ADM]

I think whatever is preparing still has a decent chance to be fine, but at the time there is just no way to find out so, heh... I hope Klei understands the lack of enthousiasme from this update, everyone is looking forward how that will go more than what we just got. But yeah imo, if we're getting like a new boss or a new world event that is dedicated to these new equipments for easier time battling them so it's just the story of one or a few fights. It could still be okay to give it a chance for the sake of having a new stage of progression in resource gathering.

But I 100% agree the execution could be totally failed since this could mean the already so small diversity of weapons and armors (more the diversity in their difference and effects than the big damages / protection, we mostly use the same 3 weapons and armors and the rest is in the back because they have nothing unique or fun) only get smaller if the new stuff become a must have, no it could be different and just suggested while still manageable without for lesser unlocked threats for a new more or less rare hound type that sometimes happen in late game waves or so many things that wouldn't necessary mean we ditch everything before this.

[GodIess]

To be fair, we now have armor and weapon classes.
wooden - all ordinary mobs
marble - for standing in one place and absorbing dmg
armor of night is a good armor for killing CC
tulecite armor for killing tough bosses with high damage
bone armor - for boss fights that you can dodge but sometimes you can't
new armor - for battles with new mobs and pvp

agree, no one will fight spiders in tulcite armor just because it protects better, or in marble to kill CC.

The story is the same now with weapons
we have a new weapon designed to kill lunar creatures and shadows. there are also weapons for shadows that just live a long time, weapons for bosses with a huge amount of hp, basic weapons, specific weapons and everything else. and each has its own purpose

[Vinja]

I’m not sure if you’re specifically talking about what I said a couple days ago on another thread but what you’re arguing against in this post is eerily close to something I said a couple days ago so I’ll post exactly what I said here and then give my response as if you were talking to me.

“Or how about this? Could we embrace a “hard mode”? What if when you kill CC the other bosses in the word get a health increase and a bigger and better more rewarding loot pool to go with it? Give the new sword 100 base damage, buff the new staff, drop the planar damage idea, and now you have a new tier of weapons that can feel stronger and more fun to use in your day to day combat but it doesn’t make other boss content too easy, and for taking on the challenge you get better boss drops in the process. Maybe give the old bosses a Lunar/Shadow themed reskin and maybe even a new attack or battle mechanic to symbolize their hard mode variant and add Lunar/Shadow items into their loot pool. “

This was the idea that I had in full context, it wasn’t just “make new sword 100 damage”. 
 

Now granted, this was absolutely not some incredibly well thought out idea, it was a quick idea I had that I wrote up on the fly so I’m not gonna pretend like what I said exactly should be implemented but I do think it’s an idea that could be worth looking into at least.

So firstly I agree that I don’t want the boss fights to just be pushovers which is why I brought up the idea of a hard mode where bosses get a new look, maybe a couple new attacks or battle mechanic or something to fundamentally add another layer to each fight, a slight reskin to show that they’re a different harder version of the boss, and better loot for the trouble. I’m saying in the same recommendation as buffing the sword that the bosses should be harder as well which kinda makes your point about fighting dragonfly sound a bit silly. If what I said were to happen you would probably feel more excitement fighting him as he’d be more refreshing and challenging and give better loot.

As far as the regular mobs go, I don’t think something like one shotting default spiders or killing beefalo faster would be game breaking or remove fun, hard disagree for me here. Assuming you’re fighting them intelligently, spiders aren’t hard they’re just tedious and time consuming. Once I learned the bunnymen spider farm setup I don’t even need to fight spiders much beyond removing them from an area or trying to get loot in early game. 
 

Beefalo are ridiculously easy kite, there is literally no challenge in fighting them unless you’re trying to fight a whole herd at once or something and even then it’s not the beefalo that’s challenging it’s your bad strategy causing the challenge. Killing beefalo in less phases is fine. I realize these weren’t your two major points like “Aha! But the spiders and beefalo!” Or something but I think it’s for the most part indicative of the rest of the regular mobs. They really aren’t that hard especially if you’re fighting them cleverly. Would just make farming their drops a bit quicker but the more important thing is it would give the players a sense of achievement and accomplishment. An actual real tangible cool reward for spending hours and hours dying over and over and honing your skills and strategies to the point that you’re actually able to complete all the content. It would also finally give players who haven’t beat CC (which is the vast majority btw) something to work towards, an actual REASON to take on the challenge. Plus a hard mode would actually give existing players that have already completed the content a new challenge to take on. 
 

Anyway, I agree with some of what you said, and I agree that just giving the sword a flat 100 damage and doing absolutely nothing else is a bad idea but if I’m one of the people you were talking about, that is absolutely not what I said.

[abrocator]

No.