Ocean Feedback Thread

[Primalflower]

My ocean feedback is that i love it so SO SO SO much and like a good 40% of my gaming in DST tends to be focused around it because the content it has is amazing! With all of the content in its place and the numbers for spawns finally properly tuned, it has one of the most compelling/clear cut gameplay loops in terms of survival that exists in DST.

I feel like something that a lot of people ignore/approach in a way that makes their experience worse is that the core ocean gameplay lies within traveling from place to place, and finding and grabbing things as you travel, sort of like wind waker, but procedurally generated. What this means is that the ocean ends up benefiting taking your time and doing things slow/medium pace over speeding through everything with as many sails as it takes to reach the cap. (Try not to spend so much time preparing a decked out boat with a boat equipment, you don't really need much outside of a boat and an oar!)

One key example of this is the first bottle you receive. The first bottle that you ever get is always going to show you exactly where pearl's island is, which can be pretty much anywhere on the ocean, but tends to be somewhere out in deep waters on the opposite corner of the world. Now! I feel like a common player response to this is to immediately hop off your boat/grass raft if you play ocean-first like i do sometimes, and immediately run through land to whatever shore is closest to pearl's island, minimizing the amount of water you'll have to travel through. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, this is a huge rookie mistake, because in doing this, you are immediately losing out on bottles, fish, kelp, and priceless map exploration that will inevitably lead to any of the biomes/sweet spots you might find on the ocean.

On pearl's island in specific, its made in such a way that the moment you get there, if pearl is out, then you can instantly hang up the gauranteed kelp and get yourself a pinchin' winch with the singular bottle you used to get there. With the other, unread bottles you're extremely likely to have gathered up, then from there you can instantly get yourself a bunch of sunken chest X-marks on your map that will then serve as a vital little quest-generation and motive to continue exploring and thus coming across the million things you do on the ocean.

Sunken chests in of themselves have decent loot that is absolutely worth running around for, whether it be early on for canes/wanda clocks/general boat building, or tridents and thulecite later on, but I think their main purpose and what they excel at in particular is just existing as something that makes you traverse the ocean and thus give the player plenty of opportunity to run into things along the way, like shoals, ship graveyards for a million boards, rockjaws/gnarwails, salt shoals, or waterlogged biomes. All of these things end up benefitting the player pretty heavily in both the long and short term to find. Shoals full of deep bass are so huge and i have no idea how people miss it! There are a million places (shoals) in the world that you can come to with nigh any quality of fishing rod equipment and come away a few minutes later (deep bass are the weakest fish in the world they dont fight back barely at all so its super fast) with like 10 or 15 deep bass that ideally function as hunks of meat that will never, ever spoil! This is like, something that in my honest opinion, without optimization kind of rivals koalefant hunting in how lucrative it can be, especially if you set yourself up to be able to hit multiple shoals in easy time. Salt shoals mean salt boxes which is something i desperately, desperately crave in any kitchen/farm, because 4x spoilage is sooo huge, especially if you use the ice box in tandem to squeeze a little more time out of something after they've stayed in the salt box for a while. This isn't even mentioning how nice cookie cutters are for monster meat, given that every single one 100% drops one and they tend to come in packs of like, a dozen.

Waterlogged biomes are crazy too! It serves as a nice source of consistent driftwood/silk for those who go on the ocean early on, but also contains a truckload of food as previously mentioned in this thread, alongside knobbly nuts. Knobbly nuts, dude! disregarding how nice they look and their purposes for decor, thats like, an infinite smoldering protector that takes nothing after setting up and has a fairly massive radius thats one forest lake away from being super convenient for base protection, disregarding any thought of just, basing a little close to shore. They're a pretty decent chunk of my later game base building.

All of this isn't even touching things like the lunar island the stuff it has, or the moon quay and the stuff you can get from there (i love storming the place when its night and thus none of the monkeys are even out to get at me, docks are INSANE and cannons for marble farming aren't far behind) or barnacles and how you can absolutely abuse them, or the malbatross and how useful its loot is, or funny stuff you can get up to with the little trawling station building, etc, etc!!

I love the ocean so much, it makes so much sense to me. The ocean is vast and much of the space isn't taken up by things one must navigate with major precision around, and this works to its advantage as the major gameplay and the best way I've found to experience it is by exploring endlessly and finding a million things along the way, things that're helpful both in and out of the ocean. I could go on about a million different tips that I think would help a lot of players on this thread enjoy their experience more, but I feel like that would be a bit clutter-y.

[goodguythatguy]

1 hour ago, cybers2001 said:

If you haven’t built a nautopilot carousel yet, you’re definitely missing out.

Nice, can you be more specific on what I'm missing out on? Just missing out on building them for the sake of building them?

4 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

My ocean feedback is that i love it so SO SO SO much and like a good 40% of my gaming in DST tends to be focused around it because the content it has is amazing! 

I'd like to watch the last 40 hours of your DST gameplay to see what you're doing in the Ocean for 16 hours of it. You describe it as amazing, amazing Ocean gameplay sounds...amazing. I'd like to see what that amazing looks like. 

[Yuuko]

34 minutes ago, sylvia wander o said:

This just comes down to the specific framing, doesn't it...? You described the reward as a default state and then the punishment as a punishment, but the reward of rowing in a rhythm is that your boat goes faster and you can row again sooner, while the default state is rowing too slow for the rhythm, and the punishment is when you row too fast. I have to wonder, is it a simple matter of there should be a little shine effect when you row correctly or something?

Sort of yes, but not always, and "even so..." still applies.

For rowing - yes it is a framing issue.  When you mess up things go wrong and when you row correctly things go right.  But even so... the perception change is not entirely in the mind of the user.  It's something Klei should consider in designing these and other content.  Having the character perhaps give a quote when rowing correctly or have the speed boost from rowing correctly kick in after a few paddles so it is more noticeably an effect of rowing correctly, or changing the tune to a rowing song would straighten out this perception.  Those things are missing, and I think the reason why is that we're not supposed to be "good" at rowing, its supposed to be a stepping stone to sails and rigging for our boat.

This is where it's not a framing issue anymore.  Sails bring in issues that you don't have with an oar.  They lack maneuverability, and are susceptible to dangers that just don't exist if you paddle around on an empty boat.  This adds punishment only if you try to "do boating better," and there aren't any real answers to that.  What people find is that an empty boat with a driftwood oar, taking only small trips out and back bypasses most of the problems of boating, so like "good boating" doesn't engage the positive rewards we should be getting for "doing it right."

This is a common theme of some problems with DST.  There are a lot of systems that seem cool and we want to use, but they are tuned wrong, mismatched risk / reward, or time invested is inefficient, etc to the point where avoiding the content is the correct course.  imo any content that players routinely sidestep entirely is a signal that the content is flawed and needs work.  Nothing about that means the good things you enjoy about rowing, or fishing need to go - but something does need to change so that it serves as a positive feature of the game.

I really like how they did boating in DST.  I find managing the rigging and navigating to be very fun.  Its exciting when I'm steering around through dangerous waters.  But after just a bit on the water I can feel the lack of anything meaningful happening.  Boating lacks early game rewards like going to the ruins, killing dfly or bee queen, or gathering resources to a central base have.  Yet late game I've already explored the land mass, and its just quick trips in and out with a boat from the closest shore.  I really WISH there was more to it, boating is a whole dynamic that I feel compliments DST well it just needs some reason to prep a boat for staying at sea a bit, and some reward that makes you feel better when you come back, like you've actually done something worth while rather than wasted time while everyone else at base was putting in work.

[Dextops]

For an actual list of gripes i have i would say
-there just isn't enough ocean content 
-Most of the ocean is still dead sea with basically no mechanics to the actual ocean part itself
-Content is usually concentrated into a small singular area resulting in the ocean feeling dead no matter how much content you pump into it
-There isn't a lot of reasons to 1. go out into the sea in general and 2. once you get the stuff that is actually worth it there is not much incentive to every go back
-The ocean is entirely static. No matter the season or what world event is going on the ocean will remain entirely the same which seems to be such a missed opportunity. Imagine seasonal changes to the ocean, it'd be amazing
-The ocean is too massive of a place with the mainland smack down in the middle making traversing harder than it ever needs to be
-crab king exists
Despite all of these cons i still like things like the waterlogged biome a lot, but i think it's dumb to say the ocean doesn't need massive changes for it to be appealing and i hope it won't take 4 years for it to have some sort of cohesion.

[Mike23Ua]

[GenomeSquirrel]

54 minutes ago, ButterStuffed said:

Perhaps punishment was the wrong term to use.

  Hide contents

I'm going off of the concept of operant conditioning, so the rowing system would be better classified as negative reinforcement, where taking away the negative (getting wet) is the main motivator.

Pretty much yeah.

I’d argue there isn’t enough feedback to be considered conditioning, concluding that being dry is not possible or that only mast, steering wheel, anchor and viable for long distance is believable.

[bloopah]

11 hours ago, Dextops said:

Hot take: I think the ocean is pretty unfinished and bad

This take is colder than the Blue Gems that Malbatross drops.

 

4 hours ago, Catteflyterpill said:

Yeah larger oceanic biomes that just span out for you to explore with your boat would be so much more interesting. Instead of a little pocket of space, it could feel like an area intended for boat navigation. Maybe even with subbiomes within it, like the lunar island has.

One can wish for Klei to consider this. Maybe some more mobs than just reskinned Spiders and Koalefants for Waterlogged as well?

[sudoku]

Stuff I'd like to see for future ocean content:

Mainland Water

Water should be incorporated into the mainland biome with rivers, wharfs, lakes; split the mainland.

The swamp should be redesigned to incorporate water tiles, similar to the Mangrove biome in Shipwrecked.

Maybe redesign the oasis lake to be an actual lake, instead of a slightly bigger pond.

Docks

Players should want to build docks at different ports that they access frequently to travel, instead of just for decoration.

Docks should have a structure that can be placed on it to repair boats when the player leaves it. 

Docks should have a structure that can be placed on docks that when you activate it, it teleports your boat from another dock location.

Seasonal Ocean

Spawn glaciers at the northermost area of the ocean 

Add a glacial biome that pops up here in the winter 

Allow the fire pump to target the player so they can increase their wetness during summer

Add Stormy oceans during Spring with rougher waters(Waves)

Sailing

Since sailing in DST is more about being on the open ocean rather than traveling like in SW, there needs to be more interesting things to do while sailing beyond navigating sea rocks, fishing, and collecting driftwood.

Add more random ocean spawns and activities.

• Whale hunts
• More large rare fish
• Stranded/Shipwrecked pirates who become befriended if you save them and keep them fed
  • Maybe these rescued pirates can be assigned to different boat parts like sails or anchors
• Add a sunken ship graveyard
• Add floating crates that can be salvaged with random survival items inside

Current Ocean Mechanic Changes

Buff skittersquids to always drop 2 light bulbs for lantern crafting

Nerf the rockjaws bite range

Lower the amount of sea stacks in the ocean

Pirates

• Allow pirates to be neutral to you if you fly their flag/sail
• Give pirate boats more interactions other than raiding
  • Make them search for treasure
  • Make them hunt gnarwals 
  • Make them fish
• Allow the player to earn the pirates favor by doing requests for them
  • Allow the player to recruit pirate boats at max favor
  • Recruited pirates can fish for the player
  • Recruited pirates can be befreinded to join the player on their ship
  • Recruited pirates will attack hostile creatures

[goodguythatguy]

Another thing I noticed on the topic of Ocean Content...

When the Kelp and Shell Bumper Kits were introduced to the game recently, I made some and tried to place them on my Boats, but I could only apply them to one side of my Boat. I think I need to destroy some of the Structures on my Boat, THEN repair the hole in the Boat, THEN place the Bumper Kit on that section of the Boat, THEN re-build the structure I just destroyed on top of the Bumper Kit I placed down. Is this anyone elses experience with the Bumper Kits?

I decided to ditch Bumper Kits, never made them again. I'm not doing that every time a Bumper Kit needs to be replaced on a Boat. 

I just looked at the Wiki for Bumpers. There's only one comment...

LeBiggenedQuack·1/25/2023

 

i haven't seen anyone use these at all

[Hornete]

12 minutes ago, bloopah said:

just reskinned Spiders

Hey! Striders were actually pretty great in that they used a fully custom animation set. I can see where you come from though, my biggest "fear" is a "bad" reuse of animations in these updates lol. You have no idea how scared I was that they were going to just reuse Splumonkey animations for Powder Monkeys (They did reuse the ol' hunchback for Prime Mates which I can live with, though I really liked the concepts they had much more!)

Despite Hamlet reusing animations a lot it's nearly unnoticable and super clever reuse. The iron hulk rib being a spider queen reskin makes me giddy. I love stuff like that if they do happen to reuse animations.

 

As for the main topic, there is so much I could talk about but don't feel like writing right now. Might come back later if I feel it.

[Zeklo]

I'd definitely like to see some seasonal content to incentivize (and deter) going into the ocean at specific times.

I'd also really really like it if the ocean worked even more asymmetrically to the caves—we've got the whole Lunar Quest shenanigans, but I'd love it if they implement content akin to the ruins. So picking between the ocean or caves would be entirely viable, and diversify that chunk of the game.

[Primalflower]

1 hour ago, goodguythatguy said:

I'd like to watch the last 40 hours of your DST gameplay to see what you're doing in the Ocean for 16 hours of it. You describe it as amazing, amazing Ocean gameplay sounds...amazing. I'd like to see what that amazing looks like. 

sometimes i spend seasons at a time just collecting loot from sunken chests and living off of barnacles, keeping my stuff on a cleared-of-monkeys moon quay

[LinknAllie]

12 hours ago, Dextops said:

Hot take: I think the ocean is pretty unfinished and bad

Agreed wholeheartedly.  I do like the moon stuff though

[bloopah]

37 minutes ago, goodguythatguy said:

I just looked at the Wiki for Bumpers. There's only one comment...

LeBiggenedQuack·1/25/2023

 

i haven't seen anyone use these at all

Heh, that's me. I personally have only used them once to test if they would prevent the boat from causing leaks. They do, but I still never use them because I don't need them. They aren't needed in an ocean that barely has any risk of ramming into things, unless you want to clear some dumb Sea Stacks or obtain a Knobbly Seed.

[goodguythatguy]

3 minutes ago, bloopah said:

Heh, that's me. I personally have only used them once to test if they would prevent the boat from causing leaks. They do, but I still never use them because I don't need them. They aren't needed in an ocean that barely has any risk of ramming into things, unless you want to clear some dumb Sea Stacks or obtain a Knobbly Seed.

Did somebody say..."See Stacks"?

[Primalflower]

8 minutes ago, bloopah said:

Heh, that's me. I personally have only used them once to test if they would prevent the boat from causing leaks. They do, but I still never use them because I don't need them. They aren't needed in an ocean that barely has any risk of ramming into things, unless you want to clear some dumb Sea Stacks or obtain a Knobbly Seed.

you don't need boat bumpers or anything to ram into things for stuff like knobbly seeds, you can ram into things hard enough to break them but not cause any leaks in your boat pretty easily. In any case, boat bumpers don't really find much use for me. Once or twice I used them in order to get rid of the sea stacks around crab king, but that wasn't really necessary.

[ButterStuffed]

2 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

I’d argue there isn’t enough feedback to be considered conditioning, concluding that being dry is not possible or that only mast, steering wheel, anchor and viable for long distance is believable.

To me the minimum feedback limit for something to be considered conditioning is that it is reasonably noticeable. Using oars as an example again, rowing too quickly, with its various forms of negative feedback, is negative reinforcement that is intended to promote a slower rowing pace. I think the visible dialogue, animation and the wetness increasing is enough to be considered conditioning.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say in the latter half of your post. I think you are comparing rowing with using sails?

[goatt]

Remove those herds of sea stacks and replace them with small but interesting islands.

 

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, ButterStuffed said:

To me the minimum feedback limit for something to be considered conditioning is that it is reasonably noticeable. Using oars as an example again, rowing too quickly, with its various forms of negative feedback, is negative reinforcement that is intended to promote a slower rowing pace. I think the visible dialogue, animation and the wetness increasing is enough to be considered conditioning.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say in the latter half of your post. I think you are comparing rowing with using sails?

If poor performance is observed and realized, and the good experience is neither known nor experienced, then assuming positives exists is a leap of faith. 

This is a random rhythm minigame in a game that otherwise doesn't have them, the punishment seems whimsical than a logical conclusion that would be reached.

[GuardDuty]

On 5/16/2023 at 3:21 AM, cybers2001 said:

If you haven’t built a nautopilot carousel yet, you’re definitely missing out.

The hype surrounding the nautopilot carousel overshadowed the fact that the entire update introduced utterly useless additions to ocean content. Canon kit practically unusable due to its clunkiness. Moreover, it serves no purpose since the pirate raids have been almost eliminated from the game. Who would even consider using rudder while sailing? Astronauts who need a resilient test for motion sickness? Nautopilot only functions at the speed of a single mast and one pair of magnet, the second mast adds too much speed thus the boat will fail to keep up with the increased speed. Alternatively, using a second pair of magnets to match the increased speed will lead to collisions and sinking of both boats. Want more space on the boat? Traveling at sloth's pace then. 

On 5/16/2023 at 4:49 AM, Primalflower said:

Sunken chests in of themselves have decent loot that is absolutely worth running around for, whether it be early on for canes/wanda clocks/general boat building, or tridents and thulecite later on.

Treasure hunting is disappointing and lacks sufficient rewards compare to the time and effort invested. Despite ocean travel requiring the same time and skills as ruin clearing, the loot obtained from treasure hunting is abysmal little. This, coupled with the empty space, and slow travel speed of boats and sea stacks in the ocean, results in a significant time investment to reach sunken chests. It often takes players 3-5 days just to reach a single sunken chest, and that's without considering the additional time required to stop and pick up bottles along the way. Players are lucky to fetch just 5 sunken chests per season, and there is still no guarantee of finding anything valuable inside. The usable loot with actual worth keeping in a sunken chest, often has a low 10% drop rate. This means that even after spending an entire season searching for sunken chests, the majority of the loot obtained is absolute trash. And my grievance: why the golden pickaxe drop rate is 50%? Treasure hunting but all I can see is golden pickaxes. 

[goodguythatguy]

1 hour ago, Dreadle said:

The hype surrounding the nautopilot carousel overshadowed the fact that the entire update introduced utterly useless additions to ocean content. Canon kit: practically unusable due to its clunkiness. Moreover, it serves no purpose since the pirate raids have been almost eliminated from the game. Who would even consider using rudder while sailing? Astronauts who need a resilient test for motion sickness? Nautopilot only functions at the speed of a single mast, the second mast adds too much speed thus the boat will fail to keep up with the increased speed. Want more space on the boat? Traveling at sloth's pace.

It sounds like I'm not missing out on anything. Maybe @cybers2001 will explain what I'm missing out on exactly, other than building a Nautopilot Carousel for the sake of building a Nautopilot Carousel. Maybe they know of some hidden technique or insight. 

[chirsg]

People LOVED shipwrecked. I won't ask for shipwrecked, but perhaps we can say why people LOVED shipwrecked, including myself.
Islands was the big one. Having different jobs on different shores was always good. 
In dst, sailing is a big commitment. If you're on the moon island, you're there for a half a season. In shipwrecked, you're zooming about visiting 2-3 islands a day.

I don't think this would ever be achieved, but honestly, I think it would have been great to restrict brightshades and rifts to the moon island and archipelagos. 
It's so invasive, that people choose to turn it off, because you've punished players for decorating.

Monkey island is a resource pit stop. You don't have much incentive to go back there at all.

You could collect your fill of what you need and be done with the entire thing.

Pearl's island is similar. Sure, you can trade bottles with her, but there's nothing all that incredible to be bartered or farmed with her. 

I actually wish I encountered more narwhals or sharks in ways I could control. Like in shipwrecked, dropping meat into the water. That would be good.

More mobs would be good too. May as well add swordfish at this point lol.

haha slot machine for pearl's island would actually be fun. Have her establish a casino. Love that idea.

Even casino in monkey island.

If you kill X amount of monkeys, they realize you're actually too formidable to waste precious monkey lives on, and instead have them steal from you in a more bureaucratic manner.

Whenever I visit a server that is progressed in days, almost all of them have genocided all the monkeys because there is no good reason to keep them alive. A monkey casino would be an incredible fit and would bring the ocean alive.

 

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

I like it a lot. But still has a lot of emptiness and potential for far more.

 

• It needs setpieces that would make you want to go into biomes, rather than sail around them. I don't remember last time i didn't sail around the sea weed biome. I love waterlogged, but it would definitely be cooler if you needed to go through there actually.
  One of the easier way to go around this could be adding the suspicious bubbles from shipwrecked.
• All 3 islands are great.
• The ocean loot could be a bit more balanced. There is plenty of free stuff (that is superior to the mainland stuff) on the lunar island (stone fruits, kelp). On the other hand, rockjaws drop nothing special, which is underwhelming.

 

The ocean is already much better than the caves though (ruins and lunar grotto / archives excluded). Personally I hope, whatever the new update storyline will become, i hope it will add interesting content to both caves and ocean.

[Mike23Ua]

The thing I don’t get about ocean content is that it’s existed since 2019 with the start of Return of Them, and very little has been added to it since they’ve added it. Even MORE Baffling to me then that is that they continue to add new boat craftables that are intended for Prolonged sailing trips (Aka boats with masts, anchors, Lightning Conductor/Deck Illuminator/Fire Pump, Pinch Winch, bumpers, etc upgrades) A fully decked out boat is a MASSIVE Resource sink & it can end up destroyed very easily by any number of things Klei feels like adding to the ocean, which is WHY in my above concept mobs: None of them target and damage the boat, but rather attempt to hit the player on the boat instead.

Boat Kits both Wooden one made of 4 planks, and the grass raft made of twigs & grass with constant upkeep, are too expensive, ESPECIALLY in a game where Ocean Content is pretty bare bones.. The “Islands” that exist out there with Exception to Lunar & Moon Quay do not offer the player enough resources to build or repair a boat.. ALL of that needs to be obtained on the massive Mainland area.

To be honest they could probably reduce the crafting costs of boat kits down to 8 logs, masts down to 4 silk, Anchors 1 Cutstone & they would still be mostly fine aside from the above mentioned: Most the resources to build said boats only existing mostly on the main large land.

therein lies another issue with “Ocean Content” You are required to go back to the mainland to gather resources to craft/build your boat because there aren’t enough Lunar Island sized biomes out at sea with resources on them to build/craft/repair your boats with.

Which then makes any and ALL existing Ocean Content a small trip out to an area and then back to the Mainland area again.

Something needs to change.

I loved Shipwrecked.. absolutely loved it, but DSTs version feels like it’s still in early beta stages, and that’s sad too since it’s existed since 2019.

[goodguythatguy]

1 hour ago, chirsg said:

 A monkey casino would be an incredible fit and would bring the ocean alive.

 

A Casino would give me even more reason to stay away from the Ocean. Might as well throw in a Monkey Strip Club.
Maybe Klei can do a crossover with Leisure Suit Larry and really take the degeneracy to a whole new level with a 'Leisure Suit Wilson' game.