Ideas to make this update feel better, more 'complete'

[Szczuku]

Alright Klei, listen up. From the get go I'll say: get rid of earthquake boulders. This is not a challenge. A challenge is something that benefits the game, something that the playerbase will be happy to overcome. Boulder earthquakes are an annoyance. They take away from the game, make it less enjoyable. They:

-Make Antlion less unique

-Give almost no warnings, effectively punishing players that spend time around their cave bases/builds

-They. Stay. Behind. Just like how Brightsahdes' problem is that they don't wither and die, they stay behind, and there's only so many husks that the player is willing to collect and store. Meaning that at some point a world is going to be overrun with those things. Same goes for boulders. Players don't want to have to mine those things after. Every. Single. Earthquake. Meaning that at some point the world will become littered with boulders. That block your way.

If they were something more creative, such as nightmare fuel-infused stalactites that simply deal more damage than regular earthquake debris and shatter on impact (maybe have a 5% chance to drop nightmare fuel) then not only wouldn't they be a danger to undeground builds, they'd also feel conencted with the activated rifts. As opposed to just 'yeah boulders now drop. for no reason at all'

Acid rain.

First of all: we need more ways to combat it. Handheld item is simply not enough. The only head armor that doesn't have rain protection (therefore wouldn't be eaten through by acid) is thulectie crown, effectively limiting the players options and forcing them to rely on body armor. Not to mention that in a figh scenario you wouldn't be able to hold the ubralla anyway. Either allow us to upgrade existing gear or give us a head/body protection from the acid. Or a structure that acts like Sw's palmleaf hut, but bigger, maybe a pillar as a giant build project.

Furthermore, give it some benefits. Winter's cold makes food spoil less. Spring's rainfall makes plants grow faster. Summer's heat makes drying racks work faster (I think). Acid rain provides no side benefits, aside from renewing nitre which feels more like a 'This happens irl, so we added it into the game'-thing than something useful, since nitre is not a material that's often needed. And I'd personally even call it a bad thing as caves' beautiful blue ponds turn into pee-yellow [redacted]-looking puddles.

Anyhoo, my ideas for it:

-During acid rains most mobs don't leave their homes. For example: Splumonkeys! This could be a great benefit to the players as you could visit ruins during an acid rain without having to worry about monkeys. Since you know, corrosion damages machines, acid rain could also prevent broken clockwork piles from spawning broken clockworks and make said clockworks have less health/damage.

-Acid rains renew stalagmites, y'know, cuz erosion is how they form irl. And there you go, starting the rifts and dealing with their rain now allows players to renew fossils, something that I've seen players ask for.

-Maybe it could damage big enemies such as bosses. Bigger size = more acid lands on them.

I encourage forumites to also come up with quick-to-implement ideas to make acid rain feel more natural and as something that also player can benefit from.

Redesign Charlie.

I've seen at least 2 redesigns here on this subforum that look better than what we currently have.

Give Ancient Fuelweaver an interaction with upgraded gateway

I find it strange that the guy has no new voicelines regarding it.

Just make it so as you summon him he is unattackable, looks at the gateway, says "Fools. All of you"/"This time I will break the cycle"/"You don't know what you've done" (or something like that) and then the battle goes as regular.

[Reiko24]

I really like the Fuelweaver quote suggestion. I hope it will get implemented.

Also if the Fuelweaver is left alone he will maybe try to destroy the Ancient Gateway? So if you lose the fight you will need to upgrade the Gateway once again.

[GelatinousCube]

18 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Alright Klei, listen up. From the get go I'll say: get rid of earthquake boulders. This is not a challenge. A challenge is something that benefits the game, something that the playerbase will be happy to overcome. Boulder earthquakes are an annoyance. They take away from the game, make it less enjoyable. They:

-Make Antlion less unique

-Give almost no warnings, effectively punishing players that spend time around their cave bases/builds

Yes yes yes. Couldn't sum it up better myself.They are utterly unnecessary and should just be reversed and removed completely.

19 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Either allow us to upgrade existing gear or give us a head/body protection from the acid. Or a structure that acts like Sw's palmleaf hut, but bigger, maybe a pillar as a giant build project.

 Yes please. 

 

20 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Furthermore, give it some benefits

Yes 

 

21 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

 

-During acid rains most mobs don't leave their homes. For example: Splumonkeys! This could be a great benefit to the players as you could visit ruins during an acid rain without having to worry about monkeys. Since you know, corrosion damages machines, acid rain could also prevent broken clockwork piles from spawning broken clockworks and make said clockworks have less health/damage.

-Acid rains renew stalagmites, y'know, cuz erosion is how they form irl. And there you go, starting the rifts and dealing with their rain now allows players to renew fossils, something that I've seen players ask for.

-Maybe it could damage big enemies such as bosses. Bigger size = more acid lands on them.

These ideas are dope AF.

 

22 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

 

Give Ancient Fuelweaver an interaction with upgraded gateway

I find it strange that the guy has no new voicelines regarding it.

Just make it so as you summon him he is unattackable, looks at the gateway, says "Fools. All of you"/"This time I will break the cycle"/"You don't know what you've done" (or something like that) and then the battle goes as regular.

Also dope 

[HeatAndRun]

4 hours ago, Szczuku said:

-Acid rains renew stalagmites, y'know, cuz erosion is how they form irl. And there you go, starting the rifts and dealing with their rain now allows players to renew fossils, something that I've seen players ask for.

I like this idea very very much. Renewable fossil fragments, oh yeah.

[BB Marioni]

i saw somewhere that the new armors give acid rain protection too? I agree that the boulder quakes are a verrryyyyyyy bad idea.

[Pticman]

I really like these ideas. To add more I think most of the creatures should take damage from acid rains, and it is the reason why they would hide in their homes (monkeys, bats, bunnymans)

Some creatures however might benefit from acid rains, like Snurtles for example. Because Snurtles eat  minerals including nitre they should  have some sort of immunity to acid rains, maybe they can be more aggressive during the rain, walking around trying to bite everything? I also like the idea of giving Snurtle helmet acid rain protection, so it could be connected as well.

[Szczuku]

Some things that I forgot in the op:

Shadow hand should make the 'come here' finger gesture from time to time. Simple as that. I know it's not much and I assume that the hand and Charlie only appear once in-game but still- I feel like it'd be better than just reusing fire-stealing one's animations. Even Wavy gets finger guns, why Charlie should be less special.

Scrapbook.

-It should work exactly like Cookbook: Accessible from the compendium, item form in-game. New discoveries are silently added in and given the 'you haven't looked at this yet'-effect, instead of this annoying and frankly- out of place pop-up. And instead of yet another learnable drop that'll only serve as garbage once you've got it for the first time. I know that this is a thing made for new players... but so is the cookbook. I'm sure that new players will be competent enough to figure it out.

-I'd also ask devs to give bestiary mobs' some descriptions, field notes-style, written by the survivors. I feel like that'd be more interesting than just supplying us with character quotes. But, sadly, this is clearly not the direction that Klei wants to take the scrapbook in. Still... this is an idea worth throwing out there.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

Big ups for the post. Boulders need to go and acid rain needs to interact with the rest of the caves for sure.

The only thing i disagree with is: I actually like that acid rain requires you to use up hand slot.

Bigger health pools or bigger damage are not the things that make this game challenging nor interesting. It only makes it more tedious. Whereas a situation where you have to choose between not having your hand slot or taking constant damage? Heck yeah. People so often rely on head armor, walking cane and backpack. This mechanic can make you change up your playstyle. Now you have to prepare differently for the new challenges that await you after the main boss is defeated. How is that a bad thing? Plus, if you don't want to use the umbralla (or if you don't have it yet) you don't have to. You still got the option to either take constant damage to damage your water resistant clothes.

That said, i have one problem with it: I'm not sure how viable it is to get an umbralla for everyone on the server.

But hey, if you all really need a body slot or head slot item to protect you from this new challenge, all the power to you. I hope Klei listens to the majority.

[Mysterious box]

Unpopular opinions I know but I think boulders can stay with a added longer warning phase and the new umbrella could be given a new mechanic where you can stab it into the ground and it expands into a shelter that degrades faster but protects over a set area for when you need to fight or do tasks. It could also block boulders for large chunks of durability.

This would make the mechanic more bearable while giving a unique function to our latest umbrella.

[finn from human]

13 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Boulder earthquakes are an annoyance. They take away from the game, make it less enjoyable. They:

-Make Antlion less unique

I've heard this complaint a good few times and I don't really get it... Every videogame ever in the whole world does this, don't they? Antlion boulders are a rare threat during an early phase of the game, which then becomes repurposed as a common threat once the player is much stronger/more skilled in the late game. It doesn't make Mario Galaxy's first airship level less unique to have Magikoopas reappear as common enemies after being treated like a mini boss early on, it doesn't make the basement less unique in Binding of Isaac to have its bosses reappear as mini bosses several floors later, and heck, I sat here trying to find an example of this in an RPG so I had a lot of genres covered and I found that I couldn't remember a single one that doesn't do this. This is just a thing games do! A rare early game threat makes for a good common late game threat, as the player already knows how to handle it and so it can be repurposed as a new threat without catching them entirely off guard. Klei really does seem to be aiming to make the game more intuitive lately, and this is a really good way to do it imo.

[SomebodyRandom]

1 hour ago, Cr4zyFl4mes said:

Whereas a situation where you have to choose between not having your hand slot or taking constant damage? Heck yeah. People so often rely on head armor, walking cane and backpack. This mechanic can make you change up your playstyle. Now you have to prepare differently for the new challenges that await you after the main boss is defeated. How is that a bad thing? Plus, if you don't want to use the umbralla (or if you don't have it yet) you don't have to. You still got the option to either take constant damage to damage your water resistant clothes.

That said, i have one problem with it: I'm not sure how viable it is to get an umbralla for everyone on the server.

But hey, if you all really need a body slot or head slot item to protect you from this new challenge, all the power to you.

The problem with the only form of dealing with the acid rain properly being the Umbralla is that it's not a weapon. If you want to use the Umbralla, you can't engage combat at all. You could use other water resistant equipment but they take A LOT of damage so they'll probably be gone before you even finish the fight. So the only real option for fighting on acid rain is to just take the damage, which is bad because you're in combat and because the acid rain deals a lot of damage if you're in it for long enough (almost enough to make jellybeans useless). If you're playing Wanda, it's just game over.

[Pet Rock]

2 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Shadow hand should make the 'come here' finger gesture from time to time. Simple as that. I know it's not much and I assume that the hand and Charlie only appear once in-game but still- I feel like it'd be better than just reusing fire-stealing one's animations. Even Wavy gets finger guns, why Charlie should be less special.

Overall I think the shadow hand feels kind of out of place. It would be better if it reached out of the void in a 3-dimensional fashion. I drew a quick proof of concept:

Spoiler

[finn from human]

7 minutes ago, SomebodyRandom said:

The problem with the only form of dealing with the acid rain properly being the Umbralla is that it's not a weapon. If you want to use the Umbralla, you can't engage combat at all.

It is a weapon, actually! It's just currently bugged. It's supposed to do spear damage, but it's never properly specified to be a weapon in the code, and so the game disregards that number entirely.

[SomebodyRandom]

3 minutes ago, sylvia wander o said:

It is a weapon, actually! It's just currently bugged. It's supposed to do spear damage, but it's never properly specified to be a weapon in the code, and so the game disregards that number entirely.

Finally. I can now look forward to fighting Ink Blights while wielding a spear that also loses durability overtime. This is fantastic news.

[Mysterious box]

26 minutes ago, sylvia wander o said:

It is a weapon, actually! It's just currently bugged. It's supposed to do spear damage, but it's never properly specified to be a weapon in the code, and so the game disregards that number entirely.

This actually does make alot more sense now a umbrella weapon is a pretty interesting concept.

[-Variant]

1 hour ago, SomebodyRandom said:

Finally. I can now look forward to fighting Ink Blights while wielding a spear that also loses durability overtime. This is fantastic news.

Regens durability over time, actually! We'll need to see how much durability attacking will take, but the umbralla gains durability in acid rain.

[. . .]

17 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Either allow us to upgrade existing gear or give us a head/body protection from the acid.

I think some sort of coating that can be applied to any equippable gear would be nice. Already wrote in other places I think phlegm can serve this purpose but maybe it can be something else like glommer goop or a combination of different mucous-y substances to make an acid-proof gel that can be applied to any equipment which gives it a little icon like when you spice food and then makes it acidproofed.

3 hours ago, Pet Rock said:

Overall I think the shadow hand feels kind of out of place. It would be better if it reached out of the void in a 3-dimensional fashion. I drew a quick proof of concept:

I agree too. It looks kinda odd, probably should have its own unique look and not just be like those hands that snatch your fires away

[SomebodyRandom]

11 hours ago, -Variant said:

Regens durability over time, actually! We'll need to see how much durability attacking will take, but the umbralla gains durability in acid rain.

Oh, I was under the impression that it lost durability under acid rain and regened away from the acid rain. That's good to know.

[GelatinousCube]

4 hours ago, Satan_ said:

I respectfully am inclined to disagree with everything you have just said. I think you're a great and swell guy and I am interested in taking your soul  *ahem* soufflé, sorry, typo ehehe. 

But I think a healthy amount of destruction and time lost in this game would be much appreciated. What value is there in a 5000 day world anyway? Better off forcing instant regeneration after you are killed by acid rain and there, update is complete

This shtick isn't funny at all. It's childish. 

What value? The hundreds of hours that players dedicate to get to this day count maybe. The ton of time and effort they put in. The money they spend on skins. 

[abrocator]

20 hours ago, sylvia wander o said:

It is a weapon, actually! It's just currently bugged. It's supposed to do spear damage, but it's never properly specified to be a weapon in the code, and so the game disregards that number entirely.

How can it protect you from the rain if you are poking stuff with it? That doesn’t make conceptual sense.

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, GelatinousCube said:

This shtick isn't funny at all. It's childish. 

What value? The hundreds of hours that players dedicate to get to this day count maybe. The ton of time and effort they put in. The money they spend on skins. 

This guy is trolling, no point arguing with him at all.

Just ignore trolls on the internet (and perhaps report if they've gone too far)