Suggestion: make the celestial portal work only once per player

[EatenCheetos]

By now, it’s clear that the celestial portal — which was meant for players who are unhappy with their character choice — is being heavily exploited and incorporated into the late-game meta.

Because Klei doesn’t seem to want to remove the celestial portal, it should instead be limited to once per character.

[Evelo]

I approve but I can guarantee you a lot of people will disagree.

[Jakepeng99]

If they do that, there should be a setting to remove Wes from the "Random" character pool in the selection screen.

Also i feel like my main problem with the portal is wanda abusing it for easy access to time fragments.w

[DegenerateFurry]

How about you just install a mod that disables it instead of asking the devs to take away fun gameplay synergy mechanics and ruin the solo experience? Also, what meta? This is not a competitive game. It's not ranked. People do what they want and find ways to make it work. You could mass-produce compost wraps and boss rush as Wormwood if you wanted. It's not the optimal way to boss rush, but nobody's stopping you, just like nobody's stopping you from never building the Celestial Portal.

[Dextops]

Please no.

[Prinha]

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

— which was meant for players who are unhappy with their character choice — is being heavily exploited and incorporated into the late-game meta.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Frequent and easy switching of characters has been part of DS and DST for a very long time. Even in DS it's pretty quick to do using a Hamlet world. 
Please stop making claims about what things are designed for inside DST. You have no proof whatsoever and are presenting your personal opinion as a fact.

Most things in this game are very non restrictive. Their intended use is deliberately unclear. And they ended up being incoorperated in many different ways and playstyles. Encouraging player creativity and freedom is actually one of the main appeals of the series for me. I don't need a celestial portal police that wants to kill my gamefun for some imagined metagame, that doesn't even exist. 

Out of the ~1500 hours that I have spend playing on public servers, some of which went well past the day 600 mark, I only remember 3 (!!) times, where there actually was a celestial portal. Two out of those three times, I ******* build the thing myself. Are you per chance discounting public servers in your meta game analysis? Good idea, they are only the most populated dedicated servers of them all. 

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

How about you just install a mod that disables it instead of asking the devs to take away fun gameplay synergy mechanics and ruin the solo experience? Also, what meta? This is not a competitive game. It's not ranked. People do what they want and find ways to make it work. You could mass-produce compost wraps and boss rush as Wormwood if you wanted. It's not the optimal way to boss rush, but nobody's stopping you, just like nobody's stopping you from never building the Celestial Portal.

Let me explain it in a way that’s easier to understand: It’s easier to build a celestial portal & have powerful character swap choices, then it is to unlock some Forbidden Knowledge that’s single use is to craft Turfs from a Terrafirma whatever it’s called.

Klei very clearly added the portal swap super super early into the games development stages, but now with these crazy powerful reworked characters AND an actual Lunar Island out at sea that requires questing all over the constant to find and assemble a statue on the island- The Celestial Portal justifiably needs a nerf..

Im not saying to outright Remove it, but maybe give players an option to disable the ability to upgrade the Postern, if I can toggle on & off the Terrarium, I don’t see why I can’t toggle on and off the Postern Upgrade.

Now then aside being able to outright remove it from the world like with Terrarium settings, I’d also prefer it be pushed back further into the later stages of the game. 

Maybe at the bare minimal: You need to find the Celestial Orb and socket it into a fully upgraded Celestial Statue on Lunar Island.

[ZelosCharm]

2 hours ago, EatenCheetos said:

By now, it’s clear that the celestial portal — which was meant for players who are unhappy with their character choice — is being heavily exploited and incorporated into the late-game meta.

Because Klei doesn’t seem to want to remove the celestial portal, it should instead be limited to once per character.

I really dont think a forced limit is a good idea at all , seems way to restrictive for DST in my opinion.

 

7 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Maybe at the bare minimal: You need to find the Celestial Orb and socket it into a fully upgraded Celestial Statue on Lunar Island.

In my opinion at this rate best solution would be to make an item to reset your skill tree that is just as easy to make as an idol now. And push the character swap way later on. Crafting them with brightshade might be good. 

[Noaa]

I think there is a real problem for certain players that they feel that sticking around on specific characters feels very "suboptimal," and they feel this pressure to swap off of characters where most of their useful perks persist after you swap off. 

I do think this affects a very small minority of players, but it is a pretty serious issue for them. But I don't think limiting swaps or making the celestial portal significantly harder to craft is the solution. Those tools exist for lots of different kinds of players, who all use the portals for their own various reasons. The good that would come from limiting the celestial players to this set of players who have trouble with feeling suboptimal while staying on certain characters, is far outweighed by the bad that would come from limiting the celestial portal to the playerbase as a whole. I say this as someone who has never personally built or used the celestial portal, because I have played as Wickerbottom for 99% of my DST experience. 

The solution is to bake more beneficial perks for a characters into actually using and walking around as them. If most of the fun or power of a character comes from using them, then there is a cost that "meta switching" players would have to consider for who they are currently playing as. Moving the power and fun of characters out of their craftable utilities and more into their benefits of playing as them would be the better solution. 

[Mike23Ua]

If your playing the game on Survival Mode: Something as powerful as being able to swap characters shouldn’t be easier to do then getting a crafting recipe for a purely cosmetic ancient chair.

And if your NOT playing on Survival Mode, there is literally an option to play “Wilderness” which lets you switch characters the same thing the portal currently does, but without having to craft a portal and feed it idols.

[Mysterious box]

I'd argue it's harder to even consider a nerf to the celestial portal as unlike the past it's use is highly encouraged by the game going beyond the suboptimal play argument.

[Baark0]

Oh goodie another nerf celestial portal thread

The portal is fine as it is, sure it could probably due to be a little more expensive to swap but it's really not that big of a deal. How about instead of taking away one of the better ways of shaking up late game worlds, you just limit yourself to one character swap per world. This isn't even something you need a mod for, let alone something Klei should waste their development time and resources on.

[HeatAndRun]

Personally I've been enjoying the celestial portal as it is for this entire years..

[NNOUS]

I guess a cooldown for swapping character can fit if reaaally needed, wanda and such easily abuse it for instant watches, thats seems quite broken. 

That player need to be more mindful on charater selection is doable.

roughly i think one change after a season? or once after a newmoon? I dont know.

[chirsg]

The problem with a hard character lock like that is a TRUE meta will emerge. 
Right now, we've got the freedom of changing to and fro from one character to the next and perhaps we don't pick the absolute meta beast and instead pick the characters we genuinely like. In my world, objectively the best character when it comes to performance is Wanda. Problem is, I don't like her. 

I don't really adore her character that much and she's not that cool to me. Maybe there's no corniness or sense of theatrics that I love in my characters, but when it comes to getting jobs done, there is seriously no one better than she.

I don't really want that kind of meta to dictate "the best character possible" for a single world. I'm not so against a celestial portal restriction, one I can name being an extended character lock, for example; after a shift, you're bound to that decision for 70-100 in game days. But with a permanent character choice, it could get pretty ugly and to "meta" centric 

[Zeklo]

We need a world setting. Disabled | Cooldown Intervals | No Restriction

I don't care which is default.

[xhyom]

I really don't know if these people who are actually changing characters to squeeze the most out of the game exist, seriously I've never seen anyone other than some hardcore streamer in a world with 5000 days care about these details... And usually those are only using Wolfgang or Wanda for 98% of the time anyway...
Jesus you guys are like competing on public servers? It doesn't make sense to care SO MUCH about the POSSIBILITY of someone using everything to the fullest, there's no reason for me to talk about simply not using it, whoever complains about it probably doesn't use it, so it doesn't affect them for sure, at least it doesn't affect me since I don't use it...

[Mysterious box]

14 minutes ago, xhyom said:

I really don't know if these people who are actually changing characters to squeeze the most out of the game exist, seriously I've never seen anyone other than some hardcore streamer in a world with 5000 days care about these details... And usually those are only using Wolfgang or Wanda for 98% of the time anyway...
Jesus you guys are like competing on public servers? It doesn't make sense to care SO MUCH about the POSSIBILITY of someone using everything to the fullest, there's no reason for me to talk about simply not using it, whoever complains about it probably doesn't use it, so it doesn't affect them for sure, at least it doesn't affect me since I don't use it...

To be fair the portal is a lot more relevant now to the point even I started using it since how some skill trees are designed kind of encourages it. That being said I'd prefer we didn't nerf the portal.

[Cassielu]

Nerf CP is necessary.

A mechanic that hurts the game when fully exploited is not healthy.

[xhyom]

26 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

To be fair the portal is a lot more relevant now to the point even I started using it since how some skill trees are designed kind of encourages it. That being said I'd prefer we didn't nerf the portal.

To be fair I don't think this fits very well with "abusing the portal" to get a very big advantage, I know Woodie can trade his points invested in perks early in the game for something more useful later, but it's also a bigger reason not to nerf the portal.
I just don't understand the point of making life miserable for anyone who WANTS to use it for any reason, it's not mandatory, Klei doesn't even balance things taking into account the possibility of the boss being fought with 200 catapults around, it's not as if the new stuff has a gigantic life bar that makes everything unpalatable for those who aren't abusing this mechanic. The game is made to be played together and even so any boss fight with about 4 players ends in seconds, and these 4 players will be using several advantages of several characters anyway so....

[Mysterious box]

4 minutes ago, xhyom said:

To be fair I don't think this fits very well with "abusing the portal" to get a very big advantage, I know Woodie can trade his points invested in perks early in the game for something more useful later, but it's also a bigger reason not to nerf the portal.

I mean that's not really the reason on Woodie's end it's just not worth carrying around the beaver or goose's final skill most of the time as the beaver's final skill only accels at controlled tree farms that you setup even if it's really good in that area while the goose's is only really good for locating things that doesn't mean their not useful just you'd generally rather abuse the portal when you want to use them instead of sticking with them. Then there's Wormwood where there's legitimately no good reason to ever have his plant crafting perks on you in your day to day survival while also being the reason people who care very little for him are required to pick him because he is mandatory for plant crafting.

[Fufuji]

This is not about in-game balance or gameplay experience though. It's about the actual player's feelings and the spirit of Sandbox. Keep in mind that in any game, the majority is always the light gamers. 

So my opinion is CP needs a tweak or nerf but not this hard. People should be able to switch characters freely and in any pattern, but with a higher price or tweaked (later) gameplay stage. 

[ZeRoboButler]

Although I myself don't use the portal very much (if at all, I prefer to stay as the one I chose), I still do not see a good reason to remove it. 

Perhaps from my own perspective it would be absurd, in a game where one of the greatest things about it is the massive variety of approaches that any person could take, to outright remove something from the game.(to me this and walter are in the same boat, the existence may seem questionable to some, but that is an opportunity for revision not deletion)

Now if the method in which a person swaps seems like such a big deal or even the fact that they can do it at all is a issue, I implore you to suggest options or alternatives to improve the game that I am sure many of us here enjoy. (And this is coming from some one who loves playing warly and detest swapping off after bundling goatjelly) 

[cropo]

I think it's fine as it is. If you use it, use it. If you don't, don't. 

 

I really don't understand the absolute obsession people have with complaining about the portal. Character swapping has been a thing since Singleplayer and was actually encouraged as a late-game meta to bring in overpowered gear and tools to a new world to renew everything and start off much easier, that's literally why it was made. Having to reset your entire world because you feel like trying a new character would be awful.

 

Like really, you want to nerf something you'll never use specifically to ruin someone elses game because it doesn't fit your standards for some reason, I don't really think there's any good argument here. It's morally wrong to want to nerf the portal. It's against the games vision since Singleplayer to want ruin the portal, You have the power of choice through modding or your own personal server rules to want to ruin the portal.

 

You have the power to not use it, the power to limit it, and you still want to make it worse for everyone else? I don't think it's a matter of opinion, I think that's objectively and morally wrong.

[Zeklo]

1 hour ago, xhyom said:

To be fair I don't think this fits very well with "abusing the portal" to get a very big advantage, I know Woodie can trade his points invested in perks early in the game for something more useful later, but it's also a bigger reason not to nerf the portal.

Heavy disagree. Skill trees are supposed to be a choice. You're supposed to pick some, at the cost of others—it's literally why you can't choose them all.
Only you can... With the portal. Which makes the entire system an absolute joke [for certain characters].

The Celestial Portal, by design, weakens the weight of player choice.

And y'know? I'm fine with that. I really hate what it does for the game, but some people like it. So I've long since given up on a 'delete the portal stance.'

But Klei themselves needs to adapt to a DST where the portal exists. Character benefits can't just be craftables (e.g. warly), and skills need to actually be a choice even with the presence of the portal. Because otherwise... just buff characters after they beat a certain boss or something. It would feel about the same if there's a spec for early game and a spec for late game—not because of meta, but because the perks literally become obsolete.

e.g. this thread: