what kind of route will rift content take?

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, Retepeter said:

Wel if you think the ocean arent done then I'm afraid that your expectations are too high.

My expectations are rock-bloody-bottom at this point. Which frankly is half the problem.

1 hour ago, Retepeter said:

I think planar is a good way to nerf what needs to be nerfed being high damage items and characters

Litterally none of that needs nerfed. Wolfgang hasn't been OP in about 2 years, other high-damage characters are probably going to get planar damage in their skill trees. And the only damage boost we've gotten over the last decade had been Volt Goat chaud-froid.

Point is: Planar Damage is trying to solve a problem that just doesn't exist, save for a single, fringe edge case.

1 hour ago, Retepeter said:

I disagree. It's not gonna be as good as the mainland content, but there's still 3 bosses, 3 islands, waterloggeds and salt brines.

Why *shouldn't* it be as good as Mainland content though? Would it really kill the game's balance for the ocean to actually be worth exploring? Also one of those bosses is nigh-unanimously considered the worst fight in DST. Do not really earning any points there.

[lenship2]

5 hours ago, _zwb said:

90% normal damage, 5 planar damage. So 10 planar with full set.

if it has 10 planar defense total then the full chew planar damage should've be halved, which clearly isn't the case since the resulting damage willow took was lower than 60

[_zwb]

27 minutes ago, lenship2 said:

if it has 10 planar defense total then the full chew planar damage should've be halved, which clearly isn't the case since the resulting damage willow took was lower than 60

There's probably some sort of extra protection against shadow aligned mobs, plus protection from skill tree alignment

[Yuuko]

6 hours ago, Retepeter said:

Wel if you think the ocean arent done then I'm afraid that your expectations are too high.

I think planar is a good way to nerf what needs to be nerfed being high damage items and characters

Is it a nerf though?  For almost all of the game nothing changed, and for these few select mobs it changes for.............. until you buy Wolfgangs + planar perks...............

I feel it would be much better if they left planar out of it, and just lowered Wolfgang's damage and gave him perks to increase it back up - choices a player would make against other perks they could have instead of damage if they wanted.  This way it effects everyone, and the skill system feels more like a way to grow with your character in a sorta rogue-like way rather than such a binary state ie if you aren't defeating AFW / CC you just get all the other perks, and if you are defeating them you get so much free planar damage that you're essentially buffed lol.

6 hours ago, Retepeter said:

I disagree. It's not gonna be as good as the mainland content, but there's still 3 bosses, 3 islands, waterloggeds and salt brines.

One of the main problems with the ocean imo is that it isn't a place to really live.  You explore a little bit, and then you just go out and back to what you want.  Place a boat near lunar, you go out and come back.  Place a boat near salt, you go out and come back.  Same for waterlogged biomes, moon quay, pearl, etc.  If you just want to do the thing the ocean is trivial b/c you just go out on a boat to do the thing and come back.  There are reasons to go out there, but your interaction is minimal.  If you want to actually go out on the ocean, fish and boat around for a while, build a base, it becomes very empty very fast.

imo the biggest issues are the fundamental construct of the ocean - everything is too generic.  No matter where you launch the shallows are shallows, the swells are swells, and the roughs are roughs.  You'll find multiple salt, waterlogged, etc and all placed wherever with little rhyme or reason.  It might be more interesting if the swell and rough were replaced with more distinct biomes of life.  Rather than Crab King or Moon Quay just being in this one little dot, if they had a whole biome's worth of surrounding features it would be easier to navigate and more interesting to explore.  Think about it like when you first start a server you're going to look for some things, like you might notice where Chester is b/c you see other things that let you know chester will be near, or you see a forest and keep your eyes open for a totally normal tree to get living logs, or other signs that the terraria chest or moon stone event will be there, or you see a savanna and know beefalo might be inside etc.

Nothing in the ocean connects like that.  You just paddle around hoping you're going the right way to find xyz thing b/c its literally throwing darts on a map.  There is no cohesion, and I think that is a big part of why people say it feels empty, b/c they feel like all the space between the few things they want to find is all just a void.  You could boat right passed Crab King and never know b/c he's just a little dot in a big ocean.

[lenship2]

3 hours ago, _zwb said:

There's probably some sort of extra protection against shadow aligned mobs, plus protection from skill tree alignment

no skill trees for willow yet :c

there probably is some sort of extra alignment protection, hence why i think most of the information of dreadstone is outdated/incorrect

[Retepeter]

2 hours ago, Shosuko said:

ocean

I don't see it as a place to live, its as liveable as caves. There's something to be said about things being hard to find I think the balance between things to find with just exploring and the things to find with directions (pearl, ck, lunar) is good otherwise there wouldnt be any reason to explore and build cool boats, just paddle to the moon quay island and loot it. I feel like adding more things to the "empty/inbetween" biomes isnt nessesary. I'd much prefer they overhaul the caves first because the ocean is just gonna be empty, its empty irl too however the caves have so much more potential. In the ocean you just go to your destination islands (pearl, moon quay and lunar, sometimes a waterlogged) while in caves you go to the ruins and once to the archives and the inbetween content in the caves could be much better then oceans.

[_zwb]

11 minutes ago, Retepeter said:

In the ocean you just go to your destination islands

 

11 minutes ago, Retepeter said:

while in caves you go to the ruins and once to the archives

I don't see much difference here

[Yuuko]

4 minutes ago, _zwb said:

 

I don't see much difference here

The main difference is exploring the caves there are biome elements that let you feel where you're going, or that you're entering a new place / getting closer to something cool and that you can put up a reasonable amount of resource production if you wanna set up shop here.  People often complain about the unused space in the caves, but the unused space there is a bit different from the ocean - mainly in that the caves has cohesive biomes even though many are useless, where the ocean just has a lot of useless space all round.

[bloopah]

16 hours ago, Retepeter said:

its as liveable as caves

The Caves have more food sources than all of the content on the ocean combined. The ocean only has Kelp, a few sources of Raw Fish and Figs and the occasional Monster Meat from Cookie Cutters, meanwhile the Caves has Lichen, Glow Berries, Monster Meat from Spiders and Depths Worms, normal Meat and Morsel from Bunnymen and critters from Earthquakes, Mushrooms and even the god damn Guardian Horn if you're desperate. And you can't forget that you can actually place things down in a radius larger than 1.5 tiles times the amount of Boat Kits you've bothered to craft. And the floor in the Caves isn't flammable and won't teleport you to the middle of nowhere once it inevitably breaks from Sea Stacks. There is much more content in the Caves, and it is more liveable than the ocean BY FAR.

16 hours ago, Retepeter said:

In the ocean you just go to your destination islands (pearl, moon quay and lunar, sometimes a waterlogged) while in caves you go to the ruins and once to the archives and the inbetween content in the caves could be much better then oceans.

It already is much better, because you have various biomes to predict where each important area is. At the entrance of the Ruins (which connects to the Ruins itself) there is Mud Turf and before the Lunar Grotto there is the Blue Mushtree Forest, signaling that you're at the location everyone (who doesn't currently escape from the awful Wildfires in summer) wants to go to. Meanwhile, you're tough outta luck when you want to find anything on the ocean, as it's just four different shades of blue. Nobody wants to find the Moon Quay or Crab King (before acquiring the Lunar thingamajig that locates the Lunar Altars) because otherwise it's going to take half a season at minimum before you come close to each location. I know I don't when I want to go to the Moon Quay for its powerful resources. That's why I always ask in chat first if someone has the location of the Moon Quay on their map, so I don't have to go on a death trip to find it.

[sudoku]

I honestly think it was kind of a mistake to let players build base structures on boats.  Sailing should've offered its own unique gameplay, which to be fair it kind of does, with the sail, rowing and anchor mechanics but it all just falls kinda flat when boats turn into portable bases.  You don't really need to make any interesting decisions in response to resource scarcity because its as if you are exploring the ocean while sitting in the middle of your base. I mean how much fun would exploring the caves be if you had your own mini base with you at all times. 

 

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, Retepeter said:

I don't see it as a place to live, its as liveable as caves. There's something to be said about things being hard to find I think the balance between things to find with just exploring and the things to find with directions (pearl, ck, lunar) is good otherwise there wouldnt be any reason to explore and build cool boats, just paddle to the moon quay island and loot it. I feel like adding more things to the "empty/inbetween" biomes isnt nessesary. I'd much prefer they overhaul the caves first because the ocean is just gonna be empty, its empty irl too however the caves have so much more potential. In the ocean you just go to your destination islands (pearl, moon quay and lunar, sometimes a waterlogged) while in caves you go to the ruins and once to the archives and the inbetween content in the caves could be much better then oceans.

Thing is, even the best stuff on the ocean is barely worth the salt you get in your beard from getting to it.

Ocean food as a whole is sub-par, at best being about as good as mainland food, and at worse noticable worse. This is particularly insulting after both farming and tallbird eggs got overhauled to have immense gains relative to the effort put in.

Pearl has nothing good to trade. And her sunken pirate booty is about as valuable as my loose toenail clippings.

Brine shoals aren't worth the salt. Cookie Cutter caps are straight downgrades too football helmets, and salt is bad at actually preserving food; both being too expensive to restore freshness and salt boxes being too limiting to be worth it.

Waterlogged had some real potential, but above-average trees being stuck on the shoreline make them tough too build around.

 

So ultimately, the only things really worth sailing for are the lunar island; which is so easy to find from the mainland that it hardly counts as sailing. And also the Moon Quey, which is next to impossible to find and is directly tied to Monkey Raids. Something that is without a doubt the worst mechanic Klei has ever implemented, And that's coming from someone who's done nothing but piss and moan about Planar Damage for the last several months.

 

Also who the hell cares if oceans are empty as hell IRL? Don't Starve doesn't even take place on earth.

41 minutes ago, sudoku said:

I honestly think it was kind of a mistake to let players build base structures on boats.  Sailing should've offered its own unique gameplay, which to be fair it kind of does, with the sail, rowing and anchor mechanics but it all just falls kinda flat when boats turn into portable bases.  You don't really need to make any interesting decisions in response to resource scarcity because its as if you are exploring the ocean while sitting in the middle of your base. I mean how much fun would exploring the caves be if you had your own mini base with you at all times. 

 

Eh. You might have a point, but portable bases are the last of the ocean's problems at the moment.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, sudoku said:

I honestly think it was kind of a mistake to let players build base structures on boats.  Sailing should've offered its own unique gameplay, which to be fair it kind of does, with the sail, rowing and anchor mechanics but it all just falls kinda flat when boats turn into portable bases.  You don't really need to make any interesting decisions in response to resource scarcity because its as if you are exploring the ocean while sitting in the middle of your base. I mean how much fun would exploring the caves be if you had your own mini base with you at all times. 

 

idk about that...........  You can only fit so many structures on a boat before it becomes unwieldy.  Maximizing for number of structures you can fit 7 things with collision, but then you are prone to falling off your boat into the water, being unable to move around easily, etc.  Its very inconvenient and the new boat structures don't do much to help - the mast lantern is pretty meh, barely lighting up the boat.  The better boat designs I've seen use only 2-4 structures so you can still run around the outside of the boat.  Even then the fixed perspective of the game can make it impossible to see any part of the boat properly if there are structures on multiple sides.

tbh I think the ocean would be a whole lot better if they approached it with the idea that players can, and should spend enough time out on the ocean that a boat-base is a real thing.  The current implementation makes it seem like building on a boat was not even an afterthought, but more a coincidence of them forgetting to disable it...  The complete lack of sustained survival on the ocean really pushes you back to land far too often for the ocean to be a place to spent any reasonable amount of time.  Sucks b/c the mechanics of boating and fishing are actually pretty fun, would be great if we had a reason to use them...  but rather than do all that they just buffed driftwood oars enough that a sail is optional at all points in the game lol

[Jakepeng99]

8 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Brine shoals aren't worth the salt. Cookie Cutter caps are straight downgrades too football helmets, and salt is bad at actually preserving food; both being too expensive to restore freshness and salt boxes being too limiting to be worth it.

This is really false thought they are 100% worth it, only thing you wont be storing in it is crockpot dishes, honey, ice and thermal stones. They give a very large reduction since you will mostly have raw food.

8 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

And her sunken pirate booty is about as valuable as my loose toenail clippings.

And so is this, they have ruins loot even if they are annoying to find.

[Retepeter]

I'm not gonna bother to quote every post but I think the amount of movable food sources kinda invalidates lichen (stonefruit is movable btw)

8 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Also who the hell cares if oceans are empty as hell IRL? Don't Starve doesn't even take place on earth

I just said that because it's really hard to come up with ideas on something that's barren irl too

 

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

I don't see much difference here

There isn't much, I'm saying the ocean has 3 points of interest +pearl while the caves have 1 +archives.

(Besides going down to grab lightbulbs every few days)Neither of them are in the "meta" except ruins rushing and I guess lunar rushing for kelp and stonefruit which both overshadow caves content and ocean content. If you include lichen in caves food you have to include stonefruit in ocean too. Both need work but I think oceans have something (excluding lunar and ruins) while caves have lightbulbs... and erm.. uh rocks and 1 useful mushroom forest. (Excluding pearl and archs where you don't go after you complete them) oceans are more integrated with the base game because you can build docks and use salt boxes in everyday survival where you never use caves stuff (other than lightbulbs) in day to day survival.

I'll admit the moon quay island is too hidden, you should be able to find it if you force spawn a raid with a hostile flare and the first X could be on mq

[Jakepeng99]

29 minutes ago, Retepeter said:

I just said that because it's really hard to come up with ideas on something that's barren irl too

Add reefs, otters, pufferfish and stuff. Sword fish spawning in the hazordous ocean mini biome would be cool, that is a cool use. Add islands with puffin nestings and such, maybe add those flying fish from the David Atinburg movie, big blue planet.

[Yuuko]

29 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

 

And so is this, they have ruins loot even if they are annoying to find.

The ruins loot is at such a low chance it isn't worth it alone.  Buffing sunken loot chest tables to at *least* be as good as winter feast presents would do a lot to give people motivation to live the ocean life.  b/c of how bottles and chests spawn its one of the few ocean activities that actually benefits from you being on the ocean.

We'd still need supporting work like improving boat builds, navigation, and exploration.  srsly why do we not have spyglass in DST???

[Retepeter]

17 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Add reefs, otters, pufferfish and stuff. Sword fish spawning in the hazordous ocean mini biome would be cool, that is a cool use. Add islands with puffin nestings and such, maybe add those flying fish from the David Atinburg movie, big blue planet.

I think they avoided "normal" islands intentionally, I kinda feel like they did everything "realistic" in shipwrecked and they don't wanna copy their own work

I will say I like your iceberg suggestion in the biome thread thay'd help people get ice in other seasons to it's not that exclusive to winter. I think seasons work better if they encourage a certain playstlye instead of forcing it. (I feel like I'm spending my time productively in the caves in summer) and I feel unproductive while doing anything but tusk farming and ice mining in winter. It'd be really cool to get a few ice in other seasons and maybe a tusk with a 10 day respawn or something

[Spino43]

I would be fine if the bottles have a 100% chance of revealing a treasure instead of the measly 33%.

[bloopah]

6 hours ago, Retepeter said:

I just said that because it's really hard to come up with ideas on something that's barren irl too

Shipwrecked:

[Jakepeng99]

7 hours ago, Retepeter said:

I think they avoided "normal" islands intentionally, I kinda feel like they did everything "realistic" in shipwrecked and they don't wanna copy their own work

I will say I like your iceberg suggestion in the biome thread thay'd help people get ice in other seasons to it's not that exclusive to winter. I think seasons work better if they encourage a certain playstlye instead of forcing it. (I feel like I'm spending my time productively in the caves in summer) and I feel unproductive while doing anything but tusk farming and ice mining in winter. It'd be really cool to get a few ice in other seasons and maybe a tusk with a 10 day respawn or something

I would be fine with Klei porting ballphins and even some other shipwrecked stuff like the captain oaktapus as long as they fit the darker theme of the dst ocean.

 

They did add Wobsters.

[sudoku]

Ocean needs more unique gameplay activites that go beyond the normal fight/harvest/eat gameplay 

Some ideas:

An npc creature that spawns in the ocean every "x" amount of days

- tasks you with finding a large stash of treasure randomly generated on the ocean 

-use the pinch n winch to retrieve it

-could have a chance to drop a random boss item like klaus

-could involve either following a trail like hunts, or maybe some sort of detector like divining rod

-after "x" amount of times completing this quest maybe the npc will reward you with a new unique item, or maybe a boss fight spawns

A lockness monster/moby deck like friendly giant that hides in the ocean 

- can feed it different ocean food, will spit out different rewards depending on what you give it

-if you keep it fed "x" amount of days, it will spawn babies

-can feed and recruit the babies as followers

A creature stuck in some ocean debris

-can free it by hammering it

-after freeing "x" amount, a herd spawns naturally

-the creatures will mate and can be "farmed" for resources similar to beefalo/goat  but can also go extinct