DST Klei Official Servers Need A Change

[Klaussss]

I hope from the title that people gather what this post is about.

 

As a dst public main(one of a very few), life is honestly very sad on the servers.

 

The complete lack of admins or people who are able to ban make for a very depressing experience for publics. Many players on servers who hold vendettas against other induviduals will cause complete havock on a server. This has been blown out of proportion by woodie players and their werebeaver form which is able to destroy multiple entities on a base. These indivduals will wait up untill right at the end of the night to destroy the base and letting the time overlap into day which makes rolling back completly ineffective. The kick function is also made useless by the number of players who have alts which will continue to join the servers after their griefing account is kicked to continue causing havoc. 

The lag during to mid and late gameplay is horrificly bad. Walking through the killer bee biome or going to a spider farm will cause havok for a public server who has a established base. The bases that do resort to having to use the caves for materials tend to find the caves as a hassle so they never bother trying. Any players that try to teach people about late game content almost never reach that point because by then the server is already looking like a powerpoint presentation even with a ping of 60. 

 

Some Questions 

"Willows always griefed servers in the past, surely it doesnt matter, just kick them?"

Yes, kicking them does always remove the immediate issue but it always leaves players to sort the mess out. The fact that these griefers are exploiting the save time in the morning makes for a constant paranoia for people who joins the server and means potential innocents are kicked in trying to deal with this. Im not entirely sure of a double rollback to fix griefing but the possibility of it is incredilby low as ive tried on previous servers. This is mainly due to some people loading in slower than others meaning the first vote is not successfully voted for.

"Why dont you just build a base in a secret location?"

Well in my opinion it defeats the purpose of Don't Starve Together. The aim of it is to survive in a group in a certain location for as long as possible whilst enjoying the myriad of progression . By removing the celestial orb from a base and having players to look for it makes it discouraging for anyone new to Don't Starve Together. Remember that the public servers may probably be the first place anyone new to the game will go to when they decide to play with multiple random players.

"Stop playing Klei official, its for entierly new players to explore early autumn and winter content" 

This seems a valid point but with this but considering the level of later game content that klei has been pushing out for DST, surely they would want the public servers to explore the same content. Not everyone has the luxury of alot of friends who can explore the mid to late game content with which means they resort to klei official servers which never last long enough before there is either lag or griefers.

 

 

Solutions 

To fix the crazy levels of server griefing, i would hope that giving a group of players to be genuine player with the ability of banning people might fix it. This would not only stop the incredible base griefing but it would also intimidate those who login into official server to think twice before burning a base down.

For the lag, i would assume having a better host will fix it. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gashzer]

The best solution is for Klei to shut down the Klei official servers if they arnt prepared to moderate them. Devote the time they save on maintenance to bug fixes and game content updates.

Plus klei have stated before that they dont want to control how we play DST and Klei doesnt have a official stance on whats griefing an whats not griefing.

I love playing Willow, if i get instant vote kicked for joining as her. Im not the griefer, you are the griefer Klaussss

Another solution is just not care for a base. You can prototype things an carry most of what you need for bosses on you. Healing salves never spoil so you have no need for crockpots or any sort of base resources for fights.

Cave bases are generally immune to griefers in my experience of playing on Klei pubs. Random biomes like the guano biome that has nothing worth exploring it for make for great hidden base locations. Simply lead trustworthy people from the surface to it after getting to know them for abit.

I hope klei removes votekicking and rollbacks for Klei officials. I would rather spend the abit of extra time in rebuilding a base than the annoyance of redoing a full day of exploration or ruins rushing. I personally can get alot done in a day so when people vote rollback for silly things like their beefalo dying it gets very very annoying.

[BeeClops]

I hope klei pubs stay the wild west they are and always have been, that's the fun part about them.

To me they are a testing ground, a way of meeting new people (most of my dst friends I have met on pubs), and the perfect place for beginners to learn. 

If you play on pc there are moderated communities where griefers get banned, you should look into those. It's a complete resource waste for Klei to dedicate their efforts on moderating public servers, it's not a real problem and there are already solutions for people who don't enjoy them. 

And I also agree with Gashzer that rolling back and votekicking shouldn't exist on pubs. People get kicked for no reason(like being Willow), and it's not stopping the griefing problem whatsoever. I don't see why they would shut down the servers if they can't moderate them, they are working just fine unmoderated imo. 

[CameoAppearance]

Rolling back and votekicking can be misused or outright abused and don't always work, it's true, but there's nothing else that's anywhere near as effective as kicking the griefer and rolling back when they fully burn a large, well-outfitted base to the ground and destroy extremely rare and difficult-to-replace resources like mandrakes. While it sucks to lose a day of progress when you were busy elsewhere, having to rebuild from a burnt pile of rubble means losing much more than one day of progress. Removing those functions would be insane.

I don't think that having a group of VIP-status players acting as the unpaid moderators of public servers is a good idea either. It's a position that could be easily abused to ban people who those players personally dislike, or who made newbie mistakes that mildly inconvenienced someone else, or who were just kind of annoying or rude, or who picked Willow but didn't burn any structures, or, if those powers were given to someone who especially shouldn't have them, to ban someone who didn't go along with it when the player with admin powers ordered them to hand over all the good loot. Klei could have a vetting process to make sure they only picked trustworthy players with good judgment, but there's a level of thoroughness where that wouldn't be any less work than doing the moderation themselves, and it wouldn't help if some of those players' accounts got compromised later. Plus, if elevating these players was a one-off and they weren't replaced after long periods of inactivity, the number would gradually dwindle as members of the original group drifted away from DST, lost access to their computers or Steam accounts, or otherwise weren't available anymore. And on a social level, maybe the presence of an authority figure would intimidate potential griefers, but it would also intimidate everyone else.

Honestly, while I agree that there are a lot of griefers on the official pub servers and this is a problem, I don't see a simple or easy way to solve it that would actually work and not create a new, comparably bad problem in the process. Shutting down the servers so that nobody can play on them at all would definitely be worse than continuing with the current amount of griefers, volunteer moderators are unreliable, hiring new staff to moderate the servers would be expensive, adding it to the job duties of the current staff would slow down progress on everything else, and changing gameplay to make it harder to destroy other people's stuff on the pub servers (like by adding an ownership mechanic that limits other players' ability to interact with owned objects, as some anti-griefing mods do) would affect other aspects of the game and maybe even get exploited by griefers itself.

Plus, I think Klei intends to support adversarial play and player-on-player sabotage to some degree in DST - the original Early Access trailer shows a Willow player burning down a Wilson player's base and waving cheerfully at him as she does - so if they did add official moderators to the team, those moderators probably wouldn't step in as often as we hope.

The lag from large-but-not-abnormally-large swarms of mobs like bees or spiders, on the other hand, I would say is both theoretically easier to solve because it's a performance issue rather than a player issue, and a bigger problem for me when I play on Klei servers. It's particularly bad for Webber players because if you have more than about half a dozen spider friends at a time it gums up the server and everyone gets mad at you. Wurt's merms don't seem to cause the same intensity of lag and Webber's more oriented towards making lots of cheap allies and throwing them all at an enemy to begin with, which he can't do under these conditions. And if it's the killer bee biome, well, it's much harder to escape a huge swarm of killer bees you've aggroed when you're lagging so hard you can't move.

[Klaussss]

 

Quote

And I also agree with Gashzer that rolling back and votekicking shouldn't exist on pubs. People get kicked for no reason(like being Willow), and it's not stopping the griefing problem whatsoever. I don't see why they would shut down the servers if they can't moderate them, they are working just fine unmoderated imo. 

Well then i guess, with both your guys logics, kick evading with multiple accounts should be something thats allowed on publics. Idk, i dont see that to be very fun for new players, just seems straight demoralising. I personally have encountered this at least on 7 or 8 different servers. Any new player that build up a base to have it instantly wiped doesnt help for public player retention. But then again people do migrate over to more gatekept communities so that might be a good thing.

But from reading the points, a solution to this would just be an incredibly complex one that may cause more issues which i couldnt see a fix to. 

 

Well i guess i am wrong. If this level of playstyle  if it was intended to be wild west griefer style, it would make sense. Just seems to me it will make no difference with them just turning pvp on at that logic so at least then players would know those servers are designed to be hostile as you guys say. Or just have a notification for klei publics about its game style so then people will know that that those server are intended for some players who just want to see the world burn.

 

I guess its time for me to finally lay the hatchet down for me and give up on klei publics.

Edited October 8 by Klaussss
Last edit

[Mysterious box]

8 hours ago, Klaussss said:

Solutions 

To fix the crazy levels of server griefing, i would hope that giving a group of players to be genuine player with the ability of banning people might fix it. This would not only stop the incredible base griefing but it would also intimidate those who login into official server to think twice before burning a base down.

There's no way in heck you think we can trust players with this kind of power.

3 hours ago, CameoAppearance said:

like by adding an ownership mechanic that limits other players' ability to interact with owned objects, as some anti-griefing mods do

Ironically these sorts of things can be used to grief as well.

[Gashzer]

3 hours ago, Klaussss said:

 

Well then i guess, with both your guys logics, kick evading with multiple accounts should be something thats allowed on publics. Idk, i dont see that to be very fun for new players, just seems straight demoralising. I personally have encountered this at least on 7 or 8 different servers. Any new player that build up a base to have it instantly wiped doesnt help for public player retention. But then again people do migrate over to more gatekept communities so that might be a good thing.

But from reading the points, a solution to this would just be an incredibly complex one that may cause more issues which i couldnt see a fix to. 

 

Well i guess i am wrong. If this level of playstyle  if it was intended to be wild west griefer style, it would make sense. Just seems to me it will make no difference with them just turning pvp on at that logic so at least then players would know those servers are designed to be hostile as you guys say. Or just have a notification for klei publics about its game style so then people will know that that those server are intended for some players who just want to see the world burn.

 

I guess its time for me to finally lay the hatchet down for me and give up on klei publics.

Switch klei servers to wilderness mode, remove votekick and vote rollback, give players 3 lives to respawn after which they get auto banned from server for 3 hour, slap on PVP and let players sort out griefers the old fashion way.... by murdering them lol. 

This is my dream solution but Klei will never do this tho

[Klaussss]

Quote

Switch klei servers to wilderness mode, remove votekick and vote rollback, give players 3 lives to respawn after which they get auto banned from server for 3 hour, slap on PVP and let players sort out griefers the old fashion way.... by murdering them lol. 

This is my dream solution but Klei will never do this tho 

Honestly a very good solution to the issue. 

[nimzowitsch10]

the griefing has been out of hand lately with people impersonating other people's users and ruining that person's reputation so people kick the real person when they play. Klei will never do anything though unfortunately

[CameoAppearance]

9 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

There's no way in heck you think we can trust players with this kind of power.

Ironically these sorts of things can be used to grief as well.

They sure can!

[Gi-Go]

18 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Plus klei have stated before that they dont want to control how we play DST and Klei doesnt have a official stance on whats griefing an whats not griefing.

Then why is there a portal protection? I'm not a griefer, I'm a bone soup enjoyer. 

[Gashzer]

8 hours ago, Gi-Go said:

Then why is there a portal protection? I'm not a griefer, I'm a bone soup enjoyer. 

There should be cave protection as well between shard transfer. Not even for anti-griefing but for console players (switch users mostly) with long loading times, by the time you load in you could be dead or half dead from bats or weather effects or anything really.

When you start a new game on switch you are half way through day 1 so portal protection is not 100% for anti-griefing only.

Just saying 

[Retepeter]

I feel like adding a 2 day rollback would work for most situations. The only time I can think of where it wouldn't if someone takes all the mandrakes and the flute or steal a shadow atrium or something

[chirsg]

I've been playing on the beta all this time and I miss the pubs. It's the only iteration of wild west we have left online.

As long as you prove yourself, you don't have a problem and generally, autokicked willows aren't always the case.

 

However, Willows do disproportionately grief. It's true. 

[Cheggf]

There's plenty of moderated community servers, or you can just use Klei servers to find friends to start private games with. I have no idea why you're so hung up on the servers that are gonna reset in a few hours anyway getting griefed.

[Klaussss]

Quote

There's plenty of moderated community servers, or you can just use Klei servers to find friends to start private games with. I have no idea why you're so hung up on the servers that are gonna reset in a few hours anyway getting griefed.

I made some points, points was dismissed. I learnt that the true nature of DST pubs is being a wild west nature if that is what they were intended to be and conceded the point. Not exactly hung up i would assume.

Edited October 10 by Klaussss

[Gashzer]

3 hours ago, Klaussss said:

I made some points, points was dismissed. I learnt that the true nature of DST pubs is being a wild west nature if that is what they were intended to be and conceded the point. Not exactly hung up i would assume.

Ah its more fun this way.

Planning around the stupidity of others, griefers included, is fun in and of itself.

I enjoy trying to solo rush bosses in klei servers without the temptation of rollbacks if i die. Sometimes with a sidekick noobie tagging along for the adventure. 

Its really fun persuading new players to join me on my ruin rushes. I feel alot of new players get caught up in the base building aspect of dst rather than the dangerous adventurous side that DST has to offer. They always enjoy the experience of a ruins rush.

Klei servers are better for risking it all instead of base building. Find a moderated community server for base building.

[X-lem]

OOOOOOOOOOOrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... you could just stop playing on them... Honestly there is an absolute ton of dedicated servers that are moderated (some that are endless so that you can do late game content). Just play on those. I'll never understand these weekly "KLEI BAD, MODERATE YOUR SERVERS" threads. Klei should dedicate their time and resources to other things. Some people like the un-modded public servers. You don't have to. Just join one of the MANY MANY (seriously, the group I'm a part of hosts ~70 of them all around the world) other moderated dedicated servers.

[Gashzer]

2 hours ago, X-lem said:

OOOOOOOOOOOrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... you could just stop playing on them... Honestly there is an absolute ton of dedicated servers that are moderated (some that are endless so that you can do late game content). Just play on those. I'll never understand these weekly "KLEI BAD, MODERATE YOUR SERVERS" threads. Klei should dedicate their time and resources to other things. Some people like the un-modded public servers. You don't have to. Just join one of the MANY MANY (seriously, the group I'm a part of hosts ~70 of them all around the world) other moderated dedicated servers.

Aye but moderated servers can also have annoying powertrippy admins. Klei official servers are atleast free of that nonsense. And alot of moderated servers have long time members meaning it can be hard breaking into established friend groups 

[Klaussss]

Quote

I'll never understand these weekly "KLEI BAD, MODERATE YOUR SERVERS" threads.

Strawmanning my post doesnt put you in a moral highground. 

I did scout the forums and couldnt really find a similar post like this once a week but go off. Didnt mention anything about klei as a whole it was mentioning stuff regarding the klei official servers and their rampant grief style. Server communities arnt really my thing its mainly just full of sweaty tryhards who have half the stuff done by the first autumn. But i guess i enjoy different playstyles to you. 

Edited October 11 by Klaussss

[Queron81]

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Aye but moderated servers can also have annoying powertrippy admins. Klei official servers are atleast free of that nonsense. And alot of moderated servers have long time members meaning it can be hard breaking into established friend groups 

I was playing like 1500 hours on moderated servers and there was never an annoying admin. Usually the admins aren't playing on the servers, but you can report players (with some evidence needed) and they will add these players to their ban list. After a while I didn't met any griefers anymore, what was really relaxing. But unfortunately people stopped playing on these servers in the past 2 years, so the only option to play with a lot of people are the Klei servers.

[X-lem]

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Aye but moderated servers can also have annoying powertrippy admins

Honestly curious, has this actually ever been an issue for you when played on other dedicated servers? Even if it did happen why would that prevent you from joining a different groups servers with better admins?

 

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Klei official servers are atleast free of that nonsense

It’s free of the at because the servers are not moderated… you can’t really have it both ways.

2 hours ago, Klaussss said:

Strawmanning my post doesnt put you in a moral highground. 

Sigh… anyway…

1 hour ago, Klaussss said:

Server communities arnt really my thing its mainly just full of sweaty tryhards who have half the stuff done by the first autumn

This is a pretty sweeping generalization that I don’t even think is that accurate. How recently/how often have you actually tried a community dedicated server?

From my experience Klei’s servers isn’t filled with casual players any more or less than community servers. There’s constantly people ruins rushing, fighting DF, building massive bases, etc.

[Cheggf]

9 hours ago, Klaussss said:

I did scout the forums and couldnt really find a similar post like this once a week but go off.

It's because the search thing for the forums isn't the best (and maybe the threads are going away for some reason). He's right about this being a very common thread. Every month there's several threads about the Klei servers having griefers, crashing, or resetting. Complaining about Klei servers is probably the #2 most common thread, dethroned by the recent skill tree threads.

I don't think he's trying to insult you, just frustrated with how often this thread is made and how every time nothing new happens and it's always the same script. "I don't like griefers" as the first post, followed by replies of "Play on community servers", "Use Klei servers to find friends to play with", "Klei servers reset all the time anyways", "Klei shouldn't waste resources on such a frivolous thing", "No one man should have all that power. The clock's tickin', I just count the hours." and "Griefing isn't even an agreed upon term".

I don't think that last one was posted yet, so let me complete the prophecy and post it:

"Griefing" isn't even an agreed upon term. Some players think that smashing pighouses is griefing, while others don't. Some people have no remorse for mistakes and count accidents as griefing, while others don't. Some people think that any ruins made by disconnected players should be preserved, while others think the resources would be better used on projects that players can actually benefit from. Some people think that taking resources is griefing, while others think that those players who are hoarding resources are the griefers. Some people think that using the Terrarium at all is griefing, while other people think that using it without announcing it is griefing, but if you announce it then those first players think you're a griefer.

There are a million things that someone might consider griefing, that someone else might not. Outside of watching someone go around a big blatantly playermade base that's obviously occupied and burning everything, there isn't really a unanimous case of what "griefing" is, and Klei doesn't want to be the arbiter of what you're allowed to do. I believe JoeW has said something about this before. 

Edited October 11 by Cheggf

[KeshS]

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Cheggf said:

"Griefing" isn't even an agreed upon term. Some players think that smashing pighouses is griefing, while others don't.

It is griefing, but it's not something I would initiate a vote kick.

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Cheggf said:

Some people have no remorse for mistakes and count accidents as griefing, while others don't.

There is a big difference between griefing base intentionally, griefing intentionally but pretending to be stupid, and actually being stupid. While the first two have no tolerance, the last one is given some tolerance before the group decides if they can learn from mistakes or they are just a walking hazard. And yes you can spot those types of people if you play long enough.

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Cheggf said:

Some people think that any ruins made by disconnected players should be preserved, while others think the resources would be better used on projects that players can actually benefit from.

If those disconnected players want to preserve ruins gear in hopes of returning back later, it's their choice to take it with them. Otherwise it belongs to the server.

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Cheggf said:

Some people think that taking resources is griefing, while others think that those players who are hoarding resources are the griefers.

Taking resources to contribute to building structures isn't. Wasting resources for example crafting stacks of gold nuggets to compass is. The same as Wilsons having kleptomanic tendencies to horde stacks of valuable pig skin and 20+ gems of different variety.

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Cheggf said:

Some people think that using the Terrarium at all is griefing, while other people think that using it without announcing it is griefing, but if you announce it then those first players think you're a griefer.

Unfortunately it is a bad design from Klei devs with no good workaround. It was mentioned multiple times in previous threads for the terrarium to be changed so the eye boss would be summoned only where the terrarium is located, not to a random player.

Spoiler

Simple as

 

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, KeshS said:

My opinion is

Your opinion isn't relevant. No one's is. The point is that everyone has different opinions, and Klei doesn't want to decide who's right and who's wrong. Join a community server that shares the same opinions as you and they can enforce rules accordingly.