Planer Damage should be removed. A suggestion and a change.

[Yuuko]

On 11/7/2023 at 3:27 PM, MostMerryTomcat said:

What is the point of Planar component? An interestingly novel way of going into a DST Hard Mode without actual "power creep" or else straight numerical buffing weapons/armors and mobs' attacks. In short, that's it.

Characters had their "refurbishments", making them quite powerful; now is time to level the playing field, a turn in the opposite direction

I don't get why people keep repeating this lie.  Planar propaganda team must have been super effective.  Across the board planar weapons are a numerical buff in all cases where a character has their skill tree.  All planar does is nerf pre-existing items, needlessly because compared DS vs BS you wouldn't use a dark sword in literally any case anyway.  The BS is numerically superior.

Spoiler

 

You can see damage is up across the board for all characters.  This has been a straight buff in all regards for every character with a skill tree, and even every character without a skill tree who's name isn't Wanda (pLaNaR cLoCk InCoMiNg)

At first planar gear was void of numerical advantages, planar was all we had - but shortly after Klei added plenty of numerical and non-numerical advantages that buff planar gear to a new tier even if planar was simply deleted.  If the goal of planar was to introduce "a new tier of gear without increasing numbers" then planar is a resounding and absolute failure.

The only case I've seen that has any merit is this:

On 11/7/2023 at 6:06 AM, Atkvin said:

I think planar damage towards players is a really fun way to trip up difficulty - allowing enemies to bypass the safety net of armor which players are used to farming chests of and with the crazy armor numbers, barely feel hits with.

but really... if that is the case then just nerf all armor.

I don't feel this will impact new players much because most deaths are from not wearing any armor at all.  Going from 0 to 80% is a MASSIVE amount of protection that really cuts out a lot of deaths without doing something really stupid, but I don't think dropping log suit and football helmet to 60-70% is going to drastically change that.  A player can still survive more mistakes and because the mobs are all more simple less mistakes will be made.

But really we could even leave that alone and rely on the fact that BS and void gear brings new perks and actually drop the defense on them to match...  Void could have very little defense opting into a glass canon style for any character, bringing more actual play styles and variety to the game instead of just buffing things more b/c numbers.  Already BS armor is very strong compared to all other options for the perks and for how easy it is to gather materials for it.  Why would anyone farm marble in a world with a BS gear delivery system?

Bottom line is still - the difficulty from new enemies comes from their new attacks, not from the new damage type.  The complex and more engaging pattern is what sells them, not the planar damage.  Adding planar to all previous bosses, or deleting planar from all new ones wouldn't change their fights in any meaningful way.  This arc is still players scaling up ahead of the game, we're just losing options for it.  No niche plays with a thul club or batbat, etc.  They have been officially written off for new content.  Its BS and Void for every character now.

Bonus minigame - which character is which?

Spoiler

 

To me this part really sucks b/c there are so many awesome characters with unique profiles and skins, and the new armors do look really cool.... but we just lose all visual identity when we wear these things.  It wouldn't feel so bad except that b/c of planar we're basically forced to.  Really visual style and character identity are the core reasons I play this game, and a primary reason why I DON'T play games like Minecraft and Terraria.  Here I can be an awesome stylized gothic character of all sorts of flavor, but now we're here - end game - we're all the same...............

[Antynomity]

23 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Really visual style and character identity are the core reasons I play this game, and a primary reason why I DON'T play games like Minecraft and Terraria.  Here I can be an awesome stylized gothic character of all sorts of flavor, but now we're here - end game - we're all the same...............

Even minecraft lets you still have your face visible with all armours on, including the highest tier being Netherite, and if it obscures any part of the skin you wish it didn't, well, you could possibly still save your visuals by changing your skin.

But don't worry, ultra planar big bad crab king is coming and he's going to make planar so fun! Just wait 2 more years bro!

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

  Hide contents

 

To me this part really sucks b/c there are so many awesome characters with unique profiles and skins, and the new armors do look really cool.... but we just lose all visual identity when we wear these things.  It wouldn't feel so bad except that b/c of planar we're basically forced to.  Really visual style and character identity are the core reasons I play this game, and a primary reason why I DON'T play games like Minecraft and Terraria.  Here I can be an awesome stylized gothic character of all sorts of flavor, but now we're here - end game - we're all the same...............

I'm still salty that they removed characters faces being visible underneath the void robes. I know they didn't like how the face didn't match the skin. But god damn it all, it just looked so much cooler even without skins being taken into account.

[lenship2]

2 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

I'm still salty that they removed characters faces being visible underneath the void robes. I know they didn't like how the face didn't match the skin. But god damn it all, it just looked so much cooler even without skins being taken into account.

there's a lot of skins that still don't have ghost variants, it wouldn't really matter if skins didn't affect the void cowl imo

i'm still holding hope that they reintroduce it, if we're loud enough about it they might one day... (especially since they fixed the layering issues that the void cowl had)

[Captain_Rage]

46 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

I'm still salty that they removed characters faces being visible underneath the void robes. I know they didn't like how the face didn't match the skin. But god damn it all, it just looked so much cooler even without skins being taken into account.

It was done for technical and not aesthetical reasons.

[Yuuko]

14 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

It was done for technical and not aesthetical reasons.

The technical reasons were that they couldn't get it to display a face representative of each skins, not that they couldn't put the face there.  It worked fine enough with default skins, I don't think its really a technical barrier more of a time one.  I think they may come back to it in an update that properly support it.  If they do it would make the void set truly top tier in abilities and aesthetics. 

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I'm still salty that they removed characters faces being visible underneath the void robes. I know they didn't like how the face didn't match the skin. But god damn it all, it just looked so much cooler even without skins being taken into account.

I hope they add it back. Wx and Wurt looked so good.

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

The technical reasons were that they couldn't get it to display a face representative of each skins, not that they couldn't put the face there.  It worked fine enough with default skins, I don't think its really a technical barrier more of a time one.  I think they may come back to it in an update that properly support it.  If they do it would make the void set truly top tier in abilities and aesthetics. 

Even if they always used the default skins, i would like it.

[lenship2]

3 hours ago, Shosuko said:

The technical reasons were that they couldn't get it to display a face representative of each skins, not that they couldn't put the face there. 

the technical issue was the clipping of the different head layers when performing pretty much any animation

Spoiler

[Cheggf]

12 hours ago, Shosuko said:

but really... if that is the case then just nerf all armor.

Nerfing all armor or simply giving the enemies some true damage instead of planar damage would both accomplish the same thing (although one is universal and the other is only with the enemies they've decided to give it to). Honestly planar defense accomplishes the goal worse than simple true damage would, since it's basically true damage but you can wear gear to negate it anyways. For example, instead of an enemy dealing 150 damage because very powerful armors would reduce that to 7-15, they could deal something like 60 damage + 15 unblockable damage. Then regardless of your armor you're still taking at least 18 damage, while the less protecting armors are relatively less ineffective and you're still heavily encouraged to use armor since it's the old 75 damage per hit boss damage that twoshots an unprotected player.

[Yuuko]

26 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Nerfing all armor or simply giving the enemies some true damage instead of planar damage would both accomplish the same thing (although one is universal and the other is only with the enemies they've decided to give it to). Honestly planar defense accomplishes the goal worse than simple true damage would, since it's basically true damage but you can wear gear to negate it anyways. For example, instead of an enemy dealing 150 damage because very powerful armors would reduce that to 7-15, they could deal something like 60 damage + 15 unblockable damage. Then regardless of your armor you're still taking at least 18 damage, while the less protecting armors are relatively less ineffective and you're still heavily encouraged to use armor since it's the old 75 damage per hit boss damage that twoshots an unprotected player.

Yeah, it could be done that way - but the thing I'm focused on here is consistency.  In a world without a tutorial, no little "hey listen" pop up, you need to be able to figure out what is going on as it happens.  Going from a reliable 80-90% defense to suddenly getting hit by a planar enemy and receiving a massive nuke is a betrayal of trust and expectation.  It is not some fun emergency we get to respond to, it is basically telling a player the sky is blue, turning it black when they're not looking, then punishing them for it.  Its great that so many players are looking at wikies, and its nice that Klei is putting some of that information into the game, but this is still a sharp turn into a convoluted calculation that no one is going to be able to figure out on the fly.

What I've said all along has always been a plea for consistency.  If we want elemental damage to differentiate enemies like this - refit the world to include elemental damage from the beginning.  If armor is too strong so that players are not at risk anymore, then nerf armor to restore some of that risk.  If there is a problem like this somewhere, then that problem is everywhere.  There is no reason to play these gotch-ya style games that cheat players who go in blind while not even being a bump in the road to the experienced ones - and that is the real tragedy about this - all of this is allegedly done to restore some risk, or increase challenge - and planar does none of that.  Its an unfair mechanic that is designed to effectively punish a player who doesn't know about it, and do literally nothing against a player who does.

People who know about BS plants will be in BS armor off the first wave and won't look back - but that player who just got the bone armor from AFW, or gets excited for glass cutters with all those shards dropped by CC are going to get rug pulled.  Klei set out to make a new tier of gear "without pumping numbers" or w/e, but really it just trolls anyone who doesn't know about it - and ironically they still pumped the numbers anyway...

Yes true damage could work, but I see no reason that defense is only a problem now.  If its a problem to have 90 and 95% defense in the game now, then its always been a problem and we should just cut 10% across the board.  tbh weapons and armor have been due for a rebalance for a while now...

[Cheggf]

54 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Yeah, it could be done that way - but the thing I'm focused on here is consistency.  In a world without a tutorial, no little "hey listen" pop up, you need to be able to figure out what is going on as it happens.  Going from a reliable 80-90% defense to suddenly getting hit by a planar enemy and receiving a massive nuke is a betrayal of trust and expectation.  It is not some fun emergency we get to respond to, it is basically telling a player the sky is blue, turning it black when they're not looking, then punishing them for it.  Its great that so many players are looking at wikies, and its nice that Klei is putting some of that information into the game, but this is still a sharp turn into a convoluted calculation that no one is going to be able to figure out on the fly.

What I've said all along has always been a plea for consistency.  If we want elemental damage to differentiate enemies like this - refit the world to include elemental damage from the beginning.  If armor is too strong so that players are not at risk anymore, then nerf armor to restore some of that risk.  If there is a problem like this somewhere, then that problem is everywhere.  There is no reason to play these gotch-ya style games that cheat players who go in blind while not even being a bump in the road to the experienced ones - and that is the real tragedy about this - all of this is allegedly done to restore some risk, or increase challenge - and planar does none of that.  Its an unfair mechanic that is designed to effectively punish a player who doesn't know about it, and do literally nothing against a player who does.

People who know about BS plants will be in BS armor off the first wave and won't look back - but that player who just got the bone armor from AFW, or gets excited for glass cutters with all those shards dropped by CC are going to get rug pulled.  Klei set out to make a new tier of gear "without pumping numbers" or w/e, but really it just trolls anyone who doesn't know about it - and ironically they still pumped the numbers anyway...

Yes true damage could work, but I see no reason that defense is only a problem now.  If its a problem to have 90 and 95% defense in the game now, then its always been a problem and we should just cut 10% across the board.  tbh weapons and armor have been due for a rebalance for a while now...

I agree that it would be better to just have a global nerf, true damage was just offering an alternative thing that's similar to planar damage and accomplishes the same goal in a better and more consistent way. Changing the armor itself would be the most consistent, obviously, but they seem hesitant to do that for some reason.

Personally I think armors should get a flat reduction of 10 across the board for everything higher than 70. Instead of 60/80/90 60/70/80 looks nicer, has less of a drastic jump (by the time grass becomes plentiful you've moved on to better things anyways so I think the jump is unnecessary), and keeps things from needing ridiculous damage to be threatening while still allowing almost every enemy's damage to remain unchanged since 60-80% reduction is sufficient for the vast majority of threats. 95%s could go down to 85% or 90%, but I think it would be more fun if they were only 80% but had a different benefit instead such as an enormous durability. I'd take the sanity costs if it meant being able to safely only have one piece of armor for extended periods of time, and the marble suit would be a great cheap thulecite alternative for tanking/Wolfgang.

They could also do a larger change to the armors, but moving them too far away from their current values would require a lot more changes to enemy damage if they don't want the game to suddenly become super hard. 

[arubaro]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Nerfing all armor or simply giving the enemies some true damage instead of planar damage would both accomplish the same thing (although one is universal and the other is only with the enemies they've decided to give it to). Honestly planar defense accomplishes the goal worse than simple true damage would, since it's basically true damage but you can wear gear to negate it anyways. For example, instead of an enemy dealing 150 damage because very powerful armors would reduce that to 7-15, they could deal something like 60 damage + 15 unblockable damage. Then regardless of your armor you're still taking at least 18 damage, while the less protecting armors are relatively less ineffective and you're still heavily encouraged to use armor since it's the old 75 damage per hit boss damage that twoshots an unprotected player.

is to reward wearing 2 armors instead of 1

 

i would prefer a global nerf but we all know how certain parts of the community receive nerfs

[Cheggf]

13 minutes ago, arubaro said:

is to reward wearing 2 armors instead of 1

Wearing 2 armor instead of 1 is already rewarded, the durability damage is split between them according to their absorption. You get a meaningful choice of what you want to do, with some decent depth to it. Do you stack two armor to make them last longer? Should both be the same absorption, or should you protect a weaker armor (e.g. BQ crown, bramble husk) with a stronger one? Should you forgo this extra durability for a different benefit, such as movement speed, insulation, sanity, or light? Should you use one of the armors that offers an extra benefit in addition to its protection, since the other piece you're wearing makes up for its lower resistance?

Trying to artificially pressure people into forgoing creativity & choices so they have homogenous identical builds with no individual flair or personality is cringe. 

[arubaro]

3 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Wearing 2 armor instead of 1 is already rewarded, the durability damage is split between them according to their absorption. You get a meaningful choice of what you want to do, with some decent depth to it. Do you stack two armor to make them last longer? Should both be the same absorption, or should you protect a weaker armor (e.g. BQ crown, bramble husk) with a stronger one? Should you forgo this extra durability for a different benefit, such as movement speed, insulation, sanity, or light? Should you use one of the armors that offers an extra benefit in addition to its protection, since the other piece you're wearing makes up for its lower resistance?

Trying to artificially pressure people into forgoing creativity & choices so they have homogenous identical builds with no individual flair or personality is cringe. 

now you choose between having more protection+ split durability or speed/bone armor shield/weather protection/whatever

[Cheggf]

24 minutes ago, arubaro said:

now you choose between having more protection+ split durability or speed/bone armor shield/weather protection/whatever

Planar defense goes against making these choices and you'd have more without it :steamhappy: 

[Jakepeng99]

On 11/9/2023 at 4:37 PM, Shosuko said:

I don't get why people keep repeating this lie.  Planar propaganda team must have been super effective.  Across the board planar weapons are a numerical buff in all cases where a character has their skill tree.  All planar does is nerf pre-existing items, needlessly because compared DS vs BS you wouldn't use a dark sword in literally any case anyway.  The BS is numerically superior.

  Hide contents

 

You can see damage is up across the board for all characters.  This has been a straight buff in all regards for every character with a skill tree, and even every character without a skill tree who's name isn't Wanda (pLaNaR cLoCk InCoMiNg)

At first planar gear was void of numerical advantages, planar was all we had - but shortly after Klei added plenty of numerical and non-numerical advantages that buff planar gear to a new tier even if planar was simply deleted.  If the goal of planar was to introduce "a new tier of gear without increasing numbers" then planar is a resounding and absolute failure.

The only case I've seen that has any merit is this:

but really... if that is the case then just nerf all armor.

I don't feel this will impact new players much because most deaths are from not wearing any armor at all.  Going from 0 to 80% is a MASSIVE amount of protection that really cuts out a lot of deaths without doing something really stupid, but I don't think dropping log suit and football helmet to 60-70% is going to drastically change that.  A player can still survive more mistakes and because the mobs are all more simple less mistakes will be made.

But really we could even leave that alone and rely on the fact that BS and void gear brings new perks and actually drop the defense on them to match...  Void could have very little defense opting into a glass canon style for any character, bringing more actual play styles and variety to the game instead of just buffing things more b/c numbers.  Already BS armor is very strong compared to all other options for the perks and for how easy it is to gather materials for it.  Why would anyone farm marble in a world with a BS gear delivery system?

Bottom line is still - the difficulty from new enemies comes from their new attacks, not from the new damage type.  The complex and more engaging pattern is what sells them, not the planar damage.  Adding planar to all previous bosses, or deleting planar from all new ones wouldn't change their fights in any meaningful way.  This arc is still players scaling up ahead of the game, we're just losing options for it.  No niche plays with a thul club or batbat, etc.  They have been officially written off for new content.  Its BS and Void for every character now.

Bonus minigame - which character is which?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

To me this part really sucks b/c there are so many awesome characters with unique profiles and skins, and the new armors do look really cool.... but we just lose all visual identity when we wear these things.  It wouldn't feel so bad except that b/c of planar we're basically forced to.  Really visual style and character identity are the core reasons I play this game, and a primary reason why I DON'T play games like Minecraft and Terraria.  Here I can be an awesome stylized gothic character of all sorts of flavor, but now we're here - end game - we're all the same...............

I never knew Wigfrid actually never had any scaling problems with brightshade,it is not like Wolfgang where they are outclassed by pre riff weapons. 

[MondayNight]

On 11/9/2023 at 6:37 PM, Shosuko said:

I don't get why people keep repeating this lie.  Planar propaganda team must have been super effective.  Across the board planar weapons are a numerical buff in all cases where a character has their skill tree.  All planar does is nerf pre-existing items, needlessly because compared DS vs BS you wouldn't use a dark sword in literally any case anyway.  The BS is numerically superior.

A little buff. That's the idea: not monumentally good to the point of invalidating all previous before-Rifts gear. And if they were worse than previous weapons.. needless to say anything aside "manure update direction".

So your basic idea would be: don't have a complex formula for Planar, but just a straight numerical dmg that passes through no-matter-what armor from before-Planar you wear. Or even that it won't stop dmg from post Rift sources wearing post Rift gear?! Hence a major simplification, right? So... pretty much what any other run-of-the-mill-uninspired gaming company out there does? "Less is more" philosophy?

As for further nerfing everything from beginning, all gear from day 1 being made worse just because advanced experienced players "fly by" or something in DST towards greatness, Cornucopia and whatnot - hard "NO". Game's already hard enough for general populace, from beginners to noobs to casuals and even "veteran noobs". Am tired to play pubs alone from mid-to-late game. Is a multiplayer, not "DS, but nerfed for me, myself and I".

[Antynomity]

1 hour ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Game's already hard enough for general populace, from beginners to noobs to casuals and even "veteran noobs". Am tired to play pubs alone from mid-to-late game. Is a multiplayer, not "DS, but nerfed for me, myself and I".

Maybe pubs are dead and have been dead since the beginning of time once winter hits because winter is the most boring season and the other two ones don't stand out with any unique and fun content compared to autumn? For heck's sake nearly all seasonal mechanics are the same as they were back in RoG, which mind you came out 9 years ago.

[arubaro]

3 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Maybe pubs are dead and have been dead since the beginning of time once winter hits because winter is the most boring season and the other two ones don't stand out with any unique and fun content compared to autumn? For heck's sake nearly all seasonal mechanics are the same as they were back in RoG, which mind you came out 9 years ago.

winter is fun because is nearly perfect for a survival game. What happens is that there are a lot of casual players that, instead of dying in league of legends or [insert quick multiplayer game] ; playing some game that needs no effort like among us; watch how a 30 years old guy with 5 years old mentality play games; whatever, they decide to enter in a pub to see if they can waste some minutes doing something and expecting other to feed them until winter arrives and they need to actually do something in order to keep playing so they prefer to disconnect

for the same reason half of the workshop mods are to make the game easier in many ways or to reduce the effort needed to play like inventory management or remember to equip armor...

games like dst are niche

[MondayNight]

4 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Maybe pubs are dead and have been dead since the beginning of time once winter hits because winter is the most boring season and the other two ones don't stand out with any unique and fun content compared to autumn? For heck's sake nearly all seasonal mechanics are the same as they were back in RoG, which mind you came out 9 years ago.

And that points, once more, at the game being hard. Winter, for experienced players, is probably most fun, interactive and useful season: MacTs, DC, Klaus, Ice, further exploration or even farming Winter crops, etc. In fact Autumn doesn't have any "unique and fun content" - is just the most mild, blunt season out there, the default: no special mobs (outside 2nd year-onward Bearger), no particular resources, sole thing that's going for it is environment allowing you to travel without particular gimmicks like temperature & humidity control. Am not advocating for game to not be harder post-Rifts - in fact I reckon biggest role of post Rift content is the implementation of DST "Hard Mode"; and with it KLei can go wild (but not really though, on account of "mega-basers") in certain upper intervals (i.e. not making DST into some giant battle area with endless upscaling enemy waves, invalidating Sandbox). Still, pre-Rifts DST is hard enough for bulk player-base en large, no need to complicate it beyond current levels.

[Antynomity]

5 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

*snip*

Sorry, but post rift content won't save pubs, idk why they were brought up in the first place. Winter isn't hard, all you need is a thermal stone and a torch. Spring isn't hard, all you need is a football helmet and an umbrella, alternatively use a raincoat or eyebrella. Summer isn't hard, just turtle in the caves aka the most boring area in the game.

 

Using pubs as examples as to why the game is hard, or fine as is, doesn't accomplish anything in my eyes as public servers are not a good experience at their core, tons of strangers that may not want to cooperate, in a co-op game.

 

Talking about rifts again, yes, klei doesn't want to hurt long lasting worlds despite the content being completely optional, it's very selfish to demand change based on only your own scewed and biased point of view (excluding the places where the complaints were valid, aka a ton of them because a ton of rift mechanics are/were straight up horrible and I don't know why they were attempting on adding them in the first place, other than lack of ideas.)

[Antynomity]

6 hours ago, arubaro said:

games like dst are niche

DST is less and less niche every year but that is still true.

[Yuuko]

12 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

A little buff. That's the idea: not monumentally good to the point of invalidating all previous before-Rifts gear. And if they were worse than previous weapons.. needless to say anything aside "manure update direction".

So your basic idea would be: don't have a complex formula for Planar, but just a straight numerical dmg that passes through no-matter-what armor from before-Planar you wear. Or even that it won't stop dmg from post Rift sources wearing post Rift gear?! Hence a major simplification, right? So... pretty much what any other run-of-the-mill-uninspired gaming company out there does? "Less is more" philosophy?

Eh, a simple and elegant system that makes sense is not uninspired.  tbh I see an overly convoluted and complex system where a simple one would do just fine as the bigger mistake that is very often made by game devs - right next to the mistake of simply adding bigger numbers without other gameplay changes.

Klei did a good job with most of this update.  The stat inflation is minimal, new interesting mechanics were added both to our new items and to the new monsters.  Its just planar sticking out like a sore thumb, doing nothing good in the new content just walling off old stuff.  We can see the sorta thoughtless approach they had too b/c so many things had to have lunar / shadow / planar added after the fact.  It really feels like patched on, inconsistent system even now.

My basic idea?  Eh, I think you mean @Cheggf's idea which was to add simple true damage to counter the higher armor values players had access to, rather than an odd and unintuitive formula.  I think making it an easier to track, predict, and understand stat by having simple flat true damage vs the weird planar calculation would be more palatable to me - but my preference is just to rebalance the game from the beginning.  If armor is too high now, then its always been too high.  Take most things down 10-20% and we open up room for more risk and more development eh?

12 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

As for further nerfing everything from beginning, all gear from day 1 being made worse just because advanced experienced players "fly by" or something in DST towards greatness, Cornucopia and whatnot - hard "NO". Game's already hard enough for general populace, from beginners to noobs to casuals and even "veteran noobs". Am tired to play pubs alone from mid-to-late game. Is a multiplayer, not "DS, but nerfed for me, myself and I".

I disagree.  A new player is likely to die because they didn't have armor on, don't know how to heal, or going into a situation where even a high armor suit wouldn't save them.  Their deaths are mostly from lacking situational awareness and basic knowledge / skills or not healing up.  If we dropped football helmets from 80% to 70% I think most new players wouldn't even notice much.  Their damage would still be reduced significantly, and its not too hard for a player to learn how to access these being you get ~8 free per touch stone and possibly more in the swamp without even farming pigs and butterflies are abundant first autumn along with other healing things they can learn.  Hit the nail on the head properly and the game keeps its edge later.  I really don't see any reason a 10% armor nerf would be bad for new players at all.  Armor protection isn't what is making or breaking their experience.

Pubs aren't lonely mid to late game b/c the game is hard, they're lonely because DST isn't a great pub game.  The world is too volatile, and the activities are too finite.  If I join a pub server today I'm not expecting any of that to still be there tomorrow - so when I join a pub world I'm looking at what I'm doing *this session*  That means if I want to hit ruins, dfly, bqueen etc I want to be able to do that.  Well there is only 1 dfly on the map.  If someone else has already cleared dfly then I can't this session, so I won't join a world that has already progressed.  Further the rewards are not evenly distributed.  Someone could have cleared ruins and logged out with all of the loot, again taking things off my list.  Heck, the availability of grass / twigs / flint near the portal after just 5-10 days discourages people from joining.  Simply put, most people are looking to join fresh worlds at the beginning so they can do things, and aren't expecting to return the next day - old worlds just don't work for pubs.

Of course that isn't the only reason.  There are players who don't want to join older worlds because difficult effects have set in - but if you're concerned about that you want to talk about seasonal effects, not 10% armor nerf.  Overheating, freezing, wetness, wildfires, elemental hound waves etc.  If you want to encourage players to join 50day+ worlds you'd want these nerfed - ironically all of these got buffed with hail, big boulders dropping in caves, acid rain, BS plants, etc all 100% causing harassments that would prevent a new player from wanting to join a late game world.

You'd want planar removed as well b/c joining in a world that already has BS plants running rampant, acid rain and big boulders, etc and they get what?  a spear?  Yeah, planar isn't opening any doors for new players to join mid-to-late game worlds.

I think it is better to just leave pub servers out of the discussion.  They are not a primary focus of the game - or things would be built very differently all throughout the game's life cycle.  No, this is a game where you run a server with people you know or at least with some cohesive group.  Not a pub game with randos.  At least, not long term.

[lenship2]

24 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

My basic idea?  Eh, I think you mean @Cheggf's idea which was to add simple true damage to counter the higher armor values players had access to, rather than an odd and unintuitive formula.

isn't that what planar damage already does though?

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

I disagree.  A new player is likely to die because they didn't have armor on, don't know how to heal, or going into a situation where even a high armor suit wouldn't save them.  Their deaths are mostly from lacking situational awareness and basic knowledge / skills or not healing up.  If we dropped football helmets from 80% to 70% I think most new players wouldn't even notice much.

The vast majority of deaths are caused by hunger, temperature, sanity, darkness, absentmindedness, a contraction of the AFK disease, or not wearing armor at all. If someone is dying while wearing armor they're probably AFK or just mindlessly holding F without thinking or healing, both of which being situations that wouldn't change with a reduction. And if anyone feels like being argumentative, I am not saying that nobody ever dies while fighting properly, I'm saying that from what I've seen on public servers the amount of times that that happens is miniscule compared to the rest of the deaths.

I would literally bet money on new players not even noticing the reduction from 80% to 70%, unless someone told them it happened. In fact, I wouldn't even notice it at first. I bet I'd go for quite some time before thinking I'm healing more than usual, I'm not mathematically mapping out my healthbar.

1 hour ago, lenship2 said:

isn't that what planar damage already does though?

Planar damage is just true damage but they're scared to commit to true damage and added true armor to make the true damage not true. It's rather self-defeating, just like every part of planar. Look guys look, we've added a weird formula that 3 people understand that's used to calculate damage, we did it to nerf OP combat characters! Oh, also, here's some perks so that those OP combat characters don't actually lose damage from the weird formula, and it exists only to make it difficult for anyone who isn't a nerd to figure out their damage, and stifle creativity by strongarming you into only using the new things we just released.