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

[Valase]

6 hours ago, Shosuko said:

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.

I think that the planarfication is quite simple and elegant, It uses a formula to balance damage and encourage you to use the new weapons, without making old weapons useless. You may say that it makes old weapons useless, but just like you can fight klaus with a spear, you can fight lunarclops with a dsword(reminder that you need a fire staff to break his ice, not a planar weapon, and yes, you can fight lunarbearger without stunning him). Also, It does not nerf followers as much(brightshades still obliterate them because their 130 damage "bulb attack"), so follower characters are not thrown out of the window.

6 hours 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.  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?

on the player side, regading planar damage taken, it works exactly like that. Mobs deal additional planar damage, and armors block flat values, no formulaic calculations needed. Making it easier to track, predict and understand by having simple flat true damage.

Also, you can't rebalance pre-rift armor without bringing hell on earth on this forums. Not even because raw numbers, but because if you nerf a 90% armor(thulecite crown) to 80% damage reduction, it means that you take double the pre nerf damage.

Ex.: 100 damage goes from 10 (90% damage reduction) to 20 (80% damage reduction).

[arubaro]

4 minutes ago, Valase said:

I think that the planarfication is quite simple and elegant, It uses a formula to balance damage and encourage you to use the new weapons, without making old weapons useless. You may say that it makes old weapons useless, but just like you can fight klaus with a spear, you can fight lunarclops with a dsword(reminder that you need a fire staff to break his ice, not a planar weapon, and yes, you can fight lunarbearger without stunning him). Also, It does not nerf followers as much(brightshades still obliterate them because their 130 damage "bulb attack"), so follower characters are not thrown out of the window

agree but also the problem with the new gear is that is really cheap

before rifts you choose your gear based on what you can affort: hambat being cheap and with recipe prototyped; dark sword being a little expensive and with sanity drain but higher damage and prototyped; glass cutter being really cheap, no sanity drain while having same damage as dark sword but you cant prototype it; thulecite club not prototyped, "highest damage" (atleast in klei's minds) unless you are wolfgang and high price

same went for armors with also the addition of taking in count which body slot they use 

with planat weapons this balance was broken, are cheap weapons (with BS sword literally having resource delivery system to your base), both have higher damage unless you use characters with extra damage and can be repaired on the go with just 1 slot instead of wasting atleast 2 slots to recraft them like dark sword or 3 for hambat and glass cutter post CC (ironically the time when you unlock BS sword...)

atleast klei didnt made BS and void armor having +90% armor... you can have uses for thulecite, night armor and company 

[Valase]

5 minutes ago, arubaro said:

agree but also the problem with the new gear is that is really cheap

Indeed, in my opinion, klei should raise the cost of the fix kit (2 of each material, or even 3 of each for 2 repair kits), or basically making it a luxury that you only have after you crafted all of the weapons/armors/tools. But I also think that we should get a way to "convert" each material into its other part (even in a three to one ratio), as you said, Bshades deliver themselves to your base, while (due how they spawn) the rifts with pure briliance are always on the other side of the map. So you get chests overflowing with bshades husks but not even a stack of pure briliance

[arubaro]

3 minutes ago, Valase said:

Indeed, in my opinion, klei should raise the cost of the fix kit (2 of each material, or even 3 of each for 2 repair kits), or basically making it a luxury that you only have after you crafted all of the weapons/armors/tools. But I also think that we should get a way to "convert" each material into its other part (even in a three to one ratio), as you said, Bshades deliver themselves to your base, while (due how they spawn) the rifts with pure briliance are always on the other side of the map. So you get chests overflowing with bshades husks but not even a stack of pure briliance

yes plus some kind of BS furniture, turf or whatever to sink their resource is needed. Even if they reduce their spawn rate as promised they will spawn non stop and will end up like hound teeths pre waves nerf

[hyiltiz]

I wonder what the devs' response to this would be if they still hosted Rhymes With Play Thursdays.

[Theukon-dos]

24 minutes ago, hyiltiz said:

I wonder what the devs' response to this would be if they still hosted Rhymes With Play Thursdays.

They'd just ignore it. Or give a reason that completely breaks down with any amount of thought, yet is still enough for planar supporters to parrot towards any critique

[Yuuko]

31 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

They'd just ignore it. Or give a reason that completely breaks down with any amount of thought, yet is still enough for planar supporters to parrot towards any critique

tbh - as much as I dislike and disagree with planar, I think its better that Klei does not respond to me about it.

Whether it is some ground-breaking, breath-taking, "all of this suddenly makes sense" big picture or not, I'm certain Klei does have a bigger picture - and I'm confident they are reading the feedback and deciding how to develop based on that and their own desires, and I'll let Klei keep their counsel on it.  As much as I'm willing to drag an argument out here in the forums, investing in passionate responses, and willing to be confidently wrong in pursuit of the fullest argument, I don't think its proper that Klei gets involved in such things.  Rather they should let us hash it out, take the feedback, arguments and counter points up amongst themselves, and decide what they will do as the developing authority.

I'm willing to be wrong and have my mind changed - but as a user that is all okay.  Klei being the developing authority risks a lot more if they gave any response that resonated poorly with any party.  I think the Rhymes with Klei they do with the beta / release does well enough to provide their insight into what they're doing and we'll all play it and come to our own conclusions, and as they make updates and release new content the whole story will unfold for better or worse.

Also their devs are cute and I'd hate to make them feel averse to showing up and nerding out as they do by getting confrontational during their spotlight <3

[Bird Up]

My first impressions with planar damage is that moving beyond FW and CC is comparable to Terraria where you have accepted a transition into a new territory of power and challenge. You are explicitly asked upon defeating the antagonist if you want to continue further into the next stage of the game, bringing much more difficult situations. In doing so, there had to be something like planar damage and planar defense. I think the progression is great, and must be pulled off in such a way that much of the pre-rift equipment is not totally obsolete. One nitpicky point though, the calculation for planar defense is seems needlessly complicated, I'm wondering why it couldn't be simplified. An enemy with planar defense follows this formula Damage Taken = (√(General Damage * 4 + 64) - 8) * 4 + Planar Damage. This makes it very difficult to know how much damage is actually being done unless you use mods.

Perhaps to avoid obsoletion of various weapons and armor in the future, there could be a weapon/armor upgrade tool that gives our older favorites like dark sword some planar damage. Another idea is perhaps consumable buffs, but that route scares me - a consumable that makes some of your damage and defense planar. Last idea, dark swords, spears, log suits, or night armor - as an example, could be a crafting material for future planar equipment to keep their necessity to craft them relevant. While it looks like our old favorites could be outclassed in the grand scheme of things, i don't think it would make much sense to make the whole of science, nightmare and ruins weapon crafting obsolete.

[lenship2]

8 hours ago, Bird Up said:

One nitpicky point though, the calculation for planar defense is seems needlessly complicated, I'm wondering why it couldn't be simplified.

it takes the concept of using a square root of the number, but has the extra numbers to keep lower numbers at a reasonable value (tentacle spike only becomes 33, vs it becoming 7 if it was just sqrt by itself)

the multiples of 8 used mean that at 128 damage your damage is exactly halved to 64 against planar enemies, and anything above 128 is more than halved

 

so basically klei made this precise formula so that anything below 128 damage isn't affected too much, but anything above 128 damage is affected significantly

[MondayNight]

On 11/12/2023 at 9:02 AM, Shosuko said:

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.

Simple =/= elegant. Most times simple = laziness/lack of inspiration = "just do what everyone else does that kinda works, and call it a day".

For me personally such a system would be Walter's Bee Allergy 2.0, but generalized. If such a case occurred am sure forums would be flooded with underlines such as mine now: uninspired system, and laziness allegations as an excuse for its conceptualization.

 

On 11/12/2023 at 9:02 AM, 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.  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.

Any nerf impacts player-base at large, in various degrees, invariably (even if is purely psychological). A 10% nerf on armor means you basically get 2x more dmg in all situations. While newbies indeed die mostly from not wearing any type of armor, noobs & casuals that try to breach the gap into advanced - here is where all this matters monumentally. For example, only last week me and a friend were "coaching" in a pub 2 other players, Wigfrids. Both Wigs are intermediate players, knowing the theory but lacking practice to tackle complex, multi-threat cumulative dangers. For punctual example, we went with them vs Misery Toad. To cut the story short, the Wigs died a lot during that fight, particularly one of them, and their actions also led to the Wendy (one of the "coaches") dying once (hence, for people complaining game is too easy: play pubs and train new people into DST's ways, heh). By the 4th death, the Wig with most deaths was discouraged and for a bit didn't even want to revive anymore. She was wearing all time Battle Helmets + Log Suits. Now imagine that 10% nerf on armor happened. It would mean the Wigs in my pub adventure would die 2ice as much, leading to a lot more discouragement. What you propose means a harder, longer transition from casual to advanced. Why would you want that? Game already has a big problem with this conversion, of casuals into recurrent players - why accentuate it in early-game?

 

On 11/12/2023 at 9:02 AM, Shosuko said:

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.

DST is a multiplayer. So you want it balanced around... single-player experience? More-so: solo player advanced experience one? Hmmm.

[BalkanCockroach]

28 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

DST is a multiplayer. So you want it balanced around... single-player experience? More-so: solo player advanced experience one? Hmmm

They should really make DSA not DS but DSA. I swear how is this not a sound business decision. Im not saying DST can't be played solo but i am saying that by making the progression in the game towards multiplier you miss out on the players that wanna play solo casually. Because this game is 100x more tolerable with friends and is structured to be that way. How is there no scaling in this game that's been cooking for a century at this point?

[MondayNight]

6 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

How is there no scaling in this game that's been cooking for a century at this point?

Then lobby more for scaling with number of players.

For me, that got used to solo in multiplayer context, such a thing would mean game becoming a lot more easier. And probably boring. Yet that would be a "me" issue in a new, more permissive context - brought about by KLei, if such thing passes. Bons and Cons.

[BalkanCockroach]

1 minute ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Then lobby more for scaling with number of players.

For me, that got used to solo in multiplayer context, such a thing would mean game becoming a lot more easier. And probably boring. Yet that would be a "me" issue in a new, more permissive context - brought about by KLei, if such thing passes. Bons and Cons.

If they implement this like a configuration in the world settings. You can increase the difficulty for your taste. Don't tell me there's a mod for this or i will eat your glommer.

[Frashaw27]

10 hours ago, Bird Up said:

One nitpicky point though, the calculation for planar defense is seems needlessly complicated, I'm wondering why it couldn't be simplified.

Game balance is a very tricky thing, especially with a none linear progression like don't starve. There is also the point that people aren't really suppose to know what the formula is. You see it as needlessly complex while in truth this is pretty standard for some rpg formulas. They could simplify it, but that also wouldn't be the result they want and/or need.

[MondayNight]

10 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

If they implement this like a configuration in the world settings. You can increase the difficulty for your taste. Don't tell me there's a mod for this or i will eat your glommer.

Yep: scaling down option (Boss Scaling), scaling up oriented via boss armor (Scaling Boss Difficulty), general scaling (Enemy health scaling). Enjoy! Careful though, exemplified mods are old and may be bugged.

[BalkanCockroach]

13 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Yep: scaling down option (Boss Scaling), scaling up oriented via boss armor (Scaling Boss Difficulty), general scaling (Enemy health scaling). Enjoy! Careful though, exemplified mods are old and may be bugged.

Your glommer will be consumed in approximately 50 hours. Enjoy your last moments together. Also thanks for the mod i'll try it but Klei is still always welcome to implement it in the game.

[Theukon-dos]

23 hours ago, Shosuko said:

tbh - as much as I dislike and disagree with planar, I think its better that Klei does not respond to me about it.

Whether it is some ground-breaking, breath-taking, "all of this suddenly makes sense" big picture or not, I'm certain Klei does have a bigger picture - and I'm confident they are reading the feedback and deciding how to develop based on that and their own desires, and I'll let Klei keep their counsel on it.  As much as I'm willing to drag an argument out here in the forums, investing in passionate responses, and willing to be confidently wrong in pursuit of the fullest argument, I don't think its proper that Klei gets involved in such things.  Rather they should let us hash it out, take the feedback, arguments and counter points up amongst themselves, and decide what they will do as the developing authority.

I'm willing to be wrong and have my mind changed - but as a user that is all okay.  Klei being the developing authority risks a lot more if they gave any response that resonated poorly with any party.  I think the Rhymes with Klei they do with the beta / release does well enough to provide their insight into what they're doing and we'll all play it and come to our own conclusions, and as they make updates and release new content the whole story will unfold for better or worse.

Also their devs are cute and I'd hate to make them feel averse to showing up and nerding out as they do by getting confrontational during their spotlight <3

I agree that it's best they don't respond to our common criticisms, truthfully, I've lost faith in the idea of Klei seeing "the bigger picture" by this point.

After Return of Them came and went with every critisism levied towards it for the previous 3 years still more than present, I don't exactly have reason to trust that Klei won't just do that again with rifts. And even then, it really feels like the writing's on the wall with this arc.

But regardless, I'm glad one of us still has faith in the game.

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

A 10% nerf on armor means you basically get 2x more dmg in all situations. 

The only time where this is true is true is going from 90 to 80% defense.  Percentage reduction is not a linear function.  The closer you get to 100 the more each percent means.  Dropping a football helmet from 80 to 70 is only a +50% damage difference.

Current common defense percentages are 80%, 90, and 95 percent.  Strong armor isn't just strong, 95% is practically invincible.  A 150 health character at 80% reduced damage has 750 effective health, at 90 they have 1500, and at 95% its 3000.  A 100 health attack against a football helmet kills you on the 8th hit, but 95% gives you 30 hits!  If we reduce the scale by a flat 10% across the board this puts us at 500 / 750 / 1000.  The top end loses a lot but the lower ends aren't actually reduced much.  A 100 health attack kills you on the 5th hit instead of the 8th, its really not a big decrease in effectiveness.  Its only on the top end that we see nerfs - going from 3000 effective health to only 1000 means a 100 damage hit can still be risky.  Getting hit 30 times is in the realm of "ignore health, just tank and trade."  But only 10?  Still much stronger in this armor but we're not ignoring damage.

I'm curious at what point your friends died doing Toad.  There is a lot going on in that fight and much of it is not damage.  His attacks are so completely telegraphed that except for his ground stomp you could forgo armor and still clear the fight pretty well.  The stomp is tougher in multiplayer vs solo, but its no auto-kill like Dfly's rage stomps.  I'm more likely to bring too little food and starve to death, or too few axes / weather panes.

But really this is Toad - an end game raid boss.  Having new players die is no surprise or evidence of faulty design.  Toad could use improvements but nothing in your story indicates any need for it.  It also doesn't give a good argument to have more stronger armors.

2 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

DST is a multiplayer. So you want it balanced around... single-player experience? More-so: solo player advanced experience one? Hmmm.

I don't see how you read my post and got that idea.  The game should not be balanced around PUBS.  Because pubs are a whole different thing for various reasons.  Its not like an MMO where I can log into a public server, grab a party and camp a spawn to farm the gear I want.  In DST the whole world is not likely to be there tomorrow.  This warps play intentions.  Most people playing DST aren't hitting up pub worlds - but this is not the same as saying they play alone.  DST is played alone a lot though, so don't discount that - but most of it is people playing with their friends, discord servers, or otherwise in a group who can communicate to share goals and the players can invest into more long term play because they know the server won't wipe in an hour.

[Hungry French]

In DS planar damage can be real cool.

[MondayNight]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

...nerfs...

No matter the amount of nerf translated, it ultimately leads to what I underlined: harder transition from noob/casual to experienced/advanced, more deaths and more frustration - the current biggest problem of DST: player retention, conversion from casual to recurrent. You haven't addressed my question at all: why do you want such a nerf? Do you consider the general survivability rate of players too high? How would that make game more fun, engaging, entertaining? What is the point?

 

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

I don't see how you read my post and got that idea.  The game should not be balanced around PUBS.  Because pubs are a whole different thing for various reasons.  Its not like an MMO where I can log into a public server, grab a party and camp a spawn to farm the gear I want.  In DST the whole world is not likely to be there tomorrow.  This warps play intentions.  Most people playing DST aren't hitting up pub worlds - but this is not the same as saying they play alone.  DST is played alone a lot though, so don't discount that - but most of it is people playing with their friends, discord servers, or otherwise in a group who can communicate to share goals and the players can invest into more long term play because they know the server won't wipe in an hour.

I was vague with my general Pubs description: I meant Endless Community Co-Op Pubs - probably that's the best example for whom DST was balanced to begin with, and what matters most when discussing the game's further balance. There you have minimal impact of newbies/trolls/griefers and maximum cooperative players' engagement with all content, all stages. Because you don't pump a 10x HP inflation on Bosses for solo-world players, they weren't the benchmark. Else, have scaling mechanics, as mentioned above. Playing with friends and/or acquaintances is pretty much Endless Community Co-Op Pub experience. And in-game written chat as most spread form of communication. (don't know about USA, but on EU servers you seldom have voice-chat coms, blame the different nations' language barrier; likewise VoIP "eats" quite a lot of bandwidth, not very common even with Steam friends here)

 

PS: the 2 Wigs died during all stages of Toad's fight, but most in Jumping one. Bombs and Spores slowly chipped at their HPs, yet Jumping did the most dmg. Also cumulative threats as I stated many times as main culprit for failure: in this case Worms' attack, Earthquakes and Rain piled on top. Not ideal conditions with perfect planning and timing, yes - because we 4 play when we can, each with their own irl schedule, while pub seasons advance randomly stemming from the very nature of pubs. They knew the theory, they even watched vids, but theory is one and practice is a whole 'nother thing. And no, practicing on personal server the fight N times via console commands is not how games are usually played, or desire to be played - that breaks all immersion and why they didn't do so. Don't forget main point of games: immersive entertainment, not math practice.

[Hungry French]

2 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

No matter the amount of nerf translated, it ultimately leads to what I underlined: harder transition from noob/casual to experienced/advanced, more deaths and more frustration - the current biggest problem of DST: player retention, conversion from casual to recurrent. You haven't addressed my question at all: why do you want such a nerf? Do you consider the general survivability rate of players too high? How would that make game more fun, engaging, entertaining? What is the point?

 

I was vague with my general Pubs description: I meant Endless Community Co-Op Pubs - probably that's the best example for whom DST was balanced to begin with, and what matters most when discussing the game's further balance. There you have minimal impact of newbies/trolls/griefers and maximum cooperative players' engagement with all content, all stages. Because you don't pump a 10x HP inflation on Bosses for solo-world players, they weren't the benchmark. Else, have scaling mechanics, as mentioned above. Playing with friends and/or acquaintances is pretty much Endless Community Co-Op Pub experience. And in-game written chat as most spread form of communication. (don't know about USA, but on EU servers you seldom have voice-chat coms, blame the different nations' language barrier; likewise VoIP "eats" quite a lot of bandwidth, not very common even with Steam friends here)

 

PS: the 2 Wigs died during all stages of Toad's fight, but most in Jumping one. Bombs and Spores slowly chipped at their HPs, yet Jumping did the most dmg. Also cumulative threats as I stated many times as main culprit for failure: in this case Worms' attack, Earthquakes and Rain piled on top. Not ideal conditions with perfect planning and timing, yes - because we 4 play when we can, each with their own irl schedule, while pub seasons advance randomly stemming from the very nature of pubs. They knew the theory, they even watched vids, but theory is one and practice is a whole 'nother thing. And no, practicing on personal server the fight N times via console commands is not how games are usually played, or desire to be played - that breaks all immersion and why they didn't do so. Don't forget main point of games: immersive entertainment, not math practice.

Making the game harder by increasing HP and damage is the dumbest thing that can be invented.
DST is an easy game. And the Klei won't make it harder.
Especially because it will have to be made more difficult for 6 players.

And since Klei ignores single players. This can make the solo game unplayable.

7 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

I was vague with my general Pubs description: I meant Endless Community Co-Op Pubs - probably that's the best example for whom DST was balanced to begin with, and what matters most when discussing the game's further balance. There you have minimal impact of newbies/trolls/griefers and maximum cooperative players' engagement with all content, all stages. Because you don't pump a 10x HP inflation on Bosses for solo-world players, they weren't the benchmark. Else, have scaling mechanics, as mentioned above. Playing with friends and/or acquaintances is pretty much Endless Community Co-Op Pub experience. And in-game written chat as most spread form of communication. (don't know about USA, but on EU servers you seldom have voice-chat coms, blame the different nations' language barrier; likewise VoIP "eats" quite a lot of bandwidth, not very common even with Steam friends here)

It's strange that we have to mention that DST is balanced for solo.

As if no one on this forum has played DS or does not know at all how RoG and DST differ and why different changes were made.

Why is the only thing that players mention as unbalanced for solo. This is hp lol.

Do dozens or hundreds of changes between DS and DST bother anyone ? 

[joeysora]

On 11/14/2023 at 2:15 PM, Hungry French said:

Making the game harder by increasing HP and damage is the dumbest thing that can be invented.
DST is an easy game. And the Klei won't make it harder.
Especially because it will have to be made more difficult for 6 players.

And since Klei ignores single players. This can make the solo game unplayable.

It's strange that we have to mention that DST is balanced for solo.

As if no one on this forum has played DS or does not know at all how RoG and DST differ and why different changes were made.

Why is the only thing that players mention as unbalanced for solo. This is hp lol.

Do dozens or hundreds of changes between DS and DST bother anyone ? 

I would say some raid bosses are not as well like bee queen and misery toadstool

[Hungry French]

5 hours ago, joeysora said:

I would say some raid bosses are not as well like bee queen and misery toadstool

Technically, all DST bosses do not meet the solo standards that Klei set for DS.

And bee queen and toadstool ( and misery ) are some of the worst Raid bosses in the solo game

[Echsrick]

probably easy, remove planar defense....so a spear or what ever is still a spear or what ever, and make those planar weapons strong vs the opposide, so that moon sword does like i dont know 20 more damage to the shadow aligment....one could make it funny with skill trees, where something something about your alligment passive buffing either of the alligment sets and weapons

[Spino43]

12 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Technically, all DST bosses do not meet the solo standards that Klei set for DS.

And bee queen and toadstool ( and misery ) are some of the worst Raid bosses in the solo game

Klaus, celestial champion, nightmare werepig: are we a joke to you?