Are content arcs not the way to go?

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, Szczuku said:

I think the main problem (aside from general lack of stuff to do once you've visited the keypoints once) is the fact that the ocean itself discourages sailing.

Why bother sailing the entire ocean when you can just build a new boat at the closest edge to the point of interest and beeline straight to it?

The worldgen discourages sailing, simple as. We need a worldgen overhaul that puts the mainland in the corner and fits the ocean into the rest of the playable area.

We can’t have that… unless Klei bites the bullet and stops Retrofitting new content into players 15 billion days old worlds.

[Maxil20]

11 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It lasted 4 years,

The content arc Return of Them lasted Just under 2 years, starting in May 16, 2019 with the beta Turn of Tides and Ended on May 5, 2021 with Eye Of The Storm being released.

The next 2 years were updates without any arc theme around them. While this sounds strange, this isn’t too different from when Klei released the forge and gorge and didn’t have any real arc planned for those events other then trying new things out, the difference with that is we got practically no new content for the base game for almost 1.5 years, until the celestial portal update came out.

I personally don’t mind updates with an arc theme too much, however I personally preferred the Way A New Reign handled how updates released. For those not aware, A New Reign had an update structure very similar to return of them, but the difference was the main branch of DST got updated in 3 parts, these parts having a mix of 2-3 updates tied to them which in general made the gameplay experience much more streamlined. This meant players who wanted to play the updates as soon as possible could play on the beta branch, while those who wanted to wait for a more coherent experience could wait until the next “part” in the update came out. The only thing that is problematic with this is how it would be difficult for console users to experience these updates without having a beta branch, and I imagine trying to get one for those versions is quite hard.

[Antynomity]

36 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

snip

i've been repeating the 3 years thing for so long i actually forgot it lasted 2 years lol, I wasn't around for ANR but I would much prefer longer waits for main branch while beta branch is more long-form testing for the bigger parts of the arc.

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, Antynomity said:

i've been repeating the 3 years thing for so long i actually forgot it lasted 2 years lol, I wasn't around for ANR but I would much prefer longer waits for main branch while beta branch is more long-form testing for the bigger parts of the arc.

You can do this instead of deleting messages in replies and making it snip.

[Antynomity]

3 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

You can do this instead of deleting messages in replies and making it snip.

thanks but snip is cooler

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Antynomity said:

thanks but snip is cooler

Snip died ages ago. Snip is uneeded and is now counter productive and stinky.

[Theukon-dos]

7 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

~~snip~~

My bisexual ass could never stop trimming posts I reply too.

[BalkanCockroach]

3 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Sussy 

'_'

[gamehun20]

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Snip snip snip

Says who

[HowlVoid]

Content arcs are a necessity to the team so they can plan and keep things within a time frame.

Having said that, it does sometimes feel like they put all their eggs in a single basket, as you pointed out with ocean content.

What they really need is a "John ocean" side team of 1-2 people trickling in new ocean content update every patch (or whatever else feels incomplete). Though that's probably easier said than done, and could make the team feel disjointed. 

All in all if it ain't broke... 

I do love their qol patches though, those are so incredibly tasty. I think the main problem is they don't really know what content to add when it comes to the ocean without maybe making it too much like shipwrecked. But at this point just add all of shipwrecked into dst, what's the worst that can happen?

Side note: some arcs need to be longer than a month. What comes out isn't always fully baked. Sending out confusing content that "makes sense later" just makes it harder to give out good feedback.

On 11/12/2023 at 3:37 AM, Shosuko said:

DST stands for Dark Souls Terraria 

OMG I laughed so hard at this

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

The garfield movie that is coming out looks cool

I am one too.

3 hours ago, gamehun20 said:

Cut cut slash slice pinch pinch bite bite

Me.

2 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

What they really need is "John cena" side team

I thought you said john cena for a second.

[Yuuko]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:37 AM, Shosuko said:

I almost wonder if we're going to start getting tutorial style pop-ups auto-pausing the game to explain whatever convoluted nons they've added next...

Okay... bad news...  I did the zombie boss fights during beta to learn them but I didn't pay attention to any of the WARBIS stuff like, at all...  So I finally get to that in my main world, clearing all the zombie bosses and such, and find this: <Research Notes>

ugh -_- DST is dying -_- 

It didn't pause my game when it opened it up, but I'm guessing that is because I have auto-pause disabled...  why Klei???  Are Quick Time Events coming for the next boss fight too???

one day I'm gonna load back into DST and find Deerclops like this

[Jakepeng99]

2 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Okay... bad news...  I did the zombie boss fights during beta to learn them but I didn't pay attention to any of the WARBIS stuff like, at all...  So I finally get to that in my main world, clearing all the zombie bosses and such, and find this: <Research Notes>

ugh -_- DST is dying -_- 

It didn't pause my game when it opened it up, but I'm guessing that is because I have auto-pause disabled...  why Klei???  Are Quick Time Events coming for the next boss fight too???

I mean, it is just a lore book and gives us hints of the future.

[Yuuko]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

I mean, it is just a lore book and gives us hints of the future.

It force-opened a whole screen-covering thing.  This is 1) dangerous if I had clicked on this new intriguing thing while something else was going on, and 2) a bit heavy handed for a game that has used inspection quotes to spread a good amount of info...  I feel force-popping up the full screen info-dump breaks immersion. 

[Paxtonnnn]

18 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I feel force-popping up the full screen info-dump breaks immersion. 

This is a good point and all but

18 hours ago, Shosuko said:

ugh -_- DST is dying -_- 

18 hours ago, Shosuko said:

Are Quick Time Events coming for the next boss fight too???

Unless there’s a joke I’m missing, you might want to calm down a bit

[Yuuko]

3 hours ago, Paxtonnnn said:

Unless there’s a joke I’m missing, you might want to calm down a bit

The new fights are all incredibly scripted.  To fight bright shades you must lure their root and attack it to lower their defenses.  To fight deerclops you torch after it throws down 2 ice attacks.  To fight bearger you side step the butt slam.  Its fun to have to do so much at first, but it gets really monotonous each repeat fight b/c the fights are so much the same.

[KvltBear]

Content arcs or not, I'm mostly fine with what Klei wants to do as long as the updates and non-raid bosses keep coming. The skills trees have been mostly great and I can't wait till everyone has one. An overhaul/update to storage mechanics I think is desperately needed. Still holding out hope for some kind of dynamic pig/merm war to play out on the suface. And maybe some sort of follower update as hinted after the lamb crossover. Would be nice for my base to feel more alive instead of all my pigs/bunnies in a pen walking towards powdercake bait like livestock. I really doubt we'll get additions to the seasons at this point but, honestly, I'm getting a bit bored with thermal stone and one clothing item being the solution to all of them. Caves still feel very...unfinished? Could all of that fit into a singular "arc"? Don't know. But I really anticipate them to be fleshing out late game stuff at this stage.

Not really interested in new ocean content until sailing isn't such an unpleasant experience. Rowing is frustrating and tedious, only made tolerable by the auto-rowing mod. Juggling mast/s, steering wheel, and anchor all while desperately trying to dodge the billion sea stacks in the ocean is terrible. This is why I usually make several dock locations around the world so I can minimize the amount of sailing I have to do. Because sailing is slow, it just makes no sense to sail anywhere other than the shortest straight line from land to destination once you've found the biomes. It's too bad, I'd like to sail around a la SW and have a cute gnarwail following me.

[Valase]

34 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

The new fights are all incredibly scripted.  To fight bright shades you must lure their root and attack it to lower their defenses.  To fight deerclops you torch after it throws down 2 ice attacks.  To fight bearger you side step the butt slam.  Its fun to have to do so much at first, but it gets really monotonous each repeat fight b/c the fights are so much the same.

It's fine for brightshades, as they usually spawn in trios and that alone makes them hard.

But for the bosses, I believe that you have not fought them after they got released in the live server. As now you are required to hit them outside their exposed states.

As Moonbearger needs to take more damage before being able to be stunned again and Lunarclops goes into frenzy mode before growing its "ice floor" again and being able to be stunned. (all of those changes came with the update release, no micro patchs nor updates after).

And for Warg. it just does Warg things (spawn a bunch of dogs that revive too).

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Shosuko said:

The new fights are all incredibly scripted.  To fight bright shades you must lure their root and attack it to lower their defenses.  To fight deerclops you torch after it throws down 2 ice attacks.  To fight bearger you side step the butt slam.  Its fun to have to do so much at first, but it gets really monotonous each repeat fight b/c the fights are so much the same.

Its better than a boss which only has one or two attack and does it 1000 times.

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, Valase said:

It's fine for brightshades, as they usually spawn in trios and that alone makes them hard.

But for the bosses, I believe that you have not fought them after they got released in the live server. As now you are required to hit them outside their exposed states.

As Moonbearger needs to take more damage before being able to be stunned again and Lunarclops goes into frenzy mode before growing its "ice floor" again and being able to be stunned. (all of those changes came with the update release, no micro patchs nor updates after).

And for Warg. it just does Warg things (spawn a bunch of dogs that revive too).

I fought them plenty.  In fact I skipped the beta on them and have only fought them in live.  They are very linear fights.  You must do this that and this to do the fight.  There is much less creativity and player expression involved.

Compare this to Bee Queen who has had many different setups from spamming pan flutes and stacking damage, to mazes of walls isolating her from the grumbles, z axis glitches, sleep bombs, etc.  There is so much more creativity allowed when a boss isn't forcing you to do very specific things to fight them.  The boss is only boring if you're boring.

[Queron81]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:03 PM, Valase said:

New islands would be very welcome additions, but currently there is the moon-quay problem, because they need to add an island and completely new resources, otherwise the player will not go there at all, and if they remove content from the land, to add to the isles, people would complain.

They could work around this. For example, add a cold, snowy island with 1-2 walrus camps, pengulls and some mini glaciers that are always active. This would be interesting for people, who want to get a Walking Cane or a lot of ice before winter, but you don't have to remove anything from the main land. Or a hot sandy island with sandstorm, cactus flowers and another oasis, where Antlion could live apart of summer. Or a rainy island with frog rain, where Moose/Goose are living apart of spring. They also could reuse some of the content from The Gorge. Or a clockwork island, as the main land is sometimes lacking clockwork mobs. They could add so much to the ocean without even making new content.

[Sanitar]

30 minutes ago, Queron81 said:

They could work around this. For example, add a cold, snowy island with 1-2 walrus camps, pengulls and some mini glaciers that are always active. This would be interesting for people, who want to get a Walking Cane or a lot of ice before winter, but you don't have to remove anything from the main land. Or a hot sandy island with sandstorm, cactus flowers and another oasis, where Antlion could live apart of summer. Or a rainy island with frog rain, where Moose/Goose are living apart of spring. They also could reuse some of the content from The Gorge. Or a clockwork island, as the main land is sometimes lacking clockwork mobs. They could add so much to the ocean without even making new content.

Depriving seasons of exclusive content is not the best idea. This will kill the uniqueness of the seasons and the uniqueness of the game itself. 

[Hungry French]

On 11/12/2023 at 12:14 PM, Sanitar said:

I probably sound like a pessimist, but I don't believe that developers will be able to make the ocean good.

That's why I need 4 Waterlogged biomes or salt biomes that are no different from each other? You can 't even build in them , unlike the islands from SW , which differ little from each other , too .Why do I need all these devices that make life easier in the ocean if I haven't been in the ocean for more than 3 days? 

The ocean needs more islands. Approximately 7 pieces of islands are needed to make the ocean alive. The ocean does not need any biomes like Waterlogged, salt. The ocean needs islands

 

The developers could not even make the ocean good in Shipwrecked.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if they make a normal ocean in DST, but in Shipwrecked it will remain just as terrible.

On 11/12/2023 at 11:08 AM, Jakepeng99 said:

The last content arc was about the ocean and lunar content.  It lasted 4 years, and added the ocean and a bunch of lunar content. And, a farming update.

Though after it all, the ocean still feels unfinished, lacking life and only the major setpieces; salt, moonquay, waterlogged, lunar, crab king and pearl having any sort of interest for the players and these make up a very small amount of the ocean, since the swell and deep oceans have very little in them. Monkey raids have been left behind aswell, which needs some QOL.

Though now we are on a new content arc, and the ocean and other things seems to be put behind in favour of the next thing for who knows how many years. The caves are in a similar situations, though shadow riffs give hope.

I am not saying to Klei to drop their current content arc, it has actually been pretty great. But i am saying for future it might be better if klei were more freelance and updated things that felt like they needed updating- like the ocean, or to expand on new content they added similar to arcs.

Choosing between arcs and nothing. I would choose arcs.

Ironically, the DS as a whole is all unfinished. But for some reason people consider it finished, unlike DST ocean lol.

And... Isn't it right to say incomplete instead of unfinished ? Or just say empty.

19 minutes ago, Sanitar said:

Depriving seasons of exclusive content is not the best idea. This will kill the uniqueness of the seasons and the uniqueness of the game itself. 

For Spring and Summer need unique content. They are too not unique. It is necessary that they would be unique at least as Autumn and Winter

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Choosing between arcs and nothing. I would choose arcs.

Choose between nothing and no arks. Where did the nothing come from?

[Mike23Ua]

A story arc needs to have cohesion it needs to have a plot, a point, a purpose, and when it comes to DST and particularly some of the Return of Them updates.. it just seems to be content for the sake of content, and doesn’t actually serve any greater story narrative or purpose.

Like okay for example Klei labeled Reap What You Sow as a Return of Them story Arc update but what did a farming overhaul have to do with RoT? Does Pearl require me to create giant crops and give them to her to get recipes or progression?nope RWYS while everyone obviously loved it… was just sorta tacked on with a RoT label when it had nothing to do with Them or their Return.

Curse of MoonQuay is another example: the only story narrative this seems to provide is that Wagstaffs “experiments” are having Unforseen Consequences after he has already left the area, As if he is unaware of or rather doesn’t even care what he’s causing to happen.

But unless Klei plans to tie Curse of Moon Quay content into everything else- it’s sorta just content for the sake of content.

Currently the From Beyond arc has focused exclusively on late game world rifts, but that bigger picture Klei says we will understand when they’re done, has yet to be brought to light.

If Klei wanted to for example, create a NPC you need to approach as WONKEY in order to obtain progress towards From Beyond Content, then it would make sense.. but as it stands right now- Moon Quay got shoved aside and mostly forgotten.

Its great if Klei wants to do content just for the sake of doing content, but I and I’m sure others would prefer progression & purpose.

Crab King as bad as his fight already is… could’ve only been damageable by CanonBalls, which would have given Moon Quay Pirate Canons & Canonballs an actual story driven purpose within the games narrative.

As it stands right now however… I virtually have no reason whatsoever to even want to craft canons and Canonballs.

Hopefully someday Klei ties everything together nice and pretty like with a bow & ribbon.. but I fear we’re gonna be waiting a LONNNGGG while on that while they focus on Character Reworks Part 3 (skill trees) and maybe even non-DS related games like Mind over Magic or RotWood.