How bad do you think a global nerf on armor would be?

[arubaro]

3 minutes ago, Hungry French said:

Does this only work on the new super late game armor? Or for all the armor in the game ?

with the rest you stack durability which is interesting enough, more than not getting damage cuz you gear 2 armors

7 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Personally, I do think that armor needs nerfed. But not becuase it's too strong, but rather because the gap between "Unarmored" and "basic armor" is way, way to high.

 

Me? I'd cut all armor defense AND enemy damage in half. In theory, not only would this make the game easier for new players to get into without also making it easier for experienced players, it would also make low/no defense builds a LOT more viable. So if you where to, say, run Magi+Enlightened Crown, then Deerclops would only deal a quarter of your HP instead of half of it.

 

Obviously other things would need to be changed to account for this, but that's all just semantics in the grand scheme of things.

i like the thrill of my armor breaking. Being able to fight naked removes that and only good thing that it brings is being able to use powerful combos like the one you mentioned, basically making the game easier so ofc noobs would have a easier experience.... also idk how dumb can be someone to dont wear armor after being destroyed by spiders...it didnt took me that much to learn

[Hungry French]

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

with the rest you stack durability which is interesting enough, more than not getting damage cuz you gear 2 armors

It was possible to balance the armor stack. Make the percentage of increased protection MUCH smaller.
In DST, it makes no sense to wear Armor and Helmet at the same time. It's better to wear something else

It was possible to balance the armor stack. Make the percentage of increased protection MUCH smaller.
In DST, it makes no sense to wear Armor and Helmet at the same time. It's better to wear something else. Magiluminescence or clothing.

[lenship2]

3 minutes ago, Hungry French said:

In DST, it makes no sense to wear Armor and Helmet at the same time.

idk i like combining expensive armors with cheap armors to significantly extend the durability of both

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Hungry French said:

It was possible to balance the armor stack. Make the percentage of increased protection MUCH smaller.
In DST, it makes no sense to wear Armor and Helmet at the same time. It's better to wear something else

It was possible to balance the armor stack. Make the percentage of increased protection MUCH smaller.
In DST, it makes no sense to wear Armor and Helmet at the same time. It's better to wear something else. Magiluminescence or clothing.

Armor stacking granting a minor boost to defense wouldn't make stacking armor any more useful than it is right now, and arguably make it worse. Currently you can stack armor to extend the durability of it (especially useful on prolonging rarer things like a thulecite suit with an easily replaceable football helmet), or make up for weaker armors that have other benefits but might not have as much defense or durability as you'd want for a main armor (such as the bee queen crown and bramble husk). If all it did was make you take slightly less damage you may as well just use a magiluminesence to make evading easier for a considerably larger reduction in damage taken.

[Hungry French]

13 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Armor stacking granting a minor boost to defense wouldn't make stacking armor any more useful than it is right now, and arguably make it worse. Currently you can stack armor to extend the durability of it (especially useful on prolonging rarer things like a thulecite suit with an easily replaceable football helmet), or make up for weaker armors that have other benefits but might not have as much defense or durability as you'd want for a main armor (such as the bee queen crown and bramble husk). If all it did was make you take slightly less damage you may as well just use a magiluminesence to make evading easier for a considerably larger reduction in damage taken.

In DS football helmet took more damage than armor. About 70%. 
Magiluminescence is not appropriate here. This is not armor and it can be worn in the DS

19 minutes ago, lenship2 said:

idk i like combining expensive armors with cheap armors to significantly extend the durability of both

It worked better in DS

[Valase]

8 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Personally, I do think that armor needs nerfed. But not becuase it's too strong, but rather because the gap between "Unarmored" and "basic armor" is way, way to high.

Me? I'd cut all armor defense AND enemy damage in half. In theory, not only would this make the game easier for new players to get into without also making it easier for experienced players, it would also make low/no defense builds a LOT more viable. So if you where to, say, run Magi+Enlightened Crown, then Deerclops would only deal a quarter of your HP instead of half of it.

So you want to make the game easier?

13 hours ago, grm9 said:

most people don't need armor for fighting early mobs like pigs and spiders and body slot is occupied with magi if you're doing scienceless ruins so there isn't much use for it if you're fighting pre-science either

You can also come back from a ruins rush with a footbal helmet or a thulecite crown

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

dont worry, is back with planar for some reason 

I mean, you kinda left out the fact that the reduction is flat, not x% like other armors, adding "true damage" only to make a armor that "reduces true damage by x%" would be reduntant and making Flat values not stack would be worse.

[arubaro]

1 minute ago, Valase said:

I mean, you kinda left out the fact that the reduction is flat, not x% like other armors, adding "true damage" only to make a armor that "reduces true damage by x%" would be reduntant and making Flat values not stack would be worse.

i know but still i dont know how to feel about it. It encourages using double protection but at the same time, in some fights like bearger, you will like forced because without it you are most likely death

not saying i dont like stacking flat reduction, way better than DS nonsense 

[Valase]

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

i know but still i dont know how to feel about it. It encourages using double protection but at the same time, in some fights like bearger, you will like forced because without it you are most likely death

But the deal on the bearger fight, is that he combo's you to death if you get uncompromised unlucky (similarly to the mouth ink guy), I have been having success with just the Bshade helmet and bramble armor, and I only equip the helmet when I feel/know that I will take damage, as the bonus damage from CC crown is better , but when I go out to fight the planar bosses I always keep the Bshade Armor, just in case.

[arubaro]

2 minutes ago, Valase said:

But the deal on the bearger fight, is that he combo's you to death if you get uncompromised unlucky (similarly to the mouth ink guy), I have been having success with just the Bshade helmet and bramble armor, and I only equip the helmet when I feel/know that I will take damage, as the bonus damage from CC crown is better , but when I go out to fight the planar bosses I always keep the Bshade Armor, just in case.

i know, actually i didnt got comboed since the update went live, but still a danger

also im playing wormwood so i go with full planar equipment so maybe is also that, i dont feel like using other equipment on day to day combats (i do use husk in specific fights for the extra dps)

[_zwb]

9 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Please do that if you can, I'd try it out for sure.

8 hours ago, Baark0 said:

I would like to at least see it tested, but I think it'd be beneficial when it comes to getting players to try out now equipment. Below is some quickly thought up changes I made because I'm bored lol

  Reveal hidden contents

Grass suit: 60% > 50% - Mainly just to reduce the baseline of armor since this is the weakest in the game 

Football/battle helm + Log Suit: 80% > 70%

Bramble Husk: 80% > 75% - Costs 2 living logs so it shouldn't be as bad as football/log suit

Thulecite Crown + Suit: 90% > 80% - This actually makes the shield passive better since the crown takes less damage which means more shield activations

Cookie Cutter Cap: 70% > 85% - An item this out of the way to get really should provide more than 15% wetness protection. If the shell amount goes down to 2 I think this could honestly be kinda worth using

Night Armor: 95% > 90% 

Marble Suit: Unchanged. This is meant to be a stand still and tank armor, and is somewhat time consuming to farm. Not sure what you'd do about Wolfgang though

Snurtle Shell Armor: Unchanged

Scalemail: Unchanged

Dreadstone Armor + Helmet: 90% > 80% 

Brightshade Armor + Helmet/Void Robe + Cowl: 80% > 85% - The goal here is to make it feel like you've actually achieved something by killing CC/AF and dealing with the rifts. 85% makes the rift armors better than the previous best no drawback armor (thulecite) and remains on par with a strong, albeit somewhat tedious to get helmet (cookie cutter cap). This should give a feeling progression in your world, as before good armor was hard to come by or had a negative effect, but now you can just make it and even repair it.

Beekeeper hat: 80% > 75% - Debatable if this even needs change since it's literally only used against the Queen Bee

Eye Mask: 80% > 70%

Shield of Terror: 80% > 75% - Only -5% here because twins are kinda hard and time consuming

Hardwood Hat, Bee Queen Crown, Bone Helm: 70% - 65% 

Shelmet: Unchanged - I think in this hypothetical version of the game, 90% protection should be reserved for very difficult to obtain/rare armor, or armor with downsides, but I can't justify it for Shelmet considering how tedious this item is to get. Sersiously, who is sitting there hitting a Slurtle (which has 1200hp) 2 times every ~4 seconds just for a 10% chance at getting the equivalent of a cookie cutter cap. Ideally the drop chance is increased and/or Slurtles become easier to kill, then it goes down to 85% protection.

It is done

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084234652

[Maxil20]

4 hours ago, Hungry French said:

It worked better in DS

The main issue is that it was comically powerful in DS. Discounting the extreme 98% protection with a log suit, you could extend the durability of something like a thulecite crown to ~6.6K damage. With night armor, you could extend that to 26.6K damage. 

I used to dislike the way it worked in DST, but I’ve grown to think it’s fine over the years. You can still wear cheap armor to protect more expensive armor, and it works well enough, or only use the more expensive/cheap armor with other utility items like the magi. Both have their merits, and their ups and downs.

It’s the same with how I perceive planar damage. You could double up on planar gear, wear planar with dreadstone, wear a magi, or use something like bone armor. They’ve got their own strengths, their own downsides you need to mess around with, and ways to utilize them.

[Valase]

2 hours ago, _zwb said:

It is done

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084234652

DST Is fixed!

[Antynomity]

14 hours ago, _zwb said:

It is done

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084234652

Awesome, I'll check it out later.

[Wonz]

Only if everything related gets generally buffed/nerfed with some certain goal.  

Let's say the goals for example are:

• Making 20 pierogi NOT turn the game into easy mode while still keeping healing worth it. 
  • Healing so much so fast in fight makes fights too forgiving, some sort of cooldown could help with it. Example options:
    • Make dishes not stackable in player's inventory, spoil fast on the floor/get destroyed by boss so amount of healing player can take is reduced.
    • Artificial cooldown on food/salves/poultices once X seconds like terraria with potions
    • Or indirectly, your character won't eat unless missing some hunger.
      • Results in Warly buff on background of the cast and prevents one form of griefing

• Making the entry level in don't starve more new player friendly and challenge enforcing for veterans while realizing that whooping 80% DMG reduction for day 1 armor is ridiculous on paper and worth questioning if those levels of dmg reduction are not making it hard to balance upon.
  • Newbies are going to die or at least escape at critical health to hound/frog/spider, without armor monsters hit quite strong being too punishing for someone fresh.
    • Either all monsters damage could be nerfed along with all armors damage reduction to help those who don't value armor yet and not affect armored damage taken too much.
      • Let's say now 100dmg attack deals 20 dmg to log suit user but if monster's damage was halved to 50dmg and log suit nerfed to 40% the damage taken would still be 20dmg but combat with no armor would be more viable or forgiving for people who don't have it yet. If deerclops catches newbie in winter with no armor and 2 shots them then they didn't even really have a fair chance to get a grip on situation.  
  • Veterans will in 2-3 days conjure a whole inventory of armors/weapons and 1000 healing worth of food then make a post how this game dares to market itself as uncompromising.
    • The previously mentioned healing change should do a whole a lot about it
       
• Second look at if preparations are actually not affecting gameplay dynamics in boring way.
  • Isn't single piece of armor or weapon lasting too short in one boss fight? Often people bring 2/3 of inventory filled with weapons and armor.
  • Consider harder to craft armor yet lasting longer.
     
• Consider alternative armors worth choosing between at each progression level
  • 3 different armors available at each stage or system to upgrade it in 3 different aspects but only one at a time
    • Offensive: Attack increased/ Attack speed increased at cost of defense
    • Defensive: More dmg reduction/healing, a classic
    • Defensive 2: Movement speed at cost of dmg reduction

 

Those are just some examples, would love a beta for something like this introducing uncompromising mode like this in world settings where you can't just outheal and outtank your way out of any fight. 
There could be a lot done but one change as global armor nerf won't make most of us happy.

[W0l0l0]

If it replaced the whole Planar stuff, acted roughly proportionally between the armours, and Klei never went beyond 90% armour to ensure this nerf remains relevant, I really think it'd help. I'd advise it be done gradually in a series of balance games though, not all at once.

[Yuuko]

So a common thread has been "but new players will find this more difficult"

And I don't buy it.  Even putting aside all non-damage related deaths this armor change wouldn't actually change much for them.

I've done a few calculations in this thread showing how this change would play out on effective health, but lets look at that same concept a different way.

A football helmet protects for 80% damage reduction but only has 315 hit points.  If a player (150 health) has only 1 foot ball helmet their effective health is 465.

If a football helmet protected for 70% damage reduction with the same 315 hit points a player (150 health) would be the same 465 effective health.

In each case the football helmet breaks well before the character runs out of hit points.  It breaks about half health at 80% and about 1/3 health at 70%

Unless a new player is stacking armor they wouldn't actually have a meaningful difference in a single encounter.  This would put more emphasis on healing, but healing is plentiful in first autumn where most new players are likely dying as well.

[MondayNight]

11 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

So a common thread has been "but new players will find this more difficult"

And I don't buy it.  Even putting aside all non-damage related deaths this armor change wouldn't actually change much for them.

I've done a few calculations in this thread showing how this change would play out on effective health, but lets look at that same concept a different way.

A football helmet protects for 80% damage reduction but only has 315 hit points.  If a player (150 health) has only 1 foot ball helmet their effective health is 465.

If a football helmet protected for 70% damage reduction with the same 315 hit points a player (150 health) would be the same 465 effective health.

In each case the football helmet breaks well before the character runs out of hit points.  It breaks about half health at 80% and about 1/3 health at 70%

Unless a new player is stacking armor they wouldn't actually have a meaningful difference in a single encounter.  This would put more emphasis on healing, but healing is plentiful in first autumn where most new players are likely dying as well.

 

Is like you never play pubs, op. What's most common strat for newbies/noobs/casuals/"veteran noobs" after learning how to survive some days, that armor exists and gives considerable protection as opposed to.. running butt-naked in the deep dark forests of doom and despair?

TANKING, my brother into the Spaghetti Sky Monster!

For Pete's sake, even late-game players tank&spank quite a lot, especially because lag/"rubberbanding". Or purely out of convenience (Wigs tanking DF with Marble Armor & Thule Crowns, people vs AFw in Marble Armor & BQ Crown, etc).

And with this simple "Bonjour, madame!" truism, every minute armor nerf matters. Each armor nerfs for such players means lower survivability and a harder transition from casual to regular/recurrent player. Once again and more 'nd bis: Why do you want to make bulk player-base's in-game life harder from day 1 and enlarge the DST quitting rates further? What is the general fun with such a change?

Game's already hard enough for it to be considered an apex when casuals discuss about it.

If is a "you" problem, DST became too easy or whatever, no need to "force" entire player-base adapt to your philosophy/style (of probably not even tanking ever, since you admitted yourself you play solely solo personal servers and playing since DST launched), _zwb even made you the mod you asked for, above listed. Here's another mod on same lane: Armor Nerf (it already existed for 2 years, proof you haven't even searched workshop for such item, hence I don't believe is stemming from personal use desire, your lobbying; said mod has 148 Unique Visitors atm of this post and just 9 Current Subscribers - post 2 years of existing in workshop, attesting once more how "popular" such a nerf concept is). If that's not enough for you, couple it with Uncompromising Mode. Dial both mods to max hardship and bathe into the nerf madness to quench your desire for a harder DST. Your poll rests now at ~64 disapproval rates for what you advocate. Meanwhile searching DST Workshop for armor buffs yields 31 pages with max listing per page. What does that tell you in relation to bulk player-base at large and DST general difficulty, again?

[Theukon-dos]

On 11/15/2023 at 6:30 AM, Valase said:

So you want to make the game easier?

Not quite. See, despite my general attitude towards the recent updates, I'm not a purist. I'm not inherently opposed to smoothing out the game's learning curve. My main problem with updates having things like skill trees is that they effect all levels of play. Sure, they might make the game easier to get into. But even a skill tree like Wolfgang's; one so bland that you'd probably have a better time eating a bowl of boiled tree bark; provides MASSIVE boosts to high-level play unless said players actively go out of their way to avoid using them.

 

The point of cutting both damage and defense in half is too make the game softer to ease into while also effecting experienced players as little as possible. New players would; in theory; have a significantly easier time with combat due to their health being significantly more effective before it gets drilled into their head that they should have a football helmet on at all times.

But once you do start wearing armor consistantly, the damage values don't change. If you're fighting a boss that deals 100 damage with 80% armor, and then both of these get cut down to 50 damage with 60% armor, you're still going to take 20 after the reduction.

 

This would probably make the very early game a bit easier for experienced players, sense armor would be less of a priority. But that's an extremely small part of the game. Otherwise, all it really does difficulty wise is make more options viable, but I don't personally consider that being "easier" in and of itself.

[Antynomity]

1 hour ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Snip

A change doesn't need to be popular at all to be good for the game, in reality this nerf, once again, wouldn't change anything in the grand scheme of things for the worse, like at all, and would give klei more room to make armor more unique without having to compete with 95% absorption ones, planar could more smoothly and gently fade out of existence, I myself just playtested the mod and I recommend you do so as well, from my perspective it was a positive change and I felt like I had to pay more attention to my health while less to my armor (and the math proves that).

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Is like you never play pubs, op. What's most common strat for newbies/noobs/casuals/"veteran noobs" after learning how to survive some days, that armor exists and gives considerable protection as opposed to.. running butt-naked in the deep dark forests of doom and despair?

Oh please, I am not talking about going unarmored and a drop from 80 to 70 percent reduction is not so severe.

New player crafts 1 football helmet and tanks without healing => gets same effective health whether at 80 or 70 percent reduction.

New player crafts 2 football helmets and tanks without healing => Will die before the second armor breaks whether at 80 or 70 percent reduction.

In both cases a player still needs to learn about healing.

This is actually a buff for pub games.  Getting pig skins and extra grass for armor in a multiplayer world can be tough meanwhile nearly every crock pot food includes some health as a base.  Healing specific foods are pretty convenient early game as well.  Butterflies spawn / player so there will always be a good amount of those around.  Blue mushrooms heal plenty and aren't usually depleted even in multiplayer worlds.  Plus of course all of the crock pot foods like trail mix, you'll be chopping wood for boards anyway...

No, I don't see how the "players need to stack armor" has any merit for new players.  If they're putting armor on they still need healing before a second one breaks.

 

As for experienced players - tank and spank is still an option.  Ultimately tanking is accepting a tax on resources to simplify combat.  The balance of resources shifts a bit but its not like making a bit of extra healing food rather than farming extra marble is really going to change your experience.

[Baark0]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:17 AM, _zwb said:

It is done

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084234652

Oh neat, do you have a list of all the changes?

[Arcwell]

7 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I've done a few calculations in this thread showing how this change would play out on effective health, but lets look at that same concept a different way.

A football helmet protects for 80% damage reduction but only has 315 hit points.  If a player (150 health) has only 1 foot ball helmet their effective health is 465.

If a football helmet protected for 70% damage reduction with the same 315 hit points a player (150 health) would be the same 465 effective health.

In each case the football helmet breaks well before the character runs out of hit points.  It breaks about half health at 80% and about 1/3 health at 70%

Unless a new player is stacking armor they wouldn't actually have a meaningful difference in a single encounter.  This would put more emphasis on healing, but healing is plentiful in first autumn where most new players are likely dying as well.

I cannot speak for new players but I can speak for myself. One thing I learned very quickly was to always have a backup helmet in my inventory in case my current one breaks (and imo it's very easy to carry around pigskin to make more if necessary). 

If you do have more than 1 football helmet, your effective health with 80% dmg absorption would instead be 750 (150 / (1 - 0.8)) and with 70% dmg absorption it would be 500 (150 / (1 - 0.7)). By dropping dmg absorption by 10%, you have cut your effective health by 33%, which in turn drops the effectiveness of your healing by 33%. This of course gets more severe as you go up in dmg absorption as I've stated on page 1 of this post.

I genuinely do not see this as a good change at all.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Arcwell said:

I cannot speak for new players but I can speak for myself. One thing I learned very quickly was to always have a backup helmet in my inventory in case my current one breaks (and imo it's very easy to carry around pigskin to make more if necessary). 

If you do have more than 1 football helmet, your effective health with 80% dmg absorption would instead be 750 (150 / (1 - 0.8)) and with 70% dmg absorption it would be 500 (150 / (1 - 0.7)). By dropping dmg absorption by 10%, you have cut your effective health by 33%, which in turn drops the effectiveness of your healing by 33%. This of course gets more severe as you go up in dmg absorption as I've stated on page 1 of this post.

I genuinely do not see this as a good change at all.

Lets clarify something because what you're saying in point 2 is just that this is a nerf.  One of the recurring complaints about DST, and justifications for planar damage type is that armor is too strong making everything easy once you're geared up.  So to your page 1 post - yes this disproportionately hits stronger armor, and to this post - yes this is a nerf.  Being a nerf does not naturally lead to the conclusion that "this is not a good change at all."  Nerfs can be very important to the enjoyment of a game, in this case maintaining a sense of risk even after scaling up.

There are a lot of perspectives this can be viewed through and I don't think it helps to taint them with each other.

The example of 1 football helmet was in response to someone talking about pubs.  idk how often you play pubs but it is not very easy to carry around pigskin in pubs.  If you get it first great!  Otherwise you're probably chopping logs lol  Pub servers are notorious for early shortages especially for pig skins, grass, twigs, and flint.  Their post mentioned pubs and this was the basis of my response to them.  Reducing the importance of armor would likely make sharing materials, or at least not hording / strip farming them more likely so I think such a change might be a net positive to pubs.

That doesn't really matter to non-pub worlds though.  Carrying materials for more armor would still be important, and even at 80% reduction healing is still important, all this does is put some more focus on healing rather than knocking down pig houses.  A lot of crock pot dishes pack 20+ health, its not like healing is that hard really - but this does, as it is intended to, increase the risk per encounter.  You will need to either take less damage or rely on healing more, learn how to time healing in your kiting pattern, etc.

You posted about top end gear and how this disproportionately nerfs them.  Well, like I said that is the point - and that is what planar does so idk what to say about that.  The concept here is to re-balance armor to maintain risk throughout the game rather than doing some dumb ng+ terraria rip off.  imo going down the path of planar and ng+ scaling schemes only opens the door to MORE scaling and power creep in the future.  I'd rather take a rebalance, besides if 95% is too much then its too much whether we're killing AFW / CC or zombie bearger.

[Trips]

I feel like there are other reasons holding combat back besides armor. Even if you were to nerf all armor, there isn't really stopping people from bringing more armor and chugging more pierogis for the same effect. Does this make the game more difficult? Technically yes, but it's easily counteracted by just preparing more for each boss fight. 

Bosses like the Nightmare Werepig I find to be a lot more interesting than the older bosses. You have to pay attention to his movement and phases and react accordingly - and you're rewarded for properly dodging his attacks and letting him tire out instead of just tanking him. 

Right now the threat enemies/bosses in this game pose mainly boils down to "Will I kill them before they deplete all of my weapons/armor/healing?" and something like a healing cooldown might be more appropriate to add.. but the combat in this game inherits a lot of its sandbox nature, with god knows how many ways there are of cheesing bosses. You would have to change something more fundamental about the game to fix the Resources vs. Boss dynamic, and armor nerfing doesn't really do that.

[GenomeSquirrel]

with weapon variety poor compared to what 8 bit games offer, and dated net code that does not care what happens on your screen, I’m still baffled plot and most content updates is tied to these hp sponges

 

increasing failure rate doesn’t really do anything for me, I guess more failure is more sad. and who needs more sad