Should the ocean have tiny islands like SW?

[marshyds]

A big issue with the ocean is that its ~63,3333...% empty space.

Would tiny islands similar to shipwrecked make the experience more exiting or more of a hassle, since people are usually looking for lunar, pearl's or moonquay island?

(Note: the islands would either have an abundance of a specific thing or few new unique oceanic plants or so.)

[ShadowDuelist]

I think to make the ocean feel more organic it should be a mix of more islands, more ocean life and more natural ocean elements (waves, tides, currents etc). 
 

[Wander89]

yes

[arubaro]

Depends because i dont want tiny islands filled with basic resources like in glorified sw (basically the rog map split to force you walk on water).

They can add interesting biomes with new stuff via a mix of islands, like moon quay and moon island, and ocean biomes, like salt formations (salt needs buffs) and waterlogged

But adding islands for the sake of it wont make ocean more interesting and, funny enough, almost everything klei added to the ocean is more complex and cool that old content is just that still needs more of that

Also, if isnt super costly, they could add a setting to create worlds with some biomes split so you need to visit those biomes by sailing

[Mike23Ua]

Hilariously, the ocean actually does have a few “tiny” islands, but the issue with that is that they are extremely extremely small, and there’s not much, if there’s anything at all… on them. So players just sail past them and don’t even bother stopping.

Klei seems to not understand what made Shipwrecked a winning formula.

The Islands in Shipwrecked are pretty decent sized and had enough resources, mobs, or other stuff to gather/interact with on them, to actually matter…

More importantly, DST boats are permanent types of investments (not counting grass raft) once you build a wooden boat, as long as your extremely careful not to smash it into stuff (easy to do in a 95% empty ocean..) these boats never need Upkeep or Repair.

The vessels of Shipwrecked however DID slowly lose durability & start falling apart the longer you sailed on them, which is what kept players engaged with the Shipwrecked DLC.

You were venturing to different islands, constantly searching for supplies to upgrade & repair your boat, OR build a new one out of a different type of resource.

Walani having a permanent non-degrading surfboard so I could explore ocean content without worrying about needing to find resources to repair her surfboard, was one of the reasons she became one of my favorite SW characters..

But outside of Walani, the game needed that boat upkeep & repair, it needed to keep the player gathering materials to stay afloat, and outside of grass rafts…. DST just doesn’t DO that.

So there’s literally no reason to ever need to get off the boat & explore “islands” no matter what size they are… you will more likely sail right past them right on toward your true destination.

[grm9]

15 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Hilariously, the ocean actually does have a few “tiny” islands

there aren't, it's just frostjaw's island, crabby hermit's island, moon quay and lunar

[Frosty_Mentos]

Ocean is empty because it's an ocean. It's not supposed to be full of anything but a plain of water stretching till, well, this case the end of the map. WIth each new addition it feels more and more crowded now, I think the ocean is too small for it's size in the map sometimes but I don't mind it cause it offers generally decent amount of content. 

My issues will be with map size being too small to sail around much anywhere. Oceans supposed to be big vast and uncharted, but now we've got one big pot with a bunch of big bodies of land stirring in one soup. I'd wanna sail around for long while and explore but technical limitations Klei is facing with this is hard to deal with when they're trying to cram as much content as this game can afford to have.

[Mike23Ua]

23 minutes ago, grm9 said:

there aren't, it's just frostjaw's island, crabby hermit's island, moon quay and lunar

There are some small beach like islands, they usually spawn with sea kelp, sea Anenemy or some dead prehistoric fish on them. Most the time though they’ll spawn with nothing, nothing at all on them.

and they’re so small… that you’ll ignore getting off the boat to investigate.

I guess the only good use these have is to make a neat tiny base on.. but even that, leaves very little room to do anything with.

These islands are bigger than frostjaws area, but smaller than Moon Quay.

[Uedo]

8 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

There are some small beach like islands, they usually spawn with sea kelp, sea Anenemy or some dead prehistoric fish on them. Most the time though they’ll spawn with nothing, nothing at all on them.

and they’re so small… that you’ll ignore getting off the boat to investigate.

I guess the only good use these have is to make a neat tiny base on.. but even that, leaves very little room to do anything with.

These islands are bigger than frostjaws area, but smaller than Moon Quay.

No, this doesn't exist. You said this before. You're thinking of the islands attached to the Lunar Island biome.

[Riddla]

Making a separate world for Ocean would be ideal imo to not overload the Surface world.
The entrance to that Ocean world could be a special whirlpool, or by simply sailing off the charts, sort of acting like how'd you enter the Caves through Sinkhole. Would be cool if islands were as special as setpieces you'd find on the Surface, so that it's equally very dangerous and very rewarding to explore the unknown.

 

[-Variant]

8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

There are some small beach like islands, they usually spawn with sea kelp, sea Anenemy or some dead prehistoric fish on them. Most the time though they’ll spawn with nothing, nothing at all on them.

Those are actually Lunar Island Fragments! They're intentionally put there, they spawn right next to Lunar Island only, they're meant to resemble shell fragments from Alter's casing.