What is considered a cheese?

[BalkanCockroach]

4 hours ago, Swiyss said:

(Swiss cheese

Swiyss cheese

[Ridley]

There is some cheese strats I will never use and some I always use. I don't really care what is considered cheese or not for this reason, I just do what I think makes the game fun and try to ignore the rest.

[Szczuku]

Idk I like this type

[Yuuko]

3 hours ago, Swiyss said:

however, it is not here a moment to kill fuelweaver, but to take things slower now. We enter the summer soon, so finding the oasis and killing antlion is our goal. Not before doing the moon stone event. Our goal is to kill every boss before cc and fuelweaver.

idk about delaying AFW, but I do consider how I can get other bosses done before CC to make more of a full boss run.  I only recently started bothering with CK and CC because of the rifts, before I just ignored them like I ignore toad.  Its such a long and exhausting quest line that, by the time I'm done with the quest, I'm usually pretty done with the world too...  so I do want to see how I can fit dfly, klaus, and others in as I go but the thing is - once you're out of rhythm with the seasons you spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing just waiting for spawns... and I'm not good at that.  I have very little interest in things like, well, any of this

Quote

Farming is the goal. Maybe some focus in megabasing and decorations, everything well thought for brigtshades to come and earthquake boulders. Clear spider dens, trap bearger. Farm trees, food, sustainable resources and more. I think that planning where to place ice crystaleyezers is a great option. One for each biome, in a corner, placing every single unique resource of that biome in that small area, decorated based by biome, built with hexagonal pattern farms of each type. 5 dfly furnaces station in each biome.

Unless I'm building some auto-farm or other contraption I'm just checking out.  I'm not an artistic type, I don't decorate worlds, I don't plot out how I'm going to place multiple crystaleyezers b/c I'm never going to make my first.  I'm playing solo so I don't need 1k grass and twigs, etc.  The only zomboss loot that I actually use is the bearger bin which is just OP.  No reason to make the others b/c they don't really do much for me.

There needs to be a good rhythm of killing bosses and the time spent between.  If I'm not killing CC by day 110-ish then I'm probably deleting the world b/c starting over will be more fun then wasting so much time between boss spawns just to pick off stragglers before CC.  The bosses I skip, aside from toad, wouldn't be a challenge at that point anyway b/c I've got all the things I'd want to approach them.  Best gear, tons of healing, luxury of topping sanity, no conflicting priorities restricting me to a small window to make it happen, etc.

Edited February 29 by Yuuko

[Guille6785]

Cheese is any strategy I wasn't smart enough to think about 

Serious answer: Sorry to disappoint you but the community doesn't agree on one definition for what cheese means, there are multiple popular definitions floating around that literally contradict each other and sometimes even contradict themselves. In particular, any definition that includes developer intent is probably the most useless because it assumes that we know what the developer intent behind each boss is (we literally don't) and it completely ignores the fact that it would imply that a strategy that would make the fight harder that the developers didn't intend would be considered cheese (?????)

Personally I find the discourse over cheese to be largely detrimental to the community because a lot of people go in it with the mindset that cheese somehow equals that the fight is "not legit". This is not a competitive game, most players are not achieving impressive feats, it doesn't matter whether or not you cheesed Bee Queen because you blew the pan flute a few times, just play the game however you want, this isn't dark souls

Edited February 29 by Guille6785

[user1464576869]

8 hours ago, Swiyss said:

To summarize my idea is to tell a story.

I bet this is gonna be crazy since I'm truly just trying to properly formulate this line of thought as I'm writing it out simultaneously.

Just to regain common understanding first, I hope you didn't mean that I implied fun is the determining definition of cheese. I don't think this is the case either. I think the motivator behind cheese-blaming is rooted in people's interest in having shared experiences with one another. Maintaining a canonical so to say.

Yes one of the coolest aspects of DST is our ability as player to approach an event with different actions. Again though I don't think people consider those paths a cheese due to difficulty or fun- but in terms of cinematic recollection?

If you were to describe a war between humble survivor and giant beast in terms of skillful kiting, I bet that's all the same to people as the survivor outwitting the giant with clever resource management and tricks. The game allows us this, so it is canon and an agreed upon experience. But there certainly is a point where if you describe this event as... you summoned a hundred of them on a tiny raft that they can't step out of despite their apparent shadow shifting abilities, and then sat back down as you methodically lit stacks of gunpowder in two stages as to avoid a damage reduction- Like this is not a fulfilling story, it's kind of nonsense. This is not a fulfilling action even, it's unintuitive. This is by no means a good chapter in a book. Maybe born out of necessity and leading to really fun shenanigans down the line or seen as a 'what-if' tangent in parallel to a respected standard, but still it feels off just to describe that event by itself, and extra wrong if claimed as the expected standard for people to experience. There are no glitches per se. But it is meta gaming, it is toying with quantum mechanics of the world.

People will react to this the same way as seeing their friend skip a whole chapter dedicated to battle in a book. Or replacing that chapter with ill fanfiction. Meta reading, meddling with the intent. "What are you doing missing out on the canonical series of events? How is this reading the book correctly?"

So again, in my opinion cheesing is a kind of headcanon. Interpretation of art. And we all have various levels of tolerance to it.
 
 
 
More tangent... An interesting attempt to get rid of cheese-blaming is to embrace the attempted result of cheesing. Say make voidwalking an official powerup, animations, sound effects, a cost, and all. At this point people might stop calling it a cheese. It now makes sense to them as a cinematic series of events. But then they might reject the author intent itself. This is when shared headcanon transcends the author. Like rejecting a bad sequel to a beloved story.

EDIT: Right, or, as in your case, to reject the pointlessness of a story were a player is stuck with nothing, achieving nothing. So there are some applied bandaids to the bad canon to fix the experience. Cheese; because perhaps one don't consider the true canon respectable art enough to follow.

It goes back to personal interpretation. Some people might find blowing up a tiny raft with a hundred shadows on it a perfectly respectable story. Some might find something as simple as befriending three pigs to help fight a rook as an "unintended" way to experience the art.

I get that people cheese probably exclusively because of difficulty, be it make it easier, or even make it harder if they dislike the easy path. But I still feel ultimately that the true motivator is something else; shared across all arts. You can consider it "easier" to read through a book with added fanfiction of how your favourite character never really died, and all your yaoi dreams came true as well. This the same disappointment you feel as the friend of yours refuses what you feel is the intended experience (be it hardships or other emotions) over a very easy reward. A rejection of the canon.

Edited February 29 by user1464576869

[Swiyss]

4 hours ago, Ridley said:

There is some cheese strats I will never use and some I always use. I don't really care what is considered cheese or not for this reason, I just do what I think makes the game fun and try to ignore the rest.

What for example?

 

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

sitting around doing nothing just waiting for spawns... and I'm not good at that.  I have very little interest in things like, well, any of this

Exactly, this "sitting around doing nothing" moment should me nonexistent in the game. And maybe the reason why it happen might be the blueprint that you're following. But maybe it is actually different per person. I myself don't like to WANT to do something, to only be blocked by a random number generator for eg. That's why I mentioned being stoic. Your approach molds your experience a lot.

 

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Unless I'm building some auto-farm or other contraption I'm just checking out.  I'm not an artistic type, I don't decorate worlds, I don't plot out how I'm going to place multiple crystaleyezers b/c I'm never going to make my first.  I'm playing solo so I don't need 1k grass and twigs, etc.  The only zomboss loot that I actually use is the bearger bin which is just OP.  No reason to make the others b/c they don't really do much for me

Klei needs to take you in consideration. I've been talking about how the only possible outcome after doing everything in the game, is to infinitely decorate a world.

I know that, you can have almost 2k hours if you plan on playing every single survivor, do every single thing in a world with it, and delete this world if you can't revive yourself. For that, it is somewhat possible to achieve creative strategies to outrun being bored.

But still, there needs to be a replay ability in single world situations that is not decorating or building. Rather a complex skillset completion, or scrapbook completion. Though these examples do not reward the player enough and it is not self sustainable. It relies to much on the Dev's end, without actually impacting the player positively in the long run.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

There needs to be a good rhythm of killing bosses and the time spent between.  If I'm not killing CC by day 110-ish then I'm probably deleting the world b/c starting over will be more fun then wasting so much time between boss spawns just to pick off stragglers before CC.  The bosses I skip, aside from toad, wouldn't be a challenge at that point anyway b/c I've got all the things I'd want to approach them.  Best gear, tons of healing, luxury of topping sanity, no conflicting priorities restricting me to a small window to make it happen, etc

I am not sure, but what would make you play a world without deleting it? Aside from yourself and your rules of gameplay. 

What motive COULD be there for you to feel more at home in a long run world? This is kinda sad.

2 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Serious answer: Sorry to disappoint you but the community doesn't agree on one definition for what cheese means, there are multiple popular definitions floating around that literally contradict each other and sometimes even contradict themselves. In particular, any definition that includes developer intent is probably the most useless because it assumes that we know that the developer intent behind each boss is (we literally don't) and it completely ignores the fact that it would imply that a strategy that would make the fight harder that the developers didn't intend would be considered cheese (?????)

I disagree, as I said before, we can.

I fear it is possible to understand the devs intention by analyzing things aside from sheer gameplay. And I proved that, atleast on my end here.

Also I disagree with your 'intend' interpretation. Cheese would be any strategy that makes doing the same boss fights but easier, using the most amount of resources available at the time. Wether that would be actual weapons, environment itself or contraptions based on game's physics and rules. Bypassing these meaning a 'cheese' in the system, we all know that.

Furthermore, after analyzing each process the dev took to make these features, we can assume said features intention. And after developing a strategy to simplify the approach of these features, we can than pinpoint what is cheese and what is not.

Now tell me why you think intention is unseen, I simply don't believe that.

[Swiyss]

12 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

More tangent... An interesting attempt to get rid of cheese-blaming is to embrace the attempted result of cheesing. Say make voidwalking an official powerup, animations, sound effects, a cost, and all. At this point people might stop calling it a cheese. It now makes sense to them as a cinematic series of events. But then they might reject the author intent itself. This is when shared headcanon transcends the author. Like rejecting a bad sequel to a beloved story

The void walking situation sits on the fact that the intended way to reach the atrium is to either use a lazy explorer from mudland or killing a specific giant tentacle to teleport there everytime. Even though it is a glitch by itself, some folks can't bother playing the game the intended way.

Say they add void walking to the game, makes absolutely no sense, there is little to 0 things to explore outside of the lands itself. And void walking by skipping small branches for example would make the teleport feature of the lazy explorer a joke, since you could just walk over it.

The problem is bigger, it goes to cave generation, setpiece approach, each stair being further from one another. A 'problem' that I don't agree with it, it is just a mild annoyance in my book.

21 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

Just to regain common understanding first, I hope you didn't mean that I implied fun is the determining definition of cheese. I don't think this is the case either. I think the motivator behind cheese-blaming is rooted in people's interested in having shared experiences with one another. Maintaining a canonical so to say.

Yes one of the coolest aspects of DST is our ability as player to approach an event with different actions. Again though I don't think people consider those paths a cheese due to difficulty or fun- but in terms of cinematic recollection?

I say that there is no reason to take in consideration something that is not being discussed here, even if it exist in this specific case. Let's assume someone thinks like that (which I don't disagree exists), then project our train of thought based on it. We get to a point where we regress in pinpointing terms and ideas.

Say someone thinks differently, rather I convince them otherwise than going back to the same discussion where 'is it cheese to use ice staves on crab king?' When said strat was already adressed in my book. It is a cheese, even if the intended way is to avoid the geysers themselves, anything that affects a boss by using the right mechanic of said weaponry is a cheese in my book, and the cheesier, the tastier. The more moldy the strat gets, the more exciting it gets. The more I rule over bosses, the funnier. The more I see intended features being jumped or skipped, the better the cheese. It is not a Klei vs Player situation anymore, rather a Player vs Environment. We have way too many resources currently, and that's a good thing.

Say this is not 'right' in others book. Well, Klei hasn't made fuelweaver destroy lureplants yet, so it is probably intended even. Klaus loot stash is a different case tho.

34 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

you summoned a hundred of them on a tiny raft that they can't step out of despite their apparent shadow shifting abilities, and then sat back down as you methodically lit stacks of gunpowder in two stages as to avoid a damage reduction- Like this is not a fulfilling story, it's kind of nonsense. This is not a fulfilling action even, it's unintuitive. This is by no means a good chapter in a book. Maybe born out of necessity and leading to really fun shenanigans down the line or seen as a 'what-if' tangent in parallel to a respected standard, but still it feels off just to describe that event by itself, and extra wrong if claimed as the expected standard for people to experience. There are no glitches per se. But it is meta gaming, it is toying with quantum mechanics of the world.

We can't expect every approach to every situation being legit too. I agree, it is not a story anymore, it is a tragedy. But it is very simple I think, Klei's gotta fix it, by making it only possible to spawn the trio at a time, not all of them, and simply making them walk on water and jump boats. Same for bearger, deerclops etc.. not being able to reach you on a boat. It is kinda difficult to implement, but still it would show us their intention.

38 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

So again, in my opinion cheesing is a kind of headcanon. Interpretation of art. And we all have various levels of tolerance to it

I feel like this is somewhat misinterpreted. I think the devs themselves made the book, and we are not adding anything new to it, but rather choosing where to start reading or which segment is the best. Kinda like the Bible.

Cheesing is not the main problem. But I think how many of them are possible and legitimate is not set and said in some areas.

[Copyafriend]

28 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Also I disagree with your 'intend' interpretation. Cheese would be any strategy that makes doing the same boss fights but easier, using the most amount of resources available at the time. Wether that would be actual weapons, environment itself or contraptions based on game's physics and rules. Bypassing these meaning a 'cheese' in the system, we all know that

You cannot interpret correctly every time, therefore we cant assume any one interpretation is correct.

the result of this is that you can argue that YOU understand the developers intention, but you cant prove that is what they intend. If interpretations had one correct answer it would be called language sciences not language arts.

 

secondly many people have disagreed on your definition of cheese, and you can’t enforce your definition as the “correct” one, because cheesing is a community term without a proper definition, even if proper definitions are applied afterwards to try to standardize it.

 

finally i want to put in my two cents for why i disagree with your definition of cheese.

 

to say that anything that makes the boss fight easier is cheese is to ignore the actual content of the game. The entire game is not fight boss x. The goal of the game is to survive and progress. By your definition wearing armor and using a weapon is “cheese” if you’re good enough you wont cheese dragonfly, you’ll just punch her to death.

 

preparation is part of the boss fight, whether that means destroying the hound mounds around the boss arena, building an endothermic fire pit to protect against overheating (which is again cheesing by your definition) or building walls to keep the larvae away. 
 

you can skip the preparation, but you will have a harder boss fight.

i will to a certain extent say this in regards to developer intention: if you believe so strongly in developer intention, why are larvae so obviously coded to not break walls if we are not meant to use them. If we are not meant to prep for boss fights, why are we playing a survival game instead of a boss rush. 
 

because this game ISNT a boss fighting game, i agree that some strategies are clearly unintentional, but it’s obvious that its all just up to interpretation.

[Swiyss]

43 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

Some might find something as simple as befriending three pigs to help fight a rook as a "unintended" way to experience the art.

Then I would disagree with them, the intention of the pigs existence in this scenario is to help us, the it is intended AND canonically cool.

[Copyafriend]

9 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The void walking situation sits on the fact that the intended way

Actually its an engine glitch, very difficult to correct, though they could make a patch if they wanted to.

this is what klei has said according to my memory

[Swiyss]

15 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

You cannot interpret correctly every time, therefore we cant assume any one interpretation is correct.

the result of this is that you can argue that YOU understand the developers intention, but you cant prove that is what they intend. If interpretations had one correct answer it would be called language sciences not language arts.

 

secondly many people have disagreed on your definition of cheese, and you can’t enforce your definition as the “correct” one, because cheesing is a community term without a proper definition, even if proper definitions are applied afterwards to try to standardize it.

I changed my definition a lot actually already, to say I can't assume something to later obtain a tangable result is to make me not think even. I am not saying MY definition is correct, but I can speak only what is in MY mind, so that's why it sounds weird at first. But as I mentioned before in the originak text, I am subject to change.

I have to say "I don't think it looks red, it looks more pink", because if I don't, people won't tell me "you forgot that this white is more yellow-y while looking at ir this way".

15 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

to say that anything that makes the boss fight easier is cheese is to ignore the actual content of the game. The entire game is not fight boss x. The goal of the game is to survive and progress. By your definition wearing armor and using a weapon is “cheese” if you’re good enough you wont cheese dragonfly, you’ll just punch her to death

That's more like "milk" and not "cheese", maybe oat milk even. Get it now? Lol.

 

15 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

why are larvae so obviously coded to not break walls if we are not meant to use them. If we are not meant to prep for boss fights, why are we playing a survival game instead of a boss rush

I think it works something like this; the intention of the fight is clearly for the player to DEAL with the larvae. The intention of the walls is clearly to DEAL with mobs by either blocking them, slowing them down or entertain them.

So in this case, the cheese method is only a cheese when the larvae being blocked is a big problem to you, if it isn't then whatever. But we're all humans and anything can happen at any time, rain, hound attacks, etc..

My definition of a cheese right now would be:

The more an item, structure, distortion of in-game physics etc.. change your approach to a specific goal, making it easier, not harder, the more of a cheese it would be. There are levels to it. Milk, to cream, to cheese, to moldy cheese, to extreme cases like cheese essence perfume disolved in alcohol made with milk itself, disgustingly overpowered. It is funny and cool I think.

Edited February 29 by Swiyss

[GenomeSquirrel]

If you want an official definition, it likely started with the word cheesy, but dropped the y when not used as an adjective.

 

 

[Copyafriend]

7 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The more an item, structure, distortion of in-game physics etc.. change your approach to a specific goal, making it easier, not harder, the more of a cheese it would be. There are levels to it. Milk, to cream, to cheese, to moldy cheese, to extreme cases like cheese essence perfume disolved in alcohol made with milk itself, disgustingly overpowered. It is funny and cool I think.

While a much better and obviously more accurate attempt at categorizing cheese, its also very obviously flawed.

cheese is according to community consensus - a strategy that makes the game easier. 

this is obviously agreed on by you and me.

 

this however is also not a full definition, to make it so is to ignore the general consensus that is that cheese is strategies that either work extremely well or make a boss incredibly easy to defeat

 

however to try to place all strategies that exist under the umbrella that is “cheese” is to not so much move the goal post, as it is to just remove it

 

saying its all cheese, just of differing strengths is to remove the actual crux of the discussion. Which is whether a particular strategy is unfair gameplay or not. I can stand on the side of discussion where i say that walls for dragonfly are clearly intended gameplay because of x y and z.

 

you can argue against it, but to declare it all as cheese is… well quite frankly rather silly.
 

even if we ignore “milk” level “cheeses” like wearing basic armor or even just walking in general. We just circle back around to the original argument without anything actually changing. Is using walls a “basic” cheese, that is intended by the developers, or is it a “cream” thats kinda iffy.

but those strategies are not iffy, or even cheese at all.

lets take another example from the same boss fight.

enraged dragonfly.

is sleeping enraged dragonfly cheese?

well under your definition i would say that its cream because it requires you to specifically bring a counter to something. 

however if i look at it under the more general definition, it becomes obvious that the pan flute or an ice staff or other counter to enraged dragonfly is expected to fight the boss. It requires much more effort and preparation to fight enraged dragonfly compared to just bringing along the pan flute. 
 

while it does minimize a difficult part of the fight, and requires you to do things you wouldnt normally do, that does not make it a cheese, it’s called knowing what the boss does and preparing for it.

why does something that is expected from the developers (having a counter to enraged dragonfly, like a magi to outrun her, scale mail to avoid fire damage, or a pan flute to calm her down) require a particular title. 
 

for a out of game example, lets say you’re playing a generic rpg and you run across a fire elemental.

now, you could not cheese it, and hit it with any old move, and probably kill it. Or you can use your head and know “hmm, it’s probably immune to fire, and it probably is weak to water”

knowing what dragonfly is capable of is canonical for the characters, they’ve died multiple times in multiple different parts of the constant. Its lore accurate that they have some knowledge of how to deal with stuff, how much depends on you the player.

[Swiyss]

1 minute ago, Copyafriend said:

even if we ignore “milk” level “cheeses” like wearing basic armor or even just walking in general. We just circle back around to the original argument without anything actually changing. Is using walls a “basic” cheese, that is intended by the developers, or is it a “cream” thats kinda iffy

Oh my days man, that sound soooo stupidly corny and funny, (cheesy?) I can't stop laughing to these terms being used. I lost it, officially.

[Yuuko]

4 hours ago, user1464576869 said:

and all your yaoi dreams came true as well.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD lol

4 hours ago, Swiyss said:

Exactly, this "sitting around doing nothing" moment should me nonexistent in the game. And maybe the reason why it happen might be the blueprint that you're following. But maybe it is actually different per person. I myself don't like to WANT to do something, to only be blocked by a random number generator for eg. That's why I mentioned being stoic. Your approach molds your experience a lot.

That's kinda what they are trying to do with the rift arc, but I think they are going about it the wrong way.  I feel they are following the flowchart of a grind style endgame, like a Monster Hunter game where you repeat the end bosses multiple times to collect rare materials to peak out your kits then re-fight them stronger.  Always something to do b/c you're in a loop of hunting mats for better gear, and then using that better gear on those hunts.

That doesn't really fit for DST though.  In MH we can rapid fire hunts against a target monster over and over again to get their drops, and their drops are rare so we might need to do 10+ hunts to get certain materials.  In DST the spawns are on a timer and drops are essentially guaranteed.  The way they did the zombosses tries to emulate drop rate by forcing you to go through all 3 first, and then cycling between them to continue getting drops.  One drop per bearger bin / howlitzer per player that wants one, and one per crystaleyezer you want to place (obviously designed as a high grind item for mega basers even though it is perhaps flawed,) and of course 2x per WARBIS set per player...  but to what end?  The bearger bin and howlitzer are nice late game luxuries, but I'd rate their actual impact as pretty low as food is plentiful and the howlitzer is only suitable for small combat.  Nothing here really peaks out your kit because we already got the good gear once BS plants started spawning.

We've been over this before though, and I know you agree - giving out all of the BS goodies and a lot of skill tree perks up front kinda spoils what space the new content created for a "hard mode."  If these spark arcs were required to craft each piece of BS gear and maybe even redeemed in game to unlock certain skill perks I think their effort to power scale would be a bit more on par.  It tries to be RPG-esque with this progression, but then does it only half way by giving us all of the rewards up front so we never feel the lost ground.

4 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I've been talking about how the only possible outcome after doing everything in the game, is to infinitely decorate a world.

I don't think that is really a problem.  I've played 3k+ hours without needing to go passed 500 days in any world.  Playing with different characters, strategies on the bosses, and paths through the content has been plenty.  Its just with character homogenization and boss fights becoming more scripted all of that fades away.  The game has a pretty cool transition from early to mid and late game, and after you hit late game you're basically in "clear the rest of the bosses, and decorate" mode.  I've played almost entirely in that first part, in the transitions between early, mid and late game.  The new arc adds onto that something with very little variety and a very restricted pathing b/c you MUST do AFW for cave rifts, and CC for surface rifts, and what you unlock are scripted fights witch designated gear - and it isn't even challenge gear...

What would probably suit me better is something like designing the Ocean to be a whole play experience.  Give the ocean all of the resources to sustain game play indefinitely on its own, with unique bosses and loots that require basic boat / ocean crafts to approach.  Make it more analogous to the caves, ruins, atrium, archives experience.  This way as we decide how we want to path our way through the game we have MORE options rather than less.

Edited February 29 by Yuuko

[Swiyss]

4 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

While a much better and obviously more accurate attempt at categorizing cheese, its also very obviously flawed.

cheese is according to community consensus - a strategy that makes the game easier. 

this is obviously agreed on by you and me.

 

this however is also not a full definition, to make it so is to ignore the general consensus that is that cheese is strategies that either work extremely well or make a boss incredibly easy to defeat

 

however to try to place all strategies that exist under the umbrella that is “cheese” is to not so much move the goal post, as it is to just remove it

 

saying its all cheese, just of differing strengths is to remove the actual crux of the discussion. Which is whether a particular strategy is unfair gameplay or not. I can stand on the side of discussion where i say that walls for dragonfly are clearly intended gameplay because of x y and z.

 

you can argue against it, but to declare it all as cheese is… well quite frankly rather silly.
 

even if we ignore “milk” level “cheeses” like wearing basic armor or even just walking in general. We just circle back around to the original argument without anything actually changing. Is using walls a “basic” cheese, that is intended by the developers, or is it a “cream” thats kinda iffy.

but those strategies are not iffy, or even cheese at all.

lets take another example from the same boss fight.

enraged dragonfly.

is sleeping enraged dragonfly cheese?

well under your definition i would say that its cream because it requires you to specifically bring a counter to something. 

however if i look at it under the more general definition, it becomes obvious that the pan flute or an ice staff or other counter to enraged dragonfly is expected to fight the boss. It requires much more effort and preparation to fight enraged dragonfly compared to just bringing along the pan flute. 
 

while it does minimize a difficult part of the fight, and requires you to do things you wouldnt normally do, that does not make it a cheese, it’s called knowing what the boss does and preparing for it.

why does something that is expected from the developers (having a counter to enraged dragonfly, like a magi to outrun her, scale mail to avoid fire damage, or a pan flute to calm her down) require a particular title. 
 

for a out of game example, lets say you’re playing a generic rpg and you run across a fire elemental.

now, you could not cheese it, and hit it with any old move, and probably kill it. Or you can use your head and know “hmm, it’s probably immune to fire, and it probably is weak to water”

knowing what dragonfly is capable of is canonical for the characters, they’ve died multiple times in multiple different parts of the constant. Its lore accurate that they have some knowledge of how to deal with stuff, how much depends on you the player.

I somewhat disagree with some things here tho. Like.. discussing it is literally us (the community) finding a term to it, it is not too different from finding a consensus between players.

I think that yes, calming dragonfly with the pandflute is very creamy, but devs let that happen in the game, so it is somewhat close to being cheesy. The intention may be for you to use scalemail and kite her more often, but that was failed when the pandflute did a better job taking care of that. If the devs really want to spice things up, they have to remove sleeping effects while she is enraged and rework the fight a bit for the player to actually experience it the intended way, but not being THAT much unforgiving like it currently is. Maybe an ice staff cast removes the fire and stun her for 2 seconds, then she comes back enraged, but without the fire. Then the kiting pattern gets harder, and you have to use an ice staff cast every 2 kiting rotations, that would be more intuitive, harder and better to fight overall.

The scalemail could help you by making larvae not attack you while wearing it, it would fix the wall problem.

8 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

GET OUT OF MY HEAD lol

That's kinda what they are trying to do with the rift arc, but I think they are going about it the wrong way.  I feel they are following the flowchart of a grind style endgame, like a Monster Hunter game where you repeat the end bosses multiple times to collect rare materials so that you can re-fight them with peaked out kits.  Always something to do b/c you're in a loop of hunting mats for better gear, and then using that better gear on those hunts.

That doesn't really fit for DST though.  In MH we can rapid fire hunts against a target monster over and over again to get their drops, and their drops are rare so we might need to do 10+ hunts to get certain materials.  In DST the spawns are on a timer and drops are essentially guaranteed.  The way they did the zombosses tries to emulate this by forcing you to go through all 3 first, and then cycling between them like a mock "drop rate" system.  One drop per bearger bin / howlitzer per player that wants one, and one per crystaleyezer you want to place (obviously designed as a high grind item for mega basers even though it is perhaps flawed,) and of course 2x per WARBIS set per player...  but to what end?  The bearger bin and howlitzer are nice late game luxuries, but I'd rate their actual impact as pretty low as food is plentiful and the howlitzer is only suitable for small combat.  Nothing here really peaks out your kit because we already got the good gear once BS plants started spawning.

We've been over this before though, and I know you agree - giving out all of the BS goodies and a lot of skill tree perks up front kinda spoils what space the new content created for a "hard mode."  If these spark arcs were required to craft each piece of BS gear and maybe even redeemed in game to unlock certain skill perks I think their effort to power scale would be a bit more on par.  It tries to be RPG-esque with this progression, but then does it only half way by giving us all of the rewards up front so we never feel the lost ground.

I don't think that is really a problem.  I've played 3k+ hours without needing to go passed 500 days in any world.  Playing with different characters, strategies on the bosses, and paths through the content has been plenty.  Its just with character homogenization and boss fights becoming more scripted all of that fades away.  The game has a pretty cool transition from early to mid and late game, and after you hit late game you're basically in "clear the rest of the bosses, and decorate" mode.  I've played almost entirely in that first part, in the transitions between early, mid and late game.  The new arc adds onto that something with very little variety and a very restricted pathing b/c you MUST do AFW for cave rifts, and CC for surface rifts, and cuts out a lot of variance with scripted fights and designated gear.

What would probably suit me better is something like designing the Ocean to be a whole play experience.  Give the ocean all of the resources to sustain game play indefinitely on its own, with unique bosses and loots that require basic boat / ocean crafts to approach.  Make it more analogous to the caves, ruins, atrium, archives experience.  This way as we decide how we want to path our way through the game we have MORE options rather than less.

Yes, yes a billion percent. Going out of the cheese topic for now, I 100% agree that the game should give you more options to complete it, we may need like 5 approaches to the game, and each having its own rewards. Like beating the game in a pacific manner may lead you to more npc interactions and exclusive items (decoration and gathering made easier).

Like making the antlion ONLY give you the hat blueprint by giving her a beach toy, and giving one would make her stop creating holes in the world completely, essentially making her an npc. Then further interaction could lead to easier ways to deal with the heat. Once per year. Then killing her would give you a strong fighting weapon to deal with dfly easier or something like that.

That idea could be applied pretty much to everything in the game. Giving the player more options instead of the current game modes (relaxed, endless, survivor, madness and lights out).

Antlion would be unkillable for the rest of season if you made a friendly interaction. Opening the opportunity to more interactions.

[abrocator]

The intersection of playing smart and not being a tryhard.

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

The intention may be for you to use scalemail and kite her more often, but that was failed when the pandflute did a better job taking care of that

Except: the “sleep” animation exists, meaning they either saw the players doing this and canonized it as intended, or they always intended sleep as a solution.

sleeping is an intended part of the dragonfly fight, this is clearly shown by the dragonfly reacting dynamically when slept specifically during her enraged phase. Additionally there is further evidence if you consider that when bosses typically enrage it is the result of a mistake on the players part, meaning that enraged boss states are something the developers intend for you to avoid. Except that you cannot avoid dragonflies enraged state. therefore: the bosses enraged state is meant to be disabled. 
 

it not only has an animation unique to being disabled, it is neigh impossible to properly kite with traditional methods. instead dragonfly must be ran from the first play through of the fight because of the inherent fire damage from being near her. This greatly lengthens the fight while adding nothing but a “dont get hit” time limit for you to wait out or risk extreme damage for little reward.

Either way: the panflute is a developer approved method of dealing with dragonfly, therefore it is not cheese at all.

 

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

Maybe an ice staff cast removes the fire and stun her for 2 seconds, then she comes back enraged, but without the fire. Then the kiting pattern gets harder, and you have to use an ice staff cast every 2 kiting rotations, that would be more intuitive, harder and better to fight overall.

But this is just cheese is it not? Thats using a tool to disable the fire effect and make the fight easie… OH WAIT thats just what the panflute currently does. With extra steps of course.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

it would fix the wall problem.

You seem to be misunderstanding something, the walls arent an accident, a glitch, or a mistake, they have been mistakenly fixed to where larvae attack walls, and it has been reverted. Larvae are intentionally coded to not attack walls. This means: that the developers consider this to be an appropriate solution. 
 

if the developers didnt like it they could:

Allow the lava to pathfind through walls: they are made of a liquid

allow them to burrow below the walls

allow them to jump over/past them

or just let them break the walls

but they dont, which implies intention.

 which means: you are just wrong about it being a problem

 

which also means: you are wrong about your assumption that you KNOW their intentions, when clearly there is evidence contrary to your theories.

finally and most importantly:

larvae are pretty easy to deal with, the chip damage from killing them is just annoying as hell.

[user1464576869]

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

The void walking situation sits on the fact that the intended way to reach the atrium is to either use a lazy explorer from mudland or killing a specific giant tentacle to teleport there everytime. Even though it is a glitch by itself, some folks can't bother playing the game the intended way.

Say they add void walking to the game, makes absolutely no sense, there is little to 0 things to explore outside of the lands itself. And void walking by skipping small branches for example would make the teleport feature of the lazy explorer a joke, since you could just walk over it.

The problem is bigger, it goes to cave generation, setpiece approach, each stair being further from one another. A 'problem' that I don't agree with it, it is just a mild annoyance in my book.

Right, well, I wasn't actually advocating for voidwalking to be added or anything then. Just trying to emphasize my argument about how a simple rebranding on game mechanics can make people perceive it differently. I could share my opinions on voidwalking here but I don't consider it topical.
 

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I say that there is no reason to take in consideration something that is not being discussed here, even if it exist in this specific case. Let's assume someone thinks like that (which I don't disagree exists), then project our train of thought based on it. We get to a point where we regress in pinpointing terms and ideas.

Say someone thinks differently, rather I convince them otherwise than going back to the same discussion where 'is it cheese to use ice staves on crab king?' When said strat was already adressed in my book. It is a cheese, even if the intended way is to avoid the geysers themselves, anything that affects a boss by using the right mechanic of said weaponry is a cheese in my book, and the cheesier, the tastier. The more moldy the strat gets, the more exciting it gets. The more I rule over bosses, the funnier. The more I see intended features being jumped or skipped, the better the cheese. It is not a Klei vs Player situation anymore, rather a Player vs Environment. We have way too many resources currently, and that's a good thing.

Say this is not 'right' in others book. Well, Klei hasn't made fuelweaver destroy lureplants yet, so it is probably intended even. Klaus loot stash is a different case tho.

I don't really follow you here. With 'something that is not being discussed'. Or why we'd regress in pinpointing terms and ideas? ; huh?

In either case, the rest of what you said there is interesting because it sounds to me like what you think is the best intended way of experiencing the game is to actively seek out the most egregious cheesing strats, and encourage them? Or was that all contained as an example opinion, not actually your own?

Cause if it is.. Okay but- but that's the funny thing though.

I still think cheese is best defined as a rebellion against a combination of author intent / consumer's collective canon. idk, shoot me. In any case, IF your idea of best experiencing this game is to rebel against every author intent and that this is a totally valid intended way to experience the game because the author hasn't made any statement about this being an illegitimate approach to experience their game- It's... It's still by definition, in the nature of being a rebel, implied that you're acknowledging some sort of anti-author intent? So it can't be the intended way to experience the game?

Is it just me or this getting post modern? Isn't this post modernism? Like, you're not reading the book at all, you're clipping out the words and folding a swan out of them. And it both is and isn't the correct interpretation of the book because nobody said you can't do that to the book so it's probably intended even though the very purpose of this action was to do what wasn't intended?

I don't even know what any of this implies at all any more.
 

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

We can't expect every approach to every situation being legit too. I agree, it is not a story anymore, it is a tragedy. But it is very simple I think, Klei's gotta fix it, by making it only possible to spawn the trio at a time, not all of them, and simply making them walk on water and jump boats. Same for bearger, deerclops etc.. not being able to reach you on a boat. It is kinda difficult to implement, but still it would show us their intention.

And... and now you're actually advocating for Klei to remove that ambiguity to help reinforce players' confidence in what is and isn't considered canon? Even though it to me seemed like your own preference actually benefitted from maintaining that (meta-gaming specific) ambiguity just a sentence ago? :')

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I feel like this is somewhat misinterpreted. I think the devs themselves made the book, and we are not adding anything new to it, but rather choosing where to start reading or which segment is the best. Kinda like the Bible.

Cheesing is not the main problem. But I think how many of them are possible and legitimate is not set and said in some areas.

I am without a doubt lost, but am I really so lost that I can't even get this one word right.

You mean misguided surely? I mean what else, am I misinterpreting.. you? Klei? The very nature of reality? :') -That is one hell of a baller way to say "I don't agree on your definition to this word"

But, no yes, of course what is and isn't cheese isn't set in stone? As I've stated many times it is of my opinion that cheese-defining is entirely a case-by-case opinion piece kind of discussion.

I must be dumb, it's late.

Edited February 29 by user1464576869

[Swiyss]

Just now, Copyafriend said:

therefore: the bosses enraged state is meant to be disabled. 

Sounds weird taking in consideration they took time and effot to create a cool enraged phase where it is much harder to fight her. I say it is a missused opportunity. The enraged fight could be skipped with a panflute, but the use of these "extra steps" would ensure that she stays in that phase atleast, also cause it looks very cool. Many many people wanted atleast some changes in the fight when the Year of the Dragonfly came out except for a niche of players who thought that the fight is perfect as it is. Honestly, I don't really want them LIMITING my options of fighting her, but rather adding more possibilities and ways to fight her by tweaking very little things like these.

2 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

Either way: the panflute is a developer approved method of dealing with dragonfly, therefore it is not cheese at all.

if this method didn't exist, what would speedrunners do? How would people fight her? I know they can currently kite her in the enraged phase, but it is so easily avoidable that it feels like a bad fight. Yes I want the option to put her to sleep, but I also want them to maybe encourage me to experience the fight a different way, without the "cream" solutions being so easily spread and accepted. Might be a ME problem tho.

 

3 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

But this is just cheese is it not? Thats using a tool to disable the fire effect and make the fight easie… OH WAIT thats just what the panflute currently does. With extra steps of course.

but atleast we have a fun way to fight her. And there is no problem to cheese her with ice staffs rather than panflutes in my opinion. I just want a good fight.

 

4 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

which also means: you are wrong about your assumption that you KNOW their intentions, when clearly there is evidence contrary to your theories.

finally and most importantly:

larvae are pretty easy to deal with, the chip damage from killing them is just annoying as hell.

My point was that their intention can be tracked, and you just did that, so you proved my point. Doesn't make sense to tell me my theory is wrong when you're actually helping it lol. Just because I said it, doesn't mean that I am the only one able to know magically know what their intention is, you know what I mean?

10 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

how a simple rebranding on game mechanics can make people perceive it differently

true, I agree with that. But the bit I wanna talk about is how we actually face these upon release. I understand the analogy, but simply making it an "intended feature" is not the greatest option. As we talked about it earlier, I feel like boss fights, tasks and encounters should have :

1. An intended way of doing it.

2. A cheesy/creamy strat to accomplish the same goal, but faster/easier.

3. A harder way of approaching it, but with greater rewards.

4. An official unintended way of doing that thing which grants funny/uncanny/out of context "endings".

For example. We can assume that the way of fighting the minotaur is by smashing him against a pillar, then using the ceilling drops to interupt him, and kite him until he dies. But what if there was an easter egg in the game where if you bring a trapped molerat to the fight, he gets scared and turns into an even scarier nightmare version, allowing you to enter a different fight where it is much harder, but he gives you an exclusive blueprint, like the misery treatment, but with actual good rewards.

What do you think?

22 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

I say that there is no reason to take in consideration something that is not being discussed here, even if it exist in this specific case. Let's assume someone thinks like that (which I don't disagree exists), then project our train of thought based on it. We get to a point where we regress in pinpointing terms and ideas.

That part I was talking about specifically the example you gave me, not all the horizon of different ideas and arguments. I called it the example inefficient and regressive.

 

23 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

because it sounds to me like what you think is the best intended way of experiencing the game is to actively seek out the most egregious cheesing strats, and encourage them? Or was that all contained as an example opinion, not actually your own?

No, but to actually know what is the intended way in a more specific manner, and then to know that you're acting in a cheesy way. Either by influencing rewards or fight time. Surely there could be a place where everyone can experience boss fights, from beginners who want to cheese, to experienced players who want the full experience.

26 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

I still think cheese is best defined as a rebellion against a combination of author intent / consumer's collective canon. idk, shoot me. In any case, IF your idea of best experiencing this game is to rebel against every author intent and that this is a totally valid intended way to experience the game because the author hasn't made any statement about this being an illegitimate approach to experience their game- It's... It's still by definition, in the nature of being a rebel, implied that you're acknowledging some sort of anti-author intent? So it can't be the intended way to experience the game?

in the original post, I talk about experiencing the whole thing, the whole spectrum. I am not perfect, so I still skip the enraged phase of dragonfly for example. And I can give you my reasons as to why like I did before. But for me, to experience everything and THEN to cheese it is to acnowledge the fact that I understand what they want from me, and how they want it. Still again, I am no perfect human being, but my INTENTION of this is what matters here. Entering this discussion in particular is amazing because I cannot think for everyone, but only myself and what others told me THEIR intention is.

29 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

Is it just me or this getting post modern? Isn't this post modernism? Like, you're not reading the book at all, you're clipping out the words and folding a swan out of them. And it both is and isn't the correct interpretation of the book because nobody said you can't do that to the book so it's probably intended even though the very purpose of this action was to do what wasn't intended?

I don't even know what any of this implies at all any more.

I can assure you that I am talking about a large spectrum of things. My mind vanishes A ton, still I can come back to the main point tho. I like to see from every angle so I can instinctively create in my mind a "moral" belief about cheesing or not, and about how I experience the game. Feel free to discuss every single apartment from this giant building, and because most of it is already built, we can start anywhere.. in my book.

It isn't for me to rebel, but for anyone who wants to. I myself prefer to walk alongside it. That's why I tried explained it that way.

33 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

And... and now you're actually advocating for Klei to remove that ambiguity to help reinforce players' confidence in what is and isn't considered canon? Even though it to me seemed like your own preference actually benefitted from maintaining that ambiguity just a sentence ago? :')

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I was talking about that specific situation. Again, I don't think this recipe I made before is perfect, I just think it would benefit some areas of gameplay and SOME bosses too.

 

35 minutes ago, user1464576869 said:

But, no yes, of course what is and isn't cheese isn't set in stone? As I've stated many times it is of my opinion that cheese-defining is entirely a case-by-case opinion piece kind of discussion.

Yes, might be. Althought I still want to believe there is a consent. Don't you agree? I myself could be wrong too, but still I believe.

[Swiyss]

My whole point now is : Cheesy strats should exist, and we should be given more ways of finding these strats like we are already getting it.

But mainly, the "rework" of some little strategies in-game. One might argue that we don't actually need a set reason to do these fights the regular way, but I disagree. I believe that showing the player how the boss can be fought and how easy it is to fight it milky, creamy or cheesy ways is great, not the full best option since it can still change, but still is great.

For the record, terraria has bosses that are super easy to fight if you're ranged, but hard if you're true melee. That for me is a failed design, there should be different rewards based on different aproaches. NOT EASIER FIGHTS, NOT BETTER REWARDS, but just different from each other. 

My 'author' discussion enters a side where : the more option the game has, the better. 

Again, sure I can fight enraged Dfly the "milky" way, but how am I gonna keep doing this for everything? I enjoy a hard fight, and I surely tried it before, but for a cool design like that, to be trapped behind 0.1% of players to experience is to be naive to the situations itself. The devs paper in my opinion is not to limit us, granting only a single way of beating a boss, but actually showing how different it can be, and encouraging players to do it this different way. Again, I will say this, What a waste of potential for this enraged phase to be so easily countered by a panflute, and not encouraged to fought like that. One could also say they should not encourage it, but it just should be there, but I disagree too. The player would be missing a lot.

Also, this way of doing this (milky, creamy or cheesy) would set the stone for new players to encourage them to fight the bosses the cheesy way, then progressively advance into the hardest way to do it. Why? well, you see a lot of people complaining that dfly fight is boring, ag solution made it too easy and etc.. we actually got a huge amount of problems that comes to applying these without taking these steps in consideration. For the record, doing this (or even another different solution, something different since I know my ideas aren't perfect) would greatly influence the players to engage more in these fights, and be happier about their progress, instead of having to JUMP into a fight blind, only to realise the boss is way harder than he thought.

Yeah I kill dfly, but the hardest way possible, here is my trophy. Like terraria master mode, but not just simple NUMBERS tweak, but actual in-game puzzles, easter eggs and features. There is a lot of potential here I think.

Another topic is the glass cutter progression, Sure it is easier against shadows, but what if I wanna fight the celestial champion with glass cutters? I will be missing out, I would need a lot more of them. However I can easily kill the shadow pieces with dark swords, you know what I mean? still still still, I don't want a set rule, I don't want people complaining that the intention of the glass cutter is to ONLY use it against shadows, give us players more options and more little details and effects.

I can give you an amazing example. Wormwood at first has a whole bunch of RANDOM things tied to him because of lore, he is a plant. Those things at first sound ridiculous and just so small that they seem to not affect the player. But when you are actually experiencing the game with him, and say you're hungry in the ocean, harvesting barnacles suddently becomes a habit, and you don't need to always bring flint or a razor in your inventory. These small details stack up until we reach a very satisfying and rewarding process.

This rewarding process is great for characters, but could be applied to :

Game stages (start of the game, mid game and late stages)

Weapons

Armours

Tools

Mob encounters etc..

Currently we only have a difference between Before rifts and After rifts, for surface and caves.

[Well-met]

cheese is slang for exploiting an oversight usually combined from multiple mechanics unrelated to eachother which overcomes a challenge in unintended and dramatically easier ways.

It is universal videogame lingo and not specific to dont starve.

Edited February 29 by Well-met

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

if this method didn't exist, what would speedrunners do? How would people fight her? I know they can currently kite her in the enraged phase, but it is so easily avoidable that it feels like a bad fight. Yes I want the option to put her to sleep, but I also want them to maybe encourage me to experience the fight a different way, without the "cream" solutions being so easily spread and accepted. Might be a ME problem tho.

Probably just kill it anyway? it's not impossible just unreasonably difficult.

 

But it sounds like you just want a rework of dragonfly, because you DISLIKE the INTENDED solutions. I proved according to your own logic that walls and the panflute are not only not cheese, but intended solutions approved by the developers. but you still insist that they're "cream" solutions (as if they weren't just the "Correct and intended way" to fight the boss)

because THIS:

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

ut atleast we have a fun way to fight her. And there is no problem to cheese her with ice staffs rather than panflutes in my opinion. I just want a good fight.

is you just admitting that you don't think panflutes are valid compared to ice staffs, when your solution is the EXACT SAME THING, but with a "semi enraged" mode added. it's just a double standard for no reason. why do you think that is? just to make the fight harder? YOU fight him without panflutes if you want the option, you can even use an ice staff, it just takes a ton of hits.

And no?

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

My point was that their intention can be tracked, and you just did that, so you proved my point. Doesn't make sense to tell me my theory is wrong when you're actually helping it lol

Your "Main point" wasn't this, that's just a lie. You mentioned this once, and more as a justification to your actual point

Your "Main point" that you keep harping on is this "levels of cheese" thing that  people who use perfectly viable and developer approved strategies while pretending like they're NOT in fact the intended solution to the problem. if the developer intended you to do it, it's very arguably not cheese at all. not "cream" cheese, not "milk" or whatever other term you made up, it's not cheese at all.

WALLS are intended to block larvae. ZERO cheese. none at all.

THE PANFLUTE IS INTENDED to stop enrage, it does it, there's no glitch involved, the dragonfly specifically reacts to being put to sleep. again, No cheese, even less arguable cheese than before.

if you want a harder fight, thats a separate discussion. if you want new ways to fight dragonfly, separate discussion altogether.

51 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Cheesy strats should exist, and we should be given more ways of finding these strats like we are already getting it.

Great, we agree. then stop harping on "How much cheese" is involved in various strategies.

 

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

Sounds weird taking in consideration they took time and effot to create a cool enraged phase where it is much harder to fight her. I say it is a missused opportunity. The enraged fight could be skipped with a panflute, but the use of these "extra steps" would ensure that she stays in that phase atleast, also cause it looks very cool. Many many people wanted atleast some changes in the fight when the Year of the Dragonfly came out except for a niche of players who thought that the fight is perfect as it is. Honestly, I don't really want them LIMITING my options of fighting her, but rather adding more possibilities and ways to fight her by tweaking very little things like these.

It may be weird in your eyes, or odd, but it's accurate. you disliking it doesn't make it any less true.

53 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

ut mainly, the "rework" of some little strategies in-game. One might argue that we don't actually need a set reason to do these fights the regular way, but I disagree. I believe that showing the player how the boss can be fought and how easy it is to fight it milky, creamy or cheesy ways is great, not the full best option since it can still change, but still is great.

For the record, terraria has bosses that are super easy to fight if you're ranged, but hard if you're true melee. That for me is a failed design, there should be different rewards based on different aproaches. NOT EASIER FIGHTS, NOT BETTER REWARDS, but just different from each other. 

My 'author' discussion enters a side where : the more option the game has, the better. 

Again, sure I can fight enraged Dfly the "milky" way, but how am I gonna keep doing this for everything? I enjoy a hard fight, and I surely tried it before, but for a cool design like that, to be trapped behind 0.1% of players to experience is to be naive to the situations itself. The devs paper in my opinion is not to limit us, granting only a single way of beating a boss, but actually showing how different it can be, and encouraging players to do it this different way. Again, I will say this, What a waste of potential for this enraged phase to be so easily countered by a panflute, and not encouraged to fought like that. One could also say they should not encourage it, but it just should be there, but I disagree too. The player would be missing a lot.

Also, this way of doing this (milky, creamy or cheesy) would set the stone for new players to encourage them to fight the bosses the cheesy way, then progressively advance into the hardest way to do it. Why? well, you see a lot of people complaining that dfly fight is boring, ag solution made it too easy and etc.. we actually got a huge amount of problems that comes to applying these without taking these steps in consideration. For the record, doing this (or even another different solution, something different since I know my ideas aren't perfect) would greatly influence the players to engage more in these fights, and be happier about their progress, instead of having to JUMP into a fight blind, only to realise the boss is way harder than he thought.

This is an entire design philosophy.

This is not an "update to the game" this is something you build the game from the ground up based on if you so desire.

More options? Great, fantastic, everyone would LOVE more options on how to fight bosses, what weapons we can have, literally everything.

 

but that is not possible for every single thing all at once.

Why?

 

there are only so many hours in a day, so much progress the developers can make on each individual thing each day.

honestly if they were to JUST rework dragonfly, with like one or two new ways to fight her, that would take a full month.

I'm not exaggerating to prove a point, i'm not trying to be funny, this is what I genuinely think the time table would be as an amateur developer + previous klei experience.

 

would I love a rework to every single boss? ABSOLUTELY. I am a BIG proponent of reworking old systems over constant updates bringing new stuff.

but to rework all bosses with new ways to fight the boss being a priority it's a multi year process if that's all they do.

 

And each update wouldn't really do what you're trying to do.

if you want things that actually change how people play from day to day? Bosses are not your target. it's stuff like farming or foraging for resources that you want to target.

change world gen up, or maybe even make new seasonal variations, dry spring, lots of lightning and wind but not much rain. a humid summer where you're constantly becoming more moist no matter how much rain proof gear you wear because your character is sweating. it helps with the heat but the humidity is its own threat, blizzardy winter, an autumn where there's a drought so ponds dry up and berry bushes don't sprout etc etc

There ARE things you can do to really shake up the game, but every update you focus on bosses only effects gameplay while fighting those bosses, which would be great, and honestly dragonfly needs some love.

 

buut there's other parts of the game that needs it more.

 

[goatt]

In my opinion, the word cheese is useless because it's being used to mean things in opposite categories.

For productive discussion, I prefer to use the word exploits.

 

Exploits have their life cycles through the life of DST. Typically, they go through several stages.

Stage 1: newly discovered. => unintended exploits

Stage 2: widely known. => unintended exploits

Stage 3: examined by Klei => marinated exploits

Stage 4: surviving => accepted exploits (fermentation process completed)

Stage 4*: removed

 

Accepted exploits are not threatening to the general game balance or game experience because they were good to stay. Instead, it gives (new) players a sense of joy from discovering (falsely) new strategies. But really, accepted exploits have been consciously accepted as a game mechanic.

Cheese feels nice because they are sort of community inspired design integrated into the game. Cheese, essentially, are not exploitive enough to be real cheese. All known cheese are working just as intended.

You can call it cheese as if they are something special, especially in practical sense. They were special. But they aren't anymore. Just like car was special (or luxurious) in history but not anymore.

The bottomline is, (known) "cheese" is a falsely glamorous description of a strategy. They are just strategies using a particular game mechanc.

But newly discovered exploits are always exciting, no matter how small it is.