Almost a year later, rifts are still not worth opening; the circular logic behind the late game

[Siren11]

Just now, EatenCheetos said:

I still think the way to do this would be to force the boss quest lines after some X amount of days. Klei would have to make it a bit clearer for new players to understand what to do, perhaps a his could be solved with something like inscribed obelisks or stones that depict drawings of what to do.

For example, in the woods players could find a drawing of ancient people putting a sun callers staff in the moonstone and watching it change. Something like this for every vague part of the quest lines would be good.

Adding stuff to hint at the boss quest lines is a good idea! But I don’t want to be forced into playing a specific way (the current survival challenges allow plenty of time for the player to do what they want). And some fights like Fuelweaver would have to be made a lot easier if it was mandatory. Or we’d have to have easy cheese options so players who don’t have the skill level to do the fights would still be able to play.

Just now, EatenCheetos said:

Finally, players would have to know that a change is coming to the world. If we’re taking the idea of rifts activating after the first year, players could start to see particles or small changes days ahead of time and comment on them. Then the rifts themselves would start small, but ramp up as the world gets older. 

It’s fine if rifts activate after the first year, but my issue was locking the crafts behind AF and CC. Experienced players wouldn’t be challenged, and newer players would struggle unreasonably. If the crafts aren’t locked, then there’s not really any point with the current state of rifts.

I’m not necessarily opposed to rifts starting automatically, and the ramping idea is cool. I just think we could do something else and leave rifts for post-CC and AF (which should remain optional).

[EatenCheetos]

2 minutes ago, Siren11 said:

And some fights like Fuelweaver would have to be made a lot easier if it was mandatory.

It would be nice for the game to have scaling based on the max players a server has enabled. I saw a mod that has a nice progression of values for each mob depending on the number of players. I’m not sure is Klei has a stance on this already though.

5 minutes ago, Siren11 said:

Experienced players wouldn’t be challenged, and newer players would struggle unreasonably.

I think that’s going to be a side effect of any ramping method added, but I see your point on the rifts since some players activate them early anyway.

[Siren11]

1 minute ago, EatenCheetos said:

It would be nice for the game to have scaling based on the max players a server has enabled. I saw a mod that has a nice progression of values for each mob depending on the number of players. I’m not sure is Klei has a stance on this already though.

Mechanics scaling would be cool. My main issue with a some of the fights is that there’s just more than I can deal with all at once, while I’m also fighting my inventory, and one mistake undoes the fight. Part of this is also my insistence on doing fights in way that… definitely isn’t the most efficient, but I’m not afraid to add my own difficulty scaling (wall cheese for Dfly, will probably have to add catapults or something for AF).

1 minute ago, EatenCheetos said:

I think that’s going to be a side effect of any ramping method added, but I see your point on the rifts since some players activate them early anyway.

Yeah, you’re right. New players would need a slower increase in difficulty, but that would probably be boring for a lot of you. I guess it’s a matter of finding a middle ground.

I think the biggest challenge is actually when multiple things happen at once, or when stuff happens at a really inopportune time. And that one would probably affect experienced players more (newbies don’t do much anyways lol).

[Faintly Macabre]

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

Point out where you gave the real reason: because people prefer DST’s content to the original. Simple as that.

Maybe you don't care about nuance ("bugs are bugs"), but a lot of people do. Your "simple as that" answer (which isn't complete, btw) begs a ridiculously obvious question: "why?"

I didn't take enough care to be clear that that wasn't the experience of all solo players, but it is a pretty common gripe, and Siren11 seems a thoughtful enough sort that I thought they might appreciate some context. Also I'm almost certain that despite all of our disagreements on what is or isn't a problem and how those problems should be fixed, that is in part what makes Mike so salty, and that's literally who was quoted when the question was asked.

[Uedo]

17 hours ago, EatenCheetos said:

His entire post was about the way Klei treats difficulty as a whole, then he used the dialogue from the popup box for effect at the end. You decided to ignore the broad contents of the entire post and treat it as if it were simply about the popup box.

Ok. I hope you enjoy your Easter mate, I think we'll end our chat though, it's making me feel like i'm being mean to you - you don't get it

17 hours ago, Faintly Macabre said:

On the offchance you've merely abandoned the argument with those particular posters and not the entire forum, I'll try to explain at least one angle a little more coherently and thoroughly, and with less completely unwarranted hostility:

Klei announced DST like a week after DS's RoG expansion dropped. It was originally pitched as an expansion to the base game rather than its own distinct product, but at some point that changed for technical reasons. As DST was being developed, they started adding all kinds of new features that we were told were going to be implemented in the base game, which would turn out only to be a partial truth: in reality, a lot of DST's content was exclusive from the word go.

What's worse is that DST's development very very obviously took over the majority of their focus: in spite of releasing two expansion DLCs for the base game, both were buggy and frankly incomplete messes at release. They supported both of those releases for a few months after they dropped and then just pissed off, only finally coming back to fix game-breaking bugs and add a handful of new features (which also turned out to be buggy) many many months later in the case of the first and nearly four years later in the case of the second. In the latter case, they literally just hired a guy who had developed and published a massive bug patch mod on the Steam Workshop.

Meanwhile, DST ultimately morphed into the actual, expressly labeled sequel to DS, and has been in active development ever since. And as if it wasn't bad enough for the base game to be abandoned, DST was for many years being developed seemingly without much consideration for solo players, who basically had to play the game on Hard Mode to get their shiny new content and lore. Over the past few years it seems like they've taken solo play a bit more into consideration, and players have managed to make the earlier content less arduous with new tools released along the way, but there are still struggles.

This is one of the reasons why you may have noticed the beta board over the past couple of weeks just turned into a battleground over patching cheese out; despite a bunch of people insisting everybody's just lazy, bad at the game, want something for nothing, and a bunch of other character attacks that for some reason were rarely moderated, a lot of us just liked having a few tools for outmaneuvering challenges where for many the difference between "unfun test of some skill but mostly patience" and "perfectly manageable and reasonably enjoyable boss fight" is just 1 vs. 2.

Oh, and most of these multiplayer challenges get even worse if you're playing on console/controller as you not only have to fight the boss, but an outdated and insufficient control scheme too. It was actually super cool to see the adjustments they made to try to alleviate this a bit, and they were absolutely a step in the right direction. But even with these changes, AFW is so chaotic as a solo player that I was still not quite 50/50 on kills because your inventory management tools are still so insufficient and a single mistake can easily just end an attempt and flush any resources you've already spent down the toilet with it.

And like, fine? It still needs some work. I could live with that... if they hadn't changed their mind about keeping the cheese for this older content. Quality of Life, indeed.

So yeah. That's why some solo players are here and why some of them are mad: we got the short end of the stick because DS is a largely forgotten mess and the first few years of DST's design choices still make us second-class citizens here.

I don't think you know what the word "wrong" means.

Your post is so wholesome. I'm so sorry, but the forum is made of people having sincere discussions, s-posters and people who feel that people just argue - therefore are invalid. 
You're gonna just have the 'All people do is argue' crowd out in full force. 

I'm not gonna tar people under a particular demographic - but a lot of people think in very black and white terms here if you get my drift. Social skills are not typically present here.

inb4 the debate-perverts start quoting latin at me or something

16 hours ago, Siren11 said:

I appreciated their answer. It was my question anyways.

If we’re being technical, I was asking why people would choose to play the game they seemingly like less. But even for people who prefer the original Don’t Starve experience, I understand the appeal of continued support and updates, content, skins, and lore. And I can admit that I may have been wrong in my original perception (that the people making these arguments like singleplayer more than DST).

Anyways, I stand by my original point that ramping up the difficulty of the non-optional survival content in DST would be good, but Klei shouldn’t do it in an extreme way that would only hurt casual players and newbies (while not providing much challenge for experienced players). It would be a tricky thing to balance, but if we can talk about things in good faith, then I’d love to hear people’s ideas!

I'm ok with it as it is, if it changed though I wouldn't mind. Not sure what to suggest outside of a confirmation, probably because i'm just used to it.

I know I would prefer not to have it happen automatically - sometimes i'll play pretty casually, I suppose I could edit settings and stuff though if I ever fancied making it more chill. Most of the time I just cba to do something time consuming or attention consuming in DST after i've finished work, my preference just comes from it being less steps. 

Ultimately though, most players are not posting on the forums and those that make odd claims about changes are people who are already struggling with the game in one or more areas and those typically asking for small improvements/qol/things to not change are those who're comfortable with how it is presently (comfortable meaning comfortable, not saying they wouldn't ideally want some minor changes but more that it's not really major if things never changed). 

There are a few people, verified, who have conceded they dislike things they've never experienced legitimately, it's literally no shame at all to say the game is difficult, it IS a difficult game. Most things that can be repeated, in all areas of life, will become easier to deal with (In a general sense, before I get jumped on, I'm aware somethings in life will be worse the more that they happen). I think wanting DST to be like DS stems from the fact that the game, whilst difficult and uncompromising, was very much a singleplayer game, fighting a boss was tough - but scaled around it being tackled by one player. I think it's a case of people refusing to accept that just because you do not have, or want, to play with others doesn't make the primary development focus shift from multiplayer to singleplayer. It's not a singleplayer game, lots of people play solo a lot, I do but yeah, I know it's not designed for that really - the great thing is that it's doable though, very doable. Lots of multiplayer games won't accomodate at all for that.

Cheers for asking in good faith