Drying racks, long shelflife foods (and apparently discussions about food balance and player experience; veterans vs forumites)

[Frosty_Mentos]

4 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

Nah, faster eating speed is a reward for bothering with farming at all in the first place. Despite how much Klei improved the farming system, it's still pointless when I get piles of meat and honey for barely any extra effort.

To be fair we can farm tons of any food in this game either via hunting or chill farming. It's not an argument when heaps of food can be found anywhere with enough skill and effort or knowledge where to find. Anything that isn't known is mostly a newbie problem, as neither scrapbook or farming hat been likely filled yet.

14 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

cries in warly

Imo most punished character in-game. Big annoying downside with such painful limitations. But I'm not here to discuss that, he needs a thread of his own.

13 hours ago, Well-met said:

thats your mistake for making 80.

20 is good enough.

80 is absurd amount, 20 is still kinda a lot? They sure take up space to build. This game could really use a smokehouse or something. We are getting so much more advanced tech that it would make sense to have something of sorts. -w-

20 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Aaaand you went to the lengths of putting 'veterans Vs forumites' in the title, all the credibility you had in my eyes in this post have just poofed away.

 

I love segregating the entire community into two small groups of people!

[chirsg]

3 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Bad reasoning. 10 days before it is stale, that is 80 minutes which is long enough. For Wx it is 160 minutes.

Bearger bin does not make it unusable.

I thought veterans and formites were the same people so i am confused lol

pierogi is superior. Mass producing pierogi goes a longer way. Pierogi has the same spoilage time that jerky does. Same as bacon and eggs. Sanity is more value later on in the game. Much later. Early on, sanity is negligible and there are better ways of getting sanity than jerky early. Even when jerky was considered to be at it's best, it "was" the endgame choice. Even for me before the bearger bin. Now it's become victim of the middle child complex. 

 

I think you can easily forego jerky racks and be better for it. It's good reasoning. Jerky is not in a good place and as players get better at the game, which they inevitably will, jerky gets worse. 

Literally all I ask is for jerky to go into the bearger bin and that would be that. 

 

[Valase]

5 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I thought veterans and formites were the same people so i am confused lol

actchyually he is right, anyone here on the forum is not a veteran. this includes you, the reader!

[Antynomity]

9 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Who Are You? Because I'm a person in the community and I am certain you're not someone extremely known, not like it matters because most big personas in DST are fragile little manchildren scum.

[Frosty_Mentos]

3 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Who Are You? Because I'm a person in the community and I am certain you're not someone extremely known, not like it matters because most big personas in DST are fragile little manchildren scum.

Awh cute. Are we here to discuss about drying racks and jerky or to start a complaint of something you've taken quite hard to heart about a forum post on the internet? ♥

[Captain_Rage]

It would be nice if Wilson could hang his jokes on the rack to make them even drier.

[ImDaMisterL]

Hey everyone, Remember to stay on topic and to be constructive without making it personal. Discussions easily spiral out of control when we start targeting the authors of posts instead of posts itself.

Take the high road while posting and keep personal issues private. Thank you for understanding and have a great day

[prettynuggets]

NGL, i understand how bad jerky is when in my mind every time i see someone build jerky rack early i would assume " ah, you are new player ".
i would assume that because, building drying rack early autumn is a waste of time and resources. investing in farm plot or going for lunar for easy pierogi for example is much more efficient than jerky rack. 
 

[Antynomity]

7 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Awh cute. Are we here to discuss about drying racks and jerky or to start a complaint of something you've taken quite hard to heart about a forum post on the internet? ♥

Idk man it seems like the thread is long past talking about jerky but sure, jerky's fine as it is <3 mr furry artist

[Masked Koopa]

I'm gonna re-post an edited version of what I said in a similar post in the beta branch, because I feel like it probably applies here as well. The main point I was making here is that I don't think Klei is changing food balance right now because they leave clearly suboptimal food untouched.
 

Seafood Gumbo specifically is an example of a dish just being complete nonsense as a result of how Klei tried to buff fish meat. Seafood gumbo is a genuinely really good dish, giving good HP and sanity with decent hunger to boot. The issue, as many know, is that because Klei added meat value to fish meat, you end up making surf n' turf unless you use the only thing in the game with fish value but no meat: Eel. Which is nonsense because 1: Eel isn't even from the ocean, these are freshwater cave eels. And 2: Eel already has an exclusive dish - Unagi. This one isn't even so much a balance issue as Klei just straight up making a mistake that they for some reason don't remedy.


On the other hand, Stuffed Eggplant is an example of a "punishment" or "Trap" that doesn't make any thematic sense. Dishes like Monster Lasagna or Leafloaf make sense as they prevent the player from accessing meaty stew without using less easily available meats like fish or large meat or morsels. The player is rewarded for using them either with filler, or by using a variety of meats to circumvent the downsides of these meats. I don't personally have any issue with dishes like these because they serve a good purpose in encouraging players to seek many sources for their food, as well as give players a way to theorycraft an efficient meal. I personally get a lot of enjoyment out of figuring out how to concoct a Meaty stew from a variety of different meats. One of my favorite recipes is 2 frog legs, 1 monster meat and 1 leafy meat, as it feels like I am gaming the system, by turning an assortment of random gross meat into a hearty meal.

Stuffed Eggplant on the other hand is similar to Jerky in terms of effort - an entire crop type that has it's own nutrient requirements, seasonality, seed type etc. Crops like potato and toma root are significantly easier to grow while having essentially the same stats as eggplant. In order to truly stand out, eggplant would need a unique crock pot dish that brings value via filler or via powerful stats. Instead we get a dish that's objectively bad for literally no reason. I have to ask - what other food item in the game punishes the player with its exclusive dish? The only examples are things that are A: specifically very easily to get and B: usually presented to the player as being somehow 'nasty'. A player overusing monster meat probably isn't going to be surprised to find out that the game won't let them get away with spamming monster meat. A player overusing leafy meat probably isn't gonna be surprised that spamming this weird green meat produces this green goo that isn't nice to eat. What conclusion is a player making stuffed eggplant supposed to draw? Don't make stuffed eggplant?

At least with Durian the fruit is specifically presented to the player as a 'nasty' fruit, and it uses the same punishment mechanics as monster meat. That isn't to say I think Durian shouldn't be changed, but I think it could work well as a crop that barely consumes any nutrients, and/or grows fast and/or is always in season. A weedlike crop that balances out being easy to grow with poor stats and not allowing multiple in the same crock pot.

But I think the reason that this issue even exists in the first place is because a lot of crop dishes were designed with the old slot machine style of farming from DS. You put tokens in and get random crops out. And when making RWYS, Klei didn't go back and change the old veggies and fruit to reflect the new farming system, they just tried to give all of them thematically appropriate water and seasonal requirements and put in a good variety of nutrient requirements to facilitate crop combinations. So now you have crops with no crock pot dishes at all like Pomegranate or Durian, or utter dogshit dishes like Melonsicle, Pumpkin Cookies, Stuffed Eggplant, etc. It's of course possible Klei genuinely hadn't considered the implications of swapping a system where you get a random crop from a slot machine with one where you can very quickly choose exactly what you're growing. But I think it is much more likely Klei just didn't want to examine the food balance at all.
 

______________________________________________

My wider point here is that I don't think Klei is actually intending to rebalance food at all. Throughout the past few years, we have seen many things get changed, but unless we count guardian horns stacking, NONE of them were related to food stats. Not even new foods added during betas get rebalanced. It's possible that this is because they'd rather do a wide-scale rebalance of all foods at once, but whether it's because of that or because they just fundamentally hate changing foods in any way, asking for Jerky specifically doesn't really seem likely to work out. I don't think the reason they very clearly ignored the barnacle food suggestions on my ocean rebalance post was because they looked through all of them and decided that all of them were fine or served some greater purpose as a punishment food.

[Frosty_Mentos]

49 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

(so many tiny words)

ya could have at least putting spoilers or something, my poor eyes D:

But I overall agree that Klei likely to not think of rebalancing one food, but rather they'd likely to do it with more than one that's why I try to pull in other examples and show that there's some nonsense in modern Don't Starve that should likely be looked into and tweaked to some degree to have more identity than just visual stat snacks.

There's much missing recipes and there could be reasons that Klei didn't have time to make foods for them or didn't want to for some one or the other reason. But it also makes little sense to have now new farming mechanics and can't even do much but chomp on cooked or raw.

Either way, making a discussion about one food if it were to cause much of many other foods in question of balance then it's a good discussion to have. If people are interested in chatting about jerky and high shelflife foods then it could make more threads.

4 hours ago, prettynuggets said:

NGL, i understand how bad jerky is when in my mind every time i see someone build jerky rack early i would assume " ah, you are new player ".
i would assume that because, building drying rack early autumn is a waste of time and resources. investing in farm plot or going for lunar for easy pierogi for example is much more efficient than jerky rack.

That's such a mood. Rarely anyone would have a bunny farm due to a hassle to set one up cause of the danger they pose often, so pubs will rarely or never see a house set up that is not for just protecting you from bats cause genuinely - they are a really good meat source. Nor anyone would set up fish farms just to have small jerky around.

[Masked Koopa]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

ya could have at least putting spoilers or something, my poor eyes D:

But I overall agree that Klei likely to not think of rebalancing one food, but rather they'd likely to do it with more than one that's why I try to pull in other examples and show that there's some nonsense in modern Don't Starve that should likely be looked into and tweaked to some degree to have more identity than just visual stat snacks.

There's much missing recipes and there could be reasons that Klei didn't have time to make foods for them or didn't want to for some one or the other reason. But it also makes little sense to have now new farming mechanics and can't even do much but chomp on cooked or raw.

Either way, making a discussion about one food if it were to cause much of many other foods in question of balance then it's a good discussion to have. If people are interested in chatting about jerky and high shelflife foods then it could make more threads.

Alright so I feel like I have to (oh god) expand on what I was trying to get at with my giga wall of text. Trying to sum up my point as concisely as possible - I'm trying to say that the problems with a lot of foods are incredibly self-evident, AND often (but not always) not even that controversial. And for a lot of these you can even figure out exactly where they went "wrong" - they didn't think ah yes this is balanced, they weren't considering balance when making the call in the first place.

Pretty much everyone agrees that some stuff is complete dogshit, even if there will be some foods that people defend. It's a spectrum ranging from Stuffed Eggplant to Pumpkin Cookies to Veggie Stinger. Everyone has a cutoff point, but Stuffed Eggplant is a textbook example of a dish that pretty much everyone agrees is bad, which is why I spent a lot of time deconstructing it.

My point is basically that it is fruitless to discuss food balance because the reason we haven't had food rebalancing isn't due to how popular or logically sound the arguments are. I think we are better off directly asking Klei why they haven't made any changes to food instead of trying to agree on whether or not a specific food needs changes. If Klei won't change a mistake like Seafood Gumbo, or a nigh universally hated dish like Stuffed Eggplant, it is a waste of our time to debate Jerky. We can debate Jerky when Klei says "Hey guys we're open to changing food now", because at that point we know we can make a difference.

[chirsg]

6 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

Alright so I feel like I have to (oh god) expand on what I was trying to get at with my giga wall of text. Trying to sum up my point as concisely as possible - I'm trying to say that the problems with a lot of foods are incredibly self-evident, AND often (but not always) not even that controversial. And for a lot of these you can even figure out exactly where they went "wrong" - they didn't think ah yes this is balanced, they weren't considering balance when making the call in the first place.

Pretty much everyone agrees that some stuff is complete dogshit, even if there will be some foods that people defend. It's a spectrum ranging from Stuffed Eggplant to Pumpkin Cookies to Veggie Stinger. Everyone has a cutoff point, but Stuffed Eggplant is a textbook example of a dish that pretty much everyone agrees is bad, which is why I spent a lot of time deconstructing it.

My point is basically that it is fruitless to discuss food balance because the reason we haven't had food rebalancing isn't due to how popular or logically sound the arguments are. I think we are better off directly asking Klei why they haven't made any changes to food instead of trying to agree on whether or not a specific food needs changes. If Klei won't change a mistake like Seafood Gumbo, or a nigh universally hated dish like Stuffed Eggplant, it is a waste of our time to debate Jerky. We can debate Jerky when Klei says "Hey guys we're open to changing food now", because at that point we know we can make a difference.

The difference between cookies/gumbo and jerky is that each of the things are made with totally different structures.

 

The selection of items generated by drying racks is fewer in number compared to what is manufactured by crockpots. 

One isn't the same as the other. I don't think it's particularly fruitless to discuss jerky. Who knows, people who were on the fence about making drying racks may have chosen their ultimate side to making racks, either to not do it, or do it.

 

It's a seed. Perhaps people have changed their playstyles from the jerky controversy. Just because the desired outcome of jerky and other dried foods getting readjusted doesn't come to pass, doesn't mean other outcomes won't. 

 

I continue to see jerky as an unfortunate casualty in the roaring hellpath paved by the bearger bin and perhaps others see it that way too.

[Frosty_Mentos]

8 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

snip

To be fair, I think they partially only thought of balanced after late thoughts of "what if we do a funny here with that" so we have some very odd food stats on those foods. Then there's intention to have some of them feel actually useful like jerky back then, but in modern DST it's fine to call some of these design choices and have stats tweaked sometimes like we've had with some items now.

Even if it would go nowhere it's fun and good to discuss these things, maybe people will agree or disagree and maybe Klei would acknowledge that it would be maybe worth to look into a mechanic and enhance it. And I do wish for longer spoilage time for jerky related foods just for what they are and it being alternative source of good food without needing to rely on bundles.

Since people hate bundles for what they are I think it's fine to just try and push further to prove that we're way past that for a long time now to not care if we get buffs to some foods or not.

[Captain_Rage]

It feels like a bit of a shame that there are many underused dishes, or that the stats of various dishes are rather bland. On the one hand I would wholehearedly welcome a new cooking mechanic (blessed be the farming overhaul, which was done so well). On the other hand I would hate DST to turn into some complicated system with for example various food buffs in generic video game fashion. New ways of cooking and preparing food could be enough and nice however. Simply dumping ingredients into a crockpot and waiting is starting to feel outdated. If there would at least be more variation in ways of preparing food that would give players more stuff to do. Imagine a more Gorge-like way of preparing a bigger number of food stacks using different kitchen structures as a late-game thing. The dishes themselves don't necessarily need much tweaking, as for new ways to prepare them, but this is also subject to debate.

[Well-met]

pierogi existing does not make jerky bad. ive had enough of this god awful take in here.

[Chaghatai]

I didn't get all the hostility towards making drying racks/jerky more comparable to other late mid/game food options - they really aren't at that good especially considering their cost and space requirements

[Frosty_Mentos]

11 hours ago, Chaghatai said:

I didn't get all the hostility towards making drying racks/jerky more comparable to other late mid/game food options - they really aren't at that good especially considering their cost and space requirements

That's what I'm also saying, but very few that get it XD

[chirsg]

Oh to add, if you dry morsels or monster meat, you are literally scamming yourself. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

5 hours ago, chirsg said:

Oh to add, if you dry morsels or monster meat, you are literally scamming yourself. 

Used to be the case where it's more to refresh the shelflife of food, now it's kinda just as any other food when abundance is already plentiful. There's things to do instead of wasting time with racks.

[Gi-Go]

If you burn drying racks, then the food will instantly dry. This is very useful on public servers because you can get free jerky quickly while someone else wastes their time crafting the racks. You can also hammer them after for free rope and sticks. Would reccomend. 

[Valase]

6 hours ago, Gi-Go said:

If you burn drying racks, then the food will instantly dry. This is very useful on public servers because you can get free jerky quickly while someone else wastes their time crafting the racks. You can also hammer them after for free rope and sticks. Would reccomend. 

[mykenception]

I was gonna suggest that maybe they could make it so that we could place 3 or more meat items per drying rack so we get to have more things done with less resources spent since I don't actually remember klei actually giving updates to food stats since forever. 

man, some forum users really go completely unhinged sometimes. I feel like the klei forums are getting harder to get proper discussions as time goes on

[Swiyss]

I only make jerky when playing Wormwood.

I make bacon and eggs and put them in the bearger bin, so for the most optional freshness I dry all my meat in summer.
 

They honestly have their place in the game and ARE fine IMO.
 

However I still think that making more interactions and giving this item more creative ideas would be very very nice since it hasn't been changed that much since original DS.

We kinda need a food and old survivor itmes QoL at this point I think.

[Jakepeng99]

On 4/13/2024 at 10:58 PM, Swiyss said:

only make jerky when playing Wormwood.

But he benifits the least out of all characters who can eat it.