I think dst lost some of the game's immersion, which is more present in original ds.

[Anis5240]

10 hours ago, finn from human said:

Don't Starve has always been a dark franchise with creepy elements, but moonrock pengulls and horror hounds dipped specifically into body horror. Complaints were made about them not because they're too scary or lean too far towards horror, but because they chose a specific brand or subgenre of horror that was causing people extreme discomfort to even look at and think about.

Also you literally forgot Klei themselves made the Screecher mod. An official mod to DS, may I add. They literally made this Screecher as this messed up owl man that kills people when they see it and you had the gall to say DS/T players WON'T EAT THAT HORROR STUFF UP???!! BAH. How naive of you.

[grm9]

16 minutes ago, Anis5240 said:

you had the gall to say DS/T players WON'T EAT THAT HORROR STUFF UP???!!

10 hours ago, finn from human said:

moonrock pengulls and horror hounds tipped the scales over to "my body is telling me to vomit and/or scratch my own skin obsessively when looking at this creature, so I can't even engage with this new content at all" for some people

what they're describing doesn't seem to be a normal reaction for something that's too scary, removing things that cause this is closer to removing overly flashy lights to not cause epileptic seizures than making sure that children don't get scared away

[Swiyss]

I mean.. I think the main idea really is not "horror", but omninous and macabre. Those are better examples of how the game should be.

I feel like so many of these new songs (like the farming one) are too 'sugarcandyland and unicorn on a rainbow'-like as opposed to 'secluded unforgiving hopelessness dismalic reality'-like.

58 minutes ago, Sacco said:

The best thing klei removed was the ruins' layer (i heard that they removed it to reduce lag or something like this).

In the original DS every time i enter the ruins i feel like i'm in the very depths of the Constant.

That weird and always present noise which makes you unconfortable and just the void around the "island".

They are actually scary and feel like a world dead thousands of years ago which is just collapsing on itself.

Another thing is, for some reason they removed the quotes for when earthquakes are about to happen or when the day enters dusk. Those give such a more survivalistic aspect to the game. Wendy is a child who says that the ground is shaking a lot, will it collapse and bury me alive here? That was such a nice quote that I wish was still in the game.

Btw, earthquakes have 2 phases, the first little shake and then the hard shake. In original DS, the first shake is random, sometimes is same as dst (very quick), and sometimes it takes a lot more time to happen. Those little things are more immersive, It makes my brain believe more that an earthquake is happening rather than just instantly knowing WHEN it's gonna happen. They had the perfect opportunity to add randomness to the game when cave rifts came but decided not to which was a letdown imo.

[Sacco]

1 hour ago, Anis5240 said:

That's literally the point of the Ruins. You explore the depths of the Constant and see for yourself the horrors that once swept across the land; so much so that Maxwell took some inspiration from the mobs there.

yes, the thing i'm trying to say is that the dst ruins lost this feature.

[Capybara007]

The problem with these nostalgia threads is that people describe old dont starve as the most macabre video game ever when it really wasnt that scary

[Monkey Cups]

13 hours ago, finn from human said:

There was no body horror of any kind in either game before the lunar island.

This is just outright false. We had characters turning into Merms on screen in the Gorge event as well as Webber's backstory of being a kid eaten by a spider.

[grm9]

14 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

This is just outright false. We had characters turning into Merms on screen in the Gorge event

that's not really comparable to something coming out of own skin and something's organs being visible in ice, parts of their body just got replaced by merms' body parts with a sort of green bubbles fx, no visible organs or skinless animals

17 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

Webber's backstory of being a kid eaten by a spider

iirc he just got fused with the spider in the trailer, there was no detailed eating

[Monkey Cups]

1 minute ago, grm9 said:

that's not really comparable to something coming out of own skin and something's organs being visible in ice, parts of their body just got replaced by merms' body parts with a sort of green bubbles fx, no visible organs or skinless animals

iirc he just got fused with the spider in the trailer, there was no detailed eating

It's still body horror even if it isn't gory. And really the moonrock pengulls/hounds are extremely mild in terms of that sort of thing.

On a more general note why play a horror game at all if you have strong issues with very common horror tropes? That would be like me playing Subnautica and complaining there was too much water.

[lowercase skye]

17 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

This is just outright false. We had characters turning into Merms on screen in the Gorge event as well as Webber's backstory of being a kid eaten by a spider.

!!! This is not what anyone means when they say body horror !!!

A character transforming into a cartoon fish or being a spider with a human body is not the type of body horror that I am referring to. Those are the cartooniest things ever that are only creepy if you think too hard about the implications and imagine it happening to a real person. I would absolutely not sort it into the same category as "dog with skin removed" or "penguin with transparent body so you can see their organs" where the implications are in your face and the visuals are outwardly grotesque.

6 hours ago, Stardust42 said:

Ah yes, we should altogether gatekeep body horror (which perfectly suits this game) just because some lame ahh 10 year olds can't stand the sight of gore. Please, give me a f break.

It is easy and feels good to care about other people. Everyone who disagrees with you isn't a child.

6 hours ago, Stardust42 said:

THERE, I SAID IT. I was holding this rant since the turn of tides update. Somebody's gotta speak up or else this game will become minecraft

See but this is a "slippery slope" type deal that isn't actually going to happen. Turn of Tides was half a decade ago and they have hardly even toned down these sorts of designs, again see the moonstorm birds. Klei reassessing how they do body horror after one update with it 5 years ago isn't going to cause the game to "become minecraft" in the same way that Warbucks being removed didn't result in a single other character being changed. Come on now, you are not the savior of Don't Starve Together because you had the courage to say you liked something from 5 years ago.

[grm9]

3 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

On a more general note why play a horror game at all if you have strong issues with very common horror tropes?

because it isn't a horror game and never was, there never was anything scary and still isn't, it's just that that might trigger some people's reactions to that sort of stuff unlike even a jumpscare if it would've got added

4 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

It's still body horror even if it isn't gory

it's not really comparable to them

5 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

And really the moonrock pengulls/hounds are extremely mild in terms of that sort of thing

aren't you suggesting for them to go further?

[xhyom]

1 hour ago, Capybara007 said:

The problem with these nostalgia threads is that people describe old dont starve as the most macabre video game ever when it really wasnt that scary

Like, I kind of understand where that's coming from, but mostly it was just a more emptier game, and that's what gave it a sense of desperation, loneliness, wildness. Klei also did a great job working on the "mystical vision" of the game, the aesthetic of the videos like an old analogue creepypasta is very good and must have really touched the imagination of most people, who themselves fantasized about something else that would be behind this world strange, and now we that basically know everything about this "something else", or we've gotten used to it enough that we're no longer afraid of it.

[Monkey Cups]

22 minutes ago, finn from human said:

!!! This is not what anyone means when they say body horror !!!

A character transforming into a cartoon fish or being a spider with a human body is not the type of body horror that I am referring to. Those are the cartooniest things ever that are only creepy if you think too hard about the implications and imagine it happening to a real person. I would absolutely not sort it into the same category as "dog with skin removed" or "penguin with transparent body so you can see their organs" where the implications are in your face and the visuals are outwardly grotesque.

Your issue is with the presentation, not the actual event. If the game was realistic you wouldn't be whining about the definition.

19 minutes ago, grm9 said:

because it isn't a horror game and never was, there never was anything scary and still isn't, it's just that that might trigger some people's reactions to that sort of stuff unlike even a jumpscare if it would've got added

it's not really comparable to them

Don't Starve has always had horror elements in it. Monsters that try to eat you, statues that vomit nightmare fuel while frozen in a scream, a literal sanity mechanic where shadows try to kill you if it dips too low. It's just not in your face like it would be in Amnesia or Resident Evil.

It's very comparable. i don't know what you're on about.

Quote

aren't you suggesting for them to go further?

When the hell did I say that? I don't give a rat's moldy behind whether or not they add more mobs like the moon hounds/pengulls. I would like more spooky things but it doesn't have to be those in particular.

[lowercase skye]

13 minutes ago, Monkey Cups said:

Your issue is with the presentation, not the actual event.

[Anis5240]

50 minutes ago, grm9 said:

there was no detailed eating

Webber's title was The Indigestible. Do you seriously forget it? SMH.

53 minutes ago, grm9 said:

that's not really comparable to something coming out of own skin

so scales replacing skin ain't a body horror? k

[grm9]

3 minutes ago, Anis5240 said:

Webber's title was The Indigestible

i meant that they didn't show him getting eaten in the trailer

8 minutes ago, Anis5240 said:

so scales replacing skin ain't a body horror? k

no, you don't get to see a skinless or fleshless animal that way

[Capybara007]

42 minutes ago, xhyom said:

Like, I kind of understand where that's coming from, but mostly it was just a more emptier game, and that's what gave it a sense of desperation, loneliness, wildness. 

I get what you mean but again with that description is what most people use to say something that isnt scary is actually really creepy

I dont know why people keep saying the "loneliness of dont starve" when i never felt alone playing that game, you have glommer, hutch, pigmen, if you count dlcs hamlet straight up has no loneliness

And being "empty" doesnt not give "desperation" i think thats a bit too dramatic, unless its backrooms levels of empty, other than that old ds was not empty at all, and with the fun music that would play every now and then (which some people claim that used to be more scary??) there is no way someone could get actually disturbed by dont starve

Literally look at any "why minecraft is actually scary" video and you will get the description you said "the world is so lonely and full of desperation" like no, not really

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

i meant that they didn't show him getting eaten in the trailer

no, you don't get to see a skinless or fleshless animal that way

But you DO get to see a skinless and fleshless animal when you stumble upon it’s dead half chewed upon carcass… so what in the blue blazing bell is the actual difference here?

Is it not scary because it isn’t reanimated to life and chasing you or something?

Someone, Somewhere has some explaining to do. Please.. it’s hurting my brain cells.  

[grm9]

11 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

But you DO get to see a skinless and fleshless animal when you stumble upon it’s dead half chewed upon carcass

it's a skeleton in that case, not a block of ice with organs inside

[lowercase skye]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

But you DO get to see a skinless and fleshless animal when you stumble upon it’s dead half chewed upon carcass… so what in the blue blazing bell is the actual difference here?

The difference lies in implication vs presentation. A Koalefant's corpse is not visually a "skinless and fleshless animal", it's cartoon tufts of fur with a clean pure white no-icky-stuff cartoon skeleton peeking out of it. The implication is of an animal's corpse being messily torn apart by a pack of dogs, but the presentation is cartoon fur with some bones sticking out. It's scary if you think about its implications, but the presentation itself is not visually detailed and is probably one of the least gory or upsetting depictions of a corpse I've ever seen in any piece of media ever.

[BezKa]

I think there is actually less ambient sounds in DST compared to DS. Like, literally less sounds, the birds chirping etc. and it might be lower volume? The insanity ambience also starts way later when you're low on sanity (almost all at once, it's more gradual in DS) and I'm gonna be frank, the gift, scrapbook and insight notifs really do pull you out of the zone.

But I think in the very end a lot of DS ambience comes from the simple fact that it's singleplayer. You are alone, and there is no setting to flick to invite your friends. There is less to do, but everything is up to you. You get to feel exactly the way the character is supposed to, scared, lonely, exhausted with surviving, death looming at every corner. Getting immersed is way harder in a multiplayer game, where you will end up joking around with people, and simply seeing someone else in game can be distracting. We have dancing emote in the game that was about the gruesome fate of people who let their pride take them to a place that can be easily called hell.

It's not really a bad thing that the atmosphere changed, it was inevitable, and we do still have the original DS with it's ambience and it's not gonna change as far as we know.

[HowlVoid]

I think the issue is theres just a lot of empty space. You explore the savannah, desert, oasis, forest with a lot of repeated patterns that become more apparent the more you play. Eventually these patterns feel bland and devoid of meaning. I think we need more of what the mutated mushroom biome is. Creatures living their life to make the environments feel more alive. However not sure some consoles like switch could handle it, I mean, the swamp was already culled compared to what it used to be. 

[Popian]

1 hour ago, finn from human said:

please teach me how to talk like this

It is hard and feels bad to care about other people.

[Pet Rock]

3 hours ago, Stardust42 said:

The only one with a savior complex here is YOU, mate.  "iT Is eAsY tO CaRe aBoUT oThEr PeoPLe" Who are you, Mother Teresa? Are you a Make A Wish employee or smth? Honestly, i find the fact that you are trying to keyboard fight your way into toning down a cartoonish horror game (not even horror tbh, I genuinely wonder what do you think about the likes of Outlast) when everyone is disagreeing with you to be so ironic and cringe that it "triggers a vomit response in my brain and makes me feel itchy all over". Oh, and spoiler alert: the devs wouldn't change a thing because of you even if they wanted to shift the approach, so i'm not trying to "save" anything, I was just feeling "ItChY" to trigger a keyboard warrior since 2019  

I need someone to read this in an unhinged voice

[Anis5240]

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Is it not scary because it isn’t reanimated to life and chasing you or something?

5 hours ago, finn from human said:

The difference lies in implication vs presentation. A Koalefant's corpse is not visually a "skinless and fleshless animal", it's cartoon tufts of fur with a clean pure white no-icky-stuff cartoon skeleton peeking out of it.

They really be forgetting that Koalefants are also included as possible mutated mobs. Honestly I'm both excited and NOT excited to see where Klei is going to do with this. Half-eaten Koalefant body got possessed to life and throw characters around? Yes please.

Just a regular Koalefant wandering around and go mad after snorting moon dust? Yeah sure, why not. I will hate if the mutated design is generic as hell tho.