Why ocean content?

[00petar00]

My point is that caves should be the main priority. I do understand that a lot of players only care about the surface shard but caves are a waste of computing power with how terrible they are.

I was one of the players that advocated for nightmare werepig to be moved to caves because of how lacking they are but now we get scrapyard werepig on surface and literally 95% of game development is for surface for what reason?

I was somewhat relieved when cave rifts were released and their subsequent updates weren't as bad as brightshades but it can still be quite annoying with acid rain.

I feel like klei developers have focused too much on satisfying "uncompromising" players when most of us don't want to have as much of an upkeep as much as recent rift updates are forcing down our throats.

Caves are very lacking in content whether it be biomes or bosses, so why host another shard when 90% of content is surface? It feels like there is no point, why not host only surface shard and instead make caves ruins islands instead?

 

Ocean shouldn't have existed before caves were filled with content, it feels like klei bit more than they can chew, both caves and ocean require too much to be compared to surface land.

[Swiyss]

If we're talking about caves, we have to consider that they were done a long time ago. Adding new thing to the caves are just ++ and usually shouldn't be the main focus of it. 

The same problem for caves applies to the ocean, I think they missed the point.

Caves need satisfying and interesting puzzles/loot on other biomes of the caves THE SAME WAY moon island had stone fruit bushes, lunar sapplings, bull kelp, anenemies etc.
Ocean needs more reason to go out of our way other than those things ^^.

The same way caves got a bunch of loot from ag and the labyrinth + pseudoscience having a bunch of interesting options and amazing items to the game, the ocean has to have something similar also.
if their idea is for one to complete the other, and that one has 1 focus while the other has another, then they missed the presentation.

If we're ACTUALLY making the ruins loot great UNTIL rifts are open, then why aren't we getting more QoL and situational objects? like ranged items, stronger boats, better traps and magic.
And if we're ACTUALLY making the lunar island and the ocean this massive food delivery to the player then why figs are so underwhelming? Why barnacles are not worthwhile? Why are the only transportable ones the actual impactful ones? Why lobsters are never farmed? 

The answear is because there is nothing special with them. And the special things about them are overriten by already better strategies.

If a dev intend for the player to :

1. build a fishing bin and store ocean fish to eat later
2. transport barnacles close to land
3. grow a giant tree trunk next to base and eat figs.

but the player is not doing those things unless the world has 800 days and nothing else left to do, then your content is missing something.

If player are rushing the ruins instead of using a spear first to fight pigs for meat, then your content is missing in something.

 

In regards to the ruins loot, it is actually a very resource and skill required place to be, also the knowledge that you need to do the rush is pretty necessary. Players then find their way to the most overpowered gear in the game after a very satisfying and complete trip before the harsh winter comes. And then.. we got the surface.

IF the surface had a similar progression to the caves, people would be able to then "rush lunar island" or "rush crab king" without actually needing to focus on the ruins so much. The game would be way more diverse, that was the hope.

The reality is that changing the ocean now is way more impactful than the caves. Caves only need 1 small update with a lot of cool transportable QoL biome-specific hard-to-get very knowledge-intense and puzzle like to acquire that everyone would be happy and clappy about it.

Return of them went so well on certain areas, but lost mainly when all characters were the main focus. Klei KNOWS that their strong bone are the characters, yet they haven't learned much from the old reworks apparently since skilltrees are STILL little reworks desguised as skilltrees. If characters were actually already fixed a long time ago, the Return of Them arc wouldn't be so little in content as it was. Specially if we're talking about lunar altars having nothing new from one another, the 3 have literal same items. AND the items are either niche or too situational to the point where we question if it was even worth unlocking it.

The actual big reality is that, Brighthsade gear should've been the altar pieces gear, but slightly nerfed. Then planar damage wouldn't be necessary, skill trees wouldn't be necessary, current world progression would actually feel satisfying instead of rushed and crabking loot wouldn't be that bad.

Now we actually gotta work with what we have, and they still haven't realised that current "mid-game" is excruciatingly unsatisfying to play due to the lack of sense of progression in the game.

It all comes down to the same old issues in my book. I think almost every big issue is the game could be tracked to those things i've been talking about since 7 months ago. Since my first post.

[mkemal23]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

My point is that caves should be the main priority. I do understand that a lot of players only care about the surface shard but caves are a waste of computing power with how terrible they are.

The thing is, I feel like Ocean content experience can be improved drastically with qol changes but caves require an entire remake. Now Considering From beyond, and how unbalanced lunar and shadow sides are, I'm fine with klei focusing on simpler things to fix so they can cook us some juicy endgame shadow rift content.

[Mike23Ua]

8 minutes ago, mkemal23 said:

The thing is, I feel like Ocean content experience can be improved drastically with qol changes but caves require an entire remake. Now Considering From beyond, and how unbalanced lunar and shadow sides are, I'm fine with klei focusing on simpler things to fix so they can cook us some juicy endgame shadow rift content.

I think it’s got more to do with the fact that between Shipwrecked and Hamlet Klei have two already in place reference points to look at on how they can better handle DSTs ocean content, where as with Cave Content they’d really have to come up with something new a write a whole new book.

And to further add fuel to this theory, Klei not to very long ago just released a MASSIVE update for the single player version of DST (on Xbox) that covered Shipwrecked & Hamlet changes.

So my point is that they’ve been dipping their toes in water they may have forgotten how they approached over the years.

So I for one am quite excited to see how they’ll handle a QOL content update that’s sole focus is Ocean Content.

[Swiyss]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think it’s got more to do with the fact that between Shipwrecked and Hamlet Klei have two already in place reference points to look at on how they can better handle DSTs ocean content, where as with Cave Content they’d really have to come up with something new a write a whole new book.

And to further add fuel to this theory, Klei not to very long ago just released a MASSIVE update for the single player version of DST (on Xbox) that covered Shipwrecked & Hamlet changes.

So my point is that they’ve been dipping their toes in water they may have forgotten how they approached over the years.

So I for one am quite excited to see how they’ll handle a QOL content update that’s sole focus is Ocean Content.

 

14 minutes ago, mkemal23 said:

The thing is, I feel like Ocean content experience can be improved drastically with qol changes but caves require an entire remake. Now Considering From beyond, and how unbalanced lunar and shadow sides are, I'm fine with klei focusing on simpler things to fix so they can cook us some juicy endgame shadow rift content.

Why would completely reworking the caves be necessary?

Only thing we need is better ruins mapping, some 2 or 3 quests/puzzles or knowledge based resources placed in all 3 mushroom biomes, and some more bats, bunnymen and rock lobsters interactions/loot. All of this could be very quickly designed except for the mapping of the ruins which is the only complicated thing. Still it would require a whole update.

But in my view, ocean needs way better mid-game progression. Way more pirate themed loots and goods, way more QoL weapons or tools. That is way harder to design and implement than simply adding resources to biomes.

Again, I do agree that fixing the ruins would be a very hard task, and the port they did from DS definitely was a hard task.

The good thing is that Klei is always looking at feedback, so we can hope one day all of this will be fixed, including game lag.

Its like the ocean doesn't have the paperwork done yet, it's being implemented slowly. The caves are already a complete thing, so anything special added like the grotto will feel great already.

[00petar00]

11 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

If we're talking about caves, we have to consider that they were done a long time ago. Adding new thing to the caves are just ++ and usually shouldn't be the main focus of it. 

The same problem for caves applies to the ocean, I think they missed the point.

The biggest argument for caves is that they require their own shard, so that is the main reason I don't want ocean content to be the focus. What do you mean by adding content to caves just being a +? Do you realize that you are using your computer resources to host caves all the time? Ocean is also very lacking but it is using surface shard so it should be of a lower priority.

12 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Caves need satisfying and interesting puzzles/loot on other biomes of the caves THE SAME WAY moon island had stone fruit bushes, lunar sapplings, bull kelp, anenemies etc.

Caves don't need gimmics but content needs to at least match 60-80% of surface.

12 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Ocean needs more reason to go out of our way other than those things ^^.

Most players don't care that much about ocean and they have a valid reason not to, boating is not that good for solo players compared to shipwrecked so even if there was a lot of content it will always be partially annoying. I want to mention that using zoom out mods for PC makes a huge difference in sailing that I think it should be part of the game.

15 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The same way caves got a bunch of loot from ag and the labyrinth + pseudoscience having a bunch of interesting options and amazing items to the game, the ocean has to have something similar also.
if their idea is for one to complete the other, and that one has 1 focus while the other has another, then they missed the presentation.

Why even go for thulecite gear? Isn't it easier to just rush CC and enable rifts to get easily repairable gear that requires almost no effort. Thulecite isn't as good as it once was and the biggest reason players rush caves is for star caller's staffs and  hope of getting lazy explorer from AG.

22 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

If we're ACTUALLY making the ruins loot great UNTIL rifts are open, then why aren't we getting more QoL and situational objects? like ranged items, stronger boats, better traps and magic.
And if we're ACTUALLY making the lunar island and the ocean this massive food delivery to the player then why figs are so underwhelming? Why barnacles are not worthwhile? Why are the only transportable ones the actual impactful ones? Why lobsters are never farmed? 

The answear is because there is nothing special with them. And the special things about them are overriten by already better strategies.

When did I say that ocean was amazing? I don't understand how you can say that transportable food/rocks are the only good loot? Isn't it obvious why this is the case? Unless you play Wanda or Wortox basing on lunar island isn't ideal even if you make path to it because it will take a long time for player to travel where they want to go.

Having access to resource at your base saves a lot of time and usually If player is smart they can place the base in the middle of the map so that it takes the least time to travel to the biomes that they need to visit often.

Stone fruit bushes are very special, you only need like 4-5 to satisfy your hunger permanently and the grow every season. Anenemies are amazing for AG, volt goat farm and ruins clockworks farming. Kelp is decent as a filler until you get to late game.

31 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

If a dev intend for the player to :

1. build a fishing bin and store ocean fish to eat later
2. transport barnacles close to land
3. grow a giant tree trunk next to base and eat figs.

but the player is not doing those things unless the world has 800 days and nothing else left to do, then your content is missing something.

I have almost never used the foods that you listed here because it is a waste of time for me. Why would I bother with fishing bin, barnacles when there are so many better options out there? Figs are like kelp that require much more effort.

At day 800 If you still need to use figs or kelp, I don't know what to say.

32 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

If player are rushing the ruins instead of using a spear first to fight pigs for meat, then your content is missing in something.

Why do you need to fight pigmen? kill catcoons and hammer pig houses to craft hambat and football helmet to rush ruins or progress, why even uses a spear when axe is a better choice before hambat?

33 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

In regards to the ruins loot, it is actually a very resource and skill required place to be, also the knowledge that you need to do the rush is pretty necessary. Players then find their way to the most overpowered gear in the game after a very satisfying and complete trip before the harsh winter comes. And then.. we got the surface.

IF the surface had a similar progression to the caves, people would be able to then "rush lunar island" or "rush crab king" without actually needing to focus on the ruins so much. The game would be way more diverse, that was the hope.

Ruins don't require almost any skill, you can avoid clockworks and mine statues to gather thulecite and gems to craft gear. This isn't the most overpowered gear and it is actually underpowered compared to how many options we have gotten.

Surface has too many options so there isn't a single best thing you can do like caves are for rushing ruins, you can kill BQ to get bundlewrap, kill DF to get furnace, rush lunar island or look for moon quay, explore map to find a spot for base and so on.

37 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The reality is that changing the ocean now is way more impactful than the caves. Caves only need 1 small update with a lot of cool transportable QoL biome-specific hard-to-get very knowledge-intense and puzzle like to acquire that everyone would be happy and clappy about it.

False, this makes no sense since caves don't even have 20% of the content the surface has and surface is included with the ocean because it is the same shard. Lets say you see surface and ocean as separate content, it still wouldn't make sense because ocean uses surface shard when caves have their own shard.

39 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Return of them went so well on certain areas, but lost mainly when all characters were the main focus. Klei KNOWS that their strong bone are the characters, yet they haven't learned much from the old reworks apparently since skilltrees are STILL little reworks desguised as skilltrees. If characters were actually already fixed a long time ago, the Return of Them arc wouldn't be so little in content as it was. Specially if we're talking about lunar altars having nothing new from one another, the 3 have literal same items. AND the items are either niche or too situational to the point where we question if it was even worth unlocking it.

The actual big reality is that, Brighthsade gear should've been the altar pieces gear, but slightly nerfed. Then planar damage wouldn't be necessary, skill trees wouldn't be necessary, current world progression would actually feel satisfying instead of rushed and crabking loot wouldn't be that bad.

Now we actually gotta work with what we have, and they still haven't realised that current "mid-game" is excruciatingly unsatisfying to play due to the lack of sense of progression in the game.

It all comes down to the same old issues in my book. I think almost every big issue is the game could be tracked to those things i've been talking about since 7 months ago. Since my first post.

I don't really think that characters are as important as you say, I prefer having access to as many things as possible with all characters so that is why I dislike the focus DST had on character refreshes and now skill trees.

Lunar altars have the same crafting tab because you build them at the same spot so there is no need for anything more.

If brightshade gear was altar gear tab why would anyone activate rifts? Rifts wouldn't need to exist. 

This doesn't change crab king loot and it would still be bad because he only drops trident BP that is mostly useless.

Mid game is fine to me, there is a lot of progression in DST that you can focus on and we need more of it.

22 minutes ago, mkemal23 said:

The thing is, I feel like Ocean content experience can be improved drastically with qol changes but caves require an entire remake. Now Considering From beyond, and how unbalanced lunar and shadow sides are, I'm fine with klei focusing on simpler things to fix so they can cook us some juicy endgame shadow rift content.

What is the reason to focus on ocean in that case? If caves need an entire remake shouldn't they need to be the main focus? I don't agree that caves need a remake but are very lacking in content because klei keeps adding content to surface.

Shadow side is so bad compared to lunar, I am glad we agree on this.

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think it’s got more to do with the fact that between Shipwrecked and Hamlet Klei have two already in place reference points to look at on how they can better handle DSTs ocean content, where as with Cave Content they’d really have to come up with something new a write a whole new book.

And to further add fuel to this theory, Klei not to very long ago just released a MASSIVE update for the single player version of DST (on Xbox) that covered Shipwrecked & Hamlet changes.

So my point is that they’ve been dipping their toes in water they may have forgotten how they approached over the years.

So I for one am quite excited to see how they’ll handle a QOL content update that’s sole focus is Ocean Content.

That is probably the final update for DS, I don't see klei putting more effort into that game as it is considered finished even though hamlet was left in quite a bad state.

 

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

feel like klei developers have focused too much on satisfying "uncompromising" players when most of us don't want to have as much of an upkeep as much as recent rift updates are forcing down our throats.

Yeah caves suck tons, but Whats this got to do with cave updates?

[00petar00]

4 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Yeah caves suck tons, but Whats this got to do with cave updates?

It just makes me hope there are no cave updates because recent updates have made me not want to base on surface and I think that something is wrong for me to feel this way about future updates.

[Swiyss]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

What do you mean by adding content to caves just being a +?

Literally that. If they add something similar to banana bush and stone fruit bush but in cave biomes it would already be great. Then they just gotta make a beautiful place with new music in a placed consumed by moss, do a trailer explaining rock lobsters, fix followers with a quick update, add new mechanics to the game via those things and its done. Sure it's a lot of things, and I didn't even count the whole ruins biome change, but in my point of view its like this :

cave upside is ruins loot. Cave downside is biome formation and lack of content.

Ocean downside is loot. Ocean upside is the amount of POSSIBLE content it has to offer.

One is finished while the other one is not.

Imo we should be able to rush the ocean the same way we rush the ruins, its as simple as that. It's way more cool and would be a better way to divide the game into lunar and shadow. That's what I mean. Sure they don't need to do that, but it would fix the problem with replayability and progression in the game. Also good opportunity to fix the original ds immersion problem with creative content (like depth worms, cave spiders etc..).

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Caves don't need gimmics but content needs to at least match 60-80% of surface.

I don't disagree with that, my suggestion is also new biomes and new content to interact with like the archives.

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Most players don't care that much about ocean and they have a valid reason not to, boating is not that good for solo players compared to shipwrecked so even if there was a lot of content it will always be partially annoying. I want to mention that using zoom out mods for PC makes a huge difference in sailing that I think it should be part of the game

First of all this discussion is dead, they actually added more things to the ocean. New friends that play with me have always found the ocean cool and mysterious, they also praise sailing mechanic by saying "they even added a way for multiple people to interact with the boat, that's so cool". Ocean only needs more content where they lacked when they were first developing the return of them arc, and I trust klei they have a lot of amazing stuff prepared for us. Those places shouldn't receive feedback anymore (I mean the "add new content to the ocean" type of feedback). They know they should add more content to it, it's just a matter of how it impacts the game.

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Why even go for thulecite gear? Isn't it easier to just rush CC and enable rifts to get easily repairable gear that requires almost no effort. Thulecite isn't as good as it once was and the biggest reason players rush caves is for star caller's staffs and  hope of getting lazy explorer from AG

You just told me the problem that I've been saying players would have if things were added in the late game without care for mid-game. Making reaching late game harder was not the right decision either, because everyone complained about how boring quest for cc is, its all coming back. They simply should've put brightshade gear behind mid-game, and then made late-game stuff actually imbue planar mechanics INTO THE FREAKING MID-GAME GEAR. That was the whole point of choosing sides.

We used to have amazing ruins loot and bad/underwhelming ocean/surface gear. Now we simply flipped the sides and shadow gear sucks and brightshade gear is better. Klei just simply swapped sides and ignored the caves AND THE FACT THAT THERE ARE 0 LUNAR CREATURES IN "mid-game". Jesus christ I hate to repeat my old posts in here but it all makes sense. And some character are getting their ** wooped with skill trees that instead of adding different playstyles simply works as a rework no.2

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

When did I say that ocean was amazing? I don't understand how you can say that transportable food/rocks are the only good loot? Isn't it obvious why this is the case? Unless you play Wanda or Wortox basing on lunar island isn't ideal even if you make path to it because it will take a long time for player to travel where they want to go.

Having access to resource at your base saves a lot of time and usually If player is smart they can place the base in the middle of the map so that it takes the least time to travel to the biomes that they need to visit often.

Stone fruit bushes are very special, you only need like 4-5 to satisfy your hunger permanently and the grow every season. Anenemies are amazing for AG, volt goat farm and ruins clockworks farming. Kelp is decent as a filler until you get to late game

I'm sorry but I think you're missing my point and I am bad at communicating my point. Let's restart.

Yes ocean food is great, but for the most part, it could be better. Simply adding better fig dishes won't do the work, klei has to think about something actually impactful to add there when it comes to those underutilized features, items and structures.

Ok, ok. Understood, but the problem with that is that they made a whole late game gear have everything a player needs, so now they can only hope to achieve adding something actually impactful on mid-game without breaking progression apart and making people wanna rush cc before day 20.

That's the whole issue, if they decide to fix food content and make it very great, then other food farms like berry bushes are gonna slowly get worse by power creep.

The main issue tho, being completely honest, is that there was no way they were planning on releasing all of this when making original ds the same way they did here. The problem is klei can't simply run over their old game, even if current state REQUIRES them to do that. It is actually a very complicated thing to do while also trying to appease everyone.

The ruins loot was always strong, but it had limitations where you needed to be at a station to craft it, so travelling was the downside. However ocean content also has travelling to acquire it, but it is a different type of content, one where you can move things from the lunar island to mainland, and farm for moonquay stuff to also move to mainland. But ocean has no weapons or gem stuff, all we got is strident trident, glass cutters and glass axes. That's why the ocean feels bad, it's not rewarding enough. And that's why the caves feel bad, it's not making me wanna interact with it too much.

Sure some people hate interacting with the ocean, and it's not their fault, its a slow process. But to say that the issue with the ocean is the design of the navigation system or the fact that there are too many stacks around is the same to be blind about cave having nothing new to do or explore outside of 2 strategically put places where you raid once and then never again. Well guess what, we raid the lunar island and then never go back again, except for specific sanity/lunacy farms. And guess what, the way they treated the added ocean content had the same problems caves had.

Klei fixed an issue that caves had, but in the ocean. And then forgot to add the strong things about caves.. in the ocean. Now we have a super messed up and very underwhelming to play early and mid-game with a whole bunch of stupid useless items that can be over rated by day 25-30 cc rush from a free-to-have content from a boring quest line with a boss with horrible loot and rushed mechanics to receive an overpowered stupid godlike plant fiber helmet that erases completely the problems we once had in the game. All of this locked behind an either slow process of acquisition or a rushed highly skilled strategy that gets instantly overriten once you leave the caves. Nice Klei, well done.

I have all of this explained in details in my older posts. But it's all coming together now. Its too late, specially with these skill trees.

Now I know I might sound like I'm trying to make the game my way. No, I am just trying to show you guys and Klei some problems the game have and will have in the future.

The cave problem IS easily solved by literally importing the creativity they had in the ocean.

And the ocean problem IS somewhat easily (because it is not done yet) solved by adding good loot to all 3 altars the same way they did with the ruins.

One way of fixing progression is by removing or reworking planar, until it is possible, but that won't happen.

So my suggestion is to implement more developed mechanics with moon rock, moon glass, thulecite, pig skin, spider silk, gold everything in the early and midgame essentially, by simply integrating them IN weapons, tools, armours, structures, base building items in the MIDGAME. Making so if a player rushes cc, they still will feel the need to go back to the ruins for example, or go back to the lunar island to actually feel complete. Items in the game AND content in the game HAVE to feel complete when put together, instead of being overriten, runover or fall into powercreep.

guys, its simple. Berries should not be so easily replaced by stone fruit bush, there needs to be something special about it. Everything in real life has its place in the universe, everyone is unique and everything is unique. If we see that a thing gets easily in the shades of another, then we lose satisfaction points in our brain. We're monkeys overall, let's not complicate this Klei. Just add cool stuff to the game.

We need those issues to be fixed first. Then they can actually develop fixes and quality of life for season work/problems, and place new QoL with older materials and places integrated in the midgame so that it is so impactful it is necessary to advance. Sure one could beat fuelweaver with an axe, but why not thulecite clubs (that's an analogy to my point).

Caves can get so much more atmosphere, I have no idea why they are simply holding on to it so much.

Ocean could get so many sunken chests-like content to loot AND new weapons besides expensive granades and staffs that you fire while standing still.

If my brain goes *hmm delicioso* while absolutely torturing a hound with a machine gun then just add a machine gun to the game (This is an analogy also, you get the point, if I wanna slap a beefalo with a tail o three cats... nah nevermind, you get the point).

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

have almost never used the foods that you listed here because it is a waste of time for me. Why would I bother with fishing bin, barnacles when there are so many better options out there? Figs are like kelp that require much more effort.

At day 800 If you still need to use figs or kelp, I don't know what to say.

Proved my point. You're not getting it. They only farm that because there's nothing more left to do in the game.

Devs wanna create a little functional enviroment without taking everything in place in consideration. Art sometimes need all colors from the spectrum to be painted in a specific order to be art. Sometimes we need the whole context.

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Why do you need to fight pigmen? kill catcoons and hammer pig houses to craft hambat and football helmet to rush ruins or progress, why even uses a spear when axe is a better choice before hambat

See? I have the same questions, why bother farm thulecite when they made a better and easy to acquire weapon? It's THAT BAD. The game tried to progress but it got very confusing along the way.

 

Your further replies are just you shaping reality to prove a point that I don't really am against. So I won't bother answearing.

[Captain_Rage]

The surface is nice and the caves are nice. There is plenty of incentive to spend extended periods of time in both. :d The latter is my preferred farming location once lunar rifts are activate since it provides respite from Deadly Brightshades and the ponds come without Mosquitos and are usable even during winter.

[W0l0l0]

I think that an update for the caves is far more likely to be interacted with, and be positively received, than an update for the ocean.

Klei has been steadily adding stuff to the ocean for quite a while now and it's still pretty mixed from what I've seen. I think it's be nice for that effort to go into the caves instead for an update or two.

[00petar00]

39 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

Literally that. If they add something similar to banana bush and stone fruit bush but in cave biomes it would already be great. Then they just gotta make a beautiful place with new music in a placed consumed by moss, do a trailer explaining rock lobsters, fix followers with a quick update, add new mechanics to the game via those things and its done. Sure it's a lot of things, and I didn't even count the whole ruins biome change, but in my point of view its like this :

cave upside is ruins loot. Cave downside is biome formation and lack of content.

Ocean downside is loot. Ocean upside is the amount of POSSIBLE content it has to offer.

One is finished while the other one is not.

Imo we should be able to rush the ocean the same way we rush the ruins, its as simple as that. It's way more cool and would be a better way to divide the game into lunar and shadow. That's what I mean. Sure they don't need to do that, but it would fix the problem with replayability and progression in the game. Also good opportunity to fix the original ds immersion problem with creative content (like depth worms, cave spiders etc..).

Caves are so lacking compared to surface, you can't really say that they only need to add some strong resource or item and that would be good enough.

Ruins are a small part of caves or only one large biome, you can't use it to justify the lack of content.

You are able to rush the ocean, mainly to obtain stone fruit bushes, kelp, anenemy and later on even monkey tails, banana bushes and palmcone sprouts.

43 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

First of all this discussion is dead, they actually added more things to the ocean. New friends that play with me have always found the ocean cool and mysterious, they also praise sailing mechanic by saying "they even added a way for multiple people to interact with the boat, that's so cool". Ocean only needs more content where they lacked when they were first developing the return of them arc, and I trust klei they have a lot of amazing stuff prepared for us. Those places shouldn't receive feedback anymore (I mean the "add new content to the ocean" type of feedback). They know they should add more content to it, it's just a matter of how it impacts the game.

Ocean has also been lacking content since release and it is still mostly empty but I think that priority should be caves.

46 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

You just told me the problem that I've been saying players would have if things were added in the late game without care for mid-game. Making reaching late game harder was not the right decision either, because everyone complained about how boring quest for cc is, its all coming back. They simply should've put brightshade gear behind mid-game, and then made late-game stuff actually imbue planar mechanics INTO THE FREAKING MID-GAME GEAR. That was the whole point of choosing sides.

We used to have amazing ruins loot and bad/underwhelming ocean/surface gear. Now we simply flipped the sides and shadow gear sucks and brightshade gear is better. Klei just simply swapped sides and ignored the caves AND THE FACT THAT THERE ARE 0 LUNAR CREATURES IN "mid-game". Jesus christ I hate to repeat my old posts in here but it all makes sense. And some character are getting their ** wooped with skill trees that instead of adding different playstyles simply works as a rework no.2

Ruins loot always had an alternative/better options like marble suit or night armor, the advantage was that thulecite crown is a head slot and the ability it has but now there really isn't a reason to go out of your way to craft them, you may still craft them when you go to get star callers and other ruins gear but after you get brightshade gear why go out of your way to reset ruins and use thulecite?

It is mostly because there are no lunar creatures that shadow gear is worse, overall it isn't that much different. 

52 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

I'm sorry but I think you're missing my point and I am bad at communicating my point. Let's restart.

Yes ocean food is great, but for the most part, it could be better. Simply adding better fig dishes won't do the work, klei has to think about something actually impactful to add there when it comes to those underutilized features, items and structures.

Ok, ok. Understood, but the problem with that is that they made a whole late game gear have everything a player needs, so now they can only hope to achieve adding something actually impactful on mid-game without breaking progression apart and making people wanna rush cc before day 20.

That's the whole issue, if they decide to fix food content and make it very great, then other food farms like berry bushes are gonna slowly get worse by power creep.

The main issue tho, being completely honest, is that there was no way they were planning on releasing all of this when making original ds the same way they did here. The problem is klei can't simply run over their old game, even if current state REQUIRES them to do that. It is actually a very complicated thing to do while also trying to appease everyone.

How am I missing the point? How often do you think average player goes to lunar island, now lets use a hypothetical situation for example klei adds something to the lunar island that can't be transplanted to the main land or caves, do you think players will bother going out of their way to visit every so often unless it is something really useful that has no replacement in the game?

Berry bushes are a food source for new players, obviously we should have better options.

From the start when lunar island was added it was used as a loot and leave area and eventually klei added CC so you have to come back to fight the boss, no one goes out of their way to visit lunar island again unless they need to fight CC multiple times. Sailing is part of the problem, we can use beefalo or even wormholes/walk somewhere but using a boat is much slower, so players go out of their way to put docks to lunar island or make boat bridge.

58 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The ruins loot was always strong, but it had limitations where you needed to be at a station to craft it, so travelling was the downside. However ocean content also has travelling to acquire it, but it is a different type of content, one where you can move things from the lunar island to mainland, and farm for moonquay stuff to also move to mainland. But ocean has no weapons or gem stuff, all we got is strident trident, glass cutters and glass axes. That's why the ocean feels bad, it's not rewarding enough. And that's why the caves feel bad, it's not making me wanna interact with it too much.

Sure some people hate interacting with the ocean, and it's not their fault, its a slow process. But to say that the issue with the ocean is the design of the navigation system or the fact that there are too many stacks around is the same to be blind about cave having nothing new to do or explore outside of 2 strategically put places where you raid once and then never again. Well guess what, we raid the lunar island and then never go back again, except for specific sanity/lunacy farms. And guess what, the way they treated the added ocean content had the same problems caves had.

Klei fixed an issue that caves had, but in the ocean. And then forgot to add the strong things about caves.. in the ocean. Now we have a super messed up and very underwhelming to play early and mid-game with a whole bunch of stupid useless items that can be over rated by day 25-30 cc rush from a free-to-have content from a boring quest line with a boss with horrible loot and rushed mechanics to receive an overpowered stupid godlike plant fiber helmet that erases completely the problems we once had in the game. All of this locked behind an either slow process of acquisition or a rushed highly skilled strategy that gets instantly overriten once you leave the caves. Nice Klei, well done.

Ruins loot is mid tier, you have to go out of your way to craft and thulecite is limited until you reset ruins so you go kill FW once or twice for his loot but going out of your way to do it regularly doesn't seem worth when there are better armor options. Star caller's staffs have too many uses, especially if you turn them into moon caller staffs that you won't need to reset ruins in a really long time.

Sailing is terrible for solo players and ocean is 90% empty so why would anyone want to interact with it often? 

CC quest is only bad because I can't kill Pearl and have to do her quests and crab king fight is quite bad without good loot.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

The cave problem IS easily solved by literally importing the creativity they had in the ocean.

What creativity? Ocean is 90% empty lol

It was a mistake to add ocean to DST before adding enough content to caves and now both are very lacking in content and there is only so much that developers can do at once and it will take a lot of time.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

So my suggestion is to implement more developed mechanics with moon rock, moon glass, thulecite, pig skin, spider silk, gold everything in the early and midgame essentially, by simply integrating them IN weapons, tools, armours, structures, base building items in the MIDGAME. Making so if a player rushes cc, they still will feel the need to go back to the ruins for example, or go back to the lunar island to actually feel complete. Items in the game AND content in the game HAVE to feel complete when put together, instead of being overriten, runover or fall into powercreep.

We don't need so many new mid tier weapons or tools.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

guys, its simple. Berries should not be so easily replaced by stone fruit bush, there needs to be something special about it. Everything in real life has its place in the universe, everyone is unique and everything is unique. If we see that a thing gets easily in the shades of another, then we lose satisfaction points in our brain. We're monkeys overall, let's not complicate this Klei. Just add cool stuff to the game.

I don't know what is your fixation with berries, stone fruit bush requires of you to sail to lunar and transplant them, don't get me wrong it is quite good but berries are a food source accessible at the start mostly for new players to learn the game, it was once in the past a decent food source when we didn't have so many options but when more options are added players will choose what is better.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

Proved my point. You're not getting it. They only farm that because there's nothing more left to do in the game.

Devs wanna create a little functional enviroment without taking everything in place in consideration. Art sometimes need all colors from the spectrum to be painted in a specific order to be art. Sometimes we need the whole context.

There is no point in playing a game when you stop enjoying it and get bored so it is time to quit or restart, no one is going out of their way to gather fish for fishing bin and barnacles when they have nothing left to do. 

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

See? I have the same questions, why bother farm thulecite when they made a better and easy to acquire weapon? It's THAT BAD. The game tried to progress but it got very confusing along the way.

 

Your further replies are just you shaping reality to prove a point that I don't really am against. So I won't bother answearing.

To me it seems like you are hoping that everything is perfectly balanced and there is always a point where you want to use every single item in the game but sorry to say that will never be possible and it will keep getting worse when new items keep getting added, there's just too many items/resources in the game for it to be balanced like that.

1 hour ago, Captain_Rage said:

The surface is nice and the caves are nice. There is plenty of incentive to spend extended periods of time in both. :d The latter is my preferred farming location once lunar rifts are activate since it provides respite from Deadly Brightshades and the ponds come without Mosquitos and are usable even during winter.

Do you not see how lacking in content caves are compared to surface? It is mainly nice to me because rifts in caves aren't nearly as bad as surface ones and your structures are protected from wildfires while you are protected from overheating so it makes summer another autumn.

Most cave biomes are massive with nothing  distinctive in them that is worthwhile visiting regularly. There are like 13 biomes without ruins and most of them I don't ever really want to visit at all, the only exception are lunar grotto, archives and toadstool setpiece and honestly why would you even care about lunar grotto and archives after CC besides coming back for spark ark.

1 hour ago, W0l0l0 said:

I think that an update for the caves is far more likely to be interacted with, and be positively received, than an update for the ocean.

Klei has been steadily adding stuff to the ocean for quite a while now and it's still pretty mixed from what I've seen. I think it's be nice for that effort to go into the caves instead for an update or two.

That is the problem, ocean shouldn't have been added to DST until caves were comparable to surface in content.

[Cassielu]

Even though the ocean is getting more updates, it's still bad. Without a master plan, almost every update makes it broken more. You're going to get a really bad experience when you're trying to get involved. But at the same time, there are plenty of useful even OP item reward in the ocean that motivate player involve this bad gameplay experience.

Cave is opposite, although it hasn't been updated in a long time, but they are good. Although most of them doesn't have enough reward to motivate you involve them, but they still gives you a good experience when you decide to do so.

 

The ocean is a problem, and the caves are just "not good enough". Fixing problem is more important.

 

 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

That is the problem, ocean shouldn't have been added to DST until caves were comparable to surface in content.

Cave is comparable to surface in content at that time.

[Mysterious box]

9 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Most players don't care that much about ocean and they have a valid reason not to, boating is not that good for solo players compared to shipwrecked so even if there was a lot of content it will always be partially annoying. I want to mention that using zoom out mods for PC makes a huge difference in sailing that I think it should be part of the game.

You just summed up why the ocean is the first priority for fixes players already care about the caves but the ocean needs alot more help getting there.

On a side note I do agree being able to see much further while your on a boat would make sailing abit more bareable even if it has to be a new item that allows it.

 

7 hours ago, W0l0l0 said:

I think that an update for the caves is far more likely to be interacted with, and be positively received, than an update for the ocean.

Klei has been steadily adding stuff to the ocean for quite a while now and it's still pretty mixed from what I've seen. I think it's be nice for that effort to go into the caves instead for an update or two.

In theory yes but in practice I highly doubt it as people seem to get mad at any and every bit of content added that's not skill trees, decorations, or new bosses.

9 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

I don't really think that characters are as important as you say, I prefer having access to as many things as possible with all characters so that is why I dislike the focus DST had on character refreshes and now skill trees.

They really are as reworks/skill trees drum up the most hype of any content and I say that as someone who more or less agrees here since techincally klei could have completely avoided skill trees if they simply made afew small tweaks to certain characters instead.

[goblinball]

I think giving the caves more content would be nice but the player doesn’t necessarily need to spend more time in them, there’s already quite a bit of stuff there 

8 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Do you not see how lacking in content caves are compared to surface?

This entire thread you’ve been comparing the caves to the surface when they really shouldn’t be imo they aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be treated as such, I don’t think time spent in the caves should be equal to time spent on the surface 

[Gi-Go]

Because nearly everything about return of them was balanced by someone who never played the game and needs a refresh I guess. 

Caves been empty since forever 

[Swiyss]

11 hours ago, Cassielu said:

The ocean is a problem, and the caves are just "not good enough". Fixing problem is more important

Best items in the game are the staves, amulets and thulecite gear.

Sure brightshade blablabla, but still does not invalidate 90% armor, the shield from the crown, the tentacles from the club, and everything else.

[Theukon-dos]

The caves already have Lightbulbs, which are the premier light source in the game. Rabbit Hutches, which are invaluable for many boss fights. And Ruins, which are so incredibly useful many players build entire playstyles around getting in and out of them as soon as possible.

 

All that is infinitly more than anything the ocean has.

[00petar00]

17 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

You just summed up why the ocean is the first priority for fixes players already care about the caves but the ocean needs alot more help getting there.

On a side note I do agree being able to see much further while your on a boat would make sailing abit more bareable even if it has to be a new item that allows it.

Ocean is already comparable to caves. Caves look big because they are but most biomes are empty.

16 hours ago, goblinball said:

I think giving the caves more content would be nice but the player doesn’t necessarily need to spend more time in them, there’s already quite a bit of stuff there 

90% of biomes don't have anything valuable in them that you want to go there even once.

16 hours ago, goblinball said:

This entire thread you’ve been comparing the caves to the surface when they really shouldn’t be imo they aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be treated as such, I don’t think time spent in the caves should be equal to time spent on the surface 

It should because it takes a lot of resources to host another shard that gives only like 15% of content that surface has and feels like a waste, because we have caves we can't have anything else instead.

10 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

The caves already have Lightbulbs, which are the premier light source in the game. Rabbit Hutches, which are invaluable for many boss fights. And Ruins, which are so incredibly useful many players build entire playstyles around getting in and out of them as soon as possible.

 

All that is infinitly more than anything the ocean has.

This is my personal opinion but I can play the game without everything you mentioned but it would become much more annoying without stone fruit bushes, banana bushes, monkey tails, anenemies and palmcone sprouts. The only exception would be star caller's staff.

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

On a side note I do agree being able to see much further while your on a boat would make sailing abit more bareable even if it has to be a new item that allows it.

The horizon expander. (Why is this early game item post ruins?)

[Mike23Ua]

18 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The horizon expander. (Why is this early game item post ruins?)

Because Klei does not quite understand the balance of their own game? They add these fun new items that they THINK will be useful but usually the problem is that by the time the player reaches the point of obtaining these items, they no longer need them.

[Mortalbane]

I agree with the question of the topic - why not caves, when they are so boring, they use another world shard, and they exist for eternity now. I also tend to play on public servers, and there you hardly ever see lategame stuff like cave rifts.

Idk the reasons, but i just want to believe that they understood that they f-ed up so hard with the ocean, that something needs to be done. I mean, having boring caves vs f-ed up ocean, the latter definitely feels more urgent.

And personally i don't care about the order they fix things in, i just hope they will fix them eventually. Ocean, caves, lunar / shadow, characters, small things like why favorite food gives hunger bonus instead of sanity, you name it.

[Cruvimaster]

The ocean is terrible to navigate alone (when you are still exploring the map).

You raise the sail and, with a very limited view of the map, you end up hitting the rocks and damaging the boat. 

If you use Winged Sail to improve speed, your navigation becomes even more dangerous.

I don't know how they will improve this, but it is expected in the next QOL and the biggest source of complaints about the ocean, with many using Shipwrecked as a reference.

As for the caves and ruins, I agree that Klei has abandoned these places. The late game improvements for the shadows are much lower than the moon, especially after the update that brought the 3 possessed giants. Caves should have specific biomes and not copies of surface biomes.

There is also the completely forgotten part of the evolution of the story about the ancient civilization of the ruins.

However, the next update has been expected for a long time and is very necessary for the game.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Because Klei does not quite understand the balance of their own game? They add these fun new items that they THINK will be useful but usually the problem is that by the time the player reaches the point of obtaining these items, they no longer need them.

It should also be a wheeler compass all in one.

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Ocean is already comparable to caves. Caves look big because they are but most biomes are empty.

In terms of loot yes but in terms of travel I'd say no. I'm not naive enough to think 1 qol update will fix this but hey they're trying at least.