boat rework ideas

[Copyafriend]

Since the upcoming update mentioned in their "halfway" lore teaser mentioned "ocean QOL", and I know we all love a bit of speculation.

what are some things you would like to see for the ocean?

 

personally, I would like to see an easier way to deal with sea stacks, it gets a little annoying having to be hyper-vigilant on the off chance that my boat speeds into a sea stack because I happened to be cooking on my boat. The bumpers are nice, but they don't help with my first voyage, and they really cut into my surface area. but I welcome any tips and tricks for this.

I would additionally like to see a cheap way to temporarily plug a hole without actually fixing the boat. maybe I could just jam some kelp in the hole and slow the damage down by 90%, failing to bring enough patches can be really frustrating, so it'd be nice if we had an easily accessed alternative.

 

I would also like to say, while the boats are fast, having to circle the entire mainland is a bit frustrating, while it's been mentioned many times, i would like to mention it again in the hopes of it being noticed:

Perhaps the mainland could be to one side or a corner of the map, so that the ocean is a bit more open. I feel like with this change you could more easily sail from destination to destination, while not worrying so much about "what side" of the mainland that a particular island is.

It may not be feasible though, it depends on map generation and how the ocean is coded of course.

 

 

[Theukon-dos]

Sailing itself really doesn't need the rework to be honest. I know a lot of people want them to be like Shipwrecked boats. But those people are wrong and their opinions should be disregarded.

 

Really the only change I'd make is tweaking the leak mechanic so that they can only happen if your ship is below X% HP. Maybe it would make it a bit to easy to avoid leaks outright. But if you try to brute force your way through a patch of sea stacks you're getting smashed anyways if you don't have any bumpers.

[Copyafriend]

34 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Really the only change I'd make is tweaking the leak mechanic so that they can only happen if your ship is below X% HP. Maybe it would make it a bit to easy to avoid leaks outright. But if you try to brute force your way through a patch of sea stacks you're getting smashed anyways if you don't have any bumpers.

I really like this idea, that's a very elegant solution

[goatt]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Sailing itself really doesn't need the rework to be honest. I know a lot of people want them to be like Shipwrecked boats. But those people are wrong and their opinions should be disregarded.

I could say the same thing. I could say you are wrong and your opinions should be disregarded since you said "a lot of people want them".

I think it's more helpful to give actual reasonings.

My reasoning: I've never played shipwrecked. But

1. I find moving around ocean is slow, clunky and frustrating.

2. I don't enjoy the mini game. It takes too much attention to either constantly click oar, or to constantly watch stacks to prevent crashing.

3. Boats force you to use boats, so much so that it prevents swimming / floating, which is essentially a version of shipwrecked boat. I want the floating feature to replace current drowning teleportation. I blame current boat mechanism for that because dev tried to make boat work in that way.

4. Moving with a small boat base should be an option, not requirement. Moving should be as smooth as moving. If smooth moving is forbidden by devs, at least some QoL to smooth boating.

 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Really the only change I'd make is tweaking the leak mechanic so that they can only happen if your ship is below X% HP.

thumbs up.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Sailing itself really doesn't need the rework to be honest. I know a lot of people want them to be like Shipwrecked boats. But those people are wrong and their opinions should be disregarded.

 

Really the only change I'd make is tweaking the leak mechanic so that they can only happen if your ship is below X% HP. Maybe it would make it a bit to easy to avoid leaks outright. But if you try to brute force your way through a patch of sea stacks you're getting smashed anyways if you don't have any bumpers.

I personally absolutely hate the flat raft looking cookie platform boats, I may as well be sailing around in a rubber inner tube.

I loved how boats in Shipwrecked and Hamlet had various different shapes and sizes and looked like well uhh actual boats?

Keep the sailing mechanics how they are now, give us back the old art designs.

But also… I beg of you to play DS Shipwrecked or Hamlet on an Xbox and then play DST on an Xbox- I’ll skip to the TL:DR and just state that boating was designed for a controller on SW/Hamlet it was easy to raise & lower sails, drop anchors or repair boat damage at the press of a Dpad button, and with DST well uhh.. yeah not so much..

So in conclusion- maybe people don’t actually want the “water shoes” sailing mechanics/physics back, but would love to have the shapes & quick button tap boat functions back?

 

[Copyafriend]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Keep the sailing mechanics how they are now, give us back the old art designs.

some new boat designs could be very nice, i can imagine a few ways it could work

 

29 minutes ago, goatt said:

I could say the same thing. I could say you are wrong and your opinions should be disregarded since you said "a lot of people want them".

I think he was joking around man, it's okay

I agree with a lot of your points, but I'm not sure what exactly to do about it.

It would be a lot of work to rip the boats straight out of shipwrecked is all. I mean I love the concept of sailing, and I think we're starting to get a decent number of POI, but sailing BETWEEN those points is the worst part of sailing.

side note: the waterlogged biome is my favorite, I love the entirely water setting of it, and it's a super unique addition, it's a shame there's little reason to visit it

[Jakepeng99]

5 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

but I welcome any tips and tricks for this.

You can use a client side commend to delete their hitbox/make them invisable so you can place stuff.

[goatt]

9 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

It would be a lot of work to rip the boats straight out of shipwrecked is all.

I personally would prefer walking style of movement on ocean, which is very similar to shipwrecked. But that’s direct conflict with the design of boat system and the promotion of boat system.

But the coding shouldn’t be hard, because it’s basically just walking.

I wish compromise could be made. Like if normal “walking” isn’t allowed, a weakened “walking” could be allowed. By weakened, I mean punishment such as slow speed, no hand slot (occupied by swimming for example) or no body slots (life ring), wetness, insane, freezing, attracting shark, faster hunger drain, etc.

This idea isn’t new to the game. Walking in the dark or cave is a weakened walking (no hand slot / body slot / head slot + insanity). Walking on the lunar island is also a weakened walking. Walking in the rain is also a weakened walking. It also means, walking on water can be such a thing and we can introduce new gears to help that in the same way miner’s hat and umbrella help. My idea is inspired by the game’s existing mechanics.

With well design constraints, walking on water won’t be a replacement of boating. It can complement boating and make it better.

For example, if constraint is that we can only walk within certain radius of boats, then we can pick items in water without having to row super close to it, super helpful in salt mining or ocean foraging. And when one guy take over the boating, the rest of the crew walk around the boat instead of having nothing to do.

Another possible constraint is draining meter. Players won’t drain and teleport after sinking. They instead of a drain meter. Players can walk on water (floating) before the drain meter runs out. This is similar to the boat radius constraints, but without attaching to any particular boat. And this is compatible to sunken boats where there is no boat around. It does everything mentioned before, plus self-rescue after boat being destroyed, such as releasing another boat when stuck in water.

But this type of walking won’t replace boating, because the downsides are so significant. However, boats can be designed to counter the downsides of walking on water. For example, the No body slots (no backpack) can be solved by leaving your backpack on the nearby boat. Boats can also be served as a camp to restored lost stamina, sanity or temperature.

In other words, walking will make boating better, while boats are still required for it to be viable or desirable, when constraints are well designed. It’s still impossible to travel like wereduck.

 

10 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

I think he was joking around man, it's okay

My bad, sorry @Theukon-dos

[sudoku]

DST boat mechanics are fine its just the ocean is rather small with only a couple points of interest. Sailing really only boils down to more or less sailing around the mainland in a circle. Its extremely boring compared to Shipwrecked where you constantly ran into islands and actually felt like you were discovering the map. 

 

Shipwrecked's ocean felt like an ocean. DST's "ocean" feels more like a lake 

[chirsg]

Boat sucks. It was very fun when you could kill more than 1 frostjaw in a recent beta, but sailing is an unwanted chore.