Winter, regrowth and food overabundance affecting gameplay health

[GenomeSquirrel]

I can't really even answer question 2, winter shuts off many things that make scavenging worthwhile, and winter temperatures encourage sitting in base and chilling ...

 

But overall these are too plant based, and food wasn't scarce even before most of the things you're referencing existed

[arubaro]

7 hours ago, ChintzyGnat said:

I think forums users need to remember that once you get good at the game, food is obviously easier to collect. Nerfing food early game would really hurt new players and would barely impact veterans at all. 

Sometimes isnt about balance but inmersion and coherence. Seeing tropical plants growing in winter makes no sense.

Nobody that is good at the game gathers berries but is a good touch to make them not grow in winter plus these mechanics makes people who is learning the game not be dependent of an unique mechanic but looking for to experience other items and food sources 

[ChintzyGnat]

56 minutes ago, arubaro said:

good touch to make them not grow in winter

Don't bushes already not grow in winter? 

Yeah bananas seem silly in winter but it's not like I can change that. 

Your last point is really confusing on what your trying to say.

[arubaro]

11 minutes ago, ChintzyGnat said:

Don't bushes already not grow in winter? 

Yes, that is what tried to say. Doesn't affect good players but is a nice touch and incentives looking for different food sources for new players

Same could be for other food sources. Makes no sense to gather bananas in winter 

 

I will futher and say that berry bushes and bananas should lose the fruit during winter. They should stay in a state similar to harvested because fruits perish during cold season so player should harvest the plants before winter or after, not during it

[Swiyss]

I don't really think Klei will change winter on how it currently is, asking for changes in current gameplay might be futile.

Asking for changes or arguing that we need changes on multiplayer rebalance when most people commenting here probably play mainly solo is kinda naive also. This was a question put into devs minds a long long time ago.

Their focus right now is the new content, so imo the best thing we can do is ask for changes to winter after opening rifts on the surface and changing the game's mechanics.

So because of that, in my opinion I voted mostly disagreeing with the author. I don't really think that we need to make getting food in winter any harder than it is. But:

1. I do think that banana bushes and figs should not grow in winter.

2. Crops growing in winter is fine by me, requiring killing a boss or crafting a staff to make some kinda useless crops is not a good thing (this is another discussion, but basically 4 crops are just.. not very worth farming for).

Now, if we're actually trying to change the game after rifts to be harder, then I think that I agree.

Lunar corruption could maybe spread some permanent environment changes through the rifts portal, making the world colder at the surface and hotter in the caves. That would make running from summer harder and would give a reason to change original winter and world environment to be a harder place. Let's call it hard winter and hard summer for naming purposes only.

In hard winter, carrots won't regrow anymore, farms then take longer to grow unless there's heating close to it (or some sort of protection against frosting), a new mob migrates to the constant in winter like polar bears (they steal meat in drying racks and wonder around the surface fighting on sight) lunar koalephammoths (they can be found fighting hounds on hunt trail ends) sea otters (they can be found eating kelp when navigating the ocean [hunt in oceans maybe?] and drop their skin that can be used for a new strong insulation gear), snow will overtake structures requiring maintenance to use etc..

As for hard summer, cave rifts could make the caves hotter in summer, making some fissures create lava that would spread and the heat would be unbearable for lightbulb plants, making them useless at certain periods of eruptions, this lava eruption mechanic could occur occasionally and spread volcanic dust all over the caves, graphics similar to snow falling could be added but as volcanic dust, survivors would cough and need dust protections to survive, the heat in summer could make bunnymen change fur to a harder skin making them more resistant to attacks, rock lobsters could migrate to a colder biome underground to survive the heat (a new NPC between them can be found and befriended to get a recipe for Rock Blockter that can be used to block fissures from creating dreadstone outcroppings, it would also prevent this new "lava" from spreading, but only in an area around that fissure), lichen could be affected by the heat and ferment (similar to cactus flowers in summer) to create a white-ish substance on top of it called Lichen spores that can be gathered and used as a crafting recipe for Liching (a salty substance that can be crafted into a recipe [yolkerishings] and given to beefalos as food making the taming process easier, as well as be used to craft a healing salve item that heals for 40).

[arubaro]

7 hours ago, finn from human said:

Right now we are in a game full of options, and I would hate for those options to go back to the same few sources of meat in winter that we all used in 2015 just for the sake of making the game "harder." I would rather have the option to spend several mostly-night days farming than NOT have that option and have to go kill volt goats and beefalo again like every fun update to the game never happened.

Also I think it's really odd how much of the posts on this forum are slamming the moon quay as not worth going to, knobbly trees not being worth the effort, and ocean fishing being far too time-consuming and not lucrative enough... and then everyone in this thread is talking about how bad it is that these things are available in winter. Even in my friend group of ocean enjoyers, I'm the only one who actively uses figs. I am begging you not to call for nerfs to things that nobody in the world except me is even using.

I never heard someone saying that moon quay loot isn't worth it. Less considering that moon gleams gathering got highly buffed in the last update

What should be nerfed in winter (included strong meat sources) can be buffed in other seasons

Why we hace seasons if they dont have any impact or changes other than snow or rain falling?

7 hours ago, finn from human said:

.

[Valase]

4 hours ago, arubaro said:

Yes, that is what tried to say. Doesn't affect good players but is a nice touch and incentives looking for different food sources for new players

Same could be for other food sources. Makes no sense to gather bananas in winter 

 Berries don't grow in winter because just like everything from the DS, it is meant to make you stop "turtling" on your base. If bananas didn't grow during winter, we would have another barrage of posts about people not wanting to become monke.

4 hours ago, arubaro said:

I will futher and say that berry bushes and bananas should lose the fruit during winter. They should stay in a state similar to harvested because fruits perish during cold season so player should harvest the plants before winter or after, not during it

They should start to rot if they were ripen but not picked for more than a few days. This way they would "last" longer in winter and not so long in summer and start to need manure more oftenly just like the avocados.

[Pet Rock]

2 hours ago, Swiyss said:

lava eruption mechanic

YES the rifts would be the perfect opportunity to add a lava volcano type biome, especially since it could replace some empty biomes in the caves. There could even be sealed off magma vents in such biomes before rifts even open to foreshadow the development. Maybe ancient ruins could rise from the magma and house the ink blights (I've always felt they felt sorts out of place spawning from random vents). The possibilities are ENDLESS and I really hope klei takes advantage of this opportunity.

Anyways to stay on topic I think bananas should only grow in summer to not completely overshadow the bananas in the caves and make the bananas unique from other plants. Stone fruit, however, should still grow in winter since they seem like they would be able to endure extreme conditions.

[Kevinnator]

I agree that it's not that difficult to survive off of farm crops in winter but I don't think it's an issue.
What's really gonna change in difficulty if you nerf it? People mostly make meatballs which is much faster and easier to get than spending time farming. Monster meat is just brought to you from hound waves and you'll get more by fighting spiders for their loot. Filler just being fixed with ice, which you collect anyway for ice fling-o-matics.

[Jakepeng99]

The poll options for number 2 are extremely weird. Where is option for nothing at all? And they are extremely specific.

Alot of them are too weird and specific.

[Szczuku]

22 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

Yeah figs are just way too convinient and accessible compared to the much more time intensive setup of killing pigs and spiders. Every server I join people are just surviving off of figs, they make the game way too easy. Quite frankly figs destroy the game balance completely and should be priority number 1 when considering foods thart need a nerf, although mandrakes and deerclops eyeballs both come pretty close to taking that number one spot.

Ok?

During winter mob respawn timers should be doubled and spider nests should produce 25% less spiders

I can keep going

During winter bundling wraps become brittle and opening them destroys the wax paper (you get 4 by killing Klaus anyways). Salt boxes should become frozen shut and impossible to open but the food inside loses no freshness

There should be more 'punishment recipes' made with ice, such as soggy meat or thin soup

There should be an event where hungry birds, rabbits or moles attempt to destroy your winter crops in the farm tiles

[grm9]

31 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

There should be more 'punishment recipes' made with ice, such as soggy meat or thin soup

There should be an event where hungry birds, rabbits or moles attempt to destroy your winter crops in the farm tiles

that's extremely pointless, these changes'll only affect newbies, farming and crock pot are already suboptimal

32 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

During winter mob respawn timers should be doubled and spider nests should produce 25% less spiders

so just more time spent going between dens and much less risk of aggroing too many at a time

you're only hurting newbies through these changes, that's pointless

33 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Salt boxes should become frozen shut and impossible to open but the food inside loses no freshness

nerfing a suboptimal sidegrade of a suboptimal thing

34 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

During winter bundling wraps become brittle and opening them destroys the wax paper (you get 4 by killing Klaus anyways). Salt boxes should become frozen shut and impossible to open but the food inside loses no freshness

so just more annoyance if you summon CC in winter, i don't remember when was last time i've used bundling wraps for food other than bundling nearly stale cooked stuff and never unbundling it because of having enough food

12 hours ago, arubaro said:

I will futher and say that berry bushes and bananas should lose the fruit during winter. They should stay in a state similar to harvested because fruits perish during cold season so player should harvest the plants before winter or after, not during it

there's no point in nerfing suboptimal stuff that only newbies use

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, Kevinnator said:

I agree that it's not that difficult to survive off of farm crops in winter but I don't think it's an issue.
What's really gonna change in difficulty if you nerf it? People mostly make meatballs which is much faster and easier to get than spending time farming. Monster meat is just brought to you from hound waves and you'll get more by fighting spiders for their loot. Filler just being fixed with ice, which you collect anyway for ice fling-o-matics.

Meatballs are much slower to get than farming, you clearly aren't getting ice for flingos if you're making meatballs with it. Honey is much faster & easier to get, though, and that lasts long enough that even without bundling you can just keep it through the winter.

[00petar00]

16 hours ago, arubaro said:

Nobody that is good at the game gathers berries but is a good touch to make them not grow in winter plus these mechanics makes people who is learning the game not be dependent of an unique mechanic but looking for to experience other items and food sources 

Its good for immersion that doesn't really matter, berry bushes growing in winter would really help new players to survive.

10 hours ago, Valase said:

Berries don't grow in winter because just like everything from the DS, it is meant to make you stop "turtling" on your base. If bananas didn't grow during winter, we would have another barrage of posts about people not wanting to become monke.

It doesn't really stop you as bundle wraps are much easier to get in DS and meat is always amazing food source that you can have near your base If you place spider den or make some other meat farms.

 

The main issue is that experienced players want game to be more difficult but new players wouldn't be able to survive winter easily because they can't go to lunar island or kill mobs for meat without taking damage and won't know best healing sources.

Game can't be balanced around players that think winter is easy because so many servers lose all players as soon as winter starts.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I may be wrong on this, or right, but the immersion part to the game yea that was a good point.

[Valase]

45 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

It doesn't really stop you as bundle wraps are much easier to get in DS and meat is always amazing food source that you can have near your base If you place spider den or make some other meat farms.

You have to remember that first the berries got to the DS constant, and a few years later the Bee queen was introduced to the DST, only then the bundling wrap was added into the base game (DS), so whether you can bundle the berries or not, is not relevant to why the berries stop growing in winter.

In my very first comment I mentioned that meat is just the solid winner of "winter" food sources, as none of the autumm meat sources stops working and a mactusk pack is a meaty stew waiting to be cooked with the benefit of having a chance of giving you two of the best items in the game (by when you acquire it/ with their difficulty).

[chirsg]

I agree that winter should heavily restrict growth of plants, but there is one problem

 

 

It wouldn't be fair to her.

But also, the difference is, the game is still near unforgiving to new players. It's the same old story. The game has gotten too easy for survival vets. 

 

I almost think along with endless, wilderness and survival, a new game mode with it's own rewards and punishment should be added in. But that's a whole other can of worms.

I wouldn't want to call it "Expert mode" or "Master mode" because that's hardcore weirdo gatekeeping, and people like me would OCD so hard and play nothing except for that as the norm.

 

Something like solstice mode. That would be interesting. Have the constant behave similarly to george RR martin's lore where winter and summer last for years instead of a few days, and add unique challenges based on that.

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, chirsg said:

agree that winter should heavily restrict growth of plants, but there is one problem

 

 

It wouldn't be fair to her.

Her skilltree gonna be cool she need compensation, and stuff that makes her downside a more unique challenge.

Not being able to eat meat when easy alternatives are available is just an ok limitation. But, having a season where those alternatives are limited and require active effort to get makes it interesting.

I sorta want this challenge to come back as Wurt. Finding the best way to get food in Winter used to be a big thing before people and myself got good enough to get stone fruit and kelp.

Things like figs should still grow in Winter. Kelp should grow slower. Stockpilling stone fruit before Winter already seems valid.

 

 

She can still turn merms into kelp anyway with merm wars and a flingo.

[lowercase skye]

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

During winter mob respawn timers should be doubled and spider nests should produce 25% less spiders

I will plant 4 nests instead of 1.

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

During winter bundling wraps become brittle and opening them destroys the wax paper

And in spring they become soggy and in summer they get dry and in autumn they get covered in leaves and in the caves they're afraid of the dark and in the ruins they have nightmares

Anyway I will unbundle a bit of long-spoil-time food and put it in my icebox for the winter.

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Salt boxes should become frozen shut and impossible to open but the food inside loses no freshness

I will open my saltbox and move the food to the ice box, since apparently the salt box is overpowered now.

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

There should be more 'punishment recipes' made with ice, such as soggy meat or thin soup

i will simply not cook those, since I already have good knowledge of crock pot recipes and pay attention to every update and so will see this change, unlike new players who will now have a harder time for no reason because it doesn't actually affect the skilled players that this change was seemingly aimed at. I don't have to care though because I'm not them.

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

There should be an event where hungry birds, rabbits or moles attempt to destroy your winter crops in the farm tiles

Lord of the fruit flies is a full-on boss that spawns from farming and pretty much nobody complains about him being too hard to take down. I will just kill the birds and rabbits and moles. It's a good thing this extra obstacle was added to these farm plants that take constant tending and a constant drain of flint/gold and don't grow during a good 60% of winter because of how long the nights are, or I might have spent several days to farm a single batch of potatoes or uhhhh asparagus I guess?

My point with all this is that no, these sorts of changes will not increase the difficulty of the game, they will add one new incredibly-forced hazard that you as a skilled player instantly learn to overcome and now the game's too easy again. So now pengulls need to raid your base, and stone fruit bushes need to turn to ice and shatter, but then I will just kill the pengulls like hounds and dig up my stone fruit bushes before they turn to ice and shatter, so now we need MORE new hazards to "challenge" me as a skilled player of 4k+ hours, meanwhile new players are now having to deal with the "gotcha!" moment of every single structure turning to ice and shattering because I wasn't struggling enough as a skilled player of 4k+ hours and honestly the fact that I could still use mushroom farms in the caves during winter was super OP though.

[. . .]

winter in dst is super casual and lame unlike normal ds it's a lot better

[somethin]

3 hours ago, . . . said:

winter in dst is super casual and lame unlike normal ds it's a lot better

Normal DS is lame too though? It's literally the same as DST but even more boring and less stuff to do. If you count world hopping to sw/hamlet during winter does that even count as winter when you literally skip it for a whole different season?

[GimplyGoose]

I'm glad they're are more options for food nowadays. You have kelp, lure plants, stonefruit, bananas, RWYS farming, and figs. I'm not certain that it really matters if they grow in winter or not. Even if you did 0 food gathering in the entire winter, you could get by on bundled food, food in your bearger bin, or even food stored in a salt box.

I think it is a it weird that bananas grow during the winter, but let's say you got wonkeyed in the winter is nice to be able to pick bananas to fix that without going to the caves.

[arubaro]

10 hours ago, . . . said:

winter in dst is super casual and lame unlike normal ds it's a lot better

What is better about ds winter? Is literally the same season with the same mechanics

Some people need to replay old ds before saying these kind of things

[grm9]

5 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Is literally the same season with the same mechanics

thermal stone was bad, things burned for less time and fires spread nearly instantly 

[Szczuku]

3 hours ago, arubaro said:

What is better about ds winter?

It better conveyed the feeling of despair. There were less sources of food than there are in dst. Sure, if you knew what you were doing then you most likely had stockpiles of meat and jerky laying around before the snow even fell. But during winter in singleplayer you can only rely on meat you hunt. As opposed to dst where you can have mushroom planters growing in the caves, banana and stone fruit bushes growing through the cold for whatever reason, farm plots bursting with giant potatoes, pumpkins and carrots, kelp on the side of your base. And all of that on top of your pigmen farm.

Also, in singleplayer you can't just spawn Deerclops in to kill him and not worry about him for the rest of the season