why does the mosquito branch exist.

[Dextops]

Like, ill take anything else over it if i'm being honest. Idk maybe the ability to take merms to caves? maybe better merm king trades? last ditch effort to add new merm types? idk, but just anything that isn't related to mosquitos.

[Mysterious box]

29 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

Skeeter bomb: Mosquito from the bomb did more base damage.  6 (double damage) for nonmastered bomb and 10 (sloghty more than tripple for mastered skeeter bomb. Mastered skeeter bomb also shouldn't have any bonus mosquitoes.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but honestly the only thing the skeeter bomb needs is to be cheaper and for the mosquitos to focus on your targets perhaps by officially treating them as followers when spawned from the bomb (and mosquitos need 100% droprate on their sacks)

In terms of being a weapon while it might not seem like it due to the faulty mosquito ai the damage of the bombs and mosquitos combined is actually surprisingly respectable when they actually focus with multiple bombs but it's definitely not respectable enough for it to cost 2 full bug nets to make 5 bombs.

[Mysterious box]

18 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

Just make itchy buddy (the perk) allow you to pick up mosquitos without needing a bugnet and problem solved.

I originally had the same idea but thinking back on it that'd likely be too powerful which is why I later proposed the cost of the craft drop to 2 live mosqutios and 1 sack with it making 2 bombs per craft rounding out to 10 bombs per net which sounds far more reasonable.

[lowercase skye]

Mosquito items are awesome. Lil itchy is great for existing in the swamp, the fertilizer is 20x as potent as Glommer Goop for ALL nutrients, and the Skeeter bombs are going to have some fantastic niche uses when people experiment with them: check out what a couple stacks of them do to a single Malbatross on account of their extremely low damage:

Even if you don't want to craft enough for them to actually kill her on their own, just having them to do their little 3 damage strikes over and over will increase the feathers you get by a LOT since each hit = a chance for one feather to drop. This is just one thing I found in a few minutes of messing with the bombs, I'm sure there's all sorts of things like this.

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, finn from human said:

check out what a couple stacks of them do to a single Malbatross on account of their extremely low damage:

 

They're also quite good against some bosses like ancient guardian.

[EatenCheetos]

It’s actually kind of cool as a concept and fits well with the theming and synergies of the characters

[DiogoW]

Kindly reminder that not all players are advanced players.
There are a lot of players out there struggling to deal with hounds, spiders, healing, sanity and getting food.

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

[NotGabriel]

20 hours ago, SSneaky said:

Just make itchy buddy (the perk) allow you to pick up mosquitos without needing a bugnet and problem solved.

EXACTLY! The most annoying part about these skills is how many bug nets you’re wasting on them 

53 minutes ago, DiogoW said:

Kindly reminder that not all players are advanced players.
There are a lot of players out there struggling to deal with hounds, spiders, healing, sanity and getting food.

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

I started out thinking it should be obliterated, but honestly with a little work they could be enjoyable. Having the mosquitoes not lock onto followers would be nice, whether with Itchy or not. There’s not much of an incentive to use mosquitos as they in-fight with your Merms currently. 
 

I personally wish there was an easier way to gather them up for the crafts too, bug nets just burn a hole in my resources.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, DiogoW said:

Kindly reminder that not all players are advanced players.
There are a lot of players out there struggling to deal with hounds, spiders, healing, sanity and getting food.

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

I hope I'm not being a pest but is there any chance you guys will consider making the craft for skeeter bombs a bit cheaper? Going through 2 full bug nets to make 5 of them seems excessive.

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, coomaker said:

Damn Bro calmdown The game is quite hard still

I'd say the game still has challenges rather than it being hard it's not wrong to say it's gotten easier overall as the many updates have toned the game down and focused on making survival easier overall which is likely what lead to the creation of rift content.

[Wormboi]

44 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

Consider this view point:

You guys still label this as an "Uncompromising Survival" game. 

Struggling, progressing, failing, learning, and improving have been score to the game since day one. If people continue to play they will inevitably improve, barring a disability of some sort.

Skill trees are earned via play time, but play time is how people improve. You aren'tmaking the gsme easier for pure begginers, you sre doubling down on how much easier the game gets when you continue to play it.

I haven't seen nearly the amount of complaints about the scrap book that I have about skill trees and refreshes. It seems that all you guys have done for years is make the game easier and easier.

In fact, you have made the game easier for everyone accross the board via refreshes for every character, and are doubling down on skill trees. Atleast you can opt put of skill trees.

Cant opt out of people using them to trivialize the game on a multiplayer setting though. And we get a single toggleable option to make players take more damage (after complaints) as the singular change dedicated veteran players desire for more hardcore survival gameplay.

So, clearly, the games marketing does not match the intention of the modern development team. So, can you guys do something about that? If you are so scared of new player struggle then change the games marketing. Call it a sandbox, a casual party game, whatever, but I think the msrketing should stop lying.

Revolutionary idea, how about players  who strugglr with "hounds, spiders, healing and getting food" use some those config options in world gen?

Sure would love a config to disable skilltrees. Or character refreshes. Or item buffs. Or to return stuff like dragonfly as a seasonal giant.

The words "Uncompromising survival" Never meant anything even back then. Its just marketing term they used for the game.

[_zwb]

2 hours ago, DiogoW said:

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

Sure, a meta progression can give players the feeling that they are still making progress despite dying all the time, like the old XP system. I'm fine with that, but does it have to be boring skill trees where you just get stronger overtime? Why couldn't these be something you earn by actually doing things? The feeling of actually earning a skill/upgrade is very different from I get this because I played for a while, and a lot more engaging than the latter.

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, DiogoW said:

Kindly reminder that not all players are advanced players.
There are a lot of players out there struggling to deal with hounds, spiders, healing, sanity and getting food.

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

Of course there are still new players who struggle with these things. And it's not hard to see that point of view. Everyone here used to be a player like that after all.

The thing is, those struggles. Dealing with hounds and spiders. Waning closer and closer to death as our health and sanity bars trickled downwards. Those things where what made the game fun.

I don't want to sound too cynical. I fully admit that I've been letting my emotions get the better of me a bit to much lately. But I would genuinly argue that adding skill trees or other features is; if anything; making the game worse due to not understanding what gave Don't Starve appeal in the first place.

That's not to say classic Don't Starve was perfect in that department. And there are features that make the game more accessable that do great things. The Scrapbook for example makes the game much less wiki-dependent than it was before it's introduction. But hard and even player-unfriendly games are popular. Dark Souls is the most obvious example. But you also have games like Touhou, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Issac, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, and- well- Don't Starve. 

[Mike23Ua]

24 minutes ago, Wormboi said:

The words "Uncompromising survival" Never meant anything even back then. Its just marketing term they used for the game.

Maybe.. but if I knew anything at all about game coding I could slap together a more uncompromising version of DST in a couple of minutes.

As just an Example: Solo Don’t Starve had a segment in Story Mode where players needed to carefully navigate a maze of Maxwells Toothtraps without setting them off. Which is exactly what SeaEnemy do only… there’s no maze to navigate and they’re all benefit and no actual risk.

Now then, imagine an island slam full of them and something you need to reach for an important task (like Monkey Queen to reverse your Wonkey Curse) Dead Center.

It may not be the Uber hardcore super uncompromising mode, but it’s more of a challenge than what the game currently poses.

I enjoyed the original release of moon quay content and the Wonkey curse, where trinkets transcended death with you and the only way to remove them was trades with the Queen but instead of even leaving that option in the game for people who enjoyed the more uncompromising version, Klei instead Nerfed it to be much less forgiving so players have an easier time.

But… there are some people who’s “fun” in a game comes from suffering, it’s a huge reason why I sometimes build a base in the middle of a meteor land field knowing the destruction I’m intentionally imposing on my pretty base build.

I actually enjoyed being forced to be stuck as a monkey for 6 hours with no way to remove that curse.

So I can defiantly see where scrimbles frustrations come from.

We’re steadily headed toward 2025 and I’d like for Klei to heavily consider that maybe the game needs different world Gen settings, presets, options etc..

Personally just as easily as Klei added skill trees, I’d like to see a new game mode where you have harsher downsides  that heavily impact gameplay. But this thread is not the place to provide suggestions for those downsides.

Im simply stating that instead of having game content in Klei’s own words quote “Try very hard not to spawn in your base”

MAYBE they could offer a world Gen setting, harder game mode, or preset that gives the middle finger to me and my base?

More variety in how we play our games is rarely if ever, a bad thing.

[_zwb]

18 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Im simply stating that instead of having game content in Klei’s own words quote “Try very hard not to spawn in your base”

 

How many times do I have to repeat myself that unstoppable forces destroying your base is not a fair challenge? I thought we were done with this thing ages ago.

[YouKnowWho]

4 minutes ago, finn from human said:

The goal of the game has changed over the years from "survive while distracting the four giants from destroying your base" to "survive the existing threats while simultaneously doing the multiple 13+ hour questlines with 30k health bosses at the end that both reward you with even more challenges on top of those existing threats". I don't think people really consider how the goal of the game changing from survive to quest lines ambiently puts you in so many more dangerous situations. Nobody's ever complained that Terraria is too easy and that you can build a huge wooden village and then close the game, because they have to be fighting the bosses and going to dangerous locations to progress the whole time. Not only do we have that, but we also have rain, darkness, sanity, hunger, hound/worm waves, and a ton of other environmental hazards that will be always on for massive amounts of time. If a threat like hounds gets easier, it really doesn't mean much outside of a new player perspective, because the danger of hounds isn't inherent but instead comes from a wave of them combining with hail or a moonstorm or a boss fight or etc other hazard. It's literally so fine, the game has only gotten easier if you don't touch any of the things added in the last half a decade..

I haven't considered things from that angle before. It's interesting. Thinking back, I can say most of my deaths result from me stretching myself too thin in attempting to 'stay on schedule.'

[Mike23Ua]

7 minutes ago, _zwb said:

How many times do I have to repeat myself that unstoppable forces destroying your base is not a fair challenge? I thought we were done with this thing ages ago.

Yeah? Well neither is map modifiers for a game like Mutant League Football where the football field randomly opens up a black hole in the field that could potentially ruin your play.

”Different Strokes for Different Folks” but the point remains that there IS a group of people who are actually into that sort of thing.

I have a feeling you would defiantly throw your controller or keyboard through your Tv or computer screen in frustration over the types of games that I play.. lol.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, some people just aren’t into it and that’s fine…

But- That’s also how you walk into a temple in the hamlet dlc and as soon as it loads you in the door way you step on an unavoidable floor trap that sets of a wall arrow bursting 3 vases that let out scorpions.

[Dextops]

2 hours ago, DiogoW said:

Kindly reminder that not all players are advanced players.
There are a lot of players out there struggling to deal with hounds, spiders, healing, sanity and getting food.

Skill trees are a form of meta progression, and having skills that potentially help beginners is something we try to do.
As a veteran myself, I understand the frustration, but please try to visualize other points of view.

I agree, in fact it's a big reason i like the amphibian branch. It's something i'd rarely use/benefit from but it allows for variety in how people will set up their skill trees depending on their skill level(though i wouldn't mind having the first 2 skills replaced with something else). The thing is i don't see how this is applicable to the mosquito branch in its current form. I just feel as if in it's current state it's a waste of space that could've been used for something more useful. The skills seem so underwhelming for both beginners and people who are accustomed to the game.

[Mysterious box]

10 minutes ago, finn from human said:

The goal of the game has changed over the years from "survive while distracting the four giants from destroying your base" to "survive the existing threats while simultaneously doing the multiple 13+ hour questlines with 30k health bosses at the end that both reward you with even more challenges on top of those existing threats".

It doesn't take 13+ hours to finsh those quests. The higher hp is to compensate for the fact the game is multiplayer not single player yes there are people who play alone but the game isn't tailored to that kind of player. Also that end game is a entirely optional increase in difficulty which is why I said specifically the game is not hard it just has challenges. Post rift content is a attempt to appeal to veteran players while pre rift is more so meant for casual players I agree the direction of the game has changed in fact we all do but that's why the early game is being made easier and if you being honest with yourself you should know that is simply a true assessment unless you started player later in dst's cycle which is also fine.

17 minutes ago, finn from human said:

I don't think people really consider how the goal of the game changing from survive to quest lines ambiently puts you in so many more dangerous situations.

No people are very aware some hate it some like it that just varies from person to person.

19 minutes ago, finn from human said:

Nobody's ever complained that Terraria is too easy and that you can build a huge wooden village and then close the game, because they have to be fighting the bosses and going to dangerous locations to progress the whole time.

I feel like your missing the point entirely here boss fights isn't what the discussion is about it's the aspects around survival becoming trivialized. Be it from extreme character powercreep, resource powercreep, and various other feature powercreeps that move the game away from it's trial and error roots. I don't necessarily hate all the powercreep and part of that might be because while I've been around for awhile I haven't been around in the complete beginning but it's not hard to see that a level of charm has been lost in dst's transition to be as convenient and new player friendly as possible.

45 minutes ago, finn from human said:

Not only do we have that, but we also have rain, darkness, sanity, hunger, hound/worm waves, and a ton of other environmental hazards that will be always on for massive amounts of time. If a threat like hounds gets easier, it really doesn't mean much outside of a new player perspective, because the danger of hounds isn't inherent but instead comes from a wave of them combining with hail or a moonstorm or a boss fight or etc other hazard. It's literally so fine, the game has only gotten easier if you don't touch any of the things added in the last half a decade.

You don't have to enter the end game for one and these mechanics were even a part of the first don't starve where they had questlines and enviromental hazards as well. I get your focusing on the end game but keep in mind power creep has greatly reduced the impact of these mechanics due to the insane surplus of food in dst it's rare a player starves unless they actively avoid seeking out food. Sanity options are a fair bit more accessible with some characters like Wendy having powerful built in sanity recovery options a group can make use of. When it comes to darkness we have a character with permanent night vision, permanent heating, permanent cooling, and another now with full immunity to the negative effects of wetness and all of the mechanics related to spring. We have characters with personal weapons stronger than what was the strongest weapons of the game. We have characters with perks that are equivalent to ruins gear. We have passive food sources that require zero player upkeep or tricking of the ai. We can call creatures to us that we used to have to explore/wait to find/fight. To avoid going on forever the point is we have far more free time when it comes to surviving than we ever had previously even when considering the end game which tries to curb that. This isn't a veteran is out of touch with what difficulty is moment as even casual players agree that the game is getting much easier or should we just lump anyone who says that into the out of touch veteran category?

46 minutes ago, finn from human said:

It's literally so fine, the game has only gotten easier if you don't touch any of the things added in the last half a decade.

You do realize most of the content added in the last half a decade was added specifically to make the new player experience easier with rifts only being a more recent addition.

Also it's getting really tiring seeing people plug their ears and pretend all the content being specifically added to lower the games overall difficulty isn't doing exactly that despite that very much being said to be the intention then pretty much just saying no it's just that you and anyone who feels that way is just too experienced.

[Soul7k]

22 hours ago, SSneaky said:

Just make itchy buddy (the perk) allow you to pick up mosquitos without needing a bugnet and problem solved.

this is a good idea, though silk is not really an issue for me it would remove a step which would be nice.

22 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but honestly the only thing the skeeter bomb needs is to be cheaper and for the mosquitos to focus on your targets perhaps by officially treating them as followers when spawned from the bomb (and mosquitos need 100% droprate on their sacks)

I agree with this. From what I understand they are causing chaos in your merm armies at the moment. Even if only temporary before despawning if they were treated as followers they would synergize better and tank shots for your merms instead of from your merms.

11 minutes ago, Dextops said:

The thing is i don't see how this is applicable to the mosquito branch in its current form. I just feel as if in it's current state it's a waste of space that could've been used for something more useful. The skills seem so underwhelming for both beginners and people who are accustomed to the game.

It gives you a cheap healing salve that heals from 15 to 25 with max perks that heals your merms more. In concept the mosquitos can take aggro off you and your merms and tank some hits. and the fertilizer is a faily cheap and spammable alternate craft. It's not a bad tree to go down at all. It just needs maybe a mosquito behavior tweak and maybe have the ability to shoot the heal at merms like a dart

[Dextops]

Just now, Soul7k said:

It gives you a healing salve that heals from 15 to 25 with max perks that heals your merms more. In concept the mosquitos can take aggro off you and your merms and tank some hits. and the fertilizer is a faily cheap and spammable alternate craft. It's not a bad tree to go down at all.

The fertilizzer is perfect in it's current state. The blood shot is extremely mediocre if you don't spend the extra skill point on that one other skill i forgot the name of (and even then that skill only applies to merm guards not regular merms so you'll have no idea when to heal them, making it an AOE heal and just replaced that one skill would be fine though) and the mosquitos kinda suck as they just keep wandering around instead of fighting the target and even attack my merms sometimes, making them work like actual followers would be a big improvement .

[Mysterious box]

13 minutes ago, Dextops said:

The thing is i don't see how this is applicable to the mosquito branch in its current form. I just feel as if in it's current state it's a waste of space that could've been used for something more useful. The skills seem so underwhelming for both beginners and people who are accustomed to the game.

I can't speak for the devs but I think it was the solution to the complaint people had of Wurt doesn't really do anything before her merms are setup and when she isn't with them she's "Basically vegan Wilson" as some people like to say. These skills give her something to do outside of merms even if they aren't very impactful which is likely why they're bundled together.

[Soul7k]

3 minutes ago, Dextops said:

The fertilizzer is perfect in it's current state. The blood shot is extremely mediocre if you don't spend the extra skill point on that one other skill i forgot the name of (and even then that skill only applies to merm guards not regular merms so you'll have no idea when to heal them, making it an AOE heal and just replaced that one skill would be fine though) and the mosquitos kinda suck as they just keep wandering around instead of fighting the target and even attack my merms sometimes, making them work like actual followers would be a big improvement .

Maybe they could also consider extending the skill to have your regular merms run away when they need to heal would also be nice that way the indicator covers all the bases. Lol chucking the bloodshot like a water baloon and healing everyone in a blast radius would be hilarious.

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, Soul7k said:

Maybe they could also consider extending the skill to have your regular merms run away when they need to heal would also be nice that way the indicator covers all the bases. Lol chucking the bloodshot like a water baloon and healing everyone in a blast radius would be hilarious.

Honestly I think the best option would probably be to make it a aoe healing mist that activates via your merms running through it healing each merm once per mist then changing sensible merm into a skill that just lets you see merm hp bars over their heads.

[AliceShiki]

2 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Dark Souls is the most obvious example. But you also have games like Touhou, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Issac,

I can comment on all of those. Let's go over them real quick (sort of. The paragraphs are kinda long... I'm bad at being concise).

1) Dark Souls: Primarily a pattern-learning game. It's kinda unforgiving, but it's something you naturally learn as you play the game and becomes easier and easier as you try fights again as you start learning the patterns better (because execution isn't a big deal in it). Moreover, Magic and Heavy Armor are 2 different options that remove a good chunk of the difficulty of the game and can make you clear it much easier. You also already have multiple starting options with some being better than others without you needing to even think about it (Knight is obviously better than Hollow any new player will instantly know that, for example) ... As in, a game that actually puts a lot of effort in making things fairly easy to a new player who is willing to put in the time to learn things, but it also gives you plenty of options to make things harder on yourself if you're an experienced player.

2) Touhou: First of all, all games have 4 difficulties (or well, all Windows games. I didn't play the PC-98 stuff much and forgot most of them, so I'm gonna assume you were talking about the Windows games... I mean, who plays the PC-98 games anyways? Especially Highly Responsive to Prayers. That one isn't even a Shmp). Then, 6th game aside, all games allow you to clear the entire story and unlock the Extra Stage by playing on Easy. Also, the first character of the game in all games up to the 11th was always Reimu A with a Homing Shot (11th still has it btw, but it's Reimu C with a pseudo-homing), which is the most beginner-friendly option because it makes you not need to worry too much about hitting and focus more on dodging and learning the patterns. Not to mention configurable options to increase the number of Lives you have, and plenty of Bombs to save you from a near-death situation... Also, in all games before 11th (games after the 11th have better bombs, btw), the Bombs are extremely powerful and can be used to very quickly clear any spell card from bosses that you're struggling with, with the exception of the final boss' final spell card and the Extra Boss (separate game mode that is meant to be extra hard) spell cards. Also, multiple games allow you to get a Good Ending even if you do use Continues... As in, the game takes a lot of care in making sure players of multiple different skill levels can clear it. With different options available to make things harder for yourself if you're a more experienced player.

3) Super Meat Boy: Slowly starts with very simple and easy stages for you to play in (slowly increasing difficulty as you progress), with optional objectives in them in case you wanna challenge yourself more. The game also makes sure to let you restart instantly when you die so as to let you keep on practicing over and over again very quickly until you succeed. It also allows you to skip a buttload of stages of each world while still being able to move forward in the storyline in case you are stuck in a stage you just don't wanna play anymore... As in, the game has plenty of options to let you further challenge yourself, but also gives a lot of options for people to progress when they're struggling in the game due to not being as skillful as other players.

4) Binding of Isaac: Game starts with only the most simple and straightforward character being available, and starts with very short runs. As you progress you start unlocking characters, with most of the early ones being very simple and straightforward too, with the easiest to unlock being Meg, who simply has a lot of health and built-in heal, which is a character that helps new players a lot, even if experienced players find her kinda worthless. Then, as you progress and start getting better at the game, you start unlocking harder final bosses to fight, new characters that are more complex, more items that can add greater variety to your gameplay... As in, the game makes sure to make the new player experience as friendly as possible, with things as simplified as they can make it, to only start adding more difficulty and complexity later on after you have cleared multiple runs.

So like... All 4 games you listed (you listed more than that, but I dunno the other games you listed) try to take things slow to teach new players mechanics, try to ease the new player experience and give options to help the new player properly interact with the game and improve. Until you get better later on and can then start doing more challenging runs with more restrictions imposed upon yourself and the like.

... I dunno, it sounds pretty similar to Don't Starve? To me it sounds.

Easing the new player experience and making things more convenient for them is normal. Even if some things may sound unnecessary power creep to an experienced player, or plain useless, they may still serve their purpose for a new player. Which is part of what Klei is trying to do there.

So basically, I don't see those games as being player unfriendly in any way. I think they all try to ease the new player experience in the best way they can while still delivering the overall experience they want to deliver. I don't think Don't Starve is acting in a way any different to what those games do.