Ocean update wasn't done due justice

[chirsg]

I hope in the future we get an ocean update with some more care. It should be troubling that a majority of the threads here are centric on Wurt and Winona. The fact is that this won't change. Those two are in the hot seat. 

They have completely stolen ocean's thunder.

 

I don't even need to cite proof from the forums. Almost no one is interacting with the ocean to observe changes made to it. The archaic boat is just a glorified cookie V2 and crab king remains a means to an end no matter what. 
I've been on pubs in the beta and even locked games and I've seen that people are still on land building catapults and mutating merms.

 

I've already given my suggestions on the forums about how it would be better if archaic boat got bonuses to movement and agility, and also allowing logs to become driftwood after some time being placed into the ocean. Hell, if it so pleases, let boards be turned into driftwood.

 

I truly think that the sheer lack of interaction with the ocean should provide some semblance of feedback. No one wants to do it. 

The changes with Wurt and Winona, some being controversial as they are, people are still interacting with it. It's front and center part of the game. With sailing, it is not. 

[xhyom]

The problem with this ocean update is that it's only about quality of life and not about the content of the ocean, just improvements to the little that already exists. I would be more excited about it if this QoL seemed to be moving us towards something, but in general it only fixes past problems, or no problems at all, as is the case with this new boat that I can't see the purpose of. With better boats we were talking about shapes, sizes, purposes, different functions on the boats, a way to connect boats to each other, and not a boat with more HP. Yes, of course the new fight is great, I don't need a new boat for it, but as you said it is just a means to an end, just an obligation that is now less unbearable to do.

In fact, the changes are really good and there is a good incentive to do some things in the ocean. What had to be done, I believe, was done and very well, but it remains incomplete mechanically and conceptually. I don't see myself liking this ocean as long as it continues to be a blue screen with disjointed things floating around (We got a new disjointed thing this beta!) and Klei doesn't seem to have a long-term plan for it. More points A and B that we visit once and never even consider going near again won't solve anything — And by not considering going close to it, I mean fresh servers too, because I only went to those giant trees once to see the novelty and after it stopped being something new, I saw no reason to go back there ever.

[GreenBowers]

36 minutes ago, chirsg said:

-Snip-

Just because people are talking about character reworks skilltrees doesn't mean people aren't interacting with the new ocean content. There's been a million threads on ocean content. Its also like day 4 of the beta and Klei hasn't had time to enact any changes based on the feedback for the ocean content.

Im actually kinda flabberghasted this view is held. You can see the mountain of threads that aren't about wurt and winona too right.

[Pumking7]

This is somewhat what I feared when Klei said they were going to focus on developing more substantial updates with multiple aspects of a monthly update. I remember this sort of happened with the Wigfrid and Willow skill tree spotlight with no one really remembering Frostjaw existed except for saying that the boss fight looked nice. However this isn't a bad thing as character updates are always going to get more attention due to people usually feeling closer or more connected with characters they have played or seen played for a while.

21 minutes ago, chirsg said:

crab king remains a means to an end no matter what

To be fair this is sort of a lot of the Ancient Fuelweaver and Celestial Champion questlines though, for a lot of those questlines rely on doing a part of the quest, without that many rewards, to be able to progress to the next part. At least with Crab King dropping the Boat Bumpers now there is a actual reason to fight him again after receiving the Celestial Tribute.

28 minutes ago, chirsg said:

Almost no one is interacting with the ocean to observe changes made to it

This is understandable for the ocean all in all hasn't really changed that much. The ocean's main problems come from most of what the ocean offers being alternatives to mainland options, making them mostly forgettable or not needing more than one trip to the ocean to get the full value. The only game-changing/fun thing we have gotten recently was the surprising seeds from sunken chests, but due to obtaining them mainly involving waiting till day 150... then waiting for bottles to spawn I don't see how they'll change that much in the long run. Compare this to the instant power and game altering mechanics that the character skill trees bring individually for each character, its not hard to see why players gravitate to skill trees more than ocean content.

The other factor is that the ocean remains super empty for there are only three repeating biomes which only take up a small chunk of the ocean. This usually mean you sail past empty sea stack biomes for like 75% of the time in the ocean. It doesn't help that new ocean biomes haven't been added in over 3 years since Waterlogged (I am glad they added the marotters for its very pleasant to have a new mob/feature that populates the ocean). It also appears that ocean development is focused on very slowly adding more landmark items like Moon Quay and Frostjaw which don't really full up the vast space that is DST's ocean.

[Cyrefy]

Well, I would love to talk about things in the ocean but I couldn't find them :), with the exception of otters, which I really liked. great source of meat and entertainment while sailing. I would like more life at sea, some structure from the lost civilization would be interesting too.

[Well-met]

the ocean part of the update isn't talked about much because it could have been done far better.

Frostjaw is still unfinished, Crab King is a broken down mess, Monkeys are unchanged and the two random setpieces aren't really enough to keep veterans interested in exploring it.

All in all only sunken chests got "fixed" in the end.

[chaosmonkey]

47 minutes ago, chirsg said:

I hope in the future we get an ocean update with some more care. It should be troubling that a majority of the threads here are centric on Wurt and Winona. The fact is that this won't change. Those two are in the hot seat. 

They have completely stolen ocean's thunder.

 

Agreed on this. The winona catapult change being so controversial plus just two big skill trees alongside a bit of ocean QoL is not the ocean QoL patch I was hoping for. Really hoping they will land some more improvements by the end of beta.

[Primalflower]

22 minutes ago, xhyom said:

I saw no reason to go back there ever.

fun

[DiogoW]

This update is a skill tree update. The ocean QoL is a small part of it.
It wasn't supposed to have new content at all, but we end up adding some.

Our goal wasn't to “fix” the ocean with this update, just to make some things a bit more enjoyable, and by some extend, interesting.
If a relatively obvious change hasn't been made, it possibly means we have a reason to not do so.

If you made a suggestion in this forum, you can be 95% sure we've seen it.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Creatorofswamps]

5 minutes ago, DiogoW said:

This update is a skill tree update. The ocean QoL is a small part of it.
It wasn't supposed to have new content at all, but we end up adding some.

Our goal wasn't to “fix” the ocean with this update, just to make some things a bit more enjoyable, and by some extend, interesting.
If a relatively obvious change hasn't been made, it possibly means we have a reason to not do so.

If you made a suggestion in this forum, you can be 95% sure we've seen it.

Thank you for the feedback.

And thank you more for responding to our feedback and we really appreciate such comments

[Gameplayer143]

I kind of hope they add the Bottlenose Ballphin to the oceans from Shipwrecked, those little guys are adorable

[Antynomity]

6 hours ago, GreenBowers said:

Just because people are talking about character reworks skilltrees doesn't mean people aren't interacting with the new ocean content. There's been a million threads on ocean content. Its also like day 4 of the beta and Klei hasn't had time to enact any changes based on the feedback for the ocean content.

Im actually kinda flabberghasted this view is held. You can see the mountain of threads that aren't about wurt and winona too right.

Doesn't change the fact that the majority of posts made during this beta are about the skill trees. I myself have been waiting for years for the ocean to not be a joke.

[GreenBowers]

4 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Doesn't change the fact that the majority of posts made during this beta are about the skill trees. I myself have been waiting for years for the ocean to not be a joke.

No news is good news. I dont think people dislike the new marotters or ocean set pieces to make more than the 4 or so threads they already received. Or the mountain of crab king threads, 

Going from page 1 to page 13, I counted 105 threads solely about ocean beta content, not counting any thread that had a mention of wurt and Winona, or any of their mechanics. Ive also been reading every single thread since the beta started so maybe that adds to it.

[Cassielu]

You know, that's one of the things skilltree is all about... Most light user player prefer to see their characters get various boosts and ignore the value of the world content that can be explored. Just like how workshop's most popular mods will always be OP characters and unthought OP mechanics. Skilltree serves these light users rather than veterans.

[GreenBowers]

Its also the difference of

"Oh cool I can get a houndious from this ocean set piece"

Vs

"They ruined the super cool skill tree rework update ive been hoping for, wheres my Op character fantasy."

[arubaro]

What the... nobody is complaining about the ocean? Then why there are like 20 topics about CK and some about the spawn chance and the time needed to grow the ancient trees? There are few extra topics about other staff like monkey raids and behavior

Simply dramatizing as always. There are topics about what isnt liked about the ocean, which isnt that much (do you want people complaining about otters?) but obviously wont be as much as all the discussion arround 2 characters with many new perks to discuss

 

Edit. Btw ocean is one of the funnier activities i enjoy doing