Suggestion: Add a world option for the celestial portal to determine usage

[Maxil20]

(Yes I know it’s not really related to the beta and is also related to the Winona catapult tidal wave I am sorry)

It’s pretty clear from the discussion that has taken place that there are two very distinct groups of players who like “swap characters” and those that do not, and I doubt either side is going to stop with their stance anytime soon. For the record, I do think both have very valid points and I’m not trying to imply one side is better than the other.

I think the “easiest” and most straightforward way to try to handle this approach for many is for a player to adjust their usage on the portal. It’s a massive boon for a lot of players, and also something of great discourse to others. I feel a world option, which could perhaps be related to the difficulty/style of the world, would be the easiest to implement. 
 

I’m going to talk an example relating to cooldowns, since I feel that is the easiest to program, but if it was possible I would imagine a combination of price/frequency could be done as well:

-None: the portal has no cooldown and you may swap to your hearts content. This is the default option for endless/relaxed type worlds.

-short/default/long/very long: using the portal will result in a cooldown that starts the moment you swapped. This cooldown is tracked by the portal and will only count down if you are in the server. The cooldown periods would be 5/10/20/30+ days respectively. The default setting would be the norm for “survival” type worlds.

-Never: It is simply impossible to get and construct the portal. If it is somehow built (Ex: another option was used and the portal was changed to “never”), the portal simply won’t work. This would technically be the default for wilderness worlds, even if the portal does not spawn in them.

I’m not saying these are the best and most well thought out options, but I would say out of most mechanics this one in particular being adjusted to how a player wants would be very important. I can see both sides of how people like/dislike the portal as it is now, and I feel being able to customize it would be a good middle ground between both parties, in a hopefully good way.

[Valase]

My brother, the only person capable of balancing how much someone uses a celestial portal is you, The Reader.

Most forumites that complain about other people (I suppose that are other people, as it can't be them) using the Celestial Portal either don't actually play with other people or are playing with a super secret server that has the absolute best Min Maxxers in the world, because I can't see a rando in a world even bothering to build the portal, let alone use it.

to this day I can't fathom what is the issue of a solo player doing whatever they want to do in a game, especially when the game give the tools to do it.

[chaosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, Valase said:

My brother, the only person capable of balancing how much someone uses a celestial portal is you, The Reader.

Most forumites that complain about other people (I suppose that are other people, as it can't be them) using the Celestial Portal either don't actually play with other people or are playing with a super secret server that has the absolute best Min Maxxers in the world, because I can't see a rando in a world even bothering to build the portal, let alone use it.

to this day I can't fathom what is the issue of a solo player doing whatever they want to do in a game, especially when the game give the tools to do it.

I think the suggestion is just meant as a compromise between the swap-yays and swap-nays since the discussion has been pretty heated. The goal is to reduce the arguments about balance due to swapping because with an option like this it becomes player choice.

[Frashaw27]

1 minute ago, Valase said:

-snip-

And said self imposed rules and chastity can be further by implementing settings that the game allows you to change. While this in no way would fix swap characters because of it being a default choice the player has to change, it would allow people who see the portal as being too much to be more restrictive in their worlds for more fun on their end.

[Quadratordo]

Good suggestion; having more customization options never hurts, and we already have options for disabling a whole lot of features, so this'll fit right in.

[Valase]

@chaosmonkey, @Frashaw27 this still would not reduce the arguments between "each side", one side argument is that Celestial Portal should be a goner as it taints the essence of the game or something, the other side is playing the game and not in the forums.

And again, the self imposed rules and chastity can mainted as they can choose not to go on the "convoluted" path to make a Celestial portal, as in, don't pick up the suspicious orb, don't craft the portal paraphernalia, don't build said paraphernalia on the rosy portal, don't craft the moon rock Idol with gems that you only find as a drop from a boss, in a setpiece or in the ruins.

And please, don't tell me they have friends that go for a ~40 day session that will do all of that (mind you against his dear friend wish) just to swap a character (Winono to SpiceMan);

in fact, don't waste the manpower to make and option to remove an crafting option from a specific station that you only craft once. (did you know that you can upgrade the portal in the caves?).

Actually, don't bother trying to make a middle ground on a beta that has nothing to do with the celestial portal.

[Mike23Ua]

So uhh I may be confused and lost, but doesn’t going to settings and disabling meteor showers/suspicious Boulder already prevent obtaining the Celestial Orb needed to craft the Portal upgrade kit?

I never disable it however due to the orb itself being vital for later stages of the game & meteor showers being a reliable way to get rocks.

However this doesn’t actually fix the problem of characters being “Swap Characters”

And I’m going to explain that in detail, imagine if Wolfgang’s 2.5 Strength was not directly tied to Wolfgang, and was instead explained by your character swinging a (rather heavy) Dumbell. I’m skinny and weak but even skinny people can lift and swing a heavy object.
Punching a creature in the face (or swing towards) with a Dumbell in hand will deal significantly more damage than just hitting it with your fists.

Now with that explanation out of the way… Imagine if Wolfgang was the only character who could craft Dumbells, but even WES could use them for 2.5 strength.

Its not a matter of Character swap On/Off- It’s a matter of making sure that what makes playing as that character fun and unique can not be overshadowed by crafting their loot and then swapping to someone else to reap the benefits of both characters.

[grm9]

27 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

it would allow people who see the portal as being too much to be more restrictive in their worlds for more fun on their end

what's preventing them from not using it?

[dst_lover]

2 minutes ago, grm9 said:

what's preventing them from not using it?

i think its preventing them form swapping to winona and make her stuff then swap back to his character 

[goblinball]

I wouldn’t be against a celestial portal cooldown setting, but I think players will already naturally self-select their celestial portal usage and a setting isn’t really necessary. I don’t think it’d really work as a silver bullet against heated forum debates either, ppl already complain about optional stuff for the sake of complaining all the time.

[grm9]

1 minute ago, dst_lover said:

i think its preventing them form swapping to winona and make her stuff then swap back to his character 

why can't they prevent themselves from doing that on their own?

[Wormboi]

57 minutes ago, Valase said:

My brother, the only person capable of balancing how much someone uses a celestial portal is you, The Reader.

Most forumites that complain about other people (I suppose that are other people, as it can't be them) using the Celestial Portal either don't actually play with other people or are playing with a super secret server that has the absolute best Min Maxxers in the world, because I can't see a rando in a world even bothering to build the portal, let alone use it.

to this day I can't fathom what is the issue of a solo player doing whatever they want to do in a game, especially when the game give the tools to do it.

Yeah I never got why people on forums are sooo pissed off about the celestial portal existing. It wouldnt really fix the "swap character" thing by removing it because people just wouldnt play as a swap character.

[lowercase skye]

This wouldn't fix anything. It's very clear from these sorts of discussions on the forums that the sides aren't simply "I like to use the celestial portal!" and "I don't like to use the celestial portal!", but instead the sides are "I like the celestial portal existing as an option" and "I hate when I see other people use the celestial portal, because it makes me mad they're having fun wrong."

Adding a self-imposed toggle won't fix anything for that latter side, because the issue doesn't have anything to do with if they personally find the feature fun or not, but instead that it makes them angry whenever other people have fun with something that they don't like. There's no solution to this short of entirely ripping out the thing some people find fun so that those who don't like it don't have to see people playing the game wrong. I hope Klei will stick to their guns and leave the celestial portal in its current state.

[dst_lover]

27 minutes ago, grm9 said:

why can't they prevent themselves from doing that on their own?

its not for themselves only its for every one how will play in the world

[Faintly Macabre]

I agree with Finn that there's a large contingent of portal-opposed who are just trying to be spiteful fun police, but there are some more reasonable people that would just like it reined in a little, and an optional cooldown might please some of them at least a bit. I can see someone reasonable wanting to be able to say, "Hey, you can switch to Warly if you really want to, but then that's your character for the next 2.66 hours, so you have to be able to actually play him."

[EatenCheetos]

2 hours ago, Valase said:

My brother, the only person capable of balancing how much someone uses a celestial portal is you, The Reader.

Most forumites that complain about other people (I suppose that are other people, as it can't be them) using the Celestial Portal either don't actually play with other people or are playing with a super secret server that has the absolute best Min Maxxers in the world, because I can't see a rando in a world even bothering to build the portal, let alone use it.

to this day I can't fathom what is the issue of a solo player doing whatever they want to do in a game, especially when the game give the tools to do it.

So we can’t discuss nerfs for things we think are OP?

Imagine if you will, an OP sword was added to the game and I said “hey, let’s rebalance the OP sword”, but somebody else says “why don’t you just not use it if you don’t like it. Why affect what other solo players do? What about people that like the OP sword?”

Are you seeing the picture? People are allowed to discuss changes to the game, even nerfs to the celestial portal.

1 hour ago, finn from human said:

Adding a self-imposed toggle won't fix anything

I agree with you, but for different reasons than what you stated

[Mike23Ua]

23 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

I agree with Finn that there's a large contingent of portal-opposed who are just trying to be spiteful fun police, but there are some more reasonable people that would just like it reined in a little, and an optional cooldown might please some of them at least a bit. I can see someone reasonable wanting to be able to say, "Hey, you can switch to Warly if you really want to, but then that's your character for the next 2.66 hours, so you have to be able to actually play him."

There was one time when I was nearly dead with 2hp and I had no food and was just about to starve, but I had a moon idol on hand and could switch to Wigfrid who spawn in the world with enough meats to make delicious meaty stew.

But what I learned is that when I switched to Wigfrid & then switched back- My hunger and health was fully restored, not to mention WANDA gets (or used to get…) free clockparts.

I want to stress exactly how important this is because in a game mode like “Endless” If you happen to Die, sure you can continuously haunt the florid Postern to revive over and over again, but each time you do you are going to respawn in the world with less and less health with portions of it completely blacked out needing booster shots to repair your total health core.

The Klei devs have stated in the past and some in game character quotes lead you to believe that the characters who “Use” the Celestial Portal either “Die”, or are traded places and sent to an alternate dimension.

I think that is therefore reasonable to expect using the portal to swap characters to also return you into the world with less total health (same as dying and reviving on Endless Mode)

Dont Starve Together is NOT a kids game it’s rated T for Teen and it’s intended to be a brutal and uncompromising survival game.

That is why at times things in the game that can happen can feel highly unfair (fighting Crab King when Two Rockjaws Spawn and decide they wanna get involved)

And I personally feel like portal swapping should DEFIANTLY come with some Downsides, same as reviving yourself if you die a lot in endless mode.

It would be interesting to see the game be able to save your total health and hunger and sanity so that after I’ve switched to Wigfrid and made the Meaty Stew… switching back to Wes would still have had me at 2hp and about to starve.

[EatenCheetos]

I think the best way to please everyone is what OP suggested. Have a default cooldown of something like 1 year to keep things balanced, and then players that like to use swap strats can just manually disable the cooldown.

[Faintly Macabre]

13 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

There was one time when I was nearly dead with 2hp and I had no food and was just about to starve, but I had a moon idol on hand

I'm gonna stop you right here

Nobody

And I mean nobody

Is abusing the portal to fill their bars as a strat

[Mike23Ua]

17 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

I'm gonna stop you right here

Nobody

And I mean nobody

Is abusing the portal to fill their bars as a strat

That’s not what I meant.. I meant that maybe using the portal could have negative consequences (like spawning with blacked out portions of health as if you just died)

[GreenBowers]

1: You have 'suggestion' in the title. Put this in the suggestions forum. Putting it here, even with the best intentions, will just stir up ****.

2: See 1.

[EatenCheetos]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

That’s not what I meant.. I meant that maybe using the portal could have negative consequences (like spawning with blacked out portions of health as if you just died)

Could be interesting if those black portions stacked up and didn’t reset until after a long, set amount of time

[Valase]

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

So we can’t discuss nerfs for things we think are OP?

Imagine if you will, an OP sword was added to the game and I said “hey, let’s rebalance the OP sword”, but somebody else says “why don’t you just not use it if you don’t like it. Why affect what other solo players do? What about people that like the OP sword?”

Are you seeing the picture? People are allowed to discuss changes to the game, even nerfs to the celestial portal.

I agree with you, but for different reasons than what you stated

But the portal is not the op sword, the characters are, if you stay in a world long enough to meet the requirements to have the complete portal and then have the materials to not only swap in a character but also swap out as well as the materials to use with said characters, then you deserve to use the Op sword, I couldn't care less if you are converting your excess purple gems and moon rock into time pieces or building the biggest Warg farm ever or if you go make a sea of monkey tails for your local librarian so the world worst magician can read the her library.

You still need to gather the purple gems, you still need to get those rocks, you still need to get the healing, you still need to get the materials.

You can even swap to Wolfgang every time that you fight a boss and you still would be down 2 purple gems and 4?* Moon rocks.

[grm9]

7 hours ago, dst_lover said:

its not for themselves only its for every one how will play in the world

you could ask those people too, if they don't want to they'll probably not play if you'll force them

[dst_lover]

3 hours ago, grm9 said:

you could ask those people too, if they don't want to they'll probably not play if you'll force them

i don't get your point the purpose of it so i will not have to  argue with every one who will enter the world