Why dying in dont starve is not frustrating unlike other games

[Jakepeng99]

In don't starve, items are very replaceable. Weapons have durability, and are upkept by resources which require no serious grinding that you store at base. Also items wont despawn.

The worst that can realistically happen is your boat with houndious shootious and stuff breaking, or your beefalo dying.

 

Other games, like Minecraft, are majorly flawed in this aspect. You spend ages getting all your equipment, spend so many resources, grind for enchantments or getting the new mace, and then you die to something dumb and your irrreplacable stuff despawns. 

 

 

That is why Don't starve is the only well designed survival game in my opinion. Its also the only game i know that has actually good durability mechanics that mean something and make the game better rather than being annoying. 

[NPCMaxwell]

49 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

In don't starve, items are very replaceable. Weapons have durability, and are upkept by resources which require no serious grinding that you store at base. Also items wont despawn.

The worst that can realistically happen is your boat with houndious shootious and stuff breaking, or your beefalo dying.

 

Other games, like Minecraft, are majorly flawed in this aspect. You spend ages getting all your equipment, spend so many resources, grind for enchantments or getting the new mace, and then you die to something dumb and your irrreplacable stuff despawns. 

 

 

That is why Don't starve is the only well designed survival game in my opinion. Its also the only game i know that has actually good durability mechanics that mean something and make the game better rather than being annoying. 

And in the single player world Permadeath is actually quite FUN to me, because you will wake up in a new map and are better prepared this time. (and also motivates you to go exploring for ressuraction items / needed recourses without it feeling like an impossible task)

[Mysterious box]

19 minutes ago, NPCMaxwell said:

And in the single player world Permadeath is actually quite FUN to me, because you will wake up in a new map and are better prepared this time. (and also motivates you to go exploring for ressuraction items / needed recourses without it feeling like an impossible task)

I mean you can still play with perma death in dst by setting the death timer to instant though Winona should still be able to cheat it via Charlie.

[NPCMaxwell]

Just now, Mysterious box said:

I mean you can still play with perma death in dst by setting the death timer to instant though Winona should still be able to cheat it via Charlie.

Also true, but I usually don't use it in DST as i mainly play DST for longterm worlds :3 (plus the ghost are too adorable to me)

[arubaro]

13 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I mean you can still play with perma death in dst by setting the death timer to instant though Winona should still be able to cheat it via Charlie.

Meat effigie should work like in DS

 

Dropping grindy inventory items when death is just an artificial way of making the game difficult that only brings boredoom like in valheim or boats in core keeper

The only death penalty i dont really like in dst is when you die in a boat and you lose the boat. Or losing the boat in general... those things can be expensive and is so annoying to pick up 484727824 items with another boat

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Meat effigie should work like in DS

I could be remembering wrong but I believe you have to haunt the meat effigies in dst meaning you'd still need to be a ghost for that to work which would instantly regen.

[arubaro]

2 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I could be remembering wrong but I believe you have to haunt the meat effigies in dst meaning you'd still need to be a ghost for that to work which would instantly regen.

No. You activate the meat effigie which sets the respawn point like in ds effigies/eternal life fountain's flower,  or like Winona's flower

I think you are refering to the respawn rocks. I dont remember the name (the one with pig heads arround) those works like respawn points in DS but like LGA in dst

The only detail is that you need a effigie per shard 

[Mysterious box]

17 minutes ago, arubaro said:

No. You activate the meat effigie which sets the respawn point like in ds effigies/eternal life fountain's flower or like Winona's flower

The only detail is that you need a effigie per shard 

This is not how it works when you die you become a ghost and a meat effigy button appears on the top right of your screen you can wander as a ghost or click that button to teleport to where the meat effigy is and revive. That being said it does feel like it changed at some point because I distinctly remember having to haunt them at some point...

That being said considering how convenient it makes revival it's weird more people don't use it and now it's given me a idea for a post. 

[arubaro]

10 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This is not how it works when you die you become a ghost and a meat effigy button appears on the top right of your screen you can wander as a ghost or click that button to teleport to where the meat effigy is and revive. That being said it does feel like it changed at some point because I distinctly remember having to haunt them at some point...

That being said considering how convenient it makes revival it's weird more people don't use it and now it's given me a idea for a post. 

Oh ye, you are right i forgot about needing to press the button 

[Theukon-dos]

I heavily, heavily disagree actually.

While yes, most items are easily replaceable, you're forgetting that's assuming your world isn't deleted because you died. DST is one of the only survival games where perma-death is the game's default, and you need to actively prevent this by getting ways to despawn.

This isn't a problem in and of itself, admittedly. At it's heart, DST is a Rougelike, which is a genre that's defined by dying and learning from your mistakes. Which is a great thing actually. When you're new to the game, you're usually not getting more than a couple hours between deaths. So you're not wasting much time and can get back to where you where easily.

The problem comes later on. As I said, DST fundamentally a Rougelike, but most Rougelikes are really short, and for a reason. As much as I complain about DST becoming easier, I think one area where the difficulty failed was in how long it takes to get back to where you where so you can try again. It takes 4 hours of gameplay just to re-fight deerclops, which is quite a lot, but not unmanageable all things considered. But getting into spring and summer can take literal days to reach, especially if you're someone busy who can only play a couple hours per day.

I'll admit that this is mostly off-set by the fact that revival items are really easy to get in DST once you know what they are. But even then the helpfulness of those can be limited due to how hostile the world is if you don't have anything to protect you against it at base. Maybe that's just my ADHD-Laddled ass not preparing enough for death. But I can only imagine that for a new player who's only reached summer once or twice, most of them won't be particularly prepared either.

Also, Minecraft is an awful example here. Simply becuase the way it handles death is genuinly atrocious, and most every other game ever handles it much, much better.

In Terraria, you only drop a handful of coin on death, dropping more on higher difficulties. But you can keep your money in a piggybank to protect it.

In Valheim, you drop your items on death and loose some skill levels, but your items are stored in a rune stone that protects them from hazards and despawning. The way Valheim's structured also means that you shouldn't really have a huge run-back to your gear, as any prolonged trip probably includes building a portal so you can warp back nearby wherever you died.

And in Grounded, you only drop the resources in your backpack. Any gear you had; tools, weapons, armor; stay with you when you respawn, only loosing a bit of durability.

 

DST doesn't have the worst death mechanics ever, but the claims that it's better than most games and "the only well-designed survival game" are patently absurd. Obviously you can't account for taste, but it's still possible to prefer one system while still acknowledging that another is generally better.

[kehun]

c_rollback(1)

[Jimothywastaken]

2 minutes ago, kehun said:

c_rollback(1)

is this thread gonna become a rollback discussion thread 

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, kehun said:

c_rollback(1)

Also meat effigies being touch stones you teleport to when you die that you can place next to a mushlight and a chest full of items to get you back on your feet.

[arubaro]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

In Valheim, you drop your items on death and loose some skill levels, but your items are stored in a rune stone that protects them from hazards and despawning. The way Valheim's structured also means that you shouldn't really have a huge run-back to your gear, as any prolonged trip probably includes building a portal so you can warp back nearby wherever you died

Precisely valheim mechanics are really boring and made me drop it. One, but not the worst sadly (hours mining on each biome just to get strong enough to mine in the next biome... srly, this must be the most overrated game ever), was the death punish... needing to go back naked to get your armor back is beyond boring

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

And in Grounded, you only drop the resources in your backpack. Any gear you had; tools, weapons, armor; stay with you when you respawn, only loosing a bit of durability.

This, v rising(i wish you lose more durability like on grounded) and DST ones are the best imo. Both, grounded and dst, punish you without making you waste a lot of time while make you reexperience the content because you need to farm extra materials to fix your gear

 

I rather lose the save file as punishment in a game with variety of task and playthrows like dst than losing the armor in a grindy, tireshome and repetitive game like valheim

Gladly more games are adding settings like grounded, terraria or dst

[Castiliano]

In this game, when you die, you know exactly why you died (except when it's the lag issue). This makes it relieves the frustration of a defeat.

Here's a story. I've been playing with the option for the server to reset instantly in case of death and I was rushing the bosses, but after turning on the Archives and entering Grotto I quickly equipped the dreadstone helm and removed it in the same second when I remembered that I was making a mistake. But it was enough for a Greater Gestalt find me and tear me apart in half a second and the map reset. This experience could have been frustrating, but I just had fun with my mistake — I knew exactly what was.

[Swiyss]

Dying in dst is 100% your fault. Mainly I would actually say that 98% of all deaths in this game could've been prevented, and the devs made a pretty good job keeping that experience in the multiplayer of the game.

Being it your fault is already better then losing a team-based game because of someone else.. well atleast you can control your own gameplay. That for me is mainly why it is not that frustrating.

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I mean you can still play with perma death in dst by setting the death timer to instant though Winona should still be able to cheat it via Charlie.

You can do that yeah, but DST really isn’t a game that’s structured around Perma-Death, the game even has cool global content that’s locked behind a very long tedious RPG style quest grind that only people who actually want to invest “long-term” into a world will ever legitimately see without activating through settings.

Also enemy mobs still have higher health and damage to accommodate for it being a multiplayer game, so even though you CAN toggle on Insta-Dying, it won’t give you that classic solo DS game feeling.

There’s also options to disable the blacked out health core penalty when dying. Or toggle of weather all together.

What there ISNT an option for however is increasing how intense winter cold effects are, so it forces players to use more than just a heated thermal stone.

Both Minecraft & Lego Fortnite now has a “Hardcore” Mode, and in Hardcore Mode- You only get one life, there aren’t any resurrection options, hunger drains faster, mobs deal more damage (new variants exclusive to these modes can also spawn too) and as soon as you die your thrown into “Observe Mode” or you get Banned from being able to rejoin the server- When All players in the world “Die” it’ll delete the game save completely.

I think Klei just feels like too many players would “Troll” in DST if we had options like:

“Keep inventory on Death, Drop Inventory on Death, DELETE Inventory on Death”

Again- All options that exist already in Minecraft. 

[Castiliano]

21 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You can do that yeah, but DST really isn’t a game that’s structured around Perma-Death, the game even has cool global content that’s locked behind a very long tedious RPG style quest grind that only people who actually want to invest “long-term” into a world will ever legitimately see without activating through settings.

Also enemy mobs still have higher health and damage to accommodate for it being a multiplayer game, so even though you CAN toggle on Insta-Dying, it won’t give you that classic solo DS game feeling.

There’s also options to disable the blacked out health core penalty when dying. Or toggle of weather all together.

What there ISNT an option for however is increasing how intense winter cold effects are, so it forces players to use more than just a heated thermal stone.

Both Minecraft & Lego Fortnite now has a “Hardcore” Mode, and in Hardcore Mode- You only get one life, there aren’t any resurrection options, hunger drains faster, mobs deal more damage (new variants exclusive to these modes can also spawn too) and as soon as you die your thrown into “Observe Mode” or you get Banned from being able to rejoin the server- When All players in the world “Die” it’ll delete the game save completely.

I think Klei just feels like too many players would “Troll” in DST if we had options like:

“Keep inventory on Death, Drop Inventory on Death, DELETE Inventory on Death”

Again- All options that exist already in Minecraft. 

They officially released that "Relaxed" thing, I wouldn't mind if they released one that was the complete opposite. Even with the default option for the world to reset instantly if all players die.

[Jakepeng99]

Terraria is probabpy the best. But i believe it is not a survival game.

[arubaro]

17 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Terraria is probabpy the best. But i believe it is not a survival game.

Terraria death penalty sucks hard. You either lose everything making you go nude to pick items or waste time and inventory with extra gear to pick the lost gear (in dst makes sense because you will eventually waste these items due to durability mechanic) or you lose money which is a penalty that makes little impact and 0 once you unlock a way to keep the money out of your inventory

 

I think the best one for games with long lasting items/no durability is the penalty from grounded/v rising

Other than that is making the player lose time because some people believe that wasting time is the same as being difficult 

[xDarkSoul18x]

I've always enjoyed the Hard/Ironman modes in games since forever (Except Halo 2. **** Jackals lol). It's fun to overcome challenges and playing that style changes the dynamic of how you play the game. It's also exhilarating when you think you're prepare but you are not and it gets your heart pumping a bit. Because if you die that's it. My friend got me into the game a LONG time ago and I was like this is easy! Then a hound wave came. .and I was hooked. The game still has it's problems though but I will agree I hardly ever get frustrated in this game. What does is people who will rollback 20 times a single day but that's another topic.   

[Wormboi]

4 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

But getting into spring and summer can take literal days to reach, especially if you're someone busy who can only play a couple hours per day.

Yeah it doesnt help that you also have to slog though the early game each time when you die and restart.

[Mike23Ua]

Minecraft, Terraria, Valhiem & Grounded are not RogueLites.

DS Was, and honestly I don’t think DST can still be called a RogueLite either.

This mostly boils down to quite a few things.

In DS your goal was to find maxwells door way build the teleporter parts, constantly venture into a new level, and unlocking characters along the way as you progress that could maybe help you accomplish that goal easier.

But the fact that dying meant world deletion, or building the portal sent you to a new world kept one of the core features of a RogueLite intact for DS- And that would be exploring randomly generated environments and getting “loot” that’s unique to each “Run”

With DST, they want you to dedicate your entire life to playing in the same long term world, which boils down to selling skins to mega-Basers to build their fun happy time amusement parks within but non-the less..

Your no longer exploring randomly generated “worlds” your instead getting ONE randomly generated world and being able to over-familiarize yourself with it.

Roguelites also tend to continuously up the difficulty rather the player was ready for it or not..

you could spawn into a level in Spelunky 2 where an enemy mob triggers a trap sending an arrow into a shopkeepers shop which then had you being chased by an angry guy with a shotgun by no fault of your own!

The only times that DST can catch you off guard like that is maybe when some jerk spawns the Twins of Terror on you during your otherwise peaceful stroll through a biome where the resources and mobs within that biome NEVER CHANGE.

So no I actually would NOT call DST a RogueLite, it’s the most un-RogueLite game you can possibly play (that still considers itself a RogueLite)

There are several rules that are pretty much mandatory requirements for RogueLites-

Permadeath or at minimal punishing death systems, randomly generated worlds, randomly generated enemy encounters, difficulty that continues to climb rather you’ve leveled up or skilled enough to take it on or not, loot chests with random loot or weapons you can obtain per “run” attempt.  Rigged loot chests (for the too greedy, usually contains hostile enemy or inflicts your character with a Cursed status effect)

Speaking of status effects… Some RogueLite games even change the rules of the map your playing on, for example you could get one run where the map is bright and normal, and on your next run the map is covered in thick poisonous fog requiring either constant health up keep or the player to move from spot to spot to stay alive.

Ive played creative maps on Fortnite that are more RogueLite than DST.

That said: I loved Solo DS, I loved the lights out chapter having to move from Maxwell light to Maxwell light, or I loved the Two worlds chapter with the one way wormhole from a peaceful world with no weather or hostile mobs, into one drenched in eternal rainfall FOREVER and full of hostile mobs.

In fact I’ll even be so bold as to say anyone who has only played DST and has NEVER played the Single Player DS game- Has never truly experienced what the Genre Use to be about before Klei changed the rules and went all-

“Insanely powerful characters!, Skill trees for more Power! Cute RPG quest for Hermit Granny!, Long-Term life time commitment to living in one world! 100% all Sandbox Mode all the Time!!!”

If this post sounds bitter.. it’s because I’m watching a franchise I once loved, which ironically was the game to “introduce me to RogueLites” slowly but surely Die, and become so far removed from being a RogueLite that it kinda feels like an Insult to even still put Don’t Starve Together into that same Category.

[arubaro]

8 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Minecraft, Terraria, Valhiem & Grounded are not RogueLites.

They are sandbox like dst and some of them have perma death settings

[Mike23Ua]

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

They are sandbox like dst and some of them have perma death settings

Well yes they have Permadeath options, but ultimately Permadeath alone does not make a game a RogueLite/like.

Whats particularly ironic about DST however is that KLEI is a game company that specializes in the RogueLite/Like Game Genre, almost every game they release has been in this category.

And what’s actually funny to me is that some of the Newer DST content updates (particularly Moon Quays Unnatural Portal, Moonstorms, Lunar Rifts & Shadow Rifts, The Entire Ocean Experience) CAN make the game more RogueLite.

By removing the players ability to ever become so familiar with the games biomes and what spawns in them, you add a little of that “unpredictability” that is a staple part of the RogueLite Genre.

Imagine if say for Example Klei added 20 different types of mobs that could potentially spawn from each type of rift or during a “Rift” or if Funny Moonstorm mutated the mobs caught up in it.

You throw away the players ability to become overly familiar with the world.

The games death system and how punishing that is or isn’t, alone does not define a RogueLite/Like.

Its all the additional stuff that piles on in addition to that.