Patience's Running Out.

[chirsg]

56 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

friends

 

[cybers2001]

On 8/1/2024 at 1:38 PM, jpmrocks said:

I have not touched this game in a few years, and I think I know why. It's not that content is lacking, or anything like that. It's that content is treated like it's an MMO. With an MMO, you add content to feed your existing playerbase, which is great. Harder bosses, more combat options, class perks, etc. However, Dont Starve is not designed to be like that. You cant really join a server and use your level 45 Priest to hang out with other folks for a few hours. Youre ALWAYS at level 1 every time you join, and at most get through maybe Winter at most, before the server calls it quits, and you have to go through that cycle every time. Youre essentially starting over every time. 

Now this isnt a bad thing by any means, it is a survival game. However, the content being added isnt designed for early game. It's mid to late game. So you either rush everything (which can also harm the server as a whole) to get to what you want, or you spend hundreds of hours essentially by yourself, which defeats the purpose of it's being multiplayer survival. The Updates basically conflict with the core loop, and are designed for an extremely small fraction of players. Why bother adding late game bosses if a majority of players dont even try to live more than a week?

I'll never really understand this playstyle of hopping into pubs and just experiencing autumn and winter over and over. For many other games it would be insane to do it this way, like imagine Terraria or Minecraft pub servers with a 2 hour shelf life.

[arubaro]

On 8/1/2024 at 10:38 PM, jpmrocks said:

, Dont Starve is not designed to be like that.

I think you wanted to say "pubs arent designed to be like that"

[Mysterious box]

12 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

I'll never really understand this playstyle of hopping into pubs and just experiencing autumn and winter over and over. For many other games it would be insane to do it this way, like imagine Terraria or Minecraft pub servers with a 2 hour shelf life.

Ironically powercreep has made this far more common as there's just not that much incentive to stay in a world long term for the average player since most valuable content doesn't really take time to do and character perks are already on par with end game rewards.

[00petar00]

On 8/1/2024 at 10:38 PM, jpmrocks said:

I have not touched this game in a few years, and I think I know why. It's not that content is lacking, or anything like that. It's that content is treated like it's an MMO. With an MMO, you add content to feed your existing playerbase, which is great. Harder bosses, more combat options, class perks, etc. However, Dont Starve is not designed to be like that. You cant really join a server and use your level 45 Priest to hang out with other folks for a few hours. Youre ALWAYS at level 1 every time you join, and at most get through maybe Winter at most, before the server calls it quits, and you have to go through that cycle every time. Youre essentially starting over every time. 

When you look at this thread and compare what you are saying it just means that most forum members that want the game to be harder shows that they are a minority. This has always been true and game needs to change either to become easier or teach players and make winter more enjoyable worthwhile to survive. Winter in its current state makes new players so miserable that it is no wonder most of them quit, they don't know how thermal stone works or that it can be heated to even higher temperatures when it turns red. 

There are players that keep saying that thermal stone should be nerfed when that would be one of the biggest mistakes klei could make. The players don't use thermal clothing not because it is terrible but because no one likes managing inventory even more and thinking what they should carry and to many it is much worse to have a small inventory compared to dying or even losing the world. New players chop trees and barely scrape by while they have to stand next to firepit almost whole winter.

It is not correct to say that you always start at level 1 now that you have skill trees but it is true that DST has much more content and long quests that take a lot of time to complete.

On 8/1/2024 at 10:38 PM, jpmrocks said:

Now this isnt a bad thing by any means, it is a survival game. However, the content being added isnt designed for early game. It's mid to late game. So you either rush everything (which can also harm the server as a whole) to get to what you want, or you spend hundreds of hours essentially by yourself, which defeats the purpose of it's being multiplayer survival. The Updates basically conflict with the core loop, and are designed for an extremely small fraction of players. Why bother adding late game bosses if a majority of players dont even try to live more than a week?

Early game is already good enough and I don't see it as an issue. Should a game be designed for players that quit in a few days or a week and never come back? I think that DST should be designed so that more new players continue playing, the goal should be to convert new players into a regular players or ones that comes back for every update to play.

[Swiyss]

I can only speak for myself but.. it's not like I want the game to be harder, that doesn't make much sense. I want the game to be equally challenging and enjoyable.

Take Swarm from league of legends as an example. There's 9 characters, and I enjoyed playing with 4 of them, the other 5 were tedious and boring imo. But they made a nice big reward for completing the hardest level with all of them, and trust me, it WAS challenging. Less than 1% of the whole community completed it on my server, and yet, after doing it, I felt the same way I did when I killed the celestial champion on wes. I instantly forgot about the bad times playing with those characters because the reward was worth it. I can't lie to myself and say it wasn't worth it, but when someone does a lot of work expecting something good and finding out it gives you less than optimal results, it does the exact opposite. I hated with all of my heart the experience I had killing misery toadstool to get a sleep sack that can be easily subsituted by 4 early game 10 use panflutes...

Did I have any reasons to complete Swarm with every character? Yes.

Does skilltrees give enough of a reward for me considering doing it with every character there is? No. And for those who say I'm not supposed to, you're implying I should only play a set amount of characters? Why can't I show everyone that I have experience with the game? We clearly know for a fact that x hours played does not equal experience within the game. I'm not proud of the 1k days worlds I lost on my old driver since they're only in my mind now, atleast Minecraft have capes. Dst is undeniably a multiplayer game, people will unconsciously compete in pubs and help each other at the same rate, it always worked like that.

Do I enjoy all major skills for survivors? No.

Klei is hitting too much of a miss with the idea of skill tree rewards. I've been saying this for a while and will continuously do so. It's very simple actually:

Is Brightshade gear worth the time to grind for? Yes. Is it Terraria level of fun and satisfaction? Yes, it takes a helmet and combines almost all we need.

Is the skills of survivors worth the grind? Well, now we got one of the most opiniated and ambiguous responses ever (It's hit or miss for Klei). If Klei wants to play safe, they make it overpowered for everyone. If they actually care about the experience of the game WITH that survivor, it makes for an ambiguous result, some mains will love it and some will hate it.

@JoeW Klei's gotta look at what is positive and double down on it. Here's some things I love doing in game (I play since DS Beta 11 years ago);

automating things, this is my number 1 and I know you guys don't want the game to be factorio but cmon.. adding this complicated technology (energy, wires, redstone etc..) would make me play for years more than I do (I already decorated farm plot designs for maximum crop growth, I need some reason to dive deep again),

exploring the map and gearing up for future upcoming challenges,

exploring the ocean and mapping out 100% of it,

completing Pearl's quests,

collecting barnacles with Wormwood (I love doing this idk why, but recipes is meh),

farming amberosia to collect thulecite with dust moths (also love doing this but the rewards are also meh, cool concept thrown in the trash cause I can't gaslight myself enough to keep doing it. It will be the same for some other examples)

clearing the whole world off spiders and pigs (one of my favorites, that maximized spider nest amounts in my chests are like a drug to me),

mining every rock in the caves and surface (I play on largest world setting for both, I am indeed a psycho),

defeating every boss in the game and creating places to show my statues,

building small bases around the map for each biome or region (conquering basically),

clearing the ruins and archives,

using skins in a creative way to create beautiful bases.

Take notes, cause if the game didn't have that "challenging seasons" aspect, it wouldn't be the same. First I got hooked by the art, then the challenge, then the finite sandbox aspect of measuring my resources to succeed.

[Mike23Ua]

Something to keep in mind is that PC players are spoiled when it comes to games and game content- What they don’t have as a core part of their game, they’ll make mods for.

And I think that developers largely overlook that, even DST has proven this to be true when features that were very popular as mods, slowly but surely got added in overtime in an “official” capacity.

But for gamers on consoles who can’t have access to mods then even the smallest changes can be huge blessings for them.

Like for example: Quick Inventory Drop, Auto Stack, Etc..

And when you look at the wealth of content PC players have with Mods, and they still demand more more more, when Console gamers are happy with whatever scraps we can get.

Even if it’s bare minimal changes like Camera Zoom In & Out- a Feature PC has had for YEARS and consoles barely got just recently…

But it’s not “Optimized” for Console- And Ive Explained to Klei HOW it’s not Optimized for Console, we need an actual dedicated Camera Zoom Button (like selecting Abigail’s Flower in your inventory to get D-pad Prompts to interact with Abigail) we should’ve had a Camera button we could scroll to, press and Interact with- Rather than what we have NOW where we can bind buttons to Camera Zoom…. But those buttons OVERLAP with other actions in the game.

This is what truly frustrates me the most when it comes to DST, it’s not the lack of content, or the bite sized updates, or how every update seems to need a new raid boss… it’s that simple features that SHOULD work on an Xbox Controller, aren’t being Optimized for a Console Controller.

And I’m just going to be 100% honest here, had I known that “Don’t Starve” was a game built for KB+Mouse in mind first, while being poorly Optimized or Worse- Nonfunctional At All on Controllers…

I would’ve avoided this franchise entirely.

my “patience” wears thin when Klei publicly announce in their roadmaps that they hired more people EXCLUSIVELY to work on optimizing the game & controls for Console Players, and yet there are still features (see above camera zoom example) that are clearly NOT being Optimized for console gamers.

[arubaro]

5 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

When you look at this thread and compare what you are saying it just means that most forum members that want the game to be harder shows that they are a minority. This has always been true and game needs to change either to become easier or teach players and make winter more enjoyable worthwhile to survive. Winter in its current state makes new players so miserable that it is no wonder most of them quit, they don't know how thermal stone works or that it can be heated to even higher temperatures when it turns red. 

There are players that keep saying that thermal stone should be nerfed when that would be one of the biggest mistakes klei could make. The players don't use thermal clothing not because it is terrible but because no one likes managing inventory even more and thinking what they should carry and to many it is much worse to have a small inventory compared to dying or even losing the world. New players chop trees and barely scrape by while they have to stand next to firepit almost whole winter.

It is not correct to say that you always start at level 1 now that you have skill trees but it is true that DST has much more content and long quests that take a lot of time to complete.

Early game is already good enough and I don't see it as an issue. Should a game be designed for players that quit in a few days or a week and never come back? I think that DST should be designed so that more new players continue playing, the goal should be to convert new players into a regular players or ones that comes back for every update to play.

Tbh people who play pubs to leave in winter arent the target of this game. Clearly they leave the game in the moment they need to do an effort.

I bet there are the kind of players that just stick in base eating others food and asking for help because their character will die for afkitis

Also i bet they play mostly casual games like mobas and other kind of games that are based on fast and short play sessions without much text or skill involved, directly to the action.

Nothing wrong with all of these, there are games for all kind of tastes and needs but i dont see how klei can make the game more appealing for players outside of their market niche without ruinning it for the players that actually enjoy the genre. Less when there are already tons of settings to please a wider audience than ever, specially people who gets frustrated or have difficulty on playing hard games

See what happens with elden ring... they added to much mechanics to help the player like summons and facilities to increase the power that the people who actually enjoy that souls like games needs to go "ignore that if you want a challenge" mentality which imo sucks and is a mistake in game design. There were a time when you could simply choose a difficulty settings instead of making games easy by default and ask the player to ignore features and content pieces

[grm9]

1 minute ago, arubaro said:

Clearly they leave the game in the moment they need to do an effort

no, they leave because they can't play a game for 3 hours in a row

[arubaro]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Something to keep in mind is that PC players are spoiled when it comes to games and game content- What they don’t have as a core part of their game, they’ll make mods for.

And I think that developers largely overlook that, even DST has proven this to be true when features that were very popular as mods, slowly but surely got added in overtime in an “official” capacity.

But for gamers on consoles who can’t have access to mods then even the smallest changes can be huge blessings for them.

Like for example: Quick Inventory Drop, Auto Stack, Etc..

And when you look at the wealth of content PC players have with Mods, and they still demand more more more, when Console gamers are happy with whatever scraps we can get.

Even if it’s bare minimal changes like Camera Zoom In & Out- a Feature PC has had for YEARS and consoles barely got just recently…

But it’s not “Optimized” for Console- And Ive Explained to Klei HOW it’s not Optimized for Console, we need an actual dedicated Camera Zoom Button (like selecting Abigail’s Flower in your inventory to get D-pad Prompts to interact with Abigail) we should’ve had a Camera button we could scroll to, press and Interact with- Rather than what we have NOW where we can bind buttons to Camera Zoom…. But those buttons OVERLAP with other actions in the game.

This is what truly frustrates me the most when it comes to DST, it’s not the lack of content, or the bite sized updates, or how every update seems to need a new raid boss… it’s that simple features that SHOULD work on an Xbox Controller, aren’t being Optimized for a Console Controller.

And I’m just going to be 100% honest here, had I known that “Don’t Starve” was a game built for KB+Mouse in mind first, while being poorly Optimized or Worse- Nonfunctional At All on Controllers…

I would’ve avoided this franchise entirely.

my “patience” wears thin when Klei publicly announce in their roadmaps that they hired more people EXCLUSIVELY to work on optimizing the game & controls for Console Players, and yet there are still features (see above camera zoom example) that are clearly NOT being Optimized for console gamers.

Tbh, there just very few good and worth content mods and alot of mods are simply cheats dressed as "QoL"

Most mods are just furry/anime low quality op characters 

In my +5k hours i have only played like 2 or 3 worlds with content mods

Coding and designing is harder that you may thing

[Mike23Ua]

35 minutes ago, grm9 said:

no, they leave because they can't play a game for 3 hours in a row

I mean.. DST is a huge time investment, one in which I can spend 3 hours playing and feel like I have effectively achieved NOTHING.

Now let me explain, if you want to experience and be challenged by the challenges of “Winter” then you have to wait 20 game days to reach Winter which takes Forever waiting OR you can start a world that starts in Winter, with the disadvantage of not having time to gather resources and prepare for its arrival.

Don’t even get me freaking started on the laughably long and grueling RPG Quests DST shoves down the players throats all with one singular purpose of doing A, B, C, D, E & F BEFORE G, H or I.

What that means if you don’t understand the alphabet analogy, is that before the player gets to experience Moonstorms and Wacky Wagstaff Shennigans, they first need to do all the underground Archives stuff, survive a moon staff siege mini game, activate the archives etc etc etc….

Now because I DO NOT plan to permanently invest into one world indefinitely forever, let me tell you that restarting the game over in fresh worlds and having to repeat these 20 hour quests just to activate “New Content” Is not in the Slightest bit “Fun”

Because for me, I could complete 20 battle pass levels of Fortnite or Fail 42 runs of a RogueLite game like Trinity Fusion and feel like I’ve invested my time into something much more worthwhile.

I guess in short: I hate how “Grindy” DST feels compared to DS.

The Skill Trees help to give off the “Illusion” that the time you invest into DST is giving you some actual progress, but for everything beyond the skill trees..

Its Do ABCDE&F before you can do GHI. 

[arubaro]

41 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I mean.. DST is a huge time investment, one in which I can spend 3 hours playing and feel like I have effectively achieved NOTHING.

Now let me explain, if you want to experience and be challenged by the challenges of “Winter” then you have to wait 20 game days to reach Winter which takes Forever waiting OR you can start a world that starts in Winter, with the disadvantage of not having time to gather resources and prepare for its arrival.

Don’t even get me freaking started on the laughably long and grueling RPG Quests DST shoves down the players throats all with one singular purpose of doing A, B, C, D, E & F BEFORE G, H or I.

What that means if you don’t understand the alphabet analogy, is that before the player gets to experience Moonstorms and Wacky Wagstaff Shennigans, they first need to do all the underground Archives stuff, survive a moon staff siege mini game, activate the archives etc etc etc….

Now because I DO NOT plan to permanently invest into one world indefinitely forever, let me tell you that restarting the game over in fresh worlds and having to repeat these 20 hour quests just to activate “New Content” Is not in the Slightest bit “Fun”

Because for me, I could complete 20 battle pass levels of Fortnite or Fail 42 runs of a RogueLite game like Trinity Fusion and feel like I’ve invested my time into something much more worthwhile.

I guess in short: I hate how “Grindy” DST feels compared to DS.

The Skill Trees help to give off the “Illusion” that the time you invest into DST is giving you some actual progress, but for everything beyond the skill trees..

Its Do ABCDE&F before you can do GHI. 

 

That just means that you enjoy grinding battlepass and play games like fornite or rogelikes. Dont starve was never a short sesion casual games, always has been a time invest kind of game.

The game has seasons, do you know? Dont expect to experience every piece of content right after you spawn and dont expect klei to dont invest resources on adding more late game stuff when is something that a lot of people enjoy 

That would be like asking to beat the final boss in a final fantasy at level 1 because you dont feel like playing the rest of the game or jumping into the last puzzle in a click and point graphic adventure because isnt 'fun' for you to experience the rest of the game

If you want short sessions game, you and everyone else that is looking for something that dst isnt, there are a plethora of mobas, shooters, rogelike, sport games, racing games, silly coops, etc but dont force rogelike casual short sessions into a survival game with hours of content 

 

[00petar00]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

Tbh people who play pubs to leave in winter arent the target of this game. Clearly they leave the game in the moment they need to do an effort.

I bet there are the kind of players that just stick in base eating others food and asking for help because their character will die for afkitis

Also i bet they play mostly casual games like mobas and other kind of games that are based on fast and short play sessions without much text or skill involved, directly to the action.

If endless was default gamemode and most players could come back and continue their progress it would be much better for new players.

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

no, they leave because they can't play a game for 3 hours in a row

This is 100% correct, most casual players only have 3-4 hours to play in a week not a single day. It is also wrong to say that only casual players play like that, I've had weeks when I was really busy and also had around that much time to play. 

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

Nothing wrong with all of these, there are games for all kind of tastes and needs but i dont see how klei can make the game more appealing for players outside of their market niche without ruinning it for the players that actually enjoy the genre. Less when there are already tons of settings to please a wider audience than ever, specially people who gets frustrated or have difficulty on playing hard games

Klei is already doing a good job at that by adding skill trees so that players stick for longer but its not easy to make a big change as long as survival is default game mode because of world regeneration.

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

See what happens with elden ring... they added to much mechanics to help the player like summons and facilities to increase the power that the people who actually enjoy that souls like games needs to go "ignore that if you want a challenge" mentality which imo sucks and is a mistake in game design. There were a time when you could simply choose a difficulty settings instead of making games easy by default and ask the player to ignore features and content pieces

I disagree with you here, why is it wrong for a game to have easy mode for players that can't beat the game normally? I think that Elden Ring did it perfectly as anyone can play it and have fun.

Elden Ring made as big of a splash into mainstream as it is possible for soul like games because they decided to do that.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

 

That just means that you enjoy grinding battlepass and play games like fornite or rogelikes. Dont starve was never a short sesion casual games, always has been a time invest kind of game.

The game has seasons, do you know? Dont expect to experience every piece of content right after you spawn and dont expect klei to dont invest resources on adding more late game stuff when is something that a lot of people enjoy 

That would be like asking to beat the final boss in a final fantasy at level 1 because you dont feel like playing the rest of the game or jumping into the last puzzle in a click and point graphic adventure because isnt 'fun' for you to experience the rest of the game

If you want short sessions game, you and everyone else that is looking for something that dst isnt, there are a plethora of mobas, shooters, rogelike, sport games, racing games, silly coops, etc but dont force rogelike casual short sessions into a survival game with hours of content 

 

I mean, DS had a RogueLite game mode, the game was actually categorized as, listed and sold under being a RogueLite.

Obviously I’m going to expect more of that with any and all potential franchise sequels unless they’re well NewHome or something spin-off’y like that.

But DST isn’t a Spin-Off, it’s a Direct Sequel to the single player game.

For me the most fun I had with DS was Maxwells RogueLite Adventure.

But even the DLCs kept me on my toes by throwing things at me I wasn’t prepared for at all times (like flipping over a stone slab and random angry mob was hiding inside)

For me a games replay value is in how long it takes before it becomes highly repetitive.

Its like okay for example imagine a open world Spiderman game with amazing graphics, Huge HUGE beautifully detailed open world… but, there’s only the same repeat six missions over and over and over again.

How long will it be until you grow bored and play something else with more variety?

With DST its always the same process, you always are out to accomplish the exact same tasks over and over and over again in a game that In order to stay relevant & keep people playing in year 2024-

Either has to get constant new updates for more and more content, or it needs to have enough replay value that it doesn’t actually need new content- And for me, Replay value is in how long it takes to get Repetitive.

I have begged for years on these forums for the devs to just give us even just larger variety in the way worlds generate and what can spawn and where would go a MASSIVELY long way in keeping it from becoming the same repetitive cycle of go here, do this, this and this: Rinse, Repeat.

I’m definitely not a fan of the hours long quest grinds just to get something new & interesting to start happening in the world.

[Mysterious box]

8 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

When you look at this thread and compare what you are saying it just means that most forum members that want the game to be harder shows that they are a minority. This has always been true and game needs to change either to become easier or teach players and make winter more enjoyable worthwhile to survive. Winter in its current state makes new players so miserable that it is no wonder most of them quit, they don't know how thermal stone works or that it can be heated to even higher temperatures when it turns red. 

There are players that keep saying that thermal stone should be nerfed when that would be one of the biggest mistakes klei could make. The players don't use thermal clothing not because it is terrible but because no one likes managing inventory even more and thinking what they should carry and to many it is much worse to have a small inventory compared to dying or even losing the world. New players chop trees and barely scrape by while they have to stand next to firepit almost whole winter.

It is not correct to say that you always start at level 1 now that you have skill trees but it is true that DST has much more content and long quests that take a lot of time to complete.

Early game is already good enough and I don't see it as an issue. Should a game be designed for players that quit in a few days or a week and never come back? I think that DST should be designed so that more new players continue playing, the goal should be to convert new players into a regular players or ones that comes back for every update to play.

I think the thing I've noticed both in and outside the forums is people want the game to be more engaging it's not that the game is too hard it's that there's little incentive to learn and with skills allowing players to ignore learning mechanics I think we should just drop the learn as you go style of the game and just have the game explain how things work directly.

Making the game easier is just going to bore new players faster but that also doesn't mean it should become harder in the early game it needs to simply become more engaging.

 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

If endless was default gamemode and most players could come back and continue their progress it would be much better for new players.

Very unlikely as most players want to feel their impact on a world from the beginning rather than randomly joining later.

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I mean.. DST is a huge time investment, one in which I can spend 3 hours playing and feel like I have effectively achieved NOTHING.

While people might point in other directions this is the biggest factor that scares off new players and keeps people from playing long term.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

 

That just means that you enjoy grinding battlepass and play games like fornite or rogelikes. Dont starve was never a short sesion casual games, always has been a time invest kind of game.

The game has seasons, do you know? Dont expect to experience every piece of content right after you spawn and dont expect klei to dont invest resources on adding more late game stuff when is something that a lot of people enjoy 

That would be like asking to beat the final boss in a final fantasy at level 1 because you dont feel like playing the rest of the game or jumping into the last puzzle in a click and point graphic adventure because isnt 'fun' for you to experience the rest of the game

If you want short sessions game, you and everyone else that is looking for something that dst isnt, there are a plethora of mobas, shooters, rogelike, sport games, racing games, silly coops, etc but dont force rogelike casual short sessions into a survival game with hours of content 

 

The issue here though is Mike is right don't starve together is a multiplayer game but it's content is designed like a single player one despite being balanced like a multiplayer one and this is a massive issue for a large amount of players who don't have a consistent friend group who is willing to commit to a single world. By the time your average player gets their base established they've already been playing for hours so they're either ready to throw in the towel or they're going to rush content without taking the proper time to enjoy it. But if they're playing alone and they do get the time to enjoy it they have to deal with the fact that the game isn't balanced around that sort of play. It isn't a big deal for veterans like us but it really harms the accessibility of the game and it's what lead to the power creep skill trees introduce giving you instant gratification in order to entice you to commit to a world.

[arubaro]

2 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

I disagree with you here, why is it wrong for a game to have easy mode for players that can't beat the game normally? I think that Elden Ring did it perfectly as anyone can play it and have fun.

Elden Ring made as big of a splash into mainstream as it is possible for soul like games because they decided to do that.

Atleast you could properly read what i wrote. Precisely im supporting games having easy mods over having just 1 difficulty and making the player abuse or ignore mechanics to make it easy. Is a non sense to do it in that way

[Echsrick]

dst is like a social.....center.....something social, and the people that go still after winter are the players with actual time and investmends and not just goin in randomly for social interactions and the likes