Less and less people playing dst?

[nimzowitsch10]

Most of my DST friends have all quit playing for a while now. Is this the case for anyone else? Nowadays I just play on a solo world. I tried to play the beta but very few people have servers in the beta.

Feels like DST is in a slump in terms of updates and long time fans arent as excited for beta/updates anymore. Guess that is the life cycle for every game. 

[moneymonday]

[nimzowitsch10]

@prezera I'm more referring to long time players, I know new players are picking up the game especially with that 1 dollar sale they had not too long ago. No need for the snarky response.

[chirsg]

2 minutes ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

@prezera I'm more referring to long time players, I know new players are picking up the game especially with that 1 dollar sale they had not too long ago. No need for the snarky response.

Long term players are mostly gone. Numbers are trending upwards though.
Long term players usually wait to see if an update is consistent with their tastes, or there was a patch that made them quit straight out.

 

[Mike23Ua]

10 minutes ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

Most of my DST friends have all quit playing for a while now. Is this the case for anyone else? Nowadays I just play on a solo world. I tried to play the beta but very few people have servers in the beta.

Feels like DST is in a slump in terms of updates and long time fans arent as excited for beta/updates anymore. Guess that is the life cycle for every game. 

I think it’s got ALOT to do with the way Klei presents content honestly.. they’re on this weird trend to try and incorporate some kind of Terraria “Hard Mode” into DST, Content that’s tied behind hours upon hours worth of grinding and RPG style fetch and collect quests. It probably doesn’t help that the highlight of almost every update is a new big bad raid boss with new Uber tier loot to make staying alive in general even more of a base sitting simulator after you fight the optional raid bosses to get their loot.

Meanwhile I’m seeing a lot of what would otherwise actually be FUN content for EVERYONE to Enjoy (with various difficulty settings to tune them to your liking) being locked behind “Hard Mode”

Take the new beta mobs as an Example, The Icker and the Giant Cave Worm Both deal huge amounts of damage to the player, and that’s because Klei’s trying to make “Hard Mode” content.

But 99% of the time what happens is people complain about how “Bad” they think the content is, and that leaves Klei to release tweaks and changes that in most cases, always results in heavily Nerfing the content.

Im willing to bet the upcoming “changes” to the Giant Worm will be making it no longer destroy structures, lowering its damage threshold or turning it into a Glorified boss fight with “OP Rewards”

Ive tried to advocate for a massive change to how the game is designed for a long time now- I keep repeatedly saying

“in a game full of options it really does need more options”

But I don’t think anyone truly understands or cares what I mean by that..

let’s take the Icker mob as an example, it’s tied to “Late Game” because of how much damage it can dish out… but if players could Tune these to deal less damage (such as that toggle to take 40% less damage from all sources)

It could just as easily be a minor (but fun) annoyance for even completely casual players while retaining its “hard mode” status for players who want it to be more deadly.

However the 40% reduction or 40% more damage from all sources is a pretty poor way to handle it.

Maybe I want RockJaw Sharks to be able to instant kill me in one hit, but at the same time, maybe I don’t feel like being insta-killed by a random seaweed sprout or MacTusk dart?

This is what I’ve been trying desperately to explain, Klei for whatever bizarre reason choose to lock content behind hours upon hours of progression grinding (which becomes even more obvious & obnoxious if your like me and delete your game saves to start new worlds often)

To put it plain and simply: Klei wants you to dedicate your lives to one game world living in it forever… and because of that- They don’t actually SEE how tedious or boring the progression grind to get something new and exciting spawning or happening in your game world can be.

Personally I’d love to be able to adjust a bunch of different toggles to “Customize” my play sessions.

For Example- Maybe I can adjust the difficulty, health, and behavior of different mobs and other content. Like the giant cave worm- Currently it Despawns if left alone.. but maybe I would enjoy a toggle to where it never despawns and continues to chase you until you fight and kill it?

And maybe I want it to be a serious nuisance intentionally targeting and destroying my base structures?

And MAYBE I want it to Instant Kill me in one hit if it hits me with one of its attacks..

OR Maybe I want it to only deal like 40 damage per attack, it won’t target or destroy structures, and it’ll Despawn if I leave it alone.

 

Klei is trying to add a Terraria “Hard Mode” to the game, When they should be treating DST more like it’s Minecraft or State of Decay 

Aka games that get new content, that can be scaled based on the “difficulty” you choose to play on. But ALL difficulties still get the new content, instead of just going all in on “This is the Uber hard end game stuff”

I think that’s why a lot of my friends have thrown in the towel and uninstalled the game, because like Me.. they can see all this otherwise amazing content- That if it wasn’t intentionally tuned to be so damn difficult, they could otherwise be enjoying.

And it seems, every time I try to bring this up as a serious forum discussion it gets met with laugh reacts and falls on deaf ears.

 

[Balter]

Those upward trends are actually from Russian players now a days the majority of the DST player base is made up of almost an invisible community which is them hardly interacting with anyone and just gaming DST. Props to klei for their marketing though I don’t know how it got so popular in russia maybe some famous Russian YouTuber or something idk.

[DegenerateFurry]

I don't think there's less people playing now or even less "long-term players". I still regularly encounter players who have close to or even over a thousand hours on the game. 

[SonicDen220]

1 hour ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

Most of my DST friends have all quit playing for a while now. Is this the case for anyone else? 

Feels like DST is in a slump in terms of updates and long time fans arent as excited for beta/updates anymore. Guess that is the life cycle for every game. 

Definitely the case for me and for all of my friends who play DST. I still follow the updates, but the last time I actually sat down and played the game was... before the first ever rift update? I just don't feel any excitement towards any rift content. 

[benfroyobro9381]

I really don't think looking at the forums will give you a good grasp of the entire fan base. For example, unlike most forum users, there's a decent chance the majority of players struggle with winter, hounds, and darkness. This place tends to be an echo chamber at times and it's no one's fault. Your personal experiences are not completely representative of how the fandom feels. Neither are mine or anyone elses. 

[nimzowitsch10]

@benfroyobro9381 of course, i'm really just wondering what people's personal experience is with dst nowadays. Do you have an active group of ppl you play with? Or is it a bit quiet. I struggle to find people to play dst with nowadays.

[HellHeater]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Im willing to bet the upcoming “changes” to the Giant Worm will be making it no longer destroy structures, lowering its damage threshold or turning it into a Glorified boss fight with “OP Rewards”

I'm taking that bet. Loser gifts the next cheapest skin bundle Klei releases.

[Brotid01]

2 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

Most of my DST friends have all quit playing for a while now. Is this the case for anyone else? Nowadays I just play on a solo world. I tried to play the beta but very few people have servers in the beta.

Feels like DST is in a slump in terms of updates and long time fans arent as excited for beta/updates anymore. Guess that is the life cycle for every game. 

In my case I play on local 1-player servers so I can test the updates without interruptions using commands etc. and pause wherever I want.

So, I'm guessing a lot of players testing the beta are also playing solo on "local servers".

And yeah 10 years is a long time to move on, get older aka lack of time, energy, get bored and most of my friends from my "generation" don't play it anymore, that's doesn't mean the game is dying.

Meaning the majority of the players don't even have a forum account or even know the forums even exist in the first place or like me who took a lot of years before join in, that's also explain why sometimes you see the same people posting here or the lack of new faces in the forums even I don't post a lot here.

For last, the burnout is a real b**** a lot of old players myself included can't play for long this game and it's natural... again it's been 10 years.

So maybe try to talk with more people outside of discussion, reworking, balancing the game or feedbacks and more for the pleasured of talk and meet new people, but who knows maybe I'm just speaking without knowing and maybe is not the answer you want.

2 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

of course, i'm really just wondering what people's personal experience is with dst nowadays. Do you have an active group of ppl you play with? Or is it a bit quiet. I struggle to find people to play dst with nowadays.

I still love this game but when I feel a little lonely I like to chill in the public servers just to chat or help other people, decorate, or just role playing, you know? like having more variety but I don't like playing for long, otherwise I'm gonna get sick of this game and end it up having another burnout, HA!

But I don't think I would enjoy playing serious with people because this games lack of scaling difficulty when there's so many people and I'm not speaking about bosses only I mean in general.

[gaymime]

well, there is a natural shedding of players once you get past a certain level of competency and that level of competency requires time which also has a natural shedding of players. it seems like people just aren't playing because you are at a level of play that just has less people and are moving into the position a lot of other higher-than-the-floor players have of spending more time with friend-only or solo-only worlds. i have like 8 worlds atm, two are friend-only the rest are solo. i got rid of my pub like 3 weeks ago because it just wasn't fun going back to the spawn base every few days to help/kick new people coming in. i still go play in pubs myself but only a few times a month(less than ten). it is just how it is.

[NoodlemanNed]

9 hours ago, Balter said:

Those upward trends are actually from Russian players now a days

the russian and chinese communities for dst have been the 2 biggest ones for quite some time now. Its would make sense for the english speaking community to be getting smaller and the upward trend is just because the game is growing in its more popular areas.

[Terra B Welch]

11 hours ago, SonicDen220 said:

Definitely the case for me and for all of my friends who play DST. I still follow the updates, but the last time I actually sat down and played the game was... before the first ever rift update? I just don't feel any excitement towards any rift content. 

This is much the same for me, I still grab the twitch drops and follow the updates, but between the additions of rifts(planar mechanics) and the skill trees I've only felt less like playing DST as of late.

I still have Glommer Buddy tho, I'll never forget about Glommer Buddy.

[Echsrick]

the friends part sure is ture, but other wise its just recent updates just....not feeling good you know? all of the rift stuff is just...i dont know it just not good, dont help the fact that the game seemingly suddenly focus way too much on combat then anything else these days, i mean i do play at random times in a puplic server but thats random puplic servers, usualy it never even gets to experince rift stuff or generaly the newer update stuff, actualy despite most seemingly not liking the skill trees i kind of llike them, there a nice little fresh take thats just a small thing, and then of course there are other video games in this world, like a japanise only mmo i been playing, or the new mana game that has released recently, so no time to even play this game given that this game can be a real time investment

[SpookyXy]

Maybe there is no smoking gun reason for why long term players stop playing a game. Maybe people feel satisfied with their experience after a 100+ hrs and just move on.

[NPCMaxwell]

I have been stuck to DS/ROG/SW/HAMLET for too long despite owning DST from the beginning. Basically I am like one of those "new players" since I have just 'started' to play DST. (before it just was my: ROG with mods game)

I suppose if I had treated DST like the sequel it was meant to be I...........would probably still have been stuck in soloworlds and never played with public servers, so I sadly would have probably just added to your experience, OP, of DST being "a dying game". I'm sorry it looks like this for you. Maybe, I can only assume this may be a good suggestion, you could use the 'server advertising' subforum here and see if you can gather people who would be wanting to mantain a public world that all of you can use for every new beta?

[Cheggf]

Most of the older players have quit playing. Klei is focusing on attracting the opposite demographic since it's larger.

3 hours ago, SpookyXy said:

Maybe there is no smoking gun reason for why long term players stop playing a game. Maybe people feel satisfied with their experience after a 100+ hrs and just move on.

There have been dozens of forum posts about why people are leaving the game.

[Valase]

I always played DST(and ds) alone, but I would always check out new videos in youtube, the only "popularity" change that I really saw were the content creators migrating to Twitch.

17 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

Feels like DST is in a slump in terms of updates and long time fans arent as excited for beta/updates anymore. Guess that is the life cycle for every game. 

Yeah, this is a clear case of "people that didn't like came to the forums to complain and people that liked are busy playing the game". And to try to put things into perspective, ever since they started doing those "pre-beta streams" were they show what will come into the next beta, I have not missed once and have always been very excited to the new content, but I all threads that I made regarding those streams, usually were for feedback, not for "This is **** and I didn't like it" or "this will ruin the game" or a meme of "poor taste".

Your post reads like a circlejerk bait, but I still believe that it is important to say that it is alright to feel that, and that most of the answers here are quite expected.

But I must say, going into a beta to find servers with people is quite a choice, huh.

[Mr Giggio]

17 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

I'm more referring to long time players

Welp I can tell that most of my friend circle is around the same age as me here [since 2017, 6-7 years + ish] so probably just a personal situation that u want to be a thing or spread pessimist PoV I guess

[SpookyXy]

37 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Most of the older players have quit playing. Klei is focusing on attracting the opposite demographic since it's larger.

There have been dozens of forum posts about why people are leaving the game.

The forums don't represent the average playerbase. Most of us are a lot more invested than others, posting here multiple times a week, making friends, it's natural to have more in depth reasons for leaving. Most people who stop playing a game don't go to the forums to announce they are leaving, one day they put down the game and don't pick it up again. My sister has thousands of hrs in game, nothing drove her away other than life going on and new games to play.

[Keknutui]

17 hours ago, Balter said:

Эти восходящие тенденции на самом деле исходят от российских игроков. В наши дни большая часть игроков DST состоит из почти невидимого сообщества, которое практически ни с кем не взаимодействует и просто играет в DST. Спасибо klei за их маркетинг, хотя я не знаю, как он стал таким популярным в России, может быть, какой-нибудь известный российский ютубер или что-то вроде idk.

As someone living in this country, I can say one thing. Yes, you're right, Don't Starve, and especially the Shipwrecked was heavily promoted in 2016-2017, but closer to the addition of the ocean and the Celestial Champion, most left the fandom, now even YouTubers as such are gone, we basically have ONLY 2 of them, and all the others either left or are playing others games, which by the way had an extremely bad effect on their channels.

Personally, I am the only one from my social circle who has been playing this game for 4000 hours, and some of my friends have stayed at 125...

But hey, the community is still big now, but damn, not as big as in 2016-2020, I've never seen it before 

[Cheggf]

24 minutes ago, SpookyXy said:

The forums don't represent the average playerbase. Most of us are a lot more invested than others, posting here multiple times a week, making friends, it's natural to have more in depth reasons for leaving. Most people who stop playing a game don't go to the forums to announce they are leaving, one day they put down the game and don't pick it up again. My sister has thousands of hrs in game, nothing drove her away other than life going on and new games to play.

The "average playerbase" has not left the game. Someone already posted a screencap of the Steamcharts page.

Edit: oh no wait I fell for him blatantly lying. That isn't what the Steamcharts look like, he put that dumb face on it on purpose to block the end of the chart:

There really are way less people playing. Instead of 45-75k players it's been at 10-40k. But your explanation doesn't make sense either. Why, after 10 years, would there abruptly be such a huge drop in players all of a sudden due to reasons that have been eternally true? 

 

[BezKa]

We got pretty annoyed with the skill tree stuff and haven't played much together since then. We're currently doing a introduction run in Stardew valley for the one friend who hasn't played, and exploring new content there. I've sat down to do some housekeeping on my solo world for a few hours recently though.

Once we're done with SV though we're gonna come back and keep playing on our most recent world, it's got sick map gen and we've been right at the midgame there.

With the no skill trees mod enabled ofc.