Lurking Nightmare Feedback

[Reiko24]

60 people agreed, that is an absolutely INSANE amount of support on this forum. Almost no post gets as much coverage and likes.

Please consider adding it...

[Frosty_Mentos]

I can understand if that were in the caves themselves, but in surface it would be too much for newer players I'm afraid. We need to keep some balance between things like going to caves where we actively SEEK OUT danger for the sake of big loot, while on surface it's less of that and just managing survival overall. 

If you're in caves with 0 sanity sure that could work for an enemy, as many wouldn't go down there and it IS a tough enemy to fight which imo should stay below than on the surface just to not put too much stress on other players.

[Reiko24]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I can understand if that were in the caves themselves, but in surface it would be too much for newer players I'm afraid. We need to keep some balance between things like going to caves where we actively SEEK OUT danger for the sake of big loot, while on surface it's less of that and just managing survival overall. 

If you're in caves with 0 sanity sure that could work for an enemy, as many wouldn't go down there and it IS a tough enemy to fight which imo should stay below than on the surface just to not put too much stress on other players.

it is difficult to even accidentally hit 0 sanity for a longer period of time
experienced players will use food or other items, beginners will run pick flowers even when their sanity hits 80
it could spawn if you are on 0 sanity for some time, instead of having the same chance to spawn

 

[Ohan]

11 minutes ago, Reiko24 said:

it is difficult to even accidentally hit 0 sanity for a longer period of time

Wickerbottom 

[Frosty_Mentos]

14 minutes ago, Reiko24 said:

it is difficult to even accidentally hit 0 sanity for a longer period of time
experienced players will use food or other items, beginners will run pick flowers even when their sanity hits 80
it could spawn if you are on 0 sanity for some time, instead of having the same chance to spawn
 

that is very untrue, i seen plenty of people have 0 sanity at a lot of times. There's bone helm that exists, Maxwell, Wicker with their abiltiies. Wolfgang who has higher sanity loss, characters with slower sanity threshhold overall like Willow Webber Wes (idk if wes would count here even) others that will lose it quicker and stay insane longer cause of not knowing what to do.

There's a fine balance of where we should put danger and where we should keep things as normal as default, as much as some people want "uncompromising mode" like features, I want to keep balance for everyone to have opportunity to survive, thrive, learn and not be killed by BS mechanics for far too often unless they seek that danger themselves, which is the case where it'll be their own fault than the game's all the time. 

Don't stress out the newbies or scare off those that play very casually at lower level, we don't need to do that. 

[Reiko24]

20 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

that is very untrue, i seen plenty of people have 0 sanity at a lot of times. There's bone helm that exists, Maxwell, Wicker with their abiltiies. Wolfgang who has higher sanity loss, characters with slower sanity threshhold overall like Willow Webber Wes (idk if wes would count here even) others that will lose it quicker and stay insane longer cause of not knowing what to do.

There's a fine balance of where we should put danger and where we should keep things as normal as default, as much as some people want "uncompromising mode" like features, I want to keep balance for everyone to have opportunity to survive, thrive, learn and not be killed by BS mechanics for far too often unless they seek that danger themselves, which is the case where it'll be their own fault than the game's all the time. 

Don't stress out the newbies or scare off those that play very casually at lower level, we don't need to do that. 

this shadow creature is nowhere near the level of an uncompromising mode-like creature, it is maybe a bit harder than the terrorbeak

[Frosty_Mentos]

4 minutes ago, Reiko24 said:

this shadow creature is nowhere near the level of an uncompromising mode-like creature, it is maybe a bit harder than the terrorbeak

Point still stands. Uncomp is something I wouldn't compare for difficulty level personally. DST doesn't need to be like it, but should still consider other players when playing.

[00petar00]

6 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

60 people agreed, that is an absolutely INSANE amount of support on this forum. Almost no post gets as much coverage and likes.

Please consider adding it...

What you need to know is that most of the players active on the forum are 0.01% or less of the playerbase and most of us have thousands of hours played. While I am against this there are a lot more people that are for it and results are very skewed.

Klei developers have already been making quite a few bad decisions in regards to destruction of structures probably because they are getting feedback from the forums. In the last few years we have gotten so many more new additions that focus on destruction compared to 6 or more years previously since release of the game.

[goblinball]

5 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

it is difficult to even accidentally hit 0 sanity for a longer period of time

I don’t think this is true. I’ve played with alot of beginners recently and almost all of them have had troubles managing sanity. Not all of them know to pick flowers (or they just aren’t available or they know not to because butterflies), and even if they do pick them it won’t take long for their sanity to go right back to zero. 

[Canis]

5 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Point still stands. Uncomp is something I wouldn't compare for difficulty level personally. DST doesn't need to be like it, but should still consider other players when playing.

It seems that Uncomp has become a frequently talked about topic both on the forums and the discords, so I want to poke my head in here for a sec and say a few things:

We are never going to advocate for Uncomp-level difficulty in base-game, because that'd just make the game impossibly un-fun for new players.  Vanilla should stay Vanilla, and Uncomp should stay Uncomp. Uncomp was designed for people who want to increase both risk and reward, something that might not to be everyone's taste. (Even if you can config/toggle off each feature the mod adds to customize the experience to your liking, cough cough.) 

I just want to emphasize the fact that we encourage the use of our features as an answer to "What if?" questions (ie "What if a unique shadow creature spawned at 0 sanity?")

However, feeding the logical fallacy of "You want to add an Uncomp Feature? That must mean you want Uncomp-level difficulty in basegame!" or just using it as an excuse to bring up your 4-years-out-of-date criticisms is unproductive to any conversation and makes you seem silly, because that wasn't the reason it was brought up in the first place.

We've been around since 2019 (Half a decade now). We've done a LOT of things. We've made a LOT of things. Naturally, some of these things will have some overlap with stuff Klei adds (or are planning to add), because that what happens when you have such a dedicated playerbase of content creators. It's completely fine to Uncomp features as inspiration for suggestions, but remember that youre considering them for the vanilla experience.

Edit: Goes without saying, but this isn't all directed at @Frosty_Mentos themselves lol, they're good people.

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

that is very untrue, i seen plenty of people have 0 sanity at a lot of times. There's bone helm that exists, Maxwell, Wicker with their abiltiies. Wolfgang who has higher sanity loss, characters with slower sanity threshhold overall like Willow Webber Wes (idk if wes would count here even) others that will lose it quicker and stay insane longer cause of not knowing what to do.

There's a fine balance of where we should put danger and where we should keep things as normal as default, as much as some people want "uncompromising mode" like features, I want to keep balance for everyone to have opportunity to survive, thrive, learn and not be killed by BS mechanics for far too often unless they seek that danger themselves, which is the case where it'll be their own fault than the game's all the time. 

Don't stress out the newbies or scare off those that play very casually at lower level, we don't need to do that. 

I don't really think it really impact newer players much to keep it as a zero sanity thing since if they're struggling with sanity in the first place odds are they aren't going to be able to handle terror beaks anyway.

[Frosty_Mentos]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

I don't really think it really impact newer players much to keep it as a zero sanity thing since if they're struggling with sanity in the first place odds are they aren't going to be able to handle terror beaks anyway.

Anything new of a threat is enough new and impactful to newer players. Add a harder shadow enemy without knowing how to deal with or sanity to stay safe? Yea that's death. Terror beaks are deadly, crawlers mostly to those that don't think while running around away from them. Terror beak is tier above crawler due to speed and trickiness and higher damage and health, already is a lot. Add a THIRD one and it's a bit over the top for the surface dwellers imo.

To state clear that I don't want them to be on the surface at least when it comes to sanity. There's already a lot of bosses we gotta deal with upstairs and other threats that I think we should remain this as cave content part still.

Besides, it's cooler this way. Ruins having own nightmare creature that evolves once rift opens? That's pretty neat. In caves as a whole having it sneak up would be scary and fun enough.

[Milordo]

12 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

that is very untrue, i seen plenty of people have 0 sanity at a lot of times. There's bone helm that exists, Maxwell, Wicker with their abiltiies. Wolfgang who has higher sanity loss, characters with slower sanity threshhold overall like Willow Webber Wes (idk if wes would count here even) others that will lose it quicker and stay insane longer cause of not knowing what to do.

The examples you have listed here, are all player dependant. It's the player that choose these options and risk it, therefore it's all their fault if they went 0 sanity, not the opposite like the game forcing you in dangers such as winter. Especially the bone helm is nonsense, more than Wes, considering you finish literally the game for that item, so which new players we're talking about anymore? A good example that came to mind of possible instances where new players go 0 sanity, is when other people died and are ghost. That's the game forcing malus and dangers on you. Buuutttt

12 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

There's a fine balance of where we should put danger and where we should keep things as normal as default, as much as some people want "uncompromising mode" like features, I want to keep balance for everyone to have opportunity to survive, thrive, learn and not be killed by BS mechanics for far too often unless they seek that danger themselves, which is the case where it'll be their own fault than the game's all the time. 

Don't stress out the newbies or scare off those that play very casually at lower level, we don't need to do that. 

I do much agree on this point. Literally I agree with everybody about lurking nightmare xD because you're all bringing up very good points and good point of views but that's why discussions and critical thinkin exist, to found a better solution. It doesn't have to be black and white, there are tons of roads we can choose. Reiko and all the others want to have a small sanity rework because it has not been touched for....bruh, since 2012 and want more, as righteous they are, but you bring out also a good point about new player experience and game progression, which is very important, until you remember that even Klei themselves doesn't care particularly and often stomps on their own rules and designs.

Conclusion = I had this concept floating around my head for years. What if Don't Starve..... progress with the player? You start you run normally. Sanity has still crawling horrors and terrobeaks, but..... once you're in the Ruins, you met this new never met shadow, the lurking nightmare. You confront your fears and almost 100% the Ruins. Then you met Ancient Guardian. Once defeated, you grab the ancient key and all the marvelous Ruins loot and go back to the surface, to your main base. You have 34 sanity. You're becoming crazy, so you prepare youself for the combat but....it can't be! The usual shadow spawned up to 30 sanity, to just "lurk" the player around is this time a lurking nightmare! What happened is by entering the Ruins and defetead Ancient guardians, for example, now you gave a check for the game to spawn lurking nightmares as sanity monsters.               

It's probably not the best solution and not the only road/option we could take for Klei, in case we push lurking nightmares as a sanity monster but it's something. Tell me what you think. Also I want to ask you, and maybe others here who are reading, did you have tested/challenged/fighted lurking nightmares? I did and it is far more simpler than you expect.

 

[00petar00]

18 hours ago, Canis said:

It seems that Uncomp has become a frequently talked about topic both on the forums and the discords, so I want to poke my head in here for a sec and say a few things:

We are never going to advocate for Uncomp-level difficulty in base-game, because that'd just make the game impossibly un-fun for new players.  Vanilla should stay Vanilla, and Uncomp should stay Uncomp. Uncomp was designed for people who want to increase both risk and reward, something that might not to be everyone's taste. (Even if you can config/toggle off each feature the mod adds to customize the experience to your liking, cough cough.) 

It doesn't matter what you personally say you want when a lot of uncompromising mod players want vanilla game to become more difficult and will advocate for it on the forums.

18 hours ago, Canis said:

I just want to emphasize the fact that we encourage the use of our features as an answer to "What if?" questions (ie "What if a unique shadow creature spawned at 0 sanity?")

However, feeding the logical fallacy of "You want to add an Uncomp Feature? That must mean you want Uncomp-level difficulty in basegame!" or just using it as an excuse to bring up your 4-years-out-of-date criticisms is unproductive to any conversation and makes you seem silly, because that wasn't the reason it was brought up in the first place.

 

This just goes completely against what you previously said. I do believe that klei has taken ideas from uncomp mod when a decent number of developers of this mod literally mock klei for focusing on making the game easier to introduce new players and please old megabase players. There have been multiple situations and that is the main reason this mod is disliked, otherwise I wouldn't care about this mod that much but when I hear about the controversies of the developers of this mod it just shows their true self and what they want game to become while they are aggressive and don't care about any other playstyle.

18 hours ago, Canis said:

However, feeding the logical fallacy of "You want to add an Uncomp Feature? That must mean you want Uncomp-level difficulty in basegame!" or just using it as an excuse to bring up your 4-years-out-of-date criticisms is unproductive to any conversation and makes you seem silly, because that wasn't the reason it was brought up in the first place.

We've been around since 2019 (Half a decade now). We've done a LOT of things. We've made a LOT of things. Naturally, some of these things will have some overlap with stuff Klei adds (or are planning to add), because that what happens when you have such a dedicated playerbase of content creators. It's completely fine to Uncomp features as inspiration for suggestions, but remember that youre considering them for the vanilla experience.

Edit: Goes without saying, but this isn't all directed at @Frosty_Mentos themselves lol, they're good people.

If one uncomp invasive uncomp feature gets added something like new worm boss it literally counters years of cave updates while megabasing features don't affect uncomp players at all.

14 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

To state clear that I don't want them to be on the surface at least when it comes to sanity. There's already a lot of bosses we gotta deal with upstairs and other threats that I think we should remain this as cave content part still.

I don't want them in caves either, a lot of endless players have moved to cave basing or megabasing because rifts on the suriface have been terrible with brightshades and we don't want to build areas and calculate range so that we have brightshades covering most of our base so that we have more safe spots.

10 hours ago, Milordo said:

The examples you have listed here, are all player dependant. It's the player that choose these options and risk it, therefore it's all their fault if they went 0 sanity, not the opposite like the game forcing you in dangers such as winter. Especially the bone helm is nonsense, more than Wes, considering you finish literally the game for that item, so which new players we're talking about anymore? A good example that came to mind of possible instances where new players go 0 sanity, is when other people died and are ghost. That's the game forcing malus and dangers on you. Buuutttt

A lot of characters have low sanity number or maxwell/wickerbottm, so it doesn't really matter If someone chose to "risk it" according to you. I don't think that being at 0 sanity should be an even bigger of a punishment because you already have a lot of nightmares spawning and have to kill them.

[Brotid01]

In theory “yes” the new players they’re gonna die by a lot of things before even reaching 0 sanity and they're pretty much gonna die by terror beaks before seeing a lurking terror.

But my complains are the next:

If know how to manage your sanity not speaking being perfect or good just having an average skill, you’re never gonna see a lurking terror in the first place because is quite hard to drop your sanity for long periods of times by “accident”.

Even if you drop your sanity to 0 you can’t keep it that low, you're only need to kill regular shadow creatures and that's grants you a minimum sanity meaning you’re really gonna put a lot of effort to spawn one in the first place.

Even if you make easier to spawn one, that’s gonna make miserable the new players, believe or not the amount of good players in DST in just a mere fraction of the community, a lot of people struggle in simple things as winter or summer not even speaking about kiting in fights, farming healing items, making set up for bosses or keeping sanity.

Even if you manage to spawn one, what’s the point? The loot is not good enough, killing regular shadow creatures is easier, quicker and safer, and if I really want to farm NF the Ickers are more than enough and of course if I really want to farm Pure Horror, we also have Fused Shadeling, both creatures are so more consistent in fights.

Then again, a lot of people are saying the new players are never gonna be able to see one but the little more experience players never gonna see one either and experience players don’t have any incentives to kill one in these conditions assuming they reach by accident 0 sanity in the first place.

Also, I can see a few cases when this creature can kill a lot of new players specially in public servers but I’m not gonna elaborate on that.

In this case adding this creature at 0 sanity are gonna add nothing to the game, doesn’t change the meta, the way I play or the measures I take, in my personal opinion is straight waste of potential even when i want more difficult to this game this is not the right answer.

[Jakepeng99]

20 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

60 people agreed, that is an absolutely INSANE amount of support on this forum. Almost no post gets as much coverage and likes.

Please consider adding it...

Yeah. Its honestly kinda crazy considering its something big that makes the game harder.

[Milordo]

2 hours ago, Brotid01 said:

--snip--

Maybe in the end it could be just a chance of encountering him when low sanity and the game could calculate to put less shadows since he's dangerous? Like 1 lurking and only 1 crawling horror can spawn? Or maybe the idea of "progression" I said it earlier? Or both?

[arubaro]

23 hours ago, Ohan said:

Wickerbottom 

Well, if a new player is abusing her books (doubt) they deserve to be punished. Wicker books are specially good for new players since they didn't learned to gather food and resources

This mechanic can be implemented after beating fw so sanity changes for veterans

[Mysterious box]

15 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Anything new of a threat is enough new and impactful to newer players. Add a harder shadow enemy without knowing how to deal with or sanity to stay safe? Yea that's death. Terror beaks are deadly, crawlers mostly to those that don't think while running around away from them. Terror beak is tier above crawler due to speed and trickiness and higher damage and health, already is a lot. Add a THIRD one and it's a bit over the top for the surface dwellers imo.

To state clear that I don't want them to be on the surface at least when it comes to sanity. There's already a lot of bosses we gotta deal with upstairs and other threats that I think we should remain this as cave content part still.

Besides, it's cooler this way. Ruins having own nightmare creature that evolves once rift opens? That's pretty neat. In caves as a whole having it sneak up would be scary and fun enough.

I feel like it still goes back to what I said initially would it be harder on newer players who hit 0 sanity sure but not in a meaningful way. Why? Because a new player is going to fall into one of three categories either they know how to fight nightmare creatures, they know how to recover sanity, or they were going to die anyway. Adding a extra threat at zero sanity isn't going to meaningfully negatively impact the experience for them because they're likely going to exist in one of these categories.

That being said I'd be down to go forward with aurobaro's idea of making them just be added to default insanity post rifts as it feels like a waste to just leave them at the lights.

[arubaro]

15 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

There's already a lot of bosses we gotta deal with upstairs

 By a lot fo you mean bearger and deerclops?

[Reiko24]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

 By a lot fo you mean bearger and deerclops?

meanwhile deerclops is on the same level of power as a treeguard if you just stand by a campfire and tank her

[Canis]

On 9/7/2024 at 12:19 AM, 00petar00 said:

It doesn't matter what you personally say you want when a lot of uncompromising mod players want vanilla game to become more difficult and will advocate for it on the forums.

This just goes completely against what you previously said. I do believe that klei has taken ideas from uncomp mod when a decent number of developers of this mod literally mock klei for focusing on making the game easier to introduce new players and please old megabase players. There have been multiple situations and that is the main reason this mod is disliked, otherwise I wouldn't care about this mod that much but when I hear about the controversies of the developers of this mod it just shows their true self and what they want game to become while they are aggressive and don't care about any other playstyle.

This will be the last time I post about Uncomp as to not hijack the thread, but I feel like this must be stated. If anyone feels so inclined to continue the conversation, DM or ping me on discord (im in all of the popular dst ones, including Klei's, #CanisWTF)

Random players to not represent the mod they play. We are just as annoyed as you when random people come into threads completely irrelevant to Uncomp and say that "Uncomp is just way better" because, sure it felt satisfying the first few times, but after the two hundredth it gets on our nerves that some people in our playerbase actively reverse the progress we make on both player inclusivity as well as public image. You cant have a game that's impossibly hard to get in to and expect a healthy playerbase, I think we all know that.

Our development team has never mocked Klei in recent memory, no. The only affiliated person who had a history of that is Scrimbles, my ex co-head developer who has retired from DST modding a while back simply because it's not a game they enjoy anymore. They have publicly apologized for their emotional outburst(s) and credited it to external factors.

This is the only incident regarding an uncomp dev 'mocking' Klei in recent history, as all other dev team members have overall positive opinions and have clearly stated that we do not share her opinions, past or present. We had a spotty past with "elitist" values in our infancy, but we have grown out of such childish way of viewing game development/community a long time ago. (For reference, I started Uncomp when I was 16. I am now 21.)

If you have any criticisms or anything else you would like to share, I strongly recommend you shoot me a DM, because I am eager to hear anything and everything that otherwise flies under our radar. Plus, there's a lot of misinformation floating around about us - Did you know people still think Uncomp has burnable tooth traps despite that being a feature we removed half a decade ago? It's become a bit of an inside joke.

[Kevinnator]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:51 PM, Reiko24 said:

it is difficult to even accidentally hit 0 sanity for a longer period of time

Play with someone new and you'd be surprised by the results. Play with several newbies and it becomes impossible to babysit them all to prevent this.

Also a terrorbeak is already enough to deal with for insanity, by the time one actually spawns you might as well be at 0 sanity. Bosses with high insanity auras get you to insanity fast, especially when you have low max sanity. 2 terrorbeaks attacking you in the middle of a fight is enough to put the average player in grave danger. And no, not every player carries sanity food with them in case a boss suddenly spawns, in case you want to argue to just have sanity food with you.
At least terrorbeaks have a simple attack that if someone does the gamer move of "leaning forward and locking in" might be able to get them out of this situation. Making this harder with another creature that has a more complex way of attacking would be unnecessarily punishing to new players.

Its place in the ruins is good for players who seek this extra challenge and will further increase the dangerous feeling the ruins should give. However I do think it's a neat idea to let them spawn outside of the ruins if cave rifts are active. Any player who can reach the rifts will either be skilled enough or have a lot of prep to deal with them.

[gaymime]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:09 PM, Frosty_Mentos said:

that is very untrue, i seen plenty of people have 0 sanity at a lot of times. There's bone helm that exists, Maxwell, Wicker with their abiltiies. Wolfgang who has higher sanity loss, characters with slower sanity threshhold overall like Willow Webber Wes (idk if wes would count here even) others that will lose it quicker and stay insane longer cause of not knowing what to do.

There's a fine balance of where we should put danger and where we should keep things as normal as default, as much as some people want "uncompromising mode" like features, I want to keep balance for everyone to have opportunity to survive, thrive, learn and not be killed by BS mechanics for far too often unless they seek that danger themselves, which is the case where it'll be their own fault than the game's all the time. 

Don't stress out the newbies or scare off those that play very casually at lower level, we don't need to do that. 

wes is a bit of a special case, he suffers the beginning stages of insanity around 50 just because his numbers are so small that a loss of 25 sanity is enough for aberrant visuals,

the loss of 38 is enough for crawling horrors to pop up and after losing 60 sanity points terrorbeaks start biting so the most reasonable thing with him is passive sanity items like hats

[Mike23Ua]

On 9/6/2024 at 4:34 AM, Frosty_Mentos said:

I can understand if that were in the caves themselves, but in surface it would be too much for newer players I'm afraid. We need to keep some balance between things like going to caves where we actively SEEK OUT danger for the sake of big loot, while on surface it's less of that and just managing survival overall. 

If you're in caves with 0 sanity sure that could work for an enemy, as many wouldn't go down there and it IS a tough enemy to fight which imo should stay below than on the surface just to not put too much stress on other players.

I think your honestly just to stuck on the game not changing, but even though I can’t fight this particular mob due to it being in a Beta Phase I can tell you what I personally would have developed it for.

Over the years Klei has been making the game more accessible to solo players by lessening the amount of On-Screen Threats in exchange for a larger threat that’s a bit more deadly and has a little more health.

Aka instead of a hound wave of 20 hounds, you get a Varglet.

They did the same with Caves with the new Giant Worm (regardless of how you feel about it right now, it’s the intent behind it.)

When it comes to shadow creatures, I imagine it would be 1000x easier to fight this Big Boi then it is to try and dodge and kite 3 crawling horrors and 3 Terrorbeaks all simultaneously at once.