I think these first rift updates and skill trees are but resource introductions and powerups for what might to come

[Frosty_Mentos]

Looking at Wortox he has two sides of his skilltree that is support or damage, tank or glass cannon, other characters having something similar or somewhere between utility, damage or survival is first point I'll make as observation.

Second thing is that most of these new things seem to just unlock us new gear and resources that are kinda wildly exotic that powers up character powers or just gives really decent gear in general.

Third thing is that we only got so very few threats that would count as 'giant' or extreme kinds, we haven't had raid bosses that would feel super challenging maybe since forever while crabking could count as one I'm still unsure.

What my point is that this feels more of an introduction and QoL years of updates we're getting to whatever might be to come. Things feel super powerful and weird on purpose, tuning and gear is super strong and new mechanics are getting introduced like ranged blasts from deerclops or faster swipes and butt stomps from Bearger. Without the new gear those enemies do feel very strong, but all the old items still feel weird for losing most of their purpose, at least could become maybe future crafting ingredients to more stronger versions of thule club or darksword or whatever there could be.

This feels very on purpose and old bosses fall off in strength cause of it but still retain enough strength to seem imposing.

What do you all expect from Klei in the future for gameplay wise post Rifts? It seems to be mostly gonna be focused on rifts, story progression and world progression, so what would be your expectations towards future bosses and challenges or even events since we haven't had one in a while and what would I call an event is like New Moon, Full moon and Wagstaff minigame.

[Sacco]

i guess it can be one of the outcomes???

But as of now we don't know anything of what's going to happen, we just have to wait, which isn't great but i'm fine with it.

[Mike23Ua]

I don’t think it’s very wise nor healthy to design 60% of your game for post rifts content… yet that seems to oddly be the route we’re headed down with DST.

I wish the Klei devs would actually play their own games for once, for players who have Yet to beat AFW and CC they are locked out of their powerful Affinity skills.

This wouldn’t ever be a problem if Affinities were only unlocked once per world and you had to re-unlock them again and again, however this is not the case.. you kill AFW and CC once and you unlock these skills.

They then have this huge divide between their fanbase of players who have affinities unlocked, and players who don’t.

Interestingly enough Klei thinks that players who join your game world after I think it’s like 6 days into its existence? Need a helping hand.. a “crutch” so to speak, by literally spawning them into the game with some starting resources.

Join someone’s world and it’s already summer or winter? No problem we’ll drop you in with some starting resources to survive with.

Join someone’s world with Moonstorms & Lunar/Shadow rifts activated? Hahaha Welp your just screwed.

The more content and mobs that Klei adds to “Post Rift” the larger this divide is going to get.

And hilariously… they claim that they don’t want the game to be “Powercreep” but it is farrrrrrr too late on that claim lol….. you now have players who have defeated AFW and CC running around on DAY ONE of any server they join absolutely demolishing things with their Moon Willow Lunar Kamehameha blasts.

But if the have mostly useless stats like how often players pick to play as Walter, I’m pretty sure they also have stats of how many people have actually unlocked Affinity perks.

[Cassielu]

I desperately hope it does. I hope they can add as much content to the Rift as possible in future updates to make it as playable as Terraria's Hard mode.

Not like the ocean today, where you go in and you do only few things and then you leave.

[Well-met]

"Let klei cook guys it's for later updates"

I don't think you realize how often this was said for RoT.

[Milordo]

This is a terrible mindset and I advise you to lower a lot your exceptions.

I don't know what you expect from Klei when they already showed us what they're capable of and what they do. I disagree heavily and wish old content be balanced more, more and more, which from my point of view it's not old but the real content of don't starve is, all pre-rift stuff. I'm also not really keen on rift stuff as they're really bad not only for what they are, design, ecc ecc.... but for what already Klei had difficulties with it, since you're hyped for that. Also it's a very very well strong expressed sentiment in the community to wish the game to be touched more on the pre-rift stuff than after. 

[Mysterious box]

On one hand that sounds nice but on the other this makes some of the weaker skill trees even more questionable.

[Maxil20]

14 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t think it’s very wise nor healthy to design 60% of your game for post rifts content… yet that seems to oddly be the route we’re headed down with DST.

I don’t really see it as a negative thing. Keep in mind “pre-rifts” is still a vast majority of the game that has been worked on for almost 8 years. There are two “major” progression routes you can take based on the lunar/shadow sides, and there’s an immense amount of side content, way more than DS with ROG, which is what DST is based on.

It’s also important to note that they haven’t just abandoned pre rift content altogether, they still do a number of tweaks/additions, including new encounters like the scrappy werepig (+the tweaks/changes to scrap pre rift and adjusting the lunar siphonator for that) the rabbit king, and the great depths worm.

I do agree that affinities being unlock instantly is a bit silly (I myself wish that using affinities was tied to rifts being open so players that join post rift will have the skills unlocked), but I doubt they are going to change that soon.
 

14 hours ago, Cassielu said:

I hope they can add as much content to the Rift as possible in future updates to make it as playable as Terraria's Hard mode.

Not like the ocean today, where you go in and you do only few things and then you leave.

This in particular is something that I do hope can be adjusted, even for just QOL stuff. I myself forcefully blocked my cave rifts because getting jumpscared by ickers every 30 seconds when clearing the ruins gets cumbersome fast, and then the masques and rock lobster/wall breaking issues didn’t make me any less inclined to deactivate them (the latter seems to have been fixed though). It’s unfortunate since I like the other threats/acid rain a lot, but theres no practical way to deal with the bridge threats that don’t involve a large amount of structure spam (which doesn’t look pretty…) or having the masques slowly accumulate over time. At least by contrast I’ve kept the lunar rifts open since I think the mutant bosses are nice to fight and I think the threats by comparison are pretty tolerable in day to day experiences.

[Maxposting]

20 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

This wouldn’t ever be a problem if Affinities were only unlocked once per world and you had to re-unlock them again and again, however this is not the case.. you kill AFW and CC once and you unlock these skills.

I agree.

Affinities, as they are right now, sorta break the actual playthrough sequence with characters having shadow/lunar-related abilities when in that playthrough, players could have not experienced any of the factions or their fights.

If skill trees are meant to spice characters up and give buffs after unlocking rift content in a default world, then it doesn't seem far-fetched to not have a meta-progression between worlds.

Perhaps killing fuelweaver or celestial champion should give a global unlock on all characters for players who defeated the bosses in the current world, since refighting the two final bosses for all 18 characters would be tedious.

Collecting insight isn't as tedious as much since the timer got reduced to 68 days, however it should still be improved (even if skill trees would not be made world-bound), as right now, people will have to spend 1224 days to unlock insight on characters.

Players are sorta incentivized to cheat in their insight or, if they lack console/mod access (cough cough consoles), to just make an empty world where one can easily survive for eons, simply because the character skills are actually helpful and fun content.

Skipping/waiting out the redundant timer isn't an outright "cheat" that conflicts with playing a cheatless world either, because of the meta-progression being intended. Personally I'd say cheating the insight in can be better than waiting, well, due to spending less time and power on running the game to just... skip the tedium.

Also if the skill trees are designed with helping noob players who struggle in mind, it doesn't seem like it is very rewarding by continously surviving few days and then being offered a slight helping hand by the meta-progression, plenty of skills can be quite complex and noobs can suffer due to the skills because of a lack of hindsight the game has as a difficulty curve.

[Frosty_Mentos]

22 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t think it’s very wise nor healthy to design 60% of your game for post rifts content… yet that seems to oddly be the route we’re headed down with DST.

60% seems like extreme exaggeration. It's more like 2-5% of the game which isn't a lot since most content is literally before rift. If more content lays with progress I don't mind that, but I'd doubt it would even surpass 50%, depends on how much will Klei develop the game and it's engine that is.

11 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

On one hand that sounds nice but on the other this makes some of the weaker skill trees even more questionable.

I think it's mostly to make some characters mostly stronger early game and being extra resourceful when transmuting or bringing certain items for convenience once swapping is more needed and rampant for base upgrades, otherwise many skills are mostly how you want to face the world via combat or fighting. I don't think it's in Klei's interest to make them feel similar or balanced but to feel good and very strong once you play the game long enough as the characters you like/skipping time enough to do anything you want cause it's a sandbox game in the end.

21 hours ago, Cassielu said:

I desperately hope it does. I hope they can add as much content to the Rift as possible in future updates to make it as playable as Terraria's Hard mode.

Not like the ocean today, where you go in and you do only few things and then you leave.

The ocean in the lategame kinda doesn't exist but for the seeds and some resources. It is a lot more lively than before and crabking is a nice boss to face off for some bottles or just cause. More bumper kits and storage boat extension's protection? Yes please hehe.

1 hour ago, Maxposting said:

Collecting insight isn't as tedious as much since the timer got reduced to 68 days, however it should still be improved (even if skill trees would not be made world-bound), as right now, people will have to spend 1224 days to unlock insight on characters.

I do agree that there needs to be a more proper progression, but right now it really doesn't matter for as we are in a concept and reception phase where we just get new things to play around with before we do any big changes. We haven't gotten all skill trees yet after all, and some characters are way more powerful in comparison to others in their non skill tree way which makes me wonder how they'll handle Maxwell 4.0 skill tree addition (yes this will be 4th update to the character's kit since singleplayer change).

[Szczuku]

Dst players, once again, gaslighting themselves into thinking that Klei has plans to expand this years' content in the future in a meaningful way

[Frosty_Mentos]

23 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Dst players, once again, gaslighting themselves into thinking that Klei has plans to expand this years' content in the future in a meaningful way

Particular DST players seeming to remain skeptical and negative about possible future updates while not contributing to the topic but coming just to gaslight the conversation.

[layangan putus]

42 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Dst players, once again, gaslighting themselves into thinking that Klei has plans to expand this years' content in the future in a meaningful way

What are you trying to imply? Our efforts giving suggestions & feedbacks are pointless because DST will stay the same especially in the combat mechanics meaning hold F & dodge using movement keys, survival aspect vs abundant resources, and similar game loop between characters? So by 2030, DST will be similar like in 2019? Maybe yeah maybe nah, I mean it's only one time purchase for us.. I'd patiently wait until these skill trees finished and observe what their next move would be regarding the development. If no new Constant or just same insignificant changes, I can finally uninstall this game for sure and make my conclusion about this game. Too bad tho I can't burn money to buy more DST cosmetics or maybe they will release more DLCs for DS?

 

BUT..

Until then, I want to contribute ideas for the game development especially for survival aspect and some bosses' reworks to improve the overall experience.