The current state of DST.

[Pedrolar27]

Hello everyone.  

I've created this topic to share my thoughts on the current state of DST. 

Well, I think 2023 and 2024 have been the worst years for the DST franchise.

I know that sometimes these kinds of topics are avoided in the forum. But it has to be talked about. 

We have been obsessed with updating the characters for the last 2 years (and who knows how many more) when it seemed like something already finished in that distant 2023 with the "Wilson Rework".

There have been no major or differential changes since the "Return of them" updates.

I don't want to be misunderstood, I love this game, but I don't want to live its decline.

I think we can still get back on the right track and bring content that everyone likes. 

I don't make this topic to insult or belittle Klei. They are incredible and have given us a wonderful game.

But what do you think? I would like to know what the community thinks. ^^

 

[Mike23Ua]

Ultimately it depends entirely on Klei’s “Stance” with DST, if they feel like they have admitted to feeling before quote “Burned Out” on DST, then it’s going to show in the Quality of the games content updates, But if they were treating DST as a Brand New Game they were super super excited and passionate about, a ton of really amazing, High Quality ideas will be thought up and put into the game.

The thing here though is that Klei more realistically sees DST as a game that has existed for a long time extending its shelf life with Updates.

And while that may be true: My stances is that they’ve spent the last two and a half years or longer redesigning the games cast of characters with Reworks & Skill Trees.

If you want to get “Technical” DST feels more like you’re playing a Dont Starve 2 now, more than it does updates to DST.

But if Klei feels “Meh games been around 10 years we’ve done enough for it…” then it’ll get slower less meaningful content updates.

Ultimately it all depends on how “Motivated” the people who make the updates are.. that determines the quality of the end result.

My one and ONLY wish is that I wish that more developers at Klei would play their own game, not just design them but actually PLAY THEM, play without mods, play using Controllers, play without God Mode Enabled…

Play the game like your a gamer, not a Developer.. and maybe when they do that they’ll discover things like “Wow You can’t use the D-pad To quickly move Logs into Wurts Amermory or Shoody Tool Shed? This sucks and needs fixing…”

[WANZUN]

*****正确表达

[Evelo]

I (kind of) like what's going on with the Rift content, just really think Klei shouldn't have expanded the skill trees beyond Wilson.

When it first came out I thought it was made for 2 reasons: 1) Wilson's Refresh; 2) A template for modders to go wild.

Turns out this isn't the case. Don't get me wrong I appreciate that Willow got a re-refresh but locking it behind a skill tree? Really? Yuck. Skill trees are here to stay. While I am hopeful that once they are finished with all the character skill trees we will finally be done with characters. For real this time, like we (should) have/were once Wilson's refresh came out. However knowing how players behave, there is a larger revenue stream with regular character updates compared to global stuffs. I am a whale for sure and buy everything regardless but just look at the beta forums. Characters are popular.

Speculation: Klei has to balance income generation with over arching gameplay desires. Klei could have done so many scummy monetization things and considering after all these years DST is still a one time purchase with only skins being their income stream outside of new buyers is something to praise. I'm still confused on how No Man's Sky makes money given that company is still working on it. Last I played there were no skin purchases or anything of the sort.

Mostly what I hope for is we stop with bosses bosses bosses bosses and focus more on environmental dangers.

[Hungry French]

It's better that way, especially what's been happening with DS for 5 years.

[RozeMeteor]

1 hour ago, Hungry French said:

It's better that way, especially what's been happening with DS for 5 years.

Care to tell us why ? your answer don't make sense

[Hungry French]

1 minute ago, RozeMeteor said:

Care to tell us why ? your answer don't make sense

DST has been developing for 5 years. Yes, not all updates are good (skill tree), but still there are many good updates.
At that time, the DS received 1 QoL update in as many as 5 years.
It's crazy.

[RozeMeteor]

4 hours ago, Hungry French said:

DST has been developing for 5 years. Yes, not all updates are good (skill tree), but still there are many good updates.
At that time, the DS received 1 QoL update in as many as 5 years.
It's crazy.

Ds is a finished game, outside of bug corrections on adjustments for QoL i don't see why it should be in developement, i also disagree with the first line, yes we won cool things but it could have been much better and global instead of developing individual characters just to make most of the game irrelevant. The new ''spin'' of the characters it just a time thing, people will get bored and ask for more later not mention the HUGE gap between them. That said i really wish Klei focused more on Qol and worldbuilding, updates where everyone could enjoy and not just look at the game and ''Oh i don't play this character, i'm out.''

[Hungry French]

Klei wasn't told that DS was over.
And the game is not logically over. It has various bugs and it has a huge development ceiling. So much new content can be added as DLC.

Why should it be in development? For the same reason as DST.

 

[Volskygge]

I totally agree, as many said in the past the game needs to start focusing more on survival or continue the story
Most of the skilltrees were frustrating and just added more combat at cost of survivors lore/goal, dont even get me started with the boss fights, i love their design but in the end they are just there to be there, it is this or they are pulling "just wait and you'll find out" card like what i believe was last year
We all love Klei and show support them as possible but as consumers we need to make clear what the issues are with the product so they can improve.
Many are frustrated and considering quit the game, next year will be probably a decisive one

[Cats_On_Fire]

That's it I am jumping ship to the oxygen not included community. Till this forum becomes decisive and certain in what it wants 

[RozeMeteor]

2 minutes ago, Cats_On_Fire said:

That's it I am jumping ship to the oxygen not included community. Till this forum becomes decisive and certain in what it wants 

Won't be missing much, any forum is better than this one. I just still look cuz i hope the better for the future of the game.

[Vinja]

The last 2 years have been some of the best for DST. Without skill trees in the game there are a small handful of interesting characters, most people settling on a single character or swapping between 2. After skill trees, I enjoy playing nearly half the cast now and have trouble picking who I want to play at the start of a server. That's a good thing. 

 

Also, the characters getting stronger and more interesting and fun to play is good for attracting new players, which is what this game needs to continue thriving. In my opinion, klei has been killing it of recent and that's coming from someone that's played since before dst existed.

[Uedo]

3 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Klei wasn't told that DS was over.
And the game is not logically over. It has various bugs and it has a huge development ceiling. So much new content can be added as DLC.

Why should it be in development? For the same reason as DST.

 

No. They really did say it was over. I'm not going to dig out Joe's post, but he's explained this... a lot.

--------------

I truly noticed during the 'Setting the stage' section of development. 

I can't remember the exact wording, but it was described as being a slight hint at what's to come - a pun, as they were literally setting the stage for the future of the content.

I mean, it was a small play which described the past lore of the game and it gave NOTHING in terms of what was to come. And what did come after that? Lots more unconnected and separate pieces of content, which has now circled back to another small play that describes .... nothing? Something? Does it matter?

It's such an old game and it's travelled no real distance toward a conclusion. I really don't think there IS a destination, if DST ever ended so would the motivation to keep it as a live service to incite whales to purchase skin packs. 

[kroban]

Nah I disagree, I think most of the things from the past updates made the game way more fun and enjoyable. Just from this year alone we had:

- Skill trees giving characters a more defined and fun playstyle, while also giving them more tools to make them more specialized. I.e Woodie becoming a "no armor"  form-based character, Winona more of the engineer that does automatization, Willow a ranged fire mage with a pet that tanks for her, Wormwood THE gardener character based around plants, Walter THE ranged character with versatility in combat, and so on. And yeah some of them are "op" now post-rift but, Klei still has a lot to cook there.

- Ocean update imo was one of the best updates ever, incredibly good at making ocean more worth the visit. Treasure chests became a pretty solid reward, specially when it comes to the gems trees and being able to get thulecite on surface, also the ancient boat, frostjaw bootlegs, ck bumpers, and even otter farms, made ocean way more rewarding.

- Rift updates gave players many more things to do in endgame, I dont know how long you have been playing but damn, as a guy that played DST for like 6+ years already I have to say, pre-rift endgame ******* sucked, there was 0 enviromental threats once you had eyebrella and tam, and there was nothing to do other than farming mats for decoration. Now theres new bosses, new threats, and new crafts to get, some also being a huge QoL improvement. And yes, rifts still feels lacking (personally I would like more mutations and bosses), but like I said, Klei is still cooking that.

The only thing from these past updates that I think just made the game worse for no reason was Great Depths Worm, because its an annoying thing that made cave-basing in multiplayer way riskier and has 0 reward for killing it. IMO they should have made it an actual boss with an unique drop. But for the rest of things I think DST is in a pretty good state right now.

 

[Hungry French]

47 minutes ago, Uedo said:

No. They really did say it was over. I'm not going to dig out Joe's post, but he's explained this... a lot.

--------------

I truly noticed during the 'Setting the stage' section of development. 

I can't remember the exact wording, but it was described as being a slight hint at what's to come - a pun, as they were literally setting the stage for the future of the content.

I mean, it was a small play which described the past lore of the game and it gave NOTHING in terms of what was to come. And what did come after that? Lots more unconnected and separate pieces of content, which has now circled back to another small play that describes .... nothing? Something? Does it matter?

It's such an old game and it's travelled no real distance toward a conclusion. I really don't think there IS a destination, if DST ever ended so would the motivation to keep it as a live service to incite whales to purchase skin packs. 

Setting the stage ?
I'm looking and I can't find anything like this. Maybe you're just mistaken?

[Guille6785]

4 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Klei wasn't told that DS was over.
And the game is not logically over. It has various bugs and it has a huge development ceiling. So much new content can be added as DLC.

Why should it be in development? For the same reason as DST.

 

[Maxil20]

9 hours ago, Pedrolar27 said:

Well, I think 2023 and 2024 have been the worst years for the DST franchise.

I know that sometimes these kinds of topics are avoided in the forum. But it has to be talked about. 

The reason why I disagree with this is people do not formulate their opinions on content well. There’s been a lot of these kind of posts, but people post it in angry ways and it doesn’t get the point across. It’s very difficult to interpret feedback if you don’t try to be constructive on it.

I have my own gripes with the updates (especially depths of duplicity, I really hope they look into adjusting the spawning of the great depths worm and prevent getting back to back masque attacks, along with making the rabbit king forgive you like krampus or just making masqued bunnymen not contribute), but like every update, there are good and bad aspects of them. It’s important to highlight the good aspects in addition to talking about the bad ones (I personally have gotten a good amount of value from the bridges added, alongside all of the mobs being cool concepts with unique gimmicks).

This brings me to my next point:

9 hours ago, Pedrolar27 said:

There have been no major or differential changes since the "Return of them" updates.

Absolute hard disagree, especially in a lategame context. We haven’t had something this major for lategame purposes since, IDK, when the ruins became regenerable and meant all ruins content was reliable to use outside of mass killing DFly?

The updates have shifted my gameplay drastically, in pretty good ways. I adore the QOL of the various rift tools/gadges, and I like having lategame rewards like the sproutrocks/dreadstone pillars to work towards. The variance in threats and how to use them is also a nice surprise, one I hope they continue to expand in ways that don’t result in too many time sinks/base destructions (again, masques are a really cool concept, but having to spend ~10 minutes handiling 3 masque waves and a rabbit king in a row what was previously a 30 second walk at best is not something I think is fun for the majority of players).

I know a lot of people are a bit unhappy it doesn’t contain much early game content, but I personally never saw this as much of a drawback. DST already has an immense amount of player choice early in the game, especially compared to base ROG. I feel like they are going into thus directly to not clutter an already packed early game and working on the relatively underdeveloped endgame.

Overall, I do think these updates have some gripes and could use a bit better execution sometimes, but I still think the updates hold a lot of value which people don’t appreciate, and I certainly don’t think these are the “worst” years of DST. Did people just forget when Forge/Gorge were around and literally nothing changed for basegame DST for almost two years?

[HowlVoid]

Idk, sometimes it feels like I see posts where every year is the worst year. 

What is back on track exactly? That can mean so many things to a lot of people.

A quick Google search shows me the game is more popular than ever? Went from not even double digits in player count to 30k players? Not sure how accurate these numbers and frankly it's not something I care about.

Personally I would just like the early game be revamped a bit. Collecting grass and twigs for the millionth time gets boring. I wish we had shop like hamlet or something. Palworld has been adding a lot to the early game with apex pals, bounties, researching, events etc.

Closest thing to an event in dst is when you find a group of merms and pigs mid war. More stuff like that to make the constant feel alive would be nice. But no, I don't think the game is dying.

[Hungry French]

43 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

 

Well, thank you. Ironically, JoeW says that DS has been finished for a long time, but the lack of new DLCs refutes the fact that it can reduce DST's profits.

[Swiyss]

The bosses Klei added were almost perfect in my opinion, their design still resembles DS.

late game was a great idea, and the planar dmg thing is a good thing in my opinion, late game gear is also very fun to use. Also late game content is very fun to interact with. The zombified bosses give the player a feeling of "the land that once was is now gone", an apocalyptic vibe which made the game very interesting.

skill trees can be way better, but they can be easily expanded and changed overtime. And even though I really dislike the lack of creativity SOMETIMES with some lvl 1, 2 and 3 type of upgrades, it's still not the end of the game.

I just think that something Klei hasn't talked about too much and it's extremely important to the game is the fundamentals of it. 

It reeeeally gets kinda boring when I can say with 100% certainty which biomes can and can't spawn when I see some of the map. These details should be expanded on overtime.

You can easily guess where lunar island will be because of the world gen and it gets kinda boring sometimes because it removes that feeling of discovery. Caves are all the same. We need more biomes with more random stuff around and more rare biomes, rare setpieces. I think it's time to check world gen code.

Change some world generation characteristics and add some more too. (example: New rare evergreen type that drops something else that shows up in the world after rifts are open, new season weather changes, random world part that can branch far into a new land that closes with time, underground river biomes, ocean cave entrances, something similar to frog rain like a heavy object falling and turning a random place in the map into a new area to explore etc..)

 

another thing that needs to be expanded on are pigs and other creatures. Pigs have houses of wood but we never see one chopping wood, they have grass on their villages but we don't see them picking it up, we also don't see them making or eating food,it would be very cool.

A creature/follower behaviour and animation update would be soo insanely good.

[Swiyss]

Imagine if they add the possibility of birds flying out of trees when chopping with a 1 in 20 chance, then that tree would have a chance to drop eggs like in shipwrecked. Maybe they could add that crows now can stand of things and scratch their feet in it. Red birds picking twigs would also be cool and it could happen out of screen and on-screen right after rains.

we definitely need an update on existing things

An update that gives new animations would most certainly make 90% of ppl happy. Like a new quick animation for rabbits, frogs, spiders, pigs and butterflies spawning and entering their home.

If they make it a small thing but with that don't starvy touch, it would not remove any nostalgic feeling from the game.

[Jakepeng99]

14 hours ago, Pedrolar27 said:

Hello everyone.  

I've created this topic to share my thoughts on the current state of DST. 

Well, I think 2023 and 2024 have been the worst years for the DST franchise.

I know that sometimes these kinds of topics are avoided in the forum. But it has to be talked about. 

We have been obsessed with updating the characters for the last 2 years (and who knows how many more) when it seemed like something already finished in that distant 2023 with the "Wilson Rework".

There have been no major or differential changes since the "Return of them" updates.

I don't want to be misunderstood, I love this game, but I don't want to live its decline.

I think we can still get back on the right track and bring content that everyone likes. 

I don't make this topic to insult or belittle Klei. They are incredible and have given us a wonderful game.

But what do you think? I would like to know what the community thinks. ^^

 

I agree with you.

 

Less skilltrees.

Less riff content.

Less bosses.

More marroters and rabbit kings.

3 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Idk, sometimes it feels like I see posts where every year is the worst year. 

Thats a bad thing.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

Imagine if they add the possibility of birds flying out of trees when chopping with a 1 in 20 chance, then that tree would have a chance to drop eggs like in shipwrecked. Maybe they could add that crows now can stand of things and scratch their feet in it. Red birds picking twigs would also be cool and it could happen out of screen and on-screen right after rains.

we definitely need an update on existing things

An update that gives new animations would most certainly make 90% of ppl happy. Like a new quick animation for rabbits, frogs, spiders, pigs and butterflies spawning and entering their home.

If they make it a small thing but with that don't starvy touch, it would not remove any nostalgic feeling from the game.

Yup. I hope my old Atmosphere thread got the message.

[Uedo]

6 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Setting the stage ?
I'm looking and I can't find anything like this. Maybe you're just mistaken?

i'm not. It was the patch that added the stage and play. 

[Hi.]

IMO Klei keeps on dragging out the game. Once all of the characters got a rework they added skill trees and they also added rift content which draws out game even further. Rifts don't bother me that much and I do kinda like them but still...