[Poll] On DST 2024

[GetNerfedOn]

Happy New Year, DST Klei forums!

As always, feel free to vote and discuss.

 

[Cheggf]

Consistently every thread like these that I've seen has had a large portion of people voting negatively, I feel like way more than there used to be. This thread currently has 40% satisfied & 50% unsatisfied, and another thread on the front page has 23% voting good & 35% voting bad. The comments also seem to be much more divisive, everyone seemed much happier with the state of the game several years ago. Complaint threads were much less common & much more random about what the complaints were instead of mostly being about the same handful of things.

Although this poll only has 10 couple of votes on it, so maybe it'll change... The other poll's a bit older so it has 34. 

[ShadowDuelist]

YOTD was the least interesting content IMO, not because boat racing was bad, but because we were all probably expecting a different/more fun dragonfly fight for the event.

I hope we get more islands, ocean content and things to explore in 2025 though 

[Mike23Ua]

In my opinion, they took longer to release less updates so they could be larger and more substantial but yet those updates felt more or less the same size and scope as their previous update schedule (bite-sized, disconnected)

I have extremely high hopes that it’s all for some HUGE future updates, (like a major 10 year celebration event & we got less meaningful and slower updates while they worked on THAT..) but if it’s not, then I guess we’re witnessing the Decline in DST, slower updates schedule, still as bite-sized content as ever.

I guess the only GOOD thing about it is that it’s significantly less taxing of a work load on the Developers..

But then I see them announcing and working on other new games to add even more to their plate to work on.

Look if DST is dead and/or dying, they should just come out and say it… I mean the games been around almost 10 years now? They’re probably considering that cow milked.

[Swiyss]

I can't believe people are voting "very unsatisfying" when it comes to Klei's decisions. You have to understand that even Jesus couldn't please everyone.
But one thing that stood up as a fact was that Klei actually communicated A LOT this year, as well as made a bunch of decisions based on our feedback that actually impacted the game positively. I think this year was a year of learning and evolving for everyone, but Klei did NOT dissapoint on their decisions even if some updates might've seem bad or too litlle.

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Consistently every thread like these that I've seen has had a large portion of people voting negatively, I feel like way more than there used to be. This thread currently has 40% satisfied & 50% unsatisfied, and another thread on the front page has 23% voting good & 35% voting bad. The comments also seem to be much more divisive, everyone seemed much happier with the state of the game several years ago. Complaint threads were much less common & much more random about what the complaints were instead of mostly being about the same handful of things.

Although this poll only has 10 couple of votes on it, so maybe it'll change... The other poll's a bit older so it has 34. 

The old return of them updates were solid. They would add to the world in meaningful ways, and were basically never controversial.

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

I can't believe people are voting "very unsatisfying" when it comes to Klei's decisions. You have to understand that even Jesus couldn't please everyone.
But one thing that stood up as a fact was that Klei actually communicated A LOT this year, as well as made a bunch of decisions based on our feedback that actually impacted the game positively. I think this year was a year of learning and evolving for everyone, but Klei did NOT dissapoint on their decisions even if some updates might've seem bad or too litlle.

I dont like the focus on riffs and skilltrees. I dont believe they were good decisions in my opinion.

[Valase]

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

YOTD was the least interesting content IMO, not because boat racing was bad, but because we were all probably expecting a different/more fun dragonfly fight for the event.

Yeah, I didn't like this event at first, but now I really like the items it "added", the fact that I can just buy some boat parts as well as a smaller boat for quick trips is just so good.

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The old return of them updates were solid. They would add to the world in meaningful ways, and were basically never controversial.

I will be very frank, ever since I started to lurk on these forums, people always hated the "current" update whatever it was.

[Maxil20]

46 minutes ago, Valase said:

I will be very frank, ever since I started to lurk on these forums, people always hated the "current" update whatever it was.

I’ve been on the forums since 2017, and I can pretty confidently assure this is accurate. I know a lot of people who didn’t like RoT initially (ironically, this included myself) outside of some exceptions (RWYS post launch was like ~95% universally praised, there were very few threads that actively disliked it). People judge “new” content very harshly, and then years later people get pretty comfortable with it. I have seen this happen with both of the “world” DS DLC’s, Forge/Gorge, RoT, and From Beyond.

That’s not saying that the judgements people have made have not been genuine issues. There have been a lot of pain points throughout the years and community feedback helped course correct the issues. The celestial champion quest has gotten a boatload of improvements throughout the entire questline and From Beyond is no exception to getting tweaks to make the content feel better. 

 

Regarding how I feel about the updates, I still feel the updates overall have been ~7/10 for me. Scrappy scavengers/Staying Afloat were really good updates from my viewpoint in terms of content and lategame QOL, and ironically most of the things I didn’t like come from the update right after, Depths of Duplicity. That update in particular could use quite a few adjustments, though nothing I feel is impossible to fix, just needs a good bit of tweaking (EX: masque spawns, fixing bugs with things like the mimicreeps, adjustments to the greater depths worm spawning to be more in line with the other bosses, adding more world options to toggle specific things like ickers/masue surprises, etc.)

Sidenote, this year was pretty decent for skins. I loved how many we got from Staying Afloat, especially how many got their “first” item skin.

[aidankocherhans]

If it weren't for the crab king rework, I doubt I would've beaten celestial champion for the first time this year

[Evelo]

I think Staying Afloat was the Willow/Wigfrid Skill tree introduction, which imo, by far the most damaging update to the game. Maybe that was last year. I don't fully remember honestly.

[Jakepeng99]

1 minute ago, Evelo said:

I think Staying Afloat was the Willow/Wigfrid Skill tree introduction, which imo, by far the most damaging update to the game. Maybe that was last year. I don't fully remember honestly.

No. Willow and Wigfrid was last year in the frost jaw update.

In the staying afloat, it was Wurf and Winona.

[lowercase skye]

7 hours ago, Cheggf said:

everyone seemed much happier with the state of the game several years ago. Complaint threads were much less common & much more random about what the complaints were instead of mostly being about the same handful of things.

During/after ANR it was "bosses are too optional, critters are implemented badly, and the game is too focused on base-building and not enough on survival". Maybe throw in a bit of "meatballs are too good" in there too, but, yeah, complaints were very common and consistent. The biggest mod project for the game so far was made due to these complaints building up and getting louder and louder over the years. There has always been large amounts of constant uproar about whatever the most recent content in the game was, and how much worse it is than the state of the game from a few years prior, this is nothing new.

I tend to bore people when I talk about this in detail, but just think about how much people look back on Shipwrecked fondly nowadays, when people used to HATE Shipwrecked for being mainly composed of reskinned content and having very little to do in 90% of its map.

4 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The old return of them updates were solid. They would add to the world in meaningful ways, and were basically never controversial.

This is an interesting take because it shows exactly what I'm talking about: people HATED RoT whenever it was new, but now that we're in another "bad" content arc we're looking back on it and thinking that actually everyone always loved it. Like, the RoT updates were "never controversial"?

- Turn of Tides was well received initially, but once the stone fruit hype wore off everyone pretty much turned on it. This is where "the ocean is too empty" and "ocean content is too optional to ever matter" complaints started, during the literal first update of the content arc.
- Salty Dog was picked apart like crazy. Malbatross's drops were only for crafting sails or rowing faster, so were labeled as "ocean content just feeding back into the ocean" and thus never worth crafting since it wouldn't help you on land, while salt was compared to bundling wraps and concluded to not be worth the time or effort (salt boxes weren't even a common sight in kitchens until years later). Also, this update was in beta at the same time as the Woodie rework was released, and people HATED the Woodie rework so much, genuinely the most vitriol and anger I've seen on this forum until the Wendy skill tree. There were multiple threads a day telling Klei to remove the other wereforms because they sucked and were bad. It was a bit of a nightmare.
- Hook, Line and Inker was heavily criticized for how out of the way and "tedious" it was to actually go fishing, when you could just use a food source from land instead. Once the trident was added later, people also absolutely tore into Gnarwails and how "rare" it was to find them.
- She Sells Seashells was the update that added old Crab King. If y'all have been on the forums at all before the update that reworked his fight, you know just how much people hated this boss. Plus Pearl's house required cactus flowers to rebuild, people complained about that one for YEARS because of how it necessitated getting to summer in order to fight Crab King, who would then be cheesed with some flingos because nobody actually wanted to fight him ever. I remember having to tell my partner at the time that you were able to row away from his geyser attack, because there was so much angry misinformation about how bad the boss was that she was genuinely under the impression you just had to sit there and tank all of his attacks with boards and boat patches. Nobody had corrected her ever.
- Troubled Waters was practically laughed off the stage due to how small and scattered its content was. But in particular, people hated Rockjaws to a massive degree, even now you'll still see people talk about how the game "punishes you" for kiting them properly, due to their mechanic where they back off if you fight back too well. This used to be a main talking point as to why Return of Them was bad, that Rockjaws are annoying and don't have unique drops and punish you for being good at the game or whatever.

The remaining updates (Forgotten Knowledge, Reap What You Sow, and Eye of the Storm) were all received pretty well (except moonstorms), but you'll notice that none of them added ocean content and instead focused on the land or caves (and, hell, when RWYS was first added I woke up to a bunch of messages from friends about how the update was horrible because it nerfed Bunnymen drops, so even that wasn't free of intense criticism at first impression).

People HATED Return of Them, this entire forum was filled with threads about how the ocean is bad up until Rifts took its place as the big thing to complain about, and I wish I had experienced a hypothetical forum were the RoT updates were "rarely controversial".

[Jakepeng99]

Just now, lowercase skye said:

This is an interesting take because it shows exactly what I'm talking about: people HATED RoT whenever it was new, but now that we're in another "bad" content arc we're looking back on it and thinking that actually everyone always loved it. Like, the RoT updates were "never controversial"?

I always liked it.

 

I was like 12 when it started, what i remember was people disliking ocean content.

[lowercase skye]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

I always liked it.

Oh, me too! I should clarify, I am a huge fan of RoT since it started, and all the things I've listed off are complaints I feel were pretty unreasonable, they were just the state of the forum at the time.

[Jakepeng99]

4 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

People HATED Return of Them, this entire forum was filled with threads about how the ocean is bad up until Rifts took its place as the big thing to complain about, and I wish I had experienced a hypothetical forum were the RoT updates were "rarely controversial".

Most people from what i saw back then disliked the ocean because it had little value and was seen as really inefficent and empty. Though, sailing was also extremely slow back then. Its not the same as the reasons people disliked riff content.

 

What i liked about rot was that they were always going in the right direction.

5 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

During/after ANR it was "bosses are too optional, critters are implemented badly, and the game is too focused on base-building and not enough on survival". Maybe throw in a bit of "meatballs are too good" in there too, but, yeah, complaints were very common and consistent.

I started playing the game around the Willow rework, but it would be annoying if every update was only for bosses.

[Evelo]

31 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

No. Willow and Wigfrid was last year in the frost jaw update.

In the staying afloat, it was Wurf and Winona.

Ahh. Yeah that also wasn't a good one. Not as bad as Willow/Wigfrid but Wurt was interesting and Winona got a less intense re-refresh compared to Willow.

[Mike23Ua]

This year was definitely focused mostly on Character Skill Trees, but if your favorite character had already been Reworked, prior to this year, OR your just not too heavily invested into character skill trees, then that left you with very little actual content to enjoy throughout this year.

You can’t really count “Rift Stuff” because very very few people actually reach that point of the game, (show me at least THREE Xbox Servers that have and I might think differently) 

There was some Decent QoL, but it’s nowhere near as exciting as something like Minecrafts “Creaking Update” or Lego Fortnites “Lost Isles” update.

Honestly I really do feel like the Klei devs either A: Feel like DST has ran its course & they’re exhausted working on it. Or B: They feel that because the updates are “Free” they don’t have to be big or significant.

I guess it’s not really “fair” to compare Klei to Minecraft or Fortnite due to how many people work on those other two franchises compared to Klei’s (Smaller?) Indie Dev Team. (are they even Indie sized anymore after the Tencent Acquisition?)

[This14Real]

12 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

Happy New Year, DST Klei forums!

As always, feel free to vote and discuss.

What are the unrelated pictures you post on your polls?
It's boggling my mind more than I want to admit. 

[DegenerateFurry]

No big surprise that Year of the Dragonfly is the majority's least favorite and it's not close. The rest have been a lot better.

[GetNerfedOn]

4 hours ago, This14Real said:

What are the unrelated pictures you post on your polls?
It's boggling my mind more than I want to admit. 

They're just there for fun! So chill out!

[Jakepeng99]

5 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

They're just there for fun! So chill out!

Congradulations first message of the year.

[This14Real]

52 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

They're just there for fun! So chill out!

But I want to know so bad the relation saldmanders have with the cast from breaking bad!!! 

[GetNerfedOn]

18 minutes ago, This14Real said:

But I want to know so bad the relation saldmanders have with the cast from breaking bad!!! 

They're all Salamancas.

[This14Real]

7 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

They're all Salamancas.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Wow… wow! I did not get that at all and now I feel silly.

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

There was some Decent QoL, but it’s nowhere near as exciting as something like Minecrafts “Creaking Update” or Lego Fortnites “Lost Isles” update.

Is the creaking update actually any good? I'm not sure what it actually adds to the game other than decoration. The eyeblossoms in particular don't seem to have any reason to exist, despite their unique behavior. (Much like the sniffer seeds they added last year that went nowhere.)

The tricky trials update was better, but I wouldn't say this year's Minecraft updates are even as good as DST's. Mojang seems more rudderless than Klei, TBH.