Why playing on a console is a self-imposed challenge

[Detaki]

Unfortunately, all console versions of Don't Starve (with and without DLC), as well as Don't Starve Together, suffer from a poor control setup (Not counting the lack of something as essential as a Geometric Placement and Geometric Drop to decorate bases, it stopped being a survival-only game a long time ago and all Sandboxes have ways to decorate properly).

 

1.- Inability to configure controls to taste (this stopped being a problem in Don't Starve Together on all consoles, but Don't Starve still has this lack that can hinder the experience for many).

 2.- Lack of a Forced Attack, the character will attack the closest mob no matter how many times the intention one has as a player (a common problem is to play Wendy and kill Abigail with one hit xd... This does not happen in Together)

3.- As absurd and stupid as it sounds, the Telelocator Staff, Lazy Explorer and Wortox's Soul Hop are still completely broken and completely ruin the use of these unless you try too hard to use them (this is because their range is predefined and there is no way to adjust it).

4.- This only happens in Don't Starve Together on Nintendo Switch, but when creating a world and loading it, the world will be advancing even if there is no one inside... This makes Speedrunning difficult and encourages playing long sessions and not short ones, since you will lose approximately 2 minutes loading the world, in the end you will have lost even days of the game just by entering the game xd.

 5.- Lack of zooming in and out in Don't Starve, this was fixed in Together by adding the option to replace it with a button in the settings.

6.- Attacking should work like on PC, if you're fairly close to an enemy the character will attack it, this was "fixed" with the possibility of marking a mob and then the character will chase it, but if you're attacking a horde, it's almost impossible to finish it off because when you attack and you don't have a mob in your face, the character will hit the air.

7.- Terrible optimization (null) in many cases, the Don't Starve port on PS Vita runs at 60FPS for most of the game, but they never optimized the snow, rain and fire particles (which caused them to go from 60 stable to 15 or 8 stable x.x). This also happens in Switch in portable mode, Shipwrecked with rain and wind drops to about 18fps and in Hamlet with the hud of tree leaves and so on the same thing happens (they still haven't optimized the fire, wtf)

 

I'm sure I forgot many more points, feel free to comment c:

[gaymime]

is this something others can verify? if so this is pretty shameful...

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

is this something others can verify? if so this is pretty shameful...

Yeah its like that. Setting stuff on fire with torches and fire staff by accident is also really easy since misclicks happen more as it always targets the closest.

[Mx-Pain]

I have enjoy this game since it came out with my wife on Ps4, playing split screen.

The game have his downsides. I just think that point 3 can be fixed by using the big button on the middle of the controller, the one that triggers the map tho, it can be used as mouse to move the telelocator or whatever that point do.

And yeah I have also played in PC and I think the experience is pretty broken, mods, console to trigger and move all objects, duh... 

In our console has been working fine and I have even posted some bug myself and devs fixed in the next updates. I'm pretty sattisfed with the console experience so far, if you like to play on a pc, get a pc then, the game requirements are not even that crazy.

[mima_]

5 hours ago, gaymime said:

is this something others can verify? if so this is pretty shameful...

well, i played for sometime in nintendo switch, attacking is pretty lame. instead of enemy i keep attacking bernie for some reason so i need to run and target lock one enemy but its kinda hard and long time if u need to fight multiple enemies at once, while its kinda bring new experience im kinda having fun with this handicap in early game but can be frustrating in boss fight/mid-late game content.

also its terrible on splitscreen XD its lagging if once pass through cave 

[Mike23Ua]

There are ways Klei could & should have improved console version. Rather than just dumping PC Features on us that work absolutely horribly (or not at all) on a Xbox Controller, and I have expressed many MANY times in the past how to better make that work, but everything I suggest seems to not be taken into consideration, & I’m absolutely exhausted trying to express those things.

For example the Unassigned Camera Zoom Options, it’s nice that they added Camera Zoom FINALLY for us Console players, but: the options of which we have to “Bind” to camera Zoom don’t work, because they ALL overlap with one Another (if you assign Camera Zoom out to Down on your Directional Pad then you’ll Zoom out every single time you craft something in your quick craft tab)

Currently I have my Camera Zooms assigned to LB & RB (Map Rotation Buttons) I rarely ever use the map rotation at all when playing DST, Plus I like the feeling of how it feels like Wagstaff is in a Hamlet Hotair Balloon above us spinning a Camera Lens in and out for a closer or further away view (which rotates our world below as it zooms in and out) YES this is totally a personal preference thing…

But it Should not have to Be, Klei added an additional on screen Hud for Wilson’s Beard Hair Storage, why not just add an actual Camera Button like this too we can scroll over to, click to interact with and perform camera movement options without the buttons we assigned that to (Like Up or Down on D-pad) overlapping with other controller functions that use Up or Down D-pad Presses?

This is just ONE EXAMPLE of how to better make the games features function on a game controller.

Ive also suggested being able to hold in Y,(which inspects stuff in the world or pulls up your Skill Tree Menu ONLY if your standing out in the open in a clear spot away from anything nearby to Inspect) Hold in Y for 3 seconds to pull up a Virtual on screen Mouse (like how Mario Paint all the way back on the Super Nintendo was able to be played with a Mouse, but if you did not OWN the Mouse that went with the game no problem, you could also use a Virtual Mouse using the Controller)

This would allow us Console players to perform actions we currently can not do AT ALL (Aka: Any Feature that requires Dragging and Dropping something such as dragging meat over a Gnarwail to “tame” him)

The devs proudly claimed sometime back ago that they hired a team of developers who’s ONLY job was to improve the game for console players.

And if that’s true: Put your money where your mouth is Klei, make those Developers actually PLAY THE GAME USING A CONTROLLER.

And when they do that: They’ll Discover things like “Wow you can’t quickly tap on wood in your inventory to move it into Wurts Amermory?” yeah we should totally fix that. 

[Cats_On_Fire]

7 hours ago, Detaki said:

Unfortunately, all console versions of Don't Starve (with and without DLC), as well as Don't Starve Together, suffer from a poor control setup (Not counting the lack of something as essential as a Geometric Placement and Geometric Drop to decorate bases, it stopped being a survival-only game a long time ago and all Sandboxes have ways to decorate properly).

 

1.- Inability to configure controls to taste (this stopped being a problem in Don't Starve Together on all consoles, but Don't Starve still has this lack that can hinder the experience for many).

 2.- Lack of a Forced Attack, the character will attack the closest mob no matter how many times the intention one has as a player (a common problem is to play Wendy and kill Abigail with one hit xd... This does not happen in Together)

3.- As absurd and stupid as it sounds, the Telelocator Staff, Lazy Explorer and Wortox's Soul Hop are still completely broken and completely ruin the use of these unless you try too hard to use them (this is because their range is predefined and there is no way to adjust it).

4.- This only happens in Don't Starve Together on Nintendo Switch, but when creating a world and loading it, the world will be advancing even if there is no one inside... This makes Speedrunning difficult and encourages playing long sessions and not short ones, since you will lose approximately 2 minutes loading the world, in the end you will have lost even days of the game just by entering the game xd.

 5.- Lack of zooming in and out in Don't Starve, this was fixed in Together by adding the option to replace it with a button in the settings.

6.- Attacking should work like on PC, if you're fairly close to an enemy the character will attack it, this was "fixed" with the possibility of marking a mob and then the character will chase it, but if you're attacking a horde, it's almost impossible to finish it off because when you attack and you don't have a mob in your face, the character will hit the air.

7.- Terrible optimization (null) in many cases, the Don't Starve port on PS Vita runs at 60FPS for most of the game, but they never optimized the snow, rain and fire particles (which caused them to go from 60 stable to 15 or 8 stable x.x). This also happens in Switch in portable mode, Shipwrecked with rain and wind drops to about 18fps and in Hamlet with the hud of tree leaves and so on the same thing happens (they still haven't optimized the fire, wtf)

 

I'm sure I forgot many more points, feel free to comment c:

Lock on will solve the attack issue

[Well-met]

Console gaming was never supposed to be equal to PC no matter the game. It's just alot more convenient and especially excels at splitscreen.

gaming on consoles means you accept those downsides.

[EctoPlaza]

50 minutes ago, Well-met said:

Console gaming was never supposed to be equal to PC no matter the game. It's just alot more convenient and especially excels at splitscreen.

gaming on consoles means you accept those downsides.

Though it may be true that KB+M and controllers will never be equals, that doesn't mean that steps shouldn't be taken to make the controller experience better in its own way.

I've seen a few people make valid enough suggestions for them to at least be considered, such as some by this person:

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

Console gaming was never supposed to be equal to PC no matter the game. It's just alot more convenient and especially excels at splitscreen.

gaming on consoles means you accept those downsides.

Saying something like that isn’t really helpful or relevant, and it also could in some cases be possibly considered as an insult to Klei, I mean.. they did clearly state they hired a group of Devs who’s only job was to improve the QoL of the game for Console Players.

And to give credit where credit is rightfully due, it’s not like they HAVEN’T been doing that, (we not too terribly long ago finally got the ability to quickly switch between two held or worn items) Which actually makes things like switching between a weapon and a walking cane something console players can now do more easily, when prior to that update, wasn’t possible & switching between them was a pain in the rear end & not at all viable in any given combat scenario.

PC will ALWAYS have the Advantage of being able to bind more things to certain keyboard buttons, so while we have something similar now: Things like well uhm hold on let me see here…

Scrolling through a inventory of & applying Abigails Ectoherbology Potions are still a pain for console players.

And while I can not directly play in Betas Myself, I can already tell from watching gameplay videos of people playing Beta Version Wendy that I am going to personally absolutely HATE the New Abigail Command Wheel..

It’s going to be slower, it’s going to clutter up on screen, and it’s not going to be as Controller friendly as the previous Non-Beta design was.

[Ratituee]

my biggest problem is that you cant hold X/A to keep picking grass and saplings the same way you can by holding space on pc, you have to manually walk to the next object every time you want to pick it

[GimplyGoose]

3 hours ago, Well-met said:

Console gaming was never supposed to be equal to PC no matter the game. It's just alot more convenient and especially excels at splitscreen.

gaming on consoles means you accept those downsides.

There are some console games that were later ported to PC and the PC experience sucked.

I don't think the premise of what you are saying is wrong though. In order to get the best experience, you are likely going to have to play a game on the platform it was originally developed to be played on (with exceptions).

I think that the PC versions of DST and DS are the better versions, but I think the console versions are still adequate and, importantly, still fun to play on those platforms.

[00petar00]

@Well-metis right, console gaming will never be comparable to PC and it is relevant to the topic because some console players expect too much.

I can barely play the game with a keyboard with numpad keys because I don't have enough buttons for all my mods.

To me DST becomes unplayable without mods now that I've gotten literally spoiled, there are so many good client mods that require a lot of keybinds like the ones that let you bind all character specific abilities, boat control, place statues and so on.

 

[keats95]

16 hours ago, Detaki said:

4.- This only happens in Don't Starve Together on Nintendo Switch, but when creating a world and loading it, the world will be advancing even if there is no one inside... This makes Speedrunning difficult and encourages playing long sessions and not short ones, since you will lose approximately 2 minutes loading the world, in the end you will have lost even days of the game just by entering the game xd.

I don't think this is unique to the Nintendo Switch version, it may just be more pronounced there due to load times. I play on PS5 and I've definitely noticed when doing rollbacks/menu loads that the world will start advancing while you're waiting for it to load you in. I made a save with a little bit of night left and was confused when I loaded back in early morning. But when I rollback it puts me at the original save point.

 

14 hours ago, gaymime said:

is this something others can verify? if so this is pretty shameful...

Haha yeah unfortunately so... The Lazy Explorer/Soul Hop issue has been one of my biggest frustrations with the console version for the past decade and the main reason why I immediately discounted Wortox as a viable character to play as on console.

[Juanasdf]

5k+ hours pc player here:

I've played like 160 days of DST on switch this past week and I've been having a blast

Yeah it's janky, the controller layout is kinda messy, it has a bit of input lag and long loading times... But it works. Disclaimer: I haven't tried multiplayer... and I played with autopause......... with wigfrid lol

I agree with most complaints in here but it is what it is. The game wasn't designed with consoles in mind and I think Klei did a pretty good job. I guess they could improve it a bit.

I feel like the most needed change right now is the addition of geometrical placement as some sort of item. Something similar to the horizon expandinator, but we should be able to get it day 1 with not much effort (like a recipe drop from the junkyard).

Maybe a way to access the console too? Or at the very least a button to activate godmode and free crafting if you're admin. It'd be neat to do creative worlds... Although without geo placement it wouldn't be that fun lol

Other than that... I really don't know if I can ask Klei to improve how the game handles because that would require a cursor lol.

I guess touch screen support would be good for camera manipulation, inventory management and maybe some hotkeys for spells since a few characters now have spell wheels.

Maybe even targeting? I had some issues with the weather pain. Tried to use it vs toadstool's mushcap but it would only target him unless I was right next to a mushcap. Maybe holding the left analog button and touching an area could lock onto the nearest entity.

[Arde]

One thing they changed from ds to dst is that you cant drop items one by one with pressing ZR and then dropping anymore. So if you had 40 grass and wanted to drop 8 you have to half the stack twice and then put two from one of the stacks into another one, now you have 3 stacks, one with 8 grass, one with 12 grass, and one with 20 grass. You can now drop the 8 stack grass and combine the other two. Simple isnt it?

Also we have to use sign language to communicate on switch. Like literally use signs to talk to each other

[HellHeater]

22 hours ago, Detaki said:

4.- This only happens in Don't Starve Together on Nintendo Switch, but when creating a world and loading it, the world will be advancing even if there is no one inside... This makes Speedrunning difficult and encourages playing long sessions and not short ones, since you will lose approximately 2 minutes loading the world, in the end you will have lost even days of the game just by entering the game xd.

Something like this used to happen in regular DST too. I remember some streamer taking so long to prepare the stream while in the character selection screen that they started at the night of day 7.

[Jakepeng99]

14 hours ago, Well-met said:

Console gaming was never supposed to be equal to PC no matter the game. It's just alot more convenient and especially excels at splitscreen.

gaming on consoles means you accept those downsides.

Thats an uneducated statement.

[Moonatik]

When Sony and Microsoft will give to the players standard controllers with more buttons, it will help a lot. And by this I mean without buying a pro-elite-200 euros-controller.

It could help for the zoom and maybe some other things. 

If I had this power, I will instantly add 6 buttons on standard controller.

Such a shame. They prefer add some options like caress it, whisper to it, some new and amazing vibrations (can you feel it?), can you feel the trigger going harder, and harder ? speak to it, put it in your a...  &#@% !!

[gaymime]

38 minutes ago, Moonatik said:

When Sony and Microsoft will give to the players standard controllers with more buttons, it will help a lot. And by this I mean without buying a pro-elite-200 euros-controller.

It could help for the zoom and maybe some other things. 

If I had this power, I will instantly add 6 buttons on standard controller.

Such a shame. They prefer add some options like caress it, whisper to it, some new and amazing vibrations (can you feel it?), can you feel the trigger going harder, and harder ? speak to it, put it in your a...  &#@% !!

now, now, it is an extra 30 quid on your monthly subscription to put it there.

[Castiliano]

8 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Thats an uneducated statement.

There are games that are made and designed for PC and others for console, working better on each of them and that's fine. Of course, that doesn't negate the fact that developers can look for better solutions in the port — However, you can't expect a miracle when a game has this type of DST interface on the console.

[Misa22]

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't console shipwrecked actually "had right analog stick aiming" for stuff like, say, coconades or Willbur's poop throw?

I don't understand why they can't make Wortox's hop or Lazy explorer's tp like that too, specially after making things like Willow's new flame skills able to aim like so. Everything is full of jank and contradictions.

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, Misa22 said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't console shipwrecked actually "had right analog stick aiming" for stuff like, say, coconades or Willbur's poop throw?

They did, actually! I remember you pressed the button and used one of the sticks to aim the marker, and then the second tap of the button used the item. I remember it particularly for spyglasses.
 

The only problem is it was really slow to move said point. I’m curious if they could port it to DST and increase the speed of the marker movement and see how it would go.