Poll: how much information should the game give to new players? Is DST too hard to learn?

[Bumber64]

1. It's somewhat reasonable to show a bar but not numbers. Klei made the horizon expandinator an item, so it would likely be tied to equipment.

2. The range should be accurately depicted by animations or effects. No constantly visible radius, or anything like that.

3. Scrapbook.

[FourthLess]

I don't have much to comment except for the food part. Scrapbook is a good addition for new players, especially since it gives you info on the stuff only after you encounter it, including food. 

However, I simply think having stats of food pop up when you hover over it with a mouse just looks nice and I would definitely like that as a setting (which is weird because I dislike stuff like combined status but something about food showing its values without having to go through another menu and searchihg it up feels right) 

Oh, also/or making it so the value of stats that was changed by something (like getting hit by a spider or healing) showing up for a split second would be nice

[Edible Coal]

1 hour ago, -Variant said:

Oh yeah, absolutely, trust me I've dug around the game enough to know that the visual changes are absolutely not happening ahaha. Oh a girl could dream though.

But yeah, some upgrade, perk, item, tool, whatever could totally be a thing and it sounds fun to me.

well not really, only bosses need that, some boss has phrases and i think they need it

[somethin]

Absolutely no health bars, except for bosses maybe. Why do you want health bar for mobs anyway? They die so fast even with adjusted dst health...
Attack range is debatable, personally I wouldn't want them except for some selected range attack and not with a super obvious circle like c.clops. They have to be much more natural.
Food value is already covered with scrap book.
Learning DST for me isn't that hard at all, but I had experience with og DS with all dlcs, so unless they throw me a huge curve ball like completely new essential mechanics like boating in sw or extreme seasons in hamlet nothing gave me much problem.
Dying isn't a big deal anyway since life amulets are so cheap.

[Nini voovoo]

All the other points you could discuss whether they would be good or not healthbars are whatever if you know their max health values anyway, food values are already displayed in the scrapbook there is really no point in having that permanently displayed on hover over.

but mob attack ranges? That should absolutely not be implemented, this is not asking for qol this is just removing part of the combat learning process, it changes how you approach and learn the combat so fundamentally that would hurt the game a lot.

[WilsonHiggs]

7 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I really don't understand your views here. Why is it a bad thing to tell the player the health of what they're fighting? All it does is give you some very much needed feedback for how effective your actions are, saving you from the tedium and frustration of trial and error. The same is true for attack ranges - it's always better to have combat information communicated clearly to the player than to leave them guessing, especially at something as vague and prone to feeling inconsistent as attack range.
Granted, we don't need exact numbers (for example, DOOM: Eternal's destructible demons system, where the models of enemies change dynamically as their health gets lower to make it clear how hurt they are, does a great job of communicating it through a more diegetic method), but healthbars would be pretty easy to implement and wouldn't require a ton of work from Klei.

Do all of you who're saying that health bars would "ruin the game" or that showing attack ranges "is cheating" really think Don't Starve Together is such a boring and empty game that it'd really have nothing to draw people in with without the "challenge" of memorizing a bunch of random crap you probably read on the wiki and manually counting how many times you've whacked a boss? Really? Why are you even here if that's your opinion? .

Is easy to know the range of something...get close to it lol. Everytime i started playing a ds dlc or when i just bought the game i approached a new mob and checked: is hostile?; from which distance can hit?; does high damage? ,etc

Isnt that hard. Same for food, you just make experiments. What would be the point of this game if you could simply know that "if im insane i can simply cook that mushroom" (which technically the game now tells you via scrapbook).  The game is very easy if you have all the info on hand.

Just see how much megabasing there are, is because, once you learn, this game isnt much different from walking/farming sims like no mans sky or stadew valley where you farm materials, beat enemies/hunt for food with the simpliest combat in all videogames history and build fancy stuff.

Even challenge runs are more based on time management rather than skill because any fight, exept for fw, is hard. Any videogame out there has harder and more complex fights, harder scenarios with traps and hazzards... this game only has temperature which is beaten by an item you can craft day 1 or 2, weak enemies that can be defeating with non direct combat and optional bosses that you only face once you are prepare (or overprepare to make the chances of winning go to 300%...)

If someone drops this game means that this isnt their game the same way i dropped games because they weren't of my taste

You dont see people going to Fifa forums asking for shooting or platform gameplay. This is a survival and real survivals works in these ways because once you know the answer of the puzzle "how to survive" the big part of the fun and the challenge is gone

I dont think is hard to understand and anyway there is the scrapbook which is better than having a lame system like health bars (most bosses with high hp have visual indicators), cheats like atack range indicator (srly? A mod that tells you where to dont step to dont be hit?... this is no game for such junk) or constant knowledge of how much stats you get from food (survival game = die by eating is a classic)

 

The game has been casualized enough lately. 

[Szczuku]

Idk, this game has been steadily popular for the past 10 years so I'd say that it was doing a pretty good job gathering new players

Players learning things through watching tutorials isn't really that bad of a thing - helps build a sense of community imo.

[BezKa]

All I've gotta say, is that when I started playing DST (and switched to DS to play that first) it was the most wonderful moment in my gaming experience. Something clicked for me.

A game that doesn't tell me what to do. A game that obscures information from me, which I have to pry from it. A game that lets me discover everything myself, with small hints peppered across the world, with cheeky tooltips on crafts, with character comments guiding me sometimes into a great mechanic, and sometimes right into a trap. A game unlike any other I have played before.

I never even knew l craved this kind of experience the entire time. I have only played games that love over explaining stuff, that keep curious players away with invisible walls and reward following the main path with no deviation.

I have never properly feared a game, until Klei put me in a world with a eerie sense of unknown. The shadows scared me, not because they were covered in blood or made deep evil sounds. It's because when I went insane enough to see them, I knew something went wrong. I messed up, and I don't know how to fight it. I have to learn, but the knowledge comes at a price. I might die for it. Like Wilson was ready to.

Every backhand from the game felt like harsh world rejecting my attempts to live in it. Don't base near the pigs, it's fun until the full moon comes. Don't base near beefalos, it's fun until they go into heat. Don't run into the last track from a suspicious dirt pile, there's a ******* dog waiting to kill you. I adored it.

The only downside of this game design is that you can truly experience it only once. I loved what I got from this game, exactly how it was given to me. I loved not knowing, and learning, and using the knowledge I got. I loved getting prepared, but a twist of fate still resulting in my failure. I loved being punished by my own mistakes.

I will never get that back. I already know all I need. I shouldn't care what new players' experience is like, having already gone through mine. But everytime someone suggests a change like this, or a change that breaks apart that starting experience I loved makes me very sad. Because there might not be many people who would love the game as it was the way I did, but now they'll never have a chance to experience it that way.

But, who cares. Player retention.

[kikia]

50 minutes ago, BezKa said:

All I've gotta say, is that when I started playing DST (and switched to DS to play that first) it was the most wonderful moment in my gaming experience. Something clicked for me.

A game that doesn't tell me what to do. A game that obscures information from me, which I have to pry from it. A game that lets me discover everything myself, with small hints peppered across the world, with cheeky tooltips on crafts, with character comments guiding me sometimes into a great mechanic, and sometimes right into a trap. A game unlike any other I have played before.

I never even knew l craved this kind of experience the entire time. I have only played games that love over explaining stuff, that keep curious players away with invisible walls and reward following the main path with no deviation.

I have never properly feared a game, until Klei put me in a world with a eerie sense of unknown. The shadows scared me, not because they were covered in blood or made deep evil sounds. It's because when I went insane enough to see them, I knew something went wrong. I messed up, and I don't know how to fight it. I have to learn, but the knowledge comes at a price. I might die for it. Like Wilson was ready to.

Every backhand from the game felt like harsh world rejecting my attempts to live in it. Don't base near the pigs, it's fun until the full moon comes. Don't base near beefalos, it's fun until they go into heat. Don't run into the last track from a suspicious dirt pile, there's a ******* dog waiting to kill you. I adored it.

The only downside of this game design is that you can truly experience it only once. I loved what I got from this game, exactly how it was given to me. I loved not knowing, and learning, and using the knowledge I got. I loved getting prepared, but a twist of fate still resulting in my failure. I loved being punished by my own mistakes.

I will never get that back. I already know all I need. I shouldn't care what new players' experience is like, having already gone through mine. But everytime someone suggests a change like this, or a change that breaks apart that starting experience I loved makes me very sad. Because there might not be many people who would love the game as it was the way I did, but now they'll never have a chance to experience it that way.

But, who cares. Player retention.

Oh... thank you for sharing. This really took me down memory lane.

Of course, the present is alright as it is, but in some quiet corner, a shadow whispers the words it once etched

[Queron81]

I have only voted yes for the food values, as there is so much food and it is hard to memorize everything (even I don't remember most of the food values after playing the game for 12 years). I mean, you can see the values in the Cook Book and in the Scrapbook, but that is pretty uncomfortable to use. I would display the food values (with the option to remove them), but only for food you have eaten once (otherwise there should be a question mark, so new players understand they have to eat it at least once to get the values).

I was watching a lot of new players playing the game on stream during the last year and I always saw a lot of frustration. I would add a tutorial for some basic mechanics, and add some more (decent) information, but only for the characters (like temperature, total wetness protection), not for mobs.

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, somethin said:

Absolutely no health bars, except for bosses maybe. Why do you want health bar for mobs anyway? They die so fast even with adjusted dst health...

This would include allies too. Wurt has an item to heal merms, but no easy way to tell they need it.

[Well-met]

scrap book solved that problem.

However bosses should definitely have an official health bar. Literally everyone uses Epic Bars and we all know it

[WilsonHiggs]

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

scrap book solved that problem.

However bosses should definitely have an official health bar. Literally everyone uses Epic Bars and we all know it

I dont know why they should have it. There are plenty of situations that you can simply finish the fight because you know is few hits away instead of playing safer because you dont know if is about to die

Also it helps on knowing specifically when to deal burst damage when a phase is trigger or to cheese fw's mechanics

[Bumber64]

1 minute ago, WilsonHiggs said:

I dont know why they should have it. There are plenty of situations that you can simply finish the fight because you know is few hits away instead of playing safer because you dont know if is about to die

Also it helps on knowing specifically when to deal burst damage when a phase is trigger or to cheese fw's mechanics

But why should that matter?

Why should AFW's mechanics be cheeseable using that info to begin with?

[AliceShiki]

Healthbars: I think it's fine either way. Mods exist for the people who want Healthbars (I do), and people can play vanilla if they don't want health bars. This is too easily fixed by modding, so I don't care either way.

Attack Ranges: The animations of the enemy attacks are basically all you need for most enemies. Main thing you need to know is that it's actually possible to dodge an attack once the animation starts, since like... In some games, once the enemy starts an attack animation, you get hit regardless of where you go... But this is just something you naturally learn by playing.

Health/Sanity/Hunger values of food: Same as healthbars. It's too easily fixable by modding for me to care, even if I personally play with them visible.

Lack of Information: For me, personally, lack of in-game information just makes me look up wikis or guides or whatever. This isn't a Don't Starve exclusive thing though, I do that on basically any game I play that doesn't give me enough information, so... Playstyle dependent? I'm sure there are people who like the sense of discovery as they go through a new game. That's just not for me though.

How difficult it was to learn: Not too hard? Like... On the first times I played, I had no idea what to do, I just cut Birchnut Trees and ate Roasted Birchnuts, then Winter came and I had no idea of what I was supposed to do, and just stayed in base most of the time while my friends carried me... Until I eventually decided to look up a new player tutorial and started looking up info on the wiki and suddenly, things became a lot easier.

[WilsonHiggs]

29 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

But why should that matter?

Why should AFW's mechanics be cheeseable using that info to begin with?

Because makes the fight easier and safer

[goblinball]

I think some people take the idea of “learning = fun” way too far. While yes, learning things yourself is definitely really fun, if information is too ambiguous and obfuscated then it can become a bit of a chore to try to guess what things do, and “learning” things naturally through only gameplay can be nearly impossible, or at the very least unfun.

There is such a thing as too little information, and sometimes it’s just better to tell the player something upfront. What “something” means is entirely subjective, but I think at the very least dst could tell its players some more things, like hp and food values.

[reddocc]

hmm acktually the scrapbook tells you the health values, practice dummies the dmg values, and cook book recipes you have cooked (the scrapbook also tells you dmg values and special effects of weapons/tools)

[FillerText]

Can't you just view most of it with the cookbook/scrapbook? I think Klei have made their own decisions, and I think it's an ok change. There are also various tools that already fill those jobs in the game. I think Don't Starve is completely fine without any of those things, even if I do use mods to display healthbars, food values, and seasons. I think a few vague indicators(such as what DST has with the updated crafting tab) are good for introducing players to the game. I personally didn't find display values to be particularly game changing. Imo, just being a bit of a Wilson, and doing stupid things in the name of science gets you through the game fine(I don't use any of those mods in singleplayer, and it's dlcs.)

 

There are, of course, exceptions. I think I would be stuck for a solid few playthroughs never actually knowing how to counter humid season, other than "learn to play without equippable items". And I don't think most of these changes would significantly harm the game in any way.

[WilsonHiggs]

7 hours ago, goblinball said:

I think some people take the idea of “learning = fun” way too far. While yes, learning things yourself is definitely really fun, if information is too ambiguous and obfuscated then it can become a bit of a chore to try to guess what things do, and “learning” things naturally through only gameplay can be nearly impossible, or at the very least unfun.

There is such a thing as too little information, and sometimes it’s just better to tell the player something upfront. What “something” means is entirely subjective, but I think at the very least dst could tell its players some more things, like hp and food values.

Scrapbook does everything you asked for and even more since there are descriptions of the functions of complex items 

[PrincessProblem]

There's plenty of tutorials online if one chooses to use them. Otherwise there are some who prefer to learn it on their own

[Cheggf]

On 2/27/2025 at 5:19 AM, Nini voovoo said:

All the other points you could discuss whether they would be good or not healthbars are whatever if you know their max health values anyway, food values are already displayed in the scrapbook there is really no point in having that permanently displayed on hover over.

but mob attack ranges? That should absolutely not be implemented, this is not asking for qol this is just removing part of the combat learning process, it changes how you approach and learn the combat so fundamentally that would hurt the game a lot.

Attack range is 10,000x easier for you to see than health bars and 10x easier for you to see than food values. Literally just hold still so the enemy walks towards you and see when they start doing a windup animation. 

[Bumber64]

23 hours ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Because makes the fight easier and safer

For the last 10 seconds of it?

[Valase]

1. seeing exactly how much health a mob has changes the way you fight it, at every stage of the game, people think that it is a minor thing but its not.
2. the visual attack range thingy causes more visual bloat than it helps, but I think that certain mobs should get one like how crystal clops got one on his ranged attack.
3. We got scrap book for that.
4. A lot of DST/DS ambience comes from your lack of knowledge, sitting around a campfire waiting for the night to go, DST got a lot of changes that affect this, but again, some of those questions just rub it the wrong way.
5. Nothing to add.

[WilsonHiggs]

9 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

For the last 10 seconds of it?

10 seconds or minutes if you dont know that you can finish the fight with a couple of hits... isnt that hard to understand but if you always used the health bar i get that you never got into the situations im describing.

It really blows the emotion away but i get and wont be against an optional health bar setting even tho, i prefer visual indicators instead of just raw and direct info that kills adrenaline situations