What can klei do to bring the hype back?

[nimzowitsch10]

As we know this has been the longest update ever. Nearly half a year since the previous update depths of duplicity and we have finally received the update today.

Depths of duplicity was already a controversial update that alot of people disliked and now this update which I feel was underwhelming in my honest opinion.

I feel alot of people have lost interest in DST during this long hiatus and feel dst is in kind of a slump in terms of updates nowadays.

 

Klei really needs to add or change something that can drastically affect the game cycle.

Skilltrees are OK additions but I dont think they change the game cycle enough for people to stay interested.

Early/mid/late game items that could impact gameplay should be added. New Mobs, biomes, map updates.

These are the type of things everyone is looking for, not constantly skilltrees.

 

But klei is probably going to finish the skilltrees this year (Hopefully) and I sincerely hope they will focus on actually creating new things instead of constantly reworking. We have been in a reworking phase for 6 years now.

I don't make these types of posts to crap on klei because I still love the game but I really wish it could go a different direction as do alot of people here.

[Echsrick]

what you mean? an update JUST happend

[Kwaik]

The next patch has to be all meat and potatoes. Advance the main story , advance true progression, new bosses (whether lunar or new shadow bosses) , new gear. 

 

And doing it in a reasonable time frame. 

I was pretty obsessed with this game. But this last patch took a reallllly long time, and ended up being incredibly underwhelming, mostly because of Wendy mania. Not gonna lie I went from a sunshiner defending everything the devs did to pretty jaded and really uninterested 

Just now, Echsrick said:

what you mean? an update JUST happend

That's literally what they're talking about. 

This being a massive hiatus between patches. And this isn't a particularly big update.  And TBD what public sentiment is. But I think there's a lot of frustration with the response to the boycotts craziness etc 

[Frosty_Mentos]

You shouldn't forget that they had vacation time in between so Klei was not much active or at all in development.

As well as they work on things in the background on other content as well. I think they mentioned they are not much or at all slowed down by this.

DoD update was... fine? It added a lot of cool new shadow related items and ruins strengthening from it. Might have not been the ruins update much but it was decent imo at least.

[Kwaik]

25 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

You shouldn't forget that they had vacation time in between so Klei was not much active or at all in development.

As well as they work on things in the background on other content as well. I think they mentioned they are not much or at all slowed down by this.

DoD update was... fine? It added a lot of cool new shadow related items and ruins strengthening from it. Might have not been the ruins update much but it was decent imo at least.

They take vacation for the holidays every year (as they should) 

But the patch got pushed out until the end of February. 

And this is a skills tree patch (of which there's a pretty decent chunk of discontent) not a major content patch. Meaning by the time the next content patch comes out it could be close to 9 months between content patches, maybe even a year 

[Duck986]

1 hour ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

I feel alot of people have lost interest in DST during this long hiatus and feel dst is in kind of a slump in terms of updates nowadays.

you *feel* like this happened, but the truth is that people who actually wanted to quit dst did so way before this update. others just stay for this or that reason.

[lowercase skye]

1 hour ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

I feel alot of people have lost interest in DST during this long hiatus and feel dst is in kind of a slump in terms of updates nowadays.

72 out of the 266 pages in the beta branch forum were posts about this single update. Out of those long content arcs like From Beyond and Return of Them, 25% of discussion about DST betas was just for THIS specific update. Steam Charts are looking good too, we haven't dipped below ~50k daily concurrent players since mid-2022. Also yeah, the holidays happened and there's always a big gap in updates around that time. DST is fine, it's in no slump and it's not losing players at any notable rate.

[Frosty_Mentos]

38 minutes ago, Kwaik said:

They take vacation for the holidays every year (as they should) 

But the patch got pushed out until the end of February. 

And this is a skills tree patch (of which there's a pretty decent chunk of discontent) not a major content patch. Meaning by the time the next content patch comes out it could be close to 9 months between content patches, maybe even a year 

they had to rework Walter's skill tree, rework Woby and carefully change and tune Wendy for the sake of keeping the angriest calmed. This specific patch needed more of a chisel than a hammer so I can understand it. I don't mind content delayed tho considering they can work on more quality over quantity.

I'm not sure why ya'll are so bothered how long it would take for an update, have some patience read a book or something lol.

[Kwaik]

12 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

they had to rework Walter's skill tree, rework Woby and carefully change and tune Wendy for the sake of keeping the angriest calmed. This specific patch needed more of a chisel than a hammer so I can understand it. I don't mind content delayed tho considering they can work on more quality over quantity.

I'm not sure why ya'll are so bothered how long it would take for an update, have some patience read a book or something lol.

The Wendy rework is part of the problem 

It seems like it was let's placate some extremely angry people, and ignore other characters (cough cough Wortox) and content 

 

[Frosty_Mentos]

9 minutes ago, Kwaik said:

The Wendy rework is part of the problem 

It seems like it was let's placate some extremely angry people, and ignore other characters (cough cough Wortox) and content 

 

it seemed to have mostly worked out in the end though? Wortox came in with a good build already compared to other half baked skilltrees, considering Wendy's tree lacked some skills is probably due to time constraints.

You know, Klei always say that they don't really try having time constraints and take their time if they need to. Especially now with new update model. I would consider being patient when it comes to time topic and just giving them your suggestions and feedback instead of complaining how long they'll take about anything.

[Roodmas]

I don't know, I'm plenty hyped about this update. I never had much of a desire to play any of these 3 characters and now I do, so it did everything for me.

And I loved the heck out of the Depths of Duplicity update, it made the caves so much more interesting, and it gave us weapon variations for the shadow rift (I didn't like that the reaper and the brightshade sword were the only viable post-rift weapons).

[Dr. Safety]

The hype never left for me. The most disappointing thing about Depths of Duplicity was no character updates, but the content was still really fun. These skill trees give me reasons to play characters that I otherwise had minimal interest in playing

[Mysterious box]

Can't speak for anyone else but this update was hype for me though I was skeptical for awhile it finally got me to pick Wortox up and the skins got me back on my Warly kick. Also I've just been overall enjoying Walter and Wendy as usual the discussion around the beta has been painful but the update itself felt amazing at least to me so 

 

[WANZUN]

He'd better not be in recession. How can I quickly see a company that everyone is fighting for? Klei

I don't know where your data came from, but what I see is that the reputation of a praised company has gone bad.

[Guille6785]

I feel like it's easy to hang around sections of the community that are essentially just echo chambers and forget that they only represent 1% of the playerbase at best

[Faintly Macabre]

What would bring the hype back for me at least is an announcement that DST is reaching the end of development and they're about to start a sequel of some kind. I'm ready for a fully renewed core experience.

[Mike23Ua]

New and widely varied game modes. I’m honestly surprised how DST has managed to survive for this long without a variety of different modes, the one size fits all solution is getting very stale..

Using Fortnite or Minecraft as an example: these games survived as long as they have because they keep adding new ways to play outside of just “this one mode”

Fortnite now has Racing that rivals Disney Speedstorm, Guitar Hero, Lego creative, it even has TMNT shredders revenge RogueLite modes and Fall Guys levels.

Minecraft is the same way, there’s core Minecraft, then there’s the large variety of different DLCs, modes, add ons etc that make it Minecraft + some of which (like the nerf world DLC or another furniture add on) are even FREE.

And I strongly feel like that’s what DST is missing. The game has all these animations such as set pieces that contain trapped chests inside, all of that if put into a proper “dungeon crawling mode” would work exceptionally well.

Instead of allowing players to craft whatever they want, they’re need to explore labyrinths and find weapons in chests etc. 

And the funny thing about all that is- If DST had an actual Sandbox mode where we could place terrain, loot, enemy mobs, hazards etc where we wanted to… I could create this mode myself.

Ive done it before in Minecraft, Fortnite, FarCry, even BattleBlock Theater.

Bring back the Forge as an actual game mode instead of a limited time event…

Im sure there’s a plethora of things Klei could do to bring back the hype.

But all this “end game” focus on rifts content, and ridiculously op bosses ain’t it chief.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

New and widely varied game modes. I’m honestly surprised how DST has managed to survive for this long without a variety of different modes, the one size fits all solution is getting very stale..

Using Fortnite or Minecraft as an example: these games survived as long as they have because they keep adding new ways to play outside of just “this one mode”

Fortnite now has Racing that rivals Disney Speedstorm, Guitar Hero, Lego creative, it even has TMNT shredders revenge RogueLite modes and Fall Guys levels.

Minecraft is the same way, there’s core Minecraft, then there’s the large variety of different DLCs, modes, add ons etc that make it Minecraft + some of which (like the nerf world DLC or another furniture add on) are even FREE.

And I strongly feel like that’s what DST is missing. The game has all these animations such as set pieces that contain trapped chests inside, all of that if put into a proper “dungeon crawling mode” would work exceptionally well.

Instead of allowing players to craft whatever they want, they’re need to explore labyrinths and find weapons in chests etc. 

And the funny thing about all that is- If DST had an actual Sandbox mode where we could place terrain, loot, enemy mobs, hazards etc where we wanted to… I could create this mode myself.

Ive done it before in Minecraft, Fortnite, FarCry, even BattleBlock Theater.

Bring back the Forge as an actual game mode instead of a limited time event…

Im sure there’s a plethora of things Klei could do to bring back the hype.

But all this “end game” focus on rifts content, and ridiculously op bosses ain’t it chief.

I think it's unfair to compare a survival game to a battle royale or a sandbox game. We've seen fun modes such as the Forge and Gorge, and I would love if they were officially reintroduced in some way at some point, but I don't think there's anything wrong with DST just being a survival game

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

New and widely varied game modes. I’m honestly surprised how DST has managed to survive for this long without a variety of different modes, the one size fits all solution is getting very stale..

Using Fortnite or Minecraft as an example: these games survived as long as they have because they keep adding new ways to play outside of just “this one mode”

Fortnite now has Racing that rivals Disney Speedstorm, Guitar Hero, Lego creative, it even has TMNT shredders revenge RogueLite modes and Fall Guys levels.

Minecraft is the same way, there’s core Minecraft, then there’s the large variety of different DLCs, modes, add ons etc that make it Minecraft + some of which (like the nerf world DLC or another furniture add on) are even FREE.

And I strongly feel like that’s what DST is missing. The game has all these animations such as set pieces that contain trapped chests inside, all of that if put into a proper “dungeon crawling mode” would work exceptionally well.

Instead of allowing players to craft whatever they want, they’re need to explore labyrinths and find weapons in chests etc. 

And the funny thing about all that is- If DST had an actual Sandbox mode where we could place terrain, loot, enemy mobs, hazards etc where we wanted to… I could create this mode myself.

Ive done it before in Minecraft, Fortnite, FarCry, even BattleBlock Theater.

Bring back the Forge as an actual game mode instead of a limited time event…

Im sure there’s a plethora of things Klei could do to bring back the hype.

But all this “end game” focus on rifts content, and ridiculously op bosses ain’t it chief.

You can't keep saying the same things every year, people didn't like this idea 2 years ago, they didn't last year so they're probably not gonna suddenly like it this year. Quit it.

[Bumber64]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Minecraft is the same way, there’s core Minecraft, then there’s the large variety of different DLCs, modes, add ons etc that make it Minecraft + some of which (like the nerf world DLC or another furniture add on) are even FREE.

By this logic, Minecraft Java would never have survived. Essentially it's still just a building survival game. Everything else is mods, but I don't think most players even use total conversion mods. They just want to megabase or do self-imposed (e.g., one chunk, skyblock) challenges.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

I think it's unfair to compare a survival game to a battle royale or a sandbox game. We've seen fun modes such as the Forge and Gorge, and I would love if they were officially reintroduced in some way at some point, but I don't think there's anything wrong with DST just being a survival game

I’d call DST more of a Sandbox game than I would in calling it a Survival one, sure there are small traces of survival elements here and there… but even the so called “end game” Rift stuff leaves ALOT to be desired.

The “Elite” versions of bosses (Aka Crystal Deerclops etc..) can be completely ignored by just burning away the corpse before it can reanimate to life.

I think enemy placement within DST is just too scripted and predictable Minecraft and Lego Fortnite will both spawn random hostile mobs at night, while DST mostly only has Deadly Brightshades.

Yeah I guess it’s not fair for me to compare the unfinished “From Beyond” to the likes of Fortnite and Minecraft, but Klei’s statement about the non-existent 2025 Content Roadmap was that they can’t reveal any of those plans until after concluding from beyond.

Which ironically…. Means Klei is already looking beyond that. (See what I did there? )

You can call me a debi downer, but I’m sorry I just don’t think Klei is going to finish up rift content in the two updates they claim are left in the arch.

[Edible Coal]

10 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’d call DST more of a Sandbox game than I would in calling it a Survival one, sure there are small traces of survival elements here and there… but even the so called “end game” Rift stuff leaves ALOT to be desired.

The “Elite” versions of bosses (Aka Crystal Deerclops etc..) can be completely ignored by just burning away the corpse before it can reanimate to life.

I think enemy placement within DST is just too scripted and predictable Minecraft and Lego Fortnite will both spawn random hostile mobs at night, while DST mostly only has Deadly Brightshades.

Yeah I guess it’s not fair for me to compare the unfinished “From Beyond” to the likes of Fortnite and Minecraft, but Klei’s statement about the non-existent 2025 Content Roadmap was that they can’t reveal any of those plans until after concluding from beyond.

Which ironically…. Means Klei is already looking beyond that. (See what I did there? )

You can call me a debi downer, but I’m sorry I just don’t think Klei is going to finish up rift content in the two updates they claim are left in the arch.

a 2025 road map....in september, cool i guess

[Uedo]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

 

You can call me a debi downer, but I’m sorry I just don’t think Klei is going to finish up rift content in the two updates they claim are left in the arch.

It's not that, you're not a downer at all. Your ideas are absolutely fine, but sometimes you reference frustrations that technically don't exist. 

You mentioned mobs being to scripted, I don't feel you're referencing what most people would be referencing with that. I think you're on about mob behaviour (scripting in that sense) but you also mention placement so it's confusing. Like your arguement here isn't a typical one when Klei tend to use quite nice, in my opinion, basic scripting for how a mob interacts with the player space (loaded chunks). Most of their scripting incorporates some form of 'home' or return-zone,  which they give the appearance of them spawning out from, and then they have emergent behaviour (checking else-if's when they're in the loaded chunk), they have a priority system for certain behaviours and sometimes interact with where assets are stored (mainly items). So it's not quite simple scripting, comparable to the industry standard - maybe you'd say it was basic, but its a good standard. 

Klei could just as easily tie mob interactions really simply with event triggers for everything, they don't. Spawning a mob with aggro mechanics is much much easier than what Klei do with their mobs. 

Again, it's not you being a downer, it's you not understanding the points your arguing but also feeling that you're absolutely right, as said before you're generally disagreeable - it's ok, but it's frustrating at times.

[0rutyna0]

"What can klei do to bring the hype back?"

Forge 3, Gorge 2, Horge 1.

[WilsonHiggs]

Stuff at the level of moon quay island which brought new enemies, a new survival mechanic, many plants including a tree, new boat attachments, a revolutionary new way of building over water...

Also revisiting skill trees so they all bring cool experiences. And some pieces of content from "from beyond" makes me dont want to play like the bland spawning mechanics from inks and rictus or how weak they are against BS staff...i play to feel challenged not to hold F while the enemie stand still defenseless

More mutations to work with moon storms and rifts. There are very few mutations during moon storms and the birds only work during the wagstaff minigame. Why we dont see mutated birds in the moon island or near the rifts? Also they didnt implemented a fused varg-koalaphant for the tracks, that, even if didnt added anything new in terms of loot, could being variety to the gameplay.

A missed opportunity of having mutated frog rains in the moon island just because they decided to change the theme from 'mutations from moon exposure' to 'possesions'. Feels unattached and artifical to only get certain mutated mobs in very specific situations (no ponds frogs possesed during rifts?)

There are a lot of little changes that can improve a lot what we already have

Ofc, they have plenty of room to add stuff to the sea and the caves