Don't Starve Together state

[Hollow soul 3]

I think once they finish balancing out the skill trees, it'll free them up to add more varied or challenging content

[AliceShiki]

12 hours ago, Milordo said:

Nope. Not skill trees, characters! Big difference. If skill tree were for, I dunno, other things like science machinces they would never had this popularity. 

Characters and bosses are always the prime big lure attention in the dst community. That's why more traffic is involved there.

Yeah, obviously. Character updates get more enthusiasm than world updates... It just so happens that the character updates we're getting nowadays are the skill trees.

Which results in the skill trees being extremely popular.

[Milordo]

15 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

We are still waiting for the "it all makes sense" from the Moon Quay. It feels like the lore was forced on it for no reason, i don't understand the point of it other than "Wagstaff made a weird portal that doesnt have lore significance". Could have just been monkeys who like the moon because it is sometimes banana shaped, which i find funny. 

Forgotten knowledge was identified as an amazing update back then and to this day. 

Maaaannn, I remember Forgotten Knowledge as it was yesterday. Hyped as hell by the trailer, went full blind with my friend, we were searching for the lunar grotto because it was hidden before (btw I prefer it hidden or unlocked by a mechanic instead of being attached now in a lazy way to the blue mushroom forest....) and when we found it we were mesmerized just only by the look of it. Then the archives, all their mysteries, puzzles and mechanics, the weird infected mushrooms, the lunar grotto becoming a war land betwenn shadows and lunar, ecc.....really all fantastic. 10/10. I had the loading screen of the lunar grotto as wallpaper desktop for months. One thing that perplex me to this day is how some people found the lunar quest boring or bad when you have this marvelous *chef kiss* content to do. I do have some theories on why but come on, atleast the lunar quest is a real quest and it's clear Klei learned and cooked it very well *chef kiss* compared to the shadows which is.....bleah. Wow. Moving three statues, some fossils and a tentacle. The shadow quest is carried only by Ancient Fuelweaver and if I wouldn't be such a fangirl of him xD, I would be more cruel towards shadow quest.

[Theukon-dos]

I've said my dues on the matter plenty by this point. But honestly? I feel like the worst part is that the problem at this point isn't even direction. It's the sheer lack of foresight that's been put on display.

 

Basically all the problems that the last few years of updates have had where just- really obvious when they first went down this path. I don't want to say "I told you so". But when skill trees first started, I did point out that trying to give all characters a skill tree as means of balance was a really bad idea. Even if you don't think that they're power creep (which they are), the fact that the strength of characters varies so wildly means that skill trees would either have to vary just as wildly; with already decent characters getting much tamer trees; or the skill trees would be consistent and power would vary just as wildly anyways.

Fast forward to today, and that prediction has held true through and through. Just look at the last 4-5 months of people flooding the forums with complaints about Wendys' skill tree and how comparatively simple it is. It's not like Wendy was a bad character before hand, so there's not much they really could have done with her. But it still sucks for all the Wendy mains who where exicted to see what she got.

 

And skill trees themselves feel like a short-sighted solution to the problems brought upon by rift content, which themselves feel like a short-sighted solution. During the Rhymes with Play streams where they talked about the rifts and what they wanted from them, Klei talked about how one of the big intentions with rifts was "balancing" combat characters, which I don't disagree with on a conceptual level. DST is balanced around multiplayer, and the only way that manifests that makes solo play worse is enemy and boss HP, so characters that deal more damage do have an advantage for solo play in that regard.

But as a method to actually balance combat characters, rifts are... just really bad at it. Obviously the way they're supposed to do this is with the addition of planar damage and defense, which ignores a character's damage modifiers. But not only does that feel really bad for the characters who do have those modifiers. Rifts can't be opened until you beat either Celestial Champion or Ancient Fuelweaver. One of which is probably the hardest boss in the game, and the other has a mile-long shopping list the player needs to do before they can even think about fighting, including fighting Crab King. And prior to his rework, you could argue that he was actually the hardest boss in the game.

 

So to summarize, in order to reach the mechanic that was intended to nerf combat characters, players needed to beat most of the game, which included beating no less than 2 bosses, and atleast 1 of which is or atleast was amongst the game's hardest. Meaning that the best option for getting to the mechanics that nerfed combat characters were... the combat characters.

 

As for why I think skill trees where a response to this, the main reason is that nearly all of them give characters bonus planar damage in one way or another. Including to the characters that where supposed to be "nerfed" by planar mechanics. Wolfgang in particular was probably hit the hardest, was included in the first wave of skill trees after Wilson, and got just about all of his damage from skill trees back between a flat +25 planar damage and upto 30% extra damage against aligned enemies.

They added a mechanic that was meant to turn everyone's damage down to around the same place. And then immediately turned around and decided to give everyone more damage that can bypass this mechanic. If that's not a knee jerk reaction, then I don't know what it is.

 

[Milordo]

Hey Theukon-dos, it's been a long time since I saw you on the forums  

22 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

I've said my dues on the matter plenty by this point. But honestly? I feel like the worst part is that the problem at this point isn't even direction. It's the sheer lack of foresight that's been put on display.

Basically all the problems that the last few years of updates have had where just- really obvious when they first went down this path. I don't want to say "I told you so". But when skill trees first started, I did point out that trying to give all characters a skill tree as means of balance was a really bad idea.

But you can't say that! You're negative! You're a complainer, a contrarian! No no no, we need to be happy and satisfied with what we're getting of! 

49 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Even if you don't think that they're power creep (which they are)

Those thinkings are long gone. At this stage I see everywhere that everyone accepted that they're indeed 100% factual powercreep, let's not kid ourselves and blind our eyes.

58 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

During the Rhymes with Play streams where they talked about the rifts and what they wanted from them, Klei talked about how one of the big intentions with rifts was "balancing" combat characters, which I don't disagree with on a conceptual level. DST is balanced around multiplayer, and the only way that manifests that makes solo play worse is enemy and boss HP, so characters that deal more damage do have an advantage for solo play in that regard.

I do heavily disagree and mind with Klei, when instead of overcomplicate themselves they could have implement A GODDAMN AUTOBALANCE IN THE GAME. A criticism brought since 2015 by people and still made to this day!!!!!!!!! I don't understand why Klei is so adamant on doing it, if not for taking an easy route and don't work and waste too much time and resources on that (because for sure I understand it's not easy to code an autobalancing mechanic) 

And look, maybe they can prove me wrong with a good "sike!". They can prove me that making a convoluted mess of a system can fix all these problems. But they didn't. So I'll gladly suggest, remove all of that, remove the planar thing, do the GODDAMN AUTOBALANCE IN THE GAME and we'll all be happy with rainbows and flowers. 

Instead of a "knee jerk reaction" as you wonderfully put it.

 

Nevertheless super agreed, take my potato cup and have a nice day.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

During the Rhymes with Play streams where they talked about the rifts and what they wanted from them, Klei talked about how one of the big intentions with rifts was "balancing" combat characters, which I don't disagree with on a conceptual level.

Balancing combat characters with end game combat makes no sense.

If they were op before, they are still op pre riffs.

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

As for why I think skill trees where a response to this, the main reason is that nearly all of them give characters bonus planar damage in one way or another. Including to the characters that where supposed to be "nerfed" by planar mechanics. Wolfgang in particular was probably hit the hardest, was included in the first wave of skill trees after Wilson, and got just about all of his damage from skill trees back between a flat +25 planar damage and upto 30% extra damage against aligned enemies.

They added a mechanic that was meant to turn everyone's damage down to around the same place. And then immediately turned around and decided to give everyone more damage that can bypass this mechanic. If that's not a knee jerk reaction, then I don't know what it is.

There is no proper evidence, but i feel like skilltrees might have been a last minute shift.

In their roadmap they said they wanted every character to have a way to choose between shadow and lunar, i remember them saying it will be different to Wilson. 

[DVGMedia]

I don't want to blame combat honestly. Because most of the Combat characters are fairly simple.  They just got harder but like understanding and playing more there really are tools available for all characters that no one really uses. Everything is not just weapon and armor. 

But the reason people push for combT characters is that they often need less resources to tackle  the worlds challenges

Everything is going to end up just looping because they're going to be looking at the skill trees so they are going to continuously keep this update cycle so that way people keep buying more from this game

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

Everything is going to end up just looping because they're going to be looking at the skill trees so they are going to continuously keep this update cycle so that way people keep buying more from this game

What do you mean? Like people buying more copies of the game?

[Milordo]

19 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

There is no proper evidence, but i feel like skilltrees might have been a last minute shift.

In their roadmap they said they wanted every character to have a way to choose between shadow and lunar, i remember them saying it will be different to Wilson. 

 

Spoiler

 

This one? It doesn't say tho what you meant exactly and couldn't find more.

12 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

I don't want to blame combat honestly. Because most of the Combat characters are fairly simple.  They just got harder but like understanding and playing more there really are tools available for all characters that no one really uses. Everything is not just weapon and armor. 

But the reason people push for combT characters is that they often need less resources to tackle  the worlds challenges

Everything is going to end up just looping because they're going to be looking at the skill trees so they are going to continuously keep this update cycle so that way people keep buying more from this game

Eyebrella is made by defeating Deerclops. Insulated pack is made by defeating Bearger. The farming minigame can be progressed by killing a """Boss""". You have constantly hordes of hounds, depth worms and monkeys coming at you. A lot of players farms are based on killing pigs, spiders, beefaloes and again hounds. Catcoons, butterflies and (normal) spiders are too easy to kill and give excellent drops while Tallbirds, slurtles, rockjaws and splumonkeys are not easy to kill but still all of them provide great bounty if confronted. Then I want to reiterate about pigs, because they're too damn much useful as alive and even dead, so even more combat. You have Sanity and Ruins fighting for your life or rewards. To progress in the game you need to kill giant super bosses like Bee Queen, Crab King, Ancient Guardian, ecc.... and even some special mobs, such MackTusks which are SUPER important. The finale of the game IS a super final boss fight and NOT a farming challenge or exploration challenge (***) The Rifts from what I get is 60%, maybe even 75%, all around based on fighting new creature and bosses.

 

Now compare all of this short summary to crafting, building, exploration and farming. Exploration is on the same plane of fighting....but when you create a new world and need to have all the map explored...wwwwhich is something early game. After that exploration falls a lot pretty hard. You have few things like MackTusks and Ancient Pseudostation that incentives you moving, but are too few and gets diminished by time with items and structures that let's you speed up these process. Only things like hunt minigame does something but are too few of them. Crafting and building are fine, but still don't hold a candle because they never evolved in the franchise. Get items --> craft items and that's it. It doesn't help that has been proven in the years that you don't need to build a lot of structures and items in the game (thanks Klei's balance). And finally what about farming? I mean it is important. Chopping, mining, digging, hammering all useful! But....they're just that. They don't evolve. Don't have variations. And in terms of usefulness is very debatable when we introduce the other part with beehives, farming minigame, ecc... because you're getting out of your way to just have fun, since you can accomplish your needs to this day with just berries (very small portion of farming) and spiders or pigs or beefaloes or cacti and a birdcage. Compare all of this with the rewards of fightining, with how it evolves, how many variations it has, strategies, skill expression, how it makes you progress through the game. The godly fun beautiful crop farming system doesn't lets you grow a crop that is needed to fight a new hazard/danger. The new animal that you need to kill does it.   

People that feel "too much fighting" in the game, are not wrong at all. And finally it doesn't help that Klei themselves said and doing skilltrees with the goal of every character accessing and doing fighting perks, abilites, specials, ecc....

 

(*** Btw as much I drool and LOVE Ancient Fuelweaver, Adventure mode is still to this day > shadow quest (Ancient Fuelweaver) because Klei absolutely nailed the real challenge and spirit of Don't Starve, aka survival, something that Together did not forget. It had everything. Crafting, building, farming, exploration AND fighting.)

[NoodlemanNed]

i like the skill trees a lot more than the entirety of return of them

[Dingle]

Yeah I like the skill trees, it keeps my friends and I coming back.

I do wish there was more work done on new biomes, bosses, and so on. The story also really, really drags on. One giant thing I really want is some kind of real "endgame". Something like, do this big post-post-rift thing and you "win", like Adventure Mode in Don't Starve 1.

I think mostly the team needs to be bigger. But I understand why it isn't. DST has been out for what, a decade now? On the other hand, isn't it also their most profitable game still? Not sure on this. Maybe Oxygen Not Included makes more money at this point?

[ColdHeaven]

i don't hate skill trees but they are indeed very big powercreep. wortox for example is incredibly strong now, just not in the usual way which is being strong in combat but rather being too strong in surviving.

 

[Milordo]

18 hours ago, Dingle said:

Not sure on this. Maybe Oxygen Not Included makes more money at this point?

I genuinely think Don't Starve is still their golden goose lol

[Edible Coal]

52 minutes ago, Milordo said:

I genuinely think Don't Starve is still their golden goose lol

dst is literally the top seller of klei lol

[Spunney]

On 3/11/2025 at 6:57 PM, 2D_Lesobur said:

What i truly hate is how we've gone from asking "What?" to "What's next?" 
 Back in the day nothing was clear, everything required a theory, an explanation.  The game actually felt concrete, it had an entire world behind it that we couldn't see, and now what? We just have a big hole in the ground with forces that will most definetly not be explained as they rely purely on magical thinking, and a big angry rock in the sky. Aside from them, everything in the world doesn't matter anymore. 
 Klei themselves have invested into this chess and theater thematic, and that's exactly how the game feels now. Instead of actually participating in the world and percieving it through our own senses, we have been demoted to simply watching a play, and a scuffed one at that.
 The content they add is not bad per say, it's just... Not special anymore. Soulles, even.

This is just sorta a natural evolution of any videogame that's been out for a long time. Nothing keeps it's air of mystery after it's had a dedicated community hammering away at all parts of a game for over a decade. It has nothing to do with any updates.

[Hungry French]

On 12.03.2025 at 01:25, Well-met said:

Печальный факт заключается в том, что обновление персонажей и древа навыков отняли у Klei несколько ценных лет разработки, которые были потрачены на обновление мира и сюжета, и мы никогда не вернём это время.

Теперь просто наблюдайте, как они объявят, что закончили с DST, как только выйдут следующие два обновления.

Кроме того, за этим человеком невыносимо наблюдать и слушать его, однако я полностью согласен с его доводами.

Klei has been releasing updates over and over again since 2012 that don't really add content. Starting with DS, there are 1 million clothes, food, and wall-type items that the game doesn't need and it was pointless to waste time on them.
Developing DST as a separate game in itself is pointless because it would be possible to modify the original DS, rather than wasting time on a separate game and trying to make DLC for DS. Klei keeps adding things like Cookie Cutter Caps that are just useless.
Or Bundling Wrap, which make Ice Chester and Insulated pack are useless. The game literally does not need these things, because they are a direct replacement for existing things or useless analogues.
At the same time, Klei really knows how to create new things that complement the game like Salt Box. Which Klei could have made literally Ice Box 2.0, but made a neighbor for Ice Box.

What would the game be like if Klei really thought about the overall game balance and game progression, as well as what differences solo and multiplayer players should have...

 

[Fuffles]

On 3/11/2025 at 10:51 PM, Milordo said:

[...] but I please everyone with an open mind to tell me what do you think about it. How you feel recently about dst, [...]

A notable quote certainly emerges "popularity vs the health of the game are two different things". I don't think I have to spell out how true that stands in this case.
As for DST, it's quite insane how Klei's choices have led me through the entire spectrum of affection, from loving the game, to hating the choices after 'A New Reign', the Forge and Gorge events ended and trying to voice these concerns, to being absolutely indifferent towards the game anymore. Truth be told I just peeked at the forums as I was cleaning my tab groups.

[Guille6785]

I think the game's doing fine for the most part

[somethin]

The game is fine until morale improves

[Catuna_]

Oh golly, another video of Beard complaining about the game's direction claiming that the game is in trouble, or dying, or is about to be hit by a nuke...

Look, I get it. I have been underwhelmed by a decent bit of decisions that I feel like could've been avoided or approached in different ways. I really do not like the new philosophy of boss design relative to the old one: bosses like Scrappy Werepig, Frostjaw and the new Crab King have been majorly underwhelming for me. I do not agree with planar damage and I especially do not agree with the way it is implemented. I understand that skill trees enable a certain type of power creep that may not sit well with some people and I understand that they are just such an odd way to add content to characters when they rarely execute the idea of customization and alternate play styles and typically just revolve around clicking a couple buttons to buff your character the most and that they eat a large amount of time.

For the sake of replying to the actual post, I'll respond to each point that he makes in the "Beard's Best Rant Ever" YES ITS ACTUALLY CALLED THAT LOL section and I'll leave some other thoughts after that.

"The game does not do well with skill trees involved" & "The development hell with skill trees"

I just talked about how I do not agree with skill trees' execution. However, that does not mean that I don't think they work and I overall see them as a net positive to the game. Skill trees do not break the usual gameplay loop of DST. You can argue that they make it easier but that's just the result that you'd have from buffing a character in the first place. Had Woodie gotten a refresh that integrates the same fixes for his were-forms, he would still accomplish what skill tree Woodie does. 

Skill trees encourage the player to get out of their way to interact with either new mechanics like Winona's glasses or going out of your way to get materials that you usually wouldn't care about like azure feathers for Wigfrid or interacting with different sources of resources to make Walter's new ammos. Skill trees enable players to interact differently in the game especially in combat in a genuinely new way. Willow for example with her skill tree offers a genuinely new way to interact with the game actually delivering on her relationship with fire and her pyromaniac tendencies.

Lore implications are weird and I'm not personally educated on the DST lore enough to actually comment on such a thing, but I can find it quite jarring for a character like Willow to just start shooting """lunar fire""" out of her hands. 

Bad skill trees exist and are plentiful, characters like Wigfrid, Winona and Wendy had little to no good feedback (if any feedback at all) and ended up with what is in my opinion some really majorly disappointing trees. Not to mention Wolfgang who got the shortest end of the stick being given literally one new decently useful toy (icebell) and boring stat buffs. People arguing that this is justified because he's too strong of a character gloss over how you can make fun additions without majorly buffing a character (like Wigfrid's weapons which are overall worse save for the upgraded spear but still fun) and how Klei STILL ended up majorly buffing Wolfgang by giving him an absurd 2.6x damage modifier vs opposite alignment targets instead of the usual 2x. The inclusion of SIX mighty gym perks genuinely baffles me.

But overall, skill trees add to the game and at worst they are just missed potential. They do not subtract from the game in any major way and thus they fulfill their purpose and are justified if a little weird. If it was up to me, I would just rework/buff characters that need it and introduce alignments as powerful perks that change how you interact with the game rather than an entire skill tree.

And while I love seeing old and aging dated character designs have life breathed into them, I really do wish that we'd be done with it already and get to experience full-time content and qol updates.

"The game has become far too combat focused, it has lost its survivor feel. But it's also lost its mysterious kind of morbid and brusk, like, emotion behind what you are doing. Like it always had a whimsical-ness to it but a reality that you're doing anything you can to survive in a world that has rules that are clearly happening in the background but you don't know what's happening"

I think this is a result of skill trees taking so much development time. And I agree with this point for the most part! I'd love more environmental hazards. I've had a blast with a lot of uncompromising mode's new threats like snowstorms and the giant tornado that I feel could be an inspiration for Klei to add new things that take advantage of pre-existing mechanics like insulation and wetness and whatnot to enrich seasons that don't have a lot going for them and by seasons that don't have a lot going for them I mean summer.

That being said, the game still heavily centers on survival as much as its prequel I'd argue, but both of these games are built on knowledge checks that heavily punish or outright kills the player (whether it'd be immediate or gradual) if the player fails to know what they are doing. The truth is that DST just slowly turns from a survival game to a sandbox game the more you are familiar with it, and there's nothing Klei can really do without reworking the game from the ground up.

I feel like a lot of people also forget that DST is a multiplayer game and players can have wildly different levels of knowledge and skill, so making survival actively harder and/or making revival harder (mentioning this bc of UM lol) just makes new players go from sandbags to bags full of anvils and cartoonishly large pianos and would turn off a lot of people which would lose Klei a lot of money because attracting new players and retaining them would be just impossible.

"Dragging the lore/gameplay/development for the business side for Klei Entertainment."

I'm not educated on the lore aspect of the game, and I don't focus largely on it because I mainly see it just as a background for the actual game and its theme so I won't comment on that.

But I also don't see what Beard is trying to say when it comes to a gameplay perspective or why he brought up gameplay??? It genuinely feels like complaining about new free content just because he's been playing the game for years. Beard is just genuinely stuck making content for a game he's bored of, and that's the large issue I have with this guy when he tries to talk about DST or the state of DST or what DST needs (I've watched several of his videos) and it just feels like he's squeezing as much money as he can out of doomposting about the game nowadays.

I enjoy the new updates, and I'm grateful for the free content even if I think that things can be improved. I especially think that even beard himself, the person that made this point, would agree with me when I want the game to rework or add more content to areas or portions that have nothing going for them, DST isn't finished and there's a lot of room for improvement.

I don't see this as Klei "milking the game" like he's largely implying, as these updates have added meaningful changes whether that'd be new content or overhauling pre-existing content, and the monetization he criticizes is so light compared to other games (70-90$ AAA  games, 20-30$ skins in other live service games, battle passes, etc.) but also IN GENERAL. Klei has the best f2p model I've seen and actively give out free skins, points, have regional pricing for those in third world countries (thank you klei i love you I bought the entire victorian bundle for like 4 dollars LOL) etc. etc.

Klei are genuinely still passionate about this game, and they've been more clear with their communications ideas and directions they want to take with the players when they literally do not have to be. This bit of the video feels so accusatory and honestly I hate it.

Communication:

I don't think that devs should have to treat what they say like some sort of religious book, ideas can and should be overhauled,altered or outright scrapped sometimes and the community should recognize that not everything that is said will happen and should just criticize what is there and what's missing. and I think that the way that Beard words this just makes him seem like a spoiled brat...
He also goes on this whole tangent about how Wagstaff being a Charlie counterpart makes no sense, and this point feels dishonest when he says something like
"We went from ethereal mystery, ever powerful, mutating moon to now physical tangent technological scrap stuff versus shadow. What? Shadow's gonna win that fight."
The thing is that Wagstaff is tampering with said "ethereal mystery ever powerful mutating moon" in a way that parallels Charlie's motivations with shadows. It is asymmetrical but I think that is a good thing in my opinion.

Largely, I think that people like beard are just people that doompost about DST like beard are just looking at the game with rose-colored glasses ignoring the many mess ups dramas criticisms etc that DS/DST had, and I think that these people just don't really acknowledge that Klei cannot keep someone that's played for 1.5K+ hours hooked on the game permanently and are NOT trying to. The game's in a very healthy state, and it has more players than it's ever had and is maintaining those players in a very healthy way just from the PC numbers alone. This doesn't mean that they're doing everything perfectly, nor do I think this means that they're doing everything well, but what I'm trying to say is that this is as silly as people claiming that old minecraft was better.

 

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Catuna_ said:

Oh golly, another video of Beard complaining about the game's direction claiming that the game is in trouble, or dying, or is about to be hit by a nuke...

Look, I get it. I have been underwhelmed by a decent bit of decisions that I feel like could've been avoided or approached in different ways. I really do not like the new philosophy of boss design relative to the old one: bosses like Scrappy Werepig, Frostjaw and the new Crab King have been majorly underwhelming for me. I do not agree with planar damage and I especially do not agree with the way it is implemented. I understand that skill trees enable a certain type of power creep that may not sit well with some people and I understand that they are just such an odd way to add content to characters when they rarely execute the idea of customization and alternate play styles and typically just revolve around clicking a couple buttons to buff your character the most and that they eat a large amount of time.

For the sake of replying to the actual post, I'll respond to each point that he makes in the "Beard's Best Rant Ever" YES ITS ACTUALLY CALLED THAT LOL section and I'll leave some other thoughts after that.

"The game does not do well with skill trees involved" & "The development hell with skill trees"

I just talked about how I do not agree with skill trees' execution. However, that does not mean that I don't think they work and I overall see them as a net positive to the game. Skill trees do not break the usual gameplay loop of DST. You can argue that they make it easier but that's just the result that you'd have from buffing a character in the first place. Had Woodie gotten a refresh that integrates the same fixes for his were-forms, he would still accomplish what skill tree Woodie does. 

Skill trees encourage the player to get out of their way to interact with either new mechanics like Winona's glasses or going out of your way to get materials that you usually wouldn't care about like azure feathers for Wigfrid or interacting with different sources of resources to make Walter's new ammos. Skill trees enable players to interact differently in the game especially in combat in a genuinely new way. Willow for example with her skill tree offers a genuinely new way to interact with the game actually delivering on her relationship with fire and her pyromaniac tendencies.

Lore implications are weird and I'm not personally educated on the DST lore enough to actually comment on such a thing, but I can find it quite jarring for a character like Willow to just start shooting """lunar fire""" out of her hands. 

Bad skill trees exist and are plentiful, characters like Wigfrid, Winona and Wendy had little to no good feedback (if any feedback at all) and ended up with what is in my opinion some really majorly disappointing trees. Not to mention Wolfgang who got the shortest end of the stick being given literally one new decently useful toy (icebell) and boring stat buffs. People arguing that this is justified because he's too strong of a character gloss over how you can make fun additions without majorly buffing a character (like Wigfrid's weapons which are overall worse save for the upgraded spear but still fun) and how Klei STILL ended up majorly buffing Wolfgang by giving him an absurd 2.6x damage modifier vs opposite alignment targets instead of the usual 2x. The inclusion of SIX mighty gym perks genuinely baffles me.

But overall, skill trees add to the game and at worst they are just missed potential. They do not subtract from the game in any major way and thus they fulfill their purpose and are justified if a little weird. If it was up to me, I would just rework/buff characters that need it and introduce alignments as powerful perks that change how you interact with the game rather than an entire skill tree.

And while I love seeing old and aging dated character designs have life breathed into them, I really do wish that we'd be done with it already and get to experience full-time content and qol updates.

"The game has become far too combat focused, it has lost its survivor feel. But it's also lost its mysterious kind of morbid and brusk, like, emotion behind what you are doing. Like it always had a whimsical-ness to it but a reality that you're doing anything you can to survive in a world that has rules that are clearly happening in the background but you don't know what's happening"

I think this is a result of skill trees taking so much development time. And I agree with this point for the most part! I'd love more environmental hazards. I've had a blast with a lot of uncompromising mode's new threats like snowstorms and the giant tornado that I feel could be an inspiration for Klei to add new things that take advantage of pre-existing mechanics like insulation and wetness and whatnot to enrich seasons that don't have a lot going for them and by seasons that don't have a lot going for them I mean summer.

That being said, the game still heavily centers on survival as much as its prequel I'd argue, but both of these games are built on knowledge checks that heavily punish or outright kills the player (whether it'd be immediate or gradual) if the player fails to know what they are doing. The truth is that DST just slowly turns from a survival game to a sandbox game the more you are familiar with it, and there's nothing Klei can really do without reworking the game from the ground up.

I feel like a lot of people also forget that DST is a multiplayer game and players can have wildly different levels of knowledge and skill, so making survival actively harder and/or making revival harder (mentioning this bc of UM lol) just makes new players go from sandbags to bags full of anvils and cartoonishly large pianos and would turn off a lot of people which would lose Klei a lot of money because attracting new players and retaining them would be just impossible.

"Dragging the lore/gameplay/development for the business side for Klei Entertainment."

I'm not educated on the lore aspect of the game, and I don't focus largely on it because I mainly see it just as a background for the actual game and its theme so I won't comment on that.

But I also don't see what Beard is trying to say when it comes to a gameplay perspective or why he brought up gameplay??? It genuinely feels like complaining about new free content just because he's been playing the game for years. Beard is just genuinely stuck making content for a game he's bored of, and that's the large issue I have with this guy when he tries to talk about DST or the state of DST or what DST needs (I've watched several of his videos) and it just feels like he's squeezing as much money as he can out of doomposting about the game nowadays.

I enjoy the new updates, and I'm grateful for the free content even if I think that things can be improved. I especially think that even beard himself, the person that made this point, would agree with me when I want the game to rework or add more content to areas or portions that have nothing going for them, DST isn't finished and there's a lot of room for improvement.

I don't see this as Klei "milking the game" like he's largely implying, as these updates have added meaningful changes whether that'd be new content or overhauling pre-existing content, and the monetization he criticizes is so light compared to other games (70-90$ AAA  games, 20-30$ skins in other live service games, battle passes, etc.) but also IN GENERAL. Klei has the best f2p model I've seen and actively give out free skins, points, have regional pricing for those in third world countries (thank you klei i love you I bought the entire victorian bundle for like 4 dollars LOL) etc. etc.

Klei are genuinely still passionate about this game, and they've been more clear with their communications ideas and directions they want to take with the players when they literally do not have to be. This bit of the video feels so accusatory and honestly I hate it.

Communication:

I don't think that devs should have to treat what they say like some sort of religious book, ideas can and should be overhauled,altered or outright scrapped sometimes and the community should recognize that not everything that is said will happen and should just criticize what is there and what's missing. and I think that the way that Beard words this just makes him seem like a spoiled brat...
He also goes on this whole tangent about how Wagstaff being a Charlie counterpart makes no sense, and this point feels dishonest when he says something like
"We went from ethereal mystery, ever powerful, mutating moon to now physical tangent technological scrap stuff versus shadow. What? Shadow's gonna win that fight."
The thing is that Wagstaff is tampering with said "ethereal mystery ever powerful mutating moon" in a way that parallels Charlie's motivations with shadows. It is asymmetrical but I think that is a good thing in my opinion.

Largely, I think that people like beard are just people that doompost about DST like beard are just looking at the game with rose-colored glasses ignoring the many mess ups dramas criticisms etc that DS/DST had, and I think that these people just don't really acknowledge that Klei cannot keep someone that's played for 1.5K+ hours hooked on the game permanently and are NOT trying to. The game's in a very healthy state, and it has more players than it's ever had and is maintaining those players in a very healthy way just from the PC numbers alone. This doesn't mean that they're doing everything perfectly, nor do I think this means that they're doing everything well, but what I'm trying to say is that this is as silly as people claiming that old minecraft was better.

 

A lot of people feel what bearrd was saying. A lot of people dislike the game direction, even if they still play it.

Personally, I feel very deprived of survival content and don’t like riff content. I’m surviving on otters and the rabbit king for 2 years with nothing else. Skilltrees are ok but not fulfilling, and I often drop them. They end up making me focus on my character too much, which is why I prefer Wilson now. I have way more fun as Wilson as any character (and, those people trying to make Wilson like the rest of the cast can stay away)

 

The old Minecraft comparison isn’t a good one though, there are a lot of people who genuinely prefer the old Minecraft for its simplicity and how it makes you more creative. Also less feature bloat and useless stuff. More features + content does not always equal better, and this is in DST’s case too.

[NPCMaxwell]

18 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

A lot of people feel what bearrd was saying. A lot of people dislike the game direction, even if they still play it.

Personally, I feel very deprived of survival content and don’t like riff content. I’m surviving on otters and the rabbit king for 2 years with nothing else. Skilltrees are ok but not fulfilling, and I often drop them. They end up making me focus on my character too much, which is why I prefer Wilson now. I have way more fun as Wilson as any character (and, those people trying to make Wilson like the rest of the cast can stay away)

 

The old Minecraft comparison isn’t a good one though, there are a lot of people who genuinely prefer the old Minecraft for its simplicity and how it makes you more creative. Also less feature bloat and useless stuff. More features + content does not always equal better, and this is in DST’s case too.

YAY Wilson has found another supporter \o/ That is more boosting for the beloved funny hair man then any skilltree could do! (Wilson says thanks!)

[readkey]

6 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Oh golly, another video of Beard complaining about the game's direction claiming that the game is in trouble, or dying, or is about to be hit by a nuke...

I do not disagree with you, but find something interesting to discuss:

6 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Oh golly, anoint for the most part! I'd love more environmental hazards. I've had a blast with a lot of uncompromising mode's new threats like snowstorms and the giant tornado that I feel could be an inspiration for Klei to add new things that take advantage of pre-existing mechanics like insulation and wetness and whatnot to enrich seasons that don't have a lot going for them and by seasons that don't have a lot going for them I mean summer.

1. From my observation, not all players like more natural hazards, especially when it comes to those breaking structures. Even for less destructive ones, some players find them more as annoyance rather challenges. I think Klei is a bit hesitated to add more hazards, since it is pretty difficult to balance between players who view hazards differently. 

6 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Bad skill trees exist and are plentiful, characters like Wigfrid, Winona and Wendy had little to no good feedback (if any feedback at all) and ended up with what is in my opinion some really majorly disappointing trees. 

2. I just started a new world with Winona and I got to say she is way more fun than I expected. Making the Catapults portable not only lighten the resource sink, but opens up a lot of options in my game plan. This includes both daily tasks and boss fights. I would never rush catapults for seasonal bosses like Deerclops and Moose/Goose, which can be defeated easily with a ham bat, but now I rushed 8 catapults ASAP because I can use them everywhere, and finish these fights ASAP. Using catapults on daily tasks such as clearing the spider infested rocky biomes, killing fish for Surf and Turf are all worthwhile now as you can put them away once you finished.

The most important change, for me, is Winona now gets a complete new way of battle, which is using the Precision Targeting. You can definitely tank hits and let the Catapults do their work, but it is WAYYY more fun to instead kite and press buttons at the same time. The rhythm of pressing buttons feels completely different from melee, as it is slower and you cannot cancel the animation, and you have to aim it when you are dragging the target away from the catapults. This makes every boss fight feels fresh to me, and I think this is seriously underrated.

6 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Not to mention Wolfgang who got the shortest end of the stick being given literally one new decently useful toy (icebell) and boring stat buffs. People arguing that this is justified because he's too strong of a character gloss over how you can make fun additions without majorly buffing a character (like Wigfrid's weapons which are overall worse save for the upgraded spear but still fun) and how Klei STILL ended up majorly buffing Wolfgang by giving him an absurd 2.6x damage modifier vs opposite alignment targets instead of the usual 2x. The inclusion of SIX mighty gym perks genuinely baffles me.

3. I heard a lot of people saying about the 2.6x modifier on Wolfgang, but this is no longer true post-rift. If the target has planar entity protection, a Wolfgang having Lunar affinity with a Brightshade Sword actually deals only roughly 2x damage to Shadow aligned creature (slightly lower actually, around 130 vs 68 x 2 = 136), even if you put all 8 points on buffing his damage, because the physical part still get blocked by a lot. You get even lower if you are targeting creatures that have same alignment with you (around 100). I am not saying his skill tree has no problem or whatsoever, but I believe this is why Klei adds these branches in his skill tree.

[Radicaljoe]

For the most part, I like what klei is doing. I understand they're trying to implement a harder mode to the more skilled players, which is a hard thing to do. I get that skilltrees are a sort of double fix, operating as rift kit upgrades, as well as second reworks for those characters that REALLY needed it. 

I have some minor complaints, some skilltree skills could and should have just been basekit changes, like Winona picking up her buildings, and Wormwood's seed inspection skill, but that's a negligible complaint. 

I also believe that bridges could have been handled better, and I'm not a fan of lunar hail rain. Once again, just preference complaint.

I think my only actual complaint is klei doesn't seem to enjoy dwelling on previous update content. We did get an ocean update, which was really good because it was exactly what I wanted, it made an old area of content more enjoyable and accessible. But, it also came with moonquay cannon raids, which klei has never gone back to fix. Regular raids are annoying, but several times I've had these cannon idiots swim TOWARDS me then get mad I got to close to them. There is not enough reaction time to get ready for them, I literally pulled both my sails down getting ready for a regular raid, threw a banana on the floor for the tax, look  at the boat, and by the time I realized it was the cannon variant I already took 200 damage cannonball to the face and died, with a hole in my boat that sunk it. I think we're about one year into that change happening and klei has never gone back to fix them. It's not a bad thing to be focused on future content, but it's annoying when stuff gets added and its issues ignored forever.

Another example caves have had the issue of being empty since like what? 2014? And even now in 2025 they're still rather uneventful and can be boiled down to ruins-mushbiomes-archives-atrium-toadspawns-bulbbiome. I really like cave rifts because they add more life to the caves, granted all of it wants to kill me, but still it's more interesting than the 3 stalagmites and lichen that I'm used to. Which is good, they're adding into the world making it more alive, issue, have to essentially beat half the game to experience this cave experience upgrade.

 

Despite my complaints,I do still think klei is doing good. If they can make Winona, Walter, and Woodie enjoyable, then they can do anything. It may be a weirdly windy road to get there, but klei will do good in the end.

[Hungry French]

4 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

For the most part, I like what klei is doing. I understand they're trying to implement a harder mode to the more skilled players, which is a hard thing to do. I get that skilltrees are a sort of double fix, operating as rift kit upgrades, as well as second reworks for those characters that REALLY needed it.

I have some minor complaints, some skilltree skills could and should have just been basekit changes, like Winona picking up her buildings, and Wormwood's seed inspection skill, but that's a negligible complaint.

I also believe that bridges could have been handled better, and I'm not a fan of lunar hail rain. Once again, just preference complaint.

I think my only actual complaint is klei doesn't seem to enjoy dwelling on previous update content. We did get an ocean update, which was really good because it was exactly what I wanted, it made an old area of content more enjoyable and accessible. But, it also came with moonquay cannon raids, which klei has never gone back to fix. Regular raids are annoying, but several times I've had these cannon idiots swim TOWARDS me then get mad I got to close to them. There is not enough reaction time to get ready for them, I literally pulled both my sails down getting ready for a regular raid, threw a banana on the floor for the tax, look at the boat, and by the time I realized it was the cannon variant I already took 200 damage cannonball to the face and died, with a hole in my boat that sunk it. I think we're about one year into that change happening and klei has never gone back to fix them. It's not a bad thing to be focused on future content, but it's annoying when stuff gets added and its issues ignored forever.

Another example caves have had the issue of being empty since like what? 2014? And even now in 2025 they're still rather uneventful and can be boiled down to ruins-mushbiomes-archives-atrium-toadspawns-bulbbiome. I really like cave rifts because they add more life to the caves, granted all of it wants to kill me, but still it's more interesting than the 3 stalagmites and lichen that I'm used to. Which is good, they're adding into the world making it more alive, issue, have to essentially beat half the game to experience this cave experience upgrade.

 

Despite my complaints,I do still think klei is doing good. If they can make Winona, Walter, and Woodie enjoyable, then they can do anything. It may be a weirdly windy road to get there, but klei will do good in the end.

Now, my dear friend, do a few things.
1. Install DS on your computer
2. Log into the game, create a world and go down to the caves.
3. And understand that Klei for single player has not added cave content since 2012...
and only the multiplayer version of the game has received 2 times more than what is in the official single player game catalog that Klei positions...
Crying about the lack of DST content makes no sense, because the game is updated every 4 months, unlike DS, which is not updated even every 4 years.