Problem: How to keep new players engaged?

[Hollow soul 3]

16 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Yeah, i think that having 2 consoles is the best solution, gonna wait until the switch 2 comes out an hopefully it will be cross-compatible with switch 1

The switch version lags really bad with online, miserable play experience

[readkey]

Keeping new players has always been the weak point of Don't Starve series. Not everyone likes to experiment stuff on their own in gaming, especially people nowadays have way less attention time span due to a lot of different reasons. So from my experience, there are a few things I try to keep in mind when playing with new players:

1. Don't spoil too much, but also don't shroud your partner(s) into complete darkness.

I had the experience where I did not tell one of my friend what he had just discovered, the Lunar Grotto, because I wanted him to find the Archive himself, but he immediately got frustrated and probably thought I was being a jerk. It is ok to answer what confuses them. If they ask why you are collecting stuff, you can let them know you need the resources to build essential survival gears, but no need to explain too thoroughly, such as exactly what kind of gears you need. You can tell them seasons will change and you need to prepare for Winter, but no need to explain what Winter brings in detail.

2. Understand what kind of gaming they like 

There is a great variety of playstyles. Try to find what interests your partner(s). If they like building and crafting, let them open the craft menu and craft whatever they like. They will definitely ask you some questions on what can be built, where the resources required can be found etc. If they likes fighting, let them know there are better weapons and armors locked behind the Science machine, and let them collect these gears and fight some mobs. Again they will have a lot of questions on where to collect better gears, how to fight a certain mob and which one worth to fight.

3. It's ok to die with your partner. 

I find people, myself included, can't help but ensure their own survival by following their usual routine, and then in the end unintentionally give the new players stuff like Lantern, Crockpot, Meatballs, Hambat etc. LET YOUR PARTNER DO THE THING. It is ok to tell them when they ask, but usually only after they ask. And if they fail, fail with them.

For example, you can let them first experience hunger, then suggest them some methods to improve, like building a crockpot, not building one yourself straight away and make yourself some meatballs. You can let them first experience cold, then suggest to open the menu and see which item they can craft to counter the cold, not give them a thermal stone right away.

You can try to salvage the game when they realize what they fail to do, like gather rocks and flints for thermal stone, or immediately make a water can and try to stop wildfire in Summer if your partner did not collect ice beforehand for Ice Flingomatic. But if you can't, just die with them. Your job here is to let them experience first hand as much as possible while stimulating them to think what they should do without leaving them completely clueless. Your own survival is in the lowest priority. 

[Jakepeng99]

Pay them to play.

[Uedo]

18 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

I will take dst's update cycle over Minecraft's higher resolution any day. Mojang updates the game like what once a year just to add a mob that farts particles? No thanks.

Also, snow melting would need to be coded in. I think you're misinterpreting what a visual overhaul is. Environmental effects are not simply a visual graphics update.

Though more environmental effects would be welcome to add ambiance, a graphical update is not needed for that.

Also the new minecraft update is getting panned. 

[Walrusst]

If we could make creatures which search for stuff to eat off the floor lag the game 600% less (As well as an abundance of floor trash doing the same) I imagine many more people would adore playing this as well.
It might need some clever optimization to do that (NOTE: I'm not speaking in absolutes because I would need to spend 30X more work investigating my suspicions to be sure,) but it would be worth it.

The lag most the time isn't bad in my experience playing on servers whose ping claims that it should be unplayable.... Its just server performance is extremely inconsistent which makes it critically bad some of the time since consistent lags easy to play around, but random lagspikes are random. The only way to account for them is extreme caution.

[JaxckLl]

On 3/25/2025 at 8:38 AM, Valase said:

When I started, I found DST and DS/RoG quite a bore, but I loved the fast pace from HAM. Maybe you could introduce her to Hamlet and help/guide her there.

Second this. Shipwrecked has a similar experience, since you can usually explore your entire starting island in less than 10minutes. I also really like how both Shipwecked & Hamlet justify the picking animation by requiring a machete. I find that one of the biggest problems for new players is how slow it is to collect resources without quick pick. There's no real decisions being made while the animation is playing, which is boring. Having a tool justifies the animation. Even then picking & harvesting is generally too slow. Especially without Action Queue, it's just dull to collect a tile's worth of grass tufts. If Klei is really serious about improving the new player expeirence they'd add Quick Pick as a game option.

[Mike23Ua]

Relinking this in the right thread. (Sorry)

[IAmAFurrz]

On 3/26/2025 at 4:53 PM, Gashzer said:

The average person doesnt have 10s of hours to try out every character and also learn the game.

yea, the games not for them. players STAY for the gameplay, the updates already do keep player engagement. 

[BB Marioni]

It's easier to keep a new player engaged if they were playing with someone.. you know... together. I find it more effective if you tweak the world customization to suit the gaming skills/ experience of the new player and then work their way up to a default setting. It also helps if the person who invited them play knows the game. Otherwise, playing alone, as a newbie can be very frustrating not knowing what to do and why you're doing it.

[Edible Coal]

On 3/27/2025 at 4:29 AM, Walrusst said:

If we could make creatures which search for stuff to eat off the floor lag the game 600% less (As well as an abundance of floor trash doing the same) I imagine many more people would adore playing this as well.
It might need some clever optimization to do that (NOTE: I'm not speaking in absolutes because I would need to spend 30X more work investigating my suspicions to be sure,) but it would be worth it.

The lag most the time isn't bad in my experience playing on servers whose ping claims that it should be unplayable.... Its just server performance is extremely inconsistent which makes it critically bad some of the time since consistent lags easy to play around, but random lagspikes are random. The only way to account for them is extreme caution.

(wrong reply, sorry)

[Hollow soul 3]

1 hour ago, IAmAFurrz said:

yea, the games not for them. players STAY for the gameplay, the updates already do keep player engagement. 

Eh, unlocking every skill tree is a huge time commitment. I like the game, but the progression totalling to "just wait 10 hours" is boring and uninspired. If you respect your time at all, youll end up cheesing it after you unlock the first one.

Progression is not cross platform too, if you play on multiple devices, you're spending twice as long to catch back up. It totals to around 18 hours. Since it's the same profile, only one can be logged in at a time so you can't just do both at the same time.

I like the game as a whole, but really feels like a lazy way to keep players engaged. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

I found out the hard way that majority of people don't like games that are too complicated. Or at least younger gamers often don't.

Back in my day we didn't have tick tack and mlg was very dorito.

[WilsonHiggs]

Any game is made to please every kind of player and the ones that tried ended up being trash.

Forcing stuff to happen, not only in videogames, just aims for mediocrity and disgusting experience.

Let things be the way they should be 

On 3/25/2025 at 3:23 PM, Gashzer said:

DST is absolutely amazing at keeping semi-experienced to veteran players hooked

To be a semi-experienced and veteran player first you need to be a new player so the entire post starts with a non sense

[Gashzer]

6 hours ago, WilsonHiggs said:

To be a semi-experienced and veteran player first you need to be a new player so the entire post starts with a non sense

There is a great somewhat metaphorical barrier whether knowledge or a certain critical mass of experience is required for a brand new DST to overcome for them to become a semi-experienced player. 

My question is how do you help someone overcome this great barrier without quitting first?

A not so fun solution was the free second copy of DST idea,  doubles the amount of people who plays DST so like instead of 5% of people who own DST overcome the barrier and continue playing over the 4 hour mark, it's now 10% who do.

6 hours ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Any game is made to please every kind of player and the ones that tried ended up being trash.

Forcing stuff to happen, not only in videogames, just aims for mediocrity and disgusting experience.

Let things be the way they should be 

I agree with this tho, hence all cheeses and bugs for bosses should be removed. Why do we expect mediocrity from ourselves and klei, when klei can simply design better more engaging, balanced boss fights so we don't need to resort to cheese 

[IAmAFurrz]

18 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Eh, unlocking every skill tree is a huge time commitment. I like the game, but the progression totalling to "just wait 10 hours" is boring and uninspired. If you respect your time at all, youll end up cheesing it after you unlock the first one.

you play the game and you get new things to try out if you do it. the choice of using commands is completely up the the player here.

18 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Progression is not cross platform too, if you play on multiple devices, you're spending twice as long to catch back up. It totals to around 18 hours. Since it's the same profile, only one can be logged in at a time so you can't just do both at the same time.

I like the game as a whole, but really feels like a lazy way to keep players engaged. 

i never specifically said the skill trees are for keeping players engaged since those werent maade for that. theyre mini reworks, nothing much more. i was talking about the content of the game that wasnt characters, the world and gameplay loop

[Hollow soul 3]

4 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

you play the game and you get new things to try out if you do it. the choice of using commands is completely up the the player here.

i never specifically said the skill trees are for keeping players engaged since those werent maade for that. theyre mini reworks, nothing much more. i was talking about the content of the game that wasnt characters, the world and gameplay loop

No commands on console, the only way to fill it there is to wait. Would love the option though. Any alternative to waiting 20 hours for every character I want to max would be great. 

It definitely doesn't feel like they were built with engagement in mind, but I think it should be. Waiting for skills is really boring. There's so little engagement involved. Kind of the opposite of what you want in a video game. 

[Cruvimaster]

Problem: How to keep new players engaged?

Objective answer: By making the game F2P, removing all the difficulties and making a lot of money selling skins, inserting battle passes and the loot box system into the game. Just follow Tecent's magic formula. This is what new players like and companies make billions with this strategy.

[IAmAFurrz]

16 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Waiting for skills is really boring

the skill points are rewarding you for playing the game so idk what youre on. you arent a new player so thats waiting for you

[Hollow soul 3]

1 hour ago, IAmAFurrz said:

the skill points are rewarding you for playing the game so idk what youre on. you arent a new player so thats waiting for you

The post is about engagement. There's no engagement in waiting. 

You're not wrong though, I think a newer players perspective is going to have more weight on the topic. I came in pretty aggressively without giving impactful feedback. Waiting for a skill tree doesn't impact me much. I play a handful of characters. They release separately, so at worst it's an occasional thing.

New players are going to shift their opinions on what's good while they learn the game. As their priorities shift, switching characters frequently is pretty normal. They're going to spend a lot more continuous time unlocking insight than us, so I think it affects them differently. They're also more likely to feel like they wasted time unlocking a character because they didn't have a great grasp of certain mechanics. When the number is purely time based, they can't use all the new information to level more efficiently.

Time as a resource is always important in survival games, so I do like the time based tree. The first goal is spending time not starving, so it lines up there. It's just not engaging. Skill has little/no influence, because it stays between worlds, and can be bypassed by constantly resetting, or leaving the console on overnight after adjusting the settings. Console commands for pc. You arent doing anything to impact it though regardless of how you play. Even just surviving a year in one go, you still aren't doing anything special to advance in the tree. I like what they add, and getting it all at once takes away from it. I think that there are fun methods to gaining experience points, and since i perceived a gap there, I felt that it was missed opportunity. I should have taken the time to express that. Calling it boring was lazy of me. 

[YouKnowWho142]

really late to this and absolutely not for everyone but the only way i've managed to get my friends into the game was to constantly get them to experience new bosses. I played in a group with 5 other friends who were all newer but we fully established within the first 10 days, they were getting really bored already as they felt like they couldn't die and i managed to keep them engaged all the way to fuelweaver by constantly leading them to new bosses to fight