A message to Klei. Listen to feedback, it seems you are not realizing your mistakes.

[Swiyss]

I am not making a tldr or resume. All information here is necessary for context.

The lunar rifts were added and I thought we were getting like new seasons, new food resources, like new mutations and LUNAR STUFF instead of just scrap scrap scrap all over the place (not that I'm not a fan of that, just that I wasn't expecting it). I was hoping for deadly winters with mutated pengull raids, lunar hail being longer and have more interesting effects in the world and be in spring only.

Like sure we got the new frog and the mutated bosses, but it really doesn't feel like the world changed forever. It just feels like there's 2 or 3 different things added that can just be ignored anyways. I can burn the bosses corpses, bananas and stone fruits don't get brightshades, and lunar hail is literally countered by standing next to a tree for 1 and a half minutes..

I just wish the developers can think about altering survival mechanics, and you know, actually implementing planar stuff the right way. Currently no one is ever fighting rift bosses without planar damage, and you just gotta kill a brightshade horde once to get fully repairable planar damage forever, where's the hardmode?

Is the community not prepared for hard mode or is the game lacking shadow and lunar alligned enemies?

What's gonna happen if you put a regular player with a hambat/dark sword against armored bearger? Are they gonna explode with anger because they can't stun the boss? or are they going to ACTUALLY feel rewarded and satisfied with planar stuff?

Klei should fix this issue imo, and force people to fight these bosses without planar. Why is it called the hardmore if you can avoid 99% of it's problem by simply ignoring it until you got planar stuff?!? That's ridiculous imo.

Isn't the planar mechanic in the game to not make regular enemies get oneshotted? Then why the hell are skill trees even a thing?!? Why are you guys saying you're "concerned with the balance of the game", but then you're giving Willow a spell blast on day 1 as a skill. You should be making it base kit and nerfing it (nerfing it early game and buffing it mid to late game with in-game *per world interactions) and then ACTUALLY make an interesting skill tree that doesn't consist of a bunch of filler skills and "meta" versions of it that everyone uses. If there's an objectively better skill tree setup of skills, then it's not situational neither balanced nor optional, It's just another set of uninspired character updates masked as skill trees.

Listen here Klei, "meta" skill trees existing is already a problem. The player should not be thinking about getting lunar or shadow aligned "skills", they should be able to choose their alignment and that's it. Lunar "skills" like Woodie not transforming in the moonlight should be separate skills from the alignment, because some characters just got bonus alignment damage while others got super cool unbalanced day 1 game breaking ones. The player should NOT be forced to choose a skill that will aligned them forever in that side just because that one is objectively better than the other one. And there's 2 reasons for this: lack of lunar and shadow aligned enemies early game and the bad placement for that skill as an alignment and not a secondary skill. Also, the reason why some skills should slowly ramp up as we play the game is not only to prevent the lvl 1 veteran player being ABSURDLY OVERPOWERED because he played the game once, but also to prevent character swapping in the portal to unlock the full potential of skill trees right there, without even experiencing anything (like what stupidity is to force the player to choose a side, but then allow them to overcome this issue the second they upgrade the portal???).

I have to reiterate this here just in case you haven't understand it yet. Willow can one shot all spider and the nest in a level 3 nest with 5 embers and still get a 2 to 3 surplus ember amount (starting with 5, ending with 7 or 8) which is stupid. Without the skill tree she would have to drag spiders one by one or let bernie tank them while she herself take 30 more seconds hitting all spiders 1 by 1 and then destroying the nest herself. Do you see the imbalance here?

Now let me question you about Wendy, why is wendy able to kill a level 3 spider while Abigail tanks everything? BECAUSE THAT'S HER BASE KIT. Now we have her lunar alignment BLOCKING her from doing this, basically nerfing the character. This is not "balancing the game", this is not a well thought out developing design, this is putting a band-aid fix to your already existing unbalanced characters and forgetting that they should also have downsides because you couldn't fix it with regular character updates. This is beyond bad. And it's making Willow players happy with a completely unbalanced character while making Wendy players unhappy with a lackluster alignment skill tree.

You guys need to be more consistent with your game, you say you don't wanna disrupt early game balanced with a 150 damage weapon, so you then add planar damage to make the weapon deal dark sword damage but still be effective against future bosses and make old weapons ineffective against them. But then you ruin everything by giving Willow early game unbalance? You guys also apparently don't care about Wendy's early game unbalance? And you guys also don't care about this hardmore since you can instantly bypass the planar with 1 brightshade horde. You can literally kill the inkblight trio in 20 seconds with less than 70% use of a Brightshade staff. Is it because you're concerned that console players won't be able to kill them without planar? THEN YOU SHOULD ADD AN EARLY HARDMODE PLANAR WEAPON WITH LESS DAMAGE. Just like you did by adding Warbis for the console. But easily bypassing them like this is nuts. Easily ignoring hail standing next to an evergreen is nuts. Hail not damaging literally anything in the game but you is nuts. Brightshades are one of the only great challenges we have, and the solution to them (forever frozen in ice crystaleyezers) is a very well thought out use of game design laws.

Willow was a character not supposed to have those magic weirdness By Design, then why are skill trees changing the whole character design instead of implementing incremental achievements to her already existing design? Isn't that the whole idea of skill trees in the first place? Why isn't the character redesigned first and THEN you can make an actual skill tree? If you wanna change her, don't mask her whole kit behind a skill tree. Also, controlled burning is completely out of character, would've been way better to add lunar flames or shadows flames, and make so THESE don't spread. THAT'S a good design. Also, flame cast is a great skill, but spontaneous combustion could've been replaced by making flame cast bigger, and fireball shouldn't be a copy to the existing star caller because you couldn't think of anything more creative than that. Like literally almost all Willow players were asking to be able to set HER on fire, and burning frenzy indicator is hardly visible in most scenarios. Also her whole bernie side is ridiculous, just a bunch of filler besides burning bernie but you gotta sacrifice the fire raisers spells to get that and it's not equally as balanced do it makes 0 sense. Again, this meta in skill trees really hurts the balance of the game that you talk about all the time.

Why can't we choose between actual skill sides and have both parties be equally efficient at their own thing separate from each other? Why don't we have in-game quest-like interaction locks on skills instead of using points to unlock them?!?? You're just ruining the old Don't Starve balance. If you say so much that you hate ruining the old game so that's why you don't wanna add more biomes, then why are you hurting the balance of combat in the old game by adding ridiculous skill trees? For fun? Don't be partial, be just.

Wendy should have a lock in her lunar affinity to let her mutate Abigail at any time with Lunar Moths, making it last way way more than just some seconds, it should be like 3 minutes per moth minimum, and we should have a way to unmutate her at any time. Then they should buff the Shadow Affinity to make it also last 3 minutes and change shadow to be a mutation as well. We should be able to store both butterfly and moth wings in the casket for 6 times spoilage, and then increase the amount of *@***@*@* mourning glory require to use them. The wreath should have more locks to get to it and it should have a late game fusion with the crown that lasts longer and it's stronger. They should've at the very least added 2 more mini games to pispook quests and reduced the filler mourning glory skills, both ressurection skills should be one, and we should be able to mutate regular ghost as well, same as we can do with abigail, as we are already spending a ton of stuff relocating those graves, so why not add some pure horror and pure brilliance consumption as well?. Dark petals in the sisturn should only be placeable with a shadow affinity and it should just do the same as current lunar blossom does, and lunar blossom should be tied to lunar affinity and only affect lunar aligned abigails in the map. It's common sense.

Why are you punishing the player that chooses lunar abigail? They're losing Area of Effect damage and we can only mutate and unmutate on specific situations, when in practice we're only using those for bosses, and those are sometimes NOT SITUATIONAL, they get you by surprise!!!! Oh deerclops is coming, let me wait 3 days or the right moon cycle and then build a lunar water altar and then mutate Abigail so we can fight, It does not make any sense. It doesn't work in practice nor in theory, the skill tree feels like a failed design in my opinion. Why don't we decide to NERF ABIGAIL EARLY GAME BY DESIGN?!??? Why can't we make abigail levels be slowly unlocking her damage, light aura and health by levels and not by daytime? We had to make a potion to unlock her full potential damage and we can only use 1 potion at a time, are you kidding me? Why can't we have a progression that makes sense? Why can't abigail be weak the first few days, but be able to get stronger later? Isn't that the whole idea of "levels"???

Not to mention, but Wilson got overpowered transmutation skills, and underpowered combat skills... why?

That to me just shows how skill trees are not being implemented well, and that the outrage from a certain community a while back may actually make sense.

Wilson is unlocking transmutation with his affinity, then what? Willow can blast a whole legion of frogs in one tap and instakill a whole raid of hounds with 5 embers which she can get from her skill tree (not her plain character) and she even got bernie to help tank while wilson is just being forced to f******@ run to the closest moose/goose or beefalo herd to help him because he's apparently a joke character. His tragedy is worse than Wes. His quotes are jokes because he's basically a big joke now. If you wanna play a neutral character my beautiful friend, then you shouldn't be using skill trees, then Klei should NOT worry about noobs one shotting spiders dens because they didn't even unlock the f***@@** skill tree yet. Make it make sense.

That's also another thing I wanna discuss about, an enormous, gigantic, massive amount of players on steam reviews and youtube reviews have been saying for 10 years that the game doesn't tell them what to do, and that they feel lost while playing. You created Character quotes and the scrapbook to help the player, but quotes are in reality just in-game lore bits since they don't actually help much and the scrapbook is just a bestiary. It's about time that we actually direct and help the new players out there by doing an actual great completion system that is not just an USER INTERFACE that you can open by pressing I.

My suggestion is to literally add "notes left by someone" item that everyone spawn in with and that sticks to your inventory forever in a little slot forever and in-between worlds information but per-world analysis's, and there should be one note per world that later transforms into a book, the more you unlock the notes, the more it starts to look like the current scrapbook. These notes would then explain in in-game terms and puzzles how you can actually acquire insight points by not only surviving a x amount of days, but also interacting with the f**@*@*@ world Klei. Insight points should be gained when exploring a new area, when fighting certain bosses, when farming certain plants, when cooking certain foods. We would then slowly fill this book on boss kills, new plants etc.. And again, this book will retain information per account just like the scrapbook, but analysis per-world, as to make up for skill trees making the game unbalanced. Now we don't need the cookbook nor the gardener hat for information, we can access all in the players notes, and these notes would open an UI that looks like a book just like the scrapbook, that we can ACTUALLY UPGRADE SKILLS THERE!!!!!!! There shouldn't be 3 skills for 3 levels, it should be 1 skill that we can Upgrade it to 3 levels by adding more insight into it. Klei should separate the affinities with the regular skills, and the regular skills should not look essential to make the character work (like character designs), they should only be incremental to a survivor experience.

Some skills should be tied per world, and NO player (not even Maxwell) should be able to invoke all of those crazy game-breaking and design-breaking mechanics on day 1. If the Bee Queen is broken, then fix it. If people are cheesing something, then there's a reason why.

All damage bonuses against affinities should not be %, but added planar fixed against said aligned enemy.

Willow should only unlock her Lunar Fire Raiser skill after analyzing a Pure Brilliance in her new "scrapbook" PER WORLD. She should only unlock her Shadow Fire Raiser skill after noting "Pure Horror" in her new "Scrapbook" PER WORLD.

Scrappy werepig should spawn on day 1. And he should drop pure brilliance. It doesn't make sense that we have to kill him first down there, and then later we are FORCED to kill him up there to get more dreadstone and pure horror down there. KLEI THEMSELVES said that they only made things this way temporarily, so I think it's time to fix this. This back and forth of him spawning up and down is tedious, and his drops are mediocre until the cc is killed anyway so they should change that. If dfly respawns, then who is that? DFLY'S LONG LOST COUSIN COMING FOR REVENGE? If they can have nonsensical respawns because of gameplay purposes, then why can't we have 2 werepigs at the same time for the sake or gameplay as well? They're not even npcs.

Not only this would influence players to kill the Nightmare Werepig instead of the fuelweaver, but also the pig is available on day 1 so go figure it out instead of unlocking once with cheats and then oneshotting everything @*@**@*@, like come on Klei.

Wendy should NOT be able to get abigail leveled up so quickly, abi should take 5 days from level 1 to level 2, and then 6 days from level 2 to level 3. Abigail should get 15dmg on level 1, 25dmg on lvl2 and 40dmg on lvl 3. The sisturn should then allow petals to never spoil while in there and they should not lvl up abi faster, regular petals would only add the vex damage and subsequent percentages per petals like we're ACTUALLY leveling her up. Remember this is all base kit, and considering all skill tree suggestions I made earlier, this would make abi way better to use and way more fun and strong while still keeping her balanced and ACTUALLY making the lvl up potion good to use. There could even be space for skills to make her level up quicker there in the skill tree.

Wilson should make enemies entangled in beard hair when he's hit by them while his beard is big, and this should be a top skill in his skill tree, this entanglement should do 25 damage to anything that hits him and they get slowed by 30% for 5 seconds. Wilson should know how to craft the alchemy engine and most science stations in the game without a science machine and this should be outside of his skill tree. His iridescent transmutation has to be nerfed to 2 of each gems. 

Woodie should be able to upgrade his moose form in-game by making better totems, NOT by simply getting planar on day 1 by clicking on a UI separated from the game from the other experiences you had. Some of Woodie's goose and beaver skills should also be obtained by upgrading his totems, and they should have further upgrades for late game.

Maxwell's cage should be a skill in the skill tree, and it should last longer after he analyzed pure horror and leveled up the skill futher Per World.

Well if you read until now you get the idea, the whole game is all over the place and Klei seem to not care a single bit about how the game works and the actual balance of it.

Let me ask this again, Why can Wendy solo Bee Queen easily without skill trees, but Wilson is forced to go through very expensive setups and cheeses? And why did Wilson get superb transmutation skills that help him a lot in game, but Wendy can't have actual in-game spiritism rituals to help her casual survival? (Instead we got a ridiculously undertoned and boring Wreath design because she's "already too strong" or something)

Klei, you really need to re-think what you're doing, and we're also very tired of not getting anywhere with lore. Nothing is consistent and it takes ages for us to know that gestalts can infect technology which is not a "tiny bit of lore", but an actual excuse for the lack of development. We could be getting pages of lore writings in the scrapbook, but instead we got the basic stuff that 90% of people won't read because it adds nothing to gameplay. What the scrapbook really is is an actual very hard to implement mediator between me being too lazy to go to my chest to check what's the quote by opening a non-existent UI for it. Make it make sense.

[lowercase skye]

Klei listen to my feedback too: I do not agree with anything said in the above post.

[Guille6785]

Klei listen to my feedback too: Let us catch saladmanders with traps

[Swiyss]

9 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

Klei listen to my feedback too: I do not agree with anything said in the above post.

Ok so you don't agree that something can be better alright. Be stale like that then. People are gonna still keep complaining in steam reviews, they'll keep losing players and the chinese community will not stop to attack a developer personally for the development. This could all be very easily fixed btw it's just some days of work and some redesigns.

I believe that almost everything I said that was an issue is objectively true btw.

[AliceShiki]

Klei is listening to the feedback alright. The feedback they're getting is that they have a 10 years old game and are still growing, which means they're doing a bunch of things right and should continue the way they are going.

That's just the reality. The numbers speak louder than forum posts.

[Swiyss]

21 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Klei is listening to the feedback alright. The feedback they're getting is that they have a 10 years old game and are still growing, which means they're doing a bunch of things right and should continue the way they are going.

That's just the reality. The numbers speak louder than forum posts.

Klei already listened to feedback = They don't need to listen anymore

???

Thing are good, I'm giving feedback for things to be great. So I'm apparently the villain and you're here defending Klei, but it's not an attack, you don't need to get defensive when someone asks for changes. To change is already a hard thing to do, but don't think I'm here against them or critiquing them without constructive suggestion. I wouldn't give my opinions if I didn't care so much about the game already, let's make this clear.

I would like to actually further discuss these points I made since they're very important.

[lowercase skye]

33 minutes ago, astareus said:

Ok so you don't agree that something can be better alright.

I think it's good now, and that the suggestions here would be worse. I enjoy these things now, and I would enjoy these changes less.

34 minutes ago, astareus said:

I believe that almost everything I said that was an issue is objectively true btw.

There's not a single objective thing in the post, it's all subjective opinions on how a video game is designed.

[Tushonka]

I strongly agree with your opinion about skill trees and their implementation in the game. Meta skill trees the problem and I was thinking about fixing it for a long time. I’m not a game dev but I believe skill trees are progression systems, not pre-game chosen abilities. Talking about progression, as for my experience (I didn't play all characters at the same time I have my mains) many characters lack or don't have a good progression at all, I don't feel rewarded playing them… I’m a bit of a Wurt main and after playing here with the skill tree I can tell that skills that require in-game actions for benefits are very rewarding and fun. Competing King quest is more than just selecting skill and then it hit me. Skill trees should be unlocked in-game by actions not insights for days and mean all skills. Your actions like transforming into were forms as Wooodie will unlock your Curse Embracer and other skills. You can picture the ideas for different skills (also after completing serene actions you need to activate the skill so if you don't like it and you unlocked it you do not have to use it) also I had the idea of not limiting characters to only 15 skills at a time because all skills now will require you to do stuff for them and not just pick them at the begging of the game and for sure some skills will need to be adjusted to a new system.

I hope my ideas makes sense, if not correct me! Thanks for reading!

[Swiyss]

58 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

I think it's good now, and that the suggestions here would be worse. I enjoy these things now, and I would enjoy these changes less.

There's not a single objective thing in the post, it's all subjective opinions on how a video game is designed.

I think it's kind of unfair that Willow was a character without Area of Effect damage and they changed that with her skill tree instead of making that her character rework. Klei Reworked, Redesigned, Reinvented her as a character, and because of that redesign, we got some gameplay interferences:

_Now she has AoE.

_Now she can cast Lunar fire or Shadow fire.

If we think about this isolated, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem relies on Klei making all of her Embers, Controlled Burning and Absorbing Fire skills be part of her skill tree. Because of that, Willow can now completely make a joke of any AoE problem that was in the game before. The implications with that are huge because of context, so frog rain, Bee Queen, Hound waves, Spiders, Pigs, Pirate Monkeys, Ink blights etc.. All of these are now nothing more than a joke, you collect embers, press one button and then boom, you can now not interact with them in any way.

As I addressed this before, Wendy's base kit is unbalanced, because she can also get all of that AoE, but for the cost of Abigail's health meter. Wendy can kill Bee Queen on day 3 without skill trees.

You still might think there's not an issue here, but the problem comes with her skill tree. Jason said she was already strong, so they're not giving her too much power. They used this excuse to make a very boring skill tree, and they kept talking about balance.

It was not me who brought this up, it was them. This inconsistency is their own design mission. They can redesign Willow (with a skill tree, locking everything essentially behind killing one of the longest bosses to get to in the game) to make her arguably even stronger than Wendy, with no lore explanation as to why, no short animation as to why, so we assume it was because they simply wanted to.

But then they have the courage to say that Wilson is also underwhelming in combat because he's supposed to be the starter character. Well F me, don't they understand that a person playing Wilson for the first time is probably not going to have skills unlocked?

So basically Klei do whatever they want and use the excuse of "balance" to make a lazy skill tree for wendy, and the same excuse of "balance" to have Willow be insanely strong and completely negate great part of survival aspects of the game with the excuse of killing the celestial for it, basically saying it is "balanced", not taking in consideration that you will unlock this once and then forever have this casualty in your hands at all times.

Then they use the excuse of "character identity" to not put AoE on Wilson as well or any combat even, but they randomly forgot what Willow's identity was to begin with, added the strongest AoE on her, didn't even make a lore short animation clip as to why and put this all in her skill tree instead of her character. They also haven't addressed the fact that "controlled burning" does not make 1 dime of sense with her uncontrollable insane identity, and having bernie activate outside of insanity also doesn't make with her insane identity. Most Willow players that played her before the skill trees were peacefully asking for at least having the ability to put herself on fire, and to create more fire skills unrelated to already existing items like the star caller, but something unique. They haven't thought about her too much and it shows.

And it's not the first time that they randomly decided to change the game for the sake of gameplay without taking in consideration game design and lore. Like, just look at Crab King, he was supposed to be fighting you with magic and the power of thr moon, but now he is brainwashing little crablings that we can't even find in the game for his own gains, which goes against his identity. It's easier to call him Crab Tyrant or Narcissist Crab than Crab King at this point.

If we're going by some logic, you can't just later bend this logic and argue with players that your new logic that is the opposite of your original argument is now correct. I don't wanna say it's hypocrisy, because I know it's not like that. So for me I think it's a design mistake.

Also why can we cook Meloncicles on crockpots? Klei please, don't use this "funny" excuse to not develop an actual interesting hunger and cooking mechanic for your game called Don't Starve.....

33 minutes ago, aoka404 said:

It is obvious that klei indulges fools and uses them as tools to confront Chinese players.

Your actions are admirable, and we are also dismantling klei's hypocritical mask in the Chinese community.

I believe that your claims might have no actual base to it. There's no way that Klei indulges a separation of ideals between a western audience and an eastern audience, and there's no point or evidence to further prove this argument.

Also, if I remember correctly, Skill Trees are supposed to be focused for the "veteran" players. If I remember correctly, scrapbook was to fix the issue of new player (and it's not the perfect fix, it still has many issues) and skill trees were to reward the player who survived long with these characters, which also has a bunch of implications that I already mentioned here, one of them being the fact that surviving x days and then unlocking these skills forever (as some sort of permanent reward) shouldn't include CHARACTER REDESIGNS nor GAME BREAKING mechanics, like for example skipping the entire survival aspect of the game.

They did a very very great job with Walter's skill tree though, which has early game adjustments, mid game upgrades and also late game additions, and they're all very well balanced. It's probably one of the best skill trees they made.

And then theres Wendy again, the idea of having the player interact with the world to unlock a feature was something I pointed out, however it was badly implemented, It should've been a lock Klei, A LOCK. And the player should be able to toggle on and off between gabi and abi. Listen, what if the skills were reversed? What if mutating abigail on new moon would transform her into nightmare fuel abi, and killing butterflies would put a white gestalt effect on the bottom part of her ghost and just added some vex damage? 

Like, see? Why are they making the same thing with willow, again? It's not fair that we have AoE on lunar fire raiser but no AoE on shadow fire raiser. It limits options because of how powerful AoE is in this game. We should be able to choose AoE or not OUTSIDE of affinities because of how unbalanced affinities also are. There's basically NO lunar enemies early on for you to benefit from the added damage from shadow affinity as opposed to Lunar affinity, which has Shadow Creatures, that's why everyone's choosing lunar affinity. 

This bad design creates basically a "meta" where people minmax what's better and almost never consider the opposite because it's simply not worth it.

It's better to give the player the freedom to choose, and it's better to make both choices equally great in different scenarios. But again, outside of affinities.

Say I wanna play Shadow Willow, I'm gonna have to sacrifice having the casualty of killing almost anything in the game instantly to be able to kill bosses 10 seconds faster with shadow Willow. Also, lots of bosses require AoE which is controversial, like Bee Queen grumble bees (unless you cheese), Dfly larvae (unless you cheese), Fuelweaver's healing hands and heads (unless you cheese), Crab King (unless you use panflutes) etc.. 

[Cassielu]

2 hours ago, astareus said:

Isn't the planar mechanic in the game to not make regular enemies get oneshotted? Then why the hell are skill trees even a thing?!? Why are you guys saying you're "concerned with the balance of the game", but then you're giving Willow a spell blast on day 1 as a skill.

Balance is not only about making characters stronger or enemies stronger, it actually the compare between rewards/difficulty that players obtain from different channels.

What Klei is doing here is more wiser than that. They do not expect players to enjoy the exploration, learning, research or development of the world and its things. Instead, they prefer players to enjoy picking legends, accumulating the online time of their characters, purely WASD battles and completing limited tasks without any regularity or hints.

That's perhaps true purpose of planar's balance, to dilute and reduce the proportion of these old gameplays feasibility and rewards in the entire game, and increase the feasibility and rewards of these new gameplays.

[Swiyss]

7 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

Balance is not only about making characters stronger or enemies stronger, but also includes the rewards that players obtain from different channels.

What Klei is doing here is more wiser than that. They do not expect players to enjoy the exploration, learning, research or development of the world and its things. Instead, they prefer players to enjoy picking legends, accumulating the online time of their characters, purely WASD battles and completing absurd tasks without any regularity or hints. The true purpose of Planar's balance is to dilute and reduce the feasibility of these old gameplays and their rewards, and increase the feasibility and rewards of these new gameplays.

I believe this to be sarcasm. Either way, if what you said here is true, then Klei really is bad at designing these concepts for the game. However I better believe they're naive then believe that they're purposefully adding things for player retention, and this idea is above actually designing concise, impactful, fun, engaging and interesting mechanics. Because I believe that neglecting those characteristics would indirectly reduce player retention anyways so what gives.

They're not able to pump out MMO's levels of updates to keep "meta builds" into their game, so better make things balance than to keep shifting power between characters and angering the players for inconsistent results. 

Now that I thought about it, this might be the reason why they have been solely focusing on character updates all this time, and unless they fix this issue, they're probably going to keep having to keep shifting metas over and over until they run out of patience.

[nicolas103]

The rift content is still very.. very new even with the time its been around it hasnt been touched much at all. I'm not sure i would call it a hardmode tho.

 

Rift content should start immediately, and you're right about that. It would better help players learn to deal with these threats but in its current state its just not well thought out enough for that.

 

Planar being a means of balance between characters, and weapons was thrown out the window too, yea lol.

 

Lunar hail is unfortunately in a sad state, but it was too damaging to long term worlds, and unfortunately to my understanding is shelved until the Klei decides what they wanna do with it.

Lunar Rifts are still very damaging, and cause a lot of lag in worlds. This alone is why im against destructive content. Just the lag they cause. Let alone the fact i feel for players who spent years building just for one update to destroy it all with no way of countering that. That is bad game design.

 

Skill Tree Balance is its own mess, i agree. I'm not gonna get into that one tho until all skill trees are out as there may be more they adjust, or redo.

 

The game is very unfair for newcomers, i agree. Feeling lost, Unsure of what you can do, but thats sort of what got me into the game. I can't speak for everyone tho.

 

The scrapbook. Yea, this thing sucks. You gotta pause, and go through a massive page of just every single item, or enemy possible, and the best part is a lot of the information doesnt save into it unless you've eaten, killed, gotten this item to drop, inspected with each character, etc. Oh, and the game still goes on while this massive page is on screen, hunger still drains, etc. You cant even access this on the Main Menu so it has to be in game.

 

 

I will say that a lot of your post is really not constructive enough to get your points across, and to me just comes off as a big rant. Which, imo, isnt the helpful for the devs. Even if you're still passionate about the game. Not trying to be rude or anything, just to be clear.

 

I will say that i trust Klei. They've sold me these games for less than $40 total, and i've gotten my ten years out of it. Each update despite the direction of them improves the game(at least for me), and i've had very little moments where i felt otherwise, and to top it off they prove time and time again that they still care. They just need time to cook, and im okay with that.

 

(I'd have quoted, but i dont really know how, and i dont exactly wanna learn just yet, sorry.)

[Swiyss]

1 hour ago, nicolas103 said:

Rift content should start immediately, and you're right about that. It would better help players learn to deal with these threats but in its current state its just not well thought out enough for that

Hmm I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear there and there was a misunderstanding. What I actually mean is:

Terraria hardmode is like this: you conquered the world, but now you're back to ground 0, not only this gives replay ability, but it also motivates the player to conquer the game even further again so it's satisfying. Just watch UberDanger video about terraria, he explains it way better.

So in my mind, I'm picturing that for DST, but that's not what we got. We got instant reward before even facing the problems. Like, brightshade gear is currently the reward of opening the rifts itself, so basically the reward of the whole journey, but it's really badly placed there, because brightshade gear will completely neglect the difficulty behind the tree Host of Horror enemies, and all planar enemies that come.

It's like if terraria gave you all 4 moonlord pillars armours at the start of hardmore, well OF COURSE it's gonna be easy. The problem with Klei is that I pointed that out back then but they can't seem to bother. There was time back then but now the damage is already done, everyone got so so used to the casualty and power of brightshade gear that it's basically a crime to remove that from our hands now. Also, DST don't got enough planar content to back that up.

Basically, lunar horror bosses should be NECESSARY for progress to obtain the planar weapons and armor, they shouldn't be a casualty, they should've added them before brighthshade gear.

And there's also the fact that you can get Dreadstone super early, but Warbis is only after cc. It's the same biased thing. You can't do cc quest without going down the caves and crafting a staff in the ruins (unless you're wilson of course), again another biase. We are not choosing sides, we are part of them both. We have to interact with both sides if we want to progress into the game, unless you wanna fight ink blights for the first time without brightshade gear, which I tried and it's one of the most unfair fights in the game. But again, I have no problem with that, as long as we feel some sort of progress being made after the first fight. Klei has this issue where they fail to reward the player the right way sometimes it seems. Sometimes we get too many resources and rewards in one place like the ruins, but other times we get almost nothing in return like 90% of the way into the cc and fuelweaver quest. Like, shadow pieces will drop 1 dark sword and 1 night armor, seriously? We also have to kill Misery for all blueprints, that's an lot more work than reward in my opinion. All current blueprints should go to old toad and they should add something better, cooler and stronger for misery.

So, the end game is super easy, but it's because of planar gear, not because of the bosses or enemies designs themselves.

So it should be noted that my idea is right now to increase the difficulty of future bosses by A LOT, but then give us very very strong rewards later later on, so that all that struggle feels rewarded. Basically, the Celestial Champion Quest Struggle is rewarded with brightshade gear, but then brightshade gear is making all future content too easy. Pack that with the fact that Lunar hail and Acid rain are basically not affecting us as much as it should and you got a very unbalanced "hardmode".

Now I know a lot of people get mad that the great depth worm will destroy their base in the caves and stuff, and they also get mad that boulders will also. For the latter Klei added pillars, but for the first there's still not really a fix for it, I believe that the warning should be a bit more specific and should take a couple more seconds to let all players leave the cave base in time. This would already show that they care about players bases.

1 hour ago, nicolas103 said:

I will say that a lot of your post is really not constructive enough to get your points across, and to me just comes off as a big rant. Which, imo, isnt the helpful for the devs. Even if you're still passionate about the game. Not trying to be rude or anything, just to be clear.

In terms of direction I think I was very constructive, but in terms of suggestions not really. I'm just not that preoccupied with concerns about ideas because I've been giving out a LOT of suggestions on my posts lately, this is basically just yet another post with yet the same things I said 2 to 3 years ago with even more and more evidence to prove that I'm not saying some random stuff, and as time goes by it all gets clearer and clearer.

[ZeRoboButler]

You ever feel like some of the forums go in circles? I feel like this is happening more now but i'm not sure how to feel about it...

[FillerText]

I don't think I can read past the Willow point you've made. Your post is too full of useless words taking up space that don't convey any information other than rage. Do you think Klei would suddenly change everything because you said you're really angry? I feel like I've seen more expressive statements and insults just by reading a tiny portion more than I saw constructive criticism. 

Spiders are easy to kill in DST, and Willow being efficient at that is basically QoL. Why is it game breaking to wipe spiders with fire instead of clumsily dodging them for a few minutes? Methods of wiping spiders always existed via Abigail, Mighty Wolfgang, Bunnymen, and such.

I honestly think her tree is good altho it gives me whiplash. It actually convinced people to play Willow instead of her being a Wilson with a higher chance of being kicked from servers. The only upside she really had was that Bernie could tank a few hits, and all of her fire gimmicks were ultimately useless. Every character used fire just as efficiently as Willow while having more useful perks. Old Willow was more unbalanced than current Willow. Because Old Willow was a completely useless character that neither offered interesting or powerful skills. 

[Swiyss]

29 minutes ago, ZeRoboButler said:

You ever feel like some of the forums go in circles? I feel like this is happening more now but i'm not sure how to feel about it...

I mean, if people are saying the same things all the time, then these things might be relevant.

1 minute ago, FillerText said:

Spiders are easy to kill in DST, and Willow being efficient at that is basically QoL. Why is it game breaking to wipe spiders with fire instead of clumsily dodging them for a few minutes? Methods of wiping spiders always existed via Abigail, Mighty Wolfgang, Bunnymen, and such

bunnymen need setup, wolfgang only does it faster, but still need to attack, and you didn't read it but I said that Wendy kit is unbalanced by design.

3 minutes ago, FillerText said:

don't think I can read past the Willow point you've made. Your post is too full of useless words taking up space that don't convey any information other than rage. Do you think Klei would suddenly change everything because you said you're really angry? I feel like I've seen more expressive statements and insults just by reading a tiny portion more than I saw constructive criticism

Ughh, I was trying my 100% best here to be as real as I could, so I felt like self censoring would just hurt me more than being able to express exactly how I feel. I'm sorry if that felt too much like a rant, but I tried to be 100.

[reddocc]

klei please give us a system to make chester have chester babies, you could also finally make something new creepy like, picture this, if you put the chester eyebone inside a chest with boneshards inside in the lunar island at full moon, chester merges with the chest and transforms on a big immovable chester monster but actually with a long eye he can use to see, to get chester back you have to chop his eyebone back with a glass axe, after that chester spits the chest revealing a baby inmovable chester monster that you also have to chop his eyebone back to get a baby chester.

[Well-met]

They teased pig raids in WX's short and it never happened. Lame.

[Edible Coal]

35 minutes ago, Well-met said:

They teased pig raids in WX's short and it never happened. Lame.

free meat knocking up from your door? dont mind if i do

[Maxil20]

I’m sorry, but a lot of the post here is heavily biased, and I feel it likely comes from extensive burnout of the game.

The post is heavily opinionated (why are you so adamant about players fighting rift bosses without planar gear???), and generally seems like you want the game to provide an unbelievable challenge when that has never really been a thing in DS and especially not in DST. DS/T has always been a big knowledge check: once you know what to do in X situation, beating said challenge becomes very easy, and there haven’t been many exceptions to this. It’s a game with a steep learning curve, but a low difficulty plateau.

It sounds like the thing you liked about DST was the curve, and you’re bothered that there isn’t much to challenge you now that you “know” everything and know how to utilize characters/abilities to their full merits to surpass everything. If that bothers you so much, it might be worthwhile to take a step back and process if you still like playing DST or not, and if you don’t, it might be worthwhile to play something else for the time being. Heck, I’m doing that myself at the moment with Modded Minecraft as I wait to have a fun project idea to pull off in DST again.

 

[Jakepeng99]

I just want them to add rats.

[Edible Coal]

1 minute ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I just want them to add rats.

UM rats?

[gaymime]

12 hours ago, astareus said:

Ok so you don't agree that something can be better alright. Be stale like that then. People are gonna still keep complaining in steam reviews, they'll keep losing players and the chinese community will not stop to attack a developer personally for the development. This could all be very easily fixed btw it's just some days of work and some redesigns.

I believe that almost everything I said that was an issue is objectively true btw.

it is only "objectively true" if you ignore all of the parts that are personal and based solely on gut feelings and you pretend the publicly available posted stats don't exist.

 

you can like or dislike whatever you wish but calling your heavily biased opinion "objective" degrades the point you want to make and reduces people's willingness to listen to anything you say in earnest especially when it is so demonstratively disprovable.

[DegenerateFurry]

About the only thing that I agree with in your post is that the game needs to give the player more information, but I don't agree with how you want it to do that. I still think having an option to turn on health and attack range displays and things like food stats information would go a very long way in helping people learn to play better.

[Echsrick]

15 hours ago, astareus said:

I am not making a tldr

but maybe you sould add in bigger text where some points start in because in no way am i interested into reading all of that just so i can tell to what i would care about