Why do we rarely get balance updates?

[aidancode]

For a long time I had a lot more respect for the DST update cycle than, say, Minecraft's, because it felt like updates had the freedom to do whatever they needed to in the moment. Now I feel like updates have been so confined in the past few years that some major balance controversies have arose: discontent with a select few bosses, both new and old, the effectiveness of beefalo taming, Wanda's character design, and at least for me personally there's stuff like a lot of crock pot dishes being unbalanced, a lot of things that could be fixed literally by tweaking some numbers over the span of a few updates until everything is in an alright spot. I'm curious if anyone knows why this is or if anyone has any insight to add here.

 

And yes, I know that the devs have said that updates are going to slow down. That doesn't mean that they have to be so narrow. The first thing that comes to mind is Wickerbottom's rework that buffed Wortox's soul hop as well.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I would say 'they just started making content for the game' after they laid groundwork of 'return of them' with character refreshes, engine updates as well as establishing opposing forces.

Right now everything is weird because we're dealing with content that's from original game while making a new game as a whole. That's where people and Klei feels split on 'if we should keep the status quo with base game content' or 'we should tear this down and make it all new'.

It appears we are having both. At least for now, or forever. I wouldn't mind balance patches, they change meta and act as content where people have to do adapt to. But I also want them first to release what they're planning for that to happen.

[Guille6785]

if we ever got a "balance" update it would be the worst update Klei could ever put out and I'd stop playing the game

[Keller Max]

16 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

if we ever got a "balance" update it would be the worst update Klei could ever put out and I'd stop playing the game

Why though?

Also imagine if they lock ruins content behind something? So you can't access there in the first autumn?

[Szczuku]

36 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

if we ever got a "balance" update it would be the worst update Klei could ever put out and I'd stop playing the game

Yeah, the game you love, which is also a product you bought for a specific reason, changing into something it wasn't when you got it, just because the developers decided they have a different vision for it now, sure sucks.

Luckily dst devs would never pull something like that off in the guise of a 'balance' update

[AliceShiki]

I don't think updates focused solely on balance would be very popular, so this kind of stuff is kinda put here and there in the middle of bigger updates.

I do think we could use some updates that primarily buffed weaker stuff (easiest example being Breezy Vest), but I feel like that would have to be done in the middle of a bigger update focused on changing stuff for Winter.

And I don't think there is anything that really needs nerfing rn, so uhn... Yeah, basically that. I could see some weaker stuff being buffed in some updates, but I don't think it would happen unless it's part of a bigger update.

[shaurun]

I'm not interested in balance tbh in this game. I think there's a soul in this unbalanced things. Let's take a look into food, imagine all dishes have cook time, ingridients and benefit overall equal. for example you might spend a lot of time collecting the ingridients and have high stat dish A or spend half of the time for ingridients gathering and have half of that stats dish. Would it make sense to cook specific dish? No, since they're equal.

Same with characters selection. You pick the one which is of your playstyle, pick someone for relaxed game or for the challenge, for grind or for no grind.

 

However I believe they will revisit skill trees and some content once they'll finish all the characters updates.

[Maxil20]

3 hours ago, aidancode said:

Now I feel like updates have been so confined in the past few years that some major balance controversies have arose

DS/T has had controversies about general balance and the like since the beta in 2012-2013. They didn’t magically just flare up a year or two ago, they’ve been here since the start of the game. Most games usually have people complain about balance and the like if you look into it enough. This isn’t that exclusive to DS/T.

In addition, when people give feedback, its genuinely very cryptic and unreliable. For instance:

3 hours ago, aidancode said:

there's stuff like a lot of crock pot dishes being unbalanced

-What crockpot dishes are you talking about?

-Why do you believe these crockpot dishes are underpowered/overpowered?

-Do you use this crockpot dishes short term or long term?

-Is your playstyle potentially biasing you into these dishes in particular?

-Are you potentially playing a character that makes making these crockpot dishes easier/more consistent/due to diet restrictions?

-Are there other crockpot dishes you could make with similar effort that provide similar effectiveness? 

Like, the Klei devs are not psychic entities that know every idea of every player at once. If you just say something like “crockpot dishes are unbalanced” and don’t expand on this, the devs are not going to get any significant feedback. You need to refine a genuine critique and have other players potentially offer in feedback of their own. 

Lastly, Klei’s balance tweaks are often, well, interesting. Wolfgang in particular is a pretty infamous example, where people complained about him being “OP”, and he was reworked into what is essentially a completely different character to the point the original people who were playing him didn’t want to keep playing him, while arguably becoming more powerful at combat, especially with his extremely generic tree that focuses 80% on stat buffs for combat and nothing else. Bunnymen farms used to be a near constant occurrence on most servers for the (quite frankly) obscene amount of food you could get with minimal effort, and post RWYS I have not seen anyone interact with bunnymen that isn’t for decor reasons. I just feel the way they go about tweaks can sometimes go exceptionally well, with the farming of RWYS being a highlight, but sometimes can also go in a direction that isn’t really ideal for just about any player.

[Reiko24]

30 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

Bunnymen farms used to be a near constant occurrence on most servers for the (quite frankly) obscene amount of food you could get with minimal effort, and post RWYS I have not seen anyone interact with bunnymen that isn’t for decor reasons.

Weren’t they phased out of use not because of RWYS but a huge nerf to their drop rates?

Agree with all else tho

[Maxil20]

1 minute ago, Reiko24 said:

Weren’t they phased out of use not because of RWYS but a huge nerf to their drop rates?

RWYS was the update when they nerfed the drops, for context!

[Reiko24]

1 minute ago, Maxil20 said:

RWYS was the update when they nerfed the drops, for context!

Really? Damn my brain completely separated those two updates. 

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, Keller Max said:

Why though?

because everytime Klei tries to "balance" something they end up making random things that there was nothing wrong with less fun to use, the game is fine when Klei isn't actively trying to "balance" it like it's some sort of moba, it's a sandbox game ffs

[Cassielu]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

Yeah, the game you love, which is also a product you bought for a specific reason, changing into something it wasn't when you got it, just because the developers decided they have a different vision for it now, sure sucks.

Luckily dst devs would never pull something like that off in the guise of a 'balance' update

Considering how many guises they have used to do this, I don't think there is anything special with adding a new word into this long list.

Edited May 20, 2025 by Cassielu

[Well-met]

for some reason klei is deathly afraid to revisit older things, even if its literally just changing one value in tuning.lua.

But when I remember the ck rework i think i can see why

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, aidancode said:

For a long time I had a lot more respect for the DST update cycle than, say, Minecraft's, because it felt like updates had the freedom to do whatever they needed to in the moment. Now I feel like updates have been so confined in the past few years that some major balance controversies have arose: discontent with a select few bosses, both new and old, the effectiveness of beefalo taming, Wanda's character design, and at least for me personally there's stuff like a lot of crock pot dishes being unbalanced, a lot of things that could be fixed literally by tweaking some numbers over the span of a few updates until everything is in an alright spot. I'm curious if anyone knows why this is or if anyone has any insight to add here.

 

And yes, I know that the devs have said that updates are going to slow down. That doesn't mean that they have to be so narrow. The first thing that comes to mind is Wickerbottom's rework that buffed Wortox's soul hop as well.

Something that you need to keep in mind is that like or not, DST is officially a Decade Old game (10 Years) and of course with something with that much age on it it’s going to eventually at some point become Memorized, like for example there are people on these forums who can calculate exactly how many hits you can smack a mob before needing to move backward and avoid it’s usually one slow attack towards you, they can count exactly how many hits it will take with X weapon to kill Y enemy mob.

As a result, the only way DST truly ever “evolves” is if Klei changes up the formula, perhaps with things I’m sure most people would find to be annoying, uhh such as giving your character a Stamina Bar to perform actions.

Crockpot dishes have always been way too good & beneficial, and I strongly feel like if a mode were to be added so foods only restore hunger, but to heal you’d need to use the health tab of items (which keep getting more health tab items btw..) we would be playing a drastically different version of DS.

I also don’t think “balance” should be a topic of debate when it comes to new content vs old content.

Because when you do that: You do something incredibly stupid like give Woodie and Wendy cool new “toys” to build tree guard or ghost armies with, and then you go and tweak something like AFW’s turf so you can’t plant pinecones or place gravesights- Rendering those same new toys you JUST GAVE US Obsolete..

Meanwhile: Willow remains unphased by this change because KAME-HAME-HAAAAA

Edited May 20, 2025 by Mike23Ua

[Sikers]

49 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

because everytime Klei tries to "balance" something they end up making random things that there was nothing wrong with less fun to use, the game is fine when Klei isn't actively trying to "balance" it like it's some sort of moba, it's a sandbox game ffs

This. Like I'm still mad they made Willow unable to cast lunar spell from Beefalo. It doesn't balance anything, just adds unnecessary restriction 

[AliceShiki]

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Because when you do that: You do something incredibly stupid like give Woodie and Wendy cool new “toys” to build tree guard or ghost armies with, and then you go and tweak something like AFW’s turf so you can’t plant pinecones or place gravesights- Rendering those same new toys you JUST GAVE US Obsolete..

Uhn... It was pretty explicitly stated that the change to Atrium Turf was to let players bring Atrium turf to the surface for decoration purposes and not have it filled with trees due to Regrowth.

AFW no longer being cheesable by Treeguards was a side effect, not the intended effect. The goal was just to let people bring Atrium Turf to the surface and not have it be infested by trees.

[Echsrick]

56 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

because everytime Klei tries to "balance" something they end up making random things that there was nothing wrong with less fun to use, the game is fine when Klei isn't actively trying to "balance" it like it's some sort of moba, it's a sandbox game ffs

example?

[Well-met]

6 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

example?

unhappy about klei fixing exploits probably

[Guille6785]

29 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

example?

22 minutes ago, Well-met said:

unhappy about klei fixing exploits probably

people have already mentioned the wolfgang rework and rwys nerfing bunnymen, literally just scroll up

[Bumber64]

2 hours ago, shaurun said:

I'm not interested in balance tbh in this game. I think there's a soul in this unbalanced things. Let's take a look into food, imagine all dishes have cook time, ingridients and benefit overall equal.

The opposite end of the spectrum is having an eggplant dish that Klei could completely remove and nobody would even notice.

[Jimothywastaken]

Generally, at least for dst making something "more balanced" would just take away from the player experience.

Nuking shadow prison would make maxwell more balanced, sure. But it would also take away something that most maxwell players find fun to use. So overall the game is less fun now, since the people who like shadow prison are upset and the people who don't play maxwell just don't really care.

Shadow prison is just an example but this would apply to every character's perks.

Obviously this doesn't cover 100% of situations (i don't think theres many who'd be upset at toad getting a health down) But generally it's better to make alternatives more fun than to just nerf things to be in line.

[AliceShiki]

53 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

The opposite end of the spectrum is having an eggplant dish that Klei could completely remove and nobody would even notice.

Yeah, I feel like the Crockpot Dishes that use farmed stuff could really use a buff, they require way too much effort to often times be worse than the sum of the ingredients' benefits.

Not saying they need to dethrone Pierogi as the best food in the game in terms of stats gained per effort put into making it, but it should at least be worth the trouble of making it.

[Curly Bill]

I feel like we get pretty frequent balance updates, they just arent the entire focus of the update. Changes to the turf results (going 1 to 4 per craft), added crock pot foods (which balance out or improve/worsen individual food recipes); Literally our last update just added a balance upgrade to the bugnet.

 

I think people might have preconceived idea of what balance can be, but in a game where the focus is to survive, tool addition and added items, i would consider balance things. Plus we do see pretty cool upgrades directly to the survivors themselves too; (wortox when he got map hops/walter being able to feed while on top of woby)

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, AliceShiki said:

Yeah, I feel like the Crockpot Dishes that use farmed stuff could really use a buff, they require way too much effort to often times be worse than the sum of the ingredients' benefits.

See, this is an example of understandable feedback that someone can discuss and talk about because it narrows down the scope into a reasonable list. The farm crop crockpot dishes often have the most variance when it comes to reliability.

I think it’s got a decent amount of dishes that are worth the time you put in (dragonpie, creamy potato puree, veggie stinger, spiral tibers, salsa fresca) that feel they give a decent amount of return for the effort/reward, but on the flipside you have some of the more lackluster dishes in the game like melonscicles, pumpkin cookies, and stuffed eggplant, which are reasonably considered underpowered for the effort you put in, especially when compared to the dishes above.

I think the latter 3 could reasonably use a buff. My ideas was stuffed eggplant being adjusted to be a heavy hunger oriented dish (which would be quite nice for veggie diets!), melonscicles giving more sanity and hunger (latter being to differentiate itself from banana pops), and pumpkin cookies being a batch cook recipe that gives 2 per craft. These would be changes that I feel would encourage variety without removing niches of the current farm crop dishes.

Warly’s dishes are another story because a ton of them are farm crop related, though @Guille6785’s thread on Warly from a month ago sums up the general nature of how I want to see the dishes buffed, especially the temperature-shifting ones lasting 2 times as long innately and Warly getting a 2X buff on top of that, along with the spices (pepper/garlic) getting buffed from 5 minutes to 4 (and Warly again getting twice the benefit).

Epic “oh yeah pepper poppers are a dish” edit: I would throw this into the buff category as well. I would like if it both got the effect of sharply increasing your temperature for a minute similar to fire nettles, and also didn’t have the heat bonus naturally decay. This could turn it into a unique heating alternative for players that utilize clothing for winter options. Would make that -5 sanity hit also feel a bit more fitting!

Edited May 20, 2025 by Maxil20
Pepper poppin