Why is progression just bosses and fetch quests now?

[IAmAFurrz]

8 hours ago, WhackE said:

Ok so genuine question then. Why are people that don't like this content playing a game where that was once the entire focus, and the entire game is built on the foundation of the survival mechanics

its a passive thing, i love passive ambiance as the next person and would love more, but i understand why people dont care for it much as it is mostly just 'have xyz item and bypass said challenge'. only thing we still cant easily just remove is wildfires, and to me its a good mechanic while others disagree. either way ppl just dont like things that they cant conveniently beat like winter heating with a torch and trees 

[reddocc]

The Great Depths Worm is a well-designed mini-boss, and I'm tired of people saying it's a bad designed enemy.

It has unique attack mechanics and it feels like a strong hostile enemy that is going to get you in this hostile world.

Its destructive nature is actually a hint on how to defeat it. You don’t need to feed it Hutch to kill it—since the worm destroys most natural structures, those structures drop items, which the worm then tries to eat. This momentary distraction gives you, the player, a chance to either attack it or run away to despawn it.

The thing holding back this mini-boss is the fact that it has no unique drops, unlike the Spider Queen. I know it's meant to be an optional encounter, but this game usually rewards you with an easier time after defeating a strong enemy.

Also the spawning conditions of this thing is so rare I have to actively be basing on the caves to have a chance to see it.

Edited May 26, 2025 by Pedro cc

[Mike23Ua]

Your being delusional if you think that old biomes getting updated, revamped or replaced will not have any sort of “pushback”

I can name off a quite exhausting list of things Klei COULD do in those regards that I guarantee you someone somewhere will complain about.

For starters: Let’s add Hamlet Snakes and Scorpions to the Desert, Jungle and Sandy Beaches.

Lets Re-Add poison as a obstacle, and give certain scorpions, snakes and warrior spiders the ability to inflict this effect.
And to make sure it’s not something you can easily ignore, let’s make the remedy something that requires multiple resources to craft.

Next let’s up the survival aspects of the game by adding back Hamlet unpredictable nature of trees that you chop, boulders that you mine, etc having a chance to spawn hostile or annoying mobs (like squirrels that steal the tree pinecones and flee away with them making you have to chase them and kill them to obtain something that otherwise would had just dropped on the ground)

 Finally after all that let’s make a random pool of hostile mobs (appropriate for each area) spawn randomly at night, while on the ocean, or during rift portal openings.

Oh yeah and change late game cave earthquakes so that instead of annoying boulders, Acid Rain inflicted mutated Tallbirds fall out the ceiling, first as a fossilized rock, then the raining acid eats away at the rock and awakens the sleeping horror birb.

Why? Because #Non *completely optional* Boss fight focused survival, that’s why.

[Maxil20]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Bro I’m going to ignore everything you just said (I actually read it, I just choose to ignore it..)

[xhyom]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

In the post that you quoted I did say that there wouldn't be any pushback if biomes were added/replaced/updated and this is mostly needed currently in caves.

That's the direction that survival content can take and there would be no issues but from what I have seen on the forums a decent amount of players that advocate for survival mechanics only consider it real survival when it is chore-like and comes to the player.

Sure, but those are the ones we receive, so we can't really say that updates 'of this kind' are poorly received by the community, they are poorly made, and they are definitely not what we want.

[Milordo]

1 hour ago, Pedro cc said:

The Great Depths Worm is a well-designed mini-boss, and I'm tired of people saying it's a bad designed enemy.

It has unique attack mechanics and it feels like a strong hostile enemy that is going to get you in this hostile world.

Yup, yup, yup. All love.

1 hour ago, Pedro cc said:

The thing holding back this mini-boss is the fact that it has no unique drops, unlike the Spider Queen. I know it's meant to be an optional encounter, but this game usually rewards you with an easier time after defeating a strong enemy.

Not really, it's 5 points that hold him back. The drops even if not unique are very tempting since gems and thulecite. Especially gems, nitre and marble which were request by the community (for me thulecite too) and thus me creating his slot machine loot table idea. These are very strong good rewards for defeating a strong enemy. You may don't feel it because -->

2 hours ago, Pedro cc said:

Also the spawning conditions of this thing is so rare I have to actively be basing on the caves to have a chance to see it.

Which is the last 20% he's missing. With more encounters you would change that perspective. 

 

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, WhackE said:

Ok so genuine question then. Why are people that don't like this content playing a game where that was once the entire focus, and the entire game is built on the foundation of the survival mechanics

Klei lost focus on this when they powercrept the player. Used to be you'd kill a giant (if you had DLC) for an item to survive a season slightly easier. Then they added staves that instantly solve the issue. With rifts Klei tried to add new threats. Acid rain? Umbralla. Lunar hail? Umbralla.

I don't think Klei understands the genre anymore. They keep leaning in on combat threats, but the combat system isn't one of the game's strengths.

The destructive threats are only a threat to your megabase decorated with fancy skins. You'll rollback because you had everything just so, not because you're at risk of dying (itself a joke with LGAs). Forget the days Deerclops stomped your campfire and the cold darkness got you. Even if we know more now than we did back in the day, the threats have all become trivially solvable with single items.

TLDR: New survival content is bad because Klei abandoned the foundation and can't make it fit anymore.

Edited May 27, 2025 by Bumber64

[WendyHater9000]

This is a ten year old game. And I believe the difficulty of survival aspect has already reached it's peak. Usually survival game's survival aspect get countered easily after you know this game for like 10~20 hours, like Ark and Project Zomboid. After those few starting hours, you will barely need to deal with survival aspect and change into focusing on dealing with outside threat like dinosaurs and zombie. DST is the few one that survival aspect is a threat even after 200 hours.

As a player with 3000 hours, I'll say I'm pretty satisfied with the update recently added. Cause doing these new bosses challenge is really fun for me ngl

[PonyOfApocalips]

It's kind of klei design choice. When dont starve was finished they said they will not add any new survival chellenge cause it would be unfair if u build your world with no idea new danger became a thing- soo they relise dlc full of it when they had new ideas. It's obviusly can't be done in DST cause it would split playerbase

[FillerText]

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Next let’s up the survival aspects of the game by adding back Hamlet unpredictable nature of trees that you chop, boulders that you mine, etc having a chance to spawn hostile or annoying mobs (like squirrels that steal the tree pinecones and flee away with them making you have to chase them and kill them to obtain something that otherwise would had just dropped on the ground)

Squirrel infested trees make active sounds when chopped. Neither are actually difficult to deal with as Scorpion fighting is easily perfected, and snakes are just unstunlockable spiders. Your examples of how old DS was better often just boil down to some DLC mechanic you aren't sure of how to deal with. People might complain for a bit, but then just stop caring about it. 

10 hours ago, Wormboi said:

Same. I dont have the motivation to do any of the rift stuff for this same reason.

To be entirely honest. I think my issue is that I am just stuck in this skill middle ground where I am too good for the game's basic content but too bad for advanced stuff. I can't really tackle bosses like Bee Queen within a particularly timely fashion, while Daywalker is like seasonal boss tier to me.

[aidancode]

8 minutes ago, FillerText said:

To be entirely honest. I think my issue is that I am just stuck in this skill middle ground where I am too good for the game's basic content but too bad for advanced stuff.

This hits too hard  why I always play with friends. Even a mediocre teammate makes raid bosses so much easier lol

[Wormboi]

4 hours ago, FillerText said:

To be entirely honest. I think my issue is that I am just stuck in this skill middle ground where I am too good for the game's basic content but too bad for advanced stuff. I can't really tackle bosses like Bee Queen within a particularly timely fashion, while Daywalker is like seasonal boss tier to me.

For me I just dont like the combat that much and fact that you have to go through a million bosses in order to activated the rifts

[aidancode]

Just now, Wormboi said:

go through a million bosses in order to activated the rifts

technically its just 2 for lunar and 3 for shadow so if you're just thinking about the rifts its not actually too too much. main problem is that AFW and CK in particular are huge time sinks but like AG pieces and CC aren't too bad of a time sink nor are they particularly super hard.

[Jakepeng99]

9 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

What part of it actually got fixed?

Boats much faster and easier to controll.

[Mike23Ua]

11 minutes ago, aidancode said:

technically its just 2 for lunar and 3 for shadow so if you're just thinking about the rifts its not actually too too much. main problem is that AFW and CK in particular are huge time sinks but like AG pieces and CC aren't too bad of a time sink nor are they particularly super hard.

Play on Xbox, the game console notorious for deleting your worlds, and failing to properly retro-fit new gameplay content into your existing worlds. It might be fun 2-3 times, but you’ll very quickly feel tedium and boredom doing it for the 400th time.

A feeling I NEVER FELT while playing Solo DS, it’s Campaign or DLCs.

[GetNerfedOn]

in my view we're looking at the survival content through the rose tinted glasses of people who have already overcome these trials

When we were still inexperienced these content were challenges to overcome and strategize around. even first winter was something we'd set up a checklist for and spend whole jngame days preparing for. and now that we know exactly what to do we just choose our preferred effective option and go our merry way ad infinitum ad nauseam. winter? Ez thermal stone. Spring? Eyebrella. Summer? Thermal stone (again)

it has come to the point that some survival content added to dst was removed entirely (disease) or are seen more  as a nuisance than a legitimate challenge and turned off by default (summer wildfires)

so progression feels stale and simplified because it simply is already so for us and anything added is just another nuisance to overcome

[aidancode]

7 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Play on Xbox, the game console notorious for deleting your worlds

well that sounds miserable

 

is this because lack of support or an xbox problem

6 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

anything added is just another nuisance to overcome

there's a big difference between a new survival challenge and an extra task to handle, i think. take ocean travel. I've been on the ocean plenty of times by this point so I know how to handle it, but I'm not left with annoying chores to maintain, I have to use strategy to ration food, preserve boat HP, and find likely locations for various ocean biomes. Obviously expecting another expansion as big as the ocean would be more than a reasonable ask but there's certainly a way to make interesting survival challenges without leading to the chore problem we're all so concerned about

[Szczuku]

1 hour ago, GetNerfedOn said:

in my view we're looking at the survival content through the rose tinted glasses of people who have already overcome these trials

When we were still inexperienced these content were challenges to overcome and strategize around. even first winter was something we'd set up a checklist fo

Thing is, content like seasons actually came naturally and was an integral part of the game, affecting many of its aspects, rather than an optional fetch quest with a set difficulty that nowadays takes the form of an enemy to beat up

[RoughCactus69]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Play on Xbox, the game console notorious for deleting your worlds, and failing to properly retro-fit new gameplay content into your existing worlds. It might be fun 2-3 times, but you’ll very quickly feel tedium and boredom doing it for the 400th time.

A feeling I NEVER FELT while playing Solo DS, it’s Campaign or DLCs.

By God I took a multi year break from the forums and Mike is still at it sparking arguments!

 

😭😭😭

 

Mike is a staple of the forums.... Can't live without em...

 

Sincerely,

Cactus

 

[GetNerfedOn]

11 hours ago, aidancode said:

e between a new survival challenge and an extra task to handle, i think. take ocean travel. I've been on the ocean plenty of times by this point so I know how to handle it, but I'm not left with annoying chores to maintain, I have to use strategy to ration food, preserve boat HP, and find likely locations for various ocean biomes. Obviously expecting another expansion as big as the ocean would be more than a reasonable ask but there's certainly a way to make interesting survival challenges without leading to the chore problem we're all so concerned about

I can laud the immersion into ocean content. Most sentiment i have seen over the years points towards people treating the ocean as a.) optional, b.) a barrier to desirable content, c.) in its early development stages, empty

10 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Thing is, content like seasons actually came naturally and was an integral part of the game, affecting many of its aspects, rather than an optional fetch quest with a set difficulty that nowadays takes the form of an enemy to beat up

expanding on this, the reason why Shipwrecked and hamlet work really well is the complete change in scenery; heck even Reign of Giants adding seasons to the original don't starve would have received the same amount of fanfare.

I would suppose that this is the drawback of DST as a live service game - it's already so well established and documented and it would take nothing but an immense update or overhaul both to provide something that's fresh or to unseat the playerbase from the things they're used to
 

15 minutes ago, RoughCactus69 said:

Sincerely,

Cactus

 

HIIII

[GenomeSquirrel]

11 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Boats much faster and easier to controll.

In my quest to get strange seeds to actually function, I tried sails again yesterday, and got holes in my boat pretty fast … perhaps it’s a skill issue, and perhaps I wanted to fail so I could stop trying … but the ocean has too many spikes, and far too little islands for me to agree with it being a fixed.

[Mike23Ua]

15 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

In my quest to get strange seeds to actually function, I tried sails again yesterday, and got holes in my boat pretty fast … perhaps it’s a skill issue, and perhaps I wanted to fail so I could stop trying … but the ocean has too many spikes, and far too little islands for me to agree with it being a fixed.

This, and there isn’t enough on the sea resources to recover & repair with. I loved the Shipwrecked DLC, I hate whatever DST Sailing is. Also welcome back @Cactus  

[Milordo]

19 hours ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

It's kind of klei design choice. When dont starve was finished they said they will not add any new survival chellenge cause it would be unfair if u build your world with no idea new danger became a thing- soo they relise dlc full of it when they had new ideas. It's obviusly can't be done in DST cause it would split playerbase

Looool, very ironic this phrase after Rifts.

17 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

it has come to the point that some survival content added to dst was removed entirely (disease) or are seen more  as a nuisance than a legitimate challenge and turned off by default (summer wildfires)

so progression feels stale and simplified because it simply is already so for us and anything added is just another nuisance to overcome

To clarify, diseases and summer wildfires are very bad survival content design and people have good reasons expressed ad nauseam through years. Klei removed disease after 4/5 years because the datas showed 99% of players removed it from their world. 99%. Jesus. Wildfires were in second place with something like 95%.

If Klei balanced disease and wildfires nobody would have a problem with it. Even at that time I remember a very small portion of a community of which I talked with here, that criticized Klei for removing disease and I 100% agreed. We celebrated and Klei did good for removing them but it was the easy route. It's more difficult to come up with a complete rework but it would have been a real gift for both parties and the best solution.       

Spoiler

coff coff **as it happened with reap what you sow** coff coff

Then I have nothing else to add that hasn't already been said in the @aidancode @Szczuku and yourself comments.

 

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

in my view we're looking at the survival content through the rose tinted glasses of people who have already overcome these trials

When we were still inexperienced these content were challenges to overcome and strategize around. even first winter was something we'd set up a checklist for and spend whole jngame days preparing for. and now that we know exactly what to do we just choose our preferred effective option and go our merry way ad infinitum ad nauseam. winter? Ez thermal stone. Spring? Eyebrella. Summer? Thermal stone (again)

it has come to the point that some survival content added to dst was removed entirely (disease) or are seen more  as a nuisance than a legitimate challenge and turned off by default (summer wildfires)

so progression feels stale and simplified because it simply is already so for us and anything added is just another nuisance to overcome

This is the defenition of cherry picking. You picked base destroyers with jank solutions, and only talked about seasons otherwise. This is a quite dissapointing response.

 

Marotters are great survival content (perfect survival challenge). So are catcoons, so are the king rabbit, so are slurtles, so are pigmen, so are beefalo, so are spiders, so are boulders... and the list goes on. They are the key of dont starve.

17 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Thing is, content like seasons actually came naturally and was an integral part of the game, affecting many of its aspects, rather than an optional fetch quest with a set difficulty that nowadays takes the form of an enemy to beat up

If it wasnt for seasons, you could just loaf around in Autumn all the time as a new player and never die, as nothing is pushing you to explore for resources as the seasons do.

Edited May 28, 2025 by Jakepeng99

[PonyOfApocalips]

17 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Looool, very ironic this phrase after Rifts.

Welp rifts are something that u need to active. And i dont thnik any new danger after rifts can be balanced cause you can active it whatever you want and be ready- rifts content cannot give anyone same feeling as new season in RoG/Shipwrecked/Hamlet because it was all about "bring chellenge to player" now players choose when they want new chellenge