Should klei get back onto a monthly schedule?

[DVGMedia]

I am only saying this because I have been rather disappointed with a lot of the updates lately. There has been some cool things that have come from it.
But like everything kind of just feels aimless.
Maybe its just cause I'm an old veteran of the game.  played this game for over 10 years pre strange new powers. 

I feel like the best that klei has ever been was during the new reign updates. Which was like a year and a half of updates. But they gave us beequeen, toadstool,  shadow pieces beefalo taming antlion, decoration,  atrium, and also fuelweaver. 

And each and every update lead from one thing to another basically seemlessly. There was actually build up within the game. and there was questions that people were excited to try and find answers to. 
Now a days Just don't really feel that. It kind of just feels like everything is happening just because. 


Frankly i think its important to have a goal. Because i feel that since each update is taking longer and longer It gives opportunities to change alot more than what was originally planned. I don't know what machinations actually occur in development. But having time doesn't always make a better product. 

[YouKnowWho142]

my issue with the less frequent update schedule has been that despite the extra time we haven't really seen much of an increase in quality, not to mention that a lot of update additions felt as if to justify the amount of time between updates rather than add to the updates themselves.

Depths of Duplicity was an extremely important update which needed to focus on improving both the caves and shadow rifts, both of which deemed lackluster at the time, but the end result even after many months is that the core issue of both was never fixed. Meanwhile, a new depths worm "boss" was added and a new overworld trader/miniboss in the form of rabbit king showed up, and while it is completely okay to have additions not related to the current arc their poor timing only resulted in a bit of aimlessness towards an otherwise vital update and overall made the update feel unfocused and directionless. 

Do not get me started on the most recent batch of skill trees, which were each almost entirely changed from how they started by the end of the beta which invalidated a significant amount of their work up to that point.

Every update they've added since they changed to a less frequent schedule have been consistently the most controversial updates in dst, which considering the 2 additional months spent on these updates is especially problematic, and it doesn't help in the slightest that the impact on these updates are significantly greater now that they don't happen as often.

I do not intend to discredit Klei's work entirely, I do understand the idea of stepping back to do quality over quantity, but what we are actually seeing right now is that the quality is staying roughly the same while the quantity is significantly lower and less focused, and that has really been hurting the game's direction

[xhyom]

I wished at the time that they would release updates every 3 or even every 6 months so that they could pack enough content into one update and release something complete. But the updates are kind of the same size as before, they have problems like before, the difference is that the betas drag on for months now and i feel we get a lot less like, we are at june and all we had was Wendy fiasco and now this beta... so...

[Cassielu]

They have devoted too much energy to making each update unique and promotional, discarding more important things like planning, coherence and overall.

Nowadays longer update interval is definitely external manifestation of that root cause, I don't know if shortening the update interval would be help.

Edited June 3, 2025 by Cassielu

[xhyom]

5 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

They have devoted too much energy to making each update unique and promotional, discarding things like planning, coherence and overall planning.

 

I really believe that, I feel like they focused a lot on developing the story at all costs too, with a core idea like, Wagstaff being the mysterious and interesting Wagstaff, but it seems like they don't really know how to apply that and it ends up being this kind of strange thing that doesn't go beyond Wagstaff being strange and mysterious, like he's iconic and beloved but there has to be a plan for what comes beyond his actions, right?
 

 

[_zwb]

the updates are aimless because the dev team is aimless, the only goal in mind is infinite profit growth, just a natural consequence of being sold to Tencent

Edited June 3, 2025 by _zwb

[Milordo]

No.

I'm an even more older veteran, coming from long live the queen don't starve beta. 13 years. I still die to a hill that the best time to live in dst are 2019-2022 and 2024. Why? Because Klei started finally to balance and polish the game. I mean, just look at the upcoming official geometric placement and gesture wheel. Or even depths of duplicity and the 2024 ocean rework update that I can't recall its name.

 

The monthly schedule would not help but only worsen it. You said it yourself "having time doesn't always make a better product."

The same on the opposite. To fix this problem of Klei, unfortunately, you need to aim at people inside Klei via helping them with other people as quality controls or someone that direct them through a very clear goal. Of which we as a community can't do and it's not our power to decide. We can only influence it via criticizing it here on the forums or by not paying bundles and skins. For example let's look at a more "modern picture" of Klei, the moon. They added lunar island, lunar grotto and archives and lunar quest. All of this packed in 3 updates. Three updates!!!! And I remember it. We were all happy and mesmerized it by it. A lot of big hype was surronded it. Klei was very "locked in" for the moon during that time, you can clearly see it.

I must agree tho, I miss the times when we had puzzles, enigmas and build-up, even from lore perspective. There's nothing of that in today Don't Starve.

Edited June 4, 2025 by Milordo

[Uedo]

I agree with you but I think it might be my bias, i've been playing for a long time too.

Fortunately there's a lot of new releases coming out soon, so I don't particularly mind right now.
 

[Milordo]

2 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Depths of Duplicity was an extremely important update which needed to focus on improving both the caves and shadow rifts, both of which deemed lackluster at the time, but the end result even after many months is that the core issue of both was never fixed. Meanwhile, a new depths worm "boss" was added and a new overworld trader/miniboss in the form of rabbit king showed up, and while it is completely okay to have additions not related to the current arc their poor timing only resulted in a bit of aimlessness towards an otherwise vital update and overall made the update feel unfocused and directionless. 

True, true. Objective fact here. With how much I love the big wormy boi, I said it myself he's still for example at 80% done from being finished. Or how I was literally the FIRST person and pratically the only one shouting and screaming during the beta about the consequences of Rabbit King.

[Szczuku]

No.

The current system leaves a lot to be desired but even if we, the customers, are let down, the developers have extra time to work on an update. Sure, the updates aren't really any bigger or more polished than they were back when we had a monthly scheme but at least there should be less crunch and pressure on the devs nowadays

[00petar00]

5 hours ago, xhyom said:

I wished at the time that they would release updates every 3 or even every 6 months so that they could pack enough content into one update and release something complete. But the updates are kind of the same size as before, they have problems like before, the difference is that the betas drag on for months now and i feel we get a lot less like, we are at june and all we had was Wendy fiasco and now this beta... so...

That's the same issue I have with the updates. I was one of the players that wanted them to take longer, to give us time in beta so that things could actually be changed early on but this really hasn't happened and the updates are the same size with the same problems but they take longer, this just shows that resources allocated to DST team aren't what they used to be.

It is not the fault of developers but management for trying to do this and players fault for accepting it but If this continues it will slowly cost them as players won't continue playing because there's not that much new content to latch on to.

Skill trees only worsen the situation even though I am not against it at the core but most players including me only play one or two characters so most skill trees updates literally don't exist for us.

Edited June 3, 2025 by 00petar00

[BattleOzze]

3 hours ago, Szczuku said:

but at least there should be less crunch and pressure on the devs nowadays

Is there? Most of the updates since 3 month schedule looks rushed. Incoherent. Haphazard I'd say. Ocean feels unfinished and lame even now, caves are barren,  all rift content incomplete (for last 3-4 years?) and we still reworking characters for some reason. 

 

Dst feels more like beta, than beta version of ds nowadays. And I'm kinda suspect that there is something unhealthy going on. Idk, all of this just feels very... Blizzard. 

[RoughCactus69]

7 hours ago, _zwb said:

the updates are aimless because the dev team is aimless, the only goal in mind is infinite profit growth, just a natural consequence of being sold to Tencent

I agree with the first part, but not the second part. Klei is alot of things but a liar is not one of them. 

 

If they say something it's typically the truth. This goes with their original statement of TenCent is solely present to push the game in China and Klei holds complete creative freedom. I believe them when they say that. 

But yeah, the updates are pretty aimless.

 

Sincerely,

Cactus 

Edited June 3, 2025 by RoughCactus69

[firoborn]

4 minutes ago, Wraif said:

My question is, would people not mind having updates that are "aimless", "incoherent" or otherwise unrelated to each other, if there was no story arc that's supposed to be followed?

ppl love QOL updates and while reworks are hit or miss most ppl have wanted boss, biomes, caves, etc reworks for a while

[Radicaljoe]

I like the longer schedule. It gives me time to play other games and it feels less stressful for klei. I still have no clue how they were pumping out updates and animations on the old schedule. 

I cannot comment on the quality because everything they're doing with the new schedule has been new territory. Like, the Ocean QoL update was awesome. But with the rift stuff it seems harder to give a proper rating. It's a new type of game style, literally making a late game for DST. But I think they're still doing okay. I do wish they were slightly more transparent/talkative about plans, but I know they don't want to release the road map until this rift chapter is finalized.

[Jakepeng99]

12 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

my issue with the less frequent update schedule has been that despite the extra time we haven't really seen much of an increase in quality, not to mention that a lot of update additions felt as if to justify the amount of time between updates rather than add to the updates themselves.

Depths of Duplicity was an extremely important update which needed to focus on improving both the caves and shadow rifts, both of which deemed lackluster at the time, but the end result even after many months is that the core issue of both was never fixed. Meanwhile, a new depths worm "boss" was added and a new overworld trader/miniboss in the form of rabbit king showed up, and while it is completely okay to have additions not related to the current arc their poor timing only resulted in a bit of aimlessness towards an otherwise vital update and overall made the update feel unfocused and directionless. 

Do not get me started on the most recent batch of skill trees, which were each almost entirely changed from how they started by the end of the beta which invalidated a significant amount of their work up to that point.

Every update they've added since they changed to a less frequent schedule have been consistently the most controversial updates in dst, which considering the 2 additional months spent on these updates is especially problematic, and it doesn't help in the slightest that the impact on these updates are significantly greater now that they don't happen as often.

I do not intend to discredit Klei's work entirely, I do understand the idea of stepping back to do quality over quantity, but what we are actually seeing right now is that the quality is staying roughly the same while the quantity is significantly lower and less focused, and that has really been hurting the game's direction

I feel like most of the upgrades we got was on the art side of things, they reuse animations and models much less now.

[Nikki Darks]

I don't know if this is just me, but I could not care less about the rifts whatsoever.

And I think this is mostly because the base (pre rift) game needs so much more polishing and cleaning up before content like this should be worked on....

Caves as a whole and overworld biomes... The Ocean is still a big nothing sandwich... 

Why are they working on post rift content so vigorously while these issues are still present???

Tl;dr, I don't think that changing the schedule will do anything if they still continue to focus on the wrong things....

Such as the critter den critters costing 1 lavae egg and steel wool!? Why are the critter den pets so expensive, why is the critter economy so bad Klei!? /j
 

Edited June 3, 2025 by Nikki Darks
Typo

[DVGMedia]

I mean there are some things that really are kind of cool

Like singular little stuff that I think really makes the game better however that doesn't really encompass the entire update system. 

Usually things are kind of done as a test like the reason why we got critters was because they were trying to test out how a tiny companion would work so that way Walter can exist with woby .. 

And there are mechanics that exist currently that can be expanded on yet and choosing to do new things it's just kind of weird.

 

[Jakepeng99]

17 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

I don't know if this is just me, but I could not care less about the rifts whatsoever.

And I think this is mostly because the base (pre rift) game needs so much more polishing and cleaning up before content like this should be worked on....

Caves as a whole and overworld biomes... The Ocean is still a big nothing sandwich... 

Why are they working on post rift content so vigorously while these issues are still present???

Tl;dr, I don't think that changing the schedule will do anything if they still continue to focus on the wrong things....

Such as the critter den critters costing 1 lavae egg and steel wool!? Why are the critter den pets so expensive, why is the critter economy so bad Klei!? /j
 

Same here.

[Milordo]

20 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

I don't know if this is just me, but I could not care less about the rifts whatsoever.

And I think this is mostly because the base (pre rift) game needs so much more polishing and cleaning up before content like this should be worked on....

Caves as a whole and overworld biomes... The Ocean is still a big nothing sandwich... 

Why are they working on post rift content so vigorously while these issues are still present???

Tl;dr, I don't think that changing the schedule will do anything if they still continue to focus on the wrong things....

Such as the critter den critters costing 1 lavae egg and steel wool!? Why are the critter den pets so expensive, why is the critter economy so bad Klei!? /j
 

Yeeeeaaaahhh, like.....uff. Eugh. Same. Same sentiments since late 2023. More if we consider people were asking for these things since 2017-2018.

[Derreck]

What klei can do is make uncompromising mode a DLC! For console players ! I dont like that theres no clock work pieces to build no more. They can make a dlc for dst and uncomp would be great.

Edited June 3, 2025 by Derreck

[Echsrick]

if you dont like current updates then would you even like monthly updates that may even be smaller because they happen so often?

[Well-met]

I don't see what that would change

[Curly Bill]

My biggest concern is the fact that they just havent released a roadmap for this year. I mean I dont know why they didnt tell us this update was going to just be a few QoL improvements and a few new additions to the Lunar Arc?

Why was that a secret? Why couldnt we know about at least the next update? It's weird, and im worried the reason they havent mentioned the new roadmap is because it's something along the lines of mentioning the end of dev support/new updates/the game's finality.

[Wormboi]

4 hours ago, Curly Bill said:

Why was that a secret? Why couldnt we know about at least the next update? It's weird, and im worried the reason they havent mentioned the new roadmap is because it's something along the lines of mentioning the end of dev support/new updates/the game's finality.

I heard the reason why the haven't realse one yet is because the backlash of the last skill tree update, they thinking what to do for it