[Poll] On the Hostile Takeover Update, Postmortem

[Antynomity]

Idk 2 years ago when I saw the gear we were getting are reskinned football helmets but worse for the new mobs I knew that all we'd get at the end is just the same loot we already had but "enhanced".

[Wormboi]

This is prolpley the most negative reaction I seen to towards a update. Only two positive comments and the rest are mixed.

Edited June 13, 2025 by Wormboi

[Evelo]

I finally changed my positive steam review to negative. I keep holding out hope, but I shouldn't anymore, it's been too many disappointments.

[xDarkSoul18x]

2 things mainly. 1 it's weird how suddenly everyone cares about pearl (or ocean content for that matter) as if they didn't just do her quest and completely abandon her, like let's be real here. Lore wise it makes sense 100%. 2, It's crazy to see the double standards and burnout people are having in real time as if bosses and for a lack of better expression "Objectives" and tiers of loot are "Bad". They have literally been in the game since the first DS game. It honestly just sounds like burnout. These things have always been in the game. It's good to see them wrap the arc up and hopefully now that it's done with, they can focus on adding more QOL and refreshes to the world for all stages of the game. After the shadow arc of course. 

[reddocc]

not the constant streams of echo chamber polls

[GetNerfedOn]

16 minutes ago, reddocc said:

not the constant streams of echo chamber polls

these polls are made with that assumption in mind. were i less lazy i'd poll the reddit, steam, every discord i'd see out there, make a proper google forms, but for now this will have to do.

[Waywarbler]

The wandering trader is definitely a good addition. Last time I played on a server with other people, I was struggling to get gears before the first summer. He'll definitely alleviate the pain of joining a world that's already had a lot of its resources picked clean.

I'm really happy with the boss (although I wish the heat-seeking missiles were more obviously heat-seeking, and there was some more incentive to keep your enlightenment low), but, yeah, other than the boss and the trader, there's not a whole lot in this update. I'm satisfied with what's done so far, and I'm looking forward the rest of the additions. Still a shame this update has effectively been split into "parts".

[Lovens]

6 hours ago, Evelo said:

I finally changed my positive steam review to negative. I keep holding out hope, but I shouldn't anymore, it's been too many disappointments.

I should do that too. I used to love this game, now it's just disappointment and frustration. 

[gaymime]

yo, the option for "i voted satisfied" is still incorrectly listed as "unsatisfied".

 

also there was nothing i was unsatisfied with because it was all either "i liked it" to some degree or "i wasnt the intended audience" which makes it none of my business x'''D

Edited June 14, 2025 by gaymime

[Szczuku]

13 hours ago, Evelo said:

I finally changed my positive steam review to negative. I keep holding out hope, but I shouldn't anymore, it's been too many disappointments.

6 hours ago, Lovens said:

I should do that too. I used to love this game, now it's just disappointment and frustration. 

Damn, the "passionate ds/t fan to dst dev team critic" pipeline is real

[Dr. Safety]

I liked the update, but it's probably because my favorite part of this game is the lore, and there were actually major advancements in it. The gameplay is still fun enough, and there were unimplimented features that will be added later. My reasoning is extremely subjective and definitely not the opinion of the majority, but I'm just happy we got an expansion on the story that isn't just "Charlie watches from a distance while Wagstaff builds another portal"

[Edible Coal]

18 hours ago, dois raios said:

The only thing I dislike is the unoptimazed celestial scion Boss fight.

I am waiting for the community to make a mod to fix it. As soon the boss do the ground attack, I am in a fight against my computer and the boss.

I wish I knew how to code to do it myself.

tbf it only happen when the boss manage to do a atk that covers the whole island, which u are probably gonna die anyways

[SilverSpoon]

Honestly, I feel that a few part of the community’s tendency which I saw so clearly during the Wendy skill tree update... um... the "Developer worship" has come down on all of us like a ton of bricks.

I’ve been consistently unsatisfied with the recent updates since "Depths of Duplicity", and lately I’m genuinely anxious about when the final nail will be hammered into the coffin of my passion for DST.

[Lovens]

2 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Honestly, I feel that a few part of the community’s tendency which I saw so clearly during the Wendy skill tree update... um... the "Developer worship" has come down on all of us like a ton of bricks.

I’ve been consistently unsatisfied with the recent updates since "Depths of Duplicity", and lately I’m genuinely anxious about when the final nail will be hammered into the coffin of my passion for DST.

I feel the same way. At least with the previous updates I was able to find creative counter-measures to put up with whatever destructive bs developers added in another build, because all rift content came with good rewards that were worth the risk. I meticulously blocked both world shards with signs so I can cage my rift and always have it spawn in the same area, instead of slowly destroying the entire world and unique objects spawned with it (boulders, spiky trees, skeletons, uprooting grass, twigs, berry bushes, mushrooms etc). I planted beautiful brightshade gardens that worked as a bait to attract brightshades, so I could contain them in the same area of my base and fight them repeatedly with the help of houndius shootious. I duplicated dreadstone and covered my entire ruins and wilds to ptotect from the giant boulders. I surrounded my base with preety giant trees to protect from lunar hail. I planted underground forests to be broken by GDW to make it easier to fight him. I built cave bridges to have alternative roads that don't drop ickers on my head when I don't want to. But here I'm finally helpless. There's nothing I can do to save Pearl's island but to choose to not fight the new boss. I can't even turn it off in the settings and make Wagstaff not appear on Pearl's island. 

Edited June 14, 2025 by Lovens

[Antynomity]

6 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Damn, the "passionate ds/t fan to dst dev team critic" pipeline is real

We need to get to the bottom of who was the first one to do this. I changed my positive review into a negative one in like September of last year.

4 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Honestly, I feel that a few part of the community’s tendency which I saw so clearly during the Wendy skill tree update... um... the "Developer worship" has come down on all of us like a ton of bricks.

I’ve been consistently unsatisfied with the recent updates since "Depths of Duplicity", and lately I’m genuinely anxious about when the final nail will be hammered into the coffin of my passion for DST.

It's something the DRG community had to tank through too, we need a chancellors to make a trvthnvke video on DST to try and play on the devs' possibly now-gone heartstrings.

Edited June 14, 2025 by Antynomity

[Strong Wendy]

When my friend equipped an Enlightened Crown loaded with 5 Celestial Jewels, I got killed by Gestalts because my Sanity was low and there happened to be a Crawling Horror nearby. I was positioned directly on the path of the Gestalts charging towards the Crawling Horror.That turned my perception of this update from positive to negative.

[GrapeVruit]

4 minutes ago, Strong Wendy said:

When my friend equipped an Enlightened Crown loaded with 5 Celestial Jewels, I got killed by Gestalts because my Sanity was low and there happened to be a Crawling Horror nearby. I was positioned directly on the path of the Gestalts charging towards the Crawling Horror.That turned my perception of this update from positive to negative.

Wait, they can target player nightmares and spawn when you're not wearing the crown? Why punish other players when they're the one's not wearing it? What's the point?

[GetNerfedOn]

13 minutes ago, Antynomity said:

snip.

if you really want to look, you can check one of the head uncomp dev's comments on the very last page, tenth to last topic, of General Discussion. Then check their last topic.

Tale as old as time, really. Normally I'd keep pretending not to care less, but quite frankly since y'all think you're so special then i'll go clean and say that one of the things that has really hurt my experience on the forums was watching all of this happen, seeing passionate people become extremely bitter over their enjoyment of a game of all things. hell, i've watched a really close friendship get torn apart by conflicting viewpoints about this game

I mean, sure i'm passionate but not that passionate nor that articulate or intelligent so i'll never be able to speak from the shoes of these people or empathize as effectively, but i came to the forums to have a shared experience of a game i loved and now that shared experience is just people i knew to be also joyful with the game they played now being constantly being bitter and justifying their bitterness as if it didn't sting to look at even from an outsider's perspective, even if at times i agreed with their sentiment

and i know these are the last bits of my idealism and kindness speaking but i just wish i lived in a kinder, saner world. but yeah that's the last bits of my idealism and kindness speaking so go ahead and keep at it. i'ts not like my opinions or my feelings are going to sway anything really. by all means, remains as passionate or as bitter or as dispassionate or as whatever as you desire

if the dev's heartstrings have been clipped then so be it really. perhaps its for the best. all good things have to end. perhaps all good things have already ended. how's it feel to be right?

[Antynomity]

34 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

Snip.....

All I can say is sorry bro. And go more in-depth as to why I continue talking in such a tone:

Overtime, starting with DST and continuing with a lot of games/franchises I have been invested heavily into (ex. PAYDAY) has been getting the short end of the stick to put it lightly from the side of their development/QA/whatever teams, ending up as either no-longer unique husks of what I used to enjoy from them (PAYDAY), having the development shift so drastically from what it was originally or even before the shift (DST) alienating me from the game and simply falling out of being interested in it, would go into more examples but I'll leave it here.

Point is, I've grown bitter, very, very bitter over the years starting in 2023. A lot of things I used to give DST a pass on like releasing poorly thought-out content, so long as it gets remedied in someway I no longer give a pass on. Straight up if I see even a glimpse of that in a game it's like a switch gets turned in my brain to immediately view that game in a more negative and apathetic light.... ehhh anyways

I can confidently say it feels absolutely terrible to "be right" in this scenario, even though I don't think I'm right. It feels terrible to think that things won't get better as they have with DRG for me, it feels awful to have to deal with no longer enjoying the direction of this game that used to hook me for hundreds of hours every year (not because I discovered everything like a lot of users like to say) but because I no longer feel joy out of trying to spin the new mechanics into something useful for myself, something creative - because there's simply barely any new features, mobs or mechanics nowadays to do that with.

I'll try and end on something positive though, for how bad things may be looking in different areas to me, you or any other DST player dissatisfied with the state of things or how the community sentiment is steering itself into negativity... I don't actually hate this update, despite what I have said from what I've seen (didn't get to fight the boss yet, still need to kill reanimated deerclops in my world) Sure, phase 3 and 2 might have a lot of very... arbitrary feeling limitations and janky implementation, sure phase 1 might be just a planar CC phase 1... but I actually, for once am loving the design (or at least idea with phase 3) of the new big bad enemy. Revenant looks cool, Warbot looks cool, and Scion could become one of the coolest looking bosses in the game if it just got a couple of touch-ups with the sprite and animations. I love the fact that... for once... SOMETHING HAPPENED in the lore, I don't care if it means that TECHNICALLY nothing will ever happen with wagstaff as an antagonist,

Spoiler

(spoilering this because I think its very cool) but overstepping your boundary and trying to exploit the constant for it's resources or magic and getting punished and trapped for it is such a DS thing to do in a character, I never expected an absolute amazing revelation on the levels of the ending of adventure mode, that simply cannot be topped, but I do actually like how there is a visible and somewhat felt consequence for the character that we have seen trying way too hard to be in charge of something in this world

I think the wandering trader is one of the best things they have added in a long time if we exclude that one ocean update we got after over a year of just riftstuffs and skill trees.

Sorry for being so all over the place, I'm not good with writing long replies, nor am I a native english speaker and not having an ongoing and active conversation in-person throws me off... regardless, I don't think DST is lost just yet, rifts can be fixed, skill trees can be fixed, the direction can be made greater, I will make sure to make an in-depth post going over this update in the coming weeks once I get to fighting the final boss myself. Trust me, when I think it is truly OVER you will not be seeing me on these forums. It's tiny, microscopic, barely existent but the hopium tank is still running. I hope the game recovers from this state and that we can go back to the forums where everyone in unison calls the negative people forumites... as if we all weren't using said forum.

Guess I kind of contradicted myself in this post at the end there whoops

WHAT IS THIS... SOME POSITIVITY? I'm sorry I promise that will never happen again.

Edited June 14, 2025 by Antynomity
help

[Cheggf]

38 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

their last topic.

The post about how Klei doesn't care and doesn't listen ends with pinging JoeW asking him to delete his account, and Joe didn't do it. I don't think it could have had a better ending. 

[Antynomity]

7 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The post about how Klei doesn't care and doesn't listen ends with pinging JoeW asking him to delete his account, and Joe didn't do it. I don't think it could have had a better ending. 

I can't believe JoeDstuts didn't delete his account after being asked to do so. How will we ever recover from this?

[ZTheNecromancer]

54 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

snippy snip snip

Hi, just adding on here because I've been wanting to get this off my chest for awhile but don't like talking here much, I know we only really talked like...once. I'm putting it under a spoiler for the people who just want to talk about the update because it's mostly forum-y reminiscing.

Spoiler

For context, I got into this forum very much underaged 5-6 years ago, and up until about 2 months ago hadn't touched the game in-depth since RWYS (only small play sessions with friends), so I've had a very interesting time seeing people go from loving the game to hating it.

When I first joined this forum I hadn't been on the internet for very long in general, so when I first started seeing upset players it really struck me as odd, or even ashamed, that people I shared a common interest with or who were supposed to be much older than me would act like children. Even if I can look at it with more understanding now, I still think that there's something to be said about someone's behavior when an 11/12 year old is looking at their posts thinking "What in the world is up with you?". Seeing those upset people is probably what's kept me from being equally as petty and snippy even as I got older and my dislike of these forums grew, if I hadn't felt like I wanted to be the better person I'd have probably gone and let this account go out into the explosive deep end.

As I got older, my interest in DST waned (and the off-topic forum disappeared), so I stopped playing and just read forums/interacted in Discords instead. At this point, the people around me grew more bitter, and I listened and watched their arguments. I didn't really think much of how simply talking to said people would shift my opinions, but I also grew to dislike the game-even though I objectively wasn't giving it a fair chance by watching from the sidelines. Something in the back of my head itched with how off it felt doing this, and I think you can see where this is going.

It all came to a head a few months ago, curiously, with the very same mod dev you just brought up. While we're only acquaintances, I used to read a lot of their posts when I was younger, their behavior absolutely floored me then, and it still floors me now. In this context, I was lurking in a Discord conversation, which was them, extremely upset, that...people were having fun with recent updates. They were upset that people were having fun with a videogame-you know, something that you play for fun? I don't mean annoyed type upset either, I mean full-on-meltdown "I feel like I'm losing everyone I know because they like what Klei's doing, and I HATE it" type of upset. I genuinely couldn't tell if it was an intricate joke at that point, so reluctantly I left it be.

Then I found out they admitted to having not touched regular DST in over a year, whilst still working on their mod, shortly before they left. This was the tipping point for me, because it felt so...arrogant? I don't know if that's the right word to describe it nor to describe how I felt, because I felt this way about their behavior for a really long time, but didn't want to say anything. Clearly, if people were agreeing with them, they were doing something right, so it's not my business, and I must be thinking about it wrong. But now I think it's a huge shame that someone I looked up to would act like this, and the best thing I can think of to describe how it felt would be that one Spongebob screenshot of Mr. Krabs looking around confusingly.

With this in mind, I set out to give the game a fair chance again. To start, I...stopped reading the forums for awhile, simple as that. I learned my lesson about peers tainting your opinions on media with another game awhile back, and I wanted it to just be my experience alone. I also stopped lurking in DST discords entirely. Then, after a couple weeks, I started my first solo world since RWYS.

...And I had a blast, quite literally the most fun I've had with the game in ages. It really made a world of difference to stop stewing with people who hated the game so much, and things that people were supposedly having full-on meltdowns over really didn't seem all that bad-or even didn't seem like they were problems in the first place. Even if I was crazy rusty, it was awesome.

Overall, I came away from that experience realizing that a large chunk of the people around me who said they hated the game and its devs...would probably benefit from not reading the forums or stewing with each other, at least for awhile. The bare minimum it did for me was help me realize how silly half of this really was, the most it did was help me rediscover why I liked the game and brush off the tainted feelings. Social media actually does mess with your perception-who knew.

At this point I'm just rambling, so I just want to thank you for making reading here more bearable over the years, the off-topic forum was much more fun with you around, and I miss floundering around on the "ban the person above you" thread. Your kindness is sorely needed sometimes.

[Frashaw27]

2 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

snip

Spoiler

Yeah, over time I've been avoidant of the forums because I have rarely seen people talk about anything "good" anymore. There is hardly any talks about what you enjoy about the game, only discussion on how "x thing is bad" or "x is bad because it lacks content". It just honestly appears to me like nobody enjoys this game anymore. I am still very passionate about DST but the forums have indeed made my enthusiasm about playing the game wane. I understand how other people have their own opinions and what not, but it has gotten draining trying to read almost any thread and seeing it filled with negativity.

 

[GenomeSquirrel]

3 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

and i know these are the last bits of my idealism and kindness speaking but i just wish i lived in a kinder, saner world. but yeah that's the last bits of my idealism and kindness speaking so go ahead and keep at it. i'ts not like my opinions or my feelings are going to sway anything really. by all means, remains as passionate or as bitter or as dispassionate or as whatever as you desire
 

 

Never mistake negative testimony with a lack of kindness, in a content where we are keeping Klei alive based on our enjoyment of the game and willingness to purchase skins, being honest is the kindest thing to do, lies are not constructive, praising something you hate may lead to more of it  ... 

 

[Milordo]

11 hours ago, Dr. Safety said:

 but I'm just happy we got an expansion on the story that isn't just "Charlie watches from a distance while Wagstaff builds another portal"

This....this hurts.💔