I think I now understand why Pearl’s eviction bothers me so much.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, Lovens said:

we should not be punished for simply doing that. I fundamentally disagree that we have to be "taught a lesson" and "feel the consequences of our actions" when it's the only plot line mandatory by the developers that stripes players of any form of free will and requires them to "be bad" in order to complete the story line.

You aren't being punished or being taught a lesson you are experiencing a story don't starve together is a sandbox survival game not a choose your own adventure game there is a difference the story so far isn't leading to a open to interpretation ending nor is it removing your free will because this is a sandbox it's entirely up to you as to if you choose to advance the story or not. Yes it asks you to do something bad if you wish to advance the plot but that's what makes it compelling you are trying to survive you will not always have the moral high ground and realistically we rarely ever did. This isn't even the first bad thing we've done to advance the plot we've been actively worsening the world even before this by giving these ancient entities more and more freedom despite being warned of the consequences sometimes directly(see fuel weaver).

5 hours ago, Lovens said:

Undertale was mentioning here earlier in the thread and while I haven't played it, from brief googling I already can see that the game offers you the choice to kill or spare every boss in the game, and the story line has different modes and lines depending on your choice. We easily could have had that.

No we really couldn't at least not while trying to telling a proper story Undertale despite what people might think is a very small game it was able to have so many little details because it's so small and even then a majority of it's endings rely on you using your imagination simply ending with a black screen with some of the survivors telling you what your actions have caused. Giving choices to major events in dst means that Klei would have to design future content for each branching path they offered or make it so each choice made has no real impact on the world it's just not realistic when they're already struggling to keep up with content output.

5 hours ago, Lovens said:

Even "evil" by its nature Wortox is offered a naughty or nice in his skill tree! We choose which gems we insert into Crab King's shell to activate him instead of straight up tasked by the game plot to blow him up with dynamite. We choose if we want to fight Antlion or to give her rocks trinkets to pacify her. Even with destructive rifts we are offered a choice to activate them or to not progress the world. Why can't we be offered a choice to spare Pearl's island by developers?

Technically Wortox isn't evil that's quite literally the point of his short he's naughty but he drew the line at doing things that are truly evil and because of that it could be a real argument that his skill tree is quite out of character for him and even calls in to question why the survivors wouldn't treat him as a threat. Anyway the difference is you are trying to advance a story vs things like antlion where you are just free roaming in the sandbox.

5 hours ago, Lovens said:

And we're back to the same argument. No, I don't think we are the bad guys. We are the protagonists in this story, the victims of the circumstances. We are just trying to survive and find our way back home

But we've been doing bad things all this time in hopes of getting home if you forgive them of that then you should be able to forgive them for helping to evict Pearl or is doing clearly bad things okay so long as you haven't made a bond with a person? The actions taken by the survivors to awaken these otherworldly forces could extend even beyond the constant threatening countless lives if they fall after releasing them but that's different because we've spent some time with Pearl? You are too focused on trying to be the good guy but protagonist does not mean hero but that also doesn't automatically make us the bad guys.

 

5 hours ago, Lovens said:

Being forced into the only plot at the end of the game story with a cartoonishly "bad" villain and becoming "bad guys" and "deserving a punishment" in the form of destruction of Pearl's island is incredibly disappointing and makes the game ending unsatisfactory. And while I and a lot of people do care about this sort of destruction, players who don't care (or happy with Pearl being moved) won't get taught a lesson or "feel more human" or "face consequences". If they don't care for Pearl's place in the first place, they won't see it as a punishment, they will see it as entertainment. It only really punishes people capable of developing sentimental attachment, or base building/decorating her island. Is it really fair to take away the plot ending from everyone that has their reasons for sparing her home (be it moral reasons or just a desire to have free will in the game they are playing, or desire to stand for their builds on her island)? 

Except Wagstaff isn't cartoonishly evil and the game isn't saying you need to be punished nor is it trying to "teach you a lesson". Let me put it this way say a starving child steals some food is that child evil? The survivors want to escape their suffering they've experienced some of the most horrible deaths burning alive, being eaten, starving to death, going insane and so on some of which are children are they truly so evil for asking a crab lady to move somewhere else for a chance to escape this suffering? It's more complicated than just whoops we're evil now.

6 hours ago, Lovens said:

But imagine for a second that we are in an alternate universe where Warbot happened on its own dedicated island or on Lunar island. I doubt a single person would be here arguing that it's not fitting the story line, not impactful enough, doesn't teach players a lesson, and in order to tick all these boxes it absolutely needs to be moved to Pearl's island. I doubt anyone would ever consider her island as a place where the final boss fight should happen. It would feel like an absurd idea straight out of fever dream and people would argue its random and too small to be an impactful location for the final boss, and that such an important fight deserves its own point of interest at least, or the most fitting to the lunar side iconic location already tied with the first big lunar boss fight. 

We kind of do have an example of that reality in the form of the nightmare werepig and the scrappy werepig which people complained felt out of place and random and that's more or less what the Wagstaff event would have amounted to just with the added flavor of hey he finally got caught messing around with powers beyond his understanding.

6 hours ago, Lovens said:

I dont think we can ever agree on what makes the story fitting or impactful. When I write it down here on the forums post mortem as an alternative suggestion by the player, of course it would look like a stretch and since we have an official story line that doesn't match what I wrote you would be arguing with me to death proving it's not fitting or not impactful or not punishing enough (side note why do videogames need to be punishing for simply trying to complete them? I thought the main goal was enjoyment first things first. It's Klei Entertainment, not Klei Punishment). But imagine for a second that we are in an alternate universe where Warbot happened on its own dedicated island or on Lunar island. I doubt a single person would be here arguing that it's not fitting the story line, not impactful enough, doesn't teach players a lesson, and in order to tick all these boxes it absolutely needs to be moved to Pearl's island. I doubt anyone would ever consider her island as a place where the final boss fight should happen. It would feel like an absurd idea straight out of fever dream and people would argue its random and too small to be an impactful location for the final boss, and that such an important fight deserves its own point of interest at least, or the most fitting to the lunar side iconic location already tied with the first big lunar boss fight. 

I agree that we'll have to agree to disagree here. I personally feel like story telling that makes you question your actions tends to carry more weight than stories that always position you in the place of moral superiority regardless of the situation yeah it feels good to be right but being right doesn't always make a compelling story at least in my opinion.

Actually to bring Undertale back into this even that game tried to do this while for most people the experience was ruined due to spoilers or finding out about the game through external media the game softly encourages you to kill on your first playthrough. The first time you try to be trusting the game pulls a bait a switch and you are almost murdered, the first "real" fight you are in happens before the game even teaches you mercy and it's very much possible to murder that monster, and you find things that imply that the tutorial monster who has been helping you might not be what she seems like monsters being afraid of her and a box of children's shoes of various sizes in the room she gives you as well as her unwillingness to let you leave. The game even tells you that monsters who are weakened via attacking can also be spared just like those who are spared via acting then proceeds to make acting not help you in her fight while she asks you to prove you are strong enough to survive on your own only to have her hp immediately drop to zero when you attack her enough to be in sparing range. There's other tricks like that the game pulls but my point is that sure they could have just not done any of that and made it straight forward on how to spare people and who is right and wrong but they didn't because they wanted you to reach your own conclusions now I doubt that amount of thought went into the Pearl situation but I don't see why those kind of scenarios would be a bad thing for don't starve together.

[Bumber64]

17 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Wagstaff's tech seems to be what prevents the mutations from happening which is why it needed to be Wagstaff who brought them there and not just the moon itself.

I'm not questioning who opened the portal. I'm talking about when he did it. Klei decided that should happen before world creation instead of tying it to progression.

You mentioned they can't create a new island for each major event, but moon quay and frostjaw islands were added just because they felt like it.

I don't have a problem with Klei making changes to landmarks, per se, but I don't think they should be making them permanently unusable by removing structures and cramming a respawning boss there.

Edited June 23, 2025 by Bumber64

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

You mentioned they can't create a new island for each major event, but moon quay and frostjaw islands were added just because they felt like it.

I'm not saying they can't but that I don't want it to be the solution for everything.

6 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I don't have a problem with Klei making changes to landmarks, per se, but I don't think they should be making them permanently unusable by removing structures and cramming a respawning boss there.

I'd also agree here I though for a slightly different reason I don't think they should focus on doing the same thing multiple times I still think using landmarks as a show of real change is a good idea but that doesn't mean it has to always happen the same way nor does it always have to end with them being erased.

 

[Well-met]

Destroying the island was a mistake but klei clearly doubled down on it so from this point there's nothing to do about it.

[Velvy]

damn this is an old thread but might as well throw my 2 cents in.

I think it works but the issue i have is that theres no kinda warning against you trying to make a base here. If you're advancing the story and playing casually with no knowledge of whats to come and get to this point while having a base there its just "all the progress you made on your base is gone now"

I feel like theres a fairly big difference between a giant monster destroying your base (because you can mitigate them with precautions) vs wagstaff destroying your base (its absolutely required for the plot), admittedly idk what they would do to help mitigate this except having some form of warning when the game detects you getting too comfortable there (maybe pearl says something? idk)

Edited February 27 by Velvy

[gaymime]

8 hours ago, Velvy said:

damn this is an old thread but might as well throw my 2 cents in.

I think it works but the issue i have is that theres no kinda warning against you trying to make a base here. If you're advancing the story and playing casually with no knowledge of whats to come and get to this point while having a base there its just "all the progress you made on your base is gone now"

I feel like theres a fairly big difference between a giant monster destroying your base (because you can mitigate them with precautions) vs wagstaff destroying your base (its absolutely required for the plot), admittedly idk what they would do to help mitigate this except having some form of warning when the game detects you getting too comfortable there (maybe pearl says something? idk)

so, please bear with me here but if you avoid pearl's island would you still be emotionally invested in pearl's island when you are told to go destroy it?

[Jakepeng99]

They should let us move the moon quay Queen and portal to our base next

[Ridley]

12 hours ago, Velvy said:

I feel like theres a fairly big difference between a giant monster destroying your base (because you can mitigate them with precautions) vs wagstaff destroying your base (its absolutely required for the plot), admittedly idk what they would do to help mitigate this except having some form of warning when the game detects you getting too comfortable there (maybe pearl says something? idk)

The initial problem was players were got off guard by the new update and were all extremely experienced players who wanted to build in a unique part of the map. I think the Venn diagram of people interested in building there and the people unaware of WARBOT has no overlap.