Why Wagstaff kicking Pearl out of her island is actually a great thing.

[Bumber64]

10 hours ago, astareus said:

if your pearl base is being destroyed by the beta, just don't build there from now on

What a fulfilling solution. And then the next time it happens, we just won't build there either.

8 hours ago, astareus said:

Would be cool if we can "reclaim" the island, but that's for a future Klei, and it might take them 3 to 5 years to accomplish, who knows.

I'm personally estimating the timeline at "never".

Edited June 26, 2025 by Bumber64

[gaymime]

5 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

I probably won’t bent my theory about this, but if you try, please explain in more detail.

art is a thing that consumes the body of person creating it both literally in that you need a human body putting countless hours of labour to make art but also takes mentally(as any worker of any stripe can explain; work is mentally exhausting if you are not able to rest and recover). much like being a carpenter or being a sales clerk or being a farmer the work puts strain on the worker and so must be justifiable to the worker

if the artist was not making art for themselves first then they would have no justification to be artists. if they are prioritising strangers who are under no obligation to give them anything then they should volunteer, if they are prioritising money they should work in a less dangerous field that gives stable pay. making video-games can be profitable, it can give pleasure to people BUT it costs a lot to make in that it eats the people creating it and if they cannot make something that gives back to them then the creation is not reasonable to commit to.

please try to understand that games that do not prioritise the artist are games that are not made with love. if the player is first then what you get is "star citizen" if money is first what you get is "marvel rivals" if you put the artist first you get the don't starve gamejam prototype

 

people seem to think the person making art should not be the main beneficiary of their labour but this would mean someone is destroying their body and using up their precious time wastefully because they could be doing almost anything else and it would either be more profitable or it would be less hard on their body(and if they had enough resources possibly both). creating art, especially video games is hard and you dont get a guaranteed salary and with the current industry structure you have to put in the money and time BEFORE you roll the dice on making any money at all on the game(no guarantee). it is just a bad choice all around if you get nothing at all

 

i was a commission artist from 2008 to 2024(my work has included work for indie developers and avatar forum-owners) and i have developed moderate ulnar nerve damage, have a shoulder that will not stay in socket, a myriad of small tears that have not always healed correctly in my back neck & shoulder and i greatly exacerbated some spinal damage from an accident by not being able to let my body recover for the year it would take to heal. i did this for the love of making art first and paying rent. the pleasure of players was a nice thing but it was not my driving motivation any more than customers are the driving motivation for a waiter

5 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

At the least, it seems to me that Klei is prioritizing the players. The removal of "Disease" is one example of that.

also that is respecting the players' needs because it was to the benefit to everyone without compromising their desires not "prioritising" the players over themselves because of a drive to put players first

Edited June 26, 2025 by gaymime

[Lovens]

I have already said what I could on the topic of Pearl's eviction in countless comments over the course of the past month, so I'm just passing by to leave the mandatory short "I heavily disagree with OP's opinion and consider Pearl's eviction the worst update I've ever witnessed in DST" comment. Nothing else to say here really. 

I'm happy to see some players still voice their opinions against this eviction arc, it's sad this won't change anything now. 

[SilverSpoon]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

if the artist was not making art for themselves first then they would have no justification to be artists. if they are prioritising strangers who are under no obligation to give them anything then they should volunteer, if they are prioritising money they should work in a less dangerous field that gives stable pay. making video-games can be profitable, it can give pleasure to people BUT it costs a lot to make in that it eats the people creating it and if they cannot make something that gives back to them then the creation is not reasonable to commit to.

please try to understand that games that do not prioritise the artist are games that are not made with love. if the player is first then what you get is "star citizen" if money is first what you get is "marvel rivals" if you put the artist first you get the don't starve gamejam prototype

I can't speak for other types of creators, but for game developers, players aren't just "strangers with no obligations" they're "fellow", who validate our existence.

For game developers, self-expression is certainly important. And also, I know some say things like, "I'm happy just making game, I just want to create what I want." But I think that for most developers, "for the players" is the true starting point. No matter how much you're creating what you want to make, if no one ever plays it... I think many developers would snap.

Why wasn't the "Don't Starve Game Jam Prototype" only shared within the company? Why was it polished and released to the public? And is there a feedback space where we are now? I think it’s because it was meant to be played by players.

I also looked into Star Citizen which you mentioned... it's outrageous! But I don't see it as a failed project. The reason it's raised $800 million and is still anticipated projects after 12 years is because that's exactly they puts the players first.

About "profits > creators"... this is nothing more than the undeniable reality coming from Klei is no longer just little indie game developer, but a top-notch studio with its own shares and serious business interests.

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

i was a commission artist from 2008 to 2024(my work has included work for indie developers and avatar forum-owners) and i have developed moderate ulnar nerve damage, have a shoulder that will not stay in socket, a myriad of small tears that have not always healed correctly in my back neck & shoulder and i greatly exacerbated some spinal damage from an accident by not being able to let my body recover for the year it would take to heal. i did this for the love of making art first and paying rent. the pleasure of players was a nice thing but it was not my driving motivation any more than customers are the driving motivation for a waiter

I'm sorry to hear about your past. I deeply sympathize being a creator can truly be both a blessing and a curse.

Spoiler

Shall I go to the fair? In my case, I started developing a personal game because making games at work wasn’t fulfilling my need for self-esteem. However, during the years I spent developing it, no one paid any attention to me. It make me fell into a vicious cycle of self-doubt and stagnation. Just working against a silent brick wall for many years was... literary hellish suffering for me, which eventually led to major depressive disorder and a suicide attempt. So perhaps I’m being a bit too personal.

However, even after recovering from my depression, I still want to make game, and in fact, I'm still making game lol. But this time, I’m also trying to satisfy my self-esteem during the development process. As part of that, I’ve realized that many game developers struggle with self-worth when their work goes unnoticed. Now, within the game development community, I try to encourage each others and offer feedback (though my own game isn’t even playable yet, so it’s one-way for now). Still, it helps me keep moving forward.

So... why do I still make games? Well, part of it is for myself, as you said. But for me, I think the biggest reason is that I want people to play them.

I appreciate for your gentle and honest response. It helped me to open up. Thank you, Mimemate.

 

Edited June 26, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Bumber64]

4 hours ago, gaymime said:

art is a thing that consumes the body of person creating it both literally in that you need a human body putting countless hours of labour to make art but also takes mentally

You're speaking from a position of drawing art, but I don't think I've heard much criticism of Klei on the graphic design. (Just that the crown wasn't very visible? Small fix.)

All the flak Klei gets is game direction and mechanics. Stuff that's been decided in a meeting before they even start implementing.

Edited June 26, 2025 by Bumber64

[Arcwell]

8 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Okay but the alternative is that that the devs can't use any existing land for content it's kinda a darned if you do darned if you don't scenario they could form a landmass everytime something major happens but that means every existing area currently is basically out of canon

Not how that works.

They've added content to the mainland continent several times before without destroying everything in its vicinity. See the stage or the werepig junkyard as examples.

[lowercase skye]

2 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

They've added content to the mainland continent several times before without destroying everything in its vicinity. See the stage or the werepig junkyard as examples.

The stage, Junkyard and Jimbo all retrofit into existing worlds, which means it's entirely possible that they will be placed right in/beside one of your builds, and add several unbreakable structures that you can now never remove no matter how much it gets in the way. This effectively scars that area forever, and potentially places a highly-destructive boss right in your base! The only reason people didn't complain about those is because it's statistically far more likely to have a build at Pearl's than it is to have a build at every single biome that those things can retrofit.

[Primalflower]

7 hours ago, Echsrick said:

you have to use boat to get to moon island therefor an ocean contend

if we're considering ocean content this way, then the entire second half of the game is ocean content on account of being gated by or directly involving the lunar island and it's relatives (you have to use a boat to get to it)

[Echsrick]

33 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

if we're considering ocean content this way, then the entire second half of the game is ocean content on account of being gated by or directly involving the lunar island and it's relatives (you have to use a boat to get to it)

no, that is moon storm event contend happening on main land and another person can join that and experince the storms without ever setting sail

[Lovens]

53 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

The stage, Junkyard and Jimbo all retrofit into existing worlds, which means it's entirely possible that they will be placed right in/beside one of your builds, and add several unbreakable structures that you can now never remove no matter how much it gets in the way. This effectively scars that area forever, and potentially places a highly-destructive boss right in your base! The only reason people didn't complain about those is because it's statistically far more likely to have a build at Pearl's than it is to have a build at every single biome that those things can retrofit.

When retrofitting these setpieces into already existing world, on your first reload of the map it will try and place itself somewhere. It usually tries to avoid structures and will try to place itself in an empty spot not occupied by something else. You can manipulate where it spawns by either rolling the world back after you've checked where it spawned and didn't like it, or you can also do a copy of your world before loading the new update, and duplicate this world save every time before loading in and checking where it spawned this time. I did it with my scrapyard setpiece about seven times until it landed in Dragonfly desert close to my walled off tumbleweed spawners where I feel it belongs a lot better than in a random evergreen forest. You can repeat this process as many times as you want until you're satisfied with where new content got placed.

Unless you have literally every inch of the world covered in builds (which I have never seen even in the largest megabases) then it's bound to land on an empty spot eventually. And even megabasers leave some empty room for fighting certain bosses. Antlion's spawner can't be built on and will usually have a dedicated free space around it free of structures. Celestial Champion, Deerclops and Bearger are all very destructive so megabasers usually have dedicated empty areas/arenas for fighting them instead of having them spawn on builds and wreck them. Same goes for mutated Lunar bosses (also super destructive to all structures), Twins of Terror and Shadow Pieces (these will break only walls). Klaus needs to have at least one dedicated fighting place as well (you can't block all of his spawners - he will start destroying one of them if all are blocked, so again a smart builder will always leave at least one free of structures around it). What I'm saying here If literally anything else is occupied by builds there will still be free room left for the new content to spawn in one of these empty spots already occupied by boss spawns. 

 

Edited June 27, 2025 by Lovens

[lowercase skye]

35 minutes ago, Lovens said:

And even megabasers leave some empty room for fighting certain bosses.

Bosses that didn't used to exist, and were placed into the world retroactively. I personally experienced the oasis desert retrofitting its content into a regular desert back in the day, and if I had built a base there prior I would have been screwed. Klaus's spawners were also retroactively placed into the deciduous. It is the nature of adding new things into existing spots, you just don't hear complaints about it because most people don't keep a world for more than a couple years at most.

Edited June 27, 2025 by lowercase skye

[Primalflower]

41 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

no, that is moon storm event contend happening on main land and another person can join that and experince the storms without ever setting sail

But the moonstorm would have had to be activated by going to the lunar island - which by your own definition, is ocean content, as you needed to engage with boats in order to activate it, and get there

(The subtext of my statement is that island content isn't ocean content, because the ocean isn't involved by the point you've stepped on the island. It's just a medium to get there. Hell, you're kind of proving my point by mentioning moonstorm content, because that's something that you needed to engage with the ocean to get, but isn't ocean content.)

If you want ocean content, then bat for stuff like glaciers, marotters, waterlogged biome... not things that you do on land and you use the ocean as an intermission track to reach.

[Radicaljoe]

1 hour ago, lowercase skye said:

Bosses that didn't used to exist, and were placed into the world retroactively. I personally experienced the oasis desert retrofitting its content into a regular desert back in the day, and if I had built a base there prior I would have been screwed. Klaus's spawners were also retroactively placed into the deciduous. It is the nature of adding new things into existing spots, you just don't hear complaints about it because most people don't keep a world for more than a couple years at most.

I feel there's also something to be said about DST being a newer game back then. Like, there were megabasers and such, but I don't think there were a large enough amount of people doing it for that to have been a debatable issue yet. People were still trying to figure out how to survive, building was a secondary aspect of the game, maybe even third. But Pearls island has been here for a couple years now and people ARE past the learning stages. Not every single person obviously, but enough that it's worthy of debating something so destructive from being added. 

(Also you can block Klaus' spawners and prevent him spawning there ever again.)

[Echsrick]

2 hours ago, Primalflower said:

But the moonstorm would have had to be activated by going to the lunar island - which by your own definition, is ocean content, as you needed to engage with boats in order to activate it, and get there

(The subtext of my statement is that island content isn't ocean content, because the ocean isn't involved by the point you've stepped on the island. It's just a medium to get there. Hell, you're kind of proving my point by mentioning moonstorm content, because that's something that you needed to engage with the ocean to get, but isn't ocean content.)

If you want ocean content, then bat for stuff like glaciers, marotters, waterlogged biome... not things that you do on land and you use the ocean as an intermission track to reach.

but if another player joins that world they can do the moonstorm event without ever touching the ocean

[Primalflower]

9 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

but if another player joins that world they can do the moonstorm event without ever touching the ocean

[Swiyss]

11 hours ago, oregu said:

There's no reason to why transplanting dug resources would lead to disease, it only seemed to punish players who know what they were doing. 

For me, you would have to change what the purpose of disease is fundamentally to add it back but it might be a good idea for post-rifts content. Why not? That seems to fit more the angle of what they're going for.

I don't really like that there's no drawback to replanting grass and saplings. They changed that with grass geckos and brightshades, but I think brightshades are just as annoying as disease. And if they made so that you can use weeds to craft a permanent addition to these resources to make them immune to disease, then it would be even better, they could even give 2 grass instead of one and look a bit more advanced. This is imo way better than just removing the thing and now dealing with grass geckos and brightshade but whatever, the community ruled this basically.

[lowercase skye]

8 minutes ago, astareus said:

I don't really like that there's no drawback to replanting grass and saplings. They changed that with grass geckos and brightshades,

How are grass gekkos a bad thing? They can be automated, or if you don't want them you can just leave some in the area and it'll prevent more from spawning.

[gaymime]

8 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

I'm sorry to hear about your past. I deeply sympathize being a creator can truly be both a blessing and a curse.

please, do not think there is anything to be sorry about! of all the work i did being an artist was both the hardest and the most wonderful. i have no regrets and would still be doing the work if i could. in fact the last 5 years of it that was my only job(unless you are young enough to count full-time husband as a job xD) and while i struggled working 9/11 hour days 5-6 days a week especially near the end it was never a question that i would retire before my doctor forced it.

8 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

for game developers, self-expression is certainly important. And also, I know some say things like, "I'm happy just making game, I just want to create what I want." But I think that for most developers, "for the players" is the true starting point. No matter how much you're creating what you want to make, if no one ever plays it... I think many developers would snap.

so here is the thing. i agree with every part of this EXCEPT the player being the starting point. the player is part of the equation yes but not the starting point. i may not have been a developer but i have worked with more than a dozen of them(mostly directly and intimately since a lot of my jobs were just me the dev working on their personal projects) and it has always started as a desire of the creator to make this thing that they have been cultivating inside of them. the two who wanted to make money(both times it was a team) had a bit more focus on what the playerbase wanted but none were only doing it for the pleasure of the players. i have also worked with coders and done some coding. the other players were much closer to the front(money was almost never a priority) but whenever i knew the purpose of the code it was always for the creator first and when i did coding or made custom art for an existing mod it was because i wanted it first with others being a pleasurable bonus. the players are why it was publicly posted NOT why it was created.

i would also like to give you some perspective that you might not have seen; i am under 6 NDAs from people who had me make art/be a design consultant/draft up character references for work that NEVER saw the light of day. these people literally only made their games for themselves and noone else. i also worked on two dress-up games(not under nda but also not publishable) where the owner of the character was also the sole player(aside from me for obvious reasons, lol). for a couple years i also made art assets and a lot of the people who snapped them up never posted anything anywhere that i could see and i am much in doubt that it was just that a LOT of people bought cheap assets(or sometimes got them for free) and did nothing. i imagine there were many people who just wanted something for themselves and so used what they could to make that. i had a fair few stardew and sims mods i made only for myself that exist only on my computer and a few thumb-drives. you don't see these pieces of art being made unless you are making them because noone else is supposed to play them. art can be collaborative but it doesnt have to be. games can and often are shared but they don't have to be.

9 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Why wasn't the "Don't Starve Game Jam Prototype" only shared within the company? Why was it polished and released to the public? And is there a feedback space where we are now? I think it’s because it was meant to be played by players.

it stayed in the company for about a year before microsoft wanted something for their online store and it got worked into a proper in-house game to fill that roll. you should look it up, it is really a fascinating story!

9 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

I also looked into Star Citizen which you mentioned... it's outrageous! But I don't see it as a failed project. The reason it's raised $800 million and is still anticipated projects after 12 years is because that's exactly they puts the players first.

i am so sorry! i looked at your reply thought "huh, star citizen???" then realised that i got the two "ships in space games" confused(actually it is not even the first time i did this), in my own post i meant eve online. i should never write anything more complicated than yes/no/lol so close to bed. i am sorry, that was a failing on my part. if you have the time someone wrote a(funnily enough for the topic) brisk and concise history of that mess that gets most of the major stuff covered. i do apologise for misleading you there

Spoiler

 

9 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

About "profits > creators"... this is nothing more than the undeniable reality coming from Klei is no longer just little indie game developer, but a top-notch studio with its own shares and serious business interests.

we are in agreement here. the industry seems to end up eating itself eventually and klei has dabbled in self-c*nnibalism a couple times though hopefully it will never get to the point of being a rockstar situation where the workers are chewed on while the studio thrives

9 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Spoiler

Shall I go to the fair? In my case, I started developing a personal game because making games at work wasn’t fulfilling my need for self-esteem. However, during the years I spent developing it, no one paid any attention to me. It make me fell into a vicious cycle of self-doubt and stagnation. Just working against a silent brick wall for many years was... literary hellish suffering for me, which eventually led to major depressive disorder and a suicide attempt. So perhaps I’m being a bit too personal.

However, even after recovering from my depression, I still want to make game, and in fact, I'm still making game lol. But this time, I’m also trying to satisfy my self-esteem during the development process. As part of that, I’ve realized that many game developers struggle with self-worth when their work goes unnoticed. Now, within the game development community, I try to encourage each others and offer feedback (though my own game isn’t even playable yet, so it’s one-way for now). Still, it helps me keep moving forward.

So... why do I still make games? Well, part of it is for myself, as you said. But for me, I think the biggest reason is that I want people to play them.

I appreciate for your gentle and honest response. It helped me to open up. Thank you, Mimemate.

 

thankyou for sharing this. yes, this is a thing that artists of every type seem to share, i know that dour empty feeling of putting a piece of myself into the world and it not being seen. it is valid and real and can be very intense(as you said). it is a motivator to share but please understand that it is also as much a feeling that is put inside of you by others as one that is already part of you as a person. i am grateful that you were able to stay here with us and i am so happy that you are doing well enough that you might stay with us for a very long time and if this desire to share is what motivates you i will not take that from you all i will say is that when you make art because you see yourself as valuable to yourself and your art is a treasure that you deserve because you are worthy of such a treasure then you might find that you can take some pleasure in being the only recipient of that art. for now though i think i will step back from the conversation. thankyou for talking to me

 

[Lovens]

6 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Bosses that didn't used to exist, and were placed into the world retroactively. I personally experienced the oasis desert retrofitting its content into a regular desert back in the day, and if I had built a base there prior I would have been screwed. Klaus's spawners were also retroactively placed into the deciduous. It is the nature of adding new things into existing spots, you just don't hear complaints about it because most people don't keep a world for more than a couple years at most.

Those are all still examples of something trying to be placed into the biomes with lots of room in them instead of taking the entire biome or location with the new content.To draw an analogy here it's as if the warbot arena was added to Pearl's island in a way that branches off it like a little square peninsula connected via bridge to the main crescent shaped island. Or only takes up half of the island. 

I also wasn't playing the game back when these changes were added (Klaus, Deerclops and such) yet something tells me back then the game wasn't too much of base building trend (or rather didn't offer too many opportunities for building). And yet again even Klaus spawner can be countered even if you happened to pick Desiduous for your base location - you can block all of them in this biome and happily build in it, and not have the entire location being forever and irreversibly taken away from you. Klaus then will spawn in the mosaic biome instead all the time. Or in the second Desiduous, if you have it. Having half a dfly desert being taken away must have sucked as well, although I can't imagine how it happened since the dfly desert biome is still in the game and is large enough to be built in, and Oasis desert exists alongside it and is not necessarily attached to it. If they created Oasis desert by cutting off and transforming half of the dfly desert they would always spawn connected to each other and be "neighbor" biomes but they clearly aren't. Deerclops and other "wandering" bosses are not tied to any location at all and therefore don't restrict your building in any of the biomes. 

I already mentioned this analogy in the past and people still don't understand. Having Warbot spawn in Pearl's island is like as if Scrappy Werepig setpiece took the place of Pig King, evicting it to the swamp and destroying the existing PK set piece, as well as nearby pig village (and nearby catcoon dens, and all the trees around it for the good measure). Or if Frostjaw spawned in place of Moon Quay, destroying the entire unique island and Monkey Queen. But none of it happened, and if it did I can imagine a lot of people would have been unhappy with it. Updates should add to the world, not take away from it. There's plenty of room in the world for the new content to be retrofitted without overlapping with existing landmarks and setpieces. 

Edited June 27, 2025 by Lovens

[SilverSpoon]

3 hours ago, gaymime said:

for now though i think i will step back from the conversation. thankyou for talking to me

I agree, this conversation with you was really meaningful for me, but I think if we keep going, we might be getting off topic. Thank you for talking to me too.

Your thoughts have helped improve my theory, so I'm updating my original answer.

23 hours ago, astareus said:

Consent? This isn't your property, nor the game is. Klei can even revoke your game if they want to, it's their game. Now I'm not saying that a build on Pearl's island is unimportant, but it doesn't justify them not being able to do what they want with the island. 

At the point when a player buys the game with their own money and invests their own time building a base, it becomes to some extent the player's property. Devs have the right to design their games however they want, but I don't think it's a good idea to lack consideration for the players. Especially in this case, there was also the option to "do it somewhere else, so as not to destroy the existing island."

Edited June 27, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[lowercase skye]

5 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

I feel there's also something to be said about DST being a newer game back then. Like, there were megabasers and such, but I don't think there were a large enough amount of people doing it for that to have been a debatable issue yet.

1 hour ago, Lovens said:

I also wasn't playing the game back when these changes were added (Klaus, Deerclops and such) yet something tells me back then the game wasn't too much of base building trend (or rather didn't offer too many opportunities for building).

The first update to add purely decorative things for base building was back in October of 2016, and they did it because people were building bases that spanned across near-entire worlds since Reign of Giants. Megabasing has been a thing basically forever!

Anyway, my point is really just that new content of varying levels of obtrusiveness have been retroactively added to worlds for about as long as DST has been getting updates at all.

[Lovens]

24 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

The first update to add purely decorative things for base building was back in October of 2016, and they did it because people were building bases that spanned across near-entire worlds since Reign of Giants. Megabasing has been a thing basically forever!

Anyway, my point is really just that new content of varying levels of obtrusiveness have been retroactively added to worlds for about as long as DST has been getting updates at all.

I don't get it. You are seemingly upset with the previous world changes and using these facts to argue...in favor of ruining the world by demolishing Pearl's island, just because similar retrofitting experiences affected you in the past and you think everybody should experience the same but even worse now?

Also: I'm not familiar with Shipwrecked but from a brief glance at the 4000+ day example of a megabase from your playlist I can see that only one biome is fully covered with builds and the rest of the islands are empty.

Of course it would be impossible for developers to add and expand the game in a way that doesn't interfere with changing existing land at all. But there's plenty of room for retrofitting content when it's chosen to be placed in relatively empty spaces of the world, and when it's chosen to be placed in large biomes such as forests, deserts, Lunar island, Ocean, it becomes a part of the world without entirely taking over said biomes and deleting them from the map forever. Now I dare you to find a single DST megabase example where literally every inch of the world is covered with player builds. Heck, even if you turned on creative mode and started trying to build one now, it would take you well over 4000 days to fully cover the entire world and even then it still won't be a realistic scenario due to the reasons I mentioned in my previous comment. 

Here's for a reference the current map from my nearly 11k days megabase world: I'm far from covering the entire map with builds and there's still plenty of room to retrofit bosses and new setpieces into it.

I didn't have any issues with them retrofitting Scrappy, Frostjaw or Balatro machine into it - all of them added to the world without erasing existing unique setpieces or touching any of my builds. My entire overworld is covered with signs to block rift spawns in all biomes to protect non-renewable resources from destruction, and not even a single sign was broken when new content was added into the game, let alone any of my builds. And even if they do add a new setpiece, say, into the Oasis desert biome (which I fully covered with builds), and it will break one of my builds, I would be ok with that because it's gonna be adding to the world diversity instead of taking away from it. I would just move my build and make room for that new setpiece. If they however make a new boss that spawns in the Oasis and entirely and irreversibly destroys the Oasis lake setpiece, I will be mad and not because I'm building at it, but because it's a unique feature of the world first things first, and taking it away ruins the world's atmosphere for me. Same goes for any other setpiece or unique world structure/location, even it's the one I'm not building at.

Anyway, are you really defending the Pearl's island destruction just because we had other instances of content retrofitted into DST over the years? I already argued that none of the previous additions were implemented into the game in such a way where they would completely take away an entire unique location/setpiece. And regardless of whether or not players build on Pearl's island the change is bad and takes away from uniqueness of the world more than it adds to it. Even if it was impossible to build on her island at all I would still have argued that the location should be preserved intact instead of being ruined in favor of placing yet another boss arena that could have happened literally anywhere else. 

 

[SilverSpoon]

2 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Anyway, my point is really just that new content of varying levels of obtrusiveness have been retroactively added to worlds for about as long as DST has been getting updates at all.

1 hour ago, Lovens said:

If they however make a new boss that spawns in the Oasis and entirely and irreversibly destroys the Oasis lake setpiece, I will be mad and not because I'm building at it, but because it's a unique feature of the world first things first, and taking it away ruins the world's atmosphere for me. Same goes for any other setpiece or unique world structure/location, even it's the one I'm not building at.

I agree with Lovens as well. Unlike previous world additional content, I think the backlash this time comes from the fact that the update completely destroys an entire landmark what a beautiful, compact, and story-significant area that players are naturally encouraged to build their bases around. Furthermore, the game itself promotes construction in this location through gameplay. Moreover, it is even more backlash because it wasn't a technically unavoidable choice (considering that Frostjaw arenas can spawn in various locations across the ocean).

Other player have said that this destruction is meant to give the story more weight. I don’t say that’s absolutely bad or wrong. However, for those of us who enjoy building base or commemorative monument in multiplayer, having those efforts destroyed is the worst nightmare.

As for me, I think I’ve already moved from “denial” and “anger” to the “bargaining” stage. Since the Animation Trailer has already been created, it may no longer be possible to not destroy Crab Island at this point. However if that’s the case, then at the very least, I’d like to see some kind of system implemented that prevents from building bases there in the first place, to save innocent players from the pain of having everything they built later wiped out.

Edited June 27, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Mysterious box]

11 hours ago, Arcwell said:

Not how that works.

They've added content to the mainland continent several times before without destroying everything in its vicinity. See the stage or the werepig junkyard as examples.

Those are minor events though bigger story events tend to have bigger impacts even if temporary like the moonstones or the Grotto event. While the changes aren't quite like this I don't think it's a bad thing for major change like this every once in awhile so long as it isn't too common and doesn't involve too many different locations.

Edited June 27, 2025 by Mysterious box