​​Some Suggestions on Retaining Certain Non-Game-Breaking Bugs in Don’t Starve Together​​

[adminaaassh]

Dear Don’t Starve TogetherDevelopment Team,

As a long-time player of the game, I’ve noticed that many members of the community—especially those who manage long-term servers—have grown quite attached to certain non-game-breaking bugs. Rather than undermining the experience, these bugs often enable players to develop building techniques or playstyles that weren’t originally part of the game’s design. I’d like to formally suggest preserving some of these unintentional features.

I. Why Non-Game-Breaking Bugs Deserve To Stay
Added Gameplay Depth: Some bugs allow unusual interactions or constructions, giving creative players new ways to engage with the game.

Community Reliance: What began as a glitch has, in some cases, become essential to certain playstyles—especially in persistent servers. Removing these could disrupt established communities and strategies.

Encourages Innovation: Players have turned several bugs into unique techniques, enriching the meta and supporting diverse gameplay approaches.

II. Recommended Types of Bugs To Retain
Harmless Visual Glitches: Minor graphical or animation issues that don’t affect gameplay balance or fairness.

Community-Embraced Mechanics: Some bug-originated techniques have become deeply embedded in local metas. For example, many Chinese players who specialize in “factory” gameplay consider certain bugs essential.

III. Proposed Implementation
Introduce a bug classification system to clearly separate game-breaking issues from harmless or beneficial ones.

Consult the community via polls or direct feedback—especially from veteran players—before deciding whether to patch a particular bug.

Conduct periodic reviews of whitelisted bugs to ensure they don’t conflict with new content or updates.

Keeping some of these unintended features could help preserve the unique culture and emergent gameplay that make Don’t Starve Togetherso special.

Best regards,

A Dedicated Player

This post originates from a friend of mine, who asked me to share it on the forum.

[Stardust42]

nah

[gaymime]

if this were a finished game then i would agree...but it is a game still being worked on and bugs left now can mean serious unseen problems later AND having a lot of bugginess impacts potential future sales. i miss a few bugs from back when i first started playing but i'd rather have a more stable game than access to some old exploits that only had niche uses but often had a negative impact on the game for everyone.

try to remember in the decade it has been out over 27 million people have gotten the game . bugs that serve at best a few thousand people(but more practically much less) but can potentially mess up the game for everyone is very hard to justify.

Edited October 4, 2025 by gaymime

[adminaaassh]

8 hours ago, gaymime said:

if this were a finished game then i would agree...but it is a game still being worked on and bugs left now can mean serious unseen problems later AND having a lot of bugginess impacts potential future sales. i miss a few bugs from back when i first started playing but i'd rather have a more stable game than access to some old exploits that only had niche uses but often had a negative impact on the game for everyone.

try to remember in the decade it has been out over 27 million people have gotten the game . bugs that serve at best a few thousand people(but more practically much less) but can potentially mess up the game for everyone is very hard to justify.

Actually, I’ve already talked about this before. I understand that some problems might arise in the future, but I think certain long-standing mechanics could be preserved in some form. We could even create new mechanics around them. Unfortunately, the developers often act too bluntly — their approach to “fixing” these coincidental gameplay mechanics is usually shallow and heavy-handed. I’ve mentioned this in other posts as well.
My point has always been about finding a balance. If we try to “fix” absolutely everything — things like snowball offset, small tallbirds attacking big tallbirds, using a lantern to mine underground, or canceling animations through movement — then strictly speaking all of these could be patched out too. That’s why I’m saying I hope the developers look for a middle ground, instead of using extreme and heavy-handed solutions without thinking through the consequences. That’s the most frustrating part.

If there’s truly no other way, then just go ahead and fix it — I believe everyone will understand. I’ve always tried to take a balanced approach. This post was actually made on behalf of a friend, and what I’m sharing here reflects my own opinion. Since I haven’t used any technical terms, please let me know if there’s anything unclear or if I’ve said anything inappropriate or offensive. Thank you.

[gaymime]

3 minutes ago, adminaaassh said:

Actually, I’ve already talked about this before. I understand that some problems might arise in the future, but I think certain long-standing mechanics could be preserved in some form. We could even create new mechanics around them. Unfortunately, the developers often act too bluntly — their approach to “fixing” these coincidental gameplay mechanics is usually shallow and heavy-handed. I’ve mentioned this in other posts as well.
My point has always been about finding a balance. If we try to “fix” absolutely everything — things like snowball offset, small tallbirds attacking big tallbirds, using a lantern to mine underground, or canceling animations through movement — then strictly speaking all of these could be patched out too. That’s why I’m saying I hope the developers look for a middle ground, instead of using extreme and heavy-handed solutions without thinking through the consequences. That’s the most frustrating part.

unfortunately there is no consensus on what balance actually means. if you ask three people you will get four different answers. each person will make their choices based on the way they and their immediate peers personally interact with the game and that varies greatly.

[adminaaassh]

5 minutes ago, gaymime said:

unfortunately there is no consensus on what balance actually means. if you ask three people you will get four different answers. each person will make their choices based on the way they and their immediate peers personally interact with the game and that varies greatly.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’d like to express it as gently as I can. I understand that some issues may need to be fixed in the future, and if there’s truly no alternative, then of course I believe everyone will understand.

Still, I feel that certain long-standing or gameplay-friendly tricks — the ones that make the game more enjoyable or give players different ways to play — are worth keeping in some form. A sandbox game thrives when it can welcome as many kinds of players as possible: some enjoy short-term goals, while others love the long-term challenges. Preserving a few of these unintended yet harmless mechanics can actually make the game richer.

Take the “floating statue” example I mentioned earlier. When it was fixed, it felt as though the developers hadn’t even tested the change before completely removing a gameplay trick that had existed for more than six years. When I saw their fix at the time, it took me only three minutes to think of an alternative solution — that’s why I felt so frustrated.

I genuinely believe that this particular trick was beneficial to the game: it didn’t affect short-term players at all, and it gave long-term players something interesting to work on. Unfortunately, the developers’ approach often feels overly simple and heavy-handed — just like the way they handled the fire-related changes.

Edited October 5, 2025 by adminaaassh

[adminaaassh]

I feel that my previous explanation wasn’t detailed enough, so let me clarify further: I understand that different people have different opinions. When conflicts arise, I believe we should look at the situation from the overall perspective of the game—specifically, whether it benefits the game’s development, whether it attracts more players, and whether it’s fun. I think this criterion is not difficult to apply and is actually extremely simple.

For example, take the case of the “floating statue” game technique. Previously, someone argued that it would affect the game’s sense of immersion. I countered by saying: if fixing it would negatively impact players, what about the spirit of exploration in the game, or removing an interesting game mechanic? Wouldn’t fixing it also ruin the sense of wonder and joy some players feel when they see these incredible constructions? And wouldn’t it be a kind of insult to the effort and enjoyment of those who built these structures? Everyone will have their own opinions on matters like this.

However, from the perspective of the game’s overall development, the issue is much easier to resolve. This game technique has virtually no impact on short-term players. By considering factors like the difficulty of obtaining materials and the minor inconveniences it may cause—and how to address them (even if developers don’t implement a so-called “fix,” I’ve already proposed extremely simple solutions, as well as other alternatives)—it becomes clear that this technique doesn’t affect short-term players at all. At the same time, it provides joy for long-term players and gives them goals, which is beneficial for the game’s development.

I have thought through all of these aspects: how it affects short-term players, long-term players, the magnitude of the impact, and whether, from the perspective of the game as a whole, the technique benefits the game. I have also long pointed out the shortcomings of the developers: they don’t fully understand the game, and their so-called fixes are extremely rough, simplistic, and fail to consider the consequences. I have suggested corresponding solutions to these developer issues. This is what I find truly frustrating.

[SilverSpoon]

16 hours ago, gaymime said:

the decade it has been out over 27 million people have gotten the game

Considering that this game is one in which the more you play more skins you are given that can be redeemed for cash, it is not appropriate to equate the number of downloads = the number of players.

If this were allowed, games with fewer downloads than Banana would be deemed to have fewer players than Banana.

Edited October 5, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[gaymime]

9 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Considering that this game is one in which the more you play more skins you are given that can be redeemed for cash, it is not appropriate to equate the number of downloads = the number of players.

If this were allowed, games with fewer downloads than Banana would be deemed to have fewer players than Banana.

that is more than a bit disingenuous. you are comparing a market-place manipulation game that is focused on cash trades and unstable market values with an actual multiplayer game with in-game checks, a stable market, and mandatory account verification.

[SilverSpoon]

49 minutes ago, gaymime said:

that is more than a bit disingenuous. you are comparing a market-place manipulation game that is focused on cash trades and unstable market values with an actual multiplayer game with in-game checks, a stable market, and mandatory account verification.

I'm being honest about this. There are about 3,560 marketable items in DST, with thousands of lower-rarity items listed on the market, and there are records of daily trading for each.

Yes, While it's certainly not as blatant as Banana, but given the large number of AFK servers, it still consider that there are a certain large number of number of non-players in DST who are simply farming for skins.

https://steamcommunity.com/market/search?appid=322330

---

Another source of information is ResamVi's DST DataViz, which currently counts 1,943 players. While I haven't checked the code, this number is significantly lower than the player count visible in the DST server list, so it's likely that AFKs and other suspicious players are excluded.

https://dst.resamvi.io/

---

Now, one more thing about DataViz. You should confirms that the number of players in China is the highest. (For reference, it's currently 6:30 AM on a Monday in Asia, a time when there are fewer players.)

For example, Y-axis building has primarily dominated China, and information about it rarely appears on YouTube or other English-speaking social media platforms (they use bilibili and Baidu). Therefore, please keep in mind that what you said "serves at best a few thousand people (but more practically much less)" may actually be far more than your imagine.

Edited October 5, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[gaymime]

On 10/5/2025 at 10:32 PM, SilverSpoon said:

I'm being honest about this. There are about 3,560 marketable items in DST, with thousands of lower-rarity items listed on the market, and there are records of daily trading for each.

Yes, While it's certainly not as blatant as Banana, but given the large number of AFK servers, it still consider that there are a certain large number of number of non-players in DST who are simply farming for skins.

https://steamcommunity.com/market/search?appid=322330

---

Another source of information is ResamVi's DST DataViz, which currently counts 1,943 players. While I haven't checked the code, this number is significantly lower than the player count visible in the DST server list, so it's likely that AFKs and other suspicious players are excluded.

https://dst.resamvi.io/

i use the dataviz too, but do know that the data there is limited. it is good for checking a sample-size average for steam players but it doesnt collect enough data to be useful in this conversation. you would do better to use steam's actual metrics;

https://steamcharts.com/app/322330

granted that is only steam, it does not measure people playing on other platforms or who play offline and counts housholds as a single instance of players(i used to be friends with someone who family-shared with a sibling and they counted as a single person because the account was tallied and the hours tallied but not that two people took turns) my ex used to be on my account too many years ago and we counted as one person and could not play at the same time as one of us running the game would lock the other person out of playing.

as for skin farming you are talking about a game that lets you get 8 skins through afking and 7 through daily log-ins not counting seasonal and post-beta grants(with many of those being loyals and timeless which are locked to an account). so that is 15 skins a week with most of the skins in the game going for about 4¥ . unless you are paying for extra phone lines to open duplicate steam accounts or paying for a second playstation you are limited to those grants and, i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most of the more pricy skins being proof of purchase and very old copies skins of a rarity that were not locked to an account(specifically heirloom/elegant skins mostly hallowed nights) which have less than a 2% droprate during their seasons.

 

 

 

but, for the sake of argument. let's make the worst bad-faith dishonest claim; half of all the purchased copies of the game are dupes or scamartists who dont play, no, let's make it two thirds, two thirds of every single purchases are totally fake and don't count leaving us with 900k real users. now we need to know how many people are using a glitch, let's just grab a number from somewhere, oh how about the number of people on steam who have played in the last 24 hours, lets say every last single user on steam uses, hm lets say the heavy items glitch, so that would be about 1 in every 13 users are currently using the heavy exploit. the heavy exploit causes items in the whirlpools to sometimes get stuck making them float inaccessibly in the sky, now, with this violently generous skewing of the numbers in your favour we are looking at what is basically 1 person out of every 13 benefits from the exploit while 12 out of every 13 do not benefit at all and all 13 people out of 13 run the risk of having the glitch mess up their game requiring them to rollback and lose progress or have an item stuck out of reach

imagine you are a game developer; would you think it is a good idea to tell more than 99% of the player that they have to live with a fixable glitch to spare the feelings of less than 1%? would you expect a game that has dozens of glitches and exploits to either leave every one of these glitches in or make a bespoke debug to allow the useage of said glitch even if it can really mess up the game in certain instances  to spare the feelings of a tiny fraction of players and do you really expect each one to get 5-50-500 hours of dev time to keep said glitches in for those tiny fraction of players and then maintain them in perpetuity for the rest of the game's life? 

 

i get your enthusiasm, i really do, but it just is not practical to ask for or to expect this kind of thing. klei isn't two guys in their bedroom making a 50mb game for their small handful of fans. this is a medium-sized company with a lot of employees managing multiple games with enough fans to populate a whole country and the game being talked about is large, complicated, unwieldy and has so many people who've coded things into it over the years that they've left actual notes in the code itself to keep track. please consider this from the position of the dev team or even from the position of people who are just regular casual players and want to play the game without the game erroring.

Edited October 8, 2025 by gaymime
two sentances got merged somehow

[adminaaassh]

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

i use the dataviz too, but do know that the data there is limited. it is good for checking a sample-size average for steam players but it doesnt collect enough data to be useful in this conversation. you would do better to use steam's actual metrics;

https://steamcharts.com/app/322330

granted that is only steam, it does not measure people playing on other platforms or who play offline and counts housholds as a single instance of players(i used to be friends with someone who family-shared with a sibling and they counted as a single person because the account was tallied and the hours tallied but not that two people took turns) my ex used to be on my account too many years ago and we counted as one person and could not play at the same time as one of us running the game would lock the other person out of playing.

as for skin farming you are talking about a game that lets you get 8 skins through afking and 7 through daily log-ins not counting seasonal and post-beta grants(with many of those being loyals and timeless which are locked to an account). so that is 15 skins a week with most of the skins in the game going for . unless you are paying for extra phone lines to open duplicate steam accounts or paying for a second playstation you are limited to those grants and, i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most of the skins in the game are about 4¥ with the more pricy skins being proof of purchase, very old copies skins of a rarity that were not locked to an account(specifically heirloom/elegant skins mostly hallowed nights) which have less than a 2% droprate during their seasons

 

 

 

but, for the sake of argument. let's make the worst bad-faith dishonest claim; half of all the purchased copies of the game are dupes or scamartists who dont play, no, let's make it two thirds, two thirds of every single purchases are totally fake and don't count leaving us with 900k real users. now we need to know how many people are using a glitch, let's just grab a number from somewhere, oh how about the number of people on steam who have played in the last 24 hours, lets say every last single user on steam uses, hm lets say the heavy items glitch, so that would be about 1 in every 13 users are currently using the heavy exploit. the heavy exploit causes items in the whirlpools to sometimes get stuck making them float inaccessibly in the sky, now, with this violently generous skewing of the numbers in your favour we are looking at what is basically 1 person out of every 13 benefits from the exploit while 12 out of every 13 do not benefit at all and all 13 people out of 13 run the risk of having the glitch mess up their game requiring them to rollback and lose progress or have an item stuck out of reach

imagine you are a game developer; would you think it is a good idea to tell more than 99% of the player that they have to live with a fixable glitch to spare the feelings of less than 1%? would you expect a game that has dozens of glitches and exploits to either leave every one of these glitches in or make a bespoke debug to allow the useage of said glitch even if it can really mess up the game in certain instances  to spare the feelings of a tiny fraction of players and do you really expect each one to get 5-50-500 hours of dev time to keep said glitches in for those tiny fraction of players and then maintain them in perpetuity for the rest of the game's life? 

 

i get your enthusiasm, i really do, but it just is not practical to ask for or to expect this kind of thing. klei isn't two guys in their bedroom making a 50mb game for their small handful of fans. this is a medium-sized company with a lot of employees managing multiple games with a whole country's worth of fans and the game being talked about is large, complicated, unwieldy and has so many people who've coded things in it over the years. please consider this from the position of the dev team or even from the position of people who are just regular casual players and want to play the game without the game erroring.

I think you could look at it from another perspective: don’t treat certain bugs as mere bugs, and don’t assume that players are just putting up with them—that’s an extreme way of thinking. Some of these so-called bugs could actually become part of the game’s mechanics and even bring joy to players.

 

For example, consider the snowball drifting bug, or something like how *Stardew Valley* turned the bug that let players climb to the top of the mountain into an Easter egg.

 

As for how to decide whether something can be treated as a feature, I think it’s quite simple: just ask whether it benefits the game. That’s usually very easy to judge.

For example, Terraria—if I remember correctly, it also had some duplication glitches and even something like void-walking (I’m not entirely sure since I haven’t played it myself; that’s just what a friend told me).

 

Minecraft’s line-duplication machines and rail-duplication machines are also good examples.

 

Of course, Don’t Starve Together actually imposes much stricter control over these item-duplication glitches.On this point, I actually don’t have much to say.

 

[gaymime]

3 hours ago, adminaaassh said:

I think you could look at it from another perspective: don’t treat certain bugs as mere bugs, and don’t assume that players are just putting up with them—that’s an extreme way of thinking. Some of these so-called bugs could actually become part of the game’s mechanics and even bring joy to players.

i have looked at it from this perspectives. that is why i started off with saying that if the game were finished i would be in agreement. for a completed game this sort of thing can very much, and often does, become part of the standard for a substantial part of the audience. in a completed game where the game is stable enough to function as intended there is room to leave in glitches and exploits. for a game that is not complete however and for a game that comes up against glitches that currently impede or, in the future are likely to impede gameplay the dev team should actually remove or stabilise glitches when they are known. a glitch that hurts the game however should not be kept in the game even if it can have an edge-case use.

[adminaaassh]

43 minutes ago, gaymime said:

i have looked at it from this perspectives. that is why i started off with saying that if the game were finished i would be in agreement. for a completed game this sort of thing can very much, and often does, become part of the standard for a substantial part of the audience. in a completed game where the game is stable enough to function as intended there is room to leave in glitches and exploits. for a game that is not complete however and for a game that comes up against glitches that currently impede or, in the future are likely to impede gameplay the dev team should actually remove or stabilise glitches when they are known. a glitch that hurts the game however should not be kept in the game even if it can have an edge-case use.

Actually, this comes down to an issue with the development team. They often don’t give much thought to some interesting gameplay mechanics. Even if such mechanics have existed for many years, they tend to dismiss them as malicious bugs, then rush to “fix” them in a crude way without any testing. That’s what frustrates me — they could have implemented a much better fix, or even turned it into a fun new feature. It’s like the ox from the Year of the Ox event: it was just part of a limited-time event back then, but now riding the ox has become an actual part of the game’s mechanics.

Moreover, this also comes down to selection and reflection. In fact, I think this part is relatively easy — you can usually figure it out in just a few minutes. To avoid any extreme interpretations, I’ll say this up front: I’m sure someone will argue, “If that’s what you mean, then the developers would have to carefully think about every single bug before fixing it — wouldn’t that seriously slow them down?” That’s not what I’m suggesting.

What I’ve been talking about is specifically those unintended gameplay mechanics that arise by accident or coincidence — things the developers never anticipated — and only in regard to game mechanics and gameplay. I’m not saying that every bug needs deep deliberation before being fixed.

Honestly, I feel that the developers’ designs are sometimes lacking, and the amount of content in each update is quite small. So whenever some unexpected or accidental gameplay mechanic appears, I can’t help but think about whether it’s actually beneficial to the game and whether it truly affects the balance or experience.

 

Just like with this post — when I pointed out the issue, I also left my own suggestions below it. The developers did see them, but I personally feel that things are rather disorganized within the team. There were times when they made beneficial changes and avoided heavy-handed fixes, but in the end it often seemed that poor communication among the developers led one of them to apply a crude, forceful fix.

So, at least in the Chinese-speaking community, this has become one of the reasons why players often choose not to report unexpected gameplay tricks or mechanics they discover.

In fact, the process of fixing this bug happened in stages. First, after I shared my feedback, the developers saw my post and made some adjustments that essentially destroyed the gameplay mechanic. However, after several rounds of tweaks, they still didn’t fully fix it.

So I published a second post. After that, it seemed that either there was poor communication within the team, or they decided that preserving the mechanic was just too much trouble. In the end, they took the players’ community feedback and went with the simplest, most heavy-handed approach — adding a line of code that completely removed the mechanic.(In fact, I asked my friend, and keeping this mechanic would actually have been very simple.)

 

Edited October 6, 2025 by adminaaassh

[Bumber64]

Klei is under no obligation to spend resources to re-fix a bug in a way you prefer. Development time is finite and programmers are expensive.

The updates have already slowed down. Let's not make it worse.

[gaymime]

ah, so it is non-negotiation with a side of basic ignorance of how game development works. i think this non-conversation has run its course.

[adminaaassh]

35 minutes ago, gaymime said:

ah, so it is non-negotiation with a side of basic ignorance of how game development works. i think this non-conversation has run its course.

I know very well how they work, and I understand exactly what you mean. At its core, the issue is that the developers don’t really understand the game’s community or what the players create and share. They simply don’t know the game deeply enough, and their way of handling things is overly simplistic — that’s all there is to it.

For me, every update they release adds very little content, yet sometimes those small changes have a huge impact on the entire world. Often their designs aren’t thorough enough. When certain features unintentionally create new gameplay mechanics and players get used to them, the developers don’t even realize it — and then they “fix” them in the most crude and heavy-handed way.

The reason I want to keep some of these unintended mechanics is that each update brings so little to explore in depth. Sometimes there’s no real game balance, and occasionally the new content becomes almost useless by the next update.

I fully understand your point — to put it simply, it’s that if we don’t fix some bugs now, they may lead to a whole chain of problems in the future. I get that completely.

What I’m arguing, though, is that these things can be evaluated and balanced. It’s not that hard; it just takes a few more minutes of thought. For example, the “floating statue” issue — I’m sorry to bring it up again, but it really is a perfect case. That technique had existed for years, and yet it was abruptly and crudely removed simply because the developers didn’t understand the community’s use of it. That’s what makes me feel frustrated.

If your answer is that there’s no need to set boundaries, then we really have to consider why some long-standing gameplay tricks (for example, the snowball offset) were never modified. That’s why I believe it’s necessary to establish clear criteria and to engage deeply with the player community to understand the diverse gameplay needs of different players.（Of course, this kind of extreme way of arguing isn’t ideal. My consistent view is to seek common ground while respecting differences, aim for balance among all sides, and make the game more diverse and engaging.）

My goal is actually quite simple: I just want the game to have more mechanics that are fun to play with. These aren’t programming errors — they’re outcomes that simply don’t match the developers’ original expectations. They don’t involve code-level bugs; they’re more like fascinating little “chemical reactions” that emerge unexpectedly.

Since this was machine-translated, I’m not sure whether my words might come across as insulting, offensive, or provocative. If they do, please let me know, and I will have the AI revise them. I did not intend to insult you in any way.

Edited October 6, 2025 by adminaaassh

[Bumber64]

I don't see any insult, but it seems to be the same point over and over without any deeper engagement. (I see the snowball thing yet again, but it's evidently not causing enough problems to need an immediate fix. It certainly doesn't affect the new whirlpool.)

It's a bit difficult to put a few more minutes of thought into a mechanic that the developer didn't know about because they didn't actually implement it in the first place. This "feature" relied on getting objects stuck in mid-air, and was removed because there was an issue with objects getting stuck in mid-air.

You can say they should reintroduce it as a proper feature, but that's not a few minutes of thought. That's a few months of having to consider what it does to all the existing features because you're asking them to take development responsibility for the feature.

So if there's no real discussion to be had here, I'll probably just refrain from this topic in the future to avoid repeating myself endlessly.

Edited October 6, 2025 by Bumber64

[Lovens]

On 10/6/2025 at 7:19 AM, adminaaassh said:

So, at least in the Chinese-speaking community, this has become one of the reasons why players often choose not to report unexpected gameplay tricks or mechanics they discover.

This is so true outside of it as well. 

Heck, I know of like 5 bugs I could report right now related to a certain niche in-game mechanic but I know reporting them will do more harm than good, with potentially patching one of the coolest and rarest interactions in the game most people don't even know about. So I choose to not report these bugs, fearing I will lose that unique interaction as well, and there is no in-game alternative to it, and I am almost 100% sure Klei won't bother implementing a replacement "intended but legit interaction" to this unique mechanic if they take away the "exploit one". Yet still any time they touch the subject of the exploit in any way when doing adjacent bug fixes, I fear they accidentally patch the interaction I enjoy. 

[SilverSpoon]

On 10/6/2025 at 7:50 AM, gaymime said:

imagine you are a game developer; would you think it is a good idea to tell more than 99% of the player that they have to live with a fixable glitch to spare the feelings of less than 1%? would you expect a game that has dozens of glitches and exploits to either leave every one of these glitches in or make a bespoke debug to allow the useage of said glitch even if it can really mess up the game in certain instances  to spare the feelings of a tiny fraction of players and do you really expect each one to get 5-50-500 hours of dev time to keep said glitches in for those tiny fraction of players and then maintain them in perpetuity for the rest of the game's life? 

On 10/6/2025 at 9:19 PM, Bumber64 said:

You can say they should reintroduce it as a proper feature, but that's not a few minutes of thought. That's a few months of having to consider what it does to all the existing features because you're asking them to take development responsibility for the feature.

I'm saying that it's wrong to say "You're in very minority, so accept it" when we don't know actually how many players are affected by this.

Your statements about "about 1 in every 13 users" or "less than 1% of players" are based on the false assumption that "all 27 million people who have purchased DST so far are still playing it." Currently, the number of concurrent DST connections is about 1,600 according to ResamVi's DST DataViz, and about 60,000 according to STEAMCHARTS, but I don't know, and I don't think you can know either, how many of those people have been affected by the removal of 3D building.

Depending on the percentage of players affected by removing 3D building, the game developers to invest or not how development time into it are both of reasonable for, and actual the fact that they chose to keep command-based 3D building suggests that the number of players actually doing 3D building is much higher than you're saying or thinking.

Another thing, it shouldn't both of underestimate or overestimate the amount of development time required to maintain a 3D building.

On 10/6/2025 at 7:50 AM, gaymime said:

i get your enthusiasm, i really do, but it just is not practical to ask for or to expect this kind of thing. klei isn't two guys in their bedroom making a 50mb game for their small handful of fans. this is a medium-sized company with a lot of employees managing multiple games with enough fans to populate a whole country and the game being talked about is large, complicated, unwieldy and has so many people who've coded things into it over the years that they've left actual notes in the code itself to keep track. please consider this from the position of the dev team or even from the position of people who are just regular casual players and want to play the game without the game erroring.

Well... I've never done 3D building, I don't plan on doing it, and I even said it was obviously a bug and it's no help if it removed, even said the option to maintain command was correct.

However, I think that implementing a facility like "Pedestal" and making it a real feature would be the option that would make everyone happy. On the other hand I also think that keeping it in the current command would be a reasonable option.

Speaking of my "enthusiasm"... I'm not into 3D building, but I have an extremely strong enthusiasm of aversion to Forum becoming a place where people are disturbed to express their opinions "despite they are still maintaining a moderate attitude"

Edited October 8, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Bumber64]

5 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

I'm saying that it's wrong to say "You're in very minority, so accept it" when we don't know actually how many players are affected by this.

It's not an advertised feature. It's not on the wiki. It takes a lot of time and effort even if you know what you're doing.

I think the claim that it's a small minority of players is more believable than the alternative.

5 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Well... I've never done 3D building, I don't plan on doing it

Case in point. You weren't going to do it even knowing it exists.

The other thing is that there's an existing 3D building mod, and you can undo the fix with a mod. Those upset that they can't do it without mods are an even smaller number.

[gaymime]

10 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Your statements about "about 1 in every 13 users" or "less than 1% of players" are based on the false assumption that "all 27 million people who have purchased DST so far are still playing it." Currently, the number of concurrent DST connections is about 1,600 according to ResamVi's DST DataViz, and about 60,000 according to STEAMCHARTS, but I don't know, and I don't think you can know either, how many of those people have been affected by the removal of 3D building.

you literally could not have read what i wrote and still honestly come to this conclusion, even if you are not able to read numbers you still would struggle greatly to extrapolate this from what i said. you need to read what other people write before you reply to them.  also "900,000" is not the same number as "2,700,000".

10 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Depending on the percentage of players affected by removing 3D building, the game developers to invest or not how development time into it are both of reasonable for, and actual the fact that they chose to keep command-based 3D building suggests that the number of players actually doing 3D building is much higher than you're saying or thinking.

they did not. this is incorrect. they are removing it and are looking to make a debug command(something new and separate) because the staff found the creative use of this exploit to be very interesting and novel. this exploit is not being kept in the game because it is breaking part of the game AND the consideration had nothing to do with the size of the community but was based on the effort the people using the exploit put into making something creative.

Edited October 8, 2025 by gaymime
incorrect tense

[SilverSpoon]

14 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

It's not an advertised feature. It's not on the wiki. It takes a lot of time and effort even if you know what you're doing.

I think the claim that it's a small minority of players is more believable than the alternative.

14 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Case in point. You weren't going to do it even knowing it exists.

The other thing is that there's an existing 3D building mod, and you can undo the fix with a mod. Those upset that they can't do it without mods are an even smaller number.

I don't disagree that 3D builders are a minority, but I don't agree that they are a "minority that can be ignored."

To begin with, I don't like the concept of a minority that can be ignored at first, and neither you nor I should know the total number of players who build in 3D and are they actually as tiny a minority as people say.

9 hours ago, gaymime said:

you literally could not have read what i wrote and still honestly come to this conclusion, even if you are not able to read numbers you still would struggle greatly to extrapolate this from what i said. you need to read what other people write before you reply to them.

What are you talking about?

Could you please tell me specifically what you think wrong? There is obviously a language barrier between us, and if you wouldn't tell me specifically what you think wrong, it would make communication even more difficult.

I've diligently read everything written here, both machine translated and my own translated, so I feel it a bit insulting to be told "you're wrong because you didn't read."

9 hours ago, gaymime said:

also "900,000" is not the same number as "2,700,000".

This should be number you said... 2,700,000 x 1/3 =900,000

On 10/6/2025 at 7:50 AM, gaymime said:

but, for the sake of argument. let's make the worst bad-faith dishonest claim; half of all the purchased copies of the game are dupes or scamartists who dont play, no, let's make it two thirds, two thirds of every single purchases are totally fake and don't count leaving us with 900k real users.

 

9 hours ago, gaymime said:

they did not. this is incorrect. they are removing it and are looking to make a debug command(something new and separate) because the staff found the creative use of this exploit to be very interesting and novel. this exploit is not being kept in the game because it is breaking part of the game AND the consideration had nothing to do with the size of the community but was based on the effort the people using the exploit put into making something creative.

Only the developers know which of my reasons or yours is actually correct, but what I trying said said that, they actually did what you said, "each one to get 5-50-500 hours of dev time to keep said glitches in for those tiny fraction of players and then maintain them in perpetuity for the rest of the game's life?".

Edited October 9, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[gaymime]

On 10/9/2025 at 8:19 AM, SilverSpoon said:

I don't disagree that 3D builders are a minority, but I don't agree that they are a "minority that can be ignored."

please don't conflate "not the sole arbiter of what should and should not be allowed" with "ignored". there seems to be this idea floating around that unless the dev team capitulates fully and with the correct deference that they are somehow ignoring the community. one can be heard without having to be given reign.

On 10/9/2025 at 8:19 AM, SilverSpoon said:

Could you please tell me specifically what you think wrong? There is obviously a language barrier between us, and if you wouldn't tell me specifically what you think wrong, it would make communication even more difficult.

i used generous unreasonable estimations wholly in your favour to give your argument the best chance that it could. i deferred to your claim that not every purchase game was a player and so i only counted 1/4th of the 2.7mil (900,000). you said we could not know how many people use any given glitch so i deferred again and chose the highest number of possible people who had been marked as having played that day as ALL using the glitch. even with this incredibly skewed and generous set of numbers it still only came out to 1 in 13. even working from the idea that the glitch used was wildly popular and commonly used(which it clearly is not considering how few people have even heard of it hand how few of those people actually use the glitch) it is still too costly to try and preserve. in reality there are many more players who are active players than the measurement of a single day of play and the statistical likelihood that that many players actively use any glitch let alone one as obscure as this one is ludicrous so while neither of us have exact numbers we both know that there is no evidence to show that most of the playerbase has ever used the glitch. and while you might not like it you should be well enough aware of how game development works to understand that supporting a rarely-used game-breaking bug for the benefit of only a small part of the community is not appropriate to ask when there is so much necessary and important work to focus on instead.

On 10/9/2025 at 8:19 AM, SilverSpoon said:

Only the developers know which of my reasons or yours is actually correct, but what I trying said said that, they actually did what you said, "each one to get 5-50-500 hours of dev time to keep said glitches in for those tiny fraction of players and then maintain them in perpetuity for the rest of the game's life?".

i know this wont be a satisfactory reply but i spent the weekend working on art assets and playing games with my boyfriend. i kind of dont have the desire to keep talking speculation. you are right that neither of us know what klei thinks or if anything either of us said was correct and after stepping away from the forums for a couple days i am not really feeling enthusiastic about continuing this part

[Popian]

8 hours ago, gaymime said:

it is still too costly to try and preserve

Is it? It still works to some capacity, except it looks like there are multiple safeguards to prevent one from getting there when attempting it. This is not mentioned in the update note.

Quote

• Fixed heavy objects getting stuck floating in the air when unloaded.

Also, note that the actual problem was not fixed:

On 9/18/2025 at 8:52 AM, Popian said:

From the disconnect sound during the black screen, it sounds like Wanda entered caves before the object dropped in the water, leaving it suspended in midair. What is expected is for us to see the object drop in and Wanda entering the whirlpool, which can probably be done with a proper transition or delay.

Including expectations on how things should be can influence how a problem is solved, especially when there's room for misinterpretation.

Edited October 12, 2025 by Popian