Discussion on difficulty vs consent

[loopuleasa]

DST is a game undergoing constant updates.

Some of those updates introduce mechanics to existing worlds that increase difficulty without most casual folks requesting it.

I noticed a spike on people who just like to chill on their world suddenly getting unsolicited difficulty additions (the great depth worm, the lunar birds).

Most casual DST players just like to hang out and escape from reality playing a cool game on a world they are attached to.

My point is this:

• If a new threat is added to the game, the design of its introduction needs to be unlocked via a deliberate action that requires input from the player to consent to the difficulty increase

The post-rift content requires you to enable rifts. That was fine. But by now most longterm worlds have rifts enabled as the default experience.

Many people signed that contract knowing what they get, without considering future updates.

I for one welcome future difficulty increasing mechanics being thrown at me, but I am in the minority.

New additional post-rift or pre-rift threats need the player to go to them, or do something to "stir the hornets nest" to launch the threat, instead of the threat being overlaid on top with a game update.

Many people also enable mods that lessen or increase difficulty, and that consent is done on the mod installation step.

The game is a good game as is, for many.

Adding new content on top needs to be designed carefully to not break existing experiences.

For an example, my girlfriend literally does not engage at all with the new skill trees, and that is fine. It's complexity that can be skipped.

Similarly, difficulty increases need to be encountered deliberately by way of player actions "looking for trouble".

 

 

Thanks for reading

[Reiko24]

The humble world configuration options:

[Milordo]

I really really really don't understand the slander towards GDW. By that logic, why nothing has been said towards deerclops or bearger, which are far worse in destruction and new player experience???

Anyway, I'm not surprisingly against 100% of what you're discussin, but I would just change the method, instead of asking of consent lol, AND it would touch everything instead of only new content (like winter, spring, deerclops, hounds, ecc....). It is something that I already thought deeply 2 years ago.

Edited November 4, 2025 by Milordo

[Hungry French]

2 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

DST — это игра, которая постоянно обновляется.

Некоторые из этих обновлений добавляют в существующие миры механики, которые повышают сложность без согласия большинства обычных пользователей.

Я заметил, что у людей, которые просто любят отдыхать в своём мире, внезапно появились непрошеные сложности (глубоководный червь, лунные птицы).

Большинству обычных игроков в DST просто нравится проводить время и отвлекаться от реальности, играя в крутую игру в мире, к которому они привязаны.

Моя точка зрения заключается в следующем:

• Если в игру добавляется новая угроза, то для её появления необходимо выполнить определённое действие, требующее от игрока согласия на повышение сложности

Для доступа к контенту после разлома вам нужно включить разломы. Это было нормально. Но сейчас в большинстве долгосрочных проектов разломы включены по умолчанию.

Многие люди подписали этот контракт, зная, что они получат, и не задумываясь о будущих обновлениях.

Я, например, только за то, чтобы в будущем мне усложняли механику, но я в меньшинстве.

Чтобы активировать новые дополнительные угрозы после или до разлома, игроку нужно подойти к ним или сделать что-то, чтобы «разбудить осиное гнездо», а не просто увидеть угрозу в обновлении игры.

Многие также устанавливают моды, которые снижают или повышают сложность, и дают согласие на это на этапе установки мода.

Для многих игра хороша сама по себе.

Добавление нового контента поверх существующего должно быть тщательно продумано, чтобы не нарушить привычный порядок.

Например, моя девушка буквально не взаимодействует с новыми деревьями навыков, и это нормально. Это сложность, которую можно обойти.

Точно так же повышение сложности должно быть намеренным результатом действий игрока, который «ищет неприятностей».

 

 

Спасибо за чтение

There should be different modes. Survival. Normal mode. And Creative.
Difficulties should be for those who want it and naturally unavoidable difficulties. The game should not be difficult because of the player's actions, but the difficulty should meet the player by knocking on his door. Great Work and Lunar Buzzard are almost the only survival mechanics that have appeared in the 10 years since RoG.
These are some of my favorite updates.... Unavoidable threats are cool.

The game has become too much of a base-building simulator... Thanks to mods like UM, which make the game a true survival experience.

[Cassielu]

The point is that Klei should know Don't Starve is a sandbox survival game, not an ACT battle game. Most players won't enjoy these forced stupid brain-dead WASD battles, not to mention that they don't offer any valuable loots. Spending energy dealing with them instead of continuing pleasure cycle of survival game is a loss , a punishment in itself,

The fact of these Mob's spawned itself is a bad thing, make the players expect way to "defeat this threat" is to prevent them from spawn in some way, rather than take this punishment every time.

Many of the From Beyond mobs are simply not qualified survival game threats.

Edited November 4, 2025 by Cassielu

[Popian]

I would not equate ignorance over what something does to difficulty. There is no need to experiment when things aren't forced on you, and with the online multiplayer aspect you can ask others if things don't make sense.

The things listed do not demand much of a casual player, as running away from the Great Depths Worms despawns it, moonstorm birds can be tanked/run by/bonked with a cane as an easy optional chore to make paths safer, and Buzzards are not a threat when you maintain a safe distance (they even go as far as to simplify later Hound waves, as Horror Hounds reliably take fewer hits and are more spaced out for avoiding stunlock (or you can ignore them and make them something else's problem)).

11 hours ago, Cassielu said:

forced

Even the lunar trio are optional after you've gotten the drops you want. You only need so many of Deerclops and Bearger's drops and you can burn the corpses if you don't want the crystal versions.

11 hours ago, Cassielu said:

ACT battle

This is also optional too, did you know Bearger can be used to chop/mine? Armored Bearger does that better in multiple ways, but comes with more risk in doing so.

11 hours ago, Cassielu said:

brain-dead WASD

This is a side effect of a decision that was made many years ago, what else are they going to ask you to do, swap items? I find it refreshing that they come up with new ways to approach things, the bar for mastery changes from passing with fewer resources to maximizing the number of hits in what windows you make/get.

Keep in mind that in Deerclops and Bearger's case they come to you so they are more likely to face the casual players, who already have the option to not face them, but if the casual players want to they can discover that there is more that they can do if they're willing to try.

Edited November 5, 2025 by Popian

[Evelo]

I am in the extreme minority, maybe even the only one in believing, resetting the world is important to Don't Starve as a whole. Starting new worlds each update is vital imo.

[Mike23Ua]

5 minutes ago, Evelo said:

I am in the extreme minority, maybe even the only one in believing, resetting the world is important to Don't Starve as a whole. Starting new worlds each update is vital imo.

Honestly it depends on the type of update, if it’s just skill trees that do not really need new content to interact with.. then I’m not starting a new game world just to get Wilson’s magic torch toss.

BUT! If it’s a big update with new resources and mobs, I will 100% start a new game world so those things can be generated into the game world in their fully intended size & functionality without having to try to retrofit itself somewhere into my world in more compact sizes.

[Milordo]

22 minutes ago, Evelo said:

I am in the extreme minority, maybe even the only one in believing, resetting the world is important to Don't Starve as a whole. Starting new worlds each update is vital imo.

It is. It always has been, and it always will be. I bet you would be incredibly curious to know each story of my closed community and how each one of them took on Don't Starve. I had even a recent group, of two new players, who deliberately chosed to reset their world after 200-ish day because they wasted so much resources, that they wanted to start a new fresh world to fight and defeat well Dragonfly. And they did.....and they won. On the second year. This shocked me even more (and couldn't be even more happier for them, I will never forget this part of the adventure with them <3), because they're even an expection in my community history, as it always resulted = people accept resets only on their journey during the Don't Starve "tutorial", aka the first year. Which still proves all our discussion. The strong design of base Ds leads people to reset, after dying badly to their first winter for example, to improve and do faster, better, stronger!

Edited November 5, 2025 by Milordo

[Dingle]

31 minutes ago, Popian said:

This is also optional too, did you know Bearger can be used to chop/mine? Armored Bearger does that better in multiple ways, but comes with more risk in doing so.

I would fight Armored Bearger in my worlds for awhile, but then I realized, much like Bearger, it's way better to think of them as a tool instead of a boss fight.

Now I just consider Armored Bearger a way to get over double the logs and living logs that I could before. Maybe have him beat up a boss for me.

Same with the Crystal Vultures. You can think of them as a nuisance and chore, or you can see what they can do as a tool. And they can do a lot.

The vultures are great because this is really what captures the appeal of Don't Starve: using its mechanics in interesting ways. Especially the mechanics that look like they're against you. With creativity, they don't have to be, until you accidentally kill yourself with whatever you're trying to mess with (this is also the appeal of Don't Starve).

[Cassielu]

1 hour ago, Popian said:

Even the lunar trio are optional after you've gotten the drops you want. You only need so many of Deerclops and Bearger's drops and you can burn the corpses if you don't want the crystal versions.

Lunar trio has never been disliked by the community (although I personally more like old ANR style boss rather than them). I'm mainly talking about are Brightshade, GDW, Lurking Nightmare, Buzzard and so on that have received a bad response from the community.

Edited November 5, 2025 by Cassielu

[-Variant]

I feel like a huge part of this is knowingly getting into a live serve/ongoing game. Updates will come that change things and I believe its important to recognize that. Nothing will stay the same forever, and things can come (and go!) that'll shake things up. Not always in ways you like, but that's just how things go.

DST is 1000% more forgiving in this since being a game with every expansive world settings. Most options you can outright disable, if you wish. Other on-going games don't quite have this luxury. The modding scene is a major PC boon, too.

There's a lot of good points I'm seeing in this thread. I like this take a lot.
 

23 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Same with the Crystal Vultures. You can think of them as a nuisance and chore, or you can see what they can do as a tool. And they can do a lot.

I think people are quick with knee-jerk reactions to a lot of these new "non-consensual" threats and don't give them enough time to settle in, or explore for themselves. This here is a good take that I like! 

16 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

Similarly, difficulty increases need to be encountered deliberately by way of player actions "looking for trouble".

I feel like the game needs BOTH types to have a healthy existence. Having more ways of actively seeking out new content for those that want new things, and threats, and whatnot, and stuff that can be added into the "core loop" of the game.
There's people that like going out for their threats, and others who'd rather the threats come to them. I love additions like the GDW and the new Buzzards, they scratch that itch I've felt the game has been missing. It'll be hard to balance, but not impossible!

[Jakepeng99]

On 11/4/2025 at 9:33 AM, loopuleasa said:

DST is a game undergoing constant updates.

Some of those updates introduce mechanics to existing worlds that increase difficulty without most casual folks requesting it.

I noticed a spike on people who just like to chill on their world suddenly getting unsolicited difficulty additions (the great depth worm, the lunar birds).

Most casual DST players just like to hang out and escape from reality playing a cool game on a world they are attached to.

My point is this:

• If a new threat is added to the game, the design of its introduction needs to be unlocked via a deliberate action that requires input from the player to consent to the difficulty increase

The post-rift content requires you to enable rifts. That was fine. But by now most longterm worlds have rifts enabled as the default experience.

Many people signed that contract knowing what they get, without considering future updates.

I for one welcome future difficulty increasing mechanics being thrown at me, but I am in the minority.

New additional post-rift or pre-rift threats need the player to go to them, or do something to "stir the hornets nest" to launch the threat, instead of the threat being overlaid on top with a game update.

Many people also enable mods that lessen or increase difficulty, and that consent is done on the mod installation step.

The game is a good game as is, for many.

Adding new content on top needs to be designed carefully to not break existing experiences.

For an example, my girlfriend literally does not engage at all with the new skill trees, and that is fine. It's complexity that can be skipped.

Similarly, difficulty increases need to be encountered deliberately by way of player actions "looking for trouble".

 

 

Thanks for reading

dst isnt intended to be a chill game.

 

Yes it can be a chill game if you know how to chill, I do this sometimes as a character like Webber and just farm spiders and base sit to chill, but we shouldn’t cater to this and ruin the game for everyone else.

As said, world settings.

On 11/4/2025 at 9:33 AM, loopuleasa said:

Similarly, difficulty increases need to be encountered deliberately by way of player actions "looking for trouble".

That’s what riffs is.

it gives you a big ominous warning message going on about how you will regret this and the world will get harder.

Edited November 5, 2025 by Jakepeng99

[Uedo]

Hasn't there already been 1000's of threads on this exact topic? Not that I mind, but the forums just generally recycle the same topics year-in-year-out ad nauseum.  

[Jakepeng99]

4 minutes ago, Uedo said:

Hasn't there already been 1000's of threads on this exact topic? Not that I mind, but the forums just generally recycle the same topics year-in-year-out ad nauseum.  

The forums have been kinda dead for a recent while, it even happens in betas now.

[Frosty_Mentos]

The consent is opening rifts

The difficulty adjustment is world settings

It's simple as.

The worm though is inconsistent and unreliable spawning wise imo, I feel like it needs adjustments. I only seen it two or three times since launch, kinda sad, but kinda okay with it (I just want it's loot ok??)

[Edible Coal]

i think people just think rift threats are too boring and uninteresting, they just feel like the dev want to make things harder without careful considerations, they dont impact how you approach the game other then another mob you need to spend time to mow down

[Cruvimaster]

I realize that here on the forum people panic before actually knowing the changes brought by Klei, which takes a few days.

This latest update actually made the game easier, contrary to what people are saying. The devs completely removed the downside of the crown with the end of the Inimical Gestalts. As for the Crystal-Crested Buzzard, it's extremely easy to exterminate them with a single spider.

[Dingle]

Just now, Cruvimaster said:

I realize that here on the forum people panic before actually knowing the changes brought by Klei, which takes a few days.

This latest update actually made the game easier, contrary to what people are saying. The devs completely removed the downside of the crown with the end of the Inimical Gestalts. As for the Crystal-Crested Buzzard, it's extremely easy to exterminate them with a single spider.

Post your video!

It's also easy to ditch them with a wormhole or sinkhole, if you don't want to take the effort of catching a spider.

[loopuleasa]

33 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

The difficulty adjustment is world settings

Less than 1% of players mess with world settings.

What matters is in-game actions.

[Cruvimaster]

10 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Post your video!

 

Spoiler

 

 

10 minutes ago, Dingle said:

It's also easy to ditch them with a wormhole or sinkhole, if you don't want to take the effort of catching a spider.

Yes.

Edited November 5, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[Lovens]

On 11/4/2025 at 10:33 AM, Milordo said:

I really really really don't understand the slander towards GDW. By that logic, why nothing has been said towards deerclops or bearger, which are far worse in destruction and new player experience???

Anyway, I'm not surprisingly against 100% of what you're discussin, but I would just change the method, instead of asking of consent lol, AND it would touch everything instead of only new content (like winter, spring, deerclops, hounds, ecc....). It is something that I already thought deeply 2 years ago.

Deerclops and Bearger arrive once per year and are unique bosses. They appear at predictable times and can also be countered by either 1) Having Bearger alive from past autumn, then new one won't spawn 2) Launching hostile flares to summon Deerclops at the beginning of winter so you can kill it and not worry about it for a year. In the event that you still somehow got caught by surprise with their warning, there are ways to escape them by using telelocator staff on any character and therefore leaving the place where you currently are. You can also step on a boat to reset the timer, or escape into the caves if you have a cave entrance nearby - this also resets the timer. Deerclops is also a great boss for fighting - as long as its aggroed on you, you can fight it directly in your base and it won't destroy the structures even if visually its attack appears to be on top of them. 

GDW can appear several times per year (potentially) and is unpredictable. You can never know if the next wave will contain it or not, unless it just happened recently in the last wave. You always live with this constant looming threat and can never be truly free in what you are doing in the caves or how you plan your time there. You can't just go and clear ruins on a whim on a non-teleport character on the other half of the map away from your base. Being in the caves on a non-teleport character overall is just a death sentence to your base, rare items or unique non-renewable spawners. GDW is the most destructive boss of the three as well. The sheer size of the arena required to be free of items/structures to fight it with no casualties is insane. Bearger will smash the ground and only destroy things in a small radius around it. In theory you can only sacrifice like a 4*4 space to fight it and contain the destruction in that area. And after all it's only the food will be be deleted forever by bearger. The structures can be rebuilt. GDW has multiple body segments each with destructive AoE attack that damage and destroy everything they touch, and the head with AoE attack and ability to forever delete any item from the game if it eats it.

GDW way too strong and tough of a fight too for a Varglet-type of recurring frequent encounter. Players are not allowed to make any mistakes in this fight, you can not leave it and come back later better prepared - you have to fight it where it caught you by surprise and use what you had on you, or it will despawn if you leave. You are not allowed to die to it, you will forever lose the items from your grave if the worm eats them. It's easy to get stunlocked by the segments with one misstep and get punished by taking 100000 damage from the boss unable to move or do anything about it. Fighting it as a Wanda is death sentence, you are not allowed to take any damage, the attacks will one shot her even with strong armor if she's old. Being swallowed as any character doesn't give you any way to recover from the attack since you take damage from the attack, it has long animation and you don't have access to your inventory to use emergency heal, or equip a spare armor piece. You are just helpless and sit there watching it happen and praying your character will make it through alive enough and not get stunlocked by the segments upon being spit out. Not to mention how huge the hp pool of this boss is for a recurring wave-based enemy. 

GDW also happens in the caves which are super barren compared to the surface. On the surface a lot of opportunities present themselves for mob-on-mob violence. You can deal with giants by making them fight against other bosses or enemies. You get treeguards (evergreen forests are very ubiquitous), spiders, bees, pigs, merms, tentacles, tallbirds, hounds, ghosts, beefalo, volt goats. Depending on your world gen you can drag your freshly spawned giant through an evergreen forest, a reed trap or a killer bee biome, or bring it to a hound/tallfort to dispose of it quickly. You can do a hunt and spawn a Varg and use it against the boss. You also have options of making it fight against twins or eye of terror, or dragonfly/bee queen/scrappy if it happens to be nearby. Even lunar mutant bosses will fight against each other! Caves lack most of these options and you need to go out of your way to set up traps you could use against GDW (say, make tentacle fields by reading books or plant evergreen trees in random spaces where you might encounter GDW). Toadstool is a great way to deal with GDW except that his arenas are usually so far away that you have no time to reach it before GDW spawns (unless you have one near your base like I do, that's how we deal with GDW at the cost of never fighting Toad again). AG is a decent match for it as well but only if you happened to get caught in the labyrinth or nearby ruins branch and are 100% confident you will pick up AG's horn before GDW eats it. 

Now the strength of the boss is something I'd be willing to tolerate if it came once per year in a fixed predictable manner like a seasonal boss (say, in spring, since it's raining a lot and it's a worm and worms have a tendency to surface after the rain). I would also have 0 problems with this boss if it was a territorial boss like Toadstool or Nightmare Werepig, came with its own dedicated arena and had a respawn timer of 20 days. The fight would still be tough and unforgiving but you would be the one actively seeking for it, so the difficulty and all the things I don't like about GDW listed above would be well justified. I would add one more change to it though, I think GDW should drop all the items it swallowed upon its death. It makes no sense they are instantly gone forever the moment he swallowed them. The food and spoilables could be returned at nearly rotten state (that's fine), the creatures consumed can be returned as spoiled meats. But realistically all the other matter that takes ages to disintegrate (say, a thulesite crown, or rocks, or wood, or gems) should not be digested so quickly. Even lureplant doesn't delete items right away, it takes time to digest them and returns them if you kill it fast enough. 

To summarise: GDW a somewhat good design/difficulty for a raid type of boss with its own setpiece, or one per year seasonal encounter with semi-predictable timing. But it's not a balanced or fair design for a recurring unpredictable wave-based encounter that is randomly forced upon players. I don't think anyone would be happy if bearger would replace varglets in hound waves - this is essentially the same. 

P. S.: Yes, I know GDW can be turned off in the settings or be despawned instead of fighting it. But it has somewhat good drops that can't be gotten somewhere else (fossils and now boulderbough seeds) so I would like to fight it to get those drops. I just don't like how I'm so limited in my options when it comes to encountering it, how destructive/unbalanced it is for a wave-type enemy, and how unforgiving the fight is with no room for mistakes whatsoever. That's why I opt to playing as Winona now for spending time in the caves and avoid them like plague on any other character (Wortox would be a decent pick but he's not my jam, and Wanda used to be my fave but is now pretty much ruined by all the rift additions, and gets outclassed by Winona in terms of utility). And the solution for fighting it is that once I hear the growls, I teleport to the Toad arena that has Toad in it, and let Toad kill GDW for me. When I get caught off-guard by this boss almost always my inventory is full of items because I wss doing something in the caves, and then got rudely interrupted by forcing a raid level boss on me. I barely have enough time to get to the arena, let alone free my inventory and be ready for a raid level boss fight. I simply don't want to be forced to risk losing my full inventory of items forever to a single mistake in this boss fight. 

Edited November 5, 2025 by Lovens

[Bumber64]

33 minutes ago, Lovens said:

Now the strength of the boss is something I'd be willing to tolerate if it came once per year in a fixed predictable manner like a seasonal boss

Most players would be lucky to see even 1 GDW per year. You have to spend the entire year underground to make that likely.

[Cruvimaster]

51 minutes ago, Lovens said:

GDW can appear several times per year (potentially) and is unpredictable.

For me, this is the hardest boss in the game. And the difficulty isn't in the combat. The difficulty is making him appear for me. My dream would be for Klei to allow summoning him after activating gunpowder.

[Cuernito.]

so a casual is a player with an old world with a megabase? i think those "casual players" are more like players that learned about old mechanics of the game but they refuse to create a new world and dont wanna learn about the new stuff. I think klei new to focus on new players that want to make a world from zero, and those folks need an easier time, DS franchise has always been hard and frustrating but DST in my opinion should be diferent. The relaxed mode needs more additions, like no droping any item on death(which is in my experience with new people one of the more annoying mechanics).