Regenerating walls

[PonyOfApocalips]

Recently, I've been thinking a bit about game design, specifically the direction the game is heading and something that could help resolve the conflict between an uncompromising survival game and a sandbox.

One of the problems I see is that developers are afraid to add new threats to Constant with them being devastating to our bases. In my opinion, this severely limits the content they add to the game. On the other hand, I understand that after creating the perfect combination of walls and turf, which are the most frequently used design elements, it's annoying when a boss, penguin, or vultures walk over them, and we have to spend a lot of time rebuilding them, while also remembering how high the wall was.

So, getting to the heart of the matter, I think that after such a long gamę existence, self-regenerating walls would be a good solution. We could get some endgame item that, when used on a wall, "locks" its height. If the wall is damaged, it will regenerate to that height over time.

DON'T MISUNDERSTAND ME. This regeneration should be small enough that even a regular spider can still damage the wall and break through it -There could be a mechanic where if any nearby wall takes damage, the regeneration stops for 30 seconds for all walls in the area. But it should be large enough that the walls will return to their original state a few days after the boss incident.

 

[Erathia]

This line of argument has one fundamental problem, it is written from the perspective of a very narrow group of players who equate “good design” with constant difficulty and perpetual punishment for investing time into a base. It is a narrative aimed mainly at people who enjoy playing under nonstop pressure and frustration a 24/7 survival mindset and that is simply not the majority of the community. The game has long been sustained primarily by players who build megabases. These are the people who spend hundreds of hours in a single world, who buy skins, and who keep the game alive long-term. For this group, repeating the same annoying event for the fiftieth time  especially when it can randomly destroy parts of their base  is not a challenge, it’s a nuisance.If a mechanic does nothing but periodically force the player to rebuild the same things in the same way, that is not difficulty  it is design friction. A good mechanic provides tools to manage frustration, especially in the endgame, rather than demanding endless repetition of identical repair tasks.The issue with your idea is not that it introduces convenience, but that it is internally inconsistent and design-wise hollow. If a wall is supposed to “regenerate,” yet can still be broken by something as basic as spiders and stops regenerating whenever there is any nearby threat, then in practice it solves no real problem. The most frustrating situations in the game don’t come from a wall being slightly damaged, but from random events or bosses destroying parts of a base while the player is absent, or doing so repeatedly. In that context, minimal regeneration that restores walls “after a few days” is cosmetic, not a meaningful mechanic.Moreover, if even basic mobs can reliably destroy these walls, the entire concept of “locking wall height” becomes illusory. The player still has to react exactly as before, except now there is the added issue of a false sense of security , which in a sandbox game is worse than having none at all. The problem is not that the game becomes “too easy,” but that a portion of the community believes their preference for constant difficulty should be the only valid vision of the game. That ignores the fact that sandbox games thrive on diverse playstyles, not only the most masochistic ones and that new mechanics and design directions should generally be aimed at the majority of players, not a small minority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PonyOfApocalips]

9 minutes ago, Erathia said:

In that context, minimal regeneration that restores walls “after a few days” is cosmetic, not a meaningful mechanic.Moreover, if even basic mobs can reliably destroy these walls, the entire concept of “locking wall height” becomes illusory. The player still has to react exactly as before, except now there is the added issue of a false sense of security.

The player still needs to eliminate the threat- I don't know what exactly would be problem with killing an enemy in a video game

And after eliminating it, they don't have to spend resources or time restoring the walls to their original appearance. Adding regeneration without these limitations would result in what the developers feared when adding the walls for the first time: the game would turn into a bunker-building simulator.

[Erathia]

8 minutes ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

The player still needs to eliminate the threat- I don't know what exactly would be problem with killing an enemy in a video game

And after eliminating it, they don't have to spend resources or time restoring the walls to their original appearance. Adding regeneration without these limitations would result in what the developers feared when adding the walls for the first time: the game would turn into a bunker-building simulator.

Killing the threat is not the issue, no one is claiming that enemies shouldn’t be fought. The problem is that simply eliminating the threat does not address the real source of frustration. The frustration doesn’t come from combat, but from repetitive maintenance and forced rebuilding.

Sometimes I get the impression that people who play this game lack even a basic level of introspection. They write posts like this without realizing that after hundreds of hours, killing yet another wave of enemies is no longer meaningful gameplay, it’s routine. The problem begins when the game forces the player to manually recreate the same structures, in the same way, over and over again. Removing that step doesn’t remove challenge, it removes unnecessary labor.

As for the fear of a “bunker-building simulator,” that concern only makes sense if regeneration were unconditional and trivial, accessible to a casual player just starting out. Endgame systems should allow players to stabilize the parts of the game they have already mastered. A mechanic that requires expensive materials and advanced progression does not trivialize survival, it acknowledges the player’s long-term investment.

Currently, the design assumes that permanent vulnerability of player-built structures is inherently good. But without scalable countermeasures, that vulnerability stops creating tension and instead becomes draining. A good sandbox doesn’t rely on endlessly resetting player progress; it gives players tools to decide where friction should still exist.

Preventing players from ever reaching a stable state out of fear of “bunkerization” doesn’t protect survival, it blocks progression. And in a long-running sandbox, progression is not the enemy of challenge it’s what keeps the game engaging.

Edited January 2 by Erathia

[PonyOfApocalips]

4 minutes ago, Erathia said:

Removing that step doesn’t remove challenge, it removes unnecessary labor.

And regenerating walls do exaclly that- remove unnesecery labor. 

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Erathia said:

This line of argument has one fundamental problem, it is written from the perspective of a very narrow group of players who equate “good design” with constant difficulty and perpetual punishment for investing time into a base. It is a narrative aimed mainly at people who enjoy playing under nonstop pressure and frustration a 24/7 survival mindset and that is simply not the majority of the community. The game has long been sustained primarily by players who build megabases. These are the people who spend hundreds of hours in a single world, who buy skins, and who keep the game alive long-term. For this group, repeating the same annoying event for the fiftieth time  especially when it can randomly destroy parts of their base  is not a challenge, it’s a nuisance.If a mechanic does nothing but periodically force the player to rebuild the same things in the same way, that is not difficulty  it is design friction. A good mechanic provides tools to manage frustration, especially in the endgame, rather than demanding endless repetition of identical repair tasks.The issue with your idea is not that it introduces convenience, but that it is internally inconsistent and design-wise hollow. If a wall is supposed to “regenerate,” yet can still be broken by something as basic as spiders and stops regenerating whenever there is any nearby threat, then in practice it solves no real problem. The most frustrating situations in the game don’t come from a wall being slightly damaged, but from random events or bosses destroying parts of a base while the player is absent, or doing so repeatedly. In that context, minimal regeneration that restores walls “after a few days” is cosmetic, not a meaningful mechanic.Moreover, if even basic mobs can reliably destroy these walls, the entire concept of “locking wall height” becomes illusory. The player still has to react exactly as before, except now there is the added issue of a false sense of security , which in a sandbox game is worse than having none at all. The problem is not that the game becomes “too easy,” but that a portion of the community believes their preference for constant difficulty should be the only valid vision of the game. That ignores the fact that sandbox games thrive on diverse playstyles, not only the most masochistic ones and that new mechanics and design directions should generally be aimed at the majority of players, not a small minority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have electric fences - walls would objectively be weaker.

[Well-met]

Granted, but in exchange all mobs are now capable of attacking walls.

[PonyOfApocalips]

22 minutes ago, Well-met said:

Granted, but in exchange all mobs are now capable of attacking walls.

Nooooooooo

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, Uedo said:

We have electric fences - walls would objectively be weaker.

You mean we have statues.