Feedbacks on Roadmap

[Lumina]

I'm replaying a bit of DST recently, thanks to the DSE announcement, and reading the Roadmap made me want to give some feedbacks in regard of early/mid game content and what I'd like to see.

Sea :
I wish there would be some middle ground between the boat as bridge and the big boat exploration.
Currently, my experiences at sea were basically a slow travel ending in disaster because of some danger that was hard to deal with, so having some small islands close of the mainland with small rewards/interesting things would be a good practice for learning what is useful/needed when making a boat.
I feel that there's a lot that is requested at once, and it's harder to make a base thing then add to it, because once you are at sea, you have way less margin to deal with whatever mistake you made, when on land you have several ways to deal with things usually (running far away for example).
Of course, you can take this with a grain of salt because of my inexperience with sea! But some smoothness to obtain this experience would be great to have.

Maybe a way to divert enemies could also be a nice addition, for having some options to learn about stuff.

I don't have enough sample for knowing if Pearl's island is often close to the shore or not, maybe the bottles are a way to give this first "short and easy sea travel", but it's a bit random to find the bottle.

Additional idea : maybe summer could make travel at sea faster, and boats being immune to wildfire? This would give a reason to go exploring sea during summer? It would give more active stuff to do during the season.

Cave :
Earthquakes in winter should have a chance to drop ice.

I wish there would be more plants and maybe creatures to find here. Possibly some things we could bring to the surface, as currently there's a lot of things we can bring from surface to cave, so more of the reverse would be cool. (I don't include ruins in this because they are a very different thing imo)
A lot of the biomes are a bit boring because they are basically just a lot of the same thing. So having new things here would definitively have potential. Like, those big mushroom forests would be way cooler if there were some other plants/creatures to occasionally discover in them. Overall, I would say a lot of cave biome would benefit for more stuff to actually do in them.
A creature liking mushrooms would both give them some more uses (especially red mushrooms).

I would also love for the swamp underground to have more things to it. It doesn't have merms, so it feels more empty than the surface one.

Followers :
It would be nice to have a bit more control on followers, maybe not from the start but with items you'll obtain/craft some way or another? Pigs panicking at dusk is a good limitation early game, an item to prevent that mid/late game would be cool, without being overpowered.

Various :
I'd like to see new set pieces, they are ones of the thing i prefer when exploring a new world. They create new points of interest, they may change where i would want to set a base up, or deal with some enemies.

I wish summer would have more opportunity for creation (with a cost) to balance the destruction it can creates.

I'd love to see a return of some of the Gorge/Forge creatures/things. Like the tree tapper thing could provide syrup/tar, the second being used for boat things?

In general, I liked making discoveries in DS, but I feel a lot more stuff in DST requires knowledge rather than experimentation, partly because there's a lot more to do. Stuff like progressing in lunar/shadow questlines for example. It would be great to have potential clues in the world somehow ?

Overall, there is a lot of content in the game that people will likely not see because it's gated behind complex things. Of course, the difficulty is to make things accessible without making the game easier, which is tricky.

 

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!