Comprehensive overall feedback and suggestions

[ZeGermanGuy]

Hey guys, I've loved this game so far, and I thought I should give something back to summarize

the experiences and thoughts I've met throughout my 118 days of survival so far.

# TOC:

• 1.0 Survival Thoughts

- 1.1 Farming w/ plots

- 1.2 Hoarding Berries (New Patch)

- 1.3 Hoarding Twigs/Grass

- 1.4 Cooking

• 2.0 Gameplay Thoughts

- 2.1 Island Creation

- 2.2 Landscape feedback

• 3.0 Equipment Thoughts

- 3.1 Current items

- 3.2 Equipment ideas

- 3.3 The "forget me not"

• 4.0 Additional feedback

1.0 Survival Thoughts

As far as survival in this game is concerned, there's only so much of a difficulty curve

until eventually it goes into autopilot mode unless you're going out, looking for trouble

just to get you killed

- 1.1 Farming w/ plots

Farming should be way more rewarding in my opinion. Although you can get some rare fruits out of this, it just doesn't feel as easy as it would through monster farms or even berry bushes. Maybe you could add something to farming that would be an ingredient to a special receipe? Maybe even buffs, that would give food you cook with this fruit/vegetable an additional effect? (Hit harder, run faster, take less damage)

An example:

Dragon Fruits so far have seemed fairly rare to me. Now if you were to bake a pie out of it, you could eat it and get a buff for 1 entire day, which would give you - say - 30% more armor, or in other words, your 100% logsuit would behave as if it was 130%, or your naked 100 health would be 130 health damage-wise.

- 1.2 Hoarding Berries (New Patch)

I feel like the nerf to berry bushes has only made the difficulty curve on the early game a lot steeper, given that you don't have a manure farm next to your spawn it's literally impossible to plant a farm of those early on, which sure is fine, but during endgame - say 30 days and on - once you've found that piece of land that gives you enough manure it doesn't even matter if you have berries or not, because there are so many more alternative sources of food.

- 1.3 Hoarding Twigs/Grass

The option to transplant twigs and grass just makes this material a given. I don't feel the need to ever go out and grab more than my stack of 40 grass/twigs I get every x days due to my transplanted tufts/saplings.

- 1.4 Cooking

Cooking, as I have mentioned in another thread already, should give the meals prefixes, depending on how the relation between ingredients and fillers is, just so you can differentiate between a meal that has 1 meat in it and a meal that has 3-4 meat in it (of course, because you take them depending on how low your hunger bar is and you don't want to waste a 60 hunger meal if you only need 20)

2.0 Gameplay Thoughts

- 2.1 Island Creation

I guess you probably know where this idea is from, but why not give the user the possibility to give the game a seed and create an island from that? It'd be great to share good seeds with other people if they wish to have some, depending on the preferences of the gamer of course. (Should be an advanced option, but it should be there :3)

- 2.2 Landscape feedback

I have seen some minor bugs on the Landscape creation that haven't really annoyed me, but I feel like every bug should be adressed. Sometimes it happens that either complete Trees/Stones are unreachable because they're too close to the ocean, even items fall into those positions sometimes, where you can't pick them up and just run towards the border of said island.

3.0 Equipment Thoughts

- 3.1 Current items

The set of items is pretty good so far, it gives you a basic idea of what is to come and isn't too confusing at all. The only thing I would love to see would be better sets of combat items, since spears and log suits don't last very long at all, and if you want to go for a swamp area that's very far away from your base, you'd have to take atleast 2-3 of each with you, asides from your bug net, your fishing rod, food, tools and so on.

- 3.2 Equipment ideas

What would I need in order to make the end-endgame a little more convenient?

- Backpacks to store like an additional row of items

- Better Armor and Weapons to add general convenience on their durability/power

- Maybe enchantments to make certain items more powerful/durable

- Different types of armors against different types of enemies (Like the bee keeper hat for bees)

- Books to keep all the receipes that you have found out so far, maybe even monster types, just to get a use for that papyrus!

- 3.3 The "Forget me not"

There should be 1 single flower in this game (A very rare find, only once per island creation) that is called the "Forget me not" which gives you the unique oppurtunity to keep your entire character's equipment and start over with the same, fresh island that you've spawned in initially. Basically once you've gathered up all the resources and you have for instance 5 stacks of gold, a set of weapons/foods/whatever you can eat the flower's petals, or even cook it with some other rare ingredients and it'll restart the game with your current gear. I'd enjoy this to make a character last through more than like 100 days without the world barely being harvestable anymore.

4.0 Additional feedback

Here's some minor ideas that I'm just going to throw in. Some of them have been heavily bothering me to say the least:

- You should give a player an opportunity to actually use the tent on his first playthrough. I'm on my very first start and I'm living through 'til day 120-ish, but I can't use other characters. Maybe you could calculate how much XP this run WOULD give and enable the characters through the tent on the fly.

- The meat effigy is just a way too easy thing to accomplish endless runs, it's too forgiving for the little ressources that it needs. Maybe atleast give it a Mandrake as an ingredient, or even multiple rare ingredients (Farms come into play here again!!)

- Of course I haven't listed every single of my opinions on there, basically because I think that the ideas to add more monsters and this and that and whatnot are a given and have already been taken into consideration, so that's why this feedback is not that unnecessarily comprehensive

- Keep going like you already are, you're awesome guys and I really love that your devs actually make their way to the people that play this game and listen to feedback. I can't say this happens everywhere, but you guys definately give me that feel of being part of the development with those suggestions, I thank you all for taking your time and reading your way through this and I really hope you're staying awesome like that.

Edited November 18, 2012 by ZeGermanGuy

[mobius187]

As far as survival in this game is concerned, there's only so much of a difficulty curve

until eventually it goes into autopilot mode unless you're going out, looking for trouble

just to get you killed

Well right now that's because we know what to expect, but I hear that we'll have more to contend with in the next update when wild dogs and fire dogs are introduced. It would seem that simply travelling across the islands may now lead to encounters with enemies, where up until now only the tentacles presented a true "random encounter" and they are stationary and limited only to swamps.

Farming should be way more rewarding in my opinion. Although you can get some rare fruits out of this, it just doesn't feel as easy as it would through monster farms or even berry bushes. Maybe you could add something to farming that would be an ingredient to a special receipe? Maybe even buffs, that would give food you cook with this fruit/vegetable an additional effect? (Hit harder, run faster, take less damage)

Farming is rewarding, with enough manure, because you can grow crops on demand. Berry bushes need to respawn their berries (I haven't tried using manure on them since the last update... but I assume manure is only needed for bushes that you transplant.

Dragon Fruits so far have seemed fairly rare to me. Now if you were to bake a pie out of it, you could eat it and get a buff for 1 entire day, which would give you - say - 30% more armor, or in other words, your 100% logsuit would behave as if it was 130%, or your naked 100 health would be 130 health damage-wise.

Well from personal experience I can assure you, the last time I ate dragon fruit IRL nothing special happened, except what happens in the game. I was less hungry. Also, I'm not a fan of adding in any magical buffs, but that's just me.

I feel like the nerf to berry bushes has only made the difficulty curve on the early game a lot steeper, given that you don't have a manure farm next to your spawn it's literally impossible to plant a farm of those early on, which sure is fine, but during endgame - say 30 days and on - once you've found that piece of land that gives you enough manure it doesn't even matter if you have berries or not, because there are so many more alternative sources of food.

I'm unable to comment on this properly since I'm still playing an existing game since the last update. Maybe you have, so you would know.

The option to transplant twigs and grass just makes this material a given. I don't feel the need to ever go out and grab more than my stack of 40 grass/twigs I get every x days due to my transplanted tufts/saplings.

Well we do need to apparently fertilize them after transplanting them. Or so I've read, again, I would need to start a new game to get a real feel for the last update. Until then I'm not able to properly give an opinion on this.

Cooking, as I have mentioned in another thread already, should give the meals prefixes, depending on how the relation between ingredients and fillers is, just so you can differentiate between a meal that has 1 meat in it and a meal that has 3-4 meat in it (of course, because you take them depending on how low your hunger bar is and you don't want to waste a 60 hunger meal if you only need 20)

Yup, I agreed with this suggestion in the other thread. This would be a good idea.

I guess you probably know where this idea is from, but why not give the user the possibility to give the game a seed and create an island from that? It'd be great to share good seeds with other people if they wish to have some, depending on the preferences of the gamer of course. (Should be an advanced option, but it should be there :3)

Yes, although I never use seeds in Minecraft. Then again I've been on the same map for ~200+ hours... so I'm kinda invested in it. I'm waiting for the day that there's something so special added that I need to start a new map to experience it. the pyramids, temples, and emeralds aren't enough yet.

I have seen some minor bugs on the Landscape creation that haven't really annoyed me, but I feel like every bug should be adressed. Sometimes it happens that either complete Trees/Stones are unreachable because they're too close to the ocean, even items fall into those positions sometimes, where you can't pick them up and just run towards the border of said island.

Meh. Yeah, this has happened to me too. I have a grave that's in front of a hole in the island. No way to stand near it to dig it up. Still, no real issue as there are other graves and other resources waiting for us. Of course if they could fix the issue that would be great too.

The set of items is pretty good so far, it gives you a basic idea of what is to come and isn't too confusing at all. The only thing I would love to see would be better sets of combat items, since spears and log suits don't last very long at all, and if you want to go for a swamp area that's very far away from your base, you'd have to take atleast 2-3 of each with you, asides from your bug net, your fishing rod, food, tools and so on.

But we have the spikey stick... what more do you want?

Yeah, I'm sure they'll introduce new weapons and armor with time. There are only the two items in the entire crafting tab at this time. I'm hoping to see a bow/arrow and slingshot.

- Backpacks to store like an additional row of items

These are being added next update.

- Better Armor and Weapons to add general convenience on their durability/power

Sure, why not? I'm sure they'll add something.

- Maybe enchantments to make certain items more powerful/durable

Not in the slightest bit interested in this... I think it would take the game in another direction. But hey, that's just my opinion.

- Different types of armors against different types of enemies (Like the bee keeper hat for bees)

Not sure if we need different hats for specific enemies... that seems a bit impractical. Better to have a strong hat for all types of combat, which of course they've mentioned a football helmet is on the way.

- Books to keep all the receipes that you have found out so far, maybe even monster types, just to get a use for that papyrus!

Books would be nice to have.

There should be 1 single flower in this game (A very rare find, only once per island creation) that is called the "Forget me not" which gives you the unique oppurtunity to keep your entire character's equipment and start over with the same, fresh island that you've spawned in initially. Basically once you've gathered up all the resources and you have for instance 5 stacks of gold, a set of weapons/foods/whatever you can eat the flower's petals, or even cook it with some other rare ingredients and it'll restart the game with your current gear. I'd enjoy this to make a character last through more than like 100 days without the world barely being harvestable anymore.

Meh... maybe if they add in difficulty levels and place such a flower on Easy mode. The only game I ever enjoyed this feature was in Parasite Eve, when you saved (and named) your firearm and armor prior to the final boss battle. Then after you restart the game it gave you both items. Oh man... early boss fights were a snap (i.e. 1-2 shot kills). Of course it served a purpose, which was to allow me a faster/easier means to progress through the story until I reached the alternate ending side story and finished it too. Not sure I would need anything like this for Don't Starve.

- The meat effigy is just a way too easy thing to accomplish endless runs, it's too forgiving for the little ressources that it needs. Maybe atleast give it a Mandrake as an ingredient, or even multiple rare ingredients (Farms come into play here again!!)

Mandrake root would certainly give a "limited" feel to it, as I think I only found 2-3 mandrakes on my island and they're gone now (as I found them during the day and before I knew how they worked). I wouldn't be against the idea, but then again, I like the idea of permadeath.