Mechanical Suggestions

[Lezli]

I'm sure content will come with time, and I'm not the most creative person, so I decided that, if I were to suggest something, it would be mechanical. Here is the list I've come up with.

Abigail: When you attack a spider nest, she attacks it as well, but if she destroys it, it drops no loot. I believe this should be changed, as there is no way to prevent her from attacking it, and everything else she kills drops loot.

The Ocean: Items dropped near ocean can get pushed out over the water, and they sit there, taunting you, irretrievable. I think it should be made to have items that fall into the ocean either disappear entirely, or make it so they can't fall in the ocean at all.

Harvesting: When one harvests a tree, grass, twigs, etc. there is a fraction of a second after that item is harvested when it is still click-able. This makes harvesting things in mass much slower and slightly tedious. I suggest making items not click-able as Soon as they are harvested, as it serves no real purpose except to cause agitation in long plays.

Torches: Torches (and other equip-able sources of light) can be equipped then unequipped over and over to prevent damage at night while using very little durability. I suggest making these equip-able sources of light use 5% durability when equipped.

Auto-equip: Equip-able sources of light that use up in durability as Soon as they are equipped should not auto-equip except at night, or not at all, as it only wastes durability when it happens during the day/evening.

Combat: During combat, special music plays. Since in-combat and out-of-combat seem to be clearly defined, I suggest that while in combat (or even all the time), the hit-boxes of monsters/enemies ALWAYS be above other hit-boxes, like those of items. This will prevent the player from picking up an item instead of attacking an enemy when clicking on the area where an enemies hit-box is. This is mostly an agitation when killing spiders 4 at a time, and the player ends up picking up 3 items in the duration of the fight and taking 2-3 extra hits because of it.

World Size: I believe the world should be at least twice as big by default. Since the goal is to spend as much time in that one world as possible without starving/dieing, the world should be big enough that personal goals of the player should be large tasks, not things that take at most 3 days in game (for example, conquering all spider nests on the island, or gathering all the berry bushes to make a farm, or mining all the gold)

That's it so far, but I will post any additional suggestions I come up with in this thread as replies, and will update the original! I hope this gets read and considered. <3

[Travis]

Combat: During combat, special music plays. Since in-combat and out-of-combat seem to be clearly defined, I suggest that while in combat (or even all the time), the hit-boxes of monsters/enemies ALWAYS be above other hit-boxes, like those of items. This will prevent the player from picking up an item instead of attacking an enemy when clicking on the area where an enemies hit-box is. This is mostly an agitation when killing spiders 4 at a time, and the player ends up picking up 3 items in the duration of the fight and taking 2-3 extra hits because of it.

I agree that this is a pain when is combat and you click on unintended target but if you make it easier to click the monster when your are just clicking around something like a beefalo and smack one with a torch its never a good thing

[Lezli]

Beefalows are big enough that its pretty hard to even SEE an item behind one, let alone be silly enough to try and pick it up without changing the camera view so their hit-boxes don't completely overlap. ^^

[ResonanceCrea]

Well, most things have been said allready and as before, I agree. Specially the original part about the combat, that could fix some nuisance. Not too sure how easy it is to implement in coding ? Ah, and welcome Lezli ! Good game and have fun !

[mobius187]

Okay, lots of ideas... so I'll share my thoughts on them.

Abigail: When you attack a spider nest, she attacks it as well, but if she destroys it, it drops no loot. I believe this should be changed, as there is no way to prevent her from attacking it, and everything else she kills drops loot.

Yes, I agree this is a bug. I know for a fact that when Abigail kills treeguards or beefalo (on purpose or randomly) that these kills always drop items (logs, meat, fur, ect). The fact that spider nests don't seems odd. It really should be all one way or the other. Either Abigail kills and destroys all she touches or loot drops from anything she kills/destroys.

The Ocean: Items dropped near ocean can get pushed out over the water, and they sit there, taunting you, irretrievable. I think it should be made to have items that fall into the ocean either disappear entirely, or make it so they can't fall in the ocean at all.

I've never had this happen, but I agree, if something falls into the ocean it should be removed. That, or prevent it from happening in the first place.

Harvesting: When one harvests a tree, grass, twigs, etc. there is a fraction of a second after that item is harvested when it is still click-able. This makes harvesting things in mass much slower and slightly tedious. I suggest making items not click-able as Soon as they are harvested, as it serves no real purpose except to cause agitation in long plays.

Not sure what the issue is here, so I can't comment.

Torches: Torches (and other equip-able sources of light) can be equipped then unequipped over and over to prevent damage at night while using very little durability. I suggest making these equip-able sources of light use 5% durability when equipped.

I agree this is a bug, but I don't agree with you solution as 5% sounds a bit too severe. I suggest the normal rate be applied automatically instead. So if it's 1% a second, then equip/unequip should cost 1% every time you equip it. Then, in 100 equips, it's extinguished for good.

Auto-equip: Equip-able sources of light that use up in durability as Soon as they are equipped should not auto-equip except at night, or not at all, as it only wastes durability when it happens during the day/evening.

Not sure I know what you mean. The only auto-equipping I've seen is if you craft a torch and your hand is empty, then yes, the torch is automatically placed in your hand, but I think that happens with anything you craft that can be equipped to your hand (i.e. axe) if your hand is empty at the time. Otherwise it ends up in your inventory.

Combat: During combat, special music plays. Since in-combat and out-of-combat seem to be clearly defined, I suggest that while in combat (or even all the time), the hit-boxes of monsters/enemies ALWAYS be above other hit-boxes, like those of items. This will prevent the player from picking up an item instead of attacking an enemy when clicking on the area where an enemies hit-box is. This is mostly an agitation when killing spiders 4 at a time, and the player ends up picking up 3 items in the duration of the fight and taking 2-3 extra hits because of it.

I've never had a serious issue with this before, but I can't see that it would hurt.

World Size: I believe the world should be at least twice as big by default. Since the goal is to spend as much time in that one world as possible without starving/dieing, the world should be big enough that personal goals of the player should be large tasks, not things that take at most 3 days in game (for example, conquering all spider nests on the island, or gathering all the berry bushes to make a farm, or mining all the gold)

This is a common suggestion, and while I would also like the world to be larger the people at Klei first need more content to fill that world with, otherwise they'll just be repeating the same things over and over. Kevin even mentioned this, so I can only assume that eventually the world will be larger when it makes more sense (i.e. to spread-out new content).

[Lezli]

In response to Mobius' comment on Harvesting:

I like to plant my grass very close together, in straight lines. Sometimes when I've harvested one, and click the one behind it, it actually clicks the one I've just harvested (it still has the full-size hit box, even though visually I am clicking the one behind it), causing Wendy to state that she has killed it. I harvest grass in a full stack of 40, and this tends to happen about 10 times in that duration. By the time I've harvested grass several times, it begins to get very aggitating. ^^'

In response to Mobius' comment on Auto-equip:

It is a minor issue, that can be fixed by the player simply paying attention, but I've had a miners hat crafted in the morning be equipped all day without realizing it (I usually have a straw hat equipped, so the visual difference was unnoticed by me). Although it is very minor, it seems making light sources not auto-equip during the day would both make more sense, and be a very VERY simple and easy to implement solution. Although I enjoy consequences to mistakes, it seems unreasonable that one would flip on an expendable source of light in the middle of the day. ^^

In response to Mobius' comment on World Size:

I understand where they are coming from, but for me personally (one who hordes by nature), I find I dislike how few of the limited resources one gets. I would personally feel that more of the same biomes would be fine if I could get 6 bee hives consistently instead of my average of 4, or could conquer 50 spider nests instead of 30, or loot 3 graveyards instead of 2. As it stands, I do not view the Island size to be proportional to the amount of content the game has (which is a TONNE, I'm STILL learning!). This is my personal, biased view based on personal experience with the game, so its perfectly fine if the game devs have a different opinion. ^^

Thanks for your thorough response! <3

Edit: Added a bit more.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Lezli