Track XP in game, use tent to consume avialable XP - cost/chioce on characters

[Peppe]

My first well setup playthrough with Wilson I got to 60 days and felt like experimenting with the other characters, but I had no one unlocked before the game, so just had to kill myself to unlock everything.

Track the XP in game -- or give a resource to collect/spend, and let the player use the tent to consume the accumulated resource.

I look forward to the research changes and resets between worlds. I personally always create a new world on death as exploring the unknown is part of the fun and a research reset is perfect.

I wonder if character unlocks should be reset between worlds as well. To me the game is less fun in successive playthroughs with everything and everyone unlocked. Most of the struggle is removed now that i don't have to balance my resource usage with research early game. It is fun to have all the characters, but there is no cost to the decision on who to use and when.

I personally would like every death to reset you back to nothing researched and give 1 character unlock. The current character lock is weird mechanic, and should probably just be a wilson tutorial for your first game and future playthroughs let you pick any character to start.

Maybe for a new world let the player pick the first character (no wolfgang if you think he is overpowered) and then give a way to spend XP/resource during the playthrough to unlock/swap to the others. That way you have a choice to make creating the world, and then choices to make during play -- who to unlock and when. If you also put a cost on swapping then there would be an additional decision point that could be interesting.

Example:

New world, I pick Willow to help me explore on the cheap. I can take greater risk on low resources with her with a her fire ability. Maybe after 10 days i can unlock wilson or wendy, but need 30 days worth of the xp/resource to unlock wolfgang. I would switch to wilson to collect beard hair or maybe I made camp too close to a spider den and first chance I switch to wendy for help holding a camp site at night. When it is time to do something manly I swap to wolfgang... etc.

Others may prefer to get that beard started first and then use the others for different roles.

If you do have an in-game unlock/swap system then you can add more characters anytime. You could have many characters targeted to crazier playstyles/challenge modes. Like a character gets friendly hounds, at the cost of aggressive pigs. Or one is 'Nature' themed and never triggers the treeguard, but can't kill any passive monsters pigs/birds/bunnies etc.

[mobius187]

Well Wilson is the poster boy for Don't Starve, so it's safe to say that he will always be the first character player have access to when they start the game. Whether other characters will be unlocked at the start with him is open to debate. The current XP for survival to unlock characters has it's pros and cons, and I'm likely to compare it to the Binding of Isaac, in which new characters were unlocked when certain in-game goals were achieved. I wouldn't mind a similar system for Don't Starve, however the nature of the challenges would need to avoid grinding (as Kevin has stated in the past he doesn't want players "grinding" for any reason).

In short, I would prefer a system that unlocked characters more gradually, so that I could play each character in turn.

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Well Wilson is the poster boy for Don't Starve, so it's safe to say that he will always be the first character player have access to when they start the game. Whether other characters will be unlocked at the start with him is open to debate. The current XP for survival to unlock characters has it's pros and cons, and I'm likely to compare it to the Binding of Isaac, in which new characters were unlocked when certain in-game goals were achieved. I wouldn't mind a similar system for Don't Starve, however the nature of the challenges would need to avoid grinding (as Kevin has stated in the past he doesn't want players "grinding" for any reason).

In short, I would prefer a system that unlocked characters more gradually, so that I could play each character in turn.