Unfair Deaths : Rougelike Death Discussion

[Ax1007]

So Ive been trying to get back into Dont Starve recently, and after the amount of BInding of Isaac Ive been playing, to me at least Ive had this constant glaring feeling that about 90% of the times I die arent "fair". By that I mean they are caused by things completely out of my control or are impossible to predict. Possibly these are just bugs, but its really hurting the enjoyment of the game for me.

 

1st Death: At night I stepped into the dark a little bit too much, and the Charlie noise starts, look at the clock and think I can squeeze a bit more time out of chopping this one tree as the sun is about to come up. Start moving back into the light, jus as the sun comes up, Charlie attacks me in full daylight, killing me instantly.

 

2nd Death: Running back to base as Willow and hear this strange noise. Realize that its Werepigs and start running in a straight line as possible to outrun them. 4 of them after me. I run accidently into a single Sapling and get stuck and I cant move away from it. Werepigs murder me.

 

3rd Death: Find a Beefalo pen firetrap in the Savvanah as Willow. "Okay, Ive seen these before. Now lets scout around to see if theres anything hidden around the chest that can cause everything to catch fire." *nope* "Okay..since Im Willow I should be perfectly fine with fire". I open the chest, Gunpowder catches fire and explodes before I can even blink, kills me isntantly.

 

4th Death: As Willow, go to shave an in heat Beefalo at night to be safe. "Okay..THIS TIME, Ill check every online source I can find to see if they wake up when you shave them." I Check the wiki and everything I can find, find nothing that says they wake up. Go and shave one, it wakes up, kills me isntantly.(I just found that it IS written on the wiki, on the Razor page, not the Beefalo page, which I will now fix... and its a chance, In game however the problem remains)

 

 

This bothers me significantly. Having come from Binding of Isaac, its painfully obvious in Dont Starve when the game is actively TRYING to kill you, and that just seems unfair. In Binding for example, its entirely possible to beat the game with the worst possible luck, getting no good items or anything, If you die in that game, you almost always know WHY you died, and its almost always your fault. I dont get that feeling very often from Dont Starve and its extremely frustrating.

 

Another game that has a similar issue is FTL. Its entirely possible that in some sectors of that game, a battle can be impossible to win, and death is just inevitable. And after getting so far, and doing everything perfectly up until that, its gut wrenching to have this sense of control taken away so blatently.

 

And thats not saying anything bad about the game design the art or anything. The game in of itself is fantastic and I love it. Its just this feeling of lack of control that seriously bothers me. Im constantly making a small amount of progress, but then I feel like everytime I get far, the game is cheating and throwing out death in ways I cant avoid.

 

Thoughts, ideas? Am I just whining and need to harden up or is this a problem other people have as well?

[zazori]

So Ive been trying to get back into Dont Starve recently, and after the amount of BInding of Isaac Ive been playing, to me at least Ive had this constant glaring feeling that about 90% of the times I die arent "fair". By that I mean they are caused by things completely out of my control or are impossible to predict. Possibly these are just bugs, but its really hurting the enjoyment of the game for me.

 

1st Death: At night I stepped into the dark a little bit too much, and the Charlie noise starts, look at the clock and think I can squeeze a bit more time out of chopping this one tree as the sun is about to come up. Start moving back into the light, jus as the sun comes up, Charlie attacks me in full daylight, killing me instantly.

 

2nd Death: Running back to base as Willow and hear this strange noise. Realize that its Werepigs and start running in a straight line as possible to outrun them. 4 of them after me. I run accidently into a single Sapling and get stuck and I cant move away from it. Werepigs murder me.

 

3rd Death: Find a Beefalo pen firetrap in the Savvanah as Willow. "Okay, Ive seen these before. Now lets scout around to see if theres anything hidden around the chest that can cause everything to catch fire." *nope* "Okay..since Im Willow I should be perfectly fine with fire". I open the chest, GUnpowder catches fire and explodes before I can even blink, kills me isntantly.

 

4th Death: As Willow, go to shave an in heat Beefalo at night to be safe. "Okay..THIS TIME, Ill check every online source I can find to see if they wake up when you shave them." I Check the wiki and everything I can find, find nothing that says they wake up. Go and shave one, it wakes up, kills me isntantly.

 

 

This bothers me significantly. Having come from Binding of Isaac, its painfully obvious when the game is actively TRYING to kill you, and that just seems unfair. In Binding for example, its entirely possible to beat the game with the worst possible luck, getting no good items or anything, If you die in that game, you almost always know WHY you died, and its almost always your fault. I dont get that feeling very often from Dont Starve and its extremely frustration.

 

Thoughts, ideas? Am I just whining and need to harden up or is this a problem other people have as well?

This game is trying to kill you.If you played before you should know it,this is meant to be hard.But let's start:

1:Bad timing on your time

2:Bad luck,the sapling wasn't spawned by the game when you started runing away from werepigs just to kill you.

3:That's supposed to happen,the gunpowder cames out of the chest.It's a trap

4:Why you check the wiki?It removes half the fun of discovering what's going on.The guys from the wiki don't know what they're talking about,and if the beefalo woke up it's because beefaloes were in mating season.Look at their backside to prevent further accidents.

 

You always know what killed you.You said it:charlie,werepigs,gunpowder and beefaloes.

[Luggs]

With the gunpowder one, you should have seen that coming. The werepig one is a bug that's been going on for awhile.

[Battal]

The game IS actively trying to kill you...but most of those were just bad luck.  The others...well, you're just out of practice.

[Neosaurus]

The game IS actively trying to kill you...but most of those were just bad luck.  The others...well, you're just out of practice.

He's right. The game is not only out to kill you, but to EAT YOUR SOUL!

[Rabbitfist]

He's right. The game is not only out to kill you, but to EAT YOUR SOUL!

Soul sees what you did there.

 

On-Topic:

1.charlie hates you

2.tress hate you

3.the chest was a terrorist, never trust chests staying round in the nature

4.Beefalo raped you

[TeoSS69]

N/A

[Diverge]

You suck at the game.

 

This is not the game's fault.

[Yay]

1. Bad timing (Like Everyone is saying)

2. Was is a Small tree or a sapling? cause you only can plant saplings.

3.Obvouis Trap...

4.Where was your beefalo hat?

[tehMugwump]

Here's an example I experienced: Adventure mode.  I made it through the first world (winter) by the skin of my teeth.  I was a nervous wreck by the end but had a 'happy dance' moment when I finally got through it to the next world.

 

In the next world (forget which one), I though "yay!  I made it.  On to the next adventure!".  Right off the bat I strayed just a tad too close to a tentacle and it killed me in one hit.  I hadn't noticed that you go from one world to the next with the same health you left with.  In my case, almost none.

 

Talk about having all your joy sucked away in a quick second.

 

That was the first and last time I tried adventure mode.  I will not invest hours of my valuable time and have it snatched away like that.  Hello, CampRes.

[Ax1007]

Ill carry on a bit because this topic interests me, but it seems people are a bit hung up on the wrong details. The point Im trying to make is that my skill level is irrelevant. Unlike what

 

You suck at the game.

 

This is not the game's fault.

 

says, Im not concerned on whether Im considered a newbie or a pro at this game. Im actually working on my own little project game, a survival game, so the idea of death and "fair" death interests me, so what Im looking at is the mechanics of the game, not my personal skill or the way I handle a problem.

 

Dont Starve and all Rougelikes in particular are balances of risk/reward. The risk being that you stand to loose all your progress, versus the reward of gaining more progress. The reason I brought up BInding of Isaac is because it does this balance perfectly. In order to progress you have to continue through rooms with the risk of dying. In BInding of Isaacs case, in any situation you are put in, you can make the call whether something is worth it by assessing risk and reward, in some situation in Dont Starve, you cant.

 

Compare for example the way the Charlie is introduced, to the Beefalo Pen/Fire Trap. When you first play Dont Starve, you are basically told you need to make a fire, so you make fire and then night begins and you are surronded by darkness. So then you venture out into the darkness(the risk/reward being set up here), you get the appropriate ques by the character and if you continue to ignore them, you get hurt. Then you have enough time to go back into the light, lesson learned and your game continues.

 

The Beefalo trap in comparison breaks that formula in several ways.

 

-The Charlie introduction gives you constant ques that what you are doing is stupid and you will be punished, this instance gives no indication until you activate the trap.

 

-The Charlie introduction is consistant. The Firetrap is randomized whether it even works, so even if you DO know how it works, the outcome is not determinable.

 

A classic example of this is the Winter Trap. Its a funny idea, but when you first meet it, you open the icebox and basically are guaranteed to die shortly afterwards. So you restart and loose that playthrough, and have essentially done a suicide run..in order to learn a single mechanic. That isnt good design, there are definalty better ways to do that.

 

Basically my point is this. I think that when a brand new player who is smart and who is cautious, the game should NEVER hang random chance death over that playthrough that potentially cannot be avoided. By making a players planning and cautious useless in particular situations,  it goes against the spirirt of rougelikes.

 

In my opinion.

[TeoSS69]

N/A

[tehMugwump]

You suck at the game.

 

This is not the game's fault.

Go easy there tiger.  It's been mentioned several times about some game glitches that cause some of these problems.  Also, the other responses are a bit more... helpful.

[Blewcheese]

Ever hear the saying "You learn from your mistakes"? (Is that how it goes? I don't even know) Anyway, one of the times I had the most fun with Don't Starve was right in the beginning, when I didn't know Jack. I ran around, and died really early. But I learned! The point of a rogue-like isn't to have one unstoppable run, it's to have multiple runs where you get better as you progress. Of course you're going to die, that's the point. However, death by bugs is unacceptable. But that's sort of an inherent thing about games, right? There are bugs in the game, and they stink. No one likes them. This is a given, you don't really have to say that. If you want to report the bug, go into the bug reporter subforum, but don't talk about that stuff here. In fact, what is your suggestion here? I'm not tremendously clear on that. Make it easier to live? Nerf Charlie? Fix bugs? All of the above?

 

I've yammered on long enough, but my point is, accept death unless it's obviously from a bug. Death because you wanted to chop one more tree? That's not a bug, that's recklessness. In Don't Starve you have to be careful, that's one of the themes, in my opinion. (Oh boy, here I go again. I'll just stop now, but know that this is more opinion based than anything.)

[jbeetle]

I agree, @Blewcheese. I really feel that's what the entire game is based around.

[Diverge]

Go easy there tiger.  It's been mentioned several times about some game glitches that cause some of these problems.  Also, the other responses are a bit more... helpful.

Bully for them.

[Anelyn]

I highly doubt a simple sapling would been able to hold me for more than 1 second if I'd been running chased by werewolves! Heck I wouldn't stop even for Obelisks wall or basalts

[The Letter W]

None of those really strike me as unfair, just normal deaths in the game.