An impression long time after "beta"

[Russian]

To begin with, I enjoyed playing the beta of the Don't Starve game - aproximately up to the moment when the patch removed the "old" land generation style with roundish biomes (and many nice features along with that)

 

Then it was like "Oh okay, maybe there's going to be something more to it".

 

Then I figured that there never would be, and quit.

 

After quite a while I checked the game again ... alas. No progress, not playable to me.

 

Main reason: While in beta, the game was kinda fast and simple, it was like "Hey! Look at what you can do in mere days of in-game time!"  Getting killed in that kind of play style was kinda fun, too, kinda LOL if you know what I mean, since the whole matter was fast and young and easy going.

 

As of now, the game became TEDIOUS. Laborous. Or whatever the right word. In an attempt to make it "harder" the "downtime" has been increased tremendously.

 

The land masses increased about 10 times. The travel distances accordingly. The amount of stuff per square was reduced at about the same rate : 10 times less. The player now faces the great areas of "nothing special" which take days to explore (real days, not even in-game ones)

 

Logistics became paramount. For the first 60-90 days of ingame time (two winters included) a player is forced to just hot-dog around, desperately trying not to screw up while building stacks of resources.

Exploration is punished. Experiments are punished. Stay put, or you have waisted another 5 hours of yer life, player. Hunt them WABBITS, dammit.

 

Honestly, I dont know. During the beta times, a 90-day long game was like wow, a nice one! Recently  I have  played about 4 games about 60 to 90 days long each, and each time I died not by something in game, but of sheer boredom : I started to take chances ( AKA doing "stupid" or risky things ) because of contunuous "farming" taking 90% of time against the 10% of adventure or exploration, and it was driving me off.

 

Guys, you had really went wrong with that. I kinda guessed that by that time, but was not sure. Now I am sure. Instead of perfecting the game you have gone the easy way of "tuning parameters" and "introducing more content" ( AKA creating more arbitrary crap to complicate the players' life )

 

Well, so much to it.

 

PS I can go into exact details about how exactly the global boredom was facilitated, but that would really be another attempt to reason with money-driven reality...  Or rather not money-driven, but bullshit-driven which is much much worse. So I just shut up, thanks for .. whatever.

 

[TeoSS69]

TL;DR : The game is too hard now and i'm not having fun with it.

[Boar Head]

So you preferred the game when it was in beta more than how it is now? There is so much more content to sink your teeth into. Honestly the "boredom" factor of the game has been around for a LONG time. It's just a part of the game. After a while you're going to run out of things to do and you're going to have to put yourself at risk for fun. I'm not saying that's good, I'm simply saying that the issue of boredom you mentioned has been around since as long as I can remember playing this game (once I got good enough to survive forever).

The point of the game is survival. And to have to hunt and gather resources. That's the most fun part of the game, the beginning parts when you feel like you're surviving rather than thriving. Not that I have a problem with thriving since I find a lot of enjoyment in having tons of resources to mess around with as well. Also I don't understand how you complained about having to gather stuff and not screw around at the beginning just to survive but then you also complained about having nothing to do once you reached that point. That kind of means you don't like any of what the game has to offer since you hate gathering and not being able to screw around but once you've surpassed that, you get bored because you have nothing to do. But maybe I misunderstood you.

[LtShinySides]

Honestly, I feel very similar. But I never actually was aware as to why I was bored with the game. This gives me some thought and I do understand where you're coming from. (I haven't had a long lasting world since beta.) However, the game is still progressing, even now. And the game does have a full story mode which is kinda the point of most games. I do miss the pointless sandbox beta had, but that's usually just my problem.   

[jbeetle]

old map generation - ew.

[goldfish911]

old map generation - ew.

I say "ew" more to new map generation. I agree with the OP, Don't Starve used to be more concern-free. Then they added sanity, which pretty much added another reason for micromanagement(and caves, and cold,and ruins, and depth worms, and other stuff). Health management is the issue for me now, and I rage, because every single time I play, I end up taking a risk and dying repeatedly, and if I didn't die last time I opened the world, I die again the next time. And cranking up resource count is unappealing. So is scumsaving. The game has become more of a "do you really want that reward" instead of "do you want to take that risk", as great risk makes great reward, but risk taking usually kills me.

[jbeetle]

wait, you start with saying "ew" to new map gen but then the rest of your paragraph has nothing to do with it. a ramble is afoot.

[gnarlytreeman]

i like the current map gen. the only thing i would say is slightly unapealing in gameplay is the over abundance of food, but there are enough other distractions that it's kinda nice not to have to worry about that.

[negaman]

I agree, the game was better in beta. 

[Cynical Cynicist]

The map generation in-between the beta and the Six Feet Under update was the best. I'd actually prefer circular biomes as opposed to the atrocity that is the current update's generation, constantly producing star-shaped worlds with long travel time, awkward and blocky edges and an ugly mix of biomes that was never a problem before. Just undo whatever you guys did to influence map generation in the Six Feet Under update, it was so organic and looked much more natural before then.

 

Also, if you're having trouble with this game, I'm going to make an assumption that you're stubborn with your ways of "survival." If you do the same thing over and over again, odds are it's not gonna work out, so look into approaching it a different way. It's an easy game.

[The_Cookiebeast]

Honestly, I feel very similar. But I never actually was aware as to why I was bored with the game. This gives me some thought and I do understand where you're coming from. (I haven't had a long lasting world since beta.) However, the game is still progressing, even now. And the game does have a full story mode which is kinda the point of most games. I do miss the pointless sandbox beta had, but that's usually just my problem.   

There is a godmode mod somewhere if you feel as if you need it.

[the truthseeker]

Meh, I re-learned how to play nomadicly as long as you aren't afraid to leave the world for another sometimes. A good player knows how to build a base, nomadicly explore and return to base. It's not either/or anymore, and I'd rather have an ocean of content than be a "big fish in a little pond."

 

 

But these triangle parts of land since Six feet Under's update are annoying the crap outta me. 

[goldfish911]

Worldgen is the biggest turnoff, as I have to travel for a day to go around to another "starfish arm" where it is in plain sight from my base. That's what bridges were being suggested for, but Klei created the Lazy explorer, not realizing that by the time people made it to the ruins, they already explored their whole branchy world(or most of it)