PS4 version needs some tweaks

[Zevvion]

Hey guys, I bought Don't Starve on Steam in 2012 when it was still early access. I loved the game from the first day. Many hours on PC and started playing it on PS4 last week because I enjoy playing with a controller and it was free with Plus (not to mention there is obviously nothing to play on a newly released console).

 

It took some time getting used to the controls. It seems that a control scheme was created to use the PC interface, but I think creating an interface for consoles would have been a better idea. But as I got used to it I can now use it seamlessly and it actually works well.

 

What I think needs some tweaks are these points:

 

 

1. Auto-target should be more intelligent.

 

I'm holding a fishing rod and I'm standing near a pond. It's obvious I want to fish. Yet, the character keeps focusing on the small plants by the pond and ignoring the much larger pond itself. I have to adjust myself to get it to work right most of the time. Holding a Bug Net and chasing a butterfly, only to keep harvesting nearby grass, twigs and flowers on the way. Same with Chester. I'm holding a weapon and there are Hounds attacking me. I do not want to attack Chester obviously, yet it seems that the auto-target favors attacking Chester. If there is a group of 5 Hounds and Chester is standing behind me, my character might go as far to turn around to give Chester a smacking instead of the Hounds. I admit it's funny at first, but sometimes that stuff gets dangerous and can get you killed.

 

2. Needs a statistics and information overlay

 

Something to tell me exactly how much health, sanity and stomach I currently have, instead of having to gauge by the meters. On PC you hover your cursor over them, but I haven't found a way to check here. This also goes for ingredients. I know all the ingredients already from the PC version, but I never entered the Ruins there and I scratched my head at what some of the ingredients are supposed to be as there is only a image and no name (again on PC you hover your cursor over the image to get the name). 

 

3. Needs a 'in hand' mechanic.

 

This seems to be absent. On PC you can have one more item than your capacity with you by having it in your hand. This is especially useful when you need to quickly relocate something from Chester but are full or eating something of the ground. When I cook something but my inventory is full it auto-drops instead of being in my hand and I have to run away from the fire, drop something and run back to pick it up or else it will burn. 

 

4. Zooming function needs a sensitivity decrease

 

Zooming in and out on the map is hard. It zooms to many points back and forth with a very short press of the shoulder buttons. I find it zoomed in too far to move fluently and zoomed out too much to see what is located where. 

 

5. Targeting distance could use an increase

 

But I would understand if this one is not possible. If I was already targeting stuff from almost a screen away, I could see that being annoying. But it seems to me that I need to get really close to enemies to be able to fire, for example, Blow Darts at them. It's a distance of about 3-4 berry bushes right now. Seems a little close to me for a ranged action. Makes fighting the Deerclops especially nasty, since I can only fire at him from within his melee range. 

 

What I would personally like, but isn't a technical issue is:

 

Option to remove button prompts. 

 

I know what what X does, I know what triangle and square does and I know that left arrow is use on world, right arrow use on self and so forth. I don't need to have that information onscreen all the time. Just highlight the object clearly and I'll know what's up. No need to display 'X to pick', 'Triangle to inspect' and so forth.

 

Some indicator that armor breaks.

 

To my knowledge, this isn't present on PC either. But I always found it annoying that there is no sound or visual indicator that I know that lets you know that your armor is broken during a fight. It often ends me taking much higher damage than I should have or even getting killed because I took two or three blows without any armor that I didn't know of. 

 

Add a Wilson dance.

 

I mean, it just makes sense. Don't you think so? I envision Wilson dancing around flowers and bees and befriended pigs joining in. It just makes sense you guys, it just makes sense. 

 

Lastly, I hope you guys won't restrict saves in the cloud upload and download manner like some games do. I play this game at home and at my girlfriends house where I am a lot. A restriction to not be able to download a save within 24 hours of it being uploaded would suck major balls. XCOM uses that feature. You don't, but I'll just say it before hand, don't do it ever. 

 

 

 

 

[jbeetle]

those all seem logical enough. if there indeed isn't a sound on armor break, there should be. as in, there is one on PC (it's a louder *tink* sound, same with weapons), so it was probably just a weird oversight.

[skithemadrussian]

I'll add my voice to all but the last suggestion. Definitely need to create a "force attack" function for pigs and chester. I've lost count of how many times I mean to hit an enemy but the game stupidly targets chester while the bad guy is beating on me. Really annoying - I don't know how this got past the testing.

[AnneHijme]

Zevvion,

2. You can see the amount you have by clicking I believe it is R (Pull up menu for the inventory you have. The numbers you have are current health, sanity, and hunger. It also pauses games and allow you to organize your inventory.

3. Um, so far if it is equipable It will be out of way, if it things you use by hand such as Axe, pickaxe, etc, they have auto equipped to hand. So far with my experience. Of course I have not tried to have them in bag with nothning in hand then pick something. I'll have to try sometime.

4. Tap instead of hold. It took me a bit to get used to, but overall isn't too bad in my point of view.

 

Some indicator that armor breaks.

 

To my knowledge, this isn't present on PC either. But I always found it annoying that there is no sound or visual indicator that I know that lets you know that your armor is broken during a fight. It often ends me taking much higher damage than I should have or even getting killed because I took two or three blows without any armor that I didn't know of. 

 

Add a Wilson dance.

 

I mean, it just makes sense. Don't you think so? I envision Wilson dancing around flowers and bees and befriended pigs joining in. It just makes sense you guys, it just makes sense. 

 

Lastly, I hope you guys won't restrict saves in the cloud upload and download manner like some games do. I play this game at home and at my girlfriends house where I am a lot. A restriction to not be able to download a save within 24 hours of it being uploaded would suck major balls. XCOM uses that feature. You don't, but I'll just say it before hand, don't do it ever. 

 

Armor breaking knowledge be nice, like a line from your character about it.

The dance be funny and fun to have each character with unique silly dance.
 

I'll add my voice to all but the last suggestion. Definitely need to create a "force attack" function for pigs and chester. I've lost count of how many times I mean to hit an enemy but the game stupidly targets chester while the bad guy is beating on me. Really annoying - I don't know how this got past the testing.

You all think it is bad with Chester, Try Wendy and her dead sister Abigail. Abigail will die with one hit from Wendy. It has been frustrating. Chester has a nice health regen and Abigail gets 1hp per sec vs Chester 22.5 per 3 sec (Not to mention regen doesn't matter when it's a one hit KO)

Most people suggest it is intentionally design that you can kill them off.. I agree that it is too easy to do so. I haven't honestly had too many problems with Chester, though my boyfriend has killed him off a few times. 

As for pigs, you often may want them dead. You don't have to run far for them to give up and they forgive you the next day. So personally don't see them as a problem.

My idea for a solution on Chester and Abigail is make their attack button something different like Square or R3 (or something that isn't used on them) or holding down a button with the attack.

[AceofSpades88]

I am glad someone started this thread. I was about to start the same topic, but I'll just add my thoughts here.

 

As mentioned above you can hit the R2 button to open your inventory. This pauses the game and gives you the numerical values of your hunger, sanity and health, which is nice. This button is invaluable as there are many times I would die if it weren't for the ability to pause and quickly swap to a spear and log suit when necessary. If I had to do that in real time it would be suicide. This brings me to another thought I've had though. Is it too much to ask to have the game pause when you hold L2 and open the crafting menu? Maybe it's intentional and functions the same on the PC, but in some instances this can be really dangerous and annoying. I've been caught in the dark when a torch runs out and had to open my inventory and frantically scroll up, find the torch in the menus and craft one. It's terrifying, especially if your cursor is way down the menu on something like Hats or Magic. I also do a lot of my exploring of the crafting menus during night standing next to my fire and machines, but given this limited time I don't get to look at much before it's dawn and time to get back on task.

 

Another thing that has been brought up by others. Both the size of the icons on a television and the lack of labels is frustrating. I would have NEVER figured out what the third component of an Ice Box was had I not looked it up. No amount of squinting at my television would have told me that was a Gear, let alone where to possibly get one. Little labels above each icon, if only in the crafting menu, would be fantastic.

 

I've considered a way the map could be improved, however mine is different than the zoom speed mentioned above. I would actually love it if the map could be zoomed in just a little more. It wouldn't even take much. I think the porting of the game over to a system that uses large televisions where you're sitting farther from the screen has lead to a lot of these issues. Even on full zoom, the map and it's icons are still small and hard to make out.

 

 

I'm sure there were some more thoughts I've had while playing, but they aren't coming to mind. I absolutely love this game, and all of these issues are easily tolerated or coped with, but if they could be considered for improvement that would be fantastic. Unfortunately, beyond just porting the game to PS4, I don't know if the Devs have any intentions of further tweaking or improving the interface of the PS4 version.

 

EDIT:

I just thought of something else that would have been cool to implement on the PS4 version. Due to it being a new feature, I often forget that the Dualshock 4 controller has a built in mono speaker. It would have been really cool to have the ambient world noises play through that speaker. It may sound insignificant, but I bet it would add a lot to the feeling of immersion in the world.

 

EDIT2:

Sorry, I'm going to keep editing this because I don't want to double post. I just remembered another feature it would be nice to have in Don't Starve: an option under settings to adjust the brightness of the game. I understand during Night it's supposed to be really dark, but even during Dusk I have a really hard time seeing things. Add in any glare on your TV and it becomes impossible. Just another thought.

[Syndrix]

 

 

1. Auto-target should be more intelligent.

 

I'm holding a fishing rod and I'm standing near a pond. It's obvious I want to fish. Yet, the character keeps focusing on the small plants by the pond and ignoring the much larger pond itself. I have to adjust myself to get it to work right most of the time. Holding a Bug Net and chasing a butterfly, only to keep harvesting nearby grass, twigs and flowers on the way. Same with Chester. I'm holding a weapon and there are Hounds attacking me. I do not want to attack Chester obviously, yet it seems that the auto-target favors attacking Chester. If there is a group of 5 Hounds and Chester is standing behind me, my character might go as far to turn around to give Chester a smacking instead of the Hounds. I admit it's funny at first, but sometimes that stuff gets dangerous and can get you killed.

 

 

5. Targeting distance could use an increase

 

But I would understand if this one is not possible. If I was already targeting stuff from almost a screen away, I could see that being annoying. But it seems to me that I need to get really close to enemies to be able to fire, for example, Blow Darts at them. It's a distance of about 3-4 berry bushes right now. Seems a little close to me for a ranged action. Makes fighting the Deerclops especially nasty, since I can only fire at him from within his melee range. 

 

 

These 2 are realllllly needed. The auto target should default to hostile first in my opinion. I am so tired of hitting chester and then my baby smallbirds kill him or my pigs.

 

I have also heard you can use smallbird followers to kill birds because they do not run from the smallbirds. However on console birds flee radius is the same as my attack radius so  I can never issue the attack command on a bird before it flies away.

 

Obviously issues with targeting can make the game much more difficult. if I have 3 pigs attacking something and I can't get lined up properly to attack the one hostile thing all I do is help it kill my pigs. This can be very aggravating. 

 

[oadslug]

These are all great suggestions—especially #1 and #4. Wanted to add some examples to number 1.

- when trying to "cook" food in the crockpot with any other tool that also uses the circle button as the action button, the tool is used instead of the desired "cook" action. So instead of cooking you will hammer your crockpot if you have the hammer equipped, or telepoof if you have the lazy explorer staff equipped. (My lazy explorer staff is down to 40% from cooking

- it is practically impossible to assist fighting if you have any followers (pigs, bunnymen, rock lobsters) as it is more likely that you will attack your followers than the enemy. And if you accidentally attack Chester, which almost always happen on the next swing after an enemy dies, then your other followers will kill him. Some sort of force attack option is needed here.

- trying to catch a firefly in the woods with the bug net is practically impossible as the game will highlight every tree around you even though these items do not have a square button interaction. (I have resorted to slashing and burning the forest during the day to open up the area so that i can catch them at night—but you have to cut down all the trees and pick up everything in the area).

- catching the boomerang is impossible if there are any other interactable objects around. (I always wear armor now when using the boomerang.

Regarding #4, it would also be great if the lazy explorer staff teleport distance was increased a bit... It only reaches to about half the distance to the edge of the screen, which I am assuming is also the range distance for attacking.

Game could definitely use some work in these areas. Not complaining mind you, just offering some suggestions to make a great game even better!

[oadslug]

I meant # 1 and #5. Sorry for the confusion.

[ron42na]

Making it easier to catch the boomerang is my #1 issue.  I've taken to just wearing armor when using this now...I've never been able to successfully catch it.  It would also be nice if the target range was extended (this may also be why I can't time the button click for catching it - since the time between hitting the mob and when it gets back to me is only about a second).

 

Not targeting chester unless there are no other mobs around is #2 on my list. 

[AceofSpades88]

What I like about this thread, among all the "PS4 Suggestion" threads lately, is that the suggestions here are about making the game more user friendly on console through mechanical changes. As opposed to those suggesting things to change the premise of Don't Starve completely.

 

I think any time you go from the pin-point control of Mouses & Keyboard to Console Controllers you are going to get these types of issues. A thought that just came to mind was that they could take an unused console button and turn it into a toggle switch for a target reticle. This would mainly just help alleviate problems of inaccurate targeting and ranged targeting distance. Here's an example: the R3 button is currently not used. By clicking the R3 button (pressing down on the right joystick) it could enter "targeting mode" where a reticle appears on screen and can then be moved around with the right joystick to highlight objects. If worried about trying to pan a reticle around in a frenzy while trying to target something (say a hostile), they could add the feature of upon clicking R3 and entering targeting mode the game pauses, much like when you open your inventory (R2). Once you highlight the thing desired you click R3 again and resume the game to use whatever item you needed to (boomerang, dart, specific attack, etc.)

 

Just a thought that popped into my head as I read over the previous post.

[Llohr]

Well, to solve both the "intelligent targeting" and "force attack" issues, in a simpler way, how about this:

 

Make the L3 button select the nearest hostile for targeting purposes, and perhaps simply the nearest mob if no hostile mobs are present. Bonus points for an L3 button that targets the nearest hostile/mob in the direction you're facing. In a perfect world, this target option would even suspend the "focus on whatever's closest" function to avoid target confusion, so the only name popping up on the screen would be whatever you're going to hit when you press square.

 

I have tried and tried to get used to targeting in combat. For the longest time, I thought that if the enemy's name was shown on-screen (i.e. that enemy was my current auto-target), then that was what the attack button would hit. Repeated testing has shown that not to be the case. I can have my screen show "Butterfly" with a "triangle = inspect" prompt, and a "square = attack" prompt, wherein if I press triangle, I inspect the butterfly, and if I press square, I attack the nearby (friendly) bee. That really shouldn't be the way it works. The same issue happens with various combinations of hostile, friendly, and neutral mobs, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. 

 

Attack specific targeting would alleviate the issues with hitting Chester or allies, and also make ranged weapons, well, ranged. As it stands, they really aren't. 

 

I also think the "auto-target-the-nearest-object" thing makes the boomerang all but impossible to use, and am thinking that either that should be suspended while a boomerang is in-flight, (or while a mob is targeted for attack, a la above suggestion) or that boomerangs should be auto-caught on the console version.

 

Attack-target cancelling would ideally be possible via some other button, like R3, or even circle or triangle, since normal interactions would be suspended while you have an attack target.

 

 

I have also noticed that the attack button doesn't always function the same. Sometimes, when pressing square to attack an auto-selected mob that's a step or two away, my character runs to it and swings. Sometimes, she just stands where she's at and flails ineffectually

[screwtape]

These are great suggestions. 

 

With respect to zoom, it would be great if I could zoom in a bit more into the map - as it stands, even at max zoom I'm seeing too much map and too little detail.

[Merlin06]

when leaving a cave it would be nice to have a "are you sure you want to leave the cave" pop up.  Ive left the caves numerous times trying to open chester.  not game breaking just annoying.  I agree with the attack feature targeting allies.  should be a different button to attack friendlies like the O button.