How to Rebalance Don't Starve for Multiplayer? Console Commands Yes/No? page 16

[jbeetle]

But shouldn't that ONLY apply to things in game that aren't player crafted?

Yea I guess that would make sense.

[J20hawkz]

Ok new page new topic:

Originally posted here, but seeing as JoeW mentioned Don't Starve Together will have Mod support I'm sure they have a plan for that. So lets talk about whether Debugspawning stuff should be a thing when playing with others in a world that is affected by everyone involved.

I also feel console should be disabled, I would hate it if someone just started randomly debug spawning random stuff out of sheer laziness, instead of exploring and finding the required resources to craft the stuff.

If mods and console commands are allowed then this should be a toggle option in world customisation. As host we have rights over that. As a guest we can see which servers have enabled the use of mods and console commands and decide to join or not join the hosts world.

Mods and console should never be taken out of Don't Starve Together. But give players the option to play with others in a world where the game won't be spoiled by someone who is using "OP" mods or any mods in general and spawning stuff all over the place with the console. Private serves won't solve this either, the only way to allow or disallow mods and console is through the world customization screen which the Host will choose.

[J20hawkz]

100% confident Klei have or will come up with a very good idea how to answer the questions JoeW left here, but let's help and see what we can come up with. Here's my initial thoughts.

How will players find each other?

Just like Steam we can have our own friends list accessed through the Don’t Starve Together interface (DSTi). We can register our forum accounts with the DSTi, so anyone who wants to add us will know our Online User names (same as forum name). I guess this will only apply to non steam users? But obviously anyone who has steam but wants to play with someone who doesn't play Don't Starve through steam can add them just as easy.

How many people should play together?

Easy. 2-4 players max. It's like this with almost every Co-op game. At least the ones I have grown up playing. Any more than this and personally it would get out of hand, you'll just have players standing around idle not bothering to do anything as most of the work has been done by other members of the team. 2 is ideal. Either way I'm happy as long as I'm not hindered gameplay wise playing as a duo. We have a thread on this.

Can we keep the game "safe" for younger players?

Communication comes to mind. Kids are going to find ways to talk with each other whether we have a chat box in Don't Starve Together or not. So how do you monitor discussions through Skype and other similar programmes? You can't. Or can you? *insert evil laugh here*.

Having the option to allow/disallow communication with someone through Don't Starve Together could be a good start. Anyone who wants to play with others but doesn't want the distractions that come with player chatter (text or voice) should be free to disable it. Instead of the Host being in charge, this ability lies with anyone. A simple mute/ignore feature would be ideal.

[J20hawkz]

× If monster health/damage is scaled up based on number of players, should weapons and armour scale? Should we deal more damage with any weapon?

× Should our armour provide more protection?

× Don't you think 2-4 players attacking a spider den is OP, especially if you consider how doable it is alone in Don't Starve vanilla.

× Should stun locking be removed then? Or how about we have a percentage chance of causing stun each time we attack?

× Should there be new weapons that inflict status like poison or stun, if monsters are scaled up but our gear and player stats remain the same?

× Poison can deal damage (once inflicted) over a short period of time. All poisoned monsters strength are drained and they take extra damage.

× Can we add poison/stun properties to original weapons by using them in crafting more status inflicting weapons?

If anyone hasn't shared their option on this please do. It's pretty clear from the Don't Starve Together progress report thread, Klei have been carefully following what has been said in this forum. Make the most of this period before multiplayer is released.

[polygone]

× If monster health/damage is scaled up based on number of players, should weapons and armour scale? Should we deal more damage with any weapon?

× Should our armour provide more protection?

× Don't you think 2-4 players attacking a spider den is OP, especially if you consider how doable it is alone in Don't Starve vanilla.

× Should stun locking be removed then? Or how about we have a percentage chance of causing stun each time we attack?

× Should there be new weapons that inflict status like poison or stun, if monsters are scaled up but our gear and player stats remain the same?

× Poison can deal damage (once inflicted) over a short period of time. All poisoned monsters strength are drained and they take extra damage.

× Can we add poison/stun properties to original weapons by using them in crafting more status inflicting weapons?

If anyone hasn't shared their option on this please do. It's pretty clear from the Don't Starve Together progress report thread, Klei have been carefully following what has been said in this forum. Make the most of this period before multiplayer is released.

Don't scale armour/weapons much if you scale monsters, that just makes unarmored players more vulnerable and otherwise cancels out the buff. The only thing that should be changed about armour is that they should have slightly more health so they don't instantly break from the stronger attacks, but they shouldn't absorb more % damage.

 

For things like spider dens upgrading the AI could help fix that, if a spider is caught in a trap nearby a den then a spider warrior could come out to see what happened to the missing spider. (and if the warrior is attacked it'd trigger a response from the nest) Having stun be chance-based would be fine, just make it a high chance for something weak/mob mentality such as a spider or bee. If you're attacking a tallbird the chance to stun would be lower, but the lowest should probably be ~50% since any lower and noone can count on stuns to save them from a monster and therefore would just run away instead of fighting alone.

 

I'm all up for poison as a new elemental effect. Don't just add it to random things though. You could do things like take stingers and rocks to craft bowls of poison. (+it'd give stingers more of a use...) Then you could 'feed' your spear or other weapon using the bowl of poison in order to get it to deal poison damage for ~2-5 hits or something. Stingers and rocks aren't hard to get at all, just find a beehive and a boulder and you're good for multiple bowls. The poison would do minor damage over time, but with the buffed health/such of the monsters it'd end up helping kill things faster. The only problem is whether or not poison stacks. So if you hit a monster twice does it have two poison timers? Did you waste your second poison hit, or does it just wait until you hit something that isn't poisoned already to use a stack?

 

Personally I'd prefer it if you can't stack poison, and for the weapon to wait until you hit something not already poisoned to use a durability of poison on your weapon. (of course, if you use up all the normal durability on your spear you'll lose the poison stacks when the weapon breaks...)

~~~~~

For stun there's one more thing you could do with a chance-based system. Stabby/slicey weapons like swords and spears would do the normal stun chance, while blunt weapons such as the ham bat and batbat will have increased chance to stun, since essentially you're just whacking the monster over the head really hard.

~~~~~

There's another thing with what you said about taking extra damage. A lot of multiplayer games have added systems where one player can play as an aggressive support, which attacks enemies in order to reduce their defense or otherwise allow teammates to deal more damage. I think this would be a great idea, possibly something in the magic tab could do this. Or it could be a recipe using wet goop, since that doesn't really have a use anyways. Essentially one player would use this goop weapon to attack a monster, and this would mark the creature with some kind of icon or other visual clue to show it's weaker. The actual weapon would deal probably as much or even slightly less than a normal spear, but marked creatures would take extra damage from all non-goop sources. Basically it'd be slag from Borderlands 2.

 

...on the topic of support items, another thing that could be useful is some kind of healing staff using red gems. Basically it'd take some sanity and hunger from the user and heal a target from a distance, or if the player targets themself it'd heal themself. It'd work at the same basic ratio for the life-giving amulet, but instead of having to wear it you could just hold it in your hand. The downside being it won't be able to revive you, and it won't give you sanity while held.

 

[J20hawkz]

@polygone just saw your post. I'll have a read and let you know what I think tomorrow morning mate.

Edit: I've read it all. You've got some awesome ideas. I particularly like the healing staff idea. But wouldn't this make scenarios like this possible:

1. Player A attacking group of spiders

2. Player B healing Player A from a distance

Effectively with such an item you are allowing Player A to tank everything thrown their way.

Speaking of a staff related item. This also made me think if it would be a good idea to have a staff that teleports the player welding it, to another player anywhere on the map. It's random of course, so you may need to use it a few times before you get to the person you want. I could see it as a useful item in a team of 2 players.

[DustyCake]

In my opinion PvP needs to be balanced (if added) will the sleep dart even have an effect? And if successful I can see a 2v2 Base wars in the future of Don't Starve. Capturing resource points and PvP over Koalephants will be a definite challenge. While others see error in PvP I find a fun free for all battle for Koalephants. Raiding will also be tons of fun. Making an unraidable base is probably the goal for most Don't Starve players instead of for food. PvP will offer a better challenge than just keeping from starving. So instead of supporting buffing creatures you guys should think about that.

[Ixmore]

The current sanity system wouldn't work very well in DST. I feel the sanity system would need to be redone for multiplayer mode for it to work well. First thing that should be done is to make sanity meter invisible to prevent the player to simply ignore the proposed events. It would be better to do something like in Eternal Darkness where players would see the game in a different perspective like seeing events or enemies that actually didn't happen or aren't actually there or being unable to see real mobs

[polygone]

The current sanity system wouldn't work very well in DST. I feel the sanity system would need to be redone for multiplayer mode for it to work well. First thing that should be done is to make sanity meter invisible to prevent the player to simply ignore the proposed events. It would be better to do something like in Eternal Darkness where players would see the game in a different perspective like seeing events or enemies that actually didn't happen or aren't actually there or being unable to see real mobs

That would be annoying mostly since people would feel like they're wasting things like straw rolls and cooked greencaps if they can't tell how insane they are. Plus new players wouldn't know why they're suddenly seeing ghosts when the last two times they ate a raw mushroom nothing happened. The HUD should be left alone really, though they do have to work on the sanity system to figure out how it fits in multiplayer.

 

@polygone just saw your post. I'll have a read and let you know what I think tomorrow morning mate.

Meow~

[J20hawkz]

Here's a scenario: irrespective of whether PvP is on or off. Permadeath is on.

Player A makes a Meat Effigy

Player A goes exploring

Player B hammers Meat Effigy

Player A doesn't realise

Player A dies = Permadeath

I have no idea how it will work with Permadeath off. If It was off I see no need to build a Meat Effigy so that isn't a solution as such. My scenario needs a solution based on Permadeath being on, which I presume the majority of us will enable.

Thoughts?

[polygone]

There'll probably be some form of penalty for people who die even with permadeath off.

[J20hawkz]

There'll probably be some form of penalty for people who die even with permadeath off.

Sanity 0

Health 10% of max

Hunger 10% of max

[DarkReaper115]

Maybe we could have an option for how many chesters per world, maybe even how close they are to the original spawn.

On a little off-topic note, I would like options for distance from spawn for more stuff, for example, force people on my server to travel way more to find caves, eyebones, the things, and the adventure mode door.

 

Specially about the adventure mode door, I find it silly that I can find those in 5 days with no divine rod, or find the 5 things and escape from my world in 13 days. Make it harder !

[polygone]

Sanity 0

Health 10% of max

Hunger 10% of max

No, bad idea. 10% hunger/health while fighting insanity creatures with your fists. That doesn't even remotely sound fair. People wouldn't even make it to their home base to get food or equipment, might as well be permadeath at that point.

 

On death with a touch stone health is set to 50, hunger is 66%, and sanity is 50%.

 

Just lower it to 20/25 health, 40-50% hunger, and 20% sanity. That way even as Wes you won't have to deal with nightmares, you still have enough starting hunger to make it to your base, and you have a harsher penalty for dying than you otherwise would.

[polygone]

@polygone just saw your post. I'll have a read and let you know what I think tomorrow morning mate.

Edit: I've read it all. You've got some awesome ideas. I particularly like the healing staff idea. But wouldn't this make scenarios like this possible:

1. Player A attacking group of spiders

2. Player B healing Player A from a distance

Effectively with such an item you are allowing Player A to tank everything thrown their way.

Speaking of a staff related item. This also made me think if it would be a good idea to have a staff that teleports the player welding it, to another player anywhere on the map. It's random of course, so you may need to use it a few times before you get to the person you want. I could see it as a useful item in a team of 2 players.

If player B constantly uses the healing staff on player A, then player B will quickly start starving to death, and player A's armor will still deteriorate, and eventually break. But yes, it'd basically mean you'd outfit player A with the best armor and weapon avaliable while player B has more food and light armor/weapons such as darts. Another thing is eventually the staff would break if you're abusing it on things like spiders, since it'd have about the same durability (or a little higher) than the life-giving amulet.

 

Another way to help balance it is player B could take sanity dips for using the staff since essentially they're starving themselves to keep someone else alive, which isn't a particularly sane thing to do realistically. So if player B spams heal on player A then player B will also start seeing nightmares as well as starving, which would distract them from doing their healing power for a short time. That said, if this is implimented I suggest having the sanity penalty relatively low, since the strategy of what to outfit who with would be a nice addition to the game, rather than just having everyone be tanky spear-toting madmen. Not a lot of combat options. There's blow darts, melee weapons, armour, and followers like pigmen and rock lobsters. Crossing out the followers since that's not really you doing the damage, that just leaves three things to think about while fighting. One for defence, two for offence. Sure there's traps, but that's fairly situational since they're better suited to keeping things out of your base or dealing with hounds/giants. And gunpowder is just a cheap way to nuke bosses. So yeah, just ranting about things being simple. Oh, also the staves are nice. Fire staff tends to start forest fires, and ice staff is meh. Ice isn't particularly powerful really.

 

[Luczrio]

      I personally feel that DST should not be a total, cooperative effort. It would be absolutely no fun if you were forced to be a team against your will. I feel more like relationships should be carved from hard work, disputes and agreements. I feel like the player should always be paranoid about his relationship with others. "Man I never met that Wolfgang, maybe he is already at night armor, and is going to rob me!" "Alright, I think I can finnally tru- wait what are you doing with that torch NONONO WAIT PLEASE". I would like it more if, you can have teams, or be at war with everyone, but you only keep you're best interests at all times. Being selfless shouldn't be promoted by the game, nor should being selfish. It should be a struggle between all the players to find it in themselves to cooperate with one another, and though there will be hardships, they will eventually make it work. And doesnt that kinda fit the atmosphere of DS? You're lost, you're alone, you're sad, and even with everything around you, you still feel lonely. Nothing will fix it, but you try anyways. And its hard, and you're in pain, and you trust nothing, but in the end if you put in the effort to go that extra mile you will come out on top. Now doesn't that sound emotionally and epic?

[Luczrio]

Like maybe if you have items that promote that style of gameplay, like a lock that you can put on chests, and a door for your walls, and a lockpick that can only be used once, yet does something bad to the players (Not just you) like a hound attack. This would mean that its the players job to monitor who is bad and who is good, or they all get punished. Using this punish all type dealio will have players kinda keep themselves in check, and actually try to make a relation sheep work. The only kind of punishment the world should enforce, should be at every player, making them kind off work out their own differences, and things of the sort. But then you have to make those differences too, so maybe like no one gets punished the first 2 days, just to fuel some pandemoneom. But then everyone would just die, so... You guys are smarter than me, what do you think? Do you also believe in that kind of system? No? Why not?

[J20hawkz]

@Luczrio PvP will be optional in Don't Starve Together: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/36216-pvp-in-pve-for-dont-starve-together-announced-as-optional/

I like your ideas, but don't you think the lock on chests and having doors will be pointless, seeing how we are able to bust into things with hammers?

[Malan-Tai]

@Luczrio I'd love if there were relation sheeps ! Y ou could shave them and they'd give friend wool ! (sorry but I had to)

[J20hawkz]

@Luczrio I'd love if there were relation sheeps ! Y ou could shave them and they'd give friend wool ! (sorry but I had to)

This isn't a farming simulator

[Malan-Tai]

This isn't a farming simulator

OH NO I have a better idea ! A new character who, when he has eaten too much veggies, turns into a weregoat that can lick everything !

[timisaurus]

I was also thinking Chester should stay at one. Technically Chester is one of a kind, and just imagine if there were 4 on screen (people won't be happy with 2 due to jealousy over someone else in the team having one, same can be said with 1, but deal with it) you could have 4 Snow Chesters and never have any need to make Ice Boxes. Or 4 Chesters following behind one person 9 × 4 = 36 extra slots. Even 2 with 18 slots is too much as a free "storage".

To compensate how about we get an extra Chester (max 4) each time we accomplish something.

1. Find the eye bone on the surface

2. Find the eye bone in the caves

3. Find the eye bone in the ruins

4. Find an eye bone in Adventure mode in Don't Starve Together (hopefully there is one)

Or simply find the four things and start a new world and keep finding eye bones like that. Max 4 times (hoping Don't Starve Together is 2-4 players only).

 

I think its better if there are a 3 Chesters: the normal, the ice chester found in youst in winter, and the shadow chester ev. in caves or in the last adventuremod stage.

[J20hawkz]

I think its better if there are a 3 Chesters: the normal, the ice chester found in youst in winter, and the shadow chester ev. in caves or in the last adventuremod stage.

But wouldn't it be fair on everyone if we all had "normal" Chesters which we could then transform into the other two variants?

[the truthseeker]

Sorry if I missed it here, but how is "Sleep" (both items you enter and items consumed that have a screen radius effect) rsolved for multiplayer? 

[timisaurus]

But wouldn't it be fair on everyone if we all had "normal" Chesters which we could then transform into the other two variants?

hmmm... if you add the feature if the normal chester turnes to a ice chester they will attack eatch other?