Ghost system, telltale heart, revive penalty, system for a dc when there is a danger

[Odinfrom]

Hello everyone !

 

So I would like to talk about these, because they are really important in the game.

 

In fact, first I think once you know a bit how to play the game, it becomes way too easy to revive players and get your health back.

Before, when you are a beginner with beginners, they will die (as planned) but once you master a bit the game, the difficulty is gone forever. I feel like the gap is not really huge.

 

 

Telltale heart/Revive penalty :

So first, telltale heart is a joke to craft, it's waaaay too easy to craft (don't tell me it's hard to get 3 cut grass, and same for the gland, for the gland you craft a trap, and you get your gland with 0 danger against spiders). And anway, you have lots of spider gland in your chest since you farm spiders for silks and monster meat and not for spider glands.

Then, you can use a armor to take a small amount of damage when you craft the telltale heart, the danger is not that great for someone to craft it, and people can craft the booster shot, it's not that hard.

 

Ghosts :

They are linked to telltale heart, but usually when there is a beginner in your game who is a ghost, you tell him to do nothing and you rush to craft the telltale heart because of the sanity penalty and especially because of the high probability of him burning all your trees/plantation (not on purpose, but you know, he clicks a bit everywhere and your ressources are gone). Usually it doesn't last at all since you have crazy amount of telltale hearts.

 

Leave when ghost :

There is this scenario : they are kicked. I guess nothing can be done but ugh...

 

And the bad one : People also leave when they are a ghost because they give a penalty to other players, and for example rejoin 2 minutes later. You know, a hound attack, one dies, one with low sanity is attacked by hounds, he says to the dead one to leave for 2 min because he is going to be mad, kill the hounds, and get a bit back his sanity and then tell the ghost to come back.

 

System for a dc when there is a danger :
Okay the last one is the trickiest. I sometimes see that and it makes me vomit, when there are in a huge danger (low life, hounds on them...and so on), they just leave and come back a bit later. It should be like the tent, or something like insta death or the body stays a bit in the server (a bit like DayZ sa, I don't know if it's still the case but if you leave, the body stays for 10/15s in order to avoid people who dc when they are threatened/going to die, and if they dc they will probably die since their body is still on the server so they can't dc in front of a danger anymore)

 

 

So There are lots of things said in it, but.. It's rather important. What do you think of it?

[RalphKastro]

Then, you can use a armor to take a small amount of damage when you craft the telltale heart

that's a bug.

Ghosts: yeah, they should be less boring to be, but also more destructive.

Survival mode: yeah, that's a pain. The penaulty is just annoying, and the kicking/leaving of people is just worse. I remember some suggestion was made Rezecib for that, but I can't quite remember what it was. something about a tombstone. I mostly avoid survival mode when I can, unless I'm specifically testing stuff in it, and I think some big things should change in it.

Disconnection: It's multiplayer. There's nothing you can do about that aside from shaming those who do. Trying to create some mechanic for it would just end up being annoying and frustrating, creating many "leave, then die" situations were the player didn't know about the danger. 

[rezecib]

Leave when ghost : There is this scenario : they are kicked. I guess nothing can be done but ugh...

I think there is a solution to this. If when you left as a ghost, it left a grave (or just any object really) behind for you, which continued the sanity drain until it was given a heart, then there would be no incentive to kick people or leave. 

 

I don't know about the disconnection system. It could also result in unfair unintended deaths, such as disconnecting close to night (because you are actually leaving the server). But ultimately I think difficulty in Don't Starve is voluntary. There are plenty of ways you can choose to baby your experience, so I don't think exploits like that are a huge problem unless they're actually fun to do by themselves-- and they're not.

 

Edit: TTH used to give a health penalty of 40. I think that was a more appropriate amount of punishment for death, since it required two booster shots to reverse rather than just one. The current 20 feels too low, the first death feels practically free.

[sunzribe]

Odinfrom,

I am curious.

When you started playing this game, did you learn by trial and error?  Or did you read the wiki and figure out how everything works before you started playing?

[Odinfrom]

Off-topic : I've discovered the game on a video (watched just the first minutes, so I knew I needed light for night, btw you bring back memories, the original ds is old), then started by trial and error and when I got bored, I watched some streams/readed the wiki.

No, obviously you can't guess everything just by playing the game, unless you've played it 5000 hours you may discover everything but otherwise no (examples : in order to unlock webber, glommer bell, giving a meat to pigs..and so on)

I've played a lot on this game, for example just for dst(got it around 20 dec) I've around 120 hours, I really like this game(and the studio klei, it's rare that a studio is nice) but you know, it's getting boring. I guess it's because it's not finished yet (the caves are not here, the dlc RoG is not here, the through the ages is not here, it's a beta)

 

Back to topic :

Woh, I really love this idea of graves, and the heart in a grave in order to stop the sanity drain sounds nice. Yeah I guess exploits can't be avoided.

And ok for TTL, anyway even if your max health is reduced by 20 at the first death, you don't have that often full life. Or maybe in the game setting you can set how much you loose for a death.

[RalphKastro]

@sunzribe, does it really matter? Discovering is fun, but the "I know everything, now let's play!" part should how up too.

[Michi01]

I think there is a solution to this. If when you left as a ghost, it left a grave (or just any object really) behind for you, which continued the sanity drain until it was given a heart, then there would be no incentive to kick people or leave.

The problem is, griefers could join a server, suicide, do stuff like burning things and
when he/she gets banned, all players still lose sanity.

[rezecib]

@Michi01, That's not really significantly worse than what griefers can do already.

[avilmask]

My penny on the topic.
There is how I would like too see this:
- after death, player leaving his bones in the place, where he died. Until player is revived, bones stay in "unrest" state (some visual effect, I think). Ghost itself doesn't suck sanity, but bones do. In order to deactivate sanity lose, you have to banish the ghost (using revival item on ghost or on it's bones). If ghost disconnects, you still need to soothe an unrest bones (i. e. disconnecting have no use). If you revive on bones, dead player take less or no penalty;
- ghosts fading over time. After death, player losing his maximum health in his ghost form (-0.5/minute). After disconnection, player keep losing his max. health, so other players should soothe his bones not only in order to negotiate sanity penalty, but to save ghost's health. After ghost hits half of his max. health it becomes weak/harmless (can't interact), and doesn't lose his max. health over time any more. Penalty from telltale heart should be reduced in order with changes;

- an item to detect ghosts and unrest bones;

- an item to speed up fading for griefer players!
- powers of ghosts should be limited too. I thought, maybe ghost should lose his max. health every time he interact with physical world, speeding up his fading and becoming harmless, but it will make being a ghost less funny. Maybe some spirit power meter should work, that slowly regenerating by it self (really slow, like 0.2/minute, with max of 50), and can be boosted by Night Light (additional use for one of the worst items in the game). And it will take 1 point to interact with wild/natural items and 5 with crafted.  But I still think, losing max. hp (-1 per use on crafted items) for using ghost abilities not a bad variant as well;
- player need at last 10 seconds to exit the game. In the case of emergency exit (disconnection) his character still stays in the game for that 10 seconds;

 

upd

 

Also this.

Actually, ghosts don't need any power limitations if you can be protected from them. But still, dead players need a reason to be revived and don't leave a game at the same time.

[chronicpayne]

I really think the DC issue needs to be addressed... was in a server the other day and every single night time, three or four people would just log out.

 

5 minutes later, log back in and conitnue.

 

This can't be considered your vision for the game, can it?

 

 

Take a page from the multitude of MMO's that had to deal with the same issue - give players a 'logout' timer that they can see, counting back from 30 seconds or maybe a minute?

 

Currently there is nothing preventing a player with a legitimate DC issue from immediately re-entering the server, and if the players computer had shut down, then yes they may die - but this is the same result in afformentioned MMORPGs, and it's not an issue.

[Buldric]

I think there is a solution to this. If when you left as a ghost, it left a grave (or just any object really) behind for you, which continued the sanity drain until it was given a heart, then there would be no incentive to kick people or leave.

 

@Michi01, That's not really significantly worse than what griefers can do already.

 

While that may be true, it also raises the issue of players who simply die because they're incompetent. Normally, if someone can't stay alive on a survival server, I'd say to just kick them. With your proposed gravestone system, every single n00b who connects to your server is unavoidably your problem, even if you kick them as soon as they give you good cause.

 

Of course, the obvious solution is to just play in Wilderness or Endless unless you're playing with people you know, but... well, if you can convince everybody to do that, I'd love you for it. I really don't understand why everybody plays in Survival.

[Buldric]

I really think the DC issue needs to be addressed... was in a server the other day and every single night time, three or four people would just log out.

 

I've seen this, too. I agree that it's an issue, but I think the game naturally mitigates behavior like that (to a degree). For one thing, anybody who knows what they're doing will be using the night for something productive, not just standing around waiting for day. If you drop off every night and come back in the morning, you're going to end up way behind someone who doesn't, even considering the resource cost of a campfire or torch(es).

 

Of course, there are substantial benefits to only having your food spoil during the day, and if you're a poor player or lack experience, you may not be able to make much out of your evenings anyway.

 

Bottom line, I'd say those people are doing you a favor, because you immediately know who to kick. On the other hand, when you're playing on a server where you're not the host, it can be a real problem.

[rezecib]

I really don't understand why everybody plays in Survival.

I think they play survival because it's the default mode selection.