The Unspoken Problem with Summer

[SneakyBuffalo]

I know this is long, but it's important to me. TL;DR is at the very bottom.

I registered just to post this, if that indicates how serious I believe the Summer problem is. It's really the only aspecy of the game I dislike, and though I dislike it a lot, I love Don't Starve and will deal with it if need be, but maybe we can make it better. So here we go.

THE COMMON OPINIONS OF SUMMER

I've read a number of other threads here on the subject of Summer and there are a number of opinions. It seems that most people basically fall into one of three opinons -

• (A) Summer is too difficult because Overheating and / or Combustion are so dangerous
• (B) Summer is boring because dealing with Overheating / Combustion results in too much down time in your base
• © Summer is challenging but that's good because vanilla DS sandbox was too easy

If you really consider the reasons behind those opinions, it's clear that even though they may seem radically different, they're all actually the same complaint, just expressed differently based on how each player reacts to the problem. So ... what is "the problem", you say? Let's break it down.

REVEALING COMMON GROUND

Player A would like to find adventure and challenge outside of his base. This is very difficult in summer, so he frequently dies while attempting it and becomes frustrated. He refuses to mitigate the challenge by wasting away in his base. It's Player B who chooses to hide in his base, but he's unhappy because that precludes him from adventures abroad for a long time. Player C doesn't necessarily like Summer, but he doesn't want it changed because it would remove the challenge he so much sought after conquering vanilla sandbox mode.

CONCLUSION

It should be clear now. All of these players want the same thing - A challenge, but specifically one that doesn't require standing around in your base for two hours managing the color hue of your screen.

 

In short, the problem with Summer is that meeting it's challenges mostly precludes you from enjoying the rest of the game for a huge chunk of your play time. IIt seems most would prefer a fun challenge instead of a boring challenge.
 

 

POST-CONCLUSION CONGRATULATIONS

 

Thanks for sticking with this novella of a post!! Hopefully it gave you something to think about. From here I provide my own opinions. If you don't give a crap what I think, you can safely return to the care and feeding of your pigmy marmaset. Though I really don't understand why you have a pet pygmy marmoset to begin with.
 

 

MY PERSONAL OPINION

I love Don't Starve or I wouldn't have wasted my time on this, and I don't presume to tell the game developers what to do with their game. I will provide a few sample ideas below this, but mainly I just wanted to say that, given the choice, when it comes to Summer, I believe the vast majority of us would rather die to a random mob, a hound attack, a giant, starvation, insanity, bring ripped to shreds by an invisible night demon, eating icky lasagna, acquiring a forehead full of uncaught boomerangs, or receiving a huge tentacle up the bum. Those things are also dangerous, but fun and rewarding at the same time.

For illustrative purposes, it may help to point out that in vanilla DS, 20 of 36 days (~56%) were mostly free of damaging elements - days we could run around and battle spider queens, scary trees, and such. Despite a whole host of new ways to die in RoG, we're down to 20 of 72 elements-free days, or ~28%. I understand that battling the elements is a big part of Don't Starve, but the ratio of challenges is much different now. To me, it feels like too much time is spent battling the elements, leaving not enough time for spanking spider queens.

HUMBLE THOUGHTS TO INSPIRE A BETTER SUMMER SYSTEM

 

Changes to Summer could be simple tweaks or whole new systems, things like making fires hurt more, making food spoil faster than it already does, the player's temperature

 

Some humble ideas that might help inspire your own vision of a newly-balanced Summer -

• It's a proven fact that depths in the earth beyond a few feet have very little temperature variance. It's the science behind using Heat Pipes for HVAC and the reason our ancestors stored food in cellars before we had refrigerators. Overheating in a cave could be removed. Some might prefer the increased danger of caves to the overheating mechanic. I would.
• Since we have wetness, instead of spontaneous combustion, perhaps the hotter it gets, the 'drier' the plants get. Drier plants can catch fire at increasingly long distances, and in the summer, fire sources (including the campfire) could produce dangerous embers, which could travel even further if wind were added to summer thunderstorms. This is the science of summer forest fires and would make summer fires situational instead of a constant risk.
• If the Ice Block hat were similar in stats to the Beefalo hat (i.e. it could provide very good cooling with no wetness), that might make Summer more akin to Winter - challenging but not crippling. Maybe the water just evaporates as it melts instead of making the character soaking wet and unhappy. It's very difficult to wear enough heat-reducing equipment and still be able to equip any protective armors as it stands.
• Consider 'Sun Exposure' in lieu of 'Heat'. Overheating isn't an issue, but a player can get sunburnt in Summer during the day without protection. A hat or parasol would be almost entirely preventative, but naturally prevents usage of a weapon and/or football helmet.
• Perhaps unrpotected days in the heat make the player unhappy, i.e. just decreasing sanity instead of health. And perhaps less 'dark' time makes sleeping much less effective - the bonuses of sleeping could vary with the number of nighttime clock slices. The combination could devastate traditional sleep-based sanity strategies in the summer. The player would literally catch 'Sun Madness' or the like, but not die outright.
• The game could just be more difficult in general - fires hurt more, food spoils crazy fast, the player gets a debuff that gets worse as he gets hotter, monsters can get 'sun madness' and attack anything in site, even if they're normally passive, metal objects like crock pots expound radiant heat and burn you when you tuch them, and so on.

I know this was long, but it's because I care. Thanks for reading.

TL;DR

The current Summer system is challenging, it's just not fun. For most, as long as it's fun, they're open to pretty much anything. Except clowns.

 

Stupid clowns and their creepy size 73 clogs. Look here, clowns - I really don't care how well you can twist that baloon, poodles aren't green!

[bellagoth]

I agree with pretty much everything you said! I really like the idea of the temperature being constant underground.

[GalloViking]

I don't really have troubles with summer... I have a special summer camp in a place where things will hardly burn: a desert. If you gathered enough ice in winter, it is easy, BUT it is boring and not funny.

[orian34]

Yes i agree, but you forgot the D character : Too easy but summer is boring...

And this is what i think of...

[Zillvr]

Firstly, welcome to the forums @SneakyBuffalo. Secondly, I just want to summarize your suggestions just so I know I'm understanding them correctly:

• Remove temperature effects in caves and ruins.
• Remove spontaneous combustion but all plants dry up faster and thus fire propagation speed increases.
• Remove ice block's drawback of making character wet.
• Make hats/parasols/umbrellas ALMOST completely reduce the chance of overheating.
• Make overheating reduce sanity instead of health and add an unknown player debuff.
• Sleeping mechanic be reworked to make its restorative properties be dependent on the world clock of what time you slept and for how long.
• Tidbits: Fire hurts more, Increase Food Spoilage, All Creatures affected by an unknown overheating debuff.

Thirdly, I'll try and shed some light on the things I know about the game in relation to your suggestions:

• The caves and ruins should be affected by the overworld's weather. Temperature will drop or increase regardless of where it is in the world. Overheating and Freezing are very much manageable though.
• About removing the Ice Block's drawback of making the player wet in exchange for cooling yourself up. Along side with your concern with hats/umbrellas taking a slot for a weapon, tool or restricting you from wearing armor for protection. All these are things that makes the game great the way it is. Inventory management and making snap decisions on what to wear for a specific situation all in all IS the game, a challenge. I'd rather like having all these drawbacks cause they make gameplay interesting and challenging.
  • If you want protection from overheating while also being well equipped with armors logsuit and helmet, you have the following option:
    • First, you turn Chester into a Snow Chester, and make him carry a Thermal Stone. Then freeze a Thermal Stone in your icebox. So when you want to explore, bring the Frozen Thermal Stone from the icebox on your person (in your hotbar not backpack). Once it starts to heat up swap it out with the Pre-Frozen Thermal Stone in your Snow Chester. With this set up you can perpetually always have armor without having to worry about overheating.
• Overheating and Freezing should hurt, because they do. 
• Fire is ok as it stands, making it hurt more doesn't add anything to the game but just a more extreme danger.
• Food does spoil faster in summer compared to other seasons.
• The debuff you mentioned that you get when you overheat. That needs more info than just a vague debuff. What kind of debuff exactly were you thinking? 
• With the idea of making the restorative values of sleeping be dependent on how long you slept, this is the only actual idea you mentioned that I liked. It would pose a good challenge, of whether you should sleep early or not. But maybe that's just us, SneakyBuffalo. Sigh...

Overall, I do I agree that summer is relatively uneventful compared to the other seasons. Maybe we need a summer counterpart to the MacTusk N' Son Hunting Party Camp. Hmmm, that's a whole different game idea suggestion though. Anyways, hope my post does shed some light for you. Good luck and have fun, Cheers.

[SneakyBuffalo]

Thanks, Zilver. The long list of changes I gave were just examples - I wasn't recommending they all be implemented simultaneously or even that they should be implemented at all - they were just possibilities that might inspire a Klei-based idea.

 

Before the first Winter, the player can normally grab a 240 Insulating Factor Beefalo Hat (just by dragging your Hound attack to a spot with a small number of Beefalo) and Heat Stone with relative ease, and still wear the log suit / backpack and use a spear. It basically removes the head slot and requires a bit of time and resource management (re-heating the stone, for example). The drawback is obviously that the very easily-attainable Footbal Helmet can't be used, and without it you have 80% damage reduction instead of 96%. There are other minor things like using more logs to heat your stone up, having to drop a fire occaisionaly if you're far from your base, etc. But they aren't a big deal. Two characters grow beards and Willow has a free torch - these can all help as well, "for free".

 

Before the first Summer, you can't get a 240 Insulating Helmet, period, since there's only one and it's the Eyebrella. There isn't a 120-insulating helm period. The only option is the 60 Insulating Straw Hat. The natural tendency then is to use a regular umbrella or pretty parasol, but then you can't attack anything, period, and there's very very little dusk to try to kill something without the umbrella/parasol. You can use a Thermal Stone, which I tried the first time, and promptly died before I realized that the stone can get red-hot in your inventory and kill you. If that happens in Winter when the stone gets to the coldest point, I don't think I've seen it, or it hasn't been a big deal. And yes, you can use Refrigerator Chester, but if you can get 9 blue gems or whatnot before the first Summer, good for you, because I surely can't. Your best bet is the Floral Shirt, which means no backpack or chest armor, and it's not even available until summer begins. Also keep in mind that beards and the lighter work against you in summer.

 

I think anyone would agree that there's a big difference there, and that's before I bring up combustion. I'm not asking to remove Summer, and I know that subsequent Summers can get easier if you can kill Deerclops, but I die everytime I try to kill that bastard, ironically because I've overheated. My request, in a nutshell, is that Summer be about as dangerous as Winter, and as I listed above - there are a boatload of ways to do that. There are precautions and restrictions for Winter, but the game is still playable in Winter even before you've killed Deerclops or farmed 9 blue gems.

[SneakyBuffalo]

Ah, I see. I don't know why, but a paragraph got cut off in my first post. Maybe I misclicked something.

 

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HUMBLE THOUGHTS TO INSPIRE A BETTER SUMMER SYSTEM

 

Changes to Summer could be simple tweaks or whole new systems, things like making fires hurt more, making food spoil faster than it already does, the player's temperature

 

-----------------------

 

There was more text after "temperature" that used to end with a note saying that I wasn't asking for all of the recommendations I put there to be implemented. They were just inspiration for Klei - examples to illustrate that Summer could be made more fun with some simple changes that continue to embrace the current 'feel' of the game.

 

As a professional whose job relies on creativity, I know how difficult it is to accept constructive feedback and/or ideas from people who aren't creative professionals. Kinda like the families you would see on Trading Spaces or whatever that had orange polka-dotted cabinets in their kitchen and actually liked them when everyone knows that chartruce green serves for a far better kitchen cabinet color when you're dead set on polka-dots.

[Lampofulmine]

I don't wanna be repetitive and boring about saying the same stuff over and over BUT me and some friends are in the progress of doing a mod called "Creeps in the Deeps". This would add an undiscovered Underwater mod but more importantly a new entity/items : Water. We will try to add rivers as well as rainwater collectors making so that the player would be able to use water as a normal item in the game. Obviously, we HAVE to add a thirst meter to make it fair BUT water would be a very precious resource in summer as it will lower a lot the player temperature when drinking AND it will be used to smolder fires without any damage. Although I know is not the best solution, i firmly believe the entity of WATER will make the game, especially Summer, more enjoyable by the players ! !

 

There will be many other features of our mod which will focus on "solving" the problem of summer but i don't wanna give any spoiler ! The mod will be probably as big as Hero in The Dark or U&A, so less players know, funnier it will be !

[orian34]

I don't wanna be repetitive and boring about saying the same stuff over and over BUT me and some friends are in the progress of doing a mod called "Creeps in the Deeps". This would add an undiscovered Underwater mod but more importantly a new entity/items : Water. We will try to add rivers as well as rainwater collectors making so that the player would be able to use water as a normal item in the game. Obviously, we HAVE to add a thirst meter to make it fair BUT water would be a very precious resource in summer as it will lower a lot the player temperature when drinking AND it will be used to smolder fires without any damage. Although I know is not the best solution, i firmly believe the entity of WATER will make the game, especially Summer, more enjoyable by the players ! !

 

There will be many other features of our mod which will focus on "solving" the problem of summer but i don't wanna give any spoiler ! The mod will be probably as big as Hero in The Dark or U&A, so less players know, funnier it will be !

And it's still work in progress!

[Lampofulmine]

Well, we are planning to release a Beta version before summer since we believe that players should have a taste of what the mod is like ! 

[Tamazacat]

I LOVE THIS. This is exactly what summer needs, in my opinion. It just makes a lot more sense!! I LOVE the sun exposure idea instead of overheating, plus maybe a debuff of 10-50% (I 'unno) movement/action speed? It's difficult to work in sweltering heat!

Also like the madness concept! It's a nice touch. Embers could be a pretty hot concept (badum-ts!) .

I REALLY hope that Klei implements at least some of your ideas (esp. Sun exposure) and I don't say that about a lot of suggestions! They're fantastic. Keep it up!

[Dipps]

I would love if they made summer more difficult whilst not just standing in your base all the season. I'd like to actually do something during summer, and they should totally make a season enemy based on summer (kind of like Walrus in winter). Also sun exposure is a good idea.
I think there isn't much to do in summer either because the devs were thinking the player would struggle to survive in summer so they would not have time to do anything else, either they wanted to work on other parts of the game (as spoken in the article linked by @SethR)

[Rosten]

Personally, I just think Don't Starve would benefit a lot by picking up the sort of "Losing is Fun" philosophy that Dwarf Fortress has. Sure you COULD just turtle in your self-sustaining fortress forever, but where's the Fun in it? 

[mellojoe]

My honest opinion of summer as it is currently implemented is a more challenging Winter with less unique elements.  

 

At least Winter has MacTusk and Pengulls and Ice and Blue Gems ...

Summer has ... ... .... cactus flowers?

 

If Summer were to at least introduce new elements to encourage players to fight through the heat, maybe it would be more balanced.  There is very little reward and a ton of risk to do anything other than turtle in the shade.  Summer doesn't ADD anything, but it sure does remove a lot of fun.

[Rosten]

There's definitely an update needed for Summer, you'd be perfectly justified in totally skipping the season because theres NO POINT. With Winter there's a risk/reward factor because of all the nice stuff you can get in it, but Summer is just death, death, and more death. Basically, what Im saying is, Summer being really hard is a great thing, that doesn't need to be changed, but what does need to be changed, is that there's nothing to do, no reason to brave Summers challenges, mostly because any gear you get during it is only useful for Summer, or is obtainable elsewhere.

[TheTraditionalGentleman]

I would personally like to see more ways to cool down. Like if you were able to carry water in a water skin, or dip into a pond, or some other slightly easier way to not just limit heating up, but actively cool down. If for whatever reason you cannot make an endothermic fire, you are basically guaranteed a hot, sweaty death. I once died during summer, spawned at a touch stone, and had to sprint back to my base while trying to avoid heating up. I started overheating, and was able to gather materials for an endothermic fire JUST in time. I was 7 health points from dying. If I could have cooled down any other way, it would not only have seemed more realistic, but more reasonable too.

[Coski]

I agree with you , and I like your suggestions.