Casuals are ruining this game.

[Zeklo]

Orienting a game to those who have "mastered" the game is never a good thing to do. You mastered it. Well done and congrats. The issue is that you are in the minority. Catering to the minority is... well not how you do anything. Whether that be running a business or making a game.

[PeerlessMind]

Orienting a game to those who have "mastered" the game is never a good thing to do. You mastered it. Well done and congrats. The issue is that you are in the minority. Catering to the minority is... well not how you do anything. Whether that be running a business or making a game.

 

Shipwrecked is DLC. Of course you're supposed to cater to your fans, that's business 101. Sure, it will pique the interest of a few people who have never played Don't Starve before, but the majority of buyers will already be fans of the game.

 

If you think we're the minority, then I welcome you to set up a poll asking if people find the game too easy or too difficult. I have every bit of confidence that the vote will be heavily in favor of the game being too easy.

[Zeklo]

Shipwrecked is DLC. Of course you're supposed to cater to your fans, that's business 101. Sure, it will pique the interest of a few people who have never played Don't Starve before, but the majority of buyers will already be fans of the game.

 

If you think we're the minority, then I welcome you to set up a poll asking if people find the game too easy or too difficult. I have every bit of confidence that the vote will be heavily in favor of the game being too easy.

We are on the Don't Starve forums here. I would expect the same poll results, and I would expect it to be biased.

[PeerlessMind]

We are on the Don't Starve forums here. I would expect the same poll results, and I would expect it to be biased.

 

...Bias towards who? Yes, we are indeed on the Don't Starve forum, aka the perfect place for such a poll regarding game difficulty to exist. If what you claim about the people who find the game to be too easy is true (us being the minority and all), then the poll results will reflect that.

Where else would we do the poll? The Terraria forum? 

[Zeklo]

...Bias towards who? Yes, we are indeed on the Don't Starve forum, aka the perfect place for such a poll regarding game difficulty to exist. If what you claim about the people who find the game to be too easy is true (us being the minority and all), then the poll results will reflect that.

Where else would we do the poll? The Terraria forum? 

 

After years of playing Don't Starve, is it so much to ask for an update that caters towards people who have stuck with the game and, dare I say, mastered it?

 

So I am to assume that the majority of players who play don't starve have played it for years and mastered it?

 

Sure it isn't god status, but I am replying to what you have said not what you have wanted to say. If the majority of people have "mastered" it then why are you calling it "mastered" in the first place? If that's the norm then why did you find the need to add it? From what you said it sounded to me (personally, as reader's will have different outlooks) that this was not in the norm to master it. It was your wording that made it seem to me like this was something unique, and everything can't be unique because that defeats its meaning. 

 

If what you are saying is that everyone finds the game too easy, then what is the purpose of this post? You are addressing people who find the game hard are you not? Am I misunderstanding something here?

[StretchVanb]

...Bias towards who? Yes, we are indeed on the Don't Starve forum, aka the perfect place for such a poll regarding game difficulty to exist. If what you claim about the people who find the game to be too easy is true (us being the minority and all), then the poll results will reflect that.

Where else would we do the poll? The Terraria forum?

I think he meant that half the players on the don't starve forums are masters at the game, but half don't even talk on the forums. So that would mean that half the players would say it was too easy, because none of the players that would say it would be hard aren't on the forums. Remember, most popular members played the don't starve original beta, which as you claimed, was difficult. So they are better players.

NINJA EDIT:

And I am used to this community being the only non-toxic community I know of... If this argument doesn't end, I think the community will be split in two halves, which is quite bad for all of us. Can we have a PRODUCTIVE conversation? Let's think up ways to make the game easier and harder at the same time. Maybe make meteors one hit kill machines, but add a way to appease the volcano. Maybe we should decrease the amount of readily avaliable food from bases(i.e. Remove the ice machine. Food and bases are the most common things here to argue about) and INCREASE the amount of hail. It would smash walls easier and provide ice in a way that is one season only, plus we could decrease the food production of fishermerms, and replace the 1 monster meat 3 ice recipe for meat balls with a 1 monster meat 3 ice recipe for super-cooled monster meat. Monster meat with only -4 sanity and health! And same hunger as usual monster meat.

Your turn. Any ideas?

[PeerlessMind]

I think he meant that half the players on the don't starve forums are masters at the game, but half don't even talk on the forums. So that would mean that half the players would say it was too easy, because none of the players that would say it would be hard aren't on the forums. Remember, most popular members played the don't starve original beta, which as you claimed, was difficult. So they are better players.

NINJA EDIT:

And I am used to this community being the only non-toxic community I know of... If this argument doesn't end, I think the community will be split in two halves, which is quite bad for all of us. Can we have a PRODUCTIVE conversation? Let's think up ways to make the game easier and harder at the same time. Maybe make meteors one hit kill machines, but add a way to appease the volcano. Maybe we should decrease the amount of readily avaliable food from bases(i.e. Remove the ice machine. Food and bases are the most common things here to argue about) and INCREASE the amount of hail. It would smash walls easier and provide ice in a way that is one season only, plus we could decrease the food production of fishermerms, and replace the 1 monster meat 3 ice recipe for meat balls with a 1 monster meat 3 ice recipe for super-cooled monster meat. Monster meat with only -4 sanity and health! And same hunger as usual.

Your turn. Any ideas?

 

Ahhh I see.

 

As for your edit, I agree with you. There has been too much hostility, and I don't pretend to not be a part of it.

Some civil discussion on proposed changes will probably get us much further.

 

What I'm still most curious about, and what has yet to be answered yet, is if sandbags will indeed soak up water like a sponge, then what can be added to Monsoon season to not make it irrelevant? Because the waterproof gear is easy to craft, so that added with your machines not breaking due to floods would surely render the seasons main threats useless.

 

 

 

So I am to assume that the majority of players who play don't starve have played it for years and mastered it?

 

Sure it isn't god status, but I am replying to what you have said not what you have wanted to say. If the majority of people have "mastered" it then why are you calling it "mastered" in the first place? If that's the norm then why did you find the need to add it? From what you said it sounded to me (personally, as reader's will have different outlooks) that this was not in the norm to master it. It was your wording that made it seem to me like this was something unique, and everything can't be unique because that defeats its meaning. 

 

If what you are saying is that everyone finds the game too easy, then what is the purpose of this post? You are addressing people who find the game hard are you not? Am I misunderstanding something here?

 

 

Wait, it's that line that confused you? The mastered comment was meant as satire. People who have played for years should be proficient enough at the game to barely die though, so it wouldn't be such a stretch to say that I suppose.

 

If what you are saying is that everyone finds the game too easy, then what is the purpose of this post? You are addressing people who find the game hard are you not?

 

You're look at things from both ends of the extreme. My post said vocal minority for a reason. Most people seem to be under the impression that the game is overly easy, myself included obviously. Yet despite this, I see the same few people (I won't namedrop) making thread after thread asking for certain elements to be nerfed, when no nerf is warranted.

[TheCorporatePuppet]

I actually would like this thread to be locked as I don't see any real value contributing to the game or the community. Although I do agree that some of the core mechanics should be tweaked to create challenging situation, Catering to vets is not the way to go. I find vanilla DS and ROG both being easy enough to manage; therefore I always do my own world custom settings to beef up the game, but that doesn't mean all people should play the game on my setting. What I am getting is that, yes, game at current stage does not seem BALANCED, notice I say balanced not challenging, the game should be balanced, which is the real priority of Alpha games along with bug fixes. "Balanced" means for every challenge that sent to task the player there should be a solution to the task. Options that people can go for. For example walls and sandbags need balancing as the community feel that those were options promised by the game. Seasons should be tweaked to be more difficult but currently I dont see that being a priority for early access, at least not this very moment. On a side note, no one should tell anyone else how to have fun or play the game. Regards, TheCorporatePuppet

[jrista]

Shipwrecked is DLC. Of course you're supposed to cater to your fans, that's business 101. Sure, it will pique the interest of a few people who have never played Don't Starve before, but the majority of buyers will already be fans of the game.

 

If you think we're the minority, then I welcome you to set up a poll asking if people find the game too easy or too difficult. I have every bit of confidence that the vote will be heavily in favor of the game being too easy.

Statistically speaking, the people on these forums probably are not representative of the vast majority of the Klei user base. Anything we say will be quite biased, in either direction. I was a happy player for a long time until I started encountering SW bugs, which is why I came here. To be a squeaky wheel. Most people are not squeaky wheels...we're not the primary user base. We're the minority user base. Most people are probably quite content with RoG as it is, which makes the default settings for RoG the ideal baseline against which to measure the difficulty of SW. In a lot of ways, SW is too easy. In some key other ways, it's too difficult. In some ways, both games are much too easy (i.e. filler for foods...sticks and ice? That really needs to be fixed, as it makes healthy food far too easy to get.)

What's also Business 101 is to find ways to expand your player base. By catering ONLY to, not just fans, but the die hard "kill me every which way you can" "make it excessively difficult" fans, your alienating the base of players who are your potential growth market. No one does that. It's bad business. You have to make the barrier to entry low enough to attract new customers, and the overall difficulty high enough to keep them once they figure out how to play the game. That really isn't an easy thing to do. It takes time and testing, and a lot of critical thought.

Again, no one is calling for the game to be ubernerfed so it's mindlessly boring. For that matter, no one is saying it can't be quite challenging to start with. It just shouldn't be insanely difficult to start with, and there shouldn't be mindless random death. It should be configurable so it can be made more difficult, or less, by each user.

[grekon]

Gotta jump into discussion while it's still going!!!

 

The Don't Starve started out as this sandbox survival "figure out everything by yourself and if you can't, you will die." No matter if the DLC game was targeted to bring more new players in or not, deviating from it's core philosophy pretty much destroys the game. On top of that the SW is an addition it should expand on the existing content and if existing content is "hard" then so should be SW.

 

I personally think SW should be more difficult than RoG because it supposed to add more into the game.

 

The benchmark difficulty for SW is indeed RoG. It can also go higher. This way it creates more content for people who have played this game for a long time and creates more content for beginners for the future as they learn the game. No game and game developers should try to make the game easier if the difficulty is already working.

 

They need to put more and more challenges to keep the game interesting. PERIOD.

 

As for how this thread is going, I do believe the title should have been less provocative to promote healthier discussion but it's too late for that now. The game still is very new and lacking and we are in the middle of holidays. I believe it would be best not to take too much away from the present state of the game and wait for the major update if we want to talk more about whether it is too easy or too hard.

[jrista]

I actually would like this thread to be locked as I don't see any real value contributing to the game or the community. Although I do agree that some of the core mechanics should be tweaked to create challenging situation, Catering to vets is not the way to go. I find vanilla DS and ROG both being easy enough to manage; therefore I always do my own world custom settings to beef up the game, but that doesn't mean all people should play the game on my setting. What I am getting is that, yes, game at current stage does not seem BALANCED, notice I say balanced not challenging, the game should be balanced, which is the real priority of Alpha games along with bug fixes. "Balanced" means for every challenge that sent to task the player there should be a solution to the task. Options that people can go for. For example walls and sandbags need balancing as the community feel that those were options promised by the game. Seasons should be tweaked to be more difficult but currently I dont see that being a priority for early access, at least not this very moment. On a side note, no one should tell anyone else how to have fun or play the game. Regards, TheCorporatePuppet

Maybe this particular thread should be locked, however a new one, one with a far less inflammatory title and a bit more respect among all the various participants, should be started, as the topic deserves discussion.

[TheRealMaZe]

Ahhh I see.

 

As for your edit, I agree with you. There has been too much hostility, and I don't pretend to not be a part of it.

Some civil discussion on proposed changes will probably get us much further.

 

What I'm still most curious about, and what has yet to be answered yet, is if sandbags will indeed soak up water like a sponge, then what can be added to Monsoon season to not make it irrelevant? Because the waterproof gear is easy to craft, so that added with your machines not breaking due to floods would surely render the seasons main threats useless.

 

 

Perhaps make snakeskin not protect you from puddles? It's a start.

I'd also like to see something done with the mangrove reason that is tied to Monsoon season. For some reason I feel like they go hand in hand.

[PeerlessMind]

Gotta jump into discussion while it's still going!!!

 

The Don't Starve started out as this sandbox survival "figure out everything by yourself and if you can't, you will die." No matter if the DLC game was targeted to bring more new players in or not, deviating from it's core philosophy pretty much destroys the game. On top of that the SW is an addition it should expand on the existing content and if existing content is "hard" then so should be SW.

 

I personally think SW should be more difficult than RoG because it supposed to add more into the game.

 

The benchmark difficulty for SW is indeed RoG. It can also go higher. This way it creates more content for people who have played this game for a long time and creates more content for beginners for the future as they learn the game. No game and game developers should try to make the game easier if the difficulty is already working.

 

They need to put more and more challenges to keep the game interesting. PERIOD.

 

As for how this thread is going, I do believe the title should have been less provocative to promote healthier discussion but it's too late for that now. The game still is very new and lacking and we are in the middle of holidays. I believe it would be best not to take too much away from the present state of the game and wait for the major update if we want to talk more about whether it is too easy or too hard.

 

Couldn't agree more. RoG set the difficulty bar when it first came out, and it did it well, so it shouldn't be a far cry to expect the difficulty to be raised again with SW. The level of difficulty raise doesn't need to be huge, but giving it some boost would do leagues of good for appeasing everybody.

Statistically speaking, the people on these forums probably are not representative of the vast majority of the Klei user base. Anything we say will be quite biased, in either direction. I was a happy player for a long time until I started encountering SW bugs, which is why I came here. To be a squeaky wheel. Most people are not squeaky wheels...we're not the primary user base. We're the minority user base. Most people are probably quite content with RoG as it is, which makes the default settings for RoG the ideal baseline against which to measure the difficulty of SW. In a lot of ways, SW is too easy. In some key other ways, it's too difficult. In some ways, both games are much too easy (i.e. filler for foods...sticks and ice? That really needs to be fixed, as it makes healthy food far too easy to get.)

What's also Business 101 is to find ways to expand your player base. By catering ONLY to, not just fans, but the die hard "kill me every which way you can" "make it excessively difficult" fans, your alienating the base of players who are your potential growth market. No one does that. It's bad business. You have to make the barrier to entry low enough to attract new customers, and the overall difficulty high enough to keep them once they figure out how to play the game. That really isn't an easy thing to do. It takes time and testing, and a lot of critical thought.

Again, no one is calling for the game to be ubernerfed so it's mindlessly boring. For that matter, no one is saying it can't be quite challenging to start with. It just shouldn't be insanely difficult to start with, and there shouldn't be mindless random death. It should be configurable so it can be made more difficult, or less, by each user.

 

I agree with what you're saying for the most part.

Excessively difficult is not how I want the game though. I play enough games that fit into that criteria so I don't mind DS being at a reasonable difficulty level.

 

Can you point out what suggestions I've made that sound overly difficult? The only thing I've been against is being able to remove flood water from your base without giving Monsoon season some serious compensation, because currently, it is easily the easiest season we have in both SW and RoG by a landslide. If it received some adequate compensation for being able to soak up water in the form of some other threat, I wouldn't mind the change so much.

[Zeklo]

Wait, it's that line that confused you? The mastered comment was meant as satire. People who have played for years should be proficient enough at the game to barely die though, so it wouldn't be such a stretch to say that I suppose.

 

If what you are saying is that everyone finds the game too easy, then what is the purpose of this post? You are addressing people who find the game hard are you not?

 

You're look at things from both ends of the extreme. My post said vocal minority for a reason. Most people seem to be under the impression that the game is overly easy, myself included obviously. Yet despite this, I see the same few people (I won't namedrop) making thread after thread asking for certain elements to be nerfed, when no nerf is warranted.

(Well the window just refreshed and I lost everything I typed) Short version:

I now see that the line was not meant to be taken serious and that went over my head, and while I still stand by my "marketing point of view" I do agree with your comment on how the game becomes easy (at a point).

 

As far as minority and majority... Perhaps more people do like some mechanics as is. Unfortunately people don't tend to make threads saying "I like this" (it happens, but it's rare). In most cases we only tend to see the threads from those who "do not like this". So this can create the illusion of majority and minority. 

[Fabianelf]

First, OP your post is rude, it's pretty easy to voice your opinion without being rude to other players, you should learn how to choose your words better it makes the discussion easier

 

Now about the game difficulty I agree there should be a difficulty preset, I never understood why there wasn't any in DS.

 

And I want my "safe" base! Having enemies attacking my base is ok cause I can defend it, I can use my skills/strategy/items to do so, it's fun! I don't like dealing with meteors/puddles that I can't fight/prevent/stop or mosquitoes that spawn non stop and give me a headache and a chest with 15+ venon glands.

 

The game does need to be more challenging but in a way that makes it fun, I don't think it's fun to dodge meteors, having your base invaded by puddles and mosquitoes.. it's really annoying! I stopped playing because I don't like dealing with these, not because they are hard, they are just NOT FUN. 

 

My general idea of Don't Starve is that the better you do in the start of the game, the more prepared you are and the easier it is to go through the difficulties in middle/late game. Isn't it like that in DS and RoG? Well Shipwrecked is not like that, it doesn't matter how well you do at the start, the entire game feels the same. It's easy to stay alive but it's BORING.

 

I think what we need is:

- a better sense of progression in the game, having the tools to be prepared for the challenges the game has;

- much more enemies to fight (tougher ones, that drop useful loot) and require different strategies to kill them (since kiting isn't a thing in the water);

- and having less food available as well.

[jrista]

I agree with what you're saying for the most part.

Excessively difficult is not how I want the game though. I play enough games that fit into that criteria so I don't mind DS being at a reasonable difficulty level.

 

Can you point out what suggestions I've made that sound overly difficult? The only thing I've been against is being able to remove flood water from your base without giving Monsoon season some serious compensation, because currently, it is easily the easiest season we have in both SW and RoG by a landslide. If it received some adequate compensation for being able to soak up water in the form of some other threat, I wouldn't mind the change so much.

Maybe I'm unconsciously inverting the "way too easy" quips you've made, and combining it with some of the "it must be hellishly difficult" quotes I've heard from others. Your title started this thread out on a rather inflammatory basis, so I guess I came in swinging. Your original post was flat out inflammatory and insulting, to be quite frank, and I guess you got the fight you were looking for.

So far, Monsoon season is pretty simple, and I don't think things need to be changed from a difficulty standpoint. I think my major issue with monsoon season is the use case for the sandbags is totally unintuitive...place them inside newly formed puddles to keep them from growing larger? I don't know many people who have figured that out...most are surrounding their bases, as that's how you use sandbags in real life. I don't care much for unintuitive or illogical game mechanics. However, once you do figure out how to use them, then managing the water is pretty easy. Additionally, there is also the brain of thought, which help you get around the problem of a totally flooded base.

That's the kind of stuff I care about...is there a solution to a problem? Flooded bases...there are two solutions to that. Either work to keep the puddles from growing (and, sometimes, they will start right on top of one of your machines and take it out of commission...that's just one of the chances you take with monsoon season), or farm brainy matter and make brains of thought to keep your crafting going.

There were other threads here before this one was started where people were literally calling for the one-hit kills pyroclastic meteors to be brought back during summer. Someone in one of those threads literally stated the game should be hellishly difficult. Someone else, I guess I thought it was you but maybe it was someone else, stated that even by making the game configurable so it the difficulty could be turned down was unacceptable, and that SW HAD to be super difficult period. All of that is utterly ridiculous, IMO. The game should be challenging, yes...but it shouldn't be hard coded to be insanely difficult like that.

Then this thread cropped up, and I honestly didn't even read your entire first post. You laid the blame for the current easiness of the game on casual players, and while I like a challenge, I'm not an intense player by any means...and that kind of irked me. Then your attitude in your responses, not just to me but to a number of people in this thread, just made me angry. (Seriously, you needed to throttle it back a bit, show some respect to those who don't have the same opinion as you.) This is a BETA game...any issues with gameplay and game balance issues are due to that fact...blaming the state of the game on any individual or group of players is just wrong.

The game clearly has balance issues, but it's beta. There should be some kind of balance in default difficulty. We can reasonably discuss that, without insulting anyone or blaming anyone for the current state of the game (because it's no one's fault.) We can voice our opinions and let Klei sort them out. SW is an expansion to DS, and while I could be mistaken, I don't believe RoG is a prerequisite to use it...only DS is. As such, I think finding a default difficulty balance similar to RoG is probably appropriate, however since it does come "after" (chronologically speaking) RoG, maybe an increase in the default difficulty is warranted...however certainly not to the "insane" level.