Axehilt's Suggestions

[Axehilt]

1. Default new players to "Autumn" server filters.  While nobody in the forums is likely to appreciate this, it seems like a very simple way to dramatically improve the new player experience.
2. Improved flint-spawning.  Sometimes birds randomly drop you flint. This is flint-spawning.  It seems like this is used to trickle in players' first 1-3 flint, but it's too unreliable currently. It should be server setting, with an improved "Default" flint-spawning that more reliably gets you 3 flint (enough for axe+pick) in your first game-day and trickles in extra as time progresses (ideally limited by how much map exploration you're doing; if you're stationary in the same spot it's fine for the game not to spawn you more flint, but if you're LOOKING for flint (but can't find any because the server has been scrubbed clean by other players) then you deserve to get some.)  The same system should be used for the player's first twigs on a server with twiggy trees.
3. Official Servers should have votekick.  It shouldn't be super easy to kick people, but players should be able to identify griefers and get rid of them.
4. Grief Points. (PVE only) This is a modified version of the friendly fire system Planetside uses. Basically when you destroy building(s) the owner of that building gets a prompt to forgive/punish for the destruction, which causes the griefer to accumulate grief points. Servers can set a kick or ban threshold of grief points, and if a player passes that threshold they're auto-kicked (or auto-banned).  Ideally the points are tracked centrally, and servers can set Max Grief Allowed, and a griefer can't even join a server if their grief is too high.  Grief decays slowly over time (to account for genuinely accidental destruction.)
5. Lockbox. (New item) A metal box. With a combination lock you set. Nobody can access without the combination. It takes several seconds between access attempts (to limit brute-force attempts.) Anyone who uses a lockbox is considered its "owner".  If no owners are on the server for [2] weeks, a scrap of paper is spawned somewhere in the game world with the combination written on it.
6. Compass as default UI element.  The only purpose to a compass in Don't Starve is communicating with other players. Why not make it default, to facilitate more social gameplay?

[GiddyGuy]

On 5/9/2016 at 3:30 PM, Axehilt said:

Official Servers should have votekick.  It shouldn't be super easy to kick people, but players should be able to identify griefers and get rid of them.

This is better than

On 5/9/2016 at 3:30 PM, Axehilt said:

Grief Points. (PVE only) This is a modified version of the friendly fire system Planetside uses. Basically when you destroy building(s) the owner of that building gets a prompt to forgive/punish for the destruction, which causes the griefer to accumulate grief points. Servers can set a kick or ban threshold of grief points, and if a player passes that threshold they're auto-kicked (or auto-banned).  Ideally the points are tracked centrally, and servers can set Max Grief Allowed, and a griefer can't even join a server if their grief is too high.  Grief decays slowly over time (to account for genuinely accidental destruction.)

As this could be abused, and there's a reason they haven't added it

On 5/9/2016 at 3:30 PM, Axehilt said:

Compass as default UI element.  The only purpose to a compass in Don't Starve is communicating with other players. Why not make it default, to facilitate more social gameplay?

You can tell which way is north, south east, and west without a compass, if anything it's one of the most useless items in the game, unless they port over the single player camera mechanics to multiplayer. 

[Axehilt]

7 hours ago, GiddyGuy said:

This is better than

As this could be abused, and there's a reason they haven't it

You can tell which way is north, south east, and west without a compass, if anything it's one of the most useless items in the game, unless they port over the single player camera mechanics to multiplayer. 

Votekicks can actually be mistakes.  As someone who never tries to falsely kick anyone I've only initiated 3 vote kicks.  One of them, even though the victim seemed guilty at the time (torch in hand burning nearby trees at night as I came back to my base to a burned base), he definitely acted in a way that made me think I mistakenly kicked him by the time the vote finished (normally griefers don't bother trying to call someone a liar.)  

Votekicks can be abused.  Essentially if votekicks require a greater than 50% vote, then on an 8-player server if've brought 3 friends you literally cannot be stopped from griefing (and it also only takes a single outsider supporting your votekick to kick anybody.)

A grief system is much less prone to abuse, and almost totally immune to subjective mistakes. Unless you're forgiven, if you burn 2-3 key buildings you're going to accumulate enough grief to immediately be kicked, and at that grief level you'd be prevented from joining most other servers. The "immediate" benefit shouldn't be underestimated, since griefers can cause vastly more mischief in a game like DST where your actions may not be discovered for several in-game days. The inability for that player to immediately join another server to grief another group (except for very lenient servers) is also a strong benefit.

Again, the point is if you rotate your camera you cannot tell which direction is north. While apparently a whole lot of players don't rotate their cameras in DST (which seems strange to me, since a whole lot of things are more easily accessed or spotted when rotating), the fact stands that being able to use cardinal directions to give directions to someone is valuable -- and shouldn't be hidden behind an item that takes up an inventory slot (and must take up the chest slot to be used.)  DST is a team game, and cardinal directions should be built in.

[GiddyGuy]

2 hours ago, Axehilt said:

Again, the point is if you rotate your camera you cannot tell which direction is north.

No this is false there is an easy way to tell which way is north in dst (not ds however) but it's kind of hard to explain but I'll try to, if you're facing north and push "w" and try going diagonally to the left or right, your character won't turn however if you're facing south and you try going diagonally to the left or right your character will turn to look left or right depending on which direction you're trying to look.

[Axehilt]

1 hour ago, GiddyGuy said:

No this is false there is an easy way to tell which way is north in dst (not ds however) but it's kind of hard to explain but I'll try to, if you're facing north and push "w" and try going diagonally to the left or right, your character won't turn however if you're facing south and you try going diagonally to the left or right your character will turn to look left or right depending on which direction you're trying to look.

While great advice, surely you can understand that this obscure tip isn't something that the vast majority of the active playerbase knows about and that there's no good reason that the compass shouldn't simply be a default part of the UI.  The art and functionality is literally already in the game, they just have to hook it up to be 'equipped' by default (and remove the compass item from the crafting menu.)

[GiddyGuy]

Yes I understand, but I do remember that one of the Klei devs said they wanted it to be hard to find each other in the wilderness, which is also one of the reasons why you can't see anyone on the map from super far away, so making a (useless) compass to find which way is north, south, west, and east does kind of make sense because they want it to be hard to find others.

Edit: Plus there is also a mod that adds in the compass by default if I recall correctly