Should Tree Guards be changed for together?

[leonseye]

On 5/29/2016 at 0:20 AM, Zackreaver said:

instead of changing the ________ how about if we just get new creature types.  Hostile or Passive, just new obstacles to encounter and deal with that's unique to together.

Quoting this because it really bears repeating, for this and every other thread that is looking to change mobs for DST.

Stop it.

Make new stuff and give them whatever cool properties you want them to have for DST.  Cool and unique creatures are always welcome; changing the existing game to suit a small subsect of players' tastes is not.

That's what modding is for.

[or1239]

1 hour ago, leonseye said:

Quoting this because it really bears repeating, for this and every other thread that is looking to change mobs for DST.

Stop it.

Make new stuff and give them whatever cool properties you want them to have for DST.  Cool and unique creatures are always welcome; changing the existing game to suit a small subsect of players' tastes is not.

That's what modding is for.

Are you saying that every creature that is currently in DST should just be left alone and is perfectly fine?

It would be great if we had more new multiplayer designed creatures, but shouldn't we also change or balance the current creatures as well? (you know, aside from adding more health to them, which makes the fight with them that was supposedly last a certain amount of time now take double or more when you fight them alone, which what happens most of the time since why do you ever need more then one player to fight with them anyway?)

Isn't it better if we added new creatures that were designed with multiplayer in mind AND balanced the old ones?, I don't think all of the current creatures need a change but just at least some major ones who clearly stand out since they weren't designed for this and loose some of their threat or challenge they had.

And if we simply added more creatures who fit this multiplayer version then why keep the old creatures? I guess we could just replace them or make alternative versions of them in that case. DST is supposedly a separated game, we should be able to think about and even consider to change a few basic creatures and things.

That's at least what I think .-.

[leonseye]

Yes, I am saying almost exactly that.  Most creatures in DST are fine and should be left alone.

There's nothing wrong w/ Treeguards.  There's nothing wrong w/ MacTusk.  There's nothing wrong w/ Merms.

These creatures have already been balanced; they fulfill the exact same purpose they always have and they are not somehow less suited for those purposes simply because there are now more players in the world.

All of these complaints have just been: "Well, I know how to play the game now, so these guys are easy and you should make them harder or more interesting".

No.  No, you should not.  These mobs are all intended to be pretty easy once you've learned to deal w/ them.  Meeting a Treeguard should be exciting the first time or two, but after knowing how to fight one (or make it docile), then it's not supposed to be some huge challenge.

In fact, there ARE mobs that are intended to be challenging even if you do know how to fight them; Dragonfly and Ewecus have both been tuned to be challenging for the multiplayer experience.  The other mobs have been made proportionally harder, but they were never intended to somehow become too much for a single player to handle, imo.

If you want harder mobs, then design new and interesting harder mobs.  Don't go around trying to turn all of the old mobs into hard ones just because you think everyone else wants to be challenged in the exact same fashion as you do.

Want harder Treeguards?  Then mod harder Treeguards; this entire game is in .lua for a reason.

In other words, the base game is pretty well polished and I don't feel that it needs to be balanced outside of PvP.  The mobs are fine.  What the game needs is more variety and more multiplayer-oriented mobs and mechanics, not suddenly changing the familiar into the unfamiliar.

[Axehilt]

Honestly any mob that doesn't vary up their attacks in some dynamic way is too tedious if it takes more than ~30 hits to kill.  Treeguards take 72 Spear hits (according to the wiki; not sure if that's DS or DST or both.)

They're in a weird spot though, because even though I'd prefer Treeguards to spawn 2x as often with 1/2x HP and loot, that'd be too brutal on new players (who haven't figured out the timing yet, and to them it'd just be twice as many 'unkillable' Treeguards.)

DST isn't a particularly combat-heavy game, so normally its weak combat systems aren't a problem, but with high HP monsters that don't have a lot of gameplay variance (and pine/lumpy Treeguards have none) the weakness is particularly noticeable.

Now I tend to ignore most Treeguards (in part because they represent tedium more than a fun combat challenge) so I don't actually care all that much about whether something gets changed with them, but you certainly have to admit their design leaves a lot to be desired currently.

[or1239]

13 hours ago, leonseye said:

Yes, I am saying almost exactly that.  Most creatures in DST are fine and should be left alone.

There's nothing wrong w/ Treeguards.  There's nothing wrong w/ MacTusk.  There's nothing wrong w/ Merms.

These creatures have already been balanced; they fulfill the exact same purpose they always have and they are not somehow less suited for those purposes simply because there are now more players in the world.

All of these complaints have just been: "Well, I know how to play the game now, so these guys are easy and you should make them harder or more interesting".

I am not complaining about those creatures being easy, I am complaining about those creatures becoming trivial and not posing challenge nearly at all anymore now that there's more players in the world, for example when facing a Mac Musk you just have one player confront him and the other goes around and stun lock him, making the entire thing a simple loot collect, at least if you were alone you might have needed something else then just a spear. You can still have creatures that take other players to the equation while remaining something that a single player can handle. 

13 hours ago, leonseye said:

No.  No, you should not.  These mobs are all intended to be pretty easy once you've learned to deal w/ them.  Meeting a Treeguard should be exciting the first time or two, but after knowing how to fight one (or make it docile), then it's not supposed to be some huge challenge.

In fact, there ARE mobs that are intended to be challenging even if you do know how to fight them; Dragonfly and Ewecus have both been tuned to be challenging for the multiplayer experience.  The other mobs have been made proportionally harder, but they were never intended to somehow become too much for a single player to handle, imo.

Its true that some creatures hold their intended design purpose, but i still think you can change something about them to make that intended design purpose be more emphasized and slide into multiplayer way better then how it is now. Why should we give the "more health treatment"  to nearly every single creature. And even if that creature holds up thanks to that, why should that be the case when we can just make a simple change beyond his stats that would give him a way better experience to both a single player to fight and a 2 or players fight. In practicality right now most creatures still acts the same as they do in single player and don't take the 2nd player to mind. They might have more now health but the number of hits they take is not being considered, sometimes a fights that shouldn't take too long now will last much longer since one player is fighting and then other times a fight that should be relatively long now ends in mere seconds thanks to 4 players who gang up on that creature, I don't this this is balanced.

14 hours ago, leonseye said:

If you want harder mobs, then design new and interesting harder mobs.  Don't go around trying to turn all of the old mobs into hard ones just because you think everyone else wants to be challenged in the exact same fashion as you do.

Want harder Treeguards?  Then mod harder Treeguards; this entire game is in .lua for a reason.

Why should I seek out mods when I want a better experience in the main game? and if your answer is mods for everything then why should Klei  even keep working on don't starve at all  if we are at that set mind, want more content? mods. Want bug fixes? mods. I play the game because i want to see Klei's content and play their game, mods aren't being developed with the same mindset that Klei has on the game and for some that's exactly why they use them but for others that's exactly why they don't, and yes even the simple ones such as showing your temperature and give you extra inventory slot. 

I, just like you, want to say my take on how I think the game should be and what i think about 'this and that'. What says you shouldn't seek out mods that keep the creatures the same while creatures get changed in the main game?

<3

14 hours ago, leonseye said:

 What the game needs is more variety and more multiplayer-oriented mobs and mechanics, not suddenly changing the familiar into the unfamiliar.

Both of those are happening though, dragonfly as you said is a great example of a challenge for even experienced players in together but there is no longer a dragonfly in the game anymore, the thing we have now is a raid boss that might as well be nearly impossible for a single player to handle and that thing might as well be named something else and be given a different sprite and animations, the original design for dragonfly was to be another seasonal giant, that spawns after a few days into summer and burn stuff, now it does something completely different then what he was supposed to (and that's also why it was given lavaes)

[hyiltiz]

17 minutes ago, or1239 said:

Both of those are happening though, dragonfly as you said is a great example of a challenge for even experienced players in together but there is no longer a dragonfly in the game anymore, the thing we have now is a raid boss that might as well be nearly impossible for a single player to handle and that thing might as well be named something else and be given a different sprite and animations, the original design for dragonfly was to be another seasonal giant, that spawns after a few days into summer and burn stuff, now it does something completely different then what he was supposed to (and that's also why it was given lavaes)

Seriously? You should either go back and play DS, or play DS with a LOT of mods enabled.

[or1239]

7 minutes ago, hyiltiz said:

Seriously? You should either go back and play DS, or play DS with a LOT of mods enabled.

huh? why?

[AnonymousKoala]

1 hour ago, hyiltiz said:

Seriously? You should either go back and play DS, or play DS with a LOT of mods enabled.

He means that in DST Dragonfly is not designed like Dragonfly.

Not that Dragonfly just doesn't exist anymore.

[Reagle]

What if it spawns multiple tree guards based on how many trees you have cut? First, have a probability of activating the treeguard, then if you've cut down 10 trees, 1 spawns; 30 trees, 2 spawn; 50 trees, 3 spawn and so on. 

But I agree. Tree guards are intentionally slow and easy for decent-good players so the new player can learn to kite. It's practically a benchmark mob, I wouldn't change the AI much.

[leonseye]

I don't feel like multi-quoting, so I'll just address your points in turn.  I do understand where you're coming from, and I'm not trying to be antagonistic, so I hope I don't come across that way.  I just happen to disagree. : P

1) When you say that multiple players using tactics to stunlock single mobs in a 2 or more versus 1 scenario makes fights trivial, it really does sound like you are complaining that these mobs are too easy.  I'm unsure how else I'm supposed to take this statement, to be completely honest.

I will reiterate, however, that you're talking about ganging up on what have always been very easy-to-mid level soloable mobs here.  Even MacTusk just takes a boomerang on your own.

2) You seem to misunderstand me when I say that mods can be a good answer when seeking to tweak the game more to your liking.  My real point there is more that a "better experience in the main game" is an entirely subjective topic, and while you might feel that way, I personally feel that leaving them as the "benchmark mobs" (I liked that, @Reagle) they always have been and adding new unique and more dangerous mobs would be a better experience.  

I'm not saying that my view is necessarily right, but merely pointing out that changes made to the base game effect a MUCH wider range of players who may not agree that it's a "better experience".

3) I would also like to point out that almost every time DST has strayed mechanically from its predecessor, there have been complaints; Dragonfly, Willow, Woodie, fires, health and damage changes, etc.  Some of these changes were necessary (though I feel some were heavy-handed), but for every thing you change, there is someone who's upset.  

These differences are almost unanimously cited in every thread asking for DST changes to be ported to DS, because some players dislike those changes enough not to play DST at all.

I don't see the point in "fixing" what's not really broken.  Treeguards still serve the exact same purpose as they always have, and if they now serve to teach players basic DST fight mechanics like bouncing aggro in addition to kiting, then that's even better, imo.

Even in DS, all by yourself, once you figure out their pattern, a Treeguard is an absolute training wheels mob.  I don't see why it should be any different in DST.

[Reagle]

43 minutes ago, leonseye said:

 

3) I would also like to point out that almost every time DST has strayed mechanically from its predecessor, there have been complaints; Dragonfly, Willow, Woodie, fires, health and damage changes, etc.  Some of these changes were necessary (though I feel some were heavy-handed), but for every thing you change, there is someone who's upset.  

1

I feel like this is because we all don't like changes in the metagame. We all feel like we knew Willow and Woodie as a portable fire and a mob destroying beaver tank, and we didn't want them to change. Now that they are almost completely different characters in the way that you play them, we need to come up with different approaches to each. Play Woodie like you didn't need sanity. Play Willow like the summer doesn't matter. But we need to play differently because, well, DST is a completely different game. I don't have to worry about collecting much wood or fighting if I'm a Webber in DST; I only have to worry about getting lots of silk, glands and meat for my friends. You needn't complain about varying mechanics because it's a completely different game than DS, and one needs to play accordingly. 

(But I very much did like what Leonseye had to say, I just felt like I needed to get this out. I'm not in favor for changing the tree guard, but if he needs changes to  take on multiple players at once, then he needs changes. I personally like him the way he is - training wheels, as Leon said.)

[StarvedKasad]

They keep destroying my harvesters and they spawn by the millions!

Well at least I gotta keep some wood for my dark swords ... hmm!