What I don't really like in DST

[StarvedKasad]

This is kind of a rant post and I can understand why some people can be offended,but I feel like DST is so far different from the original DS that it is both easy and linear and also ruins the fun for me.I'm suppossed to be kind of a decent player in DS: RoG (200 days with wilson and I'm trying to learn wickerbottom because she's my favourite) .

So ,I recently found out that rabbits are suppossed to drop nightmare fuel when you are at least 40% sane or less.

Why was this mechanism severely nerfed on the DST? I found out when I was playing with maxwell and Wickerbottom in DST in order to gather precious fuel I have to have even less sanity,in fact I have to be insane!That's when the nightmares take form..Why did you change that?What did you hope to achieve by changing this,making nightmare fuel harder to get?It's already hard to get! Instead you buffed the food to the point it's super easy to get with triple the number of berry bushes and constantly regenerating ice.

But you nerfed buzzards by halving their loot !You also doubled their hit points therefore turning the desert biome from an amazing biome with the right preparation, to a bare land!

I mean,I was kinda sad when I realised buzzards were nerfed,but I was totally devastated when I found out you nerfed a perfectly good way to farm nightmare fuel (and by extend beard hair). And by extending this logic I assume Beardlords also appear when you're in a state of being insane,so that's both a nerf and a buff.

 

The game feels so much different than the original which it took a lot of time and effort to learn and which seems almost perfectly balanced!

But playing DST I can no longer enjoy Willow ,Maxwell seems to be completely screwed playing the role of a harvester (because he has crappy hp and armor doesn't stack anymore) I'm starting to feel this isn't don't starve universe anymore. I feel like this is more of a totally imbalanced game made for people who can survive just with berry bushes ,ice and meat .I'd really like to play with other people just with the rules of Don't Starve vanilla coupled with "new" stuff,not altering the core of the game and I'm pretty sure don't starve (reign of giants) is much harder than Don't starve together .That's true because the food is much more scarce and even though the enemy has half the hp ,the rocks are not replenishing every 10 days,the berry bushes are one third of what is in don't starve together and the fires are very hard to control even if you can abuse them!

I wish I'd like to play more don't starve together with my friends,but every time I come from Don't starve I'm like "well surviving is super easy in DST with at least one person,but gathering some nice stuff is harder and half the characters are overly nerfed ,what's the point of that?That ruins all the fun! " and so I sadly go back in DS waiting for some nice change to happen.

Thanks for hearing me out!

[CaptainChaotica]

I do agree on some of this--quite a lot, actually.  While I never really noticed the buzzard change, because I don't farm them (I tend to use deserts as sources of cactus, monster meat, rocks, and of course the awesome mystery-boxes that are tumbleweeds) I agree that it's already hard enough trying to farm beard-hair in normal Don't Starve, as you have to stay at exactly the RIGHT level of insane.  Forget and pick a flower or two and you've stopped your collecting for a while; let yourself go nuttier and you're in danger.

And FORGET doing this as Willow in Together.  In normal Don't Starve, all you have to do for safety, is keep her away from the base for a few days while getting the hair for a meat effigy.  Bring along some meatballs, wood, grass, and a straw roll, and you're good.  (Maybe weapons and armour if hounds are expected during this time.)  In Together, if she goes nuts enough to see the beardlings she starts _freezing to death_!  It becomes a lose/lose spiral of despair, as you can't stop running from the shadow creatures long enough to put a fire down...

I also feel that I'm a halfway competent singleplayer...player (Vanilla:  207 days in World 1 with Willow, 33 days as Wolfgang (hounds, then freezing...) for a total of 240 days; RoG?  173 days and then, I _swear_ my character said nothing to warn me about the hounds and BANG! dead.) and I feel Together is kind of easier _and_ harder in some ways.  Like, on Day 32, sometimes a HUUUUUGE wave of hounds shows up, so many that even a full normal-sized server cannot handle them, and if it's too much for even multiplayer, _it's too much_.  But on the other hand, glaciers and rocks (really?! ROCKS?) regenerate, and sometimes you'll find a pond surrounded by like 5 berry bushes.   

Basically, yeah, something closer to the original Don't Starve mechanics/balance would be more satisfying.  Of course, it'd have to be tweaked _some_, but not AS much as it is.  Some things in Together work...some are...what?   Or, here's an idea--bring the new DST-only content to the singleplayer game!  I'd love the new quotes, plants, etc. and you know what would work much BETTER in singleplayer?  Beefalo riding!

Also phracking FIX WILLOW!  She's my favourite character in singleplayer and it breaks my heart to have to just skip _right_ past her every time I pick a character for Together.  The reasons she was nerfed are stupid, as ANY OTHER CHARACTER CAN DO THE EXACT.  SAME.  THINGS.

...Notorious

[Scoobie101]

1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

In Together, if she goes nuts enough to see the beardlings she starts _freezing to death_!  It becomes a lose/lose spiral of despair, as you can't stop running from the shadow creatures long enough to put a fire down...

But on the other hand, glaciers and rocks (really?! ROCKS?) regenerate

When insane as Willow and trying to build a fire, why don't you just plop down Bernie then build multiple fires to quickly regain sanity?

And rocks are renewable in normal DS, earthquakes in caves give them. However, in Together not all worlds have caves. Also, the meteors provide reward of renewable rocks with the risk of getting crushed by meteor (or your base getting crushed if you settle there)

[DVGMedia]

willow was changed for the better  cause newer players couldnt handle the sanity fires and she would burn down whole bases

and she is also a starter character for summer if you happen to join during that time her cooling capability is great for it and besides she doesnt start freezing due to insanity only if the seasons are correct so halfway through fall through the start of spring

41 minutes ago, Scoobie101 said:

When insane as Willow and trying to build a fire, why don't you just plop down Bernie then build multiple fires to quickly regain sanity?

^ that there is a reason bernie was given to willow so she can calm herself down  or just fight the nightmares with a decent meat shield  most veteran willow players end up chucking bernie cause they can handle the shadows themselves (nightmare fuel obtained w/o beardlings/lords)

 

3 hours ago, StarvedKasad said:

What did you hope to achieve by changing this,making nightmare fuel harder to get?It's already hard to get!

its easy to get specially with maxwell since you can stay insane forever infinite fuel basically  learn to fight the shadows and you will be golden its normally a bait then strike / repeat to defeat them so its not that hard.

 

glaciers berries and all that good stuff was changed so the system was a bit more user friendly. newer people dont really know the mechanics and novice players know some to help newer people to survive as well as verterans teaching is like a chain of knowledge vets ->intermediate->novice ->newbies as it goes by people learn and know the mechanics and how to get past

in a sense dst is a completely different game from the stand alone version even though they wear the same skin. just gotta deal with whats given and stop comparing the single player vs the multiplayer (while viewing it in a single player pov)

 

[Tumalu]

Wait, beardlings don't appear until you reach 15% sanity now instead of 40%? What? That's a sort of disappointing change... it also means sanity doesn't really do anything inbetween max and 15%. :T At least shadow monsters are -really- easy to kill when you have one or two people helping you, but if beardlings only happen at that little sanity they start seeming sort of pointless... you're too busy killing nightmares to go back to normal sane levels. DST already has way less rabbit farming potential, at this point trying to use them for loot is barely even worth it; if you're going insane for nightmares anyway you can kill some on the side I guess, but it takes a lot more effort to farm rabbits than in singleplayer already.

At least berrybushes can be turned down (and goosemoose nests too I... think?, since they add a huge amount of berries to the world.)

[CaptainChaotica]

I'm not used to Bernie yet; in fact, I think I've hardly used him.  The one time I did play as Willow in Together, by the time I was insane enough to make the shadow monsters start attacking me, I was already really beat up from freezing.  The one bad effect kicks in quite a bit sooner than the other.  (And I had also lost HP--and sanity--by fighting a treeguard and failing to dodge due to lag.)  Also I was alone, it was late fall shading into winter, AND getting dark, so...

I did know about the cave-ins in the normal game and oh yeah, the meteors...for some reason, when I read that "rocks can regenerate" I imagined them gradually growing back over time the way the glaciers do, only over much more time.  : P  (You never know--the Don't Starve world _is_ pretty weird, after all.)

And Willow was NOT changed for the better.  Sure, the sanity-fires thing I can understand, but WHY DID THEY TAKE AWAY HER FIRE IMMUNITY AND NERF HER LIGHTER.  Everything that made her _fun_ to play--i.e., standing in the middle of  a raging forest fire and laughing maniacally--is now gone.  Her new sanity thing is a disadvantage that pays back for only _weakened_, limited advantages! And the lighter has a sucky range anyway; that's _why_ it was allowed to be infinite.  Now it's got a sucky range and requires gold to make a new one!

People complained about Willow-playing griefers burning down things for fun, but any character can do the same thing with a god damned torch.  Sticks and grass.   Other than having to dodge out of the way of the fires they set, there is NO inherent griefing difference in playing Willow vs. another character.  None at all.  Other characters have infinite character-special items (Lucy), can cast spells that cause a LOT of damage (Wickerbottom), or attack you with shadow minions while being nowhere near you (Maxwell).  Willow's ONLY griefing vector is one that _everybody else can do too_. 

And so can the game itself!  Are you going to kick summer because of wildfires?  Ban lightning?  How 'bout getting Deerclops's IP address and reporting him, because _he_ wrecked your base?  (Yes, I'm aware of the world settings menu.  I'm making a point.)

Make Willow fun again, goddammit.  The original reason for nerfing her makes no sense.

...Notorious

[AnonymousKoala]

2 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

I'm not used to Bernie yet; in fact, I think I've hardly used him.  The one time I did play as Willow in Together, by the time I was insane enough to make the shadow monsters start attacking me, I was already really beat up from freezing.  The one bad effect kicks in quite a bit sooner than the other.  (And I had also lost HP--and sanity--by fighting a treeguard and failing to dodge due to lag.)  Also I was alone, it was late fall shading into winter, AND getting dark, so...

I did know about the cave-ins in the normal game and oh yeah, the meteors...for some reason, when I read that "rocks can regenerate" I imagined them gradually growing back over time the way the glaciers do, only over much more time.  : P  (You never know--the Don't Starve world _is_ pretty weird, after all.)

And Willow was NOT changed for the better.  Sure, the sanity-fires thing I can understand, but WHY DID THEY TAKE AWAY HER FIRE IMMUNITY AND NERF HER LIGHTER.  Everything that made her _fun_ to play--i.e., standing in the middle of  a raging forest fire and laughing maniacally--is now gone.  Her new sanity thing is a disadvantage that pays back for only _weakened_, limited advantages! And the lighter has a sucky range anyway; that's _why_ it was allowed to be infinite.  Now it's got a sucky range and requires gold to make a new one!

People complained about Willow-playing griefers burning down things for fun, but any character can do the same thing with a god damned torch.  Sticks and grass.   Other than having to dodge out of the way of the fires they set, there is NO inherent griefing difference in playing Willow vs. another character.  None at all.  Other characters have infinite character-special items (Lucy), can cast spells that cause a LOT of damage (Wickerbottom), or attack you with shadow minions while being nowhere near you (Maxwell).  Willow's ONLY griefing vector is one that _everybody else can do too_. 

And so can the game itself!  Are you going to kick summer because of wildfires?  Ban lightning?  How 'bout getting Deerclops's IP address and reporting him, because _he_ wrecked your base?  (Yes, I'm aware of the world settings menu.  I'm making a point.)

Make Willow fun again, goddammit.  The original reason for nerfing her makes no sense.

...Notorious

^^^This. Willow was a niche but she had cool fire tricks the rest couldn't compare to(at least for the most part), but in DST...she offers nothing beyond summer late joining.

6 hours ago, StarvedKasad said:

This is kind of a rant post and I can understand why some people can be offended,but I feel like DST is so far different from the original DS that it is both easy and linear and also ruins the fun for me.I'm suppossed to be kind of a decent player in DS: RoG (200 days with wilson and I'm trying to learn wickerbottom because she's my favourite) .

So ,I recently found out that rabbits are suppossed to drop nightmare fuel when you are at least 40% sane or less.

Why was this mechanism severely nerfed on the DST? I found out when I was playing with maxwell and Wickerbottom in DST in order to gather precious fuel I have to have even less sanity,in fact I have to be insane!That's when the nightmares take form..Why did you change that?What did you hope to achieve by changing this,making nightmare fuel harder to get?It's already hard to get! Instead you buffed the food to the point it's super easy to get with triple the number of berry bushes and constantly regenerating ice.

But you nerfed buzzards by halving their loot !You also doubled their hit points therefore turning the desert biome from an amazing biome with the right preparation, to a bare land!

I mean,I was kinda sad when I realised buzzards were nerfed,but I was totally devastated when I found out you nerfed a perfectly good way to farm nightmare fuel (and by extend beard hair). And by extending this logic I assume Beardlords also appear when you're in a state of being insane,so that's both a nerf and a buff.

 

The game feels so much different than the original which it took a lot of time and effort to learn and which seems almost perfectly balanced!

But playing DST I can no longer enjoy Willow ,Maxwell seems to be completely screwed playing the role of a harvester (because he has crappy hp and armor doesn't stack anymore) I'm starting to feel this isn't don't starve universe anymore. I feel like this is more of a totally imbalanced game made for people who can survive just with berry bushes ,ice and meat .I'd really like to play with other people just with the rules of Don't Starve vanilla coupled with "new" stuff,not altering the core of the game and I'm pretty sure don't starve (reign of giants) is much harder than Don't starve together .That's true because the food is much more scarce and even though the enemy has half the hp ,the rocks are not replenishing every 10 days,the berry bushes are one third of what is in don't starve together and the fires are very hard to control even if you can abuse them!

I wish I'd like to play more don't starve together with my friends,but every time I come from Don't starve I'm like "well surviving is super easy in DST with at least one person,but gathering some nice stuff is harder and half the characters are overly nerfed ,what's the point of that?That ruins all the fun! " and so I sadly go back in DS waiting for some nice change to happen.

Thanks for hearing me out!

I don't play DST THAT much compared to the singleplayer game, but from what I did play and saw:

The rabbit change is kind of dumb. its not a huge point, because its still rabbits we're talking about, but it means that there's 0 difference in being 15% insane, and 0% insane(100% sanity), so out of the whole meter, you have just 2 states which do anything.

I didn't see Buzzard's loot being halved. They were never the big thing about the desert though. What was was the volt goats for milk, cactus, and the tumbleweeds, with maybe the hound mounds to farm hounds if you need to. 

Maxwell seems to not be completely screwed. He's a supporter who can still stand on his own, harvesting resources faster than woodie even(a bit less so with chopping thanks to the new nerf which i actually like), getting easy nightmare fuel and having a built in tam o shanter, reading wicker's books(everything she can do he can do, save for crafting them. that is a huge perk), and having his fighters WHICH I HOPE WILL GET THEIR AI TWEAKED AHEM AHEM AHEM WHEN WILL THEY START ACTUALLY SYNCING WITH YOU BETTER. Also Maxy's hp is not that much of an issue, its the same as in singleplayer. Have healing and know when to heal(even easier since you have a walking meatsack near you to take the aggro off of you temporarily), armor, and don't tank everything.

Rocks regenerating is really some sort of an above ground earthquake in the form of meteor strikes(Which makes sense since in DST you can play caveless and its valid, just not as good), but unmovable glaciers is one of the things i hate so much. Why can they not go away ffs.

"Food is much more scarce" hahahahaha. Food always was and always will be abundant. You can live as Wolfgang in mighty form only for so long, practically forever, thanks to the crock pot, and all the ways to get food. 

[rezecib]

Fixing rabbits was actually really easy... bad modding practice, for sure, but it would be really easy for the devs to fix (almost all of this code is copied from the game code with small modifications):

local function IsCrazyGuy(guy)
    return guy ~= nil
		and guy.components.sanity ~= nil
		and guy.components.sanity:GetPercent() <= TUNING.BEARDLING_SANITY
		and guy:HasTag("player")
end

local function UpdateAnimOverrideSanity(parent)
    parent.AnimState:SetClientSideBuildOverrideFlag("insane", parent.replica.sanity:GetPercent() <= TUNING.BEARDLING_SANITY)
end

local function StopWatchingSanity(inst)
    if inst._sanitywatching ~= nil then
        inst:RemoveEventCallback("sanitydelta", inst.UpdateInventoryState, inst._sanitywatching)
        inst._sanitywatching = nil
    end
end

local function WatchSanity(inst, target)
    StopWatchingSanity(inst)
    if target ~= nil then
        inst:ListenForEvent("sanitydelta", inst.UpdateInventoryState, target)
        inst._sanitywatching = target
    end
end

local UpvalueHacker = require("util/upvaluehacker")
AddPrefabPostInit("world", function(TheWorld)
	UpvalueHacker.set_upvalue(GLOBAL.Prefabs.bunnyman.fn, IsCrazyGuy, "CalcSanityAura", "IsCrazyGuy")
	UpvalueHacker.set_upvalue(GLOBAL.Prefabs.rabbit.fn, IsCrazyGuy, "IsCrazyGuy")
	UpvalueHacker.set_upvalue(GLOBAL.Prefabs.rabbit.fn, WatchSanity, "WatchSanity")
	UpvalueHacker.set_upvalue(GLOBAL.Prefabs.rabbit.fn, StopWatchingSanity, "StopWatchingSanity")
	UpvalueHacker.set_upvalue(GLOBAL.Prefabs.player_classified.fn, UpdateAnimOverrideSanity, "RegisterNetListeners", "OnSanityDelta", "UpdateAnimOverrideSanity")
end)

 

[thesamon]

As in every Willow thread ever it's mentioned that all you need is a torch. it's true, AND it doesn't matter if Willow's lighter have a durability or not because you have it from the beginning and it lasts for days anyway!

[DVGMedia]

that is why all character specific items degrade now willows lighter doesnt cause it has durability  back in the day the world would get filled with dropped lighter, flowers and other items

[CaptainChaotica]

Not all.  Lucy, for one, doesn't degrade.

Also it's not like having a few extra lighters lying around actually harms anything.  You'd have to be playing a server a LONG time before that actually got to be a problem.  Even then, just make an extra chest for the lighters and point newbies to it, saying: "You wanna explore at night?  Help yourself."

Anyway.

...Notorious

 

[rezecib]

5 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

You'd have to be playing a server a LONG time before that actually got to be a problem.

With a well-trafficked Wilderness server, it can happen really quickly. I know because it happened before they changed it. I remember keeping a collection of ~100 lighters around the pig king.

[CaptainChaotica]

Wow, really?  Dang.  I guess I never really realised that, since I tend to play Survival all the time.

I STILL think Willow should have her character-special item actually be _special_ again, if nothing else.  They'll most likely never make her immune to fire or rollback the sanity-freezing, so, as the least harmful/overpowered thing...

ANYway.  I don't intend to get into a rant about this _again_.  Sorry, sorry.

...Notorious

[TheKingDedede]

The sad thing is that Willow players have many aspects that make it seem as if the character and their perks were out to get them. They have a harder time getting Nightmare Fuel for the team, hurting them in that regard. On the other hand, once you get a good base going, getting fuel from the Ruins is a viable way of getting it, no matter the character (Except maybe poor, fragile Maxwell). Scalemail, fireproof armor that all characters can wear, makes Willow seem useless to the team, as there are not a lot of situations in where you would need to be fireproof, except the boss where you get the Scales from! As many other players have pointed out, any character is capable of trolling with a Torch. The only good change to Willow is that she no longer starts random sanity fires, but that seemed necessary when this version of DS moved onto a multiplayer format.

So, any thoughts?

[AnonymousKoala]

14 minutes ago, TheKingDedede said:

The sad thing is that Willow players have many aspects that make it seem as if the character and their perks were out to get them. They have a harder time getting Nightmare Fuel for the team, hurting them in that regard. On the other hand, once you get a good base going, getting fuel from the Ruins is a viable way of getting it, no matter the character (Except maybe poor, fragile Maxwell). Scalemail, fireproof armor that all characters can wear, makes Willow seem useless to the team, as there are not a lot of situations in where you would need to be fireproof, except the boss where you get the Scales from! As many other players have pointed out, any character is capable of trolling with a Torch. The only good change to Willow is that she no longer starts random sanity fires, but that seemed necessary when this version of DS moved onto a multiplayer format.

So, any thoughts?

"poor fragile maxwell" does well in the ruins in singleplayer, i suspect he does just as well in dst. He also doesn't really need it, thanks to the codex umbra and litearly going insane and sane at will(in singleplayer and in dst).

 

[rezecib]

1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

I STILL think Willow should have her character-special item actually be _special_ again, if nothing else

I agree, and that's why I've added an upgraded lighter for her in my upcoming mod. Here are my current changes to her:

• Can craft a Shadow Lighter at the Shadow Manipulator for a Lighter and 2 Nightmare Fuel 
• The Shadow Lighter can only be used by Willow, lasts longer, and can be refueled with Nightmare Fuel 
• Can light shadowfires with her Shadow Lighter for 10% durability and 15 sanity 
• Shadowfires work like houndfires but are barely warm, and burn longer (extinguish after dealing 200 damage) 
• Shadowfires have some special interactions with flingomatics (making a form of fire farm possible)
• Willow is immune to shadowfire damage (as are other players outside of PvP) 
• After having gone 2 days without lighting a (shadow)fire, she gradually loses more sanity over time.

[CaptainChaotica]

Ooh.  Shadowfires.  That sounds...really spooky, and like a Very Bad Idea.  And like something that'd warp your brain over time in a Lovecraftian kind of way.

...in other words, very Don't Starve. 

(Either that or the kind of "Look how cool, Dark and Badass I am" screen-name an emo teenager might pick.  :P)

...Notorious