Having difficulty maintaining interest in Shipwrecked

[Xavven]

Let me start out by saying that I absolutely love DS: RoG and have about 300 hours in it, but for some reason, I'm having trouble recreating that magical feeling with Shipwrecked. It just seems... boring? Anyone else having this problem?

It's Don't Starve alright, but my feeling after about 50 days is that the map seems flat and repetitive. I spend a lot of time sailing to find new islands, but most of them are just half sand and half jungle biome. Is there another island east of this one? (15 minutes of sailing later) Nope -- just water. Okay. Guess I'll sail back but a little bit more north this time. (10 minutes later) aaaaand it's another sand+jungle biome island. Not really an exciting discovery.

What really hits the sweet spot for me in Reign of Giants, on the other hand, is that it's dense with action. Biomes are close to each other and they're full of things you've gotta collect to get your base going. On top of that, each biome offers its own advantages and disadvantages if you choose to live there, in terms of what foods are available and what defenses are available (e.g. beefalo to survive hound attacks, or merms + tentacles, or frog ponds, etc.). And when your base is done, there's still much more to do -- you've got to conquer the caves and ruins, which test the limits of your abilities and technology. Try building a base in the ruins that can last you a couple years without a surface run, for example. THAT'S fun! SW doesn't seem conducive to that playstyle, unfortunately. What biome should I build my base in? Eh, it doesn't really matter -- and chances are it'll be in sand and jungle.

What I do like about SW are the sailing mechanics. I'd honestly be happiest if Klei took RoG, split the main continent into two or three islands max (don't fragment them too much or you get the exactly problem SW suffers from) and added in the sailing component along with the seafood. Perhaps a little bit of sand biome around the edges of each island and that's it. Throw out the bamboo and vine resources-- they don't really add a whole lot gameplay-wise... just another thing to take up inventory space. And I'd also love it if the map gave you a trace outline of nearby shorelines -- surely Wilson can see land more than 100 ft away. Don't make this arbitrarily harder just because we have a top-down view in-game.

[DarkXero]

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