Smallbird Rework?

[ShadyBadger]

So, as we've seen in the new Cute Fuzzy Animals beta update, the new pets are smart. They stay out of combat when things are dangerous, and they tell you when they're hungry and starving. I think it'd be a much better use of the Smallbird mechanic if instead of hatching the egg, you just brought the Tallbird Egg (And maybe 2 Meats to signify you killed the Tallbird, but idk) to the Rock Den, and just craft the Smallbird there the same way you craft the new pets. Make the Smallbird be as smart as the new pets, instead of going gung-ho and running into certain death when you inevitably have to fight with it in your following, and idk if the new animals grow up or not, but if they don't, make it that the Smallbird doesn't grow up either. Having it grow up to just kill you anyway defeats the entire purpose, and this is a golden opportunity to fix something that I wish worked well since the very beginning, even in singleplayer. It makes me sad that there are all these new cute pet options, but the babby birb is still an option not even worth striving for.

 

On top of that, minor unrelated suggestion, there should be a pet for each boss drop. For instance, A Foalclopse, a Spider Princess, A Mosling, maybe a land tadpole for Toadstool and a baby Grumble Bee for Queen Bee?

[An Artifact]

2 hours ago, ShadyBadger said:

a Spider Princess

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSS

[GentlemanFridge]

Saplingguard!

Young Guardian!

[Rily]

I would prefer a rework of the pets in a more similar way to the tallbird egg method, the new way to get a pet feels a bit easy, when in don't starve the things for we were hyped were easy?, even the rock den is weird, how about a diferent den for each pet? maybe using an existent structure like the catcoon stump thingy (I forgot the name), the glommer statue, hound mound, etc. at least we would need to travel and find the spawn of the kind of pet we want. is just too easy, and I know that pets don't give nothing special but, they are just... meh.

Maybe the game taught me that I must work hard for everything, now with an easy task I am confused, those pets will try to murder me or something horrible?

[Lumina]

49 minutes ago, Rily said:

 

Maybe the game taught me that I must work hard for everything, now with an easy task I am confused, those pets will try to murder me or something horrible?

Someon said that there are some line in code that let think that maybe you will be able to raise your pet in a specific way. I think that maybe the difficult part will come later.
A little like beefalo. Finding one isn't really hard (could take time, but not hard), but having the tamed beefalo you want could require effort. Theses pets are only decorative at the moment (also, all the ingredients aren't easy to obtain), so it's not really bad that they are easy to obtain.

[t0panka]

With so many new pets there is no need to change smallbird. Also lot of players misinterpret smallbird as a "pet feature" but he is more like a challenge feature! It should be hard and frustrating  

[TheKingDedede]

So what you're saying is that the Smallbird could benefit...

Spoiler

...from a small rework?

 

[CaptainChaotica]

Shady--YEEEEEESSSSSS.  THIS!!  I have been disappointed by how hard, sad and pointless it is to raise smallbirds since the first time I even found out you could hatch the eggs.  Now that we know how...

--They need to be smarter.

--When they grow up, they need to NOT KILL THE PERSON THAT RAISED THEM THAT THEY _SHOULD_ BE ATTACHED TO SERIOUSLY WTF THAT MAKES NO SENSE ARGH.*

(clears throat) I'm done now.

Rather than "Now that we have proper pets we no longer need smallbirds", it should be "Now that the good people at Klei DO know how to make proper pets, the smallbird should become one too."  It's basically the almost-pet-that-wasn't-but-should've-been for years.  Who are all these whippersnapper newcomers--let the original cute-fluffy-thing-you-can-raise join in!

...Notorious

*I've heard all the arguments.  They don't work on me.  Birds are supposed to bond with whoever they think is their mommy.  You are its mommy (as far as it knows).  Therefore it should love you regardless of age.  Rebellious teenbird stage sure, but not MURDEROUS..!

[An Artifact]

13 hours ago, t0panka said:

With so many new pets there is no need to change smallbird. Also lot of players misinterpret smallbird as a "pet feature" but he is more like a challenge feature! It should be hard and frustrating  

So a challenge without any reward...?

Yeah, no. Even if that is the "intended" use, it's still a big waste of some adorable animations.

#MAKESMALLBIRDSGREATAGAIN

[CaptainChaotica]

Exactly!  Challenge with no point is...why is this feature even here at all, again?

#MAKESMALLBIRDSGREATINTHEFIRSTPLACE

...Notorious

[Arlesienne]

14 hours ago, t0panka said:

With so many new pets there is no need to change smallbird. Also lot of players misinterpret smallbird as a "pet feature" but he is more like a challenge feature! It should be hard and frustrating  

Since we have the frustration part covered, let's get to the enjoyable part. If I can delicately pluck a feather of the feathered fiend once in a while, I can stand its whining, going where it's not meant to and generally reminding me of what tasty it would have been in bacon and eggs.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

I think it would be better to adapt smallbird obtaining mechanics to pet obtaining mechanics, whilst applying pet brain mechanics to smallbirds.

The game has become something entirely different due to you now being able to have easy, ever-lasting pets. It's like if beefalo were buffed so much that riding them would be something you do pretty much all the time (stillwaiting for beefalo to exit with you if you're sat on it and to have individual player domestication and not having it all for everyone so that newbies/griefers don't erase your entire beefalo progress extremely easily).

Like, you could adopt a pup by snatching it from a hound mound and over time it'll start to follow you the more you take care of it or something, it would then grow into a hound, which would not give insanity aura and would act like before, still following anfld when it finally grows into a Warg, it would leave to wander, not attack you uwhilst wandering and would make a hound mound of its own, say, nearby where other hound mounds are or originally were at, after which it could perhaps just disappear or stay as guard for the mound it created and could summon hounds from nearby mounds or something.

Similarly, smallbirds, when hatched would follow you, but you could also keep them in your inventory perhaps, as well as them keeping away from danger like other pets, growing into Teenbirds and finally Tallbirds, who wouldn't aggroe onto you until they make a tallbird nest somewhere or until you attack them yourself.

All "teen" stages could maybe be stages where you could command your pet to attack things if you wanted in some way.

This could all be a potential way of renewing and may be even populating certain creatures. May be Wargs you track down yourself would raise pups themselves if you leave one alone for a while after tracking them down, meaning that even if all mounds are destroyed, you can still raise a pup and can still repopulate some mounds.

I honestly expected this update to, at the very least repopulate bee hives. Well, we got renewable and potentially unlimuted supply of honey combs, hence more bee boxes if we really want to, but nothing in terms of repopulating bee hives themselves. I really hate it that it's very easy to destroy an environment and it notbeing possible to regenerate, be it with player's intervention or not.

What do you guys think? Cute followers forever, which can just make the game a pet holding simulator or followers which you raise to continue their species for your future benefit in the game?

[An Artifact]

5 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

snip

While obviously I have no insider information, I kinda hope that this update was just a sort of proof of concept for the cutesy lookin' pets and that Klei is planning to give the buggers an actual use in the future. Be it for repopulating the world with creatures or just for having an actually useful attack minion, I'd be fine with either option, or perhaps a mixture of the two. 

As they are right now, these pets don't really offer much; sure they're cute and I can appreciate that, but I have hopes that they'll be turned into an actual meaningful game mechanic in the future.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

1 minute ago, MeingroessterFan said:

While obviously I have no insider information, I kinda hope that this update was just a sort of proof of concept for the cutesy lookin' pets and that Klei is planning to give the buggers an actual use in the future. Be it for repopulating the world with creatures or just for having an actually useful attack minion, I'd be fine with either option, or perhaps a mixture of the two. 

As they are right now, these pets don't really offer much; sure they're cute and I can appreciate that, but I have hopes that they'll be turned into an actual meaningful game mechanic in the future.

I hope so too! What I wonder is if how I sort of described their potential mechanics will be placed in, what benefit could raising the tiny dragonfly have. Create another Dragonfly spawn somewhere? What if you want to get rid of a spawn? Perhaps there could be a limit to how many spawns could be in the world (1 minimum, 5 maximum by default?) and if you raise one too many, it would either just not do anything or instantly respawn a dragonfly in the nearest dragonfly base? Imagine a teenage Dragonfly fight for you

It would be a Teenage Mutant Giant Dragonfly... No, that doesn't sound right...

[An Artifact]

3 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

I hope so too! What I wonder is if how I sort of described their potential mechanics will be placed in, what benefit could raising the tiny dragonfly have. Create another Dragonfly spawn somewhere? What if you want to get rid of a spawn? Perhaps there could be a limit to how many spawns could be in the world (1 minimum, 5 maximum by default?) and if you raise one too many, it would either just not do anything or instantly respawn a dragonfly in the nearest dragonfly base? Imagine a teenage Dragonfly fight for you

It would be a Teenage Mutant Giant Dragonfly... No, that doesn't sound right...

Yes that does sound right. It sounds perfect.

Though honestly, I would be fine if the dragonfly just acted as an upgraded version of the lavae. It's a bit tricky to imagine any other really useful application for it...

Unleeeesss the newly spawned BIG Dragonfly was friendly to you and could act as a guardian! 

Op? Yes, certainly. Coolest guard dog of all time? Definitely.

[t0panka]

@MeingroessterFan @CaptainChaotica @Arlesienne raising 2 smallbirds in ruins was the biggest accomplishment and most frustrating and rewarding thing i did in DST/DS.

and yes first born ate his smaller brother 

Spoiler

 

[An Artifact]

26 minutes ago, t0panka said:

@MeingroessterFan @CaptainChaotica @Arlesienne raising 2 smallbirds in ruins was the biggest accomplishment and most frustrating and rewarding thing i did in DST/DS.

and yes first born ate his smaller brother 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Do you really find it rewarding when your grown up children immediately start pecking off your hair for dinner?

[t0panka]

2 minutes ago, MeingroessterFan said:

Do you really find it rewarding when your grown up children immediately start pecking off your hair for dinner?

This is why i loved DS. When i was explaining someone what game DS is i said: "You spawn in world, no tutorial and EVERYTHING wants to kill you, even creatures that are friendly will at some point kill you" (like pigs on full moon)

DST is becoming this "craft immortal pet from tail and cake" game and im kind of missing that "everything wants to kill you" and i was hoping that there is even time when even birds will attack you - this would be awesome! I still hope Klei will add some real features to those pets

But this is just my opinion. I see that DST is wayyyyyy easier than DS was and with lot of updates it is becoming just more easy. I miss those times when you do 1-2 mistakes and your whole world is gone. We were (at least i was) preparing for caves/ruins/bosses/seasons like crazy and it was hard to survive. Smallbirds trying to kill you after you raise them is one of my favourites features in DS/DST. And there are more features like this - not that rewarding. Don't forget that this game is:

"An uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic"

[An Artifact]

1 minute ago, t0panka said:

snip

Don't get ne wrong, I totally see where you're coming from, and I too like the unforgiving aspect of the original Don't Starve. I find that due to the nature of the online game, it never can be as unforgiving as the singleplayer since you're surrounded by friends. One of the key aspects of the singleplayer was that you were always alone; even friendly creatures like pigmen wouldn't make you feel save since they're so dumb and incredibly racist.

That being said though, there's a difference between being unforgiving and just being plain underdeveloped. The smallbird raising aspect just felt unfinished to me; you put so much effort in and it takes quite a lot of dedication and careful planning to get the little blop to maturity that even a game as sadistic as Don't Starve should offer at least SOME form of reward. But no, it feels like a punchline to a big joke, which I guess works once, but then all the effort that went into designing the mechanics just feels sooo wasted.

I guess you could equate it to nurturing a wild animal to maturity and then letting it go, but still. At least they could drop some form of crafting material that you then could use for some dope equipment, just SOMETHING. As it stands, it's not even like the game hitting you in the face with a sledgehammer; it's more like leaving the sledgehammer on the desk for you to bludgeon yourself.

[CaptainChaotica]

Again, EXACTLY!  I especially like that metaphor, Meingroesster.  The whole smallbird thing to me has always felt like an only half-implemented feature.  You can hatch and raise it, both of which take a lot of effort (the egg is VERY easy to accidentally overheat or freeze, the name of any smallbird might as well be "Morsel" for as long as it tends to live), and then after all that...it just reverts back to normal as an adult.  It seems very much like a story that was never programmed to be able to finish--you can alMOST make it a pet and then at the very end, the code needed to KEEP it loyal to you _doesn't exist_.  It was never written.  I think the tallbird-egg-hatching thing was thrown in really early on because why not, and then everthing else took precedence.  I mean, for pete's sake, Maxwell even CALLS them a "failed experiment".

You can argue "wild creature blah blah blah" all you want, but _in this particular case_, it's just...unfinished!  TONS of other things _do_ still want to kill you, or potentially can at the right/wrong times (pigs at full moon, bunnymen if you're carrying meat, beefalo and bees in spring, etc.) Until this new update, absolutely no other creature even gave you the _ability_ to raise it.  That made the tallbird eggs seem special.  That made it seem as if something should HAPPEN different.  Even Don't Starve isn't usually mean enough to have you do a whole long, lot of effort to get killed by your own work.  It's uncompromising, yes...that isn't the same thing as being an outright TROLL.  We reserve that for jerkbag players and mods.  (And Adventure Mode.)

Absolutely NOTHING.  ELSE in the game, that I'm aware of (bearing in mind I'm not an expert) takes a whole lot of work and time to do, tons of chance of failure, _seems cute and harmless_ (if you were about to say "Growing a spider farm to tier 3 is deliberate!"  well, those are dangerous from the get-go.) and then...turns right around and literally bites you in the arse.  Nothing else.  This is why I don't think smallbirds are "meant" to be that way, permanently--they just don't..._fit_.  Farm crops don't grow vines and start strangling you, after all your hard work.  Moonstone walls don't call down meteors on your head. _Unrelated_ things, such as Deerclops and wildfires, destroy/make dangerous things you put a lot of time and effort into.  Not...the thing...itself.  Except smallbirds.

This game was--and still is!--an uncompromising wilderness survival game, but it has never been a _troll_. (Again, except for Adventure Mode.)  Hard work usually has a POINT, even if you only get to reap said rewards for a little while.  Smallbird-raising, does not.  It just doesn't fit the whoIe...attitude of the rest of this game.  The whole writing style, humour, difficulty level... That's why I and many others have always felt that smallbirds are a forgotten, abandoned feature. "Always been like this" does NOT equate to "should" be like this. 

Mind you, I'm not at all demanding that smallbirds be fixed right now! I'm quite aware that many other things take priority...and always have, that's _why_ the feature was abandoned. I'm just saying that it IS unfinished.  Tallbirds in general, in fact, have always seemed...not quite developed.  And Our Local Tallbirdologist is not the only one who would agree with me.

I probably haven't changed your mind and you won't change mine (yes, it's a wild creature, but it's a wild creature that YOU RAISED FROM _BIRTH_!) but these are my feelings on this and I'm happy merely to have expressed them the way I've always wanted to.

...Notorious

[AnonymousKoala]

12 hours ago, t0panka said:

This is why i loved DS. When i was explaining someone what game DS is i said: "You spawn in world, no tutorial and EVERYTHING wants to kill you, even creatures that are friendly will at some point kill you" (like pigs on full moon)

DST is becoming this "craft immortal pet from tail and cake" game and im kind of missing that "everything wants to kill you" and i was hoping that there is even time when even birds will attack you - this would be awesome! I still hope Klei will add some real features to those pets

But this is just my opinion. I see that DST is wayyyyyy easier than DS was and with lot of updates it is becoming just more easy. I miss those times when you do 1-2 mistakes and your whole world is gone. We were (at least i was) preparing for caves/ruins/bosses/seasons like crazy and it was hard to survive. Smallbirds trying to kill you after you raise them is one of my favourites features in DS/DST. And there are more features like this - not that rewarding. Don't forget that this game is:

"An uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic"

DST is easier but contains some harder things(raid bosses, the shadow pieces, etc.), but I agree to a degree. Harder things are always welcome, and as much as I enjoy the majority of the new content(I think the gates look awful and am hoping we'll get bigger things soon enough because time's ticking and we're yet to have a real game changer), I feel like fairly quickly it'll get old yet again, especially with how it doesn't offer much new things that aren't just similar to the old. Ruins and Caves in SP were a fairly big game changer, and ANR while yes the new content is fantastic, is so far not really on that level.

12 hours ago, MeingroessterFan said:

Don't get ne wrong, I totally see where you're coming from, and I too like the unforgiving aspect of the original Don't Starve. I find that due to the nature of the online game, it never can be as unforgiving as the singleplayer since you're surrounded by friends. One of the key aspects of the singleplayer was that you were always alone; even friendly creatures like pigmen wouldn't make you feel save since they're so dumb and incredibly racist.

That being said though, there's a difference between being unforgiving and just being plain underdeveloped. The smallbird raising aspect just felt unfinished to me; you put so much effort in and it takes quite a lot of dedication and careful planning to get the little blop to maturity that even a game as sadistic as Don't Starve should offer at least SOME form of reward. But no, it feels like a punchline to a big joke, which I guess works once, but then all the effort that went into designing the mechanics just feels sooo wasted.

I guess you could equate it to nurturing a wild animal to maturity and then letting it go, but still. At least they could drop some form of crafting material that you then could use for some dope equipment, just SOMETHING. As it stands, it's not even like the game hitting you in the face with a sledgehammer; it's more like leaving the sledgehammer on the desk for you to bludgeon yourself.

I doubt it's unfinished sadly. To me it just felt...pointless. Like it's just there. I tried it once, it died as a teen, and I didn't care enough to try again, especially with the eggs being so much better for food.

[An Artifact]

One very simple solution to the Smallbird raising problem has been floating around my head for literally three years now.. How about, when they change from Angsty Teenbird to Irresponsible Young Adultbird, they drop some special feathers that are then a required crafting ingredient for a new Tallbird nest? In my head, it was always a special kind of nest that spawns special Tallbirds who are neutral to players until attacked or robbed, but even if it's just a standard, run of the mill Tallbird nest, it still would be of value since you could then put it in a position of strategic value. I mean come on, who wouldn't want a dangerous eyeball on legs guarding their front lawn?

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

10 minutes ago, MeingroessterFan said:

One very simple solution to the Smallbird raising problem has been floating around my head for literally three years now.. How about, when they change from Angsty Teenbird to Irresponsible Young Adultbird, they drop some special feathers that are then a required crafting ingredient for a new Tallbird nest? In my head, it was always a special kind of nest that spawns special Tallbirds who are neutral to players until attacked or robbed, but even if it's just a standard, run of the mill Tallbird nest, it still would be of value since you could then put it in a position of strategic value. I mean come on, who wouldn't want a dangerous eyeball on legs guarding their front lawn?

Why not just have the Tallbird make a nest of its own in a particular place when you raise them? Like, within a certain radius of other tallbird nests, or if there's none in the world, they'd make them right on the spot.

[Asparagus]

5 minutes ago, MeingroessterFan said:

One very simple solution to the Smallbird raising problem has been floating around my head for literally three years now.. How about, when they change from Angsty Teenbird to Irresponsible Young Adultbird, they drop some special feathers that are then a required crafting ingredient for a new Tallbird nest? In my head, it was always a special kind of nest that spawns special Tallbirds who are neutral to players until attacked or robbed, but even if it's just a standard, run of the mill Tallbird nest, it still would be of value since you could then put it in a position of strategic value. I mean come on, who wouldn't want a dangerous eyeball on legs guarding their front lawn?

 

[An Artifact]

Just now, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Why not just have the Tallbir make a nest of its own in a particular place when you raise them? Like, within a certain radius of other tallbird nests, or if there's none in the world, they'd make them right on the spot.

Yeah, that would work too. ... Now I got the mental image of the bird diving headfirst into the floor and turning into a nest, like a spider queen.