Disease Feedback

[Trenix]

I enjoy this feature very much, it adds more maintenance, difficulty, and replayability. However, what I don't enjoy about this feature is that it destroys plants which are not part of the regrow feature. If you're going to destroy a plant, please have it regrow eventually in the wild. I'm alright with my farm of saplings, grass turfs, or whatever, being completely wiped. That's fine. I'm okay with going to the wild and picking them up again and starting over. But, I don't want to increase my distance each time to get them as this continues to happen. I also don't want these resources to eventually be wiped off of the map. It's a great feature which I believe was implemented in a very poor way. I don't want to turn off this feature, just want it to be improved on a bit more.

Maybe we should be able to set which plants we want to be part of the regrow feature within the settings of the map? That way people who want the game to be more punishing and harsh can do so, while others who want a server last for much longer can also do so. For me, nonrenewable resources make me cringe, especially with people who have no regards to them. I want to therefore prevent that from happening.

[Electroely]

Just play endless mode then. Survival is meant to run out of resources. At least in an endless world grass tufts, saplings and berry bushes are made by birds.

[Ecu]

1 hour ago, Trenix said:

I enjoy this feature very much, it adds more maintenance, difficulty, and replayability. However, what I don't enjoy about this feature is that it destroys plants which are not part of the regrow feature. If you're going to destroy a plant, please have it regrow eventually in the wild. I'm alright with my farm of saplings, grass turfs, or whatever, being completely wiped. That's fine. I'm okay with going to the wild and picking them up again and starting over. But, I don't want to increase my distance each time to get them as this continues to happen. I also don't want these resources to eventually be wiped off of the map. It's a great feature which I believe was implemented in a very poor way. I don't want to turn off this feature, just want it to be improved on a bit more.

Maybe we should be able to set which plants we want to be part of the regrow feature within the settings of the map? That way people who want the game to be more punishing and harsh can do so, while others who want a server last for much longer can also do so. For me, nonrenewable resources make me cringe, especially with people who have no regards to them. I want to therefore prevent that from happening.

It is pretty much as @Electroelystated, resources being destroyed over time is something that makes sense given the intent of the game.  During a run, the speed in which you run out of resources is kind of up to you.  You could choose to dig up a bunch of resources and as such run out faster when they get wiped out via disease, or you could dig up less...but not have the resources easily at hand in your base.

Also, there was another thread on this exact kind of topic just yesterday, do we really need two threads for what is essentially the same request?

 

[Trenix]

2 hours ago, Electroely said:

Just play endless mode then. Survival is meant to run out of resources. At least in an endless world grass tufts, saplings and berry bushes are made by birds.

Unfortunately I want to be able to lose the game but still have resources be renewable.

 

[Electroely]

6 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Unfortunately I want to be able to lose the game but still have resources be renewable.

 

Well...

If you're playing survival, your world can't POSSIBLY run out of resources THAT fast. While I don't know how many grass tufts and saplings a world has on average, I'm sure it's enough to last you 500-1000 days, if you're going that far. Plus, there are always caves which are usually full of grass tufts and saplings.

Even so, when your farm gets destroyed (my ruins base grass farm got disease while I was monkey hunting ), the game's telling you "get your lazy butt off your fur roll and go get urself a new farm". It's just encouraging exploration and not staying in base 24/7.

[Trenix]

9 minutes ago, Electroely said:

Well...

If you're playing survival, your world can't POSSIBLY run out of resources THAT fast. While I don't know how many grass tufts and saplings a world has on average, I'm sure it's enough to last you 500-1000 days, if you're going that far. Plus, there are always caves which are usually full of grass tufts and saplings.

Even so, when your farm gets destroyed (my ruins base grass farm got disease while I was monkey hunting ), the game's telling you "get your lazy butt off your fur roll and go get urself a new farm". It's just encouraging exploration and not staying in base 24/7.

You're right, but eventually it will run out and you will have to go further and deeper in the wild to get farms started up again. Disease therefore punishes you for doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing, which is living by resources and not relocating them for agriculture purposes. I'm all for the disruption of my farms, just not getting additionally punished by it since these resources are not renewable. Hopefully they're working on making them renewable or giving us the tools to make our servers renew them on their own.

[Ecu]

1 hour ago, Trenix said:

You're right, but eventually it will run out and you will have to go further and deeper in the wild to get farms started up again. Disease therefore punishes you for doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing, which is living by resources and not relocating them for agriculture purposes. I'm all for the disruption of my farms, just not getting additionally punished by it since these resources are not renewable. Hopefully they're working on making them renewable or giving us the tools to make our servers renew them on their own.

Except that you aren't supposed to have easily endless renewable resources?  That seems to me to be exactly what  tumbleweeds and cave-ins are for.  They are clunky methods to allow for infinitely renewable resources.  To help out new players to a server, they also added a means to regenerate resources around the spawn.

DST is a multiplayer adaption of a roguelike survival game.  It is still, from what I understand, a rogelike survival game.  As such, the aim is to kill all the users, making them start over from the beginning again.  If you wish for an experience that goes against this primary design, perhaps mods are the better solution.

[Trenix]

8 hours ago, Ecu said:

Except that you aren't supposed to have easily endless renewable resources?  That seems to me to be exactly what  tumbleweeds and cave-ins are for.  They are clunky methods to allow for infinitely renewable resources.  To help out new players to a server, they also added a means to regenerate resources around the spawn.

DST is a multiplayer adaption of a roguelike survival game.  It is still, from what I understand, a rogelike survival game.  As such, the aim is to kill all the users, making them start over from the beginning again.  If you wish for an experience that goes against this primary design, perhaps mods are the better solution.

I really would love to argue with you, but it's getting repetitive. You're trying to sell me that a desert biome is where you get your source of grass and twigs over biomes which are supposed to be rich in grass and sticks. Also if what you're saying is true, that we're not supposed to have endless renewable resources, than why is does the regrowth feature even exist in survival mode? As for rogue-like, I highly recommend you look up what it means. I've explained it and you still use it incorrectly. You make it seem like rogue-like intentionally makes you lose. Sorry, that is not the definition of rogue-like. You can sell me that survival mode is meant to make you lose eventually, but that has nothing to do with having a rogue-like game. Even if that's the purpose of survival mode, then why are certain things still renewable and have a regrowth feature?

You keep telling me this is how the game is and what it's about, but features in this game state otherwise. Now back to disease, this feature only severely punishes strategic planning. I'm completely against that, we're being punished for doing the right thing. That is what you call a poorly designed mechanic and people are already doing things to get around it, like not relocating plants and living near pig villages which have farms setup for them without intervention so they're unable to be diseased. Don't get me wrong, this feature can be improved and I'm glad it was implement, just it wasn't done right. This is the purpose of my feedback to state the problems and hope for a change.

[Ecu]

7 hours ago, Trenix said:

I really would love to argue with you, but it's getting repetitive. You're trying to sell me that a desert biome is where you get your source of grass and twigs over biomes which are supposed to be rich in grass and sticks. Also if what you're saying is true, that we're not supposed to have endless renewable resources, than why is does the regrowth feature even exist in survival mode? As for rogue-like, I highly recommend you look up what it means. I've explained it and you still use it incorrectly. You make it seem like rogue-like intentionally makes you lose. Sorry, that is not the definition of rogue-like. You can sell me that survival mode is meant to make you lose eventually, but that has nothing to do with having a rogue-like game. Even if that's the purpose of survival mode, then why are certain things still renewable and have a regrowth feature?

You keep telling me this is how the game is and what it's about, but features in this game state otherwise. Now back to disease, this feature only severely punishes strategic planning. I'm completely against that, we're being punished for doing the right thing. That is what you call a poorly designed mechanic and people are already doing things to get around it, like not relocating plants and living near pig villages which have farms setup for them without intervention so they're unable to be diseased. Don't get me wrong, this feature can be improved and I'm glad it was implement, just it wasn't done right. This is the purpose of my feedback to state the problems and hope for a change.

As far as roguelike is concerned, please look into the genre for yourself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike).  Traditionally, roguelikes feature permadeath, specifically causing you to have to start the experience over.  In fact a majority of the traditional roguelike features are implemented in DST.  So yeah, I'd say roguelike survival game is a pretty accurate title to label DST as.  It implements a majority of common roguelike features and adds survival features with the intent of you dieing eventually.

I will admit that the developers have been adding some features more recently that specifically feel out of place (such as pets).  You will also find that quite a few of the people who bought DST due to it's roguelike survival nature actually dislike said features (myself included).  However, along with said features, they have continued to add an additional boss as well, so I do not feel they have completely abandoned the primary design of the game (at least as of yet).  As such, I'll continue to critique suggestions based on this roguelike survival design that the game was initially built around.

Regarding punishing you for strategic planning...that's just false.  It does indeed punish you for digging up all the twigs/tufts and replanting them at your base.  That doesn't mean strategic planning itself is being punished, just the specific strategy you're using.  You could instead not pull up as many tufts, keep someone at base to watch over them for disease to prevent you from losing them all, and wait for the next disease cycle to get new tufts to replace the ones you lost.  You could also use the strategy of not pulling up twigs/tufts at all and instead gathering as you explore and then you will have a low chance of ever running out of them.

I see this system as working reasonable well and I feel the concept of losing resources over time to be a perfectly fine mechanic.  I also agree with the idea of using various locations in the world to allow you to better avoid negatives (such as the pig areas you mentioned) as a legitimate mechanic to the game.  All in all, the things you are complaining about, I feel are good aspects of the game (for the most part).

That said, I definitely would love to see more come out of the disease system.  Primarily focused around making it impossible to save replanted crops and forcing people to establish new methods (such as perhaps using food to corral the grass gekkos) of sustaining oneself.  These features would have to be paired with additional methods of players dieing as well, therefore losing the run...as currently even, it is just way too easy to remain sustaining for nearly forever.

[Trenix]

1 hour ago, Ecu said:

As far as roguelike is concerned, please look into the genre for yourself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike).  Traditionally, roguelikes feature permadeath, specifically causing you to have to start the experience over.  In fact a majority of the traditional roguelike features are implemented in DST.  So yeah, I'd say roguelike survival game is a pretty accurate title to label DST as.  It implements a majority of common roguelike features and adds survival features with the intent of you dieing eventually.

This is what I mean, I have trouble arguing with you. Have you even read the wiki that you sent me? Also permadeath doesn't mean you're intended to lose and have to start the experience over, just means you can have your character wiped upon death. For example, Diablo on hardcore mode has permadeath in it. That doesn't mean you're supposed to die. This whole, "You have to die eventually" is not what rogue-like is about. In a rogue-like game, playing indefinitely should be possible, though not likely. You're just making up your own description of a genre. If you want to be accurate, DST Survival Mode doesn't even have permadeath in it. When you die, you become a ghost and can be revived, that's not permadeath whatsoever.

Don't Starve Together doesn't stay true to the rogue-like genre and that's a perfect indication of it. You must be confusing Don't Starve Together with Don't Starve, where Don't Starve had permadeath. Again, you're back to wanting Don't Starve with Friends. DST implemented majority of the traditional rogue-like features? I'm sorry but at this point I think you must be trolling me because honestly, they've added almost nothing from the rogue-like genre, especially from the traditional features of a rogue-like genre. I've personally worked on a rogue-like game before, I know what it is.

Back to the main topic, what does renewable resources have anything to do with rouge-like? I'm sorry, I'm really trying to hold a conversation with you, but it's very difficult. I appreciate your responses though, we're just not seeing eye to eye.

[Ecu]

6 minutes ago, Trenix said:

This is what I mean, I have trouble arguing with you. Have you even read the wiki that you sent me? Also permadeath doesn't mean you're intended to lose and have to start the experience over, just means you can have your character wiped upon death. For example, Diablo on hardcore mode has permadeath in it. That doesn't mean you're supposed to die. This whole, "You have to die eventually" is not what rogue-like is about. In a rogue-like game, playing indefinitely should be possible, though not likely. You're just making up your own description of a genre. If you want to be accurate, DST Survival Mode doesn't even have permadeath in it. When you die, you become a ghost and can be revived, that's not permadeath whatsoever.

Don't Starve Together doesn't stay true to the rogue-like genre and that's a perfect indication of it. You must be confusing Don't Starve Together with Don't Starve, where Don't Starve had permadeath. Again, you're back to wanting Don't Starve with Friends. DST implemented majority of the traditional rogue-like features? I'm sorry but at this point I think you must be trolling me because honestly, they've added almost nothing from the rogue-like genre, especially from the traditional features of a rogue-like genre. I've personally worked on a rogue-like game before, I know what it is.

I'm sorry, I'm really trying to hold a conversation with you, but it's very difficult. I appreciate your responses though, we're just not seeing eye to eye.

Did you even read what I wrote in my last post?  I stated that it implements roguelike features AS WELL AS survival features and the concept that you're intended to lose eventually.  That has always been the design of Don't Starve in general and I've not heard any claim to the contrary by Klei (as of yet).  It is a roguelike with survival features and progression towards death.  DST is this with multiplayer.

As usual, you seem to think there is a difference between "Don't Starve with friends" and "multiplayer Don't Starve".  If you can play Don't Starve with multiple people, that is multiplayer.  I don't want MMO Don't Starve, or Minecraft-like servers where people continuously play forever on the same world run.  That has never been what Don't Starve has really been about and I have no intention of agreeing with suggestions trying to push it in said direction.  So if that is the direction you want the game to go, I feel you should do so via modding.

We probably won't see eye to eye, but that is fine.  I will disagree with suggestions I feel are poor for the game.  At the end of the day, it will be Klei that decides what direction they pursue for their game and if it becomes one I don't agree with, I'll either mod the game or stop playing.  So far, they haven't stated anything to said effect and are still only officially supporting survival mode servers (which have an average lifespan per world of around 100 days).  As such, I'll continue to assume that the style of play they want to promote is roughly single year play sessions and formulate my suggestions based on such.

[gabblox]

I want my survival to not have a use-by date based on when I've run out of accessible resources. In my mind survival should be moderated by combat difficulty rather than arbitrary dice rolls related to disease. This is particularly true in the multiplayer experience where new players could accidentally destroy non-renewables by not knowing any better. Survival mode could definitely stand to have all the current non-renewables become renewable through some alternative means. It doesn't need to be regrowing in the world, but there should be some way to replenish your base (in what is also a base building game). They've changed how catcoons and flowers respawn for DST so I think it's a little naive and purist to say that grass tufts and twigs shouldn't respawn as well. 

Alternatively if they don't want to make them respawn if killed by disease, they could also make a pesticide or something that can vaccinate diseased plants once a year. That would prevent people from having ridiculously huge farm plots and the onus is on you if you dig it up your diseased plants rather than vaccinating them before it spreads.

[Ecu]

16 hours ago, gabblox said:

I want my survival to not have a use-by date based on when I've run out of accessible resources. In my mind survival should be moderated by combat difficulty rather than arbitrary dice rolls related to disease. This is particularly true in the multiplayer experience where new players could accidentally destroy non-renewables by not knowing any better. Survival mode could definitely stand to have all the current non-renewables become renewable through some alternative means. It doesn't need to be regrowing in the world, but there should be some way to replenish your base (in what is also a base building game). They've changed how catcoons and flowers respawn for DST so I think it's a little naive and purist to say that grass tufts and twigs shouldn't respawn as well. 

Alternatively if they don't want to make them respawn if killed by disease, they could also make a pesticide or something that can vaccinate diseased plants once a year. That would prevent people from having ridiculously huge farm plots and the onus is on you if you dig it up your diseased plants rather than vaccinating them before it spreads.

I disagree.  Part of the whole nature of the game is that it tries to kill you.  Reducing your access to resources, eventually causing you to regularly have to go out (to the desert for twigs/grass or elsewhere for food), to acquire them gives greater chance of you dieing and the world restarting.

Sure the game currently doesn't have very creative scaling combat difficulty (hounds), but when combined with stuff burning down, disease, bosses, etc. you can indeed slowly come to a situation where you cannot reasonably hold on.  Which is all in line with how the game is intended.

Personally, I feel disease should hit harder.  You can already catch disease if you're paying attention to your crops (which you could have someone do, since it is multiplayer).  So it is very possible to minimize the damage disease causes.  If you're complaining about progressing with new players, perhaps you should help teach said new players how to do better and focus on the next run with them instead of worrying about this one.

All in all, the game is designed around playing through multiple play attempts.  Requests like this seem to be focused on playing the same attempt forever, which isn't the standard mode of play and as such should really be supported more via mods.