Make sanity problems somewhat more challenging?

[Diaboliko]

Nightmare creatures are supposed to be annoying, but they barelly are. It's pretty much the least thing devs can experiment with to make gaming experience harder(since game is already very casual on default numbers of tunning.lua, no matter what you do and requires changes!).

Fact #1: nightmares are real pain in the back when you have to deal with them and any other non-nightmare mob. Fighting 2 nightmares at a time is less annoying, since they have collision with nightmare-type creatures(though it makes them push each other which one should just get used to).

Fact #2: staying at zero sanity and fighting constantly nightmares stops spawning them at some point for a long while(if intentional - to prevent nightmare fuel farming in one go), which is, like, a Gods blessing in ruins where you can 24/7 eat that incredible lichen, restoring 12.5 hunger and 3 hp with each (Low spoilage time doesn't mean that a super-common item has to restore THAT much in my opinion, but oh well, its in game just like butterflies). That and blue mushroom biome makes life in caves sooooo easy, since there are no seasonal bosses or roaming hostile ceatures on every step. Sure, there are nigthmares and earthquakes, but with current mechanics its rather a huge stockpile of normally usefull stuff, rather then a challenge. Oh, and there are easily kitable worms too, who kindly brings their berries to muh base every time!

So yeah, can you rework the nightmare creatures spawning system? Like get a counter of 3-5 of available nightmares for player which spawns a nightmare every segment or so when you are low on sanity, if the counter is full, otherwise raises it up 'till max? And if player attacks any creature give it a chance to spawn the nightmare creature(lowering the counter too ofc)? Though drops from nightmares have to be highly reduced then. :> This way it will make waves of nightmares(you fight a nightmare - another one has a chance to spawn, with the worst of luck making you flee far away, since you are unlikely to successfully kite 4-5 of them). Such a system might be adapted for a few players near each other(though I havent thought how since Im mostly a solo player) to be less of a pain to deal with it in groups, or leave it as is which will make every newbie cry (muahahah).

[SymKensaki]

I assume insanity is meant to just increase the general difficulty of the game, while offering a venue for gathering nightmare fuel that doesn't require you to go anywhere special to do it.  Where I do agree that nightmare creatures are pretty tame compared to the ticking death imposed by other systems such as starvation or freezing, I don't think quantity and frequency of nightmares is necessarily the best solution to making this better.

I would, however, like to see more inconvenience imposed by insanity:  Smaller, quicker shadow hands that grab stuff off the ground, loss of map and mini-map functions, false readouts on stats like health and hunger, stack totals and durability showing up as question marks, food spoilage indicators randomized, crafting requiring extra or strange materials in addition to their basic costs (that being said, I think it would be cool if there was some stuff that you could only craft while insane), freezing or overheating at random but it doesn't hurt you unless you're actually freezing or overheating, chat disabled or converted partially or entirely to babble.

The hands might be a bit too much because it can hurt others, but this could be mitigated by having a shadow chest spawn somewhere in the world as soon as items start getting taken and only a crazy person can see and touch it, causing it to disappear and drop everything the darkness has claimed.

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But all-in-all the main idea would be to make a bunch of client-side effects that hinder and generally obfuscate normal functions of play that are taken for granted.

[Diaboliko]

1 hour ago, SymKensaki said:

I assume insanity is meant to just increase the general difficulty of the game, while offering a venue for gathering nightmare fuel that doesn't require you to go anywhere special to do it.  Where I do agree that nightmare creatures are pretty tame compared to the ticking death imposed by other systems such as starvation or freezing, I don't think quantity and frequency of nightmares is necessarily the best solution to making this better.

I would, however, like to see more inconvenience imposed by insanity:  Smaller, quicker shadow hands that grab stuff off the ground, loss of map and mini-map functions, false readouts on stats like health and hunger, stack totals and durability showing up as question marks, food spoilage indicators randomized, crafting requiring extra or strange materials in addition to their basic costs (that being said, I think it would be cool if there was some stuff that you could only craft while insane), freezing or overheating at random but it doesn't hurt you unless you're actually freezing or overheating, chat disabled or converted partially or entirely to babble.

The hands might be a bit too much because it can hurt others, but this could be mitigated by having a shadow chest spawn somewhere in the world as soon as items start getting taken and only a crazy person can see and touch it, causing it to disappear and drop everything the darkness has claimed.

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But all-in-all the main idea would be to make a bunch of client-side effects that hinder and generally obfuscate normal functions of play that are taken for granted.

Indeed, that kind of stuff will be nice too, but anything related to UI jokes is meaningless in terms of survival. Though sounds really fun. Personally I feel about nightmare creatures like of an constant pressure on those whose sanity is low. However the pressure itself is kinda low right now, so I've been thinking of how modify it only, not change into another direction. Being insane is just not punishing enough. Bugged rabbits add to this problem too.

[Sinister_Fang]

8 hours ago, SymKensaki said:

loss of map and mini-map functions, false readouts on stats like health and hunger, stack totals and durability showing up as question marks, food spoilage indicators randomized

No, no, no, nope, no.

Hiding important information like that is a great way to cause a lot on unnecessary frustration. Imagine being in a situation that it shows you having near full health and hunger, and suddenly you're starving because your actual hunger is gone. And soon you die because your actual health was low. Or being in a situation that shows your armor and weapons being in good condition, then suddenly they break and you're left completely defenseless only to then die. No. I can't say it enough. Something like that would be enough for me to stop playing and uninstall a great game that I enjoy. Just... no.

8 hours ago, SymKensaki said:

chat disabled or converted partially or entirely to babble.

Oh, and uhhh... No. Communication is just as important. That, and if this was a thing people just wouldn't use the ingame chat. It would be a lot easier to use steam, skype or almost anything else. So how about no?

[fimmatek]

11 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

No, no, no, nope, no.

Hiding important information like that is a great way to cause a lot on unnecessary frustration. Imagine being in a situation that it shows you having near full health and hunger, and suddenly you're starving because your actual hunger is gone. And soon you die because your actual health was low. Or being in a situation that shows your armor and weapons being in good condition, then suddenly they break and you're left completely defenseless only to then die. No. I can't say it enough. Something like that would be enough for me to stop playing and uninstall a great game that I enjoy. Just... no.

Oh, and uhhh... No. Communication is just as important. That, and if this was a thing people just wouldn't use the ingame chat. It would be a lot easier to use steam, skype or almost anything else. So how about no?

I agree on that, these changes were way too much for playing in general. 

It could be a great mod (or maybe an "extremly hard" setting), but just as an optional thing, for the most experienced players who want a really hard challenge and won't go mad if they die. Because I admit, that would be quite a measure how well prepared is someone for everything.

Hovewer, there are a lot of players for whom managing sanity is already a difficulty. Such changes to the main game would be unfair against them. 

[Ecu]

12 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

No, no, no, nope, no.

Hiding important information like that is a great way to cause a lot on unnecessary frustration. Imagine being in a situation that it shows you having near full health and hunger, and suddenly you're starving because your actual hunger is gone. And soon you die because your actual health was low. Or being in a situation that shows your armor and weapons being in good condition, then suddenly they break and you're left completely defenseless only to then die. No. I can't say it enough. Something like that would be enough for me to stop playing and uninstall a great game that I enjoy. Just... no.

Oh, and uhhh... No. Communication is just as important. That, and if this was a thing people just wouldn't use the ingame chat. It would be a lot easier to use steam, skype or almost anything else. So how about no?

I honestly don't see why you would be opposed to these (with the exception of maybe chat).  These would only apply while insane and would represent increased challenge while insane.  DST currently is too easy, and insanity does indeed not present a whole lot of a challenge to the player.

In addition, if you were to increase the difficulty through these sort of means, it could be justified to make various magic items only work while insane, but be rechargeable.  This would improve the appeal of many magic items, while still creating quite a challenge to utilize them.  Various magical weapons/armor could have their effectiveness based on current sanity as well, giving a stronger risk vs. reward style play.

[Sinister_Fang]

18 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I honestly don't see why you would be opposed to these

Because hiding or lying about VITAL information is never a good thing (unless you're doing a challenge run). I've already provided a couple possible scenarios with this. Insanity could have a little bit more going for it, but hiding important information is only going to cause frustration.

[Ecu]

8 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Because hiding or lying about VITAL information is never a good thing (unless you're doing a challenge run). I've already provided a couple possible scenarios with this. Insanity could have a little bit more going for it, but hiding important information is only going to cause frustration.

That is the entire point of hiding the information is to make you worry about the status of your items/health.  If you've ever played Binding of Isaac, it has a curse that causes your health to be hidden for a floor.  It instills a whole new sense of danger until you get through said floor.  This would essentially provide a similar purpose, to make you not want to stay in an insanity state unless you needed to.

By pairing it with having additional mechanics only functioning while insane, it gives a good risk vs. reward play.  Currently there isn't a whole lot of risk to just stay insane most of the time.  These kind of changes would make high insanity a dangerous play style and leave things open to offer more benefits for accepting such play style.  As there are plenty of methods to regain sanity, it would also make people utilize said methods to avoid said negative mechanics.

All in all, it would really improve gameplay overall.

[Sinister_Fang]

28 minutes ago, Ecu said:

If you've ever played Binding of Isaac, it has a curse that causes your health to be hidden for a floor.

Except that it's a lot easier to mentally keep track of your health in Binding of Isaac. A lot of enemies in that game usually do only half to 1 full heart worth of damage. In DS/T The damage of each enemy is wildly different, plus there's armor with different damage reduction. There's just too much you'd need to memorize if you wanted to mentally keep track of your health unlike in Binding of Isaac.

37 minutes ago, Ecu said:

All in all, it would really improve gameplay overall.

I would find dying due to the game lying to me to hinder the game overall, not improve it. Let's just agree to disagree.

[Diaboliko]

Well, perhaps it really should be left for mods... But sanity system is, once again, too easy right now.

What about making healing food taste like crap and, by thus, have effects similliar to rot? Like reducing food value to 75% and healing value to 33% may be?

[Ecu]

54 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Except that it's a lot easier to mentally keep track of your health in Binding of Isaac. A lot of enemies in that game usually do only half to 1 full heart worth of damage. In DS/T The damage of each enemy is wildly different, plus there's armor with different damage reduction. There's just too much you'd need to memorize if you wanted to mentally keep track of your health unlike in Binding of Isaac.

I would find dying due to the game lying to me to hinder the game overall, not improve it. Let's just agree to disagree.

Well, it seems like this first issue would be solved by not allowing yourself to go insane to fight a bunch of enemies?  This is a survival game, so adding more lethality to insanity isn't a bad thing.  If you are not confident in fighting while insane because of not knowing your status information, you would only have to keep more sanity food/gear on you.  It isn't all that hard to farm up green mushrooms or cactus to keep one's self sane.  So complaining about fighting while insane seems a bit silly.