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Alright, some more (or the same) arguments against Willow's current state.

1) Griefing with fire doesn't require a lighter. It requires 2 grass and 2 twigs. That's all it takes to grief with fire. If you want to stop griefing with fire, you're not solving it by nerfing Willow's lighter.

2) Willow is immune to fire. She's not immune to axes, spears, shovels, or pickaxes. However, considering that PVP represents fewer than 2%-4% of the population of playerbase at any given time, is it even worth bothering with?

3) If you really wanted to prevent griefing, you could do the same thing that was done in other Sandbox games: "grief protection". If you don't place it, you don't get to break it. It's that simple...

4) No, actually, I lied, it's even simpler. This is why a host should use passworded servers and ONLY passworded servers. If someone comes on my server and griefs because I left my server unsecured, then that's my fault as the host. Griefers are going to grief, but they can't grief a server that they can't get into. Stop letting the worst of humanity ruin the fun for everyone else that has the good sense to use passwords, Klei. Don't let trolls dictate who the characters are.

EDIT: Add a "Classic" setting for characters on Servers, so that hosts can choose to allow the classic Don't Starve characters, rather than their DST versions. Believe it or not, there are many of us that bought DST because we thought we were going to be able to play with the Don't Starve versions of the characters. We're willing to take the risk with Willow.

#MakeWillowGreatAgain

-Fist-

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You should really use the search function and add to an existing thread.  There have been a multitude of Willow threads posted, I believe multiple in the last month even.  Just suggesting this as it would keep information together.

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9 hours ago, FistfulOfZen said:

4) No, actually, I lied, it's even simpler. This is why a host should use passworded servers and ONLY passworded servers. If someone comes on my server and griefs because I left my server unsecured, then that's my fault as the host. Griefers are going to grief, but they can't grief a server that they can't get into. Stop letting the worst of humanity ruin the fun for everyone else that has the good sense to use passwords, Klei. Don't let trolls dictate who the characters are.

First of all, they can nerf Willow even more and people would still play her, so this all would be completely meaningless. Second, this game is called Don't Starve Together, not Don't Starve Alone or Don't Starve w/ Friends. Public servers should be the focus of the game. The more we force people into private servers, the more I wish this game was a DLC for Don't Starve, rather than being it's own game.

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@Ecu - I looked at the other threads, and I believed that I'm taking a different approach to the problem. Most of the other threads tried to offer alternative buffs/nerfs to Willow, while caving on the point of griefing. I'm not offering any such alternatives. I am arguing strictly to returning Willow to her original state of DST. Trolling is going to happen.

@Trenix - I appreciate your position, I just disagree with it. Willow (and Woodie) were once exactly the same in DST as they were in DS, thus your point is actually kind of fallacious. Willow doesn't need fixing. People do. I guarantee that an unsecured server is getting trolled hundreds of times more often than secured servers. I don't see how you can disagree with that very obvious assertion. Reducing griefing to practically zero is as easy as password protecting your server and playing with your friends.

Nerfing Willow, Woodie, or any other character won't stop trolling. Changing the characters punishes EVERYONE else for the bad behavior of the fraction of the population with poor impulse control. It's a fail by Klei.

 

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16 hours ago, FistfulOfZen said:

I looked at the other threads, and I believed that I'm taking a different approach to the problem. Most of the other threads tried to offer alternative buffs/nerfs to Willow, while caving on the point of griefing. I'm not offering any such alternatives. I am arguing strictly to returning Willow to her original state of DST. Trolling is going to happen

It really doesn't matter that your solution to the problem is different than the other's solutions.  It is the topic that is the same and has been posted many times.  It is honestly in the guidelines to search before you post, which is why I suggested doing so.

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21 hours ago, FistfulOfZen said:

@Trenix - I appreciate your position, I just disagree with it. Willow (and Woodie) were once exactly the same in DST as they were in DS, thus your point is actually kind of fallacious. Willow doesn't need fixing. People do. I guarantee that an unsecured server is getting trolled hundreds of times more often than secured servers. I don't see how you can disagree with that very obvious assertion. Reducing griefing to practically zero is as easy as password protecting your server and playing with your friends.

Nerfing Willow, Woodie, or any other character won't stop trolling. Changing the characters punishes EVERYONE else for the bad behavior of the fraction of the population with poor impulse control. It's a fail by Klei.

I'm not really understanding what you're talking about. You're comparing a multiplayer game to a singleplayer game and saying I'm mistaken with something. Truth is, unless all characters get balanced properly to make them all equal with benefits and disadvantages, what happens to them currently is almost completely meaningless. Unsecured servers get griefed because Klei has did extremely little to prevent any sort of griefing unlike all the other survival private servers games out there. Servers tools have proven to be exploited and simply not work. Also as said before, this is Don't Starve Together, not Don't Starve w/ Friends. If locked servers were solely intended for this game, then it lied on its description.

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1 hour ago, Trenix said:

I'm not really understanding what you're talking about. You're comparing a multiplayer game to a singleplayer game and saying I'm mistaken with something. Truth is, unless all characters get balanced properly to make them all equal with benefits and disadvantages, what happens to them currently is almost completely meaningless. Unsecured servers get griefed because Klei has did extremely little to prevent any sort of griefing unlike all the other survival private servers games out there. Servers tools have proven to be exploited and simply not work. Also as said before, this is Don't Starve Together, not Don't Starve w/ Friends. If locked servers were solely intended for this game, then it lied on its description.

Honestly, @Trenix, you do realize that "Don't Starve with Friends" is still multiplayer, right?  I'm sorry, but I've seen you make this comment quite a few times, however, it is fairly obvious by the way the game plays out that the game is really just Don't Starve with added small group multiplayer.  It isn't a new game.  Nor did they heavily rework the game around the new experience.  In fact, this is something I've talked about when I've commented on the average experience of players.

Your comment that they lied in the description is seemingly incorrect as well...here's the full description from the front page of the website.

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Don't Starve Together

Don't Starve Together is the standalone multiplayer expansion of the uncompromising wilderness survival game, Don't Starve. Now including Reign of Giants; adding new characters, seasons, creatures, biomes, and Giant new challenges to Don’t Starve Together.

Enter a strange and unexplored world full of strange creatures, dangers, and surprises. Gather resources to craft items and structures that match your survival style. Play your way as you unravel the mysteries of this strange land. 

Cooperate with your friends in a private game, or take your chances with strangers online. Work with other players to survive the harsh environment, or strike out on your own. Do whatever it takes, but most importantly, Don't Starve.

You'll notice that in their own description, they even mention private play first.  So I'm not sure how the game is primarily focused around public play.  Especially so, given that the game hasn't actually been balanced around average public gameplay, including the gameplay offered on their own servers.  It is quite obvious that DST is essentially intended as a means to play DS with your friends.  

My viewpoint is that they should definitely consider rebalancing the game around the average experience.  This way the intended experience would be better represented in an official capacity.  However, the idea that the game is intended for long term public gameplay doesn't really have any solid backing.  Nor would rebalancing the game towards that sort of gameplay as that would essentially be a different game than DST.

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40 minutes ago, Ecu said:

My viewpoint is that they should definitely consider rebalancing the game around the average experience.  This way the intended experience would be better represented in an official capacity.  However, the idea that the game is intended for long term public gameplay doesn't really have any solid backing.  Nor would rebalancing the game towards that sort of gameplay as that would essentially be a different game than DST.

Rebalancing to average? That's child's play, nobody would play this game for just killing everything in few strikes like the singleplayer bosses, which can be tanked or just kited in many ways. I think it would be a waste of time to make it super simple on the "endgame" materials or anything. Just. Add. Mods. Everything that is in the game at the moment is perfectly balanced because it's multiplayer, and even tho some bosses are meany to be boss raids for multiple people, there are some ways that are can be done easily, there isn't much for toadstool tho, but he can be killed by hand. Many ways to farm anything. Everything is still renewable. All that new comers need is to just play game long enough to understand that. Buuuut... I guess maybe in 10 years klei might make a mode for making it all like child's play, or not xd

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Just now, Mantas said:

Rebalancing to average? That's child's play, nobody would play this game for just killing everything in few strikes like the singleplayer bosses, which can be tanked or just kited in many ways. I think it would be a waste of time to make it super simple on the "endgame" materials or anything. Just. Add. Mods. Everything that is in the game at the moment is perfectly balanced because it's multiplayer, and even tho some bosses are meany to be boss raids for multiple people, there are some ways that are can be done easily, there isn't much for toadstool tho, but he can be killed by hand. Many ways to farm anything. Everything is still renewable. All that new comers need is to just play game long enough to understand that. Buuuut... I guess maybe in 10 years klei might make a mode for making it all like child's play, or not xd

By rebalancing the game for the average experience, I am referring to the fact that a majority of public servers are survival mode.  Said servers, on average, only reach somewhere within day 100-200.  Since all the official servers also are represented by this average, by overhauling the game to focus on such timeframe primarily, the official servers would represent the actual game better than they do currently.  That's all.

I honestly don't understand why you are bringing up difficulty of play, when I made no comment towards difficulty.  I merely stated that the game itself should be better represented on the official servers.  Personally, I feel the game is actually too easy currently and should be more challenging.  So yeah, not really sure why you've brought all this up.

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Regarding the topic of this thread, I've already stated that the poster should actually post their ideas where discussion has actually happened on Willow's balance, as that's in-line with the guidelines.

That said, I think Willow going back to being fire immune would be good.  I'm not sure I feel her lighting fires when insane would be good to return and I like her bear, but the fire immunity was one of her defining traits and would let her better manage sanity.  If not immune, perhaps extremely resistant (like 80-90%) and unable to actually be lit on fire.

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3 hours ago, Ecu said:

You'll notice that in their own description, they even mention private play first.

Are you being serious? Do you really think that the first words that are mentioned within a description have more merit over the other words which follow? I really don't know how to respond to this. You stretch points in lengths I have never even witnessed in my lifetime. What I was trying to say is that the game was described as having private play and public play, while the OP stated that hosts should only have private passworded servers. So I completely and strongly disagree, because that's not how the game was described when I purchased it.

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So I'm not sure how the game is primarily focused around public play.

I never said it was, I said it should be and stated my reason why I believed that.

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2 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Do you really think that the first words that are mentioned within a description have more merit over the other words which follow?

Never said it didn't.  Just mentioned that private play was mentioned and mentioned first.  I mention this because the statement they mention is playing with friends privately.  Coupled with the way the game plays out, it feels like a fair assessment that it really is the "Don't Starve with Friends" that you said it is not.

8 minutes ago, Trenix said:

I never said it was, I said it should be and stated my reason why I believed that.

Alright.  I misunderstood and for that I apologize.  I will agree that I feel the game should be designed around public play (just short term, rather than long term, play).

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Interesting discussion.

I'm with @Ecu on the fire immunity, though I think the setting fires at random was the logical disadvantage of playing a character that's a pyro with an infinite lighter. The infinite lighter was part of what helped Willow manage her sanity, but it was hardly enough by itself to keep her from burning down her own base, which was a constant problem with her. This lead to a lot of headaches in single player, and why a lot of players considered Willow a "bad" character for survival... because burning down your berry bush farm was pretty bad, let's face it.

All of that said, this was WHY you played Willow, because being able to manage your Sanity was great, but when she was already crazy to begin with (120 max Sanity), this was part of the trade off. A good Willow player and a bad one could easily make or break a DST experience, that's not controversial, but a good or bad player of almost any of the characters could make or break a DST experience. That said, as you pointed out, DST was supposed to be a simple multiplayer expansion of DS. Surviving with friends in the DS universe was the whole point of DST, wasn't it?

They didn't rework the game until after Willow griefers became a problem. That's the problem with public servers. With her changes, Willow is a completely different experience in DST from DS, so I'm arguing that Klei is failing to deliver on their pitch that this is just DS with friends and that detracts from the fun, at least for me, who happened to like the challenge of Willow's pyromania as a trade off for her functionality. Right now the game is "Don't Starve (with significant gameplay changes to some your favorite characters) with your friends".

The way the DS characters play leads to a lot of interesting problems that players can try a lot of solutions to, which is the whole point of DS/DST. Klei is taking that away from us, because, allegedly, a few bad actors.

I also don't like how she and Wendy are a little too similar now, so I want her (as well as the other changed characters) restored to her (their) original DS state.

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3 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

That's the problem with public servers. With her changes, Willow is a completely different experience in DST from DS, so I'm arguing that Klei is failing to deliver on their pitch that this is just DS with friends and that detracts from the fun, at least for me, who happened to like the challenge of Willow's pyromania as a trade off for her functionality. I also don't like how she and Wendy are a little too similar now, so I want her restored to her original DS state.

I don't think she should be completely restored to her DS state.  It isn't a failure on Klei's part to have DST function somewhat differently when compared to DS.  It is just what kind of has to be done to allow the game to be played publicly.  In general, it is a good thing they have rebalanced characters to better represent their multiplayer nature.

As such, her starting fires while insane isn't very good for multiplayer.  It has too big of a chance to ruin the experience for other players, unintentionally.  Freezing while insane already gives her a severe negative for going crazy.  I just feel her fire resistance should be increased (or returned to immunity), to help her better manage her sanity.  This wouldn't be unbalanced either as there are already many characters that have solid methods to regain sanity.

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3 minutes ago, Ecu said:

As such, her starting fires while insane isn't very good for multiplayer.  It has too big of a chance to ruin the experience for other players, unintentionally.  Freezing while insane already gives her a severe negative for going crazy.  I just feel her fire resistance should be increased (or returned to immunity), to help her better manage her sanity.  This wouldn't be unbalanced either as there are already many characters that have solid methods to regain sanity.

Yes, but what does "Freezing when Insane" have to do with pyromania? If people don't want to take the chance of Willow in their group (in a private server) ask your friend to not play Willow... That's pretty straight forward, isn't it? If you're playing with a "different kind of Willow", then you're not playing with Willow anymore. Again, Willow's strengths and weaknesses pose interesting problems for the players to solve. Hint: The same kinds of solutions that work for Red Hounds tend to work for Willow. Create a part of the base that isn't flammable that she can live in when her Sanity gets low. And these challenges are supposed to affect the decisions of the players. That's the whole point of the different weaknesses.

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1 minute ago, FistfulOfZen said:

Yes, but what does "Freezing when Insane" have to do with pyromania? If people don't want to take the chance of Willow in their group (in a private server) ask your friend to not play Willow... That's pretty straight forward, isn't it? If you're playing with a "different kind of Willow", then you're not playing with Willow anymore. Again, Willow's strengths and weaknesses pose interesting problems for the players to solve. Hint: The same kinds of solutions that work for Red Hounds tend to work for Willow. Create a part of the base that isn't flammable that she can live in when her Sanity gets low. And these challenges are supposed to affect the decisions of the players. That's the whole point of the different weaknesses.

The thing is, the game does allow public play.  Since you're not only playing with friends, the game needs to function well regardless of who someone picks.  Starting fires while insane can unintentionally harm others, and the player choosing Willow may be new and not understand this to begin with, and not understand how to maintain sanity.  So it makes perfect sense that this aspect of her was changed.

Regarding adding freezing as it's replacement, this only affects her, and represents her sanity as an internal fire, which when gone causes her to freeze.  Makes perfect sense to me.  Just that because she is not heavily resistant to fire, her ability to maintain her sanity is poor.  Given that there is such a nasty drawback to it, I feel immunity returning is fine...or at least very high resistance (to force her to use a couple healing items to keep sanity).

The challenge that you're wanting back just isn't good for a public multiplayer experience.  While it is likely true that private multiplayer was the primary intention, public play is still very much a core aspect.  As I've stated, I believe the design of the game should be shifted to said public play as it would better represent the game in an official capacity.  So there is no way I could support balancing characters for private play specifically.

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33 minutes ago, Ecu said:

The thing is, the game does allow public play.  Since you're not only playing with friends, the game needs to function well regardless of who someone picks.

See, I disagree here.

First, the implied assertion that the game allows public play should have any impact at all on the way the game or characters play is already pretty spurious. The majority of Cooperative servers (1066) are password protected, vs 913 public servers. Those public servers you're talking about aren't even remotely jammed packed, and we're in the middle of a school holiday in the United States. And, I don't know about you, but if I am going to play DST, it's going to be with a select group of friends, not the entire internet.

Also, the experience on public servers is just bad, overall. Watching DST "let's play" videos is a train wreck of them bouncing from one bad server to another bad server. Clearly DST works best when playing with a group of friends, not on public worlds. It just doesn't lend itself well to public play, because new players coming in on day 100 are in for a rough start, since the worlds are very finite (as opposed to other Sandbox games with vast world sizes) with finite resources, the starting areas tend to be picked clean of resources, such as flint and food.

Second, the assertion that the game needs to "function well regardless of who someone picks" is also fallacious, mostly because that requires the selection of character being trivial. If which character you pick is trivial, then what, in fact, is the difference between each of the characters? Some character combinations should be awful. Other combos should be really good. That's perfectly alright in both cases. The entire point of the Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together is to overcome the individual weaknesses of the characters, not to trivialize them to the point of irrelevance.

That's my opinion of course. I'm going to use the mods to fix Willow and Woodie. My point is that I shouldn't have to, if Klei's original message about DST was on point.

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3 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

First, the implied assertion that the game allows public play should have any impact at all on the way the game or characters plays is already pretty spurious. The majority of Cooperative servers (1066) are password protected, vs 913 public servers. Those public servers you're talking about aren't even remotely jammed packed, and we're in the middle of a school holiday in the United States. And, I don't know about you, but if I am going to play DST, it's going to be with a select group of friends, not the entire internet.

I'm curious as to where you are getting your figures.  The best site I know of for server statistics is https://my.jacklul.com/dstservers/statistics, and it doesn't allow for the breakdown you're giving.  As such, I am really curious as to where you acquire said statistics.

10 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

Also, the experience on public servers is just bad, overall. Watching DST "let's play" videos is a train wreck of them bouncing from one bad server to another bad server. Clearly DST works best when playing with a group of friends, not on public worlds. It just doesn't lend itself well to public play, because new players coming in on day 100 are in for a rough start, since the worlds are very finite (as opposed to other Sandbox games with vast world sizes) with finite resources, the starting areas tend to be picked clean of resources, such as flint and food.

I wonder if your experience on public servers is specifically the official servers, or if is is more along the lines of long running public servers who either run endless or manage to avoid world resets for extended periods of time.  The game doesn't play well publically too well after a couple in-game years.  This is because resources dwindle intentionally and as public servers that run long tend to play more akin to Minecraft servers, people will not always cooperate to keep resources from being wiped out.

This is why I've stated that I feel the public experience should be representative of the average survival server or around 100-200 in-game days.  Given that I primarily play on said official servers, I can say that in my experience said time frame actually tends to play out rather well with others.  I rarely have griefers and generally we can work together well to get through a year or so of play.

18 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

Second, the assertion that the game needs to "function well regardless of who someone picks" is also fallacious, mostly because that requires the selection of character being trivial. If which character you pick is trivial, then what, in fact, is the difference between each of the characters? Some character combinations should be awful. Other combos should be really good. That's perfectly alright in both cases. The entire point of the Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together is to overcome the individual weaknesses of the characters, not to trivialize them to the point of irrelevance.

When anyone can pick any character, why should any combination be awful?  Each character can do all the tasks needed to survive and have their own little quirks and individual play styles.  This isn't a MMO, where you need to have a tank, dps and healer and it shouldn't be.  While you certainly might have unique aspects to playing an individual character, the game itself isn't about the characters, it's about surviving.  All of the characters should be able to do this in any combination with other characters.

22 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

That's my opinion of course. I'm going to use the mods to fix Willow and Woodie. My point is that I shouldn't have to, if Klei's original message about DST was on point.

By all means, use mods to create the experience you desire.  However, while I agree WIllow probably needs some minor tweaks to be more appealing to seriously play, Woodie does not.  Woodie is already a very solid character.  While he is different when compared to his DS incarnation, it doesn't make him play poorly.

I can understand you being annoyed that the characters have changed from Don't Starve and wanting to fix that with mods, however, I completely disagree that the game should officially revert said characters.

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9 hours ago, Ecu said:

I'm curious as to where you are getting your figures.  The best site I know of for server statistics is https://my.jacklul.com/dstservers/statistics, and it doesn't allow for the breakdown you're giving.  As such, I am really curious as to where you acquire said statistics.

Going into the game and removing all filters. Then choose "Password: No" and then "Password: Yes".

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I wonder if your experience on public servers is specifically the official servers, or if is is more along the lines of long running public servers who either run endless or manage to avoid world resets for extended periods of time.  The game doesn't play well publically too well after a couple in-game years.  This is because resources dwindle intentionally and as public servers that run long tend to play more akin to Minecraft servers, people will not always cooperate to keep resources from being wiped out.

Exactly what I'm talking about, though if you want to play on any server that's been up for any significant amount of time with any number of new players clearing out the area around the spawn portal, you're talking about some serious hand to mouth living.

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This is why I've stated that I feel the public experience should be representative of the average survival server or around 100-200 in-game days.  Given that I primarily play on said official servers, I can say that in my experience said time frame actually tends to play out rather well with others.  I rarely have griefers and generally we can work together well to get through a year or so of play.

I haven't played as much as you have, clearly, but the public servers I've joined on have either been empty, resource depleted, or both. I watched a lot of Let's Play videos, and the only good Let's Play experiences tend to be those that set up their own server. As I said, there are enough of them that are just the caster bouncing from server to server looking for a decent start. It's a giant buzzkill.

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When anyone can pick any character, why should any combination be awful?  Each character can do all the tasks needed to survive and have their own little quirks and individual play styles.  This isn't a MMO, where you need to have a tank, dps and healer and it shouldn't be.  While you certainly might have unique aspects to playing an individual character, the game itself isn't about the characters, it's about surviving.  All of the characters should be able to do this in any combination with other characters.

Because some characters will have abilities that complicate one another, rather than alleviate one another. It's perfectly fine for some combinations to be awful. Surviving is, as you say, pretty straight forward, and depends a lot more on player knowledge and ability than character flaws. As long as players learn the strengths AND weaknesses of every character and the combinations, they will tend to do better than people who just expect trivial differences. Don't expect things to go well for the group that finds itself with a Woodie player that doesn't know when to stop chopping wood, while Abigail is on cooldown on a Hound Night.

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By all means, use mods to create the experience you desire.  However, while I agree WIllow probably needs some minor tweaks to be more appealing to seriously play, Woodie does not.  Woodie is already a very solid character.  While he is different when compared to his DS incarnation, it doesn't make him play poorly.

I can understand you being annoyed that the characters have changed from Don't Starve and wanting to fix that with mods, however, I completely disagree that the game should officially revert said characters.

Well, all I can tell you now is, as of now, Willow's disadvantage is a death sentence in Winter, Spring, and Autumn. Every other character's weakness can be "played around", that is you can apply some strategy to make your disadvantage work for you or work through it. Willow's just insures she's going to die at some point of cold. Why? Because of the shear amount of things that cause Sanity drain in RoG/SW/DST. Being wet, Hound Attacks, and any boss will send Willow into an unrecoverable death spiral.

As she was originally in DST, before Klei got weak kneed about her, her ability was mildly dangerous only if you walled your base in AND packed everything flammable into one area AND was standing in that area AND Willow was there too AND she was at 50% Sanity. So, for her weakness to kill her teammates, there had to be a combination of ignorance, stupidity, stupidity, ignorance, and bad luck, all at the same time. If you've played as Willow or with Willow for any amount of time, you know her original weaknesses and you can build around them.

Move the Ice Box somewhere other than the middle of the Twig/Berry/Grass farm, and don't make Willow's player have to go in there when Willow is nuts. Willow's player should never get "farming duties" over those flammables. Let Willow roam around and gather, because that's her strength. And for the sake of all that is holy, don't build your fortress out of flammable materials.

Willow's "advantages" are totally crap on top of being unoriginal. One, her new "bonus" does nothing but eat up a 2nd inventory slot, on top of being a poor copy of Wendy's ghost (which needs to be buffed back to its original state). It's also just stupid. Willow feels like she's an alpha version of herself. It's not fun, giving the lighter a durability is inane. Why? Why make it last only 10 minutes? Just to eat up more resources?

Here, I'll meet you halfway. Klei should have an option to use characters remaining true to the base game or the new "MP balanced" DST versions of the characters. Then each host can choose which they want.

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Also, honestly, DST is kind of disappointing. There are a lot of really neat features, but the changes in recipes and the ridiculous changes to characters (mostly nerfing the crap out of them) leaves some characters barely functional. In a lot of ways, the changes made to DST by the new developer remind me of MS era MC. They have added on a lot of needless crap and made a lot of needless changes to a game that is and was already pretty well developed. Complexity is fine, but I think it's ruining the game. The elegant simplicity of Don't Starve is being traded of for unnecessary "features" to the point where it's losing my interest.

If I want complexity, I'll go play SC2 competitively. I quit MC because it got so complex that it stopped feeling like MC, things were honestly becoming a chore. Don't Starve is beginning to feel that way, like it's trying to be something that it's not and shouldn't be. Let MC be MC. Let Skyrim be Skyrim. And let Don't Starve be Don't Starve, or in this case, Don't Starve Together.

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2 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

Here, I'll meet you halfway. Klei should have an option to use characters remaining true to the base game or the new "MP balanced" DST versions of the characters. Then each host can choose which they want.

No.  That is not how you design a game.  You generally decide on an experience you wish to create and balance around said experience.  The experience they wished to create did not work with Willow the way she was, so they changed her.  Just that the changes pushed too far in the opposite direction.  The solution is not to just go back to what it was.

29 minutes ago, FistfulOfZen said:

Also, honestly, DST is kind of disappointing. There are a lot of really neat features, but the changes in recipes and the ridiculous changes to characters (mostly nerfing the crap out of them) leaves some characters barely functional. In a lot of ways, the changes made to DST by the new developer remind me of MS era MC. They have added on a lot of needless crap and made a lot of needless changes to a game that is and was already pretty well developed. Complexity is fine, but I think it's ruining the game. The elegant simplicity of Don't Starve is being lost traded in to the point where it's losing my interest.

To be completely honest, perhaps the game isn't for you and original Don't Starve is better?  I only say this because it seems you don't care much for the direction they went for Don't Starve Together.  Not that you cannot suggest changes to the game, just that if your suggestions want to remove a majority of what they've changed...perhaps the game isn't for you.

Additionally, I don't even know what you're talking about regarding MS era MC.  I myself am quite embedded into the Minecraft community and the direction of the game has not changed really at all after being acquired by MS.  At most, they've actually started on the official modding system on the Win 10 version of the game and started working to consolidate codebases.  So I really don't know what you're talking about here.

1 hour ago, FistfulOfZen said:

If I want complexity, I'll go play SC2 competitively. I quit MC because it got so complex that it stopped feeling like MC. Don't Starve is beginning to feel that way. It's trying to be something that it's not and shouldn't be. Let MC be MC. Let Skyrim be Skyrim. And let Don't Starve be Don't Starve, or in this case, Don't Starve Together.

Minecraft got complex?  Don't Starve Together got complex?  I honestly am not sure what you're talking about here.  Neither has really gotten overly complex as you seem to indicate.

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On 12/27/2016 at 7:37 AM, Mantas said:

The chars are perfectly balanced for survival, but the fact is that they are survival chars and not meant for PvP, so there is barely the balance in that

I never understood this "characters don't need to be balanced" line of thought. Sorry, but it shows here that you don't have sufficient knowledge or interest in game design. There's a clear problem of balancing if you look at your Encounters list and it's chock-full of Wigfrid players. You can even look at the Community Market listings, and it shows that the cheapest character-specific skins are from Willow, Woodie, and Wes, and that's because they are the least used characters. The only reason why Willow and Wes skins are not cheaper than they already are is because they look nice.

You could say that singleplayer games don't need balance, because who cares about what you do alone, though I'd still recommend balancing singleplayer characters. However, in multiplayer games, PvP or not, balancing characters is important to allow characters to be played equally. If balancing is not important, then why not implement ridiculous changes such as turning Wolfgang's 2x modifier into 5x, or completely remove all of Wickerbottom's already negligible downsides? There's a reason why characters should not be overly powerful or overly useless.

Yes, stats and perks are not the only factor that tells how often a character is played. For example, Wilson is popular because he is shown in most promotional art and videos and he's the default selected character when you join a server. You could say that Willow, despite being one of the worst characters, should not need buffing because you don't bother about stats, but the countless other players that do bother about stats don't care about what you think and they will choose the character with superior stats. If there are characters that are better and characters that are worse, there will always be an imbalance.

All I know for sure is that Whackzay (one of the best Willow players) is going to be terribly disappointed if he learns about Willow's nerfs. Too bad he isn't active anymore.

#MakeWillowGreatAgain

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