Recreating the same problems Don't Starve had.

[Ares42]

So according to Steam I've put 20 hours into this game over the last few days, and I've had a blast. However, I'm getting a very strong deja vu feeling of my time with Don't Starve through early access. While the game has a very engaging learning curve it runs into the same exact issue of "now what?" once you've got some experience. I feel like the core issue lies in how it tightly balances on the edge between survival and exploration, which means it never forces the player to commit either way.

Like Don't Starve we're seeing people trying their hardest (and barely succeeding) at making sustainable bases. While there's certainly a lot of fun to get out of maximizing efficiency and making the optimal lay-outs etc, once you actually achieve it it means the game is done. Just purely "Game Over" status. You've achieved the goal of surviving, and there's nothing left to do. Now obviously this is the point where the game could expand by encouraging you to go out and discover new and exciting things (like Don't Starve ended up eventually), but if that's the ultimate goal of the game why put up this big survival hindrance in the first place ?

On the other hand though the game could lean hard into survival. Make it down-right impossible for people to make sustainable bases. And not just teetering on the edge, but brutally challenging just to survive. Force players to constantly expand and acquire new resources, and always having to deal with a new peril. Add in more systems and mechanics that become relevant over time (like the stress is atm). Just keep the ball running and never let the player achieve a "solved situation".

Either of these will make the game into a more sustainable engaging experience, rather than just being an initially fun learning experience.

[rdrazga]

Well the game is in INSANELY early development and should not be taken as not fun since its not finished. Reading your post I can see your a more reasonable person that would understand this; however, I see so many people who buy an early access game, complain about a glitch, and then say that they wasted money and are going to use the steam refund system. This is the most annoying thing to hear as a consistent player of early access games since they don't understand that they are playing a unfinished game that will have glitches. If you follow the path of many of these early access games you see that they start out really rough and once they are fully released are great games that captivate for days. Please consider these details before complaining on an incomplete games incompleteness.

[tamercloud]

I personally don't want a game you can't win. As it is now it's already set up that way. Nobody can perfectly sustain their resources forever. I think the game will evolve to be more difficult and complex anyways. It's not even finished yet.

[Ares42]

24 minutes ago, rdrazga said:

Well the game is in INSANELY early development and should not be taken as not fun since its not finished. Reading your post I can see your a more reasonable person that would understand this; however, I see so many people who buy an early access game, complain about a glitch, and then say that they wasted money and are going to use the steam refund system. This is the most annoying thing to hear as a consistent player of early access games since they don't understand that they are playing a unfinished game that will have glitches. If you follow the path of many of these early access games you see that they start out really rough and once they are fully released are great games that captivate for days. Please consider these details before complaining on an incomplete games incompleteness.

While it's certainly true that things could change, the opposite is also quite possible (and from what we've seen fairly likely). There's a multitude of "successful" early access games that went into early access and hard launched with pretty much the exact same core concept present. They got some new feature and tweaks along the way, but there was never any real progress made on the core game concept. This was very much the case with Don't Starve, and it wasn't before DLC got introduced that the game started to actually develop into a better overall experience.

All I'm trying to point out is that this game seems to be heading in that same direction at the moment. And with the experience they already made last time around I'd like to encourage them to learn form their mistakes and get ahead of the issues this time around, hopefully ending up with a more complete and fulfilling experience once launch comes around.

[rdrazga]

14 minutes ago, Ares42 said:

While it's certainly true that things could change, the opposite is also quite possible (and from what we've seen fairly likely). There's a multitude of "successful" early access games that went into early access and hard launched with pretty much the exact same core concept present. They got some new feature and tweaks along the way, but there was never any real progress made on the core game concept. This was very much the case with Don't Starve, and it wasn't before DLC got introduced that the game started to actually develop into a better overall experience.

All I'm trying to point out is that this game seems to be heading in that same direction at the moment. And with the experience they already made last time around I'd like to encourage them to learn form their mistakes and get ahead of the issues this time around, hopefully ending up with a more complete and fulfilling experience once launch comes around.

Yes I understand what you mean and thats why I said your a reasonable person I was pointing out the most annoying thing in the world. Anyhow the new thermal update proves that they are adding new possibilities to the game as well as talk about logistics systems.

[enhander23]

There's a very fine line between challenging and punishing.  It's nice that they gave us the thermal update as a way to incentivize temperature regulation, but the problem is that while some more tools were given for heating, there isn't really much of an option for cooling.  The Hydrofan is literally the only way you can effectively cool your boiler room, now that the coal generators can destroy themselves via overheating.  It would be really nice if we could use Abyssalite to craft a wall-mounted machine that could cool our systems.

Personally, I found the lore component of DS/DST to be highly compelling.  I feel like ONI has the potential to do the same.  However, in its current state ONI is very punishing for players who try to expand.  Keeping a small base sustainable is already a huge problem.  Just getting up all the components (clean water tank, polluted water tank, water purification, power generation, "gas cleaner room", bedroom, massage room, storage room, plant room (food), oxygen producing area (usually a bunch of algae terrariums near the water tanks) is actually a huge challenge.  I've found that the new thermal update is already somewhat overbearing in that the circuit overload is pretty unforgiving.

I think that a real strength of Klei's DS/DST/ONI is the biome system.  However, ONI makes it extremely difficult for people to actually explore areas sustainably.  Whenever you dig, there's a whole bunch of stuff to clean up which takes ages upon ages to finish.  I've literally spent strings of days just having all my dupes sweeping things.  This isn't a problem for outside your main base area, but even just cleaning up your newly built base takes like 2-4 days of pure sweeping.  The second thing is that the more area you dig out, the more oxygen production you need to sustain breathable air for a larger area.  Digging up lifts all of your oxygen away from your bottom rooms, and digging down is even slower because you're just covered in CO2.  We desperately need a way to dig and expand/explore more efficiently.  This could be oxygen suits/tanks, cleaning robots, etc.

[SpaceKing]

Abyssalite isn't just cold - it just has 0 thermal conductivity. Heat cannot pass through it. You can't make an Abyssalite cooler.

But yeah, ditto on most of that. I  like the game being challenging but I want that through depth, not by being esoteric. A lot of functions for items are pathetic as is, like the algae and hydrofan. Hopefully they get fixed as the alpha improves.