Rant on Klei

[CatBurger]

First off, before anyone gets mad, I am a huge fan of Klei. I love the games they make, and that is why I want problems to be fixed.

 

My rant is going to be mostly on the lack of development in certain areas of Don't Starve.

 

First complaint: Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked is an awesome expansion. I love the tropical setting, the art, and mostly the music. But sometimes it feels empty, or abandoned.

First off, the oceans are too quiet. While coral reefs will house many fish (although it is only dogfish and jellyfish, not very lively) the oceans and the shallows seem like wastelands sometimes. It'd be nice if more fish were added, some fish more common, or even just fish that can't be interacted with, just for the sake of making the ocean seem more lively. 

Second, Bosses. I know Shipwrecked isn't trying to be RoG - but there are so few bosses. The palm tree guard is a joke, along with the quacken. They might aswell not count as bosses at this point. The Quacken and Palm Guard should be buffed. More bosses, or even just more mini bosses, would add a good amount of playtime I'd say. Especially a boss of sorts on the volcano.. doesn't that seem like a good place for one?

Second Complaint: DST/DS development

I can understand that DST is a priority. It's just the base game still has bugs to work out. The fact that fire farms don't work in DST but haven't been patched for DS is surprising. Obviously, the developers acknowledged that fire farms are a thing in DS, but why didn't they bother fixing it? There are many other bugs that still happen, such as hound waves only spawning a single hound sometimes, and a whole load of bugs in Shipwrecked and Shipwrecked merging. People still frequently play the base game! Although some exploits are appreciated, they are still exploits. And those  world merging bugs aren't too fun either.

 

Don't take this rant as a hate message. I love Don't Starve and I love what Klei has done. I'm especially excited about further developments in Don't Starve Together, ironically. So please don't criticize my behavior, criticize what I wrote. Thanks for reading

[Astroknot]

Hopefully Klei will start looking at Shipwrecked again after DST development slows down after the last update, especially because Shipwrecked's 1st anniversary of release is almost here. (Also Don't Starve is getting its first retail release on consoles soon, so theres another reason why they should be getting back to Shipwrecked.)

[Sicko Hog]

2 hours ago, CatBurger said:

I can understand that DST is a priority. It's just the base game still has bugs to work out. The fact that fire farms don't work in DST but haven't been patched for DS is surprising. Obviously, the developers acknowledged that fire farms are a thing in DS, but why didn't they bother fixing it? There are many other bugs that still happen, such as hound waves only spawning a single hound sometimes, and a whole load of bugs in Shipwrecked and Shipwrecked merging. People still frequently play the base game! Although some exploits are appreciated, they are still exploits. And those  world merging bugs aren't too fun either.

World merging bugs should be fixed, but stuff like fire farms should stay. Remember the outrage whenever they fixed the burning backpack bug? The singleplayer community is based around using fun exploits, all of the fun stuff you can do with elephant cactus, fire farms, moleworms, lureplants, etc. If you patched those out, then what's left of the singleplayer community is going to disappear quickly.

[Ispin69]

7 hours ago, JellyUltra said:

World merging bugs should be fixed, but stuff like fire farms should stay. Remember the outrage whenever they fixed the burning backpack bug? The singleplayer community is based around using fun exploits, all of the fun stuff you can do with elephant cactus, fire farms, moleworms, lureplants, etc. If you patched those out, then what's left of the singleplayer community is going to disappear quickly.

I like that they may of possibly made the seasons sync in ROG/SW worlds. I noticed it recently and from streamers playing. I know they sync'd the hound attacks too. But for some reason it's gone out of sync again in the past few days. Also, the caves need work. When I go into the caves for a few minutes and still get hound attacks right after I leave the caves still. I use hound attack timer and I know when I just got a hound attack right before entering the caves and have 40-50mins on the timer, then spend 8-10mins in the caves getting lightbulbs, come out and it's 3mins to the next hound attack. Then after dealing with that, I go into seaworthy and 3 mins for another hound attack after jumping through which doesn't make sense since they said they sync'd the hound attacks which I did notice worked previously.

There's also duplicate chester glitches from going into the seaworthy. There are probably issues with entering and leaving the caves as well. As for exploits, I'm fine with them. Every game has some. Just fix the game so it doesn't crash so often and bad glitches like hound attacks with 1 hound or hound attacks timers that aren't in sync.

[HamBatter]

Can't confirm, but I think Caves desyncing is the source of issues like eternal/skipped seasons, instant attacks, Meat Effigies not working, etc. Supposedly triggered by entering at least two different Sinkholes.

I wouldn't mind if it was fixed.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

Here's what I'll tell you about exploits...

If you're playing a game where you resort to using game-changing exploits because they're "fun" or simply extremely beneficial, that means there is something wrong with the game itself and the way it executes the fun value and how much grind it requires.

If something like lichen was possible to be mass-produced using some bizarro exploit method, would you really use it that much or at all? Probably not, since you never really need a lot of lichen for anything and other veggies can be mass produced in other ways, plus the things rot in like seconds and manure type items are better than rot in every way.

Bottom line is, gameplay focus, on all vanilla, RoG, Shipwrecked AND Together need to change. It doesn't require an overhaul of the game(s) but it requires an overhaul of balance, as well as Klei taking back the focus on making the game more challenging for late game players. RNG for mob attacks is one example of doing so.

[The Curator]

Shipwrecked should have been a part of the main game.

It is such a massive, infuriating waste of content to have Shipwrecked its own world. When they could have designed it to be a bunch of islands that are generated beyond the edge of the main world map, and spawn in gaps and bodies of water in the map. Using boats to sail across lakes and down rivers for easier transport, voyaging to additional chunks of the world that are inaccessible by land, finding small little islands on lakes and beyond the edge of the map. 

The world would be so much bigger and more fleshed out if water-travel was a possible, mandatory and eventful activity. And there is no excuse for it not to have been done other then, the developers did not think of it. Or they could not be bothered to update the random generation of the world so dramatically.

Regardless, Don't Starve Shipwrecked Together not existing is not so much of a shame as the fact that the developers created such a massive expansion to Don't Starve; and then did not actually add it to Don't Starve. That is literally what they did. Instead of adding the content to the game; they made it its own game, took some of the content from the real game and added it to the expansion to flesh it out more. Absurdly backwards, extremely poor choice.

Yeah they wanted to make a new experience; but the main game with water travel would have been far more impressive as a whole concept.

 

[CatBurger]

9 hours ago, The Curator said:

Shipwrecked should have been a part of the main game.

It is such a massive, infuriating waste of content to have Shipwrecked its own world. When they could have designed it to be a bunch of islands that are generated beyond the edge of the main world map, and spawn in gaps and bodies of water in the map. Using boats to sail across lakes and down rivers for easier transport, voyaging to additional chunks of the world that are inaccessible by land, finding small little islands on lakes and beyond the edge of the map. 

The world would be so much bigger and more fleshed out if water-travel was a possible, mandatory and eventful activity. And there is no excuse for it not to have been done other then, the developers did not think of it. Or they could not be bothered to update the random generation of the world so dramatically.

Regardless, Don't Starve Shipwrecked Together not existing is not so much of a shame as the fact that the developers created such a massive expansion to Don't Starve; and then did not actually add it to Don't Starve. That is literally what they did. Instead of adding the content to the game; they made it its own game, took some of the content from the real game and added it to the expansion to flesh it out more. Absurdly backwards, extremely poor choice.

Yeah they wanted to make a new experience; but the main game with water travel would have been far more impressive as a whole concept.

 

 

I disagree. it surrounds a tropical theme, and the main world of don't starve simply wouldn't fit with it. 

[Astroknot]

I would like to note that Shipwrecked WAS supposed to be a standalone game, a spin off essentially. However the community wanted to travel from SW to RoG and back so the developers reconsidered and made it a DLC. Maybe, this was a bad idea... 

[CatBurger]

7 minutes ago, Astroknot said:

I would like to note that Shipwrecked WAS supposed to be a standalone game, a spin off essentially. However the community wanted to travel from SW to RoG and back so the developers reconsidered and made it a DLC. Maybe, this was a bad idea... 

 

The travelling back adds a lot, though. I don't see why this stops development?

[Astroknot]

4 minutes ago, CatBurger said:

The travelling back adds a lot, though. I don't see why this stops development?

It was an amazing idea but maybe because they were now only charging $4.99 for SW they had to cut development short. Maybe if SW continued development as a standalone game it might have been way better then just SW nowadays with all the bugs. Basically maybe it was not worth the world integration.

[The Curator]

2 hours ago, CatBurger said:

I disagree. it surrounds a tropical theme, and the main world of don't starve simply wouldn't fit with it. 

Hence why jungles would not spawn in the middle of deserts and forests but on islands. There would obviously be select randomization in order to ensure the world still made sense. 

[CatBurger]

On 3/23/2017 at 2:40 PM, Astroknot said:

It was an amazing idea but maybe because they were now only charging $4.99 for SW they had to cut development short. Maybe if SW continued development as a standalone game it might have been way better then just SW nowadays with all the bugs. Basically maybe it was not worth the world integration.

 

 

I guess you're right. I think a lot could be developed still though.