The Urgency of Insanity

[asix79]

I wanted to take some time today to create an account here, and share an idea that I hope the community will find worthwhile, which might be most applicable to Adventure Mode:In an effort to create a sense of urgency regarding a player's in-game sanity, sanity items, such as garland and dapper clothing, could be set to give diminishing returns. This would mean that the player would be guaranteed to go insane if he doesn't escape the current world within a period of time. The amount of time given could be both affected by the character being used, as well as random number generation. By using a random number generator, the process of escaping the current world wouldn't become a choreographed affair, and each playthrough of Adventure Mode would remain unique. In turn, another layer of replayability would be added to the game.As the player progresses from one world to the next, he could begin with a greater chance of having less time to escape before going insane. It's my hope that the uncertainty of never knowing how much time you're given would encourage players to develop unique -- and increasingly efficient -- strategies for survival.In the event that the player does lose sanity in-game, the number, and difficulty, of the shadow monsters would be affected by the current world, whereas later worlds are more difficult. I want to thank the developers for making such a wonderful game in Don't Starve.

Edited February 16, 2013 by asix79

[Starvation]

First: i'm going to make you feel #Welcome to the forums by saying:

'Welcome to the forums'

Second: I actually think that's a good idea. It would increase the importance of the sanity meter when you are turtle-ing generally make the sanity meter reach the level of importance which the health meter has instead of the level that the hunger has.

Third:

[wrongenvelope]

I wanted to take some time today to create an account here, and share an idea that I hope the community will find worthwhile, which might be most applicable to Adventure Mode:In an effort to create a sense of urgency regarding a player's in-game sanity, sanity items, such as garland and dapper clothing, could be set to give diminishing returns. This would mean that the player would be guaranteed to go insane if he doesn't escape the current world within a period of time. The amount of time given could be both affected by the character being used, as well as random number generation. By using a random number generator, the process of escaping the current world wouldn't become a choreographed affair, and each playthrough of Adventure Mode would remain unique. In turn, another layer of replayability would be added to the game.As the player progresses from one world to the next, he could begin with a greater chance of having less time to escape before going insane. It's my hope that the uncertainty of never knowing how much time you're given would encourage players to develop unique -- and increasingly efficient -- strategies for survival.In the event that the player does lose sanity in-game, the number, and difficulty, of the shadow monsters would be affected by the current world, whereas later worlds are more difficult. I want to thank the developers for making such a wonderful game in Don't Starve.

Nice to meetcha, asix79. I'm pretty new on the boards, too. :)At present, entering a new world is extremely easy. You run around until you find the wooden thing, the pieces to construct your portal are nearby, it takes no time at all to put it together and BANG! New world. What you're thinking of would require it to be more difficult to make the portal -- perhaps the pieces would need to be strewn around the map.I worry that this type of stressful aspect would build and build with each new world you enter until you're in a total chaotic run-around, running out of time, only knowing you'll escape to a world with even LESS time. Frankly, sometimes I like the peaceful feeling that my base is fine, I don't have to go anywhere if I don't want to, I could just catch butterflies and putter around. Entering a new world feels more like deciding to move into a new home, I can prepare myself and take my time. Feeling like I'm escaping a map only to be MORE screwed sounds like a frustrating experience that I would not equate with fun gaming at all. It would definitely apply more to adventure mode than sandbox mode, I suppose.

[mobius187]

In an effort to create a sense of urgency regarding a player's in-game sanity, sanity items, such as garland and dapper clothing, could be set to give diminishing returns. This would mean that the player would be guaranteed to go insane if he doesn't escape the current world within a period of time. The amount of time given could be both affected by the character being used, as well as random number generation. By using a random number generator, the process of escaping the current world wouldn't become a choreographed affair, and each playthrough of Adventure Mode would remain unique. In turn, another layer of replayability would be added to the game.

While not specific to the new Sanity meter, the idea of creating a sense of urgency for players has been brought up before. Personally I'm not a fan of timers, mostly because I hate it when the "Man" tells me I gotta hurry. One of the suggestion which I agreed with the most, and in no small part because it didn't suggest a timer, involved placing the player in a world (obviously NOT the first world) where there are very limited resources. In this way the player would have little to work with because what they brought with them. Also the player suggested if this wasn't enough the world should be trapped in perpetual Winter, further reducing survivability. You could go on of course, removing all beefalo or other resources, but until we know what winter does I would be making assumptions on how far to go. The end result would be to drive the player to creating the portal in order to escape the dead world they've ended up on.On a side note, natural disasters were another suggested reason to flee a world. For example, a giant meteor was going to strike and rather than have a "Day Counter" you were given a "Day Countdown Timer", so you knew how many days you had left before the meteor struck the island and killed you.

As the player progresses from one world to the next, he could begin with a greater chance of having less time to escape before going insane. It's my hope that the uncertainty of never knowing how much time you're given would encourage players to develop unique -- and increasingly efficient -- strategies for survival.

Maybe, but some players prefer to long game, like me. Players should be allowed to play at their own pace. Now I'm all for more difficulty, but this seems more like a punishment for not "speed gaming".

In the event that the player does lose sanity in-game, the number, and difficulty, of the shadow monsters would be affected by the current world, whereas later worlds are more difficult.

I'm not against this, as the assumption here is that if the player has travelled to several worlds they should known how to handle themselves.

Second: I actually think that's a good idea. It would increase the importance of the sanity meter when you are turtle-ing generally make the sanity meter reach the level of importance which the health meter has instead of the level that the hunger has.

Ah, turtling. I always found it odd that proper survival behavior was earmarked as "wrong". As I've stated many other times IMHO, turtling is not the problem, it's a symptom. Why do people "turtle"? Well if you have everything you need in your base camp why risk your life by leaving it? It makes perfect and logical sense to me. If the Devs want players to leave their base camps they need to encourage them to travel, and to do that they need to fix the real issue... they're not much "out there" right now.One of the best examples of this issue, and what seems to me to be a solution is the reed. Right now if you want reeds you need to treval to a swamp, harvest reeds, and then return to your base camp. I do this all the time when I need reeds. Of course we all need grass, sticks and food, like berries, even more. So every day I make the trek to my huge collection of grass tufts, saplings, and berry bushes... it's an agonizing 5 second trip. I never have to leave my camp because I have it all right there. Solution? Don't allow players to dig up those resources and we would all be traveling out of our camp every day to collect them.Also, if there were more random events or unique locations/resources to discover I would explore more often. As it stands, once you find the major resources it's just more of the same out there... so why bother? Of course I'm sure that, given enough time, the Devs will resolve these issues. I mean, the game is still in Beta after all. Until then though I'll keep turtling.

At present, entering a new world is extremely easy. You run around until you find the wooden thing, the pieces to construct your portal are nearby, it takes no time at all to put it together and BANG! New world. What you're thinking of would require it to be more difficult to make the portal -- perhaps the pieces would need to be strewn around the map.

This is being discussed in another thread. One of the most obvious suggestions is that the portal pieces should be scattered much farther apart. Other suggestions that were made included: a piece buried in a grave, require the player to craft it from rare resources, or defeat a powerful creature (which may be connected to the previous idea).

I worry that this type of stressful aspect would build and build with each new world you enter until you're in a total chaotic run-around, running out of time, only knowing you'll escape to a world with even LESS time. Frankly, sometimes I like the peaceful feeling that my base is fine, I don't have to go anywhere if I don't want to, I could just catch butterflies and putter around. Entering a new world feels more like deciding to move into a new home, I can prepare myself and take my time. Feeling like I'm escaping a map only to be MORE screwed sounds like a frustrating experience that I would not equate with fun gaming at all. It would definitely apply more to adventure mode than sandbox mode, I suppose.

Agreed.

[Henroid]

I'm actually fine with the idea of sanity functioning as a timer with regard to the Adventure mode. Stretched out across the whole of the mode probably not, because that would involve developing a sub-system to sanity. However, a particular stage or two of Adventure Mode could be artificially designed so that your sanity is the thing most at risk for that particular world you're on (by way of not providing many means to feed it).Injecting random numbers I am forever against, as I've argued in other threads. It removes player agency / skill and just causes you to lose or not by flip of a coin.I think "urgency" is the best word used to describe this feature, or any feature of this game. The developers have stated they want to combat complacent, idle play methods for this game, and the word "urgency" is perfect in that regard. That everything you do needs a sense of urgency. Needing to eat and defend yourself are urgent matters, and get increasingly so as the devs are refining the game. Now, sanity is the newest need to feed (sorry, I'm attached to that phrase in this post) so it obviously has plenty of tuning ahead, but the sense of urgency is a good bar to set for it.Where it stands now, from where I sit, is that day one of 'sanity' being implemented maybe had it in overdrive a little bit and little ways to combat it. But the game was promptly patched, and I think the pendulum swung in the opposite direction - there is no 'urgency' to handling your sanity as it stands. I do trust that in the next build or two we'll see things start to level out.Many thanks to asix79 for this post though - I've been looking for a way to describe how I feel the game should feel when playing it, and 'urgency' is just... perfect.

[iluvfuzz]

I really like the idea of adding events and unique locations. I like exploring and that would icing on the cake. I usually start hanging around the area of my camp more around day 20 I think. I actually don't dig up plants and move them to my camp though I have thought about it.