Farms not needed at all

[Luigisopa]

So about the honey.

--> Bears.

I think it's pretty straight forward... If you have to many bee boxes/ harvest to many honey/ leave the honey unharvested/ leaving food on your crockpots (hmm that smell...), leaving food around etc.:

This will attract bears (or let us call them "scavengers").

These nasty enemies are after your precious food sources: There should either come in hordes (like rats) or as one big mob maybe (bears) to destroy your crockpots and bee boxes. this will keep the player cautious and lets him think twice before building massive farms, 10 crockpots, to many beeboxes etc because this will increase the chance of scavengers coming!

After all this is a dangerous island full of monsters and stuff; It is expected to get "visitors" from time to time!

Things to keep in mind:

Don't make them be another easy food source (Gobbler)

Don't make it to easy to keep them away from your food

Don't make them easy to kill (make them quick and shy or strong and dangerous)

So what do you think? Problem solved? ;-D

[ImStarving]

So about the honey.

--> Bears.

I think it's pretty straight forward... If you have to many bee boxes/ harvest to many honey/ leave the honey unharvested/ leaving food on your crockpots (hmm that smell...), leaving food around etc.:

This will attract bears (or let us call them "scavengers").

These nasty enemies are after your precious food sources: There should either come in hordes (like rats) or as one big mob maybe (bears) to destroy your crockpots and bee boxes. this will keep the player cautious and lets him think twice before building massive farms, 10 crockpots, to many beeboxes etc because this will increase the chance of scavengers coming!

After all this is a dangerous island full of monsters and stuff; It is expected to get "visitors" from time to time!

Things to keep in mind:

Don't make them be another easy food source (Gobbler)

Don't make it to easy to keep them away from your food

Don't make them easy to kill (make them quick and shy or strong and dangerous)

So what do you think? Problem solved? ;-D

I like this more than what has been proposed.

[Vhailor]

To limit the extend to which honey can be farmed, how about adding queen bees. But as a resource, rather than a boss. Like bird cages, Bee Boxes would stay empty and not produce any honey unless "populated" with a queen bee.Queen bees, however, can only be obtained from wild hives, with a small chance for a queen spawning when rousing the bees.Ideally, that chance would get even smaller with every functional bee box already in the game.

[TylerTheDragon]

Don't play survival games, problem solved. Next time read the product description before purchasing.Try Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, and the Sims. Has all that stuff you mentioned and you won't have to deal with the things you don't like. Which by the way are the things I do like and why I bought the game.

The funny thing is , In the sims , you can die , and if you die when nobody else is in your family (and you don't cheat) you DO have to start over So sims is invalid in this argumentBut back on topic , The game needs more edgy moments , and bee boxes negates this completely.With 3 bee boxes on my current day 60 world , I am currently living off of honey , I have TOO much food and most of it goes to spoil (I try to drop my hunger just to eat it) I find that once you have enough food (and honey) it doesn't matter if I'm on edge , i'm just eating honey and have an unlimited source , every 2 days (which is 6 honey) I get 12 every 2 days , meaning that for me to run out of honey without destroying those bee boxes is a difficult thing to do , I have enough honey and I think it should be nerfed in some way.I agree with some of the ideas , alot of the things that people have suggested to be numbed down are invalid because most of them have In real life facts that conflict with it : E.G. Honey never spoils , honey is good for healing ETC. and it will make every valid point of nerfing honey be conflicted by real life facts. Now , we have a solution , that most of us have probably figured out...Its not the Honey that needs nerfing , its the bees. The bees should slow down production once its been collected , I like the idea of the bees turning into killer bees when you take their honey and pause production for them to cooldown. They should also fix that bees cant make their own flowers and the flowers die out after a few uses , meaning that you would need to find a lot of butterflies , which would now only spawn in natural forest areas (these would be places with flowers and natural trees in a forest biome) Now I agree making honey a finite resource would be a bad thing , but making it finite if you destroy your landscape would work.These would come from wild trees and already grown flowers , so If you burn every forest and pick every flower in the map , honey production would stop completely , meaning that unless you become careful with your actions , honey will stay infinite.Also , I think the bees should attack you quicker when you take it , meaning that you would HAVE to take damage unless you have the beekeeper hat. This would mean having a beekeeper hat would be vital. This could also be a needy feature by making it easier to be destroyed , and the damage you take from taking the honey would equal to you eating all of the honey you gathered , making it useless unless you have the hat (or maybe only leave you with 1/2 of the pieces left)I would type more but i'm getting tired , I need to relax.Maxwell gets mad when he wakes up...

[DrMiller357]

The bee box problem seems simple to solve to me, we need a bear. The more bee boxes you have the greater chance it will spawn. Just like you, when it finds a sustainable food source it stays put until it is taken care of, and who doesn't want a dapper bear skin rug or hat. ;)Aw damn Luigisopa beat me to it

Edited February 20, 2013 by DrMiller357

[MrGmview]

I think farms are a matter of style, it depends on what you want & how you want to go about it. I never used them pre-"Long Live the Queen", not because that mattered, but it's hard to date things in a game. I had beefalo on one side, pigs the other, & bunny traps I could reach from my firepit. Cookies come from farms now, & I think it gives the developers a range of options so that everything in the game isn't automatically an animal or monster drop or bee poop. Maybe a rare plant like--but not actually--a mandrake would spice things up or more cookie-ish recipes.

[Valkama]

Why not, make bee boxes break after a while and give the player the ability to harvest hives. You could also make something attack bee boxes and steal honey like a bear or something although we know what happened to the gobbler.

Edited February 20, 2013 by Valkama

[Cromage]

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to nerf bee boxes a little, but I'd prefer to stay away from any increase in maintenance upkeep for them. It seems like it would be an arbitrary punishment for planning rather than a real challenge. So no box breaking or increase in expense. I feel like players should be given more options rather than fewer.The ideas I *did* like were: reduced health restoration (health should be in short supply in a game like this anyway), diminishing marginal returns on each hive (but don't have it related to spacing), and bears.

[kaiwolff]

I enjoy farm plots; they allow me to make veggie food items and pumpkin lanterns! Also, pomegranates are excellent at healing.As for the bee boxes, I think they are too cheap to make, and the bees aren't dangerous enough. Although, the "scavenger" would be really cool as well. Especially if it had a 90% chance of fleeing from you, but a 10% chance of mauling you horribly. Just like a real bear!

[daldingo]

Maybe instead of nerfing bee boxes directly, or adding another mob like the gobler, you nerf bee-flower interaction. Maybe the flower will have a cooldown if the bee has been sucking on it that day? It would decrease the overflow of honey, and it wouldn't matter necessarily about spacing, because it's resource dependent. I know the potential nail in the coffin of this idea is that players will just hoard flowers, but maybe if flowers are used too often by bees, they'll need some type of maintenance. Perhaps watering? Or "dead heading" with a sheers item or something. That would bottleneck players into finding an efficient set-up that is manageable and worth their time. I'd rather have something along those lines than a gimpy mob that is going to be more novelty than anything else.

[Diezen]

Now that is some good thinking. Perhaps bees from different hives should target and kill each other. At the very least, it will make people spread their beeboxes out.

Or what if certain bees (with certain colors) will require a certain flower(s) to get their honey production going... Although it may seem a bit grindy too... Or different quality honey?That or have the characters have a horrible allergic reaction to the bees from being stung too much or too often, where a meter can possibly appear (otherwise it'd be invisible) and once filled/certain checkpoints your character would have negative attributes added... Such as less carry slots, slowed speed, reduced damage, not being able to pick equip items in main hand, etc. Edited February 20, 2013 by Diezen

[Fat Goomba]

Or maybe poor wilson should go into sugar shock if all you do is eat honey ham all dang day. Don't make me add a nutrition system!

I was actually hoping to see a nutrition mechanic... or at least a "balanced diet" mechanic, eating only berries is just going to make you sick, maybe a combination of meat and veggies solves the problem of 'useless' farm plots, honey is a treat and healing food, the way some of you people eat honey is going to give Wilson diabeetus.

[Fat Goomba]

Oh, and to solve the overuse of bee boxes, *cough* Queen Bee mob *cough* It would only make sense that after a while of you taking the hives honey that the queen herself would want to take matters into her own hands, and of course if the queen dies the hive is most likely to die.

[Palpetinus]

Oh, and to solve the overuse of bee boxes, *cough* Queen Bee mob *cough* It would only make sense that after a while of you taking the hives honey that the queen herself would want to take matters into her own hands, and of course if the queen dies the hive is most likely to die.

Well, i hope you refer to this as game, because bee queens are usually huge, fat and lazy and can't even properly do anything

[Fat Goomba]

Well, i hope you refer to this as game, because bee queens are usually huge, fat and lazy and can't even properly do anything

And pigs can't actually make houses, butterflies have no link to butter other than name and spiders don't exactly live in colonies and have a Queen that they live in, so what's your point...

[Palpetinus]

And pigs can't actually make houses, butterflies have no link to butter other than name and spiders don't exactly live in colonies and have a Queen that they live in, so what's your point...

Spiders living inside their queens.. that's.. gross.My point is, that many people are uneducated nowadays. That's why i said that i hope you only think about this as ingame content, and don't actually think that the queen does stuff herself irl^^I'm sorry if i offended you in any way.

[Fat Goomba]

Spiders living inside their queens.. that's.. gross.My point is, that many people are uneducated nowadays. That's why i said that i hope you only think about this as ingame content, and don't actually think that the queen does stuff herself irl^^I'm sorry if i offended you in any way.

Hahaha, nah it's cool, I thought you were just trying to be on of those "it's not realistic enough" people, but the idea of a bee queen boss mob for don't starve always made me so giddy. Plus it also means destroying natural Bee hives will be much harder if there is a Queen for every hive, meaning players will have to actually prepare to fight somewhat of a mini-boss, and im sure there could be some form of unique loot from her, say, a Bee crown... CONTROL AN ARMY OF BEES!!!http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1119411465589869067/010C5575281203B0A5C2F568063598B426B3F05C/

[Palpetinus]

Hahaha, nah it's cool, I thought you were just trying to be on of those "it's not realistic enough" people, but the idea of a bee queen boss mob for don't starve always made me so giddy. Plus it also means destroying natural Bee hives will be much harder if there is a Queen for every hive, meaning players will have to actually prepare to fight somewhat of a mini-boss, and im sure there could be some form of unique loot from her, say, a Bee crown... CONTROL AN ARMY OF BEES!!!http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1119411465589869067/010C5575281203B0A5C2F568063598B426B3F05C/

Beecrown would be too.. mainstream i guess. Since there is already the Spider hat.Thinking of another item.. but i can't find one..

[Fat Goomba]

Beecrown would be too.. mainstream i guess. Since there is already the Spider hat.

Hats control the world, it has to be a hat. eg: TF2

[pacovf]

I am not a big fan of either bee queens or "scavengers", they just look too much like spider queens/tree guards and gobblers, and that would actually reduce the diversity of the game. "Overharvest ANY resource? Here comes a mob that punishes you for that!"Honey needs a nerf, but I am not sure those would make the best nerfs, unless somehow Klei finds a completely new implementation of this old mechanic...

[fear_town]

"Overharvest ANY resource? Here comes a mob that punishes you for that!"

I think this was the idea behind Krampus.. but then the 20% got their way..

[Silvi]

I am not a big fan of either bee queens or "scavengers", they just look too much like spider queens/tree guards and gobblers, and that would actually reduce the diversity of the game. "Overharvest ANY resource? Here comes a mob that punishes you for that!"Honey needs a nerf, but I am not sure those would make the best nerfs, unless somehow Klei finds a completely new implementation of this old mechanic...

it seems any activity that becomes abused gets a mob that is aimed at toning down the abuse. I started to consider it a theme of the game rather than a drawback.

[Fat Goomba]

"Overharvest ANY resource? Here comes a mob that punishes you for that!"

Sounds like a good idea to me, the bosses aren't difficult so there really isn't a problem with that, but I understand that it just means another way to die, which in all honesty is what don't starve is about, you are supposed to be at risk with everything so your best defence is preparation.

[pacovf]

Sounds like a good idea to me, the bosses aren't difficult so there really isn't a problem with that, but I understand that it just means another way to die, which in all honesty is what don't starve is about, you are supposed to be at risk with everything so your best defence is preparation.

I am not saying it is not a good idea, I am saying it is somewhat unoriginal. There's the gobbler, the treeguard and whatever will replace the krampus (its intended role was to punish meat gatherers...). Not sure we also need bee queens/scavengers.Though I guess you could consider it a theme, as Silvi said... Edited February 20, 2013 by pacovf

[Luigisopa]

it seems any activity that becomes abused gets a mob that is aimed at toning down the abuse. I started to consider it a theme of the game rather than a drawback.

:applause:Yes! I would give this whole theme another chance. Okay Krampus was hated for destroying everything and he was not really balanced but the idea was still nice. As Kevin stated he was hyped to much and the psychology behind it was a bit unfair...Try it again with the bear! Everyone wanted a bear either way. And there is no "personal attribution" on having a bear eating your honey. People will say "OK it's the bear wanting to eat" and not "I did something bad..." (Krampus).Go for it devs!