Biomes feel uninspired and messy

[UncleSlim]

Hamlet feels like a hodgepodge mix of ideas thrown together without much cohesion. Just started a play through and walking not too far shows so many different biomes mixed together that it's hard to tell what is even going on. (As seen here: https://imgur.com/a/iyjoxwi) (Biome mess: https://imgur.com/a/dV4dOhq)

Now flash back to vanilla DS, and you have your winding roads down lush forests/spider packs. Your long desert roads with beefalo, dry grass and rabbit holes. Your murky swamps with swamp people, spiky trees and tentacles. And your inviting light forests with flowers, berries and trees.

To be blunt: I have no idea what the hell I'm looking at and what these biomes are. Pink palm trees in a desert? Grass covered robot remains on a rocky background? Vine covered ruin entrance in the desert? The only things I can commend them on is the rain forest feels very nice and like a rain forest would, the hamlet town feels medieval and while odd at times, like it has some taste to it (although it's an odd mix, really...). 

But largely I don't feel like the game has the big picture nailed down. Shipwrecked felt very much like a castaway adventure and nailed the immersive world of being lost at sea, Don't Starve style. Hamlet feels like there were 3 different development teams that didn't know what each other was working on, they threw all the assets together and hit the random button.

Some thoughts on how to get the game back on track:

1. Design clearly defined biomes. As I mentioned, the hamlet area is decent, the rain forest is nice, but flesh out the ideas of the other biomes. Give them their own personalities that makes them stand out.

2. Piggybacking on #1, tone down the amount of objects a bit. At one point I had a bat chasing me, a pog following me, gnats following me, a dung beetle rolling around and I'm just busy sprinting away from it all feeling like I'm being followed by a hurricane of randomness. Making the biomes span larger areas would fix this.

3. Make the monster encounters a bit more unique. Because of the amount of the monsters in the game, make some of them rare and special. For instance, why not make the pogs a very rare mob type and make them travel in packs together that roam a certain biome? Make the thunder nest a very rare occurrence as well because it has such a dramatic effect. I first played as the robot, was struck by it's lightning and was instantly insane! These shouldn't be littering the landscape!

4. The caves have way too many rooms. Don't give me 10+ rooms to sprawl through with little meaning. Give each room a unique meaning/purpose. Wandering through multiple identical rooms is not fun. Caves should be on average 2-4 rooms large. Make a rare spawn cave that is 10 rooms large, but emphasize purpose.

The hamlet idea is strange at first, and the rainforest/treasure seeking theme tacked on feels out of place as well, but the biggest issue is the biome mess that currently makes the game feel uninspired and just chaotic. The game needs personality and direction.

[ansuman]

8 hours ago, UncleSlim said:

Hamlet feels like a hodgepodge mix of ideas thrown together without much cohesion. Just started a play through and walking not too far shows so many different biomes mixed together that it's hard to tell what is even going on. (As seen here: https://imgur.com/a/iyjoxwi) (Biome mess: https://imgur.com/a/dV4dOhq)

Now flash back to vanilla DS, and you have your winding roads down lush forests/spider packs. Your long desert roads with beefalo, dry grass and rabbit holes. Your murky swamps with swamp people, spiky trees and tentacles. And your inviting light forests with flowers, berries and trees.

To be blunt: I have no idea what the hell I'm looking at and what these biomes are. Pink palm trees in a desert? Grass covered robot remains on a rocky background? Vine covered ruin entrance in the desert? The only things I can commend them on is the rain forest feels very nice and like a rain forest would, the hamlet town feels medieval and while odd at times, like it has some taste to it (although it's an odd mix, really...). 

But largely I don't feel like the game has the big picture nailed down. Shipwrecked felt very much like a castaway adventure and nailed the immersive world of being lost at sea, Don't Starve style. Hamlet feels like there were 3 different development teams that didn't know what each other was working on, they threw all the assets together and hit the random button.

Some thoughts on how to get the game back on track:

1. Design clearly defined biomes. As I mentioned, the hamlet area is decent, the rain forest is nice, but flesh out the ideas of the other biomes. Give them their own personalities that makes them stand out.

2. Piggybacking on #1, tone down the amount of objects a bit. At one point I had a bat chasing me, a pog following me, gnats following me, a dung beetle rolling around and I'm just busy sprinting away from it all feeling like I'm being followed by a hurricane of randomness. Making the biomes span larger areas would fix this.

3. Make the monster encounters a bit more unique. Because of the amount of the monsters in the game, make some of them rare and special. For instance, why not make the pogs a very rare mob type and make them travel in packs together that roam a certain biome? Make the thunder nest a very rare occurrence as well because it has such a dramatic effect. I first played as the robot, was struck by it's lightning and was instantly insane! These shouldn't be littering the landscape!

4. The caves have way too many rooms. Don't give me 10+ rooms to sprawl through with little meaning. Give each room a unique meaning/purpose. Wandering through multiple identical rooms is not fun. Caves should be on average 2-4 rooms large. Make a rare spawn cave that is 10 rooms large, but emphasize purpose.

The hamlet idea is strange at first, and the rainforest/treasure seeking theme tacked on feels out of place as well, but the biggest issue is the biome mess that currently makes the game feel uninspired and just chaotic. The game needs personality and direction.

Maybe we can have a small narrow river separating the major biomes.

Overall but I don't think the design is bad. Just a few balance change here and there is needed.

[ButterStuffed]

2 hours ago, UncleSlim said:

2. Piggybacking on #1, tone down the amount of objects a bit. At one point I had a bat chasing me, a pog following me, gnats following me, a dung beetle rolling around and I'm just busy sprinting away from it all feeling like I'm being followed by a hurricane of randomness. Making the biomes span larger areas would fix this.

Agreed, the amount of sensory overload I have in Hamlet at times irritates me. Most passive mobs should be toned down a bit (Pogs and thunderbirds specifically)

Some of the plants could do with being moved over to the Tea Tree biome as right now it's the only area that lacks much content.

[ansuman]

[N4zif]

For me, I actually liked. It gives Hamlet a unique style.

[ansuman]

2 hours ago, N4zif said:

For me, I actually liked. It gives Hamlet a unique style.

I absolutely love the new art style, but I still feel some things are cramped together. Some of the biomes should span a bit larger area, while some needs to be reduced. You can explore your entire first island in 3 days(excluding ruins).

1. The rainforest is awesome filled with details and danger.

2. The savanna though I feel the tallgrass patches can be reduced in numbers a bit, some unique creature (Zeb) would make it nice. Sometimes you can find the entirety of tall grass map generation all clustered in one place, this also causes severe lag in mine laptop. This biome needs to be larger.

3. The forest biome is good with a nice mix of plant and creatures. More trees needs to be there. This biome needs to be larger

4. The iron biome with tuber trees is also great with a nice mix of danger from gnats, and thunderbirds.

5. The city biome is exactly the opposite of all the other biomes, way too spread out. Surrounding it is a huge patch of barren land with few tea trees. Most of the game you would be walking to and fro this empty space.

6. The burned biome with charcoal, iron hulk is also very bland.

7. The lake biome is awesome and I think it should be expanded upon!! This biome needs to be larger.

 

[Ellilea]

I absolutely love the thunderbirds, please don't reduce their numbers! They're hilarious the way their gaze follows you, and the mechanics are also very neat. Nothing like an unexpected beetle unexpectedly spooking a thunderbird resulting in an unexpected chaos that wakes up a damned iron hulk to boot. I think they're great.

 

Personally, I love the clusterfuck. I don't mind making the biome borders clearer, but I would be very sad if the density of stuff was reduced. Packed biomes are way more engaging and interesting than huge plains of nothing much happening. I would definitely like to see the tea tree biome get some love though

[Zeklo]

The only biome I don't quite understand is the rocky burnt-tree one. There's nothing there. It just sorta exists for easy charcoal I guess.

[Szczuku]

50 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

The only biome I don't quite understand is the rocky burnt-tree one. There's nothing there. It just sorta exists for easy charcoal I guess.

I think it represents what's left after iron hulks did their job. Cuz they're always in that biome

[CaptainChaotica]

Oh god, YES! (to the original poster)  First time I played on everything-default mode...I liked the fact that there _were_ tons of new things, but it was SO BUSY and SO MUCH all the time that...well the first thought that occurred to me was "It's like they just went ahead and used _everybody's_ idea so that nobody would get their feelings hurt."  Like...this sounds mean, but it feels...unedited?  A bit? 

Well, this IS early access, so it is _literally_ a rough draft, so...that's why this feedback before things get cemented into semi-permanence.  Another comparison I can make is that it SERIOUSLY feels like when you turn everything up to "more" (or "lots", though there's very little difference) in regular Don't Starve?  And then you get TOTAL UTTER CHAOS everywhere with tentacles popping out of prairies, random clockworks stomping everywhere, tallbirds in swamps and rocks in meadows. 

I mean, I've played with multiple mods on that change the amount and type of things that can spawn on screen/at worldgen, and lemme tell ya:  Even with Pickle It!, Birds and Berries, Teas and Trees, Thirst, Moar Metals (sic), AND Multilands all going _at the same time_, the very first screen I ever saw of Hamlet for my own, actually-playing eyes, STILL felt like a bit much!  (I've never actually used ALL of those at once...I'm kinda afraid to.  : P)

It's like that--too many things _and_ too many TYPES of things that are intermingling together.  It seems like both the actual amount and their...ranges?  need to be toned down.  Everything doesn't need to be near everything all the time.  I mean, I know you want us to see the cool new stuff quickly, but we don't REALLY need three dungeon entrances on the same screen as two thunderbirds (who zap you the second you get ANYWHERE near them, making them a like, _blocking_ level hazard.  I want to put a lightning rod in among them SO BAD, but they'd kill me way before I had time to finish the making animation), five dung beetles, random glowflies, a couple pogs, pangoldens wandering around not letting you have the gold, AND a goddamn parrot in a pink palm tree, all on the same screen. 

Just...TONE IT DOWN!! and maybe make it so that not everything can be in everything else's territory?  It feels very loose and messy.  In regular Don't Starve, on regular settings, some creatures are truly constrained to only certain biomes.  Spiders can get everywhere, of course, and beefalo can migrate, but you ONLY find tentacles in swamps, catcoons in birch forests and the Dragonfly in the desert.  This is very unlike me, but I think Hamlet could use some more segregation and _less_ togetherness. : P 

If they ARE meant to stay in their own biomes, then...maybe the biomes themselves are too small and close together, which would result in not just _sometimes_, but CONSTANTLY, rubbing elbows anyway.  Which is also pretty much how the Multilands mod goes on default settings, and that's, a mod that has ALL the original RoG style biomes, adds new outdoor ones, AND puts CAVE biomes on the surface (including ruins)!  XD

...Notorious

[orian34]

2 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

In regular Don't Starve,  the Dragonfly in the desert.

*That's in DST*

[CaptainChaotica]

Yes, I know that.  I THOUGHT about saying "vultures" there instead, but they also show up in that rock biome, which is desert...ish...but not actually the desert?  However, they _don't_ swoop down and eat rabbits off the ground while you're trying to lay traps in the savannah, is what I was getting at.  That kind of thing.

...KNEW I was gonna regret saying "Dragonfly" there; just didn't think it'd come back to smack me in the face so soon. : P

...Notorious

[Ellilea]

1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

It's like that--too many things _and_ too many TYPES of things that are intermingling together.  It seems like both the actual amount and their...ranges?  need to be toned down.  Everything doesn't need to be near everything all the time.  I mean, I know you want us to see the cool new stuff quickly, but we don't REALLY need three dungeon entrances on the same screen as two thunderbirds (who zap you the second you get ANYWHERE near them, making them a like, _blocking_ level hazard.  I want to put a lightning rod in among them SO BAD, but they'd kill me way before I had time to finish the making animation).

You can easily get hit by lightning without dying, that's a little dramatic I got hit more than once when wandering the biome, both cause of my initial curiosity and other things pissing off the birds. I was totally fine, all I got from it was a need for a bit of healing, a bunch more iron and some delicious drumsticks.

You can put all the lightning rods you desire there, not to mention, I believe they cover an entire screen (and then some) which means you don't even have to get in the Thunderbird striking range to place one.

[CaptainChaotica]

UnLESS you were already poisoned, like I was, 'cos I'm an idiot.  : P  One area I went through with them, they seemed PRETTY closely packed?  but I'm not sure, not knowing their exact range.  I do know that I had to dodge and weave a lot and then still got hit twice anyway.  They seem to me kind of like the Hamlet equivalent of wandering into a tallbird nest area in a rockland (not an actual tallbird _colony_, with those the nests are way closer together) except while the tallbirds can and do get MAD if you come within a good distance of their nest, they can't actually _hurt_ you except at close range.

Whereas the thunderbirds get mad AND GET _YOU_ the second you get within tallbird-irritating range.  It's like groups of bishops are suddenly common, rather than you _might_ find two of them on a (sometimes) hard-to-find, rarish chess biome, and that just seems a bit much in a game where you can't even make a freaking GRASS suit for protection*, _and_ gold for science machines is so much more obnoxious to find.  (Not that I have any idea how grass would protect you from lightning, but you know what I mean.)

At the moment my only "solution" would be to manually turn things down to less (as soon as world-gen changes actually work, that is)...but that's a bit sad.  Things are just TOO.  CLOSE.  TOGETHER. in Hamlet.  Even tropical messy monkey-steals-everything Shipwrecked wasn't like that!  Maybe the thunderbirds could still be as plentiful and closely-packed as they are if their _ranges_ were a bit smaller?  I feel like I have to run an exact path to get safely between them...but the path is invisible.  :\ 

Or, maybe occasionally do it the way it is now, but not ALWAYS.  Have some solo lone-wolf thunderbirds who got kicked out of the flock, too, so that it isn't chaos EVERY time you run into them.  Or like with killer bees!  You have to dodge and weave very carefully to get through their biomes safely, but they can't actually STING you until they're really close.  A narrow dodge-and-weave path with mobs that have RANGE...?  Like, they don't even have to _move_ to kill you, they can just do it while sitting on their butts?  Seriously!  One factor or the other would be fine, but not _both_.   Close together and easy to irrirate but have to actually get TO you to kill you, like tallbirds and bees, or have range like bishops but don't live in common, easy-to-find flocks.  One of those.

Yes yes I know this all sounds (to jerks, anyway) like:  "WAAAAH WAAAAAH cry some more nub lol git gud" (anybody who DOES unironically go around saying that I insta-ignore, by the way), but...it's also legit an aesthetics thing.  And while this is supposed to be a hard game, this just seems...a bit much for even Don't Starve.  None of the other versions had some screens so crowded they put you in a paranoid dizzy whirl...while other screens, such as in towns, were nearly EMPTY. 

The distribution just needs to be a bit more even, that's all.  And since this IS early access, this is the time to speak up about things.  (shrug)

...Notorious

*Why CAN'T we make a grass-skirt equivalent in an area that's all tropical and full of tall grass, anyway?  Seems a hair odd.

[GuacBoy]

I definitely feel like biomes are too closely packed and so filled with creatures that the inhabitants tend to 'spill over' too much. 

Town, farmland, ironland, pond and jungle areas are just fine and very concrete, but the cork tree land, regular tree land and the other one could use more individuality and less mosaicyness. You end up having Pogs almost everywhere due to how big their follow range is, Dung Beetles wandering all over (and making that annoying shake all the time), Snaptooth Seedlings chasing things out of the jungle, and in general I just feel like they're too indistinct besides tree types both purposewise and in looks.. I also agree that there could be a little more spacing in general, too. 

[Charsis]

At this point wouldn't count on major changes aside from aporkalipse season because it has been stated over and over "most content has already been implemented". But they have month time, or even after release, should make some major tweaks honestly.

[Rellimarual]

Nope. I felt like this the first time I played, but only because I was so familiar with the long-standing biomes. now That Im used ed to the new ones a bit more, I think they’re fantastic. There’s a depth to the world that shows a lot of thought, from the way the spider monkeys work to the life stages of the Glowflies. Aesthetically, it’s really gorgeous, particularly the turfs. Design wise it’s such a huge step forward it would be a shame if the designers got the message that the player base is so comfortable with what’s familiar that they don’t appreciate that. People don’t like change just sort of reflexively so give yourself time to get a feel for this because so much of it is so new.

[Rikui]

I totally agree with everything op said. Biomes should be larger and/or maybe certain biomes can't spawn next to eachother.

[metallichydra]

On 10/11/2018 at 8:01 AM, ansuman said:

Maybe we can have a small narrow river separating the major biomes.

Overall but I don't think the design is bad. Just a few balance change here and there is needed.

when I saw the trailer for hamlet (before beta) I thought the lake was a river

I got disappointed when I found out it was a lake

[magia]

I find it weird that the only old rocks can be found in pig village, usually walled off.  The biome with tea trees  is usually made of vast emptiness. IDK why can't it at least imitate the biome from RoG wich is all red with the birch trees. You could add reskined road, maybe some river...