Discussing Damage, Armor, and Golden Tool rebalances

[rezecib]

First, I wanted to say I didn't put this in Suggestions and Feedback yet because I want to discuss it a bit first. I have some ideas for changes, but I want to get other perspectives and solidify it a bit first before making a suggestion.

 

So there are three direct numeric rebalances for multiplayer currently in effect:

• Player damage is reduced by 40% (0.6 multiplier)
• Player armor absorption is reduced by 25% (0.75 multiplier)
• Golden tools have half as much durability (0.5 multiplier)

Damage

 

I understand the damage reduction (because otherwise you could have players very quickly shred many enemies before they can even get an attack off), but I think it would be better if it were more reactive-- an enemy that has recently taken a hit from a player would take reduced damage on subsequent hits, for example. The period of reduction would be just less than the normal attack time, so one player attacking something would never experience the penalty while attacking alone.

 

Armor

 

The player armor absorption reduction, however, I don't really understand. It makes Maxwell pretty much useless, as it hits better armors way harder than worse armors:

• Night armor normally absorbs 95% of damage. So a 100 damage hit will do 5 damage. With the multiplier, it absorbs 95% * 75%= 71.25% of damage, which means a 100 damage hit does a whopping 28.75 damage. This means you're taking 5.75 times the damage you would in single-player.
• Log suits normally absorb 80% of damage; a 100 damage hit will do 20 damage. With the multiplier, it absorbs 60% of damage, so a 100 damage hit will do 40 damage. This means you're taking twice the damage.

If you're going to nerf armor for multiplier, I don't understand why you'd nerf the better armors so disproportionately. I think a better way to apply it would be as follows:

local multiplayer_armor_modifier = 2TUNING.ARMORWOOD_ABSORPTION = 1-((1-0.8)*multiplayer_armor_modifier)

This would keep the same behavior for log suits (using it as a reference point), while maintaining the twice-as-much damage situation for all other armors.

 

But personally I don't think armor needed a nerf at all. Sure, multiple players would collectively have a larger health pool to absorb damage, but each of them is still about as likely to die from a hit as they were before-- or much more so now that armor is less useful.

 

Golden Tools

 

I don't understand this one at all. If anything, you burn through gold faster with multiple players in the world, since there isn't any more around the world than there is normally.

 

What do you think about the current rebalances?

[J192]

Instead of reducing effectiveness of weapons, armor, and tools in multiplayer, make it so that lonely players lose sanity 100% faster and gain sanity 50% slower, unless it's PvP, of course. e.g. If lonely Wilson picks up an evil flower then eats it, then lonely Wilson loses 20 sanity. If lonely Wilson eats a pumpkin cookie, then Wilson gains 8 sanity.

Co-operating with other players shouldn't bring penalties such as lower damage and stuff like that.

Heck, make players who leave their friends alone get instantly killed or whatever, just don't punish effective teamwork.

 

I actually don't own DST Beta.

[Halved]

@J192 your suggestions are bad. That's not a solution, but only a problem.

On topic, I hope the damage/armour nerf is just a temporary solution. It really is annoying to deal with :/

[Khrayfish]

I would have preferred a Mob Increase instead of a Mob Buff...

 

Just saying.

[J192]

your suggestions are bad. That's not a solution, but only a problem.

 

And you didn't bother to say why? Please be constructive.

[Halved]

And you didn't bother to say why? Please be constructive.

Because that sanity drain would be annoying and force you to stay with people. I want to be free of staying alone even if the game is called Don't Starve Together.

[rezecib]

I would have preferred a Mob Increase instead of a Mob Buff...

 

Just saying.

 

While that sounds good at first, it seems pretty tricky to implement properly in practice. Mobs all scale differently with numbers (several MacTusks would snipe players pretty fast, while several spiders would scale more linearly), and pretty much every mob has functions other than solely opposing the player-- like if you make it so that twice as many killer bees come out of a beehive, then they'll be way more useful for baiting into attacking other stuff for you, like treeguards.

 

@J192 I don't think playing together needs to be incentivized, or playing alone punished. Playing together has inherent advantages... and that's the point of multiplayer in the first place. My aim here is to reduce the unpleasant grindiness of even basic combat that's present in DST right now. Going back and playing a little singleplayer, combat just felt so much better. Part of that was lack of lag, but part of it was not having to hit spiders 5 times with spears.

[J192]

Ah, thanks for elaborating. How about completely removing the redundant penalties to allow effectively playing alone and playing with teamwork.

In my opinion, penalties for playing alone would be unfun and redundant while penalties for playing together would be even more redundant and very unsatisfying.

[RobbingZombie]

rezecib, I really like your suggestions here for what could be done to the weapons and armor. Maybe for the golden tools a new stat could be introduced or something. I think the durability is fine but the rate which you can go through gold in dst is pretty fast. Maybe something like increases the drop rate for specific items when using a golden tool....

[Pyromailmann]

Yeah, I agree. My group ran out of rocks and gold for various reasons:

1.) The base my group set up was far from rocks but close to beefalo.

2.) We used rocks for thermal stones and gold for tools (along with flint)

3.) The map was resetting when we came back in.

[Paradoxical]

I agree that the armor did not need a nerf after the player damage nerf and monster buff. I think it really ought to be one or the other; either players have their damage lowered, making combat really grindy, or armor is nerfed, making combat more dangerous. I think there could be a middle ground, but I don't even want to think about what soloing a fully grown tree guard with a weapon looks like right now, so I'm more for armor nerfs than damage nerfs at the moment. I'm not sure about your proposal for armor though--even with the extra damage, you are still taking less damage with the night armor than you do with the log armor. I've admittedly not gotten my keys yet, though, so I do not have first hand experience of how frustrating it is to play with the nerf as is.

 

As for golden tools, for clarification: is it just golden tools that have less durability? Or is it all tools? Half durability does definitely seem a bit too much for me, but again, have not had the opportunity to play and suffer myself yet.

 

When it comes to the lack of resources in general, though, I think that's more of a fun challenge that's unique to DST. How do you deal with survival situations where you cannot provide for everyone? Do you make people go off and fend for themselves? Do you fight over what resources you have? Do you become a nomadic tribe of hunter/gatherers? Do you split up in the Summer, returning in Winter with the spoils and stories of your adventures alone? I feel like it's a really fun dynamic! Interacting with people with different preferences of what to do when resources are not ideal is also something I'd really be looking forward to.

[rezecib]

@Paradoxical My point was that if you look at the difference in how much more damage you're taking with the armor nerf, it hits the better armors way harder, because you take 5.75 as much with night armor, but only 2 times as much with a log suit. Since Maxwell pretty much relies on that 95% absorption with night armor, this kind of breaks him as a character.

 

Only golden tools have less durability. All other tools remain the same, although with the damage nerfs you burn through weapons faster.

[imsomony]

First, I wanted to say I didn't put this in Suggestions and Feedback yet because I want to discuss it a bit first. I have some ideas for changes, but I want to get other perspectives and solidify it a bit first before making a suggestion.

 

So there are three direct numeric rebalances for multiplayer currently in effect:

• Player damage is reduced by 40% (0.6 multiplier)
• Player armor absorption is reduced by 25% (0.75 multiplier)
• Golden tools have half as much durability (0.5 multiplier)

Damage

 

I understand the damage reduction (because otherwise you could have players very quickly shred many enemies before they can even get an attack off), but I think it would be better if it were more reactive-- an enemy that has recently taken a hit from a player would take reduced damage on subsequent hits, for example. The period of reduction would be just less than the normal attack time, so one player attacking something would never experience the penalty while attacking alone.

 

Armor

 

The player armor absorption reduction, however, I don't really understand. It makes Maxwell pretty much useless, as it hits better armors way harder than worse armors:

• Night armor normally absorbs 95% of damage. So a 100 damage hit will do 5 damage. With the multiplier, it absorbs 95% * 75%= 71.25% of damage, which means a 100 damage hit does a whopping 28.75 damage. This means you're taking 5.75 times the damage you would in single-player.
• Log suits normally absorb 80% of damage; a 100 damage hit will do 20 damage. With the multiplier, it absorbs 60% of damage, so a 100 damage hit will do 40 damage. This means you're taking twice the damage.

If you're going to nerf armor for multiplier, I don't understand why you'd nerf the better armors so disproportionately. I think a better way to apply it would be as follows:

local multiplayer_armor_modifier = 2TUNING.ARMORWOOD_ABSORPTION = 1-((1-0.8)*multiplayer_armor_modifier)

This would keep the same behavior for log suits (using it as a reference point), while maintaining the twice-as-much damage situation for all other armors.

 

But personally I don't think armor needed a nerf at all. Sure, multiple players would collectively have a larger health pool to absorb damage, but each of them is still about as likely to die from a hit as they were before-- or much more so now that armor is less useful.

 

Golden Tools

 

I don't understand this one at all. If anything, you burn through gold faster with multiple players in the world, since there isn't any more around the world than there is normally.

 

What do you think about the current rebalances?

 

Damage

I can understand the damage reduction. Multiple players means we can tank mobs faster and more efficiently (rubberbanding excluded), so some challenge needs to be reintroduced. If someone is alone in the world, I can see it being troublesome, but the whole point of this is to be MP. Klei can only do so much to account for a MP world where MP isn't actually occurring - likewise, they also need to account for a MP world where 20 people are playing. Reducing character damage seems to be the best balance, and it's also much simpler from a coding perspective since there's only a small amount of characters to change, rather than a gajillion prefab mobs to recode and if-then scenarios.

 

Armor

I could probably argue for-or-against the armor reduction. If the rubberbanding issues get cleared up, I'd say leave it in since the theory is that multiple people will work together in combat. If lag remains a constant, I'd say put armor back where it was because it's exceedingly difficult to fight as a client, and most of the fighting ends up left to the host. 

 

Gold

This early in, I'd say get rid of the reduction. Since the Caves aren't in yet, and the Pig King is not a guarantee, Gold is as finite as Flint. Multiple players will burn through it like crazy, and it will be gone in a flash. However, once Gold becomes renewable again - via the Caves and/or if the Pig King becomes a guarantee - nerfing the durability of gold weapons is fine by me. Like the damage reduction, there needs to be a change to accommodate how numerous people can overrun and conquer the world in a heartbeat, given the natural resources. That said, the host can always spawn in Gold if they so choose. It takes away from the RNG fun and challenge, but eh, it's there if people need it.

[rezecib]

@imsomony I wrote a mod to implement the damage change I proposed in about half an hour. It doesn't require changing a gajillion prefabs, you just have to add a check to the beginning of one of the functions in the combat component

 

I agree with you on gold, but I don't see why the same logic doesn't apply to single player. If gold weapons were fine balance-wise in single-player, what pushes for them to be changed in multiplayer?

[Paradoxical]

@rezecib

 

Ehhh, not everyone's playstyle is the same. But yes, it hits the night armor much harder, since it has more in general. This does not change that you are getting an equal percentage of nerf for both, though. What you're saying is that we should be getting an equal percentage of damage taken increased instead of an equal percentage of damage absorbed reduced. Night armor is still better than log armor, so I am not seeing a particularly solid reason as to why the current nerf system should be changed. At best, it makes the game a little easier--which may ultimately make playing meh. It's honestly more of a preference thing, I think, than something inherently problematic with the way things are set up. And, as you said, it is easy to mod, so if you prefer it your way, it's not hard to get it that way.

 

That's weird about the golden tools. If they get less endurance, then so should all other tools. I am not understanding the logic behind that change at all, unless it's to make gold a harder resource to obtain? That is certainly odd.

 

 

[rezecib]

@Paradoxical Modding as a solution for problems like these was more acceptable in single-player than it is in multiplayer, but even then I don't want to be fixing all the problems of the game with mods, especially if it means they only apply if I host or if the person's server somehow has it already. The main reason I wrote a mod to do this was so that I'm not saying "Hey devs! I have this idea, please write the code for it!", but instead I'm saying "Hey devs! I have this idea, and here's an implementation you can borrow if you want to use it!".

 

Night armor is not better than log suits at the moment. The hit to sanity is still just about as big and there's no point going through the sanity drain from wearing it for a 25% reduction in damage. Even in single-player I wouldn't wear night armor unless I were Maxwell. And now I just won't play Maxwell.

[imsomony]

@rezecib, you and your mods man... inspirational.

 

The reason for my current perspective on Gold is just because at the moment, it's not anywhere near the same guarantee of renewability (Is that a word? Spellcheck says no) in MP. We don't have the same "look to the future" probability of receiving it that we do in SP. Once we do have that, it seems better to nerf it since we'll always have some way to get it, and even more chances since there are more people who can obtain it.

 

In SP, we use X amount since it's just one person. Unless you're Flare2V and lining your roads of course ( ), you're really only gathering and using it in specific amounts. So lets assume that in MP, the usage multiplies exactly by the number of people. Keeping the usage as-is would make it fair for MP - no changes at all compared to SP, even-Steven. But we've already seen that a default world can be more easily mastered with multiple players. Heck, with 2 people in my world AND the current tweaks, we had the equivalent of a day 100 base by the time the first winter rolled around. We divide and conquer. Resources can be both consumed, yet also obtained, much more quickly. You know, obtaining Gold is not difficult at all once you know the ways to get it - and especially if/when RoG content is added with the loot that tumbleweeds drop. Assuming a PK is present, it would be extremely easy to spam him for Gold with the current setup, and master the world quite quickly simply through easily renewable tools that can be used as weapons. 

 

If changes were to be made to SP, I'd support that actually. I do agree that the same things I described could happen in SP, and it should be reigned back in, considering how it can easily be exploited. But I don't see a change like that being made any time soon =) Since MP is actively being worked on, I like the idea of nerfing Gold capabilities so more challenge and difficulty is brought back.

[Clwnbaby]

The dmg nerf is pretty much a given, more players mean they collectively do more dmg.  I actually wasn't aware of the armor nerf which to be honest is kinda lame.  As for gold tools, I have yet to play a world that doesn't have a Pig King and even in the original single player it was very very rare to get a world missing a Pig King.  It did happen to me a bit more often in RoG but for Together so far he's been there 100% of the time.  And that is why I think the gold tools is not that big of a deal.  Gold is in fact the most plentiful resource and perhaps that inspired the durability nerf. 

 

But back to dmg and armor.  While the current solution may be lacking, it is the first attempt at tackling a fundamental problem in PvE in Together; how do you scale multiple players against the same environment?  Now while most players, myself included, rarely take on many mobs with other players, if we did we would win that fight hands down every time.  In fact the only thing going in the environment's favor at the moment is that every player aside from the host lag, rubberband and overall have a difficult time fighting.  A problem which will be solved in the future.

 

So how do we give the environment a fighting chance?  Enter attempt #1 at solving the problem.  At the moment it seems to be working but some, as evidenced by this thread, feel it is not a proper solution.  Who knows what the future holds and a discussion like this is a good one to figure out what the best balance is.  But one thing everyone should take into account, whether you solo or mob it, the environment needs to have a fighting chance.  Otherwise where is the fun?  Who wants to play a game you know you're going to win 100% of the time? 

[tracc]

As always I am astonished at the efford you put into this beta rezecip. Your suggestions are always very thought trough.

Adding to the damage part, I would put the damage reduction timer higher than the the basic attack time (dont have a key so I dont know how bad rubberbanding is). My idea would be to count the instances of damage the mob got in lets say the last 3 seconds and add a small damage reduction for each one (maybe 5% for each, capping at 75%). So if 3 people attack one mob they would soon do much less damage. This would also affect single players, but not as hard. I have no idea if that would be feasible from a programming point of view tough.

[J192]

I actually think the armor nerf would be better than the damage nerf.

Less damage means that ganging up on lone mobs will be less effective. But the problem is, what about multiple low-health mobs such as Spiders?

Nerfing the damage multiplier makes what should be easy encounters extremely infuriating just because you had a friend playing with you.

This makes co-op combat against groups very annoying not only because your companions are equally as weak as you are, but also because you'll be encountering hostile groups more often in the Don't Starve world.

 

Instead of turning weapons into cardboard swords and mobs into living titanium chunks, just make mobs "smarter". Which means reducing "stunlock" duration and stuff like that.

Since there are now two heads fighting them, there should be something that somehow also gives them two heads instead of removing an arm and a leg from each player that fights them.
 

As long as you don't need to click on a spider 20 times just to kill it and you don't need to craft 10 gold axes just to get two stacks of logs, then I'll surely be excited for DST.

 

ples gib opinoin on my opnion

[ichigo]

The re-balancing that Klei is doing isn't going to appease everyone, there is basically a simple solution to this. When a host is making the server, have the host be able to set the parameters for damage / armor / tool durability. Having the player be able to customize their play experience is a lot more rewarding to the player than just forcing the player to play within the experience that Klei sets.

[rezecib]

As always I am astonished at the efford you put into this beta rezecip. Your suggestions are always very thought trough.

Adding to the damage part, I would put the damage reduction timer higher than the the basic attack time (dont have a key so I dont know how bad rubberbanding is). My idea would be to count the instances of damage the mob got in lets say the last 3 seconds and add a small damage reduction for each one (maybe 5% for each, capping at 75%). So if 3 people attack one mob they would soon do much less damage. This would also affect single players, but not as hard. I have no idea if that would be feasible from a programming point of view tough.

This wouldn't be hard to program (I first started to implement mine in a way that was similar, but ignored the stack count).

So essentially what this would mean in terms of gameplay is that you want to avoid repeatedly hitting things. I don't think that's really something you have to single out, though, because kiting is already the optimal form of combat. It would affect groups hitting things more than single players hitting things, but I think it has some other side effects that would be nice to avoid, like making it more difficult to predict how many hits it would take to kill something (if you don't manage to get all 5 hits in on that beefalo, it changes up the math, so that might push it to the next kiting phase when you kill them). One of the things I thought was really rewarding about combat in single-player was that you could learn exactly how many hits it took to kill something and strategize around that-- it takes exactly 7 hits on a werepig with Wigfrid (using her spear) in singeplayer, and so I would do two hits - dodge - two hits - dodge - three hits. 

 

I actually think the armor nerf would be better than the damage nerf.

Less damage means that ganging up on lone mobs will be less effective. But the problem is, what about multiple low-health mobs such as Spiders?

Nerfing the damage multiplier makes what should be easy encounters extremely infuriating just because you had a friend playing with you.

This makes co-op combat against groups very annoying not only because your companions are equally as weak as you are, but also because you'll be encountering hostile groups more often in the Don't Starve world.

 

Instead of turning weapons into cardboard swords and mobs into living titanium chunks, just make mobs "smarter". Which means reducing "stunlock" duration and stuff like that.

Since there are now two heads fighting them, there should be something that somehow also gives them two heads instead of removing an arm and a leg from each player that fights them.

 

As long as you don't need to click on a spider 20 times just to kill it and you don't need to craft 10 gold axes just to get two stacks of logs, then I'll surely be excited for DST.

 

ples gib opinoin on my opnion

I agree that making mobs smarter is the best situation, but it's also the hardest to execute correctly. As imsomony said, it would probably take changing a gajillion prefabs

 

Making them less vulnerable to stunlocking does seem like the most obvious fix to me, though (I could've sworn I suggested it back before phase 1 when Bigfoot said that they reduced damage because players were stunlocking things [with reference to koalefants], but I can't see to find it). You could at least make the same immunity to stunlocking that warrior spiders have also apply to normal spiders, although every other enemy is already immune to stunlocking normally (I haven't had a case in multiplayer where I've actually managed to interrupt the attack of say, a koalefant, but maybe that's much easier to do in low-lag conditions?). For koalefants/beefalo you could reduce their attack period... But now it's becoming a custom solution for each enemy, so I dunno.

[Fyrjefe]

...

 

When it comes to the lack of resources in general, though, I think that's more of a fun challenge that's unique to DST. How do you deal with survival situations where you cannot provide for everyone? Do you make people go off and fend for themselves? Do you fight over what resources you have? Do you become a nomadic tribe of hunter/gatherers? Do you split up in the Summer, returning in Winter with the spoils and stories of your adventures alone? I feel like it's a really fun dynamic! Interacting with people with different preferences of what to do when resources are not ideal is also something I'd really be looking forward to.

I would say this is pretty spot-on thinking, and conducive to story telling. I think first we need to have better resource management, and consider the dynamic of the early and mid game. Late game is where everything is gone and the mega-base is built. We don't start with that. Sure, I've watched people join "settled worlds", and basically they have nothing to contribute, except to empty the fridge. I feel like a lot of the time, people are worried about what's left for the "joiners", not the group of buds or strangers who are coming together to discover and conquer the world.

 

Damage

I can understand the damage reduction. Multiple players means we can tank mobs faster and more efficiently (rubberbanding excluded), so some challenge needs to be reintroduced. If someone is alone in the world, I can see it being troublesome, but the whole point of this is to be MP. Klei can only do so much to account for a MP world where MP isn't actually occurring - likewise, they also need to account for a MP world where 20 people are playing. Reducing character damage seems to be the best balance, and it's also much simpler from a coding perspective since there's only a small amount of characters to change, rather than a gajillion prefab mobs to recode and if-then scenarios.

 

Armor

I could probably argue for-or-against the armor reduction. If the rubberbanding issues get cleared up, I'd say leave it in since the theory is that multiple people will work together in combat. If lag remains a constant, I'd say put armor back where it was because it's exceedingly difficult to fight as a client, and most of the fighting ends up left to the host. 

 

Gold

This early in, I'd say get rid of the reduction. Since the Caves aren't in yet, and the Pig King is not a guarantee, Gold is as finite as Flint. Multiple players will burn through it like crazy, and it will be gone in a flash. However, once Gold becomes renewable again - via the Caves and/or if the Pig King becomes a guarantee - nerfing the durability of gold weapons is fine by me. Like the damage reduction, there needs to be a change to accommodate how numerous people can overrun and conquer the world in a heartbeat, given the natural resources. That said, the host can always spawn in Gold if they so choose. It takes away from the RNG fun and challenge, but eh, it's there if people need it.

I think in this case that in the short term, we shouldn't consider the permanency of worlds. I know people enjoy having their 400+ days with the super bases (watching Clwnbaby rock Wickerbottom horticulture was pretty amazing), but honestly, that gets tiring to watch, and eventually boring to play. I think world resets are the most optimal right now. For me, whatever the game mode, the element of discovery is the most exciting. Owning the world means there's not much discovery left. If you really liked your base, take a screenshot (it'll last longer ).

 

I actually think the armor nerf would be better than the damage nerf.

Less damage means that ganging up on lone mobs will be less effective. But the problem is, what about multiple low-health mobs such as Spiders?

Nerfing the damage multiplier makes what should be easy encounters extremely infuriating just because you had a friend playing with you.

This makes co-op combat against groups very annoying not only because your companions are equally as weak as you are, but also because you'll be encountering hostile groups more often in the Don't Starve world.

 

Instead of turning weapons into cardboard swords and mobs into living titanium chunks, just make mobs "smarter". Which means reducing "stunlock" duration and stuff like that.

Since there are now two heads fighting them, there should be something that somehow also gives them two heads instead of removing an arm and a leg from each player that fights them.

 

As long as you don't need to click on a spider 20 times just to kill it and you don't need to craft 10 gold axes just to get two stacks of logs, then I'll surely be excited for DST.

 

ples gib opinoin on my opnion

I mentioned the stunlock problem when it came to PvP. I think player characters should have a stunlock nerf, but not necessarily the mobs. If you're really worried about them, there are ways to harness them to your advantage (loyal pigs being maybe the most obvious example).

[Hugo M.]

Honestly, simply nerfing player damage/armors/tools is a boring way of increasing dificult, I'd rather if they improve the creatures AI instead , giving them new behavious which would screw the player for example.

[imsomony]

I think in this case that in the short term, we shouldn't consider the permanency of worlds. I know people enjoy having their 400+ days with the super bases (watching Clwnbaby rock Wickerbottom horticulture was pretty amazing), but honestly, that gets tiring to watch, and eventually boring to play. I think world resets are the most optimal right now. For me, whatever the game mode, the element of discovery is the most exciting. Owning the world means there's not much discovery left. If you really liked your base, take a screenshot (it'll last longer ).

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "in the short term, we shouldn't consider the permanency of worlds". Here's my thoughts based on what you said, but please correct me if I'm totally off-base here =)

 

I agree it's tiring to watch long streams (with the exception of the DevCasts, I never do), and yeah, 400+ days can get boring to play and inspire the urge to reset. I'm with you that the discovery is the best part, I would love to continue in my super long saves, but I've reset countless just to enjoy the freshness of starting anew. Not everyone shares this outlook however, some will want to continue to 1,000-plus days regardless of how you or I feel about it... which is exactly why this should be addressed.

 

This is a sandbox survival game with a hostile and unforgiving environment, and the challenge initially is simply to stay alive. Once staying alive is no longer an issue, world permanency becomes the challenge. Veterans of the game have shown us that world permanency is hardly a challenge though, once they have mastered "staying alive". In SP, this is something folks have said time and time again, but unfortunately, we're not likely to see major content changes to SP. So with MP, considering player strategies is crucial if DST is going to continue presenting itself as "an uncompromising survival game" both in the short-term as well as the long-term. Longevity and continued interest in a product keeps both the product and the company creating it alive.

There are differing playstyles, and these differences mean potential exploits or unplayability. We've seen the difference the current changes have made in the short term, so the earlier the "big picture" goals can be considered, the better. It doesn't meant changes need to be made immediately, but offering feedback and ideas on all possibilities and styles will help the devs in their own brainstorming and creative processes along the way. That means things are more likely to be done well the first time, so there's less backtracking in development and coding tweaks that have to be introduced later.