Making the game harder: Disasters and Rituals

[thegreywitch]

Hej everyone! Many people claim a game gets boring by the second year or day ~50-70. That's obvious since by that time efficient food production, defense, health and sanity control systems are set up. I gave few thoughts on how this problem could be solved, below are few suggestions for developers and modders. This is a refined, second version based on discussion that followed.

 

I. Discontent

Similar to 'Naughtiness' a new per-player characteristics is added, called 'Discontent'. Discontent is a level of World's opposition towards a particular player and is measured as a Sum of player's Age and Wealth.

• Age is the time passed since the last player's death. Every day passed adds +1 to Age, every player's death resets Age to 0.
• Wealth is a sum of all player owned (i.e. built) structures. Every structure built adds +1 to Wealth, every structure lost decreases Wealth by -1.

II. Disasters

World now throws random bad events at player based on player's discontent level. These 'Disasters' difficulty scale up and become more frequent with a level of discontent and tend to be centered on player's structures (i.e. base) and a player himself (his location). Examples:

1. Diseases. Crops and plants around the player's structures start to suddenly die out (some needs to be fertilized again) in big chunks, that includes farms, berry bushes, grass, trees, twigs etc.
2. Molding. Player owned freezer(s) gets molded which spoils all the food in them.
3. Earthquakes. World shakes like crazy and some structures gets destroyed and walls damaged.
4. Acid rains. Unnatural rain damages player's equipment, kills every small leaving creature and sets large creatures on rage.
5. Tornadoes. Everything that is on it's way sucked up in including the player. When Tornado ends everything falls on the ground scattered around. Late and powerful Tornadoes can damage structures, destroy chests sucking up their content and damages player's health more.
6. Invasions. Base get's invaded by ghosts, spider queens, treeguards and merms that spawn from dug up graves, spider dens, trees, rundown houses etc. and proceed to the base where they wander around and attack player on sight. To reclaim the base player has to kill or lure invaders away.
7. Wanderers. Big groups of ghosts, merms, treeguards, spiders appear that start following the player or wandering around looking for a kill.
8. Eclipse. Sunlight is gone for a few days completely due to unnaturally long Eclipse. Survive in the dark!
9. Add more, add suggestions in comments...

III. Rituals

Disasters gradually scale up and increase the game difficulty from day to day to a level the world get's nearly unplayable. The way to decrease world's Discontent toward a player and thus reduce the likeliness of nasty disasters to happen is to perform a Ritual:

1. Player must seek a Heart of the World. New spawn structure is added, called A Heart of the World (may look like a heart shaped stone with a hole in the middle). When player approaches the Heart it starts to pulsate or emit light, the higher discontent, the faster it pulsates.
2. Player makes sacrifices on the Heart. Clicking on the Heart during the full moon results in a message shown above the Heart saying what needs to be sacrificed until the next full moon to fulfill the ritual requirement. This could be anything like 10 x Honey, 3 x Live Logs or a Spider den.
   1. If player makes sacrifices on a Heart in time, his level of discontent is decreased.
   2. If player fails to do so he gets some negative effect such as a sudden sanity drain.

This way Heart allows a player to keep his Discontent level under control at the same way forcing him to venture into the world for items to sacrifice thus improving the world replayability.

 

I'd like to know if this is something that is possible to implement with a current modding API system.

[acemurdock]

Nice ideas! Some of those disasters would have me tearing my hair out ahhaha

[thegreywitch]

To make this extreme on PvP servers a number of victory points per player can be shown in a Player's list tab so that there is a competition and race to victory not only versus world with it's disasters but against other players. The Portal 'Task' per moon cycle should be the same for every player in this case.

 

I'd be fun to see players rushing for gold to acquire 10 x Gold for the sacrifice, or killing each one for the same purpose. Some people will guard the portal on full moon for players to kill and loot. I'd certainly play such a mode, dunno about you.

[thegreywitch]

Nice ideas! Some of those disasters would have me tearing my hair out ahhaha

Thanks for the comment! Do you have some modding experience? Can some part of that be implemented in a mod you think?

[imsomony]

I like the idea of having natural disasters in the game, throwing us for a loop as we get too comfortable "mastering" the environment. Once upon a time, another forum member (I don't recall who, sorry) mentioned plagues as well. Imagine a swarm of bugs sweeping through your base and eating up all your crops! To keep things balanced though, there would need to be some way to fight/combat or minimize the disasters. For example, if earthquakes slowly damage structures, we would need to have means of repairing them all. Otherwise, rebuilding just gets grind-y.

 

To your second suggestion about rituals, I don't think anything like that would be in the game natively (see below). Some form of it could definitely be modded-in though, like Gluttony and Feed The King were.

 

Way back when singleplayer was still in development, after some trial-and-error, Klei realized they didn't want to introduce mechanics that would force people to play in a particular way. That's also why they don't have achievements built in. They realized that introducing specific challenges and guiding players to completing them caused them to neglect the rest of the game mechanics, and only focus on the one goal. After the goal was achieved, players either got bored and abandoned the game, or stopped all forward-thinking of their own and simply looked to the developers to give them the next challenge.

 

Here's the thread about it... the original article is no longer available on Penny Arcade, but a forum member does quote it in a comment in that thread. Another one saved the article to Google docs so you can download it as a PDF. It's a really interesting read, and helps to see the game design through the developers eyes: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/775-design-theory-article-over-at-penny-arcade/

[thegreywitch]

Great suggestions, imsomony!

 

To keep things balanced though, there would need to be some way to fight/combat or minimize the disasters. For example, if earthquakes slowly damage structures, we would need to have means of repairing them all. Otherwise, rebuilding just gets grind-y.

 

 

I completely agree. It's not about a series of earthquakes that deny you from building your base, it's a series of disasters of different types that happen in a random intensifying pattern to get you into tough situations forcing to make hard decisions prioritizing what to do next or how to get out using the environment and your time in the most efficient manner.

 

To your second suggestion about rituals, I don't think anything like that would be in the game natively (see below).

 

 

No, I understand the developer's point of view completely and I respect that. I wouldn't like the rituals implemented in the core game the way I described them, but only as a mod or an optional game mode for me and my friends to play.

 

 

I think a good harmony here would be to combine disasters and rituals in a way rituals prevent disasters from happening. This may go with a setting on how demanding and challenging rituals and disasters would be respectively. I think mechanics of items sacrificing is ultimately fine since it makes you plan on how to acquire or build the items required in a limited amount of time.

 

The whole concept should just be incorporated in a proper and balanced way into the game in a form of objects and their relations. Maybe there are to be multiple shrines each controlling a set of different disasters. And they build up a negative energy over time if you do not make sacrifices. That energy is released in a form of disaster. Etc. etc.

 

I'm willing to get my hands dirty in modding to make this happen but I'm not sure if it's entirely possible given the current API.

[Larochette]

This is a really interesting idea.

I don't like the "invasion" and "wanderers" ones, but the natural disasters are awesome. And the ritual part is nice too. If a mod is released, i would definitively try it.

[werlpolf]

I like your ideas. But it makes 1 drawback: the player cannot ve an easy life, which he/she had in the beginning. Example: Season 5 life is harder and giant destroys alot, you lost all your valuable and your backpack! You ve to start again quite from the beginning, but the world is much harder to you, then, if you would generate a new World or another player's life, since he just joined on the 5th season. Your ideas make the game more changelling, but also more unfair.

 

It would be better, that the rituals and disasters are needed or get caused, because you choose to enter a more difficult biome, for example to get a special or magical item. And if you lose there everything you still can return to the more easy biome and play normally without get hunted from spider queens. Actually this approach makes Klei with the caves and ruins. It will be then a interesting and also challenging adventure where you can chose how difficult you like to have it and how big your rewards will be.

 

 

[thegreywitch]

It would be better, that the rituals and disasters are needed or get caused, because you choose to enter a more difficult biome, for example to get a special or magical item.

 

 

I wouldn't bind disasters to biomes as player hops between them frequently for various purposes. Caves are different since you can survive without them and yes, it's up to you to increase difficulty by going there.

 

Your ideas make the game more changelling, but also more unfair.

 

Somewhat. I believe there are no fair things in an uncompromising wilderness survival game but rather a balance. So if you lost half of everything to a boss, then to some disaster and then killed by a hound then it's your fault. And if you survived it's your personal victory, a testament to your skill which also makes a good story to tell.

 

One strategy versus disasters could be to diversify by building few small bases instead of a single super-huge one. As to new players joining a DST on season 5 I think it should still be ok because disasters are 'personal':

• disaster strength should be based on the characters' in-world age and wealth (structures owned);
• most of them (except Eclipse) tend to target a specific player or his structures (i.e. his base).

Sole purpose of disasters and rituals is to keep the game challenging the further you go and develop your base. If you don't like them, turn them off in the worldgen. If you want more challenge generate a harsh world by increasing the difficulty up.

[werlpolf]

I wouldn't bind disasters to biomes as player hops between them frequently for various purposes

 

Yes, I agree. I meant binding the disaster on player and his time staying in a 'disaster'-biome. Example: you stayed 9 days in ghost-biome and enter a meteor-biome to mine. You will still be hunted then by 3 ghosts, until you forfill a ritual or fight them off.

 

I believe there are no fair things in an uncompromising wilderness survival game but rather a balance

 

ok, then I mean more unbalanced

 

So if you lost half of everything to a boss, then to some disaster and then killed by a hound then it's your fault

 

But is that still my fault, when I resurrect myself and continue to play? Its like after resurrection I make debts of $100.000 and ve to pay 6% interest (and will never get rid of these debts!!) => my character's life is more difficult then another ones, who has same items (or even more) and only because he stayed only besides me, used the base, but never build it or just joined shortly. What I want to say is, that every character should not ve more worse conditions then on his beginning, because such systems only exist to suppress the weak, so the stronger have it even more easier....

Good storys can be also experienced in balanced gameplays as well.

 

One strategy versus disasters could be to diversify by building few small bases instead of a single super-huge one

 

What if others like to defend and create one strong base? Why should not be this possible, too? Different player have different interests and play-styles. It would be nice to keep this diversity and offer (build-)options to defend or prevent attacks from one base

 

 

[thegreywitch]

I see your point. What if when you die new disasters

1. stops from happening until the following moon cycle for instance to give you time to reclaim belongings

2. your 'age' is reset to 0.

I think this could be implemented in a fashion similar to naughtiness which summons Krampus. With every day passed and every structure built your 'Respect' increases. With every structure lost and every ritual performed it decreases. Every death resets the Age part of Respect to 0 (again, structures or Wealth part counts) .

Higher Respect value results in tougher disasters and more demanding rituals.

[_Q_]

I was in the middle of implementing food poisoning form eating spoiled food, then I realized that I won't even see that in the actual game, cause there is no reason to eat spoiled food, you can get fresh food instantly, either monster meat or some normal meat from one of many animals that are around the world. The crock pot is cursed device that ends all hunger and sanity problems + the amount of easy to kill animals is just to big. 

 

Monster meat is just even easier to get, and you can use it right away, I think it should be unusable and toxic until dried, at least drying it takes some time, and needs some effort.

Crock pot recipes should get rebalanced, 3 x ice  + monster meat  = meatballs, way to many fillers like twigs and such, food has way to much healing on it.

 

You can eat only meat or only honey for the whole game without any penalty or problems.

[thegreywitch]

This is a bit off topic but I agree crock pot needs some rebalancing done in terms of recipes.

_Q_, what do you think of a mod that drains player's sanity if player eats the same type of food all the time? Or undermines food value?

I saw people just stick to rabbits and berries with no implications. Such mode would force player to seek for alternative food sources and mix recipes.

Ons way of showing this to player would be a tooltip over a food item with an efficiency percentage. Let's say if you ate meat balls 15 times of the last 30 then their efficiency is down to 50% and they give you 50% calories.

[_Q_]

This is a bit off topic but I agree crock pot needs some rebalancing done in terms of recipes.

_Q_, what do you think of a mod that drains player's sanity if player eats the same type of food all the time? Or undermines food value?

I saw people just stick to rabbits and berries with no implications. Such mode would force player to seek for alternative food sources and mix recipes.

Ons way of showing this to player would be a tooltip over a food item with an efficiency percentage. Let's say if you ate meat balls 15 times of the last 30 then their efficiency is down to 50% and they give you 50% calories.

 

Sorry for the off topic. 

As for the food mods, I don't think you can balance it all with current systems and character status. Its all oversimplified, and lacking any long term benefits and consequences.

DS can only offer sudden deaths, you screw up and you are dead few minutes later, and in DST you can get revived quite soon.

While sanity drain could be an option, its not good idea - you can restore it quite fast via green mushrooms, you don't even need hats or other items to manage sanity. Hell even picking flowers will restore your sanity fast enough. The only time it could drop was after few days of cave exploring, other than that its always around 85 - 90%. So sanity itself needs tweaks to be any good. You see its all like that, you don't need to plan or think much cause you either die within seconds from bad decision or will restore and live on. 

I'm trying to get around to much food problems for a while now without any good solutions.  

 

[werlpolf]

I see your point. What if when you die new disasters

1. stops from happening until the following moon cycle for instance to give you time to reclaim belongings

2. your 'age' is reset to 0.

 

and

 

With every day passed and every structure built your 'Respect' increases. With every structure lost and every ritual performed it decreases

 

yes, that would be nice. the world would be harder and easier depending on your wealth. maybe some people wouldn't like that and want to ve some 'holidays' in dst or do some experimenting after they stressed themselfs to build something up, but I must agree that this approach is surely balanced and flexible to make DST harder and more interesting/challenging for the experienced player.

 

 

 

 

3 x ice + monster meat = meatballs

 

its true, recipes like these makes the crockpot as a material-to-food-transformator. maybe there should be some limitations like with monster meat like max 1 ice or else => 'ice cake'

 

 

 

While sanity drain could be an option, its not good idea - you can restore it quite fast

 

I experienced, that not too few people cannot handle with shadows like terror breaks. Sanity is for many player already a big problem. Mushrooms are not everywhere and can be destroyed. Wigfrid cannot eat mushrooms (but she can slaughter to get sanity ). Wickerbuttom cannot sleep. In winter you get more sanity drain because longer evening and night (already a death-sentence for some/many people) - also no honey and top-hats, since you need a winter cloth. only good players get the loot from walrus-mob. same in spring with the rain. and then there are sometimes ghost-parties, which are draining sanity like you are fighting with deerclops 30 days long. and the flowers get away very fast, because some player just take everything they can carry, anyway if they need it or not ...

 

And yes, the caves - when they will be implemented - will drain even more sanity. Therefore I don't think the sanity-model needs to be reworked. Lets wait until we ve the cave's ( and then later the ruins).

 

Another thing: Butterflies. With them you get health, hunger-points, sanity (4 silk + 1 rope = bug net => catch 10 butterflies alive, plant as flower and pick flower = +50 sanity, +10 hp; or eat 10 butterflies: +125 hungerpoints, +125 hp) and you even don't need to fight or risk something. this really need to be reworked

[thegreywitch]

Thanks everyone for your constructive critics and suggestions. I amended the initial post (see above) to include your feedback and is now looking for someone to say if it's impossible for implementation.

[_Q_]

Thanks everyone for your constructive critics and suggestions. I amended the initial post (see above) to include your feedback and is now looking for someone to say if it's impossible for implementation.

 

Idk if it fits disasters, but I made this for single player game for now:

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/files/file/1174-hailstorm/

 

Working on other weather based events atm.

[thegreywitch]

Idk if it fits disasters, but I made this for single player game for now: http://forums.kleien...1174-hailstorm/   Working on other weather based events atm.

 

OMG, this fits so well! I think this is a great stuff!

 

It'd be cool to see more of such things and then make them into a single discontent / disasters / rituals framework for balancing. Even an all-in disasters mod would be cool to have on it's own.

[Trenix]

I'm alright with random disasters because randomness makes the game replayable, however I don't agree with everything else. I can easily see rituals becoming very annoying. Part of this multiplayer content is to remove boredom. You want it to be more difficult and random? Then turn on PvP. If it's one thing I've learned, PvE will always get boring eventually unless more content gets added frequently.

This is why I only play games with PvP and multiplayer elements, because they can last for years with or without constant updates. In fact, I completely ignored Don't Starve because it was a singleplayer only game, but it got my attention as soon as multiplayer got added. Playing by yourself is always boring as is PvE.

[SaberYourNeighbour]

In order to make the game harder and less boring, i think every few days hounds should attack as usual. Also every 100 days, I think Maxwell should randomly poof near you, stop time, and 'curse' you lowering sanity, hunger, health, or do something to throw you off balance. the longer you survive, the worse Maxwell's 'curse' will be.