Why is everyone so angry and hostile?

[Sorbo]

Hello!

 

After playing for some time I realized that no matter how many public games I join, and no matter how helpful I have been, I always somehow get kicked or murdered, or have my entire camp destroyed.

 

Why isn't anyone on this game helpful or fun to play with? Everyone is so hostile and toxic. I killed a monster that killed another player, and instead of being like, "Kudos for helping" I got banned. I think I am through with this game in its entirety. I wanted to love this game. Everything about it looks so great, but then the community is just far too toxic and self serving. I just dont understand why people are so angry. I mean I join a game, hunt, get strong, find and load up a camp fridge with food, only to be murdered and told they wanted to play alone with just one of their friends. (This was after talking with me the entire time as if everything was fine with me being there!) Oh and then they kicked me for asking why I was murdered, as I only wanted to help.

 

WHY NOT MAKE A PRIVATE SERVER THEN!

 

Sorry for flying off the handle. I'm just deeply saddened that this great game is unable to be enjoyed.

 

I hope and wish you all the best.

 

Thanks for at least looking really rad.

[Flare2V]

WHY NOT MAKE A PRIVATE SERVER THEN!

[JoeW]

I think one issue, (which is why Flare2V always shows up in these threads} is that a lot of people have a different expectation for how Don't Starve Together should be played. Some think you should team up, some others think you should take advantage of every opportunity, no matter who you step on. Some others think you should only play the optimum way while others, just want to play. 

 

This is creating a situation where people who agree on how to play, play together and have a great time; privately. And publicly, people join up, have fun and then somebody who hasn't developed the same idea for how the game should be played, comes in and becomes the odd-man out. 

 

Other times people play on PvP and think it means it just means friendly-fire enabled, and others think it means "by any means necessary". While others *cough* specifically look for people who don't really know what they are getting into, and take it upon themselves to show them. 

 

We intend on doing a lot to clean this up by the time we consider the game ready for launch. A big part of it is going to be organizing things so that people can better know what they are getting into, and helping people find the games they want to play. Another part of it is to help people who start up servers have better tools to run their servers well; and potentially do some things to encourage them to do so. 

 

We definitely have some work to do; and we are looking to have some of this stuff in the game in the not too distant future. Thanks for your feedback. 

[jbeetle]

I think one issue, (which is why Flare2V always shows up in these threads} is that a lot of people have a different expectation for how Don't Starve Together should be played. Some think you should team up, some others think you should take advantage of every opportunity, no matter who you step on. Some others think you should only play the optimum way while others, just want to play. 

 

This is creating a situation where people who agree on how to play, play together and have a great time; privately. And publicly, people join up, have fun and then somebody who hasn't developed the same idea for how the game should be played, comes in and becomes the odd-man out. 

 

Other times people play on PvP and think it means it just means friendly-fire enabled, and others think it means "by any means necessary". While others *cough* specifically look for people who don't really know what they are getting into, and take it upon themselves to show them. 

 

We intend on doing a lot to clean this up by the time we consider the game ready for launch. A big part of it is going to be organizing things so that people can better know what they are getting into, and helping people find the games they want to play. Another part of it is to help people who start up servers have better tools to run their servers well; and potentially do some things to encourage them to do so. 

 

We definitely have some work to do; and we are looking to have some of this stuff in the game in the not too distant future. Thanks for your feedback. 

I can't wait to see how you "handle" all this. You guys clearly have a good idea of the broad spectrum of the types of players, and I can't think of any good blanket fixes. Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be creative.

[enragedcamel]

I think your mistake is that you think this game is a cooperative game, and when people don't cooperate, or are openly hostile, it contradicts that expectation and frustrates you. But the truth is that, while the game can certainly be played in a cooperative manner with the right group, it is actually designed to be played more like Hunger Games: a contest to see who can survive the longest.

 

So change your attitude and your play-style. Join the server as early as possible (preferably day 1). This ensures that there are still plenty of resources as well as untapped set pieces. Stick to yourself, explore the map early on as much as possible and hoard as many resources as possible (especially rare stuff like gears), then go build your base in a secluded corner of the map away from wormholes and roads. If you're able to secure Chester and Glommer for yourself, even better.

 

Here is where it gets fun: a few days before winter, venture out and raid other people's camps when they are foraging and hunting. Steal half the food in their fridge (not all of it, or they will know something is up), and most (but again, not all) of the critical and difficult-to-replenish resources such as gold, wool and silk. This is much easier to do when the camp belongs to a group, because then they all blame each other. Reading "dammit, we're going through food way too fast" in chat never gets old. If someone sees you when you're going through chests and fridges, make sure to say hi and act friendly, pretend to trivially contribute by doing things like adding fuel to the fire pit, and maybe even give them an item or two that are "extras" to earn their trust. The moment they leave you alone though, be gone with the wind.

 

Having their wool and silk stolen dooms most groups, because without those two items, they can't craft winter clothing or build tents to manage their sanity. They can't go out to get more food either, and you stole half of what they had in the fridge, so... yeah. A few days into winter the entire camp should have died and left the server, so you can go back to their camp and loot whatever items they left behind.

 

It really helps if you're active in chat this entire time, because quiet players get blamed first when someone notices sabotage or theft. Be helpful and friendly, but only on the surface. If someone asks if anyone has found beefalos, speak up and give them wrong directions. If after a while they say there aren't any beefalos there, apologize and say you must have accidentally rotated your map. Most people will sympathize and understand. But your goal is to deliberately misdirect people and cause them to waste their time while you efficiently collect resources and build up your base for winter. Remember: it's a contest.

 

One note regarding my suggestion to join servers early. You may be wondering, "if I'm going to steal other people's resources, why is joining early important?" The reason is simple: late-comers are always viewed with suspicion and disdain. Especially if you join on Day 15 or later, people will assume that you're either new or must have come to burn down bases. On top of that, joining early allows you to explore the map as much as possible, tap set pieces, find unique items like Chester and identify a good spot for your own base. You can't do those things if you join later.

 

Hope this helps. May the gods be forever in your favor. 

[Johnnyprofane]

JoeW is my new favorite now that Kevin is gone. You'll be missed Kevin.

Seriously what happened to Kevin?

[oCrapaCreeper]

JoeW is my new favorite now that Kevin is gone. You'll be missed Kevin.

Seriously what happened to Kevin?

JoeW is everyone's favorite Klei dude.

 

Kevin still works at Klei but he left development after the cave stuff happened to work on other stuff. He was on Rhymes With Play with Seth last month to show off the WiiU version, it was a pretty entertaining to watch.

 

I'm pretty sure he's still the almighty Lore Master of DS though, so anything he accidentally says automatically becomes canon in the game's lore. We're now waiting on that Maxwell body pillow. 

[TuffDwarf]

I can't decide if EnragedCamel is serious with his advice to Sorbo or not.  If he is serious I think DST is doomed.  I cannot imagine a nastier way to play the game than his.  Am I the only one that took the 'together' part of the games title to mean co-operation?  My heart goes out to Sorbo, and his experience along with others before him have ensured that I never enter a public server. 

 

I love DS (I have a few hours under my belt in playing it) and was delighted at the thought of playing DST with friends and family.  What better way, I thought, than to share a DS world and do it all Together!  And then the stories came in of griefing and newbies, and other horrors. 

 

I have come to the conclusion that if it were possible, which it isn't, to have all people new to DS and DST have to survive through a year in DS before they can enter a public DST world, we, and they, would all be better off.

 

I hope Klei can come up with a suitable solution to what seems to be an intractable problem.  I have great faith in their initiative and their vision for the game, but little faith in humanity overall.

 

[Clwnbaby]

@enragedcamel, that is HORRIBLE advice.  You're literally telling him how to do the thing he is complaining about.

 

Here's my 2 cents as someone who plays purely public servers.  What I have found helps (and anyone who watches my stream I don't care what you hear me say this is still my general attitude) you just gotta let the backwards steps go.  Think of all the grief and hassle as one more "fun" challenge to Don't Starve.  If you're a veteran of the single player game you know that once you're established thats it, only your stupidity will kill you.  In Together there is this whole new entity to thwart you in the form of other people. 

 

I am no stranger to the hassle of grief but its the same crap all the time and none of them are imaginative at all.  So now part of my game as a helpful player is to mitigate the griefers.  This means after the webbers spawn and die and leave I gotta stop by the portal because surprise surprise they planted their eggs there.  ALL of them do it.  Its not even clever and they thing themselves so smart and ingenious as if no one can handle such a thing.

 

Also if you do prefer to go the public route one thing that has worked for me is find 1 server and make that your go to public server.  Especially with dedicateds you will have far less hassle, no chance of random kick or bans and you tend to see the same players over and over and learn who plays how and who is a friendly and who is not.  You still run into your griefers and raiders but even they can be dealt with.  Like for instance where do you base.  Your typical griefer and raider go to the same ol spots over and over because they know they will find what they are looking for there.  So in the future when you base up dont live somewhere everyone lives.  Live off the beaten path and out of the way.  You can still be helpful just takes a little longer. 

 

Hope this helps

 

[Sorario]

Here's a simple answer.

 

People refuse to learn how to play the game before going into multiplayer.

[Arcita]

I can't decide if EnragedCamel is serious with his advice to Sorbo or not.  If he is serious I think DST is doomed.  I cannot imagine a nastier way to play the game than his.  Am I the only one that took the 'together' part of the games title to mean co-operation?  My heart goes out to Sorbo, and his experience along with others before him have ensured that I never enter a public server. 

 

I love DS (I have a few hours under my belt in playing it) and was delighted at the thought of playing DST with friends and family.  What better way, I thought, than to share a DS world and do it all Together!  And then the stories came in of griefing and newbies, and other horrors. 

 

I have come to the conclusion that if it were possible, which it isn't, to have all people new to DS and DST have to survive through a year in DS before they can enter a public DST world, we, and they, would all be better off.

 

I hope Klei can come up with a suitable solution to what seems to be an intractable problem.  I have great faith in their initiative and their vision for the game, but little faith in humanity overall.

When you go out into the world, does it shock you when you find mean, uncooperative people? I suspect not. Why then do you expect, when you enter into a virtual world with those same people who comprise the physical world, that it will be a utopia void of negativity? 

 

Yeah, there are people out there whose modus operandi is capricious and exploitative in nature. Heck, there's an unnervingly large subsection of the population who are incapable of empathy; these are the sociopaths who attain unadulterated glee from stamping on others in their blind quest for superiority.

 

Whatever Klei does will not be enough. What you need to do is change your expectations just like you've probably done in real life. Expect the worst in people, but hope for the best. 

[Bahlsen]

somebody who hasn't developed the same idea for how the game should be played, comes in and becomes the odd-man out

 That could be right for pvp but for pve don't say that griefers are just people who want to play differently, a lot of them are just malevolent and malicious. 

 

 

[Pyromailmann]

The main reason i recommend steering away from Public Servers is because of many reasons.

1.) New players- I am a veteran in some way to DS, I hate when someone drags down a base just because of the "I'm New" situation, or because they didn't play too much of DS (which isn't bad, but still can make them very dependent).

2.) Griefers- I have been griefed many times in various other games, I dislike this action. It is very annoying. I don't want my stuff stolen, or burnt to the ground, I'd only want that if it was concentrated and for charcoal.

 

Now, JoeW mentioned how they are dealing with this. I am okay with that. I think no matter how they deal with this situation, I can expect a good thing to come out. What basically everybody has said is good advice (besides enragedcamel's, since that is the opposite of the OP's Point).

 That could be right for pvp but for pve don't say that griefers are just people who want to play differently, a lot of them are just malevolent and malicious.

Well, they're open with burning stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if they got kicked from that server because of that. 

[Johnny5isAlive]

@Sorbo, Oh dear oh dear. This is always a tricky issue and the Devs are working hard on "fixing" it. (However they plan on fixing it I have no idea, but it sounds cool! Albeit a tad a vague and mysterious) 

 

I myself run a PvP server where people are encouraged to kill each other for fun. The server resets every 72 days (ish) so that people stay on their toes. But I also encourage people not to hold grudges against the people that have killed them, when it resets everyone gets clean slate. I myself often change my play-style drastically between resets. (Sometimes I even accept the challenge of protecting people, or trying to go the whole game without killing anyone, usually instead knocking people out with Sleepytime Stories instead of killing them.)

 

The game really changes a lot depending on where you play. The only way (For now) to near enough guarantee you'll get the experience you're looking for is if you make the server, set your own rules and make it clear why that server exists. That way the majority of people who join share that interest.

[DarkXero]

JoeW nailed it.

 

I have to admit though.

The game would significantly improve for ALL types of players if we universally banned the "where's base" guys.

[absimiliard]

I run a few servers, two currently.  Generally the folks on my Survival server cooperate, but there is the occasional griefer.  My Wilderness server is usually a bit less cooperative and generally needs a regen about once a real-world week due to getting all burnt-up and spidery.

 

So I, obviously, can't guarantee a grief-less experience on my servers but you have reasonable odds of making some friends and working together on my Survival server (Absimiliards Kitchen iirc).  You probably won't get griefed on my Wilderness server, but you also are less likely to find people to play with as there's no centralized spawn-point.  (you're also a bit more likely to find hidden "mini-bases" scattered around there)

 

I fear that's all I've really got to say.

[enragedcamel]

I can't decide if EnragedCamel is serious with his advice to Sorbo or not.  If he is serious I think DST is doomed.  I cannot imagine a nastier way to play the game than his.  Am I the only one that took the 'together' part of the games title to mean co-operation?  My heart goes out to Sorbo, and his experience along with others before him have ensured that I never enter a public server. 

 

@enragedcamel, that is HORRIBLE advice.  You're literally telling him how to do the thing he is complaining about.

 

When I first started playing DST, I was super nice. I really, genuinely believed that the game is meant to be played cooperatively, to the point where I sought out servers with the Global Positions mod so that it would be easy to find other people (and vice versa).

 

But, you know, everyone has a limit. After getting trolled and griefed over and over, I eventually snapped. The decision for me was a practical one: either continue being nice and keep being taken advantage of (and deal with the intense frustration that brings), or change my attitude towards the game and my play style with it. I chose the latter.

 

Last week I was exploring the map with Chester in tow. I came across another player (Webber) who was fighting some pigs. I helped him kill them and saved his life. You know what he did? He opened my Chester, looted everything from it (two stacks of gold, a bunch of gears, some silk and a beefalo horn) and walked away. When I called him out on it on chat, he said, "HA HA LOSER".

 

Previously, I would have been frustrated. You know what I did though? I remained calm, hunted him down, found his base a few days later and hammered it to the ground. And I took all my items back.

 

I know this offends people. But the fact of the matter is that the current atmosphere of the game is one of "survival of the fittest." You either look out for yourself, or you get griefed.

 

I'm interested to see how Klei fixes this, but let's just say that I'm very skeptical. They seem unwilling to make the necessary changes to game mechanics to prevent briefing. Simple example based on my aforementioned experience with Webber: if I were Klei, I would simply change Chester so that only the owner can open it. After all, he's YOUR chester and should be your own, private container. But they are afraid of making changes like this because they think it would ruin the experience for legitimate players.

[GiddyGuy]

They seem unwilling to make the necessary changes to game mechanics to prevent briefing.

But I love briefing in this game if they removed that I don't know what I would do with my don't starve together life. D: 

[Clwnbaby]

: if I were Klei, I would simply change Chester so that only the owner can open it

 

Did you put that in suggestions?  Or have you only mentioned it in posts while complaining about something.  Honestly that is an easy fix and Im with you.  I am getting tired of filling up chester with stacks of necessary resources only to have him looted just as Im heading home to unload and build.  This happens to me too ALL OF THE TIME.  And I play on a non-PvP server too BUT its nothing a Weatherpain cant fix and a lot of times I don't get my stuff back but that player ends up being 1 less player I'll ever have to worry about because I make it so they don't return

[Johnny5isAlive]

change Chester so that only the owner can open it.

This is good. And if the eyebone is on the ground or in a chest or chester himself then anyone could access him. That's hardly a change that would impact co-op games since if you trust the people you're playing with then you have no problem dropping the eyebone for a second. Same thing should apply to backpacks, if there is an item in it of any kinda no one else should be able to equip it.

 

Far too many times I've switched to a log suit to fight something big just to have someone run up and grab my bag, this led to me storing easily replaceable things in it only, and when that still didn't help I stopped using backpacks completely and trained myself to manage my inventory better. 

[LadyD]

Good Heavens! 

I suppose I should be glad that I seem to come across only very friendly servers. Where helping each other out to survive is part of it. 

The Chat function had save you some grief as well- ask if people need help. 
Select no PvP if you don't much care for it.

I am one of those people who does ask where the base is. Upon arrival I then ask what is needed for the base and go get some of it. Helps keeps things friendly. You do something for me, I do something for you.

Again the chat really helps. Touch base with people. It helps to know their expectations and attitudes. 

If people give you hard time- plenty of servers in the sea. Move onto another one. 

Another trick is - if you find a great group who you are having an awesome time with... ask if they wanna be friends on Steam or whatever. That way next time they are playing you can ask to drop in and relive the good times! 

My two cents. 

 

[RalphKastro]

Because I hate people.

JoeW is my new favorite now that Kevin is gone.

 Joe is everyone's favourite Not-Kevin.

[LadyD]

 

Because I hate people.

 

 

 Joe is everyone's favourite Not-Kevin.

 

Kevin is my favourite Kevin. 

JoeW is cool but I miss Kevin. 

 All the Klei folks are awesome

*As a moderator these words were not beaten, bribed or otherwise force from me in order to maintain my position. 

[Bahlsen]

If people give you hard time- plenty of servers in the sea. Move onto another one. 

511 hours of dst here, there is always one griefer who comes eventually so giving up hours of exploring and building isn't the solution since you'll be griefed somewhere else too. This is sad but the solution is to settle on a well hidden place, ideally on a tiny island. Yesterday I came across someone who thought so too so we settled together and had a nice time while the other less hidden base has of course been burned.

[XirmiX]

I would understand why in PvP people would fight as it many people perceive it as a combat themed mode, where as griefers do some crap stuff for like a minute and then leave. Is this what games have become? Wreck other peoples' fun when they totally didn't ask for it? Why the hell... Well, DS is made in America and most people who play the game are ought to be from America and because of all the fascism going on in many places of America, it's no wonder that people are so criminal and selfish. Based on a statistic, it is evident that more free countries have less crime rates, so more people are ought to be nicer in such countries and playing this game from there would show a much nicer attitude not only in terms of public PvE but also public PvP if they play this game. And I myself can confirm this, as more nicer people have been those who are not from the UK, US or any country that has more strict rules.

Just saying >_>