[Rant] Existing content needs an overhaul...

[Ecu]

I've been playing more and more Don't Starve Together recently and I've noticed that in a general sense, well over half the content just doesn't get used.  From ranged weapons to beefalo taming, I almost never see these used on the official servers.  This makes me question as to whether:  a) playing on the official servers is not the intended play experience, or b) the existing content is not designed well for the intended play experience.  My gut feeling leans towards the latter as from what I've been able to deduce via some statistics, a majority of servers are not using Endless mode.  This means, on average, said worlds will not last much longer than the first summer.

Seeing a new update coming out with pets and another boss, I end up wondering if we even really need more new content when the existing content already doesn't get used.  I really feel that perhaps a better approach would be to reduce the amount of new content and instead put more time into shoring up the existing content to make if more appealing to utilize.  Some areas I feel are weak are as follows...

 

Ranged Combat

Ranged combat in don't starve tends to almost never get used with the exception of the boomerang (which is mostly used to farm birds and Krampus).  I feel that this is partially due to the damage blow darts taking azure feathers (which requires winter), and partially due to it being very easy to miss (which causes you to lose the hard-earned weapon).  Granted, if it was easy to utilize ranged weapons, melee combat would lose it's appeal.  So perhaps overhauling how ranged weapons work is required.  To give an example, I'll explain my ideas for fixing darts.

To start off, the blowgun should be crafted separately from darts and be loadable with darts akin to Spear launchers from Shipwrecked.  When darts are fired from the blowgun, they will either hit the target and be consumed, or miss the target and drop on the ground where the target was.  This allows missed darts to be picked back up and reloaded, rather than just be wasted.  As for the damage of darts, I'd like to see a basic dart that deals damage on part with the boomerang, primarily used for hunting animals and tagging things.  Then you would have improved darts akin to those that already exist today.

By altering darts to function more like this, you keep melee combat important as reloading the dart takes time (animation delay) and you still can miss.  In addition, by separating the darts from the blowgun, you can balance the two separately.  Perhaps making the blowgun more expensive to craft (to keep people from using a few of them preloaded), while making the darts reasonably priced to keep them useful for things like animal hunting.

I think similar overhauls should be done to magical wands as well, to allow them to be an appealing alternative to just smashing things with a meat bat.

 

Animal Taming

I've not once tamed a Beefalo, the amount of time required to fully tame a beefalo has not been worth it.  In many runs, it is more beneficial to seek out gears and other important rare drops in order to be prepared for future seasons, than to spend time befriending a Beefalo.  I feel similarly about hatching Tallbird eggs as well.  While I think these are interesting things to give people to do while hiding out in the base, I feel the reward for achieving it just isn't worth the investment.  Perhaps some solutions to this could be to have tamed animal breeding and the ability to slaughter excess heard for meat, wool, and/or horns.

With more pets coming in the upcoming addition, I only feel that this area of the game should be looked into more heavily.  I feel that offering a method of play that focuses on animal breeding/farming would be a fun avenue to allow people to focus on, but right now I feel the rewards for the investment aren't useful.

You might say that these are more long term goals, but as stated initially...long term doesn't happen.  I must have gone through roughly 400 servers just checking the number of days and only found 33 of those 400 that were over day 100.  This means a majority of people never hit that long term state and as such will never see this content used.  Asking people to invest 20 days or 1/5th (or more) of the average play time in a playthrough to essentially get a Walking Stick that is more annoying to use.  This honestly doesn't feel very reasonable to me.

 

Magic

Magic in Don't Starve Together is quite fun and flavorful, however, the cost of using it is generally really high and utilizes things that are quite frustrating to farm, and as such, it doesn't see much use in an average run.  My primary suggestion for this is to make many of the magic items that cost gems to make work akin to my suggestions above regarding the blowgun, except allowing them to be recharged via Nightmare Fuel instead.  Some items, like the construction amulet or deconstruction wand, should definitely remain as is (unable to be recharged).  However, other items like a fire staff, ice staff, etc. should offer the ability to slowly recharge the want via nightmare fuel (or some other mechanism, such as an altar or somesuch).  This would allow a user to choose to play the wizard character, with the risk of needing to regularly fight nightmares to do so.

 

Closing

There are certainly other issues (such as a majority of the hats) that could also use reworks and if there is a specific item anyone would like my input on, feel free to reply and I'll take a crack at it.  Despite my rants here, I am indeed enjoying the game.  I just feel like adding more content, when a majority of the existing content cannot really be effectively used, ends up feeling a bit off putting.  I've considered doing some and/or all of these overhauls as a mod (or mods), however, I feel they should really be things that are fixed with the core game itself...especially when going forward with new content.

If I'm wrong and the developers ideal play experience is more long term gameplay, then perhaps we need to see some official endless servers to give players that impression, as all the current official servers are survival.  So rather than creating a bunch of long term content, instead I feel that they should be creating more short term paths of play.  Let people be adventurers in the cave, farmers with animals and crops, hunters shooting birds, frogs, and rabbits, etc.  By giving good rewards for the time investment, they can essentially create classes/jobs, without actually restricting people to a single play style and I feel this is the direction for the game that will be most appealing in the long run.

 

Thanks to anyone who made it through this rant and if anyone would actually like to see challenging overhauls as mods, has additional ideas to contribute, and/or just wants to offer criticism of my ideas...please reply below.  Take care.

[Lumina]

1 hour ago, Ecu said:

 

You might say that these are more long term goals, but as stated initially...long term doesn't happen.  I must have gone through roughly 400 servers just checking the number of days and only found 33 of those 400 that were over day 100.  This means a majority of people never hit that long term state and as such will never see this content used.  Asking people to invest 20 days or 1/5th (or more) of the average play time in a playthrough to essentially get a Walking Stick that is more annoying to use.  This honestly doesn't feel very reasonable to me.

I was about to tell that for me, the beefalo taming is in fact a long term goal, or at least something to do when you have free time.

You say that long term doesn't happen. Maybe things like beefalo taming are here to give some things to do in long term, some things you will do when the base is set, when survival is not bad and stuff like this. For the moment, they aren't enough as long term goals but A New Reign is here also to give more things to do after the first seasons, if i remember well.

It doesn't mean that beefalo or others things shouldn't be improved, just that maybe they are the first small step for long term goals.

 

[Ecu]

9 minutes ago, Lumina said:

I was about to tell that for me, the beefalo taming is in fact a long term goal, or at least something to do when you have free time.

You say that long term doesn't happen. Maybe things like beefalo taming are here to give some things to do in long term, some things you will do when the base is set, when survival is not bad and stuff like this. For the moment, they aren't enough as long term goals but A New Reign is here also to give more things to do after the first seasons, if i remember well.

It doesn't mean that beefalo or others things shouldn't be improved, just that maybe they are the first small step for long term goals.

See, this is an issue though...because on average servers don't last more than 100 days in my experience.  Sure, there are some servers that last longer, however, those servers tend to be endless servers only.  Since every single official server is a survival server (as are the majority of servers overall), that means on average these long term features are impractical for actual use.  I mean it takes between 15 and 20 days to fully tame a beefalo and that's dedicating regular time to do so (which means you aren't doing other things).  What do you achieve for doing so?  You get a more tedious to use Walking Stick that does damage on par with a Ham Bat.  Walking Stick is easy to achieve and lasts forever, and a Ham Bat can easily be acquired Day 1.  Taming a Beefalo just doesn't have the punch it should for the time investment.

I think rather than focusing on long term gameplay, they should focus the majority of things on surviving one year of play (in-game year).  This comes purely from a majority of the servers not lasting much longer than that.  That isn't to say that they cannot have long term gameplay or events that happen further on, but when over half the content doesn't even get touched because people never get to long term...I question devoting development time to it.

[Lumina]

Question is : why people aren't playing endgame : because they can't reach endgame, or because there isn't that much thing to do in endgame ? If you don't create endgame content because people don't play endgame content because there isn't endgame content, there will never be endgame content.

OVer half the content doesn't get touched, really ? Beefalo, dart and part of magic doesn't seems to me half of the content, is it ?

[Ecu]

34 minutes ago, Lumina said:

Question is : why people aren't playing endgame : because they can't reach endgame, or because there isn't that much thing to do in endgame ? If you don't create endgame content because people don't play endgame content because there isn't endgame content, there will never be endgame content.

OVer half the content doesn't get touched, really ? Beefalo, dart and part of magic doesn't seems to me half of the content, is it ?

The reason people aren't making it to late game play is simply time.  It takes roughly 10 hours straight to get through a in-game year of Don't Starve Together.  On top of this, when the last person on a server dies, the server resets and everyone starts over (in survival mode, which is the mode Klei is pushing for official servers).  Sitting down for 10 hours straight to play a year run is already a huge time investment, and all it takes to lose the progress when you all log off for the day is someone else to log on and die.  There is plenty of stuff to do in the game, but just not enough time to really do it all.

Yes, over half the content (on average) is not actually touched.  A majority of the boss monsters are generally never fought (as they provide/require late game items or in some cases don't even spawn yet).  Most of the body slot items are never used, nearly all of the magic items are never used, walls and flooring are very rarely used, ranged weapons aren't really used, explosives aren't used, beefalo taming isn't generally done, most of the ancient items aren't generally used (occasionally someone is brave/crazy and does immediate caving), traps are mostly unused (except the basic ones), etc.

The thing is, Don't Starve Together has a very similar content layout as Don't Starve, however, it isn't the same game.  In Don't Starve, you maintain a world (or at least do so for a while), meaning that you will generally experience the long term gameplay in almost every playthrough.  In that instance, things like the Beefalo taming would be great (I'd love a mount in Don't Starve).  However, in Together, you essentially play for a session and start over the next time you play.  This means the experience should be designed around this average play period.  In my experience, the average play period has been roughly 10 hours (generally more like 8 for most sessions I've played on the Klei servers).  Towards the end of such session, many people have left by then as well, due to either dying or just running out of time to play.

Does your experience differ on survival servers?

 

Edit:

I just wanted to add that I don't think they should reduce the difficulty of taming Beefalo, for instance.  Instead, I feel that there should be more of a reward for having achieving it.  Currently, tamed Beefalo are just a bad option compared to alternatives.  Something you should really only do for fun.

[Lumina]

My experience is usually on a wilderness server with friend so it's not the classic DST experience.

 

But for my experience, part of the "problem" is that you have a lot to do the first season, meaning that a lot of things aren't done even if they are ok. It's hard to tell if something is not done because it's useless or because you don't have time for "luxury".

For example, usually when i play, i'm not really a rabbit hunter, and i focus on preparing winter and surviving winter. And in spring, i realise that i forgot to catch rabbit for a Prestihatator. So part of my lack of use of magic item comes from my lack of time or planning.

 

Maybe yes, an official permanent server should be a good thing to see how people will use things in a more persistant world rather than in a world that could disappears if someone plays when you are not here and destroy your world by dying.

 

Also, i don't mind beefalo becoming more useful/rewarding, or darts or whatever, but i think that some dynamic when some items are prefered will often happen, except if you have kind of "phase" when some things aren't possible (like the rabbit in spring : there you have to adapt if you rely to much on rabbit). Or just more monsters with real weakness, so you will use different stuff for different fight. But it's not just a change of number.

 

Another thing : i, for me, dislike items that destroy the world or/and use non-renewable resources. So i don't use fire staff or gunpowder, not because they aren't good but because i don't like destroying my world (it's so quick to put fire everywhere). I don't use pan flute because there is a limited number of mandrake and i dislike the idea of depleting resource of my world. Maybe i'm not alone in this case and maybe this could be solve not by changing the item itself but by being able to replant/recraft some things, for example.

[Ecu]

I'm not sure we really need an endless official server, to be honest.  The game should have it's design focused on the primary experience first and foremost, with additional tweaks for alternative play styles.  So it really comes down to what exactly Klei feels is the intended experience.  If they want the more rogue-like experience, then focus on getting through the first year, with extra stuff coming later.  If they want a more long term, Minecraft-esk experience, then indeed they should have primarily endless servers and more systems to avoid griefing.

Since I personally see the game as more of a rogue-like, which seems to be the direction Klei was going as they progressively make the game harder and harder, with the goal of killing you and starting over.  As such all the items should be focused around that experience.  Currently, that is not how the system is designed.

[SrJardel]

I play offline atm, with 3 people at max, wilderness mode. I used to run two online servers in the past, one survival and one wilderness, but people usually were more into the latter.

I think official servers are just for show off, sort of a newcomers place (but not striclty for), a guaranted open server to hop on, idk. But I don't think they reflect the overall DST experience.

Given the number of game owners vs the number of people on/and listed servers, I guess a lot of people play private/friends only/lan sessions instead.

I dare to say that the number of private/not listed sessions are greater than the public ones, but I might be wrong.

Anyways, in my personal experience, long term sessions works just ok, being it online (in my own server with proper admin and police) or offline.

Not saying your ideas are bad, I just don't think that official servers act like the real DST experience to go.

Actually I'm playing Day 238, and I remember my wife showed up mounting a beefalo not so long ago, so, maybe it is all about priorities, chance and time. Me? I never mounted a beefalo. Not that I don't want to, it just didn't happened yet.

[Ecu]

10 minutes ago, SrJardel said:

I play offline atm, with 3 people at max, wilderness mode. I used to run two online servers in the past, one survival and one wilderness, but people usually were more into the latter.

I think official servers are just for show off, sort of a newcomers place (but not striclty for), a guaranted open server to hop on, idk. But I don't think they reflect the overall DST experience.

Given the number of game owners vs the number of people on/and listed servers, I guess a lot of people play private/friends only/lan sessions instead.

I dare to say that the number of private/not listed sessions are greater than the public ones, but I might be wrong.

Anyways, in my personal experience, long term sessions works just ok, being it online (in my own server with proper admin and police) or offline.

Not saying your ideas are bad, I just don't think that official servers act like the real DST experience to go.

Actually I'm playing Day 238, and I remember my wife showed up mounting a beefalo not so long ago, so, maybe it is all about priorities, chance and time. Me? I never mounted a beefalo. Not that I don't want to, it just didn't happened yet.

Actually, according to the server statistics, a majority of servers are survival servers.  Given the time it takes to get from Autumn through Summer (roughly 10 hours), a majority of people who are playing will likely not get through the first year on an average run.  So, I would say that balancing the game around long term is not very appropriate.  Long term can definitely be a consideration, but for general balance and a majority of content, it should be designed around the first year (as that is what sees the most play).  This game trend also meshes with the experience of the official servers, so I would indeed actually say that the official servers are representative of the real DST experience.

As for beefalo specifically, I mentioned above.  The only reason to tame one is specifically because you feel like it.  It takes 15-20 in-game days to fully tame one and in the end you would be better off with a Walking Stick and a Ham Bat (and both of those are easier to achieve).  The tamed Beefalo system is actually statistically bad.

[DVS_Zev]

Ranged combat deff needs some work.blowguns really suck and nobody ever uses them unless they get them free from Mactusk.

i wish they replace them with a bow and seperate crafting arrows.perhaps keep arrow crafting price high but do great damage or really cheap and do low damage.

a bow could be lets say, a board, and 2 silk.with durabilty

A quiver could be made to replace the backpack and would hold the arrows.costing lets say, 2 rope and 2 pig skin.

arrows could be made from a reed,feather (any) and flint.

the quiver slot would prevent suit armor and make a ranged fighter not too over powered.ideally the bow and arrow would do at least as much damage as a spear hit.

Maybe i just love archery too much.Maybe the blow guns just arent appealing at all, but, i think the depth of that would be interesting enough to encourage people to opt for some ranged action more.

 

[Ecu]

On 11/11/2016 at 11:53 AM, DVS_Zev said:

Ranged combat deff needs some work.blowguns really suck and nobody ever uses them unless they get them free from Mactusk.

i wish they replace them with a bow and seperate crafting arrows.perhaps keep arrow crafting price high but do great damage or really cheap and do low damage.

a bow could be lets say, a board, and 2 silk.with durabilty

A quiver could be made to replace the backpack and would hold the arrows.costing lets say, 2 rope and 2 pig skin.

arrows could be made from a reed,feather (any) and flint.

the quiver slot would prevent suit armor and make a ranged fighter not too over powered.ideally the bow and arrow would do at least as much damage as a spear hit.

Maybe i just love archery too much.Maybe the blow guns just arent appealing at all, but, i think the depth of that would be interesting enough to encourage people to opt for some ranged action more.

 

I disagree with changing it to a bow as they already have the blowgun animations and art made and it has been a part of the game since the beginning.  Revamping blowguns to be more modular (as I suggested in the OP) is a better solution to this instead.  It would take far less effort and could be made compatible with existing blowguns by converting existing blowguns into darts, only requiring someone to make a new blowgun to fire them.

If they do keep blowguns and revamp them, I would find adding a new bow to likewise be rather pointless as it would clash with the revised blowguns and essentially just be art.  As stated in the OP, I feel there is already too much stuff in the game that doesn't get used.  Implementing another thing that furthers said issue would not be an appealing direction.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

@Ecu Agh, I see now. Something similar is what I had in mind too, like, instead of doing a huge complexity + reality overhaul, just some items and mechanics for various things are tuned (although I still like the idea of more complexity and realism in the game for the extra challenge and the feel of proper survival... I guess there's something to like in both game designs for me). As for runs... The game should really be possible and good for both long AND short term survival, in my opinion and it can be. Short term it is fairly good, but long term nowhere near that. Here are some thoughts I have in terms of the game:

1) Rework how Survival mode works - instead of a server being restarted because you got bored or the server being restarted because one person died on it and then exited while you were sleeping, have the server start the reset countdown if the server is full of dead players (but to not stop counting down if, say, one dead player gets out while the counter is still running) and the counter would, like before stop counting down if someone resurrects or an alive player joins the game AND for teleportato to be active. Now, some people might not like knowing crafting recipes upon moving worlds. An easy solution could be that some crafting recipes could be forgotten by the player or something, but a more complex one would require a bit of an overhaul... basically, things like a shovel, rabbit earmuffs, perhaps even a straw roll and normal endothermic fire being made possible to craft without any crafting machine, including some other things perhaps. On top of that, anything you craft with any machine would still require the machine in the future. This would also require a blueprint rework though... Idk, I guess the former and simple solution could be better.

2) Have everything some way of regeneration - Bee Queen could be an easy candidate for bee hives, and perhaps a Killler Bee Queen for killer bee hives. Warg for hound mounds perhaps (by you raising its pup, which would craft a mound of its own when grown up and the same could go for Tallbird and its nest). Reeds could simply respawn in the places they have been burnt after a few days or something, making reed trap not something to look out for and easily griefable. Turf, I think should be innovative. Like the giant tentacles make marsh turf renewable, some way of making other natural turfs renewable would be great too imho, but it should be some-what creative; catcoons could have something to do with deciduous turf or perhaps their dens could (which too should probably be either indestructable or in some way always renewable), Toadstool, after each death could perhaps loot one of each kind of fungal turf, tumbleweeds perhaps could loot sandy turf, Tree guards could loot forest turf, Beefalo having a chance to loot savanna turf perhaps and grass turf... not entirely sure, but surely something could be thought of. Mandrakes too! An easy fix could be that they could, either after a few days or on full moon or something would respawn in the places they were generated at first if they had been picked, making for renewable pan flute without using deconstruction staves and them actually being prevalent even if all mandrakes have been taken by a newbie/griefer who will never come back... or eaten, that too! Having renewable mandrake soup would be great too, imho and its slow raqte of obtaining could work well in terms of balance. And if things still get destroyed to a point of no regeneration, perhaps Charlie herself could "intervene" and on full moon or something could regenerate something if it's gone completely extinct from the world or something along the lines. Oh, and pig houses and rabbit hutches need some renewable method, don't forget about them!

Sorry that the above went a bit ranty

3) Add this. Because we need some ground for the players that join in during harsh seasons and know little/nothing about the game. Don't make it their responsibility to "not come in during harsh seasons" or "be a total pro to get through that when first joining" because it discourages people from playing the actual game, can easily cause conflict between players due to several reasons and makes the game un-joinable during nearly half of the game time! Or, you know, you could just make the default selected season as Autumn instead of Any season in the server selection menu, Klei -.-

 

As goes for the darts, for instance... crafting a blow pipe (with two reeds), which takes up a whole slot and needs to be constantly refueled with individual darts (which could be their current crafting recipe except without reeds as the blow pipe would take it up) as well as dealing perhaps half the damage it currently does would be helpful and make them a bit more useful. And I totally agree about them looting down on the ground when missing the target. Perhaps, all of the darts could loot when you kill your opponent, making the darts useful for killing birds too. Although that would render boomerang inferior... perhaps blow pipes and darts could be crafted using alchemy engine while boomerang using science machine? Idk.

[Ecu]

16 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

~snip to keep post short~

I think you are just missing the point of DST, to be completely honest (at least from my perspective).  You're wanting the game to be a long running survival game, more akin to Minecraft, where you can continually play forever and new people can join in at any time.  That isn't really what survival mode of DST is.  If you want to play that, play on Endless mode instead.  Additionally, in my opinion, we should not be redesigning the game mode to destroy what it is when it is the most popular game mode already.  Instead, we should be streamlining existing gameplay features around said game mode and session experience.

Specifically regarding the regeneration of resources, I've had a few thoughts on such.  I do feel it is something that should exist, but not simply to regenerate resources...but more to shake up bases and create new challenges.  In a sense, I see regeneration more akin to diseases, where it kills off one thing and another grows in it's place.  The aim is to throw off a player's rhythm, so that they all die and are forced to start over.

As for allowing methods to come join in mid session, I disagree again.  The reason is simple, you can do this for players if you really want to already.  You could build a chest with winter gear, build a campfire, etc.  Hell, you could build the entire base near spawn if you were worried about new people.  This should really be up to the individual session as to how much help they wish to offer players jumping in later, and I feel doing anything to change this beyond what already exists, will just feel artificial.