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18 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Which is why I'm for the prevention options that wouldn't impact play, or counters that players can use. PvP can keep going how it does, griefers can keep trying to grief, actual players get to do something about it. The game retains players, and Klei does get a little bit of continuous income from skin sales (Steam has some info about it if you're curious, but basically there's a reason that nothing sells for below $0.03). Everyone wins. Cept griefers. They lose a little bit, but it's for game health.

The problem with preventative measures is that they cannot be reasonably done without impacting gameplay.  Fire is actually a rather important aspect of the game.  Both as a resource and as a danger.  To nerf it simply because of griefing is how we ended up with Willow who is never used because she's just not a very good character now, compared to being quite useful in DS.  To me, trading gameplay for anti-griefing is never worth it.

It is better to implement solid griefing detection mechanisms and weed out the community.  A good system will catch people rather quickly and the overall community benefits from less jerks.  I'm sorry, but I just cannot see merit in your side.  Sacrificing gameplay just isn't worth it.

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On 11/20/2016 at 4:19 PM, Ecu said:

I would appreciate you not making assumptions given words I did not say.  I never once said you were a carebear.

I never said that you called me a carebear, but you're making it seem like I am. I'm just letting you know that I understand griefing and not wanting a full removal of it. Also it depends on what you define griefing. I'm against griefing which takes advantage of systems, but I enjoy griefing in PvP which involves harassing others to get an advantage.

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I simply stated that the system cannot be effectively fixed without ruining the purpose of the mechanics in the first place.  Your structures are supposed to be flammable (for the most part) as an entire season exists which attempts to burn your base to the ground.

The mechanic we're using is balanced for singleplayer. The purpose of the mechanic had no regards to multiplayer whatsoever when it was created because it was made for a singleplayer game. There have already been some minor tweaks in the multiplayer version to make players more easily survive certain season and they even changed fires to make them more manageable. However, the balances weren't meaningful enough. We're not going to ruin the purpose of the mechanics, just make them workable for multiplayer.

The removal of burning things down probably shouldn't be the best thing though. I'd prefer using nonflammable walls and nonflammable lockable gates to keep people away from your base. That would make walls meaningful for once cause currently, they're useless and they don't play the role of keeping not only creatures out, but people out. Another example of how the game has no balance or consideration for multiplayer.

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Regarding gates and such to keep others out, I feel it would be out of place. They are indeed adding gates to the upcoming update, however, they seem to be choosing wood fences and gates only.  I'm also uncertain as to whether or not gates are lockable/unlockable.  I have reasonable ideas as to how such a thing could be implemented within the game with the current mechanics, however, I question how such a mechanic would affect overall gameplay as it could really end up trivializing defence.

That is the purpose of a wall, fence, and a gate. It's meant to keep everything out or keep animals in. Out of place is having walls in a game which are meaningless to upgrade and are mainly used to create death traps for hounds.

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So tell me, how would you balance fire without stopping fire from doing the job it is supposed to?

Like I said previously, leave fire the way it is, maybe increase smoldering duration for a few more seconds and add ways to fireproof your base. For example, putting a nonflammable wall and gate around your base and having it locked up from griefers. We're in the world of griefers, lets not throw them out of games, just stop them in their tracks by being able to prepare beforehand.

Yes hammering will be a problem, but it's less lethal than setting a whole base on fire almost instantly. Next step is setting up ways to protect your base from players with hammers. This can be done by setting up traps which currently don't work on players. Then we need an alliance system so traps would only activate on people who you aren't allied with. There could also be some way of having a creature or shadow protect your base by crafting something. I can come up with many ideas and this is how you start making a multiplayer game.

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23 hours ago, Ecu said:

The problem with preventative measures is that they cannot be reasonably done without impacting gameplay.  Fire is actually a rather important aspect of the game.  Both as a resource and as a danger.  To nerf it simply because of griefing is how we ended up with Willow who is never used because she's just not a very good character now, compared to being quite useful in DS.

You clearly just want a duplicate of singleplayer content and gameplay but with friends. In that case, what was the purpose of Klei making an entirely new game for multiplayer? This is the same battle I see every time and it's why the game is only appealing to the singleplayer crowd over the multiplayer one. People are buying this game over the original, because it's basically the same thing with more content. Sure some changes have been made for multiplayer purposes, but then there is backlash from the community like what you're doing, where they're unable to change anything for multiplayer purposes, because you guys continue to demand a game that's based and balanced for singleplayer.

If you want the original Willow, use a mod or play the original. Maybe there is a mod for the original game which allows you to play multiplayer. I'm honestly seeing reviews dropping for DST because the developers are not doing a single thing for multiplayer whatsoever. My girl plays Willow all the time, nothing is wrong with her. Willow got a deserved nerf and many other characters need nerfs as well because there is no balance within the game. Everyone can pick any character, but some characters are useless. This does not make a good multiplayer game. For singleplayer, these characters were rewards, unlocks, which you had to play to obtain. But once again, this isn't singleplayer.

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3 hours ago, Trenix said:

You clearly just want a duplicate of singleplayer content and gameplay but with friends. In that case, what was the purpose of Klei making an entirely new game for multiplayer? This is the same battle I see every time and it's why the game is only appealing to the singleplayer crowd over the multiplayer one. People are buying this game over the original, because it's basically the same thing with more content. Sure some changes have been made for multiplayer purposes, but then there is backlash from the community like what you're doing, where they're unable to change anything for multiplayer purposes, because you guys continue to demand a game that's based and balanced for singleplayer.

If you want the original Willow, use a mod or play the original. Maybe there is a mod for the original game which allows you to play multiplayer. I'm honestly seeing reviews dropping for DST because the developers are not doing a single thing for multiplayer whatsoever. My girl plays Willow all the time, nothing is wrong with her. Willow got a deserved nerf and many other characters need nerfs as well because there is no balance within the game. Everyone can pick any character, but some characters are useless. This does not make a good multiplayer game. For singleplayer, these characters were rewards, unlocks, which you had to play to obtain. But once again, this isn't singleplayer.

Well, again...you are assuming things when I never said them.  I do not want to just make the game a singleplayer game with friends.  I want it to be a multiplayer roguelike survival game.  I agree that we need balance chances to do this, but said balance changes should not be made specifically targeting griefing.  Griefing is done because people are jerks, so how about we stop said people from joining games.  This lets us focus balancing and content on what is best to get the roguelike survival experience.

Willow as-is is actually a poor character.  She was a better character when she was fire immune and had unlimited light.  Nerfing her didn't actually stop people from griefing, but instead just made it take a little bit more work.  In exchange, the character is now very rarely used and generally considered one of the worst characters in the game.  All because changes were made around griefing.

Continuing the path of balancing around griefing is a terrible one, and I highly doubt you're going to fine many cases where I will agree with such.

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18 hours ago, Ecu said:

Well, again...you are assuming things when I never said them.  I do not want to just make the game a singleplayer game with friends.

I'm drawing to conclusions based entirely of what you're saying. I never said you said any of this, but this is the impression I get from you when you say the things you do. You're asking for systems that are similar to singleplayer even though they were intentionally changed for multiplayer purposes. So basically, you're asking for singleplayer with friends. That however doesn't mean what I'm saying is true, just very likely based off of the things you've said.

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 I want it to be a multiplayer roguelike survival game.

I'm not sure if we're on the same page with what rogue-like game stands for. A rogue-like game is a usually a dungeon crawler, procedurally, generated world or level, tile-based, turned based, while having permadeath. There is absolutely nothing rogue-like having someone come and burn your base down. Your base doesn't count as being a character.

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 I agree that we need balance chances to do this, but said balance changes should not be made specifically targeting griefing.  Griefing is done because people are jerks, so how about we stop said people from joining games.  This lets us focus balancing and content on what is best to get the roguelike survival experience.

Yes balance and changes HAVE to be done because of the possibility of griefing. Don't Starve Together is a multiplayer game. This is part of what we have to give up to have a multiplayer game which can be played on a public servers. This is what it means to balance a game around multiplayer. Singleplayer with friends works because you're playing with people who are your friends and wont intentionally try to sabotage you. Back to rogue-like, I'm not sure we're on the same page with it. You're also making it seem like protecting your base from being burned down from other players is like some sort of challenge. A challenge which barely has any reasonable systems in place to fight it, besides kicking, banning, and rollbacks.

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Willow as-is is actually a poor character.  She was a better character when she was fire immune and had unlimited light.  Nerfing her didn't actually stop people from griefing, but instead just made it take a little bit more work.  In exchange, the character is now very rarely used and generally considered one of the worst characters in the game.  All because changes were made around griefing.

Personally I think most characters are bad. Very few work with each other to do anything productive and some characters are just overpowered that there is no reason to play any other. These nerfs alone wont balance the game, there needs to be more work for all characters overall. All need exclusive crafts, all need exclusive benefits in a cooperative play style. I'm not sure why you think a simple change means we need to go back to square one because griefing wasn't entirely fix. The work has only been started, it still needs to be worked on to be entirely finished. With the way you and some of the community acted with change for multiplayer purposes, we will never get a single thing done in multiplayer.

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Continuing the path of balancing around griefing is a terrible one, and I highly doubt you're going to fine many cases where I will agree with such.

Welcome to multiplayer. This is how multiplayer games are balanced. People will always do whatever they can to exploit systems and get an advantage. It's the developer's job to make it as difficult as possible for those griefers, so everyone has a fun and fair experience playing the game. What good is a multiplayer game, where all your work can be set on fire from a newly joined player? That's a clear indication that there is no regards to multiplayer in this game whatsoever and I'd even go as far as saying the game is broken in public servers.

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4 minutes ago, Trenix said:

I'm drawing to conclusions based entirely of what you're saying. I never said you said any of this, but this is the impression I get from you when you say the things you do. You're asking for systems that are similar to singleplayer even though they were intentionally changed for multiplayer purposes. So basically, you're asking for singleplayer with friends. That however doesn't mean what I'm saying is true, just very likely based off of the things you've said.

I'm actually arguing against systems that I feel would be redundant and/or harmful to the game's design, not asking for systems that are strictly similar to singe-player.  The main difference is that I don't have any desire to see this game made into isometric Minecraft.  This game is a roguelike survival game, and as such I am going to argue from a design standpoint of keeping the game on such course.  

There are many discussions I see on the forums here regarding offering more base protections and better ways to keep your base safe, and as far as I'm concerned...that's rubbish.  Preferably, I want to see more mechanics that undermine your base and mix up the gameplay, forcing you to work together to rebuild or even move the base all together, as the world fights back against you.

10 minutes ago, Trenix said:

I'm not sure if we're on the same page with what rogue-like game stands for. A rogue-like game is a usually a dungeon crawler, procedurally, generated world or level, tile-based, turned based, while having permadeath. There is absolutely nothing rogue-like having someone come and burn your base down. Your base doesn't count as being a character.

Yes, you've given examples of typical roguelike games.  However, DST is not your typical roguelike game.  Generally speaking, you don't even have multiplayer roguelike games as they are generally a single player challenge.  DST attempted to break the mold with that and add multiplayer after tons of pestering from fans (despite initially saying it would never happen).  However, I agree that they didn't really prepare the design towards multiplayer all that well and many of their decisions show this.

That said, while I agree that the game should undergo an overhaul to rework the existing gameplay to better represent the roguelike gameplay, said changes should not be based on griefing.  If you focus your mechanic design around griefing, you only trap yourself.  Instead, there should be a system in place to allow administration to better vet players.  

In addition, the game should be overhauled to better represent the play experience over a single year of play, as typically speaking, that is how long an individual session lasts before reset.  Additional mechanics could be added for the later years to mix up gameplay and cause troubles to the player and their base, to allow longer play to continue.

17 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Yes balance and changes HAVE to be done because of the possibility of griefing. Don't Starve Together is a multiplayer game. This is part of what we have to give up to have a multiplayer game which can be played on a public servers. This is what it means to balance a game around multiplayer. Singleplayer with friends works because you're playing with people who are your friends and wont intentionally try to sabotage you. Back to rogue-like, I'm not sure we're on the same page with it. You're also making it seem like protecting your base from being burned down from other players is like some sort of challenge. A challenge which barely has any reasonable systems in place to fight it, besides kicking, banning, and rollbacks.

You don't balance mechanics around griefing, you do your best to eliminate those negative elements from the community all together and disincentivize said actions.  Just because the game is multiplayer, doesn't mean you should cave in to jerks and neuter the game mechanics as a result.  This method of thinking is really just poor.

19 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Personally I think most characters are bad. Very few work with each other to do anything productive and some characters are just overpowered that there is no reason to play any other. These nerfs alone wont balance the game, there needs to be more work for all characters overall. All need exclusive crafts, all need exclusive benefits in a cooperative play style. I'm not sure why you think a simple change means we need to go back to square one because griefing wasn't entirely fix. The work has only been started, it still needs to be worked on to be entirely finished. With the way you and some of the community acted with change for multiplayer purposes, we will never get a single thing done in multiplayer.

I disagree, sort of.  I don't disagree with the idea of doing a pass on all the characters to make them more balanced against each other (except Wes, he's supposed to be bad).  However, I disagree with the idea of giving every character unique crafts and trying to make all the characters cooperative.  Certain characters having unique things they can make is part of what makes said characters unique.  How you utilize said unique features in cooperation with each other is what makes this game fun.  I don't want to see requirements of having different characters because they provide vital abilities, as each character is reworked towards a cooperative role.  Not only does this kind of hamper creative choices (and well, destroys single player), but it also hurts PvP play.  I personally enjoy building my own base as Webber and then working with people to provide them spider resources to help us all survive.  It offers unique elements despite me not directly sharing the same base in many cases.

At the end of the day, we don't need the game to revolve around cooperative mechanics in order to make the game fun cooperatively.  The 20,000 some odd regular players on DST proves this, doubly so with survival mode as the primary play mode.

26 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Welcome to multiplayer. This is how multiplayer games are balanced. People will always do whatever they can to exploit systems and get an advantage. It's the developer's job to make it as difficult as possible for those griefers, so everyone has a fun and fair experience playing the game. What good is a multiplayer game, where all your work can be set on fire from a newly joined player? That's a clear indication that there is no regards to multiplayer in this game whatsoever and I'd even go as far as saying the game is broken in public servers.

Actually this is incorrect.  While multiplayer games do indeed try to close exploits, it is generally in regards to someone acquiring more resources than they should be able to during a given amount of time.  Whether those resources be experience, power, gold, etc.  Griefing and exploiting are not the same thing.  

Generally speaking, negative behavior attempting to ruin the experience for other players is handled via moderation and not game mechanics.  People report said negative elements and they are dealt with accordingly.  As Klei cannot likely afford to hire a full team of moderators for their official servers, I've recommended a solution that will detect people regularly acting poorly, so that they can be restricted by server hosts from joining said servers.  This is the appropriate way to handle negative behavior in a video game.

You don't design game mechanics around people's negative behavior...that's just absurd.

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1 hour ago, Ecu said:

I'm actually arguing against systems that I feel would be redundant and/or harmful to the game's design, not asking for systems that are strictly similar to singe-player.  The main difference is that I don't have any desire to see this game made into isometric Minecraft.  This game is a roguelike survival game, and as such I am going to argue from a design standpoint of keeping the game on such course.  

Not sure what would be redundant or harmful. Not sure how anything what I've said had anything to do with Minecraft. Still you bring up roguelike, what is roguelike to you? Define what roguelike means, because the literal meaning doesn't make sense with what you're defining it as.

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There are many discussions I see on the forums here regarding offering more base protections and better ways to keep your base safe, and as far as I'm concerned...that's rubbish.  Preferably, I want to see more mechanics that undermine your base and mix up the gameplay, forcing you to work together to rebuild or even move the base all together, as the world fights back against you.

So essentially, you're asking for more difficulty. This could be why you want this griefing to be part of the game. You want people's bases on fire and broken down, so there ends up being no lategame, just a goal you struggle toward which is never achieved. Losing becomes inevitable. You may believe that's fun, but I highly doubt others will agree. If you haven't noticed, the trend of this game has been about adding more lategame content and allowing people to survive more easily past all seasons. The multiplayer version is getting less and less about how many days you've survived and more about what you've created and accomplished.

I enjoy the current direction of the game and I'm sure that's all intended. What you're asking for is more singleplayer content. You're asking for more PvE. I, on the other hand, want more cooperation and even the possibility of balanced and workable PvP. Like I said, this is the fight we're having, we have people who want a game to go this way while others want it the other way. The thing is, the game is going toward the way I want, thankfully, but not completely because of the community backlash from people wanting a game that was never promised. This is why I'm here in the forums, I'm disappointed that important aspects are still being pushed aside which could make this game worth playing and recommended.

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Yes, you've given examples of typical roguelike games.  However, DST is not your typical roguelike game.  Generally speaking, you don't even have multiplayer roguelike games as they are generally a single player challenge.  DST attempted to break the mold with that and add multiplayer after tons of pestering from fans (despite initially saying it would never happen).

What I tried to explain is that what you're saying is rogue-like actually isn't rogue-like at all. You're using this term but I still am not able to understand what you mean by it. As I said before, having someone burn down your base in a matter of seconds is not rogue-like. This is nothing that states this is considered rogue-like. Typically rogue-like are games where characters die permanently. So what you can consider rogue-like is playing wilderness mode in DST.

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That said, while I agree that the game should undergo an overhaul to rework the existing gameplay to better represent the roguelike gameplay, said changes should not be based on griefing.  If you focus your mechanic design around griefing, you only trap yourself.  Instead, there should be a system in place to allow administration to better vet players.  

You're making it seem like battling griefers ends up breaking the game. Please explain how. I never said I wanted the removal of the fire system. I instead asked for fireproof walls and gates to keep people out of your protected base so it can't be burned down. This adds to preparation, it adds to gameplay. Building a wall in this game is a joke currently, was fun to do and upgrade until you find out it's almost completely useless. Also there is a administration in servers, you have hosts and voting for bans. How did that work out?

Doesn't work, people are against it and it literally takes away from gameplay because instead of having features which fight back griefings internally, you're doing it externally, which wastes your time and ruins immersion. This is Don't Starve Together, not Don't Starve or Be Banned. We need to bring communities together, not push them away. I'm sure everyone at one point burned a base down just to see if they could in a public server. And no, I don't want to hear no Saints that never done a single thing wrong in DST before. I will call you a liar for that.

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In addition, the game should be overhauled to better represent the play experience over a single year of play, as typically speaking, that is how long an individual session lasts before reset.  Additional mechanics could be added for the later years to mix up gameplay and cause troubles to the player and their base, to allow longer play to continue.

Ah and this quote just proves what I'm saying. You want the game to be about a one year experience. However, the game is not going toward that type of experience nor do I want it to be like that.

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You don't balance mechanics around griefing, you do your best to eliminate those negative elements from the community all together and disincentivize said actions.  Just because the game is multiplayer, doesn't mean you should cave in to jerks and neuter the game mechanics as a result.  This method of thinking is really just poor.

You telling people how they should play and banning them if they do otherwise is fascist. This is not how you build a community. Lets say I made a PvP server, which I have, and had players running around burning bases. I agree with why they're doing it, it's a PvP server. However, it's a very overpowering thing to do. I therefore don't blame the player, I'm blaming the game and it's mechanic because it simply isn't balanced. I shouldn't have to ban and kick them because they're not playing to my standards. I also don't want to be on 24/7 to make sure they're not doing something I'm not entirely agaisnt. Sorry, that method of thinking is poor.

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I disagree, sort of.  I don't disagree with the idea of doing a pass on all the characters to make them more balanced against each other (except Wes, he's supposed to be bad).  However, I disagree with the idea of giving every character unique crafts and trying to make all the characters cooperative.  Certain characters having unique things they can make is part of what makes said characters unique.  How you utilize said unique features in cooperation with each other is what makes this game fun.  I don't want to see requirements of having different characters because they provide vital abilities, as each character is reworked towards a cooperative role.  Not only does this kind of hamper creative choices (and well, destroys single player), but it also hurts PvP play.  I personally enjoy building my own base as Webber and then working with people to provide them spider resources to help us all survive.  It offers unique elements despite me not directly sharing the same base in many cases.

I never said that characters would require one another. However teaming up should give you a better chance of surviving and more benefits. Remember, you're playing Don't Starve Together. Playing solo will be possible, but difficult and not recommended. What, you think you can't team up in a PvP server? That's the best part of PvP, teaming up with people who may back stab you when you least expect it. It's why I enjoy PvP gameplay above all.

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At the end of the day, we don't need the game to revolve around cooperative mechanics in order to make the game fun cooperatively.  The 20,000 some odd regular players on DST proves this, doubly so with survival mode as the primary play mode.

That doesn't prove anything. I play the game and play survival mode and still want cooperative mechanics.

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Actually this is incorrect.  While multiplayer games do indeed try to close exploits, it is generally in regards to someone acquiring more resources than they should be able to during a given amount of time.  Whether those resources be experience, power, gold, etc.  Griefing and exploiting are not the same thing.  

Actually, griefers intentionally use aspects of the game in unintended ways to irritate and aggrevate other players. Bascially they use exploits to annoy and irritate you. Like for example, burning a base down because of a flawed mechanic for multiplayer with no ways to prevent it.

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Generally speaking, negative behavior attempting to ruin the experience for other players is handled via moderation and not game mechanics.  People report said negative elements and they are dealt with accordingly.  As Klei cannot likely afford to hire a full team of moderators for their official servers, I've recommended a solution that will detect people regularly acting poorly, so that they can be restricted by server hosts from joining said servers.  This is the appropriate way to handle negative behavior in a video game.

You don't design game mechanics around people's negative behavior...that's just absurd.

Why do you feel like the only answer is managing people? Stop managing them and start blaming the mechanics that allow them to do the things they do. The person who uses a mechanic in an unintended way is not a jerk, he's just smart. Also why are you treating negative behavior as a crime? I'm getting sick of games getting offended with "negativity". Welcome to the real world, where people will act and say things that you may or may not like. There is nothing wrong with it, if you don't like it, mute them.

Telling people how to behave is ridiculous. If the host wants to manage something like that, let them, but some hosts like me, don't have the time nor care to get involved in other people's lives. If the mechanics were non-exploitable, there wouldn't be any problems. It's as simple as that. The problem needs to be fixed at the root, you're pointing fingers at the wrong people.

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1 hour ago, Trenix said:

So essentially, you're asking for more difficulty. This could be why you want this griefing to be part of the game. You want people's bases on fire and broken down, so there ends up being no lategame, just a goal you struggle toward which is never achieved. Losing becomes inevitable. You may believe that's fun, but I highly doubt others will agree. If you haven't noticed, the trend of this game has been about adding more lategame content and allowing people to survive more easily past all seasons. The multiplayer version is getting less and less about how many days you've survived and more about what you've created and accomplished.

I enjoy the current direction of the game and I'm sure that's all intended. What you're asking for is more singleplayer content. You're asking for more PvE. I, on the other hand, want more cooperation and even the possibility of balanced and workable PvP. Like I said, this is the fight we're having, we have people who want a game to go this way while others want it the other way. The thing is, the game is going toward the way I want, thankfully, but not completely because of the community backlash from people wanting a game that was never promised. This is why I'm here in the forums, I'm disappointed that important aspects are still being pushed aside which could make this game worth playing and recommended.

You keep speaking the phrase that I want single-player content, yet when I've outright stated that I would prefer to see the game more balanced around multiplayer content.  Are you even reading what I write?

I do indeed what more difficult challenges and do indeed wish to see things akin to your base burning down more prevalent in the game, however, do not confuse that for wanting griefing to remain a part of the game.  I've specifically stated multiple times on these forums that I wish to see griefing handled via server administrators and wish to give better tools to said server administrators to vet the players on their servers to weed out griefers.  How is that me condoning griefing?

1 hour ago, Trenix said:

I never said that characters would require one another. However teaming up should give you a better chance of surviving and more benefits. Remember, you're playing Don't Starve Together. Playing solo will be possible, but difficult and not recommended. What, you think you can't team up in a PvP server? That's the best part of PvP, teaming up with people who may back stab you when you least expect it. It's why I enjoy PvP gameplay above all.

How about stop making assumptions on my positions unless I actually state as such?  You've done this multiple times now and honestly it is getting quite tedious to continue correcting you.  I merely stated that PvP would be detrimentally affected by changes that specifically focused on teamwork, which it will.  Sure, you can team up in PvP and I never stated otherwise.  However, I don't believe the game should revolve around character mechanics specifically playing off each other (more than they already do, anyways).  We already have characters that are better at different roles, yet play perfectly fine solo as well.  This is how the characters should be designed.

That said, sure they aren't perfect as-is and perhaps could use some reworking.  Just not in the direction you're suggesting.

1 hour ago, Trenix said:

Actually, griefers intentionally use aspects of the game in unintended ways to irritate and aggrevate other players. Bascially they use exploits to annoy and irritate you. Like for example, burning a base down because of a flawed mechanic for multiplayer with no ways to prevent it.

Griefers exist to ruin the experience for players.  In DST, that can take form as someone burning down another person's base down.  In a game like League of Legends, it may mean feeding the enemy kills.  In a game like World of Warcraft, it might mean dragging high level creatures onto low level players.  All in all, the goal is the same...use the game mechanics to ruin the experience for other players.  This problem isn't due to game mechanics, but the people themselves.  So...punish them.

2 hours ago, Trenix said:

Why do you feel like the only answer is managing people? Stop managing them and start blaming the mechanics that allow them to do the things they do. The person who uses a mechanic in an unintended way is not a jerk, he's just smart. Also why are you treating negative behavior as a crime? I'm getting sick of games getting offended with "negativity". Welcome to the real world, where people will act and say things that you may or may not like. There is nothing wrong with it, if you don't like it, mute them.

Telling people how to behave is ridiculous. If the host wants to manage something like that, let them, but some hosts like me, don't have the time nor care to get involved in other people's lives. If the mechanics were non-exploitable, there wouldn't be any problems. It's as simple as that. The problem needs to be fixed at the root, you're pointing fingers at the wrong people.

I blame people because it is people causing the problems.  I agree, people using mechanics in unique ways to accomplish goals is indeed smart.  However, using mechanics to ruin the experience for other players intentionally...is being a jerk.  It isn't the mechanic of fire people are having problems with specifically, it is the jerk using the mechanic to ruin the experience for them.  As such, if said jerk can no longer play the game with them, the problem is solved.  The mechanics need not be touched.

Sure, you could fix the mechanics, but it is a cycle.  People that are willing to ruin the experience for others, will find various methods to do so, which means continually working against these people and slowly ruining mechanics that are fun in their own right.

I'm not completely opposed to concepts like your flameproof gate.  I am hesitant to back such a feature for fear it will allow defences to be too strong, and as such I feel the world needs a method to combat the defence in order to maintain the difficulty.  It is a feature I'd be willing to endorse if all the kinks were worked out.  However, I will not support destroying the fire mechanic (virtually) or adding other such in-game solutions to griefing, unless they are just really minor changes that do not change the overall feeling of the mechanics.

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Um I think I have a simpler solution the greifing problem why don't they set the default to an invite system so if some one joins your game and lets say your the admin you get access to a log of let say there past games for a week or however most people do games. this log will have the what past servers they joined and how long or if they left or were kicked. Since the way I understand it greifers like to do their shennigans then immedilaty well with this log you for yoursef can judge if they are a giefer or not so if they have like a lot of games with short playtimes it could hint at them being a griefer. If the admin(s) are not there then the remaining players get to vote instead if he joins or not and the majority win. This way people can police their own games and players also before a greifer joins a game. Now a greifer might still slip through in that case your going  to have to wait for the kick. but this seems like a simple way to not nerf world mechnics and keep people happy 

now the only real danger here is that this does not apply to kiel servers since those are all very public

but if they do this invite mode where you can see their past history of the games they played and name you can vote yourself or the players if this guy is a griefer or not before they even join the game their is a game with this system in place and the player base is really nice so what do you guys think.

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Passworded servers and group-only servers are a thing; group-only more or less achieves that suggestion.
This is more about making public servers playable.

Also feel like I should mention: As far as public servers go, only lasting a year is likely due to that being the usual max amount of time invested players can keep going before someone burns everything down or someone comes along to reset the server when the people who built it are offline.
Personally think Endless mode should be removed and the reset mechanic for Survival should be changed, so people who put the work in to make a server survive don't get completely screwed over simply because they had to sleep and one person came on wanting to reset someone else's progress.
That's more obnoxious and repelling than it is challenging. It's basically saying 'don't play on public servers even though the parent company hosts several'.

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14 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Passworded servers and group-only servers are a thing; group-only more or less achieves that suggestion.
This is more about making public servers playable.

Also feel like I should mention: As far as public servers go, only lasting a year is likely due to that being the usual max amount of time invested players can keep going before someone burns everything down or someone comes along to reset the server when the people who built it are offline.
Personally think Endless mode should be removed and the reset mechanic for Survival should be changed, so people who put the work in to make a server survive don't get completely screwed over simply because they had to sleep and one person came on wanting to reset someone else's progress.
That's more obnoxious and repelling than it is challenging.

Yeah, I am well aware that the reason people tend to only last a year is because that is the length of time people can reasonably play.  However, I don't think there is a good solution that isn't private/group servers.  The reset mechanic is fine when you consider everyone dieing being the end of the session and therefore starting a new one.  That is in line with how roguelikes generally work.  However, because the game is public multiplayer (as on the official servers), it just kind of results in single sit down sessions.  Mind you, I don't really think this is a bad thing.

I have a ton of fun sitting down, meeting up with a few random people and playing a game of survival for 6-10 hours.  I do similar sessions with random people from the Factorio discord channel occasionally and even if we don't actually beat the game, it is still a blast and I never mind starting over the next time as the experience is what makes it fun.

This is kind of why I feel it would be best to focus the design around a single year primarily and then for future years add mechanics that mix things up to keep players on their toes, steadily increasing difficulty through various methods until everyone dies.  This would give better gameplay for current single sit down sessions, while also keeping things interesting for those playing privately or with a group.  All in all, I think it is the best for everyone.

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ok but i wanted the invite system to be defualt so that it would be considered public unless you set in option to not allow it all if you catch what I mean

3 hours ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Also feel like I should mention: As far as public servers go, only lasting a year is likely due to that being the usual max amount of time invested players can keep going before someone burns everything down or someone comes along to reset the server when the people who built it are offline.

Yeah well there all always going to be problems

 

3 hours ago, Ecu said:

This is kind of why I feel it would be best to focus the design around a single year primarily and then for future years add mechanics that mix things up to keep players on their toes, steadily increasing difficulty through various methods until everyone dies.  This would give better gameplay for current single sit down sessions, while also keeping things interesting for those playing privately or with a group.  All in all, I think it is the best for everyone.

agreed though hope that the diffculty ramp stays comfortavle we don't want to strain a alreadly tight rope on people who play alone or with one or two people

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1 minute ago, Donke60 said:

agreed though hope that the diffculty ramp stays comfortavle we don't want to strain a alreadly tight rope on people who play alone or with one or two people

I don't think you should ever really be comfortable in the game.  At least not too comfortable.  I feel like the game should be regularly throwing challenges at you so that you have to stay on your toes to survive.  Right now, it is a bit too easy to just kind of coast through after a bit of work during Autumn.

I've seriously had sessions where I prepped well during Autumn and just kind was able to do very little extra all the way through Summer.  I'd like to see a higher difficulty when compared to this, but not strictly a more hounds or higher health enemy difficulty.  More along the lines of disease, fire, etc.  Where your stability is what is attacked, forcing you to get back out and fighting to survive.

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Yea, I really want a scaling challenge. After a while, the world should actively reject your existence and all the changes you've tried to make to it. Like...maybe Dfly's children grow to a flying state and spread outward to hunt in a similar way to what Dfly itself did in the original RoG.
Swarms of locusts that track down plant food sources and devour them. Some way of preventing it, but make it challenging. That or improve the disease mechanic, it's currently nothing but a minor annoyance.
Something with spider nests to make them less reliable.
Ect.
Challenges from the game itself are great. I feel like that's the real difference between this and something like MC, rather than ease of griefability: Once you learn it, the game just isn't challenging. Even board games are based around some level of challenge, usually pitting you against other players, but in balanced way.

Anyway.
Challenge.
Challenge is good when it feels fair and you can face that challenge in some way.
Though...they should probably implement player-count challenge scaling before going ahead with anything extreme.

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Well i i'm just a little cautios since most of its been just give it more followers and buff its health 50,000 there we go thats balence as it seems to be going right now since they don't have a scale system

 

The only way I can think of making spider nests less reliable is making an eventual guratet of if you trigger that nest you will have to fight the spider queen which one is fine but if there are in a cluster two and three queens thats going to be a survival problem but fun all the same

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Well i i'm just a little cautios since most of its been just give it more followers and buff its health 50,000 there we go thats balence as it seems to be going right now since they don't have a scale system

 

The only way I can think of making spider nests less reliable is making an eventual guratet of if you trigger that nest you will have to fight the spider queen which one is fine but if there are in a cluster two and three queens thats going to be a survival problem but fun all the same

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On 11/22/2016 at 8:01 PM, Ecu said:

You keep speaking the phrase that I want single-player content, yet when I've outright stated that I would prefer to see the game more balanced around multiplayer content.  Are you even reading what I write?
I do indeed what more difficult challenges and do indeed wish to see things akin to your base burning down more prevalent in the game, however, do not confuse that for wanting griefing to remain a part of the game.  I've specifically stated multiple times on these forums that I wish to see griefing handled via server administrators and wish to give better tools to said server administrators to vet the players on their servers to weed out griefers.  How is that me condoning griefing?

By what you say, you give the impression that you want the game based off of single-player. You want the game to be more balanced around multiplayer, so what changes or additional features do you want to see to improve multiplayer? The changes I've proposed improve multiplayer and balance it around multiplayer. What you ask for has no regards to balance, which is something a singleplayer game can get away with while a multiplayer one can't. Using server administration is poor, doesn't work, and has proven to not work. It's like society, regulating it to insane standards and expecting it to not be miserable and fail. More ways of controlling people is going to kill off servers and I've seen it here and even in other games.

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How about stop making assumptions on my positions unless I actually state as such?  You've done this multiple times now and honestly it is getting quite tedious to continue correcting you.  I merely stated that PvP would be detrimentally affected by changes that specifically focused on teamwork, which it will.  Sure, you can team up in PvP and I never stated otherwise.  However, I don't believe the game should revolve around character mechanics specifically playing off each other (more than they already do, anyways).  We already have characters that are better at different roles, yet play perfectly fine solo as well.  This is how the characters should be designed.

That said, sure they aren't perfect as-is and perhaps could use some reworking.  Just not in the direction you're suggesting.

I mean I'm not going to be here quoting everything you say and then using it against you repeatedly only for you to tell me that I'm talking about something that wasn't mentioned or even talked about even when it was. Just a circle we're going in that gets nowhere. At this point I don't even know how to respond or what part of the discussion we should talk about. You say things that clearly indicate you want singleplayer with friends by the things you say, only to say no, you want multiplayer balance. Multiplayer balance to you is retaining singleplayer content and adding to it. I mean, sorry but I think we're at a dead end here.

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Griefers exist to ruin the experience for players.  In DST, that can take form as someone burning down another person's base down.  In a game like League of Legends, it may mean feeding the enemy kills.  In a game like World of Warcraft, it might mean dragging high level creatures onto low level players.  All in all, the goal is the same...use the game mechanics to ruin the experience for other players.  This problem isn't due to game mechanics, but the people themselves.  So...punish them.

And that's exactly why I don't play those games. You deal with griefers, punishing them takes time, they never are fully weeded out, so why bother with systems that don't work? Playing a game like HOTS for 30 minutes and knowing you're going to lose because someone griefs. You know what, thank you for bringing up MOBAs. They're a perfect example of how a genre failed to target griefing. Some remedy it better than others, while some like HOTS did little to nothing about it.

Go play HOTS and take it by example. In HOTS it's basically about what team griefs the least. Everyone is expected to play a certain way and NONE of them do it, resulting in a poor and unsatisfactory gameplay in 90% of your games. Even when I win, I'm not satisfied because of how poor the match is in even diamond league. It's a stressful game, no one comes home from work to be stressed and it's exactly why the game is failing and why everyone I know has already quit the game.

As for World of Warcraft. I've heard of it, never seen it happen, never happened to people I know, and griefing like that is so minor that it's pointless and not very effective.

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I blame people because it is people causing the problems.  I agree, people using mechanics in unique ways to accomplish goals is indeed smart.  However, using mechanics to ruin the experience for other players intentionally...is being a jerk.  It isn't the mechanic of fire people are having problems with specifically, it is the jerk using the mechanic to ruin the experience for them.  As such, if said jerk can no longer play the game with them, the problem is solved.  The mechanics need not be touched.

Sure, you could fix the mechanics, but it is a cycle.  People that are willing to ruin the experience for others, will find various methods to do so, which means continually working against these people and slowly ruining mechanics that are fun in their own right.

Go play chivalry and see how people exploit mechanics to get the upper hand and the developers do not a single thing to stop it and instead claim it's intended, when they clearly aren't. When developers embrace exploits and treat it like an actual feature, the quality of the game drops and makes me look elsewhere. Just how I feel about it. It's like placing a trap over a rabbit hole and catching it without bait. Sorry, this cycle is how you design a polished and balanced game which makes it enjoyable.

 

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14 hours ago, Trenix said:

By what you say, you give the impression that you want the game based off of single-player. You want the game to be more balanced around multiplayer, so what changes or additional features do you want to see to improve multiplayer? The changes I've proposed improve multiplayer and balance it around multiplayer. What you ask for has no regards to balance, which is something a singleplayer game can get away with while a multiplayer one can't. Using server administration is poor, doesn't work, and has proven to not work. It's like society, regulating it to insane standards and expecting it to not be miserable and fail. More ways of controlling people is going to kill off servers and I've seen it here and even in other games.

So me proposing a specific system to detect griefing is somehow me supporting singleplayer mechanics?  I'm quite confused here.

Regarding server admins, actually it works quite well in a majority of online games.  The people running the server are usually responsible for breaking the rules.  The servers that are poor at managing their community, tend to die...while those that manage it well tend to thrive.  This is actually evident in the numerous online games, from MMOs to MOBAs (hell, even Minecraft).  My suggestion was simply to give better tools for authors to vet people.  Why is that somehow a bad thing?

Regarding game balanced, I feel you're just daft and don't actually know much about game design.  Mechanics do not need to involve all the players at once in order to benefit a multiplayer game.  When designing game mechanics, your goal is to create the experience you with players to experience in a way that is fun for them to experience it.  Given that DST's survival mode has something like 10-15 thousand regular players, it must be doing something right.  My aim when critiquing designs/suggestions is to focus on honing the experience already presented within the game.

Please tell me specifically, how my suggestions here on the forums, are directed at singeplayer play over multiplayer.

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13 minutes ago, Ecu said:

So me proposing a specific system to detect griefing is somehow me supporting singleplayer mechanics?  I'm quite confused here.

No, you're the one wanted Willow to remain the same as she was in Singleplayer. You're the one that wants fire to remain the way it was in singleplayer. You're the one that doesn't want Characters to benefit each other by cooperating. You're the one that brought the attention of someone who's soloing in PvP, like I care that they have a disadvantage for not playing with someone else. You're the one who doesn't want bases to have a strong defense like in singleplayer. You're the one who wants the game to end after a year similar to singleplayer.

You just change the topic to suit it to your needs and act like you made some sort of point. You also didn't say anything about detecting griefing, all you said was for better tools for admins to stop griefing. Adding more tools for a host is not a multiplayer mechanic, its a mechanic only intended for a host. We already have tools, they work terribly and people don't have the time to watch over their server 24/7.

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Regarding server admins, actually it works quite well in a majority of online games.  The people running the server are usually responsible for breaking the rules.  The servers that are poor at managing their community, tend to die...while those that manage it well tend to thrive.  This is actually evident in the numerous online games, from MMOs to MOBAs (hell, even Minecraft).  My suggestion was simply to give better tools for authors to vet people.  Why is that somehow a bad thing?

Actually it doesn't, so many people end up breaking the rules, just because they can, so player base drops while management becomes overwhelming to the point that they use systems to filter players for them. It's a bad thing because it hurts the community, takes away immersion, and doesn't resolve the underlying problem.

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Regarding game balanced, I feel you're just daft and don't actually know much about game design.

Funny, cause I know game design. I actually programmed games, multiple times. But please go on and lecture me. You rather regulate people by force over than fixing game mechanics that can easily be broken. The game should tell people how to play, not a person. Why? Because people wont follow it. I don't blame them. But we need them, they are the community. This is the other thing you need to realize. If you keep kicking out people who don't play up to your rules and standards, you're without a player base.

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Mechanics do not need to involve all the players at once in order to benefit a multiplayer game.

Like am I really the only person that keeps seeing you write up stuff that makes it dead obvious you're asking for singleplayer with friends? Like how much more obvious can you be.
 

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When designing game mechanics, your goal is to create the experience you with players to experience in a way that is fun for them to experience it.  Given that DST's survival mode has something like 10-15 thousand regular players, it must be doing something right.  My aim when critiquing designs/suggestions is to focus on honing the experience already presented within the game.

Alright, well my experience isn't fun when I play a cooperative multiplayer game which has very little cooperative features involved. Your statistics mean nothing, they're completely meaningless. You're using a statistic that I'm part of and yet disagree with what you're saying. You don't even know how many people have quit and are waiting for the game to finally have some better cooperative features. You don't even know how many people are playing private servers over public ones, possibly far more private over public. You only account to a statistic that you're including people who disagree with you.
 

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Please tell me specifically, how my suggestions here on the forums, are directed at singeplayer play over multiplayer.

Just read above with what I've quoted.

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3 minutes ago, Trenix said:

No, you're the one wanted Willow to remain the same as she was in Singleplayer. You're the one that wants fire to remain the way it was in singleplayer. You're the one that doesn't want Characters to benefit each other by cooperating. You're the one that brought the attention of someone who's soloing in PvP, like I care that they have a disadvantage for not playing with someone else. You're the one who doesn't want bases to have a strong defense like in singleplayer. You're the one who wants the game to end after a year similar to singleplayer.

I love how somehow wanting mechanics to be similar as they are in singleplayer somehow means that I want a singeplayer game.  Does that mean that everyone that plays FPS games want singeplayer, as originally FPS games were singleplayer and therefore sharing the mechanics means you obviously only want it to be singeplayer?  Do you really not grasp how absurd you are being here?

Yes, I want to keep the fire mechanic as it is (for the most part), as I feel that it is a good mechanic for a roguelike survival game (for either singleplayer or multiplayer).  I am not opposed to small tweaks to the system, however, drastic changes specifically because of griefing is wrong.

13 minutes ago, Trenix said:

You just change the topic to suit it to your needs and act like you made some sort of point. You also didn't say anything about detecting griefing, all you said was for better tools for admins to stop griefing. Adding more tools for a host is not a multiplayer mechanic, its a mechanic only intended for a host. We already have tools, they work terribly and people don't have the time to watch over their server 24/7.

I now can only believe that you haven't been reading my posts.  I've been mentioning the idea of Klei adding better methods to detect griefers throughout this thread, multiple times.  Said detection methods are the very tools I want to offer admins to better manage their server.

The system would work by tracking actions a player does during a game session and by using metrics over a period of time, be able to detect a pattern of griefing.  Obvious actions would be stuff like burning down other people's buildings in PvE.  This would be rather straightforward to implement, as it would only require tagging burning objects with the user that started the fire, keeping said tag when it propagates.  Hell, if vote kicking was fixed to disallow voting unless you've been in game for at least 10 in-game days, you could probably even just add reasons to vote kicking, and use said metrics to better identify griefers.

Regardless of the method, it would assign a naughtiness score to the user and admins would have the ability to blacklist/whitelist people based on said score.  Said score would fade over time played (maybe some over real time), to account for people who have learned not to be jerks and wish to play with others.

25 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Like am I really the only person that keeps seeing you write up stuff that makes it dead obvious you're asking for singleplayer with friends? Like how much more obvious can you be.

It is exactly comments like this that make me feel you do not actually understand game design.  Just because you have programmed before, doesn't mean you have a firm grasp on actual game design.  Hell, a lot of game developers don't have firm grasps on game design and it shows in their end product.

That said, let me ask you something...how is singleplayer with friends not multiplayer?  I certainly do not have a desire to design DST mechanics regarding something akin to Minecraft, where you have large playerbases per server.  DST isn't that kind of game, it is a roguelike survival game.  Essentially the standard design of DST is along the lines that you get together with a few people and play through as long as you can (either due to time or dieing), and then that session is over.  The next time you play, it's a new run.

I don't have a desire to make the mechanics specifically focused on a singelplayer design, however, I do have a focus on making said mechanics around a small group of people trying to get as far as they can in the time they have.  You might call this singleplayer with friends, and if that is what you want to call it...sure.  I then want to make it singelplayer with friends.

However, that does not mean that I do not account for multiplayer actions in game mechanics I design.  It is just that in a game like DST, said multiplayer mechanics will not take the same form as say multiplayer mechanics in a MMO.

36 minutes ago, Trenix said:

Alright, well my experience isn't fun when I play a cooperative multiplayer game which has very little cooperative features involved. Your statistics mean nothing, they're completely meaningless. You're using a statistic that I'm part of and yet disagree with what you're saying. You don't even know how many people have quit and are waiting for the game to finally have some better cooperative features. You don't even know how many people are playing private servers over public ones, possibly far more private over public. You only account to a statistic that you're including people who disagree with you.

Perhaps DST isn't for you then.  I don't agree with changing the game to suit people who don't enjoy the experience the game was designed around.  So, if you don't like the small group roguelike survival game concept...find another game?  Alternatively, perhaps you could actually just sit down and learn to mod the game and implement the style of play you want, yourself.

If Klei was to sit down and follow your style of design decisions, this would be the route I would go.  I would either mod the game to better suit the experience I wish to achieve, or I would quit (depending on numerous factors).  Currently, however, they seem to be sticking to the small group roguelike survival concept.  So time will tell, I suppose.

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...y'know, when you repeatedly insult people by saying over and over that they're just too dumb to have ideas as amazing as yours, it gets harder to take anything you say seriously. Other people have been looking at game design just as long as you have if not longer. Other people have actually been in it, or on both sides of the multiplayer scene and have reason to have been analyzing all this long before single player Don't Starve even existed, not to mention looking at games and their communities in general to improve their ability to design, so it seems kinda crappy for you to resort to that.
But hey, I'll bite anyway.

Bad as the griefing might be in a game like League, regarding it being a multiplayer game, it's still a lot better than here. In League, your team can't attack it's own structures, teammates, ect; even champions/items that can interact with allied champions are very few in number, and on the ones that can be either positive or negative, the person receiving the effect remains at least halfway in control.
Haven't played the newer ones, but Age of Empires, Dawn of War, and games similar to them had team-locks; you could start a game on one team, and couldn't suddenly change teams and wreck everything...or, if the lock was off, you could, allowing you to make strategic alliances. A griefing counter-measure, retaining player and host control.
...hell, let's go to rouge-likes. Risk of Rain. People love that game. It was practically celebrated. And in it, you can't shoot eachother in the back; bullets pass through allies and strike enemies.
FPS games tend to be the same. When they aren't, most have a way to turn off friendly fire.
Point being, 90% of decent multiplayer games, either the worst griefing that you can do is limited to not contributing/playing badly...or, even in a game like Minecraft (since that keeps getting brought up), the players make it that way, and servers that don't follow suit tend to be temporary, get-rich-quick schemes that quickly die out because they can't retain interest. As effective and easy as those might be, they're the best way to drive new people off by making the game and its players look shallow.

Basic stuff like that is most of what DST is missing and in need of. The basics of the basics for making a multiplayer game work...and if it's implemented on a team-based system, it would even benefit PvP. Logic similar to RTS's would leave the same amount of control to the players, just adds optional safeguards. And for Cooperative servers, automatically put everyone on the same team.
Heck, player names already get assigned colors automatically. Let's get some use out of that.
Again, noone's asking for forced changes, or turning this into Minecraft. We're asking for a game designed for multiplayer. Like it or not, the systems behind this game are still based squarely on single player logic, with an occasional multiplayer item tacked on, like bosses getting AoE attacks.
On the player side of that, Klei hasn't done anything to make the game fundamentally multiplayer since making PvP optional.
DST's a good game. I hope it gets more challenging, and noone wants another Minecraft; they'd go to Minecraft if they did. But it needs more focus on design.

 

Servers and retainment is interestingly diverse. A few 'permanent' servers do exist even now. Strictly Unprofessional is probably the most well-known out of the stable ones. But they do die out. Moriamo Insieme, in the earlier days of the Beta, was a constant community both when it had mods and when it didn't. We'd get together, start a world, and usually keep it going for a while. Try some crazy stuff together.
As far as I can tell, servers dying out usually falls to the host rather than the player-base. In the previous case, they started having physical issues and just couldn't keep up with a constantly changing thing like DST between all the other life events. Other hosts get bored with the game, and leave. Or, they can't be on 24/7, griefers pillage the place, players leave, and hosting becomes pointless so they shut the place down.
I mean, I even ran a server for a little while, but my schedule was(and is) too chaotic to keep it up, given how absolutely necessary constant staffing is on a public server.
So, I guess my goal is to make staff less necessary. To give the tools to make players able to manage themselves.
...again, here's hoping we get a Vote-Kick rework.

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54 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

...y'know, when you repeatedly insult people by saying over and over that they're just too dumb to have ideas as amazing as yours, it gets harder to take anything you say seriously. Other people have been looking at game design just as long as you have if not longer. Other people have actually been in it, or on both sides of the multiplayer scene and have reason to have been analyzing all this long before single player Don't Starve even existed, not to mention looking at games and their communities in general to improve their ability to design, so it seems kinda crappy for you to resort to that.
But hey, I'll bite anyway.

I don't recall stating that anyone was dumb, I stated that they didn't grasp game design very well.  There are tons of incredibly intelligent people out there, that develop software even, that don't grasp game design very well.  The nuances of game design are their own monster and it isn't specifically related on intelligence.

I've also never stated that I'm the top authority on game design.  I merely stated that I feel that I have a rather solid grasp on survival game design and mechanics.  I've been directly studying this kind of game heavily for around 5-6 years as one of my primary hobbies and I research a majority of the titles that come out in this genre.  Beyond that, I've been researching game design for roughly 20 years and have contributed my designs to multiple games over these years.  So I feel confident in saying that I have a reasonable amount of experience, wouldn't you agree?

1 hour ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

~snip remaining to keep post condensed~

I don't disagree with the general idea of implementing better multiplayer-centric mechanics into the game.  The primary issue I have is creating mechanics specifically for the purpose of countering griefing.  I wouldn't really have any problem with friendly fire being togglable.  However, I do disagree with trying to make burning things down griefer-proof.  I personally feel being able to accidentally burn your own stuff down is a good thing, similarly so with allies accidentally torching the whole thing.  It makes you plan out things a bit better.  Yes, it is indeed an avenue for griefing, but I feel it is better to tackle that in other ways.

That said, I have stated support for fireproof gates that can be locked, if they can be done in a way that doesn't just make walling in too good.  Similarly so, I wouldn't mind implementing locks for chests, that improve their durability and restrict access.  These kind of features would give some more control to the players as to how they protect themselves over the long term.

The key issue for me is when you put so many restrictions on a mechanic that it loses it's purpose, strictly because of griefing.  At that point, I feel it is better to either remove the mechanic completely (as it cannot serve it's purpose), or leave it as it was intended and tackle griefing another way.  Since fire is quite deeply tied into DST's mechanics, I feel the second option is appropriate here.

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42 minutes ago, Ecu said:

So I feel confident in saying that I have a reasonable amount of experience, wouldn't you agree?

On 11/26/2016 at 10:37 AM, Ecu said:

Regarding game balanced, I feel you're just daft and don't actually know much about game design.

It just doesn't seem right to dismiss the ideas of others that easily when presenting your own. Implying that you understand it while saying that someone else doesn't just because they disagree with you.
Different people have different ideas, they can be good and bad based on vision or merit, but everyone here's putting thought into their ideas.

Anyway, yea. Not even asking for major changes, I agree with you there. The flammability thing was asking for a nerf on player fire-starting to give more chances to counteract it like you'd have against world-set fires, or more prevention methods specifically against players starting them, or other things of that nature. Fire as far as Summer, mobs and other game-initiated aspects go is pretty much perfect. Those could even be harder (and I think should be) and still be fair.
I'd really like to see something like marble/moon-rock chests, lockable like you mentioned, maybe much easier to destroy when they're unlocked. Takes a while, but it'd be an actual prevention method.

I'd like to see more craftable player traps/more usability from the current ones, like burying them and leaving only a few small indications on the ground, so players would actually trigger them. I feel like that'd make PvP feel more appealing, even to people who want to cooperate. And give another use to a team-joining system.
Attach some traps to structures, someone comes along to destroy your walls/chests/machines, hits them with a hammer...bam! Teeth marks on their face for a week. Of course, damage can be changed based on whether the target is a mob or a player, that mechanic already exists in-game...so a trap wouldn't 1-hit Maxwell, for instance.
It'd serve as a way of enforcing the current 'stay out in the wild and prove yourself before joining us' thing that people currently like to do in public servers. Trap the base up, let people onto the team through a vote after they live a few days and have some supplies of their own, traps ignore teammates. Weed out the jerks and resource drainers.

TL;DR I mainly want a fighting chance against the griefers like we have against the world. If that means using similar tactics against them...that'd be fitting for the game. But griefers don't tend to have bases, so you need to be able to do something against them personally, or frustrate them just as much as they frustrate you, ect, even when you're not there to babysit your base.
This topic's pretty neat for that purpose. We've come up with several new ideas.

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7 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Yea, it just doesn't seem right to dismiss the ideas of others that easily when presenting your own. Implying that you understand it while saying that someone else doesn't just because they disagree with you.
Different people have different ideas, they can be good and bad based on vision or merit, but everyone here's putting thought into their ideas.

I don't generally dismiss things out of hand.  It is more that I decide whether or not I feel that said idea would fit the vision of the game it is being suggested for, and what the pros and cons are when implementing said idea.  That said, I don't know everything and am generally the first to admin I'm wrong when proven as such.  Just that in this case, I'm confident about my stance.

16 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Anyway, yea. Not even asking for major changes, I agree with you there. The flammability thing was asking for a nerf on player fire-starting to give more chances to counteract it like you'd have against world-set fires, or more prevention methods specifically against players starting them, or other things of that nature. Fire as far as Summer, mobs and other game-initiated aspects go is pretty much perfect. Those could even be harder (and I think should be) and still be fair.
I'd really like to see something like marble/moon-rock chests, lockable like you mentioned, maybe much easier to destroy when they're unlocked. Takes a while, but it'd be an actual prevention method.

I'd like to see more craftable player traps/more usability from the current ones, like burying them and leaving only a few small indications on the ground, so players would actually trigger them. I feel like that'd make PvP feel more appealing, even to people who want to cooperate. And give another use to a team-joining system.
Attach some traps to structures, someone comes along to destroy your walls/chests/machines, hits them with a hammer...bam! Teeth marks on their face for a week. Of course, damage can be changed based on whether the target is a mob or a player, that mechanic already exists in-game...so a trap wouldn't 1-hit Maxwell, for instance.

TL;DR I mainly want a fighting chance against the griefers like we have against the world. If that means using similar tactics against them...that'd be fitting for the game. But griefers don't tend to have bases, so you need to be able to do something against them personally, or frustrate them just as much as they frustrate you, ect, even when you're not there to babysit your base.

I'm not completely opposed to some tweaks to mechanics (which I have said repeatedly).  I just feel that caution should be taken when altering mechanics specifically to combat negative player behavior.  So, done carefully, I would even support tweaks to fire mechanics (such as smoldering delay on structures or something).

I agree with needing to make traps better handled for both PvE and PvP, to make them more appealing.

All in all, I definitely feel the game needs improvements and some of said improvements would indeed specifically address multiplayer gameplay.  From my perspective, however, the game is a small group roguelike survival game.  As such it is as one liked to call it "single player with friends" for the most part.  Therefore I see suggestions such as "give all characters co-op specific mechanics" as poor suggestions.

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