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Grass hoppers and Spring-leg suit


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With the latest update seemingly showing that Klei's kind of running low on great ideas (possibly, who knows really, it might just be in prep for something bigger and better), here's one small boon I thought that could be cool in the real game:

Spoiler

grasshopper.png

Grasshoppers would spawn from Grass tufts during Summer and despawn at them when dusk approaches, kind of like Butterflies do. They would be as small as bees and would jump around like frogs, with their jumping rate increasing when a player approaches them. A way to kill them/obtain them would be to either catch them with a bug net, which would also require team work, since they run away from you very quickly. Ranged weapons would not work on them and in case of the boomerang you would just have the boomerang fly off or something. When you catch about 12 of them, you would be able to craft this thing:

Spoiler

spring_leg_suit.png

It would require 12 Grasshoppers or their legs as items dropped from them upon death. The suit itself would have 30% protection from physical attacks (because it's not really covering your whole body, as it's just a giant spring, held up by smaller springs), increase your movement speed by 10% and would have 750 durability. The suit's feature would be to spring away enemies that hit you 1 - 2 tiles away from you, which could be useful for beating a bunch of opponents which are ganging up on you (especially useful for clearing out spiders or the full moon event). This is also made to incentivise staying in the overworld during Summer. While I strongly would like Dragonfly to also become a Summer giant again, even if she only stays at her arena the entire time, this could be a good start in the right direction for Summer. Plus, it makes sense, since grasshoppers are most commonly present during Summer time.

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I honestly don't think Klei is specifically running out of ideas so much as DST is not a flagship anymore.  It made it's money and I estimate that they are basically adding content they personally think would be fun to have.  It is probably a passion project at this point, with a majority of their development resources on new games.

Not really opposed to a new creature to give Savanna more life, however, I don't really think they should be immune to ranged weapons like you propose.  Additionally, I think the spring suit is kinda meh.  It feels really awkward as a concept and gives a whole lot of benefits (damage reduction, speed bonus, and knockback?).  Making it out of the grasshopper legs as well seems awkward unless said legs actually are made of springs.  All in all, I think this needs some work.

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On 11/25/2016 at 5:14 PM, Ecu said:

1) I honestly don't think Klei is specifically running out of ideas so much as DST is not a flagship anymore.  It made it's money and I estimate that they are basically adding content they personally think would be fun to have.  It is probably a passion project at this point, with a majority of their development resources on new games.

Not really opposed to a new creature to give Savanna more life, however, I don't really think they should be immune to ranged weapons like you propose.  Additionally, I think the spring suit is kinda meh.  It feels really awkward as a concept and gives a whole lot of benefits (damage reduction, speed bonus, and knockback?).  Making it out of the grasshopper legs as well seems awkward unless said legs actually are made of springs.  All in all, I think this needs some work.

1) Well, that sucks then, doesn't it? If you take out ANR, there is nothing much in terms of new content between DST and DS, apart from some niche things and a few changes. Yeah. the whole thing took ages to fully reprogram into multiplayer, but it still doesn't mean it should have been left half-baked, because you yourself said that the game needs a decent overhaul. Most existing content is nowhere near well balanced for multiplayer. It takes more than a simple "lets just add double the health for everything and nerf this and that" to balance it well, but alas caves took way too long. DST is a product in and of its own, which is about half the price of the original game. Might be good enough for what it costs, but for what it initially aimed to deliver, there's a lot more to balance.

2) Well, the speed boost is extremely small, considering it takes up chest slot, it only has small damage reduction, has quite the low health (750 * 0.7) and requires a bunch of a kind of resource that is difficult to obtain. The whole point of ranged weapons not working on the Grasshoppers (also I suggested these guys to be not only in Savanna, but also in Grass biome because they spawn from grass (so, they could spawn in desert, forest and mosaic too) and to be exclusive to Summer. Summer is the aim here (and not a particular biome), which btw is a season not worth going through, demonstrating further how the game's current game design very much sucks) is to make it so that it would require team work and a tool that is only rarely used; bug nets, and to, as a result, make it a difficult task to catch these mf-ers AS A TEAM. Besides, since it's a tiny hopping creature, the ranged weapons not being useful against these creatures would make some bit of sense anyway. And awkward? The meat effigy requires beard hair, health and boards, even though its texture shows bones, rope and wood bark or logs as its components (and possibly grass due to the whole animation upon attuning/crafting it in DST).

/\ Now THAT is some quality game design, if you ask me.

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On 11/25/2016 at 6:14 PM, Ecu said:

I honestly don't think Klei is specifically running out of ideas so much as DST is not a flagship anymore.  It made it's money and I estimate that they are basically adding content they personally think would be fun to have.  It is probably a passion project at this point, with a majority of their development resources on new games.

I don't know, they would have to be pretty damn dumb to just ignore their most played and most likely best selling game to focus on projects that most likely have no future and will never have DS tier following behind them.

I am not saying they shouldn't try new things but they clearly struck gold with DS and DST and there is nothing quite like it and they should focus mainly on making this game great. They have 17k people playing currently. They should try to aim for the 50k player mark I think and the way to do that would be to make the game have as high replayability value as possible and making it challenging all the way through from start to finish so players never really get bored of it. I have a few ideas in mind on how to achieve this that I will be posting soon.

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7 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

/\ Now THAT is some quality game design, if you ask me.

I agree with the concept that quite a few of Klei's recipes and the like don't make a whole lot of sense.  Doesn't mean future content should also not make a whole lot of sense, lol.

Rather than making the grasshoppers unable to be affected by ranged weapons, I think it would just be better to require grasshoppers as part of the recipe.  This is akin to catching rabbits.  This way you still have the need to catch the grasshoppers via a net and/or traps still, yet if you just want to kill them, you still can.

That said, I still think a spring armor coming from grasshoppers seems awkward given the visuals you suggested for grasshoppers.  I think a more appropriate visual might be needed to accommodate your idea.

2 hours ago, Myself49 said:

I don't know, they would have to be pretty damn dumb to just ignore their most played and most likely best selling game to focus on projects that most likely have no future and will never have DS tier following behind them.

I am not saying they shouldn't try new things but they clearly struck gold with DS and DST and there is nothing quite like it and they should focus mainly on making this game great. They have 17k people playing currently. They should try to aim for the 50k player mark I think and the way to do that would be to make the game have as high replayability value as possible and making it challenging all the way through from start to finish so players never really get bored of it. I have a few ideas in mind on how to achieve this that I will be posting soon.

Actually it would make perfect sense for them to ignore DST in favor of new games.  Barring a complete overhaul to the game that could draw in completely new players, combined with ads and sales, DST is not likely to make them a whole lot more money.  Their upcoming titles will, however, and as such focusing on them is definitely more appealing.

While DST is definitely their most popular game, it isn't getting a whole lot of new regular users.  In fact, only an average of 10-15 thousand players are on at any given time.  While that is a significant number of users, they aren't continually generating much of a profit.  New games give an opportunity to generate full revenue, and even if they sell 1/10th as good as DST, they make more money than adding more content do DST would really.

More concurrent players doesn't actually really help DST make more money.  Since once you own the game, you're not continually generating income (except for random skin sales and that isn't much).  They would need more actual sales.  Even if they overhauled the game completely to appeal to more people, a lot of the increase in concurrent players will likely be from people who already own the game.

That isn't to say that I wouldn't love Klei to take the hammer to the game and smash out all the kinks, streamlining the roguelike survival experience for multiplayer.  I just feel like the route they are taking comes off as if they are just kind of making what they think is neat/fun to them, without a direct goal as to the overall gameplay.  Not a bad thing, mind you, just different.

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24 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I agree with the concept that quite a few of Klei's recipes and the like don't make a whole lot of sense.  Doesn't mean future content should also not make a whole lot of sense, lol.

Rather than making the grasshoppers unable to be affected by ranged weapons, I think it would just be better to require grasshoppers as part of the recipe.  This is akin to catching rabbits.  This way you still have the need to catch the grasshoppers via a net and/or traps still, yet if you just want to kill them, you still can.

That said, I still think a spring armor coming from grasshoppers seems awkward given the visuals you suggested for grasshoppers.  I think a more appropriate visual might be needed to accommodate your idea.

Yeah, you could have the actual grass hoppers be caught to be in the actual recipe, but what would they loot if you kill them then and what use would the dead loot have? Nothing at all? That's something you very much need to consider with new content, and since I really only had one idea I thought was great, this is what I had to conclude on.

As for aesthetics... Klei have made a lot of things even since the beginning of the game that seem way off from what they require in comparison to what their aesthetics actually present. And since you're one of those people who really truly want the game to stay simple, how would this be a bad thing? If we're going for meeting real aesthetics, you would need a whole bunch of new items and structures introduced to meet the aesthetics and possibly the functionalities of something like the Alchemy engine, Ice box, Ice flingomatic and possibly even the Divining rod and even more so if you're going for loot tables. If you don't want to over-complicate the game, the aesthetics vs the actual crafting recipe will almost always be marginally contradictory or simply impossible and/or nonsensical.

24 minutes ago, Ecu said:

Actually it would make perfect sense for them to ignore DST in favor of new games.  Barring a complete overhaul to the game that could draw in completely new players, combined with ads and sales, DST is not likely to make them a whole lot more money.  Their upcoming titles will, however, and as such focusing on them is definitely more appealing.

While DST is definitely their most popular game, it isn't getting a whole lot of new regular users.  In fact, only an average of 10-15 thousand players are on at any given time.  While that is a significant number of users, they aren't continually generating much of a profit.  New games give an opportunity to generate full revenue, and even if they sell 1/10th as good as DST, they make more money than adding more content do DST would really.

More concurrent players doesn't actually really help DST make more money.  Since once you own the game, you're not continually generating income (except for random skin sales and that isn't much).  They would need more actual sales.  Even if they overhauled the game completely to appeal to more people, a lot of the increase in concurrent players will likely be from people who already own the game.

That isn't to say that I wouldn't love Klei to take the hammer to the game and smash out all the kinks, streamlining the roguelike survival experience for multiplayer.  I just feel like the route they are taking comes off as if they are just kind of making what they think is neat/fun to them, without a direct goal as to the overall gameplay.  Not a bad thing, mind you, just different.

I know it makes perfect sense. But it sucks for those who already own the game and even more so for players who payed for it. And if they're going to keep the game up, it should really be in their responsibility to match their initial promises and make the game good in game design if they can afford it. But focusing away from it even when you have the budget to do so even for a while would be quite scummy. Good for business, but a scummy result for the player-base. And trust me, I don't expect them to work on the game forever, but I do expect them to work on it at the times they can in order to improve it, if not now, then after ANR to make it a decent experience in nearly if not all parts of the game. The current model really doesn't work for all the kinds of multiplayer set-ups and experiences you could have in terms of what was promised and what the intention of the game was (and is, if you look at this PS4 promotional video; they talk about the whole "everything is out to kill you" idea, which the recently added content doesn't really match).

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2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

As for aesthetics... Klei have made a lot of things even since the beginning of the game that seem way off from what they require in comparison to what their aesthetics actually present. And since you're one of those people who really truly want the game to stay simple, how would this be a bad thing? If we're going for meeting real aesthetics, you would need a whole bunch of new items and structures introduced to meet the aesthetics and possibly the functionalities of something like the Alchemy engine, Ice box, Ice flingomatic and possibly even the Divining rod and even more so if you're going for loot tables. If you don't want to over-complicate the game, the aesthetics vs the actual crafting recipe will almost always be marginally contradictory or simply impossible and/or nonsensical.

Sigh, I really don't enjoy repeating myself...but even if Klei indeed does not make things make sense always, it doesn't mean we should encourage more content that doesn't make sense.  So if you want grasshoppers to create spring things, then add springs to the visual of grasshoppers.  However, it wouldn't make much sense unless the grasshopper was mechanical as animals in the game don't generally have that kind of awkwardness really.

Not completely opposed to your idea for a new creature, but I think the armor doesn't make sense given said creature and as such, the idea should be overhauled in such a way that it does make more sense.  That's all.  Currently, it doesn't even fit within the wonky world of DST as it is.

2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

I know it makes perfect sense. But it sucks for those who already own the game and even more so for players who payed for it. And if they're going to keep the game up, it should really be in their responsibility to match their initial promises and make the game good in game design if they can afford it. But focusing away from it even when you have the budget to do so even for a while would be quite scummy. Good for business, but a scummy result for the player-base. And trust me, I don't expect them to work on the game forever, but I do expect them to work on it at the times they can in order to improve it, if not now, then after ANR to make it a decent experience in nearly if not all parts of the game. The current model really doesn't work for all the kinds of multiplayer set-ups and experiences you could have in terms of what was promised and what the intention of the game was (and is, if you look at this PS4 promotional video; they talk about the whole "everything is out to kill you" idea, which the recently added content doesn't really match).

I honestly don't see any promises that they haven't already achieved in the video you linked.  You might feel that they haven't achieved the difficulty to really make you feel like a roguelike survival game (I know I don't), but it is them who really decides what is the difficulty they are shooting for.  So I really don't think they owe anyone anything regarding this.

I would love to see a ton of work put into DST as well, but honestly I'm just not sure how reasonable that is.  Perhaps it is completely reasonable, as they may indeed be still focusing a lot on DST, however, given that they have two additional titles in the works right now, I'm questioning that.

Personally, I think it would be good if they could fix various issues regarding modding (such as island generation), so that mod authors could offer better options regarding content.  This way, even if Klei doesn't focus heavily on DST...the community could.

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3 minutes ago, Ecu said:

Sigh, I really don't enjoy repeating myself...but even if Klei indeed does not make things make sense always, it doesn't mean we should encourage more content that doesn't make sense.  So if you want grasshoppers to create spring things, then add springs to the visual of grasshoppers.  However, it wouldn't make much sense unless the grasshopper was mechanical as animals in the game don't generally have that kind of awkwardness really.

Not completely opposed to your idea for a new creature, but I think the armor doesn't make sense given said creature and as such, the idea should be overhauled in such a way that it does make more sense.  That's all.  Currently, it doesn't even fit within the wonky world of DST as it is.

But why not? Why not encourage it? I don't see how it's away from DS logic, considering a purple gem, which is a combination of firey and icey gem holds as a key to most nightmare fuel based craftables and somehow can hold teleportation feats. If you were going for much more of a complex realism, I would certainly agree, but if we're keeping simples in the game, who really cares and why should they care?

3 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I honestly don't see any promises that they haven't already achieved in the video you linked.  You might feel that they haven't achieved the difficulty to really make you feel like a roguelike survival game (I know I don't), but it is them who really decides what is the difficulty they are shooting for.  So I really don't think they owe anyone anything regarding this.

I would love to see a ton of work put into DST as well, but honestly I'm just not sure how reasonable that is.  Perhaps it is completely reasonable, as they may indeed be still focusing a lot on DST, however, given that they have two additional titles in the works right now, I'm questioning that.

Personally, I think it would be good if they could fix various issues regarding modding (such as island generation), so that mod authors could offer better options regarding content.  This way, even if Klei doesn't focus heavily on DST...the community could.

The game has deviated to something completely different than "everything is trying to kill you". It's deviated towards "you are out to kill everything if you want" for one and for a decently balanced multiplayer, there's still huge issues that you would not face in a single player game, like the game helping out newbies in some way at the beginning, in particular if they're joining in the middle of the goddamn winter or summer. Not being able to join during this time would mean that you can't join in the game nearby half the time or more in order to play without somebody coming to pick you up, whilst everyone else could be dealing with challenges of their own or simply being occupied with something half way across the map. Also the split-screen is non-existent for PC, which I've heard a lot of people have been calling out to be added and not having to pay for a whole another copy in order to play split-screen.

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I actually think the idea in general is actually pretty cool, although I think there are things that could be changed:

1: These new critters should be attackable with ranged weapons. With all ranged weapons being weak, slow or inefficient I think this would give more of a reason to make a boomerang than to go koalefant hunting.

2: The crafting recipe: I think 12 grasshoppers would be a lil too much, maybe uncreative too. How about instead, the suit would need 8 grasshopper legs and 2 live grasshoppers, and it would be a magic item. That way you'd need to both kill and capture them for it.

3: The suit's effects: Based on what I'm understanding, this suit gives 30% protection, 10% speed boost and knocks back attackers. That last part is good, but I think the speed boost should be just above a magiluminescence's, which would make the item a good replacement for walking canes for the unlucky people who couldn't get one. As a disadvantage, it could make the player "hop" instead of walk, making him move kind of like a clockwork knight.

4: Things I wanna add: Maybe the suit could make grasshoppers completely ignore you, allowing easy gathering of materials for another suit? Also, the suit would lose 0.33 durability every time the player "hops", and could be repaired with a sewing kit or other grasshopper legs.

 

I'm just giving you my opinion about this suggestion. The original idea is good, too.

On November 25, 2016 at 0:14 PM, Ecu said:

Making it out of the grasshopper legs as well seems awkward unless said legs actually are made of springs.

Meat effigies, Prestihatitators, Staffs (A.K.A gems on sticks), Night armors, football helmets and a few other things also have virtually nothing in their recipe that allows them to function. Your point being?

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