Remove Summer Smolder

[Donke60]

If you build flingos your base won't catch fire and if it's hard it should stay and your reward is your stuff doesn't get destroyed 

[Residays]

No. Don't remove it because "people avoid it so much", games should not be re-balanced because of popularity.

You have ice flingomatics which last long if you only use them when needed, during the first summer you should have a reasonable amount of gold already with all the possibilities available, Pig King, Graveyards, Boulders, Earthquakes...

You can also use non-combustible structures such as stone walls, and if you don't have an ice flingomatic you can just extinguish it yourself or with water balloons. By the time you're in summer, you should have enough food and/or medicine and summer gear. Even then, cooked common food such as berries/carrots are enough to heal from those hand burnings. Willow is also resistant to fire, give her an use. Hell, she even gets cold while insane, so you can use that to your advantage.

And smoldering only happens in places where you are, so you would notice, you have both visuals and sounds that alert you.

The game gives you enough ways to prevent that, if you can't keep up with it, the game doesn't deserve to be changed because of it.

Let's not forget that:

• Campfires, Red Hounds and more can already do similar and sometimes worse outcomes.
• Don't Starve Together is a rogue-like challenging survival game. Smoldering is another task to be aware of and keep up with, so it actually is a challenge.

[Yuuko]

Games certainly should be re-balanced based on how successful a game feature is, and how much player engagement it brings to the game.

Beef taming - for example - is highly criticized for how time consuming it is to complete, how costly it is to maintain, and how easily that work is lost.  Most of the conversations I see on the forums here include comments about how they've never done it, or did it but it felt like it was way too challenging for the reward.  I got my girlfriend to play with me once when the feature was released, she loves pet systems and such in games, but when we found out how much work it was she quit.

DST needs to compete with many other games and part of that means streamlining the experience.  New end game content like Toad, Bee Queen, and Fuelweaver are added to give experienced players a reason to stick with the game over alternatives.  Players aren't afraid of a challenge but there is a pattern of player engagement, difficulty, clarity, and satisfaction that needs to be checked to provide the best experience possible.

I'm not saying Summer Smolder is going to ruin the game, or that people will quit over it - but when you consider what the player engagement, clarity, and satisfaction are for this feature it really comes up flat.  I played DS before summer and smolder were added, and I've always questioned how much thought was put into adding it to the game.  It is a very chaotic hazard, and random things happening "just because" are rarely satisfying features, hence why so many people (pretty much every thread I see here and every person I talk to) base in caves through the season.

Again - I don't need help living through summer.  I know how flingo work.  I also know that there is no reason to deal with summer or smolder so I just go into the caves...  I was very happy when the Oasis re-work happened and they cut smolder from the Oasis.  My base building is now almost exclusively in Oasis just to avoid that feature...  Again - the theme is pretty consistent - people aren't engaged and challenged by summer smolder, they avoid it.

Quote

• Campfires, Red Hounds and more can already do similar and sometimes worse outcomes.

Campfires are a player construction, not a game hazard.  Red Hounds (and hound waves) are engaging, and you receive a warning when they would occur which gives the player clarity of the situation they are in.  There is also a reward aka meat, teeth, and red gems but also the player satisfaction of facing the hound wave and winning.

Compare to Summer Smolder - there is a visual cue which may or may not be on screen, no warning, and there is no satisfaction - which is why most people just base in the caves. 

[G0dsend]

Ummmm... I disagree. I for one find that smoldering mechanic is interesting because you find ways to avoid it. Me and my friends enjoy the fact that I make a summer vacation home in the oasis or the caves to avoid smoldering. To avoid it you have to either build the expensive ice flingomatics or no which locations do not suffer from smolder, and the fact that you have to build a separate home and pay attention to the features of a season like that separates this game from other survival games. For the record there are other ways to deal with summer smolder like flingos or just simply paying attention and having a luxury fan, but making a separate home is easier and more fun since people often times want to explore the caves or see what an oasis base would be like in the much longer running servers. (In this case: avoiding it is dealing with it. Building a base in a smolder free area is a clever use of mechanics that new players would not be aware of.) What I believe residays was saying is that people are not avoiding it because it is a bad mechanic or it is unliked as you would suggest. Removing a mechanic because people actively found mechanics to avoid it makes absolutely no sense and under that logic we should remove hounds because most people make death traps for the hounds where they just stand there and watch them die.

If you personally do not like something doesn't mean the community is in agreement with you... You should be aware of this before you make a post in the suggestions section, and yet you are getting defensive and argumentative with everyone who says as much....

[Pyr0mrcow]

I see the problem being that people are less prepared/familiarized given the nature of DST.
The Whirly Fan and Pretty Parasol were added and are visible in the crafting tab, so players know about those options. What about making some anti-fire options visible (though not craftable) earlier?
Could also add visual ques. M/Goose stays a bit into summer and blows out a fire with its wings, that sort of thing. 'Oh, if I kill this thing maybe I can do the same!' A newer player would probably die immediately, but at least they'd know of another option for dealing with game mechanics.

[Yuuko]

I don't think avoiding smolder by simply isolating yourself 100% from the mechanic by basing in caves / oasis (which is a very popular method of dealing with it) is the same as building a tooth trap which requires resources to set up and maintain, and still involves you in the hound attack event.  In fact - one of the downsides to playing pure caves that I've heard some people express is the lack of hounds teeth.

I did try to play some games with Smolder turned off, as was discussed previously.  The results are kinda interesting.  I still wanted to base in the Oasis or Caves.  The reason was Antlion.  If I don't base in the Oasis I still have to start there to fish up the desert goggles, so it makes sense to at least have a camp set up near the Oasis to stay fed and chilled for that.  It took me 3 days to finally fish up both goggles recipes.  Fortunately I had a fridge pre-fabbed so I could stow some extra food and rotate cold stones as I fished.  The other game I just went down into the caves where the damage he causes can actually be helpful - the rocks if mined give you about a full stack of rocks, and it doesn't take long to clear them.

As a result of this play through, where I ended up in the Oasis and Caves anyway - I'm inclined to think there is something a bit more wrong with Summer than just Smolder.  I still think Summer could use a renovation fully willing to toss aside all established mechanics to make a unique experience that is more engaging, or at least less punishing in and of its self - allowing the world to be punishing to you, with the season being an augment on that punishment, rather than the punishment its self.

While I think Summer needs to be re-worked - playing without Smolder didn't change 1 thing that I think really makes this a moot point.  You gotta go to the caves sometime - there is a whole other world down there with tons of content.  Moving from Spring top side to Summer Caves gives you a good reason to abandon base construction top side and explore the caves to locate extra resources such as - which cave entrance matches best to farm for light bulbs, access splumonkey farms, ruins crafting, and toadstool spawn points.  This is just a crusade I'm going to abandon, as there is enough good content to experience while avoiding summer to overlook this problematic mechanic I disagree with.

[Pyr0mrcow]

5 hours ago, Shosuko said:

The other game I just went down into the caves where the damage he causes can actually be helpful - the rocks if mined give you about a full stack of rocks, and it doesn't take long to clear them.

You can also use those as barriers, which block/confuse most mobs, even depths worms. Very useful addition to an underground lair. And if the Antlion isn't fed, you should get enough duplicate stones to actually make decent-looking barriers.

 

5 hours ago, Shosuko said:

While I think Summer needs to be re-worked - playing without Smolder didn't change 1 thing that I think really makes this a moot point.  You gotta go to the caves sometime - there is a whole other world down there with tons of content.

This though.
I can personally deal with summer really well, but I still base in the caves because it's so much more interesting to me. The atmosphere, the food sources, the wave attack, the ruins and its equipment, all of it. If it weren't for starting supplies, hound teeth, boss drops, and riding a beefalo down, I'd probably never see daylight.
They did try to get people to leave for a while with the Antlion boulder rain, but...that really just made the caves more appealing.
That likely wouldn't be changeable without some major alteration, but I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Different people have different tastes, caves are my thing, a lot of people never even enter them.

[Donke60]

Also summer can be the driving force to enter the caves so I think it's nessacary because most think it's too hard but they rather go down then deal with things combusting. I've seen a lot of people go days/years with out going out there that's a lot of locked content to miss 

[The Luck Duck]

I agree in most aspects to your argument. Summer is 100% the weak point of this game. By Default on a blind game people will call BS on day 55+ for their base burning down. RoG kinda was a bit better with this issue by having Spring starts. This means starting in spring you won't have as much Base build up or love into your world so it getting taken away on day 20 isn't that bad. On the other side DST always has a Autumn start by default. Then there is SW dry season which didn't have smoldering but instead had volcanic eruptions. And the 3 warnings to 95% of anyone playing would be enough to scare them away from their precious base. This method that SW uses would introduce a new challenge of trying to survive the heat whilst away from base in a way that better suited the DS fashion of doing whatever it takes to survive. whilst RoG summer just kills you without warning unless you read a wiki or something. At least Klei has 2 new things to do in summer in DST: 1. Cave exploration and 2. Antlion. Granted Caves you could explore during summer in RoG but now the heat doesn't affect anything down there. Antlion is pretty much the Volcano of SW. Tough since he has a proper warning that should be enough to scare people away from base. Plus he is a unique boss and is one of the new main aspects of summer that presents at least one thing to do. I almost feel like summer needs a Warning of some sort. Like how in SW there was small rare windstorms that occurred in Mild season before the giant Hurricane season. Maybe one solution is to add an early threat that can easily burn your base down if your not careful or adding more options to counter base fires so that players will more likely be prepared in the future.

[StealthBeast]

Shosuko (OP) has been struggling greatly in capturing the difference between smolder and the other challenging mechanics in the game.

Freezing... Insanity... Hound Attacks... Charlie (darkness)... Heat exhaustion... Giants... The core thing separating these very good obstacles from the current lackluster "smoldering" system is that there's a spectrum of options available to the player, across varying skilled players, i.e. Primitive options available to newer players, advanced options available to more experienced players with more knowledge who are willing to take greater risks.

• At the lowest, remedial tier, freezing can be dealt with by igniting things in one's environment. A notch above that, a novice tier, it can be dealt with by strapping two rabbits to one's head. A notch above that, a moderate tier, it can be dealt with via a winter hat. A notch above that, a proficient tier, it can be dealt with via tam o shanter and thermal stone.
• At a remedial tier, insanity can be dealt with via flower picking. At a novice tier, it can be dealt with via tophat. At a moderate tier, it can be dealt with via strategic mushroom usage. At a proficient tier, it can be ignored entirely in lieu of harvesting nightmare fuel.
• Remedial tier, hound attacks can be run from/pulled to other mobs. Novice tier, they can be fought with an axe/spear. Moderate tier, they can be pulled into tooth traps or bee mines. Proficient tier, they can be annihilated by dark swords or other advanced weapons.
• Remedial, Charlie can be dealt with via campfires. Novice, torches. Moderate, lanterns and mining helmets.
• Novice, overheating's dealt with via shade from trees and whirly fans. Moderate, Straw Hats and umbrellas. Proficient, Eyebrellas and Floral Shirts.
• Remedial, Deerclops is dealt with via running your ass off. Novice, pulling Clops to various mobs. Moderate, Ham Bat + armor = Tanking. Proficient, Dark Sword + Walking Cane = Kiting.

This goes for basically all of the game's intelligently designed obstacles. Rain, travel, cooking, nursing, resurrection, etc. They all have different tiers to how to handle them and we could sit here arguing all day about where each option stands on the "tier chart" so to speak, which is wonderful. This is not the case for smolder.

Smolder can be dealt with via ice fling o matics, or basing in either the caves or oasis.

That's not a gradual incline of creative, varying options; It's an ultimatum. It's not an organic problem you have to solve depending on your preparation, luck of the world gen, and/or chosen character perks; It's a multiple choice question with a black-and-white, right-or-wrong answer.

Additionally, it's very difficult to create a base that can support a community of people on Day 1 Spring servers anywhere except the caves or the oasis, and entirely impossible to create such a base on a Day 1 Summer server. Seeing as most of the public community can't proficiently thrive in only the caves or only the oasis, Day 1 Summer/Spring public servers are unviable, and as a result it's an entire half of the game that the pub community almost never gets to interact with.

What a shame.

 

Do I think we should remove smolder? No. I think they're onto something really good here. But smolder comes off as a very incomplete game mechanic. What we need are additional options, and it's not difficult to picture what some of these options could be like. (A bit tangential, so click below if you need an example.)

Spoiler

Off the top of my head, what if there was a non-ice-based fling o matic, a sprinkler system, but it needed to be crafted next to ponds? Now swamp basing, which was "meh" before is suddenly a particularly shining option. What if there was a biome that was flooded like in Shipwrecked, all year round except in the summer, when such land is conducive to farming and there's no smolder there? What about a new type of craftable wet turf, where anything you put on it can't catch fire, but everything on it suffers the "wet" effect and the player's movement speed is slightly slowed? What if you could extinguish smoldering items by running over them with a whirly fan, and we introduced an "endothermic whirly fan" that could extinguish entirely flaming structures just by running by them? Wickerbottom says the 'Deconstruction Staff' "-appears to rewind time on an object", so what if it could also be used as an AoE to turn burnt structures back to normal?

Or we could take the opportunity to expand on character perks. What if 'The End is Nigh!' book also summoned a massive splash of local downpour that extinguished fires and drenched everything? Or if we don't want to modify an existing book, how about a brand new book, a "wind" book, which blows out fires and maybe summons some tumbleweeds/a local dust storm or something? What if my Willow buff, involving the 'Endothermic Torch' were implemented as an official feature? The ghosts of newbs are renowned for starting fires, be it by haunting or by their presence triggering natural summer smoldering, but imagine if it was reversed, where they were a fire deterrent, and what if this ghostly effect applied to Wendy's twin sister, Abigail? Lucy looks a lot like a fire axe, and Woody shows sadness towards burnt trees, so what if Lucy could be used to put fires out somehow? What if Webber could craft a special silk turf, and structures placed on top of this turf would be covered in cobwebs that protected them from rain and sunlight? What if Maxwell's shadow puppets would try to put out a smoldering structure by hand much like a player would? What if another condition to Willow's insanity is that fires around her wouldn't stay lit very well, which would be a deficit in the winter but a substantial buff in the summer. What if WX could put out the roaring fire of a structure with his bare metal hands just as easily as others put out smoldering structures?

That being said, if smolder was never to be expanded on, and I had to choose between either smolder forever being like it is now or smolder being removed entirely, I'd vote for its removal, at least from Don't Starve Together. It grinds very crudely against the general community, and as I said, it basically forces pubs to exclusively be Day 1 Fall servers. I think smolder's removal would spark an entire movement for Day 1 Spring pubs. And what could be better than that?

[Lumina]

The best idea i saw about summer smolder was this one :

- Don't remove it. Make it a special weather.

 

If you have, let's say, 2 or 3 summer smolder weather in a season (in average), you could decide "ok, i'll go exploring cave during some days to avoid the bad weather", but will not need to spend all the summer in cave. You could run for your base when the weather start, and limit the risk. This, because it changes your behaviour, will make summer smolder more dynamic. Of course you still have possibility to build a ice flingomatic, build in cave, build in oasis, but you have more space to do none of this, and keep a classic base that you'll just avoid some days in the season.

Even better, if you make it as a temporary weather, you can :

- add beneficial effects that happen during it, like rain making crop grow faster (but more outside of the base, here)

- add a way to control season (in my mod, i'm making staff that could change weather, but it could be a weather machine that wilson could build), allowing you to stop a bad weather at a cost (or trigger it), since you'll have more weather you can want to control

[LadyAzure]

Personally in Summer I have a summer base in Oasis, there I really do not care if things smolder. I just stay away from my megabase during this time. If you stay away then 9 times out of 10 your base is fine. I keep a watermelon farm under ground close by so I can make pops and the garden does not burn to the ground. Then hang out at the lake and fish most my days. Its really not that bad.

[StealthBeast]

On 9/4/2017 at 0:32 PM, LadyAzure said:

Personally in Summer I have a summer base in Oasis, there I really do not care if things smolder. I just stay away from my megabase during this time. If you stay away then 9 times out of 10 your base is fine. I keep a watermelon farm under ground close by so I can make pops and the garden does not burn to the ground. Then hang out at the lake and fish most my days. Its really not that bad.

Shosuko's point isn't that summer smolder is difficult to cope with, it's that summer smolder doesn't contribute to the fascination of the game, rather, that it does the opposite.

[LadyAzure]

Well it can be switched to less, so that would be the only other option to try and get rid of it.