New Player-Friendliness

[Chromo]

This is my first post on the forums; Hi!

What I wanted to address was how the game is becoming more and more difficult for new players to pick up.

Grass Gekkos and Disease:

Imagine you've just found out about DST, and bought it due to the multiplayer aspect. You've died a few times before, but have started to get the hang of the game. You've set up your base. It's not much - but you're proud of it. However, the next time you go back on the world, when harvesting the grass, an explosion of stupid little green creatures lights up your screen with horror and dread. "My grass!" you exclaim, in a state of shock. You'd worked so hard to get through the game far enough to have a quaint little base of your own, but alas, your crops have become sentient.

After an hour or so recovering from this cruel betrayal, you jump back in, as eager as ever. You survive the winter, barely making it through. However, now you can see a little black patch on one of your berry bushes. What should you do? Shrugging, you leave it alone, assuming it is just a graphical glitch, or something you shouldn't be bothered about. 

~~~~~

5 days have passed, and you are heartbroken. Half of your berry bushes are gone, with naught but a piece of rot for you to remember them. Through your teary eyes, you continue to play, barely scraping by, and making it into spring, and then summer.

A BIG point; the Antlion.

You've made it to summer! You couldn't believe your eyes when your world was met with a saturated hue, and frogs no longer threw themselves upon you from the clouds. A friend has told you about overheating and wildfires; you are prepared. Your base - now rebuilt after you tentatively herded your gekkos into a pen - is sustainable and ready for the world ahead. You couldn't be more proud of yo-

What was that?!

A piece of text, that your character has never said before, about the ground. A mole boss? Earthquake? You have no clue! As you've done many times before, you craft your spear and log suit, and prepare to fight.

But this was no fight.

Not at all.

This was the Antlion.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your base is destroyed; your keyboard has been broken; your computer has been pulverised, and - in a fit of unquenchable rage - you have burnt your actual house down. Such an innocent game that had a very good, albeit challenging, learning curve, has turned into the reason you have mandatory therapy 10 hours a week.

FIN

 

Now this is obviously a giant exaggeration of real-life events (this is just meant to be a hypothetical situation), but imagine if this had happened to you when the vanilla singleplayer came out all those years ago! The newest additions to don't starve, as far as I can see, have just been a nuisance, and have added next to no content that affected the rest of the game; this makes it incredibly difficult for new players to get started, and really puts people off of the game.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to write more on these forums for some time to come.

tl;dr : The newest mechanics added to the game have been more of a nuisance than a fun addition.

[Fill-Lips]

I'm fine with grass geckos and disease.

With diseases, you get a warning if you harvest it while it's going bad, sometimes you don't catch it and sometimes you do, but it graphically makes sense. "It looks/sounds bad, so I should do something about it" is what usually one thinks when seeing it turn black or getting warned about it by your PC.

Grass geckos are basically moving, automated grass saplings, sure they can wonder off into oblivion, but grass drops!

 

The antlion however, I'm not fine with.

His earthquake is pretty hard to dodge and you are unsure what you are meant to do about it, since it's out of the blue and your PC gives a warning that tells you nothing about this angry entity.

Perhaps during early summer, you hear a loud antlion roar, so you get some idea that there is an entity messing with you?

[TemporaryMan]

1 hour ago, Chromo said:

Imagine you've just found out about DST, and bought it due to the multiplayer aspect. You've died a few times before, but have started to get the hang of the game. You've set up your base. It's not much - but you're proud of it. However, the next time you go back on the world, when harvesting the grass, you start starving to death because you forgot to eat or bring food with you.  You haven't dug up any grass, and are still running around the same biome that your base is in, picking the wild grass that grows there.  You have never set foot outside this first biome.  Unfortunately, by the time you notice you're starving, you've already lost half of the 40 health you had left after facetanking spiders without armor.  You run the fifteen paces back to base, ignoring butterflies resting on the flowers on the way, and barely make it back to base alive, but somebody else is rifling through the chest you store your food in.  You die again.

After an hour or so recovering from this cruel betrayal, you jump back in, as eager as ever. You survive the last day of winter, barely making it through the log-in process, after having been absent while a veteran lurking in a distant desert base carried your server through winter solo. However, now you can see a little black patch on one of your berry bushes, and when you pick it, you get a message about it being sick. What should you do? You ask about it in chat, and the veteran tells you it's diseased and should be re-planted.  Shrugging, you leave it alone, assuming it is just a graphical glitch, or something you shouldn't be bothered about. 

~~~~~

2 days have passed, and you are heartbroken. Half of your berry bushes are gone, with naught but a pile of ash for you to remember them.  The veteran asks if you remembered to build another lightning rod, whatever that is. Apparently, it's the thing they built on the other side of your base while passing through to drop off another shipment of telltale hearts.  You couldn't build one because you're all out of rocks, but your walls sure look impressive!  Through your teary eyes, you continue to play, barely scraping by, and making it midway into spring before quitting abruptly for no discernible reason.

A BIG point; the Antlion.

The new guys who joined two days after you quit made it to summer! They couldn't believe their eyes when their world was met with a saturated hue, and frogs no longer threw themselves upon them from the clouds. A friend has told them about overheating and wildfires; they are prepared, since the vet had some spare gears from the desert and made a trip to build a flingomatic and a second lightning rod. Your-now-their base - still without a grass farm, because rot and manure are "too difficult" to obtain - is sustainable and ready for the world ahead, though desperately short of rocks, since they've all been used to build concentric circles of walls whenever the base grew too large for its cramped confines. They couldn't be more proud of the-

What was that?!

A piece of text, that their character has never said before, about the ground. A mole boss? Earthquake? they have no clue! As they've done many times before, they craft their axe, and prepare to facetank in their pajamas.

But this was no fight.

Not at all.

This was the Antlion.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your/their base is slightly damaged, having only lost two chests and a section of that awful wall.  But hey, look!  Rocks!  They can finally build a hammer, hammer down the rest of the wall, and get even more rocks!  And to imagine, for a moment, they thought they might actually have to take up the vet's offer to move into the desert base!  Florid Postern 4 Life!  The vet apologizes for the antlion attack; they were in the caves, but they're in the oasis base now, and it shouldn't happen again.

FTFY

I whole-heartedly agree about disease just being a nuisance.  The geckos are pretty nifty, though, and I like the fashion goggles.  The oasis actually offers a way to accommodate newer players who aren't familiar with summer wildfires, if only we could convince them to build base there instead of the Postern.  There are creative uses for the boulders the antlion dumps in the caves.  And fishing for trinkets to appease the antlion is a low-skill activity that's pretty easy to teach newbies, and it reinforces lessons about fishing and giving trinkets to the pig king.  Oh, and lazy deserters.  Can't forget those.

Disease, though.  It's a leftover from when resource variants changed over time, and it doesn't really serve a purpose anymore.  I don't understand why it's still around.  It just means you can't afford to take an extended trip away from base (e.g. to the ruins), for fear that the first warning signs will come and go in your absence.

[Soulk]

2 hours ago, Chromo said:

This is my first post on the forums; Hi!

What I wanted to address was how the game is becoming more and more difficult for new players to pick up.

Grass Gekkos and Disease:

Imagine you've just found out about DST, and bought it due to the multiplayer aspect. You've died a few times before, but have started to get the hang of the game. You've set up your base. It's not much - but you're proud of it. However, the next time you go back on the world, when harvesting the grass, an explosion of stupid little green creatures lights up your screen with horror and dread. "My grass!" you exclaim, in a state of shock. You'd worked so hard to get through the game far enough to have a quaint little base of your own, but alas, your crops have become sentient.

After an hour or so recovering from this cruel betrayal, you jump back in, as eager as ever. You survive the winter, barely making it through. However, now you can see a little black patch on one of your berry bushes. What should you do? Shrugging, you leave it alone, assuming it is just a graphical glitch, or something you shouldn't be bothered about. 

~~~~~

5 days have passed, and you are heartbroken. Half of your berry bushes are gone, with naught but a piece of rot for you to remember them. Through your teary eyes, you continue to play, barely scraping by, and making it into spring, and then summer.

A BIG point; the Antlion.

You've made it to summer! You couldn't believe your eyes when your world was met with a saturated hue, and frogs no longer threw themselves upon you from the clouds. A friend has told you about overheating and wildfires; you are prepared. Your base - now rebuilt after you tentatively herded your gekkos into a pen - is sustainable and ready for the world ahead. You couldn't be more proud of yo-

What was that?!

A piece of text, that your character has never said before, about the ground. A mole boss? Earthquake? You have no clue! As you've done many times before, you craft your spear and log suit, and prepare to fight.

But this was no fight.

Not at all.

This was the Antlion.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your base is destroyed; your keyboard has been broken; your computer has been pulverised, and - in a fit of unquenchable rage - you have burnt your actual house down. Such an innocent game that had a very good, albeit challenging, learning curve, has turned into the reason you have mandatory therapy 10 hours a week.

FIN

 

Now this is obviously a giant exaggeration of real-life events, but imagine if this had happened to you when the vanilla singleplayer came out all those years ago! The newest additions to don't starve, as far as I can see, have just been a nuisance, and have added next to no content that affected the rest of the game; this makes it incredibly difficult for new players to get started, and really puts people off of the game.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to write more on these forums for some time to come.

tl;dr : The newest mechanics added to the game have been more of a nuisance than a fun addition.

The first time Deerclops appeared destroyed the base and killed me, on vanilla DS where there was only 2 seasons xDDDD

[spideswine]

Yeah this game is built on trial an error.

Grass gekkos spawn, so you learn to pen you grass next time and use the gekkos for grass instead(hell, they are generally better at it). Disease you run into once, figure it's a moronic mechanic, and turn it off next time you play.(they really should just disable it by default) As far as ant lion goes, sure the first time you won't understand what the deal is, next time you'll just run out of base.

[Chromo]

15 minutes ago, TemporaryMan said:

FTFY

As much as I agree that public servers are riddled with terrible players that have never even heard of the base game, this post is to support those people. They may seem insolent, but it just seems that way due to the fact that they haven't played the singleplayer version before this. What I'm trying to say is that these people would not be going on public servers and spamming "Weres Bayse?" if the learning curve of this game was so abrupt.

Steep learning curves are fine; most of my favourite games require a lot of gameplay to master. However, these new features have changed it to straight up cliffs and plateaus. This makes most people disinterested with the game as a whole, but they still want to play it; this is why they tend to rely on other people so that they can have a good gaming experience.

[spideswine]

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

As much as I agree that public servers are riddled with terrible players that have never even heard of the base game, this post is to support those people.

No.

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

They may seem insolent,

They are insolent.

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

but it just seems that way due to the fact that they haven't played the singleplayer version before this. What I'm trying to say is that these people would not be going on public servers and spamming "Weres Bayse?" if the learning curve of this game was so abrupt.

So play the game solo until you're not god awful at it.

The learning curve is fine, merely surviving is fairly easy. Hell you're aware of it,making fun of the fact that they can't even properly ask where base is.

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

Steep learning curves are fine; most of my favourite games require a lot of gameplay to master. However, these new features have changed it to straight up cliffs and plateaus

Disease and gekkos only meaningfully start spawning later on in game, generally past the first year, noobs generally don't make it that long, I'd say the most notable difficulty change is that bearger/deerclops are harder to facetank now.

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

This makes most people disinterested with the game as a whole, but they still want to play it; this is why they tend to rely on other people so that they can have a good gaming experience.

I can assure you that sitting in front of someone else's fridge and refusing to move while deerclops is roaring in the background makes the game worse for everyone involved. They are better off trying, failing and learning on their own than just sitting and being reliant on someone else.

[Chromo]

7 minutes ago, spideswine said:

Yeah this game is built on trial an error.

Grass gekkos spawn, so you learn to pen you grass next time and use the gekkos for grass instead(hell, they are generally better at it).

Disease you run into once, figure it's a moronic mechanic, and turn it off next time you play.(they really should just disable it by default)

As far as ant lion goes, sure the first time you won't understand what the deal is, next time you'll just run out of base.

I agree; however, in the base game, this mechanic worked well:

Take hounds, for example. If you weren't prepared, you were most likely to be dead, and you would have to have a full scale reset. However, this was designed well; hounds came early, so that players were still motivated to try again, and there was a big warning that allowed players to prepare for the next time.

In this installment of the series, something has changed. In many cases, these world-wrecking events could happen very far into the game, such as disease, and the antlion. This means that players are much more taken aback, and are less motivated to play again. The warnings for these two things are, again, not sufficient. For disease, you have 4-6 days. By the time your crops are capable of disease, most players scarcely harvest crops frequently enough for this to come to their notice. This means that one day in the base, they will just find many of their plants gone.

The antlion does have a good warning, but it is at the wrong time. Since the only way to prevent the sinkholes is to please the antlion with an offering, then players should be notified in some way about that, before it is too late. If it gets to the point where you could have played 5 different worlds, and still not know why this is occuring, then something has gone terribly wrong.

 

3 minutes ago, spideswine said:

 

They are insolent.

So play the game solo until you're not god awful at it.

The learning curve is fine, merely surviving is fairly easy. Hell you're aware of it,making fun of the fact that they can't even properly ask where base is.

Disease and gekkos only meaningfully start spawning later on in game, generally past the first year, noobs generally don't make it that long, I'd say the most notable difficulty change is that bearger/deerclops are harder to facetank now.

I can assure you that sitting in front of someone else's fridge and refusing to move while deerclops is roaring in the background makes the game worse for everyone involved. They are better off trying, failing and learning on their own than just sitting and being reliant on someone else.

I completely agree with you. However, what on earth is their motivation to play the game solo? This is what I made this post to be about; DST is not a noob-friendly game. This would be fine, but it is really ruining the community and public servers, as you show in your reply. Sadly, it is nobody's fault; Klei make a game designed for vets, many mainstream people make videos about it, and new players flock in, since the game looks like good fun. The vets - the people the game was designed for - are met with a vast flock of new players invading public servers, and nobody is happy.

Once again, I shall say that while it is nobody's fault, the only people that can help this situation is Klei.

[spideswine]

4 minutes ago, Chromo said:

I agree; however, in the base game, this mechanic worked well:

Take hounds, for example. If you weren't prepared, you were most likely to be dead, and you would have to have a full scale reset. However, this was designed well; hounds came early, so that players were still motivated to try again, and there was a big warning that allowed players to prepare for the next time.

In this installment of the series, something has changed

No it hasn't.

When winter first hits it does so without a warning, and you don't really know what it means, you're pretty much guaranteed to die the first time you meet it, unless you read on it first.Hell summer, over heating and especially wildfires are the exact same thing. And let's not forget about our first encounter with deerclops, the game was always this way.

6 minutes ago, Chromo said:

such as disease

Although being hit by disease can get pretty damn painful, it's generally not something that can't be fixed with a week in game, it's still terribly designed and should be disabled, but it's no deerclops.

7 minutes ago, Chromo said:

The antlion does have a good warning, but it is at the wrong time. Since the only way to prevent the sinkholes is to please the antlion with an offering, then players should be notified in some way about that, before it is too late. If it gets to the point where you could have played 5 different worlds, and still not know why this is occuring, then something has gone terribly wrong.

Get out of base god dammit.

It's perfectly feasible to deal with ant lion without having any idea who he even is, just get out of base when the warnings go off, that's all there is to it. as long as you don't put sinkholes somewhere you really don't want them to be they shouldn't be much of an issue.

[Chromo]

4 minutes ago, spideswine said:

No it hasn't.

When winter first hits it does so without a warning, and you don't really know what it means, you're pretty much guaranteed to die the first time you meet it, unless you read on it first.Hell summer, over heating and especially wildfires are the exact same thing. And let's not forget about our first encounter with deerclops, the game was always this way.

Although being hit by disease can get pretty damn painful, it's generally not something that can't be fixed with a week in game, it's still terribly designed and should be disabled, but it's no deerclops.

Get out of base god dammit.

It's perfectly feasible to deal with ant lion without having any idea who he even is, just get out of base when the warnings go off, that's all there is to it. as long as you don't put sinkholes somewhere you really don't want them to be they shouldn't be much of an issue.

Sorry, I didn't really explain my point much.

it's just that most of the new features have been centred around preventing things, rather than preparing for them.

You prevent antlion from creating sinkholes, you prevent disease from spreading, you have to prevent grass gekkos from being able to escape, and so on.

With the base game, there were only a few things that would cause a reset; hounds, winter, summer, and giants. After a few games and watching a few videos, anybody can handle these. But adding all these new features is just an overload of things you have to constantly be trying to prevent. 

I agree that the base game was close to being this harsh as well, but once again I refer to the fact that this game was made for people who got through that stuff; if anything, DST kinda assumes you already know this stuff.

Also, thanks for all the replies! This is my first post, and you've made it a good one

[TemporaryMan]

16 minutes ago, spideswine said:

When winter first hits it does so without a warning, and you don't really know what it means, you're pretty much guaranteed to die the first time you meet it, unless you read on it first.Hell summer, over heating and especially wildfires are the exact same thing. And let's not forget about our first encounter with deerclops, the game was always this way.

The nights have been getting longer for days, and if you spend the night exploring by torchlight, you get the hypothermia warning.  You've probably noticed winter hats in your fashion crafting menu.  There's clues.

Contrast this with the antlion: it's summer, and a roaring sound in the  distance has been followed by sinkholes appearing in your base.  Obviously, that must mean the oasis you may or may not have seen is full of water now, and the antlion is living nearby, and you can appease it with trinkets and toy buckets you fish out of the water.  It's just like real life!

[spideswine]

2 minutes ago, Chromo said:

Sorry, I didn't really explain my point much.

it's just that most of the new features have been centred around preventing things, rather than preparing for them.

You prevent antlion from creating sinkholes, you prevent disease from spreading, you have to prevent grass gekkos from being able to escape, and so on.

With the base game, there were only a few things that would cause a reset; hounds, winter, summer, and giants. After a few games and watching a few videos, anybody can handle these. But adding all these new features is just an overload of things you have to constantly be trying to prevent. 

I mean after watching a few videos on disease it's incredibly easy to deal with as well: disable it, everyone thinks its garbage.

Also ant lion is a giant, so the only thing added to your list are "pen the grass", which really isn't much, I'd also say that DS dfly is a lot more annoying(especially for newer players) than DST's ant lion, especially since DST has the rollback feature.

5 minutes ago, Chromo said:

I agree that the base game was close to being this harsh as well,

I'd say considering DS's dfly+no rollback that DST is less harsh in that regard than DS.

6 minutes ago, Chromo said:

but once again I refer to the fact that this game was made for people who got through that stuff; if anything, DST kinda assumes you already know this stuff.

I don't think it was, I'd even recommend people to start from DST due to rollback feature, no overheating underground, and no summer dfly.

5 minutes ago, TemporaryMan said:

Contrast this with the antlion: it's summer, and a roaring sound in the  distance has been followed by sinkholes appearing in your base.  Obviously, that must mean the oasis you may or may not have seen is full of water now, and the antlion is living nearby, and you can appease it with trinkets and toy buckets you fish out of the water.  It's just like real life!

Rollback the first time it hits your base if it does, next time get out of it when you hear roaring.

Again: you don't need to even know what antlion is to deal with it.

[Lumina]

3 hours ago, Chromo said:

The newest additions to don't starve, as far as I can see, have just been a nuisance, and have added next to no content that affected the rest of the game; this makes it incredibly difficult for new players to get started, and really puts people off of the game.

I disagree. Moon lenses are very useful in group (to mark spot, for exemple). Mushrooms planter make it very easy to have a lot of food/heal/sanity options (and you don't even have to beat treeguard with the totally normal tree on the map). Especially with blue mushroom (very versatile, could give you any of the three stats).

Cartography is also very helpful in a group, twiggy trees are very convenients.

 

Also, you speak about difficulty to get started, but none of the things you mention happen early. Gecko is a rare event of transplanted grass, and doesn't happen early. Summer is usually the last season of the cycle, not early. And diseased plants can't appears before day 50.

None of this is early.

 

Yes, there is a lot to learn at the beginning of the game and it's why it's often better to start the first games in a solo game, but none of the thing you listed affects the early game.

[GiddyGuy]

5 hours ago, Chromo said:

Now this is obviously a giant exaggeration of real-life events

I could tell, what noob gets past winter without help?

[CaptainChaotica]

4 hours ago, TemporaryMan said:

FTFY

...in the most patronising, mean-spirited, JERKISH meaning of the word "fixed" imaginable.  Sure, the original post was written in an over-dramatic way, BUT IT WAS MEANT TO BE.  Could you possibly just answer the post WITHOUT mangling all their words to make them sound like the stupidest, weakest, most idiotic noob that ever lived?

Welp.  Time to fire up the ol' ignore list again.  You're clearly not worth listening to, if this is how you treat others for fun.

That aside, I actually like grass geckos, as they provide grass even during the winter and summer.  On my "temporary, Forge-time-period-only" server, those little dudes kept me alive and crafting through a VERY long randomised winter.  Well, they weren't "my" grass geckos--they were a huge colony that the game had spawned at world-gen.  But they were helpful.

As for disease...it sucks, but I actually haven't run into it very often--and I've got worlds that went well into the hundreds of days.  Maybe because I usually go to berry bushes to  pick them, instead of digging them up and putting them at base?  I often live in places where they're already nearby, you see.

...Notorious

[ProfessorAlpaca]

This post was quite fun to read, and I had a good laugh as it reminded me of how my first time playing DS singe player ultimately panned out. I mostly agree with your point that there isn't much of a warning for some of the New Reign content. But I guess DST is slightly more casual by nature, in that rollbacks exist to remove virtually any major mistakes you made. 

Also welcome to the forums, there are complimentary donuts in the back.

5 hours ago, spideswine said:

When winter first hits it does so without a warning, and you don't really know what it means, you're pretty much guaranteed to die the first time you meet it, unless you read on it first.Hell summer, over heating and especially wildfires are the exact same thing. And let's not forget about our first encounter with deerclops, the game was always this way.

It's worth mentioning that it takes a bit of time before you actually start freezing/overheating every two seconds without any clothing. Hopefully by the time snow actually starts falling in winter new players have realized its probably colder and have actually bothered to look at the clothing tab.

I'm actually surprised the characters don't have some dialogue when seasons initially change. Seems they're inclined to comment on the fact that the sun is going down every time dusk starts.

[dinosaur1831]

18 minutes ago, ProfessorAlpaca said:

I'm actually surprised the characters don't have some dialogue when seasons initially change.

Now that seems like a good idea, and something that would never have occurred to me.

[TemporaryMan]

@CaptainChaotica I was under the impression their post was a hypothetical about what a new player would face, rather than a personal account.  @Chromo If I have caused any offense, then I sincerely apologize and will take down the modified quote.

And I'd hardly call the behaviour described "the stupidest, weakest, most idiotic noob that ever lived."  It's pretty much average, really.  Incidentally, do you know how many forests I burned down by accident when I was a noob?  It was only two, actually.  But I burned one of them down five times!  Five!  My camp had four chests just to contain more than 1200 charcoal, and incidentally, 0 lightning rods or ice boxes.

[spideswine]

1 hour ago, ProfessorAlpaca said:

It's worth mentioning that it takes a bit of time before you actually start freezing/overheating every two seconds without any clothing. Hopefully by the time snow actually starts falling in winter new players have realized its probably colder and have actually bothered to look at the clothing tab.

 

You need to remember that for a new player getting most resources isn't "well just kill some spiders for silk", and generally requires quite a bit of a heads up.

As far as winter goes, you start freezing more or less the same time it starts snowing(maybe +-1 a day? I don't really pay attention anymore).

So basically you know winter is there when you start freezing, which needless to say, kills you fairly fast.

[Toros]

54 minutes ago, TemporaryMan said:

@CaptainChaotica I was under the impression their post was a hypothetical about what a new player would face, rather than a personal account.  @Chromo If I have caused any offense, then I sincerely apologize and will take down the modified quote.

And I'd hardly call the behaviour described "the stupidest, weakest, most idiotic noob that ever lived."  It's pretty much average, really.  Incidentally, do you know how many forests I burned down by accident when I was a noob?  It was only two, actually.  But I burned one of them down five times!  Five!  My camp had four chests just to contain more than 1200 charcoal, and incidentally, 0 lightning rods or ice boxes.

Don't take it personally.  She's quick to block opinions that disagree with her own.  You know, like a mature rational adult.

We were all terrible at this game at one point, and  to a certain extent it's fun when things go wrong.  It was clear in your post that you meant no offense to the OP who plunged into a lot more content at once than we ever did.

[Soulk]

Btw welcome to the forums xD haha late but still

Lets be honest guys.

How many of you complete a game to the end without knowing before hand and with not tips or guides?

The first time you face decease you learn that it exist and try to deal with it

The first time you encounter giants or houndwaves you learn they exist and try to prepare.

 

[axxel]

11 minutes ago, Soulk said:

Btw welcome to the forums xD haha late but still

Lets be honest guys.

How many of you complete a game to the end without knowing before hand and with not tips or guides?

The first time you face decease you learn that it exist and try to deal with it

The first time you encounter giants or houndwaves you learn they exist and try to prepare.

 

Before better access to the internet, guides and magazines gave out tips, walkthroughs and cheats, the little kid I was had some problems without them while playing video games, plus they weren't my main hobby back then . I think dealing with problems you encounter the first time and searching for a solution is very fun. I remember the first 3D Zelda title, I stuck in the first dungeon for about 2 weeks because I didn't know how to deal with these spider webs, the game even hinted about this 

[Soulk]

5 minutes ago, axxel said:

Before better access to the internet, guides and magazines gave out tips, walkthroughs and cheats, the little kid I was had some problems without them while playing video games, plus they weren't my main hobby back then . I think dealing with problems you encounter the first time and searching for a solution is very fun. I remember the first 3D Zelda title, I stuck in the first dungeon for about 2 weeks because I didn't know how to deal with these spider webs, the game even hinted about this 

OMG yes, im 28 years old, when i played Zelda Ocarina of times at the age of 6 yo hahah i wasnt able to leave the kokiri village xD couldnt find the kokiri sword xD nor buy the wooden shield

[Chromo]

12 hours ago, TemporaryMan said:

@CaptainChaotica I was under the impression their post was a hypothetical about what a new player would face, rather than a personal account.  @Chromo If I have caused any offense, then I sincerely apologize and will take down the modified quote.

And I'd hardly call the behaviour described "the stupidest, weakest, most idiotic noob that ever lived."  It's pretty much average, really.  Incidentally, do you know how many forests I burned down by accident when I was a noob?  It was only two, actually.  But I burned one of them down five times!  Five!  My camp had four chests just to contain more than 1200 charcoal, and incidentally, 0 lightning rods or ice boxes.

Thanks for the reply @TemporaryMan, no offence taken! I admit I did write it in enough detail for it to be a personal account, but yes, it was hypothetical. @CaptainChaotica made a good point though; grouping all new players into a giant box labelled "Not worth the time" isn't the best thing to do, but granted, they did react rather... Harshly.

52 minutes ago, Soulk said:

Btw welcome to the forums xD haha late but still

Thanks!

11 hours ago, Toros said:

We were all terrible at this game at one point, and  to a certain extent it's fun when things go wrong.  It was clear in your post that you meant no offense to the OP who plunged into a lot more content at once than we ever did.

Thanks Toros. 

However, let it be known that I played Vanilla don't starve for quite a while, this was just a hypothetical situation. I hold myself to be fairly decent at the game, if I do say so myself >.> I've edited the original post with a note that states the story is, in fact, a hypothetical situation.

[LuxuryHeart]

19 hours ago, Chromo said:

As much as I agree that public servers are riddled with terrible players that have never even heard of the base game, this post is to support those people. They may seem insolent, but it just seems that way due to the fact that they haven't played the singleplayer version before this. What I'm trying to say is that these people would not be going on public servers and spamming "Weres Bayse?" if the learning curve of this game was so abrupt.

Steep learning curves are fine; most of my favourite games require a lot of gameplay to master. However, these new features have changed it to straight up cliffs and plateaus. This makes most people disinterested with the game as a whole, but they still want to play it; this is why they tend to rely on other people so that they can have a good gaming experience.

I've said this many times.  It would be best if they played on their own for a while (Vanilla or Reign of Giants, it doesn't matter).  Just until they're able to collect food and not be co-dependent.

Though for the most part, I don't mind giving a few pointers within reason.  I just think there's no excuse for someone to act like a parasite and follow you around taking your loot.  There's also no excuse for someone just sitting at the base.  Of course I don't mind telling people how to do some things (like telling them to use spider traps or lure them out to tank them), telling them about mushroom, telling them how to make a spear, telling them to meet up to take the DeerClops together, etc.)  I also don't mind doing certain things for them (making Winter Hats, armor, umbrellas, etc.).

22 hours ago, Chromo said:

This is my first post on the forums; Hi!

What I wanted to address was how the game is becoming more and more difficult for new players to pick up.

Grass Gekkos and Disease:

Imagine you've just found out about DST, and bought it due to the multiplayer aspect. You've died a few times before, but have started to get the hang of the game. You've set up your base. It's not much - but you're proud of it. However, the next time you go back on the world, when harvesting the grass, an explosion of stupid little green creatures lights up your screen with horror and dread. "My grass!" you exclaim, in a state of shock. You'd worked so hard to get through the game far enough to have a quaint little base of your own, but alas, your crops have become sentient.

After an hour or so recovering from this cruel betrayal, you jump back in, as eager as ever. You survive the winter, barely making it through. However, now you can see a little black patch on one of your berry bushes. What should you do? Shrugging, you leave it alone, assuming it is just a graphical glitch, or something you shouldn't be bothered about. 

~~~~~

5 days have passed, and you are heartbroken. Half of your berry bushes are gone, with naught but a piece of rot for you to remember them. Through your teary eyes, you continue to play, barely scraping by, and making it into spring, and then summer.

A BIG point; the Antlion.

You've made it to summer! You couldn't believe your eyes when your world was met with a saturated hue, and frogs no longer threw themselves upon you from the clouds. A friend has told you about overheating and wildfires; you are prepared. Your base - now rebuilt after you tentatively herded your gekkos into a pen - is sustainable and ready for the world ahead. You couldn't be more proud of yo-

What was that?!

A piece of text, that your character has never said before, about the ground. A mole boss? Earthquake? You have no clue! As you've done many times before, you craft your spear and log suit, and prepare to fight.

But this was no fight.

Not at all.

This was the Antlion.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your base is destroyed; your keyboard has been broken; your computer has been pulverised, and - in a fit of unquenchable rage - you have burnt your actual house down. Such an innocent game that had a very good, albeit challenging, learning curve, has turned into the reason you have mandatory therapy 10 hours a week.

FIN

 

Now this is obviously a giant exaggeration of real-life events (this is just meant to be a hypothetical situation), but imagine if this had happened to you when the vanilla singleplayer came out all those years ago! The newest additions to don't starve, as far as I can see, have just been a nuisance, and have added next to no content that affected the rest of the game; this makes it incredibly difficult for new players to get started, and really puts people off of the game.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to write more on these forums for some time to come.

tl;dr : The newest mechanics added to the game have been more of a nuisance than a fun addition.

I agree with this, except for the Geckos.  Nothing is wrong with the geckos, they just give free grass!

Though I personally take disease off because I don't care to deal with it, and I base in the summer to avoid fires and Antlion (though new players won't know about basing in the caves).