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Servers are dead. We need real content


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The main servers are dead. We need real content. While the events are interesting, it doesn't give people a reason to come back to the main game. Skins are not enough. 

You have all this great art work and all these cool new items, mobs, biomes, recipes...And you're just gonna waste them for a limited time event and stupid cosmetics?!?

I'm not saying that the events bad. Many multiplayers games do this, Rainbow Six Siege comes to mind...But they have ACTUAL CONTENT that goes to the main game as well, so people don't just play the event, they play on the main servers too because they are constantly adding new characters and maps.

The modding community is trying to port the gorge content into the game, but frankly, it's ridiculous that it's gotten to this point.

I truly believe, that the only way to keep the base alive is by adding content to the core game, ESPECIALLY CHARACTERS. Winona, even though she was a terrible character, brought people back. 

 

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When you win in the Gorge, Mumsy says she and Billy will follow right back. So perhaps we will actually see characters and things from The Gorge moving in to the Survivors' world. Let's just wait a week or two now that the event is officially over, before jumping to conclusions.

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I don't agree that the servers are dead (I'm new though, just I've never had a problem finding popular servers where I am), however, I do agree more content that already exists would be nice. Even as a new player, I grabbed the Volcano, Multi-World, Gorge, and a few other popular biome mods. They just bring a lot more color and fun to my own private servers, without ruining the experience as some mods do. Since Volcano and the Gorge are canon, all the better.

The difficulty on coding it into the base game? I'm not sure, but, again small modder teams have done it. And I do believe based on my experience with other games, that content would bring back some old players who may have left after getting bored with the base game.

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45 minutes ago, verm1ll1on said:

When you win in the Gorge, Mumsy says she and Billy will follow right back. So perhaps we will actually see characters and things from The Gorge moving in to the Survivors' world. Let's just wait a week or two now that the event is officially over, before jumping to conclusions.

I thought that meant theyll show up in other events since thats how the storyline is going

45 minutes ago, verm1ll1on said:

When you win in the Gorge, Mumsy says she and Billy will follow right back. So perhaps we will actually see characters and things from The Gorge moving in to the Survivors' world. Let's just wait a week or two now that the event is officially over, before jumping to conclusions.

I thought that meant theyll show up in other events since thats how the storyline is going

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1 hour ago, Plebgod said:

I thought that meant theyll show up in other events since thats how the storyline is going

What do you mean with "that's how the story line is going"? I completely missed out The Forge, so if it has something to do with that, I wouldn't know

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That is my problem with the event's too , when they end . The content get's .... wasted (hopefully not) , at least for now . And we get back to the old normal content that everybody has played for a long time by now .

I would like with every event parts of it to be added to the base game . For example (with this event) : better cooking , cooking needs rework from a long time , additions , and tweaks (the meatballs 3 ice + 1 meat) . Nowdays many games go back to rework old content and add to them I would like to see this  happen to DS/DST too . There are tons of great features that with a bit of work could feel better and new .

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19 hours ago, AnitaCoffee said:

I don't agree that the servers are dead (I'm new though, just I've never had a problem finding popular servers where I am), however, I do agree more content that already exists would be nice. Even as a new player, I grabbed the Volcano, Multi-World, Gorge, and a few other popular biome mods. They just bring a lot more color and fun to my own private servers, without ruining the experience as some mods do. Since Volcano and the Gorge are canon, all the better.

The difficulty on coding it into the base game? I'm not sure, but, again small modder teams have done it. And I do believe based on my experience with other games, that content would bring back some old players who may have left after getting bored with the base game.

 

13 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

"Servers are dead."

If the servers were in fact dead, there would be no or next to no activity at all. I'm not denying that we need more content for the actual game, but c'mon... saying the servers are dead is a pretty big exaggeration...

Recently, I've been finding it hard to find public server with more than a couple of people on it.

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Official Klei pubs are madness grounds because of trolls/griefers, frequent restarts and generally hectic experiences. In past I was playing a lot of them official-public servers with some friends, regularly getting some of said pubs (with whom I had good pings) well into 2nd in-game year, doing almost everything possible (ruins rushes, all bosses, mid-size bases mostly in Sunken Forests or Wilds/Ruins etc). Yet, because of recurrent griefers like Master, Clouds, Saltzmah, S@tan-senpai a.s.f., such runs naturally faded away - I for one was tired of checking every BillyBobby logging past first Winter to see if they are or not on my ignore list "of shame". So there you have it, probably some official servers are more-or-less 'ghosted' (highly debatable though since you are one of the 3 'magically exaggerating people' in here, always blowing out of proportions issues most will consider mild at best) because of that - people moving to community dedicated servers where most of the well-known trolls are banned and experiences are in a more friendly environment.

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Griefers are rare, and I have a thousand hours in mostly public games behind that claim. The bigger problems, ignoring game design, are players that have no interest in cooperation and players that contribute nothing while consuming and misusing resources. That’s what makes me not play regularly, again ignoring game design.

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Amen. Mumsy said they'll go to the constant. Hope we'll see them in survival mode, not on the next event. I'm trying to beat game staleness with new huge modes like shipwrecked for DST, but i don't know if that can hold me here for a long time. Survival mode needs content. A lot of content. 

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Most of my hours (I'm at about 125 now) have been spent on public vanilla servers, because I still feel like there's a lot to learn. For instance, I've only made it through one straight play through to the second Fall, haven't ran into Bearger yet, and have barely gone spelunking. I like that there's been a lot to learn though, and still is. The game certainly doesn't lack content, but new content never hurts either. Anyways, I've not really ran into any griefers on pubs. Misused resources, sure, I eye WX-78 warily around scarce gear resources. A few destroyed pig houses here and there. Probably the biggest problem you run into is just people who don't want to cooperate. For instance, I joined one server, spent up 'till about day 15 gathering resources, found chester, was completely full. Base was initially suppose to be in an oasis. Found the desert, and one person decided to clear out the camp and move it clear across the map to PK without telling everyone else. Lack of communication, which happens often, can kill a random group.

Still though, where I am, finding a public server that's full even isn't too hard. I hear otherwise for Aussies, but that's common for a lot of group oriented games. I knew one who learned Pinoy just so he'd have groups on an MMO.

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Thanks for the feedback, but FWIW -- DST is still growing year over year. https://steamcharts.com/app/322330#All 

The issue is that the game can be pretty frustrating playing with people you don't know and most people play private games. Even if it was a better experience in pub games, still most people would play privately. So, if you're looking for public games it's gonna be kinda rough. 

As we said when we announced the events, part of the point of us working on events is that it allows us to make significant changes and experiments with how people play with each other so we can learn from them. That being said, we're still growing and we aren't going to be stopping any time soon. We're mapping out what we're going to be working on and we have about the next year covered, we will have details on that when we have a bit more solid info. 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, JoeW said:

Thanks for the feedback, but FWIW -- DST is still growing year over year. https://steamcharts.com/app/322330#All 

The issue is that the game can be pretty frustrating playing with people you don't know and most people play private games. Even if it was a better experience in pub games, still most people would play privately. So, if you're looking for public games it's gonna be kinda rough. 

As we said when we announced the events, part of the point of us working on events is that it allows us to make significant changes and experiments with how people play with each other so we can learn from them. That being said, we're still growing and we aren't going to be stopping any time soon. We're mapping out what we're going to be working on and we have about the next year covered, we will have details on that when we have a bit more solid info. 

 

 

thanks for noticing the thread but dont squeeze the nightmare juice from the game "we aren't going to be stopping any time soon.":wilson_lightbulb:

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On 17. 7. 2018 at 8:37 PM, verm1ll1on said:

When you win in the Gorge, Mumsy says she and Billy will follow right back. So perhaps we will actually see characters and things from The Gorge moving in to the Survivors' world. Let's just wait a week or two now that the event is officially over, before jumping to conclusions.

And then she 

Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler

DIES.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, JoeW said:

The issue is that the game can be pretty frustrating playing with people you don't know and most people play private games. Even if it was a better experience in pub games, still most people would play privately. So, if you're looking for public games it's gonna be kinda rough. 

For me personally I have always loved public servers, and this statement is disappointing, since I tend to enter new multiplayer games without friends who currently play the game and make friends as I play on public servers. Pubs are a great way to meet new players but the Survival format of DST makes pubs pretty hard to make new friends in and having friends in a multiplayer game generally increases player retention. I used to play DST on a great community server and made a lot of friends on it. Eventually the server owner left and the server was shut down. Everyone who was a regular/admin on the server started playing the game less frequently. Some of the admins tried to start a new community but it wasn't successful (hosting a good server is not something everyone can do.) Eventually nearly everyone I knew from the original server left the game. Some came back for the Forge and even fewer for the Gorge but outside of these events very few people I know even play the game anymore.

Personally I think the Survival format of the game makes friending others via pubs hard since its not really possible to drop in and play easily. I used to help everyone that I could but ultimately I want to survive and I don't have time to do that and help everyone who joins the server. Something I think the game could benefit from to increase player retention are new game mode's available year round that players can easily drop in and out of. It needs to be something easy to join and leave, fairly intuitive so players can pick up the rules without a steep learning curve, and something that encourages players to work together for a common goal and reward them for doing so. One project I have been playing with that I think could help achieve this goal is a team capture the flag pvp game mode which I have spent a bit of time prototyping. I would love to share it with you but these things take time to do well and I legitimately don't have the time to do so unless it is in a professional capacity.

Also I think pubs would really benefit from more anti griefing functionality to help server admins who want to moderate servers. There are people who are willing to moderate public servers and, as someone who has done this for many years, it takes a lot of work. More tools to deal with griefing would be great. A "picture in picture/minimap" to allow admins to spectate problematic players from a distance would be great but would probably be hard to implement. (And could be impossible if players are on different shards.) As you have said most people prefer to play on private servers so the public server market might not be large enough to warrant more administrative functionality. One thing I would personally like to see you guys do is disable Steam "Friends and Family share" or restrict it in some capacity. I like this functionality for singleplayer games but for multiplayer its a powerful tool in a griefers arsenal to help evade bans. Although doing this opens up the potential for malicious practices from the developers (allowing users to re-purchase the game and continue their griefing. Lots of developers encourage this behavior since it gives them money.)

If the team has not I would suggest researching the "Team Fortress 2 quickplay" incident that happened a few years back. For a short summary Valve disabled community servers in the matchmaking system by default to divert traffic purely to Valve servers. While there were community servers that abused the matchmaking service there were also a lot of good servers with active moderation that provided a far better experience, unlike Valve servers with no moderation (and a near worthless anti cheat system.) Lots of players had experience with the malicious servers (some were exploiting the matchmaking system so players would always be dropped into them first) and instead of Valve addressing the issue (eliminating the servers breaking the TOS) they chose to remove all community servers which sadly removed the platform legitimate users willing to admin servers used. The game lost players but more players were replacing them so it doesn't matter for the developers that much.

If the team does want to make public servers better I think evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a good public server along with evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a bad public server is a good starting foundation that opens up a lot of potential. Public servers should have a defined role to play in the game's ecosystem and should be improved to work better in its purpose (potentially increasing its market share) rather than altering the platform to cater to users who aren't in the market audience for them. (This could increase its market share but does so at the expense of users who are satisfied with the current platform which is not good.)

Edit: Also I know you guys at Klei already know a lot of this and don't need to be reminded. I shared what I think you already know to further discussion for other users who may not have the same knowledge to better facilitate feedback for you guys.

Edit2: Also to clarify when I refer to pubs/public servers I am referring to dedicated public servers and not temporary client hosted public servers.

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6 minutes ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

If the team does want to make public servers better I think evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a good public server along with evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a bad public server is a good starting foundation that opens up a lot of potential.

I just want to make something super clear. I am not suggesting this is not something that could change or that we will or won't do anything related to it. I am simply trying to make clear here that we are aware that public games aren't ideal for a lot of people and why there isn't as many pub servers as one might think there would be. 

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36 minutes ago, JoeW said:

I just want to make something super clear. I am not suggesting this is not something that could change or that we will or won't do anything related to it. I am simply trying to make clear here that we are aware that public games aren't ideal for a lot of people and why there isn't as many pub servers as one might think there would be. 

If I am understanding this correctly the team does not have any current plans to improve pubs but is always open to the possibility for improvements to them in the future?

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It's also possible that they have plans but can't talk about it now because they can't guarantee it will work or will be possible. They usually don't speak about changes unless they are pretty sure they will make it, so it's one of the possible options.

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I just think new content would help by adding new biomes on surface and in caves. I think adding a few more bosses would also be cool in addition to new biomes as a lot of the world is very empty with the same spots that no one goes to ( beehives, some butterflies, and birchnut trees galore). It's just been awhile since we've had a content update which was a year ago. I am very excited for what's in store and just hope we can see these new things soon. 

Also there has been a major influx of newer players on pubs lately so it's good that servers aren't actually dead, just slower traffic of older players coming in them I guess.

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As mentioned previously, anti-grief measures being added to the game would be helpful.
Wait up, there's a reason I'm bringing it up again even after JoeW mentioned it.

 

In the past, when that idea was brought up, the argument 'well, players can mod those in' was used often.
...no.
We can't.
Not for public servers.

Are there modded public servers out there? Yes.
Are they populated day round? No. Night players are lucky to find more than 2 on a modded non-Chinese server. And they're typically Endless, loaded down with other mods.
When they aren't? They still have the reputation of the former. People filter out modded servers in the list due to the association with hilariously out of place/OP mods and ignore even the limited modded servers for the most part due to simply never seeing them.
There's one server, running for quite some time now, that has nothing more than a few mapping mods (Wormhole visibility and Global Positions) and an admin UI, comparable to a vanilla server with basically no changes to the game...stability comparable to a Klei setup...and whenever I check, the count is typically 4 people at most. This compared to vanilla publics filling up quickly, then draining when frustration and realization of the sheer futility of trying to fight the griefers/leeches sets in. At least the Resetter Gang was addressed...but what about the rest?
The resetters were more directly noticeable, so they got attention.
The others still have an effect.

Make your own server with the mods you want? My setup can't run a DST world with linked caves even without mods, and server hosts have shoddy, hassle-ridden mod support at best. More commonly, terrible support or ridiculous prices. And there's still the issue of modded servers typically being ignored.
I'd wager that there are many in this position.
Not to mention those of us who can't really use the private server option on other people's servers because...well, Dreamscape put it best.

 

Public servers can be good and sustainable but we. Need. Help.
Mods aren't the answer.
Support for the game is.

There are a million topics out there about how to do it because this has been a growing issue since somewhat early in DST's inception. I just wanted to point out that doing something about this issue soon would be...preferable.

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17 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Griefers are rare, and I have a thousand hours in mostly public games behind that claim. The bigger problems, ignoring game design, are players that have no interest in cooperation and players that contribute nothing while consuming and misusing resources. That’s what makes me not play regularly, again ignoring game design.

I don't know on what servers, at what hours or how much you play in pubs (just 1st autumn, till spring, 1 in-game year a.s.o.), but it appears we are in different ...dimensions. As a measure for the troll/toxic/griefer insanity in pubs I just cite the Vanilla (Diverse Survivors) group of servers that have almost daily griefers reported on Discord - don't believe me, go to their discord, they have a whole channel dedicated to griefers report. Or How To Survive!, DST Experienced Players etc - all have griefer-report sections with frequent reports.

Now imagine if some relatively small community servers have said problem at mentioned scale, what does this tells you purely at a theoretical level about official pubs?! (will not dwell more into empirical experiences - and sadly we don't have hard data; also what one considers griefing is a matter of debate, not limited to only setting things on fire, and/or hammering of stuff)

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1 hour ago, lifetheuniverse said:

In the past, when that idea was brought up, the argument 'well, players can mod those in' was used often.

 

1 hour ago, lifetheuniverse said:

Mods aren't the answer.
Support for the game is.

I agree mods are good answers for a lot of things, but shouldn't be needed to play in decent conditions. They are here to add content (especially specific content) and some QoL that aren't mandatory or could even go against the design of the game, or to try differents things that could not work well in the base game, to test things that people could want into the base game and see how they works.

But they shouldn't fix everything and some problems deserve solution that everyone can have and use, people on public server or people on console, and so on.

 

(Also, i would like some public server hosted by Klei and using mods, it would be a good things to spice things a little and offers to some players the opportunity to discover some mods. But it's probably not easy to do...)

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