Why we're giving up on this game

[Captain Murphy]

So I used to play when Don't Starve first came out, when it was solo only, then co-op 2 player when it first came out. The permadeath feature being its main appeal, a flashback to days before autosave when players actually had to play seriously and attentively. I used to remember it being hard, and we usually died to the walrus guy in winter. It was hard, but it was fair, and it was about survival. So we kept retrying from Day 0.

Recently picked this game up a month ago and now it just seems beyond unfair and unenjoyable. We managed to get through Fall, Winter, Spring and then in Summer got the flingmatic up with thermal stones to stop the random forest fires wrecking our base. We had food and turrets and everything was fine. Then our base gets a big hole in it destroying our fridge (now out of gears, just spent on the flingomatic), because we failed to find and appease a monster called the antlion somewhere in the game which we'd never ever seen or even heard of before?

You've put a monster, the antlion, that remotely and without provocation destroys the base whether or not you've seen them? It just seems like such a stupid and lazy game mechanic, it seems like a mistake to punish a player in such a way. The latest versions of this game simply add a new mechanic to wreck your base in supernatural ways that go beyond the survival sim that I once enjoyed. And now we have stupid things like critters, and halloween candies, and bats that only spawn if you go into a cave and relentlessly follow you to your base for no reason. We have boss fights with monsters we want nothing to do with, and no reason to serve as a provocation for. Why on earth does the deerclops feel the need to sit by the wormhole we went down, half a day later? What did we do to deserve this?

All I wanted was a game where I could learn to survive — to avoid starvation — alone. That's what this game used to be. But this has morphed into some frantic, senseless and completely unenjoyable experience against sadistic supernatural elements and gimmicky side-quests. Let's not even talk about how the game seems to be more focused on making DLCs and microtransactions than strengthening the general appeal of the main quest.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just disappointed with how the game has developed over the years, and have decided to quit.

[CandyGamer73]

I'm very very sorry to hear your story about this game... But I could give you some other things to help you try the game one last time! So when your creating a world, you can make it custom! Just click the word "World" when creating a new save and then it will let you make it custom if you please. But I know a mod that can make your life better! It's called Too Many Items. And what it will do is let you spawn or be in God Mode whenever you want. There's lots of Too Many Items mods out there, so find one and try it out with your friends!

[Echsrick]

well it sounds like you dont like what your mistakes are and insult the game for it

[meepenator2k.ttv]

Why not customize your game? They added server configurations for a reason, if you don't like the way the game has developed over the years, just remove the parts you don't like. You don't like bosses, get rid of them. If I hated spring with a passion I'd just remove it entirely, same goes for anything else in the game.

[CandyGamer73]

Originally posted by meepenator:

Why not customize your game? They added server configurations for a reason, if you don't like the way the game has developed over the years, just remove the parts you don't like. You don't like bosses, get rid of them. If I hated spring with a passion I'd just remove it entirely, same goes for anything else in the game.

That's what I said! Just customize it if you please. I don't understand why people haven't figured out that you can customize it.

[Judge Cudge]

The antlion is a bad and idiosyncratic mechanic. I'm not going to say that it isn't out of place in it's execution, because it is. But this game has never, at any point, been made such that you can nakedly win by playing better without already knowing what's going to happen.

You not knowing how the antlion works and it ruining your game is par for the course. It may be the most annoying iteration of this design philosophy, but it isn't a surprise. Every single food item in the game, every single season, every single boss, every single thing in the game aside from wood and stone: ALL requires prior knowledge to interact with it properly, both in knowing what it does, and knowing how to get the most value or least hindrance out of it's particular mechanics.

The game, both to its credit and downfall has always worked this way, but summer, being the furthest season from the start, AND having the most devastating and game ruining mechanics is terrible design wise.

The deerclops ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up your base mid winter pales in comparison to any aspect of summer, let alone the antlions sinkholes. It's really beyond defense.

I like survival games, but at a certain point 'meter depletion simulator' is supposed to become an adventure game with a nuanced system of value. Summer FORCES you back into meter management mode unless you retreat into the caves, and that defeats the purpose of what it means to make progress in these games to begin with, regardless of it giving you a 9-hours-in guaranteed death and basewipe.

The antlion was never a good idea, random fires were never a good idea, them happening this deep into the game was never a good idea. But the game killing you despite perfect play because you didn't know 'X' has always been standard fare, you were just used to knowing X.

There is no new principle here, it's just a dumb unrewarding clowny season. The antlion could drop an item that turns off nighttime forever and I'd consider the season not worth the hassle. Its that bad. The whole principle has been off from the beginning, it's just that this is the worst offender.

[Mr. Aqua]

Antlion as a whole is boss that can easily be seen as out of place in this game. Unlike the other bosses Antlion just doesn't ring the bell of fitting in entirely. Part of me wants to say it's just a extra worry thrown in for summer, and it's easy to believe that. Unlike the other seasonal bosses Antlion doesn't fit in with it's seasonal theme at all.

There is technically a bit of a warning through character quotes and sound effects that Antion is about to trash your stuff. The ground will be gin to shake a bit, and characters will note of the impending danger. But of course, they aren't specific enough as to what the threat is or what to do, so it's not helpful.

The problem with when it does occur for the first time the player is left wondering what the Hell just happened and what caused it. Antlion doesn't popup at all while it's creating sinkholes, so there's literally no clue there at all as to what caused them.

But, at the end of the day, I don't hate Antlion all that much. Sure, it's inconvient to have to either kill or spoon-feed this idiot all summer. But I would say it's one of things that's extremely punishing in this game, and that's something this game needs more of. In singleplayer, with the exception of Hamlet, once you get into the style of things there's nothing stopping you anymore. The challenge of the game is completely gone and nothing is a threat anymore.

Now, bare in mind that's still a problem in DST, but Antlion is an example of a real threat if ignored. It's one of those things that you can't just keep running away from and needs to be dealt with. And I like that. I wish there were more threats in this game that hinder the main playstyle a bit. It's for this the Uncompromising Mode mod became popular a few months ago. But I would say that mod didn't handle this idea well. Instead, it made everything a hassle and just borrowed a lot of mechanics from other things or the singleplayer DLCs.

But back on track, I don't hate Antlion, but it's easy to understand why others dislike it. Antlion doesn't have any clear indication as to what to do with it, nor does it openly show what causes the sinkholes.

I understand that you find the seasonal events, skins, critters, and DLC cosmetics annoying. But frankly, it's not surprising that these are present at all. It's not cheap to keep public servers up 24/7. Klei has to find a way to pay for that somehow. And frankly, it's better than it could've been. At one point the AnR update was a DLC to DST. But they changed it to a free update because they didn't want to split the playerbase. The game would be in a much worse state if every major update was instead converted into a DLC. That would have seriously divided up the community.

[Captain Murphy]

Strangely enough I think every single comment here is right. The game is probably too hard for me, we could turn it off in settings now that we know about it and start again, but it may be that the game would be manageable then and the main appeal of the game is beating the most unpredictably punishing events.

I think it is just the complete feeling of helplessness you have against the antlion sinkhole the first time it happens. Only a warning immediately — like 5 seconds — before it happens (when it's futile to do anything about it). Maybe there were other warnings and we somehow missed them, but I doubt it because we were sitting in base a lot watching for wild fires outside of the range of the flingmatic.

Sure, we've taken out boss monsters and wolf packs before and died to them too, but at least we felt like we knew what the challenge was and we got a warning that was meaningful. It's not the challenge, it's the unpredictability and lack of a preventative warning. It just felt so powerless with the antlion sinkhole hitting our fridge the first time.

I guess also it'd be nice if, when you don't feed or kill or even visit the antlion, it comes toward you in a way, like all other monsters in the game. Or maybe there's a speech prompt saying that the antlion needs to be found soon. Or that there might be some indication early enough for you to do something about it, like every other element in the game.

I kinda like the permadeath hard difficulty when playing solo, but when playing in a group I think I just don't like the dynamic enough when a completely unpredictable element knocks us off course... we get frustrated as a group and we roll the server back but after a while it just wasn't fun because I guess it was too hard. Would this game be possible without the internet? We're just a bit fed up, maybe time heals... But ultimately it's probably that we're not, or no longer, the type of players for this, but I just hope they're giving the players it is right for what they want.

[uy]

Dude, that's how the game is supposed to be just because you felt it was way too hard doesn't mean it is, if you dont want to deal with bosses, hard mobs, caves and all that sht. then just disable it in world generation. and leave the challenge for those who actually want to experience the game.

[BlooMood]

If you genuinely feel like you don’t want to give the game another shot that’s understandible. I just want to say too that when I first learned about summer in this version of the game my base was also totalled by antlion. I figure pretty much any player would have that happen to them if they didn’t already know what was coming prior and that’s both part of the charm and flaws of the game. On one hand, you learn something new and methods to deal with it, on the other hand the design philosophy behind “trial and error” in games has always been a bit flawed depending on the implimentation and execution. Especially in this case where the “error” comes from not knowing something that basically popped into existance without warning.

The flaw here in my opinion is that outside of worldgen settings where antlion is an option, she doesn’t make herself known at all in game. There’s nothing that alludes to her and the closest hint you are given about being in the oasis desert during summer is a skeleton with a straw hat for heat and a fishing rod for the oasis itself. In my opinion, while this hint does help a small bit, something more obvious should be found in her desert, specifically her spawn location that could potentially fix this issue.

That being said. If you do decide to dive back into the game once more, now that you know Antlion is a subtle albeit dangerous threat to owning a surface base, you can take proper action to handle her this go around and prove that you learned from last time. Even if, unfortunately, the knowledge was gained through external means rather than in game. I will say, thankfully Antlion is to my knowledge/memory, the only threat really like this in game, everything else that could be a threat that you aren’t actively seeking out yourself (raid bosses for example) is less subtle about being both existant and dangerous.

Either way though, wishing you best of luck if you do give the game a try once more and if not hopefully you find something else you and your friends could enjoy! :)

[Aves]

Well, game without those mechanics would be super easy, there are 3 major factors that can kill you in this game. Not being able to refill your hunger/sanity/health. Seasons. Monsters. Pure seasons and just refilling stats would be super easy, even for new player, just collect bunch of bushes in first days, plant them in your base. poof you have now nearly infinite source of food, if you kill roosters, its bonus healing, you can actually play with low sanity so its not big problem if u are able to fight decently. To regen health you can just pick up blue mushrooms. During winter you can mine ice and put 3 of ice in crockpot with 1 monster meat for meatballs, nearly infinite food. You see where Im going right? Its just that game without big bads, like giants or just strong enemies attacking you from time to time would be super easy, and there would be probably no way to die maybe except summer which is the only season that is actually a little bit harder and requires preparations (well unless you go to caves, coz then this season is super easy). I can agree that antlion is annoying, but I suggest going to caves during summer. Or spend summer on oasis, by making there mini base. First time you slay antlion is hardest, because you need to get goggles bluepring from oasis fishing first, but each next time should be super easy if you really dont want to go to caves. Well of course everyone has his own playstyle and I respect that, if u want to play without bosses you can turn them off while making new world and there is no really bad consequences for it except the fact that you cant get their loot that is neat in some cases like deerclops umbrella. Thats why tab where you can adjust world rules is in this game, so everyone can have his own experience as he likes it.

[agu]

You can literally disable all of those in world generation settings, why put them in in the first place if you don't like them? The customization options are huge for this game, that's not a valid complaint...

[Judge Cudge]

Originally posted by Aguker:

You can literally disable all of those in world generation settings, why put them in in the first place if you don't like them? The customization options are huge for this game, that's not a valid complaint...

Disabling them defeats the purpose. The fact that they are the expected standard speaks ill of the games design philosophy.

I can cheat engine slow parts of games too, doesn't mean they aren't boring. Nor does a game with a skip cutscene button suddenly have excellent pacing.

The normal expected standard out of the box summer spits in the face of what it means to accomplish things in the game. Outside of giving value to nitre and spooking people into making a caves base, which arguably the lifetax of killing the deerclops already does, the mechanics of summer are overtuned to the point that they limit game progress to a screeching halt for new players and to a boring meter management slog even for experienced ones.

Heat, spontaneous combustion, and the antlion are all the most time occupying mechanics in the game. You may as well bot out summer just because of how much of a chore it is. It's a terrible season.

Don't confuse anything that presents itself as a problem as 'good difficulty' winter and spring have good difficulty, summer is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Airvanz]

I see Many people said That Antlion Mechanic its Bad or Garbage, its looks like never play Single Player DS Especially Shipwrecked and Hamlet, Where is originally Come from and its have Consistent Message across DLC and Game tell you that your Base its not safety Place you need Get out from your base and Eksplore The World and Punish You because you sit all day long at your Cozy Place

I could said "Dont Starve Shipwrecked Mountain Eruption at Dry Season" its more harsh than DST antlion Mechanic because The Egg Stone Rain will kill you in one,two or third hits depend of your character and armor you use, then its will burn Surrounding area that pretty much will end of your world and journey, you need to offer snackriface in order to Stop it at the Vulcano, see similarity? as Antlion you can kill it Completely to Stop it Rather than offer Snackriface

and they use same mechanic at "Hamlet The Aporkalypse" but this time all pigs Villager will tell you Something bad its gonna happen and you need to find it what is that, when The Aporkalypse arrive its become Constant Dark red Night and all forest animal become hostile will try to kill you and ancient herald will come and hount you and again its lead to your Doom to stop it you need to Change The Aprokalypse Clock at Ruins

Antlion Have its own purpose and not Mindless mechanic added to the game some modder like uncompromising mod even wanted more harsh punishment than antlion mechanic

[TINKATONK]

Sounds like you'd like to blame the game, instead of realizing you're just misinformed. What i'm getting, is that you don't like that antlion will come no matter what, and when not handled, is going to mess up your base. The only thing I can pick up here, is that you didn't expect things to change, or be different since the last time you played. This game is about catching you off guard, and punishing you for not being prepared, as well as being difficult/hard, and if you don't like that, then maybe this game isn't for you. And just to tell you, everyone has felt the same anger of this games unfairness, but you can learn from it, and get over it. But just like everyone else has said in this thread... change the game settings. I'm sorry if I came off rude, I just hope you can find a way to enjoy this game.

[Judge Cudge]

You can blame the game if the game is has gone wrong. No game is perfect, summer is a blemish.