With a previous topic I made, outlining a large chunk of the issues in terms of DS and DST and their learning curve as well as game play and so on, I thought it would be a good idea to post some suggestions in terms of game design/redesign of current features in the game. These will be aimed at creating a learning curve for the game and so that even professional players have things harder for them within the game:
* Energy stat and other character stats to make the game harder - with sleeping and resting being optional, it really makes it something that you just do to kill some time if you need stats regenerated and don't want to waste food or some other stat regenerating items. With energy stat, the game would become significantly harder, as you would lose energy from simply running, crafting or working to obtain various resources. It would probably require something like the Straw roll to be craftable from the beginning, of course and some other ways to regenerate the energy bar, like stumps, sittable logs or chairs to sit on, especially for someone playing Wickerbottom. Of course, having some foods which regenerate energy would be great, but to an extent where sleeping and sitting can simply be postponed and not replaced with eating foods. Post-poning could include a mechanic of simply not being able to eat food if your hunger is at like 95% or above or perhaps a disgust stat to come along with it, which would cause vomiting and resulting in loss of other stats, like health, sanity or something along the lines. I we're making the game more realistic, perhaps thirst, oxygen, blood, excretion (intestines and/or bladder), flesh (so, certain things attacking you might bite off a piece of your arms or something, which would need to be taken care of) and bone stats for a lot of the individual body parts. Either way, creating more stats for the player to take care of is ought to make the game harder, like sanity kind of did when it was first introduced. And how about if you regenerated health and hunger with something like a dragon pie 1 hp per second for 40 seconds and have bleeding effects and hence various bandages (like, basic bandages made from something like leaves and grass and more advanced ones out of silk).
* More equip slots - in and of themselves, this might make the game easier, but going along with the point above, you would probably need this to survive as well as game being made harder. So, imagine, things like temperature needing to be taken care of for each body part. During winter, you'd need to wear at least rabbit earmuffs, some thin scarf, dapper vest, some form of thin mittens, and some form of thin boots (perhaps even some form of pants) in order to have all of the body parts kept warm from the cold at a minimum and something like a beefalo hat, hibearnation vest, some form of thick pants, scarf and boots as well as some thick mittens (the mittens/gloves, pants, boots and scarves are not elaborated concepts, just labeled as "thick" and "thin" for example purposes). Of course, thermal stone working on all of the body, perhaps simply enhancing the warmth of the clothing you're already wearing or whatnot. Same goes for Summer, things like sandals, shorts and perhaps even some form of sun cream. Spring, of course, rain hat, rain coat, some wellies, rain pants or something and some rubber gloves. To give an example of what each body part being kept from getting wet, for example, keeping your hands from getting wet would ensure that you can continue working without things slipping out from your grip, whilst wellies would keep your feet dry, hence you wouldn't trip every so often if they get wet and/or the ground gets wet, wet legs would slow you down, wet head drain sanity, of course, wet arms means harder to work and wet torso affecting energy stat, which would start to drain faster. So yeah, more realistic look on temperature and wetness/rain.
* Reworked inventory - whilst for the amount of stuff in the game you might want more inventory and having the current amount makes things pretty well balanced for what the game provides, imagine this: you have 5 large slots. You can scroll to separate them into 4 medium slots, which can be scrolled into to give 4 small slots each. Scrolling out would give an opposite effect, obviously. Now imagine backpack providing 9 extra of those large slots. Now, each item would have size and weight to it. The heavier it is to carry, the slower you become. In order to not make things too hard, a log, for instance, could take up 1 medium slot per and hence 4 per large slot (so a board would take up 1 large slot), whilst something like a feather or a stinger could be stored multiple of in just a small slot. This means, you could carry a few large items, a decent amount of medium size items and a lot of small items, or whatever in-between of various types without having, something like, I don't know, being able to carry hundreds of moon rocks, but only a few cratered rocks before your character says "I can't carry anymore stuff!". To add to that, things that are pretty much technically giant things to carry, like turf or walls, could be carried like how you have the nose/heads of marbled clockworks being only possible to carry with your back and hand slots free. There's already basis for this, so, just applying this for more things could be a great way to make the game more immersive and a tad bit more realistic, imho.
* Running, jumping/leaping and ducking - normal melee can get boring at times. Plus, you might want to leg it in some very dangerous times. If affected by the energy stat (which at 0 would collapse you, letting you be vulnerable until you regen enough energy or something along the lines), allowing the player to leap with using certain controls or jump on spot to avoid specific attacks from mobs for a bit, same with ducking and running would enable you to get away quickly, but would drain energy (specifically the leg/feet energy and oxygen stat to that, if those are implemented), so you couldn't sustain that whole running thing for very long. It would also increase the amount of skill you would need in order to combat some harder-to-fight things, like bosses for instance as well as make it more fun to simply survive.
* Have things come to you due to your actions, not you coming after stuff, like with Dragonfly and Bee queen being raid bosses - things like hounds, deerclops and bearger come after you to keep you on the edge... other than them, there's not too much for things coming after you in that sense. You do also have tree guards coming after you if you chop down trees too much (or, they really should, with karma, similarly like with krampus, otherwise it's just random chance and chopping a few trees for some logs results in unwanted angry trees)... Imagine if Bee Queen worked like that: If you killed all of the bee hives nearby it/created by it, the giant bee hive would turn into a bee queen and attack you. And with Spider queen, if you kill more nests, the other nests becoming more powerful/faster getting to a higher tier, so essentially a spider queen would emerge to avenge. Think of them as the guardians, rather than just another optional boss (although, like with tree guard, having the ability to passify bee queen and spider queen or whatnot would be a good idea then as well).
* Balancing/rebalancing of tiers and types - there are certain things that are meant to be a tier or a type. You have backpack and piggy back, one doesn't slow you down but has more inventory, the other has less inventory but doesn't slow you down (with the aforementioned mechanics, piggyback might become a tier better item than backpack), you have a weapon which doesn't have durability but instead spoils over time, whilst some other weapons with durability and another which loses it only while you hold it, you have pretty parasol, an easier to craft umbrella, which is also slightly inferior to its counterpart, then you have a similar case with grass suit and log suit, whilst log suit and marble suit are kind of like a kiting and tanking version of each other (I say kind of, because marble suits seem to be something a bit more desirable now). Now, what if this was kept being applied to other things that are deemed quite useless or not worth it right now? Lets say, Insulated Pack could work fully like a portable ice box, but with less slots than a backpack, whilst a thermal stone could be cooled down, but only affect your body if it's in your pocket inventory and not in your backpack. And may be making it inflammable or at least loot all of the realistically non-flammable items (e.g. gears, doodads) upon burning down!
* Making recipes harder and/or more realistic to their design and functionality- this might be very easy for certain recipes, like pan flute (so, like 1 bamboo, 1 reed and 1 mandrake) or walking cane (1 walrus tusk, 2 gold, 1 bamboo... yes, it's a bamboo, not a twig that you're leaning against! Although both of these recipes would require sw to be brought in first, or at least some of the content from it) or even shadow manipulaotr (it basically just needs like 3 gold on top of what it already has... like literally, look at the machine's aesthetic!), but for something like an ice box or especially pig houses and rabbit hutches you might have a bit of a problem. Because of that, I've two suggestions: first, add in some code so that if a recipe requires more than 3 types of items, it fits in well within the crafting window, which displays this. Secondly, having the ability to place down something like a pig house as a bone structure and gradually building up on it, could work well too. This is already present for the new skelletons brought in, so how about if this is brought in for things like crafting machines (e.g. science machine, pig house) and at each stage, the player could examine the structure to find out what they need to add to the structure to complete it even more or something.
* Loot from objects//fauna and mobs as well as the ways to kill/destroy them - imagine chopping down an evergreen for a bit longer than usual, with your typical axe that now has much more durability, then having to get rid of all of the branches, twigs, pines and pine-cones per segment of the chopped down tree (resulting in you getting the aforementioned loot) and then chopping the stem of the chopped tree in segments to get logs. Then taking a rest on the stump and either digging it up and removing the roots in order to get another log (and roots which could have some form of use, be a fuel source or these could simply be vines from SW) or leaving it there and letting the rain decompose it over time. The logs you could simply use to craft on variant of a campfire or you could chop them into wood and perhaps even take the bark off them for, say, crafting a torch. And imagine if trees, upon death would fall over too to decompose over time or something. How cool would that be?! Immersive survival, more loot and logs per tree you chop, more taller versions of each tree (with the possibility of them falling on you and you having to struggle to get out of its grip if it falls on you) and just cool survival game mechanics overall! Or mining a rock for longer, but getting more loot each time you destroy a segment (similarly to how in DST, you get some ice each time you mine a segment, just that they would take longer to mine and would too give more loot in return). You might just take like 5 mins to chop down like 3 pretty large trees and you would have a decent amount of wood very quickly! Woodie doing this even quicker would make him very great (not only in chopping down and chopping up segments, but also harvesting... hey, him harvesting faster could be a cool feature, so that Maxwell doesn't outweigh him in every way or something).
* More complex mob AI - imagine if pigs would have their very own monarchic system and survival tactics, with each of them having stats as well! You could trade with them, befriend them when they aren't busy, perhaps shave a layer of skin while they're asleep to get some pig skin, so you don't have to kill them for it and overall would just make them cool dudes! What if you could also have Pig king as some form of a weaker type boss, which when killed would have pigs focus on having a new king put in place or something. Making your base near them might not be a good idea though if you're more vulnerable due to the aforementioned game mechanics and them during full moon not being so friendly at all... Something similar could apply to bunnies and merms.
* Resurrection and graves - imagine if you could set up a grave in some way that you could... literally dig yourself out, sort of like a zombie from a grave to resurrect... wouldn't that be cool? I've actually tried to make an animation for a mod I'm working on, although with a cranky result (e.g. using existing and existing images which have been edited to create the animation and Wilson turned out to be of too small scale when I tried to animate this...). But graves having more impact and something more to do with the world would be great, other than just digging them up for trinket and gem goods. Imagine being able to bury player/generated skeleton bodies, and may be even within a coffin and restore sanity or something like that... I don't have this thought-through very well, but the concepts would be cool to have in the game, imho. Some more involvement of ghosts, which techinally act as guardians for graves, would be cool too.
* Larger world and some other stuff - This is getting pretty long already, so I'll try to keep it straight-forward... what if the world is larger and you have more to explore, including the seas, and islands surrounding main land (with SW implemented, I mean)? What if the map would be something you would need to craft, like with compass and keep it on you in order to see where you've explored. Or how about a magical map (perhaps called Map of Revealed Secrets), which would require your map and with it, you could see things in the entire world, where you've explored happen as you see them... might be a bit laggy, but may be there's something that could be done with this? This would mean that at first you would not be able to see where you've been nor track where you've been, which would make the game ever more uncompromising at the beginning ![:p]( ":p")
. Imagine hound mounds in the woods with packs of wolves and a Warg leading each pack... then on each full moon (which more realistically could be every 28 days and not some random amount of days), a closest pack woudl come after you and would follow you until you kill them/beat their pack enough for them to retreat or, say, hide in a berry bush like a wimp until the full moon ends, after which they would all retreat :P. Having a larger world for this and with more mounds, which in some ways could be renewable naturally (or may be simply indestructible) could be cool and make a bit more sense than some hounds spawning in nearby at a certain moment to hunt you down. Similarly, seasonal giants could be raid bosses, but each would come after you or a friend of yours to kill you and destroy things between a certain period of time on their specific seasons (perhaps near the middle or end of the season. Being totally random might be too tough, but being very specific might make things a hunch easier and you would know when to get prepared exactly). This, of course including Dragonfly... They could perhaps also act differently when going after you, as, say whilst the Dragonfly is at her base, she could summon lavae, whilst going after you she could act like the single player dragonfly, meaning fighting the same giant the second time could be different.
* Longer days and seasons - with all of the tasks at hand, day-night cycles being only 8 minutes long and seasons being 15 - 20 days long by default could make it very stressful. Some might not like this and want to toggle it, but by default, perhaps day cycles could last 24 minutes, (so seconds being minutes and minutes being hours in the game, technically) and seasons being each roughly 90 days long. This would mean you have more time to prepare, but you would also need more prepared if you want to thrive... otherwise, a tent, a firepit, a crock pot perhaps, some chests, science machine and a few drying racks, whilst you're trying to keep the flame alive during winter would keep you very much on the edge for a large portion of the season. More time to focus, more to embrace. Why not have this in a survival game? Some other games, like The Long Dark have longer time periods too, embracing more of the survival aspect, which I really think Don't Starve sort of lacks and short days and seasons is just one of those reasons.
* More traps - why this wasn't expanded on in the game, I am not sure. Everyone knows toadstool, right? What if in caves there were actual spore trees of two kinds and one of them would look like the cap, which you chop to get toadstool. This could mean that he could act like a trap type boss for you chopping down mushrooms and would also make him harder to find. Having boomshrooms that you can harvest would be great too. Some mushroom explosives that we could use would be pretty cool, imho! A little off-topic, but I honestly think being able to craft an armour which rots slowly instead of having durability via shroom skin would be pretty great. Other types of traps could include nightmares (things displayed on your screen that aren't actually happening in the game and if you die in a nightmare, you wake up), which could be induced due to traps in the world, you being very insane and going to sleep or something along the lines. But not really being able to tell whether a nightmare has started or not until you wake up and you questioning what's real anymore would be cool as all hell ![:D]( ":D")
and how about a plant, similar to lureplant, but it would hold some form of a berry and look like itss real berry plant counterpart, which you can harvest (like with depth worms), but for the lureplant counterpart, the moment you try to harvest its berry, it would enravel its leaves with teeth, which would close up to slowly drown you or something if you are not prepared to fight it from within... or you could run and leap out of its grasp if you have enough energy at the time. So, basically being something a lot like this:
I think that's it for now... I might add more later on, but for now, this is how I would really love the game to be like in its design. A lot of what I mentioned is already presented in some new content recently added, but not within the old content, meaning that it's not too large of a game-changer. Realism might not be something to fully try and reach... that would just make it irl simulator with some magic scattered here and there because plot, but taking realism to apply to to the game, could make more sense to newbies so the learning of the game is more easy due to real-life experience, whilst at the same time, making it harder for professionals, who might not be able to even conquer the world at this point. Let me know what you, other members think and hopefully you, devs take at least some of these ideas and put them in the game after/during ANR development to make the game more immersive, uncompromising and work for people playing for longer long-term, whilst still exploring new things.
