If you've been active on these forums, you probably know there's 2 distinct types of users.
The "Veteran" Players, who bought into the game for it's self-proclaimed "Uncompromising survival experience", and are often off-put by recent additions making the game "easier" in their eyes.
And the "Casual" players, who bought into the game for a fun time with friends or it's survival/sandbox aspects. These players are generally happy with new content; whatever it may be; and are often opposed to new content making the game "harder". Often citing new players who would get overwhelmed if the game was made any more difficult.
As one might expect, these two groups of players often but heads with each other, and belive it or not, Have been going at it for nearly 9 years.
However, I belive that it could be possible to make both parties happy (generally speaking, some people are never satisfied). Both making the game more casual/new player friendly, while also adding the potential to add more content to make the game more difficult. How could this happen you may ask? Well it's simple.
Fix the difficulty curve.
1. What is a "Difficulty curve"?
Before we begin, I need to address 2 things.
First, While I am trying to be un-biased as possible in this essay. I would generally side myself with the "Veterans" in topics like these. I'm definitly not good enough to be considered one myself. But I do appreciate the game for it's difficulty over the survival-sandbox aspects.
Second, I want to establish what exactly a "difficulty curve" is. I'm sure most people reading this know, but for those who don't, a difficulty curve is, in the simplest terms, the way a game's difficulty progresses as the player's strength and skill increases.
As an example, let's look at Hollow Knight.
Hollow Knight, as I'm sure you all know, is a Metroidvania that released a few years back. While it is generally considered a rather difficult game, for the purposes of talking about a difficulty curve; it's exactly what we need.
When the player is just beginning in Hollow Knight, they only have their nail, and a light understanding of how Platforming works. And the player likely has little idea what they're doing themselves. But the world they explore reflects this. Enemies are generally slow and only take a few hits to put down. And the bosses you fight are sluggish and easy to read.
Then, as the player descends deeper into Hallownest, they get stronger. They find charms and spells, upgrades to their damage, health, and SOUL, and gain the ability to Dash and Wall jump. The player's likely also gotten better aswell. They're more comfortable with the controls, and have better sense for when to heal and dodge. But, the world also gets tougher. Enemies have more health and more advanced attacking patterns, and the bosses they encounter are much faster and more aggressive than the bosses they've fought before.
And finally, at the end of the game, you've found most of the charms, have fully upgraded your nail, and upgraded your spells. And the player's gotten better at dodging, moving, reacting, and everything else they need. And likewise, the enemies and bosses are the strongest they've been.
As seen hear, As the player explores the Kingdom of Hallownest, not only do they get better at the game, but they also get stronger, and bosses get harder. The difficulty curves with the player's abilities.
2. How does this apply to Don't Starve?
Now, DST is an interesting case. Because it doesn't really have a learning curve.
It has a a learning wall.
Not only is the player thrown into the world with absolutely 0 guidance, but there arn't any particularly "safe" zones. There are a couple items that the player has to delve into the depths of the ruins to obtain. But generally speaking, The world and player strength is going to remain largely static between the end of autumn and the end of summer.
Now, this isn't a problem in and of itself. It was a very deliberate design choice that was made to amplify the feeling of being in a mysterious new world, all on your own, just you vs. The Environment.
What is a problem, however, is that Don't Starve Together isn't Don't Starve. Klei knows and has said that they wanted to move away from the original game's Uncompromising-ness. Just being a social game instead of a solo one already makes things much less dreary, so there's no point in trying to keep what doesn't work.
On top of that, an odd design choice is that nearly the entirety of the game's difficulty is from this learning curve. Things like making food, dealing with seasons, making tools and armor, are all pretty easy to do. It's just learning what to do in the first place that makes them seem difficult. Heck, even combat is pretty easy once you know how many times you have to hit something.
3. Why should the learning curve be softened?
As I said before, I think that softening the learning curve would benefit just about the entirety of the community.
For new players, the benefits are self-explanatory. A softer learning curve means that they'll actually be able to learn how to play the game without referencing tutorials or the wiki.
For "Veteran" players, Klei not having to worry about new players being overwhelmed means that they're free to add content that's "Harder", or to adjust previous content. If players know how to get food, Klei can nerf the more broken sources like Monster Meat. If players know how to deal with weather, then more seasonal dangers could be added.
And for Casual players, a softer learning curve could result in more options opening up for the sandbox part of survival/sandbox. More dangers mean more rewards, many of which could be fantastic for base building.
4. How should the learning curve be softened?
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a game developer. However, I'm also not going to raise a problem without giving some possible solutions. So take all of these with a grain of salt.
1. Actually convey information to the player.
This game. Is absolutely *terrible* about telling players what things do. Sure, most of the time you can figure it out. But who actually figured out that you can feed caged birds meat to get eggs? I checked the quotes, the only characters who even imply that birds turn meat into eggs are Wagstaff and Warly.
Small steps have been made in this direction. Particularly with the cook book. But there are still sooooo many things that the player may never figure out how to use without help on the Wiki.
2. Additional character quotes.
This one is simple, Add additional quotes that show up when inspecting an object that help convey what an object does and how effective it is. Things that I'd say should have quotes like this are
>Insulation
>Damage
>Highest stat on a food
>How high that stat is
So really just general information. Now, this may seem out there. However, this is actually already used in the game.
For whatever reason, inspecting broken clockwork piles in the ruins will have characters comment about how the piles are fixable. This and the ability to repair walls are, as far as I know, the only instance where the game goes out of it's way to give the player information, and it's glorious.
3. Set pieces.
Probably one of the best ways to teach the player things without holding telling them anything. I'd suggest a series of common set pieces be added that teach the player things that would help them. Some of these set pieces could be.
>A crock pot and fridge with the ingredients to make a basic recipe inside of them, such as meatballs, trail mix, or taffy. These ingredients wouldn't spoil until the fridge is interacted with.
>A chest and a bird cage holding a starving bird. The chest beside it would have some spoiling meat; teaching the player that eggs can be made and are always fresh.
>Summer and Winter set pieces with items that are useful in those temperatures, and a broken thermometer that always displays the temperature those items are useful in.
5. Conclusion.
While obviously not everyone can be happy. I do belive that softening the learning curve would greatly benefit the longevity and playability of the game. Even if the devs don't do anything outside of softening the curve, that's still many more new players who will pick up and stay with the game.