Its great to see klei interested in making the new player experience better and their plans seem like a good start, however, if they wanna go down this route, i encourage them to really, really take a look at the foundation of their game and how it can contribute to a new players' confusion, frustration, and eventual abandonment of the game.
To me this begins as quickly as being greeted with the main menu screen. New players who have just bought the game "Don't Starve Together" likely want to hop into a game with others quickly and with minimal effort as possible, and yet after clicking the "Play!" button and being taken to the main menu they are presented with the choices of "Browse Games" and Host "game". Clicking browse then leads them to another screen with the browser menu but not before a popup comes up encouraging the player to host their own world to get accustomed to the game.
Now a new player is of two minds. One will listen to the game and go back and choose to host a world, where they are then presented with a massive amount of options for creating their world. Now dont get me wrong these options are great but for a new player who just wants to play they are completely irrelevant, abundantly overwhelming, and really only exacerbate the amount of time spent not in a game, when the single most important thing for a new player is to throw them into your game.
Now the other new player just wants to play multiplayer because thats this games main selling point, or it should be, as its called "Dont Starve Together" and a good multiplayer environment is going to be on the main things new players will judge the game on. Instead of the task of going through game options, these players are tasked with navigating the cumbersome browser list. New players will most likely be drawn to servers who have low ping and a decent number of players. And considering the state of official servers which are either down/full a good chunk of the time this doesnt leave many options. At worst, it may even discourage new players to see that there are not many people playing close to them. And even if they manage to find a world to join, if it is player hosted the game can be interrupted and ended at any time by the host causing frustration for others on the server. I think that this is a huge problem with the new player experience.
The point is this system is a hassle for new players, and really should not be the entry point for people who are just learning to play, and I'd like to see one of the core game enhancement completely redesign this system.
I dont think we should lose the server browser, but i think rather than being the main way we join/host worlds, i think it should be secondary to a Quick Join system. This would be listed first on the main menu and all new players have to do is click choose what season they wish to start, and then immediately be put into a game. No settings, no browser lists, just straight into it.
This is how it could function:
The matchmaker could look at a list of available servers with appropriate ping and see how many players and what day the server is on and then attempt to join the player on that world.
If there are no servers available a new world is created with the player acting as host..
Additionally, we all know that official servers fill up rather quickly because a dedicated server means no hassling around with who is the host and planning around when/if they leave, so this leaves new players who want to play in a multiplayer setting to have to join another player which means you are completley reliant on when they disconnect or host your own world which presents this problem to other players as well as giving you a feeling that you cannot disconnect or else everyone else gets booted too. Again, I think that this is a huge problem with the new player experience. DST is open ended, there is no matchtime, or typical game session, so part of the problem with DST being a multiplayer game is no one is going to agree with how much time they think a current play session should last. We need a system to alleviate this issue.
I'd love to see a system in game where if you choose to host an online world then that world is considered a community save so that when a host disconnects, then the game pauses for a moment while the server is migrated over to another player who is still in the game, and continues to migrate hosts until the server is empty at which point the server shuts down. The end result would not quite be a dedicated server as it depends on players connections but it would function similarly.
I'd also go ahead and give everyone on a server a copy of that world to host/play through normal means at a later time when they do eventually disconnect. Perhaps, even, an additional item could appear on the main menu called "Continue" where you host the last quick joined world saved on your computer.
I think this all allows for an easier more streamlined and less confusing experience for not only newer players but for players overall, especially those who purchase the game with multiplayer being a main selling point.