DST is absolutely amazing at keeping semi-experienced to veteran players hooked.
What is does poorly is keeping completely new players interested long enough to keep engaged with the game. I feel like DST could be 100000x bigger than what it currently is if Klei found a genius way to hook new players in the beginning.
I've been forever trying to get my wife into DST, I've had a few separated, couple hour game sessions with her but it always ends up with her bored with a lack of direction. I tired my best not to push her in any given direction and not overload her with info so she gets a real experience of discovery.
But the first 20 days of autumn which is almost 3 irl hours is just running around an collecting things with no real interactions par a spider here or a pig who wanders there. My wife is like, "this is so boring just collecting stuff". For us experienced players we know collecting stuff is needed to rush ruins and fight raid bosses and is necessary for the fun stuff... but new players can't obviously see that and the first real boss fight you discover which is dragonfly is such a huge spike in difficulty that my wife died and got fed up.
Again I didn't want to spoil things or force her to do things, but I think DST would really benefit from more early game interactions, npc's, traders, some mini boss raid fights that you can discover from just exploring.
We both work and have other irl commitments so me and my wife can't sit down for a 10hour gaming session to get her into DST. Wish DST was easier to jump in and out of without forgetting what you were at.
Any tips on how to introduce a new person to DST when they only have an hour or 2 to play every so often? Cheers lads.