AbbyRead’s Player Experiences and Thoughts

[AbbyRead]

I want to preface this by saying I’ve sunk literally thousands of hours into this mod through its years of development. I love it more than any other game I’ve played, and I’ve been into games since the NES days. For this game to rank as high as it does on my charts means I’m not criticizing it lightly. I want more than anything to get lost in this world and ignore real life for way longer than I should, but I’m starting to get burnt out. And I hate that it’s happening. :/

I love the feeling of progressing and the punishing way the game discourages dumb behavior. Restarting from scratch seriously takes way too long though. Takes all the daylight Day 1 just to get ready to make a fire and have enough of a hill hole prepared to avoid angry mobs. Then by morning Day 2 your food bar has taken a hit, and trying to tackle any pigs or sheep while replenishing wood and scavenging webs is more than a struggle. It just starts to feel like you have to get lucky with spawn locations rather than have skill, know what to do, and manage your time. It does feel good when you get your head above water so to speak, but needing to look at a tree or look at a wall for a full minute starts to feel like the game is just insulting me for even trying. And the problem only gets worse once all the tasty animals are gone.

I do in fact like all the intended features of this game though. I think it should take substantially longer to get materials from trees when using crap or no tools. I do think it’s weird that animals in Vanilla Minecraft just keep popping up out of thin air saying eat me senpai (like, they’re supposed to be a resource; not a freebie, right?). I don’t think we should fundamentally change anything about this mod. I think the core feel is solid. I just think we have to dial the early amounts of punishment back a little so that it’s less of a “You simply failed. Make a new world,” type of message the gameplay implies.

I don’t have much of any experience in game design or programming, but I understand that asking for more features is a big ask, and asking for removal of features can be insulting. I’m not doing either here. I just think we need to tweak the numbers. Like, instead of 19 seconds to fist one little bit off a tree, 17 seconds. 5 instead of 6 seconds using a sharp stone. Make jumping less costly. Very minor changes like that could have a huge impact on our collective willingness to get back into it on a new spawn.

Maybe I’m supposed to feel bad. Like either git gud the first time or abandon like 200 hours of would-be progress. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even try to stay safe at night and just taunt spiders for enough string to get by for just one more day. No food left at an wrecked base that I keep spawning near, harvesting dirt by hand, trying to make a terrible low tech mob grinder bit by bit in day-and-a-half chunks before I starve just in the hopes of eventually getting a slow but reliable supply of string and bait and maybe not just off myself whenever I spawn back at my failure.

I dunno. Thoughts? Am I just a bitter old hag?

[EpicAaron]

You are not alone, the first week grind can get exhausting. Like you say, I think the core is fine, but the actual tasks start to feel extremely routine: "look at stone for a few minutes until 4 loose stones, look at tree for a few minutes until 7 or 9 sticks, kill two animals, hole up somehow and try to cook."

At a certain experience level, I find I start judging a spawn by access to resources. I start looking explicitly for caves, surface iron, and clay. I will even delay placing my oven in some cases until I can build a permanent base with access to great resources or a ravine. It is easy to lose sight of progress and start mindlessly following the routine, like some kind of brute.

I think easing up on the "grinding" activities like stone and log scraping inevitably frees up more time for first week exploration and base building, which is what I am trying to design with my current addon. Basically, fuel will be a lot easier to guarantee in certain biomes, which means the player will not really need to dig up stones until nightfall if they play smart.

Making scraping take less time might make the whole process seem cartoonish. Why not just break whole logs again if you can easily tear apart a log with your bare hand anyway? It would take away from the durability of BTW's world, which is one of my favorite features of it.

[AbbyRead]

Thanks, Aaron. I thought I was losing my mind. Like I thought I was missing something until you detailed the exact same process I go through each spawn. Like, we already know how to min/max the shit out of it, and it's still not adequate to guarantee a viable start. Like, I'm okay with unlucky spawns, but when the vast majority of them are unlucky, I feel like it's more like this is just how the game is. Like we have to GET lucky rather than deal with a few jungle or small island spawns. That ain't fun.

[dawnraider]

Yeah addressing the grind early game is absolutely something I want to do. I think the early game is in a pretty good place, but there's too much grind and too much idle time, especially during the night.

Edit: and also there are plans to make an easier difficulty option to make things a bit more accessible. I'm still on board with FC's notion of avoiding configuration options, so it won't be a bunch of separate tweaks but rather a separate curated experience from the base game that is a bit less punishing.

[EpicAaron]

Like, we already know how to min/max the shit out of it, and it's still not adequate to guarantee a viable start. Like, I'm okay with unlucky spawns, but when the vast majority of them are unlucky, I feel like it's more like this is just how the game is. Like we have to GET lucky rather than deal with a few jungle or small island spawns. That ain't fun.

Are the starts not viable, or do they just require a different mindset?

I assume you have observed that certain biomes provide a vastly easier experience than others? The plains biome's flat terrain, strands of trees, and great visibility (for finding caves and ravines) makes it far and away the best biome to survive in, especially when it is complimented by bordering a forest, swamp, or desert. When surviving in different biome combinations, however, the game gets way harder. Jungles and oceans straight up devour available terrain, creating archipelagos of death in some cases.

I do not think the unbalanced terrain gen is necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes the player finds himself wandering in the wasteland in search of good land to live in rather than progressing rapidly. These exoduses can take days, and some players never think to leave at all as they slowly die in hill-taigas ringed by oceans, swamps, and jungles. I think players can survive and even thrive in the hard biomes, but it takes a lot more patience. Snow biomes not spawning chickens is a huge part of the problem, which is why my addon adds alternative methods for progressing in the absence of plentiful string.

It would be cool if the harder biomes had their own niche survival techniques that could be exploited to gain an edge, something that could add some interesting gameplay beyond just being harsher places to survive. We see a bit of this idea tested out in snow biomes with snow blocks and igloos, though I don't really see anyone play with these blocks. They seem quite unexplored...

[dawnraider]

Yeah I think snow biomes not spawning chickens is definitely an issue, especially when terrain gen can generate gargantuan icy plains. I don't think it's as easy of a solution as reverting the change, as I think it gets rid of some of the unique gameplay that BTW has created in the different biomes, but there definitely needs to be something done as right now it makes snow biomes basically unviable in the super early game, which I think is disappointing,

[AbbyRead]

Yeah, I suppose I’m just too long in an old and torn up world without lasting long enough to exploit it. It’s not that I only can handle certain biomes; it’s that I often can’t find food on the first day in the brief 30 seconds or so I have left, which really screws me over when it’s a (seemingly?) new area. Like maybe I should prioritize scouting and rolling the dice on food poisoning or cook food in the daytime day 2 when I can finally get a decent amount of sticks. I think I was mostly just having a bad day IRL though. BPD and gender dysphoria hitting like a ton of bricks when I can’t make headway in the game I use to escape… oof.

I honestly thought the chickens not spawning was intentional. Don’t know why, but I just think everything that says “F you, git gud” is intentional. This game got harder over the years.

[dawnraider]

Well chickens not spawning in snow biomes *is* intentional from FC. I just think it's an idea that could use some improvement.

But yeah as for early game, time management is super crucial and has very little room for error and massive punishment for failure, which makes it brutal to learn. Hence why an easier difficulty is on the table. Some ideas that have been discussed on discord between myself, Zhil, and some other members over there can be read about here.

Edit:

gender dysphoria hitting like a ton of bricks

Also yeah, too real lol.

[AbbyRead]

Coming away with a bad mood again because I suck at this game the way it is. I didn’t want to admit it, but I think I would go for that gentle mode right about now. Like if that’s all that’s on the table I’ll take it.

I know if you make a core game element easier for everyone, it’s going to upset the people that had no problem with it and see the punishment as warranted. Like, “Make or break, noobs. Why you nerfing our game?” I acknowledge value in reliving the desperation of having nothing when you start out and survival being touch and go. But nay, ‘tis gone too far.

For me at least, it ceases to be desperation and ends up being either predictable failure or very boring and samey. There isn’t wiggle room enough for alternatives, and the main strat is soooooo sloooooow. When you know what to do, and you do it over and over, you can’t help but want to change things up. But it takes hours to get anywhere, so experimentation ends up making me question my life choices. Like I should be studying more, not playing something for hours/day that ends in me resetting and leaving me with only my bitter memories. Speaking of bitter, was FC just getting increasingly bitter and had it gradually seep into the gameplay? I’m grasping at straws for why I have to be a masochist with the patience of a saint to enjoy this game. My wife pointed out that those two things don’t go together, and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s the thing.”

I know this is apples to oranges in a lot of ways, but games like Don’t Starve can get away with failstates because the game is more heavily reliant on skill building, and resource gathering, tech progress, and even combat goes by quicker. The early game flows once you know the ins and outs. You can take on harder things with less equipment because who needs armor; I’ve got skills! Sure it has exploits, and a game with more permanency would incentivize heavier balancing. With this game though, Better Than Wolves, I feel like there’s a solid wall that you just have to surmount because it’s either that or making the game harder every time you pass through the same area, and every area after that. And the wall ain’t fun to climb. Like I’d be better off designing a bot to do all these chores and then call me over if I survive.

Again, I’m just frustrated. I love this game, but I probably need to take a break. It’s all so samey right now that I end up doing yolo bullshit and get back to square one, which I hate. Not that I hate being sent to square one; I hate the gameplay of square one. I really do like the idea of building smaller bases all over the place, but I don’t think it’s viable post breeding and starvation changes when you still stone trees to death at the same rate. Apparently, having chickens at the ready to save my sorry ass was the only thing keeping me out of the infinite death spiral back in the day. Now there is no escape.

[EpicAaron]

Hehe, what got you this time?

[AbbyRead]

Hehe, what got you this time?

Many things, but I just keep chasing that dragon so to speak. Latest exploit only made it to workbench. On a mountaintop penis bridge jutting out over the lake during a full moon night to get some fish. Used up my bait, and I see a zombie with a sword I want. Risk the plunge into hat water and saunter over to zombie and pals before I remember that spiders and skelemans are big dangerous. In over my head, I freeze in place. The spiders help with that. I am made pincushion. The end.

Except I kept going and just became increasingly frustrated. It’s compulsive. 😑

[AbbyRead]

Maybe I shouldn’t be killing wolves to prevent starvation behavior making my surroundings more hostile. I’m starting to think I should intentionally die to them so that it’s at least a food source I can count on always being there through breading in the only no-tech way we have. Have I just created wolfmageddon or is this a known strategy?

[EpicAaron]

That's nuts! You should kill every wolf you see. Or stick them in holes and let nature take care of the rest...

I too have died to avarice. A zombie holding a tool is a trap at night. If you aren't confident you can make it there and back again without being ganked, wait until morning. A watchtower is a good structure to build in order to keep an eye on mob movement during the night. Recently, I have started building into hills so I can eventually fortify the top of the rock.

[AbbyRead]

That’s a good strat. About the zombies: yeah, but they might despaaaawn! Gotta be some gambling aversion in my brain overlapping gambling addiction here. I don’t know what to call it, but seeing spiders pop back out of existence when I’m low on string bums me out too.

[AbbyRead]

Taking EpicAaron’s advice on Discord and turning this post into a player diary as opposed to a focused dissection of gameplay mechanics, which let’s be honest, this hasn’t really been, has it?

As for my gameplay experiences right now: I’m picking up some steam after committing to one save rather than three (for different addon combos). I’m still dying miserably every chance I get. Usually because I’m halfway starved looking for food that isn’t nearby, and I gamble remaining food for vantage points. Sometimes I just accept my fate and do what I can while alive to be prepped for next time like put out logs for drying the bricks I don’t have, or barf wet bricks all over the ground right as the sun rises and go hat shopping.

I still think sharp stones need a speed boost (nothing crazy though), and there’s talk on Discord about an accelerated mode, which I’m guessing might have stuff like that. I’d be into it. I’m just wondering who really likes how long it takes starting out just to get enough for a campfire and a porkchop or two. Who likes staring at walls with staplers on their mouse buttons? I want to know so that I can shame them 👹. It just seems like bad game design to me. Like unskippable intros or something.

[AbbyRead]

I can avoid almost everything; but I can’t avoid creepers. They make no sound until it’s too late and you’re in the middle of doing something, secure in the false assumption that you’ve checked enough of your surroundings. Spawned in a new area, clear weather, broad daylight? BOOM! Jumpscare, and you’re dead. Guess the lighting glitches were more than aesthetic blemishes Eh? Think the way’s clear, looking out from your hole in the cliff face? Nope! Creepy boi he jump down kill you dead. I f*ing hate these guys. My poor heart can’t take it. 😵

[AbbyRead]

No longer am I simply playing this game and failing and complaining and bailing from Discord because abandonment issues making me crazy. No, now I can actually do things, and make addons, and make friends, and stop myself from making enemies when people unwittingly hit my emotional triggers. Doing good. I'm loving the discord channel, and I think this community is something special. Everyone on there that helped me get up and running with the coding environment, I really greatly appreciate too.

So yeah, I made some tweaks to the game for myself and managed to get it into a working jar mod on my MultiMC instance. It's just a handful of base class edits to tweak the numbers, but ooooo it feels so good now. And now I'm lying awake dictating into my phone even more changes I want to make. Trying to not overwhelm myself, but it's exciting. If any of you want to start making addons for this, I think now is as straightforward a process as it has ever been. Zhil's got it set up to download and convert just about everything all at once.

Today, I hardly played the game because I want to get good at collaborating so that I can get my addons into more hands and have it work well with other addons. So I've just been following Git tutorials from my library's web services. The (now BTW standard) addon API is still something that my one semester of Java didn't prepare me for, and I think doing it justice will still take me a while. I imagine if I get antsy about it I'll just end up comparing what others have done and looking for patterns. People are already making some amazing addons. I'm excited to be part of it. :D Soon.

But other than that, I still make stupid, impulsive mistakes and die a lot. I recorded and posted a bunch of gifs on discord. Not sure if those embed well on here, but I might end up making a separate post on the forums for a good compilation of me being a dumbass. :'D

It's really empowering being able to change the game how you want to. Highly recommend if you have the patience to learn and the willingness to make mistakes and collaborate and stuff. 👍

[EpicAaron]

But other than that, I still make stupid, impulsive mistakes and die a lot. I recorded and posted a bunch of gifs on discord. Not sure if those embed well on here, but I might end up making a separate post on the forums for a good compilation of me being a dumbass. :'D

I think you should! The gifs are extremely entertaining. There are a thousand ways to die in BTW.

I agree, learning to mod has really revived BTW for me. The game just keeps on giving, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with playing my own hard work is awesome.

[AbbyRead]

Okay, I did. 😊
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10177&p=159433#p159433

[AbbyRead]

For anyone following my rants and and grumbles but not the addons page, I released the addon! Now we can all play the early game a bit less painfully (if we want to).
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10178