Ensure new players get fair world seed.

[yoinkysploink59]

If this problem has already been addressed please disregard. I am making this suggestion on behalf of new players.

I think it would be a shame for a new player to click new game with default settings and be given a desert biome start. Starting in the desert means your pollution will spread much faster and attract more enemies quicker. A desert biome start can be hard and is very unforgiving, even more so for new players.

Imagine being convinced to try this new game, spend multiple hours learning only to face insurmountable waves of enemies and be forced to restart. And if that newbie asked for advice unfortunately I would tell them they just got unlucky with their seed and they should start all over again but make sure they get a decent seed this time. Sometimes its not enough to go back 15 minutes to the last auto save. Some people might give up and uninstall or refund

I like the defence aspect of the game I just think there might be too much variance depending on map seed between having a manageable first game experience with biters and being absolutely swamped.

The problem I am considering can %100 be solved by changing the map generator values but I think that most brand new players won't know understand what they all do properly and would just click default.

My suggestion for a solution would be scaling certain parameters on the % of desert tiles near spawn. More desert tiles could mean a larger starting area size, more time before the first wave or maybe starting with more turrets and ammo?

Another suggestion could be to have a fixed default map that has been hand crafted a little bit. Give new players a map with a non-desert start that somewhat has a perimeter of trees and cliffs that intuitively gives the new player a place to fortify and then later expand out of.
As an aside it would also be interesting for the community to have a shared seed that all players would use. It would be cool to see what different players do with the same seed and how different everyone's world looks despite the same start. Could be interesting for speedrunning too

Another suggestion could be to have more warning of the first biter wave. Maybe even pause the game and give a little pop up explaining that a wave of biters is on their way soon because of the players pollution cloud and they should craft some ammo and turrets.

I am hoping these suggestions would give players a more balanced experience that would be a little less frustrating

[worph]

Just evaluate the preview area biomes for there being a desert.
If desert tiles are above a certain treshold the game could display a yellow warning, stating that deserts are higher difficulty.
"Take note: Your current spawn area is in a desert biome. This makes the game more difficult."

As someone with 1.5k hours in the game, I always still reroll until i don't have deserts nearby, because I don't like dealing with biters in super early game.

[Alfonse215]

Imagine being convinced to try this new game, spend multiple hours learning only to face insurmountable waves of enemies and be forced to restart.

One of the nice things about pollution-based enemy attacks is that they're pollution-based.

New players are way slower at building stuff than experienced players. They usually hand craft a bunch (which produces no pollution) and it usually takes them a long time to build a furnace stack that can actually fill a yellow belt. Put simply, new players don't generate that much pollution.

A desert start is at its most problematic if you are pumping out a lot of pollution very quickly. Lower amounts of pollution don't go far on their own.

So while it can happen that a new player will get overwhelmed by "insurmountable waves of enemies", they generally have to have a 20+ hour run to get there.

[rosalktha]

100% agree that this should be changed, or at least have deserts balanced a little (more pollution absorbed by ground vs trees, maybe). A bad desert compared to a good forest are matters of hours (especially for new, slower players) before having to engage with biters

[worph]

Reducing overall difficulty in a single player game is almost never the correct answer.
Educating players about the difficulty of the biomes is much better than dumbing down possible challenges for those who enjoy them. (i don't, but someone else might)

[Kyralessa]

If this problem has already been addressed please disregard. I am making this suggestion on behalf of new players.

Are you personally acquainted with some new players who are having this problem?

It might help with interest in your suggestion if you describe some specific cases.

[Izzabelle]

I do agree this needs to be addressed for new players, I know myself two people who quit the game early due to spawning in a desert. Having a chance of your first game ever have more attacks than a deathworld without clarifying to the player why is just not good.

My suggestion is a new option for seed rerolling, being able to select "prefer deserts" or "prefer forests".
When someone starts the game for the very first time the game gives a popup asking if the player wants a forest or desert and listing the pros/cons for each. Then depending on what the player picked they are moved to the default map generator screen with either deserts or forests preferred.

What to expect of deserts/forests is communicated to new players plus they get to essentially select if they want more or less focus on combat without having to change the heaps of options the game provides, and more experienced players can now decide to start in a forest or desert without having to look at the preview.

[xfret]

I have completed probably a dozen deathworld and a dozen default settings game. I can comfortably say I find desert default settings seeds significantly more difficult than forest death world seeds. This isn't even a matter of difficulty; the presets are doing less for customization than the random roll of whether it's a desert or a forest. It's not intuitive that sliders for grass have basically the same level of impact as switching presets completely to one with "death" in its name. I think a simply minimum starting area moisture would just solve the issue completely.

To further this point, below is a default settings seed from 1.1; I know the world generation has changed since then, but I don't think it's done so in ways that would prevent this same sort of thing from happening.

[pioruns]

https://i.imgur.com/sJAZIFp.png

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[mmmPI]

Are you personally acquainted with some new players who are having this problem?

It might help with interest in your suggestion if you describe some specific cases.

new players that i'm personnally acquainted with, i tell them to avoid desert start , As a new player i always picked desert because i saw a speedrunner do it, "because you don't have to waste so much time getting rid of trees", it took me a while to realize it wasn't actually a tip but an additionnal layer of difficulty because if you start in a desert, you don't necessarily get to see the effect of a forest absorbing pollution on the map which is eventually what made me get it.

Here is an edited video about the struggle for a new player to play thru the game without restart, with a "lucky forest seed", https://youtu.be/0xuii1kgrcg?si=0rnQ7aAcPjQG42Mq&t=1292 only getting attacked after "9 hours"

the seed is shown and discussed at 21:15 if you pick the "klingon" langage

Now in the video the person who edited regrets that the seed wasn't more desert like, it would have been more action-packed but there is no real way for a new player to know, it's the "luck" factor highlighted here, not the "desert is difficult" part.

I think it's impossible to "guarantee a fair world seed" , it's too difficult to evaluate and or correct for a "guarantee of fairness" like you would see in competitive games, i feel seeds are better with "goods and bads" and agree that desert are mostly a pain, they are "bad seed" for most players, but you can sort of tell if you read the tool tips of the sliders, that tree absorb pollution and if you set it high it disable achievement. Not that i did read them myself before playing, but i expect some new players will, the more careful^^.

Imagine being convinced to try this new game, spend multiple hours learning only to face insurmountable waves of enemies and be forced to restart

as a new player it was not the biters that made me restart the game but the mess i created and the realization that it would be faster to just start over instead of reconstructing everything , it happened several time before i would even face some biters, and then i decided to set the game as peaceful so i could better learn all the trains stuff because there was no tutorial back then