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Recently I made a post about how mining is less fun now because the ore nodes are harder to find and tiny, and it was a popular sentiment. The dev response was that this change was made so that one person could not easily supply an entire server with metals, and that makes perfect sense. There are very dedicated players who would be happy to spend 12 hours a day doing so, and this needs to be balanced.
However, this only applies to large population servers where people are competing to fulfil the same jobs. On a small server, having 1-2 players being able to provide metal to the entire server is exactly what you want. I really enjoy this game and have hosted a public server for 16 seasons now, and even though at times we were lucky enough to have around 50 interested people playing through the first few hours, it always tends to end up with a half dozen dedicated players organising essential jobs by the time of shooting the meteor.
An awesome replayability aspect of this game is trying out all the professions. One example is if someone wanted to set up camp in the jungle with the purpose of "I'm going to be the brick guy! Everyone is going to have so many bricks!". A year ago, (pre update 10?) this meant buying a kiln from a mason, and then just feeding it clay/sand to make all the bricks they could want, and they also didn't have to crush the coal before it was useable fuel. If they wanted to make furniture, they just needed to buy iron bars for toilets/sinks/bathtubs.
Things are so much more complex now. I'm NOT saying they are worse, but clearly aimed towards interconnecting jobs. Bricks need wooden molds, so a blacksmith's nails and logger are needed. The kiln itself needs it's parts repaired by a mason, and the kiln's furniture now needs a miller's niche powder products in addition to a smelter's iron bars.
From what I've observed and heard, this has made the game less fun for two main reasons. Experienced players are frustrated and impatient from relying on other people to stock all the goods their profession makes (which not everyone prioritises). Also, both new and experienced players usually desire to run off into the wilderness to set up a cosy base in the wilderness. It's a very cosy looking game! But after doing this, the hurdle of having to travel for so many goods becomes apparent, in addition to the settlement mechanics discouraging this and the post-update-10 lack of spontaneously growing plants on empty fertile plots making it hard for players to feed themselves basic food.
Another aspect to this is making all the professions arbitrarily necessary. Upgrades need fertilisers and shipwrights at some point, even if boats aren't needed at all on the map or crops don't lose their nutrients fast enough in the lifespan of the server for fertilisers to matter. As a result, a single player on a small server taking a couple of days off can bar progress for many people, regardless of whether they chose a low-impact job or not.
I could have asked the devs outside of reddit, but I also wanted to get the community's perspective, especially those on public servers. I hope I don't sound hostile, I'm just wondering how much deeper this interconnectivity will go. Will there eventually be separate settings for large or small populations, or is a small population simply not how the game is meant to be enjoyed? Can anyone from large population servers fill me in on how these gradual changes have been taken?
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