Why Characters Need to be Balanced (At least in don't starve together)

[Unn0ticedShadow]

      Although this is my first post, this is something I've been struggling to find balance in for a while now, and I feel Wortox really highlights this issue better than any other character in the past. (So sorry for the long post)  

     When regular Don't Starve was first created, with it came characters, and the developers weren't concerned about balance, as the character you chose is a personal option, and I might go as far as to say they purposely scaled the usefulness of characters from early to late-game, with the more easily unlocked characters more useful for beginners, and the later unlocked ones more useful than the others, or so it seems to be with EXP unlocked characters (Except Wolfgang).

      The issue with Don't Starve Together, however is that it's aimed to be, or at least function well as a multiplayer game, which it should have.  However with the introduction of all of the base characters unlocked at once, many characters were left "useless" to the majority of the fan-base, such as Willow, who was really only geared towards beginners, and while it does sometimes work with her, there's not much reason to play her over, more interesting characters when she was meant to be an introduction to character perks, which has caused Wilson, Woody, and other dull, relatively weak characters to be left in the dust by better players, and in some cases even noobs.

      While many people push this off as you can switch characters to whoever you like, ultimately when you buff the strongest character in a multiplayer PvE game, you make the game as a whole easier, which can be disastrous for a game that advertises as being an "Uncompromising Survival Game"  While balance should not be the #1 concern in a game like this, every character has to be balanced to an extent, or have a clear place in the game in order to keep this kind of structure, or you risk wasting tons of creative character lines, or even making people downright bored when everyone keeps on playing the same two or three characters.

      When getting Wortox as the new DLC character I figured he'd probably be more powerful than the average character, being a DLC and all, but the level of easiness that he is on is beyond crazy.  Killing Bees, re-planted Lureplants, or really anything makes collecting souls laughably easy, which provide unlimited hunger, health, and the ability to dodge attacks, at almost no cost (provided you either want sanity or place the souls on the ground instead) not to mention teleportation!  With his immense healing power I could see many fights coming down to whether or not you have a Wortox on your team, and as a consequence him being dramatically overused, which will not only make newbies feel (too) weak compared to people who buy the DLC, but make people who have him feel worse as a consequence, feeling as if there is no debate of who they should play, and these affects will still continue to a lesser affect if Wortox is only slightly nerfed.

    To conclude, Klei should definitely nerf Wortox, and hopefully focus on balance too for the other character's reworks, as it's just as important as having a cool character in itself.

[Thalkas]

They wrote about working on reworks for old characters and gradual balans for Wortox. Need just time. They cant do everything in this moment. Most developers trying to do do balance and reworks in own games or characters over time but never they do everything in one moment, its impossible.

[GetRektKids]

honestly there are a few things that need to be balanced, like wolfgang, or wickerbottom, teleporting for wortox is fine, but 24 health per butterfly eeeeeeeeeeeeh

[Griver84]

Personally once all the character reworks are out. Then we can take stock in what needs to be buffed/nerfed/adjusted. Trying to do it now would probably just mess things up that Klei has planned in the future. We're going to have a few months of wonky and out of balance stuff until all the reworks are released. Unfortunately just going to have to roll with the punches for now I'd say.


Edit: Also this was posted 40 mins ago.. most of the "easy" soul farms have been nerfed as of today.
 

 

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Cool, but maybe it was a bit early to release him, but I don't blame Klei, they were under a lot of pressure to meet the deadline.

[Well-met]

well, luckily for you this is exactly what's planned. Every char is getting a major revision (wino got hers)

[OMERICA]

Wortox do NOT need a nerf. He is perfectly fine. It is common thing to forget among these “nerf a character” posts that not everyone plays this game “professionally”. If you try to balance EVERYTHING the characters couldn’t offer different things and the game would be bland. Do you want to slay some eye plants and get 100 souls? Sure, do it. Do you want to build 100 catapult? Make it. Everyone should be able to play it however they want. Is someone playing the game a way you don’t like in your server? Ban them or kick them. I will never understand why balancing so important to some. Of course balancing is needed to some extent, but people will always find ways to cheese the game and that is how they want to play. After all this is a game. It’s for fun.  

[Well-met]

20 minutes ago, hl3bekliyenadam said:

Wortox do NOT need a nerf. He is perfectly fine. It is common thing to forget among these “nerf a character” posts that not everyone plays this game “professionally”. If you try to balance EVERYTHING the characters couldn’t offer different things and the game would be bland. Do you want to slay some eye plants and get 100 souls? Sure, do it. Do you want to build 100 catapult? Make it. Everyone should be able to play it however they want. Is someone playing the game a way you don’t like in your server? Ban them or kick them. I will never understand why balancing so important to some. Of course balancing is needed to some extent, but people will always find ways to cheese the game and that is how they want to play. After all this is a game. It’s for fun.  

with this logic you might aswell do c_supergodmode(1)

Sandboxes are fine in singleplayer. Not so when other people are involved and everyone must reach a clear goal by their own means (survive).

You know what's bland? Having 10 players on a server using all the same 1-2 character because they're far better than the 12 others.

Klei seems to agree as they just disabled most of the easy soul farming an hour ago.

[Pop Guy]

 

I think peaceful creatures should not give "souls".

[BeliarBAD]

geeeez guys did you have played wortox for a while??? hes all the time insane. wigfried is still much more powerful then him. she never needs hunger sanity or health 

his most powerful abbility is that you dont need to cook pirogie and other healing food to fight giants. you can join a server and with 6 players get a weapon and armor and go and kill for example dfly. and thats a great thing. im playing for a long time dst and ive cooked enough. 

 

also with him lots of players will be able to kill fuel weaver with a big group of players. thats also a great thing. more players need to see end game content before we get new content.

and never forget. you can kill evry boss easily using beefs or in caves rocklobster. so actually no charachter can be more powerful then this methods.

[Unn0ticedShadow]

H3lbekliyenadam the problem is that public or private you cannot micromanage these things, much less ban certain characters as a whole just to keep the game at the level it should be, and that's not really an option when it comes to "Klei Official" servers, which are purely base game, of course the newbies are going to pick the characters they are best with, which is usually going to be the overpowered ones, and although you can balance or change a game in as many ways as you want, the game should be geared towards it's target audience, which for a "Uncompromising Survival Game" is at a higher level, and there are much more mods to make the game easier than there are to make the game harder in a balanced way, as it's simply easier to do one instead of the other.  I'm not suggesting that Klei put ALL of their resources into balance, but that they make it one of their focuses, which was sort of ignored with Wortox, in favor of getting him out ASAP.  Ultimately a Don't Starve "Together" game should have a semi balanced multiplayer instead of throwing balance out of the window, as this is even more crucial when it comes to multiplayer.  I certainly see your point with cheese being difficult to fix, I just think that all characters should be on par with each-other.

    As a Wigfrid main however, I would have to disagree with the idea that Wigfrid is even comparable to Wortox, while Wigfrid can heal easily, she can not do so mid-battle, and is far from "Never" needing hunger, only eating meats, with Wortox being able to eat souls, and often insanity can be good, and avoidable in this case.

   Rock Lobsters and Beefalo are very powerful against bosses though, but how you fight them is much more clear cut than if/how you play a character, and does not involve missing out on content.  Beefalo can help people bad at combat get late-game items they otherwise couldn't, but imbalanced characters take away instead of adding, with there being clear alternatives already with a much more clear "Line" that's being crossed.  Use rock lobsters if you must, but OP characters is not the way to do it, but more powerful weapons would work better.

[Griver84]

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As a Wigfrid main however, I would have to disagree with the idea that Wigfrid is even comparable to Wortox, while Wigfrid can heal easily, she can not do so mid-battle, and is far from "Never" needing hunger, only eating meats, with Wortox being able to eat souls, and often insanity can be good, and avoidable in this case.

 

Its wrong to say that in DST Wigfrid can NOT heal in battle. Taken straight from the wiki: "For example, if she attacks a Spider with Battle Spear, she gains 2.125 Health and Sanity per hit (20*0.25*42.5/100 = 2.125)". Considering you call yourself a "wigfrid" main and don't realize this makes me take this thread a whole lot less seriously now.

 

Quote

I certainly see your point with cheese being difficult to fix, I just think that all characters should be on par with each-other.

You're comparing apples to oranges here. You're implying cheese in regards to combat. Not every character is combat focused. Each character has ways to shine in their own aspects. Woodie/Wicker/Maxwell all are god tier when it comes to gathering resources. So by that logic, wolfgang needs a buff to gathering to make him on par with them. Cuz obviously its unfair to Wolfgang mains that a Maxwell shows up with 10 stacks of logs and builds a whole base while the Wolfgang struggles to keep enough wood for the armor he's going through.

You see how this logic gets out of hand quickly? Personally I think Klei and their balancing team has done a wonderful job in keeping the longevity and balance of this game in mind. I trust them in what they are doing. They are very transparent in changes and have even reverted things that the community (as a whole) pushed back on.

But like I've said in other threads.... Wortox has been out for 24 hrs... They've patched the big problems with soul gathering already. Let's let it be.

[BeliarBAD]

18 minutes ago, Griver84 said:

As a Wigfrid main however, I would have to disagree with the idea that Wigfrid is even comparable to Wortox, while Wigfrid can heal easily, she can not do so mid-battle, and is far from "Never" needing hunger, only eating meats, with Wortox being able to eat souls, and often insanity can be good, and avoidable in this case.

with 15-20 pierogie you can kill evry dst boss solo with wig. and sure you can heal midfight very easy. just go some steps away. its much harder to drop souls with wortox then to eat pierogie with wig. its just you have to cook them. thats not a hard thing but annoying. and there comes wortox very in handy. he cuts an annoying part of boss fights. the healing food cooking. 

 

what i mean with "shes never hungry"... after day 100 i can just survive from monster meat from hound waves

 

i was playing as wortox and he feels great and is lots of fun but i completely disagree if you say hes more powerful then wig, wicker, wx or wolfgang.

 

and btw if my posts sound rude... im very sorry. im not. its just my poor english

21 minutes ago, Griver84 said:

You're comparing apples to oranges here. You're implying cheese in regards to combat. Not every character is combat focused. Each character has ways to shine in their own aspects. Woodie/Wicker/Maxwell all are god tier when it comes to gathering resources. So by that logic, wolfgang needs a buff to gathering to make him on par with them. Cuz obviously its unfair to Wolfgang mains that a Maxwell shows up with 10 stacks of logs and builds a whole base while the Wolfgang struggles to keep enough wood for the armor he's going through.

You see how this logic gets out of hand quickly? Personally I think Klei and their balancing team has done a wonderful job in keeping the longevity and balance of this game in mind. I trust them in what they are doing. They are very transparent in changes and have even reverted things that the community (as a whole) pushed back on.

But like I've said in other threads.... Wortox has been out for 24 hrs... They've patched the big problems with soul gathering already. Let's let it be.

so well said

[Stonetribe]

I think that it's still way too early to be deciding whether Wortox is over powered or not, he's only been out for a little over a day now after all. And no offense but as it's already been pointed out, saying that you're a Wigfrid main and that she can't heal mid combat when literally every attack that she makes leeches life doesn't exactly add credibility..

[Monkey Cups]

Wortox isn't overpowered at all. I actually have to worry about my sanity now which is something I haven't had to do in quite a while. He's not OP, he's fun, and it worries me that the combat tryhards are gonna constantly whine until that's taken away.

Frankly if you lot should be complaining about anything it should be the ability to clip past the land barriers into the sea and cheese out literally anything. You know, an actual bug, not something that comes down to preference.

[Datanon]

since we're getting a rework for every character i'd say the main problem i see is the fact that healing items are downright worthless when youre playing with a wortox filled with souls. health is a non issue for wortox just like hunger is a non issue for wickerbottom

just like how i expect only tweaks to the downsides of wx76, wickerbottom and wolfgang, i am now expecting tweaks on wortox's numbers. and no, low sanity is not an issue until they make it not desirable for the purposes of nightmare fuel

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Griver84, What I meant is you can't heal substantially during battle, maybe you could get a few health points, but it doesn't even begin to compare with the ability to heal Thirty Twenty health Twenty times per battle, not to mention that souls don't spoil, and can be stored unlike Wigfrids healing, which I find to be much more of an alternative method of healing instead of something to rely on during battle.  I am aware it's a bit too early to judge the character based off of their power, but this has been something I have been wanted to adress since the (first) forge came out, and honestly I think current Wortox is a very good example, ignoring the release, and I didn't mean that all characters should be equal combat wise, but rather they should all have their own place, and be around the same level overall, not to say there can't be more newbie freindly characters.  (Maxwell does not need to match Woodie and other characters combat wise, but shouldn't overpower Woodie in his own specialty)

      Although you could technically replace his healing with fishsticks, to get that many into whatever battle it is unspoiled either takes a whole lot of effort or bundling wraps, which is much more difficult than just killing 20 bees, and at no point in the game do you have enough orange gems to teleport at your leisure.  

    They are working on insanity though, which could make the hunger restoration from souls a bit less convenient if the creatures themselves were made more dangerous, but it's probably best to wait until the balance patch happens, and i'll be happy as long as he does get fixed, at one point or another.

 

 

[Stonetribe]

9 minutes ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

it doesn't even begin to compare with the ability to heal 30 health *Twenty* times per battle

Don't Wortox souls only heal 20 health though?

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Is it 20, I thought it was 30, let me check.

[Griver84]

So from what I've seen two of you say now, you're upset/disgruntled at the fact that a character can do a specific task easier than everyone else because of his soul mechanic? Even though you said it yourself, you can easily get enough Fishsticks/Perogis/Dragonpie (40 hp) into battle with bundling wraps and make them fresh. Which is the whole reason bundling wraps were introduced.

I'm just going to point back up to my earlier post about how Maxwell can harvest resources faster than any other character... where's the outrage against him?...

Granted I'll give you the fact that teleporting constantly with an easily renewable resource is a bit in the OP department, but its part of his kit and I accept that for what it is currently. Without it, wortox would just be another cookie cutter character which would cause a whole OTHER type of outrage on the forums tbh.

Also his healing is about 20 points per soul and he can hold a max of 20 souls. So at best you're getting a full heal for wortox (and most characters) with him overloading (aka 200 point heal at the loss of wortoxs sanity). Which tbh to me is baffling why people even are upset with this. Its a group game and you're wanting to nerf a character that can keep you alive through doing very dumb things that would normally cause you to die...

[Unn0ticedShadow]

It's about the convenience of the souls, but you are correct in that I was too quick to judge, but with a bug net you could store an infinite amount of souls in bee form, though I imagine that will probably be changed in the next update.

While we can both agree that not all the characters are perfectly balanced, I was mainly aiming to explain why characters do need to be balanced, (which is something many people disagree with) and "villanized" Wortox in the process, which I should not have been so quick to do so.

      On an unrelated note, am I the only one who finds Wortox somewhat boring?  I feel his dialogue isn't extremely unique, and while the souls are cool in concept they don't add enough to his "playable" or maybe his lack of one as of now?

[CrimXane]

6 hours ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

      Although this is my first post, this is something I've been struggling to find balance in for a while now, and I feel Wortox really highlights this issue better than any other character in the past. (So sorry for the long post)  

     When regular Don't Starve was first created, with it came characters, and the developers weren't concerned about balance, as the character you chose is a personal option, and I might go as far as to say they purposely scaled the usefulness of characters from early to late-game, with the more easily unlocked characters more useful for beginners, and the later unlocked ones more useful than the others, or so it seems to be with EXP unlocked characters (Except Wolfgang).

      The issue with Don't Starve Together, however is that it's aimed to be, or at least function well as a multiplayer game, which it should have.  However with the introduction of all of the base characters unlocked at once, many characters were left "useless" to the majority of the fan-base, such as Willow, who was really only geared towards beginners, and while it does sometimes work with her, there's not much reason to play her over, more interesting characters when she was meant to be an introduction to character perks, which has caused Wilson, Woody, and other dull, relatively weak characters to be left in the dust by better players, and in some cases even noobs.

      While many people push this off as you can switch characters to whoever you like, ultimately when you buff the strongest character in a multiplayer PvE game, you make the game as a whole easier, which can be disastrous for a game that advertises as being an "Uncompromising Survival Game"  While balance should not be the #1 concern in a game like this, every character has to be balanced to an extent, or have a clear place in the game in order to keep this kind of structure, or you risk wasting tons of creative character lines, or even making people downright bored when everyone keeps on playing the same two or three characters.

      When getting Wortox as the new DLC character I figured he'd probably be more powerful than the average character, being a DLC and all, but the level of easiness that he is on is beyond crazy.  Killing Bees, re-planted Lureplants, or really anything makes collecting souls laughably easy, which provide unlimited hunger, health, and the ability to dodge attacks, at almost no cost (provided you either want sanity or place the souls on the ground instead) not to mention teleportation!  With his immense healing power I could see many fights coming down to whether or not you have a Wortox on your team, and as a consequence him being dramatically overused, which will not only make newbies feel (too) weak compared to people who buy the DLC, but make people who have him feel worse as a consequence, feeling as if there is no debate of who they should play, and these affects will still continue to a lesser affect if Wortox is only slightly nerfed.

    To conclude, Klei should definitely nerf Wortox, and hopefully focus on balance too for the other character's reworks, as it's just as important as having a cool character in itself.

this post will create a cool down of dropping souls, just give it time.
not saying wortox is op or not
EVERYONE sees anything as powerful.
give it a while then judge.


DE JA VU 


[ Bundling Wraps are OP ]

[Datanon]

8 minutes ago, Griver84 said:

I'm just going to point back up to my earlier post about how Maxwell can harvest resources faster than any other character... where's the outrage against him?...

wortox can clean up killer bee hives and tier 3 spider dens with no armor and end up with more health than he started, and youre comparing him to a basic resources collector

btw i dont agree with a lot of OP's points but if you think what i just said about wortox is comparable with any other character but maybe wickerbottom, i dont really know what to say. i agree that its a group game but i think there should be a limit to how reckless you can be in a survival game

[Griver84]

What I'm comparing it to is the fact that everyone is focusing on the COMBAT aspect of Wortox and other characters when it comes to Tier lists and power rankings. Yet when you really dig into the game, there are many ways to rank the characters. I was giving one such example how another non combat oriented character outshines others in ONE aspect of the game.

[Datanon]

3 minutes ago, Griver84 said:

What I'm comparing it to is the fact that everyone is focusing on the COMBAT aspect of Wortox and other characters when it comes to Tier lists and power rankings. Yet when you really dig into the game, there are many ways to rank the characters. I was giving one such example how another non combat oriented character outshines others in ONE aspect of the game.

youre right in that point, but dont you think characters like wortox and wickerbottom outshines everyone with their strong aspects a little bit too much to the point of changing the game drastically by having (or not) one on your team?