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

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Good point, teleporing in itself isn't so op though, so that could very well stay the same, although a cool-down is definitely necessary to keep it from being crazy like you pointed out, though I could see a medium length teleport being useful at times.  Dodging isn't the main use of the souls, and teleporting is still a small part of them.

  It might as well not be there if it don't have a use to begin with, so it does need the ability to dodge or teleport long distances, and if what I said was added right now it probably would be considered a poorly made nerf, kind of like when Klei made Willow "Fire Resistant" instead of fireproof.

[FreyaMaluk]

1 hour ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

Every character getting balanced would not mean the game being filled with Willows, as when it comes to other games with multiple "fighters" or whatever they have that kind of stuff has obviously been balanced, and there isn't much making DST much different than a game like LoL balance wise, which manages to have cool and balanced characters, although Don't Starve Together definitely does not need nearly as much balance, but most certainly some.

    Wigfrids healing ability on the other hand is incomparable to Wortox, she heals 4 Hp from spiders, Wortox 20.  As for butterflies, she heals 0, and wortox 24!  If your going to compare a character to to Wortox it most certainly should not be Wigfrid, and honestly I don't think there really is a character to compare him to, which while making him unique and fun to play, is very much over the top at the moment.  Maybe if only certain monsters dropped souls like spider guards, beefalo, and pigs it could be semi-balanced, but at it's current state he's beyond comparing rank-wise to any characters besides maybe Wicker and Wolfgang, who are already above powerful in most players eyes.

WE DON'T KNOW HOW THE OTHER CHARACTERS ARE GONNA CHANGE... DST ROADMAP... REEEE

[4 Da LOLs]

its really hard to actually come for a rework for this its so simple its hard for a rework because there isn't much that can be done with it

[FreyaMaluk]

1 minute ago, 4 Da LOLs said:

its really hard to actually come for a rework for this its so simple its hard for a rework because there isn't much that can be done with it

IMO if you change his soul hopping you break his uniqueness... same with the heals... 

[4 Da LOLs]

1 minute ago, FreyaMaluk said:

IMO

ive been in this fourm for years and dont know what that means please explain

[FreyaMaluk]

1 minute ago, 4 Da LOLs said:

ive been in this fourm for years and dont know what that means please explain

In my opinion..

[Unn0ticedShadow]

    I think there's a lot that can be done with him (or it).  The best way to look at if a character can be balanced is to see how the character could potentially be under-powered, and work from there.  An example of how Wortox could be under-powered is if he could not teleport or dodge with his souls, and if they were "really" rare to come by, such as only having a 2.5% chance of dropping from mobs like spiders.  This shows that Wortox can certainly be made under-powered, so moving from this (extremely under-powered) scenario how could he be made more powerful?

   A good way to balance him would be to make the souls rare, but not too rare.  For example they could have a 25% drop rate from spiders, 50% drop rate from Spider Guards until a fine balance is found (these numbers are examples, not static.) making him good in situations, but not too good.  

   As for IMO, Idk what that even means until now, so thanks for telling me.

 

[4 Da LOLs]

6 minutes ago, FreyaMaluk said:

IMO if you change his soul hopping you break his uniqueness... same with the heals... 

how would making soul hopping less 30second one side of the island to another make him less unique?

what if he teleports multiple times in quick succession the amount of souls used increases so a sorta fast for short distances or a slight boost every now and again sorta deal so its not over used yet still efficient in some way

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Unique is the wrong word, but rather broken, when combined with the soul accessibility and lack of downsides it's kind of crazy to be able to travel this fast so early, and the ability to use it consecutively against bosses can also break the kiting mechanic, if you're not fighting a high health/raid boss like toadstool.  

Although it still needs to have it's uses, a 15-20 second cool-down, like suggested above would be enough to prevent it from replacing kiting, while still being useful to escape from things like Splemonky hordes and cross corners of the map you normally need to walk around to get to, as well as just decreasing soul accessibility.

[MondayNight]

17 hours ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

...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

DST is first and foremost a family-friendly silly game with the "your world your rules" tagline. If you are on your personal server sure, ban whomever you want if they pick a character you loathe - won't be a friendly and nice attitude but hey, "your world your rules" - and the more I read your posts I tend to believe you are that exact type of host. Yet in public servers - more so the Klei variety ones - everyone is and SHOULD BE free to do whatever they want without try-hard elitists imposing nonsense.

Also it seems to me you really don't have many pub hours under your proverbial belt: because in Klei public servers the vast majority of players - aka casuals making bulk of player-base, around ~70% of it - play Wilson and Willow. You and other experienced players consider Wolf-Wicker-WX as overpowered because you've mastered their cons, but more so their pros; still most casuals that do pick Wolf-Wicker-WX out of curiosity die magnificently from hunger and/or insanity. Thus no, "newbies are going to pick the characters they are best with, which is usually going to be the overpowered ones" is not valid in this case: newbies picking "The Holy DST Trinity" kick the bucket rather quick. Your argument regarding "OP characters" holds water for medium-to-experienced gamers.

 

Wortox will surely be balanced, probably on the "double up/down rule": souls providing 1/2 of current HP-pool, aka 10; and a lot of soul-sources will disappear, and rightly so (Antlion spikes or Wes balloons - pretty lulz). Rest of characters will as well be reworked, only a matter of time; thus be patient.

 

12 hours ago, Ogrecakes said:

The game should inherently block players from seeing end game content behind a huge difficulty curve.

That's the POINT of Don't Starve. If you can just skip the games difficulty then whats the point?

Maybe for the Solo player, where your objective is to finish a story-line - as DS is story-oriented. DST is a sandbox game, no end-game objective other than what you chose it to be, beyond survival (and no, artificially-forced survival isn't a goal because most casuals - again bulk of player-base - only plays for a short amount of time). In multiplayer you as a company would want the maximum players number spending as much fulfilling time in your game as possible - and seeing this is a family-oriented casual game, "inherently block players from seeing end game content behind a huge difficulty curve" is very VERY counterproductive: that mindset is of try-hard/hardcore gamers. Even with the 20/80 Rule a very small percentage of hardcore gamers won't provide sufficient sales warranting further development of content if your game is hardcore hard - hardcore try-hard elitists are a very-small-but-vocal minority (under 1% of total player-base) plus, most funny, they don't stick with games on the long run (constantly shifting to new titles on the market), and we have examples right here on these forums, self-admitting so.

[Unn0ticedShadow]

2 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

DST is first and foremost a family-friendly silly game with the "your world your rules" tagline. If you are on your personal server sure, ban whomever you want if they pick a character you loathe - won't be a friendly and nice attitude but hey, "your world your rules" - and the more I read your posts I tend to believe you are that exact type of host. Yet in public servers - more so the Klei variety ones - everyone is and SHOULD BE free to do whatever they want without try-hard elitists imposing nonsense.

 

While people should be free to do as much as possible without ruining the experience for others, when you join a public Klei server, or on default settings, the game should of course play like it should by default, which is an "Unforgiving Survival Game".  While I get your point about giving more power to everyone so people can do what they want, if you were to give everyone console commands the game would not be any better with the extra power, as by gaining that power you would lose the experience intended and craved by most players, sure you could go live in the corner of the map away from those players, but it's not the same, and certainly not accommodating for people who just want to play what they were advertised.

 

7 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Also it seems to me you really don't have many pub hours under your proverbial belt: because in Klei public servers the vast majority of players - aka casuals making bulk of player-base, around ~70% of it - play Wilson and Willow. You and other experienced players consider Wolf-Wicker-WX as overpowered because you've mastered their cons, but more so their pros; still most casuals that do pick Wolf-Wicker-WX out of curiosity die magnificently from hunger and/or insanity. So no, "newbies are going to pick the characters they are best with, which is usually going to be the overpowered ones" is not valid in this case: newbies picking "The Holy DST Trinity" kick the bucket rather quick. Your argument regarding "OP characters" holds water for medium-to-experienced gamers.

 

 

I will admit that I don't play much in public servers, for the reasons I listed, so my mistake on how many players pick which character, but how many people might play Willow does not justify how weak she is, and Wilson gets played a lot because he's the "Default" character.  I do not play on public servers because of a lack of experience to clarify, I have 400 hours overall in DST, so I do know what i'm talking about when it comes to balance.

[Misa22]

5 minutes ago, FreyaMaluk said:

I you admit you don't know about balance then you shouldn't ask for nerfs

He said "I DO know". 

[Unn0ticedShadow]

As I said, I have 400 hours in DST, around 12 real life days in game, so I certainly have the right to an opinion about the game, and large amounts of players playing Wilson doesn't say anything, as people consider him the "Default" character upon first playing.  How many people might play Willow does not justify how weak she is, but that's another discussion on it's own, with her being compared to Wes in some circumstances.

[Loopy Ouroboros]

While Willow's rework is on the way, I am sincerely concerned how it will be handled.

Although I believe Klei will have the best intentions to spice up the character to a more viable level, merely giving her a half-dozen or so fire-related perks of questionable worth in exchange for a couple added downsides feels like a lazy stopgap, and will needlessly complicate Willow to the point where she's not fun to play anymore. Less is more.

Perhaps it would also be worth the bother to downplay her pyromania, even. Her low sanity is already more of a factor than her fire immunity as it is, so why not expand upon that? Give her something truly memorable.

 

Apologies for being slightly off-topic, just really got carried away reading this topic and couldn't resist.

[Unn0ticedShadow]

I agree, if I could I would probably just import normal Willow into DST, minus her burning downside, and add something else to replace that.  Her having Bernie, needing to re-craft a lighter and all that other stuff makes her complicated to play for beginners, and without reward, as she is not useful to begin with.  While I don't even care too much about making her 'balanced', I think she should at least be a good crutch for beginners, as most of her perks are wired to be.

[Philsam]

6 hours ago, BeliarBAD said:

but it is how it is.... 99,99999% of all players havent ever seen fuelweaver. and thats a very bad thing. 

Are you sure about that ?

 

6 hours ago, BeliarBAD said:

there should be a rule here: minimum 3.000h in ds and dst to have the permission to make comments about balancing...

Are you sure about that X2, and who have 3000h in DS and DST ? Lol

[MondayNight]

40 minutes ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

While people should be free to do as much as possible without ruining the experience for others, when you join a public Klei server, or on default settings, the game should of course play like it should by default, which is an "Unforgiving Survival Game".

The "Unforgiving Survival Game" part was pretty much dropped (downplayed?!) when DST allowed players to revive easier and be revived (Telltale Heart) - aka the mechanic of Ghost form. Also other main difference between DS and DST is the pure sandbox aspect in lack of an Adventure mode. So, in time, a slight transition occured towards some more "social club with friends" type because of a main game-goal convergence in community's mindset: road from scarcity to prosperity coming from building elaborate bases with semi-automatic farms - thus less environmental harshness (and that's ok given the context: multiplayer desired to have as much appeal as it can). Likewise don't forget another basic principle in gaming: "giving the opportunity players will optimize the hell out of your game".

 

We will see, more change is underway, balance and new DST world stuff alike, and I for one am optimistic. Only at the end of all these changes we can draw a line for fully-grounded conclusions.

[Stonetribe]

Sorry if this is a little off topic but it's something I've been meaning to ask for a while now. Is going insane really such a non-issue and more beneficial than harmful, at least for experienced players? I know that the shadow creatures are relatively easy to fight off and drop useful nightmare fuel, but they're at least dangerous when they're after you while more pressing matters, like being on the verge of starving/ freezing/overheating, need to be tended to, right? I've yet to reach a point in my don't starve career to consider intentionally going insane for the purpose of farming nightmare fuel, so I wouldn't know personally.

[GetRektKids]

20 hours ago, BeliarBAD said:

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.

HAHAHAHAHAHA LOL IM DYINGGG 

 

I personally MAIN Wigfrid she is my favorite character, but she is NOT better then Wortox..... HE CAN LITERALLY GET 24HP FROM A BUTTERFLY HEAL ALLIES AND TELEPORT..... Your halarious 

 

Character ranking to me...'

1 - Wortox

2 - Wolfgang

3 - Wickerbottom

4 - WX-78

5 - Maxwell

6 - Wigfrid

7 - Winona

8 - Wendy

9 - Webber

10 - Woody

11 - Wilson

12 - Willow

13 - Wes

(No offense wes fans)

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Low sanity is generally a non issue for me, so I imagine it's the same for the pros, but you still don't want to be fighting the sanity monsters while fighting other things.  As for your list, GetRektKids, I'd have to almost entirely agree with you, although Wigfrid would be higher than Maxwell, and I would have put Willow lower than wes, had they not nerfed him.  

[Scrimbles]

3 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

DST is first and foremost a family-friendly silly game with the "your world your rules" tagline. If you are on your personal server sure, ban whomever you want if they pick a character you loathe - won't be a friendly and nice attitude but hey, "your world your rules" - and the more I read your posts I tend to believe you are that exact type of host. Yet in public servers - more so the Klei variety ones - everyone is and SHOULD BE free to do whatever they want without try-hard elitists imposing nonsense.

Also it seems to me you really don't have many pub hours under your proverbial belt: because in Klei public servers the vast majority of players - aka casuals making bulk of player-base, around ~70% of it - play Wilson and Willow. You and other experienced players consider Wolf-Wicker-WX as overpowered because you've mastered their cons, but more so their pros; still most casuals that do pick Wolf-Wicker-WX out of curiosity die magnificently from hunger and/or insanity. Thus no, "newbies are going to pick the characters they are best with, which is usually going to be the overpowered ones" is not valid in this case: newbies picking "The Holy DST Trinity" kick the bucket rather quick. Your argument regarding "OP characters" holds water for medium-to-experienced gamers.

 

Wortox will surely be balanced, probably on the "double up/down rule": souls providing 1/2 of current HP-pool, aka 10; and a lot of soul-sources will disappear, and rightly so (Antlion spikes or Wes balloons - pretty lulz). Rest of characters will as well be reworked, only a matter of time; thus be patient.

 

Maybe for the Solo player, where your objective is to finish a story-line - as DS is story-oriented. DST is a sandbox game, no end-game objective other than what you chose it to be, beyond survival (and no, artificially-forced survival isn't a goal because most casuals - again bulk of player-base - only plays for a short amount of time). In multiplayer you as a company would want the maximum players number spending as much fulfilling time in your game as possible - and seeing this is a family-oriented casual game, "inherently block players from seeing end game content behind a huge difficulty curve" is very VERY counterproductive: that mindset is of try-hard/hardcore gamers. Even with the 20/80 Rule a very small percentage of hardcore gamers won't provide sufficient sales warranting further development of content if your game is hardcore hard - hardcore try-hard elitists are a very-small-but-vocal minority (under 1% of total player-base) plus, most funny, they don't stick with games on the long run (constantly shifting to new titles on the market), and we have examples right here on these forums, self-admitting so.

Klei has always made niche games, but I suppose making your game family friendly, adding multiplayer, removing long pig, adding gates and pets, and basically taking away everything that made the original DS great to make a party sandbox is a better marketing tactic.

But clearly these aren't all the same people behind the original, so that's unfortunate.

The tagline "unforgiving survival experience" is also slapped on both the single player and multiplayer, but I guess that's not quite true anymore.

 

This is why "No multiplayer ever" used to be an emote and important part of the forums, because multiplayer inherently breaks the point of Don't Starve, but instead of finding a way to keep the game dark and difficult, Klei chose to just abandon that side of the game in favor of a 'family friendly sandbox'.

 

 

[spideswine]

1 hour ago, Stonetribe said:

Sorry if this is a little off topic but it's something I've been meaning to ask for a while now. Is going insane really such a non-issue and more beneficial than harmful, at least for experienced players?

More or less.

Quote

I know that the shadow creatures are relatively easy to fight off and drop useful nightmare fuel, but they're at least dangerous when they're after you while more pressing matters, like being on the verge of starving/ freezing/overheating, need to be tended to, right?

These are rarely an issue for experienced players.

But yeah, insanity can be annoying in boss fights/ ruins exploring, but you generally go there when prepared for it. lag can make it a bit more troubling however, but not too much.

Quote

I've yet to reach a point in my don't starve career to consider intentionally going insane for the purpose of farming nightmare fuel, so I wouldn't know personally.

Insanity is mostly just annoying due to distortion/music, it might be a bit of an issue when fighting something else as well, but that's about it.

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Darn that's kind of sad, never thought of it that way.  They did do a lot to balance it out in DST though, like making telltale hearts require another player, as well as buffing most of the mobs.  Honestly the only thing I see standing in the way of the game being "unforgiving" is the character power imbalance and cheese, which I understand to a point but wish that surrounding pigskin with fences was not the meta way to keep them outside, although i'm pretty alone with that opinion.

[VexTheHex]

 We are only 2 characters (1 refresh, 1 new) into the road map of all the characters being refreshed and 4 new ones being added, so it's too early to really say which way the balance will go. We have to wait and see, and I am excited for it. And there's no telling what the other new core content is going to be, whether it's more general stuff to add more flavor to the world (like new starting biomes) or end game content for those who live in the late game. I personally hope it's both on that front. 

[Stonetribe]

That seems about right from what I've heard, thanks for replying. Here's hoping that the good folks at Klei look into it in the coming updates. I always thought it would be cool if there were more shadow creatures that don't actually try to hurt you but detriment you in other ways like the shadow hands that try to snuff out your campfires.