[Poll] On Character Mods

[Raspberry Shake]

-Horribly imbalanced.

-Why does someone feel the need to play Kaguya from that romcom anime nobody's going to remember in a months time? 

-It's literally copypasted assets.

-alright, it's an interesting and original premise with good art, which both suit the game's style. Wait... oh no.... WHERES THE W!

The exceptions to this last rule are @Quoth143's previously mentioned OC mods, the company of creators (if anyone knows where Erik's gone, that would be helpful), and the Charlie mod. However, I'll just **** around with these for a bit, and not really play a real game.

I tried to make my own character mod, had it almost finished, and then all the files uhhh... stopped existing. I'm attempting to make a new one with my techsavvy accomplice.

[-Variant]

5 hours ago, Canis said:

Lol, thank you.

I know I've seen this before, it's why I ask.

Good to know.

Oh, guess I'm not a cowboy now.

[minespatch]

20 hours ago, Raspberry Shake said:

-alright, it's an interesting and original premise with good art, which both suit the game's style. Wait... oh no.... WHERES THE W!

[Scrubsbarry]

This poll is a little strange, since a lot of the Why Not? reasons are not just singular, it is for all of those reasons I do not use modded characters anymore. Almost none of them are unique with copy&paste speech files from other characters to their traits. When they are unique, it is usually extremely overpowered, giving you some weapon that does bogus damage for little to no crafting requirements or traits that are exploitable to death. God forbid you go into the workship expecting anything but anime characters, furries, and ocs that don't have the DS artstyle or are just reskins of templates or pre-existing characters.

[Raspberry Shake]

1 hour ago, minespatch said:

I'm going to take this chance to ask you. Where's Erik?

[minespatch]

Just now, Raspberry Shake said:

I'm going to take this chance to ask you. Where's Erik?

Not there since this was a reply to a post on this forum.

[CaptainChaotica]

Um...does it count if they ARE DS characters?  Note the lack of "T" at the end there.   With me...

...for example, that's HOW Walani ended up as "The High Priestess of Starvania"--I ended up using her in my (second (and third) (and fourth)*) attempt at the March of Civilization Challenge. 

And yes, I've also been known to mess about with the Charlie mod occasionally...

...even if it _does_ get kinda confusing when shadow hands still come for your fire at night.  XD

I've also played as Winnie a few times, but I don't seem to have any screenshots of that...I do believe that's the time I got killed by a cotton candy, though.  : P

As for Wormwood and Wilba, I'd totally do that too, except I kinda want to unlock them myself in Hamlet first.  I _did_ do that with the Shipwrecked characters I actually play sometimes, so it'd only fit the pattern.  (shrug)

NON-Klei-even-inspired-at-all characters...whoo, those are a mixed bag.  Some can be okay.  Some SEEM overpowered at first, but aren't...at least, not in the hands of bad players (look up Stumpt's Season Two of DST with Ash playing as the TF2 Engineer for one example**--they were SO SURE that their turret's awesomeness would take care of Deerclops...a few days before he showed up?  A Treeguard like, two-shotted the damn thing!), but I think the main thing that bugs me about them is when the art style COMPLETELY clashes.  Being overpowered and instant-gratificationy is annoying too, but what _really_ gets me is when they're oversaturated in colour and too cutesy.

Also when their name doesn't begin with a W.  : P 

...Notorious

*Due to glitches, mainly...

**Actually you should watch Stumpt's DST stuff in general, as it tends to be frelling hilarious.  Frustrating, but hilarious.

[. . .]

90% of the character mods on the DST workshop suck, 4% are graphically okay but boring to play, the other 4% graphically suck but are fun to play, and the last 1% are epic mods which are impossible to play without (unless you're an evil modphobe).

[Alexias]

I don’t mind seeing Wilson quotes, i almost never played him before him so i want too see it.

It is just that most of them don’t match my preference OR Unbalanced.

I have DS characters mods and charlie and tentacle-like character mods, i play Woodlegs sometimes I just has to edit his hat so it can spawn treasures while it’s on pigs.

[Spep]

only ever used the few TF2 character mod's seriously, way too many character mods are extremely low quality, drowning out the few good ones with endless low effort mods that either are wilson clones, fast but weak, indestructable, or look like someone drew them in MS paint, don't forget the wilson quotes, if  you DO manage to get through the endless tide of bad character mods and actually find a good one, now you have to guess on if its even still supported for the current version, leading to even more wilson quotes, and sometimes the game self destructing. 

personally, i think that modded characters would have had a much better rep if the character template never existed.

[CaptainChaotica]

Or then there's that one regular DS mod where you can put together traits of different characters (both aesthetic and gameplay-altering) and make your own!...monstrosities.  Like Webber with Wigfrid's braids and Wolfgang's body, or something.  But at least that's harmlessly funny.  : P   Also, since this is SINGLEPLAYER, your overpoweredness (or not) isn't gonna affect anyone else.

One thing on the quotes side that kinda bugs me a little, is when a mod _itself_ only has one set of character quotes.  For example, with "Pickle It!", otherwise one of the best mods ever and one I don't like to play without now, EVERYBODY says the same thing about the pickle barrel, the different veggies, and their pickled/non-pickled/rotten/still in the ground states.  It'd be much more interesting if each character had their own quote about things, at least, among the normal canon characters.  (Keeping up with that among the MODDED ones would be a freakin' nightmare.) 

For example, when I first saw Willow look at some sauerkraut and be like "Oh, my grandpa used to put that in his chocolate cakes instead of coconut!"* I was like "Oh, wait, Willow's descended from German immigrants?  Huh!  That's interesting!  Maybe Jacksepticeye's randomly calling her 'Gildred' long ago actually fits!"

...until I (a) remembered that THAT'S A MOD QUOTE, NOT FROM THE CANON CHARACTER, STUPID and (b) saw Winona say the exact same thing about the sauerkraut in a later game.  : P

Otherwise it's a great mod, it's just...it would go from cool to AMAZING if it was more individualised.  Ya know?

(shrug)

...Notorious

*And yep, that's an actual thing.  It's one of those "EEEWWWW!"-sounding budget-cut ingredients that actually doesn't taste like itself when the whole thing is done, it's just there to add the proper texture.  Same with using mayonnaise as a moisturizer, or crackers with mock-apple pie.  I'm not an actual cook, by the way, so don't take my word on this as gospel.  : P

[Terra B Welch]

2 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Or then there's that one regular DS mod where you can put together traits of different characters (both aesthetic and gameplay-altering) and make your own!...monstrosities.  Like Webber with Wigfrid's braids and Wolfgang's body, or something.  But at least that's harmlessly funny.  : P   Also, since this is SINGLEPLAYER, your overpoweredness (or not) isn't gonna affect anyone else.

One thing on the quotes side that kinda bugs me a little, is when a mod _itself_ only has one set of character quotes.  For example, with "Pickle It!", otherwise one of the best mods ever and one I don't like to play without now, EVERYBODY says the same thing about the pickle barrel, the different veggies, and their pickled/non-pickled/rotten/still in the ground states.  It'd be much more interesting if each character had their own quote about things, at least, among the normal canon characters.  (Keeping up with that among the MODDED ones would be a freakin' nightmare.) 

For example, when I first saw Willow look at some sauerkraut and be like "Oh, my grandpa used to put that in his chocolate cakes instead of coconut!"* I was like "Oh, wait, Willow's descended from German immigrants?  Huh!  That's interesting!  Maybe Jacksepticeye's randomly calling her 'Gildred' long ago actually fits!"

...until I (a) remembered that THAT'S A MOD QUOTE, NOT FROM THE CANON CHARACTER, STUPID and (b) saw Winona say the exact same thing about the sauerkraut in a later game.  : P

Otherwise it's a great mod, it's just...it would go from cool to AMAZING if it was more individualised.  Ya know?

(shrug)

...Notorious

*And yep, that's an actual thing.  It's one of those "EEEWWWW!"-sounding budget-cut ingredients that actually doesn't taste like itself when the whole thing is done, it's just there to add the proper texture.  Same with using mayonnaise as a moisturizer, or crackers with mock-apple pie.  I'm not an actual cook, by the way, so don't take my word on this as gospel.  : P

I guess I ought to get on that with quotimizer huh? Sorry been distracted >.<

[CaptainChaotica]

Whoops!  Sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was calling anyone out.  I always forget who writes what ('cos I'm horrible with names in general)...and that often, the mod-writers are actually HERE. 

It's a great mod otherwise, though, and I've seen a lot of others that have the same trait without being even _half_ as well-done.  So...

...Notorious

[GuyNamedChris]

On 5/14/2019 at 12:05 AM, Raspberry Shake said:

I'm going to take this chance to ask you. Where's Erik?

I would be the guy to ask about that.

Basically we're redoing Erik and Daniel's perks in revamp mods in the future to make them more in-line with the DST cast, and scrub off any last bits of "self insert" off the characters. Maybe that includes W names? Who knows. Mainly cause Erik the Tennis Player has vaguely anything to do with athleticism or tennis, and now that Wortox is out, there's 2 variants of soul stealing characters with Daniel the Spectromancer. Not to mention the claim souls mechanic is a total rip on Abigail, so he'll probably get new spectral based abilities.
Also we really want everyone to forget about Derik by the time the Erik revamp is out.

[CameoAppearance]

I have a couple of character mods I like, such as the Charlie mod (even though it could use some updates) and the Wodger mod... but most character mods I see don't fit seamlessly into the DS art style, have dialogue that doesn't fit the tone of DS, have incomplete dialogue or occasionally other assets, or are unreasonably powerful and unbalance the game. I like the concept of character mods (although generally only for characters I have already heard of and like, not someone from a game or anime I have no interest in or a total stranger's OC) but 95% of them don't meet my standards, and that breaks my immersion. Also I definitely prefer it if the character has a W name or the modder finds some way to wedge in a W.

The Shipwrecked Characters mod only sort of counts in my mind, because those are canon characters so they already had a lot of canon-compliant assets and didn't have to be created from nothing. I'd use a similar mod that puts the Hamlet characters in DST if I found one that was complete and stable, but the last one I saw was unfinished.

As for item mods: yeah, I also find it difficult to enjoy mods that don't have unique examine quotes for all the canon characters.

[maradyne]

For me, whether I enjoy mods in general is decided by a lot of the same aspects of why I enjoy or don't enjoy a game.
Is it stylistically consistent? Does the writing work with or contradict itself? Is the gameplay balanced with risk vs reward at an appropriate level, that makes it that gameplay feel satisfying? Does what's going on make sense within the scope of the 'rules' of the game?

...DS and DST both fall short sometimes in all of those areas, but they do well enough that I enjoy the games; DST moreso even though I'd say it's, uh, the more...confused of the duo. So, mods are the same way; I can overlook a few issues here and there if they contribute enough otherwise. I can enjoy an anime mod if the visuals are 'close enough' to the vanilla style, so long as it's otherwise enjoyable.

 

gotta admit though I used to write for quite a few characters in storytelling project and mods that don't customize character quotes kinda drive me nuts because I just really connect to the characters I control in anything now and  a h h

[Raspberry Shake]

2 hours ago, Chris1448 said:

Basically we're redoing Erik and Daniel's perks in revamp mods in the future to make them more in-line with the DST cast, and scrub off any last bits of "self insert" off the characters. Maybe that includes W names? Who knows. Mainly cause Erik the Tennis Player has vaguely anything to do with athleticism or tennis, and now that Wortox is out, there's 2 variants of soul stealing characters with Daniel the Spectromancer. Not to mention the claim souls mechanic is a total rip on Abigail, so he'll probably get new spectral based abilities.

Can't wait! Gonna be honest, if W names are included, they might become part of my must-use mods.