Wheeler - Expectations vs Reality

[Lamprolydia]

So I've been pretty hyped for Wheeler and because of a busy time in my life, just now came to try her out.
The reason for the hype was, that in theory, she would correspond to the playstyle I love: Not getting hit, no close combat and maximum mobility.

I have achieved this with Wendy so far: She attracts mobs and does the close combat, also distracts and takes care of weaker mobs, which gives space for Wendy to continue running. However, in Hamlet Abigail has been more annoying than useful: Triggering traps in the dungeons (and being killed), accidentally attacking guards in the city (and being killed), overwhelmed by bugs (and being killed), standing in big birds landing spot (and being killed), beside blocking clicking things in interior spaces and the constant howling.

The cool things upfront because praise where praise is due:

• The Idea.
  Making mobility and the exploration part of the game into a theme for a character is awesome! I loved the style of Warbucks but am also glad to have another female character join the team. A ranged weapon also fits into the picture of mobility, flexibility and a more "agile" strategy of navigating the world in contrast to e.g. Wolfgang with his pure strength.
• The Character.
  The adventurous, positive and active personality adds a fresh breeze and makes the character unique. Determination and a will to challenge, with that tad of irony, amusement and self esteem. A free spirit, forward thinker and rebellious mind - absolutely love it.
• The Portrait.
  The portrait gives the impression of above personality. Wild curls, the smirk, dynamic, a wiry figure, used to running a lot, also the clothes fit for an adventurer and into the style of Hamlet.

So, what did I expect and especially - why:

•  Dodging.
  • I expected a key bind for the dodge ability. I use the mouse rarely, because birds, trees etc make it hard to click on the right target while moving around at the same time. I expected a key to tap while holding a movement key or a double tap of the movement keys. Dodging with the right mouse button comes very unnatural to me and is hindered by stuff on the screen.
  • I also expected that while using the mouse left click for moving, a right click would automatically dodge, but it doesn't. Instead you have to stop running, dodge and then start running again.
  • It also dodges into the wrong direction sometimes, a key bind would probably help with that, too.
• The Air Horn.
  • I expected the reloading to work similar to putting things in chests or backbacks, left click while holding a key. I expected new objects of the same type to automatically go into the horn slot. Instead I have to pick it up and move it to the slot manually every time. A little tedious and frustrating.
  • I expected to only shoot smaller things with it. No ... boats ... or weapons, for example. This looks weird and broken. And petals and grass? It would maybe make sense if it was condensed into a ball or something. With "Science".
  • I expected better art. Made from wood and metal, the blunderbuss looked quite cool, a little steampunky and closer to the time. Form and coloration of the horn make it look cheap, like a modern megaphone made from plastic, not a 19th century pneumatic horn. So I'd expect a brass type with a larger and curvier horn, maybe even with a loop in it, like typical air horns from the past.
• Armor.
  • Because of her mobility and dodge I expected penalties in wearing regular Armor or that she simply refuses to wear things that slow her down like a piggyback or a tin suit. This would center the character more around the movement theme and would simply make much more sense. The heavier the stuff on you and the more unflexible the clothing, the less you can move.
• Inventory.
  • A difficult topic. It makes absolute sense that she can carry less for moving faster. But taking away inventory slots does not equate to carrying less stuff, it only forces you to carry more of the same types. Why is this bad?
  • Because the slots were balanced around the Base Game. Both DLC's, Shipwrecked and Hamlet, broke this balance by adding tons of new resources and items. Now you also have additionally vines, bamboo, cork, chitin, weevole mantles, shells, different type of fish and food, a machete, iron etc. You need to have more different stuff constantly on person and inventory micromanagement became much more of a struggle and nuisance than in the base game.
  • So, how to achieve carrying less but not sacrificing flexibility in what to carry? I'd say pretty simple:
    Lower the stack sizes from 40 to 30 and 20 to 15. This has an enormous impact in how much you can carry around and would force you to take chester with you for longer farming trips and dump stuff at chests more often.
  • Same with tying the speed boost to the slots. Since the many different resource and food types make it near impossible to keep a relatively clean inventory, the boost will remain so small at most times that with a stalking stick and some coffe it makes almost no difference to other characters. Together with the less slots it is not worth it to choose her because of this.
• Ingame Art.
  • There is little left from the dynamic portrait. It looks "condensed" and clunky.
  • Clear Lines and planes not only make it look flat, but also doesnt' fit the style of the rest of the game which lives through loose strokes and hatched planes. It would fit more with the theme of Oxygen not Included.
  • The face and clothes leave no gaps between shoulder and ears, so that it looks like her head is stuck inside her chest.

I want to love the Character, I really do. But right now she feels ... unfinished. As if someone had a great idea, started and somewhere along the way lost the drive, left it as a rough wooden sculpture and sticks the parts together half-hearted so that it kinda works but leaves pointy edges standing out.

So my plead and suggestions to make the amazing Wheeler rounded, polished and complete would be (sorted by importance):

• Improve the keyboard/mouse dodging control
• Improve the horn reloading control
• Replace the inventory-speed mechanic with an armor-speed Mechanic
• Replace the slot penalty with a stack penalty
• Rework the art to make it "lighter" and fit in better with the rest of the staff

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Do you have the same feeling about Wheeler being unpolished?
Would you agree to drop tankiness for agility?
Would you agree to trade stack size for item type flexibility?

[Wheat_Sack]

I don't feel too strongly one way or another about most of these, but I think that fixing the dodging would be really nice. A lot of the time you simply can't dodge because there are trees or other large objects around and it's pretty annoying, and the wrong direction stuff is really weird too. I'd also say that messing with the whole stacks thing would probably just lead to some annoying micromanaging, since you'd never be able to just drop an entire stack of something into a chest with one click, and when you're out and about you probably don't need to use an entire stack of something anyways. It'd just make megabasing more annoying since you'd need to grab stuff from chests more often while mass crafting.

[Pluschi-Cal]

Yes henlo Wheeler main here

1 hour ago, Lamprolydia said:

So, what did I expect and especially - why:

•  Dodging.
  • I expected a key bind for the dodge ability. I use the mouse rarely, because birds, trees etc make it hard to click on the right target while moving around at the same time. I expected a key to tap while holding a movement key or a double tap of the movement keys. Dodging with the right mouse button comes very unnatural to me and is hindered by stuff on the screen.
  • I also expected that while using the mouse left click for moving, a right click would automatically dodge, but it doesn't. Instead you have to stop running, dodge and then start running again.
  • It also dodges into the wrong direction sometimes, a key bind would probably help with that, too.
• The Air Horn.
  • I expected the reloading to work similar to putting things in chests or backbacks, left click while holding a key. I expected new objects of the same type to automatically go into the horn slot. Instead I have to pick it up and move it to the slot manually every time. A little tedious and frustrating.
  • I expected to only shoot smaller things with it. No ... boats ... or weapons, for example. This looks weird and broken. And petals and grass? It would maybe make sense if it was condensed into a ball or something. With "Science".
  • I expected better art. Made from wood and metal, the blunderbuss looked quite cool, a little steampunky and closer to the time. Form and coloration of the horn make it look cheap, like a modern megaphone made from plastic, not a 19th century pneumatic horn. So I'd expect a brass type with a larger and curvier horn, maybe even with a loop in it, like typical air horns from the past.

Yes pls Klei... where key bind for dodge... fighting Iron Hulk with dodging and taking no damage is nearly impossible due to all the damn rocks everywhere blocking my m2. This applies to fighting anywhere near, well, anything really. As for that second point, as someone who has 2k hours on DST and of course only uses click to move... Klei please read this post thanks

(By the way, dodging in wrong directions isn't a thing? For me at least. I think what you mean is that you will sometimes dodge into what you're trying to dodge. What causes that is that after you examine something, you will always dodge towards it. It's actually super helpful in most fights... *cough* everything in RoG)

.

As for the pew-matic, I agree with the reloading thing but what I agree with more is the art...

Spoiler

  expectation vs reality wtf 

But above all, I don't really understand why the Pew-matic exists. As you said, it kinda defies logic being able to fit an entire canoe inside it, but it's weird that a character would have a melee dodge ability that requires lots of skill... then add a ranged weapon that requires much less skill. If shooting gunpowder and coconades at least made them explode on impact I'd probably actually use the thing, but I'm gonna stick with dropping it at the start for the +1% speed... 5 Tenpiece Oincs to deal a total of 240 ranged damage, or spending them at Boar Tusk's for a Cutlass to deal a total of 10,200 melee damage... very difficult choice here.

1 hour ago, Lamprolydia said:

 

• Armor.
  • Because of her mobility and dodge I expected penalties in wearing regular Armor or that she simply refuses to wear things that slow her down like a piggyback or a tin suit. This would center the character more around the movement theme and would simply make much more sense. The heavier the stuff on you and the more unflexible the clothing, the less you can move.
• Inventory.
  • A difficult topic. It makes absolute sense that she can carry less for moving faster. But taking away inventory slots does not equate to carrying less stuff, it only forces you to carry more of the same types. Why is this bad?
  • Because the slots were balanced around the Base Game. Both DLC's, Shipwrecked and Hamlet, broke this balance by adding tons of new resources and items. Now you also have additionally vines, bamboo, cork, chitin, weevole mantles, shells, different type of fish and food, a machete, iron etc. You need to have more different stuff constantly on person and inventory micromanagement became much more of a struggle and nuisance than in the base game.
  • So, how to achieve carrying less but not sacrificing flexibility in what to carry? I'd say pretty simple:
    Lower the stack sizes from 40 to 30 and 20 to 15. This has an enormous impact in how much you can carry around and would force you to take chester with you for longer farming trips and dump stuff at chests more often.
  • Same with tying the speed boost to the slots. Since the many different resource and food types make it near impossible to keep a relatively clean inventory, the boost will remain so small at most times that with a stalking stick and some coffe it makes almost no difference to other characters. Together with the less slots it is not worth it to choose her because of this.
• Ingame Art.
  • There is little left from the dynamic portrait. It looks "condensed" and clunky.
  • Clear Lines and planes not only make it look flat, but also doesnt' fit the style of the rest of the game which lives through loose strokes and hatched planes. It would fit more with the theme of Oxygen not Included.
  • The face and clothes leave no gaps between shoulder and ears, so that it looks like her head is stuck inside her chest.

Nah, I like when characters don't restrict content in the game. Increased movement speed penalties for items that slow you down would be much preferable, but even that wouldn't really have an impact at all. Not with dodging available, or you know... standing still, since Tin Suits and Marble Armor are made for tanking. I'd be all for regular armor penalties though. Unflexible clothing makes much more sense than taking no damage when dodging, but if you dodge with armor then that for some reason takes damage. Probably a glitch, but I feel like it would be fixed by now.

.

I never really thought about the inventory stacks. That's pretty Ham-lit actually. Normal early game, harder late game, as all things should be.

.

Yeah she doesn't really fit with the other characters when placed side by side, but neither does Wortox kinda, and he's still fine. Nothing wrong with being a little different, you know. I'd just really like if that mouth were moved up by 3 pixels... 

Oh yeah and thanks for making me notice that her head is in her chest, can't unsee that now.

Overall, I really just hope that Klei sees this, and really thinks this one through.

[Alexias]

I have 150 days world in hamlet as wheeler and my thoughts about this

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

Dodging.

I agree with this, we should have settings to make "dodge" override "examine" when pointing to entity.

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

The Air Horn.

I don't like the art tbh, but having unlimited range attack is great, and I don't have to craft boomerang to kill birds.

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

• I expected to only shoot smaller things with it. No ... boats ... or weapons, for example. This looks weird and broken. And petals and grass? It would maybe make sense if it was condensed into a ball or something. With "Science".

Maybe she shoot it too fast that it heat before hitting someone.

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

Armor

I don't think this necessary, since I don't think anyone use these items with wheeler because she isn't designed to tank damage.

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

Inventory

I despise the inventory downside, my inventory get full most of the time, I don't know about replacing it with less stack if this mean it will be worse or better.

3 hours ago, Lamprolydia said:

The face and clothes leave no gaps between shoulder and ears, so that it looks like her head is stuck inside her chest

Never noticed this

Quote

also dodges into the wrong direction sometimes, a key bind would probably help with that, too.

I realized this, it happen when you dodge immediately after attacking someone.

[Mooagain]

I really like wheeler the way she is. The inventory size doesn't really matter too much, I've gotten good at inventory management. The only issue is the dodging in the wrong direction. I've almost died a few times entirely because the dodge sent me towards danger instead of away.

Untill the dodge bug is fixed, Wheeler gets a 7/10

[thevicelion]

On 1/6/2019 at 4:32 PM, Lamprolydia said:

beside blocking clicking things in interior spaces and the constant howling.

(And being killed)

[Philsam]

The pew-matic is a joke, this weapon looks like a toy for children, Klei could have given a blunderbuss to Wheeler instead of this thing that pulls grass and sticks. 

[inferjus4]

Wheeler's only useful ability (at least to me) is her dodge. Pew-matic is useful only for killing pigeons for Hogus-Porkusator and compass only for hunting relics. She really does not need those items. Warbucks could get those items (Pew-matic would have to be reworked slightly though) and be finally more interesting character.

[Mooagain]

On 6/3/2019 at 10:30 AM, inferjus4 said:

Wheeler's only useful ability (at least to me) is her dodge. Pew-matic is useful only for killing pigeons for Hogus-Porkusator and compass only for hunting relics. She really does not need those items. Warbucks could get those items (Pew-matic would have to be reworked slightly though) and be finally more interesting character.

I use the pew matic for everything, I just load it with twigs/charcoal/flowers/oincs and then kill stuff.