Do You Support the Idea of Character Swapping?

[Well-met]

3 hours ago, Sunset Skye said:

I feel like the issue here isn't with the celestial portal, it's with the gamer attitude of "if it's in the game then I have to use it, even if I don't like it," I've seen that a lot with bundling wraps and catapults. But really, I assure you, you don't have to. Rather than enforcing a 20 day cooldown on literally everyone playing DST, which would cause some people like me to effectively lose a feature they enjoy, why not just enforce that 20 day cooldown on yourself?

read my post I'm sure it'll help resolve your concerns

[CameoAppearance]

I like that the option is available but I wish it wasn't so cheap and easy to do. Not necessarily "endgame", but harder than it is currently. I'm in favour of having a way to change characters that's available to non-expert players, doesn't require console commands, and doesn't wipe your prototypings or map, but I wish it wasn't cost-effective to exploit the character swapping feature so that you can always be playing the optimal character for the task you're currently performing. I also don't like how it encourages people to stockpile Warly and Winona's character-exclusive items and then switch off once they finish crafting, but I think that would still happen as long as character swapping is available at all so rebalancing that feature wouldn't help anything and the real solution would be to rebalance the characters in a way that takes into account that craftable perk items can be used after swapping to a different character with more exciting inherent perks and/or less severe downsides.

[Yuuko]

5 hours ago, CameoAppearance said:

I like that the option is available but I wish it wasn't so cheap and easy to do. Not necessarily "endgame", but harder than it is currently. I'm in favour of having a way to change characters that's available to non-expert players, doesn't require console commands, and doesn't wipe your prototypings or map, but I wish it wasn't cost-effective to exploit the character swapping feature so that you can always be playing the optimal character for the task you're currently performing. I also don't like how it encourages people to stockpile Warly and Winona's character-exclusive items and then switch off once they finish crafting, but I think that would still happen as long as character swapping is available at all so rebalancing that feature wouldn't help anything and the real solution would be to rebalance the characters in a way that takes into account that craftable perk items can be used after swapping to a different character with more exciting inherent perks and/or less severe downsides.

Or accept that part of the play style is that you *can* swap to characters, exploit their advantages, and return to a different character.  I really don't see anything wrong with ppl swapping to Warly, cooking stacks of food and seasonings, then switching to Wolfgang to solo every boss in the game.  First of all I kinda doubt a person who could farm up ingredients, swap to Warly, spam cook and season foods and switch back to Wolfgang would lack the skills to just clear it all as Wolfgang anyway...  Secondly it would still be better / easier to just have a friend play Warly so you don't have to put aside so much game time to do preps, you could just stay Wolfgang doing Wolfgang things while Warly does his Warly things.  I don't see any amount of character swapping that is ever better than just 2 people playing - and there are zero guards against the advantages of friends joining...  Health doesn't scale and food is plentiful.

(I'm kinda in this camp too.  I don't typically pick characters because of their inherant advantages, rather I pick who's thematic fits my current mood.  As such I play a lot of Wes and Willow, and some of other characters, but like never Wolfgang.  There are a lot of players though, and many will pick Wolfgang to rush bosses.  I used to hate on it, but eh...  Its really not a good thing to dwell on.  Let ppl play how they want, even if its better than what you do, because in a game like this you should only play how you like to.)

17 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think it’s kind of pointless TBH.. not the character swap but rather the Celestial Portal itself.

What I mean by that is if you REALLY want to swap characters and have access to all their perks then you can do that faster and more effectively by just playing Wilderness Mode, the Mode where players who die are returned to a character select screen to pick another character & spawn somewhere randomly in the world.

So finding meteor, getting orb, crafting Celestial upgrade, gathering the 20 moon rocks+ Purple Gems needed- All of that becomes such a pointless meaningless endeavor when you can play wilderness and achieve the same results in significantly less time.

So your left with- Why does it exist? And if it was made HARDER like people seem to suggest it should be, then people will just play Wilderness mode (which they should already be doing anyway) to get ALL the benefits of Character Swap with 0% of the hoop jumping through tasks to do it.

So conclusion: Why should Klei waste development time and resources making this feature harder to set up and get if players can just bypass all that effort altogether by playing Wilderness? Why take development time away from the new content that’s being added.. to fix something that in all honesty doesn’t really even need fixing?

My only issue with Wilderness mode is that it does not interact with traditional resurrection items.  If Wilderness mode included DS style resurrection I'd be all for it.  If touch stones activated to auto-res, same with meat effigies, and if you could wear a life giving amulet to res, I'd be there 100% of my game play.  It could also be cool to force random character select on spawn XD

[Dr. Safety]

23 hours ago, JazzyGames said:

Wondering how Warly could be rebalanced in that regard. You'd have to make it so the only way a non-Warly could get the buff food was for a Warly to feed it to them.

Warly is a tough one lol. Honestly I think just giving him a small buff unrelated to other players is our best bet

[pedregales]

I have honestly not used it, but I think is fine.

If people are truly abusing/swapping certain characters (to the extent other people claim) I would say it is more an inherent issue of the character and not the portal in itself. And I don't mean that the characters should have locked-items (like Walter's slingshot), which I think is unnecessary. I mean that the character fails in one way or another to be satisfactory. For example, some people have said Wigfrid is among the swappable characters because of her cheap helmets, and yet she is among the most, if not the most, used character; unlike Winona or Warly (also stated to be swappable characters).

[Zeklo]

24 minutes ago, pedregales said:

I have honestly not used it, but I think is fine.

If people are truly abusing/swapping certain characters (to the extent other people claim) I would say it is more an inherent issue of the character and not the portal in itself. And I don't mean that the characters should have locked-items (like Walter's slingshot), which I think is unnecessary. I mean that the character fails in one way or another to be satisfactory. For example, some people have said Wigfrid is among the swappable characters because of her cheap helmets, and yet she is among the most, if not the most, used character; unlike Winona or Warly (also stated to be swappable characters).

Wigfrid being a 'swap character' has mostly been used as a strawman argument from what I've seen. Her helmets are considered easier to craft by beginner players because killing pigs is more difficult than simply mining rocks. Not to mention it only surpasses the Football Helm in durability, so it's not something particularly unique like Warly's food perks or Winona's contraptions that can't be obtained otherwise.

I do agree that the primarily issue lies with the character's themselves though—but even then. The portal is still too easy to obtain. Heck, Walter is a pretty good example of a character who has a justified reason to stay playing as him and yet is still 'abused' with swapping, and that's because of Woby. No reason to go through the trouble of taming a beefalo for transporting heavy objects because you can just swap to him, and get in done with the minimal effort of a purple gem and a moon pebble.

It shortcuts gameplay. 

Not playing as a combat character? Just swap to Wolfgang instead of actually reaping the consequences of the character you picked... And, that's fine in the long run, but it needs to be in the long run. End game. A convenient option once you've already gone through the hoops. Not a way to sidestep them. Yet.

[Szczuku]

On 11/5/2020 at 10:07 AM, Sunset Skye said:

Rather than enforcing a 20 day cooldown on literally everyone playing DST, which would cause some people like me to effectively lose a feature they enjoy, why not just enforce that 20 day cooldown on yourself?

Then why did devs enforce a 20 day cooldown on raid bosses? Why couldn't have they left enforcing cooldown to the players? What if I wanted to farm ruins for 20 days straight? Is players' freedom in this part of the game less important than their freedom of switching characters?

[Yuuko]

18 hours ago, Dr. Safety said:

Warly is a tough one lol. Honestly I think just giving him a small buff unrelated to other players is our best bet

I think a decent route would be to actually bonus the first use of a food rather than start at the base line.  This changes up his mechanic so that his first perogie or honey ham heals more than it would for anyone else actually improving his play based on properly rotating dishes rather than starting you at a disadvantage.  Given a bonus in first use, with second use at base line could even come with harsher penalties for repetitions 3+ and it'd still be good.

9 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Then why did devs enforce a 20 day cooldown on raid bosses? Why couldn't have they left enforcing cooldown to the players? What if I wanted to farm ruins for 20 days straight? Is players' freedom in this part of the game less important than their freedom of switching characters?

Bosses don't have a "cool down," they have a "respawn timer."  While this is similar to a cd, the difference is that a raid boss is just there or not there.  It isn't a player action like casting a ice staff.  Similarly the Moon Stone doesn't have a cool down of 20 days, it has an event of "every full moon."

The limiting factor of the Celestial Portal is, and should be in crafting the idol.  If it should be hit in any way it should be hit in the idol crafting costs.

Why?  Because in a multiplayer game someone can troll by activating the idol every time its available limiting access to other players.  It also increases time spent doing nothing in a game.  When developing a game any time spent doing nothing should be minimized.  No one likes doing nothing.  I certainly don't.  Any downtime should have purpose, such as the respawn time of a boss.  The Celstial Portal is barely used as it is, why force downtime on players who do like it?

The idol to swap could have its materials increased.  Although right now it includes a purple gem, so unless you're getting a few bishops or clearing the ruins its already not easy to get early game.  Also if you're clearing the ruins...  well what material do you want to add exactly? lol  b/c you've basically got everything at that point.

--------------------------------------------------

I feel a lot of sentiment aimed at the Celestial Portal here is similar to what gets levied at the game's difficulty.  Some players have sunk over a thousand hours into a game that tests your experience and knowledge.  Where every fresh start in a new game instance is almost immediately jumped to whatever level a player can achieve because experience and knowledge don't reset with a new world.  Dfly isn't behind a "second year only" timer, neither is AFW.  It takes some players a long time to reach these bosses but check them speed run records...  And y'all are worried about the Celestial Portal?  (btw not a single speed run uses this, so you wanna talk about "op" you can cross the portal off the list lol)

[Szczuku]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Why?  Because in a multiplayer game someone can troll by activating the idol every time its available limiting access to other players

Uhh... and why would the devs make the cooldown world-based? 

Just reuse the code of Festive Tree and the Celestial Portal would be ready to go. Player 1 uses it and can't use it again for x days. Player 2 however can use it since cooldown would be player-based and not world-based

[Yuuko]

6 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Uhh... and why would the devs make the cooldown world-based? 

Just reuse the code of Festive Tree and the Celestial Portal would be ready to go. Player 1 uses it and can't use it again for x days. Player 2 however can use it since cooldown would be player-based and not world-based

Or why add a cooldown to a feature that is already rarely used and doesn't create game imbalance?

[Dr. Safety]

23 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Or why add a cooldown to a feature that is already rarely used and doesn't create game imbalance?

Getting the upsides of 2 characters while getting the downsides of just one isn't balanced. If you want catapults, spices, or helmets it makes sense to have to commit to that character for a bit. Frankly I feel 20 days is even too generous if character swapping is still accessible in early game.

The way I see it, character swapping should be "I did what I should as this character, now I can start to focus on doing things as another character" instead of "Hold on, I gotta quickly switch to this character so I can have their upside on the character I'm currently playing as"

[Maxil20]

Personally I never found the portal swapping that bad. At that point you have the choice to do whatever you want, and using the celestial portal and having a cooldown is not my idea of a good time.  It also feels like a forced 20 day cooldown feels more like tedium then actual concern, since barring low HP characters like Maxwell you are likely established enough to cope with the character's downsides for 20 days anyway. The item acquisition could be a bit better (Perhaps the construction recipe could require more exotic materials? It feels a bit cheap for what is meant as a project to take multiple seasons to get) but overall the concept is fine.

As for the imbalance, I honestly don't see how it was any worse then prior when people were already working around it by doing one thing: Using Alterative Accounts. You already get a second copy when you buy the game, so making alt accounts to play as multiple characters was essentially the pay to win version of playing the game before the celestial portal came into effect. I had a friend who used four alt accounts to play as different characters for their needs once. 

In short, I feel like the initial cost could be higher, but I'm not fond of changing anything else, especially since what people did years ago is still viable if they did decide to nerf it.
 

[Well-met]

literally any argument in favor of character swap is always either "but X mechanic is just as bad!" or "let people do what they want!"

I agree this sort of logic makes sense for private, local, single servers. But the online aspect of dont starve requires more elaborated balance wheter you accept it or not. On default rules servers (which means the majority of all servers) DST is a survival challenge that pits players against the game. Klei knows some people prefer playing the game as a sort of Sim City where they don't need to care about dying so that's why they made Endless an option.

yes there's many more problems other than the moon portal, but taking small steps and fixing them one by one is how long term progress is achieved. Klei has shown countless times they are more than willing to call problems ->exploits<- or tone down new mechanics in light of how they are being used by the playerbase.

12 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

As for the imbalance, I honestly don't see how it was any worse then prior when people were already working around it by doing one thing: Using Alterative Accounts. You already get a second copy when you buy the game, so making alt accounts to play as multiple characters was essentially the pay to win version of playing the game before the celestial portal came into effect. I had a friend who used four alt accounts to play as different characters for their needs once.
 

you can join any online videogame with four different computer instances of yours if you feel like it. it's not really relevant with the moon portal or exclusive to dont starve. it's alot of work only the desperate would submit themselves to and is completely out of reach to any standard player.

[Notecja]

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

literally any argument in favor of character swap is always either "but X mechanic is just as bad!" or "let people do what they want!"

Mods. If character swaping in-game would be removed, for sure some people will make mods to bring it back.

Also I'm not a fan to create 20 worlds to test every character in game.

If you can cheese Ancient Fuleweaver with shootius, then is nothing wrong with killing face-to-face Dragonfly with Wolfgang. I don't understand argumenting in a way "I dont like it, so nobody should be allowed that!". I believe if something could be done in a clever way, then why we should struggle in hard way? Survival? But survival is not about doing things in hard way... xD

Yeah, balance is also a thing... But while you can go swap, do what do you need, go swap back... You can also invite a friend for literally five minutes (like Walter with Woby to move suspicious sculptures), do whatever need... And then go back playing solo. Basically I see no difference.

And last of it: on beginning I already got to the point, that character swapping was in some way available in DS solo.

btw. If somebody bad at game tries switching to some harder characters (like Warly knowing only meatballs and meat stew), still wont get best of them. I prefer to see this as tool, like shootus it doesn't mean autowin, it still require knowledge what do to with that.

[CameoAppearance]

2 minutes ago, Notecja said:

And last of it: on beginning I already got to the point, that character swapping was in some way available in DS solo.

Technically, yes, you can swap characters without giving up your world, but you have to complete Adventure Mode to do it, which is on the more difficult end of DS singleplayer gameplay and takes a while to do if you're doing it legitimately. (If you cheat with console commands it takes maybe five minutes.) You also need an open save slot if you're not already playing as the character you want in an existing save, and DS singleplayer only has five save slots without mods. In DST you just have to go through the RNG roulette of waiting for the right moonrock meteors to fall (unless it's already day 60+ when you decide to change characters) and then spend 24 moonrocks, 2 purple gems, and some boards and rope.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure the reason Wigfrid isn't considered a swap character like Winona or Warly isn't about whether her helmets and spears are objectively good or just mild improvements over football helmets and tentacle spikes. It's because she has other good perks that only apply while playing her, like her lifesteal/damage multiplier/damage resistance that she already had pre-rework, and her whole song thing post-rework. Warly has only craftables as perks and a harsh drawback on top of that, and Winona has mostly craftables plus the minor benefit of rapid crafting.

[Notecja]

6 minutes ago, CameoAppearance said:

Winona

To be honest her upside/downside is extra annoying because of her announcements of her penalty, not because of need to feed her more xD It was only reasong I never stayed with her. (please Winona, shut up and go back working...)

[Crestwave]

17 hours ago, Shosuko said:

Bosses don't have a "cool down," they have a "respawn timer."  While this is similar to a cd, the difference is that a raid boss is just there or not there.  It isn't a player action like casting a ice staff.  Similarly the Moon Stone doesn't have a cool down of 20 days, it has an event of "every full moon."

I would just like to note that the Ancient Gateway has an actual 20-day cooldown, and it's a portal as well!

[ShadowDuelist]

Back in the day I remember people after hundreds of days, bored of their characters and wanting some change, either searched for the despawn command themselves if it was a personal server, or asked an admin of the world to despawn them via console or admin tooltips.

In those cases of console despawning people wouldn't abuse of the character swapping, instead they just wanted to enjoy the game as a different one. I mean character swapping over and over this way would be no different than outright cheating with console commands and c_spawn("everything that you need")

When the portal got introduced it was to make this possible without having to rely on console commands, but it also introduced the abuse of some character traits. The portal not having any cooldown was very likely an oversight of the devs, and since nerfs will always be frown upon some people, it just remained that way afterwards.

I believe people are still missing the point that the swapping was most likely to extend the fun of worlds when you got bored of your picked character already, instead of being a strategy.

I'll give you the most prominent example I always see from some streamers: stay building around as Maxwell and when you want to do the raid bosses, switch to Wolfgang, for like 3 days, then after the bosses switch to Wickerbottom for a day, craft 20 books, then finally change back to Maxwell. What's the point of Maxwell having 75 hp, or Wolfgang's food problem, if you can just do that?

[Muzarello]

I play mostly alone and I play thinking of the survivors as a team, so I do use character swapping quite a bit, I mostly play Webber, Warly and Wolfgang, but I have all other characters buildings in my base, even tho I don't really use 'em, I don't even use catapults or Wigfrid Helmets that much.
But well, Never happened to me of getting the celestial portal before day 30, and I was rushing it,and I don't think that it is that easy, a purple gem and a moon rock, if you haven't cleared the ruins or made a varg farm or something like that, you don't have enough gems to make it that easy to keep swapping, I think it's a fair price, I just don't like Swapping character just for their benefit like Wig's helmet ,Winona's catapults and Warly's Spices, but It's a player choice so.... Play as you want,  the thing is having fun.