Walter Quality of Life

[JaxckLl]

Walter's a great new character, with some interesting new mechanics, a disadvantage that is serious but not overtly punishing, and most of all Woby. However Woby has some few flaws, notably when in the caves:

• Woby naturally cowers or runs away when you are fighting. This is good because it gets the damn mutt out of your way when trying to kite. It's especially important when dealing with waves of enemies, such as Hounds, MacTusk & his band, or a Spider Queen.
• However in the caves this behaviour doesn't seem to work properly. Woby never cowers around Depth Worms, Monkeys, or Shadow Creatures making the large waves of these creatures you encounter down there significantly harder (I cannot recall her cowering for Bunnymen or Slurpers either, but those are usually either not hostile or encountered not in waves). (As for a recent example, while ruins diving I got hit by a Bishop I didn't realize was there, tanking my sanity. Ran away now being chased by two Terrorbeaks, at which point a Depth Dweller wave showed up. Desperately I attempted to kite the eight bastards after me, any of which could kill me in two hits. However Woby managed to park herself inbetween my campfire & a chest instead of cowering away, meaning I was stuck running in an ineffective semicircle instead of being able to kite fully around. Needless to say a death followed by disconnect and quick stepping away from the damn computer followed)
• Additionally, Walter has no way to protect Woby's inventory from Monkeys. With Hutch/Chester you can at least leave them outside the Monkey biome. But with Woby there's no way to prevent Monkey's from grabbing her stuff since she doesn't cower away from them. This was found out in most frustrating fashion when my spare Lantern & a Pan Flute disappeared.

Suggestions:

1. Woby should cower & flee when approached by Depth Dwellers, Shadow Creatures, and Monkeys. Essentially Woby should avoid being in melee with any & all hostile mobs.
2. Walter should have a craftable that lets him tie up Woby if he doesn't want her to follow.
3. It would be great to have some kind of indicator for Woby's hunger other than her movement speed while riding. Perhaps she wags her tail differently?
4. There should probably be a note in Walter/Woby's compendium that warns against Monkeys. Might even be worth listing as a disadvantage for Woby.
5. Not directly related to Woby, but it would be ideal to enable Walter's sleeping roll & tent to be craftable by more characters. It's just such a nice advantage to be able to move around tents/sleeping bags, not to mention the lack of Silk in the cost. All but one of the half dozen people I've introduced the game to showed preference for Walter simply because of the sleeping benefit. To still give a place for the regular Tent (the one that costs Silk), I'd suggest giving it a sustained sanity boost that lasts through the following morning. Additionally, ritzier characters like Maxwell or Wigfried could show a preference for the Silk Tent, gaining less from other forms of sleeping. These changes would mostly benefit newer players, making the game more accessible without changing the typical balance of play for more experienced players.

[Keller Max]

Why not just give his slingshot huge range and same speed as melee?

[MAMMAL_MAN]

10 hours ago, Keller Max said:

Why not just give his slingshot huge range and same speed as melee?

Range combat is already strong enough as most mobs in the game cannot handle ranged attacks because most of them were made for close quarters combat. increasing the slingshot attack speed on the slingshot to match the melee attack speed would make walter kill just about most enemies with almost no effort

[Keller Max]

11 minutes ago, MAMMAL_MAN said:

Range combat is already strong enough as most mobs in the game cannot handle ranged attacks because most of them were made for close quarters combat. increasing the slingshot attack speed on the slingshot to match the melee attack speed would make walter kill just about most enemies with almost no effort

He was born strictly for ranged, unless you are a kite god, but then what the point even picking him if you can pick Wolfgang? One hit and say bye bye to your sanity. Give me a good example of using his Slingshot? It is slow, bad animation, most mobs will be able to just come at you while you charging. It is bad on almost every mob, than its bad in general. Great character idea, but bad implementation.

I tried playing him, kiting mobs with woby and shooting slingshot. It possible to never receive damage, but it takes so long to kill something.

[Guille6785]

14 minutes ago, Keller Max said:

Great character idea, but bad implementation.

contrary to popular belief walter has more perks than the slingshot

[Keller Max]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

contrary to popular belief walter has more perks than the slingshot

"Walter of all trades, master of none." as one said.

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, Keller Max said:

"Walter of all trades, master of none." as one said.

he sets up a base the fastest, he explores the world the fastest, and with the right strategies he technically kills many bosses the fastest in real gameplay

if you can play the game well his downside is effectively nonexistent and actually becomes an upside as he never loses sanity

[Keller Max]

Oh cmon

14 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

he sets up a base the fastest, he explores the world the fastest, and with the right strategies he technically kills many bosses the fastest in real gameplay

if you can play the game well his downside is effectively nonexistent and actually becomes an upside as he never loses sanity

How can he fast kill bosses with slow ass slingshot? Name a single boss that he is able to kill faster with a slingshot than wilson?

[Guille6785]

Just now, Keller Max said:

Oh cmon

How can he fast kill bosses with slow ass slingshot? Name a single boss that he is able to kill faster with a slingshot than wilson?

I didn't say using the slingshot

[Keller Max]

Just now, Guille6785 said:

I didn't say using the slingshot

Mkay. Give me a good example then.

[Guille6785]

1 minute ago, Keller Max said:

Mkay. Give me a good example then.

due to his speed advantage he spends the least amount of time gathering the materials to set up farms for bq and fw early on, the most important bosses

[Keller Max]

Just now, Guille6785 said:

due to his speed advantage he spends the least amount of time gathering the materials to set up farms for bq and fw early on, the most important bosses

BQ and FW farms? And there we have a character that pretty much have to cheese to achieve anything. I see no more reason go on.

In the end, we have a Character that can kill stuff only by using cheesy mechanics, then his speed perk being outclassed by taming a beef later on. Having one of the smallest stomachs, so you need to eat often, Couple of random hits will turn you to insanity where you will fight nightmare creatures for eternity. And also low health. I don't know. He looks like Wes 2.0 for me.

[Guille6785]

Just now, Keller Max said:

And there we have a character that pretty much have to cheese to achieve anything. I see no more reason go on.

what's wrong with cheese exactly, dst isn't a boss fighting game

[Hornete]

The slingshot is designed to be used more as a tool rather than as a high damage dealing weapon. I'm glad it's designed that way, not every character has to be super duper epic at combat.

[Keller Max]

21 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

what's wrong with cheese exactly, dst isn't a boss fighting game

Well, look.

I love the challenge and struggles. I love hard things, but i also love to find the easiest way possible to achieve it. Small trick there, another there will make my fight easier but i still have this fight.. But i just hate how easily exploitable this game is, too much cheese is possible that will let me completely skip huge chunks of content and experience. I can go and prepare for the hardest fight in my dst life by challenging the devilish creature from hell named Ancient Fuelweaver. OR JUST PLACE A PEW PEW THINGY and then go to the kitchen to make myself some tea. I remember my first time when we were fighting Fuelweaver. Oh god. It was the most fun experience ever. Then the day after, there was that wolfgang that showed me how do this stupid thing with shootius. I know i can play how i want and not exploit the things and cheese tactics, but why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't anyone? Is it a good thing for a game? Where you can completely skip a badass sequence of fighting with some big bads. I don't think so. Same i think about Character swapping, same im thinking why Walter is bad character. Because he is only good if you want to cheese. Its almost impossible to fight Bee queen with him for example, because of his stupid allergie.

[Guille6785]

14 minutes ago, Keller Max said:

Well, look.

I love the challenge and struggles. I love hard things, but i also love to find the easiest way possible to achieve it. Small trick there, another there will make my fight easier but i still have this fight.. But i just hate how easily exploitable this game is, too much cheese is possible that will let me completely skip huge chunks of content and experience. I can go and prepare for the hardest fight in my dst life by challenging the devilish creature from hell named Ancient Fuelweaver. OR JUST PLACE A PEW PEW THINGY and then go to the kitchen to make myself some tea. I remember my first time when we were fighting Fuelweaver. Oh god. It was the most fun experience ever. Then the day after, there was that wolfgang that showed me how do this stupid thing with shootius. I know i can play how i want and not exploit the things and cheese tactics, but why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't anyone? Is it a good thing for a game? Where you can completely skip a badass sequence of fighting with some big bads. I don't think so. Same i think about Character swapping, same im thinking why Walter is bad character. Because he is only good if you want to cheese. Its almost impossible to fight Bee queen with him for example, because of his stupid allergie.

I like challenging optional bossfights like enraged dragonfly armorless or bee queen no armor no healing but I only do them in their own worlds, I find the standard boss fights in real gameplay to be extremely boring after I've already done them dozens of times so cheese is perfect if all I want is the boss drops; you can't claim he's bad for everyone if you intentionally set your own restrictions that make him worse

cheese is an intended mechanic because the devs know not everyone wants to fight the tedious bosses repeatedly just for items

(although I do agree his bee allergy is stupid and basically punishes you for trying to beat bee queen legit, it should be removed)

[Keller Max]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

I like challenging optional bossfights like enraged dragonfly armorless or bee queen no armor no healing but I only do them in their own worlds, I find the standard boss fights in real gameplay to be extremely boring after I've already done them dozens of times so cheese is perfect if all I want is the boss drops; you can't claim he's bad for everyone if you intentionally set your own restrictions that make him worse

Might aswell use cheats at this point. I see no reason to keep this conversation. But fact is a fact. Balancing characters around bugs and exploit is a bad game design.

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, Keller Max said:

Balancing characters around bugs and exploit is a bad game design.

characters are balanced around multiplayer, unfortunately that doesn't translate well to solo play because bosses aren't designed for solo play

cheese is an intended mechanic once again

[JaxckLl]

@Keller Max: Thank you for voicing your perspective on Walter, but I don't really see how anything you've said contributes to the suggestions presented here. It's especially poor form to be judgmental of game design without also offering an alternative.

[Keller Max]

43 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

@Keller Max: Thank you for voicing your perspective on Walter, but I don't really see how anything you've said contributes to the suggestions presented here. It's especially poor form to be judgmental of game design without also offering an alternative.

I already said what i want. Better slingshot dps. We can force him to use Slingshot only, if we reduce his melee damage like to 75% or even to 50%

[JaxckLl]

@Keller Max: Thank you for voicing your perspective on Walter, but I don't really see how anything you've said contributes to the suggestions presented here. It's especially poor form to be judgmental of game design without also offering an alternative.

Okay? Walter already has great DPS for cost since he doesn't need to buy so much armour. One stack of Marble comfortably kills Klaus for example, a resource which requires minimal time investment to gather.

[Keller Max]

16 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

@Keller Max: Thank you for voicing your perspective on Walter, but I don't really see how anything you've said contributes to the suggestions presented here. It's especially poor form to be judgmental of game design without also offering an alternative.

Okay? Walter already has great DPS for cost since he doesn't need to buy so much armour. One stack of Marble comfortably kills Klaus for example, a resource which requires minimal time investment to gather.

Hambat + 2 football helmets (1 if careful) + 2 pierogis do not require too much resource gathering either and you can easily kill Klaus without risking in losing all your sanity and life to a single Krampus hit. Also much faster.

So we have a boy with bootleg version of Ridable beefalo, Chester, slow ranged weapon with terrible animation, Bad stats, Allergic to bees (bye-bye even closely legit bee queen), A sanity system that's good on paper but which can kill you in many unexpected ways, giving you no place for a single mistake).

From the first autumn day, you can simply start taming beefalo and find chester as any other character.

High risk - Low reward character

His tent is nice though.

[Well-met]

5 hours ago, Keller Max said:

Hambat + 2 football helmets (1 if careful) + 2 pierogis do not require too much resource gathering either and you can easily kill Klaus without risking in losing all your sanity and life to a single Krampus hit. Also much faster.

you're missing the point where one method cancels all potential boss damage for free and the other involves trying your best not to get hit like every danger in the game.

[JaxckLl]

Yeah, I've seen people with less than 10 hours in the game solo Klaus and not take any damage with Walter. That's way more impressive than any experienced player's "speed run".