Why the Webber Rework doesn't... work

[QuartzBeam]

...I was gonna put some funny intro here, but I got an exam tomorrow morning so creative writing isn't really on the menu tonight. Sorry about that.  I'll cut right to the chase instead.

Today's refresh added several neat bells and whistles to everyone's favorite spider-boy, but after a few hours of experimenting with refreshed Webber, I find that the refresh ends up falling flat because it fails to meaningfully address the core issue that has plagued Webber since his debut:

Spiders just aren't very useful.

 

The entire concept behind Webber's character is that you lose access to conventional followers (Pigs, Bunnymen) in exchange for being able to tame Spiders. That, however, is not a fair exchange, because Spiders are pretty weak (and fragile) individually and require the player to spend a lot of meat to recruit enough spiders to match the damage output of a small handful of Pigs, Bunnymen and Merms (a problem exacerbated by the fact Spiders tend to scatter and you need to chase down every single one of them).

So right off the bat, Spiders have a significant disadvantage when it comes to combat. But, unlike Pigs and Merms, they don't have any use outside of combat either. Unless one counts making them kill each other for your benefit.

Oh, and they have a tendency to eat meat the moment it drops on the floor, which makes using them for hunting animals a pretty bad idea.

 

So what steps does the refresh do to improve spiders?

Step 1: It gives you the ability to AoE heal spiders via the Healing Glop and the new Nurse Spider mob. This one is actually pretty great and does wonders for improving the survivability of your spider horde.

Step 2: It allows you to give head armor to spiders. This sounds like a no-brainer buff, because every other fighting follower can wear head armor, and for sure head armor is great for protecting a few select spiders in your army. However, head armor is not cheap and this buff ultimately won't amount too much, because outfitting lots of spiders would only exacerbate the aforementioned issue of spiders being costly to recruit.

Step 3: It allows you to make Switcherdoodles to turn spiders into other types of spiders. This one sounds like it can be a lot of fun, cause "hey, I can create an army of different spiders". Unfortunately, the truth is most spider types feel interchangeable, which makes the switcherdoodles lose a lot of their impact. Nurse Spiders and maybe Spitters are the only ones that really stand out, whereas the other spiders pretty much fall into the same role of "do a little damage at close range". (Heck, Dangling Depth Dwellers are mechanically identical to Spider Warriors.) The Switcherdoodles can also get rather expensive for something that only affects 1 spider at a time.

 

Where does this leave us?

Spiders are still really expensive and, frankly, annoying to recruit. You need at least half a stack of meat to recruit a good amount and you also need to run around and feed each one individually, cause they turn to walk out in random directions. I know that a single meat can recruit 2-3 spiders, but I think the recruitment range could use a significant increase (along with an increase on how many spiders you can recruit per meat.)

Their damage output isn't necessarily an issue in and of itself, provided the cost and inconvenience of recruiting a lot of spiders is improved. Oh and they still eat meat the moment it drops on the floor. They really shouldn't do that.

In terms of non-combat utility, I think giving regular spiders the ability to pick up/harvest basic resources like twigs and grass would be a really unique touch and would also make up for how fragile and unsuited for combat they are compared to stronger spiders. you could then retrieve the resources when you pick the spider up.

Finally, I think giving some small perks to different spiders type would go a long way in making Switcherdoodles more useful and spiders more fun to use in general. For example:

• Enemies could prioritize Cave Spiders over other spiders, so Cave Spiders can use their reinforced hide to effectively shield their spider friends from damage.
• Maybe Dangling Depth Dwellers could be immune to the Bee Queen's scream? Just something to differentiate them from the more run-of-the-mill Spider Warriors.
• Shattered Spiders are in dire need of some love here as well, but, uh, I'm kinda out of ideas. They do technically have an AoE attack I think, so maybe they could capitalize on that somehow?

 

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk!

[SuperMeatGoy]

Honestly just remove the spiders forced, awkward crooked smile & make them no longer eat meat off the ground if theyre tamed and i'm happy.

[Cowboy Maxwell]

19 minutes ago, SuperMeatGoy said:

Honestly just remove the spiders forced, awkward crooked smile & make them no longer eat meat off the ground if theyre tamed and i'm happy.

I'd just be happy if they'd stop eating the loot. That will forever be the drawback of spiders though or else Webber would be too good.

[Canis]

Im in complete agreement. This refresh has severely underwhelmed me, but Im trying to keep an open mind for the inevitable day 2 patch for the various bugs.

The refresh doesn't really fix any issues for a competent Webber. Primary example being that his gameplay loop is pretty boring; gather spider dens, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm. Thats the only unique thing that Webber really brings to the table in a practical sense.

Sure, if you REALLY want to argue for it, you can say that the refresh allowed non-webbers to be near webber's spiders, but if your Webber is planting spider eggs in the community base it's time to have a talk with him.

I was REALLY hoping for this refresh to expand upon Webber's monster side as that arguably has more intriguing gameplay ideas. I think I have an old thread about that somewhere. Edit: Found it. Christ, that was nearly a year and a half ago.

[Cowboy Maxwell]

2 minutes ago, Canis said:

Im in complete agreement. This refresh has severely underwhelmed me, but Im trying to keep an open mind for the inevitable day 2 patch for the various bugs.

The refresh doesn't really fix any issues for a competent Webber. Primary example being that his gameplay loop is pretty boring; gather spider dens, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm. Thats the only unique thing that Webber really brings to the table in a practical sense.

Sure, if you REALLY want to argue for it, you can say that the refresh allowed non-webbers to be near webber's spiders, but if your Webber is planting spider eggs in the community base it's time to have a talk with him.

I can't argue with any of that. I will add though that the mechanic of shaving tier 2 and tier 3 dens hasn't been talked about much. It makes silk farming much easier. And if you base with in good walking distance of a swamp, you have everything you need. 

[SuperMeatGoy]

4 minutes ago, Canis said:

Im in complete agreement. This refresh has severely underwhelmed me, but Im trying to keep an open mind for the inevitable day 2 patch for the various bugs.

The refresh doesn't really fix any issues for a competent Webber. Primary example being that his gameplay loop is pretty boring; gather spider dens, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm, spider farm. Thats the only unique thing that Webber really brings to the table in a practical sense.

Sure, if you REALLY want to argue for it, you can say that the refresh allowed non-webbers to be near webber's spiders, but if your Webber is planting spider eggs in the community base it's time to have a talk with him.

I was REALLY hoping for this refresh to expand upon Webber's monster side as that arguably has more intriguing gameplay ideas. I think I have an old thread about that somewhere. Edit: Found it. Christ, that was nearly a year and a half ago.

Unfortunately thats not the point of refreshes. If Klei actually gave a sh*t about fixing their characters we'd be getting entirely different refreshes. These are just random buffs slapped on a character with cheerful flavor animations. The only ones who have actually been reworked are the blank slates.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

17 minutes ago, pikamuse said:

I'd just be happy if they'd stop eating the loot. That will forever be the drawback of spiders though or else Webber would be too good.

I would be happy if spiders eat loot but kinda like pigs, they wait a little to start eating so you have time to pick up everything

[HeatAndRun]

I see your opinion as the most accurate analysis of Webber main about the rework.

[Guille6785]

I'm sorry this has to be said but I think the best way to describe this refresh is that webber is now basically a "comic relief" character; you can pick him for the funny looking hats on spiders and the feeling of building your own army but you can't really pick him for his upsides because he was essentially given none, spiders are really not great for combat and they're really time consuming to amass (although I'm glad the issues of spiders attacking other players were addressed at least so I guess he's slightly better at his niche of farming spiders than he was before)

and I've said before that I'm happy klei cares about fun first and foremost more than "balance", but both aren't mutually exclusive and I'm sad webber was giving no real unique upsides over the other survivors i.e. a compelling reason to pick him gameplay wise for any given situation

[Bird Up]

yall over reacting. webber was decent and he got nothing but buffs. maybe the buffs don't make him some ultimate raid boss killer, but a good player can do that with webber anyways. after the bug fixes he is pretty solid

[BoysenSyrup]

Just now, Bird Up said:

yall over reacting. webber was decent and he got nothing but buffs. maybe the buffs don't make him some ultimate raid boss killer, but a good player can do that with webber anyways. after the bug fixes he is pretty solid

Webber was "decent". But I think what Quartz Beam is saying is that Webber just... didn't change much. This isn't a overreaction, it's someone very knowledgeable on a character not liking a character update.

[Cheggf]

I knew the rework wasn't going to be very good from the initial teaser patch notes but didn't want to say anything before it actually came out because maybe I would have been wrong. Disappointing that I wasn't. 

[Bird Up]

5 minutes ago, BoySyrup said:

Webber just... didn't change much.

and his proposed changes actually changes webber's gameplay how? it's the same experience. he just suggested more qol

[Guille6785]

6 minutes ago, Bird Up said:

maybe the buffs don't make him some ultimate raid boss killer, but a good player can do that with webber anyways

I don't think that's a fair comparison, to a "good player" webber's upsides are outweighed by his downsides 

[Owlrust]

Personally I would like either the player to receive 3-6 switcherdoodles per craft, or let the player transform nearby regular spiders by eating one himself and let you manually feed them to get the forms you want.

[Hornete]

2 minutes ago, Owlrus said:

Personally I would like either the player to receive 3-6 switcherdoodles per craft,

This! Theyre a tad expensive, especially the spitter one requiring 4 nitre which is good to make only one spitter.

[HowlVoid]

3 minutes ago, Owlrus said:

Personally I would like either the player to receive 3-6 switcherdoodles per craft, or let the player transform nearby regular spiders by eating one himself and let you manually feed them to get the forms you want.

A lot of people suggest just straight up upgrading/crafting the special dens and I think that would be better. 

[Cowboy Maxwell]

2 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

A lot of people suggest just straight up upgrading/crafting the special dens and I think that would be better. 

I'm not going to disagree; I think it would be too. But, I can see why Klei didn't do it like that. Making special types of dens in places they shouldn't be would look....jarring?....with how out of place it is. At least it probably would be for newer players,

[Souper]

It's like Klei doesn't even know where their own characters stand at this point. In my opinion, the problem with webber was that he really didn't offer anything unique to the table because wendy was a better webber, and spiders are pretty much useless. And with this update, webber is pretty much in the same spot. But I suppose now you can put hats on spiders and collect silk mildly faster than before! Great(?) Just a very underwhelming refresh overall.

[Masked Koopa]

I think it did an excellent job of fully allowing Webber's previous potential to come through, the issue was just that his previous full potential was still quite mediocre. I don't understand why we can't at least hire spider queens for example - one might assume that they'd be too powerful as minions, but the caves literally give us access to rock lobsters, which are at least as powerful as she is.

Spiders also as stated don't really have any use beyond going to war with each other, something that can also just be fully automated with merms or bunnymen, or killed more efficiently using wendy, making it kind of pointless to be webber if spider drops are what you're after.

 

On the flipside however, this update also does wurt and the other survivors dirty to a degree, in that the shoo box and webby whistle would both be excellent things to have at one's disposal even if you're not using spiders. The same also goes for the change wherin hired spiders won't retaliate against attackers. These changes should never have been a part of the webber rework, and should have instead been bundled with a full scale follower mechanics rework.

[BezKa]

8 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

On the flipside however, this update also does wurt and the other survivors dirty to a degree, in that the shoo box and webby whistle would both be excellent things to have at one's disposal even if you're not using spiders. The same also goes for the change wherin hired spiders won't retaliate against attackers. These changes should never have been a part of the webber rework, and should have instead been bundled with a full scale follower mechanics rework.

I think these are allowed to work because spiders are pretty mindless creatures, so luring and spooking them with sounds has a right to work. If they made pigs and other followers intelligent enough to speak in some sort of language and still get scared of a toy I would be pretty disappointed.

[Zeklo]

I don't really understand the ability for spider's to wear hats. It's a neat little novelty, but for the reasons stated it's really not worth it at all.

[Mike23Ua]

As a Wendy Main I don’t get why Webber needs a costly item AT ALL to “shoo” spiders away.. but maybe I’m wrong..

[BezKa]

11 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

I don't really understand the ability for spider's to wear hats. It's a neat little novelty, but for the reasons stated it's really not worth it at all.

It's a meme. Something people wanted to be a ridiculous little detail, made mods for etc because on promotional posters spiders sometimes wore top hats. It's not meant to be useful.

[Stonetribe]

2 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Enemies could prioritize Cave Spiders over other spiders, so Cave Spiders can use their reinforced hide to effectively shield their spider friends from damage.

I've been dying to point out that spider warriors are actually more durable than cave spiders. Even if they're in their shell for every time they get hit, which they won't since they only retreat into it after being hit two times, their shell only adds 168.75 hp for a total of 393.75 effective hp compared to the spider warrior's 400 hp. So yeah, something like this would be nice.