Wolfgang's Character Refresh is Coming Next Week!

[VirgilEngineer]

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING!?

 

 

(Sorry for Bad Quality, screen recorder machine broke)

 

[Sir Noel]

DST Reworks typically keep the original perks and downsides of the character while expanding upon them in a new, interesting way, and I believe this is the first one that hasn't lived up to this. While the speed boost didn't tie in very well to Wolfgang, it was still a staple to the character and made him really enjoyable to play as compared to the others. Back then getting mighty was not hard at all, which was why it was so unbalanced in the first place, but this update has made it much more time consuming to get mighty... so why remove one of the best perks he had that's locked to this form anyway? 

That said, it's clear the aim here was to make it costly to initially get mighty, but once you are, you're in the form for a good time. While I think some tweaks to the numbers are in order here (having to stand still to very slowly get your mighty form back is a pain), I think the idea was a good one.

I don't have much to say on the sanity downsides, honestly downsides either change a character completely or are very negligible. Same with the other small perks like carrying heavy objects or paddling faster, it's cool when you need it.

I'm in support of this movement, bring back the speed!

[HowlVoid]

Wolfgang became... Normal Wolfgang but with hoops to jump through to reach what was already possible (minus the speed).

One weird thing is that they said that 

"Mightyness is no longer attached to his hunger"

BUT you drain a moderate amount of hunger while working out AND you need full hunger to maintain mightyness... for 6~ minutes TOPS before needing to pull out the dumbbells and

EAT BACK TO FULL HUNGER 

To get the maximum out of the meter (better start chugging that food)

So it's Wolfgang ft. lots of nerfs

I think mightyness drain should not depend on how much hunger Wolfgang has, otherwise what was there to gain from all of this?

[Dextops]

2 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Wolfgang became... Normal Wolfgang but with hoops to jump through to reach what was already possible (minus the speed).

One weird thing is that they said that 

"Mightyness is no longer attached to his hunger"

BUT you drain a moderate amount of hunger while working out AND you need full hunger to maintain mightyness... for 6~ minutes TOPS before needing to pull out the dumbbells and

EAT BACK TO FULL HUNGER 

So it's Wolfgang ft. lots of nerfs

I think mightyness should not depend on how much hunger Wolfgang has left over otherwise what was there to gain from all of this?

yeah i was right about how nothing has changed he still eats lots of food and he still punches hard its just that put a roadblock in front of gaining that and then made the pay off even worse

[Connorsseur]

1 hour ago, JoeW said:

Hey everybody

We decided to put out a testing branch for this refresh so we can get your feedback after actually having played the refresh, rather than reacting to speculative feedback. 

While we appreciate the feedback so far, we feel like it would be best to let you see it for yourself before we make any possible adjustments to the refresh. 

A couple things to note here though. As we hadn't intended to put this build out early so there will likely be some bugs or adjustments that still need to be addressed. And, we will need some time to evaluate the feedback that we receive before making adjustments, but we wanted to give you some time over the weekend to check it out. 

To check out the Wolfgang refresh, switch over to the "Public Beta" branch. If you're not familiar with changing branches on Steam, check out this support topic: https://support.klei.com/hc/en-us/articles/360029557332-How-to-change-branches-in-Don-t-Starve-Together-Steam-

Loving the refresh so far! One thing I would like to see though is reintroducing the speed buff... but for the wimpy form! It wouldn't have any combat practicality aside from "run away!" and I think it's a nice way to help soften the blow at least a little from removing his past speed buff entirely.

Maybe also a tiny speed one for the "normal" form too, but absolutely not for his mighty. He can't have his cake and eat it, but having trade-offs like this might make him a teensy bit more interesting. This is probably all an unpopular opinion though haha

[-Variant]

I think the dumbbell art could change... this is the in-game one, compared to some older art...

[Sweaper]

These probably won't be added anymore since it's now too late and barely affects gameplay but mining, chopping, rowing and maybe even (sea) fishing could help fill his meter. In mighty he could also do these activities with less swings at the expense of tool durability while in wimpy he would be like Wes in this aspect.

[BoysenSyrup]

haha Wigfrid win haha

…well even as a biased Wigfrid main I can’t ignore the problems with this refresh, so I’d like to talk about them.

The removal of the speed means you have basically no real incentive to maintain Mightyness outside of combat. Balancing food for speed was a pretty enjoyable and unique perk of Wolfgang’s, allowing him to do… whatever you want to do early on faster. With it removed, it relegates Wolfgang into a near pure combat character, the problem with this is that we already have a dedicated combat character who, while having weaker damage, doesn’t rely on a meter to have these perks. The speed boost made Wolfgang a fun early to mid choice for exploration, and removing locks him into the fighter role, which two characters also share while having other interesting perks. Whether it be Time or Combat Support stuff.

The stat cuts to Health are fine, 200 is still a good amount of health to work with, and  allows Wigfrid and WX to be more unique within combat as tankier characters, this is a fine change.

I don’t get the weights system. It forces you to stop and play a tedious mini game to access your interesting perks. The hunger based strength flowed much better, you manage food to go faster and be stronger. It’s simple, and it works. Going through a training arc everytime you want to use your characters main perks is not the funnest thing ever. Especially with the removal of the speed, you’ll only be doing this before fights, which just serves to be an annoyance instead of anything in-depth. I feel like if they want to keep this system, they should make the Mighty form stronger (can’t believe I’m saying this…), currently you put in more effort to achieve it for a worse pay off.

The idle animation is good and cool and fits. Of course the muscular man flexes, it just makes sense. It also doesn’t make me incredibly enraged, unlike Wortox’s jig.

So… that’s my thoughts on the refresh (as a Wigfrid main with less then average experience on Wolfgang.) I like the ideas behind it but it just makes Wolfgang feel… slower then before. You don’t get stuff done as fast. The Mighty form feels sluggish and less unique. To access that Mighty form you have to go through a tedious mini game. Wolfgang’s gameplay loop has just been slowed down by a lot. I don’t really have any ideas for how this could be made better, not experienced enough with Wolfgang to say what would work or be fun. But I don’t think the current state of the refresh should stay, it just feels too… slow.

 haha Wolfgang bad now haha Wigfrid #1

[firoborn]

6 minutes ago, Sweaper said:

These probably won't be added anymore since it's now too late and barely affects gameplay but mining, chopping, rowing and maybe even (sea) fishing could help fill his meter. In mighty he could also do these activities with less swings at the expense of tool durability while in wimpy he would be like Wes in this aspect.

adding to the mightiness work efficiency i want harvest moon inspired stuff added in specific a mighty wolfgang charge hoe move that can work multiple tiles at the same time like the flint hoe would work 3 tiles in a 1x3 and the golden will do 9 tiles in a 3x3

[Dr. Safety]

At first glance in playing, here is what I've gathered:

Spoiler

His damage seems to be as follows:

• Mighty-x2
• Normal-standard
• Wimpy-x0.75

This is a general buff to his damage, since it used to go down to 0.5 iirc. His damage also isn't decreasing exponentially, and is instead a flat modifier. His mighty form can also use marble armor/piggybacks with no speed loss.

He has 3 craftable dumbbells:

• Basic- 100 uses, +1 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 27 damage (-10% durability)
• Golden - 200 uses, +2 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 40 damage (-5% durability)
• Gem - 200 uses, +2 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 59 damage (-5% durability)

I could be off by a decimal since I am not looking at the code or anything. The only difference between the bottom 2 I could find is the damage, so I think I am missing something there. It should also be noted that they can only be thrown in mighty form, and he seems to use them quicker, the stronger he is. It seems to be better to keep him mighty than to let him dip down to wimpy for the sake of time management.

His exercise station is definitely gonna need to be examined under a microscope for different values. Playing it with the potato sacks that it spawns with yields 2 might per lift, while I put 2 marble ancient guardian statues and it was giving me around 7 might per lift. It got me to 100 very fast.

This is just me playing with a couple mods to tell me certain values, so I could be wrong on a lot of this

My feedback, I can't really speak on how fun he is at this time, since I haven't properly played him outside of just testing. I actually really like the idea people are throwing around of having him faster when Wimpy, but if that is added I think there should be a way to manually decrease his mightiness which is a whole different thing. Maybe if he eats sweets, but that would nerf his sanity restoration via crockpot dishes. Other than that he seems... alright. He's certainly not terrible and I think he could be pretty powerful. The biggest factor now is whether or not he is fun to play.

[Parusoid]

19 minutes ago, -Variant said:

I think the dumbbell art could change... this is the in-game one, compared to some older art...

its from shipwrecked

[Mike23Ua]

17 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

At first glance in playing, here is what I've gathered:

  Reveal hidden contents

His damage seems to be as follows:

• Mighty-x2
• Normal-standard
• Wimpy-x0.75

This is a general buff to his damage, since it used to go down to 0.5 iirc. His damage also isn't decreasing exponentially, and is instead a flat modifier. His mighty form can also use marble armor/piggybacks with no speed loss.

He has 3 craftable dumbbells:

• Basic- 100 uses, +1 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 27 damage (-10% durability)
• Golden - 200 uses, +2 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 40 damage (-5% durability)
• Gem - 200 uses, +2 to the might meter per lift, can be yeeted for 59 damage (-5% durability)

I could be off by a decimal since I am not looking at the code or anything. The only difference between the bottom 2 I could find is the damage, so I think I am missing something there. It should also be noted that they can only be thrown in mighty form, and he seems to use them quicker, the stronger he is. It seems to be better to keep him mighty than to let him dip down to wimpy for the sake of time management.

His exercise station is definitely gonna need to be examined under a microscope for different values. Playing it with the potato sacks that it spawns with yields 2 might per lift, while I put 2 marble ancient guardian statues and it was giving me around 7 might per lift. It got me to 100 very fast.

This is just me playing with a couple mods to tell me certain values, so I could be wrong on a lot of this

My feedback, I can't really speak on how fun he is at this time, since I haven't properly played him outside of just testing. I actually really like the idea people are throwing around of having him faster when Wimpy, but if that is added I think there should be a way to manually decrease his mightiness which is a whole different thing. Maybe if he eats sweets, but that would nerf his sanity restoration via crockpot dishes. Other than that he seems... alright. He's certainly not terrible and I think he could be pretty powerful. The biggest factor now is whether or not he is fun to play.

You find any Team Based stuff in testing? I was really really hoping he would get something that wasn’t just another “Self” Perk..

If the Gym Equipment/Dumbells can be used by Non-Wolfgang’s for small buffs- that would be GAME CHANGING.

[petterr44]

I’ve never posted here before but trying the beta just now I had to…

I’ve been playing DST for a while and I've recently started really enjoying Wolfgang in boss fights and a more combative play-style. He is fun, interesting and has his challenges/downsides which makes him unique and nicely balanced. The extra damage, extra HP and speed boost are great perks for the fights meanwhile the transitions can kill you if you’re not careful or don’t time them well, and the sanity drain is definitely noticeable if you are fighting a lot or playing in the caves/ruins. The wimpy form already makes you weaker than Wes in terms of damage output and slows you down but it allows you to heal easily and conserve food if you are doing stationery chores. This allows you to think and carefully plan when to use each form. You need to think about filler food, hunger maintainers, health restoration, sanity restoration and mightiness. Everything but boring or OP with no downsides.

Klei always delivers amazing content updates and manages to keep improving the game and making the constant more fun and interesting but this update is not like that all. In fact, this update does not make any sense.
Using the gym is terrible, the whole idea of the mini game where you have to regularly click when the gold medal is in the middle does not add any fun to the character or the game, it’s tedious, boring, and annoying really… Why do I have to do that every time I need to go mighty? very unlike DST where you sometimes have mini-games (ie summer events) that you can chose to ignore completely.
The dumbbells take way too long to get you mighty (1:30 minutes for ~30 mightiness points with the regular dumbbell and the more hungry you are the longer time you need to gain mightiness - so lots of food still needed too) and this forces you to stand around and wait while watching the animation. Why would I want to sit and watch my character getting mighty while I’m sitting around doing NOTHING. It’s really inefficient and extremely frustrating. Time is limited and the last thing I want to do is to waste it. The gembell is a bit faster but regular purple gems are not accessible in early game and I still have to sit and wait while watching the animation. If you lose the Mighty form during a boss fight there is no getting it back. Throwing the dumbbells is not a useful feature as you can’t hit moving mobs like frogs but you still loose durability that is needed to gain mightiness.
Being wimpy is now punished with extra damage taken and with the stats being fixed to 200, the wimpy form doesn’t make sense anymore, you’re better off just avoiding it completely as it doesn’t have the benefits it had before. This is just removing complexity and versatility from the character.
The sanity drain is now insanely strong. The second dusk comes you have a large down arrow and the 10% when other characters are around works only when the other player is literally *stuck* to you/touching you!
And why is the speed boost gone? This was essential to his mightiness and fitness/strength, allows you to kite better and travel faster. You never had 1.25x at all times but rather always fluctuating between 1x and 1.25x while mighty, which is not always the case either as the majority of the time you would be in normal form. Other characters have speed boosts too and I don’t see anyone complaining about those…(Wanda can teleport from base to the Ancient Pseudoscience station with 1 click, and Wortox can hop across branches)

This update sadly reduces the complexity/versatility of the character, forces you to engage with a frustrating exercising mechanic, goes against his core identity and also doesn’t offer any community benefits. The character was already great and balanced as he was and this refresh just makes him much worse.

[333hemaster333]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

Вы находите в тестировании какие-либо командные материалы? Я действительно очень надеялся, что он получит что-то, кроме еще одного перка «Я» ...

Если оборудование для спортзала / гантели могут быть использованы Не-Вольфгангом для небольших усилений - это будет ИЗМЕНЕНИЕ ИГРЫ.

The rest of the characters do not interact with the mighty gym and dumbbells in any way 

[Dr. Safety]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You find any Team Based stuff in testing? I was really really hoping he would get something that wasn’t just another “Self” Perk..

If the Gym Equipment/Dumbells can be used by Non-Wolfgang’s for small buffs- that would be GAME CHANGING.

Doesn't look like anything outside of food garbage disposal and protector. I don't mind that though. 

Also is it just me, or does every character have an easier time moving heavy things in the beta? Is that a bug or did they make them less annoying to move all around?

[DST_LSJ]

dst_menu_wolfgang

 

[Catchee]

1 minute ago, DST_LSJ said:

dst_menu_wolfgang

it seems like all 3 different versions of the menu screen have overlapped eachother.

do you have any way you can seprate them?

[DST_LSJ]

Just now, CatchySong said:

do you have any way you can seprate them?

sure, why not.

[Just-guy]

4 minutes ago, DST_LSJ said:

dst_menu_wolfgang

Could you put the image as a spoiler?

[HowlVoid]

The loss in speed is something everyone should be even more displeased about now. People took it for granted and they will realize that not having anything in exchange for it is a bad trade-off. 

Think about it, what was is so great about speed? Speed is a universal perk that allows a character to increase their proficiency in all aspect of the game.

Resources- You'll get from point A to point B faster. Then take those resources to their intended place faster. Dodging means less use of resources (food, armor, etc)

Exploration- You'll explore faster

Fight- You'll kite faster

This is now more important because Wolfgang's craft require resources, however, Wolfgang himself has no resource acquiring perks. 

You'll need stone for the first dumbbell (which takes forever to increase mightyness), cutstone for the second, cutstone and purple gems for the last one. Yes you get a more reliable 2x damage but you'll need to waste more time gathering the resources for his crafts and to maintain his mightyness meter. The speed increase is now more important than ever or something of equal value. Saying that it's removal makes "sense" and it didn't "fit his kit" is absolute nonsense to me.

Personally,  I wouldn't celebrate people's mains getting such a big perk removed from them to stroke my own ego. Nor would I celebrate it because I think they should have a more gutted character to balance him out amongst the cast or because "Now he doesn't get free stats". 

I truly believe and hope that Wolfgang gets the speed increase back or something of equal value.

Sounds like rant but I'm coming from a place of love and concern for Wolfgang mains.

Just my 2 cents

[DST_LSJ]

Just now, Just-guy said:

Could you put the image as a spoiler?

Too large gif. I am not sure anyone could like it.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

 

since you need to waste time using the dumbbell for a long time, he should have a speed boost to compensate that waste of time

[Rossiyan]

I've always had a lot of fun playing wolfgang and felt that all of his perks were cool to work with.

Healing better in wimpy form and worse in mighty was a great gimmick (regardless of if it was intentional) and actually made me think twice before popping my heals at high hunger, whether nearing the end of a fight or at base contemplating a healthy serving of rot to get to wimpy form so i dont waste any health points.

Character specific speed boosts are super exciting to me, and I'm always hype to see new characters getting released with them. All the different conditions are unique and add a layer of depth to the gameplay, and wolfgang being able to bring some extra food to get around faster out of combat feels like a great addition as a little bonus incentive to be mighty when you aren't fighting. Its not even that big a boost considering youre only at the 25% boost when at a full 300 hunger, at which point it drains super quick.

Also, I know a lot of people have food totally nailed down and think its easy to stay out of wimpy form permanently, but I still get caught in wimpy now and then when im on super long expeditions or just during the first half year when i havent gotten food totally sorted, and its a real danger depending on what enemies find you lacking on your last legs.

After reading the changes and trying out the beta I feel like a lot of wolfgangs magic is gone for me. Healing is the same as any other character because of the constant max health which takes from the strategy and depth of his gameplay, theres no speedboost in mighty so the only time id care to be mighty is when fighting which really limits its use, and the indirect buffs to wimpy wolfgang with regards to speed and health just feel like one more thing being taken from the experience with this. Heck, even the damage increase in mighty feels weird to me now; im used to finding opportunities in bossfights to top off my hunger so i can keep up my damage but now you need way more time to get it up and staying mighty during longer fights is a total chore. Maybe this is just me but the time you can stay in mighty form now feels really short too. And the methods of getting your mightiness up are, like i've already seen people pointing out, quite boring. I dont want to be sitting around for ages to get mighty in the first place, but it doesnt even last long and itd probably be faster to kill mobs in normal form than workout for a while and then take them out with mighty. I think the main reason for me to workout after this update would just be to stay out of wimpy. The idea of a character specific weapon for him sounded cool at first, but the fact that you can only throw when in mighty kind of negates any DPS you wouldve gained from mighty. The only thing I thought sounded cool from this update was that wolfgangs reaction to temperatures would change, but rowing and carrying heavy items are things that youll only do for a fraction of a fraction of the time spent in your world, so i dont think those can be considered very good buffs. I can understand why you'd make some of these changes but overall it really just felt like taking all the fun and interesting parts from his gameplay. I'd love to see a better revision of wolfgangs abilities but if the final update is still mainly like this i might just find a mod to change him back.

[Theukon-dos]

47 minutes ago, Sir Aaron said:

DST Reworks typically keep the original perks and downsides of the character while expanding upon them in a new, interesting way, and I believe this is the first one that hasn't lived up to this. While the speed boost didn't tie in very well to Wolfgang, it was still a staple to the character and made him really enjoyable to play as compared to the others. Back then getting mighty was not hard at all, which was why it was so unbalanced in the first place, but this update has made it much more time consuming to get mighty... so why remove one of the best perks he had that's locked to this form anyway? 

That said, it's clear the aim here was to make it costly to initially get mighty, but once you are, you're in the form for a good time. While I think some tweaks to the numbers are in order here (having to stand still to very slowly get your mighty form back is a pain), I think the idea was a good one.

I don't have much to say on the sanity downsides, honestly downsides either change a character completely or are very negligible. Same with the other small perks like carrying heavy objects or paddling faster, it's cool when you need it.

I'm in support of this movement, bring back the speed!

The reason that move speed got removed was becase, for all intents and purposes, it was absolute dog slobber when it came to balancing.

 

Speed is, without a doubt, the most broken stat in the game. Literally everything one can do in DST becomes better with a speed boost. Farming/foraging? Speed boost to get to things faster. Exploring? Get from point A to B faster and out-run anything that might pose a problem. Fighting? Kiting's much easier with the speed boost. You might even be able to get an extra hit in for more DPS.

 

By all accounts, keeping the speed boost is possibly the *worst* thing that Klei could have done for the refresh.

[DST_LSJ]

17 minutes ago, CatchySong said:

do you have any way you can seprate them?

• wolfgang_wimpy_bg
  Spoiler

  

   

• wolfgang_mid_bg
  Spoiler

  

   

• wolfgang_mighty_bg
  Spoiler