Wolfgang rework discussion (no rant, please, keep it constructive and laconical)

[Pig Princess]

I felt like sharing some thoughts about Wolfgang in order to improve his gameplay before final changes in rework, but didn't want this to be buried under complaints, praises and advices to wait in the main thread.

Short and constructive responses would be the most useful for developers, I believe, so please don't turn this into another venting thread.

First of all I'm going to put some suggestions and then give a reason why I believe they would improve Wolfgang's gameplay, I would appreciate reply suggestions and constructive criticism, especially considering I'm not a Wolfgang main.

Suggestions:

- Remove linear multiplier for damage, health and hunger drain;

- Make speed boost consistent (+25%, +X%) and tied to Wolfgaing's low sanity (<50% sanity for 25%, <10% sanity for X%), but not tied to mightiness, where X>25%;

- Raise sanity drain due to darkness and monsters to 2x (equal to maximum damage multiplier), but lower it for each player and combat-capable ally present in certain range with cap of 0.25 (for 5 entities; including Abigail, pigs, merms, spiders allied to friendly Webbers and thus, technically, to Wolfgang, even catcoons or allied damaged clockworks, allies via one-man band and hound whistle despite being very niche situations (for consistency), (partially)domesticated beefalo, gestalts from celestial crown while they are present and so on);

- Raise shadow's agressiveness treshold from usual 15% to 40%, terrorbeak treshold from 10% to 35%, maximum limit of shadows spawning from 1 to 2 while between 35% and 40%, 3 under 35% (with the exception of terrorclaw: instead make stronger version of it which gives more nightmarefuel and sanity on kill), 4 under 15%;

- Remove speed penalty in mighty form during carrying heavy objects/equipment (from statues to marble armor and piggyback);

- Make hunger drain in wimpy, normal and mighty form different, but consistent (for example, 0.75, 1 and 2 respectively; hunger tresholds 100 and 200 respectively);

My suggestions don't cover following aspects:

- Help for team other than occasionally saving food and gaining more nightmarefuel (+ raising sanity via terrorbeaks up to 84% without any sanity food for Wolfgang, up to 100% and faster due to multiple terrorbeaks available to smack for other teammates);

- Making Wolfgaing less one-dimensional (boss-fighter) except carrying heavy objects (which is nice, but not very common task) and piggyback without penalty (marble armor is still heavily combat-related);

- Introducing alternative way to gain mightiness. Right now I think food is too easy (imagine converting carrots into weapon and armor durability as it is now), but the whole gym kit seems unnecessary way and something Wolfgaing player will need to go out of their way in 100% cases (no merm king feeding, please).

 

Now to the reasons for proposed changes.

1. Topping hunger for maximum damage multiplier and speed seems tedious and more inconvenient than hard, that is one of the reasons I don't play Wolfgang much (this part drives me insane irl more than all Hamlet bugs combined).

2. Raw damage doesn't change fights much in quality aspect (only scales from Dragonfly mid-fight consistently, <1 lazy explorer and <1 weather pain in Fuelweaver fight, panflute method for Bee Queen due to very limited number of panflutes during early game), but more in quantity aspect (amount of weapons, armor and tools), which I find boring; on the other hand speed boost is something that changes exactly quality instead quantity, and is applied not only to fights.

Speed boost from carrots and juicy berries, however, is too cheap for no reason, doesn't make even slight sence in terms of flavor perk, and just depletes overall food supply on pub in very selfish way. There are koalas, sure, but there are also Wurt players and people who don't rely on hunts for whatever reason, it limits strategies and goals, and I don't like that. There is no need for Wolfgang to worsen this problem.

3. Sanity-based speed boost, ability to precisely regulate sanity drain and changed tresholds for insanity effects raise skill ceiling and add utility to character in multiple ways, and adding a little bit of insulation from original announcement sounds boring and uninspired, sorry Klei.

4. I picked such hunger drain value to give some utility to wimpy form (to save food, current use of it), normal behaviour for regular form (without being wasteful for just existing in a team; does it sound familiar?), equal modifier to maximum damage and maximum hunger drain, again, for not being waseful, especially considering the fact that the more people are in the team, the less individual damage modifier matters, and the more individual hunger modifier matters.

I feel like there is no need to handicap Wolfgang's mightiness, but rather need to make getting mightiness more fun and skill-requiring, as well as adding engaging and interesting downside, which can be turned into upside or lessened significantly provided player is willing to put time and effort into mastering character. I'm not sure minigame for mightiness is a way to go though (they quickly become repetitive and loose their novelty, at least for me).

Downside should still be interesting, not tedious, not forgettable, e.i. not be fixed once and forever like rain protection for WX, with no impact on gameplay in any way; wisely designed - not like "glass-cannon Wanda", who in fact is not glassy at all due to infinite soul-hopping (Wortox cries in the corner; also teleporting makes marble armor great), all unnecessary buffs for night armor and weapons sanity effects, cheaply refuelable weapon hitting stronger than dark sword (even at 100% health; Maxwell joins Wortox in the crying corner) with needlessly big range (so mobs can't even get to Wanda in vast majority of cases even before armor and backstep watch come into play) and for what - for building shadow manipulator once? Yeah, I wish Wolfgang better fate than these examples both in terms of upsides and downsides, hence I started discussion.

Edit:

9 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

13 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

- Introducing alternative way to gain mightiness. Right now I think food is too easy (imagine converting carrots into weapon and armor durability as it is now), but the whole gym kit seems unnecessary way and something Wolfgaing player will need to go out of their way in 100% cases (no merm king feeding, please).

13 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

Help for team

Mightiness could be not tied to hunger directly, but rather to ratio of hunger(health) points restored/damage dealt, numbers can be adjusted. Idea is to gain the most amount of mightiness (it's own separate meter) by dealing right amount of damage/work (like mining or hammering) after eating during short period of time, but if consumed hunger/health points were too much compared to damage/work, mightiness decreases, if around optimal number - increases slowly, very close to optimal number - increases rapidly, too much damage/work and little to no food - stays the same as before. Hunger points could imply a need to deal more total damage during time period for optimal mightiness gain, health points - less total amount of damage.

Keeping mightiness drain rate dependent on hunger like in official announcement could also be a thing.

Example of how it could work: for gaining mightiness quickly one would need to prioritize health-restoring dishes/food, especially with low-damage weapon like spear (especially starting in wimpy form), for cases when one can afford to do multiple hits (especially with good weapon) before becoming mighty it would be better to use hunger-restoring food (because more hunger points in the stomach -> less mightiness depletion). So in the end Wolfgang players diet should be shifted to the health-restoring dishes rather than hunger-restoring for mightiness, preferably without excessive amount of hunger poins, and playstyle to punishing idling and encouraging fighting/work even further.

Seems complicated on paper but it really shouldn't be on practice. As for team-helping perk Wolfgang in full mightiness could gain ability to knock back regular mobs and push giants with swings away on the edge of melee weapon range (I could see it useful for CC phase 3 fight, Fuelweaver and Toadstool). Work effectiveness in the presence of mighty Wolfgang could also increase for all nearby players and entities (and stack with honey spice).

[Mike23Ua]

They don’t take feedback until the content is actually released, and then they tweak based off THAT Feedback- So I’m not going to suggest any changes to him NOW until I play for myself how he works THURSDAY.

What I wanted: Mighty to be more then just raw strength and require more effort then eat carrot, Team Based Perks, an actual downside that plays into his Myriad of Phobias 

so yes I love the Shadows are more scary when no one else is around him change.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i love how it sounds. Seems like will be less annoying to be played

what i dont get is why they add that much penalties for being wimpy, it only affect noobs

also glad to see that klei have balls of steel to remove the speed buff, not that i think was neccesary but still glad for seeing klei doing a risky move instead of always doing what we want

 

[mima_]

7 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

what i dont get is why they add that much penalties for being wimpy, it only affect noobs

i think they should make some benefit for being wimpy than giving it more downside. 

deal less damage but have some perk with his potato farming ? or maybe less hunger drain ? so atleast he can stay wimpy and work on something else than being a big buff dude looking for fight 

just make him cant get mighty if he low on food just like sleeping mechanic (cant pick up his gym equipment )

[Ohan]

42 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

also glad to see that klei have balls of steel to remove the speed buff,

Dont praise them yet there are still a couple of weeks left for them to cave in to forum whining 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, Ohan said:

Dont praise them yet there are still a couple of weeks left for them to cave in to forum whining 

oh, for sure

they will revert it 100% sure

[Toroic]

20 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

oh, for sure

they will revert it 100% sure

I’ll hold you to this.

I personally have no issue with the speed being removed as it is too universal of a perk to fit in Wolf’s kit.

If anything they should increase the mighty damage multiplier even more if Wolf needs a boost, because Wanda, Warly, Wendy are capable of producing similar dps output but also have utility Wolf lacks

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, Toros said:

I’ll hold you to this.

I personally have no issue with the speed being removed as it is too universal of a perk to fit in Wolf’s kit.

If anything they should increase the mighty damage multiplier even more if Wolf needs a boost, because Wanda, Warly, Wendy are capable of producing similar dps output but also have utility Wolf lacks

im ok with the nerf,they just forcing us to rush mag like with every other character (except worm, walter and wx who need to actually work for it) but seeing what happend to wendy... if people cry a lot they might revert it

[lakhnish]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

what happend to wendy... if people cry a lot they might revert it

What is this in reference to?

If it's about how Abigail would deal higher damage when Wnedy was low hp, wasn't that change a good thing? At the time, Scott said it just ended in the sisters not working together since Wnedy could drop at any moment.

Instead we got Wanda, who uses that same design where it was implemented an infinitely times more better.

If it's something else, please correct me.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, lakhnish said:

What is this in reference to?

If it's about how Abigail would deal higher damage when Wnedy was low hp, wasn't that change a good thing? At the time, Scott said it just ended in the sisters not working together since Wnedy could drop at any moment.

Instead we got Wanda, who uses that same design where it was implemented an infinitely times more better.

If it's something else, please correct me.

yes, i was refering to that but the thing is that the complains didnt come because wendy could be far away watching abigail destroying things because of her 80 damage but because klei nerfed abi's damage when wendy was full which for some people it was a nerf (they didnt took into account all the controll and elixirs that the refresh bring or that at 70%hp you get more than the old damage...)

maybe klei finally decided the change because of the thing you are mentioning or for both but the thing is that they removed all the work they did when it wasnt bad (actually very funny and i wish we get another glass cannon character based on having a follower linked to our hp)

or how they nerfed the second chance watch because people that didnt played the character were focused on how op was reviving every 2 minutes (what an interesting obituaries) when red gems are already a easy to farm thing and the real problem was her weapon breaking AIs (but to know that they would need to play the character..)

klei listen because they cant play the game for enough time to test things but sometimes they listen to players who also didnt tested the things but are biased and boring enough to repeat the same unuseful feedback over and over

[Leonidas IV]

2 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

this part drives me insane irl more than all Hamlet bugs combined

I M P O S S I B L E

[BeeClops]

4 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

im ok with the nerf,they just forcing us to rush mag like with every other character (except worm, walter and wx who need to actually work for it) but seeing what happend to wendy... if people cry a lot they might revert it

as they should, it was by far his most fun perk to play around with, gave us many alternative combat strategies over the years. It's what always defined him, speed and damage, and Klei said that refreshes are going to make characters more of what they are, not nerf them. 

Anyways I'm not the ranting type, they gave us Wanda so I am at peace abandoning Wolf. But I'm saddened by this nerf, and most of all by the fact that they chose to listen to the nerfing gang, which comes from people who mostly never play Wolfgang. And this after they just added a character with similar damage and teleporting, and buffing every single reworked character. It's just odd to me. I hope that somehow I'll be proven wrong and he's super fun to play as or something... 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, BeeClops said:

as they should, it was by far his most fun perk to play around with, gave us many alternative combat strategies over the years. It's what always defined him, speed and damage, and Klei said that refreshes are going to make characters more of what they are, not nerf them. 

Anyways I'm not the ranting type, they gave us Wanda so I am at peace abandoning Wolf. But I'm saddened by this nerf, and most of all by the fact that they chose to listen to the nerfing gang, which comes from people who mostly never play Wolfgang. And this after they just added a character with similar damage and teleporting, and buffing every single reworked character. It's just odd to me. I hope that somehow I'll be proven wrong and he's super fun to play as or something... 

i find weird dthe nerf and more if we take in account that they are literally making us build a gym 

Spoiler

 

[lionking102]

4 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

What is this in reference to?

If it's about how Abigail would deal higher damage when Wnedy was low hp, wasn't that change a good thing? At the time, Scott said it just ended in the sisters not working together since Wnedy could drop at any moment.

Instead we got Wanda, who uses that same design where it was implemented an infinitely times more better.

If it's something else, please correct me.

Exactly. This change was good and has nothing to do with "crying". It was just annoying to stay low hp by purpose and not good game design. With Wandy they did it right. 

Taking away the speedboost is just a big thing and like Toros said they should compensate for it. There is no point of just nerfing wolfgang when we have Wigfrid and Wendy (that get already much more played). 
Wolfgang has no utility perks so speed and damage defines him as a charakter and as of damage other have already the same or more. 

[Ohan]

10 minutes ago, BeeClops said:

they gave us Wanda so I am at peace abandoning Wolf.

From one crutch to another huh  

Spoiler

Just kidding  i suffer from default dmg elitism

 

[lakhnish]

7 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

or how they nerfed the second chance watch because people that didnt played the character were focused on how op was reviving every 2 minutes

I remember this one. I had klei ambassador build, so I was confused at to level of response to that one. I personally didn't plan on dying and the watch sent you back to the place you died, which probably wasn't safe. (Though I do understand how people saw it as an infinite life giving amulet).

But their change to it was still fine and fit well.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, lakhnish said:

But their change to it was still fine and fit well.

ye, for multiplayer. For solo you just use LGA like with every other character which sucks because, as you said, the clock bring a new mechanic that also make it weaker than LGA

[BeeClops]

5 minutes ago, Ohan said:

From one crutch to another huh  

  Hide contents

Just kidding  i suffer from default dmg elitism

 

oh don't worry it's a common condition nowadays 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 minutes ago, lionking102 said:

It was just annoying to stay low hp by purpose and not good game design. With Wandy they did it right. 

managing your hp and abi hp while you get bonus damage was a bad game desing? imo it was the most interesting game desing this game ever had

[Capybara007]

The main difficulty of maintaining mightiness is the struggle to convince yourself that its useful, more damage is very stationary, only good for bosses, and extra rowing and faster statue carrying, ok?

Mighty mode needs more advantages

[Chubbylicious]

I'm not a Wolf main, so take my criticism with a gain of salt.

After reading the nerfs, I felt like they did a little to much for him. Yeah, I agree, he's to good at everything now and was unhealthy to the game, but they didn't have to make him "useless".

Anyway, there are my proposed changes:

- His movespeed when mighty should be removed, but to balance it, he would be faster than the other characters carrying heavy objects (in mighty form). Not the normal speed, but he should be at least be 50% faster than the others. Wimpy Wolf shouldn't be capable of carrying things such as marble statues and so on (like Granny Wanda).

- I loved your idea of shadow drops and spawn, so the only thing I would add is that they would focus Wolf when he's on screen. Because:

- His mighty form would be a combat oriented form. If his health isn't increased (maintain the 300), he should receive "passive" armor and damage increase, like Woodie's weremoose form.

- Now the most controversial one... His circus WOULD REMAIN. However, other characters could use it too and have a damage for, I dunno, 2 minutes after use? It function like Wig's song metee or Warly's peppers. For Wolf, there would be 2 types of machines: One that makes him mighty faster, but don't give him the damage boost and one that ONLY HIM COULD USE, it would be slower but it would give him a damage boost equivalent to his mighty percentage.

- His "boat effectiveness" something I liked, so it could remain.

Yeah... I guess that this is it! I don't belive Klei should be so hard on him, since we have characters like Wortox (my main) and Wanda, but he shouldn't be good on everything also. 

 

[Ohan]

6 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

more damage is very stationary, only good for bosses, and extra rowing and faster statue carrying, ok?

Mighty mode needs more advantages

 

28 minutes ago, Toros said:

Higher damage multiplier is relevant any time you’re fighting.

Wolfgang can 1 shot spiders with a fresh hambat, meaning he can easily drain multiple nests very quickly to get a stack of monster meat and a good amount of silk and glands in 1/2 or 1/3 the time of other characters.

Wolfgang also can get significantly greater durability on weapons as they are good for a number of hits, and Wolfgang uses less, so he can stretch dark swords longer.

Bosses are a fairly significant part of the game in terms of challenges you can actually fail, and Wolf trades general survival convenience for making the hardest part of the game easier.

Wolf can also solo farm scales off dfly and can trigger the dfly stun which speeds up the fight even more.

 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 minutes ago, Chubbylicious said:

he's to good at everything

only at fighting and early exploring. He cant gather resources as fast as maxwell, woodie or wurt

he is only the best character for boss fights and good for fighting mobs, other than that he was a hungry wilson

[Duck986]

2 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

also glad to see that klei have balls of steel to remove the speed buff

that was one of the reason I used him tho.

I'm a bit sad, but I hope his new abilities will overweigh that lack.

[Pig Princess]

2 hours ago, Toros said:

I personally have no issue with the speed being removed as it is too universal of a perk to fit in Wolf’s kit.

If anything they should increase the mighty damage multiplier even more if Wolf needs a boost, because Wanda, Warly, Wendy are capable of producing similar dps output but also have utility Wolf lacks

Do you think speed boost is too cheap or should be unique for 1-2 characters? Because in case former cost can be adjusted (sanity micromanagment in my suggestion, but it doesn't have to be it), if latter - a lot of characters can gain stacking with other sources speed multiplier in unique way (Wormwood, WX-78, arguably Wurt (marsh turf doesn't stack with road or cobblestone though), non-stacking but still good - Walter), so why Wolfgang is a problem? It makes sence from lore perspective to run faster because of fear, fear was stated in character describtion from the beginning. I'm genuely curious.

What would increasing damage multiplier further achieve? There is major difference between 0.75x and 1x because of number of hits breakpoints, there is difference - even though less pronounced - between 1x and 2x damage multipliers for groups of mobs having 100-200 hp and hound-like attack period, but there is not much difference between 2x and 3x damage multipliers or even bigger damage modifier values for regular mobs as well as for bosses (maybe excluding Fuelweaver and Crab king healing mechanic, but again, it's more pronounced during 1x->2x transition), because number of hits for mobs remains 1, number of used weapons and armor during boss fights decrease in case 2x->3x by 1/6 durability saved compared to 1x modifier, and in case 1x->2x by 1/2. Basically it is the same thing with number of players (excluding multiple task and tools swapping, again in FW and CK fights): solo and duo differ much more than duo and trio, and after 3rd player there is not much difference even for misery Toadstool (I'm speaking from experience).

For example: let's say boss has 6 units of hp and character with damage multiplier 1x needs 6 units of some item (or time) to defeat it; for 2x damage multiplier we have 6->3 units of item, for 3x 6->2 units of item, so by additing +1x to damage multiplier for the first time resource cost of the fight lessens by 50%, and second time it's only 16.7%. Not to mention that in all these cases fight is the same as 1x multiplier. Do you not value diversity at all, only raw resource cost? 

In case Wendy it is achievable with beefalo, which looks suspiciously similar to oversight, + she needs cancel animation for similar dps as far as I know; attempts for latter if you are not host often result in the same or even lower dps, and even if you are a host inconsistent attack speed makes it, well, inconsistent (or maybe it's just me).

Warly's damage multiplier is lategame thing, fluctuates between 1.8x and 3x and even in lategame is comparably grindy to get (even with auto-goat farms there is still pepper to farm), Wanda was supposed to be glass cannon and that, I think, was supposed to justify very high dps even in early game. Wolfgang generally reduces grind of various resources (so Warly route is not for him, it doesn't fit his concept), as for Wanda, I think the problem is with Wanda here and I won't discuss it further in this topic, I just want Wolfgang rework to not include Wanda's design flaws.

I agree on utility. I also played your mod, but didn't really notice changes to shadow's numbers, as well as maximum sanity change influence (200->100 is noticeble though on Webber/Wilba in DS), and I'm sorry to say that, but removing speed boost and flat increase of sanity drain (without any conditions, with nothing to play with) just made Wolfgang tedious to play, even with no-penalty marble armor and piggyback.

2 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

how op was reviving every 2 minutes

And how it wasn't? You could literally ignore death and hunger, at all, at no cost other than little bit of time for reviving animation (and maybe not use this method in Toadstool fight), while life giving amulet needs resources (abundant after ruins clearing or in very old worlds, but still finite) and you to dedicate at least 3 slots to materials. Just because living logs are cheap for megabasers doesn't mean Klei should buff spear damage to 68 ("because weapons are "free""). Because free is infinite item on cooldown, not consumable with finite uses (life giving amulets, souls, pierogies, etc.).

2 hours ago, BeeClops said:

they gave us Wanda so I am at peace abandoning Wolf

This just tells so much about current situation, I can only hope Wolfgang will be actually reworked, not needlessly nerfed of buffed.

It's interesting that neither in announcement post, nor here was a suggestion to make Wolfgang better team player, and somehow it again turns into the talk about Wanda.

Edit:

1 hour ago, Chubbylicious said:

However, other characters could use it too and have a damage for, I dunno, 2 minutes after use? It function like Wig's song metee or Warly's peppers.

So identical, like 1:1 to pepper spice?