[Suggestions] Make Wolfgang’s Successful Dodges Rewarding, Rather Than Punishing Failed Dodges

[goatt]

In current system, Wolfgang is punished with reduction in mightiness when taking hits. This mechanism rewards successful dodges but also punished failed ones. I suggest a new mechanism which only rewards successful dodges but does not punish failed ones.

what’s wrong with the current punishing system?

1a. First problem is who or what is punished. Players who gets hit a lot gets punished. Who gets hit a lot? New players, or players who are not particularly serious about battle skills. Anyone who’s trying to casually walk into a fight using a muscular Wolfgang will soon find themselves in an odd situation because they are not skilled enough to keep the mightiness up. This system will make Wolfgang only a toy of skilled players, but discouraged other kinds of players to play it.

1b. It also punished a particular kinda of play style, namely, tanking. It should be perfectly legal for a muscular lad to tank bosses because he’s rich enough to have unlimited fancy armors. When I want to tank dragonfly with fancy thulecite gears acquired thru hard working in ruin rushes, I find myself unable to utilize my mightiness bcuz I was punished for affording to tank. This demotes certain players’ play style and demotes diversified solutions. If I can afford to tank, let me tank pls.

2. The mini game of mightiness loss management is distracting (and tedious to me personally). Its possible to negate mightiness loss by wielding dumbbell in the faces of bosses. That forms its own mini game of in-battle mightiness management at cost of dumbbell durability and lower damage output. But this little weapon switching mini game distract me from the real fight. Unless you are very familiar with the fights, the distraction can cost trouble, main reason is now you need to switching among 3 tools, namely weapon, walking cane and dumbbells. Switching between 2 tools allows weapon to be swap back into the same slot in the inventory. But 3-tool switching is a lot more messy and very distracting. It’s just a lot of effort in inventory management for me. The fight used to be smooth, but now is mentally exhausting. Again, this would not be a problem for pro fighters. And again, it makes only a toy of pro fighters.

Suggestion

My suggestion is to create a purely rewarding system, instead of a half-rewarding-half-punishing system which demotes creativity and diversity. I know devs said they will adjust the numbers to make the mightiness cost more reasonable, but I cannot be a fan.

I think any rewarding system will work. Here is an example that crossed my mind. I think it should be a crowd pleaser, I don’t know:

1. Wolfgang gain a little mightiness in battle just like during chopping, mining and etc. Getting hit does not reduce mightiness.

2. Wolfgang gains Confidence when he successfully hits enemy enough times without getting hit. The Confidence will make him perform body builder poses animation such as this one with closed eyes and smirk on the face. It should make him look confident, taunting and narcissist, while also give him a movement speed bonus as long as he’s having any aggro and remaining unharmed.

the detailed conditions for the poses and the speed bonus to occur are as following:

1. He has attacked 10 times

2. He has not been harmed. Any loss in hit points resets attack count to 0 and removes speed bonus.

3. He has aggro of any mobs. Having zero aggro resets attack count to 0 and removes speed bonus. For bosses, he has to be hearing the boss music. Existing boss music area resets attack count to 0 and removes the bonus.

This particular example solution should promote some “feel good” positive feedback loop that can keep players going on chasing successful dodges, instead of stressfully dodging hits to manage mightiness loss.

Thanks for reading this long writing.

[Cheggf]

2 minutes ago, goatt said:

He has aggro of any mobs. Having zero aggro resets attack count to 0 and removes speed bonus. For bosses, he has to be hearing the boss music. Existing boss music area resets attack count to 0 and removes the bonus.

If this were implemented it should just be based on hearing combat music for all fights instead of aggro. Basing it on aggro is just begging for weird and inconsistent behavior.

[Yuuko]

idk - I kinda feel Wolfgang's bonuses to gaining / maintaining might are there now, but without the trouble in combat it would be too much.  Just too easy.  There has to be some challenge to it.  This really brings out the thematic downside of Wolfgang being a coward.

Several people have spoken up about Wolfgang probably losing too much mightiness in fights, and I think adjusting his penalty based on his armor reduction is a good way to go.  This would give some extra synergy to his ability to wear marble suit @95% resistance.  If the current system was representative of Wolfgang wearing a common 80% damage reduction, with less armor he would lose significantly more mightiness, but with the 95% of night or marble armor he would lose enough less to make tanking more viable.

In my mind Wolfgang isn't really a tank.  Wigfrid is the tank and trade girl.  If you *want* to tank she should check all your boxes.  Wolfgang is sorta like Wanda, except instead of risking death for bad play, he risks reverting to Wilson (and he doesn't have her amazing whip).  The thing is Wanda has a synergy with her ability to wear night armor which significantly stretches out her survivability.  If he took half as much mightiness loss at 95% armor compared to what he's losing now, I think he'd be pretty good. (I still haven't fought every boss with him, and I've seen people point out specific fights where the mightiness drain is stacked against him, I presume putting the penalty through armor would be enough, but I'm not saying this is 100% THE answer)

As for switching tools / weapons - I think the previous system where you'd need to switch to a weight and lift it (or only throw it for some meager mightiness) was too much, mostly because you'd have to right click on the equipped weight to begin lifting and the lifting could be canceled early and throwing it just absolutely wrecked its durability.  That has basically all changed now.  Swapping gear between two weapons... eh I'm not pro at this and find swapping between 3 items isn't that tough.  It means you've got to improve at inventory management and the boss fights.  Maybe changing up strats like doing AFW without a weather pain.

[Wonz]

1 hour ago, goatt said:

1. Wolfgang gain a little mightiness in battle just like during chopping, mining and etc. Getting hit does not reduce mightiness.

But he already gets like 1 mightiness per hit

 

1 hour ago, goatt said:

The Confidence will make him perform body builder poses animation

You sure? Sounds like something that would "stun" him stopping his attacks and leaving him open for an attack just like when going mighty again.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

he doesn't need a reward for kitting when already get mightiness for every "work" and a lot by hitting with the dumbell (in mighty, with other forms dont even try) and can stop the drain by holding the dumbell. Now is too easy to be might, what is needed is some ajustments so he doesnt get stuck in normal form because how much points lose per boss hit plus the transforming animation, you can get stuck in a loop: going normal--->raise the meter ecome mighty--->stunlocked for being mighty so you get hit---->become normal---->raise the meter to be mighty again---->get hit because you are stunlock for becoming mighty, etc etc

before the animation locking you had sense because you needed to control your hunger, was a good mechanic to make the player pay attention, now, with the losing mightiness per hit, is something so annoying and more when you lose +10 points per boss hit ans the threshold to become normal is only 25 points

[goatt]

@Shosuko You didn't see my point. I'm guessing this Beta branch is hard to see this if I don't point it out because people here are enthusiastics and generally pro players, and the opinions here are not quite diversified. My point is this: this system punishes new players and certain play styles.

While wig is good at tanking, not tanking doesn't make her perk weaker. Tank or not tank is just a choice. But for Wolfgang, this choice is taken away, and this is the problem. Then will armor reduction solve the problem? Yes it will, for the most part. But it still punishes relative new players. And this character's perk is only the toy of pro fighters. 

When you were saying "it's too easy", you ignored the fact that you are too good, and everything is easy. I think most people in this branch fall into this category. So here is my different voice.

About previous system regarding tool switching, there is no need to compare because the system mechanism was just bad. It was so bad that Wolfgang was very unpopular (Just on weekend go to server list, filter "show empty server - no" and check all the servers and see how many people are playing Wolfgang). The experience of tool switching should be compared to some good parts of the game, not to the bad parts. While it has been improved, my point is that it's not good enough and can to be improved more.

@ArubaroBeefalo you said "it's too easy to be mighty", and what's wrong with that? I think it should be very easy to stay mighty because it is after all his perk. The old old Wolfgang's price of staying mighty was just eat eat and eat, that's why it's friendly to all players. Now the condition to stay mighty is you need to learn to dodge, and foreknowledge of bosses' behavior, and good inventory management. This is way too much requirement for skills.

About the loops you described, it was accurate. It's true that the current system punishes too much, that's why you are suggesting a lesser punishment with synergy to marble suits. It's too much punishment even for many pro fighters. Adjusting it to a level that's comfortable to pro players will work, but again still makes it favored by pro fighters. I suggest this character should be friendly to players of all experience level. After all, he was the second player unlocked in the original game.

[goblinball]

17 minutes ago, goatt said:

you said "it's too easy to be mighty", and what's wrong with that? I think it should be very easy to stay mighty because it is after all his perk.

If it was incredibly easy to be mighty than Wolfgang would be just a better Wilson. You’d never need to manage the mightiness meter, ever. Just play regularly and unless you’re sitting around doing nothing you’ll be mighty all the time. Idk about you but this sounds super boring to me.

[Cheggf]

27 minutes ago, goblinball said:

If it was incredibly easy to be mighty than Wolfgang would be just a better Wilson. You’d never need to manage the mightiness meter, ever. Just play regularly and unless you’re sitting around doing nothing you’ll be mighty all the time. Idk about you but this sounds super boring to me.

Are most characters super boring to you? Just about all of them get their power for little to no effort and could be argued to be "just a better Wilson".

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, goatt said:

@Shosuko You didn't see my point. I'm guessing this Beta branch is hard to see this if I don't point it out because people here are enthusiastics and generally pro players, and the opinions here are not quite diversified. My point is this: this system punishes new players and certain play styles.

While wig is good at tanking, not tanking doesn't make her perk weaker. Tank or not tank is just a choice. But for Wolfgang, this choice is taken away, and this is the problem. Then will armor reduction solve the problem? Yes it will, for the most part. But it still punishes relative new players. And this character's perk is only the toy of pro fighters. 

When you were saying "it's too easy", you ignored the fact that you are too good, and everything is easy. I think most people in this branch fall into this category. So here is my different voice.

About previous system regarding tool switching, there is no need to compare because the system mechanism was just bad. It was so bad that Wolfgang was very unpopular (Just on weekend go to server list, filter "show empty server - no" and check all the servers and see how many people are playing Wolfgang). The experience of tool switching should be compared to some good parts of the game, not to the bad parts. While it has been improved, my point is that it's not good enough and can to be improved more.

Granted - my experience is skewed by my familiarity with the game - but when I say "easy to stay mighty" I mean I can chop wood, mine ore, paddle a boat, and max out my mightiness very easily.  If I happen to need to fight a spider, hound, etc while doing this it is a simple thing with his mighty damage.  Even going into a boss fight it is very easy to gain mighty ahead of time and hold it while you start the boss fight.  Bosses are no more difficult for Wolfgang than they are for others - I can kite deerclops as easily with Wolfgang as I do with Willow, yet Wolfgang is getting 2x damage.  Since I can complete this fight without taking much damage it is a pure win for Wolfgang in his current form.  If you can maintain the 2x damage you will finish a fight in half the time as another character, which means you must only go through the kiting patterns half as much, a genuine advantage to kiting Wolfgang.  I see his mightiness drain issue as more niche, and specific for each boss rather than an overarching design issue.  I haven't fought all bosses yet, so as stated my opinions may be off on some of the boss encounters.

I don't think we need to specifically reward Wolfgang for dodging though - he is already rewarded for dodging in 2 ways.  First is by maintaining mightiness.  You lose mightiness when hit, you gain for hitting - so to keep mighty in a fight you want to dodge, and are rewarded by maintaining 2x damage mod.  It is also enforced by the standard advantages of kiting which is that you aren't burning armor / healing items although the battle might stretch a but further.

That is my opinion of course.  I don't feel every character needs to be able to have the choice of tanking vs kiting.  Maxwell is sitting at 75 health, Wanda is encouraged to play at <35, and Walter gets his sanity basically flatlined at 0 if he tries lol.  This version of Wolfgang fits with these characters although his downsides for taking a stray hit or two are much less severe, actually making him a more new player friendly combat character then Wanda.

Also although it is a tangent I wanna speak to this:  Wigfrid most certainly *does* lose a significant amount of her power when she doesn't tank.  Her perks to craft a more robust armor and to life / sanity leach are both worthless if you kite through every fight.  While she has only a 25% damage penalty her increased dps uptime by not dodging gives her a significant boost.  You absolutely get the most out of Wigfrid when you tank and trade.

Edit - in the update they've removed the mightiness penalty for taking damage, I think that pretty well solves this problem.

[Toroic]

I’ve grown to like the mechanic of mightiness lost on hit, but it scales poorly with bosses that deal higher damage and players having more mitigation.

Current tuning all but forces Wolfgang to kite as his only way to tank is while attacking with a dumbbell which reduces his performance to a level that Wilson can attain, or wigfrid if you’re using a gembell.

I’d like to see the mechanic scale with armor so it remains something you need to be aware of without completely locking Wolfgang out of being performant at tanking.

Wanda will always be better at kiting, and Wig will always be better at tanking.  I’d like to see Wolfgang be viable in either strategy.

Tanking itself is generally less efficient to begin with and only makes sense for specific fights.

CC right now makes Wolfgang a very unreliable choice to use.

[Yuuko]

4 minutes ago, Toros said:

I’ve grown to like the mechanic of mightiness lost on hit,

I also like it.  They just removed it though...  I think if it reduced by armor, and maybe if he loses mighty from damage had an animation where he ran away and gained some invul frames it would have worked out for him to keep it.  But just removing it is a simple solution that I'm okay with.

[goatt]

@Shosuko I agree with most of the things you say. I myself is a pro fighter, so i can totally empathize with your points. The main reason I posted op was because I realize that Wolfgang has becomes unfriendly to my casual play style. I have usually play in two modes. One is competitive mode where i push myself to fight perfect. One is casual relax mode, when I just log on game and want to deal with fights and get things done. That's when i realized Wolfgang is demoting and punishing certain style.

Unlike Wanda and Maxwell, who are known to enforce a specific fight style. For example, Wanda can not be healed with food, so she cannot afford being hit constantly. In comparison, Wolfgang has 200 hp. Solely looking at hp, he should very much afford being hit. The only reason he's designed to lose mightiness is because "it's too easy". This punish system seems more like a reactive design to fix the "too easy" problem, rather than an original design. It just feel awkward.

Like I said, I agree with most of what you said, and I think they will work. But it wont stop me from input using a different angle. This time, the angle is gaming experience. About wigfrid, i think it's a good to take hit strategically to increase the meter, but it doesn't necessarily make it feel good to play that way. I don't feel obliged to use the perk just because it's available. Wig is my fav character, the reason is how good I feel when I play her. I can fight without armor, I can mistakes and lose hp then get it back, The sound of +1+1hp increase for each successful hit and each successful dodge is blood boiling and addictive. This is the kind of "positive feedback loop" that makes me love her mechanics.

As a solution, wolfgang's mightiness reduction adjustment is a good and easy fix because of the synergy with marble suit. But the overall experience of fighting using wolfgang just doesn't feel "mighty" or smooth, it feels exhausting because of multitask. That's my original motivation of using a rewarding system, i.e. to make the player feel good.

[Toroic]

19 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

I also like it.  They just removed it though...  I think if it reduced by armor, and maybe if he loses mighty from damage had an animation where he ran away and gained some invul frames it would have worked out for him to keep it.  But just removing it is a simple solution that I'm okay with.

Thank you for pointing this out, as I've been working and missed the update.

I liked the mechanic after my tuning that made it half your health loss when hit so it scaled with armor, but I definitely see their argument that he didn't need that downside with respect to his performance vs other characters.

Wolfgang doesn't have the aoe wendy does, the group buffs of wigfrid, or the utility of Wanda so him being a relatively straightforward "get mighty and smash" while retaining the actually useful utility perks doesn't push him ahead of other combat characters.

[goblinball]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

little to no effort

Willow - doesn’t have to work hard for her abilities but they aren’t too amazing either so it balances out
Wendy - has to do the pipspook scavenger hunts for elixirs (I know they aren’t challenging necessarily but they’re annoying so I think it counts) (also abigail dies instantly on most boss fights so have fun with that 0.75x damage multiplier)

Woodie - has to deal with transformations every full moon, and spawns more tree guards when not in beaver mode.

Wes - Wes

Wigfrid - meat only diet is a pain earlygame and for newer players

Webber - pig racism is annoying, has to keep spiders alive, has to go out of his way to befriend spider types to get switcherdoodles

Warly - self explanatory

Wormwood - no healing food can be a pain especially if you haven’t killed bee queen yet

Winona - ehhh she gets a pass

Wortox - butterflies don’t spawn in winter : )

Wurt - no meat, and those structures can be expensive, man (also buggy merm ai)

Walter - don’t get hit!!!!!

Wanda - don’t get hit!!!!! (Also steal the server’s supply of nightmare fuel and go nab some thulecite AND hope you have a triple mac tusk)

this seems like a bit more than “little to no effort” especially compared to hypothetical super Wolfgang idk man

(also before anyone asks I intentionally left out the characters who haven’t been reworked yet. If I missed anyone please let me know!)

 

 

[Stonetribe]

2 hours ago, goblinball said:

Willow - doesn’t have to work hard for her abilities but they aren’t too amazing either so it balances out

*Urge to suggest Willow tweaks/buffs intensifies*