Thoughts On New Might Drain

[Cheggf]

I want to preface this post by saying that if the update shipped with Wolfgang in his current state, it would be incredible. I'm perfectly happy with how he is right now, and nothing I'm going to say is something objectively wrong that needs to be fixed, I'm just saying my experience with his new might drain so that the devs (which have been incredibly involved with the community throughout the entire beta and done an amazing job) can read it and see if it's what they want the changes to do. If it's not what they were hoping for, I have a potential idea to steer it back towards how it was with the might loss on hit at the bottom of the post.

With the new might drain rate combat and work are basically completely unaffected by might. You only need to swing once every ten seconds to break even, so it's extremely easy to maintain permanent mightiness during these tasks for no real effort and you'll likely end up gaining a lot of might. I see no reason to swing the dumbbell as a weapon (despite it swinging faster as normal Wolfgang now) unless maybe I was caught off guard and attacked before I could pump up to mighty before a fight, but the transition up animation is still there so doing that is risky.

The increased might drain is very noticeable outside of those situations, however. Those two situations where might is basically capped to full for no effort are the main two uses of might, his biggest strengths are easy to access, but his less impactful perks are much harder to access and feels like it's just a big nerf to them.

With how fast might drains and how little the piggyback slows you down I feel like this perk is more or less not there at all any more. I haven't tested it, but with how much time you spend pumping and losing all of your movement speed it feels like it would just be faster (and not use gembell durability) to simply run around at 112.5% constantly instead of alternating between 125% and 0%. Early game before you get a dumbbell it can give you a small speed boost since you may as well hold the dumbbell, but that's an early game speed boost that's 1/3 the strength of Wes' and 1/2 the strength of Wormwood's while also only being in effect if you're using a piggyback.

His winter insulation perk similarly feels like it's not worth using. Maybe if you wanted to chop trees while wearing clothes it could potentially let you chop for a little longer since you'd be gaining a lot of might, but if you're moving around you'll run out of might a very, very long time before you run out of heat. If you're stopping to pump a dumbbell you may as well burn a tree next to you to gain might and heat at the same time, but if you're warming up constantly then you're not making use of your perk at all since just the clothes alone would be more than enough to protect you. You need to pump so often that if you're staying mighty and warming up as you pump you don't even need clothes since a thermal stone would last long enough, the clothes' extra duration is wasted.

If this is how Wolfgang is meant to be it's not necessarily a bad thing, but if the intention was to make him have to be more engaged in combat it hasn't done that at all. Perhaps you could tie his might meter into his fear trait, reverting his might drain to how it was when he lost might on hit whenever he's not in danger, and now he instead loses a lot of might (perhaps 2-3x as much as he does currently) whenever he's in an insanity aura, or hearing combat music. It would fit thematically, he's scared of the monsters so he feels weaker and something something magic feeling weaker makes you actually weaker, and fit mechanically since you would have to be engaged in combat and not just running away. Not sure if it would be more fun, just an idea that popped into my head.

P.S. Fishing doesn't give mightiness. It wouldn't really do much but it would fit in since things like hoeing and using a pitchfork give mightiness.

[GrapeVruit]

15 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Perhaps you could tie his might meter into his fear trait, reverting his might drain to how it was when he lost might on hit whenever he's not in danger, and now he instead loses a lot of might (perhaps 2-3x as much as he does currently) whenever he's in an insanity aura, or hearing combat music. It would fit thematically, he's scared of the monsters so he feels weaker and something something magic feeling weaker makes you actually weaker, and fit mechanically since you would have to be engaged in combat and not just running away. 

I think if they made Wolfgang lose mightiness when at or close to being insane, it could make him feel more engaging and more interesting to play. It would encourage players to be weary of Wolfgang's sanity drain because if it gets extremely low, then they are at risk of loosing all of their mightiness and being reduced to nothing but a toothpick. I feel like it would make his scaredy cat downside much more impactful and less of an annoyance. 

[lakhnish]

12 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

I think if they made Wolfgang lose mightiness when at or close to being insane, it could make him feel more engaging and more interesting to play. It would encourage players to be weary of Wolfgang's sanity drain because if it gets extremely low, then they are at risk of loosing all of their mightiness and being reduced to nothing but a toothpick. I feel like it would make his scaredy cat downside much more impactful and less of an annoyance. 

That would make him super annoying to play. I'm constantly low on sanity on purpose to farm nightmare fuel #neverenoughfuel

[ArubaroBeefalo]

my problem with the meter is that is annoying trying to be all the time mighty to take advantage of his passive perks like wearing piggyback without penalty, would be nice if heavy items reduce the drain so there will be more reasons to use piggybacks or ice cube

[lakhnish]

These are the new effective drain rates compared to what they were before they made their change 1-2 patches ago:

Going below 150 hunger is absolutely brutal. 

If you're at full hunger and at full might and let yourself lose the normal 75 hunger/per day (ie. go from 200 hunger to 125 hunger), you're essentially guaranteed to be wimpy by the end of the day, as you'll lose a total of 86.4 might total.

Compared that to before under the same conditions, you would still be normal wolfgang with around 49-50 might remaining.

This is of course granted that I did the math right.

[Mangrove]

Losing mightiness this quickly had me go back to the normal backpack again, and I don't like holding the dumbbell when that means I can't hold a walking cane. Right now I think there are too many interruptions if you want to keep your perks or too many things that slow you down. I also feel like I'm punished for using combat to become mighty because the transformation stuns you. It's incentivizing idling with the dumbbell before a fight rather than just jumping right in.

The current state of Wolfgang sadly makes him too much of a hassle for me to use.

[GrapeVruit]

46 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

That would make him super annoying to play. I'm constantly low on sanity on purpose to farm nightmare fuel #neverenoughfuel

I might've used the wrong wording there. I don't intend for Wolfgang to be completely crippled when insane like Walter or pre-refresh Willow, he can still stay insane and take out nightmares incredibly easily as he can now, just if you don't manage your sanity inside of combat, while still possible to fight mobs and bosses, it could lead to your downfall if you're not careful.

I just thought his loosing might on hit downside could have been handled better if it were part of his afraid of monsters downside, since you have a lot of sanity to work with, leaving for more margin of error, but would encourage players to play around his increased sanity drain instead of being a minor inconvenience. I just feel like it would be make Wolfgang more interesting. Though, for how he is right now in the beta, he's in a pretty good spot.