[Discussion] Ranged Weapons' Biggest Problem And Suggestion About Fixing Walter

[goatt]

Edit: this post has no intention to make Walter more interesting. It only attempts to solve the problems it has spotted.
 

Tail o' Three Cats, Alarming Clock and Bull Kelp are not considered as ranged weapons because many monsters can land melee attacks on you when you use them.

Ranged vs melee combat

Spoiler

In order to understand the problems with ranged weapons, we have to look at how melee combat style is like. If melee combat is perceived as “fun”, then let’s see what it has to offer.

• It requires players to dodge.
• It requires players to enter the danger zone, i.e. monster’s attack range, because this is the only way to deal damage. It also makes (1) dodge more common.
• Monsters’ melee attacks have more variety. Melee combat interaction feels subjectively different with different monsters.

Let’s look at ranged weapon:

• Players also need to dodge, but in the form of keeping distance.
• Players would prefer to stay away from boss at all time.
• The main interaction with the monsters are running away and shooting. Most monsters don’t have ranged attacks.

The biggest problem with ranged weapons including blow darts from gameplay perspective is that they are boring. Players are incentivized to do only 2 things, keeping distance and holding F.

Most of the monsters’ behaviors require close range to be triggered.

In summary, by using the safest and most rewarding ranged combat style, players miss out a lot of the content that are well designed for melee warriors.

↑↑ This is the most important point of this post.

 

Solutions to the Ranged Weapons' Problems

Spoiler

To solve the problem of ranged weapon, Here are 3 different solutions:

1. Design ranged attacks for (at least some) monsters so that rangers can have various long-distance interaction with monsters and are forced to do more than just running and shooting.
2. Incentivize rangers to go back to the danger zone.
3. Create completely new way to use ranged weapons, such as skill shots, with the goal of making long distance interaction more interesting.

While solution (1) and (3) requires more brainstorm and a lot more effort in design and tuning, I think solution (2) is fairly easy to implement for Walter.

Edit: I personally think (1) and (3) aren’t that good. (2) is the only way to go.

 

Motivating Walters to return to the danger.

While melee characters always have to get close to hit the monsters no matter how dangerous it is, what reason would possibly be for Walter to go back to the monsters?

If you have good ideas, please comment.

Here is my idea in nutshell:

Spoiler

Fired ammo have a chance to bounce off monsters to be collected and reused by Walter. Ammo can be collected by Woby if she has space in her inventory. She will love to pick up the ammo as if it’s a fun game.

The gif below shows how ammo can bounce off a monster.

Detail regarding collecting ammo

• Those ammo will disappear after 2 min just like ash but with different animation. This is to incentivize Walters to enter danger zone during the fight to get the ammo back rather than after.
• Woby collecting ammo will be like angry Abigail moving around Wendy searching for butterfly to kill
• Woby will only do so when she’s not hungry. Make sure to feed her before any lengthy battles.
• Giant woby can also collect ammo, and has a larger search radius, when she’s not ridden. (Riding woby is to keep distance from enemy, which is adversary to creating diverse mob interaction. So this is to incentivize players to not ride woby during battles.)
• The animation of picking up ammo is like lazy forager’s. Edit: Instead of picking up ammo one at a time, Woby will choose a single target, and then pick up all the ammo in a small radius of it.
• Woby will try to keep distance from monsters.
• Woby can get hurt, despite having no HP. It would have a behavior change. It would try to run away from monsters after getting hurt. The fear will disappear after 1 min, or after being petted by Walter. Yes, Walter can pet Woby and give her courage in dangerous battles. Successful removal of Woby’s fear debuff through petting will give Walter 5 sanity.
• Feeding Woby regular meat or meat stew will fill up her hunger meter so that she can hunt down dropped ammo.
• Woby prioritize picking up ammo of higher quality because that's her preference.
• Walter can pick up ammo manually too.

 

Ammo balancing

If ammo can be reused, does it break game balance?

Spoiler

Let’s compare gold rounds to spear.

Spear has 150 uses and deals 34 damage. It can deal 5100 damage in total. In order to deal the same amount of damage, it requires 150 gold rounds, or 15 gold nuggets.

Let’s put all the comparison together (comparing items of same damage tiers and same total damages)

• 1 spear = 15 gold nuggets
• 1 spike = 10 marbles
• 1 dark sword ≈ 1.33 thulecites + 8 nightmare fuel (estimation)

I personally think it's too expensive.

 

If the bounce-off rate is 50%, half of the ammo can be reused. This would be equivalent to

• 1 spear = 7.5 gold nuggets (after ammo reuse)
• 1 spike = 5 marbles (After reuse)
• 1 dark sword ≈ 0.66 Thulecite + 4 night mare fuel.

I think this is much more reasonable.

 

33% bounce-off rate equivalence

• 1 spear = 10 gold
• 1 spike = 7 marbles
• 1 dark sword ≈ 0.9 thulecite + 5.3 nightmare fuel

It’s also okay, I guess.

Players might not care about reusing gold rounds, but they will want to reuse marble rounds and cursed rounds.

 

The Problem of Low Damage Output

(Edit: Low damage problem is a different problem of Slingshot, but not a problem regarding ranged weapon)

Currently, Walter's good quality ammo's damage output (marble rounds) is the same as axe in melee. This problem is mainly due to low attack speed.

First of all, I think low slingshot speed is a design choice that should not be changed.

Spoiler

If the slingshot is allowed to shoot at the same speed of melee weapon, some pretty strong stun lock can happen.

Here is an example of ranged weapons completely immobilizing an enemy.

The same effect would apply to Koalefants, Grass Gators, bees, etc.

 

Example of severe slowdown

The same effect would apply to goats, clock knights, and etc.

 

In those examples, fights are trivialized and players only need to hold F in order to kill. That's why I think slingshots shouldn't adopt the same attack speed.

So how do we increase damage output without increasing attack speed?

My suggestion is to upgrade the slingshot to shoot 2 ammo at a time instead of 1.

Spoiler

Trusty Slingshot II

Slingshot II is the upgraded version of Trusty Slingshot. It uses and shoots 2 ammo at a time from the ammo slot.

It requires Pinetree Pioneer Toolkit (a new item similar to Wanda’s clockmaker’s tool ) to craft.

The crafting recipe is:

1. Pinetree Pioneer Toolkit (new item)
2. the original Trusty Slingshot
3. 2 Living log. (You should be able to see the living log in the demo image)

Slingshot II has durability. It can be used 600 times (enough to kill all bosses except for toad with gold rounds). It will turn into a regular slingshot when its durability is 0.

Each shot launches 2 ammo. So 2 living logs can deal

• 40k damage with gold rounds <= 600 * (2*34)
• 60k damage with marble rounds <= 600 * (2*50)
• about 100k damage with cursed rounds. <= 600 * (2* (50+34 estimated shadow tentacle damage))

In comparison, a dark sword can deal 6.7k damage before damage modifiers.

Slingshot II damage output is not more than melee because of its low firing rate.

Slingshot II can store 80 ammo instead of 60. Ammo can stack up to 80 in the inventory instead of 60 (QoL change).

You can add a living log to Trusty Slingshot II to repair its durability by 50%.

 

Outro

The suggestions above try to utilize behaviors and functions that already exist in the game without creating new mechanisms.

The "fix" isn't forced. Walters still can play Walter the old way.

Edit: Walter's slow ammo and freeze ammo will be useful and in synergy with retrieving bounced off ammo. Different from the melee combat style, which requires players to constantly deal with close range interactions, my suggested slingshot style is to switch between intensive ranged attacks and a short period of close-range interaction in recycling ammo.

It tries to solve 3 problems:

1. Problem of slingshot playstyle's dull interactions with mobs
2. Problem of low cost-effectiveness in ammo crafting
3. Problem of lack of damage in late game.

 

[Rafi.]

I like the idea of having a new slingshot and a chance for the bullets to drop on the floor but I don't like the idea of Woby getting scared getting hit. When I fight I don't want to run after Woby to pet her. If she could just bring the ammo without having to do anything other than opening her inventory and feeding her some monster meat it would be alright.

Your idea for a slingshot is pretty nice but there's nothing that makes it more interesting than the regular one. And you could just play like regular old Walter but with extra dps.

If I had to find a cool idea to make Walter gameplay more interesting I would just add a shotgun like slingshot. Shoots 3 bullets in a spread, you'll need to get closer to make all the 3 bullets connect to the target. Not as close as a melee weapon of course. That could be an interesting side grade to the slingshot, you could choose to be very safe with the first one without spending too much ammo but doing less DPS than the other one. Riskier but would speed up the fight significantly. (Buffing the damage of the cursed rounds to 59.5 dmg could be nice, Farming melty marbles is definitively the worst thing ever.)

Walter isn't designed as a late game character, he's totally playable during it but at that point it's normal for him to do less damage than other characters since he already has some cool perks that others doesn't.

(Whips like items sure are not ranged but people should think about them as their own categories as a weapon due to having a significantly safer gameplay than regular melee, semi ranged or something like that.)

[goatt]

@Rafi. you remind me that I need to clarify that the intention of my post is to solve the problems, but not to make the character more interesting.

I try to minimize the suggestion on changes and keep everything the same.

[Rafi.]

1 hour ago, goatt said:

@Rafi. you remind me that I need to clarify that the intention of my post is to solve the problems, but not to make the character more interesting.

We can find ideas that can be solutions for some potential issue and be interesting at the same time, that's not exclusive !

1 hour ago, goatt said:

I try to minimize the suggestion on changes and keep everything the same.

What do you mean by that ?

Some of your points do makes me question about why people use ranged weapons, When I do play ranged, I don't want to bother with dodging, I don't want to be in a danger zone. It has never been designed that way in the first place when darts where added. I don't think it should go that way for all ranged weapons. When it comes to Walter specifically, you don't want to be hit, you avoid it entirely by being ranged, at the cost of DPS. Which is a fair trade. Having a low cost option such as living log to increase significantly your dps while staying at safe range isn't the best idea if not fleshed out. People could just play it like how Walter is right now.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Rafi. said:

When it comes to Walter specifically, you don't want to be hit, you avoid it entirely by being ranged, at the cost of DPS. Which is a fair trade.

This only works when everyone is on equal or near equal footing but they aren't Walter at his base is at a disadvantage while being given a shooting disadvantage as well while other characters have perks giving them a advantage on top of their base.

 

Another way to put to put it is his downsides meant to make melee combat less desirable but his downsides and balancing punish ranged combat far harder than it does melee causing him to ignore large parts of his perks.

[00petar00]

The problem lies with DST combat, it was never designed for ranged weapons, that's why blowdarts are so expensive, they aren't meant to be used as your main weapon.

It just doesn't make much sense for klei to focus on developing range combat as much as almost everything is made for melee and it would take too much time to justify having it for one or two character specific weapons, if every creature in the game right now needs to have attacks and patterns designed if ranged weapons are used against them.

When i first heard about Walter and him being a range character i thought that this was a massive mistake, my thoughts haven't really changed and even alarming clock shouldn't have more range compared to other melee weapons. 

[kirihime]

4 hours ago, goatt said:

Tail o' Three Cats, Alarming Clock and Bull Kelp are not considered as ranged weapons because many monsters can land melee attacks on you when you use them.

The vast majority can't.

In any case it's not like Walter can't use melee, people talk about him having "less damage output" when he's got the same damage as nearly everyone else. The slingshot is one way to approach a fight but it's hardly the only one, and his immunity to insanity auras only makes sense in melee anyway.

 

[Mysterious box]

Honestly the more I think about it the more I think combat just needs reworked if we've got to make ranged combat bad or too expensive to bother with legitimately then it needs to be changed otherwise why should it exist another thing to think about is that currently the best and most used ranged combat method is followers you get all the advantages of ranged combat while staying even safer and this is before even considering webber's followers who not only have ranged attacks but also healing. Alot of things in the game involving combat are just too lopsided which is what really contributes to very little weapon and armor variety.

[Rafi.]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

This only works when everyone is on equal or near equal footing but they aren't Walter at his base is at a disadvantage while being given a shooting disadvantage as well while other characters have perks giving them a advantage on top of their base.

 

Another way to put to put it is his downsides meant to make melee combat less desirable but his downsides and balancing punish ranged combat far harder than it does melee causing him to ignore large parts of his perks.

I don't agree, right now, where the slingshot isn't a very good weapon, it's an awesome tool that goes very well with Walter's downsides. Beefalo taming goes very well with Walter's gameplay, and having the slingshot while riding a beefalo is awesome. When doing a boss fight, if you're playing solo you'll have a longer fight but as long as you have some movespeed it should be alright, and when in multiplayer, you're a very good support doing a little extra dps without getting in the way if you're friends are kiting. (One of the reasons why I love Walter so much, I don't have to bump against my friends and get hit because of some bad placement).

Besides loosing sanity when Walter takes damage and his slingshot, he doesn't have any combat related stuff, both fits nicely in my opinion, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

[goatt]

4 hours ago, Rafi. said:

What do you mean by that ?

My suggestion tries to be as minor as possible. It avoids any complex idea and consequently avoids many interesting ideas. It mainly tries to find a motivation for Walter to go back to monsters to make his fights less tedious rather than making his fights more interesting. It will have the same result, but different goals, hence, different approaches.

[Cheggf]

Putting a ton of work on the devs to make a bunch of ranged attacks just so you can make the enemies annoying (and probably ugly) in an effort to larp about "fixing" ranged combat. Ranged combat isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing. Blow darts are extremely powerful but difficult to amass and Walter's slingshot is more of a tool than a weapon, with it being able to be used as a weapon efficiently in some situations and inefficiently but safely in others.

[goatt]

3 hours ago, kirihime said:

The vast majority can't.

The vast majority can’t do it at first, but can if you don’t dodge immediately. For example, if you don’t dodge right after whip a hound, the hound will be able to land a melee attack on you.

1 hour ago, Rafi. said:

When doing a boss fight, if you're playing solo you'll have a longer fight but as long as you have some movespeed it should be alright

It is alright and passable. But it’s lengthy and repetitive. Not only that, it’s true for almost all monsters. Imagine a character only do running and shooting to all bosses and with 3x time, it would be extra tedious for extra long time. In comparison, melee fights with different bosses usually have very different experience.

[goatt]

7 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Putting a ton of work on the devs to make a bunch of ranged attacks just so you can make the enemies annoying (and probably ugly) in an effort to larp about "fixing" ranged combat. Ranged combat isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing. Blow darts are extremely powerful but difficult to amass and Walter's slingshot is more of a tool than a weapon, with it being able to be used as a weapon efficiently in some situations and inefficiently but safely in others.

I agree most of your points. I personally don’t think monsters’ behaviors should be changed, especially people rarely use darts.

 

Before slingshot, ranged weapons only serve utility functions.

- Boomerang is only for killing small mobs, or draw aggro, not a combat weapon.

- damage darts are similar gunpowder, in crafting and in using.

- throwables aren’t sustainable nor high damage.

Devs always approach ranged weapon by making them unappealing and then they don’t have to deal with bad ranged combat experience. Ranged combat is usually so short or so rare because it is too time consuming to collect materials for ammo or to use them in fight. So the players won’t feel bored before ammo running out.

Devs approach slingshot the same way, i.e. by making it unappealing in some way. But slingshot is different, it’s a stable. It usually has enough ammo for a lengthy fight. So the problem of dull ranged combat can’t be avoided and has become significant.

To summarize my point:

1. Ranged combat excluding slingshot is not broken or dull, because it’s rare and usually quick to run out. Players usually have to stop using ranged weapons before they can feel boredom.

2. Slingshot combat usually have sufficient ammo, and its lengthy durability can make the problem of ranged weapon (repetitiveness and tedium) significant and unavoidable.

3. I personally agree with you and don’t think devs need to work on solution 1 or 3. That’s why I only focus on solution 2 and only made suggestions as minor as possible. I didn’t invalidate solution 1 or 3 in case I accidentally offend anyone, because such ideas do exist in the forums.

[kirihime]

some things I feel like i should have said earlier

Walter isn't a "ranged character". He's a character with a bunch of perks, one of which is having ranged attacks as an option.
Ranged combat itself isn't Walter's "thing", he also gets a free chester that can come to caves, a free beefalo of sorts, and a completely different sanity system.

people fixate on the slingshot and assume it's the only thing relevant about the character and what he was designed around, and that since it's not on the level of wanda's whip he therefore sucks.
maybe in the land of boss rush starve, "wendy shouldn't get a damage bonus from petals", "wilson needs a rework badly", "woodie is useless", and other such takes, that's the case, but in-game he's decent and fun to play.
i certainly enjoy playing him and he doesn't need a glock to be good

 

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Rafi. said:

I don't agree, right now, where the slingshot isn't a very good weapon, it's an awesome tool that goes very well with Walter's downsides. Beefalo taming goes very well with Walter's gameplay, and having the slingshot while riding a beefalo is awesome. When doing a boss fight, if you're playing solo you'll have a longer fight but as long as you have some movespeed it should be alright, and when in multiplayer, you're a very good support doing a little extra dps without getting in the way if you're friends are kiting. (One of the reasons why I love Walter so much, I don't have to bump against my friends and get hit because of some bad placement).

Besides loosing sanity when Walter takes damage and his slingshot, he doesn't have any combat related stuff, both fits nicely in my opinion, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

How does the slingshot specifically help his downsides the fact people are mainly opting to tame a beefalo means they're opting to entirely ignore his downside rather than working with it on top of that having a beefalo means you've official bypassed the reason to use the slingshot in combat since his sanity or low hp isn't an issue anymore what does the ranged weapon provide on a beefalo that's actually a benefit over using the beefalo's attack. This also means Woby failed at her intended purpose.

As for not being very good at fighting I do feel like that's a good reason to use the slingshot but making it a weapon only people bad at fighting use seems incredibly wasteful.

He does have combat related stuff his entire slingshot mechanic is a combat mechanic. The slingshot is very minor chip damage it's better to have it than nothing but it's very minor damage compared to what every other character will be outputting.

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

Putting a ton of work on the devs to make a bunch of ranged attacks just so you can make the enemies annoying (and probably ugly) in an effort to larp about "fixing" ranged combat. Ranged combat isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing. Blow darts are extremely powerful but difficult to amass and Walter's slingshot is more of a tool than a weapon, with it being able to be used as a weapon efficiently in some situations and inefficiently but safely in others.

Ranged combat seems to currently amount to cheese or just as slower less efficient way to do something I get not wanting to put alot or work on the devs but it feels weird to have a character with a bunch of downsides tied to ranged combat with ammo clearly catered to ranged combat but ranged combat being so not worth it. We can way it's a tool and only use it for shooting birds like other players but even then there are other options even it being safer than alternatives is debatable if we're considering all options.

[kirihime]

1 minute ago, Mysterious box said:

How does the slingshot specifically help his downsides the fact people are mainly opting to tame a beefalo means they're opting to entirely ignore his downside rather than working with it on top of that having a beefalo means you've official bypassed the reason to use the slingshot in combat since his sanity or low hp isn't an issue anymore what does the ranged weapon provide on a beefalo that's actually a benefit over using the beefalo's attack. This also means Woby failed at her intended purpose.

you can shoot things like koalefants, birds, and rabbits, using the slingshot on something already in combat won't change aggro, and how does this not also apply if you craft a hambat or dark sword as walter and kite

[goatt]

11 minutes ago, kirihime said:

people fixate on the slingshot and assume it's the only thing relevant about the character and what he was designed around, and that since it's not on the level of wanda's whip he therefore sucks.

Wanda’s alarming clock is not considered as ranged weapon in OP.

Slingshot has cursed rounds that cost thulecite fragments. If it’s not such a big deal, why would it need to use some of the rare resources? Since those rare stuffs exist, we need to make changes to justify/balance their cost.

The main problem, is not above, but the repetitiveness and tedium in using slingshot, which is the safest way for little Walter to fight. Low damage which makes fight lengthy also contributes to that.

[Mysterious box]

5 minutes ago, kirihime said:

you can shoot things like koalefants, birds, and rabbits, using the slingshot on something already in combat won't change aggro, and how does this not also apply if you craft a hambat or dark sword as walter and kite

You can also craft a boomerang but i get your point for the former.

As for the weapon thing if your good at kiting and the slingshot's advantage is for being bad at kiting what then is the point of using a bad weapon over a better one?

The beefalo was brought up because it removes his don't get hit downside if I wasn't being clear.

[kirihime]

7 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

You can also craft a boomerang but i get your point for the former.

As for the weapon thing if your good at kiting and the slingshot's advantage is for being bad at kiting what then is the point of using a bad weapon over q better one?

I will say I do think the slingshot is weak and could use more damage, my problem is that people distill Walter entirely down to the slingshot when it's only one of the things he gets and arguably the sanity mechanics are what he's more built around.

Also just the idea that he "doesn't work as a character" when in-game he fits together well and works quite nicely.
 

 

[Mysterious box]

Just now, kirihime said:

I will say I do think the slingshot is weak and could use more damage, my problem is that people distill Walter entirely down to the slingshot when it's only one of the things he gets and arguably the sanity mechanics are what he's more built around.
 

 

It's because his sanity mechanic's existence seems to encourage ranged combat add to the fact he has so many damage based ammo types and it more or less appears the focus was a ranged explorer.

[kirihime]

2 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

It's because his sanity mechanic's existence seems to encourage ranged combat add to the fact he has so many damage based ammo types and it more or less appears the focus was a ranged explorer.

Insanity auras scale inversely with distance, so his sanity mechanics are doing very little if you're fighting at range

[Mysterious box]

Just now, kirihime said:

Insanity auras scale inversely with distance, so his sanity mechanics are doing very little if you're fighting at range

I feel llike the intention of the aura immunity was to compensate the immediate sanity loss on hit as you have to admit it would feel very unfair to take lots of sanity damage from combat and insanity auras at the same time.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

Ranged combat seems to currently amount to cheese or just as slower less efficient way to do something

Yeah. It's a sandbox survival game. If you want to skip fights use blow darts and if you're extremely scared of fights use the slingshot's damaging ammos. Go play something like Mordhau if you want a complicated combat system, DST's is perfect for DST.

If ranged combat has to dodge attacks just like melee combat and ranged combat is tied for damage with melee combat then what is the point of ranged combat? You clearly just want to do melee so do melee.

[Mysterious box]

7 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Yeah. It's a sandbox survival game. If you want to skip fights use blow darts and if you're extremely scared of fights use the slingshot's damaging ammos. Go play something like Mordhau if you want a complicated combat system, DST's is perfect for DST.

If ranged combat has to dodge attacks just like melee combat and ranged combat is tied for damage with melee combat then what is the point of ranged combat? You clearly just want to do melee so do melee.

This can be applied to the refreshes, crafting systems, and content updates saying it something shouldn't change because it's the way it's always been isn't ab good argument.

[Cheggf]

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This can be applied to the refreshes, crafting systems, and content updates saying it something shouldn't change because it's the way it's always been isn't ab good argument.

And saying something should change just because it's always been that way is a good one? You have literally brought forth zero arguments on why changing ranged to be the same as melee would be an improvement.