Does klei only look for power creep in combat?

[Capybara007]

The latests rhymes with play streams confirmed that wolfgang and wanda will be getting a character unique item/perk/something to boost them in the planar damage territory

why though? why can both of them stay relevant through  the whole game meanwhile woodie, maxwell or wurt get their chopping abilities overshadowed on the second autumn because of bearger?

i dont care about balance at all (but klei for some reason does, see the wolfgang rework) it just feels unfair that only wolfgang and wanda can scale their abilities from early game to late game where as most of the cast just gets overshadowed by lategame stuff

Spoiler

i say most of the cast because im not gonna see how many characters are useful in lategame and how many are not

but basically, see the comparasion i did with bearger and woodie

just a small thing for klei devs to look into

as controversial as it sounds, i'd still rather that the game itself gave you the best option for a task

what i mean by this is, i dont want them to nerf bearger so now i must switch to woodie for getting wood, the same way i dont want to switch to wolfgang everytime im gonna fight a boss, the same way i dont find it fun currently to switch to winona to build catas

[cropo]

Woodie and Maxwell have way more perks than just chopping wood though. Bearger is also a once-a-year thing that dies to treeguards eventually. Woodie and Maxwell can do their stuff year-round.

[Gashzer]

In Woodie's defence.. his goose form makes the ocean content kinda fun to explore.

[Spino43]

17 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

In Woodie's defence.. his goose form makes the ocean content kinda fun to explore.

And when you explore the whole ocean there's no reason to use goose ever again.

[cropo]

3 minutes ago, Spino43 said:

And when you explore the whole ocean there's no reason to use goose ever again.

I think going pretty fast with moggle vision is pretty decent to have as a usable item that doesn't expire myself.

[Memetan]

I don't think Bearger it's better chopping than Maxwell or Wurt, cuz you can't control it so easy like the minions, and at the moment Bearger die you have to wait a year again, it's high risk high reward.

About Wolfgang and Wanda getting changes cuz they have "bad synergy" with new content is just dumb, we have this kinda of issue since long ago, for example playing Woodie during moon storms is a nightmare, Klei did nothing and instead added a book for Wikerbottom to make it worse. People say that is because Woodie is a good early character, so why Wolfgang and Wanda have to be good dps characters even with the plantar damage? Maybe they also found the point in the game when they are not better than just others characters with same equipment. Or maybe it's because Wanda has a special weapon? I don't think so, Walter's slingshot has an awful DPS and only shines in niche strategies like farming gold. If they really need changes, punt them at the bottom of the line of characters waiting for a change.

[Cheggf]

Bearger was added when the multiplayer was "We want to focus on making the best singleplayer game we can before thinking about multiplayer". He's also annoying to wrangle, has really good drops, and absolutely sucks at breaking trees unless you've already got hundreds of pinecones and set them up in a line beforehand. I don't get DST players' obsession with doing one thing that comes with plenty of drawbacks, then complaining that they're allowed to do that one thing and acting like it has no drawbacks and is the best. 

[GelatinousCube]

Haven't they said the whole cast will basically get new perks/abilities based on whether you pick shadow or lunar alignment? 

[_zwb]

I think Wolfgang and Wanda deserves some changes. Currently if you use the new weapons as those two, the DPS against regular mobs would be lower than dark swords, yeah...a late game item gets overshadowed by mid game item that can be easily mass produce...

If you only use the new weapons against planar mobs then...why would you enable the rifts in the first place? You fight mobs to get items specifically against them so you can fight them more... It's hilarious how the devs makes another self solving content after they make DST ocean.

[cropo]

20 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Bearger was added when the multiplayer was "We want to focus on making the best singleplayer game we can before thinking about multiplayer". He's also annoying to wrangle, has really good drops, and absolutely sucks at breaking trees unless you've already got hundreds of pinecones and set them up in a line beforehand. I don't get DST players' obsession with doing one thing that comes with plenty of drawbacks, then complaining that they're allowed to do that one thing and acting like it has no drawbacks and is the best. 

Really reminds me of when people didn't like Wilson being able to store food in his beard because ''Well you can just use bundling wrap'' like it's immediately available day 1 and act like there's absolutely no situation where having 3 extra food slots would come in handy.

[Memetan]

7 minutes ago, cropo said:

I think going pretty fast with moggle vision is pretty decent to have as a usable item that doesn't expire myself.

If you don't care about losing health, losing sanity, starving to death, and being unable to use your inventory. I'd rather use a walking cane during the day, or a boat. Or just teleport as Wanda or Wortox.

3 minutes ago, GelatinousCube said:

Haven't they said the whole cast will basically get new perks/abilities based on whether you pick shadow or lunar alignment? 

That scare me a lot, just looking the reworks I can imagine how the skill trees will be, and that will not fix how unbalanced characters feel.

[cropo]

3 minutes ago, Memetan said:

If you don't care about losing health, losing sanity, starving to death, and being unable to use your inventory. I'd rather use a walking cane during the day, or a boat. Or just teleport as Wanda or Wortox.

I mean yeah there's no debating the superior teleports of those characters, and you're obviously not going to want to get hit when running around. I dunno, I find it pretty helpful and convenient at times. I find the Moose to be the worst transformation, but that's probably because I haven't used it extensively enough to understand its uses. With Moose you're probably going to actually be taking damage so that's more of an issue for that form to me.

[Cheggf]

10 minutes ago, Memetan said:

If you don't care about losing health, losing sanity, starving to death, and being unable to use your inventory. I'd rather use a walking cane during the day, or a boat. Or just teleport as Wanda or Wortox.

Woodie's a harder character. He's not for everyone.

[Capybara007]

My point with this thread is to express how i feel with klei's decision to balancing, dont starve is about farming resources surviving, exploring, cooking, building, sailing, crafting and THEN fighting

i get that fighting is the most exciting part for many, and im not gonna say klei cares only about that aspect of the game, but if they give wanda a lunar alarming clock that deals planar damage or wolfgang a shadow dumbell that gives him planar dmg aswell, what do others get even

im not gonna use willow's lighter on the late game as my main light tool if i have access to ecrowns and star callers, when discussing balance on this game there is always that idea of "as long as you are having fun it doesnt matter if you are inefficient" problem is that people have fun being efficient, and face it or not, there is nothing wrong with it

and no, woodie with honey spice is not better than bearger, i dont know why people are cherry picking small bearger downsides like treeguards and comparing it to wurts followers because "they are easier to control" (bearger is also easy to control i never had problem with him)

[Milordo]

I don't want to allarm you Capybara007 and others, but this was one of the big titanic problems that plagued the game since the beginning, especially on this part: 

15 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

My point with this thread is to express how i feel with klei's decision to balancing, dont starve is about farming resources surviving, exploring, cooking, building, sailing, crafting and THEN fighting

You had, pun intended, an "enlightenment" about this core aspect of Don't Starve which I already had long long before on 2020 circa, which Klei caters more the fighting part of dst than all the others aspects. I'm happy that you have noticed it now and hope many others did or will do. 

It's not a big surprise if Dst is such a really really unbalance mess of a game. (compared to many others too)

[Theukon-dos]

No, not particularly. In fact, I'd argue that Klei's been trying too hard to avoid power creep as a whole. How else could we get several years worth of content updates but still be stuck in the same old meta that we've had for damn well near a decade now? 

 

New fridge that's several times more expensive but twice as effective? Better make it only hold raw foods. 

New way to deal with wildfires that doesn't require constant refueling? Only usable on the shoreline. 

New hat that can be made from the drops of a mob that only spawn in a specific biome and can't be relocated? Better give it less defense in exchange for more durability and wetness protection. Ignoring that one of those stats is completely useless on it's own.

Sunken Treasures on the bottom of the sea? Better make them suck to find and have even suckier loot. Maybe if the player gets lucky they can find one of the two worst items you can get from the ruins. 

 

And don't even get me started on the new weapons. Because apparently going through sprawling questlines that would take the average players several hundred days to complete; if they could complete it at all; isn't enough to just give the players more damage. 

 

Ironically, the character rebalances have been the one part of the game that I'd argue power creep has been a part of. Generally speaking every character refresh HAS been a massive jump of power for their characters, with only WX's being a true "nerf". But what's funny is I don't think Wolfgang, despite being over-buffed after everyone through a (somewhat justified) fit over his initial refresh needed the nerf to his damage. Yes, he deals a lot of it with solo play. But the numbers only get really absurd when combined with the damage boosts from a Warly player. Wanda will probably be fine even if her alarming clock stays useless against planar, simply because she does so much other stuff really well. But I'd have much sooner nerfed Maxwell than Wolfgang. 

 

Also for everyone else, yes Woodie is in a bad spot right now. Having a few niche uses doesn't justify having 0 scaling past the early game and the Weremoose form being an absolutely terrible fighter despite that being it's main purpose. 

 

[Memetan]

2 hours ago, cropo said:

I mean yeah there's no debating the superior teleports of those characters, and you're obviously not going to want to get hit when running around. I dunno, I find it pretty helpful and convenient at times. I find the Moose to be the worst transformation, but that's probably because I haven't used it extensively enough to understand its uses. With Moose you're probably going to actually be taking damage so that's more of an issue for that form to me.

To be honest, I have to say that I consider Goose the best and most fun transformation, and yea Moose is the worst one, you can take damage but can't heal yourself cuz inventory issues, and with Plantar damage his "tankingness" became worse, and you can't equip anything to help you. Of course, it has his niche uses, like killing hordes of mobs if they don't hit you first.

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Woodie's a harder character. He's not for everyone.

He is not hard, he is forgotten. The only character design to be a challenge is Wes. Klei just added lunar stuff, forgetting that exist a character with "allergy" to it. So he became worse and worse with new content. Even Wanda is harder to play than Woodie, but she has tools that are still relevant in the game and another to combat his downside.

[MadMatt]

3 hours ago, cropo said:

I find the Moose to be the worst transformation, but that's probably because I haven't used it extensively enough to understand its uses.

Weremoose is basically only 100% viable for farming certain hoards of mobs quickly. Frogs, spiders, shadow splumonkeys, and bees namely. He CAN be used for certain big fights effectively, like AG and NMWP, but against almost anything else he sucks. 

That's still way more uses than Werebeaver though, who I will continue to maintain actively HARMS Woodie by existing. It'd be a buff for Klei to remove the Werebeaver since it'd make full moon transformations and using cooked monster meat more reliable to save on resources and stats. 

[Mysterious box]

4 hours ago, GelatinousCube said:

Haven't they said the whole cast will basically get new perks/abilities based on whether you pick shadow or lunar alignment? 

They did? I'm not being sarcastic did they? I haven't watched the streams.

 

14 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

Weremoose is basically only 100% viable for farming certain hoards of mobs quickly. Frogs, spiders, shadow splumonkeys, and bees namely. He CAN be used for certain big fights effectively, like AG and NMWP, but against almost anything else he sucks. 

That's still way more uses than Werebeaver though, who I will continue to maintain actively HARMS Woodie by existing. It'd be a buff for Klei to remove the Werebeaver since it'd make full moon transformations and using cooked monster meat more reliable to save on resources and stats. 

Personally I'm flipped on this the only real benefit to the weremoose is horde combat and that in and of itself is putting in above average risks due to increased stun lock potential there's just safer character choices for that kind of work and in some cases the hordes you fight will simply eat a portion of the loot with you being too slow to stop them. It also falls into the problem with werebeaver as well which is that you can't have downtime in the form your forced to act at all times which can force mistakes you otherwise wouldn't make in combat to avoid changing back before the work is done. Werebeaver's uses would increase as well if it wasn't forced to gnaw every few seconds for example it'd work as a great multi tool for the ruins. While the werebeaver isn't the best either but it at least works better in a group where people can pick things up for you.

[MadMatt]

3 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

hordes you fight will simply eat a portion of the loot

This behavior is only for spiders. Virtually every single other hoard the Weremoose can charge will see very little lost loot if any.

4 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

average risks due to increased stun lock potential

It's a risk reward scenario. Your average character doesn't have such easily accessible and cheap options for dealing with hoards like the Weremoose. Yes, there are better characters for this goal, but that doesn't make the Weremoose's ability to do so useless considering those other characters are few in number. Also just having experience with knowing where and when to charge/run makes the Weremoose much safer to use.

5 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

While the werebeaver isn't the best either but it at least works better in a group where people can pick things up for you.

Even with other people the Werebeaver is pitiful. It's a better use of time and resources to hire pigmen and have those extra hands to pick them up since Pigmen chop faster. Woodie with Lucy also is faster depending on the amount of trees chopped, and is basically useless for mining since he's so slow at it. He ONLY serves as an infinite durability tool which is incredibly low value considering how cheap tools already are.

The Weremoose can give tons of boons of special monster loot. The Werebeaver is only marginally faster than other options in very specific scenarios at giving you basic resources. 

[Mysterious box]

42 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

Even with other people the Werebeaver is pitiful. It's a better use of time and resources to hire pigmen and have those extra hands to pick them up since Pigmen chop faster. Woodie with Lucy also is faster depending on the amount of trees chopped, and is basically useless for mining since he's so slow at it. He ONLY serves as an infinite durability tool which is incredibly low value considering how cheap tools already are.

Debatable really the lazy forager can already more than make up for the extra hands and while they work alright pig work hours are still limited. As for mining it's definitely slower but could have it's uses if the form timer were more lax in some areas as I've said before.

 

48 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

The Weremoose can give tons of boons of special monster loot. The Werebeaver is only marginally faster than other options in very specific scenarios at giving you basic resources. 

I feel they more or less share this trait both are very niche in their uses.

53 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

It's a risk reward scenario. Your average character doesn't have such easily accessible and cheap options for dealing with hoards like the Weremoose. Yes, there are better characters for this goal, but that doesn't make the Weremoose's ability to do so useless considering those other characters are few in number. Also just having experience with knowing where and when to charge/run makes the Weremoose much safer to use.

I mean if we're approaching it from the standpoint all his other forms are bad it kind of does if the only worthwhile perk is that he can be a cheaper but not quite the cheapest aoe then yea it doesn't speak well for it. Not only do we have multiple characters with aoe at this point but with brightshade bombs aoe is slowly becoming more accessible even for non aoe based characters.

[MadMatt]

18 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I feel they more or less share this trait both are very niche in their uses.

Idk, being able to clear a killer bee biome for a season worth of food in 1 day or farming splumonkeys for easy bananas and nightmare fuel is far from niche. 

19 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Not only do we have multiple characters with aoe at this point but with brightshade bombs aoe is slowly becoming more accessible even for non aoe based characters.

Brightshade bombs are not only super far into a world's life, but also are an annoyance to mass produce because of the infused shard requirement on top of brightshade husks. They are far from the things making the Wereforms obsolete, an alchemy engine does the job better and doesn't require you to go through a ludicrously long questline and kill 2 raid bosses.

The Werebeaver is given way too much slack for how little it does. It's why I always push against "Moose is worst" talk, since it misses one of Woodie's biggest sores being the Werebeavers extremely limited usefulness and versatility. Even more so than the Wereforms already are.

[JJ0264]

For Woodie

+ give Were forms to wear amulets (like the life giving amulet/lazy forger)

+ allow Woodie to craft a Moon amulets (stops force were-forms + exit were-forms when putting one on) (1 orange gem, 3 moon stone, 2 nightmare fuel)

+ allow Were-forms to eat Were-idols (to extend timer + alter between forms + heal 20 hp per munch) Woodie only takes damage when going human to Were-form

+ Were-goose is 10% faster and can honk to show everyone pinned location on the map

+ Were-beaver has a "new tail spin" that combines materials into stacks (also can harvest pickable stuff like grass and twigs)

+ Were-moose has 5% more defence (95% or marble Armor), can cancel charge attack, attacks 50% faster (that being normal attacking speed)

For Walter

+ Buff slingshot rate of fire (0.5% > 0.75%)

+ allow Walter slingshot to fire throwables items (like water balloons, or seaweed spikes)

+ stink-bomb rounds (2 rotten eggs + 1 guano) due to being blind the mob hit will attack the nearest mob, ammo will also drop a tiny stinky area that will drain sanity by -4.8 per/min

+ fire-work rounds (1 red gem + moon rock) hits 3 times with 15 aoe damage for a total of 45 damage

+ bumble rounds (2 killer bees + 1 taffy) flings killer bees at mobs (does 10 direct damage then 2 killer bees fight the mob) [this helps bring more attention to his bee allergies plus I think it's funny]

+ only players can access Woby (no monkeys)

- maybe trim some of the fat, so Walter is less of a "perk soup" (like sanity from trees + cooking faster)

[Cheggf]

7 hours ago, Memetan said:

He is not hard, he is forgotten

You literally just said you don't know how to manage his downside and prefer a character you can just play exactly the same as everyone else.

7 hours ago, Memetan said:

The only character design to be a challenge is Wes.

I never said anything about him being a challenge character. I said he's harder to play. Not as hard as Wormwood, Warly, or Wes, but still one of the harder characters. His upsides aren't immediately apparent at a glance like most characters' are, and as you said his power is really inaccessible unless you play him a bit differently.

7 hours ago, Memetan said:

Even Wanda is harder to play than Woodie

Wanda is easier to play than Woodie. You automatically deal huge damage without needing to think, you have a huge whip that has so much range you can cheese most things without actually fighting them, nothing you do requires any thought to utilize. Woodie has to consider his hunger level, what food he's eating, how much he wants to use his power, where & when he uses his power. You just said you would rather pick Wanda because she doesn't have to think instead of Woodie who has to worry about resource management. 

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Wanda is easier to play than Woodie. You automatically deal huge damage without needing to think, you have a huge whip that has so much range you can cheese most things without actually fighting them, nothing you do requires any thought to utilize. Woodie has to consider his hunger level, what food he's eating, how much he wants to use his power, where & when he uses his power. You just said you would rather pick Wanda because she doesn't have to think instead of Woodie who has to worry about resource management. 

Woodie isn't a hard character nor do his forms need any serious considerations it's just that in most cases his forms aren't worth using that doesn't mean they need some high knowledge to use.