The Maxwell Debate

[Picklesaurus]

4 hours ago, Dextops said:

What? Literally everyone complains about how warly and Winona lack any uniqueness for themselves. 

Do you genuinely see Warly and Winona receiving the same amount of complains as Wicker for other characters being able to use their perks better than themselves? In the time I have been in the foruns I have seen long time complains about Winona and Warly being something you swap to when you want their crafts and than swap back from, but not in the same amount as I have seen about Wicker and Max since they received their refreshes and Wicker is in a much better spot than Warly and Winona.

[Dextops]

3 minutes ago, Picklesaurus said:

Do you genuinely see Warly and Winona receiving the same amount of complains as Wicker for other characters being able to use their perks better than themselves?

Yes yes 1 million times yes. Winona’s entire sentiment in this community is basically being a swap character. Though I don’t think it’s a problem with the celestial portal, it’s more so a problem of the character that doesn’t remove the fact that you would be better off if you did switch away from Winona.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Dextops said:

The Klei forums aren’t the only people in the dst community.

Yes. As I just said, a handful of people on the forums complain that Warly is lichrally unplayable because they're addicted to the portal, but if you look at people who actually play the game Warly is very popular. I can't play on a server for a single season without seeing at least one Warly join.

[Jakepeng99]

Maybe sometimes this is going too far with some comments, we don't want to summon them.

[goatt]

-5 max hp cost for every existing puppet in additional to max sanity cost.

 

(semi-joke)

[Well-met]

he's the former king of the constant so he deserves to stand out from other characters

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, Dextops said:

Yes yes 1 million times yes. Winona’s entire sentiment in this community is basically being a swap character. Though I don’t think it’s a problem with the celestial portal, it’s more so a problem of the character that doesn’t remove the fact that you would be better off if you did switch away from Winona.

I’ve said it before i’ll say it again, its not a problem of winona being able to share her perk, no one whines about wurt being a pick and swap

its a problem of winona has literally nothing going on that’s interesting. Catapults is it, thats PEAK winona, everything else is convenient at best. No one picked her when she could just make duct tape, no one is gonna pick her to play forever now that she can make duct tape and also a catapult.

people swap to her because they want catapult, obvious right? But if they couldn’t swap for the catapult, they wouldn’t play winona just for the catapults, they just wouldn’t make catapults.

people actually play warly, i’ve seen it plenty. People dont play winona, and it has nothing to do with her being a “swap” character. It has to do with her being literally a slice of untoasted white bread of a character with one single useful perk that is super expensive and only useful in mid lategame.

 

the swap character mentality is literally a byproduct of no one playing her because she’s boring but swapping for the one semi useful thing she can do. But her not being played isnt because she can be swapped to, it’s because shes boring.

and they’d swap to woodie for one of his canes if it was 5% better, its not that serious, some people wanna play with every advantage they can get and they should be allowed to

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Dextops said:

Yes yes 1 million times yes. Winona’s entire sentiment in this community is basically being a swap character. Though I don’t think it’s a problem with the celestial portal, it’s more so a problem of the character that doesn’t remove the fact that you would be better off if you did switch away from Winona.

I'm sure Winona is fun for some people, defo played with winona mains. But for me, I set up BQ with her and maybe make some extra tapes and switch back.

The skill trees will freshen things up a bit, It's been a bumpy ride with some of them so far but they've really encouraged me to play Wormwood, i'm happy with that

I haven't played Wendy for a long time and i'd be interested in how they'll handle her, tbh i'm quite curious for most of them - Not sure how much Max really needs.
The real weakness of Maxwell in my opinion is that it encourages a different type of approach to bosses. You can for sure do it the regular way but if you're a lazy boy like me and just want some quick drops in a pinch it's not the worst to just stock up on a bunch of NF and just keep the bosses locked down. I don't mind it if i quickly wanna grab some jellybeans or some gems real fast, but it's still a bit less enjoyable than going with someone who can take a few hits. Mileage may vary though, you can certainly just kite. 

[Jakepeng99]

33 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

no one whines about wurt being a pick and swap

Because she isn't one. I never seen anyone call her that before. At most you can befriend regular merms with her disguise which spoils over time, not guard merms. It is really useful but nothing can replace the guards.

[Copyafriend]

8 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Because she isn't one. I never seen anyone call her that before. At most you can befriend regular merms with her disguise which spoils over time, not guard merms. It is really useful but nothing can replace the guards.

Regular merms are plenty, guard merms are only slightly stronger and immune to fear, but at 500 health a merm beats out a rabbit any day.

but my point was that wurt can share her skills, but no one calls her a swap character because she has other more interesting stuff going on.

[Jakepeng99]

1 minute ago, Copyafriend said:

Regular merms are plenty, guard merms are only slightly stronger and immune to fear, but at 500 health a merm beats out a rabbit any day.

but my point was that wurt can share her skills, but no one calls her a swap character because she has other more interesting stuff going on.

I feel like the problem with Winona is that everyone can share all of her stuff with the exact same effectivness. Also the merm guards are actually 2x more efficent since you tame 6 at a time, and pass the important 50 damage threshold.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

he's the former king of the constant so he deserves to stand out from other characters

Wilson is also the former king of the Constant. Everyone can be, depending on who you beat adventure mode with.

26 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Because she isn't one. I never seen anyone call her that before. At most you can befriend regular merms with her disguise which spoils over time, not guard merms. It is really useful but nothing can replace the guards.

The only unique thing that Wurt does is be a swap character. Making merms to gather is something you can already do with pigmen/woodie/maxwell/etc, and making merms to fight is something you can already do with pigmen/bunnymen/spiders/etc. The only unique thing she can do is place merm huts to make a fish farm, but that doesn't require her presence. 

[abrocator]

20 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The only unique thing that Wurt does is be a swap character.

She is very nice to play once you have both seasonal fishes. Then temperature doesn't matter above ground if you can swap out the fish every four days or something, and wetness doesn't matter.

That kind of thing is something that motivates people to play WX-78 (except you can get wet) so that should also count.

[Copyafriend]

49 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

feel like the problem with Winona is that everyone can share all of her stuff with the exact same effectivness. Also the merm guards are actually 2x more efficent since you tame 6 at a time, and pass the important 50 damage threshold.

bro, I literally described my whole problem with winona, its NOTHING to do with sharing and EVERYTHING to do with her just being boring.

And did you really just try to say "efficiency" when talking about creatures befriended with literally berries or the stonefruit that you can force them to mine open for you?

[Cheggf]

5 minutes ago, abrocator said:

She is very nice to play once you have both seasonal fishes. Then temperature doesn't matter above ground if you can swap out the fish every four days or something, and wetness doesn't matter.

That kind of thing is something that motivates people to play WX-78 (except you can get wet) so that should also count.

WX can be literally immune to temperature, Warly can make anyone literally immune to temperature & wetness, there's plenty of other ways to manage temperature & wetness. The only unique thing she has is placing houses for a farm, just like the only unique thing Winona has is placing irreplacable catapults.

[Scrimbles]

10 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

bs in a sandbox ffs

Don't Starve Together is still being marketed as a survival game, still includes references to that fact in game, and no where does it claim to be a sandbox.

I'm not going to dispute that the game IS a sandbox, but it's also a survival game, so yes, balance matters. To a lot of people like me, anyways.

[Kwaik]

I think the ultimate conclusion of The maxwell debate is it makes the most sense for him to be one of the last/later characters to get a skill tree, and the strength of his skill tree should be tweaked on how OP he ultimately is at the time. Plus potentially having an emphasis of his skill tree being on QOL and fun, instead of flat outright buffing him like some other characters. Let's also remember this game is pretty far in it's life span, and all the skill trees could take close to 2 years to get pushed out (I'm assuming), so reinventing the wheel at this point doesn't seem like an optimal use of Klei resources 

 

Makes the most sense for the early emphasis of skill trees to be on the characters who need it most. And for the most part they did a superb job with woodie and wormwood (and wolfgang relative to his already strong strength, though his skill tree is clearly the least exciting). And I'd love a reason to start playing characters I've never had interest in before, as that really would add the most playability to the players 

[Jakepeng99]

8 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

bro, I literally described my whole problem with winona, its NOTHING to do with sharing and EVERYTHING to do with her just being boring.

And did you really just try to say "efficiency" when talking about creatures befriended with literally berries or the stonefruit that you can force them to mine open for you?

Thats completly subjective, i could say Maxwell is a pick and switch if i found him boring.

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

WX can be literally immune to temperature, Warly can make anyone literally immune to temperature & wetness, there's plenty of other ways to manage temperature & wetness. The only unique thing she has is placing houses for a farm, just like the only unique thing Winona has is placing irreplacable catapults.

Try it before judging. Warlys seasonal dishes are far too janky and expensive to be worth it really, Wx would only be left with 3 notches left. Wurt keeps all her upsides with no cost at all. 4 days is a long time, and in Winter it is longer. It saves so much time running into flaming trees and frees up all body slots in Spring. The ice bream is less needed but it is still neat.

[Cheggf]

27 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Thats completly subjective, i could say Maxwell is a pick and switch if i found him boring.

Try it before judging. Warlys seasonal dishes are far too janky and expensive to be worth it really, Wx would only be left with 3 notches left. Wurt keeps all her upsides with no cost at all. 4 days is a long time, and in Winter it is longer. It saves so much time running into flaming trees and frees up all body slots in Spring. The ice bream is less needed but it is still neat.

So needing to press right click on an item in your inventory every 5 or 10 minutes is jank, unlike needing to constantly walk over to boats and swap your fish around. And needing to farm literally one single time is expensive, unlike spending who knows how long sailing during the opposite season to prepare for the other season you aren't in, catching enough fish to then place multiple copies in all the boats you've littered around the map (which themselves need to be made, along with their tin fishing bins), and then walking around the map placing fish in those boats. OK.

[Gashzer]

Dunno why people think Maxwell is so OP. The lower hp and needing to juggle casting of his spells which takes abit of time to learn how to do it well make him pretty balanced.

Anytime ive played maxwell i feel like his shadow servants give the illusion of speeding up gathering. But if you add the extra nightmare fuel farming you need to do, you are not actually saving much time at all in the early game. With the addition of the shadow reaper plus using wurts clever disguise and her merms. Maxwells servants get replaced in the lategame by methods that every character can use.

Maxwells shadow top hat is way too janky compared to using woby/chester, you cant even craft by directly using items in the hat without the hat dropping. Meaning you need to manually remove the items then craft... pure f**kin' jank! And ofc it doesnt extend across into the caves with each shard having a different inventory.

Shadow prison and duelists are the stand out abilities he has. You need to rush ruins or tech up to tier 2 magic to boost damage of the duelists to an acceptable level.. so yeah they require abit of grind to hit that nice level of power. Shadow prison/duelist rewards you for careful sanity management and require abit of skill to pull off well. This makes these abilities fairly balanced. However wurts merm king and her regular merms can be used by everyone and are very powerful. Craftsmen huts are dirt cheap to mass produce. So the poor duelists do get replaced in the late game again by wurts abilities.

If you have the skill and are used to juggling his spells i can see why you might find Maxwell OP... but hes not, you just have got good at using him! Good job!

[BB Marioni]

14 hours ago, Cheggf said:

And if a tier list made by some random dude who didn't actually do any research and just threw the characters around in random spots says it, it must be true.

I'm talking about a large amount of players who shared their tier list, meaning there's a decent amount of agreement in the playerbase. It's all about the experience, doesnt matter f there's one self proclaimed expert who disagrees if that's not the sentiment of the majority. Also, some of these were tierlists by DST streamers who have been plying the game since day 1.

19 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wear armour

You might need to read a dictionary to understand the meaning of the word "mistake". I said maxwell's downside is very proned to being heavily punished by "mistakes". If everyone can perfectly time wearing an armor 100% of the time there is danger, or swapping amulets/headgears and armor perfectly, then every other character has no downsides either. You simply.. you know... just don't die. Or just dodge.

If you think "ohh then just wear armor all the time" then that in itself is a downside already limiting Maxwell's options in gearing.

[_zwb]

11 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Because she isn't one. I never seen anyone call her that before. At most you can befriend regular merms with her disguise which spoils over time, not guard merms. It is really useful but nothing can replace the guards.

You can hire merm guards by repeatedly feeding one regular merm, because you'll hire nearby merms as well

[Uedo]

11 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

bro, I literally described my whole problem with winona, its NOTHING to do with sharing and EVERYTHING to do with her just being boring.

And did you really just try to say "efficiency" when talking about creatures befriended with literally berries or the stonefruit that you can force them to mine open for you?

I get what they mean though, once Winona puts down her generators you only need to switch back to her to do repairs if something breaks, there's not really a reason i'd stick as Winona once i've set up a farm for example.

[Copyafriend]

2 hours ago, Uedo said:

I get what they mean though, once Winona puts down her generators you only need to switch back to her to do repairs if something breaks, there's not really a reason i'd stick as Winona once i've set up a farm for example.

Okay, then i’ll try to rephrase it like this so maybe people will get the picture

Very few people start as winona and then later swap to another character, winona is typically swapped to and then used as a crafted station and then swapped back. 
 

if it was about winona losing interest as you build the farms, then logically more people would start as winona and stop playing as her later on, but this doesn’t typically happen.

 

5 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Thats completly subjective, i could say Maxwell is a pick and switch if i found him boring

And thats not how this works, you cant call maxwell a pick and switch because he doesn’t leave anything behind. I was saying that generally speaking, she isn’t well liked by the community as a playable character. Not that i myself find her boring (but i do)

warly is also called a swap character, but not many are like “dang warly needs a rework ASAP”, but everyone says winona needs it. This to me implies that there is something wrong with winona outside of being able to share her 1 perk (lmao catapults) 

Therefore my final explaination is that winona is a relatively unenjoyable character to play, so people don’t generally play her.

BUT she also has a reason to be swapped to, which some players will use if they want to.

but its not this thing that she can be swapped to for that makes her unenjoyable, warly is a comparatively well played character with the same exact “issue” of being able to use whatever he makes as any other character.

warly is swapped to and swapped off of plenty aswell.

but warly isnt hated by the community, nor does he have callouts for a refresh constantly. Warly must have something winona doesnt: an enjoyable day to day gameplay.

[Ulisesvolador]

45 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

he doesn’t leave anything behind.

Magician's Chest: