Wolfgang needs a Rework if updates keep going in the current direction.

[Theukon-dos]

Alright, before anything else, I'd like to clarify. When I say "rework", I do mean rework. Not another "refresh" like we've gotten so far. This will make more sense in time.

 

Now, with that established. What am I talking about?

In today's stream, Don't Starve Together developer Vito talked about how they're trying to bring more characters "in line" with the top-tier combat characters.

https://clips.twitch.tv/WanderingUgliestIcecreamTheTarFu-ZNB3McNIS7JFRofV

What the hell is that URL? Bah, whatever. As long as it works.

 

Now, while it is tempting to say "Why would you do that? They're called combat characters for a reason", this was my knee-jerk reaction after all. I actually do get where they're coming from here. Like it or not, "combat perks" are seen as the highest value perks a character can have by a good portion of the player base. And it's easy to understand why. No matter how good or bad at the game you are, you're prooobably not going to loose a world because you took 10 minutes to cut down a grove of trees instead of 5. Mobs and especially bosses are the most dangerous and resource-draining thing you can encounter, even for a new player.

So if combat perks are so important to the average player, then distributing more combat perks would be a good way to balance out the character roster.

 

Here's the problem though. The goal is to bring more characters "in line" with top-tier combat characters.

Being a top-tier combat character is the only thing Wolfgang has going for him.

 

The other top tiers, Wanda and Maxwell, will probably be fine. They'll get a touch of Planar Damage with their skill trees. And they still have their other perks to back them up. Be it Wanda's backtreck watches, or Maxwell's shadow puppets and magic hat.

 

But Wolfgang? What does he have other than raw damage? Faster rowing? Chopping down trees? Wolfgang just doesn't have anything to carry him other than damage.

Even his skill tree is to boring to help. While Wormwood and Woodie got huge buffs and new things they could do from their trees. The most interesting thing that Wolfgang got was being able to hit trees moderately harder. So boring that nobody talked about how boring it was, but I blame myself for that somewhat. Though perhaps the fact that I could never muster the will to write an essay about it is also an indication of how boring that skill tree was.

 

The point is: If Wolfgang wants to stay relevant, then either he needs to

A. Stay the top dog at dealing damage, which seems unlikely because of the aforementioned Twitch quote and the fact that Planar Damage is still actively nerfing him; even after his skill tree. Though I would kill a man to make his planar boosts effect the Brightshade staff again.

B. Wolfgang needs new perks to give him a role other than damage dealer.

 

Now what those perks could be? I don't know. Personally, I'd focus on feats of strength rather than raw damage. For example, say, being able to lift a boat out of the water inorder to move it somewhere else. That would be fun, right?

 

Overall definitely my favorite update from the arc thus far. But it's done nothing to quell my problems with the From Beyond arc as a whole.

[Cassielu]

NO.

Combat is already such a big part of the game that if you're good at the whole combat system, you're pretty much good at the whole game. Therefore, no single character should be better at the whole combat system than any other. Above this, years of experience have proven that higher damage is the most powerful combat gain.

Nothing about Wormwood and Woodie made them as powerful as Wolfgang or Wanda.

[TheTrueStickman]

I'd argue Wigfrid is in a worse position than Wolfgang for that actually.

Wolf atleast has a couple niches outside of combat, like no speed loss from heavy objects or the piggyback.

Wigfrid has... less damage taken from starving/temperature.

[Dextops]

5 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

NO.

Combat is already such a big part of the game that if you're good at the whole combat system, you're pretty much good at the whole game. Therefore, no single character should be better at the whole combat system than any other.

Also, years of experience have proven that higher damage is the most powerful combat gain.

NO.

most of the game is NOT combat. Most of it comes with resource gathering, so if you’re good at resource gathering you’d be the best at the game (ie maxwell)  but with combat this isn’t the case. Many bosses aren’t worth killing a ton (if at all) and they all usually have long respawn timers. This leads to some moments where you won’t be needing to use combat abilities and you’re left mostly to be a default character. The problem is that literally all Wolfgang has is combat perks, he has literally nothing else. Making characters on par with him is pretty detrimental.

[Cassielu]

11 minutes ago, Dextops said:

NO.

most of the game is NOT combat. Most of it comes with resource gathering, so if you’re good at resource gathering you’d be the best at the game (ie maxwell)  but with combat this isn’t the case. Many bosses aren’t worth killing a ton (if at all) and they all usually have long respawn timers. This leads to some moments where you won’t be needing to use combat abilities. The problem is that literally all Wolfgang has is combat perks.

Wolfgang has a unique resource ability to throttle.

Boss battles are a major drain on advanced resources, and solving battles faster means he consumes fewer resources, such as saving at least half the amount of pan flutes in Queen bee battles, at least half the amount of dragon scale armor, and at least half the amount of weather pain in battles with AF.

In other cases, high damage prevents Wolfgang from needing them at all, such as reducing the number of patches required in CK combat because the pincers do not touch the boat.

And Maxwell and any other resource-gathering character's abilities are limited to basic resources.

 

Even if we don't take that into account, Wolfgang's resource gathering abilities already exceed those of 16 characters.

Also, seriously? Now we have to combat to even in farm.

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

And Maxwell and any other resource-gathering character's abilities are limited to basic resources.

Define basic resources because as far as I know there isn't a resource Maxwell's shadows can't collect except things that need to be hammered.

14 minutes ago, TheTrueStickman said:

I'd argue Wigfrid is in a worse position than Wolfgang for that actually.

Wolf atleast has a couple niches outside of combat, like no speed loss from heavy objects or the piggyback.

Wigfrid has... less damage taken from starving/temperature.

Wigfrid has more things inside combat though and is much better in a group than Wolfgang due to how good her songs are.

[Dextops]

4 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

Boss battles are a major drain on advanced resources, and solving battles faster means he consumes fewer resources, such as saving at least half the amount of pan flutes in Queen bee battles, at least half the amount of dragon scale armor, and at least half the amount of weather pain in battles with AF.

It’s possible to beat all those bosses without using any of that, Wolfgang manages to be more of a crutch more than anything, so having his lategame utility be worsened (something these people reliant on those crutches won’t get to) isn’t something as good, since you’ll be saving “less” resources (due to you using less resources in the first place) as Wolfgang anyway just removes all incentive to ever play as him at that point. 

 

7 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

And Maxwell and any other resource-gathering character's abilities are limited to basic resources.

 

Those basic resources are by far the most important thing in the game. You need a lot of them for constant use and the best way to get them is through characters like maxwell (this argument is ignoring that maxwells combat abilities are more brain dead than maxwells and arguably much better). Sure bosses are important but the time and resources saved from a maxwell gathering a ton of logs and rocks for jack squat is more valuable than what Wolfgang saves from combat.

[chirsg]

Everyone seems to be making points I'd make, so I'll just state my side; I also don't think that every character needs to be brought up to to tier combat.

Having said that, wolfgang is a better chores character than average. 

 

Even as it stands, wolfgang being a boss killer is uncontested even in the face of max moose or wormwood.

even with wendy and maxwell, they can get up to wolfgang levels of fighting prowess, but wolfgang is super simple.

[Gashzer]

As chirsg has said. Wolfgang is super simple.

His downside is simple to get around.

His mighty form is simple and quick to get and maintain in exchange for the huge amount of raw power Wolfgang receives in return.

Wormwood and woodie are still weaker characters as they require more thought and grind to use their upsides compared with simple Wolfgang.

Wolfgang doesnt need anything currently.

[Theukon-dos]

2 minutes ago, Dextops said:

It’s possible to beat all those bosses without using any of that, Wolfgang manages to be more of a crutch more than anything, so having his lategame utility be worsened (something these people reliant on those crutches won’t get to) isn’t something as good, since you’ll be saving “less” resources (due to you using less resources in the first place) as Wolfgang anyway just removes all incentive to ever play as him at that point. 

 

Those basic resources are by far the most important thing in the game. You need a lot of them for constant use and the best way to get them is through characters like maxwell (this argument is ignoring that maxwells combat abilities are more brain dead than maxwells and arguably much better). Sure bosses are important but the time and resources saved from a maxwell gathering a ton of logs and rocks for jack squat is more valuable than what Wolfgang saves from combat.

But as I said in my original post, collecting resources doesn't have much risk. You may do it alot, sure. But it can't really go wrong.

 

There's no "Fail" condition with chopping trees or collecting grass. 10 minutes or 20 minutes, and it's done either way. Worst case scenario, you need to bring some extra food or light to account for the extra time.

But getting into fights does have a fail condition. Dying. If you get killed by a mob? Then you're either nuking your entire world for a new one. Or you're spending resources to come back to life. Resources to get back to your stuff if it's in a season that'll kill you if you're not prepared. If you had meat or pig skin in your inventory that might get eaten depending on what killed you. Resources to restore the stats you didn't get back on reviving. And if you where fighting a boss, then it will have likely reset itself. Meaning that you'll now need to spend even MORE resources on the fight sense any you spent before dying are now wasted.

There's just a lot more to loose when it comes to combat. So combat perks end up migating a lot of risk, while non-combat perks simply don't.

 

Also I lied. There are fail conditions with chopping trees. Either getting unlucky and spawning a tree guard, or getting a hound wave while you're too far from a trap zone. Both of which, as you may notice. Are combat scenarios. Thus the combat character is at an advantage here too.

[Dextops]

1 minute ago, Theukon-dos said:

There's just a lot more to loose when it comes to combat. So combat perks end up migating a lot of risk, while non-combat perks simply don't.

That’s why I said Wolfgang ended up being a crutch, while resource gathering perks are much better combat perks do have risk if you don’t know what you’re doing, and Wolfgang helps with that. I’m not gonna argue much on this with you cause in the end we both agree that Wolfgang needs changes.

[Cheggf]

Disagree with the premise. Players are dying because they took too long to gather logs, time is the #1 killer of players. Time causes starvation. Time causes freezing. Time causes insanity. Time causes darkness. Players not managing their time properly and dying to attrition they haven't prepared for is like 95% of the deaths I see on Klei servers. The only threat that you can't simply walk away from is hounds, and you still can just walk away from them but it's harder.

Think about all of the things that attack you and pose a threat. There's barely any. You always choose to go to them. Combat isn't the entire game like people pretend that it is, they only think it's the entire game because they don't know how to do anything other than sit around doing nothing until someone rallies them to go fight a boss. Just because they choose to make combat the entire experience doesn't mean combat is the entire experience, so of course for them combat characters are going to offer more help than non-combat characters.

[_zwb]

9 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

they're trying to bring more characters "in line" with the top-tier combat characters.

Klei literally achieved that by nerfing Wolfgang and Wanda with planar damage stuff, then they start reverting it with skill trees. Wonderful game design

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, Cassielu said:

NO.

Combat is already such a big part of the game that if you're good at the whole combat system, you're pretty much good at the whole game. Therefore, no single character should be better at the whole combat system than any other. Above this, years of experience have proven that higher damage is the most powerful combat gain.

Nothing about Wormwood and Woodie made them as powerful as Wolfgang or Wanda.

Woodie can kill raid bosses with 3 monster meat and 2 grass. 

[Fufuji]

With 2 saladmanders, lunar guardian II and bramble armor expert(assuming that the attacks are never interrupted) Wormwood gets a at most 56 DPS bonus, it's a 31% increase compared to BS sword combined with BS helm.

Wolf has a 30% increased DPS against lunar/shadow aligned creatures. 23.3% increased DPS with mighty weapons V using BS sword and BS helm against creatures with planar defense(69% compared to Wilson). 

Woodie deals less damage in moose form against normal mobs and aboot 1% increased DPS against mobs with planar defense compared to BS sword and helm.

He still got currently the highest damage bonus in combat from skill trees. This makes more difference when it comes to creatures with planar defense as Wormwood's and Woodie's skills provide less planar damage compared to Wolfgang's.

My opinion is that the real problem is his skill tree is too boring, rather than it doesn't give him enough damage bonus.

[Mysterious box]

10 hours ago, chirsg said:

Everyone seems to be making points I'd make, so I'll just state my side; I also don't think that every character needs to be brought up to to tier combat.

Having said that, wolfgang is a better chores character than average. 

 

Even as it stands, wolfgang being a boss killer is uncontested even in the face of max moose or wormwood.

even with wendy and maxwell, they can get up to wolfgang levels of fighting prowess, but wolfgang is super simple.

My issues here is while he's undisputed in combat the others are also better in other areas or in the case of Maxwell he's better at literally everything else while also being far more useful than Wolfgang in team combat scenarios.

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Woodie can kill raid bosses with 3 monster meat and 2 grass. 

I really wish this stupid argument would die when everything is super cheap heck let's talk about how Wanda is killing bosses with nightmare fuel and some reeds.

[Mr Giggio]

People just cant move on lmao get over wolfgang hes just fine as 

[MondayNight]

Wolfgang always had a simple and straightforward design from DS: eat, get Mighty for ~2x dmg to kill stuff quick. If anything, his DST re-re-rework (including Tree Skill) gave him more utility, though the "flexing" mechanic brought gimmicky too, con-wise. All-in-all he's in a good spot now: consistent 2x dmb, easy on-the-go Mightiness gain via Dumbbells. No need to further insist in his redesign, it's.. "mighty fine"

[Dragonboooorn]

4 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

People just cant move on lmao get over wolfgang hes just fine as 

Klei forummates when a combat character is actually good at combat: pls nerf