If Willow's spells are OP when spammed, a fun way to limit them could be to reimplement her firestarting drawback

[D_Good_Fellow]

Hear me out... What if carrying too many embers made Willow light fires at random like in DS solo?

Instead of using cooldowns or imposing a hard limit on the number of embers Willow can carry, it makes sense to me for a penalty to be added for while she's carrying too many embers. I know Wortox loses some sanity and drops souls when he hits the limit, but with Willow I feel like it would fit better if there were a more gradual, riskier line to cross.

For example, holding up to 40 embers could be fine but at 41 there could be a very small chance Willow would start a fire every minute or so. The chances to light the fire increase with each additional ember, making stockpiling possible but extremely risky. (Ideally someone smarter than me can figure out exactly what number of embers would cause it and how often/likely it would happen.)

I'll admit to not being in the beta or being particularly knowledgable about game design, so it's possible that balancing something like this would be a nightmare. In my head it leads to a lot of fun gameplay decisions: players can choose how risky they want to get with ember hoarding, they can choose whether to risk being near bases while preparing for fights, or account for it with stuff like ice fling-o-matics.

One obvious issue would be how this works with cooperative play: I've heard that Willow's low-sanity fire lighting was removed from DST because it caused Willow to become a liability to other players' bases. I feel like this would be less of an issue if it were only caused by hoarding embers, since it can be planned around a lot easier. It also wouldn't brutally punish newbies by having them accidentally destroy their friends' bases (especially if Willow is given warning quotes as she accumulates the embers).

I mentioned this in another thread about Willow's CDs, but I figured I'd post a thread for a little more visibility.

 

[GenomeSquirrel]

Since you haven’t done the beta, this would barely be an inconvenience, she can absorb the fire with no damage to structures, and her fires don’t spread.

 

She is very capable of burning the base for warmth, and the structures being fully functional.

[Losparkeros]

IMO inconvenience of carrying too many embers should be felt by Willow itself, and not everyone around her (like in example of Wortox, it even can be beneficial for others for him to spill his souls for healing everyone around).

Reintroducing starting fire basically turns one selfish/inattentive player into griefer, and this rather reinforces common belief of Willow being something to avoid (or even kick on the spot) rather than an asset for team.

[_zwb]

Excellent, I can troll people with random fire pretending not knowing a thing about it

When people do ask I can just kill them with lunar flames. Damn, Willow truly is the embodiment of griefers.

[Tortoise Guy]

  I think a better solution would be to make Willow's temperature rise the more embers she has, and having over 40 would make you reach the overheating threshold

[Yuuko]

17 minutes ago, Tortoise Guy said:

  I think a better solution would be to make Willow's temperature rise the more embers she has, and having over 40 would make you reach the overheating threshold

idk

OP => character starts fires, but also comes with free infinite fire prevention...

This one => Winter is free just carry embers.

If its a problem for her to have many embers, just cap embers.  These are more like Wortox souls than a regular item.  No reason she needs to have multiple stacks.

[MondayNight]

20 hours ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

Hear me out... What if carrying too many embers made Willow light fires at random like in DS solo?

Simple: she would be kicked/banned from everywhere.

She's already the griefers' favorite due to her long-lasting "torch" right out of gate, fire immunity, and now ability to kill players in co-op via Moon Flames. Give her the passive of starting fires randomly just because and that's the end for this character in pubs. Even I as a Willow co-main atm would kick/ban every Willow from each pub I would join if such a thing came to fruition.

[HowlVoid]

44 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

This one => Winter is free just carry embers.

Not necessarily if the game remembers two temperatures and upon losing the excess embers you go right to freezing (after overheating). Also the change would have to be gradual and not instant so if you're overheating it takes a while to cool down even in winter; to actually make it a punishment.

[D_Good_Fellow]

21 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Since you haven’t done the beta, this would barely be an inconvenience, she can absorb the fire with no damage to structures, and her fires don’t spread.

 

She is very capable of burning the base for warmth, and the structures being fully functional.

 

8 hours ago, Losparkeros said:

IMO inconvenience of carrying too many embers should be felt by Willow itself, and not everyone around her (like in example of Wortox, it even can be beneficial for others for him to spill his souls for healing everyone around).

Ah, yeah you're right. This would mean that only Willow's allies would be affected by this drawback, which would be both unfun and defeat the point of it being a drawback. Alright, bad idea, scrapping it. 

 

I do still stand by the idea of a risk-associated drawback though.

2 hours ago, Tortoise Guy said:

  I think a better solution would be to make Willow's temperature rise the more embers she has, and having over 40 would make you reach the overheating threshold

I like this a lot! It would functionally take away her ability to restore sanity by lighting a tree on fire, which would genuinely change how I go about exploring as Willow. It's also a minor enough punishment that a player could still stockpile embers for a boss battle or something if they planned around taking a set amount of damage ahead of time. I don't know how this would affect every situation balance-wise, but it sounds fun to me.

8 hours ago, _zwb said:

Excellent, I can troll people with random fire pretending not knowing a thing about it

When people do ask I can just kill them with lunar flames. Damn, Willow truly is the embodiment of griefers.

1 hour ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

She's already the griefers' favorite due to her long-lasting "torch" right out of gate, fire immunity, and now ability to kill players in co-op via Moon Flames. 

I mean you say this but making a torch the easiest thing to do in the game. Fires can be started by any character. I literally had a Wortox join my game and almost immediately burn my base down yesterday. That being said, I do agree that my idea would unnecessarily incentivize players banning Willow. Like I said, scrapped.

[_zwb]

27 minutes ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

I mean you say this but making a torch the easiest thing to do in the game. Fires can be started by any character. I literally had a Wortox join my game and almost immediately burn my base down yesterday. That being said, I do agree that my idea would unnecessarily incentivize players banning Willow. Like I said, scrapped.

It's not about burning down the structures is about casually trolling and griefing in style

[MondayNight]

53 minutes ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

I mean you say this but making a torch the easiest thing to do in the game. Fires can be started by any character. I literally had a Wortox join my game and almost immediately burn my base down yesterday.

People are lazy. Why use 3x click (torch) when 1 (lighter) does the job. And Willow comes with 1 click mayhem.

[prettynuggets]

how about any ember after maxing capacity will be absorbed into lighter fuel right away if the lighter maxed out over 100%. it make the lighter overheat? that make it raise the cost of every spell higher than normal for the duration based of percentage maxed out lighter.

since the idea its tied to the her lighter..  what about making willow lighter is permanently placed on body inventory. cant be dropped, move to backpack or stolen like from quay monkey and frogs.

i mean if there is penalty to carrying too much amber. player should the one who bear the negative effect. just explode everything on fire is kinda meh.. 
and 1 slot used permanently is pretty interesting downside.