Reworking Character Downsides (AKA Negative Power Creep)

[WenericMember]

With skill trees allowing survivors to largely mitigate their downsides, It might be worth considering how survivors drawbacks could be more significant to promote diversity of play-styles. In my opinion, a good downside should encourage survivors to make full use of their perks, while also diversifying day to day gameplay from that of a wilson.

Currently, I believe the characters with adequate downsides are: Warly, Wormwood, Wortox, Walter and Wendy (If she gets a way to mitigate her 0.75x damage multiplier against giants)

My personal Ideas for character downside reworks:

• Willow: Freezes Faster -> Ambient Freezing

With Willow's ability to summon mini suns, set isolated objects on fire and extinguish fires at will, her initial downside is largely irrelvant. As such, I think a cool idea would be to have Willow be freezing by default in Autumn and Spring, while being completely immune to the summer heat. This naturally encourages Willow to regularly interact with fire to keep herself warm throughout the year, passively encouraging players to set things on fire.

• Maxwell: Reduced Max Health -> Inability to wear armour.

Maxwells frailty, while significant does little in the face of spam eating pierogi. However, restricting him from using armour would DRASTICALLY reduce his abilty to fight in the front lines, forcing him to truly play puppet master, using his spells to the fullest to play a deadly game of keep away. Additionally, it works thematically due to his insistence on remaining dapper. 

• Wanda: Constant Health Drain -> Phasing Health Drain

Wanda's health drain is an interesting downside, but it is too easy to manipulate her age by stockpiling watches. Instead, I propose something unique: Wanda's health drain scales with the phase of the moon, aging rapidly during a new moon, and incredibly slowly in the full moon. If balanced correctly, it could force Wanda to play passively during a new moon, which may not always be an easy decision.

• Webber: Racism -> Increased Aggro range

Pretty much all Webber's present downside does is make the enchanted forest biome swamp v2. In addition to this, I believe that giving Webber an increased range to draw the aggro of mobs would encourage him to carry bodyguards when exploring hazardous locations.

• Woody: Idol Costs -> Weremeter V2

I get why the were meter was removed, as it would probably be hard to integrate with the multiple forms, but in my opinion it would be worth it. Forcing Moose form in extended fights (limiting healing and ranged attacks), forcing goose while exploring (preventing pickups of items of interest) and Werebeaver while resource gathering (admittedly the list relevant) would force Woody to manage his habits.

[Antynomity]

How dare you suggest that the most powerful characters like Maxwell and Wanda get more impactful downsides! Awesome ideas, I don't agree with the weremeter at all though.

[Paxtonnnn]

I don't agree with a lot of these, like the Willow and Maxwell ones, but I 100% agree with the sentiment

[Raven Idol]

Most I don't personally agree with. but Woodie and Willow are ones I do like. I feel like, with Willow specifically, you could crank up her existing downsides of faster sanity drain and dislike of cold up a few notches and that'd be perfectly fine, while Woodie having a redone version of the weremeter would be a nice way to bring back his old downside, while actually giving him one since his current version just doesn't have one.

I don't really know what would be best to do for Maxwell, but as somebody who adores Wanda, just sync her watch cooldowns so you can't cheese it by having multiple Ageless watches and that's all she really needs in my eyes, her timer is already a satisfying downside to work around, though if she absolutely needs a nerf, then lower her EHP to ~100 or so, since she can cheat death with a well timed use of her watch.

[BalkanCockroach]

Oh yeah, actually maxwell should have just 1 hp by default and when he gets that 1 damage by anything he performs the adventure mode scream before he gloriously turns to dust. But if i'm serious they could just reduce the healing from any source for Maxwell by half if they wanna nerf without making him unplayable. 

[arubaro]

we need better downsides but i dont think the suggested ones are the way of creating them

just things like what they did to wx or wicker. Their downsides didnt have impact and now they are something that matter (still situational but atleast now cant be completely ignored)

i didnt tried wanda with the rift content but, unless her skill tree or future armors improve that, i think she is in a better spot now in terms of being dangerous to play with

[WenericMember]

17 minutes ago, arubaro said:

we need better downsides but i dont think the suggested ones are the way of creating them

just things like what they did to wx or wicker. Their downsides didnt have impact and now they are something that matter (still situational but atleast now cant be completely ignored)

i didnt tried wanda with the rift content but, unless her skill tree or future armors improve that, i think she is in a better spot now in terms of being dangerous to play with

Fair enough.

It's suprisingly difficult to think of a large amount of meaningful, yet unique downsides :P

[Mike23Ua]

How to make money and appeal to gamers all of ages and skill levels-

Step 1-

Make all playable characters fun to play as with less tedium & downsides.

Personal note: (We can always add downsides back in later under a completely optional to the players harder difficulty setting)

Step 2- Watch characters people weren’t buying and playing as become more popular and liked due to decreased skill requirement entry into enjoyment of them.

Step 3- Profit???? $$$$

 

[Raven Idol]

18 minutes ago, arubaro said:

we need better downsides but i dont think the suggested ones are the way of creating them

just things like what they did to wx or wicker. Their downsides didnt have impact and now they are something that matter (still situational but atleast now cant be completely ignored)

i didnt tried wanda with the rift content but, unless her skill tree or future armors improve that, i think she is in a better spot now in terms of being dangerous to play with

I'm a fan of downsides you have to work around keep in mind at all times, like Warly's need for crockpot foods and having to vary what he eats for the best effect, or Wanda's inability to heal regularly and constantly draining health, as long as they're not too detrimental (the entirety of Wes).

Of course there's nuance to downsides, but ideally they're a consistent aspect of gameplay even late game in some regard.

[PunkShark]

Downsides are a tough nut to crack. Cause either you make it so forced on you that it just feels like a chore or you have something minimal that at least somewhat slows you down. 
But any downside imo should always have a solution. Woodie's downside with Alter did not have that for quite some time and it just made him not being wanted to play at a very important part of the game, it was a downside at a detrimental value. Even the impactful downsides doesn't do all that much, Wx gets destroyed by rain, but there are tools at hand to help you with that, Wicker can't sleep, but sleeping isn't needed for somebody who's good at the game. Wormwood can't heal from food, but there are plenty of ways to heal yourself outside of food. Wes has very low stats, but again, if you're good at the game this means nothing. in some cases it's actually better since you have easier control.

Downsides can only be so impactful until you've gotten so used to the game where they felt like they had meaning. And that's why buffing downsides really doesn't do all that much in the end, if you can harness, control it. figure out ways to beat it then the only people who will suffer from these editions are still the people who aren't good at the game. Because those old downsides still matter to those people, but we, the people who know this game in and out it will change nothing. Of course, that doesn't mean i don't want more downsides but it's just difficult to implement without it being a chore or nothing. 

[arubaro]

4 minutes ago, PunkShark said:

Downsides can only be so impactful until you've gotten so used to the game where they felt like they had meaning. And that's why buffing downsides really doesn't do all that much in the end, if you can harness, control it. figure out ways to beat it then the only people who will suffer from these editions are still the people who aren't good at the game. Because those old downsides still matter to those people, but we, the people who know this game in and out it will change nothing. Of course, that doesn't mean i don't want more downsides but it's just difficult to implement without it being a chore or nothing. 

downside are a good way to force players to play in a different way

warly's food penalty makes him look after hugh stats dishes and use better gear

wormwood downside makes you consider other ways of healing and using better armor

wx water weakness makes you wear clothing while sailing and be more careful in spring

i can keep going but downsides arent just to make the game harder, is about preventing that all characters could be played in the same way. In a game with that much items and mechanics is a good way to interact with most of them without breaking dev's heads to balance everything to be equally useful while making players to think creative/confortable/skilled ways to overcome those downsides

[-Variant]

I agree with the idea/sentiment. Not certain on what's presented.

It feels bad to see everyone's downsides being slowly ironed out. 

[shaurun]

1 hour ago, WenericMember said:

Willow: Freezes Faster -> Ambient Freezing

Wearing thermal stone for the whole game is so fun.

1 hour ago, WenericMember said:

Maxwell: Reduced Max Health -> Inability to wear armour.

Oh, riding beefalos, my favourite! Maxwell is best beefalo rider ever!

1 hour ago, WenericMember said:

Wanda: Constant Health Drain -> Phasing Health Drain

More mechanics to the God of Mechanics! 

2 hours ago, WenericMember said:

Webber: Racism -> Increased Aggro range

Destroying pig houses/making walls, no change in strategy. 

2 hours ago, WenericMember said:

Woody: Idol Costs -> Weremeter V2

I want weremeater dependent on Lucy again it was so good =_= And no Moose/Goose. Just pure Beaver!  He was adorable. 

But honestly if you's play as Woodie now you'll probably find him difficult enough to play.

 

Well, I agree in total that downsides should be rewised, but I consider those proposed not really proper. Maxwell is interesting one however beefalos... I'd like him to be encouraged not to use beefalos.

[Fufuji]

She's not powerful enough. She's a character only boasts combat perks, just let she be.

A total of 160% DPS more than Wilson, which equals to Wolfgang, is what she deserves. Wolfgang also "oNly" haS C0mbαT ρERks, all combat characters should be compared to him rather than themselves without skilltrees or Wilson.

[Juanasdf]

That wanda downside would be very annoying to deal with, and not in the good way. Unlike other downsides, it'd be completely unavoidable and would encourage boring ahh gameplay when DST is a game that usually doesn't restrict you in many ways.

Like, the only way to play around this would be to have your next 22 days planned and put some mundane tasks at the end of them. (AND stockpile more ageless watches, but this time even skilled players would have to since the passive aging is unavoidable damage)

And we all know DS has a lot of situations where A) things don't go your way and take longer or B) you find something else to deal with, completely switching your plans

[WenericMember]

I was sorta hoping to see other people's ideas rather than just ppl saying my ideas wouldn't work :P

I fully understand that most of these ideas would require significant refinement or not work at all, so what would you propose instead?

A lot of people are saying they want more significant downsides, so what ideas do you want to see?

 

13 minutes ago, Fufuji said:

She's not powerful enough. She's a character only boasts combat perks, just let she be.

A total of 160% DPS more than Wilson, which equals to Wolfgang, is what she deserves. Wolfgang also "oNly" haS C0mbαT ρERks, all combat characters should be compared to him rather than themselves without skilltrees or Wilson.

Who are you referring to?

[Fufuji]

8 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Who are you referring to?

Literally all "combat" characters.

[Valase]

You kinda showed us the "problems" with their current downsides, but did not change anything about them.

With your changes:

Willow still would do the same thing that she does in winter, but now in spring/fall. So you just gave her an upside (complete summer immunity).

Maxwell, one of the top three beefalo user, would have another reason to use a beef.

Wanda, is just that she takes more damage on new moons?

Webber, it would just make the new players life hell, since you could just run away from things, especially now that you are far.

Woodie, I mean, this would be a major rework on his gameplay experience, since currently, you can "tap out" of a form by just standing still.

So here comes my suggestions to make their life worse:

Willow: Loses sanity when a fire is put out, similarly to how wormwood when he chops down a tree;

Maxwell: He spawns with his Codex at 0%, and nightmarefuel refuel less. Especially since he fell from his own grace;

Wanda: Loses sanity when she ages up, but gains half of that whe she ages down. Her character is very obsessed with staying alive;

OR: Those insanity shenannigans always happen with her at a random rate. (things like wavey jones or the shadow hands taking her light away);

Webber: His hunger drain goes up with the more spiders he adopts;

Woodie: make him lose/gain sanity when he is or isn't with lucy.

36 minutes ago, Fufuji said:

She's not powerful enough. She's a character only boasts combat perks, just let she be.

A total of 160% DPS more than Wilson, which equals to Wolfgang, is what she deserves. Wolfgang also "oNly" haS C0mbαT ρERks, all combat characters should be compared to him rather than themselves without skilltrees or Wilson.

Wolfgang deals 200% of Wilsons Dps. Also her late game mobility is not something to scoff at. I'm not arguing that she should be nerfed. But I'm saying that you should not ignore a good part of her kit.

[Juanasdf]

15 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I was sorta hoping to see other people's ideas rather than just ppl saying my ideas wouldn't work :P

I fully understand that most of these ideas would require significant refinement or not work at all, so what would you propose instead?

A lot of people are saying they want more significant downsides, so what ideas do you want to see?

The cast feels okay-ish to me. Perhaps wolfgang could get his faster hunger drain back, since he's basically wilson 2 and there's tons of food sources nowadays.

Idk, i think it's not the characters that need specific nerfs but rather the game getting more challenges. The cast is well designed, even if their downsides may not be as significant as they used to, which is good imo, this is a sequel after all, lorewise they should have gotten used to them over the years.

3 minutes ago, Valase said:

Those insanity shenannigans always happen with her at a random rate. (things like wavey jones or the shadow hands taking her light away);

Wait wanda players are sane?!

4 minutes ago, Valase said:

Wolfgang deals 200% of Wilsons Dps. Also her late game mobility is not something to scoff at. I'm not arguing that she should be nerfed. But I'm saying that you should not ignore a good part of her kit.

I was going to comment about this but OP wanted downside suggestions instead of hearing why his ideas wouldnt work so here it is:

I dont think wanda needs a nerf. I think she's in a good spot with the rifts. The problem is that the other survivors need a better fast travel method.

Im hoping she at least gets stationary teleports that other survivors can use, that way at least she could become a swap characters... But a better general fast travel method would be prefered

[Fufuji]

5 minutes ago, Valase said:

ignore a good part of her kit

I totally understand how they performs before and after rifts. That's an impressive take for both Klei and Willow/Wigfrid.

I just voice to make sure that no character falls behind. 

I won't try bothering "balance" under the framework of Skill Trees. That's a topic the forum has argued about over and over again, and will not even reach a "balance" between Klei and forumites. 

[Wonz]

Warming up sucks though. Boring gameplay.

[Jakepeng99]

7 hours ago, WenericMember said:

With skill trees allowing survivors to largely mitigate their downsides, It might be worth considering how survivors drawbacks could be more significant to promote diversity of play-styles. In my opinion, a good downside should encourage survivors to make full use of their perks, while also diversifying day to day gameplay from that of a wilson.

Currently, I believe the characters with adequate downsides are: Warly, Wormwood, Wortox, Walter and Wendy (If she gets a way to mitigate her 0.75x damage multiplier against giants)

My personal Ideas for character downside reworks:

• Willow: Freezes Faster -> Ambient Freezing

With Willow's ability to summon mini suns, set isolated objects on fire and extinguish fires at will, her initial downside is largely irrelvant. As such, I think a cool idea would be to have Willow be freezing by default in Autumn and Spring, while being completely immune to the summer heat. This naturally encourages Willow to regularly interact with fire to keep herself warm throughout the year, passively encouraging players to set things on fire.

• Maxwell: Reduced Max Health -> Inability to wear armour.

Maxwells frailty, while significant does little in the face of spam eating pierogi. However, restricting him from using armour would DRASTICALLY reduce his abilty to fight in the front lines, forcing him to truly play puppet master, using his spells to the fullest to play a deadly game of keep away. Additionally, it works thematically due to his insistence on remaining dapper. 

• Wanda: Constant Health Drain -> Phasing Health Drain

Wanda's health drain is an interesting downside, but it is too easy to manipulate her age by stockpiling watches. Instead, I propose something unique: Wanda's health drain scales with the phase of the moon, aging rapidly during a new moon, and incredibly slowly in the full moon. If balanced correctly, it could force Wanda to play passively during a new moon, which may not always be an easy decision.

• Webber: Racism -> Increased Aggro range

Pretty much all Webber's present downside does is make the enchanted forest biome swamp v2. In addition to this, I believe that giving Webber an increased range to draw the aggro of mobs would encourage him to carry bodyguards when exploring hazardous locations.

• Woody: Idol Costs -> Weremeter V2

I get why the were meter was removed, as it would probably be hard to integrate with the multiple forms, but in my opinion it would be worth it. Forcing Moose form in extended fights (limiting healing and ranged attacks), forcing goose while exploring (preventing pickups of items of interest) and Werebeaver while resource gathering (admittedly the list relevant) would force Woody to manage his habits.

I like the Willow and Wanda downsides alot, though the rest are "eh" or are too bonkers like Maxwell's downside.

[hoppin mandrake]

Just talking about those with skill trees at the moment. These are my initial thoughts on how to potentially balance the characters.

 

• Woodie - Transformation Cooldown

I think it's ridiculous that I can just make a bunch of kitchy moose idols and be a perma moose. When my health gets low I can simply go back to being Woodie, use some healing/sanity recovery and then transform back to a moose. I never have to make weapons or armor ever again with Woodie. There should be a significant cooldown so that you have to use transformation strategically rather than whenever you want.

 

• Wolfgang - More sanity drain from Darkness

Wolfgang's downside is hardly noticeable compared to other characters. His sanity drain in darkness is also pretty much nulled once you get a Tam-o-shanter. It would be more interesting if you actually had to make sanity recovery food to stay sane, which also might influence players to use something other than perogi.

 

• Willow is a mess now in my opinion.

There are so many buffs that have come with her new skill tree that essentially cancel out any downsides involving fire. They need to balance the skill tree first. They gave her the ability to absorb fire and prevent spreading by default? It's like she has two skills to fight fire now. Since when do pyromaniacs want to limit the damage they do with fire anyway? Fires should still spread, things should still burn, and she shouldn't want to put out fires at all in my opinion.

 

• Wigfrid - Decrease damage potential

They seem like they want to make her the tank, so they need to scale back her offensive capabilities if they want to do this. She can't be Wolfgang and an indesctructible tank at the same time. She shouldn't be able to do significant damage with the shield or beefalo. Battle Rond does almost the equivalent damage of a dark sword and lets you block 100% damage at the same time. The point of being a tank is to soak up damage while your allies put out the damage, not to do both.

 

• Wormwood seems okay in my book.

I'd probably nerf bramble husk a bit, it's seriously OP. An army of splumonkeys aren't anything to fear with a few of those equipped.

 

• Wilson

I feel Wilson is good as is. He's got some good transmutation skills and a few extra inventory slots, Maybe the torches could use a little buff with their level 3 skills to be more viable during late game, but it's not that important.

 

[Dr.Webber]

I want to give Webber a downside for lore reasons(the reason why it’s addressed to Klei is I copied and pasted it for the forum linked in my signature):

Built in (very important it help bridge the gap between lore(an example of this is shown in the indigestible section of the description depicted in the picture above) and game) :

Dear Klei entertainment ever sense the webber rework came out I’ve noticed that one thing is missing and that thing is a small but noticeable sanity  drain when befriended spiders die it doesn’t even need to increase by the spider like being in range of befriended spiders dying drains not spider by spider and if that’s to much sanity loss then preferred he can gain sanity around decorated dens like how regular characters lose sanity around normal dens , grain sanity around alive befriended spiders like how regular characters lose around normal spiders, or both and you said yourself that the point of the reworks are to make the characters more like themselves so please make this change it would make a world of difference I love your game and this community and thank you(depending on whether or not there just considered recruits/expendable pack cows(in the case of beefalo) or friends this could also extend to all befriended mobs)

[grm9]

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

Woodie - Transformation Cooldown

I think it's ridiculous that I can just make a bunch of kitchy moose idols and be a perma moose. When my health gets low I can simply go back to being Woodie, use some healing/sanity recovery and then transform back to a moose. I never have to make weapons or armor ever again with Woodie. There should be a significant cooldown so that you have to use transformation strategically rather than whenever you want

moose is already situational and still worse than wolfgang with a ham bat or maxwell with tier 2 shadow stuff or wanda, you wouldn't turn into moose just to kill a few nightmares or hounds

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

Wolfgang - More sanity drain from Darkness

Wolfgang's downside is hardly noticeable compared to other characters. His sanity drain in darkness is also pretty much nulled once you get a Tam-o-shanter. It would be more interesting if you actually had to make sanity recovery food to stay sane, which also might influence players to use something other than perogi

using pierogi is already inefficient and you'd just two shot nightmares instead of getting sanity food 

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

Willow is a mess now in my opinion.

There are so many buffs that have come with her new skill tree that essentially cancel out any downsides involving fire. They need to balance the skill tree first. They gave her the ability to absorb fire and prevent spreading by default? It's like she has two skills to fight fire now. Since when do pyromaniacs want to limit the damage they do with fire anyway? Fires should still spread, things should still burn, and she shouldn't want to put out fires at all in my opinion

much better than an useless character, they've started removing downsides since reworks started

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

Wigfrid - Decrease damage potential

They seem like they want to make her the tank, so they need to scale back her offensive capabilities if they want to do this. She can't be Wolfgang and an indesctructible tank at the same time

her dps isn't nearly as big as wolfgang's and being a tank is pointless in a game that has AoE around the boss  

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

Battle Rond does almost the equivalent damage of a dark sword and lets you block 100% damage at the same time

blocking is worse than kiting and it has tentacle spike damage

16 minutes ago, hoppin mandrake said:

An army of splumonkeys aren't anything to fear with a few of those equipped

abigail, willow lunar fire and maxwell shadow prison nerfs first if that's broken op