Wigfrid changes + thoughts on caves, ocean and future content.

[Masked Koopa]

Ok so first up I wanna say that I really appreciated this update, but I have a few concerns about both it and the coming content.

1. As I said in my "Wigfrid changes are not enough" post, I think that currently the battle songs are not well balanced with one another. I'm very let down by the lack of changes beyond a single stinger. Wigfrid having limited song slots is kind of a joke because there are almost always only 2 songs worth actually using, and most songs aren't even worth the last slot so it ends up going to the minor QOL that is warble.
   
   And pretty much everyone agrees that the allignment songs are complete hound manure.
   
    
2. I also want to re-state my desire for Wigfrid to be able to share more of her skill tree gear with her team, with the requirement of Wigfrid being present for the sharing to fully function. I know some people disagree with this but I do think it has been a fundamental part of Wigfrid's character and playstyle to be able to share her perks by being present.
   
    
3. While I appreciate some of the changes from my ocean rebalance post being implemented, some of the ones that were not implemented are a little confusing to me, such as fish food still being so obviously worse than Wicker's book despite the obvious difference in ease of aquisition. Another is not adding the ability to hammer cookie cutter shells for broken shells - it seems like a pretty logical change and I didn't see anyone against it. I get that not everything I suggest will be added, but some of the omissions are just strange to me. I get you might not wanna change mud balls or sunken treasure loot, but are we really gonna act like stuffed fish heads don't need any changes? Maybe some of this will change in the upcoming update, I just wanted to make my thoughts on this known since my post seems to have been a catalyst to some degree.
   
    
4. Caves. Caves, caves caves. I do think that ocean needs attention, make no mistake. But I really have to question WTF is going on in regard to what has been happening ever since rifts started. At first caves were more like a side area, so while the lack of content was a bummer, it was understandable. Now however it seems as though the intent is to add survival mechanics to caves. I gotta ask - why. Not only is living in caves not common among players, but caves has little to no worthwhile content in it in the first place. The only points of interest are the Archives, which is just just a place you visit to progress surface content, the ruins, and two bosses

Lemme give you a rundown of what the surface has gotten:

• Brightshades
• Five Brightshade items, three weapons and two tools.
• Three new lunar bosses. I'd call them reskins or revisits but ya'll put so much work into them they're really just new bosses.
• Three new loot items from said bosses.
• If you don't count ocean content seperately, we also got frostjaw.
• Scrapyard and Scrappy Werepig.

Now Lemme give you a rundown of what the caves have gotten:

• Ink blights and some horde shadow creatures I don't care to learn the names of.
• Two Shadow items, one weapon/tool hybrid and an umbrella.
• Nightmare Werepig - EXCEPT we had to actively push ya'll to even put him in caves in the first place. You guys wanted him to be yet another surface boss.

I get that shadow rifts will eventually get more content and all that, but it's kinda nuts to me that we get this much content for the surface while we have to actively fight to get even a single boss put into the caves. And now we're getting more ocean stuff which is technically part of the surface. And once again - I don't think it's AT ALL bad to improve the ocean, but caves is literally being treated as though it's a counterpart to the surface yet it keeps getting a fraction of the content. And the surface already has a mountain of content. Ya'll could do nothing but update caves for the next year and caves would still be far behind. Which isn't a reason not to work on caves mind you, but maybe calm it down on stuff like Scrappy Werepig a little and try to add some pre-rift content to caves?

You could also perhaps try to integrate skill trees and caves content to some degree. Maybe you could add some sort of cave merm that wurt can obviously interact with, but would still exist in the caves for other survivors to interact with. Ditto for Webber and adding some sort of new cave spider or adding more mechanics to existing cave spider stuff.

 

[Keigo]

Just passing by as a fellow wigfrid main to disagree with point 2.

She needs to keep her stuff for herself being present or not. 

Sharing entry level stuff is fine but other characters fill the dedicated support role better.

[SSneaky]

48 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Caves. Caves, caves caves. I do think that ocean needs attention, make no mistake. But I really have to question WTF is going on in regard to what has been happening ever since rifts started. At first caves were more like a side area, so while the lack of content was a bummer, it was understandable. Now however it seems as though the intent is to add survival mechanics to caves. I gotta ask - why. Not only is living in caves not common among players, but caves has little to no worthwhile content in it in the first place. The only points of interest are the Archives, which is just just a place you visit to progress surface content, the ruins, and two bosses

speaking of which can we add water in the caves, which should be like hamlets pond biomes.

[RainBO_OM]

Wigfrid on both dev streams combined got less screentime seconds than her stingers cooldown was reduced (if you know you know)
None of her problems were adressed, correct me if i'm wrong, more like avoided. When Wilson situation were explained to what and why, Wormwood minor changes reviewed in more than 5 mins every time, and Willow stuff fixed, Wigfrid is "not too many changed in other and skiped" while shes the first character mentioned in update description.
Am I overcomplicating with this? Well yes but no, just answers, we need answers to give up on fixes or expect crumbs 

[Sir Noel]

1 hour ago, Masked Koopa said:

I get that shadow rifts will eventually get more content and all that, but it's kinda nuts to me that we get this much content for the surface while we have to actively fight to get even a single boss put into the caves. And now we're getting more ocean stuff which is technically part of the surface. And once again - I don't think it's AT ALL bad to improve the ocean, but caves is literally being treated as though it's a counterpart to the surface yet it keeps getting a fraction of the content. And the surface already has a mountain of content. Ya'll could do nothing but update caves for the next year and caves would still be far behind. Which isn't a reason not to work on caves mind you, but maybe calm it down on stuff like Scrappy Werepig a little and try to add some pre-rift content to caves?

This is the reason I like bigger, more focused updates, and am glad they are trying to go in this direction. The Return of Them arc was similar to the introduction of the caves arc for me, in that it laid the groundwork for what's to come. However, the base area(s) could still use massive upgrades and improvements to really flesh them out. One big, dedicated "ocean" or "cave" update could go a long way in keeping the focus of the update on that area, rather than what has felt like mostly random (but still good) additions sprinkled to various parts of the game that we've been getting lately. 

Whether or not we get that with the QoL updates this year will remain to be seen, but I'm hopeful.

33 minutes ago, RainBO_OM said:

Wigfrid on both dev streams combined got less screentime seconds than her stingers cooldown was reduced (if you know you know)
None of her problems were adressed, correct me if i'm wrong, more like avoided. When Wilson situation were explained to what and why, Wormwood minor changes reviewed in more than 5 mins every time, and Willow stuff fixed, Wigfrid is "not too many changed in other and skiped" while shes the first character mentioned in update description.
Am I overcomplicating with this? Well yes but no, just answers, we need answers to give up on fixes or expect crumbs 

I can understand why they tend to ignore her, seeing as most people have the notion that Wigfrid has always been a solidly balanced character despite her changes. I think other characters' skills need a bit more attention right now, but I'm definitely hard agreeing that some songs are just blatantly useless currently. 

Edited March 28 by Sir Noel
better wording

[chirsg]

29 minutes ago, RainBO_OM said:

Wigfrid on both dev streams combined got less screentime seconds than her stingers cooldown was reduced (if you know you know)
None of her problems were adressed, correct me if i'm wrong, more like avoided. When Wilson situation were explained to what and why, Wormwood minor changes reviewed in more than 5 mins every time, and Willow stuff fixed, Wigfrid is "not too many changed in other and skiped" while shes the first character mentioned in update description.
Am I overcomplicating with this? Well yes but no, just answers, we need answers to give up on fixes or expect crumbs 

I think it's less a problem with 'Wigfrid, the character' and more the underwhelming parts of her kit. Wigfrid is a good character no matter what. But the stingers for the most part could be removed and she'd still be an excellent character. Make no mistake. She herself doesn't have problems, but there are parts of her kit that seriously may as well not be present because of how useless they are. 

[CuteC]

Wigfrid has always been able to share her stuff and she is also enthusiastic about helping others, having plenty of quotes about training the other characters and I find it so strange how suddenly that's just not the case for her anymore.

As you mentioned warble was always just kind of there because it doesn't do much but now it's almost pointless given rift gear is repairable, not only that but given it's the lesser of 2 songs (sanity gain and HP gain) it always goes last which means it is extremely difficult to even have active.

[finn from human]

5 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

but are we really gonna act like stuffed fish heads don't need any changes?

stuffed fish heads are awesome. 20 health and 75 hunger with just a barnacle and a fish. barnacles can be kept fresh for a long time in a salt box, while fish stay 100% forever in a fishing bin. the only downside is the need to eat it right after cooking, but that's not a problem at sea since you can just have a crock pot on the boat, also i bet it'd hold for a decent while in the bearger bin. really awesome recipe honestly and i'm glad this post reminded me that i should cook it more

[Masked Koopa]

20 hours ago, SSneaky said:

speaking of which can we add water in the caves, which should be like hamlets pond biomes.

This could be quite cool I reckon, perhaps they could add water-based cave entrances that you can sail your boat into?

[Maxposting]

20 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

EXCEPT we had to actively push ya'll to even put him in caves in the first place. You guys wanted him to be yet another surface boss.

is this true chat

[StitchesPlush]

4 minutes ago, Maxposting said:

is this true chat

Yep, he was originally gonna be on the surface for some reason.

[Maxposting]

9 minutes ago, StitchesPlush said:

Yep, he was originally gonna be on the surface for some reason.

I know he was on the surface during the beta, my question was more whether it's true that people had to "convince" Klei to put him in the caves.

[Masked Koopa]

7 minutes ago, Maxposting said:

I know he was on the surface during the beta, my question was more whether it's true that people had to "convince" Klei to put him in the caves.

I mean, it's entirely possible they intended to move him down there later regardless but there's not any reason to think that'd be the case. You could argue that Klei's plans would be more set in stone than that but this was the same update where we convinced them to turn pure horror/dreadstone red instead of magenta.

Edited March 28 by Masked Koopa

[finn from human]

13 minutes ago, Maxposting said:

I know he was on the surface during the beta, my question was more whether it's true that people had to "convince" Klei to put him in the caves.

It's not. The Nightmare Werepig on the surface was almost certainly a beta-specific thing to make it easier for testing and getting player feedback on the fight: just like how the Scrappy Werepig was made to exist simultaneously with the Nightmare Werepig during the last beta, to make sure they got good feedback about the fight before putting it into its proper place in the progression. We can see Klei doing things like this as early as 2017: the ability to kill the Antlion was intentionally left out of the update that added her, for the sake of seeing how players would work around the sinkholes without the option to simply kill her, because otherwise they would've gotten worse feedback from people opting to just remove the threat entirely via the combat option.

Nightmare Werepig always had a shadow-y ruins aesthetic and two giant shadow-y pillars that required a pick/axe to break down. It's very very likely that Klei was just doing that thing they do in betas sometimes.

6 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

but this was the same update where we convinced them to turn pure horror/dreadstone red instead of magenta.

Pure Horror and Dreadstone were pink because everything in the ruins is pink, they were changed to red when it was pointed out enough that the pink in the ruins is turned into red by the filters there and the Nightmare Werepig wasn't in those filters. We gave feedback that caused them to fix a mistake, not to change an intentional design.

[ChintzyGnat]

Does every wigfridge song need to be intresting? Not every wicker book is intresting, wilson transmute, or even woodies perks in some aspects. Gotta have some mundane for the good perks to shine, you know like spawning in with a weapon, headgear and ability to lifesteal.

[Yuuko]

The problem with Wig's kit is that it is quite powerful without the songs so its hard to justify the songs being much better.  I get the frustration of wanting more, but I'm not sure there is much room to ask without changing what the songs are.  Passives are generally too powerful without being felt, and Wig is loaded with passives.

Also idk about her getting no screen time.  I feel the change to containers allowing them to be opened from inside the inventory and specifying how this allows them to be used on Beefalo was spurred by her anti-synergy of getting a song case and beefalo perks.  I remember pointing this out in her refresh beta, and I was really pleased to see the change get made.  Sure its convenient for everyone, but I feel the real *reason* to change it was her.

Otherwise I agree.

[Reecitz]

19 minutes ago, finn from human said:

It's not. The Nightmare Werepig on the surface was almost certainly a beta-specific thing to make it easier for testing and getting player feedback on the fight: just like how the Scrappy Werepig was made to exist simultaneously with the Nightmare Werepig during the last beta, to make sure they got good feedback about the fight before putting it into its proper place in the progression. We can see Klei doing things like this as early as 2017: the ability to kill the Antlion was intentionally left out of the update that added her, for the sake of seeing how players would work around the sinkholes without the option to simply kill her, because otherwise they would've gotten worse feedback from people opting to just remove the threat entirely via the combat option.

Nightmare Werepig always had a shadow-y ruins aesthetic and two giant shadow-y pillars that required a pick/axe to break down. It's very very likely that Klei was just doing that thing they do in betas sometimes.

Pure Horror and Dreadstone were pink because everything in the ruins is pink, they were changed to red when it was pointed out enough that the pink in the ruins is turned into red by the filters there and the Nightmare Werepig wasn't in those filters. We gave feedback that caused them to fix a mistake, not to change an intentional design.

Klei isn't perfect, but people seem to like assuming the worst from them.

There have been some cases that would make this mindset understandable to exist, but it isn't fair regardless.