My thoughts on snippets of the new update

[Catuna_]

i'm mainly going to talk about the crab king rework, and the new two skill trees, i ask of whoever wishes to reply to this thread to stay respectful
everything is subject to change and i am aware of this, but that doesn't mean that i or anyone shouldn't express their concerns with some of the drastic changes/additions an update can have

I really like a lot of these Winona changes and additions, a really big gripe a lot of people had with skill trees is that for a lot of the characters deemed underwhelming they would be solely focused on fixing their kit, arguably changes that should be in their base kit. With Winona, it seems that these concerns have been acknowledged and that they prioritized keeping her skill tree to provide additions to a character's kit rather than just tediously spending perks to remedy it. However, what I really dislike comes down to the Winbot and the telebrella/telepad. What's wrong with these? It just so happens that more Wobots and better character transportation have been very big requests, at least for me. And to see them strapped onto a character (they're Winona exclusive) and for it to be specifically stated that they are not usable by anyone BUT Winona feels lame to me. Both in the sense that I'm not the biggest fan of her Wagstaff portion of the tree to just be copying Wagstaff's inventions rather than become a lot more inventive with more out-there gadgets like him (especially since we've already been getting blueprints of his inventions from scrap piles). I really feel like there was a missed opportunity with giving everyone these recipes post-CC via blueprint and to give Winona more of her unique inventions. Character transportation in the lategame is so painfully slow and Wanda (and now Winona) being the only two allowed to fast travel conveniently just feels questionable to me.

Wurt's a character that I've tried to like, but I just couldn't. There's several posts about her already so there's no need to elaborate too much, but I think that a character being regarded as powerful isn't an excuse to give them a lot of filler. I can't say whether or not Wurt's mosquito crafts are one perk or are spread out, we didn't even get to see the tree's layout. But I really hope it's the former.

The biggest thing I was looking forward to (other than the possible Walter skill tree (rip)) was that the Crab king was going to most likely get reworked. And indeed he was, but I was so very disappointed to see that his original concept has been completely scrapped. Crab king's concept is that he is a boss that does not target the player, he is very unique among the other bosses who are not typically very punishing. Yes, he was a bit too on the unfair side for a lot of people (myself included) and I ended up cheesing him whenever I needed him killed. I was so very looking forward to making the concept work, tuning down his claws for 1x/0.75x damage characters, making his gems scale less aggressively, getting rid of some things that shouldn't scale up (like freeze range). But, it turns out that instead he has received a major rework completely scrapping this concept. The new Crab king blows. It's completely devoid of any depth that the old one could've possibly had as far as I've seen, now this does u-turn back into the fact that we're a full three weeks before the beta, so keep that in mind. The new crab king doesn't attack the player's boat anymore, and never attacks the player directly. Instead, the claws will waddle towards your boat if it is within range to attack horridly slow, the cannons are inaccurate, Crab king's repair phase has been prolonged mimicking the mechanic of stun phases (which I really personally dislike). His repair phase worked before because he was all about multitasking, and now it's going to be awkward because the breaking window is so lenient and you're just going to tank the baby crabs. There's no threat to your boat breaking as the cannons operated by said baby crabs are extremely inaccurate and seems to not cause leaks, claws will no longer grip onto your boat, you are not threatened by geysers or freezing anymore, and the boss's health is stuck at 20k and will not scale up with any gem (assuming that they didn't increase his base health).
I think it's extremely unreasonable to ask to just undo the rework, but maybe adding the geysers back wouldn't be so bad? Or the freezing attack, maybe claws have bigger range and can grip onto the boat if they are left close to the boat for too long, maybe they can cause boat damage when they swing as well as being able to hit the player? They have extremely low health (seems to be 200) it'd be perfectly okay to give them more oomph rather than making them a pushover, maybe Crab king can cast the freezing attack when you're attacking it directly, causing the claws to get close and grip onto the boat since you are frozen and creates a situation of intensity. Maybe Crab king's boulders breaking while repairing himself can start to fall by the player, potentially hitting them rather than just letting the player mindlessly tank the little crabs to maximize the damage output on the Crab king. Just make him more akin to his original concept.
 

[grm9]

4 minutes ago, Catuna_ said:

the cannons operated by said baby crabs seems to not cause leaks

the devs explicitly said that they only deal damage to creatures instead of the boat because they wanted to make the fight about killing the player instead of destroying the boat for some reason

6 minutes ago, Catuna_ said:

I think it's extremely unreasonable to ask to just undo the rework

they could reuse stuff from the rework as additions to current CK, although land fight phase seems really lame so idk what can they do with that

[Capybara007]

Bringing the geiser attack sounds like a good idea

[Mortalbane]

While i like your thought process with how characters should have their base kits fixed first before adding skill trees, i think that the easier the bosses are - the better.
Because DS combat system is very poor.
DS was not meant as a boss-fighting game, but now it is, especially for more experienced players. But fight them with what, holding F and running around in predictable patterns? Doing one and the same thing over and over for 15 minutes, until that million hp turns to zero. No skills (almost), no classes, no weapon variety, too expensive items.
I can only speak for myself here, but there is no single boss i enjoy fighting in DS, though i like most of their visuals.
Also, most of the boss loot doesn't feel being worth the effort for me.

So, unless they decide to rethink the fighting system, the easier this boss chore is done - the better. But to an extent of course, not like press X and win.