Should other characters be able to use catapults?

[Q_Ween]

New update makes catapults stop operation at some circumstances, with only Winona able to awake them. I don't like the idea, and want to know if I'm against the tide.

[Jakepeng99]

It is a hard choice.

On the other hand, houndious shootious is no longer heavily outclassed. I cant decide, it also removes some of Winona's selfless.

[benfroyobro9381]

I think the base catapults without any of the new additional perks are fine. I just feel like it'd be changing something that's been in the game for so long. Winona should have a lot of individual perks now to justify playing her. It's fine to let other characters use some of eachothers perks. 

[arubaro]

42 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

let Willson use Willona's 'Wagstaffian' gadgets, as he's been helping Wagstaff alot of the shorts.

That can be a cool interaction and more balanced that max and wickers.  Nobody will change to wilson to exploit her perks while can create interesting gameplay choices in multiplayer 

[randiao]

10 hours ago, Q_Ween said:

New update makes catapults stop operation at some circumstances, with only Winona able to awake them. I don't like the idea, and want to know if I'm against the tide.

space key

[cybers2001]

Nah this ain't it, fam. Making catapults completely unusable by other characters is a devastatingly bad feature change that robs us of existing gameplay content if we choose not to use Winona for combat. I'm actually angry about this. Let Winona have her remote for dps or whatever, that's fine. Other players should be able to benefit from at least the basic functions of the catapults.

9 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It is a hard choice.

On the other hand, houndious shootious is no longer heavily outclassed. I cant decide, it also removes some of Winona's selfless.

Different tools for different jobs. The houndius shootius was still better for single-target damage, and in cases where splash damage was a concern (ie. walls/fences).

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, randiao said:

space key

As someone who just entirely dismantled a catapult setup for BQ I want to implode inside finding this out. Good to know, at least. Hopefully a tooltip can be added when mousing over it to make it more clear you can do this.
 

 

11 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Nah this ain't it, fam. Making catapults completely unusable by other characters is a devastatingly bad feature change that robs us of existing gameplay content if we choose not to use Winona for combat. I'm actually angry about this. Let Winona have her remote for dps or whatever, that's fine. Other players should be able to benefit from at least the basic functions of the catapults.

I feel like a lot of people gloss over how strong Winona with her remote and catapults are. Aside from the fact you can control where the catapults land, they are way faster to shoot, have massively larger AOE, and are portable at that. This isn't even accounting for things like planar strike which can take out big chunks of health from bosses if you have the materials to afford them. These things make a massive difference compared to the original rendition of the catapults.

EDIT: Okay, after testing this, I actually think they made the original catapults even worse. Their AOE is not nearly as effective as before the skilltree, and struggled to deal with my usual spider setup of 20X dens. I really don't think Worse-than-base catapults for other survivors should be off limits.

[cybers2001]

2 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like a lot of people gloss over how strong Winona with her remote and catapults are. Aside from the fact you can control where the catapults land, they are way faster to shoot, have massively larger AOE, and are portable at that. This isn't even accounting for things like planar strike which can take out big chunks of health from bosses if you have the materials to afford them. These things make a massive difference compared to the original rendition of the catapults.

Exactly, which is really the way Klei should approach character refreshes in general. If character X is a hot-swap character, just make them more fun to play, rather than locking existing content away from other characters.

Hopefully this is a misunderstanding, though, which seems to be the case.

[EatenCheetos]

13 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Making catapults completely unusable by other characters is a devastatingly bad feature change that robs us of existing gameplay content

No, of course non-Winona players shouldn’t get Winonas benefits. Why is this even a question.

Otherwise you’ll have people switching to Winona, building her stuff, then switching back. 

Only Winona players should get Winona’s perks, it’s bad design to let another player use her perks while avoiding her downsides. 

14 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

I'm actually angry about this.

Sounds suspiciously like you might be one of those people…

3 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

If character X is a hot-swap character

“Hot swap characters” should not exist, period.

[adzhe tak]

2 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

No, of course non-Winona players shouldn’t get Winonas benefits. Why is this even a question.

Otherwise you’ll have people switching to Winona, building her stuff, then switching back. 

Only Winona players should get Winona’s perks, it’s bad design to let another player use her perks while avoiding her downsides. 

oh, i meant to write that
but yeah, it literally brings her back to status just a switch character again

[Maxil20]

12 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

No, of course non-Winona players shouldn’t get Winonas benefits. Why is this even a question.

Otherwise you’ll have people switching to Winona, building her stuff, then switching back. 

The thing that is distinct is Winona is exponentially more powerful with her kit. Wigfrid's helms/spears can be used by anyone else, but Wigfrid will often get more use out of them herself and it is only a part of her kit compared to the whole kit. While other players can use the catapults, Winona in particular gets far more value out of them then any other character and you still do not get things ranging from the telebrella or the rose tinted glasses. I really don't think it's crazy that a part of her kit could be used by others when they are directly inferior compared to Winona using them herself.

[EatenCheetos]

Just now, Maxil20 said:

Wigfrid's helms/spears can be used by anyone else

But you don’t see people hot-swapping to Wigfrid for her spears and helms now, do you? That’s because Wigfrid’s crafts are not permanent while Winona’s crafts are.

If you really want to make other players use Winona’s stuff, maybe they could only do so when a Winona player is nearby. That would avoid the hot-swapping issue.

[Mike23Ua]

Are people seriously upset that they may need to occasionally craft a few more totem idols to swap to Winona and back to whoever they’re wanting to play as that isn’t Winona?

If using the Celestial Portal to switch characters is for whatever reason just too much work for you, then my advice is to play on Wilderness mode so you can intentionally die and swap characters each time you die.

I defiantly don’t think other characters should be able to power back on/off Winona’s structures, some jerk might come along and decide to power them off/on until they’re out of whatever resource was powering them.

It is with this Mindset, that I feel like other players being able to use Catapult farms is a thing of the past that needed changing.

However Klei tends to bend to majority vote, so if enough players cry about it’s removal they’ll for sure revert the changes even if some people approved of the change.

[EatenCheetos]

5 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I really don't think it's crazy that a part of her kit could be used by others when they are directly inferior compared to Winona using them herself.

I think you’re comparing the wrong things. You should be comparing other characters as they are vs other characters that have Winona’s benefits without her downsides. 

If you want other characters to be able to help Winona players, that’s a bit of a different story, but it seems like you just want a free swap character.

[cybers2001]

43 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

No, of course non-Winona players shouldn’t get Winonas benefits. Why is this even a question.

Because she’s a utility character and catapults are a utility?

43 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

Otherwise you’ll have people switching to Winona, building her stuff, then switching back. 

What‘s wrong with this, exactly? Do Maxwell mains switch to Wickerbottom to craft books? Do Wolfgang mains switch to Warly to cook voltgoat jellies?

As a megabaser, I would certainly spend a lot more time as Winona if her constructions benefit my base rather than just herself.

24 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Are people seriously upset that they may need to occasionally craft a few more totem idols to swap to Winona and back to whoever they’re wanting to play as that isn’t Winona?

If using the Celestial Portal to switch characters is for whatever reason just too much work for you, then my advice is to play on Wilderness mode so you can intentionally die and swap characters each time you die.

Why do you feel so strongly about players having to use the celestial portal just for a mundane task like toggling catapults at a silk farm?

[JustExo]

Some of y'alls haven't had to convince a server to give you their rocks and it shows

I think people tend to misdiagnose the problem when it comes to Winona being a "swap character" and assume that the reason she's seen as one is because you can make her perks then swap, but the actual core issue is the character design itself, where Winona doesn't really have any major appeal to continue playing as her once you make the structures. The way to remedy this shouldn't be to force people to keep playing her if they want to make use of her structures, but should instead give Winona the means to stand out on her own after the structures are placed down. 

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

But you don’t see people hot-swapping to Wigfrid for her spears and helms now, do you? That’s because Wigfrid’s crafts are not permanent while Winona’s crafts are.

Not really, from my experience. One of the more common strats was to make a bunch of Wigfrid helms and swap back to utilize the helms as other players. Winona’s crafts can still be damaged and burnt. A setup can handle this, but its not a guarantee that things cannot go wrong. Ive myself had to rebuild a few catapults from various mistakes or replacements.

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

I think you’re comparing the wrong things. You should be comparing other characters as they are vs other characters that have Winona’s benefits without her downsides. 

If you want other characters to be able to help Winona players, that’s a bit of a different story, but it seems like you just want a free swap character.

I am asking for a part of her kit, that was usable as others before the skilltree, to be a perk people can utilize to a lesser effect than Winona herself, which it currently is at the moment. 

Winona’s “only” downside is 5 extra hunger you use per craft if you haven’t crafted anything else within the last 30 seconds, and you craft twice as slow otherwise. Unless its the early game, this downside is not significant enough to matter for most players. In exchange you get a significant benefit in the form of the entirety of the catapults, the spotlight, WINbot, and the alignment perks ranging from strong transport options to cheating death. These are very formidable perks, and players are going to play her for them. She’s not going to entirely become outclassed because you could make a setup to utilize the catapults as other characters to a far less extent than Winona can.

I don’t think it’s okay for characters to get the full extent of other’s kits, but I think it’s okay to get pieces of them if it doesn’t entirely outclass the character, like how Wig’s helms/spears works or how Wurt can give clever disguises to her teammates. This is why I’m hoping Warly gets particularly powerful self improvements to make him feel more interesting to play while still allowing dishes he can make to be used by everyone for a teamwide support character. Heck, even the minor perk Wurt gets from Wicker I think is cute and creative. I think it’s more engaging then a flat on/off switch, at least in my opinion.

If you still think that is too much, then at the very least allow some synergy with enlightened crown shards as other players. If you are far enough to tackle CC and get crown shards, I don’t think it would be too extreme to allow simple catapult support to work 24/7 as other characters.

 

[lowercase skye]

1 hour ago, EatenCheetos said:

But you don’t see people hot-swapping to Wigfrid for her spears and helms now, do you? That’s because Wigfrid’s crafts are not permanent while Winona’s crafts are.

Interestingly, while I haven't seen people swap to Wigfrid just to craft her helmets, there WAS actually a trend back in the early days of DST (pre-RoT, pre-celestial portal) where people would make a second Steam account that only owns DST, join a world, craft a huge pile of battle helms and then instantly disconnect and go back to playing their preferred character on their main account. Super weird to think back on, but I saw it quite a few times.

[_zwb]

It would be fine as Winona exclusive if powder monkey AI wasn't changed.

[Master_NiX]

3 hours ago, EatenCheetos said:

Only Winona players should get Winona’s perks, it’s bad design to let another player use her perks while avoiding her downsides. 

That's exactly why I am against others being able to use her catapults.

As of right now all Winona's unique structures get perks based on the person who placed it (tested in multiplayer).

So, if everyone could use her catapults without moving, it would keep the perks active even if there's no Winona at server.

[EatenCheetos]

3 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Winona’s “only” downside is 5 extra hunger you use per craft if you haven’t crafted anything else within the last 30 seconds, and you craft twice as slow otherwise.

Opportunity cost is a thing that exists

[Cruvimaster]

Winona's biggest downside is that she is just a portal character who only serves to buff other characters. It's the same thing as Warly, which only exists to increase the power of other characters that already have a damage multiplier.

[EatenCheetos]

5 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

Do Maxwell mains switch to Wickerbottom to craft books? Do Wolfgang mains switch to Warly to cook voltgoat jellies?

They shouldn’t, and I’m sure these issues will be addressed in their respective skill tree updates, just like the Winona swap issue is being addressed now.

20 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

she is just a portal character who only serves to buff other characters

No she isn’t, not anymore at least. That’s why removing the other’s abilities to use machines is a great idea, one I’ve been asking for for a while.

20 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

It's the same thing as Warly

Hopefully his character refresh finds a way to remove hot-swapping with him too.

There shouldn’t be a thing as “portal characters” and I’m glad Klei is taking action to remove them.

15 hours ago, benfroyobro9381 said:

I just feel like it'd be changing something that's been in the game for so long.

This is the Sunk Costs Fallacy by the way. It’s never too late to make the game better.

[grm9]

20 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

They shouldn’t

no, you shouldn't even care about how other people play, you pretty much want to ruin their fun

20 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

This is the Sunk Costs Fallacy by the way. It’s never too late to make the game better

the game won't become better after entirely optional things get removed, considering that the game isn't competitive and people won't have more fun after they get removed

20 minutes ago, EatenCheetos said:

There shouldn’t be a thing as “portal characters” and I’m glad Klei is taking action to remove them

people would've kept playing as them if that would've been fun, that's not an issue with it being possible to use their perks

[EatenCheetos]

Just now, grm9 said:

no, you shouldn't even care about how other people play, you pretty much want to ruin their fun

Lol what?? This whole forum is dedicated to changing game mechanics for the betterment of the game. What would you have us talk about, the weather?