The Winona catapult debate can be solved by finally removing the celestial portal

[Mysterious box]

Just to be clear while I am on the side of not allowing characters to use other's primary perks another good way to handle that would be to not make those shared perks their primary perks or give them a way to interact with it that shows a much greater mastery of the perk only available while your playing the character but not just sold to you as part of the skill tree as that makes it feel more like your paying to make the character stand out from the crowd using their own crafts rather than gaining new abilities to push the character to new heights like everyone else. 

I point again to what I misunderstood them to be talking about in the livestream where I thought they meant that disassembling, sleep mode, and the base remote without upgrades would be part of winona's main kit before the skill tree while keeping the old function of catapults this would solve the Winona issue while also making room for interesting new perks her skill tree would open up alongside upgrades for her existing crafts. Basically what I'm saying is I don't really mind them preventing other people from using her catapults but this would also work as a alternative solution to satisfy most people I feel.

[GreenBowers]

This is just my opinion though. I do not like people removing mechanics

Also yeah I kinda wish she had more perks involving her hunger work speed thing. Like maybe adding gathering speed to the bonus, so when you start gathering work, lose 5 hunger, next 30 seconds you pick resources or chop trees or mine faster. 90% of the kit being catapults is a missed opportunity

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, GreenBowers said:

I feel as though people will play the characters they want to play, and taking away the ability for them to do so offers no real benefit. 

This only negatively affects people that make use of the mechanic by removing it, and the only benefit it would bring would be those that dislike that playstyle feeling pleased that people cant 'abuse' it anymore.

Lets for a moment rename the Celestial Portal to Wolfgang. All the DST players, the Willows and Wendys and Wigfrids hate it when people can just select Wolfgang off the menu, it takes zero effort at all and they can do double damage for free. It takes all the challenge out of the game to play him even though when you launch the game you are by no means obligated to play him. Now everyone campaigns to remove him from the game, or to make it so he can only become mighty on an hour cool down because its too oppressive, when the solution is just dont play Wolfgang, and let others enjoy Wolfgang if they want

The change would only impact people who make use of it physically that is true however it impacts people who stick with those characters mentally and I don't mean that in a serious or unhinged way but in that it negatively impacts how they feel during their experience even if the solution is superficial like what I'm proposing with dropping a few of the Winona skill tree upgrades to her base kit it will likely have a big positive impact on people who play her and people who might consider playing her because feel is a big part of the gameplay experience. It's even why I'm positive for the most part about Wurt's mosquito branch for example sure none of the abilities are particularly amazing and I'd definitely have a lot of bad to say about the branch if made each craft a single skill point but they didn't that made it far more digestible and made me feel like actually using the crafts despite what would have been me just being mad at their addition and completely avoiding as wasted skill points. Klei was even a bit extra clever with how they handled her skill tree by making it so only similar abilities required you to commit skill points further lowering reasons people could pick issues with them.

[Szczuku]

5 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

the part where OP describes in a lamenting fashion how they feel like they're sabotaging themselves by not playing warly-buffed wolfgang is both a revealing and depressing insight

the part where you attack the OP instead of engaging with the argument is both a revealing and a depressing insight

Anyways,

People will try to min-max optimize fun out of games, that's jsut a fact of life. It should, however, be the devs job to either make the optimized run be only a little bit more powerful than a standard run, or to make optimizing it be very grindy/hard, so that it is not just a low-hanging, tempting fruit.

In dst neither of those are met. A Warly-buffed, catapult-supported Wolfgang will shred through bosses (which is apparently the main objective and the most appealing part of the game, according to the direction the devs are taking dst in) unlike the majority of the characters (untill they get ther skilltrees that will provide them with combat perks, cuz every character needs combat perks) and it is also not hard to do. Using the celestial portal is dirt cheap and can be done multiple times a day. And acquiring resources to use character-specific items (or just items in general) is also getting easier with every update. I mean... dst already had 2.5 ways of generating ruins' gems and yet Klei felt the need to literally just let us farm them, like... from the ground.

I mean, at some point you just look stupid if you're not using the conveniences that Klei keeps throwing at you. First it was hammering pigman houses for resources. Then it was "Could you imagine not having stone fruit and banana bushes in your base". Soon enough it will be weird to not have any perks selected from the skill trees. And so, if all it takes is a handful of purple gems and moon rocks to melt a boss down, why wouldn't a majority of people just take that option? 

At least adding a client-sided 20 day cooldown would discourage swapping characters for a quick gain

[GreenBowers]

Just now, Mysterious box said:

I'm proposing with dropping a few of the Winona skill tree upgrades to her base kit it will likely have a big positive impact on people who play her and people who might consider playing her because feel is a big part of the gameplay experience.

I fully agree on this point, Packing things up should be basekit, and have it make room for some non-catapult related skill on the bottom shelf,

[Primalflower]

1 minute ago, Szczuku said:

the part where you attack the OP instead of engaging with the argument is both a revealing and a depressing insight

i don't mean depressing in a deprecative way it just genuinely made me sad for op

[GreenBowers]

And I can relent and agree with a 20 day cool down, but the year cooldown or increasing the cost to crazy levels, i dont agree with.

[SteamMonkey]

Forcing difficulty on people because you don't have the willpower to not use a system you feel makes the game too easy is ridiculous. Just put up a list of custom rules for yourself and obey them and when people are like 'why don't you do X' just be like "Because I'm hardcore MFer" and bask in the warming glow of your epeen.

[GreenBowers]

Like, fine, swapping to wilson to just make gems and swapping back on the same day, thats a big gamey, but having the option to swap and play with other characters is Fun and sandboxy. I don't want to generate a brand new world and play as wormwood just to do a lot of gardening

Damn, I keep trying to merg my posts but people keep posting inbetween them xD

Just now, SteamMonkey said:

Forcing difficulty on people because you don't have the willpower to not use a system you feel makes the game too easy is ridiculous. Just put up a list of custom rules for yourself and obey them and when people are like 'why don't you do X' just be like "Because I'm hardcore MFer" and bask in the warming glow of your epeen.

Wait till these people learn that you can press the ` key in game

[Mysterious box]

11 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

I mean, at some point you just look stupid if you're not using the conveniences that Klei keeps throwing at you. First it was hammering pigman houses for resources. Then it was "Could you imagine not having stone fruit and banana bushes in your base". Soon enough it will be weird to not have any perks selected from the skill trees. And so, if all it takes is a handful of purple gems and moon rocks to melt a boss down, why wouldn't a majority of people just take that option? 

Honestly this is kinda sad to think about. I don't even know how they could power creep survival further we control the weather, moon cycle, heck we don't even have to look for Mac tusks anymore since we can just force them to come to us strange times indeed.

[Mike23Ua]

19 minutes ago, SteamMonkey said:

Forcing difficulty on people because you don't have the willpower to not use a system you feel makes the game too easy is ridiculous. Just put up a list of custom rules for yourself and obey them and when people are like 'why don't you do X' just be like "Because I'm hardcore MFer" and bask in the warming glow of your epeen.

You absolutely and completely missed my point I guess..

You have to do a long and tedious quest then kill Two very late end game bosses just to gain access to swords that are just barely slightly better than a much earlier game Darksword.

But yet you can build the celestial portal super early into the game (way before you’d ever fight any bosses) and change out Wes the intentionally lowest damage character in the game, for Wolfgang the intentionally highest damage.

It is with the above description, that the power of character swapping with early game portal is just too good… and it needs to be pushed further and later into gameplay.

Argue against it all you like, but I’m trading a what is it.. 68 damage per hit sword? for a 72 damage hit per sword? (that required killing two bosses and opening new global threats in my world) Meanwhile- Celestial Portal which is obviously far more powerful… is some silly early game thing we can do?

Haha yeah no… that’s broken.

[SteamMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You absolutely and completely missed my point I guess..

You have to do a long and tedious quest then kill Two very late end game bosses just to gain access to swords that are just barely slightly better than a much earlier game Darksword.

But yet you can build the celestial portal super early into the game (way before you’d ever fight any bosses) and change out Wes the intentionally lowest damage character in the game, for Wolfgang the intentionally highest damage.

It is with the above description, that the power of character swapping with early game portal is just too good… and it needs to be pushed further and later into gameplay.

Argue against it all you like, but I’m trading a what is it.. 68 damage per hit sword? for a 72 damage hit per sword? (that required killing two bosses and opening new global threats in my world) Meanwhile- Celestial Portal which is obviously far more powerful… is some silly early game thing we can do?

Haha yeah no… that’s broken.

what a ridiculous comparison... characters aren't gear, it's not like you were forced to start with Wes, changing characters isn't progression. 

[Mike23Ua]

12 minutes ago, SteamMonkey said:

what a ridiculous comparison... characters aren't gear, it's not like you were forced to start with Wes, changing characters isn't progression. 

Oh really??? Then mind telling me why Klei considers Wonkey to be a “Curse”?

OR why in the single player game you only started with Wilson and then over time and many failures unlocked better more unique characters that made staying alive even easier?

The only exceptions to that were Wes & Maxwell, which were characters you unlocked at the END of the game to “Challenge” yourself.

pretty sure building the celestial portal to switch out Wes to Wolfgang is considered just as much “Progression” as Trading a bunch of Bananas to Moon Quay Queen to reverse your Monkey Transformation.

[SteamMonkey]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

Oh really??? Then mind telling me why Klei considers Wonkey to be a “Curse”?

OR why in the single player game you only started with Wilson and then over time and many failures unlocked better more unique characters that made staying alive even easier?

The only exceptions to that were Wes & Maxwell, which were characters you unlocked at the END of the game to “Challenge” yourself.

pretty sure building the celestial portal to switch out Wes to Wolfgang is considered just as much “Progression” as Trading a bunch of Bananas to Moon Quay Queen to reverse your Monkey Transformation.

1. Wonkey is a status. 
2. Single player game isn't Don't Starve Together. I can only play mario or luigi in the original Mario Brothers game. 
3. Again, different game, different goals. Comparing the two at this point in development is apples and oranges.
4. You're wrong. If you started with Wes, why? Why didn't you just start with Wolfgang? You weren't "inflicted" with Wes, you chose Wes in this absolutely silly comparison you're making.

Also, why are you moving the bar, you used 2 swords as the first comparison, which is progression, now you're shifting to a curse that's inflicted and comparing that to YOU picking a character to start a world with... Either way, neither changing characters nor clearing your curse are progression.

[Maxil20]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

OR why in the single player game you only started with Wilson and then over time and many failures unlocked better more unique characters that made staying alive even easier?

In DS, you did not need to “fail” to unlock characters. World hopping (either in survival/adventure mode) would give you XP to unlock new characters. There are also special characters like Woodlegs/Webber who had to be unlocked through external methods. 
 

Yes, you could use Portal swapping to change to a different character and speed up progression, but so could Player B joining, picking that character you wanted anyway, and helping out. Multiple players playing different characters will always be more efficient then one player constantly swapping to get all the perks they would want.

[arubaro]

This must be a troll account

[Mike23Ua]

8 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

In DS, you did not need to “fail” to unlock characters. World hopping (either in survival/adventure mode) would give you XP to unlock new characters. There are also special characters like Woodlegs/Webber who had to be unlocked through external methods. 
 

Yes, you could use Portal swapping to change to a different character and speed up progression, but so could Player B joining, picking that character you wanted anyway, and helping out. Multiple players playing different characters will always be more efficient then one player constantly swapping to get all the perks they would want.

I did not say to “remove” the celestial portal, I said to push it further back into the late game so that Switching Characters is even more late game than getting a slightly better Darksword Variant.

Because.. Building Winona’s Catapults, Swapping to Woodie and Building Treeguard Idols, Swapping to Warly for Food Dish crafting buffs, Swapping To Wigfrid and building a ton of Helmets, Swapping to Wurt and equipping your Merms in said Helmets, and then absolutely demolishing everything that dares step in your path is incredibly busted and OP and should never be as “Early game” as it currently is..

[GimplyGoose]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

Because.. Building Winona’s Catapults, Swapping to Woodie and Building Treeguard Idols, Swapping to Warly for Food Dish crafting buffs, Swapping To Wigfrid and building a ton of Helmets, Swapping to Wurt and equipping your Merms in said Helmets, and then absolutely demolishing everything that dares step in your path is incredibly busted and OP and should never be as “Early game” as it currently is..

All of this takes a significant amount of time and I think it is cool and good that these kind of preparations and interactions are possible.

[Primalflower]

The celestial portal is a powerful tool and you can do a lot of cool stuff with it, and you could probably also trivialize a lot of stuff with it too. But the latter gameplay isn't engaging, and doing anything particular exploitative with it is very out of the way, so like, why do it? I feel there is a very strong disconnect between something like Elytras completely writing minecarts and all other transportation methods out of the equation and something like the celestial portal. I feel like if you go out of your way to lucratively produce warly dishes and only play wolfgang with catapult support to make fights last like 2 minutes, then you're kind of like... signing the death certificate on your fun yourself? I don't know, I feel like my thoughts here make me out to be on some kind of a higher plane of self-control than the average person, but I don't feel like that's the case. Most games I neglect to set up any sort of grass or twig farm, because I have more fun when I have to scavenge for them in the wild instead of just picking a square of them. I feel like if you feel pressured to set up stone fruit bush farms and banana bushes even though you don't have as much fun with those options then it's kind of on you to ignore them, it's a self-inflicted social pressure at best

Lol if you really wanna nerf celestial portal then just make it so wanda doesn't spawn with clock pieces and call it a day idk

[GimplyGoose]

2 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

I feel like if you go out of your way to lucratively produce warly dishes and only play wolfgang with catapult support to make fights last like 2 minutes, then you're kind of like... signing the death certificate on your fun yourself?

This is an optional additional way to play the game that doesn't take anything away from traditional ways of playing. The planning and preparation itself is fun. You plan something out and when it goes well, it is satisfying.

[SteamMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

The celestial portal is a powerful tool and you can do a lot of cool stuff with it, and you could probably also trivialize a lot of stuff with it too. But the latter gameplay isn't engaging, and doing anything particular exploitative with it is very out of the way, so like, why do it? I feel there is a very strong disconnect between something like Elytras completely writing minecarts and all other transportation methods out of the equation and something like the celestial portal. I feel like if you go out of your way to lucratively produce warly dishes and only play wolfgang with catapult support to make fights last like 2 minutes, then you're kind of like... signing the death certificate on your fun yourself? I don't know, I feel like my thoughts here make me out to be on some kind of a higher plane of self-control than the average person, but I don't feel like that's the case. Most games I neglect to set up any sort of grass or twig farm, because I have more fun when I have to scavenge for them in the wild instead of just picking a square of them. I feel like if you feel pressured to set up stone fruit bush farms and banana bushes even though you don't have as much fun with those options then it's kind of on you to ignore them, it's a self-inflicted social pressure at best

Lol if you really wanna nerf celestial portal then just make it so wanda doesn't spawn with clock pieces and call it a day idk

I don't understand why people can't just enforce their own restrictions. The concept of "But then I'm gimping myself" just feels like a lack of self control. 

Also, I'd argue that for some people, setting up a farm with wormwood and then doing a bunch of pre-cooking with warly, and setting up arenas with winona, then switching to wolfgang might BE how they like to play. All that prep and work, and then you get this payoff of feeling OP. Or ya know, you could have just kited with Wes because you wanted a challenge. 

That's the beauty of this game. There are rules but there are also a plethora of ways to play the game, tons of options, things you can partake of, things you can ignore. It's fine if you just want to 'survive' set up a base, only kill the threats, farm, and keep yourself alive as long as possibel without ever going into any of the advanced gameplay... or you can do a boss rush challenge, or a permadeath rule, or an all wes server, or "can I kill all the bosses with only catapults and no weapons" run or, or, or, or.... 

Or you can come to the forums and try to take options away from people because you lack the self control to just not use the thing you think ruins the game... that's also an option. lol

 

[Maxil20]

14 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I did not say to “remove” the celestial portal, I said to push it further back into the late game so that Switching Characters is even more late game than getting a slightly better Darksword Variant.

Because.. Building Winona’s Catapults, Swapping to Woodie and Building Treeguard Idols, Swapping to Warly for Food Dish crafting buffs, Swapping To Wigfrid and building a ton of Helmets, Swapping to Wurt and equipping your Merms in said Helmets, and then absolutely demolishing everything that dares step in your path is incredibly busted and OP and should never be as “Early game” as it currently is..

As mentioned by @GimplyGoose , doing all of this takes a lot of effort and preparation apart from the character swapping from farming the foods to make Warly dishes to getting the mats needed to make merms (or guard merms and a merm king). If you can do it, that’s great! But that doesn’t mean it’s trivial to prep that, either.

Also, nitpick, but I would not call the brightshade sword a “slightly better dark sword”. If we are comparing a dark sword and football helmet to the brightshade sword and helm (which I feel for this instance is reasonable, as the latter is made from the same mats), you deal more damage (over 75, enough to hit a good chunk of break points for many mobs), goggle protection, more wetness resistance, gestalt protection, more durable, immunity to Charlie, no sanity penalty, and the ability to repair the gear regardless of what the durability is. These are respectable perks to get post rift, especially since apart from damage multipliers it or the scythe/void cowl combo will ultimately replace your traditional weapons in most cases.

[Mike23Ua]

26 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

This is an optional additional way to play the game that doesn't take anything away from traditional ways of playing. The planning and preparation itself is fun. You plan something out and when it goes well, it is satisfying.

Yeah.. and here’s the biggest flaw behind that, Celestial Portal Character Swapping should be something your rewarded with for doing some super late game stuff, to access some super late game benefits.

For people who can not play through the game and unlock said portal the traditional way you can always just change your world settings to Wilderness Mode, this will allow you to switch characters faster than using the Celestial Portal would.

[cybers2001]

The fact that the celestial orb is tied to both the portal and the CC fight is problematic in itself. It would be better if the portal paraphernalia was crafted via the lunar forge instead.

I personally do like to take advantage of as many characters as possible in my world, but I'm pretty much Wolfgang exclusive until at least 300 or so days in.

[SteamMonkey]

8 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yeah.. and here’s the biggest flaw behind that, Celestial Portal Character Swapping should be something your rewarded with for doing some super late game stuff, to access some super late game benefits.

For people who can not play through the game and unlock said portal the traditional way you can always just change your world settings to Wilderness Mode, this will allow you to switch characters faster than using the Celestial Portal would.

And people who don't want to character swap can just not do it. You're trying to literally gatekeep the way people play the game. Why? Just don't use it. Do you feel entitled to tell other people what they deserve to be able to do? Does someone having an option to make the game easier, somehow lessen your own sense of accomplishment if you don't utilize it? I cannot fathom why you would want to take away options in a game like this, especially THAT option. One that's SO easy to just NOT use if you feel it's broken. It's not like anyone elses accomplishments or progression has any impact on you and your game experience whatsoever.