Restricting Winona's catapults is a slap in the face

[chaosmonkey]

Winona's catapults have been a staple of this game for years at this point. People in long term worlds have spent countless hours building farms, arenas, etc. with catapults. Now, those hard earned setups are being taken away. Some of them are completely irreplaceable for solo players.

During the dev stream when they presented the remote and said "It's only for Winona", that made perfect sense. An elegant solution to the problem of wanting to lock additional catapult power behind actually playing Winona's skill tree without taking things away from other characters. Klei went above and beyond giving Winona a bunch of little things here and there like the rose vine bridges, teleportation, and more. Tons of Winona specific stuff. Nothing would be lost by letting other players click the catapults and get base functionality out of them.

I'm extremely frustated and disappointed with this change. This is starting an ugly precedent of "skill trees for character X are going to impact you negatively even if you don't play character X". I was excited for Warly's skill tree before. Now I'm just scared of what else will be taken away.

I hope Klei will reconsider.

Edit: Forums largely agree that restricting catapults is the wrong direction. 60% want other characters to be able to use, 40% want it restricted. 

[Well-met]

you can still use them

just play winona.

[chaosmonkey]

Not for solo players. Not if your farms require a wickerbottom.

[KrazJoe]

As mentioned somewhere else in the forum by someone else.

This is mainly a problem in multiplayer where Winona players who are not the host are just resource sink without return. This is especially problematic in public server where Winona will likely be auto ban as she will sink resource and take up space with unusable structures that can be destroyed.

[Cruvimaster]

4 minutes ago, Well-met said:

you can still use them

just play winona.

I agree. It's the best thing Klei is doing. It costs one purple gem to exchange for it at the portal.

[chaosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, KrazJoe said:

As mentioned somewhere else in the forum by someone else.

This is mainly a problem in multiplayer where Winona players who are not the host are just resource sink without return. This is especially problematic in public server where Winona will likely be auto ban as she will sink resource and take up space with unusable structures that can be destroyed.

Oh wow, missed that one. Thanks for sharing! Never considered how she could lock up resources in pubs like that without adding any value.

[cameron8800]

19 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

This is starting an ugly precedent

I quite like the precedent being set

[chaosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, cameron8800 said:

I quite like the precedent being set

If this is the way Klei wants to go that's fine. Then they should be consistent about it. It's not a decision I agree with because it will mean things like nobody else eating warly foods, maxwell not reading wicker books, etc. Part of DST's genious is that there all these little gameplay loops that build on each other, and characters having some amount of "switch" utility builds on that and enables more gameplay loops. It seems like a crazy game design decision to suddenly do a 180 on such mechanics interacting.

[Valase]

14 minutes ago, KrazJoe said:

As mentioned somewhere else in the forum by someone else.

This is mainly a problem in multiplayer where Winona players who are not the host are just resource sink without return. This is especially problematic in public server where Winona will likely be auto ban as she will sink resource and take up space with unusable structures that can be destroyed.

may I say that this is a little bit far-fetched, I don't think that she would be an auto ban, but also I don't think that a Winona would just make 6 catapults(~90 rocks) and a generator and go away forever nor give no return. But on the same note I don't know how Wurt is welcomed in a public server (another resource sink gal).

[chirsg]

1 minute ago, chaosmonkey said:

nobody else eating warly foods

"I was a sous chef. It's my job to make delicious foods. I trained years in culinary school to make this a reality. Us Michelin star chefs are inventive with dishes we come up with using ingredients we have access to in order to make the most delicious recipes we can. What do you mean you want to have some? No. It's only for me. Do you really think I trained all these years to feed others? Don't be ridiculous"

Having said that. Winona gets a minigame. I think Warly should get a minigame for his skill tree too which has to do with cooking. 

[ZeRoboButler]

8 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

If this is the way Klei wants to go that's fine. Then they should be consistent about it.

I believe in the dev stream they did say that they wanted to move away from other characters using others perks so blatantly, so one could assume that moving forward this will probably be done for other characters. In winnona's case it makes sense that she should be the one who knows how to operate her machinery and others are not, I would hope though that they would try to add more positive character interactions to encourage combos.

I would be surprised if they went that route with warly though, Ideally a character should have more in their kit that inherently makes you want to play them more, rather then just padlocking stuff when they are not there. I personally don't care that much either way, im just gonna enjoy playing the character since when I pick that character I have no intention of switching anyway.   

[KrazJoe]

I think one of the debatable point is that Winona uses shared resources, while other characters' specific skills often sink their special generated resources, like Willow's ember, Wortox's soul, Wendy's mourning glory.

In addition, other characters have extra means to generate those resources they need, like Webber with silk.

At the moment, Winona does not have unique way to generate rocks, and this becomes a burden to the coop.

Often time, this forum is filled with more experienced players, it is easy to forget how difficult the game may be for newer players and all resources are valuable.

[cybers2001]

Wormwood should be the only character that can reset bramble traps. I mean isn't a bramble trap panic room basically the same as a catapult panic room?

Wormwood's living logs should also behave differently. Like maybe they yell at other players and refuse to be used as crafting ingredients if not by a Wormwood.

Hell, why even have the whole bottom left of Wormwood's skill tree at all? Being able to craft plants that can be used by other players just begs for him to become a swap character.

[GreenBowers]

12 minutes ago, KrazJoe said:

I think one of the debatable point is that Winona uses shared resources, while other characters' specific skills often sink their special generated resources, like Willow's ember, Wortox's soul, Wendy's mourning glory.

In addition, other characters have extra means to generate those resources they need, like Webber with silk.

At the moment, Winona does not have unique way to generate rocks, and this becomes a burden to the coop.

New early game gadget, mining drill. Sets up a station on some rocky turf to 'mine rocks' in order to fund future crafts and structures? 

13 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Wormwood should be the only character that can reset bramble traps. I mean isn't a bramble trap panic room basically the same as a catapult panic room?

Wormwood's living logs should also behave differently. Like maybe they yell at other players and refuse to be used as crafting ingredients if not by a Wormwood.

Hell, why even have the whole bottom left of Wormwood's skill tree at all? Being able to craft plants that can be used by other players just begs for him to become a swap character.

Because wormwood has skills on his tree that are character specific like blooming and mushrooms and plant creature summons, Winona's tree is only her structures and doesn't affect any of her other character gimmicks, so the structures have to be her character gimmick.

[Dr. Safety]

16 minutes ago, KrazJoe said:

I think one of the debatable point is that Winona uses shared resources, while other characters' specific skills often sink their special generated resources, like Willow's ember, Wortox's soul, Wendy's mourning glory.

In addition, other characters have extra means to generate those resources they need, like Webber with silk.

At the moment, Winona does not have unique way to generate rocks, and this becomes a burden to the coop.

Often time, this forum is filled with more experienced players, it is easy to forget how difficult the game may be for newer players and all resources are valuable.

If they give her the thumper, she can rush lunar island (and set up a telebrella spot there if she has it unlocked by this point) to get stone fruit bushes and easily mass produce filler and stone. I've been rushing lunar on Winona pretty much every server I've played as, even my solo world, just for the easy access to a large amount of stone. Thumper would make this even better

[GreenBowers]

Thats a very good point, a thumper would help with cracking open a bunch of stone fruit. I never thought about how good that would be xd

[Gameplayer143]

I honestly never really thought about certain characters being resource intensive for their special ability where it bothers other players in the server until now. Are there other characters besides Winona and Wurt that have this problem where their abilities might hog up resources in a server (though with Wurt she can just hire merms to cut down trees and get Merm King to get more tentacle spots, it's mainly the pig skin and grass for rope I'd imagine is the main issue here)

There's characters like Wickerbottom (reeds, living logs for books and bookcase) and Wormwood (manure, and rot for compost wrap) that might hog certain resources, but for those two, people are likely more willing to give them those things with the expectation it'll pay back in return, given their support capabilities. Also with the exception of living logs and maybe rot, those resources aren't really that needed day to day for most players vs pigskin, grass or rocks.

[chaosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, Gameplayer143 said:

There's characters like Wickerbottom (reeds, living logs for books and bookcase) 

Just taking this one example -- wickerbottom doing that ties up resources yes, but she can use those to generate more resources like twigs/grass/etc that will persist on the server even when she's not there. Similar to wormwood and growing tons of food.

[Dr. Safety]

Just now, Gameplayer143 said:

I honestly never really thought about certain characters being resource intensive for their special ability where it bothers other players in the server until now. Are there other characters besides Winona and Wurt that have this problem where their abilities might hog up resources in a server (though with Wurt she can just hire merms to cut down trees and get Merm King to get more tentacle spots, it's mainly the pig skin and grass for rope I'd imagine is the main issue here)

There's characters like Wickerbottom (reeds, living logs for books and bookcase) and Wormwood (manure, and rot for compost wrap) that might hog certain resources, but for those two, people are likely more willing to give them those things with the expectation it'll pay back in return, given their support capabilities. Also with the exception of living logs and maybe rot, those resources aren't really that needed day to day for most players vs pigskin, grass or rocks.

Walter and Wolfgang fight over marble, since it is the best mass-produced ammo for Walter and the most efficient dumbbell for Wolfgang while both can make good use of marble suits. No one else really needs it that desperately though so it isn't as intrusive as needing lots of stone.

gonna pretend like Wagstaff wouldn't be a pigskin hog if added to the game, where pigskin is such a scarce yet important resource, because I really want him added to the game