Walter is still an uninteresting character

[abrocator]

My impression of late game Walter:

• Fast slingshot, long range
• Special slingshot attack/side ammo
• A lot, lot of ammo types
  • But mainly about: damage, AOE, slowdown
• Fast Woby but still slightly slower than maxed out beefalo
  • Also takes a long time to max out
• Also ammo economy is great now

I think the progression is very boring. He’s been given items that amount to the typical quasi-fetch quest: gather materials in increasing order of difficulty, from pig skin to ruins gear to post-rift items. The reward for that is not an awesome weapon like the one Wigfrid gets for unlocking moon storms. You get to use your slingshot a bit better.  A great slowdown round.  A slingshot frame with infinite ammo capacity.  If you care about that.

I don’t think characters should aspire to these fetch quests. You just end up going to the same places. One time to get a slingshot frame for Walter. Another time to get a dumbbell for Wolfgang.

I am fine with Wigfrid’s items since they are so polarized.  All of them are simple enough to get, not spread out all over the place. And then there’s the moonstorm item which is much more difficult. Also her items are thematic. (How is a Ruins farmer hat thematic?)

I aspired to unlock Wigfrid’s weapon for the post-rift world. Exciting stuff. What’s there to be excited about Walter?

You get the privilege of farming ammo and then never reloading your slingshot for X years?

Walter just seems like a character where the theme came first and the playability was modeled after that.

The quasi-fetch quest also relates to another point: it would be fine if Walter was not a post-rift kind of character. All these new items that require post-rift stuff might not be needed. It would be fine to have characters that are just not tuned for that world. Just like there are characters that are better for the early and the late game.

And if characters don’t need to be post-rifts? Then we don’t need so many of them to have all this character-specific item bloat. Can’t a character just be good for fighting, travelling, utility, the Ocean (?), or whatever else?

I would much rather have a character like Walter which has an identity and a niche for parts of the game but maybe not all of them. Rather than to have a character with nothing going for them other than to do a miniquest about building their slingshot, telling campsite stories, and making tents. And hugging trees.

[Torpeda]

I think Slingshotsmith is a fantastic concept, but it doesn’t seem to work.
DST is a simple game, there’s not many mechanics regarding combat. Once you get BiS items, there’s no point to gather them ever again unless your weapon gets destroyed or you get increased ammo slot perk. This makes earlier perks just point sinks
Also, it would make more sense if Trusty Slingshot was upgradeable rather than its components changeable, although probably it wouldn’t be that cool.

Slingshotsmith would work really well as an upgrade weapon system and was given baseline.
I know the weapon is balanced around the fact that it doesn’t put Walter in danger and that Walter doesn’t have to move much when someone else is tanking the damage, but the miniscule buffs it provides feel more like basic improvement to his Slingshot.
Considering Walter’s struggle with Sanity when being hurt, I think the reward of getting your Slingshot improved for fighting ever so harder enemies would make it a great and rewarding quest-like experience that is in Walter’s character.

Woby’s skills are very poorly designed. The station is really expensive and doesn’t feel thematic. Build, train Woby and forget station.
Giving more crafts to a character is not a golden remedy to make a character more interesting. Going back every time you want to check progress or change currently chosen training is just a bad design for a character that was supposed to be wandering, exploring and rather mobile.
The amount of time you need to invest to get those perks completed is tremendous.
After many, many hours of playing I was able to complete only Agility, Digging and Fetching Training. Agility is ok I guess, but Fetching and Digging is lackluster.
I could see a new skill tree branch being added “Commands” or “Special Training” that would allow Woby to act as Lazy Forager or Shovel/Pitchfork/Gardening Hoe, or Navigadget. Other character’s perks are already inspired by other already existing items within the game.
I could also see Endurance Training being added, increasing Woby’s Hunger and/or decreasing Woby’s Hunger Drain.

When I was thinking about Walter regarding his ammo, I would never think we would get this many. I was thinking that Klei would expand on gem ammo concept a little, but Walter now feels a little bit bloated.
IMO he needed just 2 single target ammo’s: one to bring it to Dark Sword level and one to deal with post-rift content. AoE rounds are ok, they’re nice to have sometimes, yet they don’t feel necessary.
Utility rounds are OP, because those two additional slows we get from the skill tree stack. I think it would be best if we got different effects, tho.

I’m also afraid that Walter as a character was reduced just to his Slingshot. We got 16 Slingshot-related perks total and 6 for Woby. I know a lot of Walter players were excited for his new skill tree, because in his design they saw limitless possibilities, but unfortunately Walter is now a character with a poorest and most pigeonholed skill tree out there.

I really can’t believe there was no space for any survival perks for our beloved scout character.
Even as simple as Woodie’s “Quick Picker”, “Forager” perk giving chance to get additional materials from plants that were not planted by a player, “Fire Striker” reducing the cost of creating a Campfire or heck, giving an additional Charcoal or even making your campfires to not ignite nearby objects would be something, “Pinetree Pioneer” increasing the speed of planting trees or allowing Walter to talk to Saplings to increase the speed of their growth, “Happy Camper” increasing the uses of Camper’s Tent or allowing Walter to repair it with Sewing Kit, etc.
Literally anything other than his Slingshot. Please, Klei, considering the low amount of perks he got, just add some trivial survival perks for those of us wanderers .

Some people on these forums suggested giving Walter an option to create personal Drying Racks which I agree would be an awesome idea. Maybe a tent could be reconfigured to work as Drying Rack when used on a campfire to allow besmoking of food, maybe Camper’s Tent could be used on Endothermic Fire to turn it into Siesta Lean-to or maybe create a Palm Leaf Hut effect from SW when Camper’s Tent is placed within a radius of 2.5 tiles from 5 or more trees.

I really hope, Klei gonna change Walter’s skill tree even if it means releasing it another date.
I love Klei and love this game, but Walter’s skill tree just doesn’t seem well-thought-out, focuses too much on his Slingshot and doesn't do justice to Walter as a Scout.

[Mysterious box]

23 hours ago, abrocator said:

My impression of late game Walter:

• Fast slingshot, long range
• Special slingshot attack/side ammo
• A lot, lot of ammo types
  • But mainly about: damage, AOE, slowdown
• Fast Woby but still slightly slower than maxed out beefalo
  • Also takes a long time to max out
• Also ammo economy is great now

I think the progression is very boring. He’s been given items that amount to the typical quasi-fetch quest: gather materials in increasing order of difficulty, from pig skin to ruins gear to post-rift items. The reward for that is not an awesome weapon like the one Wigfrid gets for unlocking moon storms. You get to use your slingshot a bit better.  A great slowdown round.  A slingshot frame with infinite ammo capacity.  If you care about that.

I don’t think characters should aspire to these fetch quests. You just end up going to the same places. One time to get a slingshot frame for Walter. Another time to get a dumbbell for Wolfgang.

I am fine with Wigfrid’s items since they are so polarized.  All of them are simple enough to get, not spread out all over the place. And then there’s the moonstorm item which is much more difficult. Also her items are thematic. (How is a Ruins farmer hat thematic?)

I aspired to unlock Wigfrid’s weapon for the post-rift world. Exciting stuff. What’s there to be excited about Walter?

You get the privilege of farming ammo and then never reloading your slingshot for X years?

Walter just seems like a character where the theme came first and the playability was modeled after that.

The quasi-fetch quest also relates to another point: it would be fine if Walter was not a post-rift kind of character. All these new items that require post-rift stuff might not be needed. It would be fine to have characters that are just not tuned for that world. Just like there are characters that are better for the early and the late game.

And if characters don’t need to be post-rifts? Then we don’t need so many of them to have all this character-specific item bloat. Can’t a character just be good for fighting, travelling, utility, the Ocean (?), or whatever else?

I would much rather have a character like Walter which has an identity and a niche for parts of the game but maybe not all of them. Rather than to have a character with nothing going for them other than to do a miniquest about building their slingshot, telling campsite stories, and making tents. And hugging trees.

Yeah I can't help but agree it feels like his post rift upgrade short of the storage and icker don’t feel like post rift upgrades.

Going into the end game to learn a charge shot and get a 17% faster fire rate feels excessive.

As for the icker rounds and the infinite storage it feels like they're missing a in-between option as honey rounds are a bit too short but icker rounds while they feel justified considering their duration feel like a final evolution to a mid game option.

And while the thulecite slingshot gives you 120 ammo between 2 slots I wish there was a in-between for 120 to infinite.

[Jakepeng99]

Walter White.

[Dandefender]

4 hours ago, Torpeda said:

but unfortunately Walter is now a character with a poorest and most pigeonholed skill tree out there.

I think his skill tree is now worse than Wilson's. No joke.

If we compare the what's in the table, the precedents, the character and the experience upgrade...Wilson at least receives much more vs what he originally had.

 

Walter is the (unnintentionally) worst character in the game, and the skill tree does not make up for that.

 

[Catuna_]

On 11/26/2024 at 6:01 PM, abrocator said:

Fast Woby but still slightly slower than maxed out beefalo

This is untrue, Woby can reach up to 13 speed. This is faster than a Rider beefalo equipped with a Glossamer saddle (8 * 1.55 = 12.4).
However I do agree that Woby is still not better than a beefalo.

On 11/26/2024 at 6:01 PM, abrocator said:

I think the progression is very boring. He’s been given items that amount to the typical quasi-fetch quest: gather materials in increasing order of difficulty, from pig skin to ruins gear to post-rift items. The reward for that is not an awesome weapon like the one Wigfrid gets for unlocking moon storms. You get to use your slingshot a bit better.  A great slowdown round.  A slingshot frame with infinite ammo capacity.  If you care about that.

From what I've been playing I quite disagree and I think that it flows great, it follows the standard progression of items in a way that encourages exploration as the resources required are gathered from very different biomes, I like the side-grade nature of the elastispacer upgrade and the thulecite upgrade as it means that there's not just one correct choice as you defeat CC. Walter's always been a character designed around this type of progression with his crafts being prototype-able rather than spawning knowing their recipes, I think that this is a lot of fun compared to a lot of reworked/skill tree characters who spawn being at/close to their peak. I do wish there were more band and frame upgrades, though.

5 hours ago, Torpeda said:

I’m also afraid that Walter as a character was reduced just to his Slingshot. We got 16 Slingshot-related perks total and 6 for Woby. I know a lot of Walter players were excited for his new skill tree, because in his design they saw limitless possibilities, but unfortunately Walter is now a character with a poorest and most pigeonholed skill tree out there.

On 11/26/2024 at 6:01 PM, abrocator said:

I would much rather have a character like Walter which has an identity and a niche for parts of the game but maybe not all of them. Rather than to have a character with nothing going for them other than to do a miniquest about building their slingshot, telling campsite stories, and making tents. And hugging trees.

This seems like a bit of a flat view, Walter's slingshot being better means that you get to be able to experience breaking combat in a way as you're able to essentially avoid all danger with Woby/Beefalo and his new slowing rounds, while dealing decent (but not better than melee) damage. I think that this can really simplify some boss fights, such as Celestial champion's phase 3 especially for lesser experienced players.
I think that overall, some people don't understand that Walter's skill tree is not going to completely rework him in a way like Willow's did. Walter is already an established character, and he's given a lot of perks relating to his theme as a boy scout and that revolves around quality of life and interacting with things differently, not losing sanity from anything and being able to attack enemies far out of their attack range are/were both something quite new. So with Walter as a character established, the skill tree instead aims to fix and/or improve what he lacked, and in that case it's the slingshot which was notoriously bad and Woby who although was considered quite a good perk before (and a very good girl), didn't really have much appeal past the 9 slots of inventory slots that the player just kinda always had available especially compared to a beefalo, giving her the title of "extra chester".
That being said, I think that if you didn't like Walter before, I have my doubts that you'd like Walter now.

5 hours ago, Torpeda said:

I really can’t believe there was no space for any survival perks for our beloved scout character.
Even as simple as Woodie’s “Quick Picker”, “Forager” perk giving chance to get additional materials from plants that were not planted by a player, “Fire Striker” reducing the cost of creating a Campfire or heck, giving an additional Charcoal or even making your campfires to not ignite nearby objects would be something, “Pinetree Pioneer” increasing the speed of planting trees or allowing Walter to talk to Saplings to increase the speed of their growth, “Happy Camper” increasing the uses of Camper’s Tent or allowing Walter to repair it with Sewing Kit, etc.

true....

5 hours ago, Torpeda said:

Woby’s skills are very poorly designed. The station is really expensive and doesn’t feel thematic. Build, train Woby and forget station.
Giving more crafts to a character is not a golden remedy to make a character more interesting. Going back every time you want to check progress or change currently chosen training is just a bad design for a character that was supposed to be wandering, exploring and rather mobile.
The amount of time you need to invest to get those perks completed is tremendous.

A part of this problem which I agree with would be easily remedied by just making the training station portable, by either making it something like a book or just a portable structure.
Training can be good! It just needs to be more player-involved; something like the agility perk has the right idea, but it's just a stat buff, one that really doesn't make Woby interesting in any way. Let us command her to do things as we explore, picking up things and digging things up could just not have a chance to fail, as that is rather boring, why not just make the badges decrease the cooldown?  I think that bravery and support need to be merged, or... just thrown out all together. They're not interesting, and training them requires taking an obscene amount of damage all without getting bucked. Klei already stated that they're working on this, and I do have high hopes that it'll be good.
That being said, I love that you get all the first badges from the first perk, it's really nice to not have to pick pointless filler.
 

[Balter]

Good. leave it at that.

Although entertaining play’s Initial vision of Walter was off, it garnered a fair amount of people into that own play style.

Why risk totally changing him in a way that can compromise the already loyal fans of him in favor of new uncertain acceptance in unfamiliar territories?

 

Klei knows exactly what they are doing and have the ability to see the bigger picture.