Wendy's Skill Tree: Addressing Issues with Boss Fights and Shadow Creatures

[renamoe]

Hi everyone,

I watched the replay of today's livestream. First of all, I want to thank Klei for continuing to stream even during the Thanksgiving holiday season.

However, I have some concerns about the recent changes to Wendy, even though the developers mentioned that it's still unfinished and further modifications will be made. The main drawbacks I see with Wendy are in boss fights and dealing with Shadow Creatures (not only the ones that spawn when sanity is low but also those that appear periodically in the caves).

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First, there are several skills aimed at helping Abigail survive longer in fights, especially boss battles, but I don't see their usefulness.

• For example, Abigail can gain an additional 600 temporary health, but this doesn't increase her maximum health cap. I wonder how this is useful because she can't withstand multiple attacks from a boss; she'll die regardless of how much temporary health she has.

• There's a new skill that allows Abigail's maximum health to increase from 150 to 600 using a new elixir after she dies. But if Abigail dies the first time, how can I keep her alive during the second attempt? She'll likely die again for the same reasons.

• Logically, this doesn't solve the problem of Abigail dying easily in boss fights. Personally, I think a skill that allows Wendy and Abigail to share health and armor would be a better solution.

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Second, regarding Shadow Creatures:

• The developers explained that they added the grave-related skills to help new players obtain Nightmare Fuel more easily (since they can get it from Dark Flowers).

• However, for Wendy players, obtaining Nightmare Fuel is already straightforward—you can go into the caves and defeat Splumonkeys during their raids.

• I don't see the need to spend skill points to farm Nightmare Fuel when it's already accessible.

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Third, the skill that allows deceased players to keep attacking monsters for a short while feels ironic:

• Why focus on a mechanic that benefits players after they die? If someone dies once, they might die again, regardless of the reason.

• It almost feels like Wendy is incentivizing players to die, which doesn't make much sense and doesn't enhance the gameplay experience.

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In summary, it seems the designers are not addressing the key issue of Abigail struggling in boss fights, or perhaps they're approaching it the wrong way.

• We should help everyone survive. When fighting bosses, we want Abigail to survive; when fighting Shadow Creatures, we want Wendy to perform better; and when assisting others, we want them to survive rather than being ghosts that can still attack.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I hope these concerns can be considered in future updates to make Wendy even better.

[WenericMember]

Vengeful ghost isn't meant to be good.

It's meant to be a fun perk that has cool theming, which it does well.

Second. The thing your missing is the Team Spirit Skills, because they're currently undertuned. The idea is to use the Dodge and attack at commands to position Abigail throughout the fight. The bonus HP gives a greater margin of error in the event you fail to position her properly, while the new potion allows her to recover to fighting condition within a reasonable time frame  in combat.

The issue is the team spirit skills are currently too cumbersome to easily fit into Wendy's combat style, which involves keeping aggro of Abigail.

Finally, not everyone feels confident enough to find/go into the ruins, for example, and caves are disabled by default, and there's many crafts that require nightmare fuel, even without the ruins through the magic tab. That said graves do need additional utility.

[PunkShark]

Gestalt Abigail is your answer to boss killing with Abigail. Instead of an AOE crowd control tank she swoops in like a bullet, she seeks enemies when doing so. When not attacking she keeps herself away from harm and doesn't take aggro when doing so nor does she take dmg while attacking. You can use both regular and affinity elixirs at the same time for example the nostrum elixir together with a planar one. If this isn't a boss killing machine, then idk what is.

[purelove]

In fact, I heard from players who watched the producer during the broadcast, and according to them, the producer said on the broadcast that he hoped to make Wendy's players safe through their first winter.

This is probably why they simply gave up on adding late power, in fact I think it's possible to make both a hard, high-power tree and an easy, low-difficulty tree.

In fact, if you do not improve Wendy's poor control of sanity, still can not be a good way to help novice players to deal with shadow monsters, I imagine that you can get cheap light source, high return to sanity speed, and lighting the ultimate skill, one of which can protect a part of the damage received by the novice, of course, including Wendy and Abigail.

And another skill tree branch, because Wendy's skilled players because of the large base of the same many reasons, please give a late can play to cope with, the other side of the stronger, I think the number of Wendy's players, should be careful thinking, rather than do addition and subtraction, completely abandon some of the functions

Moreover, I think that the powerful ability to make games is not only their own creative ideas, individual innovation may reach ten times and a hundred times that of ordinary people, but if you can adopt your audience of 100,000 people, one tenth of each person's ideas, the producer will get thousands of times the innovation of ordinary people, and the truly powerful people are not brave people who fight alone. A strong person is one who can judge right from wrong and accept the opinions of others

[WenericMember]

3 minutes ago, purelove said:

In fact, I heard from players who watched the producer during the broadcast, and according to them, the producer said on the broadcast that he hoped to make Wendy's players safe through their first winter.

This is probably why they simply gave up on adding late power, in fact I think it's possible to make both a hard, high-power tree and an easy, low-difficulty tree.

In fact, if you do not improve Wendy's poor control of sanity, still can not be a good way to help novice players to deal with shadow monsters, I imagine that you can get cheap light source, high return to sanity speed, and lighting the ultimate skill, one of which can protect a part of the damage received by the novice, of course, including Wendy and Abigail.

And another skill tree branch, because Wendy's skilled players because of the large base of the same many reasons, please give a late can play to cope with, the other side of the stronger, I think the number of Wendy's players, should be careful thinking, rather than do addition and subtraction, completely abandon some of the functions

Moreover, I think that the powerful ability to make games is not only their own creative ideas, individual innovation may reach ten times and a hundred times that of ordinary people, but if you can adopt your audience of 100,000 people, one tenth of each person's ideas, the producer will get thousands of times the innovation of ordinary people, and the truly powerful people are not brave people who fight alone. A strong person is one who can judge right from wrong and accept the opinions of others

I watched the whole thing to make the notes and don't recall that being ever said.

I think it was briefly mentioned that specifically the Flower Shroud was designed to allow Wendy to safely avoid combat, using deerclops as an example but that's it. Not the entire skill tree. I believe they also recognized that wasn't how people invested played Wendy.

[purelove]

4 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I watched the whole thing to make the notes and don't recall that being ever said.

I think it was briefly mentioned that specifically the Flower Shroud was designed to allow Wendy to safely avoid combat, using deerclops as an example but that's it. Not the entire skill tree.

I see.

That was my mistake, so to sum it up, what does the producer have in mind for Wendy's entire skill tree, and is it possible to retain both the post-production experience and the pre-production experience, although I think the pre-production is perfectly adequate

9 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I watched the whole thing to make the notes and don't recall that being ever said.

I think it was briefly mentioned that specifically the Flower Shroud was designed to allow Wendy to safely avoid combat, using deerclops as an example but that's it. Not the entire skill tree. I believe they also recognized that wasn't how people invested played Wendy.

I found the tape and I'm going to watch it now

[WenericMember]

7 minutes ago, purelove said:

I see.

That was my mistake, so to sum it up, what does the producer have in mind for Wendy's entire skill tree, and is it possible to retain both the post-production experience and the pre-production experience, although I think the pre-production is perfectly adequate

I've listed most things in my cliff notes post but the tldr is:

• The intentionally undertuned Wendy's tree at launch, but by their own admission went too far
• They admit aspects of Wendy's tree, such as the potion line, was also underdeveloped.
• The flower shroud was specifically designed to appeal to casual players
• Lunar Abigail is designed as a "sniper" to attack single targets from a range
• Vengeful Spirit is a for fun perk, with limited practical application.
• Graveyard skills are designed to create a "haven" of sorts.
• Shadow Branch was a reference to original Don't Starve
• The tree as a whole was designed to be weaker than other characters, as Wendy is a "strong" survivor.

Anything beyond that is to varying extents guesswork AFAIK. So for most of the perks, the intended experience is the same, just more useful, except for the flower shroud.

[purelove]

13 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I've listed most things in my cliff notes post but the tldr is:

• The intentionally undertuned Wendy's tree at launch, but by their own admission went too far
• They admit aspects of Wendy's tree, such as the potion line, was also underdeveloped.
• The flower shroud was specifically designed to appeal to casual players
• Lunar Abigail is designed as a "sniper" to attack single targets from a range
• Vengeful Spirit is a for fun perk, with limited practical application.
• Graveyard skills are designed to create a "haven" of sorts.
• Shadow Branch was a reference to original Don't Starve
• The tree as a whole was designed to be weaker than other characters, as Wendy is a "strong" survivor.

Anything beyond that is to varying extents guesswork AFAIK. So for most of the perks, the intended experience is the same, just more useful, except for the flower shroud.

ok, I read part of the summary, and now it is getting better, but there are still some problems:

1. Dealing with Shadow Monster Wendy's intractable flaws.
2. Can the ai really guarantee that when Wendy is operating normally to avoid the monster, it will not suddenly rush up and be beaten?
3. If I could give her the ability to fit Dreadstone's gear as a combat character.
4. When Abigail gives Wendy more damage, will it cause the tame cow to break through higher damage, or will it be reversed so that the tame cow does not gain more damage, and if it does, it should be given more ability?

And in terms of current capabilities, there are still many shortcomings, no added functionality, as a pure combat role.

[Cassielu]

12 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

The tree as a whole was designed to be weaker than other characters, as Wendy is a "strong" survivor.

I can't believe they still hold that opinion, even though the entire community has long agreed that Wendy is kind of underpowered after all the other characters have been buffed and environmental changed.

[WenericMember]

9 minutes ago, purelove said:

ok, I read part of the summary, and now it is getting better, but there are still some problems:

1. Dealing with Shadow Monster Wendy's intractable flaws.
2. Can the ai really guarantee that when Wendy is operating normally to avoid the monster, it will not suddenly rush up and be beaten?
3. If I could give her the ability to fit Dreadstone's gear as a combat character.
4. When Abigail gives Wendy more damage, will it cause theI  tame cow to break through higher damage, or will it be reversed so that the tame cow does not gain more damage, and if it does, it should be given more ability?

And in terms of current capabilities, there are still many shortcomings, no added functionality, as a pure combat role.

1. Sisturn II further lowers Wendy's sanity reduction. She's not designed to ever encounter shadow creatures
2. I don't know enough to say, but if it does happen that's what the bonus HP and potion are fore.
3. I can't understand what you're saying here. If you're talking about Abigail with armour, i don't think they want to do that because with her other tools it would maker her impossible to kill.
4. There has been no mention of beefalo changes.
5. They have added haunt, and hopefully the skills to replace dark petals are utility focused.

9 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

I can't believe they still hold that opinion, even though the entire community has long agreed that Wendy is kind of underpowered after all the other characters have been buffed and environmental changed.

That specific part is from the original update post, they didn't mention it specifically on stream so that opinion was as of 7 days ago and may have changed. Considering how much they've buffed her tree, I'd say they've at least loosened up that opinion

For non-combat applications, I reccommend creating/promoting suggestions that improve those aspects. Some of mine are:

and

 

[WenericMember]

3 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

Hence why my fingers are crossed that they consider my suggestion as potentially one of her new upcoming skills. Sure, Team Spirit I could simply be tweaked, but might as well go for something conceptually cool, at least in my opinion. 

Plus, in terms of intended purpose, "Escape" is supposed to be a means for Abigail to quickly back out a risky situation from my guess (essentially an improved version of simply unsummoning her, and "Attack at" is meant to be a charge/dash attack for her or a means to make her target a specific creature, so really there's yet to be a skill officially dedicated to making her kite better (or at least one that isn't affinity-locked).

I think your suggestion would probably alter gameplay a bit too much for their taste, as I disagree about the use of "escape"

Escape is designed to temporarily have Abigail immune to damage and auto return to the fight. Thus, it's for extended combo attacks like the shadow pieces or CC.

[purelove]

15 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

1. Sisturn II further lowers Wendy's sanity reduction. She's not designed to ever encounter shadow creatures
2. I don't know enough to say, but if it does happen that's what the bonus HP and potion are fore.
3. I can't understand what you're saying here. If you're talking about Abigail with armour, i don't think they want to do that because with her other tools it would maker her impossible to kill.
4. There has been no mention of beefalo changes.
5. They have added haunt, and hopefully the skills to replace dark petals are utility focused.

That specific part is from the original update post, they didn't mention it specifically on stream so that opinion was as of 7 days ago and may have changed. Considering how much they've buffed her tree, I'd say they've at least loosened up that opinion

I mean, Wendy penalizes some equipment more than others, isn't very practical, and a lot of things don't work with her from early to middle, like Dreadstone.

 In fact, being strong against the shadows, in contrast to being slow to consume the mind, still made Dreadstone's equipment not very useful,

because she had trouble dealing with the shadows, and perhaps should try to give only a small boost in the early stages, then give a sense of a stronger development operation, and give the strength to deal with the shadows in the middle and late stages

[WenericMember]

1 minute ago, Fitzee said:

Alter gameplay in comparison to what, exactly? I feel like there are enough cases where gameplay is already being altered by a large margin. And do you have an exact grasp of what their "taste" is? 

Look, until I am directly told by Klei that they are not interested in my suggestion, I refuse to give up. I see them be transparent to other people often enough; why they aren't with me I have no idea, but I'm determined until something happens.

Go for it, i'm not objecting to it, I just have my doubts.

I just think being able to exactly control Abigail's position would be incredibly broken, as Abigail has an actual attack range & AOE, unlike most survivors. 

There would be limited reason to Use Wendy other than speeding up the kill.

Like, y'know how the flower shroud was broken, because controlling A player with 600hp and regen was OP? That, but Again.

[WenericMember]

6 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

I'm afraid I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to say. 

In any case, you actually think it would be "broken"? Lock it behind other skills, lock it behind a padlock with a prerequisite, add a downside/restriction to it for all I care (even though I thought being unable to access your inventory and such would be enough).

I'm sorry for being annoying about this for the past week or so, but I just want an answer and I'll stop; otherwise I'm going to continue, just like what everyone else is doing. 

Again, go ahead and continue promoting it, it's just my personal opinion, and others will disagree.

If you can manually control Abigail, The optimal strategy ceases to become "I should attack in tandem with Abigail & Wendy" and becomes, "I should attack with Abigail." Abigail can regen, and dying with her has no significant consequence, because you can just immediately resummon her. So against any challenge you aren't confident you can beat on your own, the solution becomes

-> Hide Wendy in the corner

-> Use the skill

-> Attack with Abigail

-> When Abigail Dies, Resummon

-> Attack with Abigail

-> Repeat

Because why risk fighting with Wendy and dying with whatever consequences, when you can fight with Abigail solo and suffer no consequence. It'd be slow, but pretty much risk free in many, many cases.

[WenericMember]

Just now, Fitzee said:

And you choose to tell me this now, when it's likely too late for me to make changes before they see it?

Unbelievable. 

Since my chance is probably ruined now, can you at least engage with me in discussing how to balance it?

tbh the problem only occurred to me today. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't treat me as if I was intentionally sabotaging you.

[WenericMember]

It's kinda hard to conceptualize how balance it bc its all theory, but some potential ways are:

Maybe by capping the distance Abigail can be from Wendy before attacking, but maybe that would make kiting Awkward?

Alternatively, it could be a skill that requires at least tiers 3 from blessed sisturn &  Team spirit, only working while Abigail is under the effects of overheal, but that might make it to hard to maintain.

Alternatively, any other trigger which requires it to be reset out of combat after Abigail's death could work.

6 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

Whatever.

You literally just insinuated I was intentionally sabotaging you for reasons. I'm not exactly happy with you insulting me like that and dismissing me taking issue with it.

 

[WenericMember]

19 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

I was moreso thinking it could only be done without overhealing. Since you insist the ability would be powerful to do in general, it would enforce you to be good at controlling her, since she's unable to tank in comparison.

whatever

Edit because my previous response was needlessly unconstructive:

Look I get you're invested in your idea and want it to do well, But you insulted me and seem to care more about your idea and guilt tripping me into giving feedback than the fact you baselessly insulted me.

Good luck getting your idea in the game, but I don't feel the need to give my feedback to you when the response I get is accusations of sabotage.

[Jason]

7 hours ago, WenericMember said:

I've listed most things in my cliff notes post but the tldr is:

• The tree as a whole was designed to be weaker than other characters, as Wendy is a "strong" survivor.

 

7 hours ago, Cassielu said:

I can't believe they still hold that opinion, even though the entire community has long agreed that Wendy is kind of underpowered after all the other characters have been buffed and environmental changed.

I should address this, this was not something I think we said in the stream, that the tree was designed weak because she was strong. If it was understood that way, then I didn't explain that well.

I did say earlier that Wendy was "undertuned because she is strong". Tuning and design are different categories to me. We are aware Wendy has a harder time late game with bosses. The strength I was talking about is how good Abigail is in the early game. Many of the challenges of late game are ones you choose to do. We have given a number of things to help there. It's very likely they still need tuning. 

She was also under-tuned because of the notion that it's harder to take things away than to give them. It's just a general idea I fall back on too hard sometimes. 

[Jakepeng99]

I believe Wendy is already good right now in terms of strength.

[Mike23Ua]

No, how about we just… we just not completely obliterate the games cast of characters defining downsides?

Downsides can be fun to play with too.. unfortunately the most popular decision is going to be the outcome that determines rather those downsides stay or get scrubbed out of existence.

[arubaro]

I think she got many stuff to increase her survival in fights. Fighting a couple of bosses with -25% damage in more than fair for a character tha trivialize such ammount of fights. Other characters with less power have to deal daily with a drawback

[Mike23Ua]

19 minutes ago, arubaro said:

I think she got many stuff to increase her survival in fights. Fighting a couple of bosses with -25% damage in more than fair for a character tha trivialize such ammount of fights. Other characters with less power have to deal daily with a drawback

That’s not exactly the truth anymore. One of the drawbacks I actually enjoyed about Wortox is getting completely removed in his upcoming update.

[IAmAFurrz]

i feel if they had a potion so that a set number of hits abi takes will be shared with wendy's health it can work, something like 'shared pain' (ofc when the attack hits abi then transfers to wendy, it'd need to be a damage calculation before armor is taken into consideration, if not wendy will take unprotected mob level damage)

9 hours ago, WenericMember said:

Second. The thing your missing is the Team Spirit Skills, because they're currently undertuned. The idea is to use the Dodge and attack at commands to position Abigail throughout the fight. The bonus HP gives a greater margin of error in the event you fail to position her properly, while the new potion allows her to recover to fighting condition within a reasonable time frame  in combat.

sad that attack at doesnt make abi stay where you command her to stay at (if there is no mob there i mean), cuz that'd actually allow you to strategize and plan her positioning a bit away (and occassionally run in for a gestalt attack or attack for the vex effect), or somewhere with mobs she needs to deal with

 

[IAmAFurrz]

58 minutes ago, Jason said:

Many of the challenges of late game are ones you choose to do. We have given a number of things to help there. It's very likely they still need tuning. 

may i ask, which skill it is that was intended to fill in this role?

[Mike23Ua]

Just now, SSneaky said:

<20 souls limit?

No, having Pigmen and Catcoon be hostile towards him.

this prevented Wortox from being able to hire Pigmen to help him chop entire forests which meant Wortox had to either rely on other players OR find more Unconventional methods to do the work other players did with Pigs.

Pigs can be hired for combat purposes too and equipped with armor to stay alive longer.

Pair that with a character who I personally felt was already pretty OP with just his 20 souls cap, he now can have way more souls AND the Pigmen.

Only blind man wouldn’t be able to see how much Powercreep (Possibly by popular other country character workshop mods) Has bleed into the development process of Dont Starve.

Its almost like they don’t have Creative Control over their own IP anymore.