I have not liked how character-specific items have gone lately

[Maxil20]

There's been a recent trend with characters having exclusive items that only they in particular can utilize. While I don't think there's an inherent issue with this, I feel it also makes a lot of indirect teamwide synergies lacking compared to the original days. I always liked when characters can share items with others, but are not nearly as effective compared to the characters themselves using them. A good example of these are things like Wigfrid's spear/helm and Willow's lighter/Bernie. These are not items that will specifically shine on other characters other than the helm at best, but are still perfectly usable and have some nice gimmicks for teamwide sharing, and I felt were neat parts of the character. 

One of my favorites is Wormwood's Bramble armor, and it's upgrade, Brambleshade armor. Wormwood inherently gets an advantage being the only one who can make it on the go, but he also gets an advantage in his skilltree to augment the armor so you can consistently proc the spike effect without taking damage. The armor still is great as others, but Wormwood isn't innately outclassed in using it compared to anyone else. He even gets an exclusive upgrade that allows him to use the armor in a post-rift scenario without compromising too much!

Of course, some items being character exclusive just makes sense for the character in particular. Things like Abigail's Flower/Walter's Slingshot/Wolfgang's dumbells make sense, as Abigail/Slingshot is Wendy's/One of Walter's Major Gimmicks and Wolfgang's dumbells are primarily used to fill a meter only Wolfgang has access to.

Lately however, there's been a lot less of these interactions where I feel they would make some sense. The last one we got was Winona's telebrella being able to be held by other players (you cannot use it to warp or anything like that, you just get the wetness/overheating resistance, which I feel is fair as it's one of Winona's "end" alignment perks). I personally haven't really liked how these have been going, as I feel it's a missed opportunity to make minor teamwide interactions for fun/novelty or even minor utility between others.

I also feel it leads to a lot of really, really bothering handicaps as a result. A good example for me is WINbot. If anyone ever picks up WINbot by accident, you specifically need a Winona to come over, with the skill, to pick it up and right click the bot to place it down again. I don't really see how this is particularly enjoyable when in most cases having WINbots not near generators is limited at best and any other character cannot move the generators nondestructively.

I personally do think there should be limits on what character can and cannot use, but I do feel there are some items that just feel like they are character exclusive because they can be and they cannot ever breach from that. I feel it leads to a bit of unfortunate situations where a character can use item X perfectly fine, but are Magically barred from item Y.

For the record, this is not me saying that every item a character makes ever should be usable by everyone, because that would be silly. I just feel that there should be some things here and there that could work at reduced power for teamwide sharing and the like to encourage making some extras for other players. I personally think it's a neat aspect and I wish was explored a bit more.

[Jakepeng99]

I dont like how some major functions are tied to characters only like Winbot.

[HeatAndRun]

Yeah. When I use Wigfrid her battle rond feels like a lost opportunity of team play. Why other characters cannot equip the shield when they can use almost every other equipments from skill trees?

Also, agree so much on WINBOT convenience. Other characters should not be able to pick up the WINBOTs by space or left clicking it. You'll be surprised how frequently this happens in servers with WINBOTs deployed on everywhere.

[Dingle]

The WINbot thing is very annoying.

[Ugur01]

4 minutes ago, HeatAndRun said:

Why other characters cannot equip the shield when they can use almost every other equipments from skill trees?

This is probably a change made to prevent this shield from leaving Shield of Terror behind.

[djturner]

This happened because people became obsessed with the dreaded "swap character" label, which in turn was a result of them adding the ability to swap characters to begin with (also done at great communal request). Locking functionality to characters of their own items is the surest way to safeguard against them just being there to do xyz and then swap to something "better." It was a community driven change.

[Well-met]

14 minutes ago, djturner said:

This happened because people became obsessed with the dreaded "swap character" label, which in turn was a result of them adding the ability to swap characters to begin with (also done at great communal request). Locking functionality to characters of their own items is the surest way to safeguard against them just being there to do xyz and then swap to something "better." It was a community driven change.

but is it a bad thing?

[djturner]

8 minutes ago, Well-met said:

but is it a bad thing?

My opinion? Well, I was an opponent of even being able to swap characters. To this day I don't take advantage of the celestial portal. I think it's led to resentment around things that used to be fun synergies (like Max reading Wicker's books for her to spare her the sanity cost) and has constrained design in unfortunate ways that are highlighted in OP's post. But I also recognize that I was in the minority on that, probably even more so now, so I'm not going to keep throwing a tantrum about it*. All things have costs though, and it's worth drawing attention to the fact that these issues are joined at the hip.

*EDIT: Didn't mean this to sound as negative toward the OP or anybody else as it could sound. Missing that old style is healthy and I'm right there with you in many ways. Mostly just meant that it was a battle that was lost so long ago that I've become used to the consequences of it.

[Mike23Ua]

Interestingly enough you can craft Abigail’s flower and Walters Slingshots and then you can “give” those items to other players but they can not directly use them.

Which is stupid… because when I saw I could craft additional Abigail Flowers as Wendy giving them to other players is EXACTLY what I did thinking it helped..?

I feel into that same trap AGAIN as Walter with his Slingshots.

Woodies Treeguard summoning Totems can be crafted by Woodie but picked up and burned as anyone (So technically Wendy doesn’t even NEED Lunar Abigail cause if you use these Totems to kill bosses, Lunar Abby is just Overkill)

[Maxil20]

I guess to offer my two cents to the table about how I feel about swap character things, since I do feel it is interesting to at least write about:

think in general a lot of the swap character stigma did start from a lot of the characters people swap from not being very interesting outside of the item/structure gimmicks. Winona in particular was a noteworthy example. Once you built the catapults/generator setups, the only reason you would play Winona is primarily for the 2X crafting speed and maybe the tape. These are not exactly groundbreaking things to offer to the table, so a lot of people opted for other picks.

Post skilltree Winona still heavily relies on her items/structures for her power, but she feels much better to play with them in specific now. You can easily make a quick setup and dismantle it for future use, and Winona being able to cart Literal truckloads of items gives her a lot of versatility no other character has. I think it leads to a fun gameplay loop that encourages you to actually stay as the character. You can still totally swap off and still benefit from the structures, and that's fine, but Winona now innately has qualities that make her unique to play as, rather than play for some unique items/structures she can only make.

I think it is important to strike a good balance of personal perks that you enjoy the character for and having sharable items (if the character in question is going that route). I'm really hoping for that for Wicker in particular, as she's one of my personal favorites (Played her on/off since ROG DS for the unique dynamics she had compared to others, and her quotes are wonderful for lore bits to have fun with), and I wish she had perks to give distinctions to her and Maxwell's capabilities of Book Reading, as I think it's one of the most unique synergies even if it's one sided, and I would personally find it a bit lame if they made Max worse at it to make Wicker "better" then compared to giving Wicker merits that allow her to stand out.

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Interestingly enough you can craft Abigail’s flower and Walters Slingshots and then you can “give” those items to other players but they can not directly use them.

Which is stupid… because when I saw I could craft additional Abigail Flowers as Wendy giving them to other players is EXACTLY what I did thinking it helped..?

What did you think was gonna happen?

[Mike23Ua]

10 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

What did you think was gonna happen?

Well.. I’m by no means a game developer but, I thought Anyone would be able to use slingshots (that’s obvious)

And I figured Wendy’s flowers acted as sort of “Summoning Network” as in if each of the characters were carrying one then whenever Abby isn’t being used by Wendy then another character could summon her for assistance from a different flower, however WENDY the original Wendy who crafted the flowers always takes first priority so if she needs to recall Abby back to her side, she doesn’t have to worry about other players hogging her.

At least that was what I THOUGHT would happen. That the more players I gave a flower too the more people I could share Abby with.

at the very least… Klei could make it so that bloomed out Abigail flowers in a Non-Wendy players Inventory can glow bright enough to give off the same amount of light as a heated up thermal stone.

For comparison sake Willow can give people her lighters and Bernie dolls, they can’t activate Bernie’s huge form nor can they cuddle him for extra warmth, but they can drop the doll on the ground so it dances as a distraction to ward off sanity creatures.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

And here I was hoping you'd be ripping into the Soul Jar. Oh, well.