Walter is extremely underdeveloped and its getting worrying

[Tarnishedmax]

There has been such an insane focus on Wendy, she is literally busted, gestalt abby plays the game for you but Walter keeps getting "balanced" and undertoned on purpose, how the thulecite round still viable after rifts????? that thing should have been outclassed by better ammo so long ago, why does he have 3 different slowdowns?? it seems like Klei is afraid of Walter being too strong and too viable for things but Wendy just plays the game by itself and its just so weird to me.

Despite him having some great buffs that do make him feel a lot better and even fun to play when you start to look at his skill tree you realize how much wasted potential there is, why do we have 2 skill points dedicated to crafting 10 extra ammo? why is every round its own skill point and not given in different packets (like glass rounds and stinger rounds being put together because they do the same thing but stinger its just extremely early game) gunpowder, shock and dreadstone being all just different flavors of more damage per round but still getting outclassed by thulecite rounds which are BASE KIT, the only reason i pick all of these rounds is not because im gonna be using them but rather because there is just nothing else to put my points into and also because its obligatory for the extra ammo perks (that as mentioned before it eats 2 skill points for NO reason) the slingshotsmith tree is fine but half of it is worthless, why is the sticky grip a skill? its horrible, it does essentially nothing and yet you have to waste a point for it, scrappy frame is worthless most of the time because pressing F is better anyways, scrappy frame should be more fun and silly, do something like shooting 5 rounds at the same time in a cone pattern like a shotgun or something, just have fun with it, thulecite frame is perfect as is but we really need something more here, i dont even want to talk about the Woby skills because they are seriously useless and just need a whole rework except for dig, they say Woby should be different from a beefalo but all her perks do is make her a worse beefalo that takes like a year to max out when you could have just tamed a beefalo and be more fast, tanky and useful anyways, fetch is horrendous and i genuinely think it should just be able to pick items directy when you order her to.

Overall i think the tree does make Walter feel better but its all just so many filler perks and wasted skill points, so many of these skills should be put together and give some space for some sillier/useful perks, Wortox can have fun with his panflute, Wendy can overcharge or use vengeful spirit so why cant Walter have something nice for himself? no better hunts? maybe more efficient sleeping? better foraging? just anything, the skill tree has SO much open space we seriously dont need each round to be its own unique perk and then be instantly outclassed by something else or even BASE KIT, honey rounds get outclassed by icker rounds late game and then instantly outclassed by the base slowdown rounds, they are genuinely pointless, stinger rounds are useful extremely early game but WHY are they their own skill point? why are dreadstone rounds separate from the alignment into their own? why does sticky grip exist as a skill? there is SO much free space for silly stuff and its just mind boggling how much wasted potential there is, i wasnt as upset about this before because it was the start of the beta but we are seriously running out of time and Wendy just ate all the development time just leaving Walter to rot on the side.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

Oh, don't worry. They spent all their time pre-beta on Wortox, all their time during beta on Wendy, and now they'll spend all their time on Walter post-release.

...I'm kidding, but it does seem like there has been some flaws in this release cycle.

I think they need to either completely trash the redundant rounds and replace them with something useful, or completely rework them. They are absolutely a waste of space, especially later in the game. For example, I don't understand why Stinger rounds exist at all. You can get Moonglass immediately from the Lunar Grotto, so access isn't even an issue. And we don't need 3 movement speed rounds.

There was another thread that was talking about condensing Wortox's skills and I disagreed with it, because every skill does something useful and he still ends up with at least one or two flexible points at the end, making his builds feel intentionally complete. Walter does not have the same issue. He seems to suffer from the illusion of choice on his skill tree, and legitimately feels like he's missing access to like 4 more ammunition types that offer unique features, or an entirely new family of skills that focuses on his identity as a boy scout and survivalist. The Woby skills are also mostly skippable, which is a shame, but I'm not sure they want to give her a real role in combat considering her disposition.

His concept offers a lot of potential for me to fall in love with his play style, but his skill tree doesn't really do any of that. He kinda needed his formula corrected and fine-tuned with this update, but it seems to just double down on his mediocrity at everything. He needs some unique support and a better incentive to fight on foot to lean into his risk factor and give it some actual reward (while also improving the slingshot as a crucial weapon swap in combat, though self-sufficient on its own.) He just ended up high risk, low reward, and it forces him to play in a really unexciting way that doesn't even support the team in enough interesting ways.

[Crimson Hollow]

While I agree with you that Walter is unnecessarily undertoned, it was clarified by the developer that there are three separate teams working on the skill trees. And they mentioned that there aren't many people playing Walter so they cannot draw a conclusion.

[Siren11]

There are different devs working on each character so that they each receive the same time and attention. Klei has already confirmed this. If Walter has issues (and he does), it’s not because of Wendy. Gestalt Abby is also being reworked to require more player engagement.

I think there have been a lot of good suggestions for Walter lately, so hopefully his skill tree will look better in the next beta update. I would say they still have over a week, maybe even longer if they want to push this update back, so there’s time to fix things.

[Tarnishedmax]

13 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

 

Perhaps the person just wanted a scapegoat for their frustrations?

Im not using Wendy as a scapegoat, im just genuinely concerned and a bit sad with how much attention she has received this last patch compared to everyone else, i know there are teams for each one but Wendy got half the developer stream to herself, an entire developer forum post and what is basically an entire skill tree overhaul while all Walter got last patch was prototypable ammo and a nerf to his ammo production, im not saying they are doing this maliciously because there was a HUGE Wendy backlash and the developers probably had to rush her as soon as possible but i think its really fair to be upset and worried at how little attention/changes Walter has been getting while having the most flawed tree of them all, it feels like we just don’t have time for this and Walter is gonna release on a terrible state

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Tarnishedmax said:

Walter got last patch was prototypable ammo and a nerf to his ammo production

And a nerf to gunpowder's damage which made it basically unusable

2 hours ago, Crimson Hollow said:

While I agree with you that Walter is unnecessarily undertoned, it was clarified by the developer that there are three separate teams working on the skill trees. And they mentioned that there aren't many people playing Walter so they cannot draw a conclusion.

I still have a problem with the logic of this personally if a character is infamous for being under tuned and people are complaining that he doesn't have enough interesting tools in his kit I don't think the idea that people should "just play him anyway" really works as people play a character because they like playing the character not because them playing the character has the potential for them to get better. His skill tree should have had all aspects of it fleshed out to encourage more people to play but he got the opposite and we're here sitting around wondering why people are just leaving him to the wayside and it's especially egregious when it comes to Woby even if we need more players it's plain to see from player reactions even those who just spectate the information that Woby is in a very bad state and yet the only change she's received is a condensing of her skill point cost and a nerf to the amount of points you can use almost 2 weeks into the beta.

 

2 hours ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

Oh, don't worry. They spent all their time pre-beta on Wortox, all their time during beta on Wendy, and now they'll spend all their time on Walter post-release.

...I'm kidding, but it does seem like there has been some flaws in this release cycle.

I think they need to either completely trash the redundant rounds and replace them with something useful, or completely rework them. They are absolutely a waste of space, especially later in the game. For example, I don't understand why Stinger rounds exist at all. You can get Moonglass immediately from the Lunar Grotto, so access isn't even an issue. And we don't need 3 movement speed rounds.

There was another thread that was talking about condensing Wortox's skills and I disagreed with it, because every skill does something useful and he still ends up with at least one or two flexible points at the end, making his builds feel intentionally complete. Walter does not have the same issue. He seems to suffer from the illusion of choice on his skill tree, and legitimately feels like he's missing access to like 4 more ammunition types that offer unique features, or an entirely new family of skills that focuses on his identity as a boy scout and survivalist. The Woby skills are also mostly skippable, which is a shame, but I'm not sure they want to give her a real role in combat considering her disposition.

His concept offers a lot of potential for me to fall in love with his play style, but his skill tree doesn't really do any of that. He kinda needed his formula corrected and fine-tuned with this update, but it seems to just double down on his mediocrity at everything. He needs some unique support and a better incentive to fight on foot to lean into his risk factor and give it some actual reward (while also improving the slingshot as a crucial weapon swap in combat, though self-sufficient on its own.) He just ended up high risk, low reward, and it forces him to play in a really unexciting way that doesn't even support the team in enough interesting ways.

I feel like stinger rounds exist as a alternative for people who can't find the lunar island but the problem with them is that they're so undertuned that they may as well not even exist which is baffling considering they do rock damage splash damage and I'm sure Klei has to realize noone uses pebbles.

 

 

 

 

My big issue is no matter what's said about how much people liked or hated how these skill trees turned out the fact remains that Wendy and Wortox had completed skill trees on the release of this beta it took a full week into the beta for Walter to even get alignment rounds and Woby keeps being put on the backburner while also being given little to no information on how to even go about testing some of his skills if you're not a data miner  he also required players to invest the most time of the three to even test his kit with a lot of his kit requiring heavy time sinks or post rift materials without just relying on console commands which you can't do in public beta servers. This isn't to say that all his skills or changes were bad however but considering the state of the character he should have been in a much better state at the beta's launch and should have had much more of his skills fleshed out.

[Copyafriend]

3 hours ago, Siren11 said:

There are different devs working on each character so that they each receive the same time and attention. Klei has already confirmed this. If Walter has issues (and he does), it’s not because of Wendy. Gestalt Abby is also being reworked to require more player engagement.

Common klei communication W

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

I feel like stinger rounds exist as a alternative for people who can't find the lunar island but the problem with them is that they're so undertuned that they may as well not even exist which is baffling considering they do rock damage splash damage and I'm sure Klei has to realize noone uses pebbles.

I think people really underestimate splash damage.

If you hit at least 3 creatures, you're doing marble round damage

If you hit 4? Gunpowder pre change damage

 

Yeah its not busted, but its cheap and stuns a whole crowd, it works great for spiders and bees, 6 to kill everything within range. 

 

[djturner]

I disagree with a lot of this as it relates to the usefulness/power of what the tree currently does, but I do agree that I was surprised there weren't more dimensions added to some of his "fluffier" aspects, like the campfire stories or his special hat. He IS a bit more than just Woby and his slingshot.

[Mysterious box]

45 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

I think people really underestimate splash damage.

If you hit at least 3 creatures, you're doing marble round damage

If you hit 4? Gunpowder pre change damage

 

Yeah its not busted, but its cheap and stuns a whole crowd, it works great for spiders and bees, 6 to kill everything within range. 

It doesn't need to be busted but but it should be usable beyond just spiders and bees if they are asking you to spend a skill point on it the rounds wouldn't suddenly become busted if the damage became more in line with standard ammo and did say 30 damage at base and 25 for aoe. 17 just isn't worth considering for most people.

[Echsrick]

the mistake was having the most community favourit character (wendy) with the least favourit character (walter) in 1 update, like thats just a recipe for disaster, walter NEEDS way more attention but it does not help if a certain character is on the update at the same time, like....walter skill tree is just bad, wortox is...passable, still got plenty of filler and usefull suggestions seemingly ignored for him, and wendy just gets all the spot light....again....like, walter realy does not need so many ammo types that half of them do the same thing, what happend to his scout personality? outdoorsy? and camping stuff? his portable tent got seemingly ignored, his hat is...a thing...i guess, woby is...eh i guess? like....why is he just ammo? more then half his skill tree is all about his slingshot ignoring anything else about him, there could easy be something related about his fear of gettin hurt or something but no...he gets nothing of interest

[Dingle]

8 hours ago, Tarnishedmax said:

There has been such an insane focus on Wendy, she is literally busted, gestalt abby plays the game for you but Walter keeps getting "balanced" and undertoned on purpose, how the thulecite round still viable after rifts????? that thing should have been outclassed by better ammo so long ago, why does he have 3 different slowdowns?? it seems like Klei is afraid of Walter being too strong and too viable for things but Wendy just plays the game by itself and its just so weird to me.

Despite him having some great buffs that do make him feel a lot better and even fun to play when you start to look at his skill tree you realize how much wasted potential there is, why do we have 2 skill points dedicated to crafting 10 extra ammo? why is every round its own skill point and not given in different packets (like glass rounds and stinger rounds being put together because they do the same thing but stinger its just extremely early game) gunpowder, shock and dreadstone being all just different flavors of more damage per round but still getting outclassed by thulecite rounds which are BASE KIT, the only reason i pick all of these rounds is not because im gonna be using them but rather because there is just nothing else to put my points into and also because its obligatory for the extra ammo perks (that as mentioned before it eats 2 skill points for NO reason) the slingshotsmith tree is fine but half of it is worthless, why is the sticky grip a skill? its horrible, it does essentially nothing and yet you have to waste a point for it, scrappy frame is worthless most of the time because pressing F is better anyways, scrappy frame should be more fun and silly, do something like shooting 5 rounds at the same time in a cone pattern like a shotgun or something, just have fun with it, thulecite frame is perfect as is but we really need something more here, i dont even want to talk about the Woby skills because they are seriously useless and just need a whole rework except for dig, they say Woby should be different from a beefalo but all her perks do is make her a worse beefalo that takes like a year to max out when you could have just tamed a beefalo and be more fast, tanky and useful anyways, fetch is horrendous and i genuinely think it should just be able to pick items directy when you order her to.

Overall i think the tree does make Walter feel better but its all just so many filler perks and wasted skill points, so many of these skills should be put together and give some space for some sillier/useful perks, Wortox can have fun with his panflute, Wendy can overcharge or use vengeful spirit so why cant Walter have something nice for himself? no better hunts? maybe more efficient sleeping? better foraging? just anything, the skill tree has SO much open space we seriously dont need each round to be its own unique perk and then be instantly outclassed by something else or even BASE KIT, honey rounds get outclassed by icker rounds late game and then instantly outclassed by the base slowdown rounds, they are genuinely pointless, stinger rounds are useful extremely early game but WHY are they their own skill point? why are dreadstone rounds separate from the alignment into their own? why does sticky grip exist as a skill? there is SO much free space for silly stuff and its just mind boggling how much wasted potential there is, i wasnt as upset about this before because it was the start of the beta but we are seriously running out of time and Wendy just ate all the development time just leaving Walter to rot on the side.

Quick comment:

The idea for a frame that gives the slingshot a shotgun shot is really cool. It could be a triple shot. Maybe even have a damage reduction on the side pellets.

[Steorra]

7 hours ago, Tarnishedmax said:

Im not using Wendy as a scapegoat, im just genuinely concerned and a bit sad with how much attention she has received this last patch compared to everyone else, i know there are teams for each one but Wendy got half the developer stream to herself, an entire developer forum post and what is basically an entire skill tree overhaul while all Walter got last patch was prototypable ammo and a nerf to his ammo production, im not saying they are doing this maliciously because there was a HUGE Wendy backlash and the developers probably had to rush her as soon as possible but i think its really fair to be upset and worried at how little attention/changes Walter has been getting while having the most flawed tree of them all, it feels like we just don’t have time for this and Walter is gonna release on a terrible state

There are different devs taking responsibility for their own characters. The work is processing on parallel. Be mature.

[woxd]

Before the beta I thought, what will your Skilltree be like?  It was kind of obvious that they had to put more types of bullets but I didn't think they would fill the entire skill tree with that.
I had a vision where they made ranged combat more fun but it wasn't so much the case...
KLEI PLEASEE READ THIS ****

[Tarnishedmax]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

There are different devs taking responsibility for their own characters. The work is processing on parallel. Be mature.

i really want to take their word for this but also, she got half the stream dedicated to her and an entire post dedicated to her entire skill tree overhaul and Walter just got his gunpowder rounds nerfed and ammo production nerfed and ammo prototype, the Woby skills are exactly the same as the start of the beta and the thulecite frame was not working until friday, at some point you just have to admit that maybe there has been a focus shift and Wendy is eating waaaaay to well above both Wortox and Walter

[Echsrick]

12 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

Be mature. 

Apparently, you needed that repeated to you. 

i dont think you are

[Catuna_]

18 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

Be mature. 

Apparently, you needed that repeated to you. 

2 hours ago, Fitzee said:

Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

I think it has to be said to you too.

[Catuna_]

Just now, Fitzee said:

Whatever helps you sleep.

I suppose it needs to be repeated, too

[Steorra]

20 minutes ago, Tarnishedmax said:

i really want to take their word for this but also, she got half the stream dedicated to her and an entire post dedicated to her entire skill tree overhaul and Walter just got his gunpowder rounds nerfed and ammo production nerfed and ammo prototype, the Woby skills are exactly the same as the start of the beta and the thulecite frame was not working until friday, at some point you just have to admit that maybe there has been a focus shift and Wendy is eating waaaaay to well above both Wortox and Walter

Daily (hoursly?) reminder that according to the dev's word the current skill trees is developing on parallel and they all got same efforts.

Stopping the anxiety about a zero sum game, it is not true.

"Focusing shifted on Wendy" means other developers like V2C for Walter have take hand in Wendy skill tree, which is not to suppose to happen due to devs word, or is your anxiety is just a doubt about if our devs are honest or not?

 

 

[Tarnishedmax]

6 minutes ago, Steorra said:

or is your anxiety is just a doubt about if our devs are honest or not?

 

 

Yes it is in fact a doubt and a massive worry i have, im not trying to be snarky or mean to Wendy fans, i do like Wendy but i think a lot of people will agree that the lack of Walter changes after THIS long its just extremely upsetting, this is not a personal attack on either Wendy or Wortox but Walter has genuinely gotten like a total of like 6 changes while everyone else has been rejoicing in so many unique changes and rebalancing, again. This is not an attack on the other characters, it does make me happy how fun Wortox is now and how many stuff Wendy can do but i would at least like some sort of explanation on why Walter its just so far behind on everything, his skill tree released on basically an unplayable state because his alignments didn’t even work, every single Woby skill remains exactly the same as before any patches and the only significant changes we have recieved for him are just prototypes for ammo, im genuinely concerned, im not trying to do some drama or whatever i just really want to know what is going on and why is he so lacking because it just feels illogical to me to be this lacking if there are supposedly separate teams working on parallels and receiving the “same attention”

[Jakepeng99]

12 hours ago, Tarnishedmax said:

how the thulecite round still viable after rifts????? that thing should have been outclassed by better ammo so long ago

I disagree with this part.

[Well-met]

If it makes you feel better, wormwood has had about 3 reworks after his tree, so walter will probably get revisions later just the same.

[Swiyss]

I think the team might have too many mixed opinions about how the game should develop cause we see this inconsistency all the time.

[MisterBilly]

My apologies I do not wish to be rude, but I believe a lot of what you said to be very silly. In fact, the only thing that I fully agree with is the sticky grip being terrible.

I am only going to address your statement about the scrappy frame and the honey ammo. The honey ammo, (and the stinger rounds by association) are good because they are extremely cheap and easy to make; in contrast to the very expensive slow-down rounds (requiring a purple gem), and the moon glass rounds (which require going to the moon island, cheap to make but you have to go out of your way). The scrappy frame is significantly better then it's thulecite counterpart, being that you can acquire one easily on day 1, and it's special attack while not flashy or cool, is very good as it doubles the damage and let's you fire from very far away. You can effectively clear ruins on day 3, and kill ancient guardian easily with the scrappy frame, without spending a great deal of resources or even having any armor.

I am sure you have your reasons for concerns, but tiered ammo systems aren't that awful. At worst, you're spending an idol later in the game to respec into being able to use the better ammo.

 

[MisterBilly]

My apologies I do not wish to be rude, but I believe a lot of what you said to be very silly. In fact, the only thing that I fully agree with is the sticky grip being terrible.

I am only going to address your statement about the scrappy frame and the honey ammo. The honey ammo, (and the stinger rounds by association) are good because they are extremely cheap and easy to make; in contrast to the very expensive slow-down rounds (requiring a purple gem), and the moon glass rounds (which require going to the moon island, cheap to make but you have to go out of your way). The scrappy frame is significantly better then it's thulecite counterpart, being that you can acquire one easily on day 1, and it's special attack while not flashy or cool, is very good as it doubles the damage and let's you fire from very far away. You can effectively clear ruins on day 3, and kill ancient guardian easily with the scrappy frame, without spending a great deal of resources or even having any armor.

I am sure you have your reasons for concerns, but tiered ammo systems aren't that awful. At worst, you're spending an idol later in the game to respec into being able to use the better ammo.

 

[kroban]

15 hours ago, Tarnishedmax said:

how the thulecite round still viable after rifts?????

I mean I get your post but like, thulecite rounds are more viable now than ever, even post rifts. The craft is now prototyped so its easier to mass produce, with the slow rounds the tentacles hit waaay more than before, and now it does more damage than a dark sword because of the faster attack speed.

When it comes to post rift if you choose lunar path of course you should change it to husk rounds, but for shadow path the "cursed + horror" combo is hard to "master" but does some really good dps.