Woby Ideas

[Chewabacca]

Of the recent Walter feedback posts that I've seen, I'd say that the majority of them are focused on the slingshot or on giving him skills independent from either Woby or the slingshot. And while I think both are valuable (Walter foraging skill FTW), Woby appears to be the bulk of what the devs still need to work out in this beta. If Walter players have ideas for our dog friend, now is probably the time for us speak.

I am by no means an experienced Walter player, especially by the standards of this community, but for whatever they're worth, here are my comments on about her part of the skill tree so far and what could be added in the future:

Woby's Current Badges
As a blanket note: training for these is not the most intuitive and could use more explicit signposting in the badge descriptions.

• Agility: great! Could stand a slight buff but otherwise perfect
• Bravery: While I know some have said that this one contributes to the perception of Woby as a worse beefalo, I like this skill's effect and think that said perception could be better corrected by adding more Woby badges. However, the way that you train it is completely counterintuitive. When playing a ranged character who will be thrown off his mount if he gets hit and whose downside is an additional penalty for getting hit, the mindset of most players is not "oh gee, let me try and tank some damage". I've seen the suggestion that it should be trained via engaging in melee combat, and I think that's a good idea. Especially early on when you don't have that much access to good ammo, melee combat is going to happen naturally.
• Support: The sanity aura is nice at high levels, but Walter already gets good passive sanity from trees. Also, another one where Walter needs to be wounded in order to train it. It has its uses but eh.
• Digging: let's go I love gambling. I appreciate that even the drops that aren't some super-ultra-mega-rare find are still generally useful, even just a little bit. Not a whole lot of complete duds in the list. It would be nice if she could still dig in her larger form, though.
• Fetch: not a fan of this skill. It seems generally useless. However, since some people do like it, I would suggest shortening the cooldown between when Woby picks items up. 7 seconds is a bit ridiculous, 3-4 would be fairer.

Ideas for Future Badges/Changes

This is the one where I really have to slap on that I am a relative noob and know nothing of how feasible these would be to implement or how useful these would be in the late or post-rift game. I have also never tamed a beefalo, so insights from those who have on how to more properly differentiate her from a beefalo would be much appreciated. Sorry to more experienced Walter players if I'm saying stupid stuff. I'm not trying to represent myself as an authority on Walter, only to restart the Woby conversation.

• Hunger: At present, Big Woby's hunger is not clearly displayed and if never fed after her transformation, she'll last 2.5 days. It would be nice if we had a better sense of Woby's hunger, whether through a numerical meter or in-game warning quotes. We should also be able to feed Woby enough in one go to push her past her current 2.5 mark. I know that she can currently be sustained indefinitely for about 1 monster meat per day, but I'd prefer it if you could feed her enough in one sitting to get the marker to 5 days or so. Food goes stale and loses its value, especially if it's your first year and you don't yet have an insulated pack. This would also hopefully give us a buffer for her speed loss from hunger. This should be incorporated into Walter's base kit.
• Eating things at full inventory: At present, if your inventory is full while you're riding on Woby, you can't pick food up from your surroundings and eat it. This should be changed, again as part of his base kit. "How often does this problem come up for the character who gets 9 free inventory slots?" you may be asking. The answer is: enough to get sick of it.
• Speaking of inventory: the last of the base kit changes I would argue for is that Walter should be able to access Woby's inventory while mounted on her.
• Hunting: Woby could shorten the amount of tracks players need to investigate in order to find a koalafant/varg and enable them to remain mounted on top of Woby while investigating said piles. This would fit in with her being a dog.
• Swimming: Woby could swim, with her speed or distance from land increasing as the badge scales up. This would encourage new players to engage with the ocean a bit, and just give the scout character a better sense of the map. At the very least it could be useful for dealing with marotter dens that are just out of reach of land.
• Scouting: Woby (in either form) could leave Walter for a time to go off and explore another part of the map at the player's direction, returning to him after a certain duration with the map partly uncovered, with the amount uncovered/time away scaling as badge progress increases. This wouldn't be all that useful past the early game, when the map is mostly uncovered, but would still be useful and reinforce his role as an explorer in said early game. Also, it would be much more useful underground, where players want to find the ruins. Another poster has told me that the pathfinding involved with her returning to Walter could be problematic, though, which would be a shame.
• Fur Grooming: This one is kind of silly and possibly risks creeping in on what little territory Wilson has to himself + the "worse beefalo" problem that other players have talked about, but: Big Woby is a bundle of fur. Walter came into the Constant at winter. It would make sense if he could gain some warmth from being on her.
  
  Again, I would love to hear what ideas you all have to share and where you think Woby could do more to help in the game. Let's hope our furry friend gets everything she deserves.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Chewabacca said:

• Bravery: While I know some have said that this one contributes to the perception of Woby as a worse beefalo, I like this skill's effect and think that said perception could be better corrected by adding more Woby badges. However, the way that you train it is completely counterintuitive. When playing a ranged character who will be thrown off his mount if he gets hit and whose downside is an additional penalty for getting hit, the mindset of most players is not "oh gee, let me try and tank some damage". I've seen the suggestion that it should be trained via engaging in melee combat, and I think that's a good idea. Especially early on when you don't have that much access to good ammo, melee combat is going to happen naturally.
• Support: The sanity aura is nice at high levels, but Walter already gets good passive sanity from trees. Also, another one where Walter needs to be wounded in order to train it. It has its uses but eh.

Just a heads up but they already changed this so that it also counts you attacking on Woby as training the skills now. Personally I've found support to be more useful than bravery as even at max when combined you really can't take many hits regardless while the passive sanity gain from support keeps you topped off naturally as you travel.

1 hour ago, Chewabacca said:

• Digging: let's go I love gambling. I appreciate that even the drops that aren't some super-ultra-mega-rare find are still generally useful, even just a little bit. Not a whole lot of complete duds in the list. It would be nice if she could still dig in her larger form, though.
• Fetch: not a fan of this skill. It seems generally useless. However, since some people do like it, I would suggest shortening the cooldown between when Woby picks items up. 7 seconds is a bit ridiculous, 3-4 would be fairer.

Ironically it's the opposite for me really I really dislike the dig skill but that aside I do think fetch needs buffed as well but it is worth mentioning that for all the badges you don't get the full effectiveness of the badge unless you equip both tier 1 and tier 2 of the badge at the same time and in the case of fetch it does become a lot faster when you do for example

 

1 hour ago, Chewabacca said:

Agility: great! Could stand a slight buff but otherwise perfect

When both levels of agility are combined you become faster than a rider beef. I really do hope they just condense the badges instead though since it means you need to spend 3 of Woby's 4 points on a single skill to get good results.

 

[kroban]

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

When both levels of agility are combined you become faster than a rider beef. I really do hope they just condense the badges instead though since it means you need to spend 3 of Woby's 4 points on a single skill to get good results.

IMO they should have left the previous 6 badges, it added way more customization for the badges. If you wanted to go full big Woby you were able to choose for example 3 points on speed 2 on bravery and 1 on support, 3 on speed and 3 on support, or 2 on dig/fetch for the small Woby, combinations like that.

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, kroban said:

IMO they should have left the previous 6 badges, it added way more customization for the badges. If you wanted to go full big Woby you were able to choose for example 3 points on speed 2 on bravery and 1 on support, or rather than bravery choosing 2 on dig for the small Woby, combinations like that.

That definitely also would have worked though I feel like it'd still would have been less confusing and given more build variety if we could equip 3 of the 5 badges with their current max effects by lowering the Woby points to 3.

[1007954611]

bump

[GamePlayer42]

On 12/12/2024 at 7:50 PM, kroban said:

IMO they should have left the previous 6 badges, it added way more customization for the badges. If you wanted to go full big Woby you were able to choose for example 3 points on speed 2 on bravery and 1 on support, 3 on speed and 3 on support, or 2 on dig/fetch for the small Woby, combinations like that.

would work in theory but we'd be missing out on scout perks and extra skills if they were reintroduced. better to cut the bloat imho