Why did we nerf self-healing on Naughty Wortox?

[OMEGASCRUFF]

So it seems the idea was that people thought Nice's benefits were too unhelpful compared to Naughty's benefits. This is a misconception.

Nice's only downside is in the context of receiving more sanity penalty for consuming Souls, something you don't even do much of outside of the early game, when you generally want to be insane intentionally to gain access to Nightmare Fuel ASAP. It just makes sanity management even easier as you can use your Bee biome to go from 0 to 150 sanity very quickly and little to no cost. It's just 6 Souls to get out of Nightmare range. Naughty can't even use their own Soul farm as a sanity station like other inclinations can, and the removed penalty on eating Souls is inconsequential and just convenience, if worth anything at all, prior to gaining access to a Polar Bearger Bin. The sanity heal on Souls is a pretty big deal. The difference in time it takes to collect and drop 30 Souls for full sanity is significantly shorter than that of gathering, cooking, and eating 20 Cooked Cactus. This matters a bit less after gaining access to better sanity foods later in the playthrough (mostly Banana Juice and Jelly Salad, Soothing Tea if you're freaky like me.) But being punishing to players for unwanted insanity during the early game shouldn't be ignored.

The overloading perk was also made to be a little more damaging depending on how drastic the overload is. This is just a minor inconvenience, since you have more agency over overloading and probably shouldn't be dealing with it happening to begin with. So this doesn't bother me at all. This perk is still incredibly good and makes up for the lack of sanity control decently.

What does bother me is that the self-heal nerf on Naughty builds strictly punishes solo players for no good reason. It just means you waste more time farming Souls if you want to heal yourself, and you're already forced into having 2.5 filled jars that you can't pull from without consequence to Soul Pierce or the Nabsack's damage. In multiplayer, this tends to matter less, as generally Wortox will probably need to heal allies more than he needs to heal himself if fully tasked with managing the team's health (something he can easily accomplish now with Soul Jars + Twintailed Hearts.)

Up until now, Naughty and Nice have been total parallels in numbers. Suddenly it's not, as Naughty has the added penalty of healing yourself less by 25%. So if we don't actually care about strict numerical symmetry between the two, which is what this update has told us, then why did we nerf Naughty instead of make adjustments to Nice? What exactly was the purpose behind this change?

My original suggestion was to simply reduce the change in sanity for healing/eating to 150% instead of 200% (3.75 heal/7.5 loss vs 5 heal/10 loss), as, from what I can tell, the main problem is that the sanity penalty on eating is too punishing for new players if they go with a Nice inclination. This would make that issue more manageable when combined with sanity healing options that are agnostic to Wortox's food penalty.

If we insist on nerfing Naughty instead of Nice, just reduce the grace period on overloading from 10 seconds down to 5-6 seconds or so and return the healing to normal. (In fairness, 10 seconds is too forgiving. It should probably feel more urgent than it does.)

Basically, I don't think Naughty perks were a problem, and Nice inclination offers more in the long-run to begin with. Naughty was mostly perfect the way it was, even without the ability to heal your own sanity with your farms or excess Souls. If we want to make them more equally appealing, just improve Nice for the early game and new players, or make the delayed overload a less forgiving than it currently is, because the Soul eating perk doesn't mean much on its own. I just don't know why this change exclusively singles out solo play like this. What does this actually accomplish?

[IAmAFurrz]

its only 5 per soul lmao its not that bad. and 'punishing solo players', youre complaining about having to use 33% more souls for healing, like how much would you have to mess up for this to ever matter?

[OMEGASCRUFF]

1 hour ago, IAmAFurrz said:

its only 5 per soul lmao its not that bad. and 'punishing solo players', youre complaining about having to use 33% more souls for healing, like how much would you have to mess up for this to ever matter?

Very cool. Answer the question. What's the point of this?

[Dingle]

I try not to dump on other personal tweak request ideas in general, but I'd rather keep the heal penalty if it meant I got to keep the 10 second overload protection.

I really like it for spending the overload on a map hop.

Totally predicted the naughty nerf when people made that "nice isnt good enough" thread, haha.

The finger bent on the monkey's paw. The wish has been granted.

[Master_NiX]

Ah, shucks, here we go again.

Honestly, sanity gain on souls before the talent tree was barely noticeable unless you were bundling a lot of insects for "sanity gains".

But why people keep ignoring the gosh darn SLEEPING TENT. Naughty Wortox has no penalty for consuming souls, meaning you can restore sanity by sleeping and refuel your hunger whenever necessary.

 

P.S. I am a solo nice Wortox, cus yes we do exist, and we like building in peace, ty.

P.P.S. Sanity is never an issue for Nice Wortox

[arubaro]

With that branch you get a lot of souls fast and you can store an insane ammount of them... is fair to lose healing

In my playthrow i barely needed to cook food for hunger and all the healing came from the souls 

[Dingle]

26 minutes ago, Master_NiX said:

Ah, shucks, here we go again.

Honestly, sanity gain on souls before the talent tree was barely noticeable unless you were bundling a lot of insects for "sanity gains".

But why people keep ignoring the gosh darn SLEEPING TENT. Naughty Wortox has no penalty for consuming souls, meaning you can restore sanity by sleeping and refuel your hunger whenever necessary.

 

P.S. I am a solo nice Wortox, cus yes we do exist, and we like building in peace, ty.

P.P.S. Sanity is never an issue for Nice Wortox

I always forget about the tent. When I first started playing, they really sucked. I think they went through one or two rounds of major improvements since.

Does sleeping still prevent you from opening the map? I haven't checked recently.

Also before the talent tree, I still made a lot of use of sanity gain on souls.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

9 hours ago, Dingle said:

I try not to dump on other personal tweak request ideas in general, but I'd rather keep the heal penalty if it meant I got to keep the 10 second overload protection.

I really like it for spending the overload on a map hop.

Totally predicted the naughty nerf when people made that "nice isnt good enough" thread, haha.

The finger bent on the monkey's paw. The wish has been granted.

No, I would definitely keep this change too if this was some sort of trade, but it's not a trade. There is no choice here. I don't really see what the purpose of this was when it is disproportionally annoying for the solo early game experience when empty bottle luck isn't even up to the player. 

Seriously, what was the problem we're trying to solve here? Naughty was already a mixed bag, but it's unavoidable for single player.

Honestly, the biggest issue is that there isn't really a choice for solo builds unless you make another large sacrifice. The only things you can really do is completely gut your Naughty skills in favor of... skills that do nothing for you. If you play around with the skill tree a bit, you'll quickly notice how difficult it is to avoid a Naughty inclination on a solo build in a way that provides you with very little value. It's just the consequence of 7 of the 11 Nice skills being designed for multiplayer.

There's no choice for single player builds. If inclination was something we had more control over, this wouldn't be as big of an issue. But that's just not how Wortox's skills tree adds up in the end.

So what was so wrong with single player Naughty Wortox builds that we decided it's worth deliberately being obnoxious to them in specific? What is the design philosophy here?

Just fix Nice instead. This change doesn't accomplish anything besides giving both inclinations an early game annoyance. Is this really the best outcome?

[Dingle]

2 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

No, I would definitely keep this change too if this was some sort of trade, but it's not a trade. There is no choice here. I don't really see what the purpose of this was when it is disproportionally annoying for the solo early game experience when empty bottle luck isn't even up to the player. 

Seriously, what was the problem we're trying to solve here? Naughty was already a mixed bag, but it's unavoidable for single player.

Honestly, the biggest issue is that there isn't really a choice for solo builds unless you make another large sacrifice. The only things you can really do is completely gut your Naughty skills in favor of... skills that do nothing for you. If you play around with the skill tree a bit, you'll quickly notice how difficult it is to avoid a Naughty inclination on a solo build in a way that provides you with very little value. It's just the consequence of 7 of the 11 Nice skills being designed for multiplayer.

There's no choice for single player builds. If inclination was something we had more control over, this wouldn't be as big of an issue. But that's just not how Wortox's skills tree adds up in the end.

So what was so wrong with single player Naughty Wortox builds that we decided it's worth deliberately being obnoxious to them in specific? What is the design philosophy here?

Just fix Nice instead. This change doesn't accomplish anything besides giving both inclinations and early game annoyance. Is this really the best outcome?

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just thinking if Klei did anything at all, that their takeaway would yet again just be "oh, we should nerf Naughty again" lol. We're not Wendy Players so this is how it will be.

I've made long, detailed posts on how restrictive I think the build options are. I figure that ship has sailed, too. Again, we're not Wendy Players.

On the plus side, at least we're not Walter Players. I think they're nerfing slingshot hitstun more now, as we speak.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

Just now, Dingle said:

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just thinking if Klei did anything at all, that their takeaway would yet again just be "oh, we should nerf Naughty again" lol. We're not Wendy Players so this is how it will be.

I've made long, detailed posts on how restrictive I think the build options are. I figure that ship has sailed, too. Again, we're not Wendy Players.

On the plus side, at least we're not Walter Players. I think they're nerfing slingshot hitstun more now, as we speak.

I am holding back a very anguished groan right now.

[cyjs]

4 minutes ago, Dingle said:

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just thinking if Klei did anything at all, that their takeaway would yet again just be "oh, we should nerf Naughty again" lol. We're not Wendy Players so this is how it will be.

I've made long, detailed posts on how restrictive I think the build options are. I figure that ship has sailed, too. Again, we're not Wendy Players.

On the plus side, at least we're not Walter Players. I think they're nerfing slingshot hitstun more now, as we speak.

I like your summary

[Soul7k]

The nerf to healing wouldn't bother me if it also came with a dps bump or if overloading caused an explosion based on the amount of souls released so I could pop out all the souls from all my canisters in the window. Could also be interesting if the canisters healed or damaged a little  when they released souls, but that would be weird since naughty isn't about healing.

[Bumber64]

52 minutes ago, Master_NiX said:

But why people keep ignoring the gosh darn SLEEPING TENT. Naughty Wortox has no penalty for consuming souls, meaning you can restore sanity by sleeping and refuel your hunger whenever necessary.

It's just generally unfun to sit around waiting, plus you need to craft and carry around the tent (on top of your soul jars).

So Webber can basically craft free tents and eat free raw monster meat, but the question remains why do all that versus carrying sanity food.

Wortox might as well just waste a few extra souls rebalancing sanity under nice/neutral, rather than carrying a tent as naughty.

[Dingle]

5 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

It's just generally unfun to sit around waiting, plus you need to craft and carry around the tent (on top of your soul jars).

So Webber can basically craft free tents and eat free raw monster meat, but the question remains why do all that versus carrying sanity food.

Wortox might as well just waste a few extra souls rebalancing sanity under nice/neutral, rather than carrying a tent as naughty.

The tents aren't physical kits when crafted, last I checked. You can precraft them, like a science machine or campfire.

[Bumber64]

4 minutes ago, Dingle said:

The tents aren't physical kits when crafted, last I checked. You can precraft them, like a science machine or campfire.

Okay, you get one tent. And then you have to hop back to there or base to get more, defeating the purpose of not just using souls.

[Dingle]

1 minute ago, Bumber64 said:

Okay, you get one tent. And then you have to hop back to there or base to get more, defeating the purpose of not just using souls.

They buffed tents to have way more uses than before. I forget the exact number of sleeps, but its a lot.

[Bumber64]

2 minutes ago, Dingle said:

They buffed tents to have way more uses than before. I forget the exact number of sleeps, but its a lot.

Yes, but you can't move them. Souls come with you.

[Dingle]

4 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Yes, but you can't move them. Souls come with you.

Can't argue with that. I've always been a fan of sanity on soul drop, so I consider that a big drawback for Naughty.

I'm going to give tents a shot next big playthrough I do, and see if they're handy enough to use.

[Soul7k]

30 minutes ago, Dingle said:

They buffed tents to have way more uses than before. I forget the exact number of sleeps, but its a lot.

unless it went up last i checked it was 15 for normal tents and 10 for Walter's

[OMEGASCRUFF]

19 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Can't argue with that. I've always been a fan of sanity on soul drop, so I consider that a big drawback for Naughty.

I'm going to give tents a shot next big playthrough I do, and see if they're handy enough to use.

Yeah, they're not terrible at all and they last a long time. But I'm also just pretty used to staying insane and farming fuel, while health is handled by Souls or other means. And I am a man with things to do and places to be.

[Dingle]

1 hour ago, Soul7k said:

unless it went up last i checked it was 15 for normal tents and 10 for Walter's

15 is giant. I thought it was more like 8 off top of head.

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

Yeah, they're not terrible at all and they last a long time. But I'm also just pretty used to staying insane and farming fuel, while health is handled by Souls or other means. And I am a man with things to do and places to be.

Same, but it's nice to take a break or refuel sanity before a boss fight, etc.

[twitchgabo]

They could nerf the souls to 10 hp and I wouldn't care due to how easy it is to farm souls. All you need is to find a killer bee biome and farm tons of souls (or simply build lots of bee boxes).

 

It is actually OP now. Because you won't even need to gather food anymore. All you have to do is stock a bunch of souls e eat them when low on hunger.

 

[IAmAFurrz]

6 hours ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

Very cool. Answer the question. What's the point of this?

theme. naughty gets punished, while he is more resistant to losing sanity from eating them, he gets less healing. theres also the point that naughty side is offense based, more than nice side with it being defense based

[Dizzyhint]

I'd say they nerfed Naughty because it was just the best option since it kind of cancels out all of Tox's downsides:

• Jars have a small setup cost and eliminate the main thing keeping Tox firmly around the mid tiers: his soul capacity. The unique weapon is also a nice perk pre-rifts as it's damage ranges between spear/darksword with no downside, more durability and dirt cheap.
• Soul pierce makes farming souls take barely any time at all so long as you have access to spiders or bees (preferably bees) and also helps out in several other situations such as hounds, shadow monkeys, bee queen and fuelweaver. The clone skill is kinda meh on it's own but works great in tandem with soul pierce to start chain reactions.
• Naughty inclination removing the penalty for eating souls almost totally eliminates Wortox's sanity issues, the only stat souls can't restore is sanity but them being able to keep hp/hunger topped up with zero penalty lets you funnel your resources into handling that single stat. The 10 second delay before dropping half of your souls when you go above your cap also makes soul farming significantly easier and works well with both the jars and pierce, it also removes the risk of accidently going over the cap at a bad time and getting stunned.

 

Nice on the other hand:

• The whole Capricious movement branch is insanely good and makes souls more efficient and makes Wortox's mobility just silly. It just like the jars are a must take.
• The middle tree making healing more potent is somewhat redundant, default souls heal for 20 and this just makes the range larger and adds 10 healing. On solo Tox you can negate way more damage by teleporting in place and in multiplayer if people keep dying despite having Wortox souls and whatever healing food they have brought themselves +10hp won't save them from the much larger skill issue at hand. I genuinely think this branch is only good if you really want to support any friends totally new to DST, which Tox was already good at.
• The hearts tree is only useful if you are playing with other people, letting Tox taxi people across the map is stupid good but it does come at the opportunity cost of some naughty skills/affinity.
• Nice inclination provides neutrality with bunnies/pigs/catcoons which is... nice? The issue is this isn't a major downside, pigs as workers are merely "ok" till you get much better wood farmers (Bearger), catcoons are just a nusance, and while Bunnies are dangerous you're playing Wortox and can just teleport past/away from them. The main use I see for this is making setting up a bunny/pig farm easier

More importantly is nice inclination has a downside: -10 sanity from eating souls amplifies Wortox's sanity issues and is a major nuisance, the doubled sanity gain from dropping souls (+5) does not alleviate this as you drop souls way less often than you eat them as Wortox, especially if you are proficient at avoiding damage.

Giving Naughty a minor downside (-5 hp for selfhealing) just brings it just slightly more in line with the nice inclination without making Tox worse at supporting others.

 

Imo the Nice side of his skill tree needs some kind of buff to make it more worth sacrificing points in naughty, the middle and left branches are much more situational than than their equivalent's on the other side and the inclination upside is kinda whatever vs the major QoL Naughty gives you.

[Dingle]

1 hour ago, Dizzyhint said:

I'd say they nerfed Naughty because it was just the best option since it kind of cancels out all of Tox's downsides:

• Jars have a small setup cost and eliminate the main thing keeping Tox firmly around the mid tiers: his soul capacity. The unique weapon is also a nice perk pre-rifts as it's damage ranges between spear/darksword with no downside, more durability and dirt cheap.
• Soul pierce makes farming souls take barely any time at all so long as you have access to spiders or bees (preferably bees) and also helps out in several other situations such as hounds, shadow monkeys, bee queen and fuelweaver. The clone skill is kinda meh on it's own but works great in tandem with soul pierce to start chain reactions.
• Naughty inclination removing the penalty for eating souls almost totally eliminates Wortox's sanity issues, the only stat souls can't restore is sanity but them being able to keep hp/hunger topped up with zero penalty lets you funnel your resources into handling that single stat. The 10 second delay before dropping half of your souls when you go above your cap also makes soul farming significantly easier and works well with both the jars and pierce, it also removes the risk of accidently going over the cap at a bad time and getting stunned.

 

Nice on the other hand:

• The whole Capricious movement branch is insanely good and makes souls more efficient and makes Wortox's mobility just silly. It just like the jars are a must take.
• The middle tree making healing more potent is somewhat redundant, default souls heal for 20 and this just makes the range larger and adds 10 healing. On solo Tox you can negate way more damage by teleporting in place and in multiplayer if people keep dying despite having Wortox souls and whatever healing food they have brought themselves +10hp won't save them from the much larger skill issue at hand. I genuinely think this branch is only good if you really want to support any friends totally new to DST, which Tox was already good at.
• The hearts tree is only useful if you are playing with other people, letting Tox taxi people across the map is stupid good but it does come at the opportunity cost of some naughty skills/affinity.
• Nice inclination provides neutrality with bunnies/pigs/catcoons which is... nice? The issue is this isn't a major downside, pigs as workers are merely "ok" till you get much better wood farmers (Bearger), catcoons are just a nusance, and while Bunnies are dangerous you're playing Wortox and can just teleport past/away from them. The main use I see for this is making setting up a bunny/pig farm easier

More importantly is nice inclination has a downside: -10 sanity from eating souls amplifies Wortox's sanity issues and is a major nuisance, the doubled sanity gain from dropping souls (+5) does not alleviate this as you drop souls way less often than you eat them as Wortox, especially if you are proficient at avoiding damage.

Giving Naughty a minor downside (-5 hp for selfhealing) just brings it just slightly more in line with the nice inclination without making Tox worse at supporting others.

 

Imo the Nice side of his skill tree needs some kind of buff to make it more worth sacrificing points in naughty, the middle and left branches are much more situational than than their equivalent's on the other side and the inclination upside is kinda whatever vs the major QoL Naughty gives you.

Nice has great sanity management. Its no different than neutral/prebeta. Eat one soul, drop two. You just build it into your soul farming, like always. Ends your farming with full hunger and sanity.

I have issues with sanity as Naughty, more than Neutral. What are you doing for sanity in your games?