6 Detailed ideas for improving different playstyles of Wendy - Every playstyle should be valid and respected (Abi survival, High-risk high-reward, Sisturn improvement, Lunar Abi, Affinities Compatibility)

[Steorra]

1. Basic survival ability of Abi

There's no doubt that the connection & interaction between Wendy and Abi is the only core feature of Wendy. 

 

I agree that you should have to do something to "protect" Abi, however, losing Abi in average scenarios would cause Wendy to become just a Wes-plus. We should not gate keeping the only core feature of Wendy as a "high risk, high reward" performance for newcomers or casual players. Therefore, I believe that the basic enhancements for Abi's survival need to be improved as a more general mechanic, rather than only functioning when we access the Lune Blossom.

I understand that we have some arguments regrading the "immortal" Abi, particularly concerning the Cure-All regeneration. However, if we shift our focus from Wendy to Webber and Wurt - whose followers are a core feature of their gameplay - we can see just how much more "immortal" their followers are. While I acknowledge that spamming Cure-All is a boring and uninteresting gameplay, but the maximum duration of Abi is far weaker than that of spiders and merms, even with the assistance of Cure-All. If the issue of Cure-All spamming needs to be addressed, that would warrant a separate disscussion. Nerfing Pipspook Line could be a potential solution, as it would make Cure-All a more valuable resources once again.

 

    My proposed solutions to address these issues are as follows:

        1. The "Player Tag" should be adjust to relate to the general petals of Sisturn Decoration as an additional effect of the original "Shorten Abi's leveling time" effect, which makes basic survival more accessible for average players. However, there are concerns about the aggro management issues associated with the "Player Tag", so keep this effect as an option is better than making it as default feature.

        2. To reduce the extra Mourning Glorious bonus from the Pipspook Line, it is essential to enhance the value of Cure-All to prevent the spamming of elixirs during gameplay. This adjustment would not negatively impact other Mourning Glorious applications when we consider the uses of other elixirs.

 

2. “High risk high reward” and skill expression playstyle of Wendy

During the ongoing discussions, we have observed that many players who are not fans of the "Player Tag" mechanic believe their enjoyment derives from Wendy's "High risk high reward" gameplay. They fear that enhancing Abi's basic survival would diminish their fun. This creates a conflict between casual and hardcore players. However, there is a straightforward solution to this issue: maintain basic survival enhancements for casual players while simultaneously transforming Shadow Abi into a "High risk high reward" character. 

 

    Here are my detailed suggestions for addressing these issues:

        1. Integrating the original Dark Sisterhood II effect into the Blessed Sisturn III as an effect of the Dark Petals Decoration, makes "Player tag" become invalid when players seek a stronger Vex effect from Abi. Consequently, the "Player tag" would diminish the enjoyment of "High reward" no longer.

        2. Adjust the damage taken by Shadow Abi from 100% to 125%. This change means that after the "murder" action, Abi will become more threatening but also more vulnerable in exchange for the extra damage. This adjustment will enhance the enjoyment of the "High risk" part, also encourage players to be more mindful of their decisions regarding when to activate Abi's Shadow Form.

        These 2 point above would provide a solution to the conflict between casual and hardcore players. The basic survival enhancement for casual players would be maintained, while the "High risk high reward" experiences would be amplified for hardcore players.

        3. Rework Dark Sisterhood II: Introduce a new elixir that grants a unique effect to Abi. When Wendy damages Abi with a planar weapon or Weather Pain, all damage from that hit will be reversed, providing 50% healing to Abi and activating Abi's shield for double the duration.

        This concepts propose a new technique of "shield active management", which would serve as an alternative method for enhancing Abi's survival. At the current stage, the "Player Tag" is still insufficient to assist Abi in navigating certain scenarios, such as CC combat. This encourages players to engage more actively with Abi. This idea was inspired by @Pig Princess
 

Spoiler

 

On 12/14/2024 at 6:50 PM, Pig Princess said:

I'm writing about planar weapons dealing damage to Abigail but triggering shield instead of unsummoning. It could be nice if Wendy could trigger shield of Abigail, and it would still require reaction, to be in danger, game knowledge and strategy. After all shield lasts so little even when buffed and can't be triggered by hits that are blocked by it.

 

 

3. Various effects of Sisturn Decoration

As we can see, there have been many eager requests recently for additional effects from various petals to Sisturn.

According to the suggestions above, we now have the "Player Tag" and the "Abi leveling speed up" effect from general petals, as well as the "Vex Enhancement" from dark petals (which originated from the original Shadow Sisterhood II). However, we still lack the effect of Lune Blossoms.

 

    Here's my idea for the Lune Blossom decoration effect:

       Decoration of Lune Blossoms: The enlightened power revealed a true vision to Abi when the Lune Blossoms were primarily adorned for Sisturn. Abi became capable of perceiving Shadow Creatures. Although Abi and the Shadows could not harm each other, but Abi could channel her Vex power to affect the Shadow Creatures within a 1-Tile diameter of Abi. This interaction caused a Vex effect on the Shadow Creatures.

 

4. Basic Sisturn mechanic enhancements

We have observed requests for QoL changes for Sisturn, wishing that the Sisturn could have a similar performance to King of the Merms , who can affect Main and Cave worlds at the same time. Additionally, someone noticed that Sisturn may have other issues when there are several Sisturns in a single world. I personally have no good idea to solve this problem, but I've seen someone who provided details for addressing this issue; see reference:

20 hours ago, Fitzee said:

Sisturn Attunement 

Wendy can attune Abigail to one Sisturn at a time, who is only affected by the petals within the Sisturn she's attuned to.

(This is a countermeasure in case there is more than one Wendy in a server who have different petal preferences; it also ensures that Wendy cannot benefit from more than one effect at a time.)

This part of messages was deleted from their original post. I could only paste this in this form. @Fitzee

 

    Regarding how the flower decoration would work when the petals were mixed into the Sisturn slots, here's my idea:

       To make the effect of various flowers from Sisturn activate only when a type of petal has 3-4 amounts in Sisturn. Fewer than 3 petals would not activate any effect.

 

5. Lunar Abi

After several suggestions made, we now have valuable choices of Regular Abi and Shadow Abi with different playstyles, but what about the Lunar one? It seems still unpopular at the current stage.

 

Regular Abi, with basic survival enhancement, was designed for casual players; she still needs interaction.

Shadow Abi, with a high-risk, high-reward playstyle, was designed for hardcore players; she has a more fragile duration.

Then I believe Lunar Abi should be an option for "Almost no interaction". We may simply roll back the design details of Lunar Abi from the very beginning, since it's obvious that some players' hearts was captured by her when she was patched out the first time.

The main balance concerns of original Lunar Abi were related to "Boss Killing by AFK". We could give an adjustment that diminishes the damage output from Lunar Abi when Wendy stops attacking her target - just similar to how Shadow Duelist is affected by Maxwell. Considering Wendy has no abilities like Shadow Prison, Lunar Abi would be weaker than Shadow Duelist after this change. This change to Lunar Abi would allow an extra options to those who prefer to give almost no attention to Abi while in a battle.

 

6. Affinities Compatibility regarding the Lunar & Shadow Sisterhood II

Both Lunar & Shadow Sisterhood II provided an Elixir with their own feature. At the current stage, players could achieve two Affinity Elixirs by switching characters. This might become an "Anti-QoL" design.

If limiting the gaining of 2 Affinity Elixirs at a same build is necessary, there's an idea for QoL's sake: Make Sisterhood II become achievable at a same build, just similar to Winona's lower affinity skills. However, there's a punishment of halving the effect amounts for these Affinity Elixir uses if they are used in the opposite form of Abi. Regular Abi would not suffer this punishment, but two Affinity Elixirs would halve their duration for Regular Abi.

 

 

 

Last:

My original intention of these suggestions is to aim to satisfy every player with different playstyles. I hope everyone could enjoy DST regardless of their playstyle. I don't want to gatekeep casual players from Wendy, while I don't want to diminish the "high-risk, high-reward" enjoyment for hardcore players. Then I built these ideas to make 3 forms of Abi serve as 3 different playstyles. Even mixing their features would be possible if you want a mixed playstyle.

I hope you could enjoy your game more in the future, and any ideas for improvement would be welcome here.

 

[Lee lol]

Very specific and operable advice. I agree that players of every game style should be respected. It is impolite to simply deny or say something like "you ruined Wendy" or "why don't you try to improve yourself".

 

In addition, why can Wendy's skill tree only have one style? Or, why can a Wendy player only choose one route, casual/high-risk and high-return? Personally, when I want to challenge myself, I will choose the high-risk and high-return gameplay; when I just want to solve the battle quickly and focus on the construction of the base, I will choose the casual gameplay. Keeping the skill tree open to the two ways of playing can meet the needs of different players, and can also attract different types of players to prevent Wendy from becoming a "novice-only" or "boss-only" character.

[Xplan]

9 minutes ago, Lee lol said:

Very specific and operable advice. I agree that players of every game style should be respected. It is impolite to simply deny or say something like "you ruined Wendy" or "why don't you try to improve yourself".

 

In addition, why can Wendy's skill tree only have one style? Or, why can a Wendy player only choose one route, casual/high-risk and high-return? Personally, when I want to challenge myself, I will choose the high-risk and high-return gameplay; when I just want to solve the battle quickly and focus on the construction of the base, I will choose the casual gameplay. Keeping the skill tree open to the two ways of playing can meet the needs of different players, and can also attract different types of players to prevent Wendy from becoming a "novice-only" or "boss-only" character.

Fair enough. sometimes i just prefer to play a more interesting way rather than the strongest way.

If the character is too weak or too simple, there is not many choices.

Offering different styles of characters is mainly what Shadow and Lunar Path is for.

[WenericMember]

Not a bad set of concepts. Very fair for both sides. Maybe making cure all cost a life giving amulet would balance it out - with haunt and graves Abby can gather them regularly, but it becomes a lot more resource intensive. To compensate, they could also make it a super potion. Making it something one must truly either work for or use sparingly would be a good compromise.

Making shadow Abby and Player tag abby exclusive is a good change too.

 

[Catapult 2.0]

Great advice, too many people are talking about how to weaken the character tag instead of suggesting how to optimize Abigail's survivability

[Steorra]

14 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Maybe making cure all cost a life giving amulet would balance it out - with haunt Abby can gather them regularly, but it becomes a lot more resource intensive. To compensate, they could also make it a super potion. Making it something one must truly either work for or use sparingly would be a good compromise.

This make sense for me, I really love it. Nice idea and reasonable for an potential explanation of the interaction between Abi and Life Giving Amulet.