Why Abigail's Boss Survivability Change Is a Win for Casual Wendy Mains

[Lardee]

4 hours ago, arepana said:

Are you sure about that? The way you got behind it at the start of the fight instead of just to it's side and the way you move your camera makes me thing the opposite, but that could also be me seeing things where there are none.
 

I think it's because Abigail takes up space, so it's easier to see where you are and dodge better if you're not standing next to her.

4 hours ago, arepana said:

But how exactly is she the same as Wilson or Wolfang? Because now you can just focus on your own safety without worrying about Abigail dying? Wendy has always been able to kill things the same way as Wilson and wolfgang, the only thing that changes is kill times due to the difference in damage modifiers. However, Wilson and Wolfgang can't use wendy's strategies to kill certain bosses like BQ and AF. She still retains her gameplay. "X character should always keep their gameplay or refrain to go too much into other character's gameplays" is an argument that can be interpreted many ways and can be used in favor or against of many things.

Yes that's exactly it. If Abigail cannot die, you fight bosses identical to Wolfgang or Wilson.

If "Wendy has always had the ability to kill things the same way as Wilson and Wolfgang" then we wouldn't be having this discussion. There would be no need to buff Abigail's survivability.

I never argued the bolded.

 

4 hours ago, arepana said:

Yeah, it's not hard to have spectre cure all on her the whole time, the new perks made generating potion too easy, I can agree with that. However that is a byproduct of cure all being too powerful and now making it too accessible thanks to RNG extra potions, grave relocation, more toy searchs and more glories per reward. If you ask the average wendy player which potion is the strongest one, I'm sure that the great majority will say that it's cure-all, in my opinion this only proves that cure all has always been the most oppressive potion. IIRC at the start of the beta there were a couple of players that asked the devs to let Abigail use 2 potions at the same time so that they could use something else. They kinda did it but in a different way. 
However, I fail to see how is this a bad thing. A lot of characters get to use their character perks against those type of bosses, perks that are just as good as wendy's without getting any of her downsides. 2 bernies can tank AB (and even stun him) and willow loses none of her perks when bernie dies for the first time, she still has normal damage, still can cast her allegiance spells. Maxwell can use his duelists against AB like against any other boss with no problem, like willow, he doesn't lose his character perks when fighting him. Would you say that Willow and Maxwell are Wilson/Wolfgang clones because they can fight those kind of bosses without losing their skills?

It's a bad thing because it removes Wendy's downsides. Downsides are just as responsible for making characters interesting as their upsides. Wendy's downsides made it so that Wendy players couldn't play the game the same way as Wilson. They had to get creative, come up with different strategies and learn a different set of skills unique to Wendy in order to find success. That's good game design.

 

The bolded implies that Wendy is unable to use her perks against all AoE bosses. This is simply not true which means the rest of your argument is built on a false premise.

I have no idea why you think Bernie is comparable to Abigail. If you want to remove all Abigail's advantages over bernie like buffing Wendy's damage by 1.5-2x, rapid AoE attacks and controllability, then I'd be fine with giving her survivability on par with Bernie. 

Not sure why it's relevant that Maxwell can use his duelists against AB. Another apples to orange comparison that incorrectly assumes that every character should be balanced in a PvE game or that every character should have a similar matchup or perform the same against every obstacle in the game.

There are many bosses that Willow cannot set on fire. Maxwell can't use shadow prison against the chess pieces and nightmare creatures. Different characters struggle and succeed at different aspects of the game. Wendy's weakness just happens to be AoE bosses. Some of them are easy to work around, some are difficult. None are impossible even without the player tag.

4 hours ago, arepana said:

That's all this does, make sure that wendy can use her character perks against AoE bosses, like many other characters can.

Except Wendy could already do this and for people who struggled with this, there were already solutions like Spectral Cure All, Ghastly Experience or Gestalt Abigail. There's absolutely no reason to remove half of what made Wendy's gameplay different from Wilson in order to solve a non-existent problem.

[Lardee]

3 minutes ago, Shining Galaxy said:

If I try to dodge like you do, Abigail will follow me and happen to get hit by the Armored Bearger. I guess it might be because your skill is so proficient that you subconsciously know when to move to make it easier for Abigail to dodge attacks together. But it's not as easy as it looks; the most common situation I encounter is that I dodge the boss's attack, then Abigail follows me and gets hit by the boss exactly.

Other than taking the time to right click on Spectral Cure All, I'm fighting Armored Bearger no different than I fight him as Wilson.  It doesn't matter if Abigail gets hit by all of Bearger's attacks, Spectral Cure All heals it up.

How about you record yourself fighting it post the video in this thread so we all can see.

[lsmyt]

那么他们到底在争论什么呢？

[Lardee]

24 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Hmm because we often fight twin as group (its a crime to summon twin without notice to other players in surface) casual wendies dont get the luxury to wait for twin to be awake and repositioning so eye only dash away from abi.

Plus when there are 2-3 player attacking you cant control where twin dash.

If there a maxwell to cage the twin, her dash become aoe in her place with the direction of the dash. That you also cant control where it dash.

That why casual wendy have to unsummon abi when fighting twins and most other aoe bosses, as there are too much things you cant control playing together.

If Abigail dies, just resummon her.

If Maxwell cages her, then just move Abigail away before it attacks.

No, that's not why casual Wendy has to unsummon Abi when fighting the twins or AoE bosses and if you're fighting with other players, these bosses go down ridiculously quickly.

[Tranoze]

6 minutes ago, Lardee said:

these bosses go down ridiculously quickly.

Unlike other raid bosses, twin often come to those are under prepared. Only few that actually summoned twin prepared gears before twins, while casual only have one pieces of armor and bad tier weapon, so their dps are not that much.

8 minutes ago, Lardee said:

If Abigail dies, just resummon her.

If Maxwell cages her, then just move Abigail away before it attacks.

Ye that what i often saw when a casual wendy first face a boss, they resummon abi, abi dies again, again, then they either die to twin or couldnt deal with shadow the next day, as in multiple setting, there are more than 2 shadow can target you at the same time. Good thing for them to learn, but after first twin like that, all wendies i saw choose rather to unsummon abi than risk taking her life in endless cycle of summon/death.
Move abi away before it attack is a skill they needed to learn, indeed. But how can they learn that skill when abi die in 3 hits from twins, and 1 hit if they resummon, and twin only come to them every 20 days at the highest rate.

[ColdHeaven]

The constant shifting of goal post is tiring, it's futile lardee there's no way you can convince them.

I had said this before but consider joining the uncompromising discord and give your voice on how wendy skill tree should be done, we will gladly take your suggestions and build them up, we simply need a voice from a veteran wendy player

[Lardee]

3 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Unlike other raid bosses, twin often come to those are under prepared. Only few that actually summoned twin prepared gears before twins, while casual only have one pieces of armor and bad tier weapon, so their dps are not that much.

Okay then the solution is to not troll your teamates or be prepared.

3 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Ye that what i often saw when a casual wendy first face a boss, they resummon abi, abi dies again, again, then they either die to twin or couldnt deal with shadow the next day, as in multiple setting, there are more than 2 shadow can target you at the same time. Good thing for them to learn, but after first twin like that, all wendies i saw choose rather to unsummon abi than risk taking her life in endless cycle of summon/death.
Move abi away before it attack is a skill they needed to learn, indeed. But how can they learn that skill when abi die in 3 hits from twins, and 1 hit if they resummon, and twin only come to them every 20 days at the highest rate.

If a casual wendy doesn't even know that they'll go insane if Abigail dies too much or if they're unable to deal with nightmare creatures, then they have no business fighting raid boss. They should just be running away.

They learn moving abigail away from the Twins the same way everyone else does: trial and error.

Honestly, I don't know why we're talking about the ability of people who've just installed the game to fight one of the hardest hitting raid bosses. It doesn't matter what character they pick, they're going to die.

[Tranoze]

Just now, Lardee said:

Okay then the solution is to not troll your teamates or be prepared.

If a casual wendy doesn't even know that they'll go insane if Abigail dies too much or if they're unable to deal with nightmare creatures, then they have no business fighting raid boss. They should just be running away.

They learn moving abigail away from the Twins the same way everyone else does: trial and error.

Honestly, I don't know why we're talking about the ability of people who've just installed the game to fight one of the hardest hitting raid bosses.

I'm not talking about people who just installed the game. Im talking about casual who play few hours everyday, like for atleast a month to half a year. They arent hardcore enough to spawn bosses in test world and learn how to dodge every single patterns.
All bosses in DST have 20 days cooldown except for CC and deerclops, so everyday, at max, they only have once chance to fight that specific boss. Learning through trial and error is the way, yes, but the room for mistake is too small (abi dies within 20 secs vs aoe bosses) for them to learn how to control abi vs those bosses.

And how can they learn through trial and error if they always run away?

Would you become as good today if you only 20 secs per day to test your fighting style along with abi?

[Lardee]

1 minute ago, Tranoze said:

I'm not talking about people who just installed the game. Im talking about casual who play few hours everyday, like for atleast a month to half a year. They arent hardcore enough to spawn bosses in test world and learn how to dodge every single patterns.
All bosses in DST have 20 days cooldown except for CC and deerclops, so everyday, at max, they only have once chance to fight that specific boss. Learning through trial and error is the way, yes, but the room for mistake is too small (abi dies within 20 secs vs aoe bosses) for them to learn how to control abi vs those bosses.

And how can they learn through trial and error if they always run away?

Would you become as good today if you only 20 secs per day to test your fighting style along with abi?

Okay now I'm confused because earlier you said these Wendy players didn't know that they'd go insane if  Abigail died enough and don't know how to fight nightmare creatures. That sounds like a fresh install, not someone who's been playing the game for a long time.

 

[Tranoze]

Just now, Lardee said:

Okay now I'm confused because earlier you said these Wendy players didn't know that they'd go insane if  Abigail died enough and don't know how to fight nightmare creatures. That sounds like a fresh install, not someone who's been playing the game for a long time.

 

I said at the beginning they are all like that, then slowly playing with them i saw they change, from ye let abi help to not summon abi at all.

Maybe i should be more specific: When a casual wendy first time face a boss.

13 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

when a casual wendy first face a boss,

[Lardee]

Just now, Tranoze said:

I said at the beginning they are all like that, then slowly playing with them i saw they change, from ye let abi help to not summon abi at all.

Maybe i should be more specific: When a casual wendy first time face a boss.

Oh well if it's your first time facing a boss, then you shouldn't expect anything out of them. I expect most players to die the first time they face the Twins of Terror.

[Xplan]

2 minutes ago, Lardee said:

I expect most players to die the first time they face the Twins of Terror.

why？

[Tranoze]

1 minute ago, Lardee said:

Oh well if it's your first time facing a boss, then you shouldn't expect anything out of them. I expect most players to die the first time they face the Twins of Terror.

Yes, i dont expect them to kill the boss right away. But there should be room for them to learn, especially how to use abi vs bosses (That the point of playing wendy, not just "I play as Wendy when i vs BQ/DF..." and "I play as Wes when i vs AOE bosses."). Player tag might not be a perfect solutions, but it definitely better than unable to learn how to use abi vs bosses at all.

[Lardee]

3 minutes ago, Xplan said:

why？

Because they're fighting the Twins of Terror.

[Xplan]

Just now, Lardee said:

Because they're fighting the Twins of Terror.

Twins of Terror is OP

[Lardee]

1 minute ago, Tranoze said:

Yes, i dont expect them to kill the boss right away. But there should be room for them to learn, especially how to use abi vs bosses (That the point of playing wendy, not just "I play as Wendy when i vs BQ/DF..." and "I play as Wes when i vs AOE bosses."). Player tag might not be a perfect solutions, but it definitely better than unable to learn how to use abi vs bosses at all.

The point of playing Wendy was never to overcome every problem in the game with no difficulty. The point of Wendy was to make regular survival easy. 

Already addressed your player tag argument about 10 times at this point.

 

Just now, Xplan said:

Twins of Terror is OP

For people who've never fought them before, absolutely.

[Arepantera]

8 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Yes that's exactly it. If Abigail cannot die, you fight bosses identical to Wolfgang or Wilson.

Most wendy players have always fought as a pseudo wilsons and wolfgangs. They fight the AoE boss, they kite. Abigail fails to kite, she gets hit. this happens a couple of times and then she dies, then the wendy player kills the boss with a timer variance depending on how long abby could live. This doesn't change how most wendy players played, it only changes kill times, if you argue that this changes her into wilson or wolfgang, then she has always been wilson or wolfgang.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Lardee said:

t's a bad thing because it removes Wendy's downsides. Downsides are just as responsible for making characters interesting as their upsides. Wendy's downsides made it so that Wendy players couldn't play the game the same way as Wilson. They had to get creative, come up with different strategies and learn a different set of skills unique to Wendy in order to find success. That's good game design.

When a character's upsides aren't unique anymore, or when another character has similar or even better upsides without having the original character's downsides, then that's a very good reason to remove her downsides. You could argue that we could also use this opportunity to increase both her strenghts and weaknesses, but that only makes her more of a polarizing character that people will complain about even more. Extremely polarizing gameplay is not good game design, specially when many of the wendy strategies have to involve unintended game behavior, like the beequeen boat strat and have to get patched out, I don't consider that good game design but exploiting game mechanics.
 

21 minutes ago, Lardee said:

The bolded implies that Wendy is unable to use her perks against all AoE bosses. This is simply not true which means the rest of your argument is built on a false premise.

It's kinda obvious that I'm talking about the majority of players here, I already said before that you can technically beat the whole game as Wes while using spears as your only weapon, the only thing that changes is kill times and that you might have to bring more sanity food. But using that logic isn't good enough to justify nerfing every character into a Wes and every weapon into a spear. When you say that is is possible to kill AoE bosses while using Abby and let her live, you're effectively using the same logic that this Wes scenario proposes. So it's not a false premise, It explains itself if you pay attention to what we're talking about.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Lardee said:

I have no idea why you think Bernie is comparable to Abigail. If you want to remove all Abigail's advantages over bernie like buffing Wendy's damage by 1.5-2x, rapid AoE attacks and controllability, then I'd be fine with giving her survivability on par with Bernie. 

Because he kinda is. Bernie can be specialized into doing pseudo AoE damage against hordes of mobs. Bernie can heal itself, be repaired multiple times like you can heal abby multiple times and then Willow gets to buff herself and do similar damage to wendy. The fact that Bernie, who arguably represents like 20 to 30% of willow's character can be compared to Abby, who represents 100% of Wendy as character (now it's more like 80-90% since she gets utility with the crown) is crazy and telling that she needs buffs.

 

32 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Not sure why it's relevant that Maxwell can use his duelists against AB. Another apples to orange comparison that incorrectly assumes that every character should be balanced in a PvE game or that every character should have a similar matchup or perform the same against every obstacle in the game.

Because when people say that it is bad that it is bad that Abby can tank, they're making essentially one of these two arguments, or both:
-This is bad because you get free damage without interacting with the boss/You're transforming resources into boss damage.
Something that many characters can do already. They can do it cheaper and with faster kill times. So it's not really that much of a good argument. 
-This is bad because it destroys the character's identity
If the character's identity is mainly the capacity of losing her perks against AoE bosses, then she never had that much of an identity to begin with, or does she?
Also, this argument is kinda base on interpretation, if someone said that Wendy's identity is tied to having a free guardian that deals low damage but is good at crowd controlling, this person could argue then that losing this guardian makes her a tankier wes and makes her lose the identity that he likes.

Also, No, it's not incorrectly assuming anything. I'm pretty sure that the devs have said at some point that weaker characters get stronger skill trees and stronger characters get either weaker skill trees or make them compatible with newer mechanics. Which is why characters like Willow, Woodie and Wormwood got such good trees while wolfgang got a lukewarm one, he was already good while the other ones were in dire need of help. So yes, balance is a consideration, it is in fact an incorrect assumption to assume it's not something that they consider.
 

 

46 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Except Wendy could already do this and for people who struggled with this, there were already solutions like Spectral Cure All, Ghastly Experience or Gestalt Abigail. There's absolutely no reason to remove half of what made Wendy's gameplay different from Wilson in order to solve a non-existent problem

Because you and I can do something is not really that good of an argument, like I said again. You and I could essentially beat the game with woodie without choosing any of his perk points, we cannot use that as justification for saying that some of his perks shouldn't be a thing.
And Wendy's gameplay is still going to be the same for most players, just with faster boss kill times.

[Xplan]

Just now, Lardee said:

The point of playing Wendy was never to overcome every problem in the game with no difficulty. The point of Wendy was to make regular survival easy. 

Already addressed your player tag argument about 10 times at this point.

 

哈哈，这都让我知道你with no difficulty了

1 minute ago, Lardee said:

The point of playing Wendy was never to overcome every problem in the game with no difficulty. The point of Wendy was to make regular survival easy. 

Already addressed your player tag argument about 10 times at this point.

 

For people who've never fought them before, absolutely.

for beequeen, absolutely

maybe we should nerf twins of terror

1 minute ago, arepana said:

Most wendy players have always fought as a pseudo wilsons and wolfgangs. They fight the AoE boss, they kite. Abigail fails to kite, she gets hit. this happens a couple of times and then she dies, then the wendy player kills the boss with a timer variance depending on how long abby could live. This doesn't change how most wendy players played, it only changes kill times, if you argue that this changes her into wilson or wolfgang, then she has always been wilson or wolfgang.

lardee cant decide "what is Wendy"

there are many people playing Wendy better than him.

all he did is expressing what his ideal Wendy should be like

[Lardee]

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Most wendy players have always fought as a pseudo wilsons and wolfgangs. They fight the AoE boss, they kite. Abigail fails to kite, she gets hit. this happens a couple of times and then she dies, then the wendy player kills the boss with a timer variance depending on how long abby could live. This doesn't change how most wendy players played, it only changes kill times, if you argue that this changes her into wilson or wolfgang, then she has always been wilson or wolfgang.

Right, because those Wendy players chose to ignore Wendy's weakness, they are punished. Meanwhile the Wendy players who chose to learn the character better and not play them as a Wilson clone were rewarded. That's good game design. 

Also, do you even have evidence that "most wendy players" have fought any bosses at all?

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

When a character's upsides aren't unique anymore, or when another character has similar or even better upsides without having the original character's downsides, then that's a very good reason to remove her downsides. You could argue that we could also use this opportunity to increase both her strenghts and weaknesses, but that only makes her more of a polarizing character that people will complain about even more. Extremely polarizing gameplay is not good game design, specially when many of the wendy strategies have to involve unintended game behavior, like the beequeen boat strat and have to get patched out, I don't consider that good game design but exploiting game mechanics.
 

That's a horrendous reason to remove a character's downside in a PvE game where characters being balanced was never a thing.  Weaknesses are just as responsible for character uniqueness as their strengths. Weakness shouldn't be removed anymore than strengths should be removed. If you want to make the character stronger, just increase their strengths. Or give them extra tools to deal with their weaknesses.

I have no idea what the Bee Queen boat strat has to do with the argument.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

It's kinda obvious that I'm talking about the majority of players here, I already said before that you can technically beat the whole game as Wes while using spears as your only weapon, the only thing that changes is kill times and that you might have to bring more sanity food. But using that logic isn't good enough to justify nerfing every character into a Wes and every weapon into a spear. When you say that is is possible to kill AoE bosses while using Abby and let her live, you're effectively using the same logic that this Wes scenario proposes. So it's not a false premise, It explains itself if you pay attention to what we're talking about.

Okay so you've now appealed to the authority of "the majority of players".  If that's the case, what is "the majority of players" capable of in terms of skill and please cite your source.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Because he kinda is. Bernie can be specialized into doing pseudo AoE damage against hordes of mobs. Bernie can heal itself, be repaired multiple times like you can heal abby multiple times and then Willow gets to buff herself and do similar damage to wendy. The fact that Bernie, who arguably represents like 20 to 30% of willow's character can be compared to Abby, who represents 100% of Wendy as character (now it's more like 80-90% since she gets utility with the crown) is crazy and telling that she needs buffs.

Okay just so we're clear, you're now arguing that Bernie's ability to deal damage to hordes after taking a hit, heal himself at 2 HP per second, and be repaired by a sewing kit would be the equivalent of being Abigail's permant rapidfire AoE, multiplying Willow's DPS by 1.5-2x, having a shield that limits horde damage, being able to be controlled etc.

I just want to get you on record making this claim.

No, you don't get to say that Bernie comprises X% of Willow's character. You made the claim that they were comparable. 

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Because when people say that it is bad that it is bad that Abby can tank, they're making essentially one of these two arguments, or both:
-This is bad because you get free damage without interacting with the boss/You're transforming resources into boss damage.
Something that many characters can do already. They can do it cheaper and with faster kill times. So it's not really that much of a good argument. 
-This is bad because it destroys the character's identity
If the character's identity is mainly the capacity of losing her perks against AoE bosses, then she never had that much of an identity to begin with, or does she?
Also, this argument is kinda base on interpretation, if someone said that Wendy's identity is tied to having a free guardian that deals low damage but is good at crowd controlling, this person could argue then that losing this guardian makes her a tankier wes and makes her lose the identity that he likes.

1. Another irrelevant point that for no reason at all assumes characters must all be balanced in every situation.  Also irrelevant as the potions are a tradeoff to make up for a lack of skill.

2. Also irrelevant as Wendy's identity was never a character that can use Abigail as effectively in every situation.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Also, No, it's not incorrectly assuming anything. I'm pretty sure that the devs have said at some point that weaker characters get stronger skill trees and stronger characters get either weaker skill trees or make them compatible with newer mechanics. Which is why characters like Willow, Woodie and Wormwood got such good trees while wolfgang got a lukewarm one, he was already good while the other ones were in dire need of help. So yes, balance is a consideration, it is in fact an incorrect assumption to assume it's not something that they consider.

If they did say that, it does address the point that balance isn't a complete non-factor, but your arguments take it much further than that. You've compared characters in specific situations in order to make the claim that one's weakness should be discounted. That's a lot different that weaker characters should get a stronger skill tree while characters who are already strong won't.

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Because you and I can do something is not really that good of an argument, like I said again. You and I could essentially beat the game with woodie without choosing any of his perk points, we cannot use that as justification for saying that some of his perks shouldn't be a thing.
And Wendy's gameplay is still going to be the same for most players, just with faster boss kill times.

The argument isn't that if you can do something then any character strength that would make that task easier should be scrapped.

The argument is that if you can do something without removing a character's weakness, then that weakness should not be scrapped because BOTH strengths and weaknesses are responsible for making a character unique.

 

 

[Steorra]

daily reminder that to argue with a randomly NPD on internet is completely time wasting.

[Lardee]

52 minutes ago, Xplan said:

for beequeen, absolutely

maybe we should nerf twins of terror

Why?

 

52 minutes ago, Xplan said:

lardee cant decide "what is Wendy"

there are many people playing Wendy better than him.

all he did is expressing what his ideal Wendy should be like

 

10 minutes ago, Steorra said:

daily reminder that to argue with a randomly NPD on internet is completely time wasting.

If the quality of your responses have devolved into this, I'll take it to mean that going forward, you have no interest in having a rational, honest, and productive conversation.

[Arepantera]

2 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Right, because those Wendy players chose to ignore Wendy's weakness, they are punished. Meanwhile the Wendy players who chose to learn the character better and not play them as a Wilson clone were rewarded. That's good game design. 

Also, do you even have evidence that "most wendy players" have fought any bosses at all?

A weakness that was badly designed because it punishes you for fighting regular bosses the way that it was intended, also a bad weakness because it increasing kill times isn't that big of a weakness just like lowering kill times isn't that big of a reward, which is why I say that this doesn't matter and is an overreaction.

I assume that most players in this game have at least fought a boss, unless they're constantly deleting their worlds at day 29. 

 

 

13 minutes ago, Lardee said:

That's a horrendous reason to remove a character's downside in a PvE game where characters being balanced was never a thing.  Weaknesses are just as responsible for character uniqueness as their strengths. Weakness shouldn't be removed anymore than strengths should be removed. If you want to make the character stronger, just increase their strengths. Or give them extra tools to deal with their weaknesses.

Why is it horrendous? Because you say so? What happens if someone says that it is a marvelous reason? Do both of your points get nullified and it becomes a slightly valid/invalid reason to remove her downsides?
Also, that's right, this game started being insanely unbalanced, and Klei has tried to fix it, something starting in a flawed state is not a reason to keep it flawed. It gives more reasons to balance it out.

 

 

15 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Okay so you've now appealed to the authority of "the majority of players".  If that's the case, what is "the majority of players" capable of in terms of skill and please cite your source.

No idea, the only thing I know is that most players have never activated rifts on their own. And that they struggle with keeping abigail alive and they think that her downsides should get retweaked. My source? The insane status of this forum during the first days of the beta. 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Okay just so we're clear, you're now arguing that Bernie's ability to deal damage to hordes after taking a hit, heal himself at 2 HP per second, and be repaired by a sewing kit would be the equivalent of being Abigail's permant rapidfire AoE, multiplying Willow's DPS by 1.5-2x, having a shield that limits horde damage, being able to be controlled etc.

I just want to get you on record making this claim.

No, you don't get to say that Bernie comprises X% of Willow's character. You made the claim that they were comparable. 

Again, you're exaggerating in order to make a point, but that only makes you seem like you don't want to have an intellectually honest debate but rather win a point.
Willow gets many forms of AoE in her skill tree, most of her paths will lead to one or other way of dealing with crowds. Willow gets a damage buff which, if we're being intelectually honest, is similar to Wendy's since her extra 54% is multiplied with her lower base damage multiplier leads to something around 115% damage for wendy, I'm not sure about the numbers of her vex potion but I think it makes it so her base damage ends up around 140%, both are indeed around willow's 125%. The only scenario in which she gets 1.5-2x DPS is when she's riding a beefalo, which is clearly an unintended mechanic which, if we're being completely honest, might get fixed one of these days. It is closer to an exploit than to a legitimate strategy or feature and the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Abby's shield is not that much of a big deal, it makes her already good matchups better, and her ability to be controlled isn't that good.

 Yes, I get to say it, and the point that you're not trying to engage with is that abby should be good enough that people shouldn't even think about comparing a characteristic that basically entails most if not all of the character to someone else's characteristic that entails 20% of it or even less. Yeah, you can argue that overall Abby is better than bernie, but the fact that many of abby's perks Bernie can do, and that the other parts that bernie can't, willow can, without having her disadvantages, is terrible.


 

 

29 minutes ago, Lardee said:

1. Another irrelevant point that for no reason at all assumes characters must all be balanced in every situation.  Also irrelevant as the potions are a tradeoff to make up for a lack of skill.

2. Also irrelevant as Wendy's identity was never a character that can use Abigail as effectively in every situation.

It's not irrelevant, if you don't want to face that argument despite Klei actively acting upon it, then that's fine. But that just means that, again, you don't want to engage in an intellectually honest debate or face reality, you just want to believe that you won an arguement

It actually is relevant too, because what you consider identity or character trait is merely an interpretation. Someone could say that Bernie was intended to be merely a tank and should never have had quasi-aoe capabilities because it would breach into abby's territory, yet he can. Someone could say that it was bernie's identity to be present only when you're near maximum insanity and have him wake up at higher points of sanity or when specific types of enemies are present, yet you can spec him to do all of those things. Identity is irrelevant in the face of skill trees because they're meant to customize a character and give them the identity that you like the most.

 

35 minutes ago, Lardee said:

This has nothing to do with your argument that assumes all characters are to be exactly as good as one another and in every situation.

Yes it does and it proves that balancing characters to put them on par with the current wave of powercreep is the designed intent behind these character reworks and skill trees.
 

 

39 minutes ago, Lardee said:

The argument isn't that if you can do something then any character strength that would make that task easier should be scrapped.

The argument is that if you can do something without removing a character's weakness, then that weakness should not be scrapped because BOTH strengths and weaknesses are responsible for making a character unique.

 Both arguments share the same logic, when logic is taken to an extreme and that extreme sounds ridiculous, then that logic wasn't good to begin with.

Also, when other characters have the upsides of your character, yet they get none of the downsides, then your character wasn't unique to begin with, it was badly balanced and badly designed, which is what a skill tree tries to fix. Specially when, again, the increidble weakness that makes the character unique is something as boring as a lower damage modifier. That only annoys player which is why it is getting fixed. Regardless of how much you dislike it, regardless of how many times Sisturn 3 gets reworked, the end result will be that Abby will be a lot easier to keep alive and it is very likely that the majority of wendy players will be pleased about it.

[Pig Princess]

1 hour ago, arepana said:

Most wendy players have always fought as a pseudo wilsons and wolfgangs. They fight the AoE boss, they kite.

Then the problem is they don't use tools available to them. And solution is not to make such approach viable or make it look even more suitable to new player, solution is to improve control over Abigail. Or else we end up with entire cast being Wilsons/Wolfgangs, without anything unique except maybe skin. Why should DS/T be dressing game?

Personally, I think Wendy has enough control over Abigail already, but I wouldn't mind more commands and reduction of command animation/cooldown being separate for each command.

If somebody is so unwilling to learn the character that they proceed as Wilson/Wolfgang (learning can be done by trial in error in creative worlds, rollbacks, search on video platforms and forums), then they should play Wilson or Wolfgang. Maybe those characters suit them more, there is no shame to not play character if you dislike character mechanically. And you know, there is always an option to make bosses fight each other and/or environment, it's not like generic gameplay doesn't have room to creative solutions and having fun. 

[Steorra]

8 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Then the problem is they don't use tools available to them. And solution is not to make such approach viable or make it look even more suitable to new player, solution is to improve control over Abigail. Or else we end up with entire cast being Wilsons/Wolfgangs, without anything unique except maybe skin. Why should DS/T be dressing game?

Personally, I think Wendy has enough control over Abigail already, but I wouldn't mind more commands and reduction of command animation/cooldown being separate for each command.

I'm sorry but here's a potential problem I guess I have to point out.

For a particular scenario, if we have shorter cooldown for evasion command, and every command for Abi could rebond with a hot key, there's would be another "wilson-like" gameplay:

You attacked 4 times, Boss start its attack, You dodge, You pressing "G" for active Abi's evasion at the same time, you back and attack 4 times, looping.

This seems no difference with an invincible Abi, both of them result a Wilson-like gameplay.

[thesooz9000]

3 minutes ago, Steorra said:

I'm sorry but here's a potential problem I guess I have to point out.

For a particular scenario, if we have shorter cooldown for evasion command, and every command for Abi could rebond with a hot key, there's would be another "wilson-like" gameplay:

You attacked 4 times, Boss start its attack, You dodge, You pressing "G" for active Abi's evasion at the same time, you back and attack 4 times, looping.

This seems no difference with an invincible Abi, both of them result a Wilson-like gameplay.

Having to manage abigail already makes this different from "Wilson gameplay"