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

[Arepantera]

5 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

Or it could also be that the majority of players haven't been given tools good enough for the average player. I agree that the best way to increase abby's survivability is to make her more responsive and to make her he commands better. In my ideal world there is no need to give her damage reduction, but instead her dodge command has no animation on wendy, a lower cooldown and can be keybinded. But as it stands right now, the only appropriate fix to this problem is damage reduction. 

 

 

12 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

If somebody is so unwilling to learn the character that they proceed as Wilson/Wolfgang (by trial in error in creative worlds, rollbacks, search on video platforms and forums), then the should play Wilson or Wolfgang.

There is this saying that I really like, I don't know if it loses meaning when translated but it kinda goes like this. "If you encounter bad drivers during the morning. If you encounter bad drivers during the afternoon, if you encounter bad drivers have night. Then you're the bad driver everyone is meeting"
If somebody is just incapable of learning a character and doesn't have fun with it, then this person probably should try another character that is more to their liking, but when there is such a massive sentiment against this one's character's feature, when most polls are in favor of reworking or removing this feature, when there is so much people speaking in favor of removing this feature, so much so that the ambient in the forum changes drastically for many days. Then the fault may be in the characters design and some things might need to be tweaked. I'm just saying.

[thesooz9000]

2 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

My suggested Coopparition skill wouldn't be Wilson-like gameplay at least, right?

As a reminder, it's the one that allows you to manually control Abigail as well as Wendy. 

By The Way, When I heard about your skill idea, it reminded me of a certain character from The Binding Of Isaac, Jacob & Esau, it's 2 characters that you control at the same time, However, When holding down CTRL, Esau stands still and you control only jacob. Would it look something like that?

[Steorra]

2 minutes ago, thesooz9000 said:

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

I don't think a simple hotkey spamming would have impactful difference from Wilson gameplay. And this would cause a potential balance issue especially if evasion cooldown is shorter than attack cooldown of particular bosses.

I mean, this would result in a true "immortal"/"invincible" Abi.

[thesooz9000]

Just now, Steorra said:

I don't think a simple hotkey spamming would have impactful difference from Wilson gameplay. And this would cause a potential balance issue especially if evasion cooldown is shorter than attack cooldown of particular bosses.

You have to open up a menu and left click abigail away, But I do understand your concern that if the cooldown is reduced too much, abigail will be able to easily survive. I'll do some testing on a world to see how bad it could be.

[Pig Princess]

12 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.

Good potential point, but I don't suggest to reduce cooldown. What I suggest is to remove a feature where, for example, "attack at" command puts "escape" on cooldown. Not only is this illogical, it limits you to 1 command instead of using combination of different commands.

By shortening animation I mean reducing time Wendy stays still while she commands. It is a buff, but it's not a "win button" in itself, and it would allow to use greater variety of equipment. For example, you can evade ice projectile attack of Crystal Deerclops by commanding Abigail to move and move yourself as soon as possible, but only if you have at least 20% speed boost. Meaning that if you want to use shadow reaper + void cowl, you have to use magi and can't use something else in body slot. You can use a cane, but then you would switch between 3 items in 1 slot (cane, weapon, torch/fire staff), and it's noticeble step up in reaction required to do the fight. Not to mention that DST likes to put your equipment into random slots should something break. 

[Steorra]

1 minute ago, thesooz9000 said:

You have to open up a menu and left click abigail away, But I do understand your concern that if the cooldown is reduced too much, abigail will be able to easily survive. I'll do some testing on a world to see how bad it could be.

that's just an imagined scenario, at the current stage we have no way to bond the evasion command with a particular hot key. there has a huge difference...

[Steorra]

9 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Good potential point, but I don't suggest to reduce cooldown. What I suggest is to remove a feature where, for example, "attack at" command puts "escape" on cooldown. Not only is this illogical, it limits you to 1 command instead of using combination of different commands.

By shortening animation I mean reducing time Wendy stays still while she commands. It is a buff, but it's not a "win button" in itself, and it would allow to use greater variety of equipment. 

I totally agree with this part. the overall cooldown of teamspirit is bad. it should be individual to encourage players to combine and mix the commands for a more complex management/gameplay.

not sure about the whisper animation of Wendy, but I personally have a great demand of shortening the unsummon animation of Abi. We could use ice staff to unsummon her faster, I have no idea about why there's any necessary for a longer animation of unsummoning by using the flower directly.

9 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Not to mention that DST likes to put your equipment into random slots should something break. 

This need be fix... it's annoying.

[Lardee]

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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. 

1. That's not bad design at all. A character that punishes you for fighting regular bosses the regular way, but rewards you for fighting them in an alternate way is peak game design. A character that rewards you for simply clicking on them and changing nothing about how you approach a challenge is horrendous game design. That's how you transform characters into Wilson clones. 

Increasing killing times is a huge weakness. It means not just the amount of time you spend goes up, but also the amount of resources you expend. This is why Wolfgang is such a strong character and why the biggest downside of Wes is his damage modifier.

 

 2. Reaching day 29 means you've encountered a boss. That doesn't mean you've fought a boss let alone beat a boss. In addition to that, is it your view that we should design the difficulty of the game around the player who has only encountered Deerclops?

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

I explained why it's horrendous after I made the claim:  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.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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. 

If you do not know what "the majority of players" is or are capable of, then you should not be citing them as some kind of authority that you base your arguments off of. There's no reason to assume that a bunch of people being vocal on the forums represents the majority opinion of players.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

You're the one who made the comparison between Abigail and Bernie. If you want to broaden out that comparison to Wendy and Willow, that's fine, but please forgive me if I misunderstood what you were doing. 

1.5-2x DPS is the multiplier. It's irrelevant if Wendy is riding a beefalo or not. Wendy's 0.75 base damage gets multiplied by 1.5-2x. So does whatever a beefalo's does. Just to let you know, there's no evidence that Beefalo's extra damage was unintended, but for arguments sake I'll grant you that point. Wendy's effective damage multiplier is either 1.5 with the Shadow Abigail. That's not even including what Abigail is dishing out. So even discounting Beefalo AND the fact that Willow's damage multiplier doesn't even apply to many of the bosses since they can't be set on fire, Wendy hits significantly harder than her while having much better AoE and Abigail hits much harder than Bernie. 

And all that is assuming you're trying to perfectly balance Willow and Wendy which was something Klei never ever stated or implied they were trying to do. Wendy has much better upsides against bosses than Willow, but has more punishing downsides. Her skill tree has given the player ways to counter these downsides.

 

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

this misunderstanding has been cleared up.

 

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

1. Klei gave weaker characters stronger skill trees than stronger characters. That's an argument that Klei does care to some extent about balance. That's, however not an argument for claiming that every character should be equally effective in every situation which is what you've been doing.

2. Right, and my interpretation is that Wendy was never intended to be a character where her use of Abigail was equally effective and easy in every situation. If you disagree with this interpretation, feel free to make your argument. 

If you're saying identity is irrelevant in the face of skill trees, then I'm not sure why you brought up the identity argument...

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

No, it literally does not. Giving weaker characters stronger skill tree means an attempt to make characters MORE balanced. It is not necessarily an attempt to make characters balanced. And it certainly doesn't mean that all characters are equally balanced in every situation. That's just silly.

 

1 hour ago, arepana said:

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.

Er...both arguments do not share the same logic. You seriously have to rethink this one again.

The argument is that a character's weakness should not be eliminated if they have a way to work around that weakness.

It does not follow from that statement that character strengths ought to be eliminated if you can play the character without using them.

 

None of the other characters have Abigail. If you're talking about the general upside of AoE, those come with their own costs and benefits. These costs and benefits were never intended to be perfectly balanced among characters. 

Your opinion about lower damage modifiers is just that, pure opinion.  Arguably any downside that punishes the player in one form is annoying, that's what downsides are meant to be. 

There you go again, citing the "majority of Wendy players" as a source of authority despite being unable to define it.

[hyoton123]

You know I always knew wendy was popular (I play with someone who literally only plays her) but I'm kind of amazed just how popular such an apparently underpowered, impossible to use character is. I don't think Klei should mess with such a good thing they have going. 

 

Anyway there's a reason bernie damage reflect never comes up in any serious conversation.

[ColdHeaven]

24 minutes ago, Xplan said:

there you go again......

only because she is cute.

We know wendy is cute but let's not lie like that, wigfrid is the second most popular and she isn't cute

[Xplan]

Just now, ColdHeaven said:

The length at which you will go to deny wendy's strength. The second most popular character is wigfrid

this grammar structure is kind complex for me.

if you want to me to know what you just said. please rephrase it.

[Edible Coal]

27 minutes ago, Xplan said:

there you go again......

only because she is cute.

definly not because she can handle simple mobs easily

[Xplan]

Just now, Edible Coal said:

definly not because she can handle simple mobs easily

did you recognize that you said "simple mobs"

[SilverSpoon]

First, As long as those who want Blessed Sisturn III Nerf continue to insult those who don't, I couldn't trust that you're not just spouting plausible hoax about balance and actually just wanting Schadenfreude towards Wendy Player.

Next, I tried to stop those who want Blessed Sisturn III Nerf continue to insult those who don't, because that make you are trusted that you're not just spouting plausible hoax about balance and actually just wanting Schadenfreude towards Wendy Player.

Now, I know some those who want Blessed Sisturn III Nerf has no intense to stop continue to insult those who don't, I trust that you're just spouting plausible hoax about balance and actually just wanting Schadenfreude towards Wendy Player.

However, the same can be said to the opposite side.

[ColdHeaven]

14 minutes ago, Xplan said:

this grammar structure is kind complex for me.

if you want to me to know what you just said. please rephrase it.

If you want to argue that a lot of people deliberately pick a weak character like Wendy(not really) just because she is cute then it wouldn't make much sense since wigfrid is very close behind in popularity.

Cuteness isn't something they have in common, what they have in common is them being casual friendly, they both posses the ability to easily deal with basic threats 

[Xplan]

Just now, ColdHeaven said:

If you want to argue that a lot of people deliberately pick a weak character like Wendy(not really) just because she is cute then it wouldn't make much sense for wigfrid who is very close to be second.

Cuteness isn't something they have in common, what they have in common is them being casual friendly, they both posses the ability to easily deal with basic threats 

true

but her cuteness does matter.

[Steorra]

8 minutes ago, ColdHeaven said:

NPD stand for a mental disorder

NPD is a mental disorder which causes toxic self-centred perspective. The best way to preventing be harmed from NPD is to be Grey Rock. 

But I don't think it was any chance to become an insult. Have I ever called someone's name? I'm a survivor from NPD abuse relationship. I was just to remind everyone to be ware of those toxic people.

[Steorra]

8 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

My condolences, I do hope you're okay now.

Though it is ironic that you find yourself here in the forums after such an experience. 

Thanks for your kindness.

After some healing process, I'm ok again and back to my daily life. Being a survivor doesn't means being disable. Survivor means strength to against what would harm others. And it would give a different perspective between being survivor and being victim. Though, victim is not a thing to blame.

[ColdHeaven]

7 minutes ago, Steorra said:

NPD is a mental disorder which causes toxic self-centred perspective. The best way to preventing be harmed from NPD is to be Grey Rock. 

But I don't think it was any chance to become an insult. Have I ever called someone's name? I'm a survivor from NPD abuse relationship. I was just to remind everyone to be ware of those toxic people.

Hmm very cool but judging by your posts history i can easily point out who you were referring to with NPD

Do not take the moderators to be fools, i assume you have already been warned once or twice

[Xplan]

Just now, Fitzee said:

My condolences, I do hope you're okay now.

Though it is ironic that you find yourself here in the forums after such an experience. 

Fitzee, can you define what is "condolence"

[Steorra]

5 minutes ago, ColdHeaven said:

Hmm very cool but judging by your posts history i can easily point out who you were referring to with NPD

Do not take the moderators to be fools, i assume you have already been warned once or twice

Sorry. That's not true.

5 minutes ago, Xplan said:

Fitzee, can you define what is "condolence"

I know you may just for kidding but maybe we have an option to don't be same as those toxic people... I'm sorry...

[Xplan]

Just now, Steorra said:

Sorry. That's not true.

I know you may just for kidding but maybe we have an option to don't be same as those toxic people... I'm sorry...

this is funny, the first step to learn is throwing a question.

i learnt how to throw varieties of questions from lardee.

lardee, lardee, never end questioning

[SilverSpoon]

10 minutes ago, ColdHeaven said:

Hmm very cool but judging by your posts history i can easily point out who you were referring to with NPD

Do not take the moderators to be fools, i assume you have already been warned once or twice

I know she was using the word NPD before this drama.

Honestly, moderators are as distracted as scarecrows because they don't address with me, you, and certain person I have a personal disgusted for.

[Lardee]

18 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Don't lie.

First, Not liking. This is a "Big Up" from me actually having a personality disorder.

Second, This post is in the 6th pages in this thread, so this is a post thrown in a insults exchange.

Third

 

So you're saying you gave the post a "big ups" because you have NPD?

Also, how in the world is this an insult:

[JoeW]

Please keep posts on topic and without personal attacks. 

Discussing features in a video game doesn't need to be this heated. 

If you dislike another poster, put them on your ignore list and move on.  

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/ignore/