Whats wrong with wes rework?

[Jakepeng99]

I heard some say it ruinef him. How come?

[gaymime]

from what i have been told people don't like the hunger drain removal and the lowered stats cap.

a few people have also said they don't like the reduced efficiency with tools but a couple people(myself included) don't mind the tool situation since durability is altered for him to even it out

[Swiyss]

I'm a fan of the reduced tool efficiency, and the added weapon durability. At first, when Wes's rework came out, I really also disliked it. But it was only a very biased first glance at it, and I basically stopped playing him without even trying the rework. I must admit that I was just not gonna give enough time to check it out, play some days and do my analysis.

Safe to say I changed my idea, I got so used to the current one that I'm even thinking the old one was kinda bad, mostly due to the fact that you would be locked making food constantly at base, and there would be a too little window to go do other things.

So, the first paragraph might explain some people's current perspective of Wes. But there are also other reasons too which might be unfamiliar to me specifically.

[Guille6785]

-his increased hunger drain pre-rework was a legitimately good downside
-the 75 max sanity just makes him awkward to play without really being more difficult, you're dipping constantly in and out of insanity so the mechanic feels completely different as a result since you're never staying in one state for too long, 75 hunger and health are whatever though
-reduced work efficiency is literally the most pointless thing they could've come up with and makes him straight up annoying to play, taking longer to do menial tasks isn't difficulty (and yes I know he has lowered durability consumption to compensate but then what's the point besides wasting your time???)

additionally the fact that they gave him upsides for some reason (like speedy balloon) is awful, he's supposed to be a challenge character, giving him half baked upsides makes it seem like the game wants you to pick the character to use them but they're really minor upsides either way so new wes just exists in this limbo where he's neither a true challenge character nor a remotely good character, he's just bad

[Picklesaurus]

I really dislike his reduced working efficiency, its not challenging to mine or chop wood, I'm at no risk while doing those things, his reduced working efficiency just make me idle more while doing a safe action, which is boring, idling is boring. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

I think we can collectively agree the reduced work efficiency is probably most painful part about him. I've not played him in forever but I'd rather stay away cause of the tool annoyance he has.

Then again I guess I can respect those that play around with that and can manage his weird stats. Maybe I'm just too used to character swapping to not even acknowledge his existence.

Gonna wait to see his skill tree, maybe it'll give some new decor or home improvements + follower improvements or something. I don't see him being anything himself related to combat or gathering.

[Guille6785]

I'll honestly be disappointed if the skilltree buffs him even more but I think it's inevitable at this point

[aidankocherhans]

5 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

his increased hunger drain pre-rework was a legitimately good downside

It may have been good for solo, but in a group it would make him feel more like a burden. This change and his durability efficiency makes him not take more resources from the team

 

6 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

the 75 max sanity just makes him awkward to play without really being more difficult, you're dipping constantly in and out of insanity so the mechanic feels completely different as a result since you're never staying in one state for too long, 75 hunger and health are whatever though

I think of this as his main character quirk, he has a different relationship with sanity than other characters 

 

6 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

additionally the fact that they gave him upsides for some reason (like speedy balloon) is awful, he's supposed to be a challenge character, giving him half baked upsides makes it seem like the game wants you to pick the character to use them but they're really minor upsides either way so new wes just exists in this limbo where he's neither a true challenge character nor a remotely good character, he's just bad

Niche upsides are exactly what you should give a challenge character imo, it encourages clever thinking without circumventing the challenges of the game too much, and it makes him more fun. I think his skill tree should go in this direction too, relatively small upsides that encourage strategic and skilled play

 

9 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

I'll honestly be disappointed if the skilltree buffs him even more but I think it's inevitable at this point

Even if they buff him a fair amount, if he retains his low stats and damage he'll still be a challenge character. I think he should have more skills that help the team so people don't get upset when you pick him. They could add skills that are better specifically in a team setting, like how the party balloon works

[Guille6785]

26 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

It may have been good for solo, but in a group it would make him feel more like a burden. This change and his durability efficiency makes him not take more resources from the team

 

I think of this as his main character quirk, he has a different relationship with sanity than other characters 

 

Niche upsides are exactly what you should give a challenge character imo, it encourages clever thinking without circumventing the challenges of the game too much, and it makes him more fun. I think his skill tree should go in this direction too, relatively small upsides that encourage strategic and skilled play

 

Even if they buff him a fair amount, if he retains his low stats and damage he'll still be a challenge character. I think he should have more skills that help the team so people don't get upset when you pick him. They could add skills that are better specifically in a team setting, like how the party balloon works

no excuses will change the fact that after the rework I simply have no interest in playing him as a challenge character anymore

[Anis5240]

44 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

I think he should have more skills that help the team so people don't get upset when you pick him.

Don't you suppose this logic should also apply onto Webber. I've yet to see people using him in public servers because of how horrendous his spider controls are.

[Cheggf]

The rework could've been better. Recently Klei has really hated the idea of characters using more resources as a flat stat, even though plenty of characters use far more resources which can be much more rare because they're crafting with them or whatever. It's like they saw people joke about how Wolfgang eats all the food out of the fridge and decided to completely remove the ability for anyone to make jokes about that any more, like that's the biggest problem with the game.

So they removed hunger drain from Wes even though he barely even used more hunger (15 per day is literally just eating 1 extra berry every 6:40) since they didn't want people to have an irrational hatred of him for daring to get an extra one berry per day (even though anyone picking Wes is probably providing 100% of their own food and getting a lot for everyone else too, while other new player friendly characters are the people who are net negatives for the food situation). This doesn't really change him that much but I think it's just annoying. Like they're making a pointless change for a pointless reason just to be annoying and accommodate negative stereotypes, implying those stereotypes are true.

He also gathers materials slower, except his tools break slower so it's a net neutral thing. They don't want Wes to be the guy who breaks tools fast, so instead of having it be a downside that might actually matter where you need to use more resources to do things, it's just annoying. I'm not in danger while I'm chopping trees, I'm literally just using a mod to automatically do it for me since it's so trivial and tedious that there is no effort or skill involved. I'm typing in the chat or eating in real life or whatever as these pointless animations are playing on my screen. Although most of the tools are made with materials that aren't dangerous to get so even if the tools broke faster I probably wouldn't be in more danger, maybe I'm just being a hater for no reason here.

And finally, he was originally exclusively the challenge character. I would have much preferred if they leaned into this direction even more. Made him harder, but more beneficial for people who aren't him. Instead he got a handful of perks that affect both himself and allies equally while mostly being made easier since he breaks equipment slower and starts with speedy balloons.

Nothing about his rework is a terrible dealbreaker and I still love the character but these things are kind of annoying to me so someone else who doesn't like the rework probably doesn't like it for these reasons. 

[lowercase skye]

DST's early game is a lot of time management. Picking plants takes time, mining rocks takes time, chopping trees takes time, etc. I often find myself low on rocks because of how, the entire time I'm mining them, I can feel that nagging feeling that I could have explored a whole chunk of the map in the time it's taking, and I end up just letting my one pickaxe break and then run off to go explore. In this way, Wes taking longer to do work is absolutely an impactful downside, as you're now spending even MORE time on resource gathering cutting into that exploration time, and have to make more tough decisions as to if it's worth gathering x or y material if it means you'll find an important landmark later than you'd want to.

[Swiyss]

3 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I think we can collectively agree the reduced work efficiency is probably most painful part about him. I've not played him in forever but I'd rather stay away cause of the tool annoyance he has.

This is the problem, you see people who actually play Wes liking this feature, a lot actually. And people who do not play Wes, usually don't play him because of this reason.

Try to make a skill tree to accomodate both people now and watch the world burn.

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

He also gathers materials slower, except his tools break slower so it's a net neutral thing. They don't want Wes to be the guy who breaks tools fast, so instead of having it be a downside that might actually matter where you need to use more resources to do things, it's just annoying. I'm not in danger while I'm chopping trees, I'm literally just using a mod to automatically do it for me since it's so trivial and tedious that there is no effort or skill involved. I'm typing in the chat or eating in real life or whatever as these pointless animations are playing on my screen. Although most of the tools are made with materials that aren't dangerous to get so even if the tools broke faster I probably wouldn't be in more danger, maybe I'm just being a hater for no reason here.

This might be a problem. I suspect you use autoQ. I don't play with that, and I can safely say that my chopping, mining, hammering and picking up animations are done faster than actionQ with perfect animation cancelling and using the dst alone mod. I literally am faster than actionQ, so I don't see any problem having to chop slower, since when I'm usually using a hammer for 1 use things, or chopping a whole bunch of burnt trees, I'm actually getting ahead in resources compared to the regular who would lose more durability than me.

Chopping burnt trees, hammering anything that requires 1 and 2 hits, mining ice, all of this add up and will make me waste less resources to do those actions and I can clearly notice it. As I said before, the best example of this tool and weapon efficiency are red and blue staves, both Hoes, Any weapon with planar damage (I can squeeze almost 30% more uses sometimes) and 1 use objects.

The reason why from day 1 I didn't mind this feature, and then actually started to love it, is because it:

1. Makes me wanna chop, mine and hammer as fast as I can, instead of letting a mod do it for me.
2. It challenges me into knowing I'll take 2 more hits while a nightmare creature is chasing me for example, or a grazer is on my tail, and it adds a new obligation to avoid or fight these creatures quicker than another one would. And you can CLEARLY see how it adds up when you play wolfgang in the ruins, it is so absurdly easier to destroy things, that you'll have less time spent doing that, and on top of that you also got less time fighting as well, which is both just an easier gameplay overall. It is basically harder to have to use 1 or 5 more animations sometimes, and it will add up. Spending more time doing these things will mean more food spent, more time in that area etc..
3. It completes my perfectionism. In my mind, sometimes insta mining something is cheating. It is not fun to use, and I've used wolfgang for ruins before, it makes it boring because of how easier it gets. I rather have even lower efficiency, but with a higher resource consumption overall. Why is that? I have no idea, my brain just brains this and it's worth it for me. It's worth every single additional chop and mine as long as I'm getting that 3% more every golden axe, and even 25% more if I'm using it only to chop burnt trees. Brightshade staff has 28% more uses at every enemy, and the sword has also 28% more uses. The void scythe as well is the best resource per use on Wolfgang, then Wanda, then weirdly enough, Wes. 

As I said in his skill tree topic, we kinda want Wes to be this character where his downsides will bring niche/secret upsides IF the player knows how to play the game/knows what to do with him specifically.

3 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

no excuses will change the fact that after the rework I simply have no interest in playing him as a challenge character anymore

Now I don't disagree that removing the hunger drain was dissapointing. But you gotta realize that it would be extremelly detrimental in a multiplayer setup, and it would also be very annoying in a solo one too. Annoying in the sense that you would waste more time gathering food, rather than actually doing stuff. You would have to eat 25% more food, and this adds up absurdly into the late game. 90% of Wes players would only eat, and forget to actually play the game. The only way to introduce this feature back imo is to make it different in some way.

[Swiyss]

1 hour ago, lowercase skye said:

DST's early game is a lot of time management. Picking plants takes time, mining rocks takes time, chopping trees takes time, etc. I often find myself low on rocks because of how, the entire time I'm mining them, I can feel that nagging feeling that I could have explored a whole chunk of the map in the time it's taking, and I end up just letting my one pickaxe break and then run off to go explore. In this way, Wes taking longer to do work is absolutely an impactful downside, as you're now spending even MORE time on resource gathering cutting into that exploration time, and have to make more tough decisions as to if it's worth gathering x or y material if it means you'll find an important landmark later than you'd want to.

Yes, that's true, and the time will add up. Now imagine having the hunger drain on top of that.

The reason why the weaker mining, chopping and hammering is great, is because it would only affect you IF you're doing that action. Compare this with the fact that Wes would starve on 1 day, compared to wilson who would take actually 2 days to starve. With the changes, the current is STILL true, but now you have to manage spoillage time and how much food you can bring with you, as opposed to having to EAT MORE. Eating more meant stealing food from others, eating more means having to gather more food than usual, eating more is not better than having a lesser capacity to eat better and I've come to realise that after being a main before the rework, and relearning to play him after the rework, the changes were also great.

And for his lower sanity. That's actually my favorite feature about him. It's a noob trap, a noob will never play Wes because they'll be insane constantly, and being insane is annoying for them. I don't mind being insane in the surface on day 1, I can just not get hit and kite nightmare creature with an axe, and most you guys agree with me, we can do this is not that hard. And If I get too low, I just run to a green field and pick up flowers, it is not a disadvantage at all. But the amazing part about it is how I can easily control my sanity. Wanna be insane? chug 1 green cap, wanna go back? chug 3 cooked green caps. As wilson, I have to eat an insanely higher amount of insanity foods to be insane, and then an even higher amount of sanity foods to be sane again. The enlightened crown gestalt attacks is lower tho, but I never even began to think that as a disadvantage at all since I'm most likely going to use the helm for the added damage once the crown is used anyways. And also, unless they fix the gestalts missing 70% of the time of almost all creatures, this item's little feature will remain broken. It's only great against bosses, and I rather have my light at all times too.

I actually enjoy the low sanity cap. It creates a very interesting and unique gameplay, managing your sanity was never this easy. I even see myself WANTING to have 75 sanity as other characters, literally. Having high sanity is worse than having a low sanity cap. It's annoying having to eat more resources to be insane, I can't play wickerbottom without going insane IRL, 4 green caps and I'm still sane.... Maxwell's innate sanity per minute is annoying, and I rather not have it too. I rather be insane to farm nightmares constantly, without having to use the book for that, but that's just way harder with him.

[aidankocherhans]

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

So they removed hunger drain from Wes even though he barely even used more hunger (15 per day is literally just eating 1 extra berry every 6:40) since they didn't want people to have an irrational hatred of him for daring to get an extra one berry per day (even though anyone picking Wes is probably providing 100% of their own food and getting a lot for everyone else too, while other new player friendly characters are the people who are net negatives for the food situation). This doesn't really change him that much but I think it's just annoying. Like they're making a pointless change for a pointless reason just to be annoying and accommodate negative stereotypes, implying those stereotypes are true.

I think it's an interesting downside, you don't need to eat more but you do need to manage spoilage more carefully, and you can't take advantage of some of the more lucrative hunger options in the game, like meaty stews or tall scotch eggs

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Made him harder, but more beneficial for people who aren't him.

That's basically what they did?

 

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Instead he got a handful of perks that affect both himself and allies equally while mostly being made easier since he breaks equipment slower and starts with speedy balloons.

He got a massive stat nerf, that probably at least neutralizes his strength compared to before (he's as fragile as Maxwell even though that's Maxwell's only downside)

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, Swiyss said:

This might be a problem. I suspect you use autoQ. I don't play with that, and I can safely say that my chopping, mining, hammering and picking up animations are done faster than actionQ with perfect animation cancelling and using the dst alone mod. I literally am faster than actionQ, so I don't see any problem having to chop slower, since when I'm usually using a hammer for 1 use things, or chopping a whole bunch of burnt trees, I'm actually getting ahead in resources compared to the regular who would lose more durability than me.

Chopping burnt trees, hammering anything that requires 1 and 2 hits, mining ice, all of this add up and will make me waste less resources to do those actions and I can clearly notice it. As I said before, the best example of this tool and weapon efficiency are red and blue staves, both Hoes, Any weapon with planar damage (I can squeeze almost 30% more uses sometimes) and 1 use objects.

The reason why from day 1 I didn't mind this feature, and then actually started to love it, is because it:

1. Makes me wanna chop, mine and hammer as fast as I can, instead of letting a mod do it for me.
2. It challenges me into knowing I'll take 2 more hits while a nightmare creature is chasing me for example, or a grazer is on my tail, and it adds a new obligation to avoid or fight these creatures quicker than another one would. And you can CLEARLY see how it adds up when you play wolfgang in the ruins, it is so absurdly easier to destroy things, that you'll have less time spent doing that, and on top of that you also got less time fighting as well, which is both just an easier gameplay overall. It is basically harder to have to use 1 or 5 more animations sometimes, and it will add up. Spending more time doing these things will mean more food spent, more time in that area etc..
3. It completes my perfectionism. In my mind, sometimes insta mining something is cheating. It is not fun to use, and I've used wolfgang for ruins before, it makes it boring because of how easier it gets. I rather have even lower efficiency, but with a higher resource consumption overall. Why is that? I have no idea, my brain just brains this and it's worth it for me. It's worth every single additional chop and mine as long as I'm getting that 3% more every golden axe, and even 25% more if I'm using it only to chop burnt trees. Brightshade staff has 28% more uses at every enemy, and the sword has also 28% more uses. The void scythe as well is the best resource per use on Wolfgang, then Wanda, then weirdly enough, Wes. 

As I said in his skill tree topic, we kinda want Wes to be this character where his downsides will bring niche/secret upsides IF the player knows how to play the game/knows what to do with him specifically.

I know everything you said. I said it isn't a big deal to me and is just kind of annoying. Most of the time it doesn't bug me but when I need to collect hundreds of wood to make dozens of chests it's just annoying to take so much longer to do it. 

[Antynomity]

8 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I'll honestly be disappointed if the skilltree buffs him even more but I think it's inevitable at this point

I really hope his skill tree is nerfs only (and maybe toss in a non tree removal of the tool stuff). They could go real crazy with the choosable downsides that I'll be extremely disappointed if it's just the status quo (guess I'm setting myself up then but that's fine)

[aidankocherhans]

41 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

I know everything you said. I said it isn't a big deal to me and is just kind of annoying. Most of the time it doesn't bug me but when I need to collect hundreds of wood to make dozens of chests it's just annoying to take so much longer to do it. 

Do you use pigs to help? His chopping downside isn't really a big deal once you have enough meat to hire pigs

[gaymime]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

So they removed hunger drain from Wes even though he barely even used more hunger (15 per day is literally just eating 1 extra berry every 6:40) since they didn't want people to have an irrational hatred of him for daring to get an extra one berry per day (even though anyone picking Wes is probably providing 100% of their own food and getting a lot for everyone else too, while other new player friendly characters are the people who are net negatives for the food situation). This doesn't really change him that much but I think it's just annoying. Like they're making a pointless change for a pointless reason just to be annoying and accommodate negative stereotypes, implying those stereotypes are true.

not to be a jerk or anything but unless you were playing wes or willow or webber a lot in pubs you probably didnt notice that between 1/5 and 1/4 of all servers would have character bans and a lot of servers including ones that didnt say anything would do an immediate vote-kick if you had a "bad" character even if you did/said nothing even if you had not even finished spawning in. klei didnt make these changes "pointlessly" they did it because there was an openly hostile environment towards characters that were perceived as a burden. i used to regularly and consistently get comments asking if pvp was on when people saw me and had absolute strangers explain how they wanted to kill me(sometimes in detail) because as a wes player i was meant to be murdered. in one pub an entire multiperson conversation popped up when one person saw me, said they found a wes in chat and the topic turned to how to best pvp a wes. i /still/ ask people if i am allowed to pick my own character/join the server before i use the character-picker screen because when i dont people get weird. i have heard from willow players(or at least did before her skilltree) that they'd get booted on spawn and one person had been booted from multiple games without any provocation in a single day. i made a habit of playing with webbers because so many of them would get accused of only coming in to be a problem or told no webbers would be allowed or were vote-kicked on spawn.

it might not feel it to you but playing as a character that has, or is perceived to have a disadvantage in a coop game is very different from playing as one with a perceived advantage. after wes' refresh i no longer got accused of coming in just to steal food, i stopped getting autokicked and only rarely do people make pvp comments at me(though it does help that when i see anyone at all for the first time i give them food and/or resources to preempt them talking to me at all. people usually leave you alone if they think you assume they are not capable enough to survive even as a "strong" character

7 hours ago, Swiyss said:

And for his lower sanity. That's actually my favorite feature about him. If I get too low, I just run to a green field and pick up flowers, it is not a disadvantage at all. But the amazing part about it is how I can easily control my sanity. Wanna be insane? chug 1 green cap, wanna go back? chug 3 cooked green caps. As wilson, I have to eat an insanely higher amount of insanity foods to be insane, and then an even higher amount of sanity foods to be sane again.

you have a point there. i hadn't really thought about it too much until guille brought it up but on reflection that is a big thing for me too. i absolutely revel in how easy it is to have full control of my sanity at all times. when i play maxwell for pub stuff i just kind of forget sanity is actually part of the game since i dont ever sink low enough to do anything unless i am fighting a boss and when i am playing walter(which is a whole different thing!) i am either forgetting sanity or struggling to stuff myself silly to get it back up. the feast&famine approach is a lot rougher than just having 2-6 greencaps and 2-3 bluecaps on me or just popping back to base for a daiquiri/my balloons

2 hours ago, aidankocherhans said:

Do you use pigs to help? His chopping downside isn't really a big deal once you have enough meat to hire pigs

bearger and deer are also really good and they can even spawn a few treeguards before they stop working to fight 'em. when i play alone i only get trees that first autumn before it becomes "not my job" and i make bosses do it for me X''D

[Cheggf]

1 minute ago, gaymime said:

not to be a jerk or anything but unless you were playing wes or willow or webber a lot in pubs you probably didnt notice that between 1/5 and 1/4 of all servers would have character bans and a lot of servers including ones that didnt say anything would do an immediate vote-kick if you had a "bad" character even if you did/said nothing even if you had not even finished spawning in. klei didnt make these changes "pointlessly" they did it because there was an openly hostile environment towards characters that were perceived as a burden. i used to regularly and consistently get comments asking if pvp was on when people saw me and had absolute strangers explain how they wanted to kill me(sometimes in detail) because as a wes player i was meant to be murdered. in one pub an entire multiperson conversation popped up when one person saw me, said they found a wes in chat and the topic turned to how to best pvp a wes. i /still/ ask people if i am allowed to pick my own character/join the server before i use the character-picker screen because when i dont people get weird. i have heard from willow players(or at least did before her skilltree) that they'd get booted on spawn and one person had been booted from multiple games without any provocation in a single day. i made a habit of playing with webbers because so many of them would get accused of only coming in to be a problem or told no webbers would be allowed or were vote-kicked on spawn.

it might not feel it to you but playing as a character that has, or is perceived to have a disadvantage in a coop game is very different from playing as one with a perceived advantage. after wes' refresh i no longer got accused of coming in just to steal food, i stopped getting autokicked and only rarely do people make pvp comments at me(though it does help that when i see anyone at all for the first time i give them food and/or resources to preempt them talking to me at all. people usually leave you alone if they think you assume they are not capable enough to survive even as a "strong" character

Wes is one of like four characters I exclusively play and I have noticed literally zero difference at all between the perception people have with him since the rework. People still think I'm picking him to troll, people still talk about how he's really bad, people still ask why I picked him, people still say they want to attack me, he still starts weird conversations. None of these things are even more uncommon, I notice no difference at all between Wes who ate one more berry per day and Wes who can die in one hit.

People don't care about how things are, they genuinely just want to copy memes. It's why there's currently multiple threads talking about how overpowered Wolfgang is even though he kind of sucks in a post rework & post skill tree world where he's been nerfed despite never being that good and everyone else has been buffed to be miles above the highest he's ever been. Wolfgang is overpowered because Wolfgang is overpowered. Wes is a troll pick because Wes is a troll pick. The reasoning begins and ends there. There does not have to be anything backing it up, they will ignore anything you say because the mantra is the only thing that matters. 

[gaymime]

5 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Wes is one of like four characters I exclusively play and I have noticed literally zero difference at all between the perception people have with him since the rework. People still think I'm picking him to troll, people still talk about how he's really bad, people still ask why I picked him, people still say they want to attack me, he still starts weird conversations. None of these things are even more uncommon, I notice no difference at all between Wes who ate one more berry per day and Wes who can die in one hit.

People don't care about how things are, they genuinely just want to copy memes. It's why there's currently multiple threads talking about how overpowered Wolfgang is even though he kind of sucks in a post rework & post skill tree world where he's been nerfed despite never being that good and everyone else has been buffed to be miles above the highest he's ever been. Wolfgang is overpowered because Wolfgang is overpowered. Wes is a troll pick because Wes is a troll pick. The reasoning begins and ends there. There does not have to be anything backing it up, they will ignore anything you say because the mantra is the only thing that matters. 

i am sorry you have not seen any improvement in your time playing. our experiences have been very different since his rework.

[lowercase skye]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

not to be a jerk or anything but unless you were playing wes or willow or webber a lot in pubs you probably didnt notice that between 1/5 and 1/4 of all servers would have character bans and a lot of servers including ones that didnt say anything would do an immediate vote-kick if you had a "bad" character even if you did/said nothing even if you had not even finished spawning in. klei didnt make these changes "pointlessly" they did it because there was an openly hostile environment towards characters that were perceived as a burden. i used to regularly and consistently get comments asking if pvp was on when people saw me and had absolute strangers explain how they wanted to kill me(sometimes in detail) because as a wes player i was meant to be murdered.

Yeah I think whenever people mourn how Wes is "no longer a challenge character" it shows a very romanticized solo-player type of view of him. While it's true he was seen as this cool challenge character that was exclusively played by the most expert pros in like, Reign of Giants/Shipwrecked times, the perception of him in DST pretty quickly shifted to being the useless pointless stupid character who contributed nothing to the team and was going to die to something stupid so should be firmly told to leave in the chat before he can waste resources on the way to that death (not that I agree with this, but it was just the fact of how Wes players were treated). There's a lot of factors that caused this, but the fact that he had 0 intended upsides and only the nichest of niche uses of his balloons was a large contributor to keeping it that way. The same is true of Willow and Webber, which is why Willow's rework and skill tree moved her away from fire/gave her better control of it, and Webber's rework made his spiders overall friendlier and let him decorate dens. The truth of the matter is just that, in a survival game where the overall community treats its characters like those of a hero shooter, you can't have a character that is intentionally marked as being a detriment to the team without them being relegated to videos of solo worlds.

[gaymime]

2 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Yeah I think whenever people mourn how Wes is "no longer a challenge character" it shows a very romanticized solo-player type of view of him. While it's true he was seen as this cool challenge character that was exclusively played by the most expert pros in like, Reign of Giants/Shipwrecked times, the perception of him in DST pretty quickly shifted to being the useless pointless stupid character who contributed nothing to the team and was going to die to something stupid so should be firmly told to leave in the chat before he can waste resources on the way to that death (not that I agree with this, but it was just the fact of how Wes players were treated). There's a lot of factors that caused this, but the fact that he had 0 intended upsides and only the nichest of niche uses of his balloons was a large contributor to keeping it that way. The same is true of Willow and Webber, which is why Willow's rework and skill tree moved her away from fire/gave her better control of it, and Webber's rework made his spiders overall friendlier and let him decorate dens. The truth of the matter is just that, in a survival game where the overall community treats its characters like those of a hero shooter, you can't have a character that is intentionally marked as being a detriment to the team without them being relegated to videos of solo worlds.

i might be a bit of an embarrassment but i must confess i also had a romanticized view of him when i went from solo to dst and joined the community. when i looked at my own stumbling attempts it was whatever but if someone else played as wes i automatically assumed they were this cool veteran player with gobs of hours and loads of knowledge(to be fair the first wes main to talk to me was literally warlockadam so maybe i was a bit justified, lol)

 

100% though, you are on the money. in a coop setting there is no expectation of a great player like there is in a solo experience and there is no barrier to entry either(adventure mode) so you cannot even assume there is general competency so the only safe bet is assume the worst. i dont like it but i do understand it and i dont want it to be the case but i see why it is.

[ShadowDuelist]

I think Wes is meant to make you use unconventional methods, to do the the stuff most characters can do in any way they want. And if you try to play Wes as just a slow Wilson, you will probably have a horrible time.

EG: His early game is probably better fighting while on a beefalo, he should probably aim to chop trees by having pigs, he should probably aim to have a pick/axe before attempting to mass mine rocks, etc.
He’s never gonna be good with the “most efficient” ways most characters do things, and will always be awful speedrunning things (unless he is compared against other Wes’s, as his own category). He’s meant to be for expert players that want to spice up their experience, figuring smooth and clever ways to keep up the pace of the other players of the team, while also being helpful.

I am not sure if klei accomplished a fun or perfect challenge character, I personally also dislike his lowered work efficiency despite knowing how to work around it (mostly because as others pointed out, working around some things in the early game, is also wasting precious time).
I just wanted to share the role I think klei mean for Wes to have at DST.