wortox Separate Soul Capacity from Soul Jars

[crushcircuit]

I do not like using Soul Jars. I understand that others do. This post is not calling to remove or nerf them.

I'm rather disappointed with how Soul Jars were designed, but I will keep this brief and focused on what I think could feasibly be changed.

I do not think Soul Jars should be the "end all be all" of Wortox's soul management. Twintailed Hearts are pretty alright for managing builds without Soul Jars, but they do not even come close. I dislike the fact that so many things are linked to the amount of Soul Jars you're carrying, primarily the amount of souls you can carry at once - your Soul Capacity. It's annoying not only for people who don't like using the Jars (Me) and also for people who DO. Constantly having to carry 4 Soul Jars for a full stack of 40 souls is pretty clunky, and if you drop a single one you will start overloading on souls because it decreased your Soul Cap.

I think this should be separated from the Jars, and the skill should instead increase your Soul Capacity to 40. A flat value. Extremely simple and clean cut. It'd make things easier for everybody, and although you won't be able to carry multiple stacks of them anymore, that is quite literally what Soul Jars are for.

As for how that'd look on the skill tree, I believe this skill should go before Soul Jars. They should still be directly linked, but in this context Soul Jars would pretty much be the direct upgrade for this skill. Some people have also suggested separating the Soul Jars from the Knabsack, and I think that would be most ideal here.

Here's an extremely loose mockup of this, but I'm almost certain there's a prettier (and less lopsided) way you could arrange this.

Spoiler

If the Knabsack's second ability is left as-is then it should still be connected to Soul Jars as well, making it so you have to have both skills to unlock it.

That does bring the problem that the skill would become a 4 point commitment for a skill that's pretty mid, but it's already a 3 point commitment in the current build. I think Knabsack just shouldn't have to rely on Soul Jars... or be focused on being a weapon anyways. I like using it to knab items, and I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to catch moths and bees with it too. Maybe the skill could be replaced with something in that vein?

[Dingle]

1 minute ago, crushcircuit said:

I do not like using Soul Jars. I understand that others do. This post is not calling to remove or nerf them.

I'm rather disappointed with how Soul Jars were designed, but I will keep this brief and focused on what I think could feasibly be changed.

I do not think Soul Jars should be the "end all be all" of Wortox's soul management. Twintailed Hearts are pretty alright for managing builds without Soul Jars, but they do not even come close. I dislike the fact that so many things are linked to the amount of Soul Jars you're carrying, primarily the amount of souls you can carry at once - your Soul Capacity. It's annoying not only for people who don't like using the Jars (Me) and also for people who DO. Constantly having to carry 4 Soul Jars for a full stack of 40 souls is pretty clunky, and if you drop a single one you will start overloading on souls because it decreased your Soul Cap.

I think this should be separated from the Jars, and the skill should instead increase your Soul Capacity to 40. A flat value. Extremely simple and clean cut. It'd make things easier for everybody, and although you won't be able to carry multiple stacks of them anymore, that is quite literally what Soul Jars are for.

As for how that'd look on the skill tree, I believe this skill should go before Soul Jars. They should still be directly linked, but in this context Soul Jars would pretty much be the direct upgrade for this skill. Some people have also suggested separating the Soul Jars from the Knabsack, and I think that would be most ideal here.

Here's an extremely loose mockup of this, but I'm almost certain there's a prettier (and less lopsided) way you could arrange this.

  Reveal hidden contents

If the Knabsack's second ability is left as-is then it should still be connected to Soul Jars as well, making it so you have to have both skills to unlock it.

That does bring the problem that the skill would become a 4 point commitment for a skill that's pretty mid, but it's already a 3 point commitment in the current build. I think Knabsack just shouldn't have to rely on Soul Jars... or be focused on being a weapon anyways. I like using it to knab items, and I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to catch moths and bees with it too. Maybe the skill could be replaced with something in that vein?

Oh, I didn't think about this. I like it!

It would make builds where I don't get a Soul Jar as actual build options I would consider. Right now, I consider them absolutely mandatory. I couldn't fathom not getting the soul jar. You even need it to get Overwhelming Greed.

[Y0sH]

I actually like Soul Jars and don't mind the damage they add to the Knabsack for early game either. However, you're proposed change here absolutely doesn't effect my playstyle or anyone that has a similar playstyle at all. This is a great change and solves issues for those like yourself that prefer not to use them. Very simple yet impactful change!

[viblym]

yarrr I kind of dislike it any time there's an item locked behind another item, because if I end up not using the prerequisite item it feels like a skill sink </3

[OMEGASCRUFF]

I despise the Soul Jar and would prefer it be removed in exchange for more precise fine tuning and deliberate design to the Soul cost of Wortox's abilities (specifically map teleporting), but yes, a 40 cap is what I wanted to see out of this beta for Wortox from the very beginning. It doesn't add to anything that Overwhelming Greed is designed this way, where you're required to have 4 jars to have a better stack size. Hell, you're punished for having any other number of jars by more inconvenient stack sizes for management. Like... why...? I don't really understand how the variable cap based on Soul Jars held even made it into the game. It's just a drag on ease of use. What's the point? A forced sense of progression that's over by day 3-5 unless unlucky? Great, thanks.

In actual gameplay, it's especially annoying because I'm not at liberty to just drop empty jars, or carry more or less depending on my situation. I'm forced to carry all 4, even if they're unused. It can really easily cause some unnecessary overloading during important fights where many items are required to be accessible in your inventory, if you elect to carry a different amount.

Unless the Soul Jar gets completely reworked or removed, I approve of this. I just unfortunately don't think this would change anything in practice, specifically the pain point I've had this whole beta. His meta is still Soul Jars, and you will always be holding yourself (and your team) back by an immense amount by skipping it. But this does make more sense, the way you have it set up, and gets rid of the unnecessary inventory management issues of Overwhelming Greed. So at least it fixes that problem, and the skill tree doesn't intrinsically force the Soul Jar on you as much as it does currently.

And I want the Nabsack to be optional, especially so long as it remains as unremarkable and poorly scaled as it currently is, so this addresses that issue, too. Though, there's been a few other threads that have suggested the split in the Nabsacker branch, which is incorporated into this as well.

[crushcircuit]

7 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

I despise the Soul Jar and would prefer it be removed in exchange for more precise fine tuning and deliberate design to the Soul cost of Wortox's abilities (specifically map teleporting) (...) Unless the Soul Jar gets completely reworked or removed, I approve of this. I just unfortunately don't think this would change anything in practice, specifically the pain point I've had this whole beta. His meta is still Soul Jars, and you will always be holding yourself (and your team) back by an immense amount by skipping it. But this does make more sense, the way you have it set up, and gets rid of the unnecessary inventory management issues of Overwhelming Greed. So at least it fixes that problem, and the skill tree doesn't intrinsically force the Soul Jar on you as much as it does currently.

i agree, i don't find the soul jar to be very fun either, but at this point i doubt they'll remove them because it would take a lot of work to replace and it'd be a huge risk to, and i do know that a lot of people are very fond of them, which is why i wanted to suggest an alternative. with it set up like this, it'd at the very least make not using them a bit more viable long-term. as you said, the current skill tree feels like it kind of forces the soul jar on you whether you want to use it or not.

i do not play this game to play the "meta" and i don't think you should either, because it seems to be making you a bit miserable - but that's just my perspective as an outsider. if i don't like something in dst i'll usually just avoid it, because my life is short anyways and i don't have time to waste it on things that make me angry

[ApoIIo]

If I will be able to get soul jars without sinking a point into knapsack, that'd be cool indeed. Just turn the 1.25x damage to decoy/pierce skill and knapsack upside down tbh and it's good. I love the jars though, in no universe would I ever go back to having to farm souls every two hops or building 5 bee boxes at random intervals around the map.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

36 minutes ago, crushcircuit said:

i agree, i don't find the soul jar to be very fun either, but at this point i doubt they'll remove them because it would take a lot of work to replace and it'd be a huge risk to, and i do know that a lot of people are very fond of them, which is why i wanted to suggest an alternative. with it set up like this, it'd at the very least make not using them a bit more viable long-term. as you said, the current skill tree feels like it kind of forces the soul jar on you whether you want to use it or not.

i do not play this game to play the "meta" and i don't think you should either, because it seems to be making you a bit miserable - but that's just my perspective as an outsider. if i don't like something in dst i'll usually just avoid it, because my life is short anyways and i don't have time to waste it on things that make me angry

It's definitely risky, that much is true. But it's not the players' fault that they gave us such a heavy-handed approach to Soul management, and then did nothing to tune it or discuss it with those of us who did not want them. They should have delivered something better (and scalable) from the get-go. The cap existed because it established the value of a Soul, and removing it completely was not a good move. I think it's interesting that you bring up the Twin-Tailed Hearts, because the conclusion I've reached is that Soul Bringer and Soul Bastion were both designed WITHOUT the Soul Jar in mind. Other than ally teleports, the other functionalities of both don't really provide any value without a cap.

Hmm, I'm not miserable from my gameplay choices at all. My reward and sense of accomplishment comes from my efficiency and contributions to my team, which I'm still able to do quite well. I'm just unsatisfied by the beta, and overall let down with the quality of what was delivered to us, as someone who has direct hands-on experience with this kind of stuff. I don't think these skills trees spent enough time in the ideation phase, because the end results for them were clearly not anticipated (I mean, look at Wendy...) But I was already incredibly happy with the original design of Wortox. I've already implemented some changes to my gameplay to phase out the whole stupid bee thing as soon as possible in long-term worlds, but that's only one environment I have control over, when there's several available to me. It's a good thing day 27 CC is so attainable as solo Wortox, without any help, so I can slow down early and start working on this kind of thing. It just sucks more on pubs, where I'm not in charge of the resources to build alternative Soul farms, or the worldgen, and they typically aren't long-lived servers either, so I'm just automatically dissuaded from building any alternative farms. It's also kinda the only option for challenge/speed running now, too, which is really lame, and this could have been completely avoidable with more care put into the Soul system.

4 minutes ago, ApoIIo said:

If I will be able to get soul jars without sinking a point into knapsack, that'd be cool indeed. Just turn the 1.25x damage to decoy/pierce skill and knapsack upside down tbh and it's good. I love the jars though, in no universe would I ever go back to having to farm souls every two hops or building 5 bee boxes at random intervals around the map.

A different approach doesn't have to take that away from you. The Soul Jar wasn't the only thing they could have done.

[ApoIIo]

3 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

A different approach doesn't have to take that away from you. The Soul Jar wasn't the only thing they could have done.

I deserve something this good. I am sick of Wanda's intricate teleport network dominating lategame travel when she already happens to be a better Wolfgang up until that point.

[Dingle]

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

It's definitely risky, that much is true. But it's not the players' fault that they gave us such a heavy-handed approach to Soul management, and then did nothing to tune it or discuss it with those of us who did not want them. They should have delivered something better (and scalable) from the get-go. The cap existed because it established the value of a Soul, and removing it completely was not a good move. I think it's interesting that you bring up the Twin-Tailed Hearts, because the conclusion I've reached is that Soul Bringer and Soul Bastion were both designed WITHOUT the Soul Jar in mind. Other than ally teleports, the other functionalities of both don't really provide any value without a cap.

Hmm, I'm not miserable from my gameplay choices at all. My reward and sense of accomplishment comes from my efficiency and contributions to my team, which I'm still able to do quite well. I'm just unsatisfied by the beta, and overall let down with the quality of what was delivered to us, as someone who has direct hands-on experience with this kind of stuff. I don't think these skills trees spent enough time in the ideation phase, because the end results for them were clearly not anticipated (I mean, look at Wendy...) But I was already incredibly happy with the original design of Wortox. I've already implemented some changes to my gameplay to phase out the whole stupid bee thing as soon as possible in long-term worlds, but that's only one environment I have control over, when there's several available to me. It's a good thing day 27 CC is so attainable as solo Wortox, without any help, so I can slow down early and start working on this kind of thing. It just sucks more on pubs, where I'm not in charge of the resources to build alternative Soul farms, or the worldgen, and they typically aren't long-lived servers either, so I'm just automatically dissuaded from building any alternative farms. It's also kinda the only option for challenge/speed running now, too, which is really lame, and this could have been completely avoidable with more care put into the Soul system.

A different approach doesn't have to take that away from you. The Soul Jar wasn't the only thing they could have done.

What are the gameplay changes and farms you're talking about? I too want to be free from the bees.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

46 minutes ago, ApoIIo said:

I deserve something this good. I am sick of Wanda's intricate teleport network dominating lategame travel when she already happens to be a better Wolfgang up until that point.

I want map teleports to stay accessible as well. I have no interest in advocating against that. Unfortunately, Souls do more than just fast travel, and the way we manage them matters.

Tbh I was originally kinda hoping out of this beta we'd get some sort of structure we could build for entirely free map teleports to create our own networks, maybe with a discounted Soul cost for using them on other players, or something. It would give him the freest and easiest-to-use teleport network of any character that also has some natural progression built into it. Would have absolutely solved the issue, even with a Soul cap. But that's obviously not what we got, though I don't think anyone would have complained about this as a system (probably just the build cost would receive scrutiny.)

There is literally no limit to the number of solutions that could have been implemented to alleviate Wortox's problems. I just think what we got is un-fun, clunky, and incredibly thoughtless toward the healing component of Souls. Mass farming Souls is super lame, and I'd rather we didn't have to do that at all. Nothing compelled us to do that on a regular basis, before, and this could have been avoided with a different approach.

[crushcircuit]

45 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

It's definitely risky, that much is true. But it's not the players' fault that they gave us such a heavy-handed approach to Soul management, and then did nothing to tune it or discuss it with those of us who did not want them. They should have delivered something better (and scalable) from the get-go. The cap existed because it established the value of a Soul, and removing it completely was not a good move. I think it's interesting that you bring up the Twin-Tailed Hearts, because the conclusion I've reached is that Soul Bringer and Soul Bastion were both designed WITHOUT the Soul Jar in mind. Other than ally teleports, the other functionalities of both don't really provide any value without a cap.

i agree, but unfortunately that's not the world we live in. that observation regarding Soul Bringer and Soul Bastion is REALLY interesting, i'll have to ponder that one some more, but i absolutely agree.

51 minutes ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

Hmm, I'm not miserable from my gameplay choices at all. My reward and sense of accomplishment comes from my efficiency and contributions to my team, which I'm still able to do quite well. I'm just unsatisfied by the beta, and overall let down with the quality of what was delivered to us, as someone who has direct hands-on experience with this kind of stuff. I don't think these skills trees spent enough time in the ideation phase, because the end results for them were clearly not anticipated (I mean, look at Wendy...) But I was already incredibly happy with the original design of Wortox. I've already implemented some changes to my gameplay to phase out the whole stupid bee thing as soon as possible in long-term worlds, but that's only one environment I have control over, when there's several available to me. It's a good thing day 27 CC is so attainable as solo Wortox, without any help, so I can slow down early and start working on this kind of thing. It just sucks more on pubs, where I'm not in charge of the resources to build alternative Soul farms, or the worldgen, and they typically aren't long-lived servers either, so I'm just automatically dissuaded from building any alternative farms. It's also kinda the only option for challenge/speed running now, too, which is really lame, and this could have been completely avoidable with more care put into the Soul system.

that's very relieving to hear, it is a bit difficult to make a proper observation like that when the forums are so hyper-focused on these things and i don't even know you LOL.

i agree, they definitely should've let the update cook a bit more before releasing it. once again, i hope they learn from this beta and 1) make a more solid foundation before releasing things for testing and 2) learn to better communicate their vision to the community.

it is very nice to hear your perspective on this as always, and in this case i haven't played in pubs during the beta at all. i'm also quite curious about what your setup is, i've been mostly using killer bee biomes and spiders personally.

1 hour ago, ApoIIo said:

If I will be able to get soul jars without sinking a point into knapsack, that'd be cool indeed. Just turn the 1.25x damage to decoy/pierce skill and knapsack upside down tbh and it's good. I love the jars though, in no universe would I ever go back to having to farm souls every two hops or building 5 bee boxes at random intervals around the map.

i actually forgot that they made that skill affect decoy and pierce too... @_@ that makes the situation there even more awkward. i don't think they should put the skill before Knabsack because it'd be weird to unlock something for the Knabsack before you even get the option for it, but that still makes it feel weird because it's not just a Knabsack skill. eeeyikes.

[Tarnishedmax]

i really enjoy soul jars personally and i cannot agree more with this post because currently soul jars feel mandatory with the amount of things they influence, soul jars should remain as an alternative for the greedy soul goblins like me and not forced upon every skill tree, the increased soul cap its such a necessity for Wortox than locking it behind an item just doesnt feel good for anyone. I do want to say that soul jars by themselves are great, i love the idea of getting soul power from hoarding, its a really fun concept and it fits a naughty imp, but your total soul capacity is not something that is necessarily related to combat, and i feel like them being so important while also being naughty is a bad thing because people that are trying to play as nice Wortox have a harder time as most naugthy skills provide basic utility, even the most combat adverse Wortox will have to take soul jars or else will be stuck forever at the 20 soul cap which is barely enough for anything (and lets not even mention overloading in souls from simply being present in boss fights and such) 

Soul jars should always be an option and not something that you are "missing out on" if you dont want to use them.

[ApoIIo]

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

I want map teleports to stay accessible as well. I have no interest in advocating against that. Unfortunately, Souls do more than just fast travel, and the way we manage them matters.

I don't care what souls do, besides teleporting and being eaten. You could remove soul healing altogether for all I care. Wortox was not a character until the Wicker rework and since then he only had one perk.

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

There is literally no limit to the number of solutions that could have been implemented to alleviate Wortox's problems. I just think what we got is un-fun, clunky, and incredibly thoughtless toward the healing component of Souls. Mass farming Souls is super lame, and I'd rather we didn't have to do that at all. Nothing compelled us to do that on a regular basis, before, and this could have been avoided with a different approach.

It's extremely satisfying to mass-harvest souls using naughty skills or reaper, or both.

1 hour ago, Tarnishedmax said:

Soul jars should always be an option and not something that you are "missing out on" if you dont want to use them.

You could say you're missing out on any other skill if you don't pick them. Nobody forces anyone to pick soul jars, they're not mandatory at all. It's the same deal as non-moose masteries, understandably popular choice =/= absolute necessity.

I agree with the original post in one term though, +5 per jar is unnecessary and I'd rather the skill just allow 40 capacity from the get-go.

1 hour ago, OMEGASCRUFF said:

There is literally no limit to the number of solutions that could have been implemented to alleviate Wortox's problems. I just think what we got is un-fun, clunky, and incredibly thoughtless toward the healing component of Souls. Mass farming Souls is super lame, and I'd rather we didn't have to do that at all. Nothing compelled us to do that on a regular basis, before, and this could have been avoided with a different approach.

Also, about this, I had to farm souls even more regularly to keep up with how many souls I would burn to replace non-Wortox transportation on a regular day. Would run out far more often AND consume more souls. If anything I do it far less often & it is far more fun/satisfying to do now.

[Tarnishedmax]

2 hours ago, ApoIIo said:

You could say you're missing out on any other skill if you don't pick them. Nobody forces anyone to pick soul jars, they're not mandatory at all. It's the same deal as non-moose masteries, understandably popular choice =/= absolute necessity.

I understand and agree with your point completely! but what i meant is that the extra soul capacity feels SO important that it doesnt *feel* like an option, its something so vital for Wortox as a character and for ALL his other skills that them being tied to jars feels terrible for people that dont like them.

Unlike Woodie where you still have ALL his other transformation and abilities that not picking the meta option just doesnt matter, who cares, but with Wortox it genuinely just feels like a disadvantage 

[Dingle]

2 hours ago, ApoIIo said:

You could say you're missing out on any other skill if you don't pick them. Nobody forces anyone to pick soul jars, they're not mandatory at all. It's the same deal as non-moose masteries, understandably popular choice =/= absolute necessity.

It's practically mandatory.

I think the comparison I'd make is trying to make a Winona build that doesn't get Portability. You CAN do it, it's not truly mandatory. But...

Partially an aside: I actually like Goose Mastery