Wortox Skill Feedback

[Koomin]

Wortox Feedback

Feedback below, since it keeps getting drowned out and then people say there is no feedback, when there are some pretty big and real problems in his skill tree. I’d really like some actual developer time devoted to this character, and one of the developer posts explaining choices that is Wortox focused would be great.

Cloudy Carmen: In multiplayer the enemy just attacks the other players instead, making this useless.  Even in solo, bosses usually start walking away, making you unable to even hit them.  The boss also just randomly smacks you in the face when the time expires and it’s really hard to even tell when it’s going to happen.  I can barely find any use for the skill, and it should just be changed to a different skill. 

Knabsack: 

There are like 30 posts on the forum about this skill.  Most of these include giving it some type of storage, since it is clearly a krampus sack.  As-is it is really just quite the let down.  Not going to go into much detail here since everyone has probably read novels already on why the current one is bad, and suggestions for it.

Please also make it look like something that would hurt when you get hit with it and not a balloon attached to a twig.  I don’t understand why it doesn’t just use the model of the sacks the krampii use at least.  This has been pretty continuous feedback since the start of the beta. 

Swap soul jar and knabsack: 

This one is pretty unanimously agreed upon.  Soul jar is basically mandatory with the skill tree design.  Forcing 2 skill points for it and forcing people to get knabsack when it is questionably designed is not great.  This should have just been the first neutral skill honestly.  

Soul decoy 2: 

This skill does basically nothing.  Why would I want the decoy to last longer?  If it gets noticed by the enemy it will die fast.  If it doesn’t get noticed by the enemy, why would I care how long it lasts?

Bee videos with soul pierce:

I’m not really sure what is going on in them and haven’t been able to test, but it appears maybe the gunpowder reduction change for soul pierce isn’t working when the souls are not on top of each other (like with butterflies)

Soul bastion:

This whole skill line is basically useless in single player.  Souls healing at range does nothing since there is no one else to heal.  Souls coming to you faster is actively counterproductive with soul pierce.  Your healing is also easily enough to get through any fight.  There is no reason at all to pick this, so it is really incredibly hard to get nice inclination in solo.  It is not particularly fun to be basically locked out from nice inclination if you play alone (especially since other skills in nice are multiplayer oriented).

Filler skills:

Reaching souls 2 and soul decoy 2 are super useless.  Just deleting them would be better than leaving them as they are (or fixing them to not be useless would be an option).  If their counterparts need to be also merged to keep the tree symmetric, just make the two that are being merged weaker.  While weaker filler skills make sense design wise, it’s not really ok to have filler skills be so entirely useless.  Some other ones like making souls last longer while coming to you don’t even do anything until you select a later skill.

Affinities:  

Affinities being locked to specific gear is really not fun to play with.  It feels really bad to, for instance, select shadow affinity and know that for the rest of the game I basically have to use the reaper and cowl, or be sabotaging myself.  Why not just make it “while using a shadow rift weapon” at least.  It will be even worse when new updates come with new weapons, and Wortox can’t even use them without losing affinity.  The lunar affinity has the same issue, but additionally is really weirdly designed where it just makes you ignore the boss and eliminates most of the interactivity of a fight.

It would be highly appreciated if this was not derailed with discussions of other characters, and was kept on topic for Wortox.

[Chewabacca]

Would it be helpful if I went back to page 20 and compiled a list of Wortox suggestions made since then, since that's been done for the other two characters and I have some time? Or would you rather this center on the feedback that you've provided?

[Echsrick]

there was alsol something how 1 skill somehow increases the damage of other skills FROM A DIFFEREND BRANCH wish is..not realy good, alsol for more neutral skills that could replace/added i had something done with it aswell

 

 

[Koomin]

3 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

Would it be helpful if I went back to page 20 and compiled a list of Wortox suggestions made since then, since that's been done for the other two characters and I have some time? Or would you rather this center on the feedback that you've provided?

Would love it if you did that.  I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of great feedback too.

[Dingle]

This one

And this one.

[Arepantera]

20 minutes ago, Koomin said:

Affinities being locked to specific gear is really not fun to play with.  It feels really bad to, for instance, select shadow affinity and know that for the rest of the game I basically have to use the reaper and cowl, or be sabotaging myself.  Why not just make it “while using a shadow rift weapon” at least.

This is honestly my biggest issue with Wortox's skill tree, his shadow affinity being locked to the reaper
I get the flavour that they're trying to go with, but it feels bad when your character peaks so early and you feel like character progression doesn't exist anymore. Other characters get to use those cool axes and nightmare saddles, but you're stuck with an early rift weapon.

I really think it should work with all shadow aligned weapons with planar damage, to future proof him as well.

[Dingle]

Other than that, some vfx change on Wortox himself for soul echo expiring, so I don't have to stare at my souls in inventory at all times.

[Chewabacca]

1. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/161931-wortox-feedback-after-playing-12-6-build/
2. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162441-are-wortoxs-inclinations-intended-to-have-downsides/
3. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162465-feedback-on-wortox-alignment-change/
4. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162477-how-about-letting-nice-wortox-not-have-a-soul-overload/
5. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162545-some-wortox-suggestions/
6. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162546-wortox-lunar-affinity-could-be-more-intresting/
7. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162614-fun-fact-about-nice-wortox-and-cc-crown/
8. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162628-is-it-an-oversight-that-the-reaper-still-calls-wortox-a-mortal/
9. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162611-amazing-detail-about-wortox-souls-that-i-just-found-out-today/
10. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162643-wortoxs-and-walters-affinityes-are-not-really-usefull-gor-those-eho-dont-play-lategame/
11. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162730-finally-played-wortox-a-couple-of-things-that-drove-me-insane-irl/
12. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162732-wortox-knabsack-should-have-an-upgrade-like-wigfrids-spear-tied-to-the-affinity-tree/
13. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162650-poll-is-wortoxs-covetous-collector-too-skippable/
14. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162711-nice-inclination-feedback/
15. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162365-random-ideas-for-the-skill-trees/
16. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162846-wortox-beefolo-rescuer/
17. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162844-the-suggestion-about-wortoxs-skillset/
18. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162928-howlitzer-wortoxs-lunar-swindler-idea/
19. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162885-potential-idea-for-knabsack/
20. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/160837-the-panflute-skills-are-just-kind-of-bad/
21. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162449-1213-wortox-hotfix-feedback-requests-example-new-builds-imaginary-build/
22. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/160835-please-let-knabsack-be-usable-by-others/
23. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162445-trade-team-healing-for-self-healing/
24. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162321-wortox-final-tweaks-megathread/
25. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/161313-increase-bottle-spawn-rate/
26. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162997-knabsack-needs-attention/
27. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163065-little-beta-qol-suggestions/
28. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163132-could-wortoxs-weapon-be-on-a-separate-branch/
29. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163133-knabsack-increasing-krampus-sack’s-perks/
30. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162991-please-replace-cloudy-carmine/
31. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163153-wortox-wrap-up-before-release/
32. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163212-not-panflute-neutral-skills/
33. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163371-wortox-received-new-idle-animations/
34. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163394-nice-wortox-able-to-heal-followers-without-penalty/
35. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163397-knabsack-design-request-vfx-concept/
36. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163392-separate-soul-capacity-from-soul-jars/
37. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163411-an-interesting-method-for-wortox-facing-enemies-with-skill-tree/
38. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163380-wortox-soul-boosts/
39. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163061-numerical-issue-of-cursed-vexation/
40. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163436-wortox-new-neutral-storage-perk/
41. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163422-since-soul-jars-remove-a-huge-downside-of-wortox-how-about-this/
42. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163418-why-shouldnt-knabsack-be-a-storage-option/
43. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163479-feedback-and-suggestions-for-knabsack/
44. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163478-cloudy-carmen-buff/
45. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163469-cloudy-carmen-replacement-for-wortox/
46. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163395-wortox-extra-soul-echo-too-essential-needs-a-downside/
47. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163347-wortox-skilltree-perk-review-and-addressing-certain-issues/
48. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163486-poll-wortoxs-item-visual-design-and-aesthetic/
49. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163393-make-naughty-wortox-have-a-lower-naughtiness-threshold/
50. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163484-temporary-mind-control-instead-of-cloudy-carmen/
51. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/162299-why-did-we-nerf-self-healing-on-naughty-wortox/
52. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163544-the-lunar-affinity-of-wortox-is-op-and-boring/

Also, I know there was a big thread objecting to the soul jar skill on the grounds of it nuking the resource management part of his character that got deleted. Not endorsing or opposing, just wanted to acknowledge that it existed.

 

[crushcircuit]

huge agree on soul bastion II and soul decoy II, i was JUST talking about this with a friend earlier today.

they feel like they're actively detrimental most of the time, soul bastion being most egregious because if you have it you likely dont have naughty inclination to fall back on - it just makes you more likely to overload, and copy pastes the previous skill.

soul decoy is just kind of annoying because if im using the decoys i want them to explode faster, although im guessing the point is to try to make them distract longer? i dont think they need distract enemies any longer than they already do, they already give you the time to teleport away from a threat using soul echo if that's what you need them for.

i also definitely find cloudy carmen to be a bit more annoying than its worth, both because of the lack of synergy when playing Together and because of it causing issues in certain cases (i.e. dragonfly), i might use it occasionally if it had compatibility with other players, but i agree it'd be best to replace it with something else. i love the pan flute skills and im sure theres something else they could do with it if they continue to go that direction. just to spitball, i think something either on neutral or nice branch giving buffs could have potential - maybe a skill that gives yourself and allies in range a buff when you play it? higher speed, defense, or attack, something like that.

[Koomin]

13 minutes ago, crushcircuit said:

huge agree on soul bastion II and soul decoy II, i was JUST talking about this with a friend earlier today.

they feel like they're actively detrimental most of the time, soul bastion being most egregious because if you have it you likely dont have naughty inclination to fall back on - it just makes you more likely to overload, and copy pastes the previous skill.

soul decoy is just kind of annoying because if im using the decoys i want them to explode faster, although im guessing the point is to try to make them distract longer? i dont think they need distract enemies any longer than they already do, they already give you the time to teleport away from a threat using soul echo if that's what you need them for.

The way that they distract though is by drawing aggro, which results in them getting hit, which causes them to disappear.  If they successfully distract an enemy, it almost always would hit them within the already long time that soul decoy 1 gives, making the extra time useless.  Maybe if the thing you distracted was like a slurtle or something and it was really slowly slugging its way towards it the extra time would help?? I really struggle to find a use case for it.

[crushcircuit]

11 minutes ago, Koomin said:

The way that they distract though is by drawing aggro, which results in them getting hit, which causes them to disappear.  If they successfully distract an enemy, it almost always would hit them within the already long time that soul decoy 1 gives, making the extra time useless.  Maybe if the thing you distracted was like a slurtle or something and it was really slowly slugging its way towards it the extra time would help?? I really struggle to find a use case for it.

i also havent played decoys without getting the full branch, so im not sure what the time increase actually is. i just know that sometimes it takes an extremely long time for certain enemies to attack depending on the timing... but it just isnt that useful

[Dingle]

14 minutes ago, Koomin said:

The way that they distract though is by drawing aggro, which results in them getting hit, which causes them to disappear.  If they successfully distract an enemy, it almost always would hit them within the already long time that soul decoy 1 gives, making the extra time useless.  Maybe if the thing you distracted was like a slurtle or something and it was really slowly slugging its way towards it the extra time would help?? I really struggle to find a use case for it.

I'd vastly prefer it if Soul Decoy 2 made the decoys draw more aggro. Sometimes they just don't seem to work right now for enemies bothering to attack them. Seems inconsistent, enemies sometimes just go out of their way to attack Wortox instead. I'm not sure how they even work for that, unless it's just based on chance.

[crushcircuit]

1 minute ago, Dingle said:

I'd vastly prefer it if Soul Decoy 2 made the decoys draw more aggro. Sometimes they just don't seem to work right now for enemies bothering to attack them. Seems inconsistent, enemies sometimes just go out of their way to attack Wortox instead. I'm not sure how they even work for that, unless it's just based on chance.

i'd have to assume its based off of where you tp - i found they usually attack wortox instead if you tp too close to them. i also think increased aggro radius/strength would be helpful!

[Dingle]

37 minutes ago, crushcircuit said:

huge agree on soul bastion II and soul decoy II, i was JUST talking about this with a friend earlier today.

they feel like they're actively detrimental most of the time, soul bastion being most egregious because if you have it you likely dont have naughty inclination to fall back on - it just makes you more likely to overload, and copy pastes the previous skill.

In my recommended Nice build, I avoid soul bastion 2 like the plague. Soul bastion 1 seems better than the entire rest of the line, anyway.

[Koomin]

20 hours ago, Dingle said:

In my recommended Nice build, I avoid soul bastion 2 like the plague. Soul bastion 1 seems better than the entire rest of the line, anyway.

Has anyone suggested any good fixes for the soul bastion line so that it isn't so useless on solo builds, making nice builds solo almost impossible?  All I can think of is just completely removing and replacing the reaching souls skills since they are legitimately useless there.

I can't even envision what your solo nice build would look like without wasting 2 points on reaching souls skills.

[YouKnowWho142]

Entirely agree with the affinities, I have always been put off by any push to force the player to use a specific weapon or armor, and I definitely think wortox's affinities are the most egregious example. As you stated, I think making it just "shadow" or "lunar" related weapons/armor is much more reasonable and gives the player more options

[Dingle]

12 minutes ago, Koomin said:

Has anyone suggested any good fixes for the soul bastion line so that it isn't so useless on solo builds, making nice builds solo almost impossible?  All I can think of is just completely removing and replacing the reaching souls skills since they are legitimately useless there.

I can't even envision what your solo nice build would look like without wasting 2 points on reaching souls skills.

I made a mistake in that post!

I meant I only ever get the very bottom perk of the Soul Bastion line.

So Reaching Souls I. That's it. I never go higher.

[SilverSpoon]

23 hours ago, Koomin said:

Please also make it look like something that would hurt when you get hit with it and not a balloon attached to a twig.  I don’t understand why it doesn’t just use the model of the sacks the krampii use at least.  This has been pretty continuous feedback since the start of the beta. 

If it keep be a balloon attached to a twig, but it could be cool if it was made like a morning star, so why is it so awkward.

The most unnatural thing I noticed was that no matter how much I swung the Knabsack, the sack was always facing downwards.

[Echsrick]

29 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

If it keep be a balloon attached to a twig, but it could be cool if it was made like a morning star, so why is it so awkward.

The most unnatural thing I noticed was that no matter how much I swung the Knabsack, the sack was always facing downwards.

thats a flail, its difficult to wield...and kind of not very practical as a weapon, a real morning star, or a mace, a bludgeon kind of weapon thats just a stick and the head with out a chain.....in anyways this just kind of prooves that a knapsack is not realy designed to be a weapon in the first place, its impractical

[Koomin]

1 hour ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Entirely agree with the affinities, I have always been put off by any push to force the player to use a specific weapon or armor, and I definitely think wortox's affinities are the most egregious example. As you stated, I think making it just "shadow" or "lunar" related weapons/armor is much more reasonable and gives the player more options

This does seem really easy to fix so I'm a bit confused about the lack of an update here so far.  I'll be really annoyed when new updates come out with new armor and weapons and I'm just unable to use them because then the affinity would be disabled.  

1 hour ago, Dingle said:

I made a mistake in that post!

I meant I only ever get the very bottom perk of the Soul Bastion line.

So Reaching Souls I. That's it. I never go higher.

I'm assuming your build takes all 4 movement related nice skills, the first 2 telltale ones, and reaching souls 1?  I can't even think of what another nice solo build like that would be, which is pretty good evidence of the problem.  Especially since yours even takes reaching souls 1 despite it being useless, just to get the affinity.  It's really not great to be legitimately unable to even play nice solo Wortox without selecting at least one skill that does absolutely nothing.

[Dingle]

21 minutes ago, Koomin said:

I'm assuming your build takes all 4 movement related nice skills, the first 2 telltale ones, and reaching souls 1?  I can't even think of what another nice solo build like that would be, which is pretty good evidence of the problem.  Especially since yours even takes reaching souls 1 despite it being useless, just to get the affinity.  It's really not great to be legitimately unable to even play nice solo Wortox without selecting at least one skill that does absolutely nothing.

I was talking about my team nice build in that post. Sorrynif that wasnt clear, I am phone posting most of the time.

My Team build, Nice:

All movement

1 reaching

3 twintail.

There, all the good Nice skills in 8 points. Then 6 points for Naughty. Usually decoy and overwhelming greed. Not a lot of variance there, sadly.

Here's my amazing Solo Nice Build:

4 points in movement skills and then:

Uhhhhh....

????????????????

Sometimes speedrunners get reaching souls 2, to make souls from butterflies go to you slightly faster? Thats 6...

And then you can get... 2 points in neutral (3rd is worthless) and the affinity and uh... I guess just limit yourself to 4 points in Naughty?

There's 2 points left after this. I guess just get cloudy carmine after all (it's near worthless, but this is why people get it) and then just don't spend the final point ever.

I've talked about build problems before with Wortox. I got tired of pointing it out for the most part.

More Neutral options would have helped. That or Nice having more solo friendly options.

 

[asdsaax]

Good points

Though I think that wanting soul jars for less investment is rather gluttonous because it would just buff naughty Wortox.
Letting him pick extra utility perk for free would dimnish value of other builds especially when "Naughty" branch is all about getting something that Wortox never had before:
Offense, but at cost of utility

and there's too much weight put to "filler skills" like Reaching Souls
that are meant to impact point budget managment not gameplay, so treating them like capstones is not necessary and I doubt Klei would do anything about them
+It's important to respect the impact that their capstones have, because clearing hounds, splumonkeys, spiders and bees is totally worth 3 points
+Same reason like on jars, so I'm against condensing

[Koomin]

3 hours ago, Koomin said:

Has anyone suggested any good fixes for the soul bastion line so that it isn't so useless on solo builds, making nice builds solo almost impossible?  All I can think of is just completely removing and replacing the reaching souls skills since they are legitimately useless there.

Thought about it a bit more and the best fix that is not super invasive for this late in development would be:

-swap soul bastion 1 and 2 with reaching souls 1 and 2.  (Ie make it so that soul bastion skills are at the bottom of the branch).  That would give solo players the option to pick those two and stop before getting the ones that are actually useless for them.  It would also make at least 1 viable solo nice build without assigning points to legitimately useless skills.  (Select 4 movement skills, soul bastion 1 and 2, and telltale 1). If it's somehow balance ruining, could tune heal amounts or something, or have the reaching souls skills progressively increase the healing pulse too.

2 minutes ago, asdsaax said:

Good points

Though I think that wanting soul jars for less investment is rather gluttonous because it would just buff naughty Wortox.
Letting him pick extra utility perk for free would dimnish value of other builds especially when "Naughty" branch is all about getting something that Wortox never had before:
Offense, but at cost of utility

and there's too much weight put to "filler skills" like Reaching Souls
that are meant to impact point budget managment not gameplay, so treating them like capstones is not necessary and I doubt Klei would do anything about them
+It's important to respect the impact that their capstones have, because clearing hounds, splumonkeys, spiders and bees is totally worth 3 points
+Same reason like on jars, so I'm against condensing

Totally fine with keeping the filler skills and the knabsack and stuff where they are if the skills actually do something.  The suggestion was to either improve the skills, or swap them or condense them if that's not possible.  Having skills that are more for point budget is ok, but having them have no real impact on gameplay at all is bad.  Good example of this is soul decoy 2: it's fine if this is supposed to be weaker to make soul decoy 3 need a bigger investment.  It's not really fine for it to functionally do basically nothing at all.

[GimplyGoose]

My opinion on the Nice vs Naughty inclinations are that the naughty skills are more desirable than the nice skills, but the nice inclination is more desirable than the naughty inclination. For the this is a good balance. You need to choose between taking the stronger skills or the stronger inclination. Removing prerequisite skills on either side of the skill tree or adjusting the inclinations may upset this balance and make the skill tree choices you need to make less interesting.

I think there is a bit of room to improve Wortox's neutral/affinity skills, but I don't think it would be a good idea to do things like put the soul jar before the knabsack or to consolidate "filler" skills.

[Baark0]

i personally would like an entire rework of the affinities, not having any affinity, which is usually your biggest perk, until you kill the cc/fw is kinda lame. i recently did a boss run with wortox's beta, and by the time i finally got to start using my affinities actual abilities, i had killed basically everything of importance. if the affinity skills have to stay, id prefer if the affinities simply either gave you the dodge or bonus damage regardless of what weapon/armour youre using (with nerfed stats, such as only 50% damage blocked, and less single target damage. aoe is fine to leave unnerfed imo), maybe with the values increasing if youre using a lunar armour/shadow weapon.