Why skill tree balancing feels so volatile (to me)

[Lardee]

47 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

My issue isn't a whose power level is better thing it's a your solution is lazy because it doesn't acknowledge the design differences of the characters and how that affects gameplay. You can't see merm hp so regen isn't going to go as far as having a dedicated healer without a lot of balance tweaking.

But the design differences that you bring up are just about the relative power levels of Wurt and Webber.  Wurt's gameplay shouldn't in the slightest be dependent on Webbers. It doesn't matter whether Wurt or Webber perform better, the same or worse in the same situations.  The question of Wurt's gameplay should just be whether it incentivizes uniqueness and engagement.  Basically: explain why what I'm proposing is bad WITHOUT referencing Webber.

 

47 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The investment that goes into merms can take hours for players and even after that investment they still have to pay the merm king to actually keep access to their merm guards and keep paying their merms to keep their loyalty you saying not to scale that back while weakening merms effectiveness would just straight up make the gameplay experience worse.

I said that merms should get increased loyalty if Wurt fights with them. So that's lowering the loyalty burden while incentivizing combat.  Also, I never said merm "effectiveness" should be weakened, only their survivability. I said that merms should be just as effective as they were before, however unlike before, their effectiveness depends on your ability to control them rather than your ability to left click on a target once.  

 

47 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Also I play both characters the time spent gathering and maintaining Webber's army is small compared to Wurts that's one of the key differences in their gameplay you can spend less time working towards your abilities as Webber but more skill goes into combat currently they offer a different experience in that way giving Wurt more incentive to engage on combat is something that needs to happen but lazily pasting Webber's perks and calling it a day is not a solution.

This doesn't come close to explaining the pros and cons of Webber and Wurt, but that's irrelevant because Wurt's design is not dependent on Webber. The question is: do the proposed changes incentivize the player to approach Wurt gameplay in a more engaging and unique way? If your answer is "no" then I'm all ears as to why and what you think would make it so.  

Plus, if Wurt could control her army with commands and increase their loyalty by fighting alongside them, that makes an army of regular merms you find in the swamp a lot stronger than before which speeds up Wurt's gameplay. 

 

47 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Also i thought I'd add the main reason I was saying it would take a lot of work is that the changes need to consider the differences between the characters as well as make their follower combat more distinct if the end goal is to just make them the same without any consideration then I'd rather just keep things as is as at that point Webber already fills that niche.

I'm really confused because you're arguing about them being too similar, yet earlier your argument was that Wurt doesn't have something like Nurse Spider healing.  

[FluffyBun]

On 2/5/2025 at 9:23 AM, Radicaljoe said:

I agree, there is certainly a sense of "now or never" while klei is making these trees. Like, look at Wigfrids tree's affinity, the 5% damage song for opposite affinity only? I imagine that would have been buffed by now but nah. Winona has 3 skills for I think 20% faster firing catapults, when theres 1 skill that makes it 50% by using the remote, still can't believe that made it to main and still is the same way. 
It's not a certainty that klei will never go back and make tweaks, but they do show some pretty big support for moving forward instead of dwelling on previous material.

Winona's firing speed is multiplicative. The so-called "20%" is actually 30% since you will be buffing it too.

[Mysterious box]

11 hours ago, Lardee said:

But the design differences that you bring up are just about the relative power levels of Wurt and Webber.  Wurt's gameplay shouldn't in the slightest be dependent on Webbers. It doesn't matter whether Wurt or Webber perform better, the same or worse in the same situations.  The question of Wurt's gameplay should just be whether it incentivizes uniqueness and engagement.  Basically: explain why what I'm proposing is bad WITHOUT referencing Webber.

Explain where? Because I said merms need to be reworked in their survivability methods if they cut down their base survivability? I used Webber as a comparsion not because of a whose better scenario but because he can be used to explain the faults of your solution. You brought up how it worked for Webber without addressing why it worked for Webber. She doesn't need to copy him but if the plan isn't to give merms tools to survive then all your doing is making her experience worse for the sake of how you feel her gameplay should go without considering the rebalancing that needs to happen for it.

11 hours ago, Lardee said:

This doesn't come close to explaining the pros and cons of Webber and Wurt, but that's irrelevant because Wurt's design is not dependent on Webber. The question is: do the proposed changes incentivize the player to approach Wurt gameplay in a more engaging and unique way? If your answer is "no" then I'm all ears as to why and what you think would make it so.  

Plus, if Wurt could control her army with commands and increase their loyalty by fighting alongside them, that makes an army of regular merms you find in the swamp a lot stronger than before which speeds up Wurt's gameplay. 

 

11 hours ago, Lardee said:

I'm really confused because you're arguing about them being too similar, yet earlier your argument was that Wurt doesn't have something like Nurse Spider healing.  

No I'm not arguing they're too similar my issue is that your solution treats them as though they're the same without even attempting to address the problems that arise from this but since you still don't seem to get it let me use a different example. Let's say Klei removed Abgial's health bar and damage indicators tomorrow everything else stayed the same though even with those commands people will mess up from time to time that's what the healing potions are for but now you don't know when to heal them. Now spread that out to an entire army Webber's solution to this problem is spider nurses he doesn't need that information because they're constantly being healed so as long as he keeps his spiders from being stunlocked or away from extremely powerful attacks they'll be fine.

The only healing option she has to depend on in combat is bloodshots and that requires her to heal each merm individually and only heals about a quarter of their health over time and you don't get to see when the healing duration is over and the skill that's supposed to show you which merms are hurt is setup in such a bad way that it often gets them killed while lowering your dps. Even increasing the regen is a flawed solution as again you can't see their hp and it's unknown how much regen would be needed to forgive the mistakes of the average player but not also turn merms basically invincible. Wurt didn't need to address these issues previously because her design was to work towards throwing an overwhelming force at your opponent.

And speaking of work I don't see why your so against the idea of scaling back her costs as those were established because of her overwhelming power style gameplay if reward is scaled back so should the investment and it won't suddenly decrease engagement infact it'll increase it. It's not like I'm saying remove content it can be as simple as halving the resource costs on all her structures and removing the king's hunger system.

12 hours ago, Lardee said:

Plus, if Wurt could control her army with commands and increase their loyalty by fighting alongside them, that makes an army of regular merms you find in the swamp a lot stronger than before which speeds up Wurt's gameplay. 

How? Getting a greater degree of control over them would be nice but I don't see how their damage output would be better? Even then world generations aren't even guaranteed to have merm houses. Besides if anything merms being more proactive in helping you gather resources would do far more in speeding up Wurt's gameplay than any combat additions.