I don't actually care about character balance or “power creep”

[Bumber64]

14 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

My question is what exactly does this statement add to the conversation or even relate to the point I was making

If the game is well balanced, there's less incentive for everyone to just pick Wolfgang, tame a beefalo, drop a lureplant on AFW, or whatever.

You wouldn't need custom restrictions to keep things fun.

[Y0sH]

... Seeing sub 30 min Ancient Fuelweaver run times make me and my 4k hours on this game seem like I've spent my time in Weeny-Hut Junior.

[Tranoze]

1 hour ago, Bumber64 said:

will optimize the fun out of the game, given the chance.

That how they have fun in the game. You don't have to take the fun out of the game from them, given the chance.

[Bumber64]

26 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

That how they have fun in the game. You don't have to take the fun out of the game from them, given the chance.

Didn't seem like Guille thinks he was having fun in his anecdote? He's trying to make the case that the characters were "too balanced", but he's describing a single optimal route involving grabbing a beefalo and flingo'ing BQ.

It's on the devs to provide multiple compelling choices.

[Guille6785]

1 minute ago, Bumber64 said:

Didn't seem like Guille thinks he was having fun in his anecdote? He's trying to make the case that the characters were "too balanced", but he's describing a single optimal route involving grabbing a beefalo and flingo'ing BQ.

???? I was describing a completely different thing and you randomly switched to saying speedrunning (a different playstyle that had nothing to do with my anecdote) isn't fun

[Bumber64]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

???? I was describing a completely different thing and you randomly switched to saying speedrunning (a different playstyle that had nothing to do with my anecdote) isn't fun

I never said speedrunning isn't fun. A single best way to do things isn't, which unbalance tends towards.

In other words, is Wolfgang being restricted from these runs to ruin people's fun? Clearly not.

[Arcwell]

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I never said speedrunning isn't fun. A single best way to do things isn't, which unbalance tends towards.

In other words, is Wolfgang being restricted from these runs to ruin people's fun? Clearly not.

He's not the single best way to do things. Last two speedrun.com tournaments had wins (here and here) that could not have been replicated by Wolfgang. The issue is community perception of the character. If everyone says Wolfgang is the best, of course new players are going to assume they have to play Wolfgang to win. And no one using that strategy would wind up finding out that the other characters can and do outperform Wolfgang in several areas. The goal was to encourage players to find new and better strategies, not to make the best strategy impossible.

And it's been said before but like... speedrunning balance =/= game balance. If that were the case, Wes would unironically be stronger than Wanda and Wurt, which is just absurd on its face.

[Lardee]

I don't know about you guys, but I think most people (me included) don't pick characters to play based on who I think is the strongest. I think people pick characters based on gameplay or backstory/aesthetics.

 

[Theukon-dos]

As someone who does have strong opinions about skill trees and where the game is going, and "enjoys" making those opinions known, for a lack of a better term, I do agree with you, at least to an extent.

 

I do believe that "balance" as a concept is firmly important to any and all games. In DST's case, it's important because players may end up feeling obligated to play a specific character because they're "strong" instead of the ones they actually like to play. But obviously, it's more important to make sure that all those characters are fun in the first place. And there are absolutely characters that needed the changes that came with skill trees like Willow or Walter to reach that state. And if they had been the only ones updated, I'd like to think that I'd have been over the moon with everyone else.

 

The problem is that I just don't think skill trees do a good job at making characters fun. All the characters aren't starting on equal ground. So the ones that are already fun, powerful, unique, or whatever have you are getting skill trees right along side those that actually need the changes. And say what you want about Balance. But Klei themselves did say they want everyone to be "on par" with the likes of characters such as Maxwell and Wanda. But how's that going to work if they just get skill trees to? More importantly though, the skill trees we've gotten just... aren't good at giving characters diversity in the slightest.

 

They're not broad enough to meaningfully let you choose between alternate playstyles. They don't have enough depth to flesh out any alternate playstyles a character does have, and they're all so focused on combat that the characters end up in the same field anyways. Where's the Winona skill that lets her repair tools and armor with her tape or make the Thumper to collect lumber yards worth of logs in moments? Where's the Wigfrid skill branch that lets her build viking longboats and explore new lands like the vikings of old? You know the line "When everyone's super, no one will be?" That's how skill trees feel to me right now. Just about all the skill trees have ultimately ended up just settling on "[Character] is a brawler with strong AOE damage". And while, again, there are characters who needed the buffs enough that it's just a straight improvement, it still really sucks if that's not who you want to play.

 

In my experience, if you really want characters to feel unique and diverse, then downsides are far more impactful at changing how you play the game. Or that character needs to interact with the game in a fundamentally different way than anyone else. And that doesn't just mean "Has some special abilities like flamethrowers or shadow prisons". Wanda having a time meter is probably the game's best example. She can't heal with food or medicine like everyone else. She has to rely on her watches that have a cooldown and are limited by inventory space. And her "health" is never lost all at once, meaning you have a split-second after taking a fatal hit to react and potentially save yourself. And the reason that Walter's slingshot was such a point of contention before his skill tree is because it almost did this for Walter. To this day, it's the only character-exclusive weapon that's not directly based on a pre-existing weapon like Wigfrid's battle spears or Wanda's alarming clock. Meaning that he had some real potential to be DST's one and only ranged character.

To that end, some of the most fun I've had with DST in recent memory has been playing with Uncompromising Mode's unique characters; namely Wixie and Wathom; for that very reason. Wixie takes Walter's slingshot and cranks it upto 12. Not just making it an insanely potent damage-dealing tool in general. But her Claustrophobia means that it's her only real option because she's not just encouraged to stay away from enemies like Walter is. But outright has too if she wants to avoid getting stunned and beaten to death. While Wathom's attack being replaced with a lunge gives him a far greater focus on mobility than anyone else and in a more unique way than just "speed boost go brr." Technically, he doesn't even have an innate damage boost despite being explicitly a combat character. His natural 2x modifier is almost completely offset by him attacking at just under half the speed of everyone else, so any extra damage you do in his regular state is just from his mobility letting you get an extra hit in. That combined with his adrenaline meter giving him even more mobility at the cost of taking more damage before ultimately leading him to amp up and going completely ape****, doubling his damage and maximizing his mobility at the cost of making him take 5x the damage from all sources leads to a feeling of ride-or-die that no other character in DST can match. And means that you can actually call him a "glass cannon" with a straight face, unlike with Wanda and Maxwell, who both just put on a set of night armor and call it a day.

Obviously completely reworking every character to play completely differently is a no go by every metric. But that's why I've been advocating for alignment perks to work like B-Sides so much. Completely optional choices that come with their own set of upsides and downsides which ultimately result in characters having those varied playstyles that most people seem to want.

[Guille6785]

10 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

I do believe that "balance" as a concept is firmly important to any and all games. In DST's case, it's important because players may end up feeling obligated to play a specific character because they're "strong" instead of the ones they actually like to play.

not disagreeing with the rest of your post but this one thing is something I've heard from multiple people, even Klei developers, but in all my years in this community I honestly can't recall seeing anyone complain that they feel forced to play a character that they perceive to be the strongest; I've obviously seen my fair share of people complain that Wortox/Wurt/Wolfgang/Wimble/Wingus are too strong or whatever and I've seen them bring up this exact hypothetical point but I can't recall ever seeing one real example of a person actually stick to a character purely because they perceive them to be the “strongest”, I simply don't think this is a type of player that DST attracts because of how far it is from any competitive game

[Theukon-dos]

2 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

not disagreeing with the rest of your post but this one thing is something I've heard from multiple people, even Klei developers, but in all my years in this community I honestly can't recall seeing anyone complain that they feel forced to play a character that they perceive to be the strongest; I've obviously seen my fair share of people complain that Wortox/Wurt/Wolfgang/Wimble/Wingus are too strong or whatever and I've seen them bring up this exact hypothetical point but I can't recall ever seeing one real example of a person actually stick to a character purely because they perceive them to be the “strongest”, I simply don't think this is a type of player that DST attracts because of how far it is from any competitive game

That- actually now that you mention it, I'm not sure I've seen it either.

 

Admittedly I'm also in the camp of "I got into the game because I wanted a challenge, stop making all the characters puke out damage numbers like it's flu season", so that's also a factor in why I think balance is important. But I swear I've seen people complain about that point. Or maybe I'm just mis-remembering and am thinking of the same group you're talking about.

[Guille6785]

To be honest I do think there is a discussion to be had about whether having a roster that doesn't feel like it has characters that are significantly stronger than others would be better for the game, and if we were discussing strictly from hypothetical/theoretical scenarios I wouldn't have anything against that discussion, but DST doesn't exist in a vacuum and one has to consider that the developers are real people constrained by time and their own flaws; when trying to be realistic I genuinely believe it is better when the developers don't intentionally try to swerve out of the way to make the roster feel balanced because (and I mean this as respectfully as I can) the devs are really out of touch and in practice this ends up doing more harm than good.

I hate to sound like a broken record and point this out for the 50th time, but the developers took an intergalactic bait when they actually believed Edgy Rick's “big three” trolling campaign from all the way back in 2017 and took it into consideration when designing the reworks of those three characters, the only reworks that had nerfs and which clearly played it safe out of fear of buffing the characters too much. Those three characters were extremely overrated and anyone who was mildly competent at the game could see that, but unfortunately the developers simply didn't know how to take that feedback and they had no way to know that most of the people complaining about “the big three” were actually just parroting things they heard in a youtube video and didn't actually have any problems with those characters. If Klei had someone on their team who was much more in touch (at least to the point of not falling for obvious bait) I could get behind the idea of requesting a roster that feels more balanced, but as it stands I think I prefer if the team doesn't make that a priority (which is why I'm not really happy about Jason's comment regarding “strong” characters intentionally getting tamer skill trees; I think the team should just focus on delivering skill trees that add new unique ways to play the game and worry about “balance” later. That said, they didn't fall for Edgy Rick's trolling campaign about pre-buff Wortox being an SS+ tier character when designing his skill tree, so I think I trust Klei to handle things correctly from now on)

[gaymime]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

not disagreeing with the rest of your post but this one thing is something I've heard from multiple people, even Klei developers, but in all my years in this community I honestly can't recall seeing anyone complain that they feel forced to play a character that they perceive to be the strongest; I've obviously seen my fair share of people complain that Wortox/Wurt/Wolfgang/Wimble/Wingus are too strong or whatever and I've seen them bring up this exact hypothetical point but I can't recall ever seeing one real example of a person actually stick to a character purely because they perceive them to be the “strongest”, I simply don't think this is a type of player that DST attracts because of how far it is from any competitive game

i'm not going to take away anything from your case but instead i am going to share the exception to prove the rule;

i have seen it exactly twice; once in the discord channel i used to hang out in where two people were talking about how they had to pick wolfgang(afterwards wanda came out and one of them became a wanda-main only and the other would flipflop between the two). the other time was before there were skilltrees at all and a girl told me she'd only play as wigfrid because wigfrid was the strongest and it made it feel bad for her  to play anyone else. she was also the most tryhard person i had ever seen in dst by a lot

 

[Guille6785]

1 minute ago, gaymime said:

the other time was before there were skilltrees at all and a girl told me she'd only play as wigfrid because wigfrid was the strongest and it made it feel bad for her  to play anyone else. she was also the most tryhard person i had ever seen in dst by a lot

as someone whose fiancée is a diehard wigfrid player who never plays any other character I approve

[gaymime]

4 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

as someone whose fiancée is a diehard wigfrid player who never plays any other character I approve

this girl was clearly a willow main though, she was only happy once and that was when she chose willow. i never saw her happy as wigfrid and we played together a few times because i was friends with her sibling

[lovegrooove]

14 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

How is being the worst item in the game with 0 use cases other than Pearl being in a good spot? It's pure garbage.

It's about as far from being in a good spot as it can be. A grass suit at least is useful if you find it on the ground as a set piece, Breezy Vest set pieces don't exist, and even if they did, it would still be useless for anything other than Pearl.

It's absolute garbage, how could it possibly be in a good spot?

You seem to equate "weaker than other items" with "unplayable". The breezy vest gives the same amount of insulation (60) as cat caps, and you see tons of players run around with those on public servers. 60 insulation still provides a considerable amount of warmth, when compared to being naked, more or less doubling the time you are keeping warm.

If you are walking around with a thermal stone, and you want to heat it up with a burning tree, then a breezy vest would be enough to prevent you from being forced to stand next to that burning tree, so you can do other tasks in the vicinity. If you combine a breezy vest with a winter hat and start at 90°, you get about a full day of not freezing. That's nothing to scoff at. 

And a lot of breezy vests are free, since they are included in pretty common boons (the failed survivor skeletons with items to grab). I have found dozens in my play time. 

In my opinion what makes an item good in this game, doesn't only depend on the stats of that item. It's also about what is available and what is convenient, which can change from play through to play through, or even character to character. If the character has a beard for example, then a randomly found breezy vest could push your insulation into "enough", or even "more than enough" (if you got wilson talents) territory.

Also saying breezy vests get "0 uses" and is "the worst item in the game", is a bit far fetched in my opinion, especially since you often find them randomly. There are tons of items you see far less, like the wirly fan, or the seed shells.

4 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

To be honest I do think there is a discussion to be had about whether having a roster that doesn't feel like it has characters that are significantly stronger than others would be better for the game

What is "being stronger" really? Are we only talking damage numbers? Because even those vary from enemy to enemy. Some boss fights really benefit from the player having area of effect damage, some don't. Warly, Wanda and Wolfgang don't have that in their kit. Some survivors are really strong in the early game, some need a little prep time, or even boss loot. And to really have the highest damage numbers, you need the synergy of different survivors working together. 

If we are not only talking about damage and also include things like resource farming, food farming, supportive boosts for fights, light sources, teleportation, unique crafts, or plain old fun, then I think every character could be considered pretty strong. There isn't a single character that is truely never played. 

[00petar00]

I don't understand why a decent amount of people on the forums want every character to fit their criteria? I was actually quite annoyed with some people that seemed either jealous or wanted to make the game less fun for me because I enjoy playing stronger characters and every thread discussing character balance always has the same people pop out.

I am not competing with any of you for anything unless we meet on some server and want to kill the same boss but If you play pubs and choose to limit yourself why should other players have their enjoyment of the game ruined because they can get to the boss you want to kill faster?

This is a sandbox game where players should be able to set their own difficulty with many methods and one of these is by picking weak or strong character, in reality we should have options but with every skill tree it seems that most people want their character to be the strongest so it kind of defeats the purpose of players that are always arguing for balance. Still you have Wes and WIlson If you want to limit yourself or to have vanilla experience without relying on character abilities too much.

 

 

[FourthLess]

I think with time playing this game I too started caring less about an imaginary line of balance and rather how things feel so

I agree gul ie

[Dwight34]

Morrowind is one of the most unbalanced games of all time due to the devs just not having time to balance any of it, and people loved that aspect of it and it became a staple of gaming. Good on you for realizing that the absolute Wolfgang meta we had for years while everyone else was Wilson wasn't very interesting.

[Cheggf]

On 2/6/2025 at 1:30 AM, Guille6785 said:

And the thing is, I feel oddly conflicted about having this opinion because I'm basically the walking stereotype of the type of person that hates all new content and wants the game to go back to its DS roots.

Don't worry, Guille. I will remain steadfast in being a jaded hater. You can let go of your conflicted emotions and fully support the direction the game is headed and I will be the yin to your yang who is fully against it. 

[Guille6785]

5 hours ago, lovegrooove said:

What is "being stronger" really? Are we only talking damage numbers?

no idea, I think the roster's fine, it's other people that insist on this 

4 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

Good on you for realizing that the absolute Wolfgang meta we had for years while everyone else was Wilson wasn't very interesting.

idk if something got lost in translation but I did not mean to imply at all in my post that pre-rework Wolfgang was problematic in any way, I've spoken at length that he was a perfectly fine character even long before the reworks (the rework is a different story)

[HowlVoid]

Funny how I stuck to Wormwood despite people telling me that if I want a stronger character then I should switch- I didn't. 

"Maybe Wormwood isn't for you"

People definitely want to hold some characters back on the premise of a big looming "powercreep" boogeyman. Although I may feel character envy for what some characters get i probably will stick to Wormwood for the foreseeable future. Despite all the character changes Klei has done an amazing job at keeping the characters different and unique from each other. Where they'll fill the "archtype" (mage, summoner,range, etc) a player is looking for and may prefer over straight power. 

Keeping a characters flavor is more important than ensuring every character is equally balanced. 

Ps. Wormwood isn't just a farming character, time proved me right.

[Dwight34]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

idk if something got lost in translation but I did not mean to imply at all in my post that pre-rework Wolfgang was problematic in any way, I've spoken at length that he was a perfectly fine character even long before the reworks (the rework is a different story)

I did not mean that Wolfgang was bad, but that the meta of picking him 100% of the time was boring.

[Guille6785]

6 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

the meta of picking him 100% of the time was boring.

idk when this was but ok

[Well-met]

19 hours ago, Y0sH said:

... Seeing sub 30 min Ancient Fuelweaver run times make me and my 4k hours on this game seem like I've spent my time in Weeny-Hut Junior.

The hard part is finding the chess statues + repair location tbh, and getting lucky with the weaver tentacle. The rest is alot less challenging than it sounds, thanks to ruin gear.