Hidden Slingshot nerf (it’s a good thing)

[YouKnowWho142]

1 hour ago, Walrusst said:

Ok but post rifts cheaply fueled ranged weapons aren't even that rare. They've been adding them every other patch for all characters.

This I'm afraid. The issue with ranged weapons as they are now is a core issue with the game as opposed to a Walter issue necessarily. It's just that Walter takes the most advantage of it 

[IAmAFurrz]

On 2/9/2025 at 5:56 AM, Radicaljoe said:

Has no one ever played DST and used a spear? ALL combat is press F then walk back. Its just for melee you walk forward again to repeat.

The "Walter fighting is just 2 buttons" argument is always weird to me because it's just melee pattern at a distance, his situation isn't special, you just see the pattern clearer.

problem is this is completely outside of melee range, while dodging is just 'hitting and walking back a bit, recent boss designs have been made to explicitly punish it (or at least make it a lot less good of an option) with bosses with stnading range being a lot shorter than AOE range, but with cone hitboxes instead of just a circle aoe, more complex dodging like diagonal into the boss instead, there is a LOT of risk as 1 hit can be a lot of dmg if you mess up. 

walter has none of these issues, most bosses dont have eye of terror's dash attack, and only mutated deerclops has even 1 projectile attack (that literally only grandmas can fail to dodge). he either uses slow or just dodge with extreme speeds.

this argument is oversimplifying risk reward of combat

51 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

This I'm afraid. The issue with ranged weapons as they are now is a core issue with the game as opposed to a Walter issue necessarily. It's just that Walter takes the most advantage of it 

and sadly klei is doubling down on slingshot being a weapon (clearly they do with so many damn slows and even abilities with slingshot mods)

at least darts and gunpowder, you'd have to completely change the way you play to farm for these to demolish even 1 boss. walters slingshot feels like a cheese factory and not an integrated part of combat

On 2/11/2025 at 3:18 PM, Lardee said:

 

Give him more utility/debuff rounds.

Give a slingshot upgrade that increases the effect of debuffs, but is slow as hell if you just hold F.

Give the slingshot upgrade that lets Walter fire off the first pellet really quickly.

Give the slingshot upgrade that lets Walter fire off three shots at once but with a cooldown.

these are so SIMPLE and elegant compared to just 'you choose to ignore slingshots completely and fight like wilson' or 'lol slingshot outranges boss' but for some reason ppl just dont understand that: melee + ranged would be a lot more interesting than just one or the other :\

On 2/11/2025 at 4:04 PM, Guille6785 said:

personally I love the idea of making the scrappy slingshot charged shot fire 3 rounds in a shotgun pattern in front of the player, thereby making it very unlikely for any of the extra 2 rounds to hit from further away but allowing the potential for higher damage throughput at close range, essentially creating a hybrid playstyle where you're still using the slingshot but avoiding enemy attacks

very interesting way of integrating melee and ranged into slingshot as well, theres risk and theres reward compared to what it is now

 

12 hours ago, Arcwell said:

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Not trying to argue anything with this btw, just found it amusing.
And if anyone here tries to make an argument using this as an example, why.

lolllllllll 

[Walrusst]

1 hour ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

This I'm afraid. The issue with ranged weapons as they are now is a core issue with the game as opposed to a Walter issue necessarily. It's just that Walter takes the most advantage of it 

Well more the earliest, early access, cheapest.
Still people playing more strong ranged early will make data, data that in the future should give us an idea of how on earth we make whats already established interesting gameplay rather than a plain future.

Since, things that can mess up/kill walter players who make mistakes gives us an idea of how to accommodate for what kleis already stuffed the game with a ton of.

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, Walrusst said:

Ok but post rifts cheaply fueled ranged weapons aren't even that rare. They've been adding them every other patch for all characters.
Its essentially that its too late to be complaining about it with walter. We needed to resist the proliferation long ago prior to it becoming so prevalent in our post game (Which will in the future, be part of the progression where we need to spend time in.)

There is not one single person in this entire forum who has ever said that ranged combat is unengaging because you just attack while backpeddling but it's only like that when you're playing Walter and it's somehow different if you're other people. Even in this very thread when other random things have been whatabouted the person they brought them up to said that they're also bad. 

[Walrusst]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

There is not one single person in this entire forum who has ever said that ranged combat is unengaging because you just attack while backpeddling but it's only like that when you're playing Walter and it's somehow different if you're other people. Even in this very thread when other random things have been whatabouted the person they brought them up to said that they're also bad. 

There are unique ways this problem gets exacerbated by things like icher/slow ammo for walter (and stuff like the aspected woby's, beefalo, etc etc,) given there are a lot of cases where you don't need to backpedal more then 3% of the time, but thats more tangled in the fact that there is now a second effect that for all intents and purposes is sort of its own shadow prison which makes the dps of wind up grips even more unhinged and summoned effects like the shadow tentacles even more effective than they were prior.

Where as, without lightning speeds, the immense slows, and the like walter was sort of the ideal testing bed for what makes an adequate ranged counter, as you would see walters sanity death spiral if something calls out a naive attempt at playing him. So in a way, the de-walterfying skills (Like his sanity buffs coupled with good armor) worry me far more than the slingshot grips do, since if his death spiral goes away so too goes a lot of data on whenever we get remotely close to having an enemy counter a ranged attack.

What you are missing is while i acknowledge there are significant bands of content where the AI breaks when faced with a ranged attack, the number of ranged attacks that are inexpensive are now rather high in post repair kit content (And well, whips, other skill trees,) meanwhile because content is sparse past the pandoras box the game has already set itself up for, we still need to be ready for when there is content there, as that pandoras box will open.

If we don't acknowledge this playstyles already been unlocked for a long time, and start developing the game to adequately fight/address ranged playstyles, you could see some dreary late game speedrun gameplay when damage multipliers are mixed with the absurd ranged options we already saw in game prior to the walter tree.

IE: The problem needs to be fixed elsewhere in the pipeline because kleis added technical debt elsewhere. If mobs can't beat walter, worse will come in the future when the late game weapons that exist now become genuinely relevant.
We are living in the limit test of what can work here, and if we don't test it to high hell and back and develop counters, there will be consequences in what already is coming back to bite us.

[YouKnowWho142]

2 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

If mobs can't beat walter, worse will come in the future when the late game weapons that exist now become genuinely relevant.

To be fair, Abigail can beat most mobs alone and in large quantities, willow spawns with a 2600 hp monster, and Maxwell can spawn puppets until anything he wants dies.  A majority of mobs have been out of the balance for a while now, but I get your concern about bosses (which I’m sure you meant)

I still wish Walter had better ammo for a more hybrid focused playstyle, but I don’t think his ranged weapon alone is a threat to the entire combat system’s balance (though I can be proven wrong).
Given what we’re seeing now though it’s clear why klei has been so afraid of adding good ranged weapons for so long. aside from the Brightshade staff which has a unique niche I can see why everyone is worried about future ranged weapons

It’s also really hard to consider ways you can even balance around ranged combat since a boss that has a stronger chance against ranged attacks can easily be catastrophic or annoying to fight in melee since ranged counters often involve way faster speed (still countered by Walter) or the bosses themselves having ranged attacks

[Walrusst]

 

21 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

To be fair, Abigail can beat most mobs alone and in large quantities, willow spawns with a 2600 hp monster, and Maxwell can spawn puppets until anything he wants dies.  A majority of mobs have been out of the balance for a while now, but I get your concern about bosses (which I’m sure you meant)

It sort of is, but there are also a lot of pack enemies that struggle to attempt to play the game too.

21 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

I still wish Walter had better ammo for a more hybrid focused playstyle

Weapons like the mourning star could get a second breath of life if walter had a good way of causing wet (Plus walter warly teamplay would be incredible,) and it would be pretty hype, I would love for it to replace one of his many redundant CC's since those are what I fear the most overpowering the playstyle he already does (Just like how someone applying a CC makes wanda go from a high skill character to hold f without worry since if the enemy can't reach her she can do whatever she wants, just.... Wanda+Maxwell is the most ill concieved character combo I've ever seen,) but its probably too late for that.

21 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Given what we’re seeing now though it’s clear why klei has been so afraid of adding good ranged weapons for so long. aside from the Brightshade staff which has a unique niche I can see why everyone is worried about future ranged weapons

Yet they did, so in a way a refresh that addresses their issues is likely going to need to be inevitable for the future.
A large part of whats getting cheesed is 13-9 year old content. In five years some of them will be able to vote.

We will have time to teach them to dislike rangers (Just like how wurts already learned hatred of pigmen.) Stuff like slingshot stunlock being addressed is a solid first step to fixing things.

Just, trying to remove ranged damage from the character whose core is ranged combat in a game that makes the ranged arsenal of shipwrecked look like childs toys now is... I dunno, sort of missing how big of a problem we need to solve is.

[AliceShiki]

16 hours ago, Arcwell said:

Not with that attitude.

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Not trying to argue anything with this btw, just found it amusing.
And if anyone here tries to make an argument using this as an example, why.

Color me amazed, I was wrong.

For what it's worth though, I was sure the stomps ignored armor due to being fire damage. I was absolutely wrong there.

So yeah, thanks for sharing! I actually find it really cool that this is doable if you use a stupidly big amount of resources!