Wendy skill tree framework rework

[CremeLover]

The reason behind this idea and this topic is what I perceive dissatisfaction with the skilltree, and hopefully add something that could address how to approach some of the design issues that the skilltree currently has.

There are a lot of cool things and actions you can make Abigail do, but there isn't a cost or resource associated with Abigail as a whole, so is a bit difficult to give very powerful suggestions for adding extra actions or abilities without tying it to something. And that something ends up being either very expensive or is made cumbersome or difficult to access. Some suggestion stick it on a potion, some others decide to tie it to the new headgear... So I just though it would be neat to think of a new system and standarize it using existing mechanics, simplying the code required to implement it, as well as open the design space for more new possibilities.

And if there's some action that you want to balance accordingly, you can adjust it an incorporate it into the main system instead of reinventing the wheel or adding a cumbersome method of accessing said ability.

 

Ectoplasm meter.

-Directly tied to levels (0/600 value ranges)
-Refuel slowly passively. (200 per day, 4 times faster is sisturn is active)
-Abigail lvl 1 (0-200), Abigail lvl 2 (201-400), Abigail lvl 3 (401-600)
-Exactly the same as non-skill tree Wendy works now.
-Can be refueled faster by using mourning glory on Abigail's Flower.
-Sisturn line increases the maximun ectoplasm you can hold (increase 200 per skillpoint up to 1200)
-Forget-me-lot potion restores 200 ectoplasm instead of full lvl 3.

 

You will have new Abigail actions you can execute that consumes part of the ectoplasm contained in Abigail

Some Ability examples:

-Swap Places with Abigail (20 ectoplasm)
-Temporarily give Abigail the player tag (to replace sisturn III and keep the animations) (2 ectoplasm/s, disables ectoplasm regen)
-Transfer damage from Wendy to Abigail (like the shroud) (5 ectoplasm/s, disables ectoplasm regen)
-Ghostly shroud: Abigail turns every ally in an area around her intangible like a ghost (sprites of allies have 50% in the alpha channel, cannot attack or take damage for 5 seconds, Abigail stops all actions for the duration (no commands can be used, including toggle upkeep) 30 ectoplasm, 15 second cooldown)

Each of these would be its own independent skill on the skilltree, allowing you to pick however you want to customize Abigail.
The cost would be balance accordingly.

 

Notes:

-Decreasing from a lvl treshold by using abilities will decrease Abigail's level
-Once ectoplasm drops down to 0, Abigail will go back into the flower at 0 health, as if she died normally, and will begin regenerating as soon as she's in the flower, allowing you to summon her at 1 point.

 

This would create a system you can build out of, balance the cost accordingly, add more fun and snappy interactions, increase the interactivity with with Wendy's gameplay, since everything here requires player input, and not gate everything behind a separate action that requires extra time and resources to access.

And most importantly, despite overhauling the character's main perk, it will keep the exact same functionality when no skills are active, despite some inner systems changing.

 

I though everything was mostly set in stone, so there was no point in big suggestions, but after seeing the Woby skilltree I gain hope there's still mayor changes possible, so I'm throwing this out here and hope for the best.

 

EDIT:

I added a small representation for this idea.

-Moved the potion line below the mourning glory line, since both are used for mourning glory and its crafts.
-Removed the butterfly resurrection and the wreath skill. My reasonale is, while I like the wreath in concept, balancing it is a nightmare, and is both lackluster, has people asking for buffs constantly, and is causing more problems than it is solving.
-Removed the increase potion duration from the potion line
-Moved the grave resurrection near the pipspook line, since is related, but not directly tied to it, so is just close, but not part of the branch.
-Removed the bigspook and grave beautification skill.
-Moved sisturn to the structure middle section alongside the perennial altar.
-Reserved the right side for Abigail, and added the skills that would consume ectoplasm below the team spirit ones that do not consume ectoplasm. They are all independent of each other, since these will allow you to customize Abigail as you prefer.
-You might add a lock behind the ectoplasm skills with "you must choose 2 team spirit first" like other skill trees, but is not a deal breaker.

 

Do note that this is a small representation, if you disagree and want to keep the wreath or other skills that is fine, but I would like this threat to focus on a system like the one suggested, not wether certain current skills are worth keeping or not.

Thanks for reading.

[CremeLover]

I also want to point out a few design issues from the current skill tree that this would solve by turning the player tag into a toggle upkeep.

-Two Wendys on the same server can have the player tag skill unlocked, and turn player on/off as they see fit, without it being a global level variable.
-You can make it so the player tag only drains ectoplasm if you are in combat, making you able to keep the new player-tag Abigail animations at all times, and not have them locked behind sisturn petals.
-You can restore the regular functionality of the healing elixir, since the player tag is now draining other resource, you can still have Abigail die even spamming potions. Just make it drain extra ectoplasm if the healing elixir is used during combat. Yes, you can heal Abigail, but if you spam it with player tag active, and your Abigail gets to 300 max health, you might want to wrap things up fast.

 

For the new potion, you can also reduce the amount restored from 200 to 50 or adjust it appropiately while in combat+player tag, as to not re-create the immortal Abigail with infinite potion spam.

And to make this player tag less combat-swappable, make the animation last 3 seconds and interruptible, and can only be done with actual Abigail, not the flower. So you can't just turn it off midcombat as you see fit.

[cyjs]

The wreath can be placed behind the altar, Because it's in the third position,  can enhance it a little bit

My personal opinion

[CremeLover]

38 minutes ago, cyjs said:

The wreath can be placed behind the altar, Because it's in the third position,  can enhance it a little bit

My personal opinion

In the skilltree image above, Vengeful ghost and perenial altar were not supposed to be connected, but forgot to light up perenial altar to indicate it, my bad, I fixed it.
Thanks for pointing it out.

[Yifei_]

Ectoplasm meter is very cool! I love this idea

[CremeLover]

To expand on this a little bit further and add the affinities.

Shadow and Lunar I:

-Give 15 planar defense like now.
-Allows Wendy to craft a new flower that won't use the previous flower as recipe (and won't use the skins of the current flower, because that's unreasonable)
-Shadow Flower: Mourning Glory + Pure Horror
-Lunar Flower: Mourning Glory + Pure Brilliance

Lunar Abigail form:
-Same as now, but her default vex would swap to the current elixir version of shadow, receive extra planar damage per hit.
-Decrease the vex damage to 5 instead of 10 per hit, since Lunar Abigail has more base damage than Shadow

Shadow Abigail form:
-Same as current one. Gains a shield for each creature that die near Abigail or in Wendy's inventory, similar to the old overheal from sisturn III.
The ratio for health gained is, 10% of max health of murdered creatures, 10 flat health for each thing murdered in your inventory (up to 600 shield health), which means you need 3 stack of butterflies to max out of from 0 shield. Using a normal flower to summon Abigail when she has shield will remove all the shields she has stored.

This would:
-Solve the accessibility of both shadow and lunar forms by making it based of the flower you use to spawn Abigail
-Allow quick access to both different forms of Abigails once you have an affinity (and this is desirable because...).

Downsides:
-Abigail forms are more gestalt & shadow creature than ghost, all ectoplasm commands are doubled in cost, including player tag upkeep, and natural ectoplasm regeneration is halved if Abigail is manifesting in shadow/lunar form.
-Abigail's Lunar and Shadow form require Level 3 Abigail, as soon as her levels decreases to level 2 she will return to the flower, and cannot be summoned again until Abigail reaches her maximun potential, unless using a regular flower.

This adds a "cost" to her new powers, and requires player involvement since, even with all the potions and powers in the world, her ghostly energy will ra n out if these power are heavily abused. With enough ajustemen to the drain values, it could create a very interesting and involved gameplay without allowing players to just afk and have Abigail do everything herself.

I think adding some downsides creates a more engaging gameplay that obfuscating the method of accessing the new powers.

Lore explanation:
-Abigail's spirit was bound to the flower by Maxwell using shadow magic when Wendy was summoned to the constant.
-Wendy can currently craft other copies of Abigail's flower that is not the one she spawns with (due to the nature of multiplayer)
-The conclusion is, that Abigail is either bound to Wendy, or to Wendy's flower, and she uses other specially infused flower as a medium to summon Abigail, and Abigail's soul does not reside in the flower used to summon her, she's just channeled through it.

 

Shadow and Lunar II:

Lunar - same as now and add sanity (lunacy) increase effect to the vex when hit by a player, making it synergize with celestial crown.
Shadow - Potion changes, Vex gives lifesteal to everyone hitting the vexed target, including Abigail. Lifesteal is a fixed amount, not % based off of the enemies health or damage dealt.

Shadow and Lunar III:
Similar to Willow, this would add an exclusive spell only used by its respective SAbigail/GAbigail forms.
-Lunar ectoplasm command: uses the same UI as Attack At command. Select a place, and GAbigail will more there, then she will perform the same attack Celestial Champion 3 -> create a circular perimeter around and summon gestalts to attack everything within range. It will put enemies to sleep (those that can be slept), slowdown, and the gestalts will do some AoE~ish damage. (50x2 ectoplasm cost, 30 second cooldown).

-Shadow ectoplasm command: Uses same UI as GAbigail. SAbigail will root herself into the ground, and create pure horror roses around herself similar to Winona's pure horror strike, that also slows enemies down, and damages everything around, in a true AoE unlike GAbigail. The damage is smaller, but it makes SAbigail suck the live out of everything the flowers touch. (50x2 ectoplasm, 30 second cooldown).

 

 

 

These changes make GAbigail still aloof, but it has more room for player expression, maintaining its downsides and giving more reason to swap back to regular abigail if necessary, because of both AoE and the cost of the new skills.

This gives GAbigail the identity of an aloof companion that is low maintenance but has high single target damage, and it gives SAbigail the identity of a vampire tank, using the maul/batbat as inspiration, and overstepping a bit on Wigfrid's role. I think is important to differenciate the roles, of both Shadow and Lunar, since currently, despite Lunar providing very uninvolved gameplay, it's at least its own distinct thing, whereas shadow is just normal+, and this design concept emphasizes reasons to use regular Abigail even after unlocking either form.

The biggest downside of this design is glaringly obvious. The current command wheel used by Wendy in game has 6 command, and is already cumbersome to use.
This rework adds 5 different extra commands to an already cluttered UI. Specially since Wendy's commands are designed to be more snappy and use them faster than other characters.

You could place it on the inside like the gesture wheel mod, separate the commands in two groups and put each to one side of the screen, make a right-left arrow that allows you to swap between the two wheels... but I at least believe that commands not-in-use should be greyed out, since reconstructing the wheel based off of what skills you have selected is going to screw people's muscle memory if you swap skills on multiple playthroughs.

 

There are more changes you could do, making Abigail an actual shadow creature, but I tried to keep the design idea as close to the current one and the original, while also recycling code/assets of already existing mechanics to make it easier to implement, and trying to integrate as seamlessly as possible in Abigail's previous mechanical design. And I believe this design allows for more player expression, creates a more interesting gameplay, and has improvements in almost everything except the UI.

 

I'll update cost of skills in the main post to illustrate the final design.

[lio516]

Your idea is good, but I don't think it's necessary to add so many flaws and limitations, at least the skill trees of the other characters have almost no flaws, if you want to balance the game, you should increase the difficulty of the game, not make the roleplayer feel limited and uncomfortable

[CremeLover]

  

28 minutes ago, lio516 said:

Your idea is good, but I don't think it's necessary to add so many flaws and limitations, at least the skill trees of the other characters have almost no flaws, if you want to balance the game, you should increase the difficulty of the game, not make the roleplayer feel limited and uncomfortable

That is correct, many other skilltrees don't put constrains or drawbacks on the abilities on their characters, but characters in general, skilltree or not, do have a cost for making use of their powers:
Willow: Embers
Wortox: Souls
Woodie: Weremeter
Walter: Woby's hunger
Winona: Generator's energy
Maxwell:Nightmare Fuel
Wigfrid: Inspiration

In the idea described above, I'm introducing said resource to Wendy as well, BUT this resource is different from the rest, in that it generates passively.
You can refuel faster with mourning glory and potions, but unlike the rest Abigail regenerates this resource just by existing.

Not only that, but Abigail is quite strong by herself, so strong in fact, that if these powers were not limited, she could pretty much defeat a significant amount of bosses in the game with Wendy just dropping potions in the flower and spamming commands from affar.

eg:
If you go into battle with Shadow Abigail with her strongest setup you would have:
max shield that would be 600 health+600shield + Spectral Cure-All+lifestealing super elixir+player tag, and carry a stack of critters in your inventory for fast 200 shield. And remember you still have a shield that prevents multihit attacks.

With this setup Abigail would be able to solo almost anything in the game.
Adding a separated cost that will make your entire setup stop working is what separates Abigail from a raid boss, and stops it from breaking the game.

Personally I much prefer this setup than gating the character abilities behind having to murder a bunch of critters in my inventory everytime I want to access them

[cyjs]

17 hours ago, lio516 said:

Your idea is good, but I don't think it's necessary to add so many flaws and limitations, at least the skill trees of the other characters have almost no flaws, if you want to balance the game, you should increase the difficulty of the game, not make the roleplayer feel limited and uncomfortable

I think it's okay to balance the characters in an interesting way. But the balance for Wendy is not interesting.