A thought on character balance (and why it's mostly good)

[aidancode]

So, balance is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and I think people misunderstand what balance is about. It IS important, but it is NOT about making characters equal in power. It's about ensuring no character trivializes fun challenges in the game.

If something makes the game more fun, it is balanced well. And if something makes the game more convenient, it might or might not be balanced depending on how much of the game it trivializes.

Likewise, weak perks aren't necessarily bad, either. For instance, I like Wilson's skill tree a fair bit. I think it's very weak but adds a new layer onto what Wilson can do and at the end of the day, that's what matters most. Could it be improved to make it more satisfying to use? Yes, definitely. But it's not good to discredit things just because they aren't optimal.

On this note, there are a few genuine issues with balance. For me, Wanda and Maxwell both cut out too much of the game in my opinion. For Maxwell, this applies mostly to multi-player, where you can afford to juggle your systems a little slower and it leads to every boss being "your friends tank it while you cage it". For Wanda, I don't think her weaker damage at young age is enough to encourage players to be risky most of the time.

In conclusion, balance IS relevant, but not because all characters need to be the same general power level. Balance is a tool to encourage people to give more strategies and characters a go, without making those experiences too frustratingly hard or too mind numbingly easy. This is why I disagree with the mindset some people have that Wendy needs to be buffed a lot from her current state. As (probably) the most popular character, she's already checking the boxes of encouraging people to play her while not destroying the balance of the game.

 

Is this way too much rambling to effectively just say "don't stress balance too much, just when it genuinely makes the game unfun"? Yes, absolutely. But I had nothing better to do with my time for the past few minutes.

[Danila6300]

I never use the word "Balance" at all and I never understand what players mean by this word. The word "balance" has too vague a definition in my opinion and does not always convey any specifics. 

[Crimson Hollow]

The most noticeable lack of balance I have seen in pubs:

(Credits: MechaWilson)

[Mr. Furman]

1 hour ago, Crimson Hollow said:

The most noticeable lack of balance I have seen in pubs:

(Credits: MechaWilson)

Your signature hits hard.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 hour ago, aidancode said:

It IS important, but it is NOT about making characters equal in power. It's about ensuring no character trivializes fun challenges in the game.

 

I really like this, I think that's what's in the back of my head when I play characters like Wurt who just needs a little setup to basically have the game be played for you

Characters should have strengths that let them handle challenges in different ways without completely removing the challenge outright, even if it is easier for some characters than others

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, aidancode said:

So, balance is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and I think people misunderstand what balance is about. It IS important, but it is NOT about making characters equal in power. It's about ensuring no character trivializes fun challenges in the game.

I agree with thus sentebce.

[Y0sH]

Yeah, unfortunately "Balance" is seen as a synonym of "DPS" in these forums. When balance is so much more. For example Wormwood isn't the strongest DPS wise but he's absolutely busted farming wise and that's perfectly fine.

[Dr. Safety]

For me, balance is about making sure that all characters have valid reasons to play them in all stages of the game, outside of just "I like this character's design/lore". If you were around since DST's early days, you'll remember the old Woodie/Maxwell issue, where Woodie was only kinda good at one thing and that thing was chopping wood. Maxwell was better than Woodie at chopping wood, while also being the best at mining rocks. There was no reason to play as Woodie because he was just outclassed in every way by Maxwell.

It's obvious with these balance discussions, the character that everyone is thinking about but not saying is Wendy, so I might as well open that can of worms. The only thing that I personally was ever arguing against was giving her Wolfgang-level damage with her (a beefalo's) attacks, due to what was likely an oversight in the code. I pointed out that Wolfgang's only major upside was damage, and Wendy's only downside is poor damage. 

Ever since that was addressed, I've ignored Wendy except poking fun at the occasional "Wendy is the weakest character in the game" threads. 

I realize now that discussing Wendy's balance (making her fun but not OP) on here is useless, unless you are doing it in DMs with someone. Someone made a poll about the controversial beefalo thing, and something like 35% of people wanted it buffed, when the debate was about whether it should be kept or nerfed. How are we supposed to have an honest discussion if such a large percentage of people aren't willing to be honest about what a character needs?

Fun should be considered before balance, I agree. We can't just ignore balance though. They did character reworks because some characters were just outclassed by others. Then they did skill trees because some characters were outclassed by others. Guess what will happen if some characters are just outclassed by others when the skill trees are done. I hope you like a third round of character updates.

[Walrusst]

The hordes of players who play characters who just trivialize the early game with no affinity bonuses or insight likely indicates where the bottlenecks are in players learning the game more then anything else. Few players I've run into navigate the alchemy engine well, much less the magic stations. So like, the characters that make science machine level gameplay feel trivial are going to be overrepresented. It might not even be that all the newbies are switching to wendy, it could be worse. Its wholly possible half the ones that didn't pick her first are leaving instead. I've seen this happen in other games that front load player choices long before they actually have any knowledge about the game. If they get unlucky and pick a character/faction that doesn't fit new player needs, they just refund the game.

A lot of the popular newbie characters have bottlenecks and terrible pain points later on that can be mastered, but largely speaking we are sitting around a campfire commenting on their behaviors. So the character spread will be permanently scewed in ways that are not strictly in line with power ratings until the learning process is fixed. (Since barring a coordinated effort of experienced players jumping on official servers and trying to teach as many randos as they can, information conveyance will continuously and recursively alter the character spread.)

Like, its a relief when you see a hambat, a grammarphone, or one of the many other immense qualitative improvements you get early on. This isn't really me being that condescending, the crafting menu is so packed that if you didn't know you probably won't learn without people playing positive rolemodels in the community and passing the knowledge down since the details are only shown if you know to open the scrapbook.

Which, the scrapbooks great but its information should be integrated into the crafting window after you craft something the first time, and possibly the scrapbook popup should be reworked to give a small numerical summary of what you just made. If this were done, I imagine you would see about 1/3rd of the players locked into newbie characters start to graduate and learn more then the same 2-3 things over and over.

Since, at the very least people won't be left guessing when they accidentally craft the fencing sword (An in joke) and are unsure if its worse then the spear they used (it is,) before they die (Because they got overconfident with a tool whose combat use is a meme but it looks like an upgrade.)
Or you know, woodie player using lucy (Which looks like an axe, a emergency self defense weapon) to defend themselves when its actually the weakest weapon outside of stuff like fishing rods, because it looks like a great newplayer utility when actually its a landmine that puts a lot of newbies who dare try an excellent character in the grave and make them quit.

[Lee Sy]

Balance never means dps, there's a character called Wex after all.

The situation is Wendy's new tree is neither powerful nor interesting. If the reason is still that "Wendy is too strong", just let youknowwho(a name once you said and the topic will be locked) consist on it.

[Chewabacca]

1 minute ago, Walrusst said:

The hordes of players who play characters who just trivialize the early game with no affinity bonuses or insight likely indicates where the bottlenecks are in players learning the game more then anything else. Few players I've run into navigate the alchemy engine well, much less the magic stations. So like, the characters that make science machine level gameplay feel trivial are going to be overrepresented.

A lot of the popular newbie characters have bottlenecks and terrible pain points later on that can be mastered, but largely speaking we are sitting around a campfire commenting on their behaviors. So the character spread will be permanently scewed in ways that are not strictly in line with power ratings until the learning process is fixed.

Like, its a relief when you see a hambat, a grammarphone, or one of the many other immense qualitative improvements you get early on. This isn't really me being that condescending, the crafting menu is so packed that if you didn't know you probably won't learn without people playing positive rolemodels in the community and passing the knowledge down since the details are only shown if you know to open the scrapbook.
(+ Bosses getting a five scull rating when you first die to them so players who mistakenly summon queen bee day 4 know that boss is well out of progression at least they know to prepare more first.)

Which, the scrapbooks great but its information should be integrated into the crafting window after you craft something the first time, and possibly the scrapbook popup should be reworked to give a small numerical summary of what you just made. If this were done, I imagine you would see about 1/3rd of the players locked into newbie characters start to graduate and learn more then the same 2-3 things over and over.

Since, at the very least people won't be left guessing when they accidentally craft the fencing sword (An in joke) and are unsure if its worse then the spear they used (it is,) before they die (Because they got overconfident with a tool whose combat use is a meme but it looks like an upgrade.)

The scrapbook in general could get a rework so that it's not so annoying that people are pushed away from using it. I see tons of people saying that "a player would never know this without looking at the wiki" when it's something you could figure out from the scrapbook, like the mooncaller event, but because that popup shows up so often, especially for newbies who are getting flooded with it as soon as they enter the world, everyone ignores it.

[Walrusst]

23 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

The scrapbook in general could get a rework so that it's not so annoying that people are pushed away from using it. I see tons of people saying that "a player would never know this without looking at the wiki" when it's something you could figure out from the scrapbook, like the mooncaller event, but because that popup shows up so often, especially for newbies who are getting flooded with it as soon as they enter the world, everyone ignores it.

If it was up for like, 10 seconds, helpful, and left the bookmark you have up there when it disappeared, it might be used by the average player.
Even more so if the gardening book/cook book were fully integrated as tabs up there instead of being in game items. Sure, you can check them from the title screen, but these things being clutter in world means players get starved for information when they want to quickly parse it in game. (Note: I'm still happy with discovery/scanning items like the gareneers hat.)

Since more items on the floor/in their backpack discourages them from using their ingame information resources.
+ Stuff like big concepts like insight being available in its own tab of the scrapbook.

That way you know. People know insight doesn't require them to be too minmaxy its just the overwhelming differences of your character features are fully unlocked after 4 hours, leaving you with a simplified version of what you are dealing with early on.

[aidancode]

2 hours ago, Lee Sy said:

The situation is Wendy's new tree is neither powerful nor interesting.

Do you really find Abigail commands and all the QoL stuff neither powerful nor interesting? I'd call them all both. The wraith wreath and affinities are very interesting imo as well. IDK how interesting you want this character but as she effectively fills the role of "other new player character" I think she goes above and beyond with interesting stuff to do with her. Wendy IS a strong character in the sense that her character design is strong; she is the most popular character in the game. Frankly she got more than I would expect for a character who already is so popular; look at what they did for Wolfgang.

[Debruh]

4 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Do you really find Abigail commands and all the QoL stuff neither powerful nor interesting? I'd call them all both. The wraith wreath and affinities are very interesting imo as well. IDK how interesting you want this character but as she effectively fills the role of "other new player character" I think she goes above and beyond with interesting stuff to do with her. Wendy IS a strong character in the sense that her character design is strong; she is the most popular character in the game. Frankly she got more than I would expect for a character who already is so popular; look at what they did for Wolfgang.

Tbf to Wolfgang, what happened to him was probably more of a result of him being inherently boring. Rather than popularity or anything. I think Wigfrid's stuff was pretty interesting, like Wendy's.

[aidancode]

2 minutes ago, Debruh said:

Tbf to Wolfgang, what happened to him was probably more of a result of him being inherently boring. Rather than popularity or anything. I think Wigfrid's stuff was pretty interesting, like Wendy's.

Eh Wolfgang had some potential. They TRIED to do something by giving him perks in his normal form but they didn't go all in so he ended up the same.

[Walrusst]

I'm just stuck remembering I need to try playing a memey support wolfgang who throws barbells almost exclusively to help the team.
LOOK MY COMRADES AT THE GREAT EFFORTS I EXERT MY SELF TO, TO MIMICK BUT A SMALL PART OF HER POWER. *Glances over at winowna.*