Wendy is the same but a little stronger

[ColdHeaven]

Wendy's skill tree isn't bad, it's just isn't interesting enough. I don't know what half of Wendy skill tree is even like but that's what I've collected after reading

[_mylilsunshine_]

my biggest gripe with this situation is people who are dissatisfied with Wendy's skill tree would use Walter and his skill tree to: complain about Wendy's development, discredit Walter and get him nerfed, open up bad-faith arguments about Walter just to take a jab at Wendy, derail every Walter argument with Wendy's problem and vice versa (see spoiler), and more. They act like Walter is the most overpowered character with the most love from the developers, so everything about him is unfair. All the while attacking the developers when there's no reason to. People keep dragging Walter and his community into this Wendy BS and throw a fit when we call it out (!?).

Spoiler

A, the thread up to this point has not mentioned Wendy any where, not even once. This is still about Walter:

B:

A:

B:

for the record, I have no problems with Wendy players engaging in Walter's development and such, as long as it is productive and fair, so don't bring that strawman into the argument. I do have a problem with people being petty about Wendy and reacting negatively at Walter for it. I never saw any Wortox player in this forum engaging in this behaviour throughout the beta, so I wonder what's the problem?

[Crimson Hollow]

4 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

my biggest gripe with this situation is people who are dissatisfied with Wendy's skill tree would use Walter and his skill tree to: complain about Wendy's development, discredit Walter and get him nerfed, open up bad-faith arguments about Walter just to take a jab at Wendy, derail every Walter argument with Wendy's problem and vice versa (see spoiler), and more. They act like Walter is the most overpowered character with the most love from the developers, so everything about him is unfair. All the while attacking the developers when there's no reason to. People keep dragging Walter and his community into this Wendy BS and throw a fit when we call it out (!?).

  Hide contents

A, the thread up to this point has not mentioned Wendy any where, not even once. This is still about Walter:

B:

A:

B:

for the record, I have no problems with Wendy players engaging in Walter's development and such, as long as it is productive and fair, so don't bring that strawman into the argument. I do have a problem with people being petty about Wendy and reacting negatively at Walter for it. I never saw any Wortox player in this forum engaging in this behaviour throughout the beta, so I wonder what's the problem?

See thats whats confusing me as well, especially given that the playstyles of Wendy and Walter are as different as can be... 

I dont think any reliable conclusion can even be drawn from comparing these two. In fact, I believe it wouldnt really work with Wendy and Wortox either...

[_mylilsunshine_]

11 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

See thats whats confusing me as well, especially given that the playstyles of Wendy and Walter are as different as can be... 

Wendy forumites might see me as the face of 'Walter forumite hating on Wendy' so I will also clarify this:

I never cared about Wendy, never played her before, and will still not play her. I did not care about Wendy's skill tree development, I did not know what her skills did for her, or care about how overpowered/underpowered she was. I watched some video demonstrations and I still have no impression. I did not actively engage in any of Wendy's discussions. I don't hate her, it's just not my playstyle/aesthetic.

What I did care about was how Wendy (and to some extent, Wortox) was in the spotlight for so long. Every beta build had Wendy and Wortox as the main characters, while Walter was shipped off with 1/3 of the skill tree. I didn't understand the difference in the development effort yet saw that people were still complaining about how underdeveloped Wendy was, so that was the only thing I was frustrated about and voiced my opinion on. The moment that build 645651 dropped (which was a big change for Walter) and I could finally see how Klei live up to "each character has a separate team of devs working on it", I stopped complaining altogether and devoted all of my attention to making Walter better with suggestions and discussions (not by using Wendy).

[Wendigail]

Because the gameplay hasn't changed much, most of it just increases the values based on the previous.

Many characters' skill trees seem to make them new characters, their overall gameplay has changed. Inequality rather than want is the cause of trouble. And those characters may not have any gameplay updates for many years.

[YouKnowWho142]

I think it's interesting how when the skill trees released, the Walter players gave out their feedback constructively and after admittedly a fair amount of time transformed the skill tree and all the feedback into one of the most interesting and character defining skill trees. Meanwhile, the Wendy tree got a lot of insults and distracted feedback (like half the threads relating to Wendy do literally nothing but insult it or demand complete reworks without any actual feedback), which resulted in nobody getting what they wanted out of Wendy's skill tree. Really came to the detriment of Wortox too since he definitely could've used some changes (though not as badly as Walter before the big update, at the start of the beta he did have the best skill tree) but he was just completely drowned out by Wendy.

It really does feel like the poor behavior of the Wendy players who sought only to insult others and lash out had a very negative impact on this update. There's a certain couple people here who take this frustration out on Walter, who got much better feedback due to Walter players having a clear vision and prioritizing positive critique over demands. I really do think that the Wendy tree as well as Wortox's could've been much more in line with what everyone wanted if people didn't become so aggressive over Wendy

That isn't even to mention, when you look at the threads here, the ones that get the most attention are the ones that are created to cause drama and are usually not related at all to the actual skill trees, they're always by the same 4-5 people and do nothing but cause drama, tension, resentment, misinformation, and diverts away from any actual feedback which only feeds into the issue

[Crimson Hollow]

51 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

What I did care about was how Wendy (and to some extent, Wortox) was in the spotlight for so long. Every beta build had Wendy and Wortox as the main characters, while Walter was shipped off with 1/3 of the skill tree. I didn't understand the difference in the development effort yet saw that people were still complaining about how underdeveloped Wendy was, so that was the only thing I was frustrated about and voiced my opinion on.

Understandable, though actually at the same time Wortox players are feeling neglected as well especially after the "confirmation" that the devs are "happy with what he has" which came in late January, following the last update in early December or something. And even those updates were mostly minor tweaks. 

I am now under the impression that all these insanity could have been avoided if there had been a bit more transparency... and a lot less toxicity.

Though, I must admit.... I feel like most Walter players arent the type to value character strength over gameplay flavor, cause otherwise they wouldnt be Walter players in teh first place given how undertuned he was before. 

  

36 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Meanwhile, the Wendy tree got a lot of insults and distracted feedback (like half the threads relating to Wendy do literally nothing but insult it or demand complete reworks without any actual feedback), which resulted in nobody getting what they wanted out of Wendy's skill tree.

And a lot of them are like asking for all sorts of fundamentally different things enough to fill out maybe 3 skill trees... 

[_mylilsunshine_]

15 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

There's a certain couple people here who take this frustration out on Walter, who got much better feedback due to Walter players having a clear vision and prioritizing positive critique over demands. I really do think that the Wendy tree as well as Wortox's could've been much more in line with what everyone wanted if people didn't become so aggressive over Wendy

As someone who compiled every single Walter-related thread (a bit) before and after build 645651, I can count on one hand the number of threads that were off-topic and were just to complain. The final tally reached over 100 posts, admittedly I slack off on updating the compilation because I was so busy, if not much more. I can say with confidence that 80% of community suggestions made it into the recent tree version, and V2C (Walter team rep) commented asking the community for "more testing like this" so we got right on it. It's incredibly rewarding to see what the community has accomplished, and I hope Wortox and Wendy's community can feel the same.

[Dr. Safety]

8 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

It really does feel like the poor behavior of the Wendy players who sought only to insult others and lash out had a very negative impact on this update. There's a certain couple people here who take this frustration out on Walter, who got much better feedback due to Walter players having a clear vision and prioritizing positive critique over demands. I really do think that the Wendy tree as well as Wortox's could've been much more in line with what everyone wanted if people didn't become so aggressive over Wendy

I also feel like there was some unwillingness to accept anything except massive buffs from some Wendy players, even when things were overtuned. I didn't really see this with Walter, like the increased time for a Woby delivering stuff, or them removing slowdown stacking to an extent. Nobody is upset at these, it was reasonable changes. 

But if we look at Wendy, she had some moments with stuff that was overtuned, but when a discussion was opened up about it, there was no compromising at all. Not only that, but when polls were started about it, 30-40% of people who answered would want whatever was overtuned to be buffed more. No honest conversations were able to take place, and so no real feedback to address the problem was given, leading to stuff being "gutted" rather than fixed. Then those same people started threatening the devs, or making posts about Walter being "OP" while using mechanics that existed before his skill tree when nobody played him.

I do feel bad for the handful of people who were actually engaging in honest discussions about Wendy who still feel like its a boring skill tree. I hope that they can maybe revisit hers and Wortox's at a later time, similar to what they did with Wormwood to give her some more flavor. It's just been exhausting to try to talk about it during this beta

[Steorra]

10 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

I didn't really see this with Walter, like the increased time for a Woby delivering stuff, or them removing slowdown stacking to an extent. Nobody is upset at these, it was reasonable changes. 

Some of them did upset about it and make the balance discussion being personal attack when I firstly point out the slowing effect is imbalance. They think "You are Wendy player, so you have no right to discuss Walter's balance".

[_mylilsunshine_]

22 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

Though, I must admit.... I feel like most Walter players arent the type to value character strength over gameplay flavor, cause otherwise they wouldnt be Walter players in teh first place given how undertuned he was before. 

yeah true, like me i'm only in this for the vibe, and woby, absolutely

[YouKnowWho142]

14 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

I also feel like there was some unwillingness to accept anything except massive buffs from some Wendy players, even when things were overtuned. I didn't really see this with Walter, like the increased time for a Woby delivering stuff, or them removing slowdown stacking to an extent. Nobody is upset at these, it was reasonable changes. 

I genuinely think this occurred because of how the Wendy updates were released. Wendy had some very noticeable “panic updates” and she got small updates frequently. Almost all of Walter’s changes meanwhile came at the same time. If Wendy got larger updates during the beta then I don’t think people would’ve been as upset over every single change, both positive and negative

[Crimson Hollow]

Just now, _mylilsunshine_ said:

yeah true, like me i'm only in this for the vibe, and woby, absolutely

Flavor over substance 100%... Its the same for me as well

[Cassielu]

This logic only works when the only thing a player wants from skilltree is to make the character stronger. For other pursuits, "adding something to make it worse" is a very likely thing to happen.

If a player cares about the art, and the art quality of the character's skilltree is  lower than the character's original basekit quality, then there is no doubt that this update reduces the average art quality of the character, then this player is reasonable and motivated to dislike this update.

[Dr. Safety]

3 minutes ago, Dingle said:

It was all extremely disingenuous. If everyone on the forum noticed, I'm sure the devs noticed, too.

Dishonest feedback really drowned out the good feedback.

Still, I think she ended up with a really good skill tree in the end, overall. It just took way longer than it could have, if the malicious Wendy feedback didn't exist in droves.

Oh I know that the devs 100% realized what was going. All of the unreasonable stuff was ignored. I just know that Wendy ultimately suffered in the end. When stuff was too strong and needed changed, the "I want this to remain/be even stronger" drowned out the "I think a fun alternative would be ____".

Her skill tree is still fine, as she was fine before it. Just sucks that it could have been more fun had actual conversations taken place instead of all the drama that seemed to be started by the same 2 or 3 people.

[Dingle]

58 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

Oh I know that the devs 100% realized what was going. All of the unreasonable stuff was ignored. I just know that Wendy ultimately suffered in the end. When stuff was too strong and needed changed, the "I want this to remain/be even stronger" drowned out the "I think a fun alternative would be ____".

Her skill tree is still fine, as she was fine before it. Just sucks that it could have been more fun had actual conversations taken place instead of all the drama that seemed to be started by the same 2 or 3 people.

The thing is though, her skill tree is still really, really strong. It also has a lot of fun stuff.

[YouKnowWho142]

17 minutes ago, Dingle said:

The thing is though, her skill tree is still really, really strong. It also has a lot of fun stuff.

as little as my opinion matters i'm having a lot of fun with Wendy's skill tree, the increased mourning glory means im getting 1-2 stacks in a single day which is letting me be much more creative with how I use elixirs. I am using Lunar Abi and she's fun to switch to for certain bosses. Commands are pretty clunky, but that's been true of all characters who have gotten skill wheels and I'm hoping they all get addressed at the same time. I didn't really enjoy Wendy (even despite the fact that I mained her at one point) prior to the skill tree so I'm glad that it feels like my issues with her are gone.

[Dingle]

4 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

as little as my opinion matters i'm having a lot of fun with Wendy's skill tree, the increased mourning glory means im getting 1-2 stacks in a single day which is letting me be much more creative with how I use elixirs. I am using Lunar Abi and she's fun to switch to for certain bosses. Commands are pretty clunky, but that's been true of all characters who have gotten skill wheels and I'm hoping they all get addressed at the same time. I didn't really enjoy Wendy (even despite the fact that I mained her at one point) prior to the skill tree so I'm glad that it feels like my issues with her are gone.

I played her some before, but had issues that made me not play her much. The skill tree solved all those issues for me, too.

[DVGMedia]

I really just wanted more Abby utility give Abby a bigger light source wether that he through a potion or through the sisturn 

[Thieta]

6 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

I think it's interesting how when the skill trees released, the Walter players gave out their feedback constructively and after admittedly a fair amount of time transformed the skill tree and all the feedback into one of the most interesting and character defining skill trees. Meanwhile, the Wendy tree got a lot of insults and distracted feedback (like half the threads relating to Wendy do literally nothing but insult it or demand complete reworks without any actual feedback), which resulted in nobody getting what they wanted out of Wendy's skill tree.

I really hate how you constantly try to paint people who talk about wendy negatively - If this is what you convinced yourself to believe then go right ahead.

However, The truth is - Back when wendy first got her skill tree released she had the most informative and thought out forum posts that were constantly at the top of the forums. People wrote entire essays on how the entire skill tree could be changed, Lined it up with thematics in different cultures and how they respect/disrespect death/afterlife - Etc. I have yet to see any other character get such an in-depth detailed suggestion on how they can be improved by MULTIPLE people. Aside from people having a problem with wendy digging up graves (In some cultures this is extremely offensive, Fair, But they also didn't go too far with their anger at this.) all the forums were filled with insanely well thought out ideas on how to rework her - Some were way too ambitious but the amount of love she got from people who like playing her is insane. Don't besmirch that.

 

As for her current skill tree - The biggest issue that people have isn't that it isn't "Perfect" or "The most strongest op skill tree" or whatever you want to believe. The reality is - Her stuff is pretty tedious, Some feel like the skills to reduce all her farming (It's like what 7 points total? Pipspook and potion dupe) is a lot of points to dump into reducing a tedious farm for her that takes away from putting points in her other more meaningful skills, They are essentially filler and people dislike that, Rightfully so. They could've easily lowered this down to 3-4 points and made the skills for other stuff. In comparison Walter to get woby's dash/speed ability needs to put in like 6 skill points, 3 to fully unlock the speed and 3 for filler essentially - But his filler unlocks new gameplay for him, You can grab roaming retriever, furry forager, and hard headed. Allowing her to mine/chop, double your food harvests early game, and pick up items for you - That's 3 whole new gameplay abilities in exchange for you unlocking what you want. Same thing for other parts of walter's kit - For woby here woby there, You can craft rope more efficiently, get a portable drying rack, and get woby treats - 2 gameplay changes and 1 really good resource save (Rope crafting)

In comparison a lot of wendy's skills are just... Do this for cheaper instead of providing new things - Yes she has team spirit and other skills, But focus on the ones I am talking about.

Team spirit is a waste of a skill, Should just be basekit - Sisturn exists so... why do I have to spend a skill point to get access to something the sisturn already does? Especially when abby rarely dies anyway, It's a waste of a skill THAT I NEED TO USE to gain access to extra yield. so that's a waste of a skill point. the 3 points for pipspook quest, It includes nothing new to the gameplay - Instead it just makes it give more. that's 3 points. I would've much rather liked to use that 3 points in different ways to acquire glory (rotting petals, killing enemies, bigspook quest, etc) Sisturn perks - first 2 are worthless filler, petals last longer... really? Like they are so hard to get. Even lower sanity loss? great! So excited for it! all to gain access to the lunar blossom one... which half the time I wouldn't use personally. - Another waste of 2 skill points that introduce NOTHING NEW TO HER GAMEPLAY. 

Then she has to dump a lot of skill points for the stuff that she actually wants to use... in the end there is no variation to her skill tree because half of it doesn't provide any new or enticing gameplay. Where walter the majority of his skill tree unlocks something new for you - New ammo types, Slingshot customization, New woby interactions.... Over half of wendy's skill tree doesn't do that. 4 skills go to brews, 2 make em more efficient (nothing new), 3rd is for useless elixer. 3 goes to lunar/shadow (new but shadow is insanely tedious... has to be changed and if klei doesn't I pray someone makes a mod week 1 or else i'm never using shadow, it's just stupid.) 3 to team spirit (all new gameplay! it's great!) 2 for graves (Again to reduce farm... funny enough this nullifies her sisturn 1 effect since adorned graves spawn dark petals so makes the need for petals even less relevant...) but 1 skill will introduce smth new. this is basically all the stuff that is required for her skill tree. Now you are left with 3 points.... and your only options are reduce farming... or unlock the wreath.

So lets go over this in depth. for a total of 15 skill points.... wendy gets 9 new things, 6 of which are direct gameplay changes which alter how she plays the game. The team abilities, Wreath, Graves, and lunar/shadow forms.

In comparison... Walter for a total of 15 skill points.... gets 15 direct gameplay changes. (Technically he gets a LOT more than this, since if you count slingshot customization having 2-3 new items per upgrade) infact his lunar and shadow skills have 2 gameplay paths - One for woby and one for his slingshot... and slingshot gives 2 different ammos...

So in exchange for walter's skill points he gets access to AOE dmg, Slowdown, Woby foraging, Woby mining/Chopping, Electric dmg, Slingshot customization (10), port Campfire, drying rack, healing item, woby here/there, sprinting, teleport, etc etc etc. These are all new gameplay changes for him. It directly changes how he plays the game if he has the skill or not. for wendy her gameplay stays the same but now farming stuff is less tedious for over half her skill tree... it introduces nothing new or changes her gameplay.

This is what people have a problem with and this is why they want them to change the "Filler" skills in wendy's skill tree. Her tree quite literally has only 1 path for you to take and it leaves you with 3 skill points left to either reduce farm, get sisturn, or go for wreath.

For walter you can decide to focus slingshot, Focus woby, Split between both, You will get good value no matter which path you go on and it's a personal preference, His skill tree was done amazingly and they need to have that same quality for other characters aswell.

Just because walter was bad before is not an excuse for his to be better/worse. Just because wendy was good/favorite before is not an excuse for her skill tree to be better/worse. All skill trees need to be built with character synergy like walter's.

[YouKnowWho142]

6 minutes ago, Thieta said:

I really hate how you constantly try to paint people who talk about wendy negatively - If this is what you convinced yourself to believe then go right ahead.=

I've never seen any other character result in people sending death threats and other people justifying it. That is all.

[DVGMedia]

8 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

I've never seen any other character result in people sending death threats and other people justifying it. That is all.

That's called messing with the wrong people. 

But in all seriousness this happened with wolfgang  he got really nothing unique  because people hated him  and he was considered strong 

The devs considered Wendy strong so they wanted to go the same route. It's just Wendy is the most popular character so there were people there to complain more than Wolfgang's. 

The point is though to make consistently good trees that fit the character. They didn't have to be strong just different. 

[AliceShiki]

48 minutes ago, Thieta said:

So lets go over this in depth. for a total of 15 skill points.... wendy gets 9 new things, 6 of which are direct gameplay changes which alter how she plays the game. The team abilities, Wreath, Graves, and lunar/shadow forms.

In comparison... Walter for a total of 15 skill points.... gets 15 direct gameplay changes. (

Your problem is that you're comparing the skill tree of a character that people already play with the skill tree of the most hated character in the game.

Walter needed a Willow-Tier skill tree. Wendy did not, so Wendy did not get it.

Walter is not setting a new precedent for Skill Trees. It's simply doing the same thing Willow's tree did... Actually make a boring character that almost nobody cared about become fun.

Wendy was already fun, so she didn't need as much help from the skill tree. That's all.

It makes no sense to compare Wendy and Walter. Walter obviously needed way more love.

[DVGMedia]

7 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Your problem is that you're comparing the skill tree of a character that people already play with the skill tree of the most hated character in the game.

Walter needed a Willow-Tier skill tree. Wendy did not, so Wendy did not get it.

Walter is not setting a new precedent for Skill Trees. It's simply doing the same thing Willow's tree did... Actually make a boring character that almost nobody cared about become fun.

Wendy was already fun, so she didn't need as much help from the skill tree. That's all.

It makes no sense to compare Wendy and Walter. Walter obviously needed way more love.

That's the problem because of the handicap  and because players see another character get new toys and unique changes it feels unfair. What wendy needed was just something to make her feel more unique. Except all she got was chores for no real benefits if Wendy got more unique things her discourse would be different. And unique doesn't mean strong imagine if they went with new potions with new effects or new flowers in the sisturn for different effects or new morning glory generation  it would feel different to play even though we ended up doing the same thing. 

 

You can do the same thing but different and the whole thing would be felt 

[Cheggf]

9 hours ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

I never saw any Wortox player in this forum engaging in this behaviour throughout the beta, so I wonder what's the problem?

There's two reasons. One of them is that most of the people complaining are not from the forums, they are angry brigaders who were sent here to spam the forums to try to get Klei to buff Wendy. Most of the people complaining about Wendy joined during this beta and only have posts about this beta because they were told to go make forum accounts.