[Poll] On Maxwell's Book Reading Ability

[Cheggf]

5 minutes ago, Dingle said:

You do know that Maxwell can read Wickerbottom's books, right?

I don't think you read a single word I said. You seem to just be trolling. 

[Dingle]

Just now, Cheggf said:

I don't think you read a single word I said.

I read very little tbh.

The tone seemed insulting so I skimmed it.

[Wawchik]

5 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Do you know that people sometimes play Maxwell, briefly switch to Wicker to make books and bookcases, and then switch back? This lets Maxwell access Wickerbottom's entire kit, more or less.

These posts are making me think people just don't know about this.

Megabasers 

[Dingle]

5 minutes ago, Wawchik said:

Megabasers 

I think a lot of her books are valuable, outside of a megabasing situation.

So does the Maxwell player I play the game with.

We're not megabasers by any means.

[Bumber64]

14 hours ago, Cheggf said:

It doesn't even really benefit him. 99% of the books' power comes from massing resources or making lingering things that don't require you to stay as the character who read the book. There is no point to remove this, it's just a cute little lore thing like Wurt being able to read the books that might have some situational use in multiplayer.

Then I'm sure nobody will mind removing the ability and having Maxwell give a literary critique instead. It could be an improvement, even.

[shaurun]

@GetNerfedOn despite I vote not removing the ability, I think I would like book curses. It's an interesting mechanic for any item/action.

We currently have 'karma' for killing rabbits and innocent creatures in form of a fight, curse for killing monkeys, but what I like most as a form of a punishment are slurpers. They drain hunger and sanity but give you light. I would like to see some curses like some items disappear from you inventory (but can be found later), however you gain better stats from food, or something like that.

[xhyom]

It's kind of hard to believe that Maxwell having full access to Wickerbottom's perks is irrelevant as they want to paint it when at the same time the same people do everything to prevent this from being removed, if it's just for the gimmick for the sake of it being cute then let's make the book be the same as it is for Wurt. Wendy-level gaslight

[shaurun]

14 hours ago, NPCMaxwell said:

I said "Yes" cause I prefer the "book curse" thing. I don't really mean yes in entirely removed though. More that there could be punishments for "stealing" the books involved

Cool idea basically, if Wicker gives you a book from her hands - no curses, but if you stole it from the shelves, you will have some debuff for a day.

[Cassielu]

7 hours ago, hyoton123 said:

It’s a fun easter egg and I dont think people swap from wicker to max specifically to read books

Every player I know who plays a long run game does it.

[shaurun]

3 hours ago, Wawchik said:

And I really can't think why anybody would pick wicker if they're not megabasing

I'm bad at megabasing so whenever I pick Wickerbottom, it's mostly for her her tentacles trap for BQ and possibly to forget about building all science/magic stations. So it's early game benefits, not 'preparing the world for Maxwell.

Also I hate bee book. It's noisy, bees have stupid logic of surrounding you so they die from fire often, unlike sane/immune followers,  and making yourself warm with tempering temperature book is incredibly bad if you're traveling since it's only 3 uses for a short time and with bonus sanity issues. Why we're talking about Maxwell issues at all? Because of megabasers only? Let them live.

[Cassielu]

3 hours ago, Wawchik said:

That doesn't affect wickerbottom at all, it just creates an illusion of her being a swap character

But it's a serious problem, Wicker players can't have a good experience as wicker if they think they're playing an unwanted character that can be easily replaced.

Especially when this situation is created by Wickerbottom's character progress, her entire character plays like some sort of must-have pre-quest to become Mega Maxwell.

[Maxil20]

I’m indifferent to the ability, but I figured I might as well share some foresight into why I do use Max for some tasks.

My most used book by 2 miles is applied horticulture (my world is ancient and still has those, though silvaculture/abridged would work in these cases). While I can cover just fine for most resource based purposes and Wicker/Max are interchangable, food ones are a different story. Lureplants are really bad at harvesting food since they instantly nuke half the freshness, and the reaper isn’t good for things that are spaced and can’t be relocated (like lesser glow berries) or things that end up in the ocean (like kelp, which prevents winbots from helping out). Maxwell’s workers, by comparison, have considerably more utility in scenarios like this and are very workable into a good chunk of my setups.

I feel like if lureplants didn’t instantly erase half of a food’s freshness, I probably wouldn’t be playing Maxwell in a “vanilla” scenario (I do use him a lot for Wicker Reading in Island Adventures, but that’s because his workers can hack bamboo/vines and mine Coral, while they don’t have to abide by the Laws Of Clipping to pickup the items dropped).

[shaurun]

5 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

Every player I know who plays a long run game does it.

Of course they do! Imagine you live 2000 days as Maxwell, you get bored, but you love your world and all the progress you've made so far. You start switching to other characters mostly to fill empty space and try some other characters as well. In me 2500 days Willow world I switched to Warley at some point, then  Wicker, then Winona, the Maxwell. There are plenty of character you'd like to switch, Max for chopping and destroying ocean rocks for example. Or Wormwood for mass produce berry bushes, or Wendy to make graveyards. I swapped to Wilson also and for several game years was creating beard rugs, and turning nitre into gold, and making marbles. This is the process of late game enjoyment. 

[Cheggf]

14 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

But it's a serious problem, Wicker players can't have a good experience as wicker if they think they're playing an unwanted character that can be easily replaced.

Especially when this situation is created by Wickerbottom's character progress, her entire character plays like some sort of must-have pre-quest to become Mega Maxwell.

What books are you using as Maxwell that you feel make Wickerbottom redundant?

[Crestwave]

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

There are exactly zero people on the entire planet who are picking Maxwell because they want to mass an enormous amount of resources to create tons of books, then switch to Wickerbottom to make books, then run around with a nearly unusable Sleepytime Stories book that's just a terrible pan flute.

This is a cherry-picked comparison; Wickerbottom has several books that she herself doesn't use often. One obvious contender for a book you would actually use is Rainy Rituals.

Maxwell is better at using basically all of her books after bookcases are stocked since he has the shadow hat to access them and shadow minions to help with the resource growth. You can use silviculture to instantly grow trees/grass/twigs and have minions chop/harvest them.

"Wicker is kind of a swap character anyway" is sort of true in some ways, but Maxwell is the final nail in the coffin that strips away the very last of her usefulness, absorbing quite literally her entire kit.

That said, I'm sure they're going to implement the obligatory skill-locked books and portable skill-locked bookcase in the skill tree.

[Cheggf]

Just now, Crestwave said:

That said, I'm sure they're going to implement the obligatory skill-locked books and portable skill-locked bookcase in the skill tree.

This is what I'm saying. Everyone thinks Wickerbottom is a boring character that they don't want to play, but instead of talking about ways to make her less boring they harp on this random irrelevant thing that's only going to inevitably become even more irrelevant when she gets her skill tree. 

[Dingle]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

What books are you using as Maxwell that you feel make Wickerbottom redundant?

Maxwell can use all of Wickerbottom's books.

[hyoton123]

2 hours ago, Cassielu said:

Every player I know who plays a long run game does it.

That’s fair, but not really anything i’m concerned about. If anything i consider that a good argument to  *keep* it.

[Popian]

5 hours ago, Dingle said:

Do you know that people sometimes play Maxwell, briefly switch to Wicker to make books and bookcases, and then switch back? This lets Maxwell access Wickerbottom's entire kit, more or less.

How many bookcases and duplicate sets of books do you make to offset the fact they are stationary?

[hyoton123]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Put your effort into discussing positive ways to make Wickerbottom not so boring instead of just inventing fake imaginary issues that won't change anything if they get ""solved"".

Thats basically where I am. No one is apparently swapping to max for anything except convenience. Thats *exactly* what character swaps are there for. If there was a max on the server and he stood there and couldnt read books it would be the same outcome, and it still wouldnt change the game experience.

[ZeRoboButler]

Meh, Id say keep it. I don't really see an issue here beyond the fact that there isn't much that keeps people playing wickerbottom, even if maxwell couldn't use the books, wickerbottom would still be a character that people see as a swap character. 

People will always swap to wormwood to plant a bunch of stuff, swap to wicker to speed up the growth, then go to warly for his spices. Wormwood is great since he has more he does himself that is unique to him, but wicker and warly could use stuff for their personal benefit to keep a player invested.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Dingle said:

Maxwell can use all of Wickerbottom's books.

I'm not engaging with ragebait. Stop trying to get the thread locked. 

4 minutes ago, ZeRoboButler said:

People will always swap to wormwood to plant a bunch of stuff, swap to wicker to speed up the growth, then go to warly for his spices. Wormwood is great since he has more he does himself that is unique to him, but wicker and warly could use stuff for their personal benefit to keep a player invested.

Exactly! Wickerbottom could be so much more than just someone that masses resources and makes tentacle traps to kill bosses, but nobody is discussing that.

[RexySeven]

Too late into the development to be removed.

[Dingle]

42 minutes ago, Popian said:

How many bookcases and duplicate sets of books do you make to offset the fact they are stationary?

Usually 2 in the base, 1 in underground base. The bookcases don't move, but you can just move the books as needed.

2 hours ago, Crestwave said:

"Wicker is kind of a swap character anyway" is sort of true in some ways, but Maxwell is the final nail in the coffin that strips away the very last of her usefulness, absorbing quite literally her entire kit.

That said, I'm sure they're going to implement the obligatory skill-locked books and portable skill-locked bookcase in the skill tree.

Wickerbottom should get a perk that lets her use the Codex Umbra.

[Quadratordo]

I do have to wonder just how much of an impact the ''it's always been this way'' mindset has for people answering this poll. Let me turn the matter on its head: let's imagine that Wickerbottom were to be able to use the Codex Umbra at a 2.5x fuel cost, and that Maxwell couldn't access her books, and let's not forget about things like free usage of the Magician's Top Hat and such. I'm sure people can point out the negative impact this would have on Maxwell as his own distinct character (Who does not live in a vacuum, by the way; no character does, not in a game where switching characters is this trivial), so why would the other way around be fine?

There's legitimate concerns that a character that's only defined by their own gear and not their inherent perks, is bound to be a character without identity. That's 100% true, and there's hoping that the upcoming skill tree will try to fix that; goodness knows I'd love for Wickerbottom to be more than a canned, static effect invoker. That being said, taking care of that issue alone would only lessen the one at hand on virtue of not being comparatively as bad... leaving the issue unaddressed.

Justifying ancient gameplay features (Remember, this was also possible in the DS days!) with lore explanations or by ''feature inertia'' is shaky ground in the first place, as both the game's lore and design scope underwent radical changes since the game's inception, and chances are that current lore is simply used to retroactively excuse old design choices. Mind you, I do fully agree that inter-character gear interactability can and should be expanded upon... however, it should absolutely not be something as tasteless as letting another character replicate its effects; on that note, Wurt's interaction with Wickerbottom's books is worthy of praise, and is something that should be taken as an example for future changes.

In short, Yes, it should, but it would be optimal if the update where this matter is solved were to coincide with both characters' skill trees, giving them both more individuality that goes beyond simple gear in order to decouple one another without simply taking away features (questionable as they may be) and giving back nothing.

(edited: lil' grammar whoopsie)