[Poll] On Maxwell's Book Reading Ability

[oregu]

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

Maxwell claimed that he knew every crafting recipe in the game, but had forgotten them. He also designed and built the Teleportato and Jury-Rigged Portal, which we weren't allowed to do in the game.

Adding Wicker's book to this list is not a big deal.

Oh, yes. I totally agree that Maxwell could have forgotten those things. What I was getting at with the Codex Umbra thing is that it does not make sense in the scope of how much he cares about magic.  I'm a bit surprised Maxwell doesnt skip a level in Magic. I guess the only reason that doesnt happen is balancing, but for what I wonder. Making an amulet early? If you're going to say the nightmares stripped everything away from him, why does he still have the Codex? 

The removal of him reading Wicker's books would be more of a band-aid fix on the larger issue that people have with character swapping.

I would rather give people more of a reason to play both Maxwell and Wickerbottom and not ruin an already existing synergy on the virtue of it being "too good for the other player." Klei's intention behind characters is not often making them the most balanced between each other, otherwise a lot of characters would be weaker statwise. I think the playerbase could embrace some characters being stronger than the other in other aspects more. I prefer playing Wickerbottom even though I could swap to Maxwell because I become more recognizable and can be more versatile with resources, especially early on.People would feel it's less trouble to ask "Hey can you read [book] for me?" than if I was Maxwell. Taking a step back and thinking about how much longer Maxwell have existed in the Constant than Wickerbottom, I feel like his limitations are gracious enough.

We're still waiting for the Wickerbottom's update, right? So I feel like this imbalance is mostly due to the timing of character updates.

It would be like letting Wigfrid use Walter's slingshot because she is a supposed combat expert.  I think it makes sense enough. Gives more of a reason to let Wigfrid and Walter play together. People still would pick Walter and Wigfrid for their own reasons. People would not want something like this though due to balancing, even though her damage would probably still not exceed Wolfgang's.

[Prinha]

6 hours ago, Quadratordo said:

s I've said, characters do not exist in a vacuum; If one character possesses other characters' perks, along with their own, then that other characters' appeal is diminished by comparison, as a character's appeal is defined by how unique and interesting they are, both in gameplay and flavor. In such a case, however, all that they have going for themselves is flavor and minor numeric stat differences, as proved by the fact you do play Wickerbottom mainly because of such factors (as well as your dislike for Maxwell)

Firstly I did in fact not tell you why I play Wickerbottom. I told you why I don't play Maxwell. 

Secondly a character's appeal is subjective. You may think that Maxwell's ability to read Wicker's books makes her less appealing but that's not an objective truth. She's less appealing to YOU because YOU value character perks like books more than looks, sounds, stats and downsides. Wickerbottom and Maxwell play nothing alike. Historically they have always complemented each other fairly well but they were never even close to the same. Maxwell players don't run around the world trying to solve all their problems with books because they have their own tools to deal with stuff and also because that type of gameplay has its own downsides. One of them being that there are very few books that help Wicker after she has set up something around them. As mentioned before the delay on Sleepy Time Stories for example is so much worse than the panflute it's only ever used in feather farms and the like. 

 

6 hours ago, Quadratordo said:

One could represent Wickerbottom and Maxwell as two circles of different sizes in a Venn diagram: Wickerbottom's defining gameplay features are almost entirely enclosed within Maxwell's circle, as she is, at least currently, just about entirely about her books... exception being made for her slightly different stats, and her disadvantages, which are fairly minor and something that Maxwell wouldn't want to have anyways. However, his features are all outside of Wickerbottom's circle, all things that make him both a unique character to play and extremely powerful even if you only count those. To put it bluntly, one could absorb Wickerbottom's character into Maxwell simply by giving him her crafts, and the game would only be one personality short, not so much one character. This is not good, of course; Wickerbottom deserves better... true synergy, not feature parasitism (bit of a strong word here, but you get what I mean)

I agree in that Wickerbottom should see more things that expand on her gameplay outside of setting up farms. Suggestions and discussions have been made and I'm sure more are to come. From this thread I'm thinking she should have something to reduce the time of her reading animations and maybe be able to circumvent the sanity drain temporarily so that books are more of an option on the go and in the early game. Anyways this is not the place for that discussion.

None of Wicker's problems are going to improve if you remove Maxwell's reading ability. And to put this clearly I personally do not care if Maxwell gets a book curse or whatever. But I do care that the reasoning for proposing this change is all about "increasing Wicker's appeal by making somebody else less appealing." 

 

7 hours ago, Quadratordo said:

I'd like to bring attention to the use of the word ''synergy'' here; if you ask me, it isn't quite the right word for this. ''Swap characters'' are mostly characterized by the fact that you can take most or all of what they can provide for a team outside of their control, without requiring further input from them, and conveniently store it away for free later use as (almost) any other character. That is not synergy, as that would imply a mutual benefit greater than the sum of its parts, and packaging exclusive items and structures away and possibly change into a more convenient character without any ripercussion on said things does not qualify.

Yes I was struggling for a moment to find a good word. But I have left perfectionism behind trusting that people were gonna understand the point anyway.

The items and structures are not exclusive. We wouldn't have this discussion if they were. This is what you people want to change, you want everything to be exlusive so that nobody can ever use anything from anybody else unless a friend is explicitely playing on your server and doing the thing for you.

And I also disagree on the implied statement that Maxwell is more convenient than Wickerbottom. Not to me.

[NPCMaxwell]

9 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

as an actual librarian i could not be more offended by something so true

I adore libraries and keep imagining the books actually be poisonous if they were taken without being registered properly x3

I am sorry I offended you but I think libraries and the people who work there lovely <3

[Danila6300]

Maxwell is the former owner of the constant. He should generally read books without wasting durability and without losing his mind. 

[Quadratordo]

4 hours ago, Prinha said:

Firstly I did in fact not tell you why I play Wickerbottom. I told you why I don't play Maxwell. 

Hmm, I must've misinterpreted that, my bad.
 

4 hours ago, Prinha said:

Secondly a character's appeal is subjective. You may think that Maxwell's ability to read Wicker's books makes her less appealing but that's not an objective truth. She's less appealing to YOU because YOU value character perks like books more than looks, sounds, stats and downsides.

Why of course it is subjective; if it weren't, we wouldn't even be having polls and conversations over this, not to mention skill tree updates causing forum warfare...

4 hours ago, Prinha said:

Wickerbottom and Maxwell play nothing alike. Historically they have always complemented each other fairly well but they were never even close to the same. Maxwell players don't run around the world trying to solve all their problems with books because they have their own tools to deal with stuff and also because that type of gameplay has its own downsides.

That's hardly a complementary relationship, either, as that'd imply that Wickerbottom gets direct, tailored and tangible benefits for having Maxwell interact with something of hers; that'd be an apt term for something like Abigail and Wendy. But don't be mistaken, I'm not trying to nitpick terms just to be petty, goodness knows how often I make mistakes on that matter; I really do think that it'd be wonderful for Wickerbottom and Maxwell to have proper inter-activity which would result in something unique that neither character could get on their own, but as long as the current status quo is held as the ''synergy'' (on that note, I'd like to point out that I didn't play dictionary with that word before to target your wording; it's a term that's mistakenly used by a lot of people, that creates misunderstandings as to what a proper synergy would actually be; looking in this very thread, you can see that) which it isn't, then there'll always be a strong inertia factor holding back changes for the better.

5 hours ago, Prinha said:

None of Wicker's problems are going to improve if you remove Maxwell's reading ability. And to put this clearly I personally do not care if Maxwell gets a book curse or whatever. But I do care that the reasoning for proposing this change is all about "increasing Wicker's appeal by making somebody else less appealing." 

That's a really petty reasoning for someone to approve of this change, I'll say. I imagine there's bound to be quite a few disgruntled Wickerbottom players that simply want this feature removed out of spite, or for reasons you outlined in your reply's first paragraph. My vote might match with those people, but the reasoning and end goal don't; I'm sure I've been clear in previous posts in that I don't simply want it removed, I want it to be substituted with something truly interesting, and synergistic. If anything, such a thing would surely make both characters more appealing, no? 

5 hours ago, Prinha said:

The items and structures are not exclusive. We wouldn't have this discussion if they were. This is what you people want to change, you want everything to be exlusive so that nobody can ever use anything from anybody else unless a friend is explicitely playing on your server and doing the thing for you.

I did specifically mention Winona, as her last update shows you can incentivise a degree of exclusivity by having her unique usage of her gear without barring other characters from interacting when she's not there. Now, I'd guess one might think that we could get a similar scenario by powering up Wickerbottom's reading powers in various ways, leaving Maxwell with the current usage of books. However, grandfathering a decade-plus old feature that was made when DST wasn't even a thought is a ham-fisted way of doing things; I'd expect more peculiar interactions that extend beyond effect copy-pasting, given that Klei has already done so when it's two specific characters interacting (see Wurt's reading, or WX-78 and Winona's Generator). I wouldn't be exactly devastated if it ended up being this way, but it'd be like settling for less than what it could be.

[Prinha]

35 minutes ago, Quadratordo said:

That's hardly a complementary relationship, either, as that'd imply that Wickerbottom gets direct, tailored and tangible benefits for having Maxwell interact with something of hers

They used to complement each other because Maxwell would gather the many ressources required for Wicker to setup large farm-builds. In turn he would get his share of the output of those farms and even use them in her absence. This is talking purely from a multiplayer point of view where people are cooperating to build really large things so that everyone can get Krampus-Sacks etc quickly. Situations in which a Walter or Wigfrid or Wolfgang player is killing the tentacles to get the spots for the books and so on. That is why it is mutual. Just because Wicker can do these things without Walter/Maxwell/Wolfgang etc doesn't mean she doesn't benefit from them doing it for her.

In solo play this is commonly completly ignored. If I build 60% of my base as Wickerbottom and then log onto Wolfgang to smack Misery Toadstool in the face, nobody goes around complaining that Wolfgang is just a swap character only useful for HP sponges. Just because Toadstool's loot is not a personal Wolfgang craft or something when really this is exactly the same.

Anyways I think we actually agree for the most part when it comes to buffing Wicker through her skill tree. The disagreement is mostly about you seeing her uniqueness as diminished to the point of no longer seeing any point to Wickerbottom at all. 

The way that "characters do not exist in a vacuum" these discussion also do not exist in a vacuum. And while you label  it as petty it's actually one of the main arguments brought by the make-everything-exclusive-crowd over and over. (The other one being about how this hardcore uncompromising most difficult of diffcultest games is suddenly too easy).

[NPCMaxwell]

4 hours ago, Danila6300 said:

Maxwell is the former owner of the constant. He should generally read books without wasting durability and without losing his mind. 

There could be some other punishment for him then, maybe  even if just a minor annoyance

[GetNerfedOn]

18 hours ago, NPCMaxwell said:

I adore libraries and keep imagining the books actually be poisonous if they were taken without being registered properly x3

I am sorry I offended you but I think libraries and the people who work there lovely <3

i'm messing with you lmao dw

agreed though, people who steal books from libraries should die the death, be fried in a pan, be afflicted with the falling sickness, broken on a wheel and hanged