Would you perfer if wes is an actual playable character?

[Edible Coal]

Wes as been brought to dst as hes one of the character in the base ROG characters, hes designed to be the "hard mode" character in ds and is design to give people more replay of the base game and give challenges. But that kind of idea doesn't work when dst is about multiplayer and cooperation, theres no gameplay reason to ever pick him at all. But the dev still spend time and resources on making him skins...

[Mike23Ua]

Let me put it this way, Wes is a character in the game that Klei wants to showcase his personality through his playstyle.

And look I’m sorry, he may be a Mute Mime or Whatever, but unless he’s also Deaf too- Home Boy better start dancing in front of me tugging on an invisible rope trying to box himself into an invisible box or something to let me know Hound Waves are coming.

The character should be Fun, save Frustration for other things: such as world Gen options that do a variety of things such add new types of Behaviors to mob AI.

Imagine for example: If Carrats actually spawned during Lunar Rifts, AND when those Carrats spawn- Like real rats they would run around chewing up your farm crops or something.

Wes being more likely to be struck by lightning was funny at first, but it really just makes the character more annoying when you got to carry more safety items or heals to counter the damage you’ll take.

As he stands right now: he’s better then before he got reworked, but also having an actual useful skill tree worth investing your 15 points into would only make sense.

Edited November 17, 2025 by Mike23Ua

[Cruvimaster]

Willow was changed so she wouldn't set the base on fire when her sanity was low. Wolfgang was changed so he wouldn't eat all the food in the base. I hope the devs don't treat Wes as just a joke in his Skill Tree. That was only fun for the first nine years of the game.

[lovegrooove]

2 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

Wes as been brought to dst as hes one of the character in the base ROG characters, hes designed to be the "hard mode" character in ds and is design to give people more replay of the base game and give challenges. But that kind of idea doesn't work when dst is about multiplayer and cooperation, theres no gameplay reason to ever pick him at all. But the dev still spend time and resources on making him skins...

I think that's a pretty flawed premise. There are huge gameplay reasons to pick him. 

Wes provides lots of challenges, and if you know a lot about the game, then it's really fun to tie one arm behind your back, and challenge yourself. For example, when I first got comfortable with rushing ruins, and I tried my first ruins rush as Wes, I felt way more accomplished and rewarded, than with any other character I had done it before.

This also works if you and your friends all play Wes. I went on scienceless Wes ruins rushes with my friends, and we all peed our pants and laughed a lot. Solo (or group) boss rushing as the little mime is also no cake walk, and can really get some adrenaline going. 

The constant is full of harsh challenges, and overcoming them as Wes, is one of the greatest feelings the game has to offer, in my opinion. 

[Edible Coal]

1 hour ago, lovegrooove said:

I think that's a pretty flawed premise. There are huge gameplay reasons to pick him. 

Wes provides lots of challenges, and if you know a lot about the game, then it's really fun to tie one arm behind your back, and challenge yourself. For example, when I first got comfortable with rushing ruins, and I tried my first ruins rush as Wes, I felt way more accomplished and rewarded, than with any other character I had done it before.

My overall though is that dst characters are designed to cooperate with each other, wes provides none to his teammate. A challenge character dont fit dst core ideas

[shaurun]

Thinking about Wes, I came up to a thought I want him to be somewhat beneficial to pick. He has problems with the reputation of challenge character:

1. Expierenced players don't find him challenging. All "challenge" he has is low stats and longer combat. He has innate protection from thunder with his ballon's hat, he has extra speed / disctruction setup to run away from hounds, he even has some benefits e.g. against drawning, easy sanity management,, etc, so honestly he fails to be a challenging character, just has some drawbacks.
2. Wes players don't receive a lot of recognition in publc servers. From my expirience, all Weses who joined public servers were mostly chill guys:  they don't rush something, avoid fighting, and mostly are treated as poor weak / regular dudes. OP Wortox who rushed CC or regular Wigfrid who rushed Dragondly are treated as more expirienced than pieceful Wes. So what's the point? 
3. I liked Wes as a character before because he has some mystery behind him (how he appeared to be trapped, what was the thing which dissapointed Maxwell. etc). Now after this part of lore was revealed I love him much more. And I think that according to the lore he's very UNLUCKY, but very KIND towards people. And knowing this, he doesn't need to have "challenge" character  reputation anymore - he is already unlucky by game design, now he needs some powers to share his kindness.

[Pruinae]

We can have both, depending on how Klei goes about his skill tree (if he even gets one :S we can't take it for granted)

But yeah, personally I would prefer to have another character to play as in a way that expands how I can interact with the game, Wes currently does incentivize you to interact in different ways, but not in any ways that are exclusive to his character.

[Szczuku]

Are we going to compromise the challenge character now?

21 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

My overall though is that dst characters are designed to cooperate with each other, wes provides none to his teammate.

Some of his current perks benefit the team at his expense (which fits with his lore): he's more likely to be struck by lightning and targeted by hounds when they switch agro.

24 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

A challenge character dont fit dst core ideas

Lmao

[wormwood123]

I would like if he had more actual downsides and things that make the game harder 

[slendyproject]

2 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Are we going to compromise the challenge character now?

Some of his current perks benefit the team at his expense (which fits with his lore): he's more likely to be struck by lightning and targeted by hounds when they switch agro.

Lmao

But overall he is still more of a hindrance to a team than a benefit, no?

Wes being almost a downside only character only really makes sense if one if his primary purposes is for solo play, where it doesnt matter that he doesnt provide much of anything to a team. But lets be honest DST is not designed with solo play in mind.

 

I think the best way would be giving him a two-way skill tree. One build actually gains abilities and makes him more useful. The other one just makes him even worse and gives him more downsides that still somehow benefit his teammates in small ways.

[lovegrooove]

39 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

My overall though is that dst characters are designed to cooperate with each other, wes provides none to his teammate. A challenge character dont fit dst core ideas

Maybe not your core dst ideas. The game isn't only played one way. 

Last week I made a labyrinth for my friends, maybe I should start an anti-Wortox campaign now, since he doesn't fit that experience?

And Wes actually has quite a few teamplay features, like party balloons, speedy ballons (which can also function as flares on the map), he can use fire staves and ice staves 27 times (instead of 20), and his inflatable vest prevents characters from taking damage when drowning (also prevents WX from losing max hp). He also draws hound aggro away from other (possible less experienced) players, helping them out in the process.

In the right circumstances, these things can add up to be quite helpful, while at the same time providing a challenging experience for the Wes player.

[Edible Coal]

45 minutes ago, lovegrooove said:

Maybe not your core dst ideas. The game isn't only played one way. 

Last week I made a labyrinth for my friends, maybe I should start an anti-Wortox campaign now, since he doesn't fit that experience?

what does that mean? if you mean wortox taking people to labyrinth, then you are using wortox powers to help others , 

 

48 minutes ago, lovegrooove said:

 

And Wes actually has quite a few teamplay features, like party balloons, speedy ballons (which can also function as flares on the map), he can use fire staves and ice staves 27 times (instead of 20), and his inflatable vest prevents characters from taking damage when drowning (also prevents WX from losing max hp). He also draws hound aggro away from other (possible less experienced) players, helping them out in the process.

In the right circumstances, these things can add up to be quite helpful, while at the same time providing a challenging experience for the Wes player.

sadly , no matter how you spin it , he still earns a single digit percent of play rate in dst, which isnt healthy for a character. Also the wes perks are barely worthwhile to be use in most situation.

inflatable vest ? we got floaters, it doesn't even need to be wear to be deploy

speedy balloon last barely half a day and breaks if u get hurt , woodie cane is a much better version of it

draw aggro? why not just use a combat character and eliminate the threat?

the extra staff usage is nice tho, cant say much about it but blue gem arnt too hard to find 

 

Overall i just want to see more wes players, him being a challenging character with no equal amount of upsides just makes him unappealing for anyone to pick him

[benfroyobro9381]

3 hours ago, wormwood123 said:

I would like if he had more actual downsides and things that make the game harder 

Maybe you find him easy, but saying he doesn't have actual downsides just isn't true. Worst base stats, lower damage multiplier, takes longer to chop/mine/hammer, more susceptible to grogginess, heat, or cold, more likely to get struck by lightning, higher hound priority, and can't talk or give warnings. The average player will definitely find him a lot more difficult, with less leeway and little to no benefits. 

[Cruvimaster]

What I see is some people playing on hard mode, which consists of not dying and not rolling back. For this hard mode they usually choose... Wolfgang.

[Radicaljoe]

6 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

My overall though is that dst characters are designed to cooperate with each other, wes provides none to his teammate. A challenge character dont fit dst core ideas

What are the core ideas of dst? 

Also, using this premise. What cooperation does Wolfgang or WX bring to the table?

[Cuernito.]

He is in a weird spot tight now, klei see him as a joke, i see him as a challenge character but other people think he can be a normal character...

Im not sure what should be done about wes anymore. He is a sad little clown that helps others(non intentional) with his missfortune, thats the only thing he does according to his lore videos.

What kind of skills will you give to someone like that?

[shaurun]

38 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

What cooperation does Wolfgang or WX bring to the table?

This could be offtopic, but:

- Wolfgang provides extra DPS, can move shadow pieces / lunar altars w/o beefalo, can help with mining/chopping because he's faster with it than many other characters.

- WX mostly designed to be selfish, but he can still help with ruins investigations.

[Radicaljoe]

9 minutes ago, shaurun said:

This could be offtopic, but:

- Wolfgang provides extra DPS, can move shadow pieces / lunar altars w/o beefalo, can help with mining/chopping because he's faster with it than many other characters.

- WX mostly designed to be selfish, but he can still help with ruins investigations.

yeah, my point for Wolfgang was that his cooperation is just things everyone else can do, he just does them slightly faster. (He does have the whistle, so that helps minion characters, but at the detriment of the Wolfgang player not being able to be buff to use the whistle)

Wes also has other players' hounds target him and can make speedy balloons for friends early (also works as a flare). 

Just wanted to point out that Wes is not the antithesis of cooperation and there are equal/ worse contenders for the title.

(Also while on this topic, klei please fix  Abigail's scare taunt affecting befriended mobs, poor Webber gets his friends scattered everywhere and they're just disabled)

[AliceShiki]

I'd much rather have the challenge character continue being the challenge character.

Not all characters need to have the same pick rate. In any game with challenge characters, those will naturally have lower pick rate, because... Yanno, they're hard to play with. They provide an extra challenge.

Wes is there to give experienced players a bigger challenge when playing when they no longer feel threatened by playing with Wilson. There is no need to buff him.

I'd much rather just have a skill tree filled with nerfs for Wes. To make him a bigger challenge for those who want it.

[Harrowick]

I do hope they can find a way to make him challenging to the player playing him, but much less of a liability to everyone he plays with. Being a bad character is only funny for about 30 minutes until you realize he does everything slower.

I know they reworked him to no longer be a leech on food supplies but the working slower thing feels equally as much of a liability as the hunger drain.

 

I'd like if his skill tree consisted of downsides for him, but with meaningful support abilities that only affects other players. Perhaps some sort of silly mime morale that only affects the work speed of those around him, stuff like that!

(but if nothing changes, I'll still have massive respect for Wes players, and I will still continue to randomly give you fresh fruit crepes.) 

 

[Well-met]

regardless of this topic, his skill tree will almost certainly make him more of a team player so it's gonna happen anyway.

[ZeRoboButler]

8 hours ago, slendyproject said:

But overall he is still more of a hindrance to a team than a benefit, no?

I mean, a person is only really a hinderance in dst if they 

1. don't know what they are doing at all
2. are not doing anything to actually help out

Nothing is stopping wes from gathering plants for the base, burning trees for charcoal or gathering anything else for that matter.

You play long enough the downsides turn into "downsides", ultimately you may have lower stats across the board, but your playing wes because you like wes, not because your trying to break the game. I understand that times change and so to does design philosophy, but... wes is always going to be wes, its kinda the point.   

[shaurun]

2 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

Just wanted to point out that Wes is not the antithesis of cooperation and there are equal/ worse contenders for the title.

Yes I agree, he's not antithesis, but people will see more benefit if non-Wes character will join instead, e.g. if they want speedy baloon - Woodie with his skilltree will not only provide speed for longer duration, but wll also be of great help with other things like investigation and resource gathering. If you want to deaggro dogs from others - use Willow's Bernie and you'll also can supply the base with infinite light and fire-safety.

So people see Wes as least beneficial for the team, not anticoop, but the least useful choice.

[lovegrooove]

8 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

what does that mean? if you mean wortox taking people to labyrinth, then you are using wortox powers to help others , 

Nvm. I was talking about a labyrinth that I built myself, not the one in ruins. 

8 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

sadly , no matter how you spin it , he still earns a single digit percent of play rate in dst, which isnt healthy for a character. Also the wes perks are barely worthwhile to be use in most situation.

inflatable vest ? we got floaters, it doesn't even need to be wear to be deploy

speedy balloon last barely half a day and breaks if u get hurt , woodie cane is a much better version of it

draw aggro? why not just use a combat character and eliminate the threat?

the extra staff usage is nice tho, cant say much about it but blue gem arnt too hard to find 

 

Overall i just want to see more wes players, him being a challenging character with no equal amount of upsides just makes him unappealing for anyone to pick him

Since when does it matter how many percent of players are playing a character? I know many many players, who genuinely enjoy Wes, and the biggest part of the community, is made up of casual players, which of course wouldn't have as much fun playing him. 

I was listing his team perks, because you said he had none - which I think is untrue. I never said there aren't other mechanics or characters, that can do it better. 

What I'm getting at, is that just because you don't find resonance with a character, doesn't make that character bad. It just means he is not for you. You want another character that is on par with the power level of other survivors? Ok cool - I don't, and I know many others don't want that either. The best part about Wes, is exactly that he is so weak. It's the biggest middle finger that you can give to the dangers of this game, and the reward for accomplishing your goals while crippled and blindfolded (metaphorically speaking), is oh so sweet. 

That it's "unappealing for anyone to pick him" is just plain false. That is how you see it, and how you think others see it, but many people in this community love that character. I myself have 2 people in my buddy list, who exclusively main Wes, for example. I have also joined many pub servers (where people know each other), where one person starts picking Wes, and then everybody else follows suit, because it's really fun.

If you want another strong character, there are a million mod survivors you can download. There's nothing wrong with Wes. 

[AliceShiki]

On the topic of "some people like Wes because it is a challenge character", I wanna say that this is exactly why I loved Lost in Binding of Isaac.

Like, I'm not good enough in DST to seriously try playing a challenge character, but I certainly was in Binding of Isaac, and it was just... Fun. Lost being a character that died from being hit twice in any given room (or once if you were playing without DLCs) just made for a very tense and fun experience where you had barely any room for mistakes and the run would be over.

If I just wanted to do a random run without any particular goals, Lost would be one of the first choices that would come to my mind. It was just a super enjoyable experience... And when proper co-op was launched in Repentance, I remember playing a lot with Tainted Lost together with my friend and with my brother, and it was plain awesome.

There is a real appeal in challenge characters for people who are good enough at the game. They just make you need to play more carefully and have overall better execution to succeed, and that by itself can be quite fun when you're already able to clear the challenges that the game offer you without much of a struggle.

That said, I can understand the argument of Wes downsides not being very fun to play with, like... I haven't really played Wes, so I can't really put my personal opinion on that, but I can understand the logic behind the argument, because that's how I felt about Afterbirth Keeper... It was a bigger challenge than Lost, but... It just wasn't fun. The Keeper's gameplay loop wasn't really interesting to me and the process of getting all of Keeper's completion marks was not really enjoyable... So well, I can get the argument, but I would say that if the character's downsides make it boring, then different downsides should be found to make the character more fun to play with, instead of arguing for a buff to make it stop being a challenge character.

... And just to emphasize the point, I don't really play Wes, since I'm not good enough at the game to play him, so I don't know if he is fun/boring. I just think that arguing that Wes is boring can be valid, even if I don't think the solution are buffs.