Would you perfer if wes is an actual playable character?

[Cuernito.]

16 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

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.

But the lost has some big advantages like fly, spectral tears and free trades with the devil, in fact his free trade perk was so good that was nerfed lmao. And TBOI is a really funny game cause all the characters have good perks even the "challenge characters".

[Cruvimaster]

Look at the level of debate about Wes: "I don't play Wes. I also won't play with him. However, I know people who play with him. Therefore, I have the authority to say how others should play with him."

 

 

[Cuernito.]

2 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

Look at the level of debate about Wes: "I don't play Wes. I also won't play with him. However, I know people who play with him. Therefore, I have the authority to say how others should play with him."

 

 

i mean there is no real debate wes is a mess, i do play him cause i love to vary but he is boring as heck, sure he is hard to use but its even worst he is boring to play, he doesnt have really any usefull advantage. I actually made a post in the past talking about his skill tree that should harder charllenges like a list and when you complete a challenge you get a buff, a real buff not a joke. that way he can still be a challenge wihout being the most boring character.

[GrapeVruit]

Honestly, while I like the added challenge he provides solo, on a team, Wes is nothing more than a leech, not providing the team with much of anything. While it'd be easy for his skill tree to include a ton of filler skills or skills that make him worse, I SERIOUSLY believe he needs something to make him less of a leech in a group and provide an incredible amount of support to his teammates. He'd still be challenging solo, but wouldn't be entirely worthless in multiplayer. 

[AliceShiki]

1 hour ago, NekoSoulx said:

But the lost has some big advantages like fly, spectral tears and free trades with the devil, in fact his free trade perk was so good that was nerfed lmao. And TBOI is a really funny game cause all the characters have good perks even the "challenge characters".

I don't disagree that flight and spectral tears are part of what makes the Lost more interesting to play. Rebirth Lost not having those probably made the Lost experience quite hellish.

At the same time, Azazel is just better than Lost at basically everything. Sure, you don't get free devil deals, but it's not like you need them with Azazel.

That's kind of what I was getting at with changes to make the character more fun in case it's boring. I don't play Wes, so I can't comment on how fun it is, but if most people feel like it's boring, then changes could be in order.

... I think I might have phrased myself poorly in my last post, because I said that Wes shouldn't be made an interesting character through buffs that make him stop being a challenge character... But my actual position on this is that the fun may come with some buffs if it's what's needed to make the character interesting, but I think it's important to maintain the identity of a challenge character.

Using Lost again as an example... I really can't imagine playing Rebirth Lost and finding that fun... Similarly, Afterbirth Keeper was just a hellish experience... Especially when trying to do Hush with the character with the lowest speed in the game, negative luck, who also benefits the most from backtracking, and at a time before Mama Mega was a thing (It was definitely the most frustrating thing I did in Isaac, way more frustrating than doing Mother, Dogma, Mega **** or Delirium with Tainted Lost)... It was so incredibly frustrating to try doing that... But Repentance Keeper feels way more fun to play. It's still a challenge character, alright, but the changes made the overall experience more interesting and made Keeper a unique character with features I actually cared about, and Mama Mega now existed to let reaching Hush not be a hellish task in itself.

And then there are characters like Tainted Lost, who doesn't have access to the Holy Mantle, so the run is quite tough, but the big offensive power due to the limited item pool makes him quite the powerhouse, keeping him unique, while also making his runs incredibly hard. Especially for beating stuff like Dogma.

So uhn... Yeah, I don't think there is anything wrong with giving unique benefits to challenge characters. They just need to continue feeling like actual challenge characters in the process, since that's their whole appeal in the first place.

That said, I guess it's also important to highlight that what is fun for one person may not be fun for another? Like... Tainted Keeper just... Didn't feel fun to me? The gimmick of everything costing money just didn't resonate with me at all. It was kinda annoying... But the friend that introduced me to the game back in Afterbirth days loves Tainted Keeper, so.. Well, how fun a character is can be a bit difficult to measure.

Edit: Lol, I forgot that Klei forums automatically censored that boss' name. It's not the first time I see it happens, but I had completely forgotten about it until just now.

Edited November 18, 2025 by AliceShiki

[gaymime]

7 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

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.

(after writing this i realized i am too tired to go back and shorten it to my own satisfaction so either please bear with me on this 3am ramble i have been mulling for an entire year or skip to the very end)

can i just step in to say that i have seen hundreds of people wanting a "challenge" in dst over the years and constantly what has been shown is not that they want a HARDER character to play, they want the same character they've always played but have the WORLD be more challenging(to reiterate; not actually harder, in practice people generally never want harder in collaborative games despite using that word). wes cannot perform his function in dst the way he could in ds where "harder" means harder and the only person you have to worry about is yourself. the mindset in dst is not "beat the game in a harder setting" it is "play the game and it is now more challenging" it is also considered a b*st*rd move to pick a character that inconveniences others in collaborative settings and so you are visibly marking yourself as that kind of player by not picking the most "helpful" character within your capabilities to play. wes theoretically IS the challange character, in practice he is the joke that you try once for a laugh if you are rubbish at the game or once if you wanna see what the fuss is about but overall give a pass because you already have a character you like playing and you might get pegged as anti-social if you keep picking him

i hope you can understand the distinction and understand that this comes from the same core place that when people's mains come up on the chopping block it is never ever about hobbling them in any real way but is instead about making the game easier, smoother and more entertaining while playing as that character even if the topic of said character struggling comes up sometimes as ok to do. wes just fails all around due to being tagged as a legacy character whose main thrust seems to be keeping the forums preoccupied by giving people a shared & agreed upon "worst" to keep tribalistic aggression at a simmer instead of boiling over. he is ideal for speculation and abuse because statistically noone plays him more than once or twice at most and wes players are pretty much non-existent(though funnily enough in the forums we are well over represented compared to other places). he is a good concept for people to gnaw on in places where people are debating, arguing and speculating but he is a poor execution in the wild where people are playing the game

 

as for the main bit with should wes stay a "challenge" character? the people who are for wes struggling/suffering are almost entirely people who never had any intention of playing him or playing with people who would play him. it is speculation on how much publicly sanctioned cruelty can be allowed before it is considered uncouth. personally i dont want =my= wes to be easier or more accommodating to the point where all my worlds have harder hits turned on and in solo ds i use a mod to tank his stats to dst levels BUT that is also, quite frankly, a stupid way to play and i understand he =needs= to be accessible or people will continue to not play him. 

personally while i dont want him easier and got irl stomach stressed back in april when it was most likely for him to get a skill-tree if a skill-tree was coming i need him to be easier and i desire for him to be easier because i love this lil' guy and i want people to play as him much much more than i want him to stay the same for my own personal comfort. i want there to be one more option for people when they play the game and dont know who to pick, i want him to get love from more than just whomever is in charge of his skins(ty by the way, you rock, my guy<3). i want this particular character to be so unremarkable that noone says anything at all when he shows up in a pub because he is just supposed to be there. to be totally frank i'd rather he be "ruined" and turned into the baby-mode easy character for big babies who is "unfun" than to keep him the same or to make him even more undesirable to people because i want him to thrive and i can see clear as day how the easiest characters to play line up almost perfectly with how popular they are with the normal regular playerbase(us weirdos on the forums are a bit different but more often than not we follow those trends too). i voted he needs to change because while i am stupid i am not dumb.

 

i guess tldr? it is fun to talk about this but talking means almost nothing. wes badly needs to be brought up to the same place the other characters are regardless of whether or not people cry about it in the short-term.

 

[Cuernito.]

54 minutes ago, gaymime said:

(after writing this i realized i am too tired to go back and shorten it to my own satisfaction so either please bear with me on this 3am ramble i have been mulling for an entire year or skip to the very end)

can i just step in to say that i have seen hundreds of people wanting a "challenge" in dst over the years and constantly what has been shown is not that they want a HARDER character to play, they want the same character they've always played but have the WORLD be more challenging(to reiterate; not actually harder, in practice people generally never want harder in collaborative games despite using that word). wes cannot perform his function in dst the way he could in ds where "harder" means harder and the only person you have to worry about is yourself. the mindset in dst is not "beat the game in a harder setting" it is "play the game and it is now more challenging" it is also considered a b*st*rd move to pick a character that inconveniences others in collaborative settings and so you are visibly marking yourself as that kind of player by not picking the most "helpful" character within your capabilities to play. wes theoretically IS the challange character, in practice he is the joke that you try once for a laugh if you are rubbish at the game or once if you wanna see what the fuss is about but overall give a pass because you already have a character you like playing and you might get pegged as anti-social if you keep picking him

i hope you can understand the distinction and understand that this comes from the same core place that when people's mains come up on the chopping block it is never ever about hobbling them in any real way but is instead about making the game easier, smoother and more entertaining while playing as that character even if the topic of said character struggling comes up sometimes as ok to do. wes just fails all around due to being tagged as a legacy character whose main thrust seems to be keeping the forums preoccupied by giving people a shared & agreed upon "worst" to keep tribalistic aggression at a simmer instead of boiling over. he is ideal for speculation and abuse because statistically noone plays him more than once or twice at most and wes players are pretty much non-existent(though funnily enough in the forums we are well over represented compared to other places). he is a good concept for people to gnaw on in places where people are debating, arguing and speculating but he is a poor execution in the wild where people are playing the game

 

as for the main bit with should wes stay a "challenge" character? the people who are for wes struggling/suffering are almost entirely people who never had any intention of playing him or playing with people who would play him. it is speculation on how much publicly sanctioned cruelty can be allowed before it is considered uncouth. personally i dont want =my= wes to be easier or more accommodating to the point where all my worlds have harder hits turned on and in solo ds i use a mod to tank his stats to dst levels BUT that is also, quite frankly, a stupid way to play and i understand he =needs= to be accessible or people will continue to not play him. 

personally while i dont want him easier and got irl stomach stressed back in april when it was most likely for him to get a skill-tree if a skill-tree was coming i need him to be easier and i desire for him to be easier because i love this lil' guy and i want people to play as him much much more than i want him to stay the same for my own personal comfort. i want there to be one more option for people when they play the game and dont know who to pick, i want him to get love from more than just whomever is in charge of his skins(ty by the way, you rock, my guy<3). i want this particular character to be so unremarkable that noone says anything at all when he shows up in a pub because he is just supposed to be there. to be totally frank i'd rather he be "ruined" and turned into the baby-mode easy character for big babies who is "unfun" than to keep him the same or to make him even more undesirable to people because i want him to thrive and i can see clear as day how the easiest characters to play line up almost perfectly with how popular they are with the normal regular playerbase(us weirdos on the forums are a bit different but more often than not we follow those trends too). i voted he needs to change because while i am stupid i am not dumb.

 

i guess tldr? it is fun to talk about this but talking means almost nothing. wes badly needs to be brought up to the same place the other characters are regardless of whether or not people cry about it in the short-term.

 

Oh my gotto, its a mime main! haha sowy i have to do it. But to be honest i understand your feelings towards wes, i felt the same about Nona, she used to be one of the least played characters and as a Winona main i felt bad about it, so i get you, i like wes to be a hard character but i think his skill tree should be good not another joke. And this is coming from someone that dont like Wes so lets hope klei take it seriously this time.

[crushcircuit]

17 hours ago, Pruinae said:

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.

i love these ideas a lot - i love the idea of wes remaining a challenging character to play while also having more fun things to use. i abstain from the poll because i would like a middle ground as well 

[Semind]

I typed way too much just to say that where I come down on Wes is that I need reasons to play Wes that make me feel like I'm not just playing worse Wilson. That's sort of where I stand: buff or nerf, just make him offer experiences that make me think "wow, I couldn't have gotten this by playing any other character". I can only think of two small things Wes has that feel meaningfully unique to him (speed balloon and no talking to plants) in the current state of the character.

Really buckling down and thinking about how Wes could have unique flavor made me conceptualize another "bad balloon joke". Imagine if he could gain flight with too many balloons! But the catch is (pick one or more or all of the following): you can't control where you go too well so you rely on the wind's whims, potentially falling into water and drowning/you go high into the sky so you lose aggro, but you'll also probably die from the fall back down/you might drop stuff out of your inventory at random as you hang on for dear life/crows and bats really hate your mockery of flight so they'll laser-focus on popping your balloons and keeping you grounded if they find you.

[Edible Coal]

5 hours ago, Semind said:

I typed way too much just to say that where I come down on Wes is that I need reasons to play Wes that make me feel like I'm not just playing worse Wilson. That's sort of where I stand: buff or nerf, just make him offer experiences that make me think "wow, I couldn't have gotten this by playing any other character". I can only think of two small things Wes has that feel meaningfully unique to him (speed balloon and no talking to plants) in the current state of the character.

Really buckling down and thinking about how Wes could have unique flavor made me conceptualize another "bad balloon joke". Imagine if he could gain flight with too many balloons! But the catch is (pick one or more or all of the following): you can't control where you go too well so you rely on the wind's whims, potentially falling into water and drowning/you go high into the sky so you lose aggro, but you'll also probably die from the fall back down/you might drop stuff out of your inventory at random as you hang on for dear life/crows and bats really hate your mockery of flight so they'll laser-focus on popping your balloons and keeping you grounded if they find you.

one of the actual 'hidden' perk is wes being more efficient user in planar weapons, making him able to deal more dmg ( planar does not get affact by mults) with each repairs, also more staff usages 

[Cheggf]

I would prefer if Maxwell and Wolfgang were actual characters

[benfroyobro9381]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I would prefer if Maxwell and Wolfgang were actual characters

Could you elaborate? Maxwell is already an incredibly fleshed out character lore wise and gameplay wise, even without a skill tree. He actually feels like a glass cannon summoner or spell caster post rework. Wolfgang's always been a hard character to rework or design but his core identity and character is very clear; damage dealing machine with little strings attached. There's not a single character in DST atm to me at least that doesn't feel like they at least have a clear purpose or game plan. 

Edited November 18, 2025 by benfroyobro9381

[AliceShiki]

21 hours ago, gaymime said:

(after writing this i realized i am too tired to go back and shorten it to my own satisfaction so either please bear with me on this 3am ramble i have been mulling for an entire year or skip to the very end)

can i just step in to say that i have seen hundreds of people wanting a "challenge" in dst over the years and constantly what has been shown is not that they want a HARDER character to play, they want the same character they've always played but have the WORLD be more challenging(to reiterate; not actually harder, in practice people generally never want harder in collaborative games despite using that word). wes cannot perform his function in dst the way he could in ds where "harder" means harder and the only person you have to worry about is yourself. the mindset in dst is not "beat the game in a harder setting" it is "play the game and it is now more challenging" it is also considered a b*st*rd move to pick a character that inconveniences others in collaborative settings and so you are visibly marking yourself as that kind of player by not picking the most "helpful" character within your capabilities to play. wes theoretically IS the challange character, in practice he is the joke that you try once for a laugh if you are rubbish at the game or once if you wanna see what the fuss is about but overall give a pass because you already have a character you like playing and you might get pegged as anti-social if you keep picking him

i hope you can understand the distinction and understand that this comes from the same core place that when people's mains come up on the chopping block it is never ever about hobbling them in any real way but is instead about making the game easier, smoother and more entertaining while playing as that character even if the topic of said character struggling comes up sometimes as ok to do. wes just fails all around due to being tagged as a legacy character whose main thrust seems to be keeping the forums preoccupied by giving people a shared & agreed upon "worst" to keep tribalistic aggression at a simmer instead of boiling over. he is ideal for speculation and abuse because statistically noone plays him more than once or twice at most and wes players are pretty much non-existent(though funnily enough in the forums we are well over represented compared to other places). he is a good concept for people to gnaw on in places where people are debating, arguing and speculating but he is a poor execution in the wild where people are playing the game

 

as for the main bit with should wes stay a "challenge" character? the people who are for wes struggling/suffering are almost entirely people who never had any intention of playing him or playing with people who would play him. it is speculation on how much publicly sanctioned cruelty can be allowed before it is considered uncouth. personally i dont want =my= wes to be easier or more accommodating to the point where all my worlds have harder hits turned on and in solo ds i use a mod to tank his stats to dst levels BUT that is also, quite frankly, a stupid way to play and i understand he =needs= to be accessible or people will continue to not play him. 

personally while i dont want him easier and got irl stomach stressed back in april when it was most likely for him to get a skill-tree if a skill-tree was coming i need him to be easier and i desire for him to be easier because i love this lil' guy and i want people to play as him much much more than i want him to stay the same for my own personal comfort. i want there to be one more option for people when they play the game and dont know who to pick, i want him to get love from more than just whomever is in charge of his skins(ty by the way, you rock, my guy<3). i want this particular character to be so unremarkable that noone says anything at all when he shows up in a pub because he is just supposed to be there. to be totally frank i'd rather he be "ruined" and turned into the baby-mode easy character for big babies who is "unfun" than to keep him the same or to make him even more undesirable to people because i want him to thrive and i can see clear as day how the easiest characters to play line up almost perfectly with how popular they are with the normal regular playerbase(us weirdos on the forums are a bit different but more often than not we follow those trends too). i voted he needs to change because while i am stupid i am not dumb.

 

i guess tldr? it is fun to talk about this but talking means almost nothing. wes badly needs to be brought up to the same place the other characters are regardless of whether or not people cry about it in the short-term.

The gist of what I got from your post is that you like Wes because of the design of the character? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but I do think it's weird to argue about how it's important to completely change the gameplay identity of a character when you care for him because of his design.

You're for some reason assuming it's impossible for people to like challenge characters... I don't get why you assume that, and I don't get why you think it's a problem to have a Wes in the team in a multiplayer match. Contributing less than others to the development of the base doesn't make you useless or a leech or anything. You're still a perfectly functional party member while playing Wes... You're just not as effective at contributing as other players.

Everybody knows that the Wes playerbase is small though, I'm just saying that this is fine, because challenge characters will naturally have a small playerbase... And I don't think liking the character's design and wanting it to be better because of that is an excuse to remove the only challenge character from the game.

And yes, certain portions of the playerbase want the world to be harder, other portions of the playerbase want characters to have more meaningful downsides. Different people want different things, and there are people who enjoy challenge characters. That's all there is to it. Their number isn't big in any game ever, but that didn't stop devs of multiple games to make challenge characters to appeal to this niche portion of their playerbase. I don't see why Wes should be changed to stop appealing to this niche when it's a fairly somewhat common design practice to make some characters purposefully worse than all others. This kind of thing appeals to people who like to challenge themselves, that's basically the gist of it.

[gaymime]

2 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

The gist of what I got from your post is that you like Wes because of the design of the character? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but I do think it's weird to argue about how it's important to completely change the gameplay identity of a character when you care for him because of his design.

You're for some reason assuming it's impossible for people to like challenge characters... I don't get why you assume that, and I don't get why you think it's a problem to have a Wes in the team in a multiplayer match. Contributing less than others to the development of the base doesn't make you useless or a leech or anything. You're still a perfectly functional party member while playing Wes... You're just not as effective at contributing as other players.

Everybody knows that the Wes playerbase is small though, I'm just saying that this is fine, because challenge characters will naturally have a small playerbase... And I don't think liking the character's design and wanting it to be better because of that is an excuse to remove the only challenge character from the game.

And yes, certain portions of the playerbase want the world to be harder, other portions of the playerbase want characters to have more meaningful downsides. Different people want different things, and there are people who enjoy challenge characters. That's all there is to it. Their number isn't big in any game ever, but that didn't stop devs of multiple games to make challenge characters to appeal to this niche portion of their playerbase. I don't see why Wes should be changed to stop appealing to this niche when it's a fairly somewhat common design practice to make some characters purposefully worse than all others. This kind of thing appeals to people who like to challenge themselves, that's basically the gist of it.

no, i like wes because of many things; his personality, his design, the way he encourages you to play, his lore, his disadvantages, just everything about him<3 i also have very personal reasons for adoring this lil' guy that are outside of the purview and levity of this conversation.

you said impossible. i did not. i said his function is mostly removed with the recontextualising of the game and his optics are very negative to the majority of the playerbase because of said recontextualisation. there is an open hostility to this specific character to the point of there being lock-out mods to remove him from servers and an established habit of players to auto-kick him. the reality of the player being the thing that dictates how well they play is not the thing that most people think of when they see certain characters being selected. most people do not give players a chance to show their abilities when said players pick unwanted characters(willow pre and post rework is also a good example of that phenomenon) they see the character and make an assumption. in practice there is a heavy leaning on people assuming the worst of a stranger in pubs and this character has been pegged as the worst of the worst more times that any other

wes has tens of players. this game has 60k-90k players on any given day. less than .01% of players play as wes. "smaller" is carrying such a heavy weight for a theoretical purpose people aren't actually using him for(because they are not using him).

 

[shaurun]

3 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

You're for some reason assuming it's impossible for people to like challenge characters... I don't get why you assume that, and I don't get why you think it's a problem to have a Wes in the team in a multiplayer match. Contributing less than others to the development of the base doesn't make you useless or a leech or anything. You're still a perfectly functional party member while playing Wes... You're just not as effective at contributing as other players.

Don't you think it's a problem? Imagine a character who is hard to play but is very beneficial to the others. We have one example: Wormwood, because yes healing from food is very impactful and changes the whole playstyle for you, + players loose sanity when pick flowers or chop trees. But Wormwood can provide: easy farming, easy weapons (due to mass living logs productions), easy aoe armor, easy sanity management, easy resource growth, easy traps against hound attacks. He is hard and beneficial, nobody will treat Wormwood as less effective character because he can't chop trees like normal Wilson.

Wes has team impact and benefits, but you still consider him as "nah, he's less effective, and this is because he's challenge character". What makes him a challenge character except his low stats? Nothing. If he plays as a home-chatacter, let's be honest he will be the one whom everyone either tries to feed and protect because otherwise he'll die, or  try to ignore.

More than that, there's nothing in core Wes mechanic which could be broken if they'll give him something with a skill tree. E.g. they'll give him super baloon mecha craft which deals great damage. If you want to stay out of this skill - do it. If you don't - now you suddenly have another character who is picked more for engagement, and who is not treated useless, while still having low stats and slow resource gathering.

Edited November 19, 2025 by shaurun

[astroapyr]

There's an entire roster if you are interested in cooperative gameplay.
Does no harm to have one character making a difference.

That's Wes's charm, and he also provides a raw experience where you depend less on the character's abilities and more on what the Constant has to offer, including "niche" items that seem to be redundant for other characters.
 

And as for considering Wes a counterproductive character in a cooperative play: that depends really on how you use him; Wes can still fight, cook, gather, sail, farm and more, just not as effective as anyone else, but again, that's what makes him subjectively fun.

[HowlVoid]

Ive said from the start that the best compromise is for him to be a lightning rod for disaster. Thats how he helps the team and klei has had a similar idea when his rework came out. 

Some of my ideas for skill which are just examples to continue the pattern:

Mimecry: Can copy one specific skill from each character. Like from wormwood he always gets faster tending. (Doesnt have a downside just a cute gimmick).

Silent empath-Takes on half the damage from another character.

Tough crowd- Pigs throw manure at wes when he "performs" (-5 sanity). Rarely throwing tomatoes (-5 health). And very rarely a watermelon (-20 health).

"..."- He fails at miming and characters around him slap their knees in laughter. (-x sanity/sec wes, +x sanity/sec everyone else). 

Balloon mail- Tie a balloon to an item and it will arrive at the landing pad... well someday (1-5 days)

Just some crazy examples i made 5 seconds before going to bed.

Edited November 19, 2025 by HowlVoid

[shaurun]

32 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Like from wormwood he always gets faster tending. (Doesnt have a downside just a cute gimmick).

as far as I know he can't tend to plants because he's mute, so he should use other tending methods anyways.

33 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Tough crowd- Pigs throw manure at wes when he "performs" (-5 sanity)

There's nothing in character saying that he performs badly,

[Cheggf]

On 11/18/2025 at 10:11 AM, benfroyobro9381 said:

Maxwell is already an incredibly fleshed out character lore wise and gameplay wise, even without a skill tree.

He is not incredibly fleshed out gameplay wise, his gameplay is simpler than ever. You, without exaggeration, literally just select either duelist or worker, and then click at what you want to be done. That's it. If you want to pitch in yourself and don't want to deal with that whole "dodging" business then you can also press the shadow prison button so you don't even have to worry about the enemy moving.

On 11/18/2025 at 10:11 AM, benfroyobro9381 said:

Wolfgang's always been a hard character to rework or design but his core identity and character is very clear; damage dealing machine with little strings attached.

Wolfgang just stares at the "lifting a weight" animation all day. He's not at all hard to design, they nailed it the first time 12 years ago. The strong man bulks up by bulking up. You could choose between a million different ways to get the food allowing you to improve at the character and get better over time. You could choose when and where to be in which forms allowing you to improve at the character and get better over time. He was perfect, then they removed all of that.

How do you get mighty now? You stare at an animation. Can you do it more efficiently than someone who just picked up the character 5 seconds ago? No, everyone stares at the animation the same. When do you get mighty? Before you do absolutely anything. Can you choose not to become mighty, allowing better decision making than someone who just picked up the character 5 seconds ago? No, you automatically gain mightiness for doing actions so if you aren't maximum mightiness you're going to stun yourself and possibly die if you don't become mighty before doing anything.

The characters suck. They used to be my two most played, now they're the sole reason why I stopped choosing "Random" on the CSS. No way I'm ever playing these boring garbage characters.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Cheggf

[KvltBear]

Yes, the "joke" stopped being funny long ago. If they could find a unique way to make him viable to play as, I would love to give him a try. However as it stands he is simply an even worse Wilson, who also needs a skill tree rework. Of all the ways to make the game more challenging, playing as Wes has to be the most tedious and boring way of going about it. He's not fun, at all. And I think it shows how simple stat nerfs are not the path to making this game more enjoyable, seeing as no one plays him. Hopefully the devs have a change of heart, because I'm not thrilled about having two characters that are just not nearly up to snuff with the rest of the crew at the moment. 

[Cheggf]

32 minutes ago, KvltBear said:

Yes, the "joke" stopped being funny long ago. If they could find a unique way to make him viable to play as, I would love to give him a try. However as it stands he is simply an even worse Wilson, who also needs a skill tree rework. Of all the ways to make the game more challenging, playing as Wes has to be the most tedious and boring way of going about it. He's not fun, at all. And I think it shows how simple stat nerfs are not the path to making this game more enjoyable, seeing as no one plays him. Hopefully the devs have a change of heart, because I'm not thrilled about having two characters that are just not nearly up to snuff with the rest of the crew at the moment. 

No one plays Warly or Wormwood either and their stats are higher than default, not lower. It's because you guys hate fun characters, you just want the game to play itself. 

[shaurun]

58 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

No one plays Warly or Wormwood either and their stats are higher than default, not lower. It's because you guys hate fun characters, you just want the game to play itself. 

Why would you say so? I know Jazzy likes to play as Warly solo a lot. I choose Warly when I want to roleplay a restaraunt in publics. Wormwood is picked realy often in public servers, I see 1-2 Wormwoods all the time in official Klei servers and it's mostly my default choice for publics too because how beneficial Wormwood is to the team.

[AliceShiki]

16 hours ago, gaymime said:

no, i like wes because of many things; his personality, his design, the way he encourages you to play, his lore, his disadvantages, just everything about him<3

By "Design" I mean "everything other than gameplay", so uhn... I guess you like both gameplay and design of the character?

Then I still don't get your complaints. If your problem is pubs, then that's a pubs problem, not a character problem. You can just play with friends or find a discord server or whatever to bypass the pub problem.

16 hours ago, gaymime said:

wes has tens of players.

Don't be silly. There are way more than that.

16 hours ago, shaurun said:

Don't you think it's a problem?

Of course not. You play the game, and if you want a challenge, you use the challenging character. Why would there be any problem with that?

I can't even imagine someone caring about it outside of randoms on a pub who are scared of you base sitting all day and actually leeching on resources because they can't fathom the idea of people liking challenge characters actually liking to play the game too.

As long as you're doing stuff, you're contributing one way or another. It's fine.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, shaurun said:

Why would you say so? I know Jazzy likes to play as Warly solo a lot. I choose Warly when I want to roleplay a restaraunt in publics. Wormwood is picked realy often in public servers, I see 1-2 Wormwoods all the time in official Klei servers and it's mostly my default choice for publics too because how beneficial Wormwood is to the team.

Warly & especially Wormwood are unusually high right now, but they're still really low. Warly only has about 3x the playercount of Wes, they're both close to 0. 

[shaurun]

19 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Warly & especially Wormwood are unusually high right now, but they're still really low. Warly only has about 3x the playercount of Wes, they're both close to 0. 

You graph for some reason doesn't include Wormwood. Wormwood has pretty high pick rate, so I believe your words were based on some old pre-skills statistics. Warly currently doesn't have much fun in his kit to be picked - his challenge is countered by 2 meat stews at the hungliest pick, and to have some other benefits you simply have to farm a lot. So I don't think he's very fun to play personally.

Edited November 19, 2025 by shaurun