My Personal Issue with Followers in DST (And How Webber can Fix It)

[YouKnowWho142]

Let me clarify that it is more of a me thing than anything, I just wanted to get my thoughts out. Followers are a really cool and fun idea in DST, but there are a lot of things about them that make them feel a little uncomfortable to use or outright feel unfun. It became a reoccurring thought to me once the clockworks became followers since they have a lot of the same issues I have with a lot of other followers. I don't really mean followers such as Abigail, Bernie, or the shadow puppets, since they all generally tend to be fine and play really well into their respective characters.

Firstly, it's how spammable they are. It's mostly an issue with Wurt's merms, where they have such a high impact in fights and essentially trivialize all content. It's definitely fun to watch every boss melt in seconds by an endless sea of merms, but I started to realize that it made it really hard for me to want to replay Wurt once the novelty was over. I never really got to participate in boss battles and just watched my merms do all of the work, it really burnt me out on playing her and it felt like a bummer. The day the clockwork update dropped, I (albeit tediously) managed to tame 50 bishops and proceeded to shred most of the game's bosses. Since the cut stone or marble you use for the statues is returned, it costs a total of 2 rocks for each bishop. Again, a funny gimmick, but after the novelty wears off there isn't really a lot of fun left to be had.

There's also the matter of how little control you have over followers. They kind of just do their own thing, for better or for worse. It makes them frustrating at worst and otherwise just really uninteractive. It feels a lot like you are just pointing your finger at the enemy and letting them handle the rest. There's also a lot of followers who can wear armor or get healed, which could be cool to play around with but instead of focusing on improving the quality of your summons you're kind of encouraged to just improve the quantity (which sort of just wraps back around to the first point). I'm sure that's fine for a lot of people, it's just something that I tend to be bothered by. 

I had a quite kind modder offer to make me a mod that forced follower limits, and that really changed my perspective on how followers could function in DST. With Wurt's merms, I suddenly felt less like I was just watching them melt everything in the game and instead got to play more of a supportive role. I felt encouraged to give them armor and healing, and even found use out of the otherwise useless sensible merm skill which let them back off so I can provide them healing and armor to get back into the fight. I found it (personally) a lot more enjoyable and engaging to participate in boss fights this way. I'm not suggesting that there should or even needs to be follower limits, though, since I know that's one of their biggest appeals. Instead, the focus should be on how the player interacts alongside the followers during fights and the player's influence and relationship with these followers, which is where we come to Webber and his (eventually) upcoming skill tree.

Webber alleviates some of the issues I have with followers. Spiders are weak so they inherently rely on quantity, and his whistles offer a level of control over the spiders that most followers don't have. I would love more than anything for Webber's skill tree to focus on Webber being more of a "commander" for his spiders, being able to give them commands such as dodging or charging to give Webber as much control over his spiders as possible. This would make Webber involved in a fight in a way completely different from other characters by utilizing more tactical commands to improve the strength and survivability of his spiders instead of just turning them into bigger statsticks (merms cough), offering a major distinction between the other major faction character Wurt who both currently play the same (with one having stronger and less laggy results). I don't really like doing skill tree predictions or concepts, but the idea of a Webber more focused on commanding and leading spiders through the whistles is what has me excited and intrigued by his skill tree more than any other character, since a tactically focused follower character could be extremely unique and engaging.

Again, just mostly personal opinion. I know swarming things and killing them instantly is fun to most people, and I wouldn't want to deny that for them, but I hope that Webber and his spiders especially are able to differentiate from other followers especially Wurt's merms through a more involved and tactical swarm follower playstyle rather than simply melting everything instantly. 

Edited February 17 by YouKnowWho142