Thoughts on exploiting %-based transfer of stats between chassis

[AverageWurtMain]

It has become incredibly beneficial for WX recover health, sanity, and hunger in a chassis with low maximum stats before swapping back to a more fleshed out chassis; thereby multiplying the recovered amount by the difference in percent of the relevant stat maximum of the two chassis. By utilizing the aforementioned exploit, one can double, triple, or sometimes even quadruple any stat recovery except the most urgent ones.

Besides the obvious balance issue this could pose, my issue with it is largely in intuition. Even after discovering on my own that stat transfer is proportional, the implication did not become obvious to me until I saw another forum user point it out. If this is the intended way for a WX to restore a stat they have circuits for, I worry casual players will go a while before naturally considering that stat recovery is more potent the weaker they are.

I understand that proportional stats are likely the most elegant solution, but I think a rougher alternative might suite the game better. I don't believe I know that solution, but here is my first idea:
 

Stat increasing circuits (for simplicity, I will be using health from here on, though the concept should generalize to all three stats) now increase the max HP and (to fill the space created by the new max HP) "loan out" an equal amount of HP. When a circuit is removed, it will collect the loaned HP in full and then decrease the max HP. This idea does create two undefined behaviors: what happens when collecting a loan puts the player into the negative, and what happens when a circuit isn't removed but is cut from power?
Firstly, as a measure to prevent you from not paying back these loans, you cannot remove a circuit that would put the stat into the negatives. This would be a great place for dialogue. Something like "WARNING... THIS IS KEEPING ME RUNNING".
Secondly, when a circuit loses power, it decreases the max HP and then calculates and stores the amount of HP lost by decreasing the max HP, e.g. a player at 120/150 HP losing power to a hardy circuit would have 100/100 HP, and the hardy circuit would remember it's holding 20. When a circuit regains power, it increases the maximum again, and restores any hp it was storing, setting the stored value back to 0. If an unpowered circuit is removed, it subtracts the stored value from the debt before trying to collect it from the player.

This isn't a perfect solution. A player could die in order to disconnect their circuits without paying the loan, and players may be confused when swapping to a chassis with no hp to loan while they themselves are on loaned HP. But I wanted to get the conversation going, so I'm putting the idea forward.

[Radicaljoe]

I like the idea someone suggested about having each backup having individual recorded stats (except sanity.) Though this method also seems interesting.

[hhhhddh]

I assume klei take this into design, cause I data mined wx's chips, there're chips which reduce your max sanity. I can't see any other reason than use % mechanism during transferring to design such a chip. But it just my guess.

[AliceShiki]

19 minutes ago, AverageWurtMain said:

If this is the intended way for a WX to restore a stat they have circuits for, I worry casual players will go a while before naturally considering that stat recovery is more potent the weaker they are.

It's definitely not the intended way, it's just an option players have access to. Devs don't usually balance their games around the idea of the players breaking their systems.

20 minutes ago, AverageWurtMain said:

I understand that proportional stats are likely the most elegant solution, but I think a rougher alternative might suite the game better.

I think the proportional stats are just better, tbh.

Like, yeah, a clunkier solution that tries to hold back this exploit could work, but I don't think it's a big deal. You're just saving up on a few resources by doing the chassis swap. I'd say the character would be in a worse spot if the devs decided to make the system overall worse to try patching an exploit in a game full of exploits.

At least that's how I view it. Proportional stats just feel functional and effective to me. It being exploitable doesn't look like a problem.

[flamboyant wolf]

It just feels weird that not only can I go and eat a meatball as another body to restore the hunger of the one I'm on, but somehow it can even be more efficient? Does WX-78 have teleportation tech in their "stomach" or something? HP feels even weirder cause like. Well that's just body's durability. It doesn't make sense that being hurt on one body would damage all the rest, it doesn't make sense that healing one body would mend all the rest. 

Aside from that, I don't really like what proportional stat scaling ends up doing in practice:

1) Hunger - say you use a tier-2 hunger circuit on one of your bodies, you now have 200 hunger at 50% drain speed. You switch to another body that doesn't have hunger circuits installed, and spend some time on it. By doing this, you're essentially spending 4 times the hunger you would on the body with the hunger circuit, due to not having a hunger modifier, and going through hunger at a 1:2 scale compared to the other body. This only gives further incentive to then eat as the low stat body to recoup the hunger unnecessarily lost, or to use a similar circuit configuration on both bodies, partially defeating the purpose of them being able to have different loadouts. 

2) Health - say you have a tanky body with full hardy circuits, and another exploring body with a few or none. If you get hit on the more fragile body, it ends up being a much bigger hit to your tanky body's hp pool, which can be quite a detriment, and once again gives further incentives to heal on a lower stat body, not to lose out on value. Furthermore, having bodies share the health stat makes it so you can just put a beanbooster or two on a body back at base and switch to it whenever you want to restore your 600 hp body to full in a few moments for free, which also makes the decision "do I want a beanbooster on my tank or should I go full hardy build?" largely irrelevant.

Imho, having hp/hunger be individual per body would just make more sense, and it's not like it wouldn't open way to some strategies of its own(someone mentioned you could switch to another body midfight for basically a full heal and you know? I think that's a more interesting "exploit" than switching to a body at base to magically restore your stats more efficiently).

[AliceShiki]

10 hours ago, flamboyant wolf said:

It just feels weird that not only can I go and eat a meatball as another body to restore the hunger of the one I'm on, but somehow it can even be more efficient? Does WX-78 have teleportation tech in their "stomach" or something? HP feels even weirder cause like. Well that's just body's durability. It doesn't make sense that being hurt on one body would damage all the rest, it doesn't make sense that healing one body would mend all the rest. 

That's just gameplay/story segregation. You shouldn't overthink it.

[flamboyant wolf]

18 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

That's just gameplay/story segregation. You shouldn't overthink it.

That's not what it is though. It is unrelated to the story in any way, it just doesn't make sense in how it works.

idk, I just struggle to suspend my disbelief when it is in opposition of what one could expect(or at least how I would expect it to work?), and happens for seemingly no other reason than "that's how it was programmed". Maybe I am overthinking it, but I don't like it 

[AliceShiki]

3 minutes ago, flamboyant wolf said:

That's not what it is though. It is unrelated to the story in any way, it just doesn't make sense in how it works.

idk, I just struggle to suspend my disbelief when it is in opposition of what one could expect(or at least how I would expect it to work?), and happens for seemingly no other reason than "that's how it was programmed". Maybe I am overthinking it, but I don't like it 

Ah... Well, I guess Gameplay/Story wasn't the right term.

It's more like... Gameplay being segregated from the internal world logic of how the character works?

Kinda like how Pigs becoming Werepigs being related to the moon... Doesn't make much sense when you consider that the Moon is actually related to Lunacy and not Shadow stuff. It's just gameplay being separated from general lore and the like (most likely because Werepigs were made long before Lunacy was even thought of).

That's the gist of the point I was trying to make. This one isn't meant to be a lore-accurate thing that explains how WX works... It's just the gameplay leading to some oddities here and there if you start thinking too much about it means for the character.

That said, you, of course, totally have the right to dislike it. I just think you're overthinking it and shouldn't worry too much about it.

[GRC]

I'm personally partial towards bodies fully having their own stat pools, so I think physical stats such as Hunger and Health should probably be tied to the physical body they embody. As is, a WX can be fighting something, switch over to their backup body at low HP, restore their HP in the non-combat body with fewer resources via eating Pierogi, then swap back to the combat body at full Health. Not only is that odd in flavor sense (A consciousness swapping bodies means all physical damage is healed across said bodies...?), but mechanically it doesn't seem like the right direction for a character like this to play guerilla warfare when their Super-Hardy and Beanbooster Circuits are supposed to enable them to stay in a fight longer than most other characters in the first place. If a WX can come into a fight with a tanky build, I think it only makes sense for said build to need the full amount of resources to maintain. Tie all of this with the resource aspect of food not coming along without a Transport Drone and now it's a more interesting game of resource management to effectively keep two characters topped off (even if Hunger-drain ceases in inactive bodies).

Still sharing the same Sanity would have its own set of interesting implications. You can swap to a body better equipped for fighting off nightmares if caught in a bad time, but the nightmares will still pursue you regardless. Sat within a Beanbooster-emphasized body before jumping into a body with a lower Sanity cap? Makes sense that entering a body you are outright incapable of feeling just as sane in would immediately mean excess Sanity past the lower limit is cut off. Plus we don't lose the current advantage WX has of Lunar Island/Grotto basing being its own form of Sanity manipulation across the Constant, which feels all the more in-character for WX's close ties to Wagstaff.

[Jakepeng99]

16 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

I like the idea someone suggested about having each backup having individual recorded stats (except sanity.) Though this method also seems interesting.

I want this. It balances it while being cool

[viblym]

This feels like a convoluted solution to a problem that does not exist, the stats scale intelligently based on %, you can utilize this in your favor, but chassis swapping is rather sluggish and getting a full heal in combat by swapping from a chassis with no hardy circuits and then swapping back is rather clunky, you have to step away from whatever you're engaging in, it has to not be a circumstance under which your backup would just be broken, and you could put yourself in a more vulnerable position by scaling down % wise into a weaker chassis. Also it would make the stat circuits awful when plugging them in or even casually swapping them around, especially with how sanity thresholds work. Like you said, removing an elegant design for a rougher "solution" to something that's pretty niche or at the very least not urgently useful in a lot of scenarios

[somethin]

Or you know, you could just use more food to restore stats. It's not like food is hard to come by, despite the name of the game.

[Kvetevk]

On paper it sounds like the most powerful thing, but from experience I could not use this method against bosses, they either despawn, heal or stun you out of the animation.

The only use case is for daily survival that wx78 is already best at.

Also if playing with other people as wx78, it is best to revive with chassis that has nothing but food and heals, then tranfer to the dropped chassis you dropped while fighting a boss and you will have full energy + full stats.

[Cheggf]

I think the people disagreeing are looking at this all wrong. You guys are right, swapping chassis isn't strong. It takes a long time and doesn't give very much benefit. But it's annoying to do, and it's ""optimal"", so it encourages annoying boring gameplay that nobody likes doing. Many people, not me but others, have this strange compulsion where they have to do things they perceive as "optimal", even if they suck. If chassis swapping was nerfed, those players would benefit, as they no longer feel forced to do this. And what harm is there in the nerf? As you guys said, this is weak, it's not good. It's not actually nerfing the character at all, it's just preventing you from feeling like you're losing out if you aren't doing something boring and annoying.

I think it would be an improvement overall if either the suggestion you have where the circuits themselves hold the stats, or the suggestion flamboyant wolf & GRC have where the bodies have their own stats, were implemented. That second one would even open up different, more interesting strategy, and would arguably buff WX in a way that I think would be fun. 

Edited March 26 by Cheggf

[DaZoul]

18 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

Kinda like how Pigs becoming Werepigs being related to the moon... Doesn't make much sense when you consider that the Moon is actually related to Lunacy and not Shadow stuff. It's just gameplay being separated from general lore and the like (most likely because Werepigs were made long before Lunacy was even thought of).

This is slightly off-topic, but yeah I imagine one of the points of the Daywalker's entire arc will be to retcon the werepig curse so it makes sense again.

Wonder when we'll see the big guy next.

[Edible Coal]

2 hours ago, DaZoul said:

This is slightly off-topic, but yeah I imagine one of the points of the Daywalker's entire arc will be to retcon the werepig curse so it makes sense again.

Wonder when we'll see the big guy next.

daywalker 3

[DaZoul]

1 hour ago, Edible Coal said:

daywalker 3

that's what I'm hoping for

[GRC]

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I think the people disagreeing are looking at this all wrong. You guys are right, swapping chassis isn't strong. It takes a long time and doesn't give very much benefit. But it's annoying to do, and it's ""optimal"", so it encourages annoying boring gameplay that nobody likes doing. Many people, not me but others, have this strange compulsion where they have to do things they perceive as "optimal", even if they suck. If chassis swapping was nerfed, those players would benefit, as they no longer feel forced to do this. And what harm is there in the nerf? As you guys said, this is weak, it's not good. It's not actually nerfing the character at all, it's just preventing you from feeling like you're losing out if you aren't doing something boring and annoying.

I think it would be an improvement overall if either the suggestion you have where the circuits themselves hold the stats, or the suggestion flamboyant wolf & GRC have where the bodies have their own stats, were implemented. That second one would even open up different, more interesting strategy, and would arguably buff WX in a way that I think would be fun. 

Frankly I wasn't even thinking about this too much from a boss-fighting perspective at first, but if stats are specific to each body, I like the idea that now a prepared "solo" WX is now their own multi-phase boss fight. Imagine bodies tag-teaming as one is worn down enough to leave their first two "I'm very tanky and have a lot of healing" phases to their "I'm fast af and kiting you with a Hambat, a Magiluminescence and a dream" phase. Storage body hangs onto all the other items the first three didn't need for the fight and gets to take the safe trip home knowing all of their stats are still topped off even if the other bodies are coming out bruised and battered.

Whether the circuits themselves or the bodies themselves hold the stats, either way I think optimal-usage with that sounds a lot more fun to play with.