Preference Theory

[Trevindo]

I'm the kind of player who always likes to check things out before playing something — I look at the usage statistics of all the characters and pick whichever one I find useful and least used. Looking at the characters, I theorized that the one who fit this would be Warly, and indeed he's the 3rd least used. However, I thought he'd take at least 2nd place, since he's a support character with penalties and more tedious food management, and his advantages don't come close to compensating for his difficulties.

To my surprise, 2nd place went to Wanda. I get that her health management could be a barrier for players, but in my view her advantages more than make up for that barrier.

After that, I started thinking about a theory: what really influences whether a character is popular (disregarding personal preferences and playstyle) is an unconscious weighing of Advantages/Disadvantages + Design Effect. But now I'm starting to suspect that, regardless of what a character has to offer, how manageable their drawbacks are might be the deciding factor. So even though Wanda is strong, could she have more punishing downsides than Warly?

Another thing — I'd like to know what the community would suggest as a character pick, since I like characters that are considered "forgotten" and remain forgotten by the community even after getting a skill tree (please don't suggest Wes, I want to feel useful, and Wes was designed to be a challenge, which makes him an obvious pick for "least popular").

[Cassielu]

Wanda's current situation has little to do with her health management problems, main reason is that she has lost her unique advantage. She was far more popular before planar and other teleportation abilities were added to the game.

[YouKnowWho142]

Wanda is super disproportionately affected by the rift content, possibly more than any other character. Against some threats you can genuinely argue she’s on a similar level or even worse than Wes due to her lack of ease of healing and the fact that her benefit with shadow weapons don’t scale well with planar weapons at all.

combining that with the fact that she’s geared more towards experienced players rather than newer players, it creates an effect where new players who wouldn’t experience rift content don’t want to play her and more experienced players don’t want to play her since almost all of her perks do nothing in late game content or are actively harmful to a degree that even the challenge character isn’t impacted by.

she wouldn’t be particularly popular in pubs either since her watches take a lot of setup, are expensive, and in the case of her best watch season locked.

Edited July 4 by YouKnowWho142

[Walrusst]

Wanda is really fun for intimidating new players when you positively one shot a wild enemy but she is a one trick pony of becoming everyones key to the late game if you find the blue mushtree biome (As the powered down archives just let you instantly reach full power without earning full power, she doesn't take much setup just visiting each staircase because the moment you find blue you've won already if you have a hammer,) but she doesn't really scale past there.

She's really good to know how to play if you like characters that need post-rift materials to scale well, as she is the perfect swap character for like 6 other characters who like materials but don't have a fun time reaching them.

Hey does your character like brilliance? Husks? Dreadstone? Can you kill every boss in 3 days easy if you just get that first restrained static?
Congrats nothing in the base game can really face her but she'll fall apart to the post rift encounters.

But hey, she works really well if you use her as wigfrids mom because the charged elding spear is practically still the strongest weapon so if you are good at wielding time you can go in the funny purple portal to clock out.
Now you can lightning dash, have your grassy tentacle sword, or whatever else you possibly could want and all it cost was the moonstone you hammered underground and the purple gems those bishops gave you in the speedrun.

Edited July 4 by Walrusst

[Mike23Ua]

After Klei ruined Wendy I switched to playing as Willow, Willow is now (for me at least..) the AI companion character. I use Bernie for a large variety of tasks that as any other character (including Wendy..) just would not be possible.

One such task I can name recently was using Bernie as a Distraction as he ran behind me drawing the Aggro of everything in FuelWeavers annoying Maze, Spiders, Damaged Clockworks, Crawling Horrors, Terrorbeak, Bernie got all the attacks aimed his way while all I did was just keep running until he caught back up to me.

And with his passive health regen, It makes him THE definitive AI Companion to have following you.

then of course there’s Willows easy to use Lunar Flame skill which a single usage of can destroy the large swamp tentacles. 🥺🫶🏻

[Walrusst]

Wendy and willow are sort of opposite sides of the same coin.
Willow needs to grind for area damage but her minion has planar entity protection and thus is from the ground up designed to tank but doesn't have that great damage.
You are spending a lot of time watching tallbirds or something burn for every pack of enemies that goes up in a column of flame.

Wendy has a minion who is capable of so much damage but this means there is no fair universe where abby is a tank without limits or a cost. You are playing the protector in hard fights which is the inversion of the easy early game you get.

Kinda glad there is variety here. I understand why you'd make the move, but imagine a world where abby was a constant area minion but was as tanky as bernie...
Willow would be about half as useful, where as now the two actually have a lot to gain by working together. If Bernie and Abby work together you can do an unholy amount of work to the enemy.

This is you know, not just don't stave.
We starve together, don't.

Edited July 4 by Walrusst

[Trevindo]

12 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Wanda is super disproportionately affected by the rift content, possibly more than any other character. Against some threats you can genuinely argue she’s on a similar level or even worse than Wes due to her lack of ease of healing and the fact that her benefit with shadow weapons don’t scale well with planar weapons at all.

combining that with the fact that she’s geared more towards experienced players rather than newer players, it creates an effect where new players who wouldn’t experience rift content don’t want to play her and more experienced players don’t want to play her since almost all of her perks do nothing in late game content or are actively harmful to a degree that even the challenge character isn’t impacted by.

she wouldn’t be particularly popular in pubs either since her watches take a lot of setup, are expensive, and in the case of her best watch season locked.

I understand, but that leaves me with a few questions. Why is it that most servers don't even reach the post-rift stage, yet this disadvantage is still enough to discourage players—even those who haven't made it that far? Another question is that this disadvantage isn't exclusive to Wanda; most characters without skill trees lose their edge compared to those who do upon entering post-rift content, yet many of them remain popular or reasonably well-used. I wonder why that is? Personally, I remember a period when Wanda was among the top 5 most used characters, but I wonder if that was just because she was new, or if people still played her for her monopoly on teleportation despite not enjoying her gameplay?

12 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

After Klei ruined Wendy I switched to playing as Willow, Willow is now (for me at least..) the AI companion character. I use Bernie for a large variety of tasks that as any other character (including Wendy..) just would not be possible.

One such task I can name recently was using Bernie as a Distraction as he ran behind me drawing the Aggro of everything in FuelWeavers annoying Maze, Spiders, Damaged Clockworks, Crawling Horrors, Terrorbeak, Bernie got all the attacks aimed his way while all I did was just keep running until he caught back up to me.

And with his passive health regen, It makes him THE definitive AI Companion to have following you.

then of course there’s Willows easy to use Lunar Flame skill which a single usage of can destroy the large swamp tentacles. 🥺🫶🏻

One thing that's undeniably funny is that no matter the era, Wendy is always the number one most played character. I've always wondered if it's because of her character design or because of the early-game advantages she offers. Another funny detail is how Willow went from being one of the most hated characters to a solid, fun-to-play pick.

12 hours ago, Walrusst said:

Wanda is really fun for intimidating new players when you positively one shot a wild enemy but she is a one trick pony of becoming everyones key to the late game if you find the blue mushtree biome (As the powered down archives just let you instantly reach full power without earning full power, she doesn't take much setup just visiting each staircase because the moment you find blue you've won already if you have a hammer,) but she doesn't really scale past there.

She's really good to know how to play if you like characters that need post-rift materials to scale well, as she is the perfect swap character for like 6 other characters who like materials but don't have a fun time reaching them.

Hey does your character like brilliance? Husks? Dreadstone? Can you kill every boss in 3 days easy if you just get that first restrained static?
Congrats nothing in the base game can really face her but she'll fall apart to the post rift encounters.

But hey, she works really well if you use her as wigfrids mom because the charged elding spear is practically still the strongest weapon so if you are good at wielding time you can go in the funny purple portal to clock out.
Now you can lightning dash, have your grassy tentacle sword, or whatever else you possibly could want and all it cost was the moonstone you hammered underground and the purple gems those bishops gave you in the speedrun.

Personally, I don't find Wanda complex, but maybe her unconventional playstyle is what makes her feel so jarring to people? I say this because the last time I checked a stats site, there were twice as many people playing Warly as there were Wanda. I love Warly with all my heart, but I have to admit he doesn't compare to Wanda—yet players seemingly avoid her. A lot of the drawbacks I usually hear people attribute to Wanda are things I also see in Warly, so I still can't quite wrap my head around this phenomenon.

[Cruvimaster]

Anyone who praises Wanda these days simply hasn't played as Wortox. He is better at absolutely everything—teleportation, combat, and healing. He excels in every aspect. I speak from actual in-game experience, as I have worlds set up for both characters.

[Walrusst]

2 hours ago, Trevindo said:

Personally, I don't find Wanda complex, but maybe her unconventional playstyle is what makes her feel so jarring to people? I say this because the last time I checked a stats site, there were twice as many people playing Warly as there were Wanda. I love Warly with all my heart, but I have to admit he doesn't compare to Wanda—yet players seemingly avoid her. A lot of the drawbacks I usually hear people attribute to Wanda are things I also see in Warly, so I still can't quite wrap my head around this phenomenon.

New players don't have her unlocked cause they need spools, they don't have spools and they don't see content that wanda falls off on.
Its specifically you showing off a fancy spools character and looking overpowered that makes her intimidating.

Edited July 4 by Walrusst

[Mysterious box]

Wortox, Winona, and Wx have straight up superior versions of her teleportation. Add on late game teleportation improvements and there is little reason to pick her if teleportation is your goal.

Moving on to her revival ability other characters via skill trees also do it better.

 

Even her damage is called into question not only does it fall off during the rifts but thanks to skill trees it's not quite as impressive in comparison to the rest of the cast as it once was especially with the added risks in combat for using her.

If you want to sum up what happened to Wanda the most simple way is.

 

Edited July 4 by Mysterious box

[Walrusst]

Its also just a lot of what made her challenging and interesting in the early part of the game got cut away because really easy to access sources of her key resources got added to the map in a safe area you visit in lunar storyline anyhow.

So.

• Her power got brought into question.
• Her challenging and fun parts got replaced with "Oh, right after day 20 you skip her tech tree once you get the gem for the archives."
• She falls off heavily after this safe and easy instance of peaking.
• Grinding her resources directly gives you the ability to swap out of her.
• Mactusk grinding is a big part of her gameplay, mactusk is one of those things that like shadow pieces, its very easy to build fatigue from hunting them.

I really hope she gets a skill tree that plays like a klei arg.
Lots of cryptic skills that don't directly do things but that you re-order and fiddle with to unlock bonuses that are only come together in combinations with each other where everything she unlocks feels like a secret, and she can craft a way to back track on the tree to just keep testing combinations and orderings to try and figure out what she is supposed to become.

A puzzlebox tree in a way. Not quite as hard as the WX one where you feel like you are playing a slot machine, but something that you have fun reverse-engineering useful consequences from it.

Edited July 4 by Walrusst
Less rude wording.