Why do people care about EDIT: >CHARACTER< balancing in single player?

[Scrimbles]

I mean characters like Maxwell Wigfrid and Webber are clearly much stronger than the rest of the cast, but the thing is, no character is competing for a spotlight.

If you want a character thats harder to play, then play a character who is harder to play. And the same goes for ones that are easier to play. I like playing Woodie because I find him hilarious, and I love his Werebeaver transformation even though he is a lot stronger than others if you use him right, and I love playing Wilson for his pure vanillaness, even though hes worse than a lot of other characters.

As long as the character has a small gameplay niche, and isn't worthless then play who you want to play, no one is judging you based on how many days you survive.

With Walani I can understand people not playing her because of how little she changes the game, but with someone like Warly people are just complaining that hes too good, or too bad, but what does that even matter? He fulfills an interesting gameplay niche, doesn't make the game too easy, and doesn't make it too hard so he is fine.

[DwerBomb]

Why do you care about people who care about balancing in single player? :^)

On a serious note though, balance is good. People who care about it care because balance makes a game better. And it's all feedback for the developers. And for the character maybe one likes a character they find too hard or too easy and don't play as them for that reason. For example I wouldn't mind a nerf for Wx, which would make me play as him again

[Sheauwn]

I think you can edit all characters max health, sanity, and hunger through the console. Looks like people could always balance whenever they wanted to

[PhelsarusBeel]

There is a fine line between balance as in actual ingame balance and gameplay changes basicly what you describe.

As balance i see things like the adjustments that Snakeskin items got to reflect the lowerd dropchance of Snakeskin since the "Release the Quacken" Update. Stuff like this is important to keep going because if we don't have a slight balance on things like that it gets tedious very quickly. I mean since the change to snakeskin i haven't made the Snakeskin Jacket because i just didn't get the Snakeskin for it so it did need a little bit of balance in the recipe to reflect the changes to the droprates.

The thing about the Characters however is a whole different turkey. ATM i see no definitive reason to play the SW cast because not one of them has any interesting abilitys that makes me go and say "I want to play as Warly/Walani/Wilbur/Woodlegs" when the rest of the Maincast is more mechanicly fleshed out. I don't say that the SW cast needs buffs or nerfs what i do want is that they have a very distinct playstyle from the rest of the characters and just little things like having a Crockpot to go or a surfboard doesn't knock me out of my socks tbh.

I mean if i want early fast travel i can also just play Wickerbottom and have instant acces to the Rowboat recipe as well as the Thatchsail. Sure it maybe takes a second day to get that going but after that i already outdid Walanis big starting perk and i'm actually better of because of how Durable the Rowboat is compared to the Surfboard.

And Warlys Hunger is more a curse then a blessing sure he can cook on the go however it's not because it's a usefull little perk but more because he needs to do so what makes him just much more of an annoyance to play. Basicly the SW cast got a few little upsides but nothing sticks out and in some cases all their upsides do is cover their downsides what basicly makes even Wilson more interesting and entertaining to play.

[NoQuitting]

15 minutes ago, DwerBomb said:

Why do you care about people who care about balancing in single player?

Why do you care about people who care about people who care about balancing single player?

On a less serious note, characters should be balanced, but not all to be made equal, rather balanced to what makes sense. For example it makes sense Maxwell is amazing because he is one of the hardest to unlock it would be unbalanced if his stats were equal to all the other characters.

[Scrimbles]

Just now, Mr.P said:

There is a fine line between balance as in actual ingame balance and gameplay changes basicly what you describe.

As balance i see things like the adjustments that Snakeskin items got to reflect the lowerd dropchance of Snakeskin since the "Release the Quacken" Update. Stuff like this is important to keep going because if we don't have a slight balance on things like that it gets tedious very quickly. I mean since the change to snakeskin i haven't made the Snakeskin Jacket because i just didn't get the Snakeskin for it so it did need a little bit of balance in the recipe to reflect the changes to the droprates.

The thing about the Characters however is a whole different turkey. ATM i see no definitive reason to play the SW cast because not one of them has any interesting abilitys that makes me go and say "I want to play as Warly/Walani/Wilbur/Woodlegs" when the rest of the Maincast is more mechanicly fleshed out. I don't say that the SW cast needs buffs or nerfs what i do want is that they have a very distinct playstyle from the rest of the characters and just little things like having a Crockpot to go or a surfboard doesn't knock me out of my socks tbh.

I mean if i want early fast travel i can also just play Wickerbottom and have instant acces to the Rowboat recipe as well as the Thatchsail. Sure it maybe takes a second day to get that going but after that i already outdid Walanis big starting perk and i'm actually better of because of how Durable the Rowboat is compared to the Surfboard.

And Warlys Hunger is more a curse then a blessing sure he can cook on the go however it's not because it's a usefull little perk but more because he needs to do so what makes him just much more of an annoyance to play. Basicly the SW cast got a few little upsides but nothing sticks out and in some cases all their upsides do is cover their downsides what basicly makes even Wilson more interesting and entertaining to play.

Oh, I really should have specified this, but I'm only talking about character balance, world balance is totally fine, that's stuff that effects all characters, good or bad, at various levels.

Warly at a concept level is a very hard niche, he seems to be encouraging farming and maintaining food supplies to cook with, but that's already the entire point of the game and pretty much a mandatory thing for every character. I played him for awhile in DST with a mod, and I realized the entire point of his character right now is just removing the time you need to spend gathering crock pot crafting materials.

I made a small comment on Walani in my main post, you're right in saying she needs more interesting mechanics, I think giving her more options to upgrade her board would help her be an interesting choice.

1 minute ago, NoQuitting said:

Why do you care about people who care about people who care about balancing single player?

On a less serious note, characters should be balanced, but not all to be made equal, rather balanced to what makes sense. For example it makes sense Maxwell is amazing because he is one of the hardest to unlock it would be unbalanced if his stats were equal to all the other characters.

Characters can become a lot less fun when they are balanced from too good to on par with the rest. If a character like Maxwell lost his overpowered sanity regen and his starting items he would be super boring, same thing for if Warly no longer gained huge value out of high tier crock pot food, and pretty much became a character who starts with a crock pot.

[stl1234]

A lot of people, despite playing this game, treat it like other games. Not everyone complaining about balancing do this, but it is fairly common. The expectation, which is carried over from other games, goes something like: I gained more XP, and unlocked this character, now the game will be easier, because this character must be stronger.

The point of different characters in this game isn't to make the game easier, it is to make it different, both gameplay mechanics wise, and flavor wise. From this aspect, there is no reason to balance difficulties of any character, only thing that matters is that they provide enough of a difference when playing the game.

An extension of the same problem is when people complain because their particularly accustomed play style does not fit the benefits/penalties of a character. Without realizing the characters offer a different gameplay mechanic, trying to do the same thing with all characters will make same of them shine, others will be fine, and the rest will be terrible. But people cannot connect this to how they play the character, instead, they interpret this as "easy" - "hard".

So, this is why people care.

That said, there is a need for balancing across characters to provide characters that fit to various play styles, and provide various challenges. If all the characters lack in/excel at a certain aspect of gameplay, then people focus on that aspect/other aspects will be disappointed.  

 

[Serph]

I never cared about singleplayer balance. A good videogame gives you the option to choose the difficulty you want, and that's what DS does. There is no such a thing as "no reason to play this character", or else nobody would play Wes.

[oCrapaCreeper]

4 hours ago, Serph said:

I never cared about singleplayer balance. A good videogame gives you the option to choose the difficulty you want, and that's what DS does. There is no such a thing as "no reason to play this character", or else nobody would play Wes.

Wes is specifically designed to be the hardmode character though, that's why no one complains about him. If people want a harder experience, they play Wes, otherwise they ignore him.

[Serph]

Just now, oCrapaCreeper said:

Wes is specifically designed to be the hardmode character though, that's why no one complains about him. If people want a harder experience, they play Wes, otherwise they ignore him.

WX is specifically designed to be a late game god character though (upgrades, no spoilage, system overload), why people complain about him?

I'm sure the best players are so good they don't even consider Wes a challenge and just use him cause they like the character. Not everything has to be about balance or gameplay.

[oCrapaCreeper]

28 minutes ago, Serph said:

WX is specifically designed to be a late game god character though (upgrades, no spoilage, system overload), why people complain about him?

I'm sure the best players are so good they don't even consider Wes a challenge and just use him cause they like the character. Not everything has to be about balance or gameplay.

People complain about him simply because he's overpowered in an overkill kind a way, as far as they feel really cheap for playing him. When you compare every other character, no one is overkill in quite the margin WX is.

[grekon]

Not really sure what you mean. 

The instances where people really talk about balancing was with WX rain dmg and poison immunity and a little bit of Woodlegs. In the end though Wilson is the most op character so there don't seem to be any problems.

The rest was to make characters more unique like Warly's eating and cooking and Walani's surfing and what not.

Besides that, character balancing is character variety. The are intertwined, switching characters is supposed to make game feel fresh, allow for different strategies and a little bit of that unique "This is the character I identify with". Trade offs is the name of the game. 

Without "balanced" characters the game becomes stale. Lets take Wilson and Wes as an example. Most don't care about wes even if he was available and because of that you virtually end up with only 1 character - Wilson. If however both Wilson and Wes were to be "balanced" then we would have 2 characters to consider and play.

[DeputyDeath]

I think the problem is in defining what an 'overpowered' character is. You said that Maxwell, Webber and Wigfrid are overpowered, yet I think that the only one out of those that's decent is Webber; and even then, I would never make a world as him unless I was desperate for change. On the other hand, I think that Wolfgang, Wilson and WX78 are far more powerful, although our metallic friend here certainly isn't as godly as the Don't Starve community makes him out to be.

As you can probably tell, this is where character balancing runs into a problem. If you want to look at any character who's balancing is a controversial topic, look at Warly. Look at all the threads that call him overpowered, and then those that say he's terrible. So how do we balance Warly then? Well, we do nothing.

People like balancing because making each character good in their own little way means that everyone can find one that they enjoy playing as the most. A game can't be good without variety (which is why Undertale and GTA V did so well), but having this without making each option equally viable is just as bad as having no variety at all because everyone will just go for the 'best' character/weapon/tactic and ignore the rest.

I personally love Wolfgang, others go right to the other end of the scale at Wendy; so as previously mentioned, there aren't characters that are obviously better than others, or else this divide wouldn't happen. In my opinion, a character isn't interesting unless it can stir up a good argument between two people, and that aspect of a community can really make or break a game. Pre-defined meta games are the worst, and thankfully Don't Starve has remained mostly free from them, aside from standard survival methods of course. 

So, who actually NEEDS balancing based off this? Well, nobody seems to strongly like Willow, Walani or Woodlegs, so obviously these three characters are in need of a rework. If they were re-'balanced', the game would have more selection and would be a better experience, whilst the community would be happier because they have more stuff to argue about.

So yeah; balance is important because quality is better than quantity.

[DwerBomb]

15 hours ago, stl1234 said:

 

The point of different characters in this game isn't to make the game easier, it is to make it different, both gameplay mechanics wise, and flavor wise. From this aspect, there is no reason to balance difficulties of any character, only thing that matters is that they provide enough of a difference when playing the game.

An extension of the same problem is when people complain because their particularly accustomed play style does not fit the benefits/penalties of a character. Without realizing the characters offer a different gameplay mechanic, trying to do the same thing with all characters will make same of them shine, others will be fine, and the rest will be terrible. But people cannot connect this to how they play the character, instead, they interpret this as "easy" - "hard".

I have to disagree. Characters can offer different game plays AND be balanced. Look at the TF2 cast: everyone plays differently but no one is far superior then the other as the character's abilities are only influence by how skilled the player is. 

[stl1234]

13 minutes ago, DwerBomb said:

Look at the TF2 cast

 

15 hours ago, stl1234 said:

A lot of people, despite playing this game, treat it like other games

 

[DeputyDeath]

3 hours ago, DwerBomb said:

I have to disagree. Characters can offer different game plays AND be balanced. Look at the TF2 cast: everyone plays differently but no one is far superior then the other as the character's abilities are only influence by how skilled the player is. 

TF2 is one of the best balanced games I can think of, because if I consider each class individually I can say that they're all overpowered in their own right.

This is basically what Don't Starve is like, because each character excels in different situations and aspects, therefore seeming 'overpowered' because other characters do not.