Maxwell discussion

[SuperPsiPower]

As many of you know, our dear friends from Klei are showcasing Maxwell tonight. During their Livesteam! @ www.twitch.tv/KleiEntertainment

I have posted the original changes to him here but I would like to know how you guys feel about these changes. Feel free to put

• What you want to see changed
• Ideas/tweaks
• Opinions/Thoughts on the changes

Etc.

Happy posting!

and never forget:

Spoiler

"Snicker-Snack!" -Maxwell

 

[oCrapaCreeper]

I'll wait to play him to really judge, but so far in the state shown in the code it looks like he got nerfed notably hard. No dark sword or night armor, sanity regen decreased from +20 to +6.7, and his shadow puppets aren't multi-purpose anymore.

Only good parts I see is that the puppets seem to last forever, regain health, and the figher has kiting AI.

[Bahlsen]

The question is what changes were made for pvp and what changes were made for pve. I'd like to be able to perform an analyse but I never play pvp so I really can't guess.

 

I can see myself using the shovel helper to dig all the graves with less sanity penalty, and without taking the ghosts aggro. I even wonder if we'll still be able to start digging, cancel the animation but the helper will still work. I saw this technique used for mining. 

 

I'll also be cruel and dress Maxwell with a common t-shirt and pants

[Sivdun]

Just give him enough sanity regen so he can carry night armor or dark sword without sanity pentaly.

You take Dark Sword? More dmg than Spear but if you don't want to loose to much sanity you must use normal armor and health (risky)

You take Night Armor? Have your protective "shield", use Ham Bat or Tentacle Spike and after that you can swap to Dark Sword and Wooden Armor with Football Helmet if needed.

Or you can go with both and just trade a bit of your "shield" for dmg.

Choices, choices.

 

[Gavary_Henaii]

isnt the codex umbra requirement a bit to much? it need 50 health to craft it and maxwell has 75 health, not to mention that you need another 15 health to summon shadow puppet so it leave him with 10 health if he does that right away

he is so dead

[SuperPsiPower]

9 minutes ago, Gavary_Henaii said:

isnt the codex umbra requirement a bit to much? it need 50 health to craft it and maxwell has 75 health, not to mention that you need another 15 health to summon shadow puppet so it leave him with 10 health if he does that right away

he is so dead

I forgot to mention in my previous post that you don't need to craft one after spawning, as he spawns in with one. Plus the fact that he doesn't take damage from making the helpers themselves.

[Serph]

I don't mind the removal of dark sword/night armor. That's fair.

I still don't know what to think of the dapper nerf, it hurts him alot but i won't deny it was overkill. 6.7 per minute is still pretty good, not high enough to let him trivialize the stat but not low enough for him to farm nightmare easily.

My main problems:

-Making Codex a placeable "puppet station" is a bad idea. What's the point of placing a structure that only maxwell can use yet other players can take/destroy? I can foresee curious newbies taking it for no reason. Make it so he has his own puppet tab all the times but still needs to hold the codex in the inventory to make them.

-75 health simply won't work in DST. Unlike Singleplayer, you have to consider:
A) Telltale hearts cost 40 hp -> Over half of Maxwell hp  (lol nobody will ever craft that thing with him)
B) Armor + helmet defense doesn't stack -> Every combat is dangerous for him
C) Max health penalties hurt him much more than the other, by 3 deaths he should have less than 20 max hp. (Or 46 since the penalty is 12.5% now?)
His nerfed perks are not worthy enough to walk around at half of normal hp.

-You can only make 2 fighters, they need spears (so they deal 34 damage?), they're the most expensive and weakest fighters (not even close to abigail / spider army) and you can't give attack orders. Like, seriously, we now have 3 characters focused on using allies and none of them can give attack orders. Let him and everyone give attack orders, that wont make the fighters ggood but at least they could make good distractions vs single monsters.

[Muttbutt]

The changes are probably the best thing that has happened to Maxwell in a while. The only thing I'd change is his lack of starting armor, maybe something like Wigfrid's helm but for his body would stop a lot of laggy deaths early game and protect him from camping Wigfrids in pvp. Light shadow armor maybe?

A porter puppet would also be neat. It could take nightmare fuel and the materials to make a backpack, and limit it to 4 slots instead of 6.

Maxwell is a really promising character, and I can't wait to play my favorite wet piece of paper with friends.

[DwerBomb]

I like the changes! The non absurd sanity buff makes dapper dresses not useless at least. But that's only my opinion based on what we know. Maybe seeing him in action will make me change my mind. 

 

Well ll what I want from Maxwell is special late game magic. That's all. Surprise me, devs B)

[t0panka]

58 minutes ago, Serph said:

I don't mind the removal of dark sword/night armor. That's fair.

I still don't know what to think of the dapper nerf, it hurts him alot but i won't deny it was overkill. 6.7 per minute is still pretty good, not high enough to let him trivialize the stat but not low enough for him to farm nightmare easily.

My main problems:

-Making Codex a placeable "puppet station" is a bad idea. What's the point of placing a structure that only maxwell can use yet other players can take/destroy? I can foresee curious newbies taking it for no reason. Make it so he has his own puppet tab all the times but still needs to hold the codex in the inventory to make them.

-75 health simply won't work in DST. Unlike Singleplayer, you have to consider:
A) Telltale hearts cost 40 hp -> Over half of Maxwell hp  (lol nobody will ever craft that thing with him)
B) Armor + helmet defense doesn't stack -> Every combat is dangerous for him
C) Max health penalties hurt him much more than the other, by 3 deaths he should have less than 20 max hp.
His nerfed perks are not worthy enough to walk around at half of normal hp.

-You can only make 2 fighters, they need spears (so they deal 34 damage?), they the most expensive and weakest fighters (not even close to abigail / spider army) and you can't give attack orders. Like, seriously, we now have 3 characters focused on using allies and none of them can give attack order do this. Let him and everyone give attack orders, that wont make the fighters ggood but at least they could make good distractions vs single monsters.

+ 11111111

So much this and especially that

[PanAzej]

1 hour ago, Serph said:

 Like, seriously, we now have 3 characters focused on using allies and none of them can give attack order do this. Let him and everyone give attack orders, that wont make the fighters ggood but at least they could make good distractions vs single monsters.

Well, you can, but it requires you to stop attacking in the middle of the attack animation, so you don't actually hit the monster, but it becomes your target. Yeah... we could use actual 'attack order'.

Maxwell? He's gotten nerfed all-around, but his puppets got buffed. Will he be worth playing? We'll see.

[WorstNightmare]

Pretty much what @Serph has said...

Maxwell is mid-tier if I would rate him late game material versus other characters. Starting out he would be a very good pick-up to mass gather resources faster better than woodie in his spot so he ranks above him for sure with a penalty of 75 health. Outside of this he's has a lot of vulnerabilities that suggest he isn't meant for combat so he would be the home care type for the team. Overall not a bad character definitely unique in his own way which sets the theme for the point of each character since I personally think they lean towards mainly making each character they're own playstyle, I like it.

[muttles]

does anyone yet know the crafting cost of each of the puppets, is it just nightmare fuel and sanity.

In the video it looked like the wood chopping puppet would automatically chop trees if you stood by them... seems somewhat powerful.

 

Please make his base life 100.

[rezecib]

@Gavary_Henaii The puppets don't cost health. So the only health cost is if you need to remake the journal, and you start with one anyway.

@Serph I agree with you that all those things contribute, but the health penalties you mention in (3) are actually percent-health penalties now, so 3 deaths + resurrections from telltale hearts will remove 3*12.5% = 37.5% of his health, which means a penalty of 28.125, leaving him with 46.875 health. So it's not too bad... but it's still kind of bad. And also the telltale heart recipe does take 40 health flat.

Overall my impression is that the sanity nerf is probably needed when considering that he can use Wickerbottom's books. It still makes him a great ally to Wickerbottom. However, his health could use a little buff.

As I mentioned on stream, I'd really like to see the shadow puppets be customizable after creation-- giving them a new item would change their type (and the current penalty on your sanity-- if you can't afford the new type, then they'd drop the item instead or something). This would make them more useful for varied tasks, while still having some cost to it. Plus it would feel really cool, and avoid cluttering the crafting menu (he wouldn't need his own crafting tab anymore, could just throw the journal and puppet recipes under magic), and would make adding other types of puppets feel really natural (e.g. torch puppet, picker puppet, maybe stronger duelist puppets by giving them stronger weapons or armors?).

[Serph]

Just now, rezecib said:

 

@Serph I agree with you that all those things contribute, but the health penalties you mention in (3) are actually percent-health penalties now, so 3 deaths + resurrections from telltale hearts will remove 3*12.5% = 37.5% of his health, which means a penalty of 28.125, leaving him with 46.875 health. So it's not too bad... but it's still kind of bad. And also the telltale heart recipe does take 40 health flat.

Isn't the revive penalty 25%? I'm almost sure other characters follow the 150 hp -> 113 -> 75 -> 38. Maxwell has half max health so he should follow as 75- 56/57 - 38 - 19/20. If it's really as you say then Maxwell would have more health than the others after 3 deaths (46 > 38) which makes doesn't sense.

I know the tell tale heart is fixed, it's the same 40 hp cost for Wolfgang/Wigfrid so it has to be same for him, but Maxwell can only make one heart at once and loses over half of his health.

[rezecib]

Just now, Serph said:

Isn't the revive penalty 25%?

25% is if you revive from the portal, it's 12.5% from telltale hearts. It got changed at some point, but quite a while back.

I don't think it's worth worrying much about the percentage of health loss from crafting a telltale heart for Maxwell, because what really matters is (a) does the health cost kill you right then and (b) how much work does it take to regain that health; regaining 40 health is the same amount of work for all characters (with some minor exceptions for Wolfgang and Wigfrid who have perks related to that).

[peppey23]

I think he will be a lot of fun. I don't see to much of a concern with the fact of lower health points. Just means you have to carry healing items/food for combat and just make sure you bail if need be. Although terms of team work early game he will be handy, late game not so much. More of a gather then anything else once you set up, mostly its combat. Although if you can manage to work with staffs and nightmare weapons I think it would be ok not as horrible. Control over Strength.

 

I am curious will there be an eta on release of him or will we wait for the expansion before we see more of him?!

[BlindGunner]

I see his health being more of an issue because there's always lag, and he's gonna get dropped if he doesn't even have his armor...

[oCrapaCreeper]

They should at least give him his armor back. Dark sword I can understand removing, but when the health of monsters is double and he stays at 75 hp, things get stacked against him.

[CaptainFun]

I would also be a bit worried for him a 75 health. Armor doesn't work the way it did in DS so he's really at a disadvantage. I think 100 would be better, and still sufficiently squishy. 

[DwerBomb]

[Asparagus]

Just now, DwerBomb said:

Wh- why do I suddenly feel afraid of looking out my window?

[Meneervis]

2 minutes ago, DwerBomb said:

''I suppose I deserve that''

[DwerBomb]

1 minute ago, Asparagus said:

Wh- why do I suddenly feel afraid of looking out my window?

 

1 minute ago, sirscrubbingtont said:

''I suppose I deserve that''

 

[Asparagus]