What kind of a drawback would the community want for Willow?

[JJburner]

On 3/13/2017 at 4:23 PM, The Curator said:

It is not as though balance is to be much of a crucial concept.

 

Wickerbottom :

- Knows all tier one recipes

- Can craft special books

 

- Cannot sleep

- Less benefits from spoiled food

 

A relatively solid and interesting play of strength and weakness. Meanwhile.

 

Wigfrid :

- Saps sanity and health from enemies

- 25% damage bonus

- 25% defense bonus

- Can mass produce above average combat equipment with little cost

 

- Can only eat meat

 

Even if Monster Meatballs existed to help counter the Meatball meta, gathering meat is still exceptionally easy. And the effects of things like mushrooms and cactus are borderline meaningless, as Wigfrid is practically immune to insanity so long as she fights every while.

 

Characters should be buffed in general to align with Wigfrid, or rebalanced to align with Wickerbottom. Willow in particular is a towering beacon of meaningless. A shoddy lighter, and a bear to defend you against kite-magnet shadows. As well as a negligible sanity regeneration around fire, and un-useful resilience to fire.

Here comes another "Wigfrid is considered OP why...!?" argument...

[The Curator]

4 hours ago, JJburner said:

Here comes another "Wigfrid is considered OP why...!?" argument...

Yeah because four boons and one quirk is obviously balanced. But at this point, people are simply just allergic to the subject.

[JJburner]

3 hours ago, The Curator said:

Yeah because four boons and one quirk is obviously balanced. But at this point, people are simply just allergic to the subject.

Four boons which aren't that good... Lemme give you a little run down

1. Sapping health and sanity is nice, but if you don't get hit and know how to kite the health doesn't matter, and often times you want your sanity to be low to farm nightmare fuel which is harder for wigfrid who has a low cap and sanity gain for fighting.

2. The damage bonus isn't as good as wolfgangs... that's that, better than most characters, but still wolfgangs damage is way better.

3. Defense bonus isn't going to take effect if you know how to kite, and even if you do get hit, if your going to tank wx and wolfgang have much higher healths that the damage minigation isn't much stand to their high healths.

4. You got me on this the battle helms are pretty awesome, but the spear is much worse for other characters since the hambat is so much superior in all ways.

5. Her disbenefit is not eating meat. Of course meat isn't hard to get, but the time wasted that wigfrid players have to go through to go get that meat gets often times tedious whereas all other characters can just harvest 4 bee boxes and have food for 3 days in 5 seconds.

Taking a good look at better characters...

Wicker makes op books which she can solo 5+ bosses with on tentacles, overcharge a wx with the end is nigh, mass produce reeds, grass, twigs, and berries with lure plants and applied horticulture, have a cheap pan flute with Sleepy time stories, and easily farm a krampus sack with Sleepy time stories and birds of the world.

She know more things early on so she can more rapidly do everything it'd take other characters to do and gets less sanity gain from prototyping new things allowing her to keep her sanity low to easily farm nightmare fuel and her books help with that. And if you ever have trouble with sanity chug 17 cooked cactus and boom full sanity.

Disbenfits are she can't sleep which sucks but pierogi's and cooked cactus manage those two stats with ease

And stale food, which you just feed every stale food you have to wx anyways.

Many people overrate her for being op, based on her advantages when her advantages aren't much, and her disadvantage is such a time waster, but we all have our opinions for a reason!

[HamBatter]

4 hours ago, The Curator said:

Yeah because four boons and one quirk is obviously balanced. But at this point, people are simply just allergic to the subject.

FYI it's very obvious how easy mode she is, but there seems to be an in-joke to counter with what she can't do compared to others while not discounting the original point.

I think it's great she's a crutch, as that can act as a gateway to taking more rewarding risks. Whether others are actually using it for that purpose isn't really my concern.

[The Curator]

4 hours ago, JJburner said:

Four boons which aren't that good... Lemme give you a little run down

1. Sapping health and sanity is nice, but if you don't get hit and know how to kite the health doesn't matter, and often times you want your sanity to be low to farm nightmare fuel which is harder for wigfrid who has a low cap and sanity gain for fighting.

2. The damage bonus isn't as good as wolfgangs... that's that, better than most characters, but still wolfgangs damage is way better.

3. Defense bonus isn't going to take effect if you know how to kite, and even if you do get hit, if your going to tank wx and wolfgang have much higher healths that the damage minigation isn't much stand to their high healths.

4. You got me on this the battle helms are pretty awesome, but the spear is much worse for other characters since the hambat is so much superior in all ways.

5. Her disbenefit is not eating meat. Of course meat isn't hard to get, but the time wasted that wigfrid players have to go through to go get that meat gets often times tedious whereas all other characters can just harvest 4 bee boxes and have food for 3 days in 5 seconds.

Going insane forcibly is ridiculously easy, it's called Wormholes, Wigfrid being able to avoid something negative because of how ridiculous her sanity regain is; is certainly not a dis-benefit because of the single situation where you need to farm nightmare fuel. Seriously, insanity is a bad thing most of the time and it is supposed to be, you cannot spin having trouble going insane as a bad thing because of a farming method. Which already can be easily accessed, with Wormholes.

25% is a huge difference, but as copy and paste arguments say; because Wolfgang is even more overpowered that magically makes Wigfrid more balanced just by comparison. That is not how balance is made, you compare everything to the lowest fair level of the game; not the highest absurd level. The point is making things fair, not scaling them up to all be ridiculous, the discussion on Wigfrid's balance is about making things fair. It is not about who wins the meta race.

25% is still a huge difference. Oh, if you don't get hit the defense bonus won't count. Well the point of defense is that it helps protect you when you do get hit, just like in any game. You can't discredit the existence of defense because characters will sometimes dodge, it exists to help mitigate damage taken when you fail to dodge. That's the entire point. And again with comparing meta to meta instead of to balance.

So the Battle Spear is bad, because a superior weapon exists. So, you ignore the fact that it is a highly durable and powerful basic weapon Wigfrid can make to be even more powerful normally while still not having to spend complex resources on crafting higher end equipment. But, because there is a higher tier then her Battle Spear, that makes it useless. Its existence is to replace the default spear with something ridiculously better; allowing Wigfrid to fight longer and easier while still not having to spend resources on better equipment. Yeah, a higher tier exists. The same can be said about most weapons in most games.

So in this magical world you say, players have food right at their doorstep but Wigfrid does not. Wigfrid can mass farm monster meat, use some of it to create eggs, then cook Bacon and Eggs to set herself for potentially even longer then three days. But Wigfrid's gimmick is made worse because bee boxes, which produce honey only occasionally, will in one circumstance give players the food to survive a short while. Why would they even eat the honey, it's an ingredient in several useful recipes.

And yeah, they get food for several days in five seconds; because it takes several days for the honey to be generated. You just take the most efficient, quaint possible example of regular characters acquiring easy food and compare that to the worst scenario of Wigfrid having to go on some long journey to kill a Koalephant. That is not how it is for both those sides at every given time.

[thistownneedsguns]

farming nightmare fuel with wigfrid is pretty easy, its not really a disadvantage. 

 

from playing a lot of wigfrid.. her disadvantage is being boring to play. its too easy.

 

sure you can say wolfgang is in some things better, but he is also more fun to play. he has several hunger stages, he has his speed boost, he has nice items like the funcaps, belt of hunger.. while wigfrid is just bland. 

[JJburner]

5 hours ago, The Curator said:

Going insane forcibly is ridiculously easy, it's called Wormholes, Wigfrid being able to avoid something negative because of how ridiculous her sanity regain is; is certainly not a dis-benefit because of the single situation where you need to farm nightmare fuel. Seriously, insanity is a bad thing most of the time and it is supposed to be, you cannot spin having trouble going insane as a bad thing because of a farming method. Which already can be easily accessed, with Wormholes.

25% is a huge difference, but as copy and paste arguments say; because Wolfgang is even more overpowered that magically makes Wigfrid more balanced just by comparison. That is not how balance is made, you compare everything to the lowest fair level of the game; not the highest absurd level. The point is making things fair, not scaling them up to all be ridiculous, the discussion on Wigfrid's balance is about making things fair. It is not about who wins the meta race.

25% is still a huge difference. Oh, if you don't get hit the defense bonus won't count. Well the point of defense is that it helps protect you when you do get hit, just like in any game. You can't discredit the existence of defense because characters will sometimes dodge, it exists to help mitigate damage taken when you fail to dodge. That's the entire point. And again with comparing meta to meta instead of to balance.

So the Battle Spear is bad, because a superior weapon exists. So, you ignore the fact that it is a highly durable and powerful basic weapon Wigfrid can make to be even more powerful normally while still not having to spend complex resources on crafting higher end equipment. But, because there is a higher tier then her Battle Spear, that makes it useless. Its existence is to replace the default spear with something ridiculously better; allowing Wigfrid to fight longer and easier while still not having to spend resources on better equipment. Yeah, a higher tier exists. The same can be said about most weapons in most games.

So in this magical world you say, players have food right at their doorstep but Wigfrid does not. Wigfrid can mass farm monster meat, use some of it to create eggs, then cook Bacon and Eggs to set herself for potentially even longer then three days. But Wigfrid's gimmick is made worse because bee boxes, which produce honey only occasionally, will in one circumstance give players the food to survive a short while. Why would they even eat the honey, it's an ingredient in several useful recipes.

And yeah, they get food for several days in five seconds; because it takes several days for the honey to be generated. You just take the most efficient, quaint possible example of regular characters acquiring easy food and compare that to the worst scenario of Wigfrid having to go on some long journey to kill a Koalephant. That is not how it is for both those sides at every given time.

The thing is that her fighting stats are overrated, sure it's good early game, but thats ever the only time you'll fight often enough for it to even matter, and the reason why wolfgang is even good is because he can clear ruin day 5-15, you know who can't, because they can't eat op blue mushrooms and has too little damage? Wigfrid! Without the fact that wolf gang can clear ruins early, he is pretty much just above average... After day 200+ the only enemy you'll fight are ancient fuelweaver , AG, toadstool, deerclops, and moosegoose if you run out of luxury fans. Queen bee you kill with tentacles, d-fly you kill with bunnymen, klaus you wouldn't kill because you can farm krampus sack much easier with wicker, and you have no reason to kill anything else! Need pig skin, just use moonstone exploit, need bunnymen loot, just farm with houndius, need spider loot, just use tentacles from wicker and 4 spider nests. You just don't ever fight making wolfgang and wigfrid pretty average late game. Her spear sucks since hambat is 100% easier and better to get. Playing wigfrid you just waste time farming food, hunting and killing 2 koalas takes 6 minutes which you could spend that time taking down 4 bee hives, getting 8 boards and catching 16 bees which can used to sustain yourself for food indefinetly where wigfrid has to constantly fight to get her food which waste time! You take time making bacon and eggs, 1 is killing 6 spiders 50% monster meat which is for 2 eggs and 1 monster, and get a morsel some how or big meat which also would take time, all this for 1 food for the day taking at least 2 minutes including cook time and 5 seconds compared to 3 minutes is a long time.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

Could we not derail this thread into one about how good Wigfrid may or may not be? This thread is about what kind of a drawback Willow could have if her feats were buffed. At this point it seems like we'll probably need to wait till after ANR for the developers to make any character balance changes, but I have something in mind before that, although I'm struggling to get it working well...

Anyway, please don't derail the thread!

[Astroknot]

I think freezing while insane should stay, yeah its annoying but instead of removing the problem why not just make Willow's perks more useful? For example: Willow's Lighter should give off torch light, be refuelable, and not break at 0%, but will be unusable by non-Willows. Bernie will now fight shadow monsters not just tank them and can be equipped with armor helms to increase its stability, maybe it can also be made to fight and distract all monsters? I don't know I'm making these ideas up as I go along. To compensate for the freezing whilst insane thing, maybe be warmer when sane? That way Willow would be all about the sanity management? <-- (Maybe I'm just making it worse with this idea.) Anyway to end off if Willow's Lighter is refuelable, it should use a very cheap fuel, like ash, charcoal or petals. EDIT: Oh and of course bring fire immunity back! That part is mandatory. EDIT 2: Maybe also allow the Lighter to be dropped and give off light and warmth so that Willow can use it as a cheap lantern? Perhaps allow everyone to cook on it when dropped making it a cheap portable campfire with torch-level light radius.

[Captain_Rage]

27 minutes ago, Astroknot said:

I think freezing while insane should stay, yeah its annoying but instead of removing the problem why not just make Willow's perks more useful? For example: Willow's Lighter should give off torch light, be refuelable, and not break at 0%, but will be unusable by non-Willows. Bernie will now fight shadow monsters not just tank them and can be equipped with armor helms to increase its stability, maybe it can also be made to fight and distract all monsters? I don't know I'm making these ideas up as I go along. To compensate for the freezing whilst insane thing, maybe be warmer when sane? That way Willow would be all about the sanity management? <-- (Maybe I'm just making it worse with this idea.) Anyway to end off if Willow's Lighter is refuelable, it should use a very cheap fuel, like ash, charcoal or petals. EDIT: Oh and of course bring fire immunity back! That part is mandatory. EDIT 2: Maybe also allow the Lighter to be dropped and give off light and warmth so that Willow can use it as a cheap lantern? Perhaps allow everyone to cook on it when dropped making it a cheap portable campfire with torch-level light radius.

This is also what I've been contemplating. Buffing Willow's Lighter could work, if it could be used to ward off the insanity freezing, maybe.  Your suggestions make sense. I would also like to see Willow's Lighter unperishable and refuelable, and preferably only usable by Willow. This is a subjective thing, though, but it would make it feel more personal and useful.

Since Ash only has one use in the entire game, maybe let Willow utilize it, somehow?? WX-78 can eat Gears. Willow could use Ash for crafting a consumable items, or use it raw. I don't know how, but something useful and team oriented. Covering up herself/others with ash to stave off extreme temperatures for a small duration of time.................................. or something. Anything....!

[Astroknot]

6 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

 

Since Ash only has one use in the entire game, maybe let Willow utilize it, somehow?? WX-78 can eat Gears. Willow could use Ash for crafting a consumable items, or use it raw. I don't know how, but something useful and team oriented. Covering up herself/others with ash to stave off extreme temperatures for a small duration of time.................................. or something. Anything....!

I suggested potentially using ash as the fuel for the lighter so that lighting things would be encouraged, the more you light the more you get to utilize your lighter. I also did not realize until just now that ash has literally one use in the whole game... always thought it was used for more.