Think they will ever overhaul Winona?

[Korlie]

She's just not very interesting or fun to play as compared to all the other characters. Players will like, split hair follicles to try justifying the usefulness of her so they don't have to admit Klei made a meh character. But just from a gameplay perspective, she's boring.

Like what does she do. She gets a free hit from Charlie, which changes nothing in the gameplay. She can make things faster, which makes things slightly faster. And she can make an alternate version of an existing item, which slightly changes how you use something already in the game which you seldom use anyways.

It's not even that she's not super powerful like most of the characters, which she isn't, but it's that her gimmicks aren't fun. Every other main character other then Wilson, even Wes, was designed to fundamentally change something about how players interact with the game. Which is what makes each character special and interesting. Winona doesn't do that though, all of her gimmicks are extremely passive and make little impact in the gameplay. Compared to all the other characters in the game, it's like Winona is a default normal Stormtrooper and every other character is an Overwatch hero. At least Wilson is iconic and his beard serves directly useful purposes.

Winona is the first new character ever in DST, and she didn't even get featured in The Forge trailer; what did Klei really have no enthusiasm to show off their brand new character in the brand new event they made which was the exact time when you would do that. And in The Forge itself, they couldn't even come up with a unique role for her to have. They just made her the generic, shapeless Jack-of-all-Trades character with a generic Jack-of-all-Trades tiny passive ability. It's like Klei has either run dry of ideas for new characters or they just don't actually like Winona.

They could at least make it so her tape repairs basic equipment; which is a thing people were hoping for from the very start and they still didn't do it. Makes no sense why they are just leaving her like this, at least nerfed Willow has some unique items and mechanics.

[Nino123]

She is a good character to star, for new players. My girlfriend is starting on DST and she wanted a simple character. She had choice between Wilson and Winona and, as she is a girl, picked up Winona.

I think she was made to be a female  starter character, because of is capacity to repair things, resist a luil bit more in the dark and is neutral balance. A Girly Wilson.

[Sinister_Fang]

She's not getting a change. We all want it, but I highly doubt it'll ever happen.

2 minutes ago, Nino123 said:

She is a good character to star, for new players. My girlfriend is starting on DST and she wanted a simple character. She had choice between Wilson and Winona and, as she is a girl, picked up Winona.

I think she was made to be a female  starter character, because of is capacity to repair things, resist a luil bit more in the dark and is neutral balance. A Girly Wilson.

The game didn't need Wilson 2.0. It needed a new, unique character...

[Nino123]

that's your opinion of what the game needs. My gf and i are ok to play Wilson and Winona...

[evantropia]

7 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

She's not getting a change. We all want it, but I highly doubt it'll ever happen.

The game didn't need Wilson 2.0. It needed a new, unique character...

Amen, sir.

[Lakurius]

I think Winona is a character bound to the story of don't starve together. so perhaps as the story goes on, winona could get new abilities?

Spoiler

It'd be so cool... Very unlikely to happen, but cool. 

 

[ShadowDuelist]

She's marginally useful for saving light sources if you don't care being insane: you can stay in complete darkness and then after charlie's dodged hit you can turn on a light for a split second to get another long darkness period. Spl0range did a nice ruins rush video on youtube with just torches, grass suit and an axe, doing the darkness trick.

Other than that she's pretty niche and I hope she does get some form of boost.

[Dreamscape18459]

I was extremely dissapointed by Winona. After Klei's previous expansion characters in ROG I was expecting someone unique and interesting like Wigfrid and Webber. Both of these characters are very unique in their playstyle, but most importantly, their perks and penalties feel fun and satisfying to play.

I wasn't expecting Wilson v_2.0. Her dialogue is a pleasure to read and she has a funny personality. Its a shame Klei didn't seem to put as much effort into making her a fun and compelling character to play as they did her dialogue and relevance to the plot. She was fun in the Forge I guess.

[Naveil]

I've brainstormed some ideas for a Winona rework. Probably won't make it into the game, but it's fun to think about lol

 

-Turn the free hit in the dark into resistance against Charlie's hits (makes sense, considering Winona is her sister)

-Get rid of her tape (just a glorified sewing kit)

-Have a permanent "construction amulet" effect. Obviously toned down, but a slight discount when crafting.

-Consume some hunger when crafting. Nothing too crazy, but maybe 2 hunger for most craftables, 5 for 'wall' structures and 10 for other structures.

-Start to lose sanity when nothing has been crafted for 1/4 of a day. The sanity loss will only be reset when something has be crafted.

[Starlogy]

I hope she gets reworked. She reminds me of how the characters were before Strange New Powers, where everyone was basically Wilson with small differences.

She has some of the best dialogue in the game, but unfortunately her perks just aren't that useful. Which sucks because just being able to repair armor would turn her into a top tier character.

[fimmatek]

59 minutes ago, Starlogy said:

She has some of the best dialogue in the game

I agree so much with this! In my opinion alone this makes her interesting to play. 

59 minutes ago, Starlogy said:

but unfortunately her perks just aren't that useful. Which sucks because just being able to repair armor would turn her into a top tier character.

I just partly agree with this. Armor repairing would be nice, but also quite op too because it would make thulecite renewable without having to go to the ruins at all. 

She's a perfect choice for new players, and why should new players always pick Wilson? 

12 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

The game didn't need Wilson 2.0. It needed a new, unique character...

Why not? This isn't Overwatch where every character skill is important and a 6-healers team is unviable. And they are not so similar, Wilson excels in winter, Winona excels at building. It makes a significant difference for newcomers, and she definitely looks designed more for them as for the experts. Not accidental that she was added when DST was released on a new platform (XBox, if I'm right?).

Overall, I think (or hope) that Winona will have some role later. Charlie is still on the Throne and she is the one closest to her (and Maxwell). As the story continues, she could (/should) be in the center of the happenings. Why would Klei give us a new character right in the middle of DST (not with a DLC or something), especially a character who is the ruler's sister, if they have no long-term plans with her?

[GuyNamedChris]

There's two changes I've been spitballing for Winona:

One is the one everyone's been begging and pleading for: Armor and Tool repair for the Tape. It would be great to repair pretty much anything with a durability, barring light sources or magic items, etc. No other item in the game does this yet, so while it may need balancing, it has the potential to be something great. (It may need buffs to the recipe though)

Two is a new idea: Tool-crafting quality changes based on stats. Allow Winona to craft 120% durability tools, but only if her stats(Hunger, Health, and Sanity) are all above 2/3rds. If these requirements are not met(One or two stats are below 2/3rds), she'll only craft 100% durability items. If every stat is below 2/3rds (i.e. you just revived and all your stats are halved), then Winona will only craft 80% durability items. I thought of this because it'll be an actual downside to Winona; one she doesn't have yet. Yet at the same time it'll reward players for managing their stats well enough with higher durability tools she can make for herself and her group. 

 

Tl;dr Let tape repair tools and armor, barring light source and magic items, and let Winona's tool-crafting quality depend on her stats.

[Dreamscape18459]

Winona's personality has a lot of interesting gameplay potential but.....it feels like Klei really didn't follow through with it. To me it feels like Klei was so focused on the Forge and Hamlet that they didn't have enough time to give Winona the attention to gameplay she needed.(So she suffers from being fairly vanilla whereas Wigfrid and Webber were a huge part of the new content for ROG so they got a lot of attention from Klei.) This is a version of Winona I have been playing with for a while that I feel better represents her character.

Perk: 200 max health, hunger. (+50 of each stat compared to Wilson.)

Perk: Immunity to Charlie's night attacks

Penalty: 10% faster hunger drain

Penalty: shares Wickerbottom's food penalty

Penalty: gains no sanity from wearable items.

(Please note this rework is intended for a mod that makes the game more difficult. Most notably hunger drains at 85/day and food spoils very quickly, an example being meaty stew spoiling in two days, so Wickerbottom's food penalty is a legitimately relevant downside. In vanilla these "downsides" wouldn't be relevant at all.)

Extra stats represent this supposed "indomitable spirit" she possesses that....isn't represented in game. (Outside of the Forge of course.) I was expecting her to be a bit tankier than most characters before she was released, and it would make sense that she is a factory worker in extreme conditions, so she should be a little hardier than most.

The extra hunger drain (and hunger) represents her tougher working conditions, she can go longer without food being used to long work shifts but will need more of it, reflecting that the work she does is difficult. Having Wicker's hunger penalty could infer that she needs to pay special attention to her diet, eating poor food could influence her work performance negatively. (And potentially in game. The threat of dying to starvation damage might influence her ability to work negatively.) Sharing Wickerbottom's hunger penalty creates interesting gameplay potential (10% quicker hunger drain while gaining 33% of stale food can lead to quick starvation) but.....this downside is not relevant at all in vanilla. (Again this is intended for a rebalance mod.)

Immunity to Charlie's attacks is just a buff to her ability. Theoretically she "knows all of her sisters moves" but she only seems to know one. (Which notably is always the attack Charlie opens with.) It would make sense Charlie would gain access to new abilities on the throne (that Winona would not know. Maxwell's time on the throne influenced him greatly so it would do the same to Charlie as well.) but this perk is so incredibly weak and can be reset by flashing a torch/lantern/moggles/whatever in less than a second, essentially giving her full immunity to darkness. Light sources are so cheap so this perk doesn't seem very good in general gameplay. (Newer players would probably find Winona overpowered due to immunity to darkness. If a player legitimately benefits from this then they will have trouble dealing with her hunger penalties, no sanity from wearable items, and nightmares that being insane from exposure to darkness causes.)

No sanity from wearable items reflects her supposed hatred of fashion ("I hate fashion. -Winona examining Fashion Goggles.) that is simply not represented in game outside of examination strings. This has so much interesting gameplay potential and greatly limits Winona's ability to use dress items effectively. (The Winter Hat and Tam o Shanter are identical to Winona players with 120 insulation. She is better off using the Beefalo hat which has 240 insulation.) This penalty would really change how people play the game. The Tam o Shanter goes from +6.7 sanity/min to +0 sanity/min. If you want to exploit Winona's darkness perk you need to use a lot of Jerky/Taffy/etc to do so. If you plan on being in the caves (or even just on the surface) you have no reliable, easy method to maintain your sanity outside of food. This also means that, even though Winona may have an alternative sewing kit, she can't utilize it as effectively as others on a server can which makes her Trusty Tape more of a sidegrade to her (although to allies it is still a potential strength). Notably no sanity from wearable items means no sanity gain from the Beequeen crown. While she may have higher health to aid her in a fight this gives her a notable weakness in combat.

Again this is intended to be used with a mod and would be overpowered in Vanilla but Winona's character has so much interesting gameplay potential. To me it feels like Winona was a bit of an afterthought. If Klei prioritized her more, such as making her a major part of the "Heart of the Ruins" update then maybe she would have gotten the attention she needed and would be much more interesting and developed as a result. Winona feels like a bit of an afterthought to market the XBOX version of the game (being released in a minor content patch on PC when the team was working on the Forge instead of the base game while also being a timed XBOX exclusive.....I have not played the console versions but I don't think timed exclusive content that is honestly not as polished as prior content is what they need for DST to thrive on those platforms.)

Hopefully Klei learned from Winona and this knowledge can be used to create better future content. I was most dissapointed with Winona because Klei's prior work has been very good. (97% of 44k+ reviews being positive for a game is a great achievement that not every company can do. Klei has 5(!) games with 90%+ positive ratings on Steam, not including sequels such as DST or Shank 2. Clearly the work they do is viewed well by fans.) Don't Starve is a great game, ROG was an absolutely phenomenal expansion, Multiplayer is extremely well done and ANR added lots of quality of life content to the game that Winona being so unpolished on official release feels incredibly out of place and even jarring. Winona's quality honestly doesn't feel consistent with what Klei is capable of producing, and has produced, in the past and personally I was extremely dissapointed by her. Again hopefully Klei learned from this and can use it to produce even better content in the future. We all know that they can. =)

[Mr.Mulk]

Considering that very little has been done with Willow and Woodie I wouldn't get my hopes up. If they're gonna do a rebalance they've shown no signs of interest unfortunately.

[csc_unit]

@Dreamscape18459   Ouch ouch ouch buddy. Right of the bath, you went to far. 200 hp and hunger doesn't add gameplay to Winona and immunity to darkness?? That's just unthinkable in many ways. 

Near instant crafting and a way to fix/recycle old items looks like a more simple and efficient solution to revive the character.

[Sinister_Fang]

5 hours ago, fimmatek said:

And they are not so similar, Wilson excels in winter, Winona excels at building.

Both perks are fairly negligible though. They both fill the same niche of balanced character with no cons and minor perks. That would be like adding a new sewing kit when the existing one is already easy to craft. Oh, wait...

[Cellby]

She has good dialogue? Shame I never knew that...I've literally never played her in a survival DST world before. For me her being added to the game was the equivalent of not getting a new character at all.

Anyway I found this repair mod with some Winona perks a while back. Armour can be repaired now. Everyone gets a new repairing mechanic and Winona herself gets some crafting buffs. If anyone is interested in playing Winona here is the only decent workshop file I've found so far.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=850125165

[fimmatek]

13 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Both perks are fairly negligible though. They both fill the same niche of balanced character with no cons and minor perks. That would be like adding a new sewing kit when the existing one is already easy to craft. Oh, wait...

I understand your point and you're right from the point of view of an expereienced player. But for those who have much less experience in the game (or none at all) it does make a difference. Back as I was still learning the basics of this game, I mostly used Wilson, because I simply couldn't use the others well enough to live long. Almost all of my interesting memories from those times are with him, including my first whole survived year. Some variety could have been better in my opinion, even tho I liked Wilson quite a lot. 

Yes, we already have a sewing kit which isn't hard to craft (if you're experienced enough to get enough spare silk and tooth...), but why is it a problem that we got an alternative one? I agree, the tape could be better, but it wasn't made to be better. It is meant to be a cheap, very easy to craft and less useful variant for everyone who could need its help to get past early-game or the learning phase of DST. It's quite similar to the grass suit, the garland or the pretty parasol. We don't use them because there are much better alternatives for us that we can get with the same effort. So do these items need a buff? Make garland great again? Or just scrap them from the game? Not at all. Not everything in the game must be super useful for everyone. Furthermore, we received so many late-game content in the last year, almost everything from ANR is unaccessible for beginners... they also deserve to get something new to the game. Besides the events of course, those are just temporary.

And lastly, I trust Klei that they know what are they doing. They don't always share their exact goals and plans, they didn't say that Winona will very interesting or useful, in fact they didn't say anything about her. And I also don't think the devs thought that every pro will use the tapes instead of the sewing kit  It just seems that they had different intentions with Winona than what the fanbase expected.

Also, sorry for the long text, I just try to explain my point to the topic and to keep it short but still understandable.

[ProfessorAlpaca]

I've suggested this before, but I'd love if Winona's gathering animation for stuff like twigs and grass was twice as fast just like her crafting animation.

4 hours ago, Chris1488 said:

Tool-crafting quality changes based on stats.

I really like this idea because my play style has always been to keep each of my stats at or near their max (unless I specifically needed nightmares) I don't normally go running around with 60% Hp, though depending on the character I will wait till I am actually starving to finally eat any food I'm carrying. This idea would greatly reward keeping your stats in check and punish you for crafting in any sticky situations, and I kinda like that. I can image it'd be tricky to initially get through the ruins and craft some thulecite gear with the added percentage.

[torauma]

I feel like instead of giving Winona a straight up ability to just simply repair armor with tape, instead it could be a one use crafting option for her since you wouldn't be able to constantly repair the same armor over and over again, like lets say 3x trusty tape 1x football helmet. could make a fine addition while this limits only to early game items like, football helmet, log suit, grass suit, battle helmets, etc

what do you think? Kinda pointless on talking about these but hey more posts for my account

[ZolaRay]

Buff woodie.

k bye.

[Nino123]

10 hours ago, fimmatek said:

She's a perfect choice for new players, and why should new players always pick Wilson? 

Why not? This isn't Overwatch where every character skill is important and a 6-healers team is unviable. And they are not so similar, Wilson excels in winter, Winona excels at building. It makes a significant difference for newcomers, and she definitely looks designed more for them as for the experts. Not accidental that she was added when DST was released on a new platform (XBox, if I'm right?).

Exactly.

New players just had Wilson or Wicker to start with simple characters. And Wicker's abillities (no needs a science machine) forbbid the normal discovery of the game (she's made for experienced players who wants to rush, imao). Now they have a new one, a different one, with classic perks and abillities that help (a lil bit) new players to start in DST (fast building, Charlie's hit dodge...).

[voyager156]

9 hours ago, Cellby said:

She has good dialogue? Shame I never knew that...I've literally never played her in a survival DST world before. For me her being added to the game was the equivalent of not getting a new character at all.

Same here! I was very excited when they put her in the game. Then I read her perks & never played her since.

[illusione]

I'd like it if she could use the tape to repair tools and armor, but repairing them with it would change them to a "taped" item.

a "taped" item would have the prefab taped added to it, possibly show a duct taped version of the item for it's inventory icon, and it wouldn't be repairable again.

[Footman Crouch]

45 minutes ago, webbermain252 said:

I'd like it if she could use the tape to repair tools and armor, but repairing them with it would change them to a "taped" item.

a "taped" item would have the prefab taped added to it, possibly show a duct taped version of the item for it's inventory icon, and it wouldn't be repairable again.

That sound like a lot of works for one item, but i like the idea.