Why Has Nothing Changed?

[Mr.Mulk]

13 minutes ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

I was referring to talking about Toxic players as I don't feel a public forum is the best place to discuss this. Nearly anything else I am open to discussing.

I understand what you mean by this, although I think we've done a relatively good job of keeping things civil and respectful. I understand that there is an inherent risks with posts like this and have done my best to keep it from a flame up, which has so far sufficed.

13 minutes ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

Again thanks for taking the time to reply and read my post. I enjoyed the discussion and found it helpful and hopefully you have as well.

Certainly, it's important to have differing views on a subject to really fully flesh out the spectrum of possibilities. 

7 minutes ago, Korlie said:

I'd never even heard of this until now, it doesn't look natural though considering there's no graphic for items burning in your inventory or you being on fire while holding them.

It's a pretty minor ability that can have big consequences although I assure you it is most likely intentional despite the lack of graphic. The issue is that it's not really something that's immediately intuitive so a lot of people overlook this ability, even though it was designed to make Willow viable in combat. I'd like to see it re-implemented as a buff if possible.

[DarkXero]

You can turn all characters into Wilson but that won't stop KCDA from lambasting you with an orbital cannon.

Ignore and move on.

[Mario384]

33 minutes ago, JoeW said:

We would never say that. 

Everybody knows what we're working on right now. And when we're done with that, we'll be working on something else. I don't know what that is, so discussions like this go a long way to help us prioritize things when we decide what we're doing next. 

We know there are a lot of people who want character rebalances. We also know there are a lot of people who are happy with the way they are. 

I don't think you're putting enough thought into how big of a change an entire rebalance on characters is and how much that would affect literally everybody who plays the game, those who want changes and those who don't. Believe it or not, that takes a lot of work, and when most people are fine with it the way it is, it really has to be justifiable work. So it would need to be really cool and for a good reason. 

If you haven't thought about it, during The Forge, we played around and tried some things with character abilities and roles and we'll be doing something with the Big Event #2 as well. While those aren't permanent, they do let us experiment in interesting ways. 

I think the way we have thought of all of this is that if you don't like something, you can mod it. That's why a significant amount of effort was put into modding. I understand that some people don't feel that mods are a good solution because they aren't official. However, I believe it does go a long way to show us how people feel about what they want in the game.

All that being said, after Big Event #2, we'll regroup and see if there are changes we believe are worth making. 

Thank you for responding, it means a lot to us to hear the big guys up-stairs on the matters every so often, last response to a balance discussion like this might've been two years ago or so.

 

What we're asking for isn't an entire re-balance or anything like that, what most people want really are just small tweaks which Klei certainly has done before.  For example, when Woodie came out, his Werebeaver form was later updated to have weather resistance and 25% damage reduction, for example.  Plus, there was all those (albeit subpar in many people's eyes) tweaks you guys made to Willow over time, we just want that again.  Willow is bad, Werebeaver mode is bad, Duelists are too, and the to really fix the main gripe people have with them is to just make small tweaks.  We don't need some crazy, game-wide rebalance of everything, but small quality-of-life fixes would definitely help the experience.  It's probably not the issue of balance that people have problems with (WX, Wicker, and Wolfgang literally out-do everyone else by a huge margin it's not even funny), but it's that these characters aren't fun.

For example, Willow doesn't have a lot of what made her fun in DS, and there's been many great posts about it which you guys could look at (I personally didn't play her much, I can't speak for them) which point out small tweaks that could be made.  Werebeaver form is just extremely lackluster as a mechanic because the fun that tied into using Werebeaver form was completely stripped from the DS version (for good balance reasoning), but nothing was given to it for compensation except for some bland Woodie perks.  Finally, Duelists are so limited in scope to be used as a tool that nobody bothers with it, because they're almost certain to die.  There's a lot of balance issues, but fun is what I believe sparked people to call for possible tweaks.

In the end, it's your game, and I agree with your statement about modding as well.  But, if you'd look, you'll see how many mods have been made to rebalance Willow and Woodie, and I think it speaks for itself, truly.  I really hope you guys consider it, and don't be afraid to take community feedback.  You guys could even have a poll linked in-game if you wanted, so you could let everyone speak their opinion.  As someone else said before, silence isn't acceptance, all those people probably harbor some opinion or another.  Almost everyone I've talked says the same about Woodie and Willow, so I think if you ask your playerbase directly to possibly vote on this, I think you could get a clearer picture.

[Mr.Mulk]

3 minutes ago, DarkXero said:

You can turn all characters into Wilson but that won't stop KCDA from lambasting you with an orbital cannon.

Ignore and move on.

I get what you're saying, but it's especially hard when they're making valid arguments at to why their mains are superior to yours, it kinda stinks. There are actually times where you can have people just ban/kick you for your main because they're "useless" which is dumb but reality.

The ones that just name call aren't honestly too bad generally though, it's pretty obvious to not take them seriously.

To sum up I get that there would still be annoying people, but it'd certainly help if there was more balance to counter with.

[Mr.Mulk]

31 minutes ago, Mario384 said:

What we're asking for isn't an entire re-balance or anything like that, what most people want really are just small tweaks which Klei certainly has done before.

In the end, it's your game

Realistically for Willow I'd be satisfied with a return to true (don't starve) form, with the caveat of insanity freezing replacing random fire spawns.

As for Woodie I'm not realistically studied up enough on him to make an opinion on the actual tweaking, although I do agree he could use a buff in his current state as this post says.

[DatShadowJK]

FYI, Woodie also has this thing called 'Celebrates Thanksgiving too early', which extends the timer on all (not sure about spiders) followers

[ProfessorAlpaca]

1 hour ago, DatShadowJK said:

FYI, Woodie also has this thing called 'Celebrates Thanksgiving too early', which extends the timer on all (not sure about spiders) followers

You're just pulling our leg right? Is this seriously what that means? It's so ambiguous that I honestly assumed it was just flavor text, that is hilarious.

4 years of playing this game I still learn new things that were right in my face all this time.

[DatShadowJK]

59 minutes ago, ProfessorAlpaca said:

You're just pulling our leg right? Is this seriously what that means? It's so ambiguous that I honestly assumed it was just flavor text, that is hilarious.

4 years of playing this game I still learn new things that were right in my face all this time.

Nope, not kidding

 

[Cellby]

4 hours ago, JoeW said:

Believe it or not, that takes a lot of work, and when most people are fine with it the way it is, it really has to be justifiable work. So it would need to be really cool and for a good reason. 

If you haven't thought about it, during The Forge, we played around and tried some things with character abilities and roles and we'll be doing something with the Big Event #2 as well. While those aren't permanent, they do let us experiment in interesting ways. 

I think the way we have thought of all of this is that if you don't like something, you can mod it. That's why a significant amount of effort was put into modding. I understand that some people don't feel that mods are a good solution because they aren't official. However, I believe it does go a long way to show us how people feel about what they want in the game.

All that being said, after Big Event #2, we'll regroup and see if there are changes we believe are worth making. 

You say most people are fine with the way it is, but many people also can't make it past the first year alone. I would argue that the opinions of the players who have put a lot more time and effort into the game would have a more nuanced take on the direction of it, and that these people, myself included, would want the game to improve. People who check and post on these forums regularly have a special love for the game. Heck, I have not launched the game in ages but I still check these forums once in a while waiting for news on an update to make me want to play again. 

It is not uncommon in popular multiplayer games to have the devs revamp a character or a weapon and change the game in drastic ways. If changes are made in a successful manner, the average player would normally take just a moment to assimilate and forget how the old mechanics were sooner than you think. 

You don't need to make new characters; improve on current ones! Or if you make a new character...can you make them more unique at least? I am not going to get into a long Nerd Essay™ but character balance, I believe, is the direction the game needs to make it even more solid. I really love The Forge, and I trust I will have fun with the next event you guys are planning. It's a good direction to take the game in – I enjoy it a lot more than the normal Survival mode; it gets boring after a while. If you guys are planning on going in the direction of adding an all-year event lobby system I would not complain about that at all. But you have to accept that there will always be a part of your loyal playerbase being very sad that their wishes are not being granted or are just minimally addressed, at least to my knowledge.

I think that most of the frustration of the forum-goers stems from the fact that you guys, despite being pretty good with communication, have been pretty silent on this pretty well-discussed topic. But that's just my observation...I could be wrong. I personally am glad that you have officially "blue ticked" a character rebalance thread. 

I've said this before and I will always keep saying it:
CHARACTER REBALANCE > SKINS

[Korlie]

4 hours ago, DatShadowJK said:

FYI, Woodie also has this thing called 'Celebrates Thanksgiving too early', which extends the timer on all (not sure about spiders) followers

Actually it's 'Celebrates Thanksgiving at the correct time' so every other character naturally has a lower follower time by comparison because they don't.

[Naechan]

Ok, but whatever you do please do not touch Wicker. 

I'm begging you. Don't make this grandma cry.

[DVGMedia]

my thoughts on woodie and willow  are kind of basic. I honestly cant see anything wrong with willow.

but woodie i would say just needs to have grass armor protection and maybe spear damage

 

[DatShadowJK]

1 hour ago, Korlie said:

Actually it's 'Celebrates Thanksgiving at the correct time' so every other character naturally has a lower follower time by comparison because they don't.

Thats in Canada, the other one is literally anywere else.

we should stop getting off topic

[Mario384]

3 hours ago, Naechan said:

Ok, but whatever you do please do not touch Wicker. 

I'm begging you. Don't make this grandma cry.

I don't think they'll be touching the meta 3 (Wolfgang, Wickerbottom, WX78) anytime soon, solely because of how how much salt it'd bring.  Do those characters deserve it?  Yeah, they trivialize the game with extremely strong pros and cons which hinder them very little (example being Wolfgang's sanity problem, where he overcomes the problem by easily beating the nightmare creatures with double damage) and they're literally so far from the other characters in terms of balance it's ridiculous.  However, if the focus is about being fun and not balance, they're extremely fun to play and I'd hate for any of them to get the Woodie/Willow treatment.  Instead, they should focus on the one's people are complaining about (Woodie, Willow, Maxwell's Duelist and maybe Winona) and getting them to at least a fun status for a majority of players before looking at anything else.

[Mr.Mulk]

4 hours ago, EsaiXD said:

my thoughts on woodie and willow  are kind of basic. I honestly cant see anything wrong with willow.

but woodie i would say just needs to have grass armor protection and maybe spear damage

No character is useless (despite what a lot of the "pro" community says), but there's simply no denying the massive imbalance that exists between the characters in their current statuses. A big issue was the unforeseen consequences of multiplayer synergizing, creating what is known as "the meta" and we can see what a negative impact that has made on the community. If you genuinely believe that Willow and Woodie is fine, that's your decision, however I'd hazard a guess that most of the community solidly  disagrees with this. I'll be doing some more research on the subject later to improve this point, but we're at the point it's sometimes not even fun to play my main because I know they're objectively worse than other characters.

4 hours ago, Naechan said:

Ok, but whatever you do please do not touch Wicker. 

I'm begging you. Don't make this grandma cry.

They wouldn't touch the meta, it's the equivalent of the third rail at this point.

1 hour ago, Mario384 said:

I don't think they'll be touching the meta 3 (Wolfgang, Wickerbottom, WX78) anytime soon, solely because of how how much salt it'd bring.  Do those characters deserve it?  Yeah, they trivialize the game with extremely strong pros and cons which hinder them very little (example being Wolfgang's sanity problem, where he overcomes the problem by easily beating the nightmare creatures with double damage) and they're literally so far from the other characters in terms of balance it's ridiculous.  However, if the focus is about being fun and not balance, they're extremely fun to play and I'd hate for any of them to get the Woodie/Willow treatment.  Instead, they should focus on the one's people are complaining about (Woodie, Willow, Maxwell's Duelist and maybe Winona) and getting them to at least a fun status for a majority of players before looking at anything else.

Yeah for the mains of those characters do not worry, this thread is not denouncing anyone or calling any specific character out as needing a nerf. Honestly I agree that I wouldn't even want a nerf because of what's happened to Willow and Woodie, and instead I just want to see a buff for each.

[Korlie]

4 hours ago, DatShadowJK said:

Thats in Canada, the other one is literally anywere else.

we should stop getting off topic

That was the joke yes, although there are apparently three versions of the text for Canada, the US and then any other place. It would be weird if the text mentioned Thanksgiving in places like Egypt.

[Mr.Mulk]

As to the point of whether or not this is desired by the community I've done a bit of research and here's what I've found.

To keep things simple, I've started with this thread. While it is certainly a small sample I think it's safe to suggest we can glean some basic information about the active dedicated community's opinions from a topical thread which anyone in the community can see and post on. As of stating this the post has received 19 likes and numerous comments in agreement on my views on the subject, including users who have cited their previous posts as evidence of my claim as well. For the sake of argument we'll keep it simple and assume that so far two of the commenters have expressed views that disagree with my claims or are skeptical, along with one like on those posts by which I'll assume means he/she agrees. This would give us a ratio of 19 desired for every 3 undesired, or approximately a 90% desirability. Obviously this is skewed by the fact there's no downvote system and therefore we have to compare negative comments to likes, however it does not invalidate the findings.

Let's move on to rebalance mod counts. Foremost I think these are a valid indication of a community's desires as a lot of people have attempted to "recreate" the old Willow/Woodie via modding, although this is simply not the same as them being actually fixed. Going to the Steam workshop and simply inputting the term "rebalance" yields 50 results (and utilizing other terminology can yield new results), which is a lot for a game in which a few are postulating doesn't need rebalancing. Obviously not all these are relevant, some being related to mod characters or items, however the Woodie/Willow ones stand out prominent on the page and have some of the highest popularity. This isn't including mods posted to the forums at all, which would certainly appear very similarly to steam page.

The next platform I examined was YouTube. For starters, I had no trouble finding videos upon the subject of character rebalancing, including videos describing buffing the characters Woodie and Willow (along with Winona). Just a single one of these videos racked up 34 thousand views, which is certainly not saying all those people agree with the video, however based off of the comment section and like count (around 750) it is clear that the viewers are generally in agreement. Most people obviously don't comment or like/dislike making it difficult to determine their opinion, however the fact that this subject is causing such a big deal is evidence enough that Klei needs to examine the arguments being put forth.

Source(s): 

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8svu8a8jHUxOqXA5SM82jA

I mean even the patron saint of the elitism admitted that a buff would help when commenting on Willow's inventory burning in DS.

Moving onwards, I examined the forums themselves, perhaps the most important group of people for Klei to be listening to. Unfortunately when it came to searches regarding buffing and nerfing characters, most people who made the threads did not properly tag them, and as such it yielded lackluster results. However, I don't think it's a small secret that there is a near constant flow of posts regarding Willow and Woodie on the forums, and I've had other users who've posted here back me up on this claim.

The most broad of things that I examined was the simple google search. Starting with just Willow the results I got were certainly interesting.

There were approximately 207,000 results, and if even only 5% are on topic, it's still 10,350 results pertaining to this subject, which is a pretty big assumption to assume google is that wrong. Besides the prominent youtube display which I cited earlier, it was also important to note that a lot of the results were coming from the forums, mostly being the topic posts I mentioned as being hard to find earlier. Out of all the things I researched I'd say this one may be the most powerful, showing the claim that it is an issue that needs to be addressed. It addresses the issues with the previous examination and supplements that the dedicated few fans desire this.

Heck I didn't even address Discord in this study but if anyone wants more I'd be happy to try.

To sum up, I think it's no secret that the community has been demanding a buff for Willow and Woodie for quite some time now, and here are some actual hard numbers to back that claim up. I understand not every single member of the community agrees with this claim, which is why I've presented these numbers to both them and Klei in the hopes that it can help persuade them to view the community's desires.

Addendum: Something I'd like to directly address is the claim that 347,000 people played DST in the past two weeks and seem to be fine with it the way it is. This is incredibly misleading the way it's worded as the median playtime for these people is 2 hours (this is counting idlers keep in mind). The vast majority of people open the game probably once, play it for a little bit and then completely forget that it exists. The claim that these people should be accounted for as "being fine with things the way they are" is kinda ridiculous. Of course they're fine with it, they'll play the game once and never plug into the community, they* have no idea of the nuances of the characters in Don't Starve or Don't Starve Together, and I personally don't think their lack of saying anything should be taken as evidence of opposition to a buff. Not to mention that the daily max players peak at around a little above 10,000, showing some pretty high player turnover rates.

If we actually examine the regular active community we find it to be astronomically smaller, as far as I have seen.

*I'm not bashing on these people, most games are like this and DST isn't for everyone.

[Dreamscape18459]

1 hour ago, Mr.Mulk said:

Addendum: Something I'd like to directly address is the claim that 347,000 people played DST in the past two weeks and seem to be fine with it the way it is. This is incredibly misleading the way it's worded as the median playtime for these people is 2 hours (this is counting idlers keep in mind). The vast majority of people open the game probably once, play it for a little bit and then completely forget that it exists. The claim that these people should be accounted for as "being fine with things the way they are" is kinda ridiculous. Of course they're fine with it, they'll play the game once and never plug into the community, they* have no idea of the nuances of the characters in Don't Starve or Don't Starve Together, and I personally don't think their lack of saying anything should be taken as evidence of opposition to a buff. Not to mention that the daily max players peak at around a little above 10,000, showing some pretty high player turnover rates.

If we actually examine the regular active community we find it to be astronomically smaller, as far as I have seen.

Yeah Steamspy is not a great source but we don't have access to the telemetry that Klei does. Steamspy only includes active accounts (potentially including alternate accounts and skin idling accounts) but its still a better source than nothing.

If you are a patron for Steamspy I think you get access to exclusive data not shared publicly but I don't have the money to do so.

Also ignoring feedback is extremely dangerous. While some players (less than 2 hours a week) may not be as active as some members of the community they still are part of the player base. Ignoring select feedback can have extremely dangerous consequences. (Like Team Fortress 2's developers listening to the competitive community and stripping the casual matchmaking system of nearly all its functionality in 2016 to help further the competitive community's goals. Casual players were extremely upset and Valve had to re-implement functionality they removed to appease the competitive player base because they were losing a notable amount of casual players. Isolating a portion of the player base can lead to very bad things.)

Also Workshop page subscribers kinda has the same issue's. We can see total subscribers but not active subscribers (those currently using the mod in their game.) For this making some software that browses the servers and searches for mods might be useful although this is outside my ability to do. There is more information and graphs that are hidden and only visible to the author's but even that doesn't yield much more information than is public.

Steamcharts has some more information that steamspy does not and might be helpful to you. This is mainly concerning the playerbase over an extended period of time. My favorite portion is the player spike that occurred during the Forge. http://steamcharts.com/

Anyway the math you have so far looks good. If you have some sort of office application some charts might look cleaner and take up less space.

Also if you are trying to prove to Klei through this math that a substantial portion of players want re-balances I don't think this is a good idea. Klei has access to better information that we do not so they likely have far more accurate information than we can ever piece together.

[Mr.Mulk]

1 minute ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

Yeah Steamspy is not a great source but we don't have access to the telemetry that Klei does. Steamspy only includes active accounts (potentially including alternate accounts and skin idling accounts) but its still a better source than nothing.

Yeah unfortunately we don't get to see the who picture with even the best sources available. Honestly though telemetry can only tell us so much, although it can be used as the foundation for sure.

2 minutes ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

Also if you are trying to prove to Klei through this math that a substantial portion of players want re-balances I don't think this is a good idea. Klei has access to better information that we do not so they likely have far more accurate information than we can ever piece together.

It's not so much of I'm trying to prove to Klei that this is a thing, so much as that it's a response to the silence that we had received on the topic for so long, indicating to many that Klei may have been ignoring these types of posts entirely despite the seemingly strong support amongst the smaller active regular community. Obviously this isn't true as indicated by Joe's post, however it's important to myself and the others here who agree that I can conclude this is a legitimate thing to the community, whether or not they agree. I would cite their post that they are aware of the situation however, so I have no real need to prove it to them, although I'd hope they'd at least take my arguments and others into thought, which appears to be the case.

[Zeklo]

I'm probably in the minority, at least here on the forums, but I don't really think it's a huge deal, and especially not a priority.

 It feels like I'm walking into a heated Smite, Dota, League, or whatever discussion. Those competitive games where precise balance is such an issue because its player vs player.

I'd rather them devote their time to bringing fresh new content than tweaking numbers-if it really bothered me I'd do it myself. The only character I really want changed is Winona, not to make her more viable or stand up to the rest but to make her have a more interesting playstyle specific to her.

At the end of the day that's all that matters to me. That all the characters play differently. Not how they amount in comparison to one another.

[kertinker]

I think buffing Willow and Woodie is important, because many new players choose those characters, Willow especially. Just because they think she's cute, and funny. Then they die horribly, hate the game, and never come back. Too late, already bought it, time to laugh, ha ha! But I do think that people might be leery of playing a game, if the developers are metaphorically laughing at people and ripping them off. Especially a mature game like this where the hype has faded, it's important to make it accessible to people trying it out.

Honestly I'm surprised that the character unlocking process was removed. Fewer choices is easier especially if you're new to the game, and it's a good idea to keep challenging or specialist characters out of the default lineup for people who don't already intend to play them. Though I'm sure a lot of people would be upset if the only characters you start out with are Wilson and Winona.

[Scaltra]

4 hours ago, Dreamscape18459 said:

 

Also ignoring feedback is extremely dangerous. While some players (less than 2 hours a week) may not be as active as some members of the community they still are part of the player base. Ignoring select feedback can have extremely dangerous consequences. (Like Team Fortress 2's developers listening to the competitive community and stripping the casual matchmaking system of nearly all its functionality in 2016 to help further the competitive community's goals. Casual players were extremely upset and Valve had to re-implement functionality they removed to appease the competitive player base because they were losing a notable amount of casual players. Isolating a portion of the player base can lead to very bad things.)

 

 

Ignoring feedback is extremely dangerous you are right, one of the worst things you could do in my oppinon is not listen to constructive feedback from your playerbase. This is evident in team fortresses case; however, this is not team fortress and no one is being unheard. I fail to see groups calling out and claiming these characters don't need a buff or that things are fine, I've heard nothing from such players. 

A competitive team based co-op game is not very comparable to don't starve together as that is not the main game mode. Buffing these two weak characters is not going to cause unbalance and ruin the game for anyone at all. 

If anything it would add a much needed diversity to the don't starve roasters you see publicly played. By buffing a character you are appeasing to both the competitive players who want a more balanced and fair game for all characters and make it so people who pick a currently considered "low tier" character they won't actually be a drag on a team or be at a disadvantage, as a newer player wouldn't know.

[Lumina]

2 minutes ago, kertinker said:

But I do think that people might be leery of playing a game, if the developers are metaphorically laughing at people and ripping them off.

I don't think that developers are doing this or that it's their intent in any way. When you play a game with multiples characters, either you try first the first character (because usually it's the one suited for beginner), or you try multiple characters (trying to find one fitting your taste).

Also, in this case, unlocking wouldn't help a lot because Willow is the first character we unlock, usually.

 

Anyway, i think it would be welcome to have some small change for Willow, Woodie and maybe some other characters. I wouldn't be against a small tuning to make Wickerbottom less great but i understand why it's something to risky.

 

And i like the fact that in events, role and balance of character could be completely different. It's a nice change, even if it doesn't change the base game. I like playing Wickerbottom, but in the Forge, i liked playing other characters (Webber was one of my favorites). It's not the same thing than a base game balance, of course, but it's a great way to introduce changes and make people considering characters in another point of view.

[kertinker]

Just now, Lumina said:

unlocking wouldn't help a lot because Willow is the first character we unlock, usually.

Unless... she wasn't the first character we unlock. First unlocking WX-78 or Wolfgang, or Wendy would be better. Or better yet, there were creative ways to unlock each character, like Willow's skull drops after you've torched your 1000th tree, or something.

2 minutes ago, Lumina said:

but in the Forge

The Forge isn't even remotely the same game, so I don't think it applies to buffs in DST. How's Willow going to freeze to death in that arena? Where's Woodie going to find trees to chop?

[Zeklo]

3 minutes ago, kertinker said:

like Willow's skull drops after you've torched your 1000th tree, or something.

I don't think you thought that through.