Character Reworks???

[Spoops]

Don't starve together has a lot going for it. It's fun, the devs are great and the community is active.

There's just one little problem and that's balance between the characters. Characters like Wickerbottom, WX-78 or Wolfgang are often picked cause of their abilities and playstyles. Maxwell and Wilson are pretty balanced in my opinion, Wilson is the mascot and the all around character. Maxwell is really useful if you know how to play him. Webber provides upsides and downsides with a fun and unique playstyle. Wes is the challenge character, nothing wrong with that. 

Here's the tricky part. Almost half of the roster is rarely used because of their lackluster abilities/upsides and a generally boring playstyle. These characters are generally Willow, Woodie, Winona, Wigfrid and Wendy. I know I'm not the first one to talk about this topic and I know that I'm certainly not the last.

Contrary to what you might believe, I main Wickerbottom. I want to play other characters but I feel like that wouldn't benefit me all that much.

I just want the dev team to know they've done an amazing job with this game that so many people enjoy playing. 

 

How would you guys rework these characters?  

[Auth]

2 minutes ago, Spoops said:

Wigfrid and Wendy

Something tells me you don't go on pubs that often. These are some of the most played characters I see.

[Spoops]

Just now, Auth said:

Something tells me you don't go on pubs that often. These are some of the most played characters I see.

I meant that the other characters are usually played a lot more generally speaking.

[Najaf]

WX-78, he needs deadly laser beams 

[Auth]

Just now, Spoops said:

I meant that the other characters are usually played a lot more generally speaking.

Again, I don't think you go on pubs that often. I primarily see Wilsons, Willows, Wendys, Wickerbottoms, Wigfrids, WX-78s, and more Webbers than there are actual spiders in the world. Despite the fact Golfwang is unrivaled in terms of combat, I don't often see him on servers. Even when I host servers myself I think I've only seen about 3 of them ever. I see more Winonas and Wes than I see of Golfwang. However, I do see a lot more Maxwells than I see of Woodie, as Woodie (or at least beaver mode) I feel needs some sort of change to even render him useful, as beaver is essentially a debuff with a fancy coat of paint (as opposed to DS singleplayer where it was awesome) and even in human form he is easily and instantly outclassed dramatically by Maxwell's potential, albeit at least Woodie has more control of where he actually wants to chop trees.

Ranking characters that need changes based off of their representation is a little odd though, as that's what VALVe does for Team Fortress 2 and it follows a cycle of "Making it overpowered, the community complains, they make it useless, nobody uses it because its useless, so they make it overpowered" and as you can probably guess it isn't the best plan.

[ButterStuffed]

On top of a general rebalance of all the characters a minor ability that is specifically only useable when playing with other people would be neat.

For example Wendy could have Abigail buff another person for a short period of time.

Or WX-78 could detach his head and give it to somebody else so they can feed him from far away.

Stuff like that.

[Spoops]

5 minutes ago, Auth said:

changes based off of their representation

Sorry if I'm a bit confusing, (I'm kinda bad at communicating). What I meant was that they're not underpowered cuz they're underrepresented or anything. I was talking about their abilities and viability. What I meant was that a lot of experienced players usually don't play these characters. (at least from what I've seen)

[Lakurius]

Plz nerf wicker, maxwell, wolfgang and maybe wx.

Buff willow, wendy and winona. (Buff woodie's werebeaver form a bit (hambat damage probably), other than that he's fine.)

Thx klei : )

[ShadowDuelist]

52 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

Plz nerf wicker, maxwell, wolfgang and maybe wx.

Buff willow, wendy and winona. (Buff woodie's werebeaver form a bit (hambat damage probably), other than that he's fine.)

Thx klei : )

Nerfing would only make most people angry, myself included.
I'd say:
Add new/better perks to some characters YES
Remove/lower efficiency of perks from current ones NO

EDIT:

Also, there are many mechanics I feel most people doesn't know about these characters:

EG:

• Willow with scaled armor can get sanity from 0 to 120 almost instantly by tossing one by one (not stacks, single items) long burning items, like rope, burning them 10 or 20 seconds, then putting them out with a balloon or a flingo. it doesn't make her awesome, but its still a cool thing only her can do, that most players don't use. She can also stack Bernies in little enclosed places to mass farm nightmare fuel with the bone helmet or nightmare amulet, with tiny or no risk.
• Wendy can make the most efficient sanity stations for any base, with evil flowers (look up wendy sanity stations if you don't know how). Wendy can make short work of shadow monkeys, even actually farming them during nightmare cycles. Wendy can have multiple Abigail flowers, so she can re-spawn her almost instantly every time, allowing you to use Abigail as a tank against most mobs. Also bear in mind that Abigail deals 40 damage AOE in the caves permanently, so pair that up with the multiple flowers thing explained above. She's far from bad.
• Woodie has permanent Nightvision and does not actually require to eat as a werebeaver, you can exist just nibbling boulders once and then for days. You can map the ruins literally without items.

 

[Maxposting]

37 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

Plz nerf wicker, maxwell, wolfgang and maybe wx.

Buff willow, wendy and winona. (Buff woodie's werebeaver form a bit (hambat damage probably), other than that he's fine.)

Thx klei : )

i dont want to be rude but you are maxwell worshipper after all...

[ShadowDuelist]

27 minutes ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

i dont want to be rude but you are maxwell worshipper after all...

And regarding this, Maxwell does not require nerf if anything, his duelists require some buff, perhaps letting them use helmets would do.

Spoiler

Helmets that break just as they would on pigs, and if PVP is the main concern, let other players attacking the duelists in PVP bypass the protection entirely. Helmets could also offer a different armor for them for balance purposes, for instance half of their original protection EG: a football helmet would offer just 40% protection for them, and if it gets enough damage it will break and you will need to give it another.

The whole point is so that when fighting things, duelists don't die instantly, and end up becoming a waste of 4 fuels. I think their main purpose is meant that they are an extra DPS for maxwell, just as they were in Forge (with a different mechanic, of course). Currently they are a tiny hunting aid in early game, and will most likely die against everything else.

[Lakurius]

Spoiler

39 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Nerfing would only make most people angry, myself included.
I'd say:
Add new/better perks to some characters YES
Remove/lower efficiency of perks from current ones NO

EDIT:

Also, there are many mechanics I feel most people doesn't know about these characters:

EG:

• Willow with scaled armor can get sanity from 0 to 120 almost instantly by tossing one by one (not stacks, single items) long burning items, like rope, burning them 10 or 20 seconds, then putting them out with a balloon or a flingo. it doesn't make her awesome, but its still a cool thing only her can do, that most players don't use. She can also stack Bernies in little enclosed places to mass farm nightmare fuel with the bone helmet or nightmare amulet, with tiny or no risk.
• Wendy can make the most efficient sanity stations for any base, with evil flowers (look up wendy sanity stations if you don't know how). Wendy can make short work of shadow monkeys, even actually farming them during nightmare cycles. Wendy can have multiple Abigail flowers, so she can re-spawn her almost instantly every time, allowing you to use Abigail as a tank against most mobs.
• Woodie has permanent Nightvision and does not actually require to eat as a werebeaver, you can exist just nibbling boulders once and then for days. You can map the ruins literally without items.

 

 

People will be angry but it's just necessary. Wicker, max and wolf are just way stronger than the other chars

Spoiler

Also there are many games that constantly nerf/buff their chars for good balance. It's just a normal thing to do.

Sanity stations and willow's nightmare fuel farms are pretty cool for megabases but they don't really make willow and wendy good chars : (

5 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

And regarding this, Maxwell does not require nerf if anything, his duelists require some buff, perhaps letting them use helmets would do.

  Hide contents

Helmets that break just as they would on pigs, and if PVP is the main concern, let other players attacking the duelists in PVP bypass the protection entirely. Helmets could also offer a different armor for them for balance purposes, for instance half of their original protection EG: a football helmet would offer just 40% protection for them, and if it gets enough damage it will break and you will need to give it another.

The whole point is so that when fighting things, duelists don't die instantly, and end up becoming a waste of 4 fuels. I think their main purpose is meant that they are an extra DPS for maxwell, just as they were in Forge (with a different mechanic, of course)

His duelists are pretty useful though. They give you more dps but here are some random things only very few people know about the duelists:

They don't get attacked by baby tentacles so tentapillars are easier, beequeen can be(e) killed without armor or healing if you use the duelists right, they can easily kill ewecus for you if you combine ranged weapons with /dance, they kill annoying splumonkeys in the ruins and they're also able to tank beefalos cuz hp regen : ) dis all combined with better nightmare fuel farming, op logs and rocks farming (which is actually faster than any char+bearger/forest stalker) makes him pretty op imho (and on top of that you can just switch to wicker, craft all the books you need, then switch back to maxwell and WEW there u have the best char in dis game : ) 

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

 

• Willow with scaled armor can get sanity from 0 to 120 almost instantly by tossing one by one (not stacks, single items) long burning items, like rope, burning them 10 or 20 seconds, then putting them out with a balloon or a flingo. it doesn't make her awesome, but its still a cool thing only her can do, that most players don't use. She can also stack Bernies in little enclosed places to mass farm nightmare fuel with the bone helmet or nightmare amulet, with tiny or no risk.
• Wendy can make the most efficient sanity stations for any base, with evil flowers (look up wendy sanity stations if you don't know how). Wendy can make short work of shadow monkeys, even actually farming them during nightmare cycles. Wendy can have multiple Abigail flowers, so she can re-spawn her almost instantly every time, allowing you to use Abigail as a tank against most mobs. Also bear in mind that Abigail deals 40 damage AOE in the caves permanently, so pair that up with the multiple flowers thing explained above. She's far from bad.

 

Needing to beat dragonfly or bee queen means it doesn’t count.

[ShadowDuelist]

20 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

People will be angry but it's just necessary. Wicker, max and wolf are just way stronger than the other chars

If the other characters become better, Wicker and Wolf will be on the same page. Again, no need to nerf them, Klei has had a way too strong hand for nerfing, just look at Willow. You'd only get 2 new Willows.

 

20 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

Sanity stations and willow's nightmare fuel farms are pretty cool for megabases but they don't really make willow and wendy good chars : (

What makes a good char? Also Wendy has a ton of extra abilities she can do, I don't see where she's bad at. Her only con can be bypassed entirely by having a beefalo on the surface, and having 3 or 4 abigail flowers in the caves. 

 

20 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

His duelists are pretty useful though. They give you more dps but here are some random things only very few people know about the duelists:

They don't get attacked by baby tentacles so tentapillars are easier, beequeen can be(e) killed without armor or healing if you use the duelists right, they can easily kill ewecus for you if you combine ranged weapons with /dance, they kill annoying splumonkeys in the ruins and they're also able to tank beefalos cuz hp regen : ) dis all combined with better nightmare fuel farming, op logs and rocks farming (which is actually faster than any char+bearger/forest stalker) makes him pretty op imho (and on top of that you can just switch to wicker, craft all the books you need, then switch back to maxwell and WEW there u have the best char in dis game : ) 

Maxwell has the strongest con in the game, you are always left with a crippled character that will die out of a tiny distraction. He's essentially the true glass cannon.
The tentapillars is just a tiny niche thing you'd use once in an ingame year and its most likely not worth making them for that , and as far as I've tried they die instantly to splumonkeys. The beefalo thing is part of what I meant about tiny hunting advantage. For the most part I rarely use them, I do give them some hunting use when i can spare some fuel, just for fun,  because they never end up being worth the fuel usage, even when I tank the hits and keep the aggro.

I don't know what you mean about bee queen, do you have an example?

7 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Needing to beat dragonfly or bee queen means it doesn’t count.

My examples were meant to aim for the long term game, the mid and late game, where some chatacters lacking start showing. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a Willow or Werebeaver buff, I just wanted to point that sometimes people exaggerates when they say some characters are entirely useless.

[Maxposting]

28 minutes ago, Lakurius said:

on top of that ( hell long comment ) you can just switch to wicker, craft all the books you need, then switch back to maxwell and WEW there u have the best char in dis game : ) 

Except that wickerbottom is the actual one that crafts the books so don't go all MAXWELL OP CUZ HE CAN READ MAGIK because It is wickerbottom who crafts the books , not maxwell.

Without any mods , pre lunar update and solo Wickerbottom is the only one.

[ShadowDuelist]

For a solo playthrough I'd go Wickerbottom, as Ivo said. Much more possibilities, even if you can now change characters to get books.
Having more than one Wickerbottom does not add much to a team, whereas having a wickerbottom AND a Maxwell does. This is where I feel Maxwell becomes much more useful in the late game. The synergy between these 2 characters is well made in my opinion and something I'd personally like to see more in the game.
And yeah you can switch between wicker, make books and come back as Maxwell, but when you do, the game will always remind you one important aspect: 75 hp.

With great power comes great... fragility.

[Lumina]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Nerfing would only make most people angry, myself included.

Depend of how it's done. I would not mind some nerf on book (like not being able to spam them without enough sanity, for example), if this opens the possibility to more diversity, and so, more fun. Just nerfing character will be of course a little frustrating, but at the moment, it's not fair to add options to wickerbottom since it will probably make her even more powerful and mandatory.

I feel some other "op" characters could also benefit for a "nerf but more diversity added", when others characters just need the buff/the diversity (or both).

 

And honestly, if a character rebalance brings shiny and fun things to some of the characters, i would like to see Wicker having something shiny and fun too. But i feel like it could not come without a cost, and she can totally be nerfed on some things anyway, so there is space to do stuff here.

[Dr. Safety]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

And regarding this, Maxwell does not require nerf if anything, his duelists require some buff, perhaps letting them use helmets would do.

What are your opinions (being a fellow Maxwell main) to have a shadow carrier? 

Same sanity loss as a duelist. To craft you have to be wearing a backpack and have 2 nightmare fuel. When crafted everything in the backpack will be dropped to the ground. The shadow carrier acts like a chester who runs around and picks up loose items, and has the same carrying space as a normal backpack.

[ShadowDuelist]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

What are your opinions (being a fellow Maxwell main) to have a shadow carrier? 

Same sanity loss as a duelist. To craft you have to be wearing a backpack and have 2 nightmare fuel. When crafted everything in the backpack will be dropped to the ground. The shadow carrier acts like a chester who runs around and picks up loose items, and has the same carrying space as a normal backpack.

I actually like that Idea, rezecib added that to his rebalance mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=741879530 try it out you will see how it behaves in the game, it feels like a great addition.
He also made shadows to be able to change purpose by giving them items, which is something neat for the mod, although I wouldn't ask such a big change to Klei, since the current system is extensively tested and it works.
However adding new shadows with new uses like this one you mention, would be really cool.

[Lakurius]

Spoiler

30 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

If the other characters become better, Wicker and Wolf will be on the same page. Again, no need to nerf them, Klei has had a way too strong hand for nerfing, just look at Willow. You'd only get 2 new Willows.

 

What makes a good char? Also Wendy has a ton of extra abilities she can do, I don't see where she's bad at. Her only con can be bypassed entirely by having a beefalo on the surface, and having 3 or 4 abigail flowers in the caves. 

 

Maxwell has the strongest con in the game, you are always left with a crippled character that will die out of a tiny distraction. He's essentially the true glass cannon.
The tentapillars is just a tiny niche thing you'd use once in an ingame year and its most likely not worth making them for that , and as far as I've tried they die instantly to splumonkeys. The beefalo thing is part of what I meant about tiny hunting advantage. For the most part I rarely use them, I do give them some hunting use when i can spare some fuel, just for fun,  because they never end up being worth the fuel usage, even when I tank the hits and keep the aggro.

I don't know what you mean about bee queen, do you have an example?

My examples were meant to aim for the long term game, the mid and late game, where some chatacters lacking start showing. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a Willow or Werebeaver buff, I just wanted to point that sometimes people exaggerates when they say some characters are entirely useless.

 

The thing with the tentapillars is pretty useful when trying to find the atrium. 

Duelists can easily kill the unshadow-version of splumonkeys. (This is especially useful in the REAL ruins (part of the ruins where statues and clockworks can be found) since rooks sometimes destroy ancient pseudoscience stations and splumonkeys spawn and they just steal ur stuff ;'( oh also, duelists can take bishops' aggro which is quite powerful in a no-armor-no-healing ruins rush as maxwell.)

I rather keep the maxwell-beequeen strat a secret since i dont want everyone to know about it (you can send me a DM if you really want to know).

Maxwell's downside isn't that bad. The only time it really matters is when bunnies kill you (you should have some life giving amulets at that time cuz umm klaus?) or when splumonkeys attack you but you can just wait for the nightmare phase to end so um wut

How i'd buff/nerf maxwell (please don't flame me)

give him 150 hp, double all the damage he receives. Give him the ability to open/close his codex in his inventory which does the following:

shadows will attack/chop/dig/mine everything they see if the book is opened.

They'll only chop/mine/dig something if you click on trees/boulders/stumps/graves etc. if the book's closed. Duelists would behave like maxwell's reflection (move to the right and they do the same, attack something and they'll attack too). They deal 0.25x damage in this form and lower maxwell's max hp by 25%. Ur thoughts plz but dont flame me pls

Klei should probably give us the ability to choose the nerfs so we dont get super-nerfed chars such as willow but ummm idk 

49 minutes ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Except that wickerbottom is the actual one that crafts the books so don't go all MAXWELL OP CUZ HE CAN READ MAGIK because It is wickerbottom who crafts the books , not maxwell.

Without any mods , pre lunar update and solo Wickerbottom is the only one.

Pre lunar update yeah, but now we have this update and it somewhat buffed maxwell.

[Alarsin]

I completely agree with ShadowDuelist. Nerfing strong chars would create a lot of negative feedback. I would rather have no character rebalance at all if it comes to nerfing.

[Loopy Ouroboros]

I know I will be cutting across the grain with this, but I strongly think that the infamous three meta characters we all know and love deserve some truly meaningful drawbacks to really make playing as them interesting.

People can adapt to change. Wickerbottom can have an equal standing with Willow in both utility and playstyle without making either of them unnecessarily difficult to play. If negative feedback is such a consideration to be worth doing nothing at all, then, tough beans. I never thought we must try to please those most who are the most unwilling to try something different in their lives.

[torauma]

Willow should be able to put out flames for sanity (Or something that would take her off the "Griefer" character list)

[ShadowDuelist]

What I fear about nerfs is that Klei was pretty hard when it came about nerfing in the past. So it would be quite a delicate balance. As mentioned above, Wicker needing the actual sanity cost to use each book would probably do, it would also turn sanity into a "mana" or "magicka" pool of sorts which could be an interesting take.
But still, giving her more drawbacks than that would probably do more damage than good.

...And sorry, it's my main, my name and my avatar, and have to stand for it, I still think duelists need more durability  

[GMDApple]

I think the point a lot of people miss is how good the characters are early game and how good they are late game. A reason a lot of the "good" characters are considered to be good is because they either have the ability to scale well into late game (WX-78) or have abilities that are constantly good no matter where you are in the game (Wolfgang, Wickerbottom, Maxwell). However there are some characters whos weaknesses are exaggerated a bit. Let's take a look at Wendy for example.

Wendy is actually much better than people give her credit for. Most people already know her potential in the early game with her twin sister Abigail, as she can easily demolish the weaker mobs that are usually present, and is great for people who do not know how to kite. The part where seem to exaggerate her weakness is her late game. Many people point to her 0.75x damage multiplier as being a great liability, and while this would be true if this was Don't Starve, people are forgetting that you have other people with you who can do full damage. Sure it might take a bit longer, but not much to the point where it can completely change the game. Some people also say how Abigail is completely useless by late game, and I have to say that is not true at all. I cannot count how many times i was in the ruins and Abigail saved us from so many things such as spider swarms or Splumonkey. Hell Abigail is a godsend during a hound wave, as she can stun lock the hounds and kill all of them. I will say though that Abigail does become somewhat useless during a boss fight, as she can chip them down, but dies fairly quickly. If anything I would suggest to buff Wendy by allowing her to craft some sort of nightmare abigail that does single target damage, and has higher HP pool. (Probably from 6 evil flowers and nightmare fuel) However I would honestly place her as a good character rather than bad character.

On a side note I feel like if you're putting Winona on the list of characters who need a buff you might as well put Wilson on there as well. Even if he is the mascot Winona is better if you can deal with Freezing. Wilson can make beard hair which... right now can only make two things: bernie, and a meat effigy. Both of which you don't really use much, or maybe at all.