Do people not feel that Pig Guards need some tweaks?

[Duxe]

I think this is my largest balance concern so far.

This spoiler is my thought process / pretty much brain puke I had while writing this, that I didn't want to delete. It's thicc.

Spoiler

In my opinion:

• Their loot is too good.

For how easy and common they are, being able to use a torch to burn one five times and obtain a halberd, a torch, and a log armor is way too much reward. Pig guards are literally wearing the tin suit and fancy helmet - how is there a log suit even involved?

• The torches at dusk/night needs tweaking.

I get that Don't Starve is about all the trouble any single one [possibly unexpected] thing can cause and having the pigs be a fire hazard isn't inherently a bad thing but often times this torch situation with them goes awry. They chase enemies off screen and end up burning down half of an entire biome when you are literally 2 days in and just running around to uncover some of the world map. To me it also makes no sense for a town full of civilized pigs to be burning down their entire village when any mob at all gets into it, reinforced by the fact that there are already city lamps all over the place - why do they need another light source in town, they should just be patrolling the streets with their halberds out! As for the guards outside of town, they have two hands (hooves?) so why can't they hold a halberd in one and a torch in the other?

• Security contracts and bribery complicates things. [Note: Don't get me wrong, I think both of those systems should stay!]

The security contract complicates this whole situation even further because if you buff the gaurds so they are harder to kill, it also makes the security contract much more OP.

The bribery system has two issues in my opinion. First, in my head, if I bribe a guard, they should turn a blind eye for a second. You can currently take everything from an area a guard is watching over and then pay him 10 oincs and he forgets everything. But if you bribe him beforehand, it doesn't do anything. Second, the guards being so easy to kill, kind of defeats the purpose of bribing them, especially for the cost.

I really don't know how I would go about the balance even though it's been on my mind a lot while playing. Here's my thoughts:

• Pig guards should not drop armor or whatever light source they have. They should -only- drop the halberd and have that small possibility of pig skin, and even still I think that's pretty OP loot considering how annoying it can be to make a halberd at the moment (I get it might be easier later if rubies are easier to get our hands on).
• Pig guards should get an armor upgrade, maybe give them the a tin suit and then offset the speed reduction by making them slightly faster. [Crossed out for realizing they could just code a multiplier where players do less damage.]
• Limit the number of guards you can use security contracts on at once (if this isn't already a thing, I haven't tested it.) [Almost crossed out for the same reason as above, if they keep the current gear on them I don't think this is that necessary, however, maybe there still should be some limit.]
• Make it so players do less damage to the guards, just put in some multiplier that halves player damage or maybe cuts it into a third. This way, players will have a harder time killing them but monsters won't.

The torch situation is complicated. I want the fire hazard to remain, but I also think something should be done to it - something I at the moment can not think of.

If there were patch notes on the pig guards, something like this is what I would like to see:

• Pig guards now only drop halberd with a chance of pig skin.
• Players do 50% less damage to pig guards. [Monsters still do the same.]
• Pig guards are now immune to fire.

Edit at the end before I post: I have been looking at this post too long and I need other sources of input to further my thoughts on this. I don't know why they bother me so much but this post took far too long to think over / edit. Look at how much essay I had to write and it boiled down to just the above. Blah. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the torching of everything by guards as it is but I can live with it.

As an aside about it though: If we are going the torch route - How about letting the houses actually burn down and you could repair them with some materials, like using a few boards and cut stone on them. Once repaired, the pig assigned to said house could reward you with oincs? A thought.

Also I have left this up for like 4 hours while doing other things irl and browsing the forums here and there. Now that I have learned about the Swashy hat allowing you to hide your identity from the guards I can't be bothered by the security contract and bribery point I had written earlier. It's whatever.

[lakhnish]

1 hour ago, Duxe said:

As an aside about it though: If we are going the torch route - How about letting the houses actually burn down and you could repair them with some materials, like using a few boards and cut stone on them. Once repaired, the pig assigned to said house could reward you with oincs? A thought.

Burnt homes can and are already reparable. Use a hammer yourself to repair it, or wait till daytime for the hammer pig to repair it.

[Duxe]

Oh, the only reason I didn't think about that is because every time a home burns theres that bug where if you walk inside a store and then exit, they automatically repair. So I've never had to try repairing one - though I have done that to the Slanty Shanty. But I guess then thats fine as is too as long as the bug gets fixed.

However, doesn't it then get complicated when we can build our own Pig City buildings? If we can't hammer them down it might be annoying. I don't know, maybe the key to the city will use different buildings than the base ones, at least in terms of how they work maybe not new designs.

[BionicSandwich]

I would say:

1.increase the pig guards health, they should be more beefy in full body Armour.

2. make them have different attack patterns for attacking, such as charging with the halberd.(its a spear axe, the pointy bit should be used for something.

they need to be more threatening, being able to kite them around so easily is not good for game balance.