Concerns Regarding the Recent "DST" Update

[Nothing W]

As a long-time loyal player of "DST," I've always loved the game's challenging survival aspects and the unique, balanced design between different characters. However, I have deep concerns about Klei's recent test update.

In this update, Klei introduced a skill tree for Wolfgang that gives him a significant attack boost. This design appears to disrupt the game's balance and challenge. Wolfgang's attack power now far surpasses other characters, making them seem underpowered in combat. Moreover, once players unlock this skill tree, it can be used in any new game. This could potentially simplify the game to a point that diminishes its replay value.

I understand that Klei might be aiming to attract new players by lowering the game's difficulty. However, I believe this approach is not appropriate. The game's challenge and balance are the core attractions of "DST," and this update may weaken these elements. I'm convinced there are other ways to attract new players, such as improving beginner's tutorials or optimizing the existing difficulty adjustment options, without disrupting the fundamental balance of the game.

I've also noted that Klei has recently released several new games, which may indicate that they are not under financial pressure. I hope they can make use of these resources to find better ways to attract new players while maintaining the core attractions of "DST."

As a loyal "DST" player, I look forward to the game continuing to maintain its uniqueness and appeal. I hope my feedback can help Klei make better decisions and make "DST" an even better game.

[Baark0]

Wolfgang's damage has always surpassed other characters, that's literally 80% of this kit. The skill tree just lets him scale into the endgame, as it doesn't make a ton of sense for the damage character to suddenly stop dealing damage. You can't even use this early game as planar weapons cannot be acquired until AF/CC have been defeated, and even if you could, you'd still get more damage out of dark swords. 

3 hours ago, Nothing W said:

This could potentially simplify the game to a point that diminishes its replay value.

In what world would Wolfgang dealing higher damage, not even with planar weapons, diminish DST's replayability? Simply picking a different character already gives you a much different experience, and that's not even mentioning world settings, player imposed restrictions, mods, or playing with other people. 

[Kemthazul]

Eeeeeh, I'm pretty ambivalent about it.

But it does feel like Klei doing a "make a problem, sell a solution" thing. 'sell' here not to be taken literally, but I hope y'all get what I'm saying.

[Nothing W]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

Wolfgang's damage has always surpassed other characters, that's literally 80% of this kit. The skill tree just lets him scale into the endgame, as it doesn't make a ton of sense for the damage character to suddenly stop dealing damage. You can't even use this early game as planar weapons cannot be acquired until AF/CC have been defeated, and even if you could, you'd still get more damage out of dark swords. 

In what world would Wolfgang dealing higher damage, not even with planar weapons, diminish DST's replayability? Simply picking a different character already gives you a much different experience, and that's not even mentioning world settings, player imposed restrictions, mods, or playing with other people. 

Looking at the difficulty curve that Klei once projected, players can only start a certain game node if they survive for a longer time, such as the Shadow Chess Piece Statue of the Lunar Eclipse and the bosses that spawn in fixed seasons. The risk that players take and what they can gain (power increase) usually have a positive correlation. However, Wolfgang can easily gain real damage improvement in the skill tree, and his excellent combat ability means he takes less damage and consumes less than most characters. I just think that the interesting settings in his skill tree have been ignored in favor of high attack. Now players can quickly progress through a mainline, and if Wolfgang's skill tree only provides him with benefits at the end of the game process, then Klei actually hopes that players can enjoy crushing everything after unlocking weapons in a fixed process. This is not conducive to the replay value of a single world because there is nothing that poses a threat to Wolfgang in the late game. And the fixed process will lead to the loss of replay value of a single world spreading to every world, which I do not want to see. If Klei wants players to switch characters to extend the playability of a single world or to let the mod community save their game, it is a failure and also devalues the existence of every character, just a fixed link, devoid of soul.

[Frashaw27]

7 hours ago, Nothing W said:

I just think that the interesting settings in his skill tree have been ignored in favor of high attack

That's literally any perk relating to combat would have this issue. In the beta Woodie has a choice between 3 masteries of his different were forms, and most people pick the moose because it helps them deal more damage. There's arguments that can be had that the beaver slam/goose flight is useful in certain scenarios, but everyone just eventually goes back to were moose because of the combat boost. Same thing with wormwood, most people praise his bright shade perks (which are admittedly the most unique of the most of the perks) because it helps him in combat. Most people are just gonna gravitate towards the combat perks for any character, so why is it bad for Wolfgang and not the others?

[Capybara007]

14 hours ago, Nothing W said:

I understand that Klei might be aiming to attract new players by lowering the game's difficulty.

Bruh

Sentences like this are the reason nobody takes the "dst is now easier" argument seriously anymore, its also the reason why the beta branch forums got filled with people who didnt even play the update, just heard about the idea of skill trees and started whining about how dst is now different

not me saying "whining" because they disagree with me, the threads were literally just people saying how bad the skill trees are without actually saying what makes the skill trees bad

if you go to the beta branch rn there is a lot of threads that actually care about the content of the update and give useful feedback

[_zwb]

I don't quite get the point of Wolfgang skill tree, the whole planar defense and damage system is just against high damage per hit as the more damage you dealt, the more defense planar mobs have against normal attacks. Then...why would you buff Wolfgang again? Isn't the whole point of planar defense to stop characters like Wolfgang and Wanda to deal high damage per hit?

[Mysterious box]

44 minutes ago, _zwb said:

I don't quite get the point of Wolfgang skill tree, the whole planar defense and damage system is just against high damage per hit as the more damage you dealt, the more defense planar mobs have against normal attacks. Then...why would you buff Wolfgang again? Isn't the whole point of planar defense to stop characters like Wolfgang and Wanda to deal high damage per hit?

It's more or less the mmo formula introduce a powerful threat that worries you for a short bit then to catch up you speed up the process of speedrunning to the end game content and introduce something powerful to trivalize the threats that new content offers then repeat from step one.

[Baark0]

11 hours ago, Nothing W said:

However, Wolfgang can easily gain real damage improvement in the skill tree, and his excellent combat ability means he takes less damage and consumes less than most characters. 

Where in Wolfgang's skill tree is this damage improvement coming from? Higher maximum mightiness doesn't increase his damage, the extra planar damage is just making up for the damage he lost due to the introduction of planar damage, and the affinity bonuses are only effective against a small portion of the creatures in the game. You're not wrong that Wolfgang uses less resources than other characters when it comes to armor, healing, and weapons, but that's because outside of damage, Wolfgang doesn't really do anything. 

11 hours ago, Nothing W said:

I just think that the interesting settings in his skill tree have been ignored in favor of high attack.

You're not wrong that Wolfgang's skill tree is boring, but the issue isn't with that a portion of his skill tree is dedicated to planar damage, it's that a portion of his tree is dedicated to the next to useless extra maximum mightiness. Klei had to give Wolfgang planar damage though, as the main selling point of his character (high armounts of damage) was taken away when fighting planar enemies.

11 hours ago, Nothing W said:

Now players can quickly progress through a mainline, and if Wolfgang's skill tree only provides him with benefits at the end of the game process, then Klei actually hopes that players can enjoy crushing everything after unlocking weapons in a fixed process. 

I feel like you don't realize that the extra damage Wolfgang gets is exclusively for planar weapons. The only way this would speed up progression (which isn't that true by itself, DST is a game about much more than just combat) is if players decided to enable rifts in the world settings, and even if they did, the extra damage doesn't overshine Wolfgangs 2x damage multipliers, it simply makes up for the lost damage versus planar enemies. 

As for players using stronger weapons vs previous enemies, that's literally the whole point of weapons being stronger. Players should want to use the best equipment available to make previous problems easier, it's why the bone armor is so coveted, as tons of enemies can be killed effortlessly with this stronger piece of equipment.

11 hours ago, Nothing W said:

This is not conducive to the replay value of a single world because there is nothing that poses a threat to Wolfgang in the late game. And the fixed process will lead to the loss of replay value of a single world spreading to every world, which I do not want to see.

For the vast majority of characters, nothing poses a threat to them in the late game, that's the whole reason Klei's been adding all these late game threats in the first place. And again, Wolfgang dealing higher damage will not cause a loss in replayability to DST. All worlds eventually reach a point where players lose interest in them, that's the natural cycle of this game, and you know where those players go when they lose interest in their world? They go and start a new world, likely picking a new character, and suddenly they're invested in the game again. 

11 hours ago, Nothing W said:

If Klei wants players to switch characters to extend the playability of a single world or to let the mod community save their game, it is a failure and also devalues the existence of every character, just a fixed link, devoid of soul.

What are you even saying? Klei doesn't handle mods, they are a completely optional part of the game that the player has to choose to add to their world, and often times when players add mods to their worlds, it's because they want to keep playing on their world but have ran out of things to do. As for character swapping, this was never intended to be a way to extend the lifetime of a world, it was added so that players wouldn't be locked out of certain character perks without having to start a whole new world. It just so happens that being able to play has 18 different characters tends to keep players playing the same world for a longer period of time.

Please for my mental sake, stop saying that Wolfgang dealing higher damage will kill the game's replayability. This is just such a bad take.

[Nothing W]

15 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Where in Wolfgang's skill tree is this damage improvement coming from? Higher maximum mightiness doesn't increase his damage, the extra planar damage is just making up for the damage he lost due to the introduction of planar damage, and the affinity bonuses are only effective against a small portion of the creatures in the game. You're not wrong that Wolfgang uses less resources than other characters when it comes to armor, healing, and weapons, but that's because outside of damage, Wolfgang doesn't really do anything. 

You're not wrong that Wolfgang's skill tree is boring, but the issue isn't with that a portion of his skill tree is dedicated to planar damage, it's that a portion of his tree is dedicated to the next to useless extra maximum mightiness. Klei had to give Wolfgang planar damage though, as the main selling point of his character (high armounts of damage) was taken away when fighting planar enemies.

I feel like you don't realize that the extra damage Wolfgang gets is exclusively for planar weapons. The only way this would speed up progression (which isn't that true by itself, DST is a game about much more than just combat) is if players decided to enable rifts in the world settings, and even if they did, the extra damage doesn't overshine Wolfgangs 2x damage multipliers, it simply makes up for the lost damage versus planar enemies. 

As for players using stronger weapons vs previous enemies, that's literally the whole point of weapons being stronger. Players should want to use the best equipment available to make previous problems easier, it's why the bone armor is so coveted, as tons of enemies can be killed effortlessly with this stronger piece of equipment.

For the vast majority of characters, nothing poses a threat to them in the late game, that's the whole reason Klei's been adding all these late game threats in the first place. And again, Wolfgang dealing higher damage will not cause a loss in replayability to DST. All worlds eventually reach a point where players lose interest in them, that's the natural cycle of this game, and you know where those players go when they lose interest in their world? They go and start a new world, likely picking a new character, and suddenly they're invested in the game again. 

What are you even saying? Klei doesn't handle mods, they are a completely optional part of the game that the player has to choose to add to their world, and often times when players add mods to their worlds, it's because they want to keep playing on their world but have ran out of things to do. As for character swapping, this was never intended to be a way to extend the lifetime of a world, it was added so that players wouldn't be locked out of certain character perks without having to start a whole new world. It just so happens that being able to play has 18 different characters tends to keep players playing the same world for a longer period of time.

Please for my mental sake, stop saying that Wolfgang dealing higher damage will kill the game's replayability. This is just such a bad take.

After careful consideration, I believe the issues with Wolfgang's new skill tree could negatively impact the game. Let's first look at the design of the capstone nodes in the tree.

Firstly, the massive extra planar damage that Wolfgang gains from his skill tree on planar weapons completely ignores and undermines the core design philosophy behind the planar defense mechanism. We know planar defenses are implemented to increase the health scaling for certain enemies. The effects of Wolfgang's skill tree directly contradict this original intention.

Additionally, the excessive planar damage he gets through the combination of his skill tree and planar weapons is very likely to significantly trivialize the challenge posed by late game content. This clashes with Klei's design goal of increasing difficulty via new content. From the perspective of maintaining overall game balance, this flaw merits serious attention.

Lastly, the impact of the enhanced planar damage against normal enemies through his skill tree disrupts the balance of different characters' gameplay experiences. Considering the current game design, where players can only obtain planar weapons in the late game, it implies that the balance of the mid-to-late game will also be affected. Notably, since future updates will likely introduce more enemies with planar defenses, while planar weapons will become available earlier relatively, the tremendous planar damage bonuses from Wolfgang's skill tree will create a huge divide between him and other characters in terms of experience. This poses major risks to the game's balance in the long run.

Moreover, such overt imbalance indirectly diminishes the game's overall replay value. Facing new challenges and more enemies with planar defenses, players will be incentivized to use the overpowered Wolfgang to tackle obstacles. This not only sacrifices planar defenses but also overturns DST's engaging trait of differentiated character design and difficulty curve. Once formed, this issue will be difficult to reverse through simple adjustments. Thus, foreseeing and preventing balance risks is crucial to maintaining the game's long-term appeal.

Our perspectives overlap on certain points. Perhaps Klei could consider alternative solutions that achieve balance without compromising core future content.

[Dollmaker]

Tbf, being a power tank was always Wolfgang's main appeal. 

Besides, as far as we know, all characters will eventually get a Skill Tree that will make them stronger, just imagine what characters like Webber and Maxwell will get.