What is the design philosophy/thought process behind Wormwood's Fly Trap skill tree? (And what it was really trying to get at)

[lakhnish]

For today's dev stream, there was a question I had started to ask which we were told to ask on the forums as the devs on the stream were not involved with this one, so here it is.

What is the design philosophy/thought process behind Wormwood's Fly Trap skill tree?

It was not my intention to make the devs uncomfortable during this stream, and for that I apologize to the devs. Unfortunately when the go ahead was given to ask questions and this question started coming en mass, the topic shifted from asking questions to explaining something else, the situation became awkward and for that I again apologize. 

The Intent Of the Question

My intent with this specific question was this: how did the skill come to be born? What was the thought process that inspired the idea? What were the insider/office conversations that were had? Things of this nature that is common in past dev streams. That was it.

As players, getting this type of insight is incredibly valuable to us (or at least for me) as it illuminates the differences between how the devs design the game and how we players play it. The devs streams are a great opportunity to fill this gap as otherwise, this type of communication between developers and players on the forums is incredibly sparse.

The dev streams are the rare opportunities where these type of questions get asked en mass (though typically in a variety of questions rather than the same one) and again is something that never would get a response on the forums. (For example, this dev stream did exactly that in regards to the intent of skill trees and what they were set out to accomplish).

Why was this question asked?

For both wormwood mains and non-wormwood mains (though of course not everyone), the skill tree of wormwood can be at best described as underwhelming. The mood at least in my circle was that because the update is live, the likelihood of further work being done was close to nil (or at the very least, maybe in an unknowable time in the future, who knows when, could be this year, could be 2 years, we don't know).

To at least move on from the disappointment, getting the question of why the Fly Trap skill exists would have provided some closure, for it was the one skill that didn't change throughout the many changes across this patch, despite the lacklusterness of the skill (more on that later).

I will explain why the skill isn't so great cause that was the question I was asking, but really it's only emblematic of a larger issue. Don't take my word for it, this Wormwood main has a really great and in-depth video on why Wormwood's skill tree feels incredibly underwhelming. If there's anything from this post, just looking at this video would be appreciated.

What Fly Trap does. Why it's not so great.

What the Fly Trap does is fruit flies in a 5 tile radius will be attracted to Wormwood and the Lord Fruitfly will require 8 crops instead of 15 in order to spawn.

The problem can be summarized as follows:

1) You are Wormwood. When you're in full bloom, whatever sadness the Fruitfly does is counteracted by you being in bloom. Even when I am not Wormwood, I personally have never had the sadness of the fruitflies negatively affect my crops. If anything, (for me) the Lord Fruitfly isn't alive long enough to spawn fruit flies, unless...

2) If you spawn Lord Fruitfly in the corner of the world, no additional Lord Fruitflies will spawn. No additional Lord Fruiflies means no baby Fruit flies to make your crops sad. The only time baby Fruit Flies would be near you is if you harvested spoiled crops or you wanted to use baby Fruitflies to make a weed farm, which was possible before this perk.

3) The Friendly fruit fly itself. It's cute. It's useful. But you are Wormwood. You can use the Friendly Fruit Fly as Wormwood of course, but odds are, you're gonna be better than it and even if you do use it, it has very little to do with this specific skill since the thing that changes is the amount of crops needed to spawn Lord Fruitfly (if you haven't put in a corner), not the actually timer of when the giant spawns.

How Fruit Fly describes the general mood of most of Wormwood's skill tree.

The Fruit Fly trap is more of an anomaly in terms of questioning how useful it is.

But a good portion of the other perks are in my opinion, not that far off in terms of their utility (they are not as bad as the Fly Trap, they are more like "eh it's ok, but meh", which is a stark contrast between skill trees of the other two characters.

There are of course some great skills, but when I look at Wormwood's skill tree, my mood generally isn't "there are so many good skills, I have trouble deciding which ones to choose", it was more of, "there are so many lackluster skills, which skills do I choose so that I don't get the insight icon to always pop off". And again, having that question answered would have at least allowed me to move on.

Here's an example with flower power:

Spoiler

Flower Power is an ok but not exciting skill. You start full bloom with 4.5 days of bloom instead of 3 and the full bloom can reach 7.5 days instead of 5. The thing is, once you're in bloom, you're more than likely just applying the fertilizer a few times a day to maintain the bloom rather than reaching the full bloom length. (The amount of fertilizer will of course depend on what you use)

Even if you apply to full bloom length, the Growth Spurt I and II skills you invested in don't really build upon that since it really only affects stage 1 and 2. That's of course my take on it, there are gonna be other views as well.

At the very least, this post was a chance to at least clear up what was occurring on my end. Thank you and once again, I apologize for the situation that occurred @JoeW.

[Popian]

I think it would be better to ask "how can I use this to my advantage?" instead of "what would happen if I applied this to the way I play now?" You will see that you can get crop seeds from the lord and random seeds from flies, which can speed up getting giants/large fields started.

Personally I don't find it very impactful because there's no scarcity of food, and if you are going for team play with Warly you could have Wickerbottom or Wurt for seeds.

[HowlVoid]

While we're at it

What was the design philosophy behind butterfly friend, aka how is this skill supposed to help new players. How does it serve as part of wormwoods progression?

In the stream we learned the skills are meant to empower newer players (or serve as a progression system for them) who "keep dying and dying" (as said in stream). But how is a skill that does nothing for him supposed to do that exactly. Butterflies aren't worth killing as Wormwood both for new or veteran players.