Skill Not-So Spotlight: Wilson

[glooomy]

So I have been seeing complaints when it comes to other characters receiving Skill Trees and I dont really understand why. People feel robbed of Wilson’s rework, that the Skill Tree should’ve been strictly and “uniquely” for him and him alone. But I do not agree and I think this type of feedback is awful for the game’s direction. 

Wilson, for me, has always been the jack of all trades— master of none. A character perfectly balanced; with no real pros, no real cons. And whether or not Wilson lovers feel like he deserves something more (since they think he gets out shined by other characters)— I don’t think he should. 

He is the “face” of Don’t Starve Together and he is perfect the way he is. I feel he is right in the middle of the difficulty spectrum when it comes to playing and personality/lore wise— is the glue that brings and holds everyone “Together”. 

If anyone wants overpowered, or unique perks that will potentially break a character’s cannon then I highly suggest using mods. 

Please leave our beloved Scientist alone. 
 

[Ardcrumb]

Torch skill tree.

It's all I need to say.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Ardcrumb said:

Torch skill tree.

It's all I need to say.

Lowkey love the torch tree. Especially if you are spending a prolonged period on the surface, its a good bit better than a lantern in this situation. Throwing torches around feels much more fluid and better than dropping lanterns.

On the nintendo switch, there is a massive loading time between shards so torch tree is even more useful on switch since you dont need to suffer travelling to caves just for lightbulbs.

 

[Well-met]

15 minutes ago, Ardcrumb said:

Torch skill tree.

It's all I need to say.

the throw is great.

[GenomeSquirrel]

as a Willow main, him having 7 torch perks unnerves me, so much precious space on something and it’s sometimes situationally better than a lantern …

[Creatorofswamps]

41 minutes ago, glooomy said:

So I have been seeing complaints when it comes to other characters receiving Skill Trees and I dont really understand why. People feel robbed of Wilson’s rework, that the Skill Tree should’ve been strictly and “uniquely” for him and him alone. But I do not agree and I think this type of feedback is awful for the game’s direction. 

Wilson, for me, has always been the jack of all trades— master of none. A character perfectly balanced; with no real pros, no real cons. And whether or not Wilson lovers feel like he deserves something more (since they think he gets out shined by other characters)— I don’t think he should. 

He is the “face” of Don’t Starve Together and he is perfect the way he is. I feel he is right in the middle of the difficulty spectrum when it comes to playing and personality/lore wise— is the glue that brings and holds everyone “Together”. 

If anyone wants overpowered, or unique perks that will potentially break a character’s cannon then I highly suggest using mods. 

Please leave our beloved Scientist alone. 

I so want them to rethink Wilson's skill tree , since he doesn 't have a rework , then please improve the skill tree

[mkemal23]

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

Wilson, for me, has always been the jack of all trades— master of none.

Yeah, that's your opinion. But some people waited so long for his rework. It's understandable why people got upset when they saw the new beta.

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

 Wilson, for me, has always been the jack of all trades— master of none. A character perfectly balanced; with no real pros, no real cons. And whether or not Wilson lovers feel like he deserves something more (since they think he gets out shined by other characters)— I don’t think he should. 

This is the equivalent of saying "Wormwood is farming character so, his skill tree is perfectly fine!"

Wormwood might be a good "farming" character, but this doesn't justify his bad skill tree.

Wilson might be a good "blank" character, but this doesn't justify his bad skill tree.

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

He is the “face” of Don’t Starve Together and he is perfect the way he is. I feel he is right in the middle of the difficulty spectrum when it comes to playing and personality/lore wise— is the glue that brings and holds everyone “Together”. 

What? I don't get this one. You are saying that Wilson's skill tree should not get any changes because he's the "face" of Don't starve? You realize that torch tab entirely exists because of the whole "Wilson is the torch holding Don't starve guy!" thing, right?

Not only that but I don't get how buffing his torch skills would change anything about his lore but anyways.

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

If anyone wants overpowered, or unique perks that will potentially break a character’s cannon then I highly suggest using mods. 

Show me one sentence of Wilson players wanting him to be overpowered as workshop characters.

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

Please leave our beloved Scientist alone. 

They did. They left the Gentelman Scientist alone and replaced him with the Generic, torch holding, poster guy. All those potential got wasted because apparently, there is this secret rule about how Wilson is always meant to be a blank character.

 

 

[Datanon]

52 minutes ago, glooomy said:

But I do not agree and I think this type of feedback is awful for the game’s direction.

if anything, it makes perfect sense with the game's direction. theyre adding stuff that does not fit the DS theme and the progression feels weirdly linear right now; stuff that was clearly inspired by other games with different gameplay

i spent so much time talking about this already and honestly klei just does whatever they want at this point with the game. they didnt keep Wilson as a boring default character nor give him interesting features, they went with this weird middle ground and it just looks depressing

[Ridepod]

56 minutes ago, glooomy said:

So I have been seeing complaints when it comes to other characters receiving Skill Trees and I dont really understand why. People feel robbed of Wilson’s rework, that the Skill Tree should’ve been strictly and “uniquely” for him and him alone. But I do not agree and I think this type of feedback is awful for the game’s direction. 

If by robbed you mean he flat-out didn't get one, sure. Only non-skill tree change that I can think of to come from his rework is being able to shave off each tier of beard one by one. Skill trees don't have to be his unique thing since that ship has sailed. And deeming feedback you disagree with as "awful for the game’s direction" is one way to kill any discussion.

59 minutes ago, glooomy said:

Wilson, for me, has always been the jack of all trades— master of none. A character perfectly balanced; with no real pros, no real cons. And whether or not Wilson lovers feel like he deserves something more (since they think he gets out shined by other characters)— I don’t think he should. 

Mostly agree, but I'd like my reasons to pick Wilson to not be because I simply don't want to play anyone else. Nor do I think he deserves "more", I think he should get equal treatment. He appears to be getting 1 character update, just his rework, while everyone else will get their rework + skill tree.

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

He is the “face” of Don’t Starve Together and he is perfect the way he is. I feel he is right in the middle of the difficulty spectrum when it comes to playing and personality/lore wise— is the glue that brings and holds everyone “Together”. 

I would have thought that the "face" would have gotten more love -- he feels forgotten. I feel Wilson's skill tree was a good solution to the problem of some people wanting Wilson to be more fun and have some upsides to put him on par with the rest of the cast while others wanted him to stay the same, since it was basically optional. I wouldn't have minded leaning more into that fact if certain skills had combined downsides to them, as well

1 hour ago, glooomy said:

If anyone wants overpowered, or unique perks that will potentially break a character’s cannon then I highly suggest using mods. 

Please leave our beloved Scientist alone. 

He doesn't need to be suddenly be overpowered to be worthwhile or fun to play, I would like a reason beyond a source of beard hair or not dealing with the rest of the cast's nearly negligible downsides to choose Wilson. He doesn't feel very beloved when his dedicated rework is turned into an early access skill tree.

I wouldn't consider myself a Wilson main, but I felt more compelled to pick him up post-rework mostly because of the unique customization, not the perks themselves. Now that he no longer has that, its really unlikely I'll choose him over anyone else, especially those with skill trees now. Unless I want to do the archives without bothering with a mooncaller staff, then he's been demoted to a swap character for me.

 

[mkemal23]

11 minutes ago, Datanon said:

i spent so much time talking about this already and honestly klei just does whatever they want at this point with the game. they didnt keep Wilson as a boring default character nor give him interesting features, they went with this weird middle ground and it just looks depressing

This is what I was just thinking. He's neither a Default character, Nor a actually good character. It would have been fine if he didn't had anything. It would have been also fine if he got a actually good skill tree. Unfortunately he didn't got either of them. He just got this sad prototype skill tree.

[Creatorofswamps]

3 hours ago, glooomy said:

So I have been seeing complaints when it comes to other characters receiving Skill Trees and I dont really understand why. People feel robbed of Wilson’s rework, that the Skill Tree should’ve been strictly and “uniquely” for him and him alone. But I do not agree and I think this type of feedback is awful for the game’s direction. 

Many of those who ask to leave him alone didn't actually play for him. Changes are being asked by those who really love him as a person and as a character, you can't talk about vanilla experience since he already has advantages due to the skill tree and he has a minus since he overheats in the summer

2 hours ago, mkemal23 said:

This is the equivalent of saying "Wormwood is farming character so, his skill tree is perfectly fine!"

Wormwood might be a good "farming" character, but this doesn't justify his bad skill tree.

Wilson might be a good "blank" character, but this doesn't justify his bad skill tree.

These are the most accurate words of all time, go and say that wormwood is only needed for the farm, and let it bring back the empty transitional gardener skills, "they will bite your throat out" (note that you have more transitional skills before you move on to storing a beard and a torch for Wilson).

[pyroisshy]

Wilson was perfectly designed when the original game came out, because a lot of the cast (with a few exceptions) didn't have that great of upsides and had pretty harsh and impactful downsides, and wilsons design of having a very small upside and no downsides was compelling enough to want to play as him.

10 years of every other character slowly getting huge powercreep has left Wilson in a horrible spot, and giving Wilson the same treatment of gigantic buffs would completely ruin his original character design, but klei doesn't want to go back and give all the other characters nerfs and more impactful downsides

[Creatorofswamps]

4 hours ago, glooomy said:

If anyone wants overpowered, or unique perks that will potentially break a character’s cannon then I highly suggest using mods. 

Please leave our beloved Scientist alone. 

No one asked for super-powered perks, leave it to Wolfgang Wanda and others. People only ask for a little justice, why did people like wormwood and Woody get what they really deserved? Wilson also deserves love and respect. He doesn't need anything out of the ordinary, just add things to his tree that emphasize his character. As already mentioned, throwing a torch is something that everyone could do, it's not the worst thing, this is not the The best. If we connect the branches of the torch and the connections of the branches of the beard, we will get 2 more places in which we could add development branches that emphasize the character I just want justice for our scientist. You would will not be upset if, for example, your Wendy was deprived of decent skills and would have given her the skill: "dries meat on the dryer faster" or "she loses less% of the strength of the fishing rod when fishing" - skills that do not emphasize the character's harkter and only lead to stupor. (I wasn't going to be rude. if my tone seems "angry", then the translator is largely to blame. I apologize if something is wrong.)

22 minutes ago, pyroisshy said:

10 years of every other character slowly getting huge powercreep has left Wilson in a horrible spot, and giving Wilson the same treatment of gigantic buffs would completely ruin his original character design, but klei doesn't want to go back and give all the other characters nerfs and more impactful downsides

Golden words

[Ardcrumb]

I'm just sad that the character who I've been playing for over 10 years has been overlooked, I know klei is inventive and open to feedback, so I just want Wilson to have something genuinely unique to him.

I was happy with the skill tree for him because it gave him something with legitimate substance to work towards that other characters have, like Wanda with the alarming clock and wurt with the king, but it's a bit sad loading into a world and knowing that if you have the skills unlocked, that's it, nothing you can do.

Wolfgang has to have his dumbells and gyms, wormwood has to plant things, get bramble traps etc.

Wilson is at his best possible point at day 1. Which was alright for just Wilson, as he would still have the skill tree as a unique ability; with the downside of having to survive the 150 days to get it, but he is still completely overshadowed by both other characters reworks and the newer skill trees, which leaves him unviable to play as long term, and unfun to get to max insight as you have no other abilities, knowing that other characters have things to do in the meantime is just sad.

 

Tl;dr if you have max insight Wilson doesn't have a character specific goal.

[Ridepod]

6 minutes ago, Ardcrumb said:

I'm just sad that the character who I've been playing for over 10 years has been overlooked, I know klei is inventive and open to feedback, so I just want Wilson to have something genuinely unique to him.

I was happy with the skill tree for him because it gave him something with legitimate substance to work towards that other characters have, like Wanda with the alarming clock and wurt with the king, but it's a bit sad loading into a world and knowing that if you have the skills unlocked, that's it, nothing you can do.

Wolfgang has to have his dumbells and gyms, wormwood has to plant things, get bramble traps etc.

Wilson is at his best possible point at day 1. Which was alright for just Wilson, as he would still have the skill tree as a unique ability; with the downside of having to survive the 150 days to get it, but he is still completely overshadowed by both other characters reworks and the newer skill trees, which leaves him unviable to play as long term, and unfun to get to max insight as you have no other abilities, knowing that other characters have things to do in the meantime is just sad.

 

Tl;dr if you have max insight Wilson doesn't have a character specific goal.

Well technically you've got growing the beard to work towards. Which isn't much, but its something.

Going to take a second and complain about the Wilson's primary upside - the beard. Beginners will die and lose it constantly basically making it pointless for them, and I personally find it to be more of a downside - the only season it's useful in is winter, but this results in taking extreme prolonged overheating damage from Klaus' fire spell. I can shave and fight Klaus at the end of winter, but at that point, I'm just not going to play Wilson lol

[Hornete]

3 hours ago, mkemal23 said:

They did. They left the Gentelman Scientist alone and replaced him with the Generic, torch holding, poster guy.

Yea! That's how I feel about Wilson.

I've always really enjoyed Wilson thematically because this is the guy who has done it all, and accomplished so much more than any other character in the story!

This is the guy who canonically created a good chunk of the stuff we use in the game, made the first entrance into the DLC worlds(He learned from his boat making experiences in SW for RoT!), hopped through dimension after dimension and world after world to go up against Maxwell and freed him from the Throne, helped to create the very portal to bring everyone together and united.

So for his 'rework' to dedicate such a fairly big chunk of his tree to just... torches? It feels a bit lacking on the thematic side! I don't even necessarily mind him not having actual useful perks, but for the last, long awaited rework and to turn the poster art of him holding the torch into his perks feels a little bit unfortunate.

I like and enjoy the alchemy branch and even the beard branch unironically enough though. Would have maaaybed liked to see a cute unique craft animation for when he performs his alchemy like how Wormwood and Woodie got unique animations when summoning lunar followers or carving wood crafts, but it's not the worst thing in the world for me.

Ranted a bit there but again, despite him being the most normal of the cast, I genuinely think he is one of the coolest and well accomplished survivors in the Constant, and I had wanted his 'rework' to reflect that a bit more potentially, .

Cheers!

[Creatorofswamps]

37 minutes ago, Hornete said:

This is the guy who canonically created a good chunk of the stuff we use in the game, made the first entrance into the DLC worlds(He learned from his boat making experiences in SW for RoT!), hopped through dimension after dimension and world after world to go up against Maxwell and freed him from the Throne, helped to create the very portal to bring everyone together and united.

So for his 'rework' to dedicate such a fairly big chunk of his tree to just... torches? It feels a bit lacking on the thematic side! I don't even necessarily mind him not having actual useful perks, but for the last, long awaited rework and to turn the poster art of him holding the torch into his perks feels a little bit unfortunate.

I like and enjoy the alchemy branch and even the beard branch unironically enough though. Would have maaaybed liked to see a cute unique craft animation for when he performs his alchemy like how Wormwood and Woodie got unique animations when summoning lunar followers or carving wood crafts, but it's not the worst thing in the world for me.

Ranted a bit there but again, despite him being the most normal of the cast, I genuinely think he is one of the coolest and well accomplished survivors in the Constant, and I had wanted his 'rework' to reflect that a bit more potentially, .

If I were a native English speaker, I would express all my thoughts exactly the same way! Thank you for fully conveying the thoughts of all the real Wilson fans

[Masked Koopa]

I think it would be cool if wilson could craft something similar to the lunar experiment as part of his skill tree. He is able to transmute minerals and such, so why not let him transmute mobs as well? It could be a way to add renewable beefalo, for one, as well as make the lunar experiment a part of the base game, allowing for saladmander and carrat creation year-round. Not to mention all the other interesting conversions we could get with stuff like clockworks or guardian pigs.

[Popian]

Icky I makes it easier to live off bacon, stew, pierogi and Icky III turns Hound's Teeth into filler for things like Banana Shakes. The extra gold from PK from Icky I can also go towards making Nitre to fuel endos and flingos. Get some Marble Suits to tank through shadows, hounds, and Deerclops and he's slightly above pre-rework Wigfrid's level.

I agree that he could use merged skills for some more impact from 1-2 extra branches. Reducing the cost for some transmutations could also help, but it doesn't look like they would have the potential that Icky I has.

[Dragonboooorn]

Wilson update gameplay wise is literally the worst one since original launch of DST.

Fight me

[lenship2]

2 hours ago, Dragonboooorn said:

Wilson update gameplay wise is literally the worst one since original launch of DST.

but the nightmare werepig 

[mkemal23]

10 hours ago, Hornete said:

Yea! That's how I feel about Wilson.

What a nice way to describe the whole situation. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. 

10 hours ago, Creatorofswamps said:

If I were a native English speaker, I would express all my thoughts exactly the same way! Thank you for fully conveying the thoughts of all the real Wilson fans

This goes for me as well.

[glooomy]

I never said anything about Wilson’s Skill Tree not needing to be tweaked to better suit him, I said I don’t understand why people complain about the Skill Tree not being unique to him. And that outside of the Skill Tree— Wilson should not have any perks (besides, arguably, his beard).

I understand emotional attachment to a character but that doesn’t mean Klei needs to warp what they want/need said character to be in order to better suit what you are envisioning for them. There is a massive community out there, outside of the forums, and a lot of us (especially veteran players) were not expecting him to get any buffs for his rework. I’m not sure why others got their hopes up— I thought it was pretty obvious. 

As I was saying though, perks outside of the Skill Tree do not make sense for a character who is suppose to be the baseline character. Any real pro will have to come with a real con and if they did this there would be absolutely no character left to choose for those who want (as close to a vanilla experience) as possible. 

Also I think people have forgotten that Wilson is a wanna-be scientist. He is ironically and comedically horrible at it. If he were ever to get a new set of Skill Tree things I think he should get something along the lines of the Mad Scientist Lab but with a comedic twist. Possibly not-quiet-what-he-was-expecting/near-failure experiments with, (if any real benefit) having a negative effect in return. I think that would better suit him.

[Antynomity]

I don't get it either, if people want him to stay basic then they got what they wanted, and it's not like his skill tree is bad (except the torch tree due to how limited it is because it's JUST for the torch).

Gem transmutation helps with skipping deconstructing a moon caller staff because you can just craft an opal to socket into the 3rd altar in The Archive biome.

His Icky Transmutation helps spread food more thin meaning you don't have to set up nearly as much meat production or even get as much meat as you can split 1 big meat into 2 morsels to cook more dishes that don't need big meat worth of meat value (or if you need just a bit more meat value so you don't have to waste any).

Beard storage comes with the advantage of 3 more slots strictly for food which is good and they also don't get detected by bunnymen (amazing for those who use them as they don't need to keep their meat dishes in chester or a bundle to keep on them.

His shadow affinity isn't that useful due to the transmutations provided not really being needed (except for getting more pure horror as it can be used as a more potent fuel for nightmare fuel-fueled items) and because there's not enough times you'd be fighting lunar creatures for the damage boost to take affect, however his lunar affinity is something I. from my experience found to be useful lategame, damage against nightmare affiliated creatures is nice but it also lets me get infused moon glass without going into a moon storm for crafting brightshade bombs or having one of the 3 resources needed from moon storms accounted for after I get access to pure brilliance post-CC.

Though, I do wish he actually got a rework, there is no need for a 'vanilla character' in DST as you're not forced to play as him when you start unlike in DS. But I guess we'll see if he ever gets something... grand.

[Creatorofswamps]

18 minutes ago, glooomy said:

Also I think people have forgotten that Wilson is a wanna-be scientist. He is ironically and comedically horrible at it. If he were ever to get a new set of Skill Tree things I think he should get something along the lines of the Mad Scientist Lab but with a comedic twist. Possibly not-quiet-what-he-was-expecting/near-failure experiments with, (if any real benefit) having a negative effect in return. I think that would better suit him.

to be fair, you are a littl wrong, Wilson invented a lot of devices in constant (for example, tools for navigation and gardening, + others. he also invented a meat scarecrow, although it is not scientific, but this does not negate the fact that he created it. he also got a lot of knowledge from Maxwell when he was building Maxwell's door.