So why did the skill trees happen now?

[BezKa]

I don't get it. The new updates are clearly a lot of work, in real need of expanding and balancing, with new content lurking around the corner at every moment. Isn't balancing characters (only some of them each time) along, for the community to give feedback on right now, in the state the game is in at the moment, and then introducing more stuff that will likely change the balance again, a bit of a pointless task? How long until there's a bunch of new rift content and Maxwell gets his skill tree to match the game difficulty and leaves Woodie woefully behind again? Do they get like, another skill tree and we start over again?

Wouldn't it make more sense to keep updating, with clear communication that characters will all be updated to match the game, after the rifts are finished? And over the span of like several weeks, release a single tree for beta testing, fix it up, put it in the game, and put another one in the beta or something. Or three at once for 3 weeks, though we can see how well that worked, with Wormwood still not being to the audience's liking after all this time. With the way the reworks lost their relevance for certain characters, where they could be considered fairly strong when they got them and are now considered weak, I'm skeptical of the trees avoiding the issue.

And maybe, if the trees were released at the end they could have not been trees. Yes, I'm still not over that and I will die on this hill, give me those shopcats I want that fun counter on my profile to reach 666

[Ulisesvolador]

Probably so characters don't get left behind in terms of progression and also the choose a path thing, thats what I get. 

Also, 

[MikoFanboy]

24 minutes ago, Ulisesvolador said:

Probably so characters don't get left behind in terms of progressio

honestly I want to know why Wolfgang first and not Winona or Willow

[_zwb]

Some characters like Woodie do need some tweaks or a rework, and they actually did a good job on Woodie's skills. I don't know why it has to come in the form of skill tree though, there gotta be some better way to buff the characters.

The developers said skill tree is intended to help new players a bit but I don't think it actually helped. It doesn't show you what to do or what can help you survive, it just makes your character stronger overtime. That doesn't help new players, they aren't struggling because their character is too weak, they are struggling because there's no guidance at all. I've seen a lot of new players playing Wx/Wolfgang/Wicker and still die all the time, even those characters are "the meta" characters.

[Captain_Rage]

The skillsets were not intended to radically change a character, more to facilitate new players and give experienced players additional options. At least that is what the devs said on the last stream, from my understanding. The game has quite a bit of content for new players grasp. Perhaps the idea was to give them a sense of progression while not getting overwhelmed by everything in the game at the beginning.

I am just crossing my fingers that the skills in general won't overshade each other nor have a huge impact on gameplay, while still providing something fun, although some of them are already a bit overly powerful.

[_zwb]

2 minutes ago, MikoFanboy said:

honestly I want to know why Wolfgang first and not Winona or Willow

So they can traumatise Wormwood in the animated shorts

[mkemal23]

2 minutes ago, MikoFanboy said:

honestly I want to know why Wolfgang first and not Winona or Willow

If I remember correctly, Devs said that they can't pick the characters randomly. The writer chooses them so it would make sense lore wise.

[Hornete]

The skill trees serve as a 'meta-progression' mostly especially for new players, to give them the feeling that they are genuinely progressing in the game and have something to look forward to to keep on playing. While also providing a way for the developers to revisit certain characters and give them their affinities in the process for older players to look forward to.

That is what I gathered in short from their answers and discussion on the stream, I heavily suggest watching the stream yourself to make out your own summary/interpretation.

[Electroely]

5 minutes ago, _zwb said:

The developers said skill tree is intended to help new players a bit but I don't think it actually helped. It doesn't show you what to do or what can help you survive, it just makes your character stronger overtime. That doesn't help new players, they aren't struggling because their character is too weak, they are struggling because there's no guidance at all. I've seen a lot of new players playing Wx/Wolfgang/Wicker and still die all the time, even those characters are "the meta" characters.

I would think the skill trees are there mainly to give players a sense of progress - getting stronger the more they survive, so they have incentive to keep playing on new worlds until they figure things out. Don't Starve was built as the kind of game where you learn from your mistakes, so I think the skill trees help incentivize that style of play.

[BezKa]

2 minutes ago, Hornete said:

The skill trees serve as a 'meta-progression' mostly especially for new players, to give them the feeling that they are genuinely progressing in the game and have something to look forward to to keep on playing. While also providing a way for the developers to revisit certain characters and give them their affinities in the process for older players to look forward to.

I'm not asking why, they told us why even if I think it's a bad decision. I'm asking why now. Why spread it out, while such big changes are happening and changing game balance from update to update, risking the trees made earlier to become obsolete and leave the characters behind again. I don't trust them anymore to handle this well, since they added trees in the first place, so why are they okay with the risk of having to do this all over again in a year or two? Is there some actual benefit from releasing this content periodically instead of all at once when the rift updates are over?

[Hornete]

3 minutes ago, BezKa said:

[snip]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I don't disagree, nor did devs have an official answer on why this specific update schedule suddenly now, instead of any other.

If it's any consolidation, someone had asked about the worry of a "Reworks 2" where we take several years again to go through every character and they had made it clear they did not want to go through that again either and are looking to go through the characters and their trees as reasonably quickly they can.

Future batches of skill trees may come with only two characters being updated, or even more than 3, they have mentioned that 3 is not a set number for how many are getting trees at once in an update.

[Captain_Rage]

I meant that the game has even more content now. Quite enough to lose sense on what to do, even in the context of a sandbox game. For new players the skillsets might serve as some sort of fun progression while they sort and figure things out.

[MikoFanboy]

30 minutes ago, mkemal23 said:

If I remember correctly, Devs said that they can't pick the characters randomly. The writer chooses them so it would make sense lore wise.

now that's kinda dumb to improve character kit based on the writer first instead of the actual character gameplay data, isn't it

Beside if we has to put story reason in...

we has Wortox and Wanda, a space and time manipulator, anything can happy, oops Wanda weird clock mess up the timeline and bem, Willow become a must better character now

or Wortox doing his thing like what he did during the Terraria collab

 

 

[Catteflyterpill]

51 minutes ago, MikoFanboy said:

honestly I want to know why Wolfgang first and not Winona or Willow

I thought it kind of made sense to not do them all at once. Woodie was somebody that people felt really needed revising, Wormwood was a more neutral character and Wolfgang was one where making changes can be very controversial. Seemed like a good choice to see how the community would respond to changes to these characters and feel things out. Maybe next update they'll go for more characters in need of revising, or continue trying to get a variety of survivors for the revisions. 

[Duck986]

Don't worry, you'll get it in the next update.

[BezKa]

3 minutes ago, Duck986 said:

Don't worry, you'll get it in the next update.

And if not in the next one, surely the one after that.

[Popian]

A good way to keep things "balanced" is to have a good idea of what things are going to look like when everyone has their skill tree.

[BezKa]

2 minutes ago, Popian said:

A good way to keep things "balanced" is to have a good idea of what things are going to look like when everyone has their skill tree.

Shouldn't they stop updating the rifts then, so they can take a good look at what they have once the skill trees are complete? It seems like too much chaos doing both at the same time.

[Dextops]

We already have a general idea of rift content though do we not? And skill trees are not purely for rifts so I’m confused on what this shaking up of content is, I really don’t expect a planar damage 2 the sequel shmequel I expect new mobs that utilize planar damage and skill trees already have perks to help with that. The problem with reworks were that beginning reworks were pretty minor and not trying to achieve much which is something that changed along the way (for the better imo) but that resulted in some characters severely lacking. Skill trees have shown not to have this problem balance wise. Woodie has gotten a big make over, with the sneak peek at wormwoods new tree the same can be said for him, and Klei said they didn’t want to touch Wolfgang too much so they made him interact better with planar damage. It seems Klei has a clear vision of what they’re trying to do and with the skill trees we have I say they are doing a pretty good job with it so far.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Captain_Rage said:

I am just crossing my fingers that the skills in general won't overshade each other nor have a huge impact on gameplay, while still providing something fun, although some of them are already a bit overly powerful.

Regrettably this is impossible because for that to happen we as a community would need to accept some characters getting bad skill trees in order to maintain that sort of balance.

 

52 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

I meant that the game has even more content now. Quite enough to lose sense on what to do, even in the context of a sandbox game. For new players the skillsets might serve as some sort of fun progression while they sort and figure things out.

Honestly don't starve together isn't as huge in content as it seems there's just not a good reason to engage with the majority of it while other parts you can't organically find this is mainly a fault of survival needs being so easily met the game never asks you to explore so most of it remains largely unexplored by the playerbase with maybe some knowing from a passing YouTube video on the topic.

[Notecja]

Likely because they are part of that series of updates. I am unsure of community reaction if devs start doing these skill trees 2-3 years later after Wilson.

[Mike23Ua]

Skill trees happened because a lot of players jokingly said they’d be a great inclusion into the game, and Klei took that sarcasm as actual feedback of something people really do want to see, and now that it’s here and they’re here to stay.. I just hope they make characters like Wigfrid, Willow & Winona more fun when they get theirs.

[Dextops]

7 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Skill trees happened because a lot of players jokingly said they’d be a great inclusion into the game, and Klei took that sarcasm as actual feedback of something people really do want to see, and now that it’s here and they’re here to stay.. I just hope they make characters like Wigfrid, Willow & Winona more fun when they get theirs.

i can confirm that is exactly what didn't happen

[Brago-sama]

11 hours ago, MikoFanboy said:

honestly I want to know why Wolfgang first and not Winona or Willow

Considering they subtly admitted they dont know what to do with Wes, and said they might not always do 3 depending if the next characters are hard or easy to make skills for, they probably dont wanna mess up

[Szczuku]

Klei needs the 'character changes/qol' time between content updates so that they can actually finish them, instead of making monthly Taking Root/Terrors Below-quality updates.

Stupid, imo. 

They should just let go of the monthly updates scheme altogether and update dst every 3 months or so