Skill Trees — Big Discussion

[grm9]

8 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

I mean, did you read my #1?

i did, but i bet they'll just do the same thing with all characters that were bad before skill trees, like how they did with willow and woodie    

[cybers2001]

13 minutes ago, grm9 said:

i did, but i bet they'll just do the same thing with all characters that were bad before skill trees, like how they did with willow and woodie    

I answered in an edit, but I’ll copy it here:

 

to answer more specifically, I simply disagree with your Woodie argument. His pre-skill moose was just fine for early-game needs like clearing spider and bee biomes. He was actually a strong starter overall since you also explore the map quickly as goose too. I used to do speed runs as Woodie that involved rushing moon island for glass cutters.

His tree allows him to scale into lategame, which makes it even more practical as a time-locked buff.

 

 It should not be the tree’s responsibility to introduce day 1 viability for characters, though. But we have different opinions on viability it seems. Even Wes is viable if your goal is to survive an in-game year.

[ADM]

DST skilltrees can and should offer adaptable solutions to characters for the very personal issues a player can be experimenting with each of them.
Most of this have been successful at least in my regard and I can't wait to see it expanded for more characters that I don't enjoy playing only because of some frustration in their mechanicity -
that is not to say the system is perfect or that they'll always feature just the thing for everyone else or myself, far from that and I'll elaborate on issues I have with it too.
- and for that I don't think there would have been many other systems to manage it, or occasions to feature this with all the reworks behind and the game's evolution ahead. Which I'm so much more concerned about rn...

3 positive points :

1. All of the survivors that now have skilltrees got full or partial solutions for my issues with them
   Wilson: Wilson crafts are super resourceful and that's really not a bad thing knowing how much I liked the character but not missing on the rest.
   Willow: Fire is now tolerable in combat, I've got my reasons for that one.
   Wolfgang: I'm so glad his speed boost bonus returned and in a better spot, I only missed old Wolfgang for mobility at the cost of food, now it's at the cost of his main power and I understand it had to go. Best compromise that could happen.
   Woodie: No longer being harassed by shadows? My Woodie main friends no longer motormouthing every fullmoons ? Sign me up. I also like each morph enhancers at different states of the game.
   Wigfrid: Truth is I couldn't like the character until now. She got the unique combat moves I expected the rework to have. As me and my friend enjoy beefalo taming, I'll help theirs with the armor saddle, have a reason not to use only the ornery + war saddle beefalo myself, and start combats with a song on.
   Wormwood: There's lots of good enhancers for farming crops, mushroom, blooming... pretty much anything Wormwood is about so they're all welcome.
    
2. And the ones that don't have skilltrees, well I can only imagine how they'll look like and if it keeps going this way I can already tell I'm going to finally enjoy WX78, and some others more.
   On the topic of WX78, the rework was good but I find myself way too restricted to enjoy anything about the circuit stuff. Biodata gathering annoys me and I don't want to make pen farms.
   Circuit durability and positioning forces me to either craft them too often or switch less; I want to be versatile without returning to more data farming... and yes I do want more circuit slots to top off 1-2 good circuit with a slight stat buff somewhere, and the music box or other for the fun of it. It's not about stacking speed modules which could be capped.
    
3. There are feature about characters I like but other players don't, and I wish they could solve their issue while maintaining my preferences.
   One example is Wortox soul limit of 20, I find the overloading downside to be actually useful in combat and easy to time.
   But others usually don't want to deal with it and wish for an expanded storage of souls and it's true it can feel tiny at times...
   you know what's coming and I'm happy about it too.
    

So yes that's what there is to appreciate, longly awaited improvements making their ways and letting us tune them to our liking.
And as a bonus and a modder myself I wanted to say I'm grateful of this system because it allowed me to toss in some customization in my characters
after players expectations and feedback, my own thoughts too, and I simply had no space for this before it, worked out very well.

Now nothing's either fully black or white and I do have a few complains of my own on their functioning and I agree with most of the reasonable critics out there and hope to see some work done, attempts should be made about the system instead of rolling with the first recipe that came up, and if possible while the skilltrees are still releasing, it's a good time for that.

3 negative points :

1. The insight system is boring, a friend of mine waited fair and square 2 characters' insight to max during our sessions (myself, only 1) and the rate at which this increase is insensitive to our progression.
   This is especially truth past the point where we change of character in the same world, back to 0 yet so much was achieved on the server and this newly picked character first few insight points would be spend into branches that starts with now irrelevant skills, typically Wigfrid's Rider branch or Woodie's Weregoose Mastery.
   Some players would rather have complements on top of time such as completing goals behind each branch / skill.
   But I don't see this solving the progression gap from the initial and following character picks. I'd fall more behind the idea of having insight shared across everyone, and starting fresh in each world but with our layout saved, just not enabled if the insight has not built enough. And well, we could also get a insight starter world config to essentially have what's close to nowadays.
    
2. Some skills are not preferable to have and yet are a requirement for others, this has been made apparent with Willow's Controlled Fire skill which has that questionable side effect of preventing spread. If this continues, maybe my third positive point could put me in a sensitive situation about Wortox?
   We also kinda have to go through an unnecessary step of changing of character and dropping our pocket to swap skills. What will it mean for Wonkey skilltree? Will they get one at all, because I hope so.
   All of this means there need to be more convenient ways to meddle with our selected skills. I tried to achieve that for testing purposes by making a stackable moonglass idol that would respec insight and I was happy with it. I think the ability to save and name different layouts would be cool too.
    
3. Certain skilltrees have too linear customization, and the value of an insight point is way too variable. I'm taking Wilson for that example and his Torch branch:
   3 points to double a torch durability? That should be 1, and 1 insight can buy you a lot on some characters. In the end with 15 insight I don't see how I can come up with a different layout than the one I use on Wilson, not because 15 is too high/low but because there's a clear path to take / avoid.
   Some characters trees are better built than others due to how many problems they solve, or the cherries on top they got, but it's not because Wilson is "that guy" that he doesn't get to shine especially when he already got that huge deal which is the Alchemy branch, other light sources could be highlighted (sigh) for similar bonuses and that's where I'd say 3 insight points are worth it. Here's one of my friends suggestion about it:

Spoiler

 

Lastly a word about Power Creeping which is on the tongue of many when we speak skilltrees, it isn't one of my negative points because I don't see it as their consequence.
We would have it the same without them, we've been years into series of updates always focusing on making additions to the playthrough and improve the overall user experience. It wouldn't make sense booing these efforts if it wasn't for the fact that updates haven't factored any difficulty whatsoever in them aside of few post-rift additions that aren't all great.

If there was no skilltree updates there wouldn't be any core difficulty update magically taking place instead, but there wouldn't anything going on for the characters post their reworks for good and I don't wish for that, what would happen is Klei continuing on the same road of localized challenges and concluding the arc in record time.
All that to say I'm with you when you want a harder game but I'm not picking a battle where it isn't taking place.

[MadMatt]

17 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

His pre-skill moose was just fine for early-game needs like clearing spider and bee biomes. He was actually a strong starter overall since you also explore the map quickly as goose too.

This is personal preference. For some people having the Moose be good for those tasks is more than enough, for others it isn't nearly enough to call him even viable, depending on your playstyle. I'm not saying you're wrong but the skill tree allows players who want to use his abilities earlier on somewhat optimally to do so, and locking those good perks behind timegates means his forms get less relevant as you would get by with better loot and resources rather than using Moose idols to replace and supplement.

I disagree with your assertion and believe Woodie would suffer greatly if skill points were given over time. Of course this is dependent on the time frame, but I consider it unfun and would basically ruin skill trees for me if I had to wait a year in order to gain perks for Woodie, many of which are geared to give the most benefit in the first few days. The skill trees were clearly not designed to work like what you suggest and forcing them to do so would ruin these updates in their entirety for me.

[grm9]

5 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

to answer more specifically, I simply disagree with your Woodie argument. His pre-skill moose was just fine for early-game needs like clearing spider and bee biomes. He was actually a strong starter overall since you also explore the map quickly as goose too. I used to do speed runs as Woodie that involved rushing moon island for glass cutters.

His tree allows him to scale into lategame, which makes it even more practical as a time-locked buff

idk if i'm just playing the game wrong but i don't normally clear spider and bee biomes and goose was slower than untamed beefalo with a default saddle and beaver is still inferior to maxwell and getting glass cutters isn't worth it when playing solo at least imo 

[cybers2001]

25 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

This is personal preference.

Of course it is. That’s the point. For some people, there are literally only 3 characters they would classify as “viable.” There’s no changing that.

25 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

For some people having the Moose be good for those tasks is more than enough, for others it isn't nearly enough to call him even viable, depending on your playstyle. I'm not saying you're wrong but the skill tree allows players who want to use his abilities earlier on somewhat optimally to do so, and locking those good perks behind timegates means his forms get less relevant as you would get by with better loot and resources rather than using Moose idols to replace and supplement. I disagree with your assertion and believe Woodie would suffer greatly if skill points were given over time. Of course this is dependent on the time frame, but I consider it unfun and would basically ruin skill trees for me if I had to wait a year in order to gain perks for Woodie, many of which are geared to give the most benefit in the first few days. The skill trees were clearly not designed to work like what you suggest and forcing them to do so would ruin these updates in their entirety for me.

Reread my #2, please. I never said all skills should be time locked.

24 minutes ago, grm9 said:

idk if i'm just playing the game wrong but i don't normally clear spider and bee biomes and goose was slower than untamed beefalo with a default saddle and beaver is still inferior to maxwell and getting glass cutters isn't worth it when playing solo at least imo 

Well, the best way to see if something is viable is to try it! If only the skill tree had a merit-based system that incentivizes you to get out of your comfort zone.

Beefalo, as obnoxious as they are, cannot unfortunately cross water, which sucks if youre trying to map the contours of the land mass.

I bet I can get glass cutters faster than you can get dark swords.

[MadMatt]

10 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Reread my #2, please.

Sorry, I don't understand the relevance of paragraph 2 to the point I was making. Yes it can be tailor made but I feel the fact it'd have to be balanced in a way for it to be satisfying in the first place is an issue with the concept of timegating points. There is no interesting gameplay to it, it's a static thing that relies wholly on the development team to get it right which they won't because people have different playstyles. I fundamentally disagree with the concept of timegating and so is why I made that point.

If perk points get locked behind ANYTHING, it should be behind reasonably achievable benchmarks. Research stations are one thing I think could work, since they can be made quickly but force you to actively think about and acquire those resources to make them in the first place. I do not want to wait until day 60 or 30 for character perks no matter what. I want to feel accomplished not sit around until the game says it's okay for me to do something. There's already enough of that with seasons.

[cybers2001]

1 minute ago, MadMatt said:

Sorry, I don't understand the relevance of paragraph 2 to the point I was making. Yes it can be tailor made but I feel the fact it'd have to be balanced in a way for it to be satisfying in the first place is an issue with the concept of timegating points. There is no interesting gameplay to it, it's a static thing that relies wholly on the development team to get it right which they won't because people have different playstyles. I fundamentally disagree with the concept of timegating and so is why I made that point.

If perk points get locked behind ANYTHING, it should be behind reasonably achievable benchmarks. Research stations are one thing I think could work, since they can be made quickly but force you to actively think about and acquire those resources to make them in the first place. I do not want to wait until day 60 or 30 for character perks no matter what. I want to feel accomplished not sit around until the game says it's okay for me to do something. There's already enough of that with seasons.

Like I said in #3, insight points can still be time-gated and persistent. In which case, you still only have to grind for them once. I also propose that the time between points should be significantly reduced, so it shouldn't take more than an in-game year to fully earn. I think this is a reasonable compromise, and still forces players to actually play the characters in their base form. And just like I've already said 3 times in this thread, if a character is unplayable without a full skill tree on day 1 into a new world, then that's a problem with the character, not the skill tree.

What part of #2 confuses you? You're saying you don't want to sit in a base for 60 days, but I'm literally telling you that #2's proposal is to make the skill tree more engaging.

[grm9]

12 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

I bet I can get glass cutters faster than you can get dark swords

i don't get dark swords and getting them is still faster if you include the amount of time it takes to get as many glass cutters as you can and go back to mainland

13 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Beefalo, as obnoxious as they are, cannot unfortunately cross water, which sucks if youre trying to map the contours of the land mass.

problem is that there's nothing to search for, everything important (lunar, crab king, crabby hermit) have things on mainland that point to them, so goose only saves time until you just make a boat bridge to lunar and never return to crabby hermit and crab king and before that i doubt that it compensates not having other good perks 

[MadMatt]

7 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Like I said in #3, insight points can still be time-gated and persistent. In which case, you still only have to grind for them once.

This is how it currently works no? You only need to get to day 150 once and then they persist forever. Perhaps i've misunderstood what you're arguing for?

7 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

What part of #2 confuses you? You're saying you don't want to sit in a base for 60 days, but I'm literally telling you that #2's proposal is to make the skill tree more engaging.

Paragraph 2 seems to be just suggesting certain skills for skill trees. Like Wolfgang could do with more utility branches for fishing and stuff. That doesn't seem relevant to the overarching argument about locking perks/points behind a timegate. My issue is with the idea that any perks should be locked to a mandatory time lock every new world, as you say in paragraph 4.

[cybers2001]

1 minute ago, grm9 said:

i don't get dark swords and getting them is still faster if you include the amount of time it takes to get as many glass cutters as you can and go back to mainland

problem is that there's nothing to search for, everything important (lunar, crab king, crabby hermit) have things on mainland that point to them, so goose only saves time until you just make a boat bridge to lunar and never return to crabby hermit and crab king and before that i doubt that it compensates not having other good perks 

I'm not going to argue with you if you're just going to use conjecture. I've actually put in the time to practice early-game starts back when Woodie's update first came out, so I have perspective compared to my typical Wolfgang starts. All I can say is just try it yourself.

[grm9]

26 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Well, the best way to see if something is viable is to try it!

i've played a lot of pre-skill tree woodie previously and he wasn't good, no pan flute against dfly and bq, no chopping against toadstool, no lazy explorer or sanity food against FW, no sanity food against anything with an insanity aura or just in case the fight is long and the wereform sanity drain ends up mattering etc.

[cybers2001]

Just now, MadMatt said:

This is how it currently works no? You only need to get to day 150 once and then they persist forever. Perhaps i've misunderstood what you're arguing for?

Paragraph 2 seems to be just suggesting certain skills for skill trees. Like Wolfgang could do with more utility branches for miners hat and stuff. That doesn't seem relevant to the overarching argument about locking perks/points behind a timegate. My issue is with the idea that any perks should be locked to a mandatory time lock every new world, as you say in paragraph 4.

Then what you want is not a skill tree, but baseline perks. I'm sorry, but I don't think characters should be able to realize their max OP-ness on day 1. Plus, like I said in my post (man I have to say that a lot, huh), by preventing the tree from being fully unlocked on day 1, Klei could actually buff late-game perks instead of making them borderline useless, like the way people have said about Willow's affinity perks.

3 minutes ago, grm9 said:

i've played a lot of pre-skill tree woodie previously and he wasn't good, no pan flute against dfly and bq, no chopping against toadstool, no lazy explorer or sanity food against FW, no sanity food against anything with an insanity aura or just in case the fight is long and the wereform sanity drain ends up mattering etc.

And how does Woodie's skill tree change literally any of these points you're making? Just stop, man. You're completely derailing the topic.

[MadMatt]

3 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Then what you want is not a skill tree, but baseline perks.

No it still very much is a skill tree considering you have a limited number of points that don't cover every perk, and have certain requirements and limitations (mutual exclusivity and requiring a certain number of perks). The point of skill trees is the choice given to a player on how they want to affect their gameplay with the limited resources they have to do so, not the amount of time it takes to go through it in my opinion.

3 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Klei could actually buff late-game perks instead of making them borderline useless

This is a separate and convoluted issue. It's difficult to say we should make things work one way while it working well hinges on Klei going back and making "right" balance changes. It's what makes the suggestion inelegant and a bad idea to me. A suggestion should stand well fairly on it's own, not be so dependent on other factors to work well.

[grm9]

2 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

And how does Woodie's skill tree change literally any of these points you're making?

it makes it remotely worthwhile to use the workarounds for those things since moose dps is higher than dark sword instead of being lower than ham bat if you don't anim cancel and you're immune to insanity

[cybers2001]

18 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

No it still very much is a skill tree considering you have a limited number of points that don't cover every perk, and have certain requirements and limitations (mutual exclusivity and requiring a certain number of perks). The point of skill trees is the choice given to a player on how they want to affect their gameplay with the limited resources they have to do so, not the amount of time it takes to go through it in my opinion.

This is a separate and convoluted issue. It's difficult to say we should make things work one way while it working well hinges on Klei going back and making "right" balance changes. It's what makes the suggestion inelegant and a bad idea to me. A suggestion should stand well fairly on it's own, not be so dependent on other factors to work well.

It's really not, though. You're telling me that Woodie isn't viable if he can't throw dark-sword punches on day 1 autumn while other characters are running around with spears. A good game doesn't use skill trees to balance characters. They use skill trees to promote divergent playstyles. Though the concept of balance is somewhat subjective already in DST, considering there will always be a few optimal picks for the min-maxers. Most characters are driven by the fantasy of playing as those characters (ie, pyromancer, ghost girl, weak mime, etc)

I mean you understand the concept of scaling, right? Even among characters, there should be some that are weaker than others in the early game if they can make up for it in the late game. This is a very basic concept in many video game genres. You want to know what to do for 60 days while your character scales? You, you know, play the game.

[MadMatt]

15 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Woodie isn't viable if he can't throw dark-sword punches on day 1 autumn while other characters are running around with spears.

Wolfgang throws around dark-sword punches while using a spear. And he can actually access the rest of his inventory to take full advantage of healing, speed, and items. And a hambat isn't too far behind a dark sword and can be made way before day 10, let alone day 30. Woodie is not OP, especially compared to certain other characters even without skill trees. This argument is only convincing to a specific level of play.

15 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

You, you know, play the game.

Yes and I like to play the game by fighting bosses as fast as I can manage within a given world. I want to do that using my favorite characters unique perks. You can see how locking perks behind timegates in order to preserve an artificial scaling for characters would impede upon this. I won't argue further because we won't change each others mind, we fundamentally play differently, however I must let it be known I am vehemently against the idea of time locking perks in any capacity. It is better to allow players to play how they wish, than to force them into a box for a self-righteous sense of "scaling" or "balance".

[cybers2001]

1 minute ago, MadMatt said:

Wolfgang throws around dark-sword punches while using a spear. And he can actually access the rest of his inventory to take full advantage of healing, speed, and items. And a hambat isn't too far behind a dark sword and can be made way before day 10, let alone day 30. Woodie is not OP, especially compared to certain other characters even without skill trees. This argument is only convincing to a specific level of play.

Then play Wolfgang, instead of demanding other characters are changed to suit your style?

1 minute ago, MadMatt said:

Yes and I like to play the game by fighting bosses as fast as I can manage within a given world. I want to do that using my favorite characters unique perks. You can see how locking perks behind timegates in order to preserve an artificial scaling for characters would impede upon this. I won't argue further because we won't change each others mind, we fundamentally play differently, however I must let it be known I am vehemently against the idea of time locking perk points in any capacity. It is better to allow players to play how they wish, than to force them into a box for a self-righteous sense of "scaling" or "balance".

... what? You're telling me it's self-righteous to expect players to work to power scale in a game where survival is driven by power scaling? You're talking about viability while also telling me players should play how they wish without regards to balance? What is this hypocrisy?

[MadMatt]

1 minute ago, cybers2001 said:

... what? You're telling me it's self-righteous to expect players to work to power scale in a game where survival is driven by power scaling? You're talking about viability while also telling me players should play how they wish without regards to balance? What is this hypocrisy?

You are putting words in my mouth. I am saying there shouldn't be hard limitations on what the player can achieve. Locking perks behind time is a HARD lock, there is nothing anyone can do about that. It is not fun nor interactive. You only want it because you think it fits better with your own perception of what is fair and not. I want Woodie to be as is because I am happy playing with him, your suggestion limits my enjoyment and if done across all trees would limit many players for this endless battle of balance. I am not hypocritical, you just don't understand me or where I am coming from.

4 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Then play Wolfgang, instead of demanding other characters are changed to suit your style?

I am not demanding other characters change to suit my style. YOU are demanding the game changes to suit how YOU think things should be. You are disingenuous. I am arguing for status quo, you are asking for change. Please do not accuse me of anything else that is patently false.

[cybers2001]

7 minutes ago, MadMatt said:

You are putting words in my mouth. I am saying there shouldn't be hard limitations on what the player can achieve. Locking perks behind time is a HARD lock, there is nothing anyone can do about that. It is not fun nor interactive. You only want it because you think it fits better with your own perception of what is fair and not. I want Woodie to be as is because I am happy playing with him, your suggestion limits my enjoyment and if done across all trees would limit many players for this endless battle of balance. I am not hypocritical, you just don't understand me or where I am coming from.

I am not demanding other characters change to suit my style. YOU are demanding the game changes to suit how YOU think things should be. You are disingenuous. I am arguing for status quo, you are asking for change. Please do not accuse me of anything else that is patently false.

The whole point of this thread is to discuss the skill tree system, because many people feel there's room for improvement. If you personally think the system is flawless and not worth discussing, then I don't know why you choose me to pick a fight with. Just because you like the status quo doesn't mean that everyone else should, though. And just because Woodie with a full skill tree is nice and shiny does not mean that he wasn't viable without it.

Ask the Wormwood, Willow, and Wilson mains how they feel about their skill trees.

[MadMatt]

1 minute ago, cybers2001 said:

The whole point of this thread is to discuss the skill tree system, because many people feel there's room for improvement. If you personally think the system is flawless and not worth discussing, then I don't know why you choose me to pick a fight with. Just because you like the status quo doesn't mean that everyone else should, though.

I have no issue with you wanting change, and I discuss it because Klei takes feedback into consideration for their design. I do however an issue with you arguing in bad faith and continuing to assume things about me and my stances that I have never said or even implied. That is why I am arguing with you, you are stifling actual game discussion by being rude and disingenuous in your discussion. Stop putting words in my mouth, please.

[Mike23Ua]

The TL:DR of my opinion.

At first I HATED the idea of skill trees, but then I actually got to play with them & realized that Skill trees & character reworks are pretty much the same thing. The only difference here is that Klei can force players into limiting how powerful their character can actually become, by choosing which skills to invest in or not. 

And while I’ve come to enjoy them now, the one thing I still dislike about skill trees is that unlike with Reworks, should my game data somehow end up corrupted, instead of having all those new abilities right out the starting gate like you would in a Rework, you’d have to spend FOREVER to regain all your lost insight.

And any game where you have to grind for forever before it actually can feel new & interesting is just plain bad.

 

[cybers2001]

1 hour ago, ADM said:

Some skills are not preferable to have and yet are a requirement for others, this has been made apparent with Willow's Controlled Fire skill which has that questionable side effect of preventing spread. If this continues, maybe my third positive point could put me in a sensitive situation about Wortox?
We also kinda have to go through an unnecessary step of changing of character and dropping our pocket to swap skills. What will it mean for Wonkey skilltree? Will they get one at all, because I hope so.
All of this means there need to be more convenient ways to meddle with our selected skills. I tried to achieve that for testing purposes by making a stackable moonglass idol that would respec insight and I was happy with it. I think the ability to save and name different layouts would be cool too.

To this extent I'd say the argument lies that some skills are "worth" more than one point, and is accomplished as such by making players pickup uselss lower-level skills to reach the higher-level ones. This of course is obvious in the case of, say, Woodie's curse masteries, where it takes 4 points to max out a single curse, but less obvious in the case of others like Wormwood's bramble husk specialist skill.

Though whether Klei really did painstakingly quantify appropriate values for each individual skill is up for debate

[Trips]

Insight carrying over between worlds seemed strange to me, but perhaps not as much when you consider the metric of "new players not surviving their first winter". A maxed out skill tree might be gotten incrementally over several worlds if assuming players play on survival and reset their world repeatedly. 

[Dr.Webber]

How do you think I did  do you have anything you want added or changed please let me know