Willow skill tree is an example of a "bad" skill tree

[Sapientis]

To be fair I think Willow's skillset is well designed: she got skills that amplify her as a Fire user and Fire fighter, and firefighter. Both her Lighter and Bernie got major perks that feel fun to play with. Lighter part is awesome and very cohesive, Bernie part is also very useful, Alignment part is fantastic, as it makes Bernie much more viable against Planar enemies and gives Willow a choice of single target fast cast ability vs long casting time AoE spell against groups.

If I had any nits to pick it would be mainly Burning Frenzy, which still feels strange to use (keep in mind it was massively buffed to 1 minute from 30 seconds), because you have to recast it, and ignite your target mid-fight, and the VFX is also pretty hard to see in certain environment (e.g. snow, lunar island, some turfs, and insanity). The bottom text is also there are many boss enemies who just cannot be set on fire, making this skill useless against them (AFW, CC, Shadow Pieces, Nightmare Werepig, Dragonfly, Crab King (?)).
For me 10-15% more damage flat would be much better than those 25% only against burning enemies...

Secondly, Accelerant skills are pretty useless and Burning Bernie is really underwhelming for how high the requirement for it is (I know it's aimed for players who haven't defeated AFW/CC, but it's just pretty bad and takes a lot of Bernie skills to invest in, while Lighter ones are much more useful than those Accelerants I mentioned before.

 

Having said this...
Wormwood has those plant crafting skills that are just really out of place, like yea, he's a plant that grows plants, but gameplay-wise those skills are just terrible and everyone was arguing during his skillset release, that plant crafting shouldn't be gatekeeped behind a DLC character. On the other hand, half of his Alignment skills are for post-rift items exclusively, which also seems like worse design than Willow's skills in my opinion.

Wolfgang's skillset is so restrictive, it hurts. He really has nothing to choose from, if you think about it. He can basically drop all Push the Limits and his gameplay remains unchanged for most players... Is this the example of a good skill tree?

Wilson's skillset is a bunch of newbie-friendly perks combined, but the raw benefit of his skills is forgetable at most. The best thing is the ability to craft boneshards and get up to 3 slots for food carried in his beard... Are we really talking about Willow's skillset being an example of a bad skill tree??

 

The main thing that bugs me in skillsets overall is the fact you can take the majority of skills and you don't really have to choose A over B, when one is objectively better overall.
A good design would be "get some A, but lose some B" or vice versa and not "gain a lot of A and some B" OR "gain some A and a lot of B". In current state skillsets just add and not change, which makes good characters even better (for no real reason other than power inflation, maybe reality-inspired, idk). The skillsets I'd like would differentiate same characters who pick different skills (but now there's clear META and that's just super boring).

[Ridley]

11 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

The main thing that bugs me in skillsets overall is the fact you can take the majority of skills and you don't really have to choose A over B, when one is objectively better overall.
A good design would be "get some A, but lose some B" or vice versa and not "gain a lot of A and some B" OR "gain some A and a lot of B". In current state skillsets just add and not change, which makes good characters even better (for no real reason other than power inflation, maybe reality-inspired, idk). The skillsets I'd like would differentiate same characters who pick different skills (but now there's clear META and that's just super boring).

I am in favour of skilltrees and I think they are a good idea, but I agree with this. 

[Echsrick]

you think so? i was thinkin willows skill tree is better one...especialy against wolfgangs skill tree

[djturner]

You guys are getting caught up in comparing "skill trees" as they exist in DST to their purpose/function in other games (referring to other replies not necessarily OP). I think that "skill trees" in DST, especially with the source of their improvement (raw days survived) are primarily more like training wheels or guide rails for players that are new to the game or the character. Instead of being presented with the entire ember/spell mechanic all up front, it's something you unlock over time once you are presumed to get a greater handle on her baseline functionality.

It's a way of time gating depth so as not to overwhelm new (or longtime, less "plugged in" to the community) players with changes, and also to give players the ability to completely opt out of certain things if they don't like it (which the refreshes did not do). I don't think it's any accident this system really started taking off alongside other new player friendly changes/polishing efforts. Admittedly, yes, there is some degree of character customization component to it (otherwise Insight would max out in such a way that we'd unlock everything), but it just doesn't seem to be the primary purpose to me.

In this regard, I actually think Willow's skill tree is the best so far. More directly responding to OP, igniting enemies, both affinity spells, and the "magus" gameplay of using fire and then dealing more damage with conventional weapons are all great fun for me. She became one of my favorites overnight. And then as to the tree itself, it completely reimagined an otherwise bland and mediocre character, while still gating that functionality behind building on the fundamentals of her kit and gradual building upon increasingly unlocked abilities. It's a fantastic way to learn something.

[Swiyss]

2 hours ago, Sapientis said:

To be fair I think Willow's skillset is well designed: she got skills that amplify her as a Fire user and Fire fighter, and firefighter. Both her Lighter and Bernie got major perks that feel fun to play with. Lighter part is awesome and very cohesive, Bernie part is also very useful, Alignment part is fantastic, as it makes Bernie much more viable against Planar enemies and gives Willow a choice of single target fast cast ability vs long casting time AoE spell against groups.

If I had any nits to pick it would be mainly Burning Frenzy, which still feels strange to use (keep in mind it was massively buffed to 1 minute from 30 seconds), because you have to recast it, and ignite your target mid-fight, and the VFX is also pretty hard to see in certain environment (e.g. snow, lunar island, some turfs, and insanity). The bottom text is also there are many boss enemies who just cannot be set on fire, making this skill useless against them (AFW, CC, Shadow Pieces, Nightmare Werepig, Dragonfly, Crab King (?)).
For me 10-15% more damage flat would be much better than those 25% only against burning enemies...

Secondly, Accelerant skills are pretty useless and Burning Bernie is really underwhelming for how high the requirement for it is (I know it's aimed for players who haven't defeated AFW/CC, but it's just pretty bad and takes a lot of Bernie skills to invest in, while Lighter ones are much more useful than those Accelerants I mentioned before.

 

Having said this...
Wormwood has those plant crafting skills that are just really out of place, like yea, he's a plant that grows plants, but gameplay-wise those skills are just terrible and everyone was arguing during his skillset release, that plant crafting shouldn't be gatekeeped behind a DLC character. On the other hand, half of his Alignment skills are for post-rift items exclusively, which also seems like worse design than Willow's skills in my opinion.

Wolfgang's skillset is so restrictive, it hurts. He really has nothing to choose from, if you think about it. He can basically drop all Push the Limits and his gameplay remains unchanged for most players... Is this the example of a good skill tree?

Wilson's skillset is a bunch of newbie-friendly perks combined, but the raw benefit of his skills is forgetable at most. The best thing is the ability to craft boneshards and get up to 3 slots for food carried in his beard... Are we really talking about Willow's skillset being an example of a bad skill tree??

 

The main thing that bugs me in skillsets overall is the fact you can take the majority of skills and you don't really have to choose A over B, when one is objectively better overall.
A good design would be "get some A, but lose some B" or vice versa and not "gain a lot of A and some B" OR "gain some A and a lot of B". In current state skillsets just add and not change, which makes good characters even better (for no real reason other than power inflation, maybe reality-inspired, idk). The skillsets I'd like would differentiate same characters who pick different skills (but now there's clear META and that's just super boring).

I think you contradicted yourself in the middle here.

I played a lot of willow and wormwood. And I used to play them before skillsets. Safe to say that if you played both before and both after, and you think wormwood skillset is worst than willow's, then idk what do say.

Playing willow now feels like tasting burned cookies with some uncooked parts, but atleast you can chug it down with fresh delicious milk.

Playing wormwood feels like a whole meal, the everyday one. Not that tasty but not bad either and it has all necessary nutrients for survival.

That's how I can best discribe these.

1 hour ago, djturner said:

You guys are getting caught up in comparing "skill trees" as they exist in DST to their purpose/function in other games (referring to other replies not necessarily OP). I think that "skill trees" in DST, especially with the source of their improvement (raw days survived) are primarily more like training wheels or guide rails for players that are new to the game or the character. Instead of being presented with the entire ember/spell mechanic all up front, it's something you unlock over time once you are presumed to get a greater handle on her baseline functionality.

It's a way of time gating depth so as not to overwhelm new (or longtime, less "plugged in" to the community) players with changes, and also to give players the ability to completely opt out of certain things if they don't like it (which the refreshes did not do). I don't think it's any accident this system really started taking off alongside other new player friendly changes/polishing efforts. Admittedly, yes, there is some degree of character customization component to it (otherwise Insight would max out in such a way that we'd unlock everything), but it just doesn't seem to be the primary purpose to me.

In this regard, I actually think Willow's skill tree is the best so far. More directly responding to OP, igniting enemies, both affinity spells, and the "magus" gameplay of using fire and then dealing more damage with conventional weapons are all great fun for me. She became one of my favorites overnight. And then as to the tree itself, it completely reimagined an otherwise bland and mediocre character, while still gating that functionality behind building on the fundamentals of her kit and gradual building upon increasingly unlocked abilities. It's a fantastic way to learn something.

I played willow a lot before and after the skillset. Once the skillset came out, I was disappointed immediately. Here are my reasons :

Blue fire and black fire doesn't sit well with her. They could've simply made those fiery skills with small planar buffs on melee with little effects and it would be amazing.

She doesn't feel like a maniac anymore, combustion and fireball are great but not what I thought it would be. They don't adress the uncontrollable part of her.

Instead of making more fire, or putting fire everywhere, she now controls it. What the * man. It is the exactly opposite of her identity.

The embers don't make sense............. Why Does She Need To Use Embers To Start ***magic***. Since when, why, who, where did she took that from. We don't even have a willow short. What.. she got those before siding with wagstaff or charlie even. If you really really really played willow before and after. You'll see what I mean

Most people that liked it didn't play her before or simply didn't understand her. Since beta DS she was something, and now out of nowhere she has those uncanny things on her kit. All because someone gave klei a suggestion and they didn't filter it.

All my friends that are og wolfgang players loved the skillset, it does what wolfgang needs, damage. So it makes sense.

I had atleast 2k days on wormwood before skillsets, safe to say it was perfect for him, it needed some refining, but it got to an amazing place. Early game damage that rewards you for not getting hit, more blooming time, less annoying animations, sleep inducing spores for bee queen fight, light underground at all times, carrats for when exploring and farming, increased summer protection. Even late game damage up in a creative way. It adresses almost all parts of gameplay.

Willow was already great at all of the things they buffed her. Sure I liked the lighter range, but 2 skills for that? And bearnie side is all messed up, it should all be passives in her kit. Burning bearnie is not intuitive since you are mostly taking if you participate in fights and having to constantly manage 

1 applying burn frenzy

2 igniting bearnie

3 hitting the enemy

4 click on ember to cast spells

5 moving ember in inventory

6 Switching to lighter to ignite enemy

Some of these should be automatic. I should only focus on embers and casting spells, like max. She's harder than max while dealing less damage...

And she is even a different character without skills. How can you say it was greatly improve upon. There was nothing that made sense from the beginning and won't until they decide to fix it or change a bit. I even said FINE, I like new stuff, add it. But the way they did it made it so she'll have amazing clear at day 1 with little to no cost, and cooldowns were an even worst decision. You just gotta kill cc once. The system is also something bad imo.

[Swiyss]

It should've been : approach a lunar altar to unlock (per world) for her lunar skill

and : approach a ruins fissure to unlock (per world) for her shadow one.

[Cheggf]

On 2/1/2024 at 11:12 PM, Swiyss said:

The skill tree mechanic is actually really good.

Imagine a system that rewards long-time players while also encouraging new players to dive in their character specifics.

Skill trees do not reward long time players or encourage new players to dive into character specifics. What rewards long time players is having characters that are actually well made and cohesive. Having a character with complexity and depth that actually requires you to think about them and learn is a reward, offering blatantly obvious-at-a-glance things like "Number... But bigger!" as a reward for doing nothing and just existing (So you can easily unlock them by AFKing or using console commands) does nothing for long-term players. You yourself even admit it with the very next paragraph:

On 2/1/2024 at 11:12 PM, Swiyss said:

Imagine playing Willow without skill trees, the character is night and day. That disparity is what makes the skill trees bad. Also the system, unlocking by surviving 150 is very boring and unintuitive, they should add things to do inside the world to unlock certain perks and tied other per-world. Why can I have all 15 insight points forever after unlocking it once? It doesn't even make sense.

You say skill trees are good, yet criticize literally every single aspect about them. You like skill trees, except you don't like how you only have half of a character's kit and are punished for not idling for no reason. And also you don't like how there's no engagement to be had with the system at all, and you just get them from idling. And also you don't like how the rewards are permanent and account-based instead of world-based.

With all of those things removed, what is left of the skill trees? You want characters to have a natural growth that's earned through actual progression of the game, you earn more things as you go on. That isn't skill trees, that's normal character abilities. You earn Wanda's watches by going into the ruins. You earn Wickerbottom's books by going to various areas.

If Klei continued on actually creatively improving characters instead of just lazily slapping on an unfitting RPG skill tree more characters could earn things over time. Many of the things that they've given in skill trees could have even fit as a reward for something in-game. Woodie's enhanced forms could be a better craft you can make later, such as with items you get from the lunar island, or he could use something dropped from the Champion to make a one-time conusmable that permanently buffed his forms. Instead you can just start the game with 1 of the forms upgraded, and the other 2 can't be.

[Sapientis]

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

I think you contradicted yourself in the middle here.

I played a lot of willow and wormwood. And I used to play them before skillsets. Safe to say that if you played both before and both after, and you think wormwood skillset is worst than willow's, then idk what do say.

Playing willow now feels like tasting burned cookies with some uncooked parts, but atleast you can chug it down with fresh delicious milk.

Playing wormwood feels like a whole meal, the everyday one. Not that tasty but not bad either and it has all necessary nutrients for survival.

That's how I can best discribe these.

I'm not talking about personal feelings about those characters' skillsets, because those are opinions and they all might be valid. You know, to each their own.

The thing I'm pointing out is that every part of Willow's identity was somehow addressed, her skillset is much more cohesive and all of her skills work with each other to some extend (even if some are less useful they are still viable choices). Affinity skills are both great and both viable (and they also can be used all the time, no matter the server progress).

Wormwood's skillset is all over the place: little to no skills from different branches synergize with each other, Affinity skills are half really weak and half super late game, most branches have some odd lose ends with random skills attached to it for some reason, like Poor Sap or Bee Kind. The other problem is also having to take bad/useless skills as a requirement for the good ones, like Bramble Husk Specialist (what does Farmhand have to do with it, or Seed Sleuth?). Don't even get me started on the whole Plant Crafting branch which is just added there to make Wormwood a swap character for megabase builders.
Design-wise Wormwood's skillset is crap as heck, which is on brand, but you cannot really say Willow's skillset's design is worse, like come on!

And that all doesn't have anything to do with my preference, to be honest I was a Wormwood enjoyer for the longest time before all of those skillset era. His skillset just feels odd, there are some awesome bits, he is a great character, but his skillset isn't the best thing that could happen. And just to remind you what it used to look like, and what it could have looked like...

Spoiler

I used to complain a lot to fix some of Wormwood's skilltree issues and I am more or less happy with the way Klei changed it. 

As for Willow, I tried her many a time, she never felt too good to play (for me). Her strange mechanic with losing sanity while cold, complicated relation with fire, useless lighter, low Sanity, etc. never really spoke to me. Even BERNIE! update didn't change it much, she just wasn't my cup of tea, so to speak. After her skillset, even with some flaws I see, I played her for 800+ days and she feels like a great character for basically anything. Clearing ruins is a pleasure, fighting is always more fun with BERNIE!, winter is a joy with poor man's Starcaller's Staff at hand at all times, fighting using fire and not worrying about burning loot makes lesser mobs just an Ember farm. She really became one of my favourite characters from the bottom of the ladder. I do very firmly feel her skillset is one of the best we got so far.

[Ohan]

7 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

This was legit a jumpscare  i somehow forgot how horrifying it used to be… 

+1 on everything u said. 

I like the one build worm has (middle two branches without beekind, carrat+salad and BS equipment skills) but there really is only one build, and even this one build still has a couple of complete duds. this is no doubt because klei just had a completely different image of worm in their minds than the players so we ended up with this messy tree after they overhauled it at the last minute. 

——

Willow’s tree is *****leagues***** better for all the reasons u listed. It all follows a singular thought, like it all fits together and there r no obvious disjointed parts.

Ive also had a legitimate blast with the new willow, shes so fun.

If lunar fire was different and she had a more pronounced downside to make it feel like uve earned all this new power she would be perfect. 

[Mike23Ua]

I personally enjoy the skill trees, and yes I’m someone who had played and completed the original DS game.. so I know where the franchise started out as, and personally I look at both character reworks AND skill trees as Character Growth.

As in: They’ve been stuck in this world for a very long time, they’ve learned things, the world has changed around them (return of them literally has a piece of the moon break off and fall in the ocean which starts causing funky lunar mutations to happen both on the surface AND leak through into caves..)

So I don’t think it’s too far fetched to explain Woodies new found wereforms as due to a result of parts of the moon being closer to him, his powers became more powerful with new mutations, and with the help of Wickerbottom, learned to contain and control them.

Willows the same way TbH, she’s known for a very long time she had some sort of immunity to fire, (chick literally casually walks out of a burning orphanage) with the powers of the moon having falling out the sky and mutating so many things in the constant- Why is it so hard for you to believe that a power that had been dormant within Willow all along, is suddenly discovered?

I really don’t get why people are so upset about Willow NOT having an animated short to explain her new fire powers…

DST is NOT Dont Starve- a lot of New crap has Happened, Survivors that once found themselves stranded and working alone were pulled together as a Unit to work together, Funky Moon God doing Silly Moontations to the Constant.

people are looking at it as “this doesn’t belong in Dont Starve”

Meanwhile… Im over here watching an entire island get terraformed so that carrots come to life as little animated living rodents, and I’m like…. “Why Not?”

[Swiyss]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Skill trees do not reward long time players or encourage new players to dive into character specifics. What rewards long time players is having characters that are actually well made and cohesive. Having a character with complexity and depth that actually requires you to think about them and learn is a reward, offering blatantly obvious-at-a-glance things like "Number... But bigger!" as a reward for doing nothing and just existing (So you can easily unlock them by AFKing or using console commands) does nothing for long-term players. You yourself even admit it with the very next paragraph:

You say skill trees are good, yet criticize literally every single aspect about them. You like skill trees, except you don't like how you only have half of a character's kit and are punished for not idling for no reason. And also you don't like how there's no engagement to be had with the system at all, and you just get them from idling. And also you don't like how the rewards are permanent and account-based instead of world-based.

With all of those things removed, what is left of the skill trees? You want characters to have a natural growth that's earned through actual progression of the game, you earn more things as you go on. That isn't skill trees, that's normal character abilities. You earn Wanda's watches by going into the ruins. You earn Wickerbottom's books by going to various areas.

If Klei continued on actually creatively improving characters instead of just lazily slapping on an unfitting RPG skill tree more characters could earn things over time. Many of the things that they've given in skill trees could have even fit as a reward for something in-game. Woodie's enhanced forms could be a better craft you can make later, such as with items you get from the lunar island, or he could use something dropped from the Champion to make a one-time conusmable that permanently buffed his forms. Instead you can just start the game with 1 of the forms upgraded, and the other 2 can't be.

You misunderstood everything.

The idea is great

The execution could be better.

It's funny how I agree with 99% of what you wrote here but you didn't get my point.

12 hours ago, Sapientis said:

To be fair I think Willow's skillset is well designed: she got skills that amplify her as a Fire user and Fire fighter, and firefighter. Both her Lighter and Bernie got major perks that feel fun to play with. Lighter part is awesome and very cohesive, Bernie part is also very useful, Alignment part is fantastic, as it makes Bernie much more viable against Planar enemies and gives Willow a choice of single target fast cast ability vs long casting time AoE spell against groups.

If I had any nits to pick it would be mainly Burning Frenzy, which still feels strange to use (keep in mind it was massively buffed to 1 minute from 30 seconds), because you have to recast it, and ignite your target mid-fight, and the VFX is also pretty hard to see in certain environment (e.g. snow, lunar island, some turfs, and insanity). The bottom text is also there are many boss enemies who just cannot be set on fire, making this skill useless against them (AFW, CC, Shadow Pieces, Nightmare Werepig, Dragonfly, Crab King (?)).
For me 10-15% more damage flat would be much better than those 25% only against burning enemies...

Secondly, Accelerant skills are pretty useless and Burning Bernie is really underwhelming for how high the requirement for it is (I know it's aimed for players who haven't defeated AFW/CC, but it's just pretty bad and takes a lot of Bernie skills to invest in, while Lighter ones are much more useful than those Accelerants I mentioned before.

 

Having said this...
Wormwood has those plant crafting skills that are just really out of place, like yea, he's a plant that grows plants, but gameplay-wise those skills are just terrible and everyone was arguing during his skillset release, that plant crafting shouldn't be gatekeeped behind a DLC character. On the other hand, half of his Alignment skills are for post-rift items exclusively, which also seems like worse design than Willow's skills in my opinion.

Wolfgang's skillset is so restrictive, it hurts. He really has nothing to choose from, if you think about it. He can basically drop all Push the Limits and his gameplay remains unchanged for most players... Is this the example of a good skill tree?

Wilson's skillset is a bunch of newbie-friendly perks combined, but the raw benefit of his skills is forgetable at most. The best thing is the ability to craft boneshards and get up to 3 slots for food carried in his beard... Are we really talking about Willow's skillset being an example of a bad skill tree??

 

The main thing that bugs me in skillsets overall is the fact you can take the majority of skills and you don't really have to choose A over B, when one is objectively better overall.
A good design would be "get some A, but lose some B" or vice versa and not "gain a lot of A and some B" OR "gain some A and a lot of B". In current state skillsets just add and not change, which makes good characters even better (for no real reason other than power inflation, maybe reality-inspired, idk). The skillsets I'd like would differentiate same characters who pick different skills (but now there's clear META and that's just super boring).

 

8 hours ago, Ohan said:

This was legit a jumpscare  i somehow forgot how horrifying it used to be… 

+1 on everything u said. 

I like the one build worm has (middle two branches without beekind, carrat+salad and BS equipment skills) but there really is only one build, and even this one build still has a couple of complete duds. this is no doubt because klei just had a completely different image of worm in their minds than the players so we ended up with this messy tree after they overhauled it at the last minute. 

——

Willow’s tree is *****leagues***** better for all the reasons u listed. It all follows a singular thought, like it all fits together and there r no obvious disjointed parts.

Ive also had a legitimate blast with the new willow, shes so fun.

If lunar fire was different and she had a more pronounced downside to make it feel like uve earned all this new power she would be perfect. 

 

9 hours ago, Sapientis said:

I'm not talking about personal feelings about those characters' skillsets, because those are opinions and they all might be valid. You know, to each their own.

The thing I'm pointing out is that every part of Willow's identity was somehow addressed, her skillset is much more cohesive and all of her skills work with each other to some extend (even if some are less useful they are still viable choices). Affinity skills are both great and both viable (and they also can be used all the time, no matter the server progress).

Wormwood's skillset is all over the place: little to no skills from different branches synergize with each other, Affinity skills are half really weak and half super late game, most branches have some odd lose ends with random skills attached to it for some reason, like Poor Sap or Bee Kind. The other problem is also having to take bad/useless skills as a requirement for the good ones, like Bramble Husk Specialist (what does Farmhand have to do with it, or Seed Sleuth?). Don't even get me started on the whole Plant Crafting branch which is just added there to make Wormwood a swap character for megabase builders.
Design-wise Wormwood's skillset is crap as heck, which is on brand, but you cannot really say Willow's skillset's design is worse, like come on!

And that all doesn't have anything to do with my preference, to be honest I was a Wormwood enjoyer for the longest time before all of those skillset era. His skillset just feels odd, there are some awesome bits, he is a great character, but his skillset isn't the best thing that could happen. And just to remind you what it used to look like, and what it could have looked like...

  Reveal hidden contents

I used to complain a lot to fix some of Wormwood's skilltree issues and I am more or less happy with the way Klei changed it. 

As for Willow, I tried her many a time, she never felt too good to play (for me). Her strange mechanic with losing sanity while cold, complicated relation with fire, useless lighter, low Sanity, etc. never really spoke to me. Even BERNIE! update didn't change it much, she just wasn't my cup of tea, so to speak. After her skillset, even with some flaws I see, I played her for 800+ days and she feels like a great character for basically anything. Clearing ruins is a pleasure, fighting is always more fun with BERNIE!, winter is a joy with poor man's Starcaller's Staff at hand at all times, fighting using fire and not worrying about burning loot makes lesser mobs just an Ember farm. She really became one of my favourite characters from the bottom of the ladder. I do very firmly feel her skillset is one of the best we got so far.

Ok so I cannot understand or even process your opinion. I almost read it twice and even took some notes, I was gonna respond but.. it would lead me nowhere.

 It is so different from what I think. It is literally the opposite. Idk what to say rather than 

Yeah, guess I'm fine with the current state of her, I just will never play her again...

[Swiyss]

12 hours ago, Sapientis said:

To be fair I think Willow's skillset is well designed

 

12 hours ago, Sapientis said:

Burning Frenzy, which still feels strange to use

 

12 hours ago, Sapientis said:

Secondly, Accelerant skills are pretty useless and Burning Bernie is really underwhelming

This was all in the same text. Am I really the one contradicting myself?

I like skillsets, but I want them better, I wanna improve them. I wanna have the best skills and gameplay possible for every player type. That's why I criticize it.

How do you live in a world where you don't critique something you like?

It's like relationships. "Hey you forgot this thing open" "thanks, I'll try not making the same mistake twice, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have noticed it".

[Cheggf]

10 hours ago, Swiyss said:

You misunderstood everything.

The idea is great

The execution could be better.

It's funny how I agree with 99% of what you wrote here but you didn't get my point.

What is left after your critiques? The idea of an unfitting Workshop mod RPG HUD element being added and making the game uglier so that player choice can become restricted in something as far from Don't Starve as can be?

[Swiyss]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

restricted

The idea is for multiplayer to have a shadow wilson and a lunar wilson, so 2 people can play wilson. What do you mean restricted?

[Cheggf]

9 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

The idea is for multiplayer to have a shadow wilson and a lunar wilson, so 2 people can play wilson. What do you mean restricted?

Two people can always play Wilson. What do you mean by acting like they can't? And even if you're unable to play the same character as someone else for some reason (even though if you want to be a sweaty tryhard character stacking is really overpowered), how are skill trees required to have a shadow and lunar Wilson? Why can't he just do something in-game to become one of those? Why does he need an ugly unfitting RPG skill tree with a bunch of useless filler perks in order to pledge allegiance to the flag?

[Swiyss]

Just now, Cheggf said:

Two people can always play Wilson. What do you mean by acting like they can't? And even if you're unable to play the same character as someone else for some reason (even though if you want to be a sweaty tryhard character stacking is really overpowered), how are skill trees required to have a shadow and lunar Wilson? Why can't he just do something in-game to become one of those? Why does he need an ugly unfitting RPG skill tree with a bunch of useless filler perks in order to pledge allegiance to the flag?

I think the problem is not this topic of discussion here. Your problem is that you don't like skillsets thematically and fundamentally. There is something klei is not going to do, and it is removing skillsets. So for your sanity I say you just deal with it. You can opt for a hud mod to change the appearance if it bothers you, or you can simply not use the feature until it's finished. Adding a health bar, bosses, puzzles, treasures, damage numbers and setpieces are already rpg styled features, even if they're not 100%, it still resemble it. 

[Sapientis]

11 hours ago, Swiyss said:

This was all in the same text. Am I really the one contradicting myself?

It seems you dropped this:

On 2/3/2024 at 5:21 PM, Sapientis said:

If I had any nits to pick it would be

That's exactly "how I do live in a world where I critique something I like". I said "Willow skillset, in my opinion, is well designed because <yada, yada, yada>, the only minor things I would personally improve are some QoL changes to Burning Frenzy, Accelerant and Burning Bernie, as they look like they missed the spot (to me)".
Still what I say is an opinion, I see how all of those could be a conscious design decision and the final product does feel finished and cohesive (again: to me).

Burning Bernie is a good example of that, it's a skill I never used, because you cannot take it while investing points into both Affinity skills and I did defeat AFW before I got all Insight points. This skill is useless if you have defeated AFW/CC, but there are plenty of players that take their time, and tbh I don't expect anyone to progress so quickly while trying out a new character. Probably Burning Bernie was designed for them, maybe even Accelerant skills are fine and I just cannot use them properly.

 

PS: Contextomy is misleading

Spoiler

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I like

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

making the same mistake twice

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

That's why

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

you don't critique something you like

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

This was all in the same text.

12 hours ago, Swiyss said:

if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have noticed it

 

[Swiyss]

17 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

It seems you dropped this:

That's exactly "how I do live in a world where I critique something I like". I said "Willow skillset, in my opinion, is well designed because <yada, yada, yada>, the only minor things I would personally improve are some QoL changes to Burning Frenzy, Accelerant and Burning Bernie, as they look like they missed the spot (to me)".
Still what I say is an opinion, I see how all of those could be a conscious design decision and the final product does feel finished and cohesive (again: to me).

Burning Bernie is a good example of that, it's a skill I never used, because you cannot take it while investing points into both Affinity skills and I did defeat AFW before I got all Insight points. This skill is useless if you have defeated AFW/CC, but there are plenty of players that take their time, and tbh I don't expect anyone to progress so quickly while trying out a new character. Probably Burning Bernie was designed for them, maybe even Accelerant skills are fine and I just cannot use them properly.

 

PS: Contextomy is misleading

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I am just judging you the same way chefgg did. I kinda mixed answears too.

My point was to prove how you can't say someone is contradicting themselves just because x don't mix with y. And some people use that to invalidate your argument.

So we then understand now..

that hidden content was hilarious.