Should skillsets even exist?

[Swiyss]

Currently skill trees only have 15 points for you to spend and all of those are acquired by simply playing the game for 150 days, which is not very intuitive. I think adding more ways to unlock points, more skills and points, changing the structure so you can only choose 1 side or another, making those sides more direct and impactful, adding more veins of possibilities and making so unlocking them doesn't permanently removes the progression of the feature itself by making it per-world would greatly benefit the way you play dst.

Every person is different and everyone wants certain goals. Making so you can choose those goals early on gives the player a sense of control over the system, that encourages them to keep playing and is also satisfying. The relaxed, lights out, survival and endless options only change the game settings, it's an illusion. Skill trees could be added to the main menu at character customization (also please add the scrap book to the main menu Klei).

A way they can achieve this is by selecting which way you wanna play the game. The fighter (combat oriented side), the explorer, the assassin (killing of small creatures as oppose to bosses/high damage at once but lower damage slowly), the gatherer (faster picking time (why only woodie???), chance for full resources when hammering), the farmer (WHY ONLY WORMWOOD? I mean he SHOULD be the best at it, but not the only one viable right?), the underground menace (cave intelligence), the sail master (easy ocean objects administration), the friendly trader (pig and merm interactions, pig king rewards, antlion interaction, pacifying of the ruins, bunnymen interactions (why the heck only wolfgang can have this?).

We like all characters, but we're not playing all of them at once, make playing them unique yes, but not necessary. Most of the players are solo anyways.

[Swiyss]

11 hours ago, Swiyss said:

Currently skill trees only have 15 points for you to spend and all of those are acquired by simply playing the game for 150 days, which is not very intuitive. I think adding more ways to unlock points, more skills and points, changing the structure so you can only choose 1 side or another, making those sides more direct and impactful, adding more veins of possibilities and making so unlocking them doesn't permanently removes the progression of the feature itself by making it per-world would greatly benefit the way you play dst.

Every person is different and everyone wants certain goals. Making so you can choose those goals early on gives the player a sense of control over the system, that encourages them to keep playing and is also satisfying. The relaxed, lights out, survival and endless options only change the game settings, it's an illusion. Skill trees could be added to the main menu at character customization (also please add the scrap book to the main menu Klei).

A way they can achieve this is by selecting which way you wanna play the game. The fighter (combat oriented side), the explorer, the assassin (killing of small creatures as oppose to bosses/high damage at once but lower damage slowly), the gatherer (faster picking time (why only woodie???), chance for full resources when hammering), the farmer (WHY ONLY WORMWOOD? I mean he SHOULD be the best at it, but not the only one viable right?), the underground menace (cave intelligence), the sail master (easy ocean objects administration), the friendly trader (pig and merm interactions, pig king rewards, antlion interaction, pacifying of the ruins, bunnymen interactions (why the heck only wolfgang can have this?).

We like all characters, but we're not playing all of them at once, make playing them unique yes, but not necessary. Most of the players are solo anyways.

Edit : small correction, wolfgang is indeed the one that has the whistle, but he can't have merm interactions unless he's using a disguise. What I meant was the ability to interact better with certain friendly creatures, like an animal caretaker (potential beefalo skillset/points)(you could later choose which type of beefalo you want).

[Theukon-dos]

Skill trees are fundamentally flawed in that the vast majority of characters are already fully fleshed out mechanically. There are certainly some characters who have the room to expand. Woodie and Willow definitly benefited, and Winona likely will too. But because Klei has already committed to giving *everyone* a skill tree then the vast majority of them will either be low impact, extremely bland, give already strong characters a large boost, or some combination of the three.

 

 

Wolfgang's skill tree is a great example here. It is, by every metric, extremely bland. The majority of his perks are simple numbers changes with no tangible benefits on how he plays. And the gym branches of the tree completely fail at fixing the actual issues with the gym, thus making them completely worthless to pick up, which in turn means that his skill tree has next to no meaningful choices. Which, you know. Is the whole point of a skill tree.

 

Despite this though, it's still a MASSIVE boost in power for him. His alignment perks give him a 30% damage boost on top of his already massive 2x damage to many of the most important enemies and bosses in the game. (which probably stack multiplicatively like every other damage modifiers in the game, making it 2.6x total). Shadows, Fuelweaver, Crab King, ect. And Despite Planar being introduced to keep characters like Wolfgang "in check", his skill tree gives him 90% of his damage back with planar. Making the divide between him and other characters even larger than before.

 

At the end of the day, Don't Starve is a game with over a decade of work and updates behind it, and that has left no room for skill trees to integrate seamlessly into the player experience.

[grm9]

6 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Planar being introduced to keep characters like Wolfgang "in check"

making his damage multiplier not work was odd from the start because that was his most impactful perk, that would've made him worthless instead if there wouldn't have been the planar perks

[Theukon-dos]

6 minutes ago, grm9 said:

making his damage multiplier not work was odd from the start because that was his most impactful perk, that would've made him worthless instead if there wouldn't have been the planar perks

Planar mechanics are genuinely auch a flawed premise on every conceivable level that it's kind of hilarious. I'd go into more detail. But I don't have the time and this is not the place for doing so.

[GenomeSquirrel]

I like accidental benefits instead a more direct uniform one, like WXs chorus box may be intended for sanity, but it's also a good farming tool, Willows fireball may be intended for light, but said light can also be used for crops (i could be wrong on assuming it's a star clone, didn't get around to practicing this)

[_zwb]

Skill trees are just filler updates.

[Yuuko]

I'll jump in for the sake of discussion - I'm on lunch break and got nothing better to do lol - but I doubt Klei will change course.  They've started it, and will undoubtedly finish it, for better or worse.  I've made my peace with that.

I think skill trees were a horrible idea, like a piece of sugary candy to taste good but provide no nutrients and possibly spoil the flavor of actual healthy food.

My main issues with skill systems as a whole come from 2 perspectives.

1) DST is a flat progression game.  Some games like CotL have skill trees where you unlock new perks as you play, others like Terraria do a NG+ of the world to make things "hard mode" where you get bigger numbers and more abilities both for you and the bosses to ramp everything up.  DST was neither of these.  It was a flat progression game where the characters and the world were what they were for every player.  The experience wasn't shaped by "level up for x power and beat boss for y power to out scale z boss" it was shaped by "learn about x resource and practice y strategy to overcome z obstacle."  Dark swords were the strongest weapon, but were actually very vanilla - and so were all of the other weapons really, b/c the whole point was YOU played better.  Whatever you could do with dark swords you could do with spears, it would just take longer.

Skill trees break that flat progression.  Now a new player is potentially handicapped by being locked out of abilities that may be core to the experience of the character they pick.  This sours the experience of a flat progression game b/c what one person can do another person cannot without unlocking the tree.

2) Skill trees are not a fix for power disparity.  At a point in the refreshes things shifted and characters got more powerful.  Some are extremely OP now compared to the low powered characters that used to inhabit the constant in days of yore.  Unfortunately this caught on MID refresh cycle so many characters did receive a refresh but sat in the low power field while others were packed with perks.  Skill trees are basically acting as a second pass through the characters BUT not all characters needed a second pass.  A character like Wormwood or Willow is going to need a BIG overhaul to their kit, while a character like Woodie is going to need a lot of little tweaks, yet a character like Max or Wanda is in need of nothing...  This means some skill trees need to be essentially worthless, or include nerfs, or are just going to spike character power disparity even further.  Like what do you ADD to Max??

Nah.  They should have simply revisited a few characters who needed the touch ups and given them the refresh they needed to fit in with the rest of the cast and been done with it in a year or so rather than embarking on another 3 year epic that just circles around to buffing Maxwell again...

3) Planar is still the worst thing they've ever done.  This is only tangentially related to skill trees, but I still firmly believe that planar damage mechanic is the worst thing Klei has done to DST ever.  It has homogenized character builds, reduced item choice, and basically opened up room for the most bland stat mod skill trees to exist.  When it was released it was lauded as their way of normalizing the cast so that power disparity wasn't such a great factor going into the "real end game" stuff AND that they could release new weapons that were better in some cases but didn't power creep the game.  NOPE - that is not the case.  Wolfgang's skill tree shows us the extremely bland shell game they played with power.  He still deals a lot more damage than everyone else even in a planar world so there was no power balancing done.  More then that all of the planar weapons are strictly more powerful then their non-planar counter parts with and without character perks.

This system is an absolute DUD.  We got planar - and still got power disparity and power creep.

I feel both the planar and the skill trees are reactionary developments made by Klei to try and turn DST into something its not - possibly influenced by the cross over events with Terraria and CotL which showed Klei that DST was maybe just not doing numbers like these other games...  but tbh I think it was better DST was its own game and had a smaller player base capturing that no-progression niche* rather than warp the game with these RPG mechanics.  Both the planar / NG+ attempt and the skill trees feel extremely tacked on, out of place, and disruptive to the core game experience that's been the identity of DS/T until now.

*No progression games are a smaller niche.  More people like skill trees, levels, and in general prefer out scaling obstacles rather than improving player skills to overcome them in spite of flat progression.  It is sad how few companies dare to occupy this niche.  Sure the number of players who are after a no-progression game are smaller, but they are absolutely thirsty for content too.

[Mike23Ua]

Since my one of my favorite games of all time just so happens to be the original Borderlands, I’ll chime in on this thread, skill tree progression gives players powerful choices as to HOW they want their characters to play as.

I feel like when it comes to DST that dare I say this, characters don’t really have enough skills to choose from to make a largely significant difference here.

Does that mean Klei should give them even more skills? Hahaha, absolutely not!

But I can certainly see the appeal behind skill trees, and more importantly- They will guide & teach a New DST player what all their character can actually do.

So IMO: Skill Trees aren’t bad, I just hate that they take up so much development time when so many other areas of the game need MAJOR work.

When traveling through the extremely empty ocean until you reach a point of interest is so boring you quite literally fall asleep, then you know this is a boring part of the game that should be more engaging.

And in my opinion, Skill Trees took all the focus away from things like that.

[lenship2]

imo most skills should be crafts requiring items that you have to go out of your way to get

[Szczuku]

Skill trees are just part of the "make dst more mainstream. DEAR GOD WE WANT THAT MONEY" thingy that Klei has going on. By the time skilltrees are finished, scrapbook will also be expanded upon (in a boring way, most likely) and I bet there will be a new thing added to help new players

"Don't starve doesn't hold your hand" and "You feel powerless in don't starve" will simply no longer apply to this game. It is... compromising.

[HowlVoid]

2 hours ago, _zwb said:

Skill trees are just filler updates.

Strongly disagree. As a Wormwood player that finally gets to see some of his kit shine like everyone else's... I couldn't disagree more.

[Well-met]

there is literally no reason to change the system until they fix console cheats

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, HowlVoid said:

Strongly disagree. As a Wormwood player that finally gets to see some of his kit shine like everyone else's... I couldn't disagree more.

Even if some characters' gameplay is so bad that they needs another rework, that could just be done for them, instead of giving every character a buff. No, Wolfgang, Maxwell and Wanda doesn't need anything more powerful, I'd say they could use some nerf even. Skill trees for those who doesn't need massive buffs ARE fillers, they could've made changes to characters that are lacking or too powerful little by little each update, just like how Wortox got new abilities in Wickerbottom refresh.

On the topic of Wormwood skill tree, his skills are useless, even after countless forums posts on skill tree ideas, Klei still can't make his skills impactful or "game changing". Like what others said, it made the gap between characters even bigger, Wolfgang and Woodie are way more powerful than rest of the skill tree characters.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

Skill trees at this point seem to only exist as a way to patch up fundamental problems with DST and the latest updates. I would say these fundemental problems are planar damage, character balancing/power creep, and character specific perks becoming obsolete within the new content.

Now, trying to fix these problems is a great thing, and I'm glad Klei is at least trying. However, I think this is the worst way to do it. It has fixed some problems, such as the general lack of (interesting/helpful) features that wormwood and willow had, but others have been left in the dust or made worse.

I would love skilltrees if they were unique skills added on top of a bunch of well balanced characters and mechanics, but unfortunately that's not what happened/is happening.

[grm9]

18 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Wolfgang and Woodie are way more powerful than rest of the skill tree characters

wolfgang is only useful for killing bosses early and woodie still kind of sucks since he's only better than wolfgang for killing bosses extremely early which you won't realistically do when playing normally because there's no reason to do that because you'll get a ham bat sooner or later to have more dps as wolfgang if you want to kill a boss early and beaver and goose are still worthless

21 minutes ago, _zwb said:

On the topic of Wormwood skill tree, his skills are useless

bramble husk and bloom perks are always useful and you can use moon shrooms against BQ

[Dr.Webber]

I feel like after ironing out some flaws the main part should just be added on to the character’s base kit and the skill trees should just be a bunch of alignment skills

[Habakkuk]

2 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Strongly disagree. As a Wormwood player that finally gets to see some of his kit shine like everyone else's... I couldn't disagree more.

The skills are not the problem, the skill tree is the problem. I don't like this RPG stuff in DST, it  changes too much the game. 

[_zwb]

15 minutes ago, grm9 said:

bramble husk and bloom perks are always useful and you can use moon shrooms against BQ

你觉得是就是吧。

If you think so, then it is, I can't be bothered to argue with you.

[Mike23Ua]

13 minutes ago, Habakkuk said:

The skills are not the problem, the skill tree is the problem. I don't like this RPG stuff in DST, it  changes too much the game. 

Uhh actually.. not really? The initial unlocking of skill trees & point allocating feels like RPG progression, Yes. BUT once you have your skills fully invested into- they just feel more like a natural part of the characters “Kit”

Example: Treeguard Idols & Walking Cane crafting for Woodie is no different from the Itchy Totem Idols he got during his rework.

Willows skill tree is more of giving her what her Rework SHOULD had been, through skill investment, the lighter is now Magical, it consumes blazing infernos, it just makes sense.

I think people are “Unfairly” hating on the skill trees, because they hate how much more powerful the cast of characters are getting, while the rest of the constant (before wild rifts) just stays weak.

Willow being completely fire immune and having a Combustion skill is cool and all… but- Fire Hounds should probably had been Immune to it.

[Paxtonnnn]

I miss when 'uncompromising' was just a fun way to describe a difficult game and not something people on these forums can't go 5 minutes without saying as if their life depended on it because they can't comprehend the idea of anything ever getting buffed.

I think skill trees were the wrong way to go but sometimes this site is just embarrassing

[Habakkuk]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Uhh actually.. not really? The initial unlocking of skill trees & point allocating feels like RPG progression, Yes. BUT once you have your skills fully invested into- they just feel more like a natural part of the characters “Kit”

Example: Treeguard Idols & Walking Cane crafting for Woodie is no different from the Itchy Totem Idols he got during his rework.

Willows skill tree is more of giving her what her Rework SHOULD had been, through skill investment, the lighter is now Magical, it consumes blazing infernos, it just makes sense.

I think people are “Unfairly” hating on the skill trees, because they hate how much more powerful the cast of characters are getting, while the rest of the constant (before wild rifts) just stays weak.

Willow being completely fire immune and having a Combustion skill is cool and all… but- Fire Hounds should probably had been Immune to it.

Nope, I would be happy if we  won the skills after a quest or killing celestial or fuelweaver. 

[Frashaw27]

To throw my hat in the ring, skill tree are part of the reason why I feel motivated to play anymore. Before skill trees started getting to everyone, I ran into the problem of all the world feeling samey. While that could've been because I usually used Maxwell, because I had the most fun playing as him before pre and post rework, most of the worlds just feel kinda the same. Sure, I could do something like rush the ruins, but what would that do besides push my boredom onto a season that isn't as veristile to do stuff in (summer) so I started to find it hard to find a reason to play after the same grind of starting up a world and doing the same motions over and over again. Skill trees massively changed the game for me as it felt like I was actually working towards something tangible, something of some worth rather then just going back to square one. I'm one of the few who actually likes the current implementation of insight as it allowed me to keep having something to work towards even 2 years in. Granted, I know this approach is not everyone's cup of tea, but I, specifically, like it. Skill trees helped me find a reason to play again after doing everything so many times.

That being said... they aren't perfect. Like with everything, there is things that can be improved, managed differently, ect. Like I feel as if the lunar plants could replace the growables branch in the Wormwood skill tree, and give way for an actual shadow alignment instead of having him alignment locked at the offset. I also think that character necessities, like Woodie's Lunar Immunity should not be apart of the skill tree but rather apart of the character themselves (in this case a way to manage full moon transformations so that events like the moonstorm aren't hellish). Skill trees should be things that help the gameplay of the indiviual feel a bit more distinct and smooth, not a solution to character flaws. Like Wolfgang's Speed Boost when normal is not needed but it is nice to have, Boosting Walter's Pellet damage without base changes is needed because the current ones are doo doo unless your really good at convoluted strats to make it useful. In my opinion, the skill tree updates should also have base character updates to smooth things out instead of just using skill trees to cover them up like a painting over a hole in the wall. Also, while I do like the insight system, a majority of people don't, so I'll offer my compromise. The current system would still be in effect, except it would cap off after 7 points, meaning you'll get all the points after a year of playing them, both for some standardization and some visible progress even if you don't participate in the next portion. The next 7 points would be done by doing character exclusive tasks. An example of Woodies would be:

1. Chop down 100 trees with Lucy
2. Craft all the wood based structures in the Science Machine + Alchemy Engine tiers of crafting
3. Summon a full 4 tree guards and kill them all within 4 minutes
4. Chop down a totally normal tree as the Werebeaver
5. Beat the Moose/Goose as the Moose
6. Escape from a sinking boat as the Goose
7. Have a transformation that was about to run out be restored back to full by the full moon

Are these perfect, no. Infact they may not even be all that interesting, but they fit the example I'm going for, objectives related to the character. Instead of something generic, like having it tied to bosses killed, it is instead tied to the character themselves and their gameplay. Whatever these points would transfer between worlds or not is up to personal interpretation is up to the individual, but I feel having this compromise would alleviate some of the complaints of the current system taking too long. The final point would be gotten when you killed either alignment boss, as to facilitate actually pushing the player to get them and choosing an alignment perk specifically as they would have the point free from the task instead of planning before hand.

In short, I like skill trees, but they do need some work. 

[Swiyss]

6 hours ago, Yuuko said:

I'll jump in for the sake of discussion - I'm on lunch break and got nothing better to do lol - but I doubt Klei will change course.  They've started it, and will undoubtedly finish it, for better or worse.  I've made my peace with that.

I think skill trees were a horrible idea, like a piece of sugary candy to taste good but provide no nutrients and possibly spoil the flavor of actual healthy food.

My main issues with skill systems as a whole come from 2 perspectives.

1) DST is a flat progression game.  Some games like CotL have skill trees where you unlock new perks as you play, others like Terraria do a NG+ of the world to make things "hard mode" where you get bigger numbers and more abilities both for you and the bosses to ramp everything up.  DST was neither of these.  It was a flat progression game where the characters and the world were what they were for every player.  The experience wasn't shaped by "level up for x power and beat boss for y power to out scale z boss" it was shaped by "learn about x resource and practice y strategy to overcome z obstacle."  Dark swords were the strongest weapon, but were actually very vanilla - and so were all of the other weapons really, b/c the whole point was YOU played better.  Whatever you could do with dark swords you could do with spears, it would just take longer.

Skill trees break that flat progression.  Now a new player is potentially handicapped by being locked out of abilities that may be core to the experience of the character they pick.  This sours the experience of a flat progression game b/c what one person can do another person cannot without unlocking the tree.

2) Skill trees are not a fix for power disparity.  At a point in the refreshes things shifted and characters got more powerful.  Some are extremely OP now compared to the low powered characters that used to inhabit the constant in days of yore.  Unfortunately this caught on MID refresh cycle so many characters did receive a refresh but sat in the low power field while others were packed with perks.  Skill trees are basically acting as a second pass through the characters BUT not all characters needed a second pass.  A character like Wormwood or Willow is going to need a BIG overhaul to their kit, while a character like Woodie is going to need a lot of little tweaks, yet a character like Max or Wanda is in need of nothing...  This means some skill trees need to be essentially worthless, or include nerfs, or are just going to spike character power disparity even further.  Like what do you ADD to Max??

Nah.  They should have simply revisited a few characters who needed the touch ups and given them the refresh they needed to fit in with the rest of the cast and been done with it in a year or so rather than embarking on another 3 year epic that just circles around to buffing Maxwell again...

3) Planar is still the worst thing they've ever done.  This is only tangentially related to skill trees, but I still firmly believe that planar damage mechanic is the worst thing Klei has done to DST ever.  It has homogenized character builds, reduced item choice, and basically opened up room for the most bland stat mod skill trees to exist.  When it was released it was lauded as their way of normalizing the cast so that power disparity wasn't such a great factor going into the "real end game" stuff AND that they could release new weapons that were better in some cases but didn't power creep the game.  NOPE - that is not the case.  Wolfgang's skill tree shows us the extremely bland shell game they played with power.  He still deals a lot more damage than everyone else even in a planar world so there was no power balancing done.  More then that all of the planar weapons are strictly more powerful then their non-planar counter parts with and without character perks.

This system is an absolute DUD.  We got planar - and still got power disparity and power creep.

I feel both the planar and the skill trees are reactionary developments made by Klei to try and turn DST into something its not - possibly influenced by the cross over events with Terraria and CotL which showed Klei that DST was maybe just not doing numbers like these other games...  but tbh I think it was better DST was its own game and had a smaller player base capturing that no-progression niche* rather than warp the game with these RPG mechanics.  Both the planar / NG+ attempt and the skill trees feel extremely tacked on, out of place, and disruptive to the core game experience that's been the identity of DS/T until now.

*No progression games are a smaller niche.  More people like skill trees, levels, and in general prefer out scaling obstacles rather than improving player skills to overcome them in spite of flat progression.  It is sad how few companies dare to occupy this niche.  Sure the number of players who are after a no-progression game are smaller, but they are absolutely thirsty for content too.

For some reason I read everything with a voice of someone speaking and chewing on food simultaneously lol. I can't read normally now because you were eating while typing this.

[HowlVoid]

4 hours ago, _zwb said:

On the topic of Wormwood skill tree, his skills are useless, even after countless forums posts on skill tree ideas, Klei still can't make his skills impactful or "game changing". Like what others said, it made the gap between characters even bigger, Wolfgang and Woodie are way more powerful than rest of the skill tree characters.

Have you played wormwood with the bramble husk skill? 

If you think all his skills are useless then you haven't really played him.