i think it's about time starting insight points get capped

[fabin]

especially that now with this beta, almost half of DST's characters have skill trees! maybe it's unrealistic to want changes like that for this update, but i hope that the next beta around the end of the year (i think it'll be around the end?) this can be looked into

in my (very bad and definitely wrong) opinion, i love skill trees! i think they can add a ton of depth to characters, but the way you can just start with all of the 15 insight points when choosing a character just kinda rubs me the wrong way. a simple cap of like, 5 insight would be more than enough to already start some builds (winona could get access to 2 of 2nd shelf skills, wurt could get many useful mermdom skills, woodie could get a lot of curse skills, etc.)

even though i don't think the next update after this will have new skill trees (how i hope that the next will be wx78's...) or maybe even skill balance changes, i think something simple as this should be considered

[grm9]

some perks're only useful during early game so they'll become worthless if that'll get added and in that case they'll need to add a way to get them quicker because waiting is lame, woodie's also only useful with skill tree during early game so he'll just become worthless again

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, fabin said:

especially that now with this beta, almost half of DST's characters have skill trees! maybe it's unrealistic to want changes like that for this update, but i hope that the next beta around the end of the year (i think it'll be around the end?) this can be looked into

in my (very bad and definitely wrong) opinion, i love skill trees! i think they can add a ton of depth to characters, but the way you can just start with all of the 15 insight points when choosing a character just kinda rubs me the wrong way. a simple cap of like, 5 insight would be more than enough to already start some builds (winona could get access to 2 of 2nd shelf skills, wurt could get many useful mermdom skills, woodie could get a lot of curse skills, etc.)

even though i don't think the next update after this will have new skill trees (how i hope that the next will be wx78's...) or maybe even skill balance changes, i think something simple as this should be considered

 It can't happen due to skil trees that are used to fix problems with characters base kits.

[HowlVoid]

1 hour ago, fabin said:

 

You know what... I don't have a problem with this BUT!

And this is a big but!

Skill points need not be arbitrarily gated by time. If I have to replay as a character and wait X hours everytime that's going to become annoying sooo fast. 

I can see this being a thing (potentially for a harder mode) where bosses (above 10k hp) give a skill point. Or the game having milestones like walk 10k steps, restore a combined 10k hunger, deal a combined 10k damage, etc for skill points. (Honestly wished the current system used milestones)

[fabin]

3 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Skill points need not be arbitrarily gated by time. If I have to replay as a character and wait X hours everytime that's going to become annoying sooo fast. 

yeah, i wish they weren't time gated too. having simple milestones (building an alchemy engine, building a shadow manipulator, surviving a full year, etc.) give insight would be pretty cool, instead of having to JUST wait 

[cybers2001]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

some perks're only useful during early game so they'll become worthless if that'll get added and in that case they'll need to add a way to get them quicker because waiting is lame, woodie's also only useful with skill tree during early game so he'll just become worthless again

Hard hat, walking stick, and cheaper boards are all nice early game perks. Honestly if skill-swapping stopped requiring celestial portal, this could give some otherwise weak perks more use overall.

Kinda whack that Wolfgang's planar perks are essential, yet he doesn't even use them during the early game.

[grm9]

6 minutes ago, fabin said:

surviving a full year

you already get all points for doing that

[fabin]

8 minutes ago, grm9 said:

you already get all points for doing that

is it really that fast now? damn, i thought it'd still take a 100-ish days still. cool

[abrocator]

1 hour ago, HowlVoid said:

I can see this being a thing (potentially for a harder mode) where bosses (above 10k hp) give a skill point. Or the game having milestones like walk 10k steps, restore a combined 10k hunger, deal a combined 10k damage, etc for skill points. (Honestly wished the current system used milestones)

PC DS didn’t have these arbitrary achievements for philosophical reasons. You were supposed to do whatever. Right now you only get rewarded with things like items.

(But there are exceptions like blow a beefalo horn and use battle stingers to unlock songs...)

Which is why this idea seems untenable

• Time gatekeeping every game is tedious
• These do X steps just look like introducing achievements with another name
• Doing steps like building an alchemy engine is supposed to be what you do out of game sense and not for itself (achievement): you need it to progress with something else

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, cybers2001 said:

Hard hat, walking stick, and cheaper boards are all nice early game perks. Honestly if skill-swapping stopped requiring celestial portal, this could give some otherwise weak perks more use overall.

Kinda whack that Wolfgang's planar perks are essential, yet he doesn't even use them during the early game.

Personally I'd argue those Woodie perks are useful into the late game if your someone who doesn't care about using the best armor for day to day fights or play in large servers.

[Golden Daemon]

They are saving the insight cap feature to release it alongside Wes's skill tree.

[Faintly Macabre]

2 hours ago, abrocator said:

PC DS didn’t have these arbitrary achievements for philosophical reasons. You were supposed to do whatever. Right now you only get rewarded with things like items.

• These do X steps just look like introducing achievements with another name

The philosophical reason was that they're pointless fluff (At least in the context at the time, which was PSN Trophies and Xbox cheevos) with one purpose: keep people playing. A meaningful progression system that guides you through basic tasks most players should complete would be a little different.

Still not sure it's a good idea though. For better or worse, skill trees are being used to make some characters suck less at the baseline, and those characters starting every world with only half of what they need to not suck wouldn't feel great to a lot of people.

[SteamMonkey]

yeah, I think the exact opposite. Just give everyone the points without the time gating. I get the concept behind wanting folks to 'beat the game' without them first but it feels weird in this game because it's so open ended with no real direction or guidance. If you're gonna add the points and people can just log into a dummy world and godmode it with commands in 5 minutes, just skip the pretense and give the points up front.

 

[Mike23Ua]

I’m not fully understanding what your wanting or asking for, but all that I do know is on Xbox without Pc admin commands to “skip” I have to spend several HOURS playing as a character to get their 15 skill points & I have a buddy who can only play Xbox for 1 hour out of an entire day… could you imagine how bad DST would be for him if that progress on skill unlocking did not transfer from world to world?

I don’t want to have to repeatedly grind in each and every world I play in just to get the fun stuff on my character skill trees.

Id rather throw my controller through my Tv set then have to grind for hours on end to Re-Unlock Wilson’s torch toss & beard food storage.

Now as far as Lunar & Shadow affinities go- those should be a once per character thing.

(kinda like solo DS where if you beat the game as Wendy, your “reward” was playing as Maxwell with Wendy now trapped on the Nightmare throne needing rescued)

[Mysterious box]

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m not fully understanding what your wanting or asking for, but all that I do know is on Xbox without Pc admin commands to “skip” I have to spend several HOURS playing as a character to get their 15 skill points & I have a buddy who can only play Xbox for 1 hour out of an entire day… could you imagine how bad DST would be for him if that progress on skill unlocking did not transfer from world to world?

I don’t want to have to repeatedly grind in each and every world I play in just to get the fun stuff on my character skill trees.

Id rather throw my controller through my Tv set then have to grind for hours on end to Re-Unlock Wilson’s torch toss & beard food storage.

Now as far as Lunar & Shadow affinities go- those should be a once per character thing.

(kinda like solo DS where if you beat the game as Wendy, your “reward” was playing as Maxwell with Wendy now trapped on the Nightmare throne needing rescued)

Probably not much consolation but if you don't mind leaving your system on you could turn every setting off, remove nightmare creatures, starvation, and night time and leave the game on.

[BezKa]

Obligatory Skill Tree hate comment

Seriously this whole idea is falling on it's head for the umpteenth time and people hate every aspect of them without saying they hate skill trees themselves.

[Faintly Macabre]

2 minutes ago, BezKa said:

Seriously this whole idea is falling on it's head for the umpteenth time and people hate every aspect of them without saying they hate skill trees themselves.

Except it's not and you're projecting.

[fabin]

7 minutes ago, BezKa said:

Obligatory Skill Tree hate comment

Seriously this whole idea is falling on it's head for the umpteenth time and people hate every aspect of them without saying they hate skill trees themselves.

ah yes, just because i dislike one aspect of something great MUST mean i hate the entirety of it secretly. you got me, yeah :[

[Sir Noel]

Sadly I think it's too late, a lot of balancing is already based on having the points right away, and the current system isn't inherently bad. This would have been a cooler approach though (IMO) if they did this from the get-go.

[Pet Rock]

5 hours ago, abrocator said:

These do X steps just look like introducing achievements with another name

Achievements aren't inherently a bad thing. In early testing the simple task system stopped players from exploring the game and instead encouraged them to wait by their campfire. However, I do not believe that adding achievements now would cause the same issue.

As achievements are more open (all of them are available from the steam menu) than the task system and could mostly be tied to endgame shenanigans and other things player would need to go out of their way to achieve, this would actually encourage players to explore and find out how to unlock them instead of doing the opposite. In addition, they could provide a guide for new players to understand the game more and engage with it. 

It is important to remember that DST has been taking steps to make some parts of the game more understandable for new players, and have largely changed their philosophy when it comes to developing the game, whether you like it or not, so adding achievements isn't so farfetched.

Being tied to insight would also expand and make skill trees more engaging. Currently, although skill tree points are unlocked permanently, the initial time gating does exactly what the old task system did, incentivizing waiting by the campfire for days to pass. If skill trees were changed to be reset in each world and tied to achievements, unlocking skill tree points would be more engaging than just surviving, and players with skill could still unlock skills quickly. (Obviously players could still complete the task tied to an achievement after an achievement has been completed to unlock insight in a new world)

In addition, making skill trees reset for each world would give newer players an equal playing field, and allow speedrunners to play without prerequisites. Make them an engaging core part of every playthrough, instead of a one-tine tedious wait!

I hope klei considers these changes, as tying skill trees to in-game accomplishments other than surviving an X amount of time would make them more engaging, tied to skill, and solve most issues I've had with them.

[HowlVoid]

6 hours ago, abrocator said:

PC DS didn’t have these arbitrary achievements for philosophical reasons. You were supposed to do whatever. Right now you only get rewarded with things like items.

(But there are exceptions like blow a beefalo horn and use battle stingers to unlock songs...)

Which is why this idea seems untenable

• Time gatekeeping every game is tedious
• These do X steps just look like introducing achievements with another name
• Doing steps like building an alchemy engine is supposed to be what you do out of game sense and not for itself (achievement): you need it to progress with something else

Walking isn't an achievement.

They're milestones, milestones refer to doing things you would normally do in the game. It's no different than waiting x hours except that it rewards you for actually paying attention and not being afk with god mode on.

Ds also didn't have NPCs

Ds also didn't have skill trees

Ds also didn't have multiplayer 

DST needs to stop being compared to a game it's not. The game was built from the ground up specifically because systems in ds didn't work in a multiplayer setting.

Also, skill trees already do what achievements would have intended; guiding the player.

[cybers2001]

6 hours ago, BezKa said:

Obligatory Skill Tree hate comment

Seriously this whole idea is falling on it's head for the umpteenth time and people hate every aspect of them without saying they hate skill trees themselves.

Nah, some of us like the skill trees but think its weird that there is no merit given for playtime spent with a character on a per-world basis.

I personally was surprised when I found that defeating CC/FW a single time as any character fully unlocked those planar-aligned skills for all characters forever.

For example, Woodie gaining immunity to full moons seems like a total copout negation of a core weakness of his, but could be justifiable if the Woodie player had to earn that ability to use within a given world.