[Poll] On the Winona Skill Tree, Postmortem

[GetNerfedOn]

As always, feel free to vote and discuss in the comments!

(Good Lord in heaven take me back to 2019.)

(PS: Content Poll and Wurt skill trees are on separate threads.)

 

[zhangsheng]

Actually, I voted in all three columns. The skill tree turned Verona into a powerful character, without changing her core gameplay strategy, but adding it. However, it is equally regrettable that Klei did not have a new gameplay of adding shadow lines in the cave, which is a significant loophole. Compared to the cavities in caves, shadow lines are more useful on the ground, which is not in line with lore.

[Sir Noel]

Satisfied is definitely the word I'd use, her gameplay loop is very fun now and I enjoy maining her even more then I already did before. She's strong with great utility (I adore WINbot so much =^=) and teleport stations make getting to places a lot easier. I don't see myself using shadow seekers too often but it's truly not bad, and it could be a nice change of pace if you want to try it. But by far the best QoL is being able to move machines; it opens up so many opportunities for her when she's out and about.

The only thing I did not check in the second list is "The skill tree adds a layer of strategy builds on the builds you can create using different skills." Honestly, I don't really feel like I'm missing out on anything once I've picked the affinity skills I wanted. This is my main problem with the tree at the end of the day. I've already talked about the other parts I didn't like extensively, but by this point it's probably a universal sentiment. Had those issues been addressed, this would have easily been the best skill tree for a character so far (it's still really good though).

[Theukon-dos]

Ignoring my own biases towards skill trees as a whole. I just found so much of Winona's skill tree to be so *boring*.

 

There where a good handful of QoL perks added to it, like power conservation and portability. And most of the top-shelf perks are fun. But why is 90% of her skill tree focused on her generators and Catapults? How come her spotlight; easily the weakest part of her kit; only gets 2 nodes on her skill tree. While her catapults; already the strongest part of her skill tree; gets 10? And how come neither her trusty tape or hard working perks get any nodes on the skill tree at all?

 

One of my main problems with skill trees as a whole is that Klei's committed to giving them to everyone even though most characters already have fully fleshed-out kits. But Winona doesn't have that problem. There are a handful of characters who I think are weak enough and narrow enough in scope that a skill tree would be a genuinly good addition to them. And Winona was 100% one of them. Just to throw some ideas of what she could have had at the wall:

 

>Spotlight upgrade that would make it shine on plants, letting them grow in Winter

>A series Spotlight upgrades that would let them shine on farm plots and make crops on it think it was a different season.

>The ability to make more rolls of trusty tape per craft.

>The ability to repair armor with trusty tape. Doing so fully repairs it, but lowers the max durability by 20%. This could be done upto 4 times before the item can't be repaired anymore.

>Winona's hard-working perk getting expanded to picking and harvesting. Letting her gather resources faster at the cost of hunger.

>The ability to bulk-craft refined resources, and even do so at a discount. For example, 10 logs into 3 boards, or 10 cut grass into 5 rope.

There are a LOT of things you could have given to Winona to give her an interesting skill. Things that Klei kind of just... didn't.

 

In addition, I realllllly don't like Winona's shadow alignment for two main reasons.

First just to get the elephant out of the room, the fragile rose is stupid. I thought we learned that giving characters cheap and infinite revives was a bad idea after Wanda. But these roses blow the second-chance watch out of the water. Hell, they blow the pre-nerf second chance watch out of the water. Atleaet even then you had to explore a bit for the resources that needed. Instead of being able to get cheap and easy revives mere minutes after starting a fresh world. It's genuinly absurd.

But on top of that, I just don't think the shadow Alignment really works for Winona mechanically. Thematically I like it. Charlie playing favorites with her makes total sense after all. But it comes off as really weird how Winona's whole personality is a hard-working engineer, but this branch of the skill tree effectively makes her a warlock who's sister/patron does all the work for her.

I think a much more fitting direction would be to make it so that Charlie helps Winona unravel the inner workings of the constant, which Winona herself can then reverse-engineer. For example, shadow-Winona can change the routes of Wormholes as an alternative to Wagstaff's Telepad and Telebrella. But what if instead, Shadow-Winona could effectively build her own worm holes? You pair them by socketing the same gem on both sides, and both sides require power to function. 

This would still have it's ups and downs with the Telepad. The latter would be more flexible and better for returning to a central location. While the former would be better for making a hub to travel between several locations. You could argue that this would make the two sides to similar. But to that I say: if Wigfrid, Wolfgang, and half of Willow can have identical albeit mirrored alignment perks, then this would still be acceptable.

 

There are a lot of reasons I don't like skill trees. But despite all of them, the worst thing they can do, the cardinal skin of skill trees, is be boring. And with the exception of her top shelf, Winona's skill tree is very, very boring.

 

Better than Wolfgang's though. I'll give it that. 

[Frashaw27]

5 hours ago, zhangsheng said:

However, it is equally regrettable that Klei did not have a new gameplay of adding shadow lines in the cave, which is a significant loophole

They said on stream yesterday that they're trying there hardest to make them work but they need to put in a lot of legwork to do so

[Mike23Ua]

I’ve only unlocked two skills in Winona’s skill tree so far (portable builds & heated spotlight) 

these two items if you were an actual Winona Main and didn’t just switch to her long enough to use her catapults and switch to someone else are actually game changing for Winona..

Used to you had to set up catapults in every area you wanted them (and they get pretty expensive too each one requiring 15 rocks and a duct tape) but NOW you can just re-use the same catapults over and over again, so TL:DR

In the past you may have needed 60 different catapult set ups in each area you intended to use them, now.. I can just use a handful of them. That is MASSIVELY game changing.. and that’s before I even unlock any of her crazier perks like teleportation pads and catapults with effects on them.