What Should A Skilltree Achieve?

[Peasant]

Over the past few days I had seen much debates over whether a skilltree is good or bad, whether a skilltree is op or lame, and so on. I imagine this happens is because there lacks a generally agreed Standard to judge whether a skilltree is good or not. So, why don't we make ourselves one?

I'll throw out my opinion first: Skilltrees should be able to achieve at least one among the following three things, otherwise is a failure. Achieving ones that ranks higher means the skilltree is more well-designed.

1, Adding a whole new and interesting enough system to the character, like Willow and Winona's did.

2, Solving certain disadvantages that being an obstacle to certain characters thus achieving a improvent in QoL, like Woodie's did.

3, Giving some big numbers to the character, which is the dumbest yet most efficient way of buffing, like Potato Man's did.

[2390508611]

The big numbers is not dumbest, there is no doubt that other survivors and the challenges they face are constantly getting stronger, and there is no reason for Wendy to remain stagnant. In addition, I think the character should also be given some unique features, such as imagining Wendy being able to examine bones, generate a friendly ghost, and explore the surroundings, which represents her communication with former explorers and obtaining some information. I don't think it's powerful, but if someone thinks it's too strong, they can spend a mourning glory as compensation (I think ghosts should like this).At least it's better than turning black petals into regular petals for me

[Mike23Ua]

New toys to play with, new features that make them less like other characters, the developers instead of designing a skill tree based entirely on community feedback sitting down at a table and asking themselves “who is this character? Who do we want them to be? How are they portrayed in their animations we release for them? And how can we translate that into fun core gameplay when playing as the character?

What a skill tree should NOT be is removing downsides just LOLOLOL Because we can, or making them climb to ridiculously crazy levels of strength, or even fixing the base characters issues with a Skill tree stat instead of being a core part of the character in a QoL update.

I have no idea why we can now have 1200hp Abigail, it to me seems to make using healing and shielding potions obsolete.. 

[ZeRoboButler]

I think the big focuses of a skill tree are to

1. give a character late game interaction with planar systems
2. make a character more complex or interesting to play, with varied degrees of focus dependent on how much help or attention they need (Examples being willow and winona who were very bare bones in terms of what they could do compared to others.)

It's kinda like bringing up the characters to certain modern standards, walter is getting improvements to his slingshot and is improving his boy scout training by awarding woby with badges, wortox is getting more interactions with souls and how he can store them, and wendy is focused on trying to make her sister more durable and focusing on her dead/undead interest and theme.  

[Wormboi]

Some people wanted skill trees to be a B-sides of a character. Binding of Isaac style tainted characters.

[ZeRoboButler]

2 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I have no idea why we can now have 1200hp Abigail, it to me seems to make using healing and shielding potions obsolete.. 

I would argue that the hp won't save abby in fights she was already dieing in (she may take an additional 2-3 hits) , if anything it just makes it so she can be in mass hoards longer since she still takes the increased damage from bosses and the shield only works on very rapid attacks. 

The healing potions will never be obsolete and the shielding potions were niche to begin with due to the activation and effective windows, if anything this discussion leads to "what is a balanced and meaningful way to help abby stay alive".

[Nikki Darks]

Whatever Wortox's is. A collection of skills where you sacrifice some skills in order to pick other ones.

A way to have 3 of the same characters on a server, and have them all play differently.

But also a way to fix characters who need fixing, obviously.

[Well-met]

The entire purpose of skill trees should ideally be to make players connect to their world better with extra progression

of course because trees are tied to people and not games, already they have no purpose other than to ultra buff characters for no tangible reason. 

People treat them like free buffs because that is what they are.

[DegenerateFurry]

Skill trees should add new playstyle options (Willow, Winona, Wormwood) and quality-of-life stuff (Woodie, Winona, Wendy). Sometimes, buffing characters is necessary (like it was with Woodie - the skill tree made weremoose actually viable). 

I think Wolfgang's skill tree is easily the worst because it almost does nothing but change some numbers around.

[NotGabriel]

To me I rank the skill trees based on two categories

1. This character needed a skill tree

2. This character did not need a skill tree

characters who needed their trees (in my opinion) included Willow, Woodie, and Walter. These characters and others were previously considered weak, outclassed, boring, or switch characters. Their skill tree introduced new game changing mechanics that took the character’s theme/identity and dialed it in. Willow is a fire character? Here’s a bunch of ways to use fire. Woodie is a shapeshifter and a lumberjack? Let’s buff every form and add wood carving. Walter’s slingshot is mediocre and there’s little use to big Woby? Expand both of those to make them considerable options. Additionally, these skill trees fixed issues with the base kit that held these characters back. Examples of these improvements include Werebeaver being able to harvest just about anything efficiently to help Woodie compete with other gatherers, and probably the best example of the fire control skills for Willow letting her not spread flames and preserve loot drops. These QoL’s for these characters are absolute game changers.

Characters who didn’t need their trees include Wolfgang, Wormwood, and Wendy. To me these characters already had a complete set of capabilities and are the best at what they do. For a character in this category a skill tree is successful when they introduce new abilities that fit the character’s personality, and not centering the whole tree around improving what’s already great. I think these three characters succeed on this front. Wolfgang gets access to Coaching, Leg Day, and Planar Damage Buffs these grant Wolfgang wholly new ways to play as the strong man, that aren’t just improving the big guy with a ham bat who was already solo’ing the world. You can argue the Planar buffs go against that philosophy, but since they only apply when using a planar weapon (of which the damage of these weapons aren’t boosted by Wolfgang fully) I think it’s a fair set of skills that if any character was getting it better have been Wolfgang. Wormwood was already one of the most unique characters with a comfortable mastery over farming, base building, and support via his crafting and farming. Wormwood’s tree gave him completely new dimensions of gameplay with huge combat and summoning capabilities, arguably making Wormwood one of the best fighters when set up properly. In my opinion, Wormwood’s skill tree was the biggest success in the game. Wendy also fits this philosophy to me. She was very well rounded with a high skill cap based around controlling Abigail, potion management, and her unique combat synergy with Beefalo. With a tree of nothing but buffs I would find her boring, but the amount of new mechanics and side-grades included in this tree make it a W. Gravestone movement and allegiance with ghosts is something we haven’t seen before and has lots of farming and bossing opportunities, Gestalt Abigail is a different take on the character that opens up new combat possibilities, and while there’s no gameplay the proposed rework to the petal veil seems like it has potential for lots of unique possibilities, so hopefully I’ll be able to cite “Enlightened Crown Abigail” as a point here eventually.

Overall I can’t think of any one tree so far I’d consider a failure. Every one of the trees except for maybe Wormwood has some dud skills that no one who plays this game regularly is gonna care for. For every Lunar Flames there is a Brighter Lighter 3. Klei has been pretty decent at listening to feedback regarding skill trees and have a good understanding of what makes the skill trees special on a character by character basis.. in my opinion. If you put a gun to my head and told me to call one character’s skill tree bad I’d say Wilson, as I feel there was so much more potential for his if he wasn’t yet again delegated as the tutorial character and thus assigned a tutorial skill tree.

[Castiliano]

I like it when the skill tree is entirely good and not half-bad (like most characters' trees).

Woodie's is the best one in my opinion, so far. Everything is so incredibly good (except for the hat) that it makes you want to have a lot more points to acquire all the skills.

[Evelo]

Skill Trees are meant to be small bonuses to a character with a major bonus that can enhance, alter, or be a build around for certain play styles at the end of the tree.

Given we don't have that with any characters as the small bonuses are quite large, and the skill trees are too small to actually make investing significantly into it really matter I feel the system as a whole is flawed.

Some great skills I think exist are Wolfgang's slight number boosts, Winona's catapult attack/aoe increases, Wendy's pipspook buffs, Wilson's Torch and Beard trees, and the Burning Bernie skill (though i have issues with willow's skill tree in general, I do like that talent and the requirements surrounding it.)

Some poor skills I think exist are Wormwood's MoonShroom Sleep Powder, Willow's Embers, Wigfrid's entire tree, Woby Badges (the first talent to unlock them), Wortox's Soul Jar, Wilson's Transmutations, and many more.

I feel the skills do way too much in general with the capstone needing to be the new thing that you can build around or drastically alters your playstyle. At the moment we effectively have capstone abilities scattered haphazardly though out. The affinity skills are probably the best for everyone because they focus more on the end of the line cap stone for the most part, even if they don't change much (which I wish some did, see Wilson, Wolfgang, etc)

[Peasant]

pump this up

[OMEGASCRUFF]

They should encourage healthy and/or fun and/or unique gameplay. They should improve their meta relevance and ability to partake in newer content. They should stay true to the core components and flavor of the character, but expand on their gameplay. Improving support options is always nice, too, to improve the multiplayer aspect of this game.

And of course, they should be well-received enough to encourage people to try the character out, but this is a side effect of good design, not a tangible goal.

It's why I'm not happy with any 3 of the Insight trees.  Wortox is very close to great but he's become lost from his original balance, and could also use some minor tuning on a few more skills. I don't think the devs will have the courage or experience playing him to do what needs to be done. Walter needs a meta relevant DPS benchmark and more diverse utility. The Woby skills could also be improved or reworked to give him more of a distinct purpose that's different from a Beefalo. Wendy is... completely misguided, and they clearly had no cohesive plan for her when the answer was obviously to just make teamwork and fighting alongside Abigail the primary focus, but none of her skill tree encourages that at all.

I've been mostly content with the skill trees we've had this far, but this trio has been... disappointingly designed. Willow and Wormwood are my favorite existing skills trees, by quite a lot actually, if that helps make my perspective a little more clear.

And please, for the love of Tenebrous, stop removing downsides and limitations. Making them more manageable (ideally, more flexible) is fine, sometimes even good, but this is generally unpopular unless is a minor downside, and disregards the entire structure of certain characters. It takes nuance to touch these things sometimes, and a lot of that was nonexistent during this beta.

[WenericMember]

22 hours ago, SSneaky said:

Oh hey something we can agree on

I think my current ranking is:

1. Woodie (Fixes his characters problems, no skills feel necessary, but all are good additions)
2. Wortox (Gives Depth to his gameplay and solves his scaling issues in a manner that isn't too insight intrusive)
3. Willow (I think at least the first tier of her lighter magic should've been base kit, but other than that is great, if a bit too dependant on changing stats).
4. Wormwood (Woodie, but slightly less interesting Perks)
5. Wendy[?] (With how drastic the changes still to come are she's hard to rank, but if the promised changes live up to their potential, is pretty much what she needed, albeit with a few duds skills, could go as high as #2, or as Low as #8, depends on how the rest of the beta turns out)
6. Wigfrid (Weapons are cool, I know its an unpopular but I love the beefalo skills, and the more standalone perks are neat enough. Alignmnent being so underwhelming drags it down a lot though)
7. Walter (Perks solve flaws in his character design, but nothing beyond that)
8. Wurt (Perks are interesting, and make Merms more unique. But her amphibian tree is underexplored.)
9. Winona (I like how fleshe out her alignment Perks are, but outside of alignment its really just her catapults)
10. Wilson (I like the Alchem5y perks as a core of his tree, but the torch branches should be universally applied to all light sources. Beard Tree's kinda whatever)
11. Wolfgang (When like 75% of your skill tree is just changing around numbers (Crits, Dumbell Damage, Max Mightiness, Damage Boosts) Your tree is in a baddddd spot. He has like 2 interesting perks In the coaching line. And that's it.)

IMO, a skill tree should scale a character to endgame, add QOL and Flavour to a survivor, by encouraging customization of survivors to ultimately decrease the issues of redundancy of duplicate survivors.

I'd say Woodie-Wormwoods are Great, Wendy - Wurt are solid, Winona-Wolfgangs are meh.

[Steorra]

For me Woodie has a best skill tree which covered all downside of him, and every skill is useful - which means player have to choose.

And now it seems Wortox one joined here - it is same like Woodie's one, and more interesting and more creative.