The Insight System has to change - Sooner than later

[ADM]

32 minutes ago, finn from human said:

I've never liked this idea because it simply makes a lot of the perks useless for the game's progression. Killing Fuelweaver and Celestial Champion one time upgrades Woodie forever, but if it was per-world then you wouldn't get to use the "no transforming on full moons" perk during the moonstorms (when you need it most) or the "passive shadows when in wereform" perk during shadow pieces and fuelweaver (when you need it the most). I understand seeing insight carrying over between worlds as a flaw, but it's a very very intentional part of the system.

I do see Skilltrees under the light where they should especially solve problems a player can have with a certain character and as far as I can recall I've always said it that way. Generally I'd just ask never to the point where they delete a whole downside but with the case of Woodie, they're quirks, his affinities are very fair and I was looking forward the lunar perk to be this exactly how it is like many players, even if I ended up preferring the shadow one anyway because the Moonstorm phase with him are funny, still, very legitimate thoughts and needed to be present. But in 0 circumstances Woodie needs to be the excuse to leave the insane stuff the other few are capable of using early so something similar to the Wormwood situation I evoked could be considered, there are ways to make this work across the board, and that makes it all the more preferable to me.

[Theukon-dos]

While it is a tempting idea. I feel like it would just make things worse in the long run.

 

For as much as I drag on skill trees as a concept, they do; at the very least; tend to buff weaker characters more than stronger ones. Walter is a good example here, his play rate was apparently on par with Wes, and it's not hard to see why. He had a lot of neat ideas, but he didn't execute any of them particularly well. But his skill tree fixes almost all of them; despite people complaining about it not being bloated enough.

If Walter didn't have his skill tree right at the start, then you'd be forced to play the weak, wes-level version of him at the start of any new world. While characters who didn't need skill trees and got relatively low-impact ones as a result really wouldn't care. Even if you got a handful of insight at the start, that power disparity would still be present and very prominent.

 

You could get around this by adjusting the character's base kit. But ignoring the fact that one might start to question what the point of skill trees where at all of Klei could have adjusted characters on a case-by-case basis instead, there's also the problem that giving the characters a stronger base kit means giving them a weaker and duller skill tree. Especially if those adjustments involved folding in the important parts of the skill tree. Willow got spellcasting as part of her tree. But if those abilities where just given to her outright, then what would that branch contain? A couple spells that she doesn't get by default? 5% extra pick up range for Embers? A boring skill tree is a far greater sin than a broken one in my eyes. And everyone getting the Wolfgang treatment would just make the whole thing even worse.

 

 

On top of that, there are very important questions around unlocking insight in the first place. The one thing players who like and dislike skill trees can usually agree on is that the current method of building insight is rather poor, being nothing but a waiting game. If you keep the insight requirements as-is, then you're still not really making any "progression" by building the skill tree sense a player turtling in base and a player actually doing things earn insight XP at the same rate. Even speeding it up to only take 20-30 days, you'll just have a lot of players who do the bare minimum to get by until their skill tree is fully unlocked.

But if you do switch Insight into something you earn, then what are the requirements for doing so? Lord knows it can't be by defeating bosses, 90% of the reason skill trees exist is so that more characters are effective at killing giants, meaning that you'd just face the same problems that Planar mechanics ran into where the characters it's meant to keep in check are the ones able to best make use of the system in the first place. But then what else are you going to tie it to? Random loot caches around the world? Various and potentially arbitrary milestones like "Build an alchemy engine" or "trade with the pig king"?

With no changes, earning insight would change from an uninvesting and bland system to an uninvesting and bland system you have to deal with constantly. But at the same time, there's just no clear answer for what you would change it to in the first place.

 

 

I hate bringing negativity into nearly every thread involving the last year of updates. But as it stands, the issues with skill trees are incredibly deep rooted, and while; again; I do think that them being unlocked per world is a better idea than how they work now, actually trying to execute on said idea just makes new facets of those problems show up.

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

the current method of building insight is rather poor, being nothing but a waiting game.

it's only a waiting game if you've already mastered your character and even DST as a whole.

Other people, such as newbies or people who aren't terminally gaming like us will be busy with the actual tangible gameplay while they are steadily awarded insight.

[somethin]

I don't usually participate in betas just for this reason. I get to actually play the characters and building the skill tree as I survive. It felt fresh. Hell, it make me start playing Willow again after being bored playing as girl Wilson with a very mediocre summon.

[arubaro]

Is sad how much powercreep they added just to try to hook casual players by giving them more power to start new worlds...people who surrend with games when they die will keep dropping the game but this only will make people,who were having fun for years, drop it and move on...

[Cassielu]

That actually takes away the only special thing about Insight. Maybe it does help the balance a little bit, but in my opinion it's worse overall.

If the Insight acquisition progress is independent in each save, there is no need for it to still exist as skilltree.

Just lock those abilities behind content like seasons, attack waves, moon cycle, ocean, ruins, world events, quest line, crafting station, Instead of opening an extra menu and clicking a button to get them. These progress systems we already have are better than any new progress system, and fit the whole game.

[BezKa]

On 12/1/2024 at 1:51 AM, -Variant said:

where you'd unlock skills by doing specific actions in-game.

I remember suggesting that when skill trees were announced for characters other than Wilson. I got laughed and told to cope, fun times.

It's really amusing watching forums fall into chaos as certain people demand more and more buffs, while others start to realize how skill trees fail at various steps and suggest putting them on life support when they were a horrible idea from the start. And really sad because I knew this would happen and just needed to wait.

The desperate hope that I've been trying to kill with a hammer still lingers, that Klei gives up on the whole skill tree idea and removes it all. Add whatever 'equalizing' skills there are to the characters that need them, and add some minor qol to characters that never had a skill tree, and focus on other parts of the game that deserve the attention more than characters that already feel too strong to just "survive" in a survival world.

[Masked Koopa]

The fundamental issue at play here is that Klei envisions the skill trees as being a way to incentivise players to play long-term even if they lose their worlds. The idea being that well hey you might have lost all your stuff, but you did unlock a bunch of skills you can still use.

And I honestly don't think that's a bad idea in a vacuum - the issue is that Klei isn't very good at actually coming up with a system that would properly facilitate that. For one, skill trees being used to fix the issues with each character's kit has resulted in there being absolutely no level of consistency with what you can expect from a skill, as well as making the base experience of the character remain generally quite unwieldy and underwhelming.

It also just generally isn't a good idea to try to fix problem characters by giving them really good skills to compensate, because now you're making every tree for a 'good' character be filled with a bunch of junk nobody sincerely cares about. And when people inevitably complain about the junk because well hey character x gets good skills, suddenly you have an incentive to make skills much more flashy and impactful, and you end up giving massive buffs to characters who might not have nessecarily even needed them.

It is not impossible to resolve an issue like this, but I also think that Klei do not have anyone who has a really intuitive sense for how to handle a system like this, and moreso relies on deferring to community feedback. To truly resolve the issue you'd have to grab every facet of every character, and then decide which elements are crucial for their core, and which elements are sufficiently "extra" to be something you could put on a skill tree. Which would be more of an undertaking than I think is reasonable for Klei to attempt.

I think the skill trees are incredibly flawed in execution, but I do appreciate Klei trying to cater to newer players getting a better sense of progression, and I think a lot of the new content for the characters is really fun to use. Id rather Klei get rid of boring skills than focus on trying to balance the system.

[Szczuku]

18 hours ago, BezKa said:

I remember suggesting that when skill trees were announced for characters other than Wilson. I got laughed and told to cope, fun times.

It's really amusing watching forums fall into chaos as certain people demand more and more buffs, while others start to realize how skill trees fail at various steps and suggest putting them on life support when they were a horrible idea from the start. And really sad because I knew this would happen and just needed to wait.

That's the dst forum experience for you

Unfortunately, for years now, dst has been changing to better accommodate people that view this game as a boss-fighting, resource-hoarding game. Shouldn't come off as a surprise that those people are now out here giving feedback nd suggestions... and demands.

The very fact that now every character needs to have combat-related skills speaks volumes

[arubaro]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

That's the dst forum experience for you

Unfortunately, for years now, dst has been changing to better accommodate people that view this game as a boss-fighting, resource-hoarding game. Shouldn't come off as a surprise that those people are now out here giving feedback nd suggestions... and demands.

The very fact that now every character needs to have combat-related skills speaks volumes

Dont forget the ones who use cheat mods and expect the devs to make the game as easier as the modified version they play

[RexySeven]

I agree that skill point respec tied to character portal swapping is kinda janky.

We should've been given different way to change skill tree builds that feel more immersive instead of, like, short term solution implemented by developers (or what it feels like overall lack of thought put into it). 

Oxygen not Included have a structure that does that and Dups don't just walk to Printer to reprint themselves a second time; although that would be funny. 
Why can't have something like this?
I have an idea: a headwear, craftable in the magic tab, that sucks "knowledge" out of your head so you get your insights back one by one in the spam of some time while equipped. It also gives de-buff in the form of sanity drain or somethin' silly.

[Just Ragnar]

On 12/4/2024 at 1:53 PM, RexySeven said:

I agree that skill point respec tied to character portal swapping is kinda janky.

We should've been given different way to change skill tree builds that feel more immersive instead of, like, short term solution implemented by developers (or what it feels like overall lack of thought put into it). 

Oxygen not Included have a structure that does that and Dups don't just walk to Printer to reprint themselves a second time; although that would be funny. 
Why can't have something like this?
I have an idea: a headwear, craftable in the magic tab, that sucks "knowledge" out of your head so you get your insights back one by one in the spam of some time while equipped. It also gives de-buff in the form of sanity drain or somethin' silly.

Evil Hat that makes you slowly but surely forget every blueprint, prototype and map progress the longer you wear it.