How can a developer in the same company design skill trees with such a huge discrepancy?

[Pominsing]

I believe Wortox and Wendy’s skill trees represent the best and the worst of skill tree design. Why is there such a huge difference in this skill tree update? Why?

It’s hard to imagine. This isn’t about whether you’ve played Don’t Starve—this is about whether you understand game design at all. In any game, a character with extremely high mobility must have their low damage as a trade-off. Wortox’s skill tree solves his existing issues, yet at the same time, it gives him even higher damage—how can this possibly make sense? Of course, you could argue that this is a cooperative survival game and one overpowered character won’t ruin the balance, but why? Why does Wendy have such a skill tree, and why has her core issues been entirely ignored in multiple updates? Transferring damage to Abigail? Restoring sanity? Summoning butterflies? Crawling out of graves like a zombie? Are you kidding me?. Why? Why has Wendy received such a skill tree? Powerful? Popular? Are you thinking about the new players who struggle with Wendy, or are you considering those who are already experienced with her?

Can’t beat the Shadows? When I first played Don’t Starve, do you know what the first thing I mastered as Wendy was? It was fighting the Shadows. After that, Shadows became nothing more than nightmare fuel to me. I never saw them as a real threat. The "strength" you talk about for Wendy—was it built on this?

Now, what about Wortox? Wortox has never been a niche or weak character. Even without a skill tree, he still has the strongest mobility in Don’t Starve.

Do you know what Wendy players want? Huh? Do we want Shadow Abigail with stats like Wolfgang? Do we want Moon Abigail to be able to solo bosses? I don’t want any of that. As a Wendy player, all I want is for Wendy and Abigail to fight together. Does this update address that? You clearly haven’t played Wendy, so how would you know what needs changing? Fine! Let me tell you: Have both Unyielding Draught and Vigor Mortis exist at the same time, and double their effects. That would not only fix the problem where these potions have little impact, but it would also solve the issue of Abigail falling behind and dying when fighting with Wendy. I just want Wendy and Abigail to fight together. Can you understand that?

And what have you given Wortox now? The ability to solo defeat Celestial Heroes and Weavers on the first autumn day—this is the power you’ve given him, and it’s not even hard to achieve;
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ihiSYaEcg/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19CzbYCExs/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
Give me some time, and I could reach that level with Wortox as well.

Don’t know how to design skill trees? Fine! You could have just canceled Wendy’s skill tree update altogether instead of presenting us with a pile of garbage like this. Then you keep decorating and adjusting it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still garbage.

Wendy is strong? Look at Wortox now. This is really a joke. Some people are hiding behind 'balance' to cause imbalance.

[cyjs]

Translate it for you

I think Wartox and Wendy's skill trees represent the best and worst of skill tree design. Why is there such a big difference in this skill tree update? Why?

It's hard to imagine. It's not about whether you've played Don't Starve - it's about whether you understand game design. In any game, characters with extremely high mobility must come at the cost of low damage. Wortox's skill tree solves his existing problems, but gives him more damage at the same time - how could that possibly make sense? Sure, you could argue that this is a cooperative survival game and one overly powerful character won't upset the balance, but why? Why does Wendy have a skill tree like this, and why has her core issue been completely ignored in multiple updates? Transferring damage to Abigail? To regain sanity? Summon butterflies? Crawling out of the grave like a zombie? Are you kidding me? Why? Why does Wendy have such a skill tree? powerful? popular? Are you thinking about new players who are struggling with Wendy, or are you thinking about players who already have experience with her?

Can't defeat the Shadow? When I first played Don't Starve, you know what was the first thing I mastered as Wendy? That's the fight against the shadows. After that, Shadow became nothing more than nightmare fuel to me. I never saw them as a real threat. What you call Wendy's "power" - is it based on this?

So, what about Wortox? Wortox was never a niche or underdog character. Even without a skill tree, he's still the most mobile character in Don't Starve.

You know what Wendy’s players want? Um? Do we want a Shadow Abigail with attributes like Wolfgang? Do we want Moon Abigail to be able to fight the boss alone? I don't want any of this. As a Wendy player, I just want Wendy and Abigail to play side by side. Does this update resolve this issue? You obviously haven't played Wendy, how do you know what needs to be changed? good! Let me tell you: take the Elixir of Unyielding and Corpse Power at the same time, and double its effect. This would not only solve the problem of these potions being ineffective, but also solve the problem of Abigail falling behind and dying while fighting Wendy. I just wish Wendy and Abigail were side by side. Can you understand?

So what do you give Wortox now? The ability to defeat the Celestial Hero and the Weaver alone on the first day of autumn - this is a power you give him, and it's not that hard to achieve:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1bLiyYMECo/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19CzbYCExs/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
Give me some time and I can get to that level with Wortox too.

Don't know how to design a skill tree? no problem! You could just cancel Wendy's skill tree update instead of showing us a bunch of crap. Then you keep decorating and tweaking it, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still garbage.

Is Wendy very strong? Look at what Wortox is like now. It's a joke. Some people just hide behind "balance" and create imbalance.

[Lee Sy]

一个是付费的DLC角色，一个是免费更新的福利，如果是这样那就说得通了。

[AngelicBug]

There are different people who are taking care of each skill tree, Jason has said this here on the forum more than once 

[Pominsing]

7 minutes ago, ccczz said:

我很理解你想要重做Wendy技能树的想法，但是也没有必要去拉动Wortox技能树，事实上你所展示的视频是玩家个人对时间带来的结果，是玩家技术的决定。

如果按照你所展示的方式来看，Wolfgang打图纸完全需要26天，排Wolfgang后面一位的就是Wendy29天。

事实上，这些所谓的记录受玩家的操作影响很大。

This isn't a matter of player skill, it's a character stat cap issue. Wendy's skill tree doesn't address any of her current late-game weaknesses, and there's no improvement in quality of life. What I'm trying to say is, this isn't a game design problem; they can only inflate the character's stats to cover it up. Do you understand?

[ColdHeaven]

16 minutes ago, Pominsing said:

This isn't a matter of player skill, it's a character stat cap issue. Wendy's skill tree doesn't address any of her current late-game weaknesses, and there's no improvement in quality of life. What I'm trying to say is, this isn't a game design problem; they can only inflate the character's stats to cover it up. Do you understand?

stats cap issue? elaborate further, little emperor

[Pominsing]

4 minutes ago, ColdHeaven said:

stats cap issue? elaborate further, little emperor

Maybe you should use your eyes to take another look at the article and the link?

[ColdHeaven]

39 minutes ago, ccczz said:

我很理解你想要重做Wendy技能树的想法，但是也没有必要去拉踩Wortox技能树，事实上你所展示的视频是玩家个人对时间规划带来的成果，是玩家技术决定的。

如果按你所展示的方式来看，Wolfgang打完全图纸boss需要26天，排Wolfgang后面一位的就是Wendy29天。

事实上，这些所谓的记录受玩家的操作影响很大。

the great prince 姬云涛 using facts and logic, please talk and calm down the other 大侠, for the sake of other wendy mains and Jason

[Pominsing]

1 hour ago, Lee Sy said:

一个是付费的DLC角色，一个是免费更新的福利，如果是这样那就说得通了。

From the perspective of free vs. paid content, you can check out the price of Wendy's cosmetics on the Steam market. Wendy's cosmetics are generally priced much higher than other characters', which shows how much players love her. From this angle, the value that Vortox brings shouldn't be any higher, or much higher, than Wendy's. But the Wortox's skill tree is on an unprecedented level. Even the DLC character, the Wormwood, doesn't compare to the strength and design quality of the Wortox skill tree

[Lee Sy]

1 hour ago, AngelicBug said:

There are different people who are taking care of each skill tree, Jason has said this here on the forum more than once

这就是原因了，设计师的风格差异（委婉的说法）导致了技能树间的效果相差得如此巨大，那为什么不能让Wortox技能树的设计师分担一些温蒂的技能树呢。

[Dingle]

3 hours ago, Pominsing said:

I believe Wortox and Wendy’s skill trees represent the best and the worst of skill tree design. Why is there such a huge difference in this skill tree update? Why?

It’s hard to imagine. This isn’t about whether you’ve played Don’t Starve—this is about whether you understand game design at all. In any game, a character with extremely high mobility must have their low damage as a trade-off. Wortox’s skill tree solves his existing issues, yet at the same time, it gives him even higher damage—how can this possibly make sense? Of course, you could argue that this is a cooperative survival game and one overpowered character won’t ruin the balance, but why? Why does Wendy have such a skill tree, and why has her core issues been entirely ignored in multiple updates? Transferring damage to Abigail? Restoring sanity? Summoning butterflies? Crawling out of graves like a zombie? Are you kidding me?. Why? Why has Wendy received such a skill tree? Powerful? Popular? Are you thinking about the new players who struggle with Wendy, or are you considering those who are already experienced with her?

Can’t beat the Shadows? When I first played Don’t Starve, do you know what the first thing I mastered as Wendy was? It was fighting the Shadows. After that, Shadows became nothing more than nightmare fuel to me. I never saw them as a real threat. The "strength" you talk about for Wendy—was it built on this?

Now, what about Wortox? Wortox has never been a niche or weak character. Even without a skill tree, he still has the strongest mobility in Don’t Starve.

Do you know what Wendy players want? Huh? Do we want Shadow Abigail with stats like Wolfgang? Do we want Moon Abigail to be able to solo bosses? I don’t want any of that. As a Wendy player, all I want is for Wendy and Abigail to fight together. Does this update address that? You clearly haven’t played Wendy, so how would you know what needs changing? Fine! Let me tell you: Have both Unyielding Draught and Vigor Mortis exist at the same time, and double their effects. That would not only fix the problem where these potions have little impact, but it would also solve the issue of Abigail falling behind and dying when fighting with Wendy. I just want Wendy and Abigail to fight together. Can you understand that?

And what have you given Wortox now? The ability to solo defeat Celestial Heroes and Weavers on the first autumn day—this is the power you’ve given him, and it’s not even hard to achieve;
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ihiSYaEcg/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19CzbYCExs/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=54697a685cb186c97bf317be13352db1;
Give me some time, and I could reach that level with Wortox as well.

Don’t know how to design skill trees? Fine! You could have just canceled Wendy’s skill tree update altogether instead of presenting us with a pile of garbage like this. Then you keep decorating and adjusting it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still garbage.

Wendy is strong? Look at Wortox now. This is really a joke. Some people are hiding behind 'balance' to cause imbalance.

You'd have to play many, many times and restart a lot of worlds to get that level of speedrun. That was a lot of absurd luck. Also the speedrunner had to roll back lol.

For anyone that hasn't seen the Wortox video:

1. He drowns during crab king and rolls back. He can't do enough damage. He almost drowns a second time.

2. He has completely bizarre and luck with the ocean content. This is the biggest thing for an autumn celestial champion. He finds cookie cutters immediately after getting in the water. Then also finds crabby hermit. Crabby Hermit gives the runner not one, but two heavy lures, 25% chance each. Then a third heavy lure. At one point the runner catches 3 heavy fish from a single school of fish. Crabby hermit island also spawns next to the killer bee biome haha. It's pretty much perfect.

3. If you can kill Celestial Champion early, you can kill Fuelweaver immediately after because of moon phase control. This isn't Wortox specific.

4. This Wortox has to cheat for the Fuelweaver kill.

[ApoIIo]

3 hours ago, Pominsing said:

Now, what about Wortox? Wortox has never been a niche or weak character. Even without a skill tree, he still has the strongest mobility in Don’t Starve.

Terrible take. Wortox was always on a timer to be outdone by Wanda and post-skill tree Winona in his teleporting niche, and one comes with a nuclear arsenal and the other is just a better Wortox/Wolfgang combination in every way. He was just diet Wanda that was earlygame-oriented. Wortox NEEDED a good skill tree, his only progression was swapping to Wanda.

25 minutes ago, Dingle said:

You'd have to play many, many times and restart a lot of worlds to get that level of speedrun. That was a lot of absurd luck. Also the speedrunner had to roll back lol.

For anyone that hasn't seen the Wortox video:

1. He drowns during crab king and rolls back. He can't do enough damage. He almost drowns a second time.

2. He has completely bizarre and luck with the ocean content. This is the biggest thing for an autumn celestial champion. He finds cookie cutters immediately after getting in the water. Then also finds crabby hermit. Crabby Hermit gives the runner not one, but two heavy lures, 25% chance each. Then a third heavy lure. At one point the runner catches 3 heavy fish from a single school of fish. Crabby hermit island also spawns next to the killer bee biome haha. It's pretty much perfect.

3. If you can kill Celestial Champion early, you can kill Fuelweaver immediately after because of moon phase control. This isn't Wortox specific.

4. This Wortox has to cheat for the Fuelweaver kill.

Checks out. Always eye-rolling material when people bring up speedruns as the basis of balance. It's giving "guys, look Wolfgang can do day 2 fuelweaver with insane luck!!!" 

I genuinely don't see why Wendy players are *this* upset? The skill tree looks fine. Is gestalt abigail soloing bosses or essentially running over Wolfgang's entire existence with the sheer obnoxious dps she can achieve not good enough for the horde? Their damage character is doing insane damage now, what else do they want? So far only Catuna made a decent, constructive critic post without either attacking the devs or going "but other skill trees r better :<"
 

[Echsrick]

oh boy....i...i dont even know how i sould say things in a friendly manner, it is THIS wrong, like, just dont compare the 2? is it that what you do? trying to make look others worse just so you get your will? wendy has her own fair bit of upsides AND DOWNSIDES just like wortox has, wortox has his own share of problems, actualy kind of a bigger deal his downsides then the BARELY existing downside wendy gets, damage not everything, and thats her only "downside" dealing a bit less damage, wich gets completly negated if you attack with the ghost at the same time, or you know, just dont, for most every day encounters the ghost can just SOLO things, like no other character can just spawn into the world and gets a personal body guard, wendys skill tree is just as good, you lot are just greedy and want more and more with unreasonable needs to the point some of you started to insult the poor devs wich realy not a cool thing to do....realy sad realy, they workin on the updates for so long especialy now in the christmass times, please just give them a break allready

[Hollow soul 3]

I'm not a Wendy player, so to me her skill tree looks good. A more experienced Wendy player would have to explain her nuances for me to understand the hate behind it. I think you're probably having a similar misunderstanding with Wortox. To be fair, I haven't really expressed what I think Jesse has been doing well, the soul pierce looks awesome, the twintale is great, cheaper teleporting and soul storage are all pretty significant changes. The explosion resistance was the right call for bosses, it does a great job at instructing us on it's intended use through gameplay mechanics. 

His neutral skills aren't for me, and getting a nerf for pickings too many skills on one side seems like it's going to lower diversity. The nice alignment is a fantastic add, but the soul overload seems kind of pointless when the naughty side has so many skills to help you hold more souls. 

Teleporting on the map cheaper is kind of a waste too compared to holding more souls, the twintale takes 10 souls to make, so you're training 200 health for a telltale heart. The other perks on that branch do make up for it, but at base it's a wasted skill. 

On the naughty side, my only real critique is that the sack isn't too useful late game, and it's a mandatory pick. If I invest in a perk, I don't want it to be something I'm not using. Really feel like it needs a better utility, or at least maybe make it faster than a regular pickup.

The biggest criticism I have is the control issue. On PC, he's great, but on console his teleport is a set distance hop. It ruines the shadow/lunar alignment perks, along with the control over soul pierce. It used to be good enough, but we've seen the controls implemented correctly with Winonas catapult targeting. It nerfs him severely, and the fix is right there. Please have your team for console ports fix this. It's not being tested, but if you think about it just a bit you can see the problems.

[Dingle]

10 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm not a Wendy player, so to me her skill tree looks good. A more experienced Wendy player would have to explain her nuances for me to understand the hate behind it. I think you're probably having a similar misunderstanding with Wortox. To be fair, I haven't really expressed what I think Jesse has been doing well, the soul pierce looks awesome, the twintale is great, cheaper teleporting and soul storage are all pretty significant changes. The explosion resistance was the right call for bosses, it does a great job at instructing us on it's intended use through gameplay mechanics. 

His neutral skills aren't for me, and getting a nerf for pickings too many skills on one side seems like it's going to lower diversity. The nice alignment is a fantastic add, but the soul overload seems kind of pointless when the naughty side has so many skills to help you hold more souls. 

Teleporting on the map cheaper is kind of a waste too compared to holding more souls, the twintale takes 10 souls to make, so you're training 200 health for a telltale heart. The other perks on that branch do make up for it, but at base it's a wasted skill. 

On the naughty side, my only real critique is that the sack isn't too useful late game, and it's a mandatory pick. If I invest in a perk, I don't want it to be something I'm not using. Really feel like it needs a better utility, or at least maybe make it faster than a regular pickup.

The biggest criticism I have is the control issue. On PC, he's great, but on console his teleport is a set distance hop. It ruines the shadow/lunar alignment perks, along with the control over soul pierce. It used to be good enough, but we've seen the controls implemented correctly with Winonas catapult targeting. It nerfs him severely, and the fix is right there. Please have your team for console ports fix this. It's not being tested, but if you think about it just a bit you can see the problems.

Fully agree on the nabsack. Better utility would be nice. I'm not even using it as a weapon early game anymore.

I'm trying to play with the Neutral perks more. Still can't find a real use for them. As others point out, in a non-speedrun you should just get jars. I'd be ok with the pan flute perks being replaced, or also ok with them just not being for me. I think more casual Wortox players like the pan flute soul perk, and speedrunners like it to squeeze every second out of a short run before the flute breaks.

[Hollow soul 3]

3 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Fully agree on the nabsack. Better utility would be nice. I'm not even using it as a weapon early game anymore.

I'm trying to play with the Neutral perks more. Still can't find a real use for them. As others point out, in a non-speedrun you should just get jars. I'd be ok with the pan flute perks being replaced, or also ok with them just not being for me. I think more casual Wortox players like the pan flute soul perk, and speedrunners like it to squeeze every second out of a short run before the flute breaks.

My current plan for Xbox with two friends is twintale 3, three of the nice side teleport skills (skipping map skill), filling out the soul pierce and hard tree, and the panflute middle skill. Might change our the panflute and the top two soul jars perks to fill in the decoy a little, but the soul hop utility skills don't work well with controller. I feel like that and the alignment perks are where my biggest issue is. 

 

Also side note here, everyone's been praising klei for their communication. Wortox is not getting that treatment at all.

[Dingle]

6 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

My current plan for Xbox with two friends is twintale 3, three of the nice side teleport skills (skipping map skill), filling out the soul pierce and hard tree, and the panflute middle skill. Might change our the panflute and the top two soul jars perks to fill in the decoy a little, but the soul hop utility skills don't work well with controller. I feel like that and the alignment perks are where my biggest issue is.

Decoy is better now. Maybe still the worst naughty perk line though. I'd maybe get rid of Covetous for it but not Overwhelming Greed.

6 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Also side note here, everyone's been praising klei for their communication. Wortox is not getting that treatment at all.

I try not to point this out too much.

[Hollow soul 3]

4 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Decoy is better now. Maybe still the worst naughty perk line though. I'd maybe get rid of Covetous for it but not Overwhelming Greed.

I try not to point this out too much.

Its definitely interesting. I feel like the panflute is going to get me out of enough situations that the decoy 1 and 2 would cover. 3 is where it stands out a little more. If I were going that direction I would be tempted to pull off reverberation as well, and just skip on the damage side of the new weapon just to switch it up a little. 

 

Yeah, I totally understand that it's not their job to communicate. We aren't owed it at all. I really don't want to generalize a group, but I don't know how much it helped with Wendy. I just feel like getting the developers input really helped understand their perspective. If we know what they're thinking about changing, we can provide better feedback. It also helps to humanize the process. Right now, it feels like wortox mains are talking to a wall

[CremeLover]

23 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm not a Wendy player, so to me her skill tree looks good. A more experienced Wendy player would have to explain her nuances for me to understand the hate behind it.

I can give you a quick rundown of what I think the issues are, and from Wendy as a whole, but I believe I wildly differ in opinion from most of the complains from the vocal Wendy's playerbase. Still, if you want a small analysis...

TL;DR: Wendy, the sidequest character.

Starting with not the skill tree itself, but a part of her base design, Mourning Glory.
Many characters have a special resource used for a lot of their crafting recipes or just their gameplay in general, but Wendy is the only one whose resource cannot be automated, gathered along the way by just playing normally, or by another non-Wendy player.

Quote

Willow =  Embers. Just burn any weak mob. Can setup nice farms to automate it better.
WX-78 = Biodata. You can gather biodata from many different sources, and once you have a setup you want you only need more biodata if you swap circuits constantly. You can make a few pens near your base and scan mobs very fast and easy to stockpile a bunch of it.
Wickerbottom = Papyrus. Is a bit out of the way to go to the swamp to gather reeds, but with the inclusion of monkey tails, and the ability to turn blueprints from bosses into regular papyrus, plus the ability to regenerate books in the library, I believe her resource intensive demand has been quite lessened from her first iteration.
Woodie = Monster meat + basic resources. Is everywhere.
Maxwell = Nightmare fuel. Also everywhere
Winona = Many resources, including some boss drops. She is quite resource intensive, but structures need to only be built once since you can move them. Fuel can be gathered just doing other things not related to Winona, or by other characters. Lunar alignment removes need to refuel.
Warly = Spices. You do need to farm and do some sailing to get many of his spices, but many characters can gather all the spices for him.
Wortox = Souls. Any mob gives you souls.

 

Wendy = Morning Glory. Do a specific sidequest where you guide a ghost to its toys. Sidequest is the same day 1 and day 1000, cannot be automated or speedup or gathered through any other means, and only Wendy can do it. Her resource is to make consumables to boot, so no reuse like Wicker's books or Winona's structures

And her skillset also has more IFs and more sidequest.

Blessed sisturn: Get more health IF you leave Abigail with the sisturn for 5 minutes EACH TIME
Vengeful Ghost: Does damage to mobs AFTER dying
Shadow Abigail: Does more damage IF you kill a mob in your inventory, so go gather a few before each fight.

And for the rest

Gravestone line: You don't need to go search graves from faraway to do your sidequest, but you still have to do the entire sidequest with no alternative each time you want more potions. Still, I do appreciate the ability to move and make graves.
Team Spirit: I actually like this line... after I've automated the inputs with mods. For console players or controller players, this is going to be a bit of a dud. You're moving Abigail and you at the same time, sort of like a puppeteer, and unlike Maxwell or Willow, where you can take some steps back and prepare your spell, you need to do this ASAP to get Abigail out of the way so neither of you takes damage.
Mourning Glory: You can revive butterflies for a very expensive amount, allows you to use potions with your hat which while it has great potential, it does require some tunning still. And you can make a meat effigy with new cool animation and assets, and same functionality.
I do like the potion brew line, I have no problems with it

There are 6 skills dedicated to make her sidequest easier to do (grave line and pipspook line) to adquire her resource.

 

And I personally don't think the direction of Lunar Abigail is the correct one, since it overlaps quite a bit with regular Abigail, and it should've taken a different direction entirely, like I said here. At least the gestalt form doesn't last 2 days and you need to renew it every full moon.

So:
6 skills to improve her unique resource collection (pipspook and grave line)
6 skills that gives conditional bonuses (4 for sisturn, 1 for dying, 1 for shadow abigail murder buff) that are
1 skill to pay resources to save the gathering of resources of one of her conditional skills (butterfly resurrect to empower shadow abigail)
1 skill that is a meat effigy
1 hat skill that is not tuned that well yet.
4 skills to control abigail (which are great for PC players) (but from what I've read, the haunt and spook skill seems to not have been a success for a lot of people)
4 skills related to her elixirs + 1 new elixir (which requires her resource). I think they are neat, but not everyone agrees.

 

I don't share the negativity of most people in regards to the skilltree, but while nice, it doesn't really do much of what I would want, except for the team spirit and brew line. I do love her new animations added with the team spirit line tho ♥

From what I've seen, most people are particularly dissapointed with some of the more lackluster skills, and dissatisfaction in regards to skills that don't seem to have a use in endgame, improve her gameplay loop, or simply does not reflect their particular playstyle, whereas I'm a bit dissapointed in that the skilltree doesn't expand or changes her gameplay loop as much as I would've liked also, it seems a section of the playerbase feels disenfranchised by the developers and have decided to vent their frustations alongside giving the feedback.

Overall, not the best, but I believe people pulling towards their own particular viewpoint has made this whole beta a bit messy. I hope Klei does take some measures to prevent this kind of situation in the future, and does not become more closeminded to the community as a result.

[lio516]

1 hour ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

I'm not a Wendy player, so to me her skill tree looks good. A more experienced Wendy player would have to explain her nuances for me to understand the hate behind it.

I hope you understand, because I really can't explain everyone once, in fact, many problems in the skill tree can be found in the play process, whether it is before, or now, you can find that many characters' skills have its uniqueness and irreplaceability, but this time the garland skills, I can say is no characteristics, first of all, during the existence of the drug effect, There's no point in abandoning the gear bar for him. I'm sure I won't use it either early or mid-game. Moon Abi is now weakened, damage is halved, attacks are invincible, and it's not much better than before. Tomb skills, actually must be built on the corpse, you do not commit suicide can not make it, forcing players to commit suicide, and Shadow Abby, actually need to kill creatures to trigger a few seconds of skills, kill creatures with the time, Wendy himself up to play it may cause more damage, and do butterfly skills, actually need 4 mourning glory to make a butterfly? Is the cost too high? Abigail's mode switch is also a problem, and if you miss it, you have to wait a full 20 days, which is totally unacceptable

[Mysterious box]

21 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

TL;DR: Wendy, the sidequest character.

Starting with not the skill tree itself, but a part of her base design, Mourning Glory.
Many characters have a special resource used for a lot of their crafting recipes or just their gameplay in general, but Wendy is the only one whose resource cannot be automated, gathered along the way by just playing normally, or by another non-Wendy player.

I would argue this is Walter even more so post skill tree but pre skill tree he has to setup marble farm for sustainable dps or continuously go all the way back to the station for cursed ammo. Post skill tree however this becomes far more grindy as he has to visit the ruins, the lunar island, kill bee queen, and kill various unique end game mobs like mimics and inkblights for his gear upgrade and side grades not including farming end game mobs for his alignment ammos. This is before considering the Woby training side quest personally I feel like it just makes Walter and Wendy more unique in these aspects.

[Dingle]

38 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Its definitely interesting. I feel like the panflute is going to get me out of enough situations that the decoy 1 and 2 would cover. 3 is where it stands out a little more. If I were going that direction I would be tempted to pull off reverberation as well, and just skip on the damage side of the new weapon just to switch it up a little. 

I'm playing with this more today and tomorrow. Will post a build tomorrow in my big Wortox feedback thread.

38 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Yeah, I totally understand that it's not their job to communicate. We aren't owed it at all. I really don't want to generalize a group, but I don't know how much it helped with Wendy. I just feel like getting the developers input really helped understand their perspective. If we know what they're thinking about changing, we can provide better feedback. It also helps to humanize the process. Right now, it feels like wortox mains are talking to a wall

Most characters dont get this level of communication. This beta was pretty special. And Wortox did get one explanation post, maybe two? Thats really good compared to before. So I'm not complaining, unless I want to be snarky to a Wendy player that calls for Wortox nerfs because one speedrunner had amazing fishing and Pearl luck.

33 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

I can give you a quick rundown of what I think the issues are, and from Wendy as a whole, but I believe I wildly differ in opinion from most of the complains from the vocal Wendy's playerbase. Still, if you want a small analysis...

TL;DR: Wendy, the sidequest character.

Starting with not the skill tree itself, but a part of her base design, Mourning Glory.
Many characters have a special resource used for a lot of their crafting recipes or just their gameplay in general, but Wendy is the only one whose resource cannot be automated, gathered along the way by just playing normally, or by another non-Wendy player.

And her skillset also has more IFs and more sidequest.

Blessed sisturn: Get more health IF you leave Abigail with the sisturn for 5 minutes EACH TIME
Vengeful Ghost: Does damage to mobs AFTER dying
Shadow Abigail: Does more damage IF you kill a mob in your inventory, so go gather a few before each fight.

And for the rest

Gravestone line: You don't need to go search graves from faraway to do your sidequest, but you still have to do the entire sidequest with no alternative each time you want more potions. Still, I do appreciate the ability to move and make graves.
Team Spirit: I actually like this line... after I've automated the inputs with mods. For console players or controller players, this is going to be a bit of a dud. You're moving Abigail and you at the same time, sort of like a puppeteer, and unlike Maxwell or Willow, where you can take some steps back and prepare your spell, you need to do this ASAP to get Abigail out of the way so neither of you takes damage.
Mourning Glory: You can revive butterflies for a very expensive amount, allows you to use potions with your hat which while it has great potential, it does require some tunning still. And you can make a meat effigy with new cool animation and assets, and same functionality.
I do like the potion brew line, I have no problems with it

There are 6 skills dedicated to make her sidequest easier to do (grave line and pipspook line) to adquire her resource.

 

And I personally don't think the direction of Lunar Abigail is the correct one, since it overlaps quite a bit with regular Abigail, and it should've taken a different direction entirely, like I said here. At least the gestalt form doesn't last 2 days and you need to renew it every full moon.

So:
6 skills to improve her unique resource collection (pipspook and grave line)
6 skills that gives conditional bonuses (4 for sisturn, 1 for dying, 1 for shadow abigail murder buff) that are
1 skill to pay resources to save the gathering of resources of one of her conditional skills (butterfly resurrect to empower shadow abigail)
1 skill that is a meat effigy
1 hat skill that is not tuned that well yet.
4 skills to control abigail (which are great for PC players) (but from what I've read, the haunt and spook skill seems to not have been a success for a lot of people)
4 skills related to her elixirs + 1 new elixir (which requires her resource). I think they are neat, but not everyone agrees.

 

I don't share the negativity of most people in regards to the skilltree, but while nice, it doesn't really do much of what I would want, except for the team spirit and brew line. I do love her new animations added with the team spirit line tho ♥

From what I've seen, most people are particularly dissapointed with some of the more lackluster skills, and dissatisfaction in regards to skills that don't seem to have a use in endgame, improve her gameplay loop, or simply does not reflect their particular playstyle, whereas I'm a bit dissapointed in that the skilltree doesn't expand or changes her gameplay loop as much as I would've liked also, it seems a section of the playerbase feels disenfranchised by the developers and have decided to vent their frustations alongside giving the feedback.

Overall, not the best, but I believe people pulling towards their own particular viewpoint has made this whole beta a bit messy. I hope Klei does take some measures to prevent this kind of situation in the future, and does not become more closeminded to the community as a result.

I really liked your lunar abigail idea.

I also never really liked the pipspook quest. I felt like the perks really helped that, though, plus the grave relocation.

[xhyom]

Do you really want to show us some discrepancy between the two talent trees by showing us a video of Wortox not using 2/3 of the talent tree most of the time? Yes, the character who teleports now teleports a little more, and has easier access to souls, which are basically everything the character does, and where exactly does Wortox get EVEN higher damage, which implies he had a higher damage before, which he does not, and still doesn't have now with his tree, what are you even talking about????....
Wendy gained new forms, unique effects for potions, new COMMANDS for Abigail, made it easier for her to access the potion ingredients, not only by putting them closer, but also by making the task faster and easier, revival, and you want to tell me that Wortox getting more souls by killing more than one bee at a time is disproportionate in comparison? And that's why Wendy deserves 15 more buffs?

And of course, the perfect metric to compare characters and balance: Speedrun on a perfect seed handpicked to work in the best possible way (and failing sometimes), I would really like to see the Wendy main who can't keep Abigail (Something that has been buffed tho) alive do that .

You will get the changes you want when you start talking about what changes you want instead of pointing fingers and complaining that the grass is supposedly greener on the other side. Of course, if these changes are reasonable, there is no point in asking them to rebuild the tree because it is not exactly as powerful as you thought it should be, knowing that it will not happen so that you can keep complaining about it. And no, saying that "They should fight together" is the most empty thing I've ever read, what exactly does that mean, how exactly are they supposed to fix that and how exactly is Lunar Abigail NOT that?

[Guille6785]

I swear these forums detest speedruns unless they can use them to argue why characters should be nerfed, in which case they become the golden standard by which to judge all DST gameplay

[HowlVoid]

13 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

I swear these forums detest speedruns unless they can use them to argue why characters should be nerfed, in which case they become the golden standard by which to judge all DST gameplay

Hi cutie 

What do you think Wendy needs? 

I'm curious to hear your opinion.