Why skill tree balancing feels so volatile (to me)

[wizrad7]

I don't know how others feel about this but I think the reason we get so grumpy about skill trees and so heated in their feedback is that they are largely self-contained in their respective updates. Let me elaborate.

For the most part, as of now I can't think of any- skill trees do not get balance updates except within their own beta updates. Once a skill tree is live in the main branch, it is usually not touched upon again. I see this as a potential weakness of the update model, since not all of the player base accesses or gives feedback on beta releases, and the game also changes after the trees are released, potentially making specific skills worse or better. I would encourage klei to not be pressured to release the complete, never-to-be-changed-again versions of these trees, or any update really. Anything should have the potential to be readdressed, and that doesn't mean in a rework necessarily.

One of the best instances of this idea succeeding was in the wickerbottom rework. I think it was then that wortox gained the ability to soul hop anywhere on the map, and from what I can tell the community really enjoyed the change. In addition, it didn't come with an entire wortox rework, it simply existed alongside a different update.

I really hope this happens because I think it'd be pretty good for not just the game, but the community (and forum toxicity lol).

Much love y'all <3

[WenericMember]

I think there's a point to that. It does rather feel quite "now or never." in terms of changes for trees, rather than world content that can fairly easily be improved with QOL updates.

I think the other issue is skill trees feel a lot more... competitive for lack of a better word. An underwhelming world addition is really whatever - at worst its ignorable for the most part. Skill trees are lot more omnipresent, being relevant throughout your entire time playing a character. 

[Radicaljoe]

I agree, there is certainly a sense of "now or never" while klei is making these trees. Like, look at Wigfrids tree's affinity, the 5% damage song for opposite affinity only? I imagine that would have been buffed by now but nah. Winona has 3 skills for I think 20% faster firing catapults, when theres 1 skill that makes it 50% by using the remote, still can't believe that made it to main and still is the same way. 
It's not a certainty that klei will never go back and make tweaks, but they do show some pretty big support for moving forward instead of dwelling on previous material.

[Well-met]

this also explains why so much base content sucks, like all those hats no one wear and crappy stuff like the tree tail whip

[DVGMedia]

24 minutes ago, Well-met said:

this also explains why so much base content sucks, like all those hats no one wear and crappy stuff like the tree tail whip

Every item has its uses. Its just people want to always go for the best item of its class.
Having cheaper weaker things are nice because may not always be able to get the most optimized thing.
And there are great items that no one cares for because of other reasons.

Anyway skill trees have always been kind of rushed out. with minimal testing and they usually just get the "Eh Thats fine" Treatment.  Now its something different because The "Eh thats fine" Mentality would work because of the characters within this skill tree.
Which also is causing discourse because the ones okay with the "ehh thats fine" Trees are getting impatient.

At least thats how i kind of see it.
Frankly every single tree should be given care and not just treated as "Ehh thats fine"

[Chewabacca]

Also: once people have found their favorite characters to play, they don't tend to switch around a lot (especially not the people into DST enough to come to the forums). So people get very invested.

[Hollow soul 3]

Tbh the way they implemented it was kind of not great. Drip feeding the character updates is pretty annoying. A skill tree update would have been awesome. 6 skill tree updates over three years is awful.

With the context of skill trees updating balance it makes no sense to update this way. The characters who got their skill trees are more balanced than the ones without, else what's the point. With the gap between the first and last skill tree, and all the newer content, it's pretty hard to stay consistent.

Not knowing how long it's going to be until your character receives the new balance is not appreciated either when it takes place over years. I understand that klei doesn't have it planned yet, and that things change, but man. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to keep the community up to date. There's plenty of tier lists out there, and I'm sure there's internal communication about who needs a skill tree most. I feel like getting a rough outline on what order they're planning on making these changes should have been step one. 

42 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

Every item has its uses. Its just people want to always go for the best item of its class.
Having cheaper weaker things are nice because may not always be able to get the most optimized thing.
And there are great items that no one cares for because of other reasons.

Self imposed limitations also totally change the game! It's so fun to master different elements of the constant. I absolutely love the low tech/no magic worlds. Removing different basic resources is a blast too. Lots of the lesser used items really save the day and become the highlight of your run

[Echsrick]

1 hour ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

who needs a skill tree most. I feel like getting a rough outline on what order they're planning on making these changes should have been step one. 

thats what i think too, 2 out of 3 characters in this update are allready fine at best without a skill tree even, it realy is just that one that needed it the most out of the 3 that sadly because of his...reportation? is left right now with an half baked skill tree

[Dr. Safety]

5 hours ago, wizrad said:

Once a skill tree is live in the main branch, it is usually not touched upon again.

This 100%, and it is how it was during character refreshes too. I wouldn't have to care so much about everyone being balanced if they would give minor touch ups to characters that need it and nerfs for characters that have too much going for them (looking at you Maxwell, even thought he is one of my mains).

It promotes this idea that every character related update has to be absolutely perfect, because if not it will be flawed for years to come, until they get another big update dedicated to them

[WenericMember]

29 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

This 100%, and it is how it was during character refreshes too. I wouldn't have to care so much about everyone being balanced if they would give minor touch ups to characters that need it and nerfs for characters that have too much going for them (looking at you Maxwell, even thought he is one of my mains).

It promotes this idea that every character related update has to be absolutely perfect, because if not it will be flawed for years to come, until they get another big update dedicated to them

And even then basekit issues aren't guaranteed to be solved - even now Wendys shield potions aren't getting any changes other than a slight duration buff.

[flamboyant wolf]

5 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Also: once people have found their favorite characters to play, they don't tend to switch around a lot (especially not the people into DST enough to come to the forums). So people get very invested.

idk, I used to stick to characters in the past, but nowadays I play a bit of everyone. It's just more fun, especially with all the trees.

[Thieta]

13 hours ago, wizrad said:

For the most part, as of now I can't think of any- skill trees do not get balance updates except within their own beta updates. Once a skill tree is live in the main branch, it is usually not touched upon again.

For the love of god - Not every character in the game has a skill tree yet. This argument is nonsensical, It makes the most sense that every character in the game will get a skill tree first then afterwards they will go back and retouch others or maybe even expand on the skill trees in future updates... Do you honestly want them to spend... months... Years... reworking the same 2-3 skill trees and no other characters get any?

 

10 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

Frankly every single tree should be given care and not just treated as "Ehh thats fine"

I understand and agree to this but it falls under the same issue above - With the same resolution - At one point everything hit's an "eh, that's fine" and they release it. Otherwise they would spend too long (Tho sometimes they spend too little) on things

 

9 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Tbh the way they implemented it was kind of not great. Drip feeding the character updates is pretty annoying. A skill tree update would have been awesome. 6 skill tree updates over three years is awful.

Agreed

 

Considering upon the above some more, I think klei needs to have a dedicated character balancing and skill team tree - They can easily just tweak some older skills to keep up with newer content instead of reworking an entire done skill tree etc. Having a dedicated team would also allow these skill trees to come out at a more consistent rate... However the real problem comes with how small of a team klei is and handling multiple games at that... Is something to consider.
I do agree, However, That they should have a few people revisit the older skill trees - A tweak here or there or reworking a skill to make it more appropriate would be a lot better than leaving it perfectly alone.

Quickest example - Nightmare saddle ruined wigfrids beefalo saddle (more problems than just that) - Literally just remove her war saddle skill, Make it an innate basic craft she has access to with lvl 1 beefalo skill. Then add in 2 skills for lunar and planar that allows her to buff/change the nightmare saddle into a lunar/deep shadow saddle. Deep shadow is nightmare but even better, Lunar is Deep shadow but lunar aligned. - Puts her useless skill craft into an existing skill (Keeping it in the game and helping players for early game) and also makes investing a skill point worth it for the lunar/shadow aligned while also letting her keep her beefalo ruler status. That's just a quick example on how they can easily change a simple skill to keep a character's skill tree from becoming useless through updates. And this is something they can work on while they are working on depths of duplcity update and have it out with the update, shortly after, or a month or two after without much issue.

Tho personally I think they should rework the entire beefalo branch of wigfrids tree to instead focus on giving her an "Alpha" beefalo, It needs to directly change the beefalo instead of giving passive buffs. She can craft a beefalo crown and use it on the beefalo to turn it into a special variant only she has access to and BAM tons of possibilities, Fast attack speed so the beef can be like a follower doing damage alongside her, Access to her shield and spear while on it so it can block attacks get electric dmg buff and also have dash attack. Lot they can do in a perfect world, But that's just me nerding out.

[Theukon-dos]

Didn't Wormwood's skill tree see some revisions after it went live? Not a full rework, but changes none the less.

 

No, the far larger problem seems to be that Klei has several different teams working on skill trees, but seemingly no meditator between the teams making sure that they're all following the same design philosophy and goals. Mending that skill trees have been *wildly* inconsistent between characters, even those with a similar power level pre-tree.

 

 

Wendy got an extremely tame skill tree due to being considered "already strong" by Klei. Which is fair enough if you ask me. But then why did Wurt; who was already one of the strongest characters in the game; gets such a powerful skill tree despite that? Sure. She didn't come online as fast as the game's top dogs. But was being able to raze most of the game's bosses with an army of Fishman not good in Klei's eyes?

 

Or look on the other side of the spectrum. Walter got a narrow, focused skill tree. And while I agree it's a bit over-saturated on Slingshot perks, it still feels like the skill tree was designed to actually patch the holes in his character design while avoiding much of the bloat found in other skill trees. And it remains my favorite skill tree because of that.

 

But then Willow's skill tree basically gave her an entirely new kit with her Pyromancy perks. Admittedly not entirely unreasonable given that Willoe's fire perks where so lacking that there wasn't much to build off of in the first place.

 

But then Winona's skill tree doesn't even try to flesh her out as an engineer or anything of the sort. A third of her skill tree is Quality of Life perks, the other third are just number buffs for her Catapult; already the strongest part of her kit. And the final third is just the lore writers breaking into the dev's office to make sure they're Charlie and Wagstaff are playing favorites with her. 

 

And don't even get me started on Alignment perks. Hardly any of them can agree when you should actually be able to make use of them, what they should do, or how effective they should be. Some perks like Wortox's require you to open rifts first to use them. Others like Woodie's have their perks available right out of the gate. And others still somehow manage to have one alignment gated to be post-rift but the other available pre-rift, such as Wurt's or Wigfrid's.

It's no secret that I'm no fan of skill trees as a whole. But even putting that bias aside, the skill trees we've gotten so far have all gone in wildly different directions and ended up in even more different places. Something that is rather confusing, given how the goal of them was to "balance" all the characters in the first place.

[Anis5240]

6 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Didn't Wormwood's skill tree see some revisions after it went live? Not a full rework, but changes none the less.

Yes, yes, yes. Along with part of Willow's and Wigfrid's skill trees. Mind you, in about a month said 'revisions' will be a year old while Wilson's was still rotting for nearly 2 years old without any changes.

[DVGMedia]

4 hours ago, Thieta said:

I understand and agree to this but it falls under the same issue above - With the same resolution - At one point everything hit's an "eh, that's fine" and they release it. Otherwise they would spend too long (Tho sometimes they spend too little) on things

Thing is that threshold is based on the playerbase. And the popular opinion of said characters.  Wolfgang was one of the biggest examples of a character that got shafted because of the playerbases opinon on him. And also the fact he wasn't the most popular character.
 
there were also other characters that got so little because the bar of "Thats fine" Wasn't set that high for them.

I really hope klei does kind of do a clean up sweep on the trees kind of like how they did for willow and wormwood.

[Guille6785]

5 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

But then why did Wurt; who was already one of the strongest characters in the game; gets such a powerful skill tree despite that?

lmao what

[YouKnowWho142]

2 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

I really hope klei does kind of do a clean up sweep on the trees kind of like how they did for willow and wormwood.

My big concern is that its gonna get to a point where we are doing skill tree refreshes, and considering skill trees are already treated as refresh refreshes this can result in refresh refresh refreshes. I think that could be part of why they want to make the trees feel so finalized, it seems like they want to be done with fleshing out the characters.

Minor tweaks for a couple skill trees are definitely necessary, but if a skill tree like Wilson's gets an overhaul at this point that could set a dangerous precedent for the other skill trees.

Honestly, you can say that for most of DST, these last few years have been a lot of tripping over due to outdated content not blending with new content in a natural way, at this point it feels like a lot of the older content needs changes and once those changes happen other content is gonna need changing and its gonna create a loop where more time is spent looking back at old content than adding new content. At the same time the new content is not getting the attention it needs due to so much time spent refreshing old content, it's been almost 6 years since Turn of Tides and the ocean still lacks the incentive it needs for most people to want to interact with it. It's a little worrying for the future of DST

[loopuleasa]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

lmao what

"YO this guy is so strong, disregard the fact that he costs so much, but he's the most powerful guy bro trust"

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

But then why did Wurt; who was already one of the strongest characters in the game; gets such a powerful skill tree despite that? Sure. She didn't come online as fast as the game's top dogs. But was being able to raze most of the game's bosses with an army of Fishman not good in Klei's eyes?

Her skill tree mainly focused on quality of life buffs that helped with the main reason noone was using her. Her merms became better and more competent workers to help with all the resources you need to make her army kingdom they made her merms more durable to lower the amount of merm homes you need to build to help with combat, they gave a call button to make gathering up your merms easier, they gave the king survivability buffs to lower the amount of time you invest into feeding him. They added specializations for the merm types to make them feel more unique giving an actual reason to make normal merm homes. Like what were they supposed to do ignore the main problems with Wurt's gameplay due to merms being very strong after you devoted potentially hours of solo grinding into her?

[Thieta]

2 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

Thing is that threshold is based on the playerbase. And the popular opinion of said characters.  Wolfgang was one of the biggest examples of a character that got shafted because of the playerbases opinon on him. And also the fact he wasn't the most popular character.

this is sadly just irrefutable - It would be cool if they would spend a lot of time on the least popular characters and really give them a rework... But the investment for the reward ain't as high as focusing on the popular ones. It's how it is and I understand it but I do wish they would go back and spend more time on them nontheless.

Lets be real, If they changed walter to have a truly unique and amazing woby/skills it's not going to make more people main him, He's still gonna be the most unpopular character... At best maybe he goes to 2nd most unpopular, That's really a fact. People tend to stick to their mains, Most won't even try him out - This isn't an argument to say he shouldn't get a good update cause there are those who do play him, However it is understandable as to the reasoning of why his won't be giving as big of a touch up as someone more popular... and expecting him to/wanting him to is flawed. This plays more into mental and perceived value, Honestly could write a couple paragraphs on this so let me not lol.

To respond about the Wurt thing - it's an optional playstyle at the end of the day, If you want to oversaturate with merms and have them defeat a good portion of bosses in the game (Ain't happenin with merm blender) then that's a players choice. Regardless takes time and resources... and at such a point in the game where you building a megabase every character will have their own ways to just brutalize boss fights tbh.

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

lmao what

 

14 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Her skill tree mainly focused on quality of life buffs that helped with the main reason noone was using her. Her merms became better and more competent workers to help with all the resources you need to make her army kingdom they made her merms more durable to lower the amount of merm homes you need to build to help with combat, they gave a call button to make gathering up your merms easier, they gave the king survivability buffs to lower the amount of time you invest into feeding him. They added specializations for the merm types to make them feel more unique giving an actual reason to make normal merm homes. Like what were they supposed to do ignore the main problems with Wurt's gameplay due to merms being very strong after you devoted potentially hours of solo grinding into her?

A moderate exaggeration I admit. But none the less, Wurt still had immense snowball potential thanks to the mass scalability and disposability of her merms. And could stomp most bosses with extreme ease given enough prep time. She may not be a top-dog like I implied. But she was still none the less a potential powerhouse for anyone who was willing to put the time in.

Also keep in mind that Wurt is still a character that needs to be unlocked with either spools or cold, hard cash. So she's always going to have a lower playerbase compared to much of the other cast. Unlike Walter, who's both free and played less than Wes.

 

Regardless, the point remains that it's baffling to consider Wendy too strong to give her a potent and fleshed out skill tree, despite Wurt getting an incredibly powerful right right out of the gate even though the two girls where on a very similar playing field before hand.

 

And even if I am misconstructing how good Wurt really is. What about Walter? Again, I adore his skill tree. But there's no denying that even with all the buffs he got, he'd only be considered mid-tier by the standards of even the pre-skill tree character roster. This is a great place to be in my eyes and I'd not want him to be any better. But if the goal of Skill trees is, to paraphrase Klei, "To bring everybody up to par with characters like Maxwell and Wanda", then why does it stop there? Willow got a bear sturdier than the berlin wall; a Bearlin wall if you would; complete mastery over flame, and a store-brand Kame hame ha. Winona got fanfiction-esq Mary Sue powers courtesy of her sister. So then why is Walter's best perk a sling shot frame that lets him shoot a seperate round without hot swapping anything?

 

Again, I think Walter's in a good spot now. But the inconsistencies are absolutely there no matter how you cut it.

 

 

[xhyom]

8 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Regardless, the point remains that it's baffling to consider Wendy too strong to give her a potent and fleshed out skill tree, despite Wurt getting an incredibly powerful right right out of the gate even though the two girls where on a very similar playing field before hand.

Okay, but what exactly changed for Wurt? She was already killing bosses, now she kills the same bosses with exactly the same amount of resources, since the relevant improvements for bosses cost more than just building several more houses, which she already did. It's arguable that she received exactly the treatment that a strong character would receive, not much has changed overall, which if you base it on what they say about Wendy, is exactly what she received?...

[Guille6785]

56 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

A moderate exaggeration I admit. But none the less, Wurt still had immense snowball potential thanks to the mass scalability and disposability of her merms. And could stomp most bosses with extreme ease given enough prep time. She may not be a top-dog like I implied. But she was still none the less a potential powerhouse for anyone who was willing to put the time in.

And even if I am misconstructing how good Wurt really is. What about Walter? Again, I adore his skill tree. But there's no denying that even with all the buffs he got, he'd only be considered mid-tier by the standards of even the pre-skill tree character roster. This is a great place to be in my eyes and I'd not want him to be any better. But if the goal of Skill trees is, to paraphrase Klei, "To bring everybody up to par with characters like Maxwell and Wanda", then why does it stop there? Willow got a bear sturdier than the berlin wall; a Bearlin wall if you would; complete mastery over flame, and a store-brand Kame hame ha. Winona got fanfiction-esq Mary Sue powers courtesy of her sister. So then why is Walter's best perk a sling shot frame that lets him shoot a seperate round without hot swapping anything?

Again, I think Walter's in a good spot now. But the inconsistencies are absolutely there no matter how you cut it.

ngl reading this post makes me feel like I've been transported back to 2021, I thought in 2025 these sorts of discussions about character strength were pretty much extinct

I'll never be able to see eye to eye with anyone when this topic gets brought up because “strong” by what metric? Character strength is completely subjective because different people value different things

I'm not even really disagreeing you, I just think you're mistaking the forest for the trees by identifying that a problem might exist but not really pinpointing what it is correctly, I don't think the problem is Klei misidentifying what characters are ““““strong”””” (by whatever imaginary metric you think defines that term) but the complete opposite, Klei shouldn't make imaginary balance a focus at all when designing skill trees, they should focus on making each character feel fun and uniquely rewarding in meaningful ways and, if done correctly, a general feeling of a balanced roster should be the natural result of that

(and I guess this has been stated enough, as seen above, that it should go without saying, but Klei trying to identify what characters are “strong” and basing reworks off of that is what resulted in the garbage wolfgang rework where Klei attempted to nerf a character that was arguably in desperate need of buffs; you simply cannot expect the larger playerbase nor the developers to make accurate judgments about this sort of stuff)

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

 

A moderate exaggeration I admit. But none the less, Wurt still had immense snowball potential thanks to the mass scalability and disposability of her merms. And could stomp most bosses with extreme ease given enough prep time. She may not be a top-dog like I implied. But she was still none the less a potential powerhouse for anyone who was willing to put the time in.

Also keep in mind that Wurt is still a character that needs to be unlocked with either spools or cold, hard cash. So she's always going to have a lower playerbase compared to much of the other cast. Unlike Walter, who's both free and played less than Wes.

 

Regardless, the point remains that it's baffling to consider Wendy too strong to give her a potent and fleshed out skill tree, despite Wurt getting an incredibly powerful right right out of the gate even though the two girls where on a very similar playing field before hand.

 

And even if I am misconstructing how good Wurt really is. What about Walter? Again, I adore his skill tree. But there's no denying that even with all the buffs he got, he'd only be considered mid-tier by the standards of even the pre-skill tree character roster. This is a great place to be in my eyes and I'd not want him to be any better. But if the goal of Skill trees is, to paraphrase Klei, "To bring everybody up to par with characters like Maxwell and Wanda", then why does it stop there? Willow got a bear sturdier than the berlin wall; a Bearlin wall if you would; complete mastery over flame, and a store-brand Kame hame ha. Winona got fanfiction-esq Mary Sue powers courtesy of her sister. So then why is Walter's best perk a sling shot frame that lets him shoot a seperate round without hot swapping anything?

 

Again, I think Walter's in a good spot now. But the inconsistencies are absolutely there no matter how you cut it.

 

 

Again though that's only op in the vacuum of infinite prep time Wurt's skill tree was needed because not everyone will be on board with the trust me bro it gets good x amount of hours in. Even more so in a multiplayer game where you probably won't even commit to a world that long. This isn't a case like Wendy where the character was mostly being powered up for the sake of being powered up like with other characters who didn't need a skill tree until skill tree power ups justified it. Wurt's grind is a real problem which could only be fixed by increasing the value of individual merms. Even considering she was a paid character she saw less play than Wortox, Wormwood, and Wanda all of which were paid characters as well but didn't require such a massive time and gameplay sink to justify their existence. Also when you say Wurt is powerful out the gate I assume you mean purely because of shadow merms?

As for Walter his skill tree is just unfinished we all know this how complete it'll end up at this point is up in the air but I don't really see his tree as being in a good spot between the balancing issues with his rounds, the Woby tree being bad, and the lack of other skills outside of them.

[Theukon-dos]

3 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

ngl reading this post makes me feel like I've been transported back to 2021, I thought in 2025 these sorts of discussions about character strength were pretty much extinct

I'll never be able to see eye to eye with anyone when this topic gets brought up because “strong” by what metric? Character strength is completely subjective because different people value different things

I'm not even really disagreeing you, I just think you're mistaking the forest for the trees by identifying that a problem might exist but not really pinpointing what it is correctly, I don't think the problem is Klei misidentifying what characters are ““““strong”””” (by whatever imaginary metric you think defines that term) but the complete opposite, Klei shouldn't make imaginary balance a focus at all when designing skill trees, they should focus on making each character feel fun and uniquely rewarding and, if done correctly, a general feeling of a balanced roster should be the natural result of that

 

While it is true that different people will value different things. Klei does still have goals and their own metrics they're aiming for when it comes too the skill trees. From what they've said about them in streams and on here, they want skill trees to do 2 things.

1. They want all characters to be "on-par" with the modern big wigs, namely Wanda and Maxwell. These characters are often cited as the game's strongest due to a combination of great damage potential and high utility.

2. They want every character to be a brawler. No more combat characters, because every character will be a combat character.

 

By these metrics, I do think you can argue that Wurt and Wendy are fairly even. They don't take the exact same approach. But both are generally combat-focused characters that rely on their underlings to do most of the dirty work. Obviously the way they go about this and their real end goal is different. But regardless.

 

As for "the problem" as you put it. I would like to clarify, I don't think that Klei is miss-identifying who's strong and who isn't. My issue is that what each skill tree is trying to achieve and how it goes about that is wildly inconsistent.

Klei knows that Walter is hot garbage without his skill tree. They have years worth of feedback about him. They have internal data from their servers and the like. Hell, they're the reason we know that he's played less than Wes in the first place. I don't think he got such a tame skill tree because they thought he was a secret sleeper pick that only needed a small nudge to finally fall into the spot light. I think he got a tame skill tree because Walter already has a broad and incredibly unique set of tools and abilities that where all dramatically undertuned to the point that it undercut his entire identity as a character. So the designers of his skill tree decided to focus on improving those tools instead of trying to expand him as a character. And in doing so I do think they fixed most of his issues and made Walter far more interesting than he was before.

Meanwhile, I doubt that Klei thought that Willow and Winona where "worse" than Walter in any way. But their skill trees still ended up in dramatically different places.

Willow, as I said before, really didn't have much going on before her skill tree. So getting a whole new branch of abilities via Pyrokenisis does make sense. But even then, her skill tree is still clearly trying to make her far stronger than Walter's is trying to make him, given the effectiveness of these spells and the massive buffs that it gives to Bernie aswell.

And then Winona's skill tree- Well if it wasn't obvious already. This thing's been frustrating me for months now. Minimal attempts to fix Winona's problems, expand her as a character, or expand her as an engineer. The spotlight got a whole 2 perks dedicated to it. And her crafting and trusty tape got litterally nothing for no good reason. Meanwhile her catapults, which where already without question the best part of her kit, got a whole 10 perks dedicated to making them even stronger than they already where. Despite being an engineer, the only new crafts and buildings she gets are the ones that she nabs from Wagstaff. And her shadow-alignment perks don't even try anymore. Just turning her into a Warlock that gets Charlie to do everything for her. And also getting the absolutly absurd perk of just pulling free revival items out of the ground. Like don't get me wrong reviving isn't hard in DST, but there was atleast still a gate on doing so. Be it time or material.

 

 

The point is, these are three different characters who where; presumably atleast; updated by three different teams who all had three different goals for what their characters should be in mind and different methods on how to achive those goals. One wouldn't expect every character to be handled exactly the same, but the inconsistency is still noteworthy.

 

And on top of that, I agree that skill trees should focus more on making characters unique over making them strong. I just don't think that they can accomplish that in the context of DST. Even ignoring the fact that Klei said they want to Homogenize everyone by making them all brawlers. Skill trees as a game design concept are dependant on letting the player flesh a character out in a way that suits them. But most of DST's cast are already fleshed out perfectly well. So either you have to treat skill trees consistently, which means the characters that are already in a good spot design and/or balance wise end up over-designed. Or you do what Klei's doing now and design the skill trees inconsistently, meaning that some characters end up with disappointing and underwhelming skill trees to the point that one has to ask why they needed one in the first place.

We already have a tool for diversifying the character cast. It's called "having a character cast". We have over two dozen of the lads, each with their own set of curses and boons, albeit with varying levels of interest put into them. If Klei really wanted to diversify the cast even more without actually adding any new characters, then the best; or perhaps even only way I could see that working is if Alignment perks worked like "B-Sides" for the characters. That is to say, overhauls that keep the core ideas or themes of the character they belong to, but executing on them in different ways. And despite the wildly different directions the skill trees all take, not a single one is doing this.

 

 

52 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Again though that's only op in the vacuum of infinite prep time Wurt's skill tree was needed because not everyone will be on board with the trust me bro it gets good x amount of hours in. Even more so in a multiplayer game where you probably won't even commit to a world that long. This isn't a case like Wendy where the character was mostly being powered up for the sake of being powered up like with other characters who didn't need a skill tree until skill tree power ups justified it. Wurt's grind is a real problem which could only be fixed by increasing the value of individual merms. Even considering she was a paid character she saw less play than Wortox, Wormwood, and Wanda all of which were paid characters as well but didn't require such a massive time and gameplay sink to justify their existence. Also when you say Wurt is powerful out the gate I assume you mean purely because of shadow merms?

As for Walter his skill tree is just unfinished we all know this how complete it'll end up at this point is up in the air but I don't really see his tree as being in a good spot between the balancing issues with his rounds, the Woby tree being bad, and the lack of other skills outside of them.

Ok so I admit that I may have somewhat overestimated the popularity of Wurt. I guess these forums just have a disproportionate amount of extremely vocal fish fans.

 

That said, have you considered that if someone doesn't want to deal with Wurt's slower gameplay loop. They could just play someone else? I mean that's the whole point of having a colorful cast of characters, isn't it? That you can just pick whoever strikes your fancy? Why do skill trees need to attract people who don't care for the character in the first place?

Atleast the people who like Wurt actually praise the things she does. Her town/army building mechanics. her wetness resistance, her fish pet mechanic giving her a unique resilience against temperature shifts thanks to sunfish and Ice Bream. Pre-skill tree Walter had his fans. But the way they talk about him gives the impression that Walter was so bad at what he was trying to do that he ended up attracting a completely different demographic. You know it's bad when the best/most common response to people talking about how bad the slingshot's damage was is "Just don't use it.". Not like it's his defining character trait that informed his entire design or anything.

Don't get me wrong, Walter's skill tree could use a couple touch ups. Woby could definitely be thrown a bone, and it's definitely odd how Walter now has like- what? 3 rounds all dedicated to slowing his opponent down? 4? But other than that? I don't want anything else. Again, Walter already has a strong core kit that just needed to be stronger. And his skill tree accomplishes that with flying colors. Just about anything else would just be bloat.