I don't actually care about character balance or “power creep”

[Guille6785]

This thread isn't aimed at anyone in particular or about any specific topic, I honestly just wanted to give my 2 cents as someone who has been on the forums for a few years now.

Despite having strong opinions about many other topics in the past I've honestly been neutral towards the skill trees for the most part; I wasn't necessarily stoked when I learned that Klei was gonna go for a second round of refreshes since I was fairly unhappy with the way Klei handled the majority of the refreshes, but I was fairly optimistic to see the skill trees were going to essentially just be straight buffs that aimed to address fundamental issues about the characters rather than just changing things for the sake of changing things (like many of the refreshes unfortunately did).

Several skill trees later, I can honestly say that Klei has done a pretty decent job with the skill trees for the most part (in my opinion) and has handled them a lot more tastefully than I was afraid they would. I'm not trying to turn this into Developer appreciation thread #391489 and say that Klei has done an “exceptional” job with the skill trees, but I do want to thank the devs for learning from their mistakes with the refreshes (especially Wolfgang's) and for making the skill trees excel at adding new unique ways to enjoy characters even if they aren't necessarily groundbreaking (I wouldn't complain if Wigfrid's affinity songs got buffed though, Klei pls).

That said I think we're all awfully familiar with the fact that every time a skill tree beta comes out the forums devolve into a literal warzone where the same words get thrown around by multiple sides constantly, that being character balance and “power creep” (which essentially just means whatever the person posting wants it to mean).

And honestly I just wanted to make this thread to say that I can't bring myself to care anymore. We get it, everyone is getting combat abilities and blah blah uncompromising survival something something but honestly I just don't care anymore whether Wimble can out-DPS Wongus after defeating the Scrimble Champion and obtaining the Scringus Hat, because I'd be lying if I said my enjoyment from having new fun unique things to play around with doesn't surpass any concerns I have over new additions being better than old content.

And the thing is, I feel oddly conflicted about having this opinion because I'm basically the walking stereotype of the type of person that hates all new content and wants the game to go back to its DS roots. I've been skeptical of the direction has been going in regards to things like boss design, for instance; I got into the franchise through RoG exactly 10 years ago now and I was exclusively a singleplayer guy until late 2020, and once I became active in the DST community I spent so much of 2021 arguing with people about character balance (I once proudly believed the developers were stupid for not nerfing Wendy) but as time has passed I've pretty much adopted the complete opposite opinion and honestly I would even go as far as to say it's healthier for the game when the developers don't care about balance.

To show what I'm talking about with a tangible example, sorry for the story time:

Spoiler

In early 2021, Year of the Beefalo released, and with it came what I would most likely point towards as the single most “balanced” state DST has ever been in. Celestial champion wasn't even in the game yet so there was no reason yet progression-wise to do Pearl, early moonstone or Crab King, so if you were a skilled player at the time whose only priority was to rush the important bosses and structures in the first 2 seasons the “meta” was quite simple: You saddled a beefalo ASAP, you set up a bee queen oven with one flingo and a few stacks of mini signs, you explored the map and assembled the shadow pieces and in the early days of winter you killed fuelweaver with 2 fence gates and the spikes at the entrance to the atrium, no resources required. Killing Dragonfly early had little benefit (and could easily be done with bone armor) and if you wanted mushlights you could easily push toadstool with fossils and trap him with lureplants by spring.

In this patch, all characters had access to the best speed AND boss killing methods from day 1. Walter's free beefalo didn't matter anymore when it was more time-efficient to start taming your future rider beefalo ASAP, WX hadn't been refreshed yet, Wormwood's blooming speed was largely irrelevant when a beefalo was faster even in the early days anyway, and even Wolfgang and Wigfrid's damage multipliers were largely inconsequential because the best boss killing methods available didn't actually benefit from higher damage. As someone who argued a lot about balance back in the day, if I had to make a tier list, pretty much everyone would've been in the same tier in this update. Nobody had significant advantages nor disadvantages when measured by time-efficiency; at best you had Walter for his free extra inventory space and at worst you had Warly with his slightly increased hunger drain for essentially no upsides. Essentially, if you wanted to be a meta snob about it and ranked characters by actual efficiency, who you picked was pretty much irrelevant and basically just flavor.

And the thing is, reminiscing about this patch makes me scratch my head whenever I see someone say that balance is necessary for the game to be fun, because no matter how nostalgic I may get sometimes for the “good ol' days” I NEVER want to go back to this state. ****ing EVERYONE was Wilson back then, almost no characters had unique skill ceilings or skill expression of any kind with few exceptions like Wendy (with her unique Abigail strats) and maybe Woodie with his difficult albeit unique Weremoose strats (too bad the Weremoose was garbage back then, but thank you so much Klei for buffing it).

And this ultimately leads me to my point from the thread title which is that I just can't bring myself to care about character “balance” anymore. I don't care if JimmyJohn0952 thinks Warly is SS++ tier and buffing him would shake up the meta of DST, I want Warly to receive major buffs because it simply isn't fun to me that if you're a skilled player you're still at the mercy of the world with things like pepper and volt goat horns. Would consistent volt goat jelly and buffed pepper spice power creep damage multipliers to a certain extent? Maybe, I'm not saying you're wrong if you think that, but I just can't pretend to think that it matters to me anymore. A player of my skill level is by far the least affected by whether or not characters get buffed or nerfed, but if I have the option to have characters that are finally unique, with upsides that can meaningfully affect the way you approach the game, or to have a delicately “balanced” game where all characters are comparable by some imaginary measure of “power” I will pick the first option without even a second thought.

 

Tl;dr DS boomer ramblings at 2 am

[Frosty_Mentos]

As also someone who played this franchise for 10+ years I completely agree and I love to see mechanics and gameplay getting deeper and characters feeling ACTUALLY unique playstyle wise instead of being Wilson with different item or damage buff (Wolfgang is a mix of damage types but at least he has like two and half different playstyles to him which is nice.)

The lame excuses from hearing people cry about powercreep all the time has been nothing but annoying and boring. Do we want the game to change and content delivered? Yes. Do we want new playstyles? YES! Is tuning a few numbers and giving buffs is too much? NO!

Balance in sandbox game is A VIBE not a real time strategy Versus type of vibe. If it feels good to use it then we SHOULD keep those mechanics/damage.

Remember those gloomy days when people complained 'this character is stronger than X characters and that is BAD' well lmao get all characters now buffed to bring either resourcefulness and or being very reliable damage dealers. Now many characters feel a lot more fun to play, even if it's taking Klei a while to bring them all on similar enough level or just feel good to play.

The game is still challenging enough, people will keep complaining that it isn't and complain harder when we get more access to better solutions to problems despite us wanting and asking for content/variety of them and now that we have them people gonna complain that they don't like that? lol okay buds, maybe go play Uncomp mode solo for once with all settings on if that's your kind of game.

This game may not be Terraria type of game (and thank goodness it isn't that game is garbage to me imo) but Klei really made this game blossom at it's highest in both popularity and likeability for good reasons and their updates are usually quite well thought out and planned ahead, other times it's filler content and we like that sometimes. But the point is that we don't need numbers that would oneshot things, but having better ways to do higher damage or new tools like ranged weapons bring the game to have more varied playstyles if you don't rely on character skills alone.

I'm happy with how things are now and I have so many fun tools and solutions to deal with many problems within the game which is all I would want content and gameplay wise - variety of choices I can make and still be decently effective.

[lovegrooove]

I whole-heartedly agree with both of you guys. The main focus of this game should be fun, not balance. It's a hardcore survival game, which for the most part, isn't played in a pvp format.

If a person is starting out, then let them play the big powerful characters, that make it much easier to deal with the games harder challenges. If somebody wants to be challenged, then they can play characters with bigger downsides. 

If one feels reminiscent of old school DS times - that game is still there, with all the old mechanics. One can even download mods, to enjoy that as a coop experience. 

If one doesn't like the skill tree - nobody is forced to use insight points. I don't think any base character design got changed, because of a skill tree release. 

I suspect that people arguing about power balance in a game like this, adopt this mentality from other games, where it makes more sense. I really enjoy all the additional flavors, new experiences, and character evolution this game has seen over the years. Many survivors just make so much more sense now. Like Willow - evolving from fire immunity and sanity boost from fire, to being the all powerful pyromanic mage she was always meant to be. That's how I want to feel like, when I play her. That's real diversity. Same goes for most of the other survivors with skill trees. 

[Tranoze]

Giving strong power and high ultility for unpopular character is a good move. (Winona). It attract players play winona more.

Giving weaker power for already popular character for the sake of balance is not.(Wigfrid, wendy) what do klei gain from getting less players play Wigfrids and Wendy? Just less players.

For the sake of balance, they made the hardest weapon to make, look at you maul, also the worst weapon to keep.

[nicolas103]

Hi, i've been playing this game semi- daily for like 10+ years now(actually pretty insane thinking back as im near 13k hours lol), and each and everytime a character gets a buff, or skill tree i've been happy with it as when i'd started Dst everyone was kind of just Wigfrid, Wendy, or Wicker and maybe the odd Wx78. I don't think i'd seen any other characters for years until these skill trees actually started, and now going through the server browser, seeing what characters my friends have moved on too theres actual diversity which is awesome, and my favorite part is its allowed more characters to become resource gatherers instead of just Maxwell, or Bearger being the only real ways to mass obtain resources. 

 

Something i'd heard sometime back but could be a rumor, tbh, but i'd also heard these buffs, and skilltrees were going to be a way to make the characters ready for the harder content they wanted to make as imo the game hasnt been difficult in a long time.

 

Just something funny i wanted share

My last death was to Mutated Bearger stunlock when the beta released, lol.

My death before that being to a Flower back in like idk 2019 lol

Both of which make up 17.9% of my total deaths in the "Often Killed By"

 

Anyways, sorry if i misunderstood the thread, or something, but i appreciate what Klei has been doing with Skilltrees, however, sometimes i feel they need to remember that the character should get some fun buffs too.

Like Wendy being able to fully control, or maybe even fly with Abi for short times, maybe put a hat on Abigail.

Like Wolfgang being able to toss other survivors.

Like Maxwell being carried on a shadow throne like he's the Coffin Dance meme or something, lol

Like Willow being able to fully engulf herself in fire for a speed boost and warmth.

Just some dumb stuff that don't need to be super effective, but fun, and helpful in niche scenarios.

[Gashzer]

Yeah power creeping is great. What isn't great is when thematics are affected.

Wendy for example is at her most powerful when riding a beefalo, you can treat your beefalo as simply a tool/weapon and not a living entity/follower within the game and wonder what the hell im on about. But for me, Wendy should be at her most powerful when she's working with abigail and only abigail, not requiring a third follower like a beefalo. Especially when we already have a character (Wigfrid) that has a speciality in beefalo skills.

Right now an ornery beefalo is more powerful with wendy than it is with wigfrid. Which is 100% thematically wrong. It's like making wigfrid more powerful if she is around ghosts... makes no sense.

[Tranoze]

58 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Which is 100% thematically wrong. 

you mean these thematics?

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Right now an ornery beefalo is more powerful with wendy than it is with wigfrid. Which is 100% thematically wrong.

Wolfgang cant pick up tree by his bare hand, which is 100% thematically wrong.

[Gashzer]

20 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

you mean these thematics?

Wolfgang cant pick up tree by his bare hand, which is 100% thematically wrong.

Yeah you can use silly examples all you want but you know exactly what I mean. (The fact that this is your go to counter arguement says it all...)

If walter used merms better than wurt you would have a problem, yes?

Be fine if wigfrid didn't have a branch of her skilltree dedicated to beefalos but she does. Current wendy as of the beta update can have apparently higher dps than mounted combat if using thulecite club and enlightened crown so problem is sorta being fixed?? For this problem to be completely solved, wigfrid also needs to get serious damage buffs to mounted combat.

[nimzowitsch10]

honestly everyone just wants klei to move from the skilltrees and get to the meat and potatoes content.

It has been over 5 years of this character rework cycle and I think everyone is fed up.

[Frosty_Mentos]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Right now an ornery beefalo is more powerful with wendy than it is with wigfrid. Which is 100% thematically wrong. It's like making wigfrid more powerful if she is around ghosts... makes no sense.

It's called synergy with the mechanics that allow us all to use. A beefalo makes Wes into a tanky WX, gives all characters a HP bonus (not against ranged) and is high maintenance and need of attention to tame. Willow basically has her own beefalo and it is Bernie who is much better than one, but having also a beefalo would make her basically be a boss and a half on her own even if she doesn't need this much tankiness for much of anything. Maxwell benefits from beefalo with his more magician-like abilities, making him not need to participate much besides adding few hits so his minions would be at max power.

Beefalos are a character of their own combined with ours, they're stat boosters for what they provide and that's why people love them cause they work for everyone. Unless it's Wigfrid which idk why she got those skills but sure why not those are filler skills from what looks like and speedy beef is nice. Of course there's characters that don't benefit unless for speed from beefs so there's that.

Filler skills are filler skills after all, if the character is as solid in their kit and overall handleability is great then there's barely anything needed to be changed. Wig is a battle scaling songstress and a vampire kinda, her refresh made her into a super solid character and skilltree just kinda added things for the power fantasy of what she is.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Frosty_Mentos said:

It's called synergy with the mechanics that allow us all to use. A beefalo makes Wes into a tanky WX, gives all characters a HP bonus (not against ranged) and is high maintenance and need of attention to tame. Willow basically has her own beefalo and it is Bernie who is much better than one, but having also a beefalo would make her basically be a boss and a half on her own even if she doesn't need this much tankiness for much of anything. Maxwell benefits from beefalo with his more magician-like abilities, making him not need to participate much besides adding few hits so his minions would be at max power.

Beefalos are a character of their own combined with ours, they're stat boosters for what they provide and that's why people love them cause they work for everyone. Unless it's Wigfrid which idk why she got those skills but sure why not those are filler skills from what looks like and speedy beef is nice. Of course there's characters that don't benefit unless for speed from beefs so there's that.

Filler skills are filler skills after all, if the character is as solid in their kit and overall handleability is great then there's barely anything needed to be changed. Wig is a battle scaling songstress and a vampire kinda, her refresh made her into a super solid character and skilltree just kinda added things for the power fantasy of what she is.

A synergy shouldn't outclass another characters dedicated skills in the exact same field by this much. Especially when it has no thematic sense. Gameplay mechanics should lend service to thematics not the other way round. Wigfrid is a pretend viking and a beefalo is her pretend unicorn mount with the power of the constant making it true. Wendy getting her unique vex multiplier while it's actually her beefalo follower attacking resulting in Wendy, abigail and Mr. Beefcakes being the most powerful version of Wendy is just thematically wrong.

Even wes isn't his most powerful form with a beefalo as planar weapons suffer less from his damage penalty and gain extra uses making him super efficient with post-rift gear. And he's a deliberately unlucky and challenge character whos misfortune helps others thematically so him being powerful shouldn't be a thing, his skilltree should be funny wacky skills that help other players and not the wes player.

[Tranoze]

21 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

The fact that this is your go to counter arguement

I go counter arguement because your logic has no back up. Give me hard thematic evidences why Wendy shouldnt deal more damage than Wigfrid on a beefalo, instead saying it  like they are just facts.
Valkyries does ride steeds, but they dont use steeds as main sources of damage.

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

thematic sense.

again, which thematic sense are we talking about, give photo/lore evidences.

[AliceShiki]

Mmmmm... On one hand, I just like balanced games, so I tend to argue from the perspective of wanting things to be balanced.

On the other hand, DST characters feel unique enough that it does make balance a bit of a moot point.

Like... The main reason balance is important isn't PVP, it's because unbalanced games lead to some tools being better than others, making some tools useless and never see any use whatsoever... Like, Breezy Vest. That thing is useless. I dislike unbalanced games because I don't like feeling like I'm hindering my own performance by making use of a tool I found interesting... And I also dislike it when I have to force myself to not use a tool I liked because said tool is obviously broken and will trivialize the game.

But in DST in particular... Well, you pick a character at the start of a world. It's a long-term commitment and they all feel fun enough to play, so... Yeah, I don't think one needs to care that much about balance between characters. I feel like balance between tools (please buff Breezy Vest) is much more important for DST than balance between characters. Characters just need to be fun, really.

[BezKa]

I disagree, but I'm tired of trying to communicate with people at all at so I'll just grunt "whatevs" and we can shake hands.

 

[Frosty_Mentos]

4 minutes ago, BezKa said:

I disagree, but I'm tired of trying to communicate with people at all at so I'll just grunt "whatevs" and we can shake hands.

 

It's kinda not that we don't want balance but rather we don't want Klei to restrict themselves too much on making cool and interesting content and for us to do more damage and have more ways to do a lot of it.

In my point of view there needs to be character progression when it comes to damage and stat increases albeit skilltree would charge insight much faster for daring tasks and all. Other point is that we're getting cool new features that should have been part of base game instead of character related, but we're now getting things towards character progression. Thirdly is the world isn't balanced around needing to hit a saddled enemy as much, not enough direct elemental threats to threaten Wanda or anyone that's element sensitive, not enough enemies with stat debuffing attacks or abilities to nerf all characters overall to do much. Planar defense is a good start but there's basically no content in that type of endgame yet.

[Well-met]

It's fine if all characters are meant to be super powerful, however the game simply does not scale for it.

[Frosty_Mentos]

6 minutes ago, Well-met said:

It's fine if all characters are meant to be super powerful, however the game simply does not scale for it.

I think the idea is for new players to have a goal to reach kinda, for older players too but also prepare for lategame mechanics and just give the tools to deal with hardest of bosses for solo or together.

Full idea of what is Klei trying to achieve with this is either not said or I don't remember xwx

[Gashzer]

23 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

I go counter arguement because your logic has no back up. Give me hard thematic evidences why Wendy shouldnt deal more damage than Wigfrid on a beefalo, instead saying it  like they are just facts.
Valkyries does ride steeds, but they dont use steeds as main sources of damage.

There is zero reference anywhere that wendy has a special interaction with beefalos. No evidence in her lore that suggests Wendy should be more powerful with a beefalo and abigail than just Wendy and abigail together by themselves apart from game code allowing a mounted beefalo to get Wendy's unique vex bonus.

Everyone's arguement is that it's just the way the game is programmed. No one has justifed wendy as this super special beefalo tamer thematically.

My ultimate evidence is that there is zero thematic evidence relating beefalos and wendy. 

[Mysterious box]

My main issue is when balance doesn't matter what should the game scale to? It feels like the game isn't able to keep up with the cast currently but who knows maybe that'll change when we eventually get biome refreshes.

[Tranoze]

26 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

There is zero reference anywhere that wendy

There is also zero references anywhere that beefalo have connection with any survivor. Why? Because all lore and thematics are pre-constant, what they show us who Wendy is, what Wendy does before she come to constant.
Anything happen in the constant is for the constant, and you - player to decide. The lore is that wolfgang is a weak man. The constant make him strong. The lore say Wilson is a failed scientist. He success make the portal with bare minimum materials he had in the constant.

Just because there are no connected between Beefalo and Wendy, and no connection between Beefalo and Wigfrid doesnt mean Beefalo Wendy can't have better synergy than Beefalo Wigfrid.

37 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

zero thematic evidence relating beefalos and wendy. 

If there are thematic evidences, only one things can happens - thematic accuracy, like how Wendy connection with abigail, Willow connection with bernie.
If there are NO thematic evidences, anything can happens, as it's their first time interact, anything, include somes synergy better than other.

[Gashzer]

1 minute ago, Tranoze said:

Just because there are no connected between Beefalo and Wendy, and no connection between Beefalo and Wigfrid

I'm sorry what? Beefalo and wigfrid have no connection? Did you really just say that?

I'm not just making up this arguement to nerf wendy. Wendy doesn't necessarily need nerfed with beefalo, her skills just need to make her more powerful on foot with abigail than mounted with Mr. Beefcakes. And for Wigfrid to get damage buffs while mounted.

But yeah I'm just making up this connection between Beefalos and Wigfrid... there are no skills whatsoever that connect the two........

[lovegrooove]

1 hour ago, AliceShiki said:

Mmmmm... On one hand, I just like balanced games, so I tend to argue from the perspective of wanting things to be balanced.

On the other hand, DST characters feel unique enough that it does make balance a bit of a moot point.

Like... The main reason balance is important isn't PVP, it's because unbalanced games lead to some tools being better than others, making some tools useless and never see any use whatsoever... Like, Breezy Vest. That thing is useless. I dislike unbalanced games because I don't like feeling like I'm hindering my own performance by making use of a tool I found interesting... And I also dislike it when I have to force myself to not use a tool I liked because said tool is obviously broken and will trivialize the game.

But in DST in particular... Well, you pick a character at the start of a world. It's a long-term commitment and they all feel fun enough to play, so... Yeah, I don't think one needs to care that much about balance between characters. I feel like balance between tools (please buff Breezy Vest) is much more important for DST than balance between characters. Characters just need to be fun, really.

I see your point about game balance and forcing yourself to forgo items because they are over/underpowered. But especially in DST it's fun to nerf yourself, that's why a lot of long time players like to play Wes at some point. It's the ultimate middle finger to the dangers of the constant, and a huge flex of your knowledge and mastery of game mechanics.

There are many challenges you can set for yourself, by using items, methods, or survivors that are less powerful - that's a huge part of the appeal for people who play uncompormising mod, for example. And if you handicap yourself, yet still succeed in what you want to do, the feeling of accomplishment will be on par with the level of handicap you forced on yourself. 

When I think back on my first successful solo ruins rush as WX, it was no where near as exciting, as my first successful solo ruins rush as Wes, because it's just that much harder to do. And people take it much further than that, going on scienceless ruins rushes, and whathaveyou. 

Also the breezy vest is in a good spot i feel. The only downside is, that you can't stockpile the puffy vest outside of winter, but then you don't really need them there anyway. It's a decent item to give to pearl, since you don't have to wait for winter in order to make it. And come winter you just get a better version of the item, for a minor upcharge. 

[Tranoze]

6 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

I'm sorry what? Beefalo and wigfrid have no connection? Did you really just say that?

Yes, im not a lore guy, and i never see connection between them. Can you enlighten me and give me true thematic connection between them?

[Gashzer]

10 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Yes, im not a lore guy, and i never see connection between them. Can you enlighten me and give me true thematic connection between them?

No problem i love enlightening people, so when you load up the game and look at wigfrid's skilltree. She has 4 skills, noble mount 1, 2, 3 and battle saddle relating to beefalo.

To quote her DST compendium:

"Fans delighted in her portrayal of a noble and fearsome Valkyrie warrior, and she in turn took great pains to fully embody the role. She was perfect for it... perhaps too perfect."

Beefalos are her "noble mount" as she embodies the role of "a noble and fearsome Valkyrie warrior".

Now show me any of Wendy's skills that refers specifically to beefalos. 

[RozeMeteor]

10 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Yes, im not a lore guy, and i never see connection between them. Can you enlighten me and give me true thematic connection between them?

Wigfrid mention for MooseGoose that she would like to ride it to battle but that's it..