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

[Tranoze]

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

"noble mount"

Noble mount indeed. Noble doesnt do the dirty work of attacking. That why Wigfrid's beefalo arent better than any other survivor's beefalo.
Beefalo is a Noble mount, not a Fearsome mount. Fearsome is the trait of Valkyrie warrior.
 

 

3 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

"a noble and fearsome Valkyrie warrior".

 

[Gashzer]

1 minute ago, Tranoze said:

Noble mount indeed. Noble doesnt do the dirty work of attacking. That why Wigfrid's beefalo arent better than any other survivor's beefalo.
Beefalo is a Noble mount, not a Fearsome mount. Fearsome is the trait of Valkyrie warrior.
 

 

 

"Battle saddle..."

[Tranoze]

Just now, Gashzer said:

"Battle saddle..."

which everyone can use. Battle saddle is just for show now. It look cools, but functionally, can never beat nightmare saddle.
Perfect description of a noble.

[RozeMeteor]

4 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

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

more like noble dinner, She have a quote saying it makes her mouth water just from look at it.. Wig has absolute nothing related to beefalos, and back them in the gorge event she did get more meat using slaughter tools to kill old beefalos as well, so aesthetically her beefalo branch is all over the place.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Tranoze said:

which everyone can use. Battle saddle is just for show now. It look cools, but functionally, can never beat nightmare saddle.
Perfect description of a noble.

Doesn't say anywhere that it's just for show, now you are making things up.

Regardless of the semantics, you are still avoiding the main issue here which is Wendy. Where does Wendy have any thematic connection to beefalos to justify her being uniquely strong in combat while using an ornery beefalo especially when we have a character who is now linked thematically to beefalos?

1 minute ago, RozeMeteor said:

more like noble dinner, She have a quote saying it makes her mouth water just from look at it.. Wig has absolute nothing related to beefalos, and back them in the gorge event she did get more meat using slaughter tools to kill old beefalos as well, so aesthetically her beefalo branch is all over the place.

Wig used to have absolutely nothing related to beefalos. Now she does, so Klei needs to respect that.

Wendy however has nothing at all.

[Tranoze]

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

Doesn't say anywhere that it's just for show,

I doesnt quote it, and i say the word "now", which mean in game right now. that outside lore.

2 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

main issue here which is Wendy. Where does Wendy have any thematic connection to beefalos

I did say about Wendy. I said "When there are no thematic connection anything can happen"
Because the game play is what decide what will happen in a game.
There are no thematic say player will plant grass in perfectly rowed geometric placement.
But they did, and all gonna do them again.

[Gashzer]

22 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

I doesnt quote it, and i say the word "now", which mean in game right now. that outside lore.

I did say about Wendy. I said "When there are no thematic connection anything can happen"
Because the game play is what decide what will happen in a game.
There are no thematic say player will plant grass in perfectly rowed geometric placement.
But they did, and all gonna do them again.

But why does a character that has no thematic connection have this massive dps boost over a character that does have thematic connection. If wigfrid had no connection I wouldn't have a problem. Its like if maxwell was more powerful than wigfrid when using elding spear. Beefalos are now wigfrids thing. She is a valkyrie warrior focused on traditional combat. So an ornery beefalo should be the most powerful when played by her.

Like lads just admit you are wrong. I know you selfishly don't want Wendy nerfed but this is the direction DST has headed for Wigfrid. Klei needs to have respect for their own thematic direction and commit the gameplay to reflect the thematics as well.

[Tranoze]

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

So an ornery beefalo should be the most powerful when played by her.

Then ask for proper interaction between Wigfrid and beefalo.
Like allow wigfrid to use all type of spears when riding beefalo, or allow both to attack together, instead of using beefalo attack. This has nothing to do with Wendy.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Tranoze said:

Then ask for proper interaction between Wigfrid and beefalo.
Like allow wigfrid to use all type of spears when riding beefalo, or allow both to attack together, instead of using beefalo attack. This has nothing to do with Wendy.

But it does have something to do with Wendy. If Wendy didn't have this unique strength then wigfrid would be fine. Wendy is unbalanced thematically and gameplay wise.

Two ways to sort this:

• is to remove 1.4x vex bonus from beefalo damage when Wendy's mounted
• Or rework wigfrids skills like what you said or to give wigfrid a unique damage modifier when mounted on beefalo to surpass mounted Wendy.

[Tranoze]

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

 If Wendy didn't have this unique strength then wigfrid would be fine.

Wow. How is that related? 

12 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

thematic direction and commit the gameplay to reflect the thematics as well.

If there are no thematics to a thing, there are no thing needed to reflect to, which mean they are allowed to do anything to that.

[Gashzer]

8 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Wow. How is that related? 

Refer to my elding spear example. Wendy is performing in combat with beefalos better than the thematic warrior character. I dunno how many times you want me to repeat the same thing lol

8 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

If there are no thematics to a thing, there are no thing needed to reflect to, which mean they are allowed to do anything to that.

We have already established that there are thematics. Beefalos are thematically linked to wigfrid now. Otherwise let wigfrid also summon abigail to help her out.

[Tranoze]

Just now, Gashzer said:

Refer to my elding spear example. Wendy is performing in combat with beefalos better than the thematic warrior character. I dunno how many times you want me to repeat the same thing lol

So because wolfgang use any weapon better than all survivor, meaning all survivor are unplayable now?

1 minute ago, Gashzer said:

We have already established that their are thematics. 

Not for Wendy. You also agreed that there are no prior thematic connection between Wendy and Beefalo. And by anything can happen mean doing better than wigfrid also included.

There are no thematic connection between Winona and spiders. There are also no thematic connection between Abigail and spiders. Both of them farm spider 10 times faster than Webber.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Tranoze said:

So because wolfgang use any weapon better than all survivor, meaning all survivor are unplayable now?

Not for Wendy. You also agreed that there are no prior thematic connection between Wendy and Beefalo. And by anything can happen mean doing better than wigfrid also included.

There are no thematic connection between Winona and spiders. There are also no thematic connection between Abigail and spiders. Both of them farm spider 10 times faster than Webber.

........ man you think Webber's character about mass murder of spiders? Hahahahahah

This is the problem, you are using your gameplay habits to justify the character's thematics.

Fyi: webber isn't about mass murder of spiders but to befriend them. As he is one. He might benefit from mass murdering them but that is the complete opposite of what the character is about.

Do you not realise what you are saying or are you just saying whatever nonsense to try to not get Wendy nerfed haha 

[Tranoze]

9 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Fyi: webber isn't about mass murder of spiders but to befriend them. As he is one. He might benefit from mass murdering them but that is the complete opposite of what the character is about.

Im saying farm spider. Not specific on killing them or not. Webber can befriend spiders but can they produce more silk as a spider than a mechanic who throw rock at spiders?

9 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

what the character is about.

If Wigfrid like to battle, she would prefers attack enemies with toothpicks so fight last longer.

[Guille6785]

2 hours 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.

2 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

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

I'm confused, I'm not sure what you mean when you say the game doesn't “scale” for the buffed characters because what they are capable of doing is still well within the bounds of what characters in general have been capable of doing through other means already

The way you guys talk makes it sound like the average skill tree gives every character x3 damage and 50% speed boost from day 1, but even after certain characters getting significant buffs the objectively best strategy time-efficiency wise to do as much content as possible as fast as possible is still Wolfgang with a beefalo just like it was 2 years ago, this hasn't changed, Willow being able to rush Bee Queen with a unique strategy does not mean Klei now needs to buff Bee Queen, I think these strategies are perfectly suited for the overall sandbox of DST, literally none of the new additions have been such major buffs that now characters can do what couldn't already be done pre-skill trees

[Topazaz]

I played casually for 5,000 days and I still suck at kiting and very suck at killing bosses. That said I love all the buffs! Even if that just means holding F.

[Maxil20]

10 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

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, no characters had unique skill ceilings or skill expression of any kind with the sole exception of 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).

I’m glad you brought up this point in particular. A lot of people call reworks/skilltrees “OP”, and I never got that. When every character has an identical gameplay loop except for a very select few, it creates a very similar experience.

Given my background in megabasing, this was especially apparent in the endgame before RoT (and honestly, a bit after?). Very few characters had perks that would reasonably make a difference in the endgame, those being Wickerbottom for her books that created exclusive scenarios no one could replicate, and Winona for catapults for reliable AOE and boosted crafting. Every other character kinda fell off after awhile. Heck, the reason I used to play Webber an unbelievable amount is because every other character wasn’t very enticing to me. Wicker was my second favorite, but the times you used the books were moreso in bursts and as such I didn’t feel an incentive to stay playing as her. Webber was just funny and the ability to eat monster meat contributed to a lazy playstyle.

You can argue that there was merit to that, and I’m not going to say it’s wrong to view it as such. However, I think the current route of every character attempting to have a unique role (and usually succeeding) feels much better gameplay wise. I have a genuine reason to play a good ~7-8 characters of the cast for a variable amount of time in the endgame, which is much better than the farcry of ~2 at best.

I also feel people blow the powercreep situation too much out of the water…? Combat is by far the main example. The forums have a habit of writing essay tier responses for various new additions and calling them unbalanced, only for 80% of the options they talk about to fall off in actual gameplay or end up being quite niche in general. As it stands, the most reliable way of dealing with combat in this game is grabbing a melee weapon and fighting the enemy in melee range, and it’s still the most effective way to handle combat in 2025. Weapons like the gloomerang add alternatives, but you’re going to pay a much higher material cost using multiple gloomerangs over using a shadow reaper and fighting the enemies as you normally would.

 

 

[AliceShiki]

5 hours ago, lovegrooove said:

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.

Yeah, challenge runs are fun in any game, that doesn't mean I like unbalanced stuff. I can do challenge runs on my own by using self-imposed challenges. I don't need the game to be unbalanced to accomplish that. I can just put my own challenges for myself.

Wes is a unique case where it's meant to be a challenge run character. I'm not a fan of those, but hey, it's far from the worst thing, especially when the game isn't like Binding of Isaac when there are unlocks associated with clearing the game with every character, so Wes can function fine for the people who want a challenge run character.

Which is different from unbalanced items, which just plain suck.

5 hours ago, lovegrooove said:

Also the breezy vest is in a good spot i feel.

How is being the worst item in the game with 0 use cases other than Pearl being in a good spot? It's pure garbage.

It's about as far from being in a good spot as it can be. A grass suit at least is useful if you find it on the ground as a set piece, Breezy Vest set pieces don't exist, and even if they did, it would still be useless for anything other than Pearl.

It's absolute garbage, how could it possibly be in a good spot?

[DegenerateFurry]

This is pretty much how I feel about it: skill trees are best when they give characters alternate playstyles, and how powerful those alternate playstyles are only matters up to a point. That point being, they need to be powerful enough to be viable, but not so powerful that they're the only option. Woodie's skill tree gave him an entirely new playstyle option in combat (tanking as Weremoose and/or dodging with well-timed charges). Wormwood got perks that make two playstyles far more viable (mushroom planters instead of farm plots and combat Wormwood, which actually work quite well together since the passively-growing mushrooms let you spend more time fighting). Willow's skill tree made her much more than Arsonist Wilson. Wigfrid's skill tree gave her an actual reason to ride a beefalo aside from just transportation. 

Maxwell and Wolfgang exist, therefore limiting character strength in this game is not a priority. Every boss can be near-effortlessly slaughtered in like two minutes or less by five Wolfgangs and a Maxwell with ham bats and marble suits. We should care more about fun and diversity of playstyles since that increases replay value. The more there is for the player to master, the longer they'll want to keep playing. Quality of life is also important, since that reduces the annoying stuff with characters (Woodie's forced transformations, being stalked by terrorbeaks when trying to turn from goose back to Woodie, etc) or gives you a more pleasant experience when playing them in general. 

[Mr Giggio]

13 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

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:

  Hide contents

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

Honestly? Agreed.

I do have this mindset since Wanda was introduced to the game. People keep saying that  new stuff r  being broken but if you were doing a rush the easy course of action was Wolfgang [if u aint cheesing]. Adding other characters or buffing them just add OPTIONS TO BE EFFECTIVE the same way. It doesnt break the game. It gives other ways to have the same strenght to push it. We were in the state of being bRoKeN oP since the beggining when Wolfie could hambat/futball helmet approach everything in few days and win.

Since.

The.

Beggining.

And honestly it was fine having Wolfgang as the boss guy but IT IS WAY MORE FUN having options. It gets tiresome after a while. I was so done to look at that potato head if I wanted to be able to do the order of bosses I wanted in a specific amount of time and I FELL IN LOVE WITH MAX cuz of that cuz it literally just gives it a mage shadowy twist for the same type of chores. 

Diversity/Variety is healthy.

We won. People are not ready for this, but we as player fanbase won.

[Chewabacca]

With characters and skill trees, what I mainly care about re:balance is whether each character has something they're better at than almost all of the rest of the cast (except Wilson and Wes I guess), and whether they still get punished for being completely careless. If you don't have a niche, then it's harder to figure out how to contribute to a multiplayer server and also to pick a character that suits your playstyle. If a character is strong at everything, then multiplayer becomes boring because it's just one player doing everything.

How "strong" a character is is subjective because different people like doing different things. If someone finds their enjoyment sailing around or trying to figure out how to optimize their crops or just roaming around the map, it doesn't even matter what their character's DPS is, and it gets kind of annoying when people treat DPS in general as the only measure of how "good" a character is. Variation in how characters play and become stronger is more interesting than whatever number ends up on the calculator.

[Bumber64]

16 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

To show what I'm talking about with a tangible example

Sounds like the issue is that the characters had nothing unique to offer, which is a somewhat separate issue from balance. Also sounds like you were ruining your enjoyment with cheese.

7 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

The way you guys talk makes it sound like the average skill tree gives every character x3 damage and 50% speed boost from day 1

It's just the one character. That's kind of the problem. Wolfgang does it with zero effort and is unbalanced beyond anyone else. Are we to believe it doesn't matter he's this busted? (I believe now is the time where I point out he's the one banned from speedruns?) The game might be more interesting if he struggled to remain mighty in boss fights.

Not every character needs to be equally good at combat, but they need something to excel at. If Wendy gets free AoE, she probably doesn't need high single-target DPS with minimal investment. That steps on Wanda, specifically, who deals Wolfgang DPS with some actual risk.

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Sounds like the issue is that the characters had nothing unique to offer, which is somewhat separate from being balanced. Also sounds like you were ruining your enjoyment with cheese.

no, the point I was making was that hypothetical perfect balance doesn't automatically result in a fun experience, I only used that example because it was one I had first hand experience with, the minute details are irrelevant

3 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

(I believe now is a good time to point out he's the only one banned from speedruns?)

Wolfgang is not “banned from speedruns”, some community tournaments elect to ban him as well as other characters simply to encourage more variety, and this is completely irrelevant since speedruns are a fundamentally different way to play the game that should have no bearing on how people normally play the game

[Bumber64]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

Wolfgang is not “banned from speedruns”, some community tournaments elect to ban him as well as other characters simply to encourage more variety, and this is completely irrelevant since speedruns are a fundamentally different way to play the game that should have no bearing on how people normally play the game

Because some players will optimize the fun out of the game, given the chance.

[Guille6785]

6 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Because some players will optimize the fun out of the game, given the chance.

My question is what exactly does this statement add to the conversation or even relate to the point I was making