[POLL] How do you guys feel about these aspects of skill trees?

[Cheggf]

If anyone doesn't remember the given examples:

Treeguard Feller I: +41% damage dealt to Treeguards.

Treeguard Feller II: +100% damage dealt to Treeguards.

Treeguard Feller III: Can craft a Treeguard Idol to spawn Treeguards.

Lifebringer I: Allows Wortox to craft a Twintail heart, which is like a Telltale Heart.

Lifebringer III: Allows the Twintail Heart be used by living players to teleport to Wortox.

And this is what Wormwood's skill tree looks like, which is used as an example both for long linear paths of skills where you get all of them if you want the perk at the end and as an example for skills being locked behind entirely unrelated skills. Bramble Husk Specialist improves your Bramble Husk while the previous four perks are for automatically resetting traps, having manure be used a little better, picking plants faster, and identifying planted seeds when you examine them.

[GenomeSquirrel]

It's hard to answer this without the context of a full tree, but my answer is generally,

I dislike weak upgrades like Wilson's torch brightness taking up multiple slots,

perhaps have some neutrality like if I deem the notch substantial and it meshes well with other parts of the tree

buy overall, I'm usually satisfied with what 1/4 or 1/3 of most trees provide, that I don't care about the rest

 

Like as Wormwood, I only care about the mush planter path, I like the lightbugs left branch solely as a means to travel in the caves fast to get mush planter supplies.

The HP costs of the crafting branch conflicts with the hundreds of living logs I need, not that I won't focus on this path on occassion

Unless in an odd mood, I don't fight enough to care about the DPS branch

And I'm often in caves away from both sun and fertilizers, so the final path doesn't do much for me either

[Popian]

It should be noted that stat filler "identical skills being broken up" is not inherently bad as it facilitates "having a little bit of everything" vs. "all or nothing", especially if there is no intention to replace them with less impactful skills.

This is likely to be more successful if they are inherently strong and not stepping stones for a more desirable skill (rewarding loyalty is good, but depends on context).

[FillerText]

I feel rather indifferent about having some skill points wasted due to it just being costly(I guess?) Without making you consider whether it's worth it or not. 

Bad sets of skills are just as long, and expensive as their better counterparts. You don't really choose between a few sets of smaller branches, or the long ride all the way to the final heavy hitter skill in a long branch.

[Anis5240]

I very much dislike any long-winded skills/stat boosts skills. If said skills warrant being tiered/connected, my limit is only 2. Any more than that is just lazy thinking and not creative.

[Cheggf]

5 minutes ago, Popian said:

It should be noted that stat filler "identical skills being broken up" is not inherently bad as it facilitates "having a little bit of everything" vs. "all or nothing", especially if there is no intention to replace them with less impactful skills.

This is likely to be more successful if they are inherently strong and not stepping stones for a more desirable skill (rewarding loyalty is good, but depends on context).

Quick Picker I is an entirely worthless skill, only increasing gathering speed by 17%. Quick Picker III increases it by 82%. Maybe I could get behind some skills being broken up into half power & full power, but I really don't like the flood of repetition where most skill trees are breaking things up into 3+ things with the first being entirely worthless and the second being very weak. 

[Popian]

4 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

I really don't like the flood of repetition where most skill trees are breaking things up into 3+ things with the first being entirely worthless and the second being very weak. 

This is likely a symptom of working backwards and having too much focus on the before vs. after impact.

[Masked Koopa]

I think the ideal would be a little bit of column A and B when it comes to variety vs. buildup. I do think the concept of needing prerequisite skills to unlock a final, more impactul skill is certainly a solid idea, but the prerequisite skills should still have supplementary effects to make them feel more like skills in their own right rather than a portion.

I think this is how I'd deal with the ones I am more familiar with, if there's anything on Winona/Wortox/Wendy/Willow/Walter's tree that I forgot about, it's because I haven't played with their trees enough to know what their weak points/issues are.

Woodie:
Quick picker could feature a skill that reduces the regrowth time of the next harvest after Woodie has picked from it (he is skilled at avoiding the shoots/buds/whatever the plant needs to grow), and a skill that gives a small chance to yield an extra crop (he is more thorough/skilled with his hands). As long as the latter's chance were aboot 25% or so, and the former weren't too drastic (maybe 25% or so) I don't think it'd cause significant problems. 

Transformation timer could probably be given one that increases the effectiveness of running as goose/attacking as moose/chopping as beaver, and another one that increases the grace period before you lose the effects of these actions (i.e it takes a little bit longer for not fighting/running/chopping to drain your weremeter at an increased rate, and the increased rate could maybe be bumped up so intentionally exiting wereforms isn't slower).

Wolfgang:
I think that the Lunar/Shadow allignments and planar damage bonuses should be replaced with a Dreadstone/Pure Brilliance dumbell that infuses his muscles with lunar/shadow energy, granting him similar stats to what he has currently, as well as providing a planar damage component when swung or thrown.

Overall though he just needs most of his skills smooshed together even if it comes at a cost to the overall power of the maxed out tiering, in exchange for actually new and original skills. Personally id be partial to letting him throw boulders or trees or something zany, but either way I think what Wolfgang's current tree can't really be easily given bonuses to his tiered perks with how aggressively ordinary they are as a concept.

Wilson:
The Beard tree could probably have additional beard-related effects replace four of the six insulation and growth skills, with something like "Silky beard" (gives small sanity gain for having a beard), "Waxed beard" (Gives up to 30% wetness protection, meaning a Rain Hat or Umbrella can give 100% total wetness protection), "Hardened Beard" (Gives up to 15% or so damage reduction), "Bristly beard" (Attackers take some damage when hitting Wilson). You could probably come up with different concepts but I think there's enough room for ideas, and the potential of having them scale according to beard growth level. You could even have the skill's "preferred" growth stage vary, meaning a T3 beard wouldn't always be - the way to go. You could also perhaps make the different beards require a particular item to invoke (i.e Beeswax for Waterproof, Beefalo Brush for silky, etc).

Torch skills could easily be smooshed into like 2 skills tops, in favour of either enhancing other basic items in nominal ways (i.e Spear, Log Suit, Ham Bat, Healing Salve, Meatballs) or by allowing him to enhance light sources other than the torch.

Wurt:
Buildings could overall be made much more sensible simply by making the T2 structures have greater material costs in exchange for much better efficacy, or additional functionality. You could make the recipes for the T2 versions require an Ancient Pseudoscience station to craft, and/or the Lunar Altars, and add ingredients like Thulecite, Moonrock, gems, etc to their recipes and resource pools to make them generally pretty difficult to obtain compared to the T1 versions. You could even make each of three different King Quests prerequisites for each of these T2 buildings.

That way the T1 buildings would have a niche as being cheaper and faster to obtain, with a lower maintinence cost. Meanwhile T2 buildings could offer either (relatively) more substantial power, or a greater variety of features at the cost of more expensive materials. I'm thinking something like the ability to have Merms "passively" work an area (i.e they're not followers they do stuff in an area as long as there's food being paid), or granting them the ability to put items away for you or harvest your crops. Or something completely different - it'd just be a way to justify not giving them super-good damage reduction or tool durability without making materials like Thulecite an unreasonable investment.

As for Merm King's Hunger, I think a new skill could enhance Merm King's Trades in some form, perhaps by making him occasionally request a specific type of fish and/or veggie crockpot dish in exchange for a more substantial but one-off reward.

Wetness should probably just be compressed to make room for a way to farm Mosquitoes anywhere in the world, and something like a Conch to give commands to Merms using a Menu like Willow/Max/Wendy etc. This would remedy Lunar/Shadow Merms ignoring fish-kills and not being dismissed, as well as making her not dependent on worldgen to use her Mosquito skills.

[Evelo]

I love identical skills being broken up (see Winona's Middle tree section and Wolfgang) As long as it is not linear but exponentially increasing in power. (ie Winona is exponential (good), Wolfgang is linear (bad)).

Notably different at the end of a skill line is fine. Just make sure the line is long and really rewards the heavy investment. Just so long as the difference is still tied in somehow (like Woodie's treeguard thing).

I love the length of Wormwood's branches, I just dislike how disjointed they feel. The mushroom branch is great (if over powered), it could be longer imo though but it's acceptable atm. The other side... hoo boy it is a disjointed mess and I am not a fan of that.

Sad to see though how I am one of the few who enjoy long skill lines. Yall must detest ARPG skill trees like PoE, or Grim Dawn, which I love.

[Anis5240]

4 minutes ago, Insaginary said:

characters were improved without adding RPG elements

so real man. why even klei wanna go down doing this RPG BS in the first place. this a survival game first and foremost dawg. but then again this game also has shifted to #72893930 fight simulator so blegh.

[Anis5240]

1 minute ago, Insaginary said:

only to become the fiasco it is now

that's just average klei moment

do a thing, thing is bad, make better, rinse and repeat until the end of the universe

transmutes could literally be part of Wilson's base kits and no one would ever bat an eye.