[Poll] Should Wes skilltree buff him to (try to) balance with other character?

[Cassielu]

Just curious.

skilltree has natural optionality and task that encourages players to play as some character to get insight point, which I think that makes it great for making Wes worth to play and wouldn't damage his status as a joke character too much... If the developer decides to do so.

I know some people have specific ideas for Wes skilltree, like half buff and half nerf or something, but in the end it can only be yes or no.

[Walrusst]

I feel like he should stay mostly bad with cases where he is arguably ok. Like imagine taking his downsides and sort of making them side-sides that are still clearly downside overall even if there is a little reason to be optimistic. Frustrating, but in line with the character themes.

Except for one task that nobody imagined where suddenly he is a comedically useful/helpful. Its not anything anyone was trying to do, nobody asked, but we appreciate that he can nonetheless.

[Balter]

Make the buff go both ways, like say Wes can tightwalk over small gaps on the surface world using one rope in which he has to play a balancing minigame while slowly crossing it at 0.1 of his original speed, if he fails he drowns. This rope ofcourse will break after a single use.

[gaymime]

if you want people to play him then he will need to be made comparable.

[Gashzer]

6 hours ago, Balter said:

Make the buff go both ways, like say Wes can tightwalk over small gaps on the surface world using one rope in which he has to play a balancing minigame while slowly crossing it at 0.1 of his original speed, if he fails he drowns. This rope ofcourse will break after a single use.

Agree with Balter here. Wes skills need to have a certain yin-yang to them.

[Guihhza]

For a Wes skill tree i'd be ok with almost anything as long as it's funny and a bit miserable

[Walrusst]

2 hours ago, Guihhza said:

For a Wes skill tree i'd be ok with almost anything as long as it's funny and a bit miserable

Pretty much.
As long as I'm laughing when it actually works, laughing when it fails I'm fine with it.

[Edible Coal]

i doubt he will get a skill tree at all

[Cheggf]

15 hours ago, Cassielu said:

skilltree has natural optionality

No it doesn't, if you have unspent Insight it constantly spams you telling you to go buy skills.

[Walrusst]

47 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

No it doesn't, if you have unspent Insight it constantly spams you telling you to go buy skills.

Given I've started leaving most of my points unspent early game until I see the world gen its really kinda annoying.

[Radicaljoe]

I've said it before, I have 2 hopes for the Wes skilltree options

option1: It is all skills that have an upside and a downside, like you get 25% more hunger from food, but you can only eat veggies (basically miming other character's upsides/downsides)

option2:It's a tree with exactly 15 skills and all they do is revert Wes to his old 113 self, pre-rework.

[Mike23Ua]

35 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

I've said it before, I have 2 hopes for the Wes skilltree options

option1: It is all skills that have an upside and a downside, like you get 25% more hunger from food, but you can only eat veggies (basically miming other character's upsides/downsides)

option2:It's a tree with exactly 15 skills and all they do is revert Wes to his old 113 self, pre-rework.

My question is a simple one. If option 1 was one of his skills. Why on earth would anyone waste one of their skill points to intentionally handicap themselves? The only way a BAD skill tree works for Wes, is if the skills Automatically unlock and apply themselves giving you no option to Opt out of taking them.

[Chewabacca]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

My question is a simple one. If option 1 was one of his skills. Why on earth would anyone waste one of their skill points to intentionally handicap themselves?

For the same reason they pick Wes in the first place.

[Pruinae]

I hope his skill tree isn't exclusively negative, that it adds positive things he can do that other characters can't the same way. We know that as he is right now there's no one playing him, why would I play Wes when other characters make the game more interesting? Even through all his downsides, I still want something meaningful that I can only do while playing as Wes.

Sure, current Wes does incite you to engage with the game in a different way, but its just by slowing the game down, that isn't fun.

[Mike23Ua]

32 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

For the same reason they pick Wes in the first place.

People pick Wes for a variety of reasons, cool skins, funny balloon crafts, no annoying musical instrument sounds when telling “campfire stories” My friend he is newer to the game (only been playing like 2 months) choose Wes and his reasoning behind WHY is because Wes (currently) doesn’t have a bunch of overly complicated abilities and perks to have to learn and understand.

In actuality: Wes’s Smaller Stomach downside just means his hunger meter is full again faster, and that’s something even a complete newbie can understand.

and unlike single player don’t starve where unlocking Wes was a chore in of itself, he’s unlocked from the beginning in DST.

A Wes player never has to for example: Scour the constant to find Walrus tusk to craft Wanda Clocks, or learn how to shave beefalo wool to craft additional Bernie dolls.

Talking more about Willow for a moment, A newbie player isn’t going to ever understand that they need to kill enemies while they are still on fire to collect and gather her embers to use her powers.

Wes is simple, Wes is Basic- Wes is less complicated than even WILSON.

And a Tamed Beefalo removes any Health Disadvantage Wes might had once had. And huh wouldn’t you know? It’s easier than ever to tame beefalo now.

My point is simple: people do not pick Wes to be “Challenged”

If you want a challenge you’ll play as Wurt who literally can’t eat any meats, or Wigfrid who can’t eat veggies, or Wormwood who can’t heal from traditional methods, Wickerbottom who can’t use Tents or Lean-Tos for Sanity and health restoration, or even Warly who has an incredibly annoying downside of diminishing returns on repeated meatballs consumption.

But Wes… has no severe downsides whatsoever, he gets injured? He can still eat food or use tents to heal. You get the point.

[Echsrick]

wes skill tree sould be a luck tree

[Valase]

I think that he needs event balloons like winters feast, "year of the ...", carnival, the spooky one.

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, Pruinae said:

I hope his skill tree isn't exclusively negative, that it adds positive things he can do that other characters can't the same way. We know that as he is right now there's no one playing him, why would I play Wes when other characters make the game more interesting? Even through all his downsides, I still want something meaningful that I can only do while playing as Wes.

Sure, current Wes does incite you to engage with the game in a different way, but its just by slowing the game down, that isn't fun.

Omg who cares if he isn't popular there are 18 characters in this game not every single one of them needs to be exactly the same so that you personally feel like playing as them. You don't see me suggesting that everyone's huge enormous upsides get trimmed down to a fraction of what they currently are while they all get downsides at least on-par with Wormwood so that they all appeal to me.

[AliceShiki]

26 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

choose Wes and his reasoning behind WHY is because Wes (currently) doesn’t have a bunch of overly complicated abilities and perks to have to learn and understand.

That's a reason to play Wilson. Why didn't you tell them that? They're just making their life harder by playing Wes for no reason.

It's just pointless to assume someone is playing Wes when they should be playing Wilson. Most people playing Wes play him because he is a challenge character, not because they don't know Wilson exists. This is a seriously pointless argument.

[Guille6785]

trying to turn wes into an actual character is the easiest way to completely miss the one single purpose of his entire character

[HowlVoid]

I've said this before, but I invison a skill in his skill tree with a million uses: Mimemicry

The ability to copy the skills of other survivors at a fraction of the efficacy. What he copies from each survivor is set in stone. 

Like copying Wolfgan's 5% to chop down a tree instantly but instead it's 1%

Or Healing 1 hp every 20 seconds in sunlight from wormwood.

He can only hold one copy and and he puts on a different Balloon hat based on the character he copied, like Kirby lmao.

There's no reason why Wes can't have fun too.

14 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

trying to turn wes into an actual character is the easiest way to completely miss the one single purpose of his entire character

We both know giving a character the less than Wilson parameters don't actually make the game harder.

I know he's the "joke character" but he's the least played character. You can make a joke character while lowering the difficulty, without compromising the integrity of said character.

[YouKnowWho142]

I don't think he should be as good as everyone else, I just think he should be a more interesting challenge character

[Chewabacca]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

People pick Wes for a variety of reasons, cool skins, funny balloon crafts, no annoying musical instrument sounds when telling “campfire stories” My friend he is newer to the game (only been playing like 2 months) choose Wes and his reasoning behind WHY is because Wes (currently) doesn’t have a bunch of overly complicated abilities and perks to have to learn and understand

Okay, fine. Wes is pitched as and exists to be the challenge character (which is not the same as a "joke character" since that would mean he has 0 purpose). As you point out, he's currently not so great at doing the one thing he exists to do, and so the people who would otherwise be interested in a challenge character don't play him because he offers no interesting challenge compared to everyone else. The answer to that is to make him better at his job, not to abandon the whole original idea of Wes and try to use the skill tree to make him into an entirely new character from basically scratch, since that would just make him a muddled mess.

Also, your friend should be playing Wilson for a simpler time. "Wilson has more complicated stuff going on than Wes"--yeah, that's because Wilson has a skill tree already and Wes doesn't.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, AliceShiki said:

That's a reason to play Wilson. Why didn't you tell them that? They're just making their life harder by playing Wes for no reason.

It's just pointless to assume someone is playing Wes when they should be playing Wilson. Most people playing Wes play him because he is a challenge character, not because they don't know Wilson exists. This is a seriously pointless argument.

Wilson has feature bloat, Wes does not..

The only thing that Wes can’t do (assuming your a new player who picked the game up yesterday) the only thing Complicated about playing Wes for a new player- Is when they Die and misplace their Balloons and can not figure out how to craft a new pile of balloons.

But WILSON (now with fancy confusing Skill tree) has some features that the player has to figure out and learn, such as: What the actual Hell the ingredients needed to “Transmutate” items are, and what those transmutated items will be used for.

On top of THAT a Newer player also randomly grows out a long Castaway style beard which the brand new to the game player: Will at first benefit from (for Winter) and then later Burn to death for not knowing how to shave off (for Summer)

To play Wilson demands the newbie to learn how to sacrifice one inventory slot to constantly shave off beard scruff.

Wes is literally the only character in the entire game, who currently… has no extra Features bloat. Even Wilson & Willow now are more complicated for brand new beginner players.

[Pruinae]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Omg who cares if he isn't popular there are 18 characters in this game not every single one of them needs to be exactly the same so that you personally feel like playing as them. You don't see me suggesting that everyone's huge enormous upsides get trimmed down to a fraction of what they currently are while they all get downsides at least on-par with Wormwood so that they all appeal to me.

Is not that he isn't popular, is that he is basically not played at all, it goes beyond popularity.

I could instead just not ever say anything and just leave Wes to be forgotten like he always has been, but the forum provides opportunity to say what I would personally prefer, so why not? That generates discussion that might provide the developers an idea of what should be done, be it with people agreeing or disagreeing with me. There's no need to be harsh.