After experiencing Walter's skill tree, I find it hard to get into other characters, knowing what they have can't be as good.

[_mylilsunshine_]

As the title suggests. I'm spoiled with the Walter skill tree.

I wanted to try out Wormwood and Wurt, but their skill trees suffer from 1>2>3 syndrome and some kills aren't just that great/creative/gameplay-changing. Wurt doesn't suffer from this as much, but I don't think I'd ever pick some of the skills.

I wanted to try out Webber but he doesn't have a skill tree just yet, so I'm yearning for the potential that he can have.

All of those characters are great on their own, and worth playing now. But all I can think of is how great they could be, or could've been.

I hope that every character will have a skill tree of similar or higher quality. But I'm also hoping for new content instead.

[ADM]

It does help skilltrees a lot when each Insight point feel well spent ! Walter didn't get any skill that is an increase of the last, even the Basic Customization one has so much going for it despite the 3 following skills are better - but you still make use of both basic and upgraded modules because of your progression, and you get upgrades for each even if you didn't decide to spend more insight in a specific customization slot. For the rest, everything is something new each times.

 

For 15 skills, you always receive way over 15 upgrades for the character. What Walter got is unmatched.
(not that this is something I necessary demand for the rest of characters... some deserved to get more heavy lifting done with skilltrees than others, but in effect this was great and should the treatment for Warly, Webber, and such)

[hyoton123]

Oh, brother.

[_mylilsunshine_]

7 minutes ago, ADM said:

It does help skilltrees a lot when each Insight point feel well spent ! Walter didn't get any skill that is an increase of the last, even the Basic Customization one has so much going for it despite the 3 following skills are better - but you still make use of both basic and upgraded modules because of your progression, and you get upgrades for each even if you didn't decide to spend more insight in a specific customization slot. For the rest, everything is something new each times.

For 15 skills, you always receive way over 15 upgrades for the character. What Walter got is unmatched.
(not that this is something I necessary demand for the rest of characters... some deserved to get more heavy lifting done with skilltrees than others, but in effect this was great and should the treatment for Warly, Webber, and such)

it took a lot of bad skill trees to create mediocre skill trees, and then mediocre to excellent. i hope it will only take this one skill tree success for the dev to have a better experience going forward

[Walrusst]

Wormoods is satisfying even if it has a lot of forced empty points and point taxes.
The genuine limit breakers are nice in that tree even if you can't take many interesting utilities due to how taxed you are for points.

Like, I'm not really talking like. Just minmaxing. Just like, there is usually at least 3 points taken before the first skill with a tactile effect outside of the craft branch. You aren't doing a whole lot until you learn full bloom and reach stuff like ipecac/trap resetting at least. At which point you still only need one more point to get the minmaxer skill anyhow.

Still, the handful of the skills where you are doing instead of offsetting nothing are just the best.

[Cheggf]

Every single skill tree in the entire game except for Walter's is bad. Some of them, like Wormwood's, would not take very much to become good. Wormwood's got a lot of good skills, it's just some of them are broken up a bunch, and all of them are locked behind big linear paths where you don't choose anything. Walter spends 1 skill point on something that doesn't have any prerequisites and he gets something much more powerful and much more fun than what Wormwood spends 5 points getting.

I hope that, since it would be relatively less effort than introducing entirely new skill trees, the older trees could get some touchups. Growth Spurt I & II and Flower Power should really be combined into 1 skill since even all 3 together are extremely minor and unimpactful. Shade Plant & Photosynthesis should be combined together, and grant a decent amount of water resistance (35%?) as well since the idea is that you're blooming so big it provides shade from the sun. All 5 of his crafting perks should be combined together. His first 3 mushroom perks should be combined together, but the lunar one feels different enough to stay separate. Farmhand & Seed Sleuth should be combined together (Would a single person ever choose Seed Sleuth if it wasn't mandatory?).

And, most importantly, the tree should be rearranged so that there's actual choice behind your decisions and you're picking perks that you want to pick instead of just picking things because if you want this one perk you have to pick the 4 irrelevant perks before it that have nothing in common with it. To keep with the theme of him being a plant I think the perks could be in "branches" of similar perks, where you pick 1 perk to unlock 3 more related perks. For example, one branch could be about planting things and starts with Farmhand, then branches into the two mushroom perks and the 5 crafting perks as one perk. One branch could be about combat and starts with a perk that gives a small chance to yield 2 living logs when you craft them, then branches into Bramble Husk Specialist, Bramble Trap Specialist, and Compost Care. One branch could be about your bloom and starts with Growth Spurt then branches out into Shade Plant and two other perks.

If every skill tree was as fun with as much room for player expression and choice as Walter's, skill trees would be a lot better of an addition to the game. So many of the skill trees like Wormwood's & Wolfgang's are almost not even skill trees at all and are just passive buffs to the characters since everyone's choices look exactly the same. 

[HowlVoid]

A lot of the older skill trees suffer from being really inflexible. 

A lot of unituitiveness because of the rigid skill 1 -> skill 2 forced pattern that doesn't feel like you're making any progress at all.

If there were no forced prerequisites, most people would choose only a few skills and that shows how bland and unimaginative the whole tree is. They don't even feel like proper upgrades leading to  more powerful skills. They feel like a whole lot of nothing. Some skills like "growth spurt 1&2" are detached in what they actually do and in practice have nothing to do with flower power. They work against eachother.

What does a lunar sapling have to do with plants that produce food?

Its filler on top of filler.

[Walrusst]

I would say most long line trees are actually pretty good in my experience, its just that they often have one or two too many duplicate skills in them.

Wormwoods tree would unironically be the best if we had adequate replacements for his three two part skills that are otherwise pretty much the same (Berries, bloom speed (lol), and mushroom speed,) and dropped the first point tax for seed identification. (And possibly grab-baggified his craft branch/affinities.)

Woodies would be top tier if quicker picker and treeguard feller were condensed to free up 3 points that meaningfully fleshed out his gameplan when not in wereform.
I'd love a few skills for fleshing out lucy as a weapon, some forge references as an alternative scaling plan to moose all day every day.
Affinities are a bit weird, but I actually don't hate them too much even if they touch on topics that many people consider skill tree sins. Downside fixing perks taking a high opportunity slot in the tree is actually sort of interesting! (So long as not every tree does this I won't complain, one character having a downside fixer isn't the end of the world.)

Wilsons would be incredible if he had crafts for underutilized items that are theorhetically strong but never used. Say cheaper crafts for bee mines, tooth traps, darts, feather transmutes....

Wortox's is honestly fine and pretty good in my practical playtime experience, for the same reasons I say wormwoods rocks. Sure you are locked in, but the payoffs for locking in are excellent. Wortox's affinities being exclusively rift based is a sour taste for me, but its absurdly rare I like a characters affinity skills.

Willows tree has one issue of them over-valuing bernie. 8 point skill gates for upgrades is a bit steep. I'd love the brighter lighter skills to be condensed with a different end to the line, but there isn't anything offensive about that tree. (Say a skill that gave her better firedart/fire staff crafts after the brighter lighter.)

If you want trees which I think are half developed, look no further then wigfrid and wolfgangs.

What we have learned from walters tree is simple.
A block of six unrelated perks which are fun and not forced on you is a great buffer to make long lines more enjoyable. Given, You know. The woby lines practically 5 long and you need 3 skills for your ammo crafting upgrade. Walter has a lot of locking in and point budgeting in his tree! THREE OF HIS most popular skills are locked in skill lines!

Whats different is the grab bag is there, always waiting to tempt you with something you can grab if you could just save another point chowing down his tree. His lines are more fun and valuable and fun feeling BECAUSE you can scrutinize every point in every line, so you  sometimes will be left doubting "Do I really want this capstone skill is it valuable enough to make me drop another big healing and sanity source/discount?"

Without the grab bag, a skill tree feels like 3 points.
BECAUSE there is a grab bag even lines that are long with great capstones fall under scrutiny. Now it feels like 15 points. 

[Cheggf]

14 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

If there were no forced prerequisites, most people would choose only a few skills and that shows how bland and unimaginative the whole tree is.

Exactly! If you could pick any perks you want but only had 5 insight instead of 15 most characters would still have like 90% of the benefits from the skill trees. Wormwood's skill tree is one of the ones where there's more useful skills than average but even he only really wants about 3 skills pre-rift and 2 skill post rift, with another 4 being somewhat helpful but not really that good. Walter's skill tree has literally every single skill on the entire tree being an attractive and fun option, and most of them have little to no prerequisites.

The only notable prerequisite is the Woby chain on the far right of the tree, but even that's 1,000x better than other skill tree's chains. "You can inspect seeds" into "You pick farm plants better" into "You rub poop on yourself better" into "These traps you have are better" into "Your armor is better" is a completely nonsensical and incomprehensible chain. The only perks even vaguely related to each-other are maybe Seed Sleuth & Farmhand, and maybe the two Specialist perks. "Woby can run after moving for awhile" into "Woby can dash with a doubletap" into "Woby's dash behaves differently" is so much more natural and feels like they're actually building off each-other, in addition to that only being a line of 3 skills instead of the freaking 5 like Wormwood & Wolfgang have. 

[Gashzer]

You know why Walter got a great skilltree? 

Because Walter mains knew what they wanted an gave practical, reasonable feedback that explained how they played Walter and why they choose Walter. 

You all can thank us for such an awesome skilltree.

[Walrusst]

3 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

You know why Walter got a great skilltree? 

Because Walter mains knew what they wanted an gave practical, reasonable feedback that explained how they played Walter and why they choose Walter. 

You all can thank us for such an awesome skilltree.

Has character which people generally didn't play because of frustrating downsides.

V1 of his skill tree has a lot of downside fixing (A woby that ignores the buck mechanics and almost perfectly heals his sanity downside, near endless free moleworm resources,) and is almost all raw damage outside of this.
(Well, that and the really slow woby training people disliked, which was a valid criticism. V1 did have its scaling issues and flaws.)

People ask for less minmaxing in the tree for their character and more flavor and utility skills.
I can't imagine how much fun klei had in drafting up the v2 tree finally being told "Please have fun and be weird with this!"

[DVGMedia]

The grab bag approach does feel like a much better approach instead of just capstone skills that most have 

[Gashzer]

7 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

Has character which people generally didn't play because of frustrating downsides.

V1 of his skill tree has a lot of downside fixing (A woby that ignores the buck mechanics and almost perfectly heals his sanity downside, near endless free moleworm resources,) and is almost all raw damage outside of this.
(Well, that and the really slow woby training people disliked, which was a valid criticism. V1 did have its scaling issues and flaws.)

People ask for less minmaxing in the tree for their character and more flavor and utility skills.
I can't imagine how much fun klei had in drafting up the v2 tree finally being told "Please have fun and be weird with this!"

The v2 tree literally all just Walter main suggestions that klei took on board. 

[_mylilsunshine_]

23 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

You know why Walter got a great skilltree? 

Because Walter mains knew what they wanted an gave practical, reasonable feedback that explained how they played Walter and why they choose Walter. 

You all can thank us for such an awesome skilltree.

?

[Crimson Hollow]

25 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

You know why Walter got a great skilltree? 

Because Walter mains knew what they wanted an gave practical, reasonable feedback that explained how they played Walter and why they choose Walter. 

You all can thank us for such an awesome skilltree.

What about.... Walter started from a low point and bringing him on par with everyone else already means a lot of potential being dug out, and thus the good tree?

And the fact that Walter mains generally care less about power because if they care they wont become walter mains before the skill tree to begin with lol

[Gashzer]

Just now, Crimson Hollow said:

What about.... Walter started from a low point and bringing him on par with everyone else already means a lot of potential being dug out, and thus the good tree?

See the thing is, base Walter wasn't low. People just never played him differently or took advantage of his upside which is a free beefalo, free chester and sanity drain immunity, all of which are pretty high tier abilities. All you had to do as base Walter was wear pinecone hat and body armour to get around his downside, this made Walter better in melee against high sanity draining bosses as long as you could kite ok-esh

Some Walter players pre-skilltree tamed a beefalo which was so stupid. Then it caught on and people thought he was weak when Walter definitely wasn't. Just because people couldn't live without backpacks...

[Walrusst]

22 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

The v2 tree literally all just Walter main suggestions that klei took on board. 

I mean two things I asked for exactly are in v2 its great.

7 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Some Walter players pre-skilltree tamed a beefalo which was so stupid. Then it caught on and people thought he was weak when Walter definitely wasn't. Just because people couldn't live without backpacks...

I mean on public servers it makes sense that people are reluctant to drop their backpacks as without constant sorting to make sure your most worthless items are in there, since you can have situations where people joining can rummage your bags or new joins can outright run off with them.

Helmets being overpowered enough that people learn to never drop their backpack is just a symptom of some of the changes that were made to translate the game from SP to mp. (Not saying that armor stacking was wise, but I will say that it being gone has made people far more conditioned to always wear a backpack.)

It would take something really out of left field and unexpected to make people willing to sacrifice their backpacks.

[Echsrick]

33 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

You know why Walter got a great skilltree? 

Because Walter mains knew what they wanted an gave practical, reasonable feedback that explained how they played Walter and why they choose Walter. 

You all can thank us for such an awesome skilltree.

if that were to be the reason we can use it for wortox aswell wich..........ahm......his skill tree is...realy bad

[Crimson Hollow]

2 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

See the thing is, base Walter wasn't low. People just never played him differently or took advantage of his upside which is a free beefalo, free chester and sanity drain immunity, all of which are pretty high tier abilities. All you had to do as base Walter was wear pinecone hat and body armour to get around his downside, this made Walter better in melee against high sanity draining bosses as long as you could kite ok-esh

Some Walter players pre-skilltree tamed a beefalo which was so stupid. Then it caught on and people thought he was weak when Walter definitely wasn't. Just because people couldn't live without backpacks...

I share the sentiment that base walter wasnt bad at all, but he surely didnt have a good reputation before (and thus the same pick rate as Wes lol) 
I guess for most people, the problem is that he is so different and doesnt give the players enough rewards for learning to play him

[_mylilsunshine_]

3 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

if that were to be the reason we can use it for wortox aswell wich..........ahm......his skill tree is...realy bad

i genuinely believe the difference in the staffs between teams is also a key factor, which is unfortunate as it is not quite as black and white

[Crimson Hollow]

11 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Some Walter players pre-skilltree tamed a beefalo which was so stupid. Then it caught on and people thought he was weak when Walter definitely wasn't. Just because people couldn't live without backpacks...

Taming a beefalo sometimes can be fun, for example if you tame a pudgy beefalo and pair it with enlightened crown... I believe kroban has mentioned this as well

Acting like Walter cant function without a beefalo is stupid. Incentivizing the same playstyle for a character thats meant to play differently... 

[Walrusst]

Woby fetch goes really well with beefalo too, which makes walter even funnier with how flexible he is.
Wait... Walrus brain itching, I can't resist the urge to come up with another quip.....

Talking about all this makes me realize just like how we have the woby lock, a server command to toggle roaming retrievers behavior between all floor items, and only items that match what woby has in their backpack would be amazing.

Since beta walter's woby fetch only impacted things woby was carrying, and all too often I wish woby would stop stealing other players stuff in a world, hence why I wish I had a button to activate his old behavior.

[Gashzer]

6 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

Taming a beefalo sometimes can be fun, for example if you tame a pudgy beefalo and pair it with enlightened crown... I believe kroban has mentioned this as well

In the time it takes you to tame a pudgy beefalo you could of just farmed a whole load of sanity food which you probably would need to do anyway if using the old slingshot for boss fights.

I get the idea, just isn't a very practical or good one

[Walrusst]

Just now, Gashzer said:

In the time it takes you to tame a pudgy beefalo you could of just farmed a whole load of sanity food which you probably would need to do anyway if using the old slingshot for boss fights.

I get the idea, just isn't a very practical or good one

I mean sometimes I'll start beefalo taming mid summer instead of autumn if I want to do ocean content early on due to world gen quirks.
Pudgy taming is ultra-easy when you have the lunar kelp patch planted, and I'll usually have steel wool and a walrus tusk at that point.

[_mylilsunshine_]

13 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

Woby fetch goes really well with beefalo too, which makes walter even funnier with how flexible he is.

Pudgy taming is ultra-easy when you have the lunar kelp patch planted, and I'll usually have steel wool and a walrus tusk at that point.

man, i wish i can tolerate taming and using beefalo, using fetch woby with it would be so much fun.

but the melee damage block makes the beef too good for me to justify using it. woby has a good risk to reward ratio that makes the game intersting, beefalo is just a 'win more' button

maybe one day i'll finally be able to add pudgy beef into the e.crown sanity station