I'm tired of character specific traits.

[Swiyss]

Can we bring back working on features that will be available for everyone after these skill trees are finally over? I'm kind of tired of seeing such amazing perks and skills for characters and not being able to have them unless I play that character. This only creates frustration, because when we get skill trees for the characters we actually play, we then compare it to other survivors traits and it gets frustrating really fast. Player are kinda expecting too much and this will only continue to grow, making the demand for better skill trees infinite.

 

[YouKnowWho142]

There is nothing wrong with giving incentives to play and experiment with different characters, that to me is the biggest source of replayability in DST. There needs to be a point where characters should be "complete", and I strongly hope that no more strong attention is given to skill trees once the skill trees are over, but I have never seen any issues with expanding on what makes characters unique. Comparing characters isn't fair to any characters involved and locking yourself into only playing a "main" isn't always the healthiest either if it results in a mindset that creates frustration, it's better to just enjoy what makes every character special instead of complaining that they have something your character doesn't.

 

more features available to everyone should always be expected and will be expected to come soon

[DegenerateFurry]

What this individual said:

18 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

There is nothing wrong with giving incentives to play and experiment with different characters, that to me is the biggest source of replayability in DST. There needs to be a point where characters should be "complete", and I strongly hope that no more strong attention is given to skill trees once the skill trees are over, but I have never seen any issues with expanding on what makes characters unique. Comparing characters isn't fair to any characters involved and locking yourself into only playing a "main" isn't always the healthiest either if it results in a mindset that creates frustration, it's better to just enjoy what makes every character special instead of complaining that they have something your character doesn't.

 

more features available to everyone should always be expected and will be expected to come soon

Character variety is one of the things that makes this game so replayable.

I personally like the skill trees because they (at least, most of them) add alternate playstyles for characters and improve them to the point that I'd actually want to play them. Woby became an actually viable alternative to beefalo, Wormwood gained combat viability, Wigfrid actually has a reason to use a beefalo, Willow became a viable character, Wurt can make herself temporarily invincible by by getting wet and wearing a fashion melon + marble suit, and Woodie can use treeguards to kill bosses. I want to see this happen for more characters.

[Swiyss]

18 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

There is nothing wrong with giving incentives to play and experiment with different characters, that to me is the biggest source of replayability in DST. There needs to be a point where characters should be "complete", and I strongly hope that no more strong attention is given to skill trees once the skill trees are over, but I have never seen any issues with expanding on what makes characters unique. Comparing characters isn't fair to any characters involved and locking yourself into only playing a "main" isn't always the healthiest either if it results in a mindset that creates frustration, it's better to just enjoy what makes every character special instead of complaining that they have something your character doesn't.

 

more features available to everyone should always be expected and will be expected to come soon

yeah that's true. I believe that skill trees additions are very enjoyable to the overall experience of the game, but it definitely needs an end not because they're objectively bad or because I'm against them, but because this has been dragged out for so so many years now, and it feels like it never ends.

And while I do want the devs to "complete" the game and the characters as well, I also don't want that to be a reason to stop updates, but rather to change focus where attention needs to be, and that will be inevitably updates like Host of Horrors and the Return of Them arc.

[Walrusst]

At some point it needs to stop being a prime development focus and a secondary agile refinement process that doesn't take the spotlight away from the game.

Since getting everyone to where they feel 90% to 60% finished is fine, it adds a lot of replay-ability that only hurts if you only main characters, and even then you get to work with people who don't play your main so benefiting from other peoples lives getting better is also just... a thing if you don't let yourself get too jealous.
Eventually, character updates should just be a single bullet point in the patch notes, and not a new patch in its entirety.

I'll trust klei to see things through, and as the game scales further and further, I hope that characters whose reworks got shafted get the slight nudges they need to feel 10/10.
Slight nudges, not full patches.

[YouKnowWho142]

7 minutes ago, astareus said:

yeah that's true. I believe that skill trees additions are very enjoyable to the overall experience of the game, but it definitely needs an end not because they're objectively bad or because I'm against them, but because this has been dragged out for so so many years now, and it feels like it never ends.

And while I do want the devs to "complete" the game and the characters as well, I also don't want that to be a reason to stop updates, but rather to change focus where attention needs to be, and that will be inevitably updates like Host of Horrors and the Return of Them arc.

It took a little over 4 years for character refreshes to be complete. We are currently on year 3 of skill trees and 2/3rds of the characters are complete. The major difference is the fact that Klei chose to slow down game updates from once a month or so to basically every 3 months, so the droughts feel a lot harsher when you wait 3 months for what turns out to be character updates, especially when it doesn't necessarily feel like 3 months worth of content is being added in the content updates they do add. We already know that their main focus is completing From Beyond, there will probably not be a skill tree update in a long while, so this post feels more like a reuslt of skill tree fatigue than anything, which is (in my opinion) an issue with longer waits between updates. 

2 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

At some point it needs to stop being a prime development focus and a secondary agile refinement process that doesn't take the spotlight away from the game.

Since getting everyone to where they feel 90% to 60% finished is fine, it adds a lot of replay-ability that only hurts if you only main characters, and even then you get to work with people who don't play your main so benefiting from other peoples lives getting better is also just... a thing if you don't let yourself get too jealous.
Eventually, character updates should just be a single bullet point in the patch notes, and not a new patch in its entirety.

I'll trust klei to see things through, and as the game scales further and further, I hope that characters whose reworks got shafted get the slight nudges they need to feel 10/10.
Slight nudges, not full patches.

I think it'd help then a lot to have the remaining skill tree updates focus on 2 characters instead of 3, then add extra content on top of it (like willow/wigfrid and wurt/winona). I don't think they're going to try a three character skill tree spotlight again any time soon after the last one

[Swiyss]

28 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

At some point it needs to stop being a prime development focus and a secondary agile refinement process that doesn't take the spotlight away from the game.

Since getting everyone to where they feel 90% to 60% finished is fine, it adds a lot of replay-ability that only hurts if you only main characters, and even then you get to work with people who don't play your main so benefiting from other peoples lives getting better is also just... a thing if you don't let yourself get too jealous.
Eventually, character updates should just be a single bullet point in the patch notes, and not a new patch in its entirety.

I'll trust klei to see things through, and as the game scales further and further, I hope that characters whose reworks got shafted get the slight nudges they need to feel 10/10.
Slight nudges, not full patches.

That's exactly how I feel about it. Also just a note, I've put the question about sad and frustration not because I feel that strongly about that, but because I know that some people might feel that way, specifically Wilson mains. I really really wish they can take a second look at that skill tree in the future, but as you said it, not as a main spotlight.

[YouKnowWho142]

4 minutes ago, astareus said:

That's exactly how I feel about it. Also just a note, I've put the question about sad and frustration not because I feel like that, but because I know that some people might feel that way, specifically Wilson mains. I really really wish they can take a second look at that skill tree in the future, but as you said it, not as a main spotlight.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, his skill tree really would've been acceptable if it weren't for other characters getting them. I would want his torch line to be changed, but I (mostly) like his transmutation and beard stuff and those don't need anything more than tweaks.

[Walrusst]

9 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

I think it'd help then a lot to have the remaining skill tree updates focus on 2 characters instead of 3, then add extra content on top of it (like willow/wigfrid and wurt/winona). I don't think they're going to try a three character skill tree spotlight again any time soon after the last one

Single character updates with like, 2/3rds of a world update where you get biome specific content, boss improvements, etc etc would go so hard so long as the three were semi-unrelated and you didn't marry a character to a biome people don't want to visit.

Say you took warly did him, reworked the water logged biome to have more biodiversity, and a rework of dragonflys lavae (where you engage with the games resource system to defeat them and get rewards for actually beating the lavae, like using water baloons to get a lavae resource) to make the fight more engaging would be a 10/10 update.

So long as warly's skills aren't about cooking dragonfly and going to the waterlogged biome in a hyper focused way.

 

4 minutes ago, astareus said:

That's exactly how I feel about it. Also just a note, I've put the question about sad and frustration not because I feel like that, but because I know that some people might feel that way, specifically Wilson mains. I really really wish they can take a second look at that skill tree in the future, but as you said it, not as a main spotlight.

I'm just hype and positive about what we've gotten.
A lot of my ideas for the old skill tree characters are like, 2-3 skills rather than a full tree, and kleis skill tree updates have a pretty regular pace of like 60-90 skills so the transition to small character bullet points from big refreshes is something they could probably manage extremely naturally.

[YouKnowWho142]

3 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

Single character updates with like, 2/3rds of a world update where you get biome specific content, boss improvements, etc etc would go so hard so long as the three were semi-unrelated and you didn't marry a character to a biome people don't want to visit.

Say you took warly did him, reworked the water logged biome to have more biodiversity, and a rework of dragonflys lavae (where you engage with the games resource system to defeat them and get rewards for actually beating the lavae, like using water baloons to get a lavae resource) to make the fight more engaging would be a 10/10 update.

So long as warly's skills aren't about cooking dragonfly and going to the waterlogged biome in a hyper focused way.

I 100% believe Wes is going to get to get a standalone skill tree update (maybe even this April 1st? That'd be pretty neat albeit unrealistic), but I don't expect it to be the case for the other characters. either way, they're working with an odd number of characters so they are forced to have at least one standalone or another 3 character spotlight

[Swiyss]

19 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

It took a little over 4 years for character refreshes to be complete. We are currently on year 3 of skill trees and 2/3rds of the characters are complete. The major difference is the fact that Klei chose to slow down game updates from once a month or so to basically every 3 months, so the droughts feel a lot harsher when you wait 3 months for what turns out to be character updates, especially when it doesn't necessarily feel like 3 months worth of content is being added in the content updates they do add. We already know that their main focus is completing From Beyond, there will probably not be a skill tree update in a long while, so this post feels more like skill tree fatigue than anything. 

So, my main point of discussion is about character specific traits. I'm not tired of skill trees, but tires of seeing such incredible and amazing additions like what they did to Walter being locked behind a survivor I will probably never play again unless it's for testing a change since I don't like them that much. We have to also take in consideration that people who only play 1 character do exist and there's nothing wrong with that.

If you actually think about this, what would someone that plays every single character lose when a new fun addition is added to a specific character? they'll just play that character. But if it happens to someone that only plays 1 survivor for example, then there's an issue here.

Then you can argue that making these features and traits available for everyone would kind of ruin the uniqueness of characters. But that's not what I want either. I know for sure that every character can be unique in their own way, but let me be clear and honest, this takes more than skill trees, it takes another 5 years or so of refining the character to what it could be with skills, and what players feel comfortable around these survivors turning into -like most willow players complained how it's kinda sad she didn't get as many fire related perks-.

10 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

, like using water baloons to get a lavae resource) to make the fight more engaging would be a 10/10 update

wow, that's brilliant.

[YouKnowWho142]

2 minutes ago, astareus said:

So, my main point of discussion is about character specific traits. I'm not tired of skill trees, but tires of seeing such incredible and amazing additions like what they did to Walter being locked behind a survivor I will probably never play again unless it's for testing a change since I don't like them that much.

What did Walter get that no one else has that would make sense on any character but him? You are not being very specific 

[Evelo]

Refreshes were cool to differentiate characters from DS and DST. Then we got Skill Trees... Remember when Klei said they wanted to stop doing character updates once the refreshes were done? That isn't a false memory right?

I'd be okay with Skill Trees if they weren't Re-refreshes at this point. I am glad how "bare bones" Wendy's is (it really isn't) because she didn't need a re-refresh. Willow certainly did and her Skill Tree sucks (in my opinion) because it is locking core gameplay behind the skill tree instead of making many of the changes baseline.

[Swiyss]

11 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

What did Walter get that no one else has that would make sense on any character but him? You are not being very specific 

Would be cool if everyone had a way to upgrade their weapon or spells up to a late-game point like he does it with his slingshot.

There's also Willow for example, who got a super cool shadow fire skill and a not that cohesive lunar blast, so now my prediction is they won't give Maxwell too much as he's already strong and we're gonna have the same thing happening to Maxwell that happened to Wendy, who should've gotten way more deep skills. Like the wreath which is underpowered because of how powerful gabi already is which is something very annoying. This is basically power imbalanced created by trying to balance an already existing imbalance. So, they went to the other side of the scale imo.

There's also the fact that Willow was reimagined into something completely different from what she was with the inclusion of magic in her kit and she got very powerful because of it, maybe even too much in the spells and too little in the bernie side. And there's Wilson who got also reimagined but was kept under a small roof because he's the "starter character" or something. Well, then why was Willow buffed so much? She's also a very beginner character, but they just decided it would be cool to just add crazy mod-looking spells to her lol.

So, I'm not against what they did with the characters, even though I would prefer if willow was more centered around either using fire on herself or fire on bernie which was what most people was also expecting. I still love how she is today, but little changes to accommodate her fire addiction and pyromaniac personality to work side by side with her skill tree would be nice. Klei just gotta remember she's a little crazy just like wilson.

I also play wilson, but not as much as some other characters, and I feel like what he got didn't really made sense to who he is. I believe he's gotta have at least some set of skills focused around potions and science stuff some more. Transmutation is cool and all but it's but one of his traits, and shouldn't be the main focus of his tree. There's definitely an imbalance there in my opinion.

Then we got wolfgang which I'm not really that fan of too, but we can clearly see the decline on his tree. like, that many gym skills and planar upgrades were straight up disrespectful.

1 minute ago, Evelo said:

Willow certainly did and her Skill Tree sucks (in my opinion) because it is locking core gameplay behind the skill tree instead of making many of the changes baseline

That's something I remember bringing it up still in her beta that got completely ignored apparently. Most abilities on her skill tree should be rather base model changes, like the controlled fire skill and the ember collection.

I'm a little concerned about the last question in topic being so even. I have no idea what to expect really

[Walrusst]

8 minutes ago, astareus said:

That's something I remember bringing it up still in her beta that got completely ignored apparently. Most abilities on her skill tree should be rather base model changes, like the controlled fire skill and the ember collection.

She is such an interesting case study because the gateway skills feel like they shouldn't be there right?
But in her case, I find they actually give her a really useful tutorial effect where I find new players that play her automatically discover whats good about her because her insight keeps hyping her up and telling you what the next big thing is. Like I haven't seen a newbie play her and not figure her out yet. Gateway skills are godlike when they teach you something.
I just want skills for her being able to use embers in discounted dart/fire staff crafts with a bonus to using these items, and the like so she can tutorialize people on what all the fire tools are and have the tools be a part of her identity (That and the lashing lighter skill I mentioned in another thread which is just too hot of an idea to not implement, and one other skill rework which would make a weird skill cooler.)

Contrast this to wormwood who, has a singular gateway skill that doesn't really teach you much, feels like its base kit, and puts more of a point tax on you attempting to do anything that is interesting/not pure minmaxing. As like the core singular flaw to a tree that is otherwise a solid 8/10 tree.

[Swiyss]

4 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

She is such an interesting case study because the gateway skills feel like they shouldn't be there right?
But in her case, I find they actually give her a really useful tutorial effect where I find new players that play her automatically discover whats good about her because her insight keeps hyping her up and telling you what the next big thing is. Like I haven't seen a newbie play her and not figure her out yet. Gateway skills are godlike when they teach you something.
I just want skills for her being able to use embers in discounted dart/fire staff crafts with a bonus to using these items, and the like so she can tutorialize people on what all the fire tools are and have the tools be a part of her identity (That and the lashing lighter skill I mentioned in another thread which is just too hot of an idea to not implement, and one other skill rework which would make a weird skill cooler.)

Contrast this to wormwood who, has a singular gateway skill that doesn't really teach you much, feels like its base kit, and puts more of a point tax on you attempting to do anything that is interesting/not pure minmaxing. As like the core singular flaw to a tree that is otherwise a solid 8/10 tree.

That's a very interesting perspective I didn't take in consideration. So very weak and undertoned character got skill trees that made them too strong, and strong characters got weak skill trees who looked kinda uninteresting. 

And now that I think about it, I can clearly clearly remember how strong and different Willow felt to play once I started gaining insight, and how boring it felt to play Wendy in this new update, I felt like the insight I was getting was basically doing nothing new, so that's extremely sad.

I think instead of Klei trying to put every character under a specific amount of strength to make them feel balanced, I think they should keep some kind of unbalance for more popular and strong characters like wendy, max, wolf and wanda, while making other weak characters look like wendy without a skill tree if you know what I mean.

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, astareus said:

Can we bring back working on features that will be available for everyone after these skill trees are finally over? 

 

bold of you to believe skill trees will ever be over

[Walrusst]

Just now, astareus said:

That's a very interesting perspective I didn't take in consideration. So very weak and undertoned character got skill trees that made them too strong, and strong characters got weak skill trees who looked kinda uninteresting. 

And now that I think about it, I can clearly clearly remember how strong and different Willow felt to play once I started gaining insight, and how boring it felt to play Wendy in this new update, I felt like the insight I was getting was basically doing nothing new, so that's extremely sad.

I think instead of Klei trying to put every character under a specific amount of strength to make them feel balanced, I think they should keep some kind of unbalance for more popular and strong characters like wendy, max, wolf and wanda, while making other weak characters look like wendy without a skill tree if you know what I mean.

I feel like wendy needed more of the end game to be refined before she entered into the oven.
When you learn abagail herding she was brutally strong, when you didn't she sort of skips the survival game part of the game and flounders against bigger enemies.

She is sort of optimized for being awkward to update and fiddly to mess with because of how bipolar her experience is already.

[FillerText]

All skill trees did was just flip the character tier list upside down.

Weak characters got unreasonably overpowered trees that raise the question as to whether they would actually be better than Wilson with godmode activated.

Strong characters got ghost trees with no fun perks or meaningful buffs.

Decent characters got minor qol, and "fun" gimmicks. Except those gimmicks aren't fun due to how much they are overcorrected in the name of balance to the point of just not being worth using. 

When I first saw Bramble trap specialist, I thought it would be incredible, and started imagining all the useful applications it may end up having. Then got immensely disappointed, as all those applications were seemingly intentionally taken account of, and were rendered unviable, and that the only improvement was that it does things it did anyway slightly better. It felt like a spit in the face(then it got a harsh nerf). It prevented me from being able to enjoy Wormwood's skill tree for a long while until I eventually just accepted that. 

Only characters that are winners here are ones that were incredibly unpopular. And even then there are exceptions, given what I heard about Wurt. Everyone else might as well not have one in my eyes.

[JaxckLl]

Wilson is literally the best character in the game at the moment. Why? Because he lets you skip the Moonstorm event and thus solve the Archive puzzle in the first couple of days of the game. He's 10+ days faster than any other character at getting to Celestial Champion as a consequence. Personally I don't find this acceptable. It's one thing for characters to have cheese that allows for easier boss fights with the right preparation, but no other character gets to just skip an entire event. It's like if Maxwell could craft a Shadow Atrium. Frankly, it's ********.

So I completely agree with your fundamental point. I like it when character's unique mechanics allow them to interact with the world in a unique way. I don't like it when character's unique mechanics allow them to skip content. It's a sign that the content needs to be reworked or rescaled so that it's fun for all characters, and thus worth doing on its own merits regardless of what character you're playing.

[Dr. Safety]

I enjoy the impact that character choice has on your experience. If there is content that would make sense for one character and that character alone to have, then yeah, I'm all for it. It's a benefit of playing that character. 

[Cheggf]

Wilson's skill tree is not the most boring. Wilson's skill tree, in multiple different ways, lets you completely change the way you look at and play the game. It adds several different things to Wilson that he never had before. It's one of the best skill trees. People just hate Wilson's because they don't want to look at the game in different ways and want to play as if they didn't have a skill tree, then they get mad because they've made it so that they don't have a skill tree by refusing to engage with it.

Wolfgang's skill tree is the most boring, it is completely ignorable and forgettable. It does not change anything about the character, and it does not add anything new to the character except for the gembells.

[Bumber64]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Wilson's skill tree is not the most boring. Wilson's skill tree, in multiple different ways, lets you completely change the way you look at and play the game. It adds several different things to Wilson that he never had before. It's one of the best skill trees.

Your post was going well until this point. It's in the bottom 50%, which is bad because he doesn't have anything in his base kit.

It's definitely not the best, and it needed to approach Walter/Willow's in terms of what it added. Clearly doesn't. It's a Wendy tree.

[readkey]

On 3/25/2025 at 3:50 AM, Walrusst said:

She is such an interesting case study because the gateway skills feel like they shouldn't be there right?
But in her case, I find they actually give her a really useful tutorial effect where I find new players that play her automatically discover whats good about her because her insight keeps hyping her up and telling you what the next big thing is. Like I haven't seen a newbie play her and not figure her out yet. Gateway skills are godlike when they teach you something.
I just want skills for her being able to use embers in discounted dart/fire staff crafts with a bonus to using these items, and the like so she can tutorialize people on what all the fire tools are and have the tools be a part of her identity (That and the lashing lighter skill I mentioned in another thread which is just too hot of an idea to not implement, and one other skill rework which would make a weird skill cooler.)

Good point on Willow. In fact the controversy on Willow’s skill tree is mainly for 2 reasons: Willow becomes a mage and no interaction with other fire options. 
 

I think we can get best of both worlds by introducing these fire related items, mostly fire staff and night light into her skill tree instead of just farming “fire souls” and create fire out of her hand. These items have durability, which is sort of equivalent to using ember as fuels. She can keep the same fire effect, only now that she has to use these items to do so. As for tutorial effect this can also give hints to the new players there are magic items they can eventually craft. Hell, maybe her lunar affinity can be to put the fire staff on the altar and transform it into lunar fire staff during full moon, hinting some staff should be put on the altar for transformation. 

[Walrusst]

4 hours ago, readkey said:

Good point on Willow. In fact the controversy on Willow’s skill tree is mainly for 2 reasons: Willow becomes a mage and no interaction with other fire options. 
 

I think we can get best of both worlds by introducing these fire related items, mostly fire staff and night light into her skill tree instead of just farming “fire souls” and create fire out of her hand. These items have durability, which is sort of equivalent to using ember as fuels. She can keep the same fire effect, only now that she has to use these items to do so. As for tutorial effect this can also give hints to the new players there are magic items they can eventually craft. Hell, maybe her lunar affinity can be to put the fire staff on the altar and transform it into lunar fire staff during full moon, hinting some staff should be put on the altar for transformation. 

I did suggest some leaning into the use of flame/fire tools in her kit a while back.