Why don't klei do balance patches to skill trees?

[Edible Coal]

klei seems to rarely do balance patches and usually never bother to tweak stuff that are out for a while, maybe is fine for most updates, but i think skill tree shouldn't be treated as such, there's clearly a lot of small improvement that the trees need and it wouldn't take a lot of resources to tweak some of the weaker skills.

any skill tree in particular you see could get some small changes to be good?

here are mines:

woodie goose mastery should allow random take flight or targeted flight ( a teleport seems op but remember you only get one mastery and player have to choose between planar moose and big aoe smash beaver)

some number adjustment to willson transmute stuff to make them more reasonable

 

[Jakepeng99]

I agree I don’t get why they don’t do this.

lots of people go “Oh it’s not a competitive game”. But balanced games with many options are very fun.

 

Woodie is a good example. Only the moose skills are good because they make it so so strong (it needs scaling with game progression).

Meanwhile, the beaver and goose have some of the worst skills of the tree. Goose has 1 really good skill which is speed boost, 2 that basically do nothing at all, and 1 that isnt worth it.

 

The beaver skills are just really low value and not worth it. Mining skill is ok for marble, but everything else is not worth it at all. Why are you investing points in werebeaver instead of his other powerful skills for tiny improvements. 

[gaymime]

anyone around for the wendy debacle can understand why it is not prudent for klei to go back over existing skilltress post-beta. if they go back to alter a thing then they have opened themselves up to two things; first people saying "you fixed x why arent you fixing y?" and "you improved this thing for character x but still havent improved that thing for character y. you are being unfair!" klei would get mired down in dozens of small worthless updates for one or two characters that take away from progress elsewhere and not actually satisfy most players

[luvu2bits]

Correct me if im wrong but have they not done this plenty of times? I feel like i remember this happening with wolfgang, wormwood, and wurt. They kept touching up on their skill trees for a few updates after their release, i think? I recall wormwood and wurt getting pretty extensive focus on a second go around. And the wortox wendy walter update was in beta for like 4 months because they were working so hard on fixing it up to satisfy fans

[Edible Coal]

41 minutes ago, luvu2bits said:

Correct me if im wrong but have they not done this plenty of times? I feel like i remember this happening with wolfgang, wormwood, and wurt. They kept touching up on their skill trees for a few updates after their release, i think? I recall wormwood and wurt getting pretty extensive focus on a second go around. And the wortox wendy walter update was in beta for like 4 months because they were working so hard on fixing it up to satisfy fans

those fixes and adjust are within the update/beta period 

42 minutes ago, gaymime said:

anyone around for the wendy debacle can understand why it is not prudent for klei to go back over existing skilltress post-beta. if they go back to alter a thing then they have opened themselves up to two things; first people saying "you fixed x why arent you fixing y?" and "you improved this thing for character x but still havent improved that thing for character y. you are being unfair!" klei would get mired down in dozens of small worthless updates for one or two characters that take away from progress elsewhere and not actually satisfy most players

we cant solve world hunger, but we can provide one more meal to the people in need. so i dont quite understand your logic

plus some skill can use some small tweaks like willow flaming bear requirement be reduce by one to allow willow to have both affinity flame and the flaming bear ( but no enough for planar bear as well)

i dont think these take any dev time at all if klei already tracks the usage of skill tree points

Edited March 7 by Edible Coal

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I agree I don’t get why they don’t do this.

lots of people go “Oh it’s not a competitive game”. But balanced games with many options are very fun.

 

Woodie is a good example. Only the moose skills are good because they make it so so strong (it needs scaling with game progression).

Meanwhile, the beaver and goose have some of the worst skills of the tree. Goose has 1 really good skill which is speed boost, 2 that basically do nothing at all, and 1 that isnt worth it.

 

The beaver skills are just really low value and not worth it. Mining skill is ok for marble, but everything else is not worth it at all. Why are you investing points in werebeaver instead of his other powerful skills for tiny improvements. 

The biggest issue with Woodie's design is the locks for the wereforms sure they aren't the best but people would actually go for goose or were beaver if they didn't have to miss out on the moose and even if you weaken the moose via scaling this remains a undeniable fact even then there's not much you can do to make the moose worth it while making him weaker due to how easy getting weapons and armor already are. In short the beaver is fine more or less I'd probably just remove the hunger consumption on tail slam and the were locks and he's perfect for what the tree offers. Goose could probably use a rework but it also would greatly benefit from their removal. To make a comparsion the were beaver forms are more like if Walter's slingshot branch locked him out or his scout and Woby tabs. It just doesn't flow well at all and leads to just ignoring some forms and options.

[Nikki Darks]

7 hours ago, gaymime said:

anyone around for the wendy debacle can understand why it is not prudent for klei to go back over existing skilltress post-beta. if they go back to alter a thing then they have opened themselves up to two things; first people saying "you fixed x why arent you fixing y?" and "you improved this thing for character x but still havent improved that thing for character y. you are being unfair!" klei would get mired down in dozens of small worthless updates for one or two characters that take away from progress elsewhere and not actually satisfy most players

I mean, if they'd even need to go back in the first place to fix things that need fixing... Then they should? And if multiple skill trees need things to be fixed, then they should fix them? This whole "whiny players" argument means nothing if they are "whining" about genuine problems that need fixing. I really don't get what you're trying to get at here. Also, skill trees are probably the most important thing to work on until it's as good as it can be because character updates affect everyone, unlike other parts of the game.

[Gashzer]

11 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

klei seems to rarely do balance patches and usually never bother to tweak stuff that are out for a while, maybe is fine for most updates, but i think skill tree shouldn't be treated as such, there's clearly a lot of small improvement that the trees need and it wouldn't take a lot of resources to tweak some of the weaker skills.

any skill tree in particular you see could get some small changes to be good?

here are mines:

woodie goose mastery should allow random take flight or targeted flight ( a teleport seems op but remember you only get one mastery and player have to choose between planar moose and big aoe smash beaver)

some number adjustment to willson transmute stuff to make them more reasonable

 

Goose mastery is super good, i would rate it the best of the 3 atleast as a day 1 pick... moose AoE and slight damage increase isnt gamechanging enough in comparsion. 

The main problem with the goose mastery is the 2 filler skills you need to get it. 100% water insulation and damage dodge are both useless. Unlike the moose line were all skills are useful hence getting the moose mastery isnt as costly insight investment to get.

[Frosty_Mentos]

They do balance patches depending on community feedback and their own thoughts. I think they're doing a decent job. This game is a sandbox, so balance is focus on enjoyability and fantasy of the character while keeping them somewhat in bounds of having limitations or have none cause not needing any.

Think of Wigfrid, her balancing is basically of playing as a "main character". She kinda gets a pass for being uber strong anyway.

[DegenerateFurry]

11 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Woodie is a good example. Only the moose skills are good because they make it so so strong (it needs scaling with game progression).

Meanwhile, the beaver and goose have some of the worst skills of the tree. Goose has 1 really good skill which is speed boost, 2 that basically do nothing at all, and 1 that isnt worth it.

 

The beaver skills are just really low value and not worth it. Mining skill is ok for marble, but everything else is not worth it at all. Why are you investing points in werebeaver instead of his other powerful skills for tiny improvements. 

I mean, the moose skills are the best if you're a boss-rushing combat-focused player, and even then, Weremoose isn't as good as a normal player against certain bosses that require tool use like Toadstool and Fuelweaver (yes, I know they can be done with it, but it's still harder than using the appropriate tools). If you've got a few other players to fight bosses with, Weremoose perks are way less relevant since the perks won't contribute all that significantly to the overall damage output of your group. If you get more of a kick out of exploring the map, goose is superior. Beaver does fall off compared to the other two, though, its harvesting abilities are already great and its perks don't make them meaningfully much better since its only real weak point is that it can't pick up items, not that it's not good enough at harvesting trees and rocks. 

 

A better example would be Wormwood, who has an entire branch of his skill tree that has almost no use case: plant crafting. Sure, you can make saplings in a twiggy trees world... but if you're playing on default settings, you can't know that it'll have twiggy trees going in; you can't know that the caves won't have saplings; and if you end up in a world where the overworld or caves have saplings, that perk point can be replaced by a shovel. You won't even lose sanity from it because you gain back more replanting them than you lose digging them up.

Berry bush crafting is marginally more useful if you specifically want one or the other berry bush type, but berries aren't good enough of a food source (especially for Wormwood, who has way better food options) to justify it anyway, and it's absurd that it's two separate perks for berry bushes and juicy berry bushes. Monkeytail crafting isn't good at all because you need bananas to craft it, and unless you're slaughtering Splumonkeys by the scores, you're not gonna have a good source of those until you go to Moon Quay anyway, which is where you can get free monkeytails with no perk investment. Lure plant crafting is arguably good, but it's not worth taking these other garbage perks to get, especially since Wormwood benefits the least from leafy meat dishes. 

You are infinitely better off, as Wormwood, taking the mushroom planter tree. It makes mushroom planters (which Wormwood can easily craft) into an extremely efficient and completely passive food source capable of supplying filler veggies for a server, gives you a very easy way to get loads of manure, and gives you a very useful and cheap AoE sleep cloud to use in combat. With just a tent and a beefalo (syrup of ipecaca for manure, overfeeding for rot), you can easily have 8+ mushroom planters set up before mid-autumn, producing 40 mushrooms after replanting every three days. That supplies healing from blue caps, sanity from moonshrooms or cooked green/blue caps, and food in the form of crock pot filler. Absolute no-brainer unless you've completely dedicated yourself to farming crops.

To fix Wormwood's plant crafting, I think they need to condense sapling crafting and berry bush crafting into a new perk called Forest Crafting, which lets you craft lunar saplings, twiggy tree cones, grass tufts, both kinds of berry bush, and juicy berry bushes. Now it's useful regardless of world type and gives way more value for the perk point. Then monkeytail crafting can get replaced with Swamp Crafting, allowing you to craft normal reeds and brambles (which Wormwood is uniquely suited to harvest due to his bramble husk providing immunity to their thorns), a new perk called Desert Crafting can be added that allows the crafting of a new, replantable cactus type (and maybe a tumbleweed spawner?), and lure plant crafting remains as the final perk. Oh, and unlink them all so we can just take what we want out of there like with Walter's skill tree. 

Edited March 7 by DegenerateFurry

[Bumber64]

I think we need all the skill trees done first before we can go back and tweak things. Klei is still figuring out what skill trees should do for a character, and there's a clear evolution from Wilson to Walter. They can better rebalance things after they've seen where each character ended up.

[Evelo]

It's almost like skill trees were a mistake for everyone except Wilson.
I honestly thought they were just the ground work to allow modders to make their own skill trees for other characters. Turns out I was wrong...

[Sacco]

Skill trees broke the balance of the game (making it way too boring), which was already pretty bad... skills should have come with downsides, but it didn't happen. As of now we are too much into them to fix this issue, i just hope klei will nerf most of them (it won't happen i know).

Edited March 24 by Sacco

[Mike23Ua]

At this stage of the skill trees I personally say finish & be done with them for good. They take way too much development time. Time that could be spent doing literally anything else, such as making the Gorge, Forge, Shipwrecked & Hamlet Mods actually available as playable content for all players to enjoy, rather than a small group who play for example: Wes or Warly.

[gaymime]

12 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

those fixes and adjust are within the update/beta period 

we cant solve world hunger, but we can provide one more meal to the people in need. so i dont quite understand your logic

plus some skill can use some small tweaks like willow flaming bear requirement be reduce by one to allow willow to have both affinity flame and the flaming bear ( but no enough for planar bear as well)

i dont think these take any dev time at all if klei already tracks the usage of skill tree points

let's use your analogy; a soup kitchen wants to feed people but the same half dozen people get their bowl then keep pushing back to the front of the line to demand the people cooking fix the taste of the food and not leaving until they get another "better" bowl even though lots of people still have not been fed yet. it is agreed that feeding people who are starving is GOOD but if there is nothing stopping a small group from holding up the line in perpetuity because they don't feel their needs were met then everyone loses out

5 hours ago, Nikki Darks said:

I mean, if they'd even need to go back in the first place to fix things that need fixing... Then they should? And if multiple skill trees need things to be fixed, then they should fix them? This whole "whiny players" argument means nothing if they are "whining" about genuine problems that need fixing. I really don't get what you're trying to get at here. Also, skill trees are probably the most important thing to work on until it's as good as it can be because character updates affect everyone, unlike other parts of the game.

here is the thing though; a lot of people play and not everyone agrees on what "fixed" even is. i am not saying to avoid fixing broken things i am saying that there is no universal "fixed" state and it would be a sisyphean task to try to make several thousand people ALL agree that their favourite character could not be improved further.

Edited March 7 by gaymime

[Evelo]

1 hour ago, gaymime said:

i am saying that there is no universal "fixed" state

removing them (except Wilson's)

[DegenerateFurry]

16 minutes ago, Evelo said:

removing them (except Wilson's)

Man, you hate skill trees almost as much as I hate Fuelweaver. What's up with that? Skill trees are optional.

[Well-met]

why don't klei do balance patches period.

[Edible Coal]

4 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I think we need all the skill trees done first before we can go back and tweak things. Klei is still figuring out what skill trees should do for a character, and there's a clear evolution from Wilson to Walter. They can better rebalance things after they've seen where each character ended up.

i would agree if the skill tree didnt took like 3 years and we are still 7 character short, but i see your logic

[DegenerateFurry]

55 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

i would agree if the skill tree didnt took like 3 years and we are still 7 character short, but i see your logic

I mean, if Klei actually focused on skill trees, they'd be done by now. They've been doing a mix of skill trees and post-game content for us to use the more powerful perks against, but I think we're at a place with the rifts stuff where they can just leave it be for a while and focus on getting the rest of the skill trees done.

We'll see what they do, though.

[Echsrick]

5 hours ago, Well-met said:

why don't klei do balance patches period.

exchept when they do

[flamboyant wolf]

14 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

The biggest issue with Woodie's design is the locks for the wereforms sure they aren't the best but people would actually go for goose or were beaver if they didn't have to miss out on the moose and even if you weaken the moose via scaling this remains a undeniable fact even then there's not much you can do to make the moose worth it while making him weaker due to how easy getting weapons and armor already are. In short the beaver is fine more or less I'd probably just remove the hunger consumption on tail slam and the were locks and he's perfect for what the tree offers. Goose could probably use a rework but it also would greatly benefit from their removal. To make a comparsion the were beaver forms are more like if Walter's slingshot branch locked him out or his scout and Woby tabs. It just doesn't flow well at all and leads to just ignoring some forms and options.

Weregoose 2 & 3 barely do anything, so I hope those get tweaked eventually. 

[Jakepeng99]

13 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I mean, the moose skills are the best if you're a boss-rushing combat-focused player, and even then, Weremoose isn't as good as a normal player against certain bosses that require tool use like Toadstool and Fuelweaver (yes, I know they can be done with it, but it's still harder than using the appropriate tools). If you've got a few other players to fight bosses with, Weremoose perks are way less relevant since the perks won't contribute all that significantly to the overall damage output of your group. If you get more of a kick out of exploring the map, goose is superior. Beaver does fall off compared to the other two, though, its harvesting abilities are already great and its perks don't make them meaningfully much better since its only real weak point is that it can't pick up items, not that it's not good enough at harvesting trees and

Moose is significantly better in a group not sure what you mean.

Its dps is higher than a darksword, and it costs zero resources while providing crowd control and a damage sponge, while others negate the mooses weaknesses.

 

Also spending 3 skillpoints on water immunity as goose, a practically useless dodge, and an ability that is not worth using isnt better than moose

16 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

The biggest issue with Woodie's design is the locks for the wereforms sure they aren't the best but people would actually go for goose or were beaver if they didn't have to miss out on the moose and even if you weaken the moose via scaling this remains a undeniable fact even then there's not much you can do to make the moose worth it while making him weaker due to how easy getting weapons and armor already are. In short the beaver is fine more or less I'd probably just remove the hunger consumption on tail slam and the were locks and he's perfect for what the tree offers. Goose could probably use a rework but it also would greatly benefit from their removal. To make a comparsion the were beaver forms are more like if Walter's slingshot branch locked him out or his scout and Woby tabs. It just doesn't flow well at all and leads to just ignoring some forms and options.

If he didnt have locks it doesnt change the fact the moose and goose skills are the worst in his tree. It would be mostly the same.

[Cruvimaster]

The only skill tree that should be revised is Wilson's. He's the only old character who hasn't had a rework, and his skill tree should better reward him for that. Everything else should be treated as finished work.

I hope that after the seven remaining skill trees are finished, Klei will stop making the characters even more broken.

And if Klei continues down this path, I'll be rooting for Wendy's fans to harass the forum to make the devs really angry, like they did back in Wendy's time.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 hour ago, Cruvimaster said:

The only skill tree that should be revised is Wilson's. He's the only old character who hasn't had a rework, and his skill tree should better reward him for that. Everything else should be treated as finished work.

I hope that after the seven remaining skill trees are finished, Klei will stop making the characters even more broken.

And if Klei continues down this path, I'll be rooting for Wendy's fans to harass the forum to make the devs really angry, like they did back in Wendy's time.

harassment should not be encouraged period