A major issue with Skillsets and what WX's does well (in part)

[Evelo]

In my original example way at the top of the topic. Let's say you have a Crossbow. Everyone has a crossbow that fires 1 bolt every 3 seconds. Now we add a skill tree to customize what the Crossbow does. The crossbow will have 3 choices in this example. More Bolts per shot, Faster Firerate, or Larger more Powerful Bolts. You can only choose one line as a focus and splash a little bit of the others. More Bolts line could go like: Default 1 Bolt > 2 Bolts > 3 Bolts > 5 Bolts, so on. Fire Rate could be: Default 3/s > 2.5/s > 1.66/s > 1/s, so on. Larger Bolts could hit harder but have a slower fire rate: Default 1dmg/3s > 2dmg/3.33s > 4dmg/3.5s > 7dmg/3.6s. This way the players had the choice between the three styles for their crossbow. Now combine this with a full character. They got the Crossbow, the Power Armor, A sword, whatever. But you are given only a limited number of skill points to invest in, so you invest in what is the most fun for your playstyle. I like being a tanky guy so I invest in Power Armor to increase my defense vs my movement. Someone might like to use a crossbow as a sniper so goes with the slow firerate high damage with a splash in power armor's damage bonus stuff. Someone might like the sword and combines the multishot from the crossbow to help with aoe. There are so many possibilities if everyone has the base kit to specialize into. I can convert this to DST character skill trees if really desired but I hope this gets my point across in how numerical changes can change the gameplay and be personalized.

I know you, @Cheggf mentioned other games with skill trees (see many ARPGs) but there is so much build diversity that the homogenization is rarely there because of how many choices there are. Just for clarity sake, going to ping @Swiyss since they were pretty vocal as well. 

Of course if there is a disagreement that's fine, just trying to build understanding as to my point of view. I can understand why adding abilities is something to consider, I just disagree because why lock content behind a skill. Balance is incredibly important and is used for such situations. I just, personally find having all the tools and specializing in certain tools to be more fun than unlocking new tools. 

[Kvetevk]

Klei made a good job with wx78 skill tree, I don't think that anything in the skill tree should be changed, maybe tweaked only.

About the chassis being a base kit, I will have to disagree, characters with no skills should be easy to understand and play as for newer players, wx78 can now hold more circuits, but his stats were reverted to 100, that is reasonable and fair, because people can now use fun circuits while still having better stats, having chassis from the start could be confusing for newer players and would not feel like the original wx78.

I personally skip all chassis skills to have better passives than being able to have more weaker bodies placed around the map, like @Evelo mentioned, in the skill tree you can choose to have 1 body with buffed circuits (like power armor) or have multiple bodies with lesser circuits but have more map control (easy teleport + revive), either way, people can choose between one or the other but also can mix both but with less skills in both.

And also nobody should say that something should be a base kit just because "everyone" uses set skills, yes some skills from previous skill trees feel like everyone uses them, but I as a Wilson main will never say that transmutation skills should be base kit just because I and a lot of other people who play Wilson always use the transmutation skills.

[Evelo]

As mentioned by @qwp18 , there are also skills that are so bad they are a never take. Which I hadn't considered. Balance is extremely important for skill trees so there is a wide variety of decisions that are viable for the players. I know people seem ambivalent or truly opposed to the idea of integrating many skills baseline, but I do suspect that is the easiest way to solve the validity of various builds. I will say though, given Klei's track record of not really balancing much, I am not going to hold my breath that this happens.