Skill Tree Thoughts So Far :)

[viblym]

I'm nonbinary and WX is too so use the right pronouns by using They/Them for WX in my thread or I'll get you

Lalalaaaa so I've been playing a beta world as WX to gauge how much the skill tree influences my feelings on their gameplay as it's very easy to get caught up in the whole "new shiny abilities!" thing and get blindsided by new content. I sort of wanted to wait until Gamma Circuits and Affinities were in since those I feel are going to be pretty significant but I do think that my feelings have merit in current time so I'd get them out sooner rather than later.

Is the skill tree good? I'm not sure! Is WX fun now? I'm also not sure! Throughout my world (I just reached day 100 yesterday) I've been feeling a few strong up's and down's of playing WX. At first I was excited to try out their new abilities (new shiny thing), once I got my circuits and a backup or two I had a long "Now what?" phase where I was progressing through the game pretty normally and the influence of the character felt like it was taking a backseat again. This is an issue I have with the circuits primarily, is that all of them sort of fade into the background of the character unless you're using them for a niche thing (As with all character abilities, you're always going to do some things the same universally, it's not a problem on its own, but I prefer it when the character you're playing is consistently felt.) One of the few instances where I felt like I was doing something "different" was solo tanking bee queen with a specific chassis that had electrification and hardy circuits, but hardy just got nerfed again basically into the damage reduction being completely insignificant (I'll talk more on that later).

There are some things, like having more hunger and sanity are nice things to have, but don't provide much gameplay variety. The new layout of circuits where they are categorized into different types helps a LOT. And this is basekit! That's fantastic! Stat circuits feel more significant when you don't feel like you're "wasting" slots on something that can be very easily fulfilled by something else, and missing out on a circuit that influences your playstyle more. I know a LOT of people who like Gastrogain circuits from before their skill tree (myself included). Hunger is such an easy thing to get by (Contrary to the game's name. At least where I'm at, speaking from my ivory tower of playing this game a lot) so it's sort of funny seeing that there's a strange curve between new players who struggle to get food seeing value in a Gastrogain circuit, to players getting better at the game, holding more confidence in their capacity to get food and therefore thinking the circuit is inconsequential, to curving back upwards with players like myself and a few others who like having a high hunger stat again. 

Beanbooster circuit was always nice to me, I always liked that one. I personally like having a high sanity stat, I'm not constantly going insane nor do I struggle with insanity creatures or anything like that, it's just something I like having especially when I get the enlightened crown. Seeing a lot more people appreciate the circuit now that it can be used with a few others without loosing out on too much is really really nice. 

As far as Circuit Tinkering Perks go, I think they should be condensed from 6 perks to three, one for each circuit type. As it is right now the circuit tinkering perks are vague in that they don't tell you what circuits they modify (Beyond type) and what each one specifically does. They're also set in a required order, which feels unfair given the fact that circuits are just using whatever build you want. What if a circuit you use is only influenced by Alpha Tinkering II, but you have to take Alpha Tinkering I first? That's a wasted insight! "Prerequisite" perks I have never liked. I understand to some extent they want to keep the stronger abilities higher up into specialization of the specific branches, but then you get something like Wortox where a majority of his skill tree perks are very inconsequential in order to get anything that actually does something, it limits the variety you can design into a skill tree, and it limits the variety players have person-to-person in the skill tree they choose. If there's a point where the majority sees a perk as a "must have" and another perk as worthless, something has to be changed, skill tree picks should not be so homogeneous. More effort needs to be put in place to make perks have equal or equivalent value.

Circuits on their own should be enough. People get really caught up in things like "WX can have SIX HUNDRED health and SUPER SPEED and FIVE BILLION SANITY and FOLLOWERS and HUNGER and ELECTRIFICATION and-" the list goes on. It sounds pretty extreme, but it's misleading. You cannot have all of that at once. Something that I really liked with the design so far is that with Tinkering none of the circuits felt pointless, no circuits felt like they were without use on their own anymore, if you had a circuit with that extra ability it felt like you had buffed an aspect of your character and it had influence. People immediately got caught up in the idea of all of these circuits at their extremes- yes, if you use all of your slots to plug Hardy Circuits, you are going to have a lot of hp. At the cost of not running anything else within that circuit type. The initial strength of the damage reduction on Hardy Circuits was too much at first. Prior to the patch implemented yesterday the hardy circuit damage reduction felt perfect. It wasn't as extreme as it was upon implementation, but it still felt worthwhile. As it is now, the damage reduction on hardy circuits is just completely nerfed to ashes. Raptured to the ground. You can get it somewhat higher by stacking hardy circuits, but then that just circles back into the issues I had before where no circuit was ever complete on its own. I will of course test this more throughout the beta, but the response to it felt like overcompensating for the initial damage reduction (which I again agree was way too high, but now it's way too small). Getting to make your own character builds is the appeal of WX, so only getting handed weak pieces to work with is sad. You can stick a bunch of Acceleration Circuits in and be really good at running. Congratulations you're fast now. 

(Ignore the perks I have selected here they are not indicative of what I am actually using or consider useful)

 

Quick graphic so you can see what I mean. Circuit tinkering perks should be condensed.

The circuit swapping perks should all be condensed into one perk (Right To Modify should be basekit). Circuit swapping being "punishing" was only as common of a complaint as it was because Circuits was All WX had prior to their skill tree. I never agreed with the notion that circuit swapping was too much. Full recharge if you removed all of your circuits hardly took over one in game day, and how frequently are you even actually swapping circuits? Even if you were running temperature based ones seasonally that's 1 durability off of 4 per in game year. Circuits are fairly cheap to craft (Beanbooster being the only exclusion here) so I just cannot understand why so much emphasis is put here for such a minor nitpick. At worst you're constantly dying and loosing circuit durability and charges but then that's just a reasonable punishment for dying. Your things break, just be more cautious. 

All of their drone perks I think need to be condensed into one perk each. Roto-Mappers completely loose utility after you have mapped out the world so they have an effective time limit on their functionality before you just wasted 1-2 insight on something that you're inevitably going to swap off of to invest in an actually interesting perk. Zaptrocuters are way too spammy as they are currently, they're silly but by no means do they feel fair. Portable Storage units are by far my favorite (Come on... I'm the person who suggested Woby Here Woby There... of course I'm going to like it) but they run into the issue of storage being so unnecessarily stingy in this game. Three slots is so small. They do have some aspects that I really REALLY like, like being stackable, being able to place objects like the eye bone inside (for extra storage per delivery) etc. But I think they should just have 6 slots by default and that's it. They function perfectly as is but having a tier 2 feels pointless when you can just craft More. May sound a little backwards like "oh but carrying just one with more space would be more convenient!" nono. Just make it one perk with the 6 slots. It's fine. Also maybe please Klei fix Woby Here Woby there to function like the Portable Storage drones where you can just send her wherever is mapped out.

The additional backup perks existing feels sort of weird to me. It's good to have more but they feel more on par with filler perks where you could probably just have a perk that's more interesting instead of a skill that's just "do this perk but More". 

Inhabited Machine III feels pointless, by that point you already have the perk that lets you revive with the chassis (it's literally required to get anything else) so it just turns the chassis into a glorified meat effigy that preserves circuit durability, that an Inhabited Machine II just confuses me. Not having your circuits loose durability on death in favor of just getting a "free" revive with all your items split into three perks and then a fourth one just so you can get full HP is weiirrdddd maybe it's just not for me. But even if I was using it you generally want to avoid dying, having a perk that's just """"removing""" (Heavy quotations there) a consequence of death feels like a pointless contingency, at least in reference to giving you the option to spend an insight to just revive with more hp. Also give WX more backups teehee *runs away giggling*

People overhype Warm Standby. Backups feel infinitely more useful for teleportation / circuit builds than they do as a static object that performs one of like 4 different niches that are already done significantly better by other objects. Sanity, heat, cold, light, storage.. most of those are already fulfilled by just having a star caller. Not that everyone has a pocket star caller to lug around. I do see it being useful or fun to mess with having a random WX disco ball in base, but I don't think many people if any are going to be actually utilizing it to this extent in gameplay. Don't remove it, I don't think it's bad, nor do I think it's overpowered, I just think it's funny. 

Off By One my Goat free slot for Super Illumination Thank you Klei letting me use Gastro + Processing + Beanbooster all at once Mwa Mwa thank you (rename Beanbooster to Dronemaster and my life is yours)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE WX's stats being back at 100/100/100. It's beautiful. 

I'd also like to ask for a button on the sidebar for circuits that allows me to have the circuit display always open (on toggle). I liked looking at them on the side of my screen and having them always visible would be very nice for me both aesthetically and functionally. I also need the ability to actually view my circuits without having the circuit extractor. 

Backup Chassis is honestly fantastic functionally, prior to their skill tree I was a big fan of the "Circuit loadouts" mod that gave WX three different circuit builds that you could swap between every 5 seconds. As far as remote transfer goes I don't know how much of remote transfer is just Klei slapping transportation solutions onto a character to make them appealing. That's a big thing for me when I can't tell if I'm actually having fun or if just an issue I have with DST as a whole is being partially addressed on a specific character basis. I hate with ever fiber of my being that Winona's skill tree got two major transportation options for you and your items that could've been made available for every character lategame. How many people do you think play Winona because they actually like her, and how many people play Winona just so they can get teleports and more Wobots? Want better transportation and storage solutions lategame? Should've played a character that has that QoL smushed into their skill tree. It feels mean. They are commonly requested features and I hate the character restrictions on these things! I want more options globally!

Either way I'm looking forward to Gamma Circuits and their Affinities. Please do not add that waterproofing circuit. 

Edited March 24 by viblym

[LavenderLillie]

I think it would be nice if the Circuit skills were condensed into a starter skill for each of them, then a skill that gave all of them their tier 2 versions, then Off By One (maybe some other perks thrown in to make the gears aesthetic work better)

Other than the general issue of skill bloat that this tree has (27 is a LOT), as an avid WX main, I have loved messing around with this skill tree/refresh. I can't wait to see what the gamma circuits and affinity skills do as well. +1 on the waterproofing circuit hate, characters should have downsides.

[Kacpert25]

16 minutes ago, LavenderLillie said:

+1 on the waterproofing circuit hate, characters should have downsides.

I think this circuit wouldn't be such a bad idea if it didn't provide 100% resistance to getting wet. 
Instead, it worked like the circuit from Island Adventures. That is, it increased the maximum wetness threshold after which Wx began to lose a ton of HP.
Also, this circuit should be an alpha circuit instead of a beta circuit. Since the wetness stat displays in a similar way to the other three stats (instead of being an invisible statistic like speed) it would be fitting for the waterproofing circuit to be an alpha circuit.