How do characters interact with themselves?

[aidancode]

I made a post a bit ago about how I think WX doesn't develop any of their gimmicks, preferring quantity over quality. I thought it might be interesting to go over all of the characters and how well they do at developing a "game plan", so to speak.

Wilson's skill tree really isn't all that bad for what it was trying to do. It's legitimately useful for new players and has minor utility for experienced players. Wilson's goal is to survive a few seasons and he makes it easier to do just that with his perks and skill tree focusing on early game survival. Wilson will get an arbitrary rating score of 3/5 for being pretty well designed but having really boring skill tree progression and very limited, mostly weak perks.

Willow is interesting because she had a major change in design from pre and post skill tree. Nowadays, she's mostly a utility character that needs to collect embers in the early game to access most of that utility. BERNIE! is there too, but I don't really feel like BERNIE! is particularly important. You can invest into the BERNIE! skills, but I don't think they're powerful enough to justify pivoting playstyles. Ultimately, though, Willow does a great job at making sure that everything you're doing can be summarized as "using the lighter, its spells, and BERNIE! to get fire-based utility. Like, think about this. How do I get embers? Use the lighter. How do I ignite BERNIE!? Use the lighter. How do I cast spells? Use embers. It's all connected. Willow's arbitrary score is a 4/5 since she feels pretty good and is mostly just lacking some little balancing stuff. I would also like if the ability to collect embers was made base kit so new players could get started on that right away.

Wolfgang is notorious for having an absolutely awful skill tree, but in terms of his vision as a character he's really not that poorly made. I like how many interactions relate to mightiness, but I do wish being wimpy was more impactful or interesting. My one problem is that the whole weight training thing doesn't really mesh with the character well. The idea of using boss statues on the gym is GENIUS but I don't think it's capitalized on. I think overmighty should be way more impactful of a mechanic. Wolfgang gets a 2/5, since he's really got some really good ideas but just feels poorly implemented. With some love and care, I could see Wolfgang being great.

Wendy is pretty neat. Aside from the revive crafting, Wendy's kit is pretty reasonable. Her potions exist because Abigail exists. The wraith wreath exists because the potions exist. Everything makes sense, to be honest. Wendy is one of the most complete feeling characters. I haven't played much with Wendy, and I've heard she has balancing issues that make some of her kit not useful, but that still lands her in the 4/5 space with Willow on account of having just generally good ideas and design.

WX-78 is incredibly messy, as I've said. None of the ideas connect to each other much at all. WX-78 was clearly made to be the convenience character and their lack of a game plan beyond "get overpowered, stay dry" makes them incredibly dull. Now, with their skill tree, they've got more going on, but none of it has anything to do with anything else. The only real connection is the bio-data cost of a lot of things in their kit. Other than that, they've got equipable upgrades, plus they have a charge meter that barely does anything, plus they can build map explorers, plus they can build moving chests, plus they can electrocute things from a distance, plus they can make shelves from hit game Minecraft, plus they can apply a status that makes enemies take more damage, plus when they collect resources it doubles, plus they can make hoppers from hit game Minecraft, plus they can make clones. I'll give the tree some credit, though: the connection between circuits and chassis, and especially with the possessed chassis, is very cool, and is a really great nugget that I wish could have been expanded upon. If you could socket various circuits into the drones, that would be awesome. WX unfortunately gets a 1/5 from me since I think they are the worst designed character (though certainly not the lamest or weakest, but that's not what I'm grading right now.)

Wickerbottom's skill tree isn't out yet, but even as-is Wickerbottom feels great. I especially like how there's so many things that interact with science. Wickerbottom is a little bit of a "Wilson + thing" character which I think works fine because it means Wickerbottom is a fairly normal, down to earth character. She doesn't have best-in-slot tools that invalidate the rest of the game. She's kinda the truest character in that way. An easy 5/5 for me.

Woodie is really cleanly designed too. He has some big problems with how easy it is for him to reach full power, but after the skill tree, Woodie is finally good! All three transformations are useful and the rest of his kit fits pretty well. He has unique strategies with werepigs and treeguards and charms pigs for longer, which, I guess if a character has 3 minion perks it's kinda a central thing? I don't know. Woodie's got the variety, he's got the challenge, he's the whole package. His skill tree doesn't have very much customization, though. Easy 5/5.

Maxwell by the definitions I've laid out is pretty obviously a 5/5 character. His entire kit fits his role as spellcaster and resource gatherer. I don't think a single perk is out of place. Probably the only case of a perfectly designed character in DST by my definition. Well, if we ignore the shadow prison, which kinda breaks the game, especially in team play. I'm very scared about Maxwell's skill tree, since I feel like he's in a great state already.

Wigfrid is pretty well designed, I'd say. She focuses on everything except resource gathering, which is kinda interesting. She's got good team support, her need to eat meat fits perfectly with her combat role, her skill tree is boring but has the fun elding spear and doesn't do anything to hurt the character. I like the use for azure feathers, it's a neat way to encourage resources I wouldn't always get. Another easy 5/5.

Webber is really funny in the sense that while technically his skills all fit my definition of being well-designed, his power level is so low and his perks are so limited that his identity suffers a lot. Webber can dominate sometimes, but oftentimes he's basically just Wilson. I'll give him a 3/5, but I have high hopes in his skill tree!

Winona is not a character I have used much. I appreciate that she has perks at every stage of the game but I think that she's kinda held back by having both her industrial perks AND shadow perks. It feels messy. I know a lot of people wanted her skill tree to add more structures, and I have to agree. If she got, for instance, Wagstaff's thumpers to serve as an early game alternative to enlightened strikes, that could go a long way. 3/5.

Warly is an incredibly flawed character in the context of other characters, due to his extreme weakness and relatively minimal buffs. That being said, Warly actually does manage to encourage a character fantasy pretty well, I'm just not sure if it's the right one. What you don't have to do is cook a variety of meals depending on the situation. What you actually have to do is pay close attention to what you have eaten and will eat and really strategize about that. For that reason, I respect Warly, even though I do not want to play him again lol. 3/5.

Wortox is such a weird case of a character who I feel has gotten worse design-wise after the skill tree, marginally. I really like the knabsack perks; I think it fits the character really well. Wortox, at the end of the day, is all about using souls, particularly as sustenance and healing. His skill tree expands on his teleporting, which is also great. It's quite useful now, compared to before where it was good, but not amazing. His shadow affinity is also an attempt at giving Wortox some much-needed offensive power, since he did really feel like old WX before in the whole "unkillable but can't do anything cool in combat" way. It sucks that it's 100% limited to post-rift, but the effect is really fun. The main drawback, though, is with the soul jars, which I think really hurt Wortox's relationship with killing. Oversouling is much less of a thing now, and that's a little sad, since I feel like that was a big part of the character. While I will admit that the strict 20 soul cap was very punishing, it also felt interesting as a restriction. Nowadays, Wortox feels unshackled in a horrifying way. He's so incredibly powerful that his souls have gone from "the center of his character" to "the win button", which is a subtle distinction, but very real. So it's really a mixed bag overall. I think for me, personally, Wortox's character fantasy is hurt from the skill tree, dropping an otherwise 5/5 character to a 4/5. I think the next time I play Wortox, I'll avoid the soul jar skills. At the same time, the rest of his kit is kinda designed around it at this point, so I don't even know.

Wormwood is the weirdest character in the game to me. They're good at farming, but they don't benefit from the healing that farm crops are generally really good at providing. Weird. That being said, Wormwood definitely makes you feel like a farmer. All of his perks relate to plants in some way, so even if you're just rushing bosses down, any time you take advantage of Wormwood's kit, you end up interacting with the plants. It works better than it should, good job Wormwood. I really like Wormwood's downside more broadly speaking, though. It might be a balancing decision, now that I think about it, since Wormwood's easy crop access could be a monster. Wormwood is a really good support character generally, though. They make farming easy, which I think is okay. Farming feels like second nature as Wormwood, rather than with Warly where it's very involved. I'll give Wormwood an optimistic 5/5, but I haven't used him enough to say for sure.

Wurt has one of the coolest character fantasies in the game, but that can be a little dull at times. Wurt is another character that just makes the game so incredibly easy that I don't really have fun playing with her anymore. I know it's invalidating a bit of what makes Webber unique, but I would really appreciate if Wurt got more control over the merms in combat. That, or the merms should be nerfed. Wurt being insane at combat and survival and resource gathering is wild. The overpowered-ness of Wurt does hurt the character a lot for me, so I'll give Wurt a (very very high) 4/5. I'm sorry!

Walter's combat is boring, sure. Raid bosses suck to fight solo with him. But I can't lie, playing as Walter is just really satisfying. The way you can choose to use a beefalo or Woby, and both have advantages and disadvantages, or how Walter's role fits perfectly into team dynamics, or just how fun the slingshot is in everyday survival. I love how Walter gets an entirely separate progression chain from the rest of the characters with his slingshot mods and various round types, most notably the moon glass rounds which encourage Walter on a route totally different from what other characters want at that stage of the game. Walter has his problems, believe me, but I can't not give him a 5/5.

Wanda is another really weird character. She's really just... incredibly flawed. My main problem with her is how survival becomes a complete joke. She doesn't need sanity or health, just food. As such, there's really no reason to do anything with Wanda except beat bosses. I guess it fits the vibe of her caring about being on pace -- she really is just a speedrunner character. Wanda just needs some reason to care about the 50% of the game she invalidates, since her kit is actually pretty cool when you just look at the stuff she can do. Rift watches are amazing and the alarming clock is pretty fun to use. The second chance watch as well is a really cool utility item in my opinion. Wanda works well when playing with new players, since she can mostly just give a lot of items to the others in the group. It's also cool how much Wanda encourages getting a shadow manipulator and going to the ruins or archives early. I'm a big fan of alternate progression paths. All this being said, Wanda has good ideas, but is mostly really flawed, so I unfortunately have to give her the arbitrary ranking score of 2/5.

 

So uh thanks for reading my text wall, or skipping to your favorite character to see why I gave them a 3/5 and then complaining in the comments. I hope that I don't come off as too condescending here, since I really do like a lot of characters! I just also think that every character in the game has at least one major issue with them that I struggle to get past. With a Don't Starve Together sequel potentially on the way, maybe that's the chance to really develop the design of these characters and making sure their character fantasy is a top priority. And please Klei, fix Wolfgang.

 

Is it weird that I have WX-78 as the worst rated character? At first I thought it was recency bias but honestly WX was always the worst character, and the skill tree didn't so much make them worse as much as it failed to make them better. At least in this regard. WX is definitely way stronger lol

[Mysterious box]

14 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Woodie is really cleanly designed too. He has some big problems with how easy it is for him to reach full power, but after the skill tree, Woodie is finally good! All three transformations are useful and the rest of his kit fits pretty well. He has unique strategies with werepigs and treeguards and charms pigs for longer, which, I guess if a character has 3 minion perks it's kinda a central thing? I don't know. Woodie's got the variety, he's got the challenge, he's the whole package. His skill tree doesn't have very much customization, though. Easy 5/5.

I'd say Woodie's got quite a few issues in terms of design the were locks just don't make sense existing because what the lock skills do just don't justify locking you out of them. That aside being able to be hit mid transformation is always going to be a weird design choice in my eyes.

 

18 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Warly is an incredibly flawed character in the context of other characters, due to his extreme weakness and relatively minimal buffs. That being said, Warly actually does manage to encourage a character fantasy pretty well, I'm just not sure if it's the right one. What you don't have to do is cook a variety of meals depending on the situation. What you actually have to do is pay close attention to what you have eaten and will eat and really strategize about that. For that reason, I respect Warly, even though I do not want to play him again lol. 3/5.

The issue here is he is well designed it's just everyone else got so much stronger via skill trees that what he offers feels bad by comparison. Damage wise he's on par with Wolfgang, Defense wise on par with Wigfrid, Work speed wise on par with Woodie and he can apply the work speed buff to followers as well. His temperature and wetness dishes means he doesn't need to rely on gear or he can use limited gear to lower how often he uses those dishes, his light dish means he doesn't need to carry a light source. The issue skill trees brought is that now characters can do these kinds of things for free without putting in the work of farming or gathering unique food items.

 

25 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Wormwood is the weirdest character in the game to me. They're good at farming, but they don't benefit from the healing that farm crops are generally really good at providing. Weird. That being said, Wormwood definitely makes you feel like a farmer. All of his perks relate to plants in some way, so even if you're just rushing bosses down, any time you take advantage of Wormwood's kit, you end up interacting with the plants. It works better than it should, good job Wormwood. I really like Wormwood's downside more broadly speaking, though. It might be a balancing decision, now that I think about it, since Wormwood's easy crop access could be a monster. Wormwood is a really good support character generally, though. They make farming easy, which I think is okay. Farming feels like second nature as Wormwood, rather than with Warly where it's very involved. I'll give Wormwood an optimistic 5/5, but I haven't used him enough to say for sure.

While Wormwood does have farming advantages the thing people often overlook is that he leans far more into being a combat character as he has many advantages that help him excel in combat over just being a resource farmer.

 

27 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Wurt has one of the coolest character fantasies in the game, but that can be a little dull at times. Wurt is another character that just makes the game so incredibly easy that I don't really have fun playing with her anymore. I know it's invalidating a bit of what makes Webber unique, but I would really appreciate if Wurt got more control over the merms in combat. That, or the merms should be nerfed. Wurt being insane at combat and survival and resource gathering is wild. The overpowered-ness of Wurt does hurt the character a lot for me, so I'll give Wurt a (very very high) 4/5. I'm sorry!

Wurt is in a weird spot where nerfing her combat ability would just break the character without giving her something else to excel at. Her resource gathering is good but she exists in a game where more and more characters are exceling at resource gathering now that skill trees are blending character specialties more and more. This is especially problematic when you consider how expensive her playstyle is between setting up merms, merm guards, merm king, and other merm structures while more recent skill trees show she could have gone a different direction design wise for her skill tree just nerfing her merms would lead to her becoming a bad character unless the nerfs were limited to her affinity skills.

 

37 minutes ago, aidancode said:

Wanda is another really weird character. She's really just... incredibly flawed. My main problem with her is how survival becomes a complete joke. She doesn't need sanity or health, just food. As such, there's really no reason to do anything with Wanda except beat bosses. I guess it fits the vibe of her caring about being on pace -- she really is just a speedrunner character. Wanda just needs some reason to care about the 50% of the game she invalidates, since her kit is actually pretty cool when you just look at the stuff she can do. Rift watches are amazing and the alarming clock is pretty fun to use. The second chance watch as well is a really cool utility item in my opinion. Wanda works well when playing with new players, since she can mostly just give a lot of items to the others in the group. It's also cool how much Wanda encourages getting a shadow manipulator and going to the ruins or archives early. I'm a big fan of alternate progression paths. All this being said, Wanda has good ideas, but is mostly really flawed, so I unfortunately have to give her the arbitrary ranking score of 2/5.

Honestly I feel like Wanda's just been power crept and by a lot she doesn't need health food but that's because she's limited to watches on a cooldown for healing which while not requiring refueling is still a lesser healing item compared to food or other unique character healing methods like souls and this can be worse due to it being cancelable by damage and needing to stay at low hp for max damage potential. Also while nice her rift watches kinda come up short compared to the easier mobility options that have been poping up left and right lately. This will likely be fixed in her skill tree however.

[Jussatoon]

I personally wouldn't mind Wurt's combat prowess via merms being nerfed a good amount, in exchange of giving her much more utility in the form of creating a high-functioning civilization like what I'm sure many would rather prefer, as that still aligns with her character, I feel. 

Unfortunately, that's either something we can only expect from a very distant follower overhaul update, or something that we can only expect from Don't Starve Elsewhere, but not this game. 

[aidancode]

55 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Honestly I feel like Wanda's just been power crept and by a lot she doesn't need health food but that's because she's limited to watches on a cooldown for healing which while not requiring refueling is still a lesser healing item compared to food or other unique character healing methods like souls and this can be worse due to it being cancelable by damage and needing to stay at low hp for max damage potential. Also while nice her rift watches kinda come up short compared to the easier mobility options that have been poping up left and right lately. This will likely be fixed in her skill tree however.

You bring up some good points but I want to push back against this. I think no matter how good other survivors are, Wanda would be poorly designed in this way because of how few items she interacts with. She focuses on herself too much with her perks. I generally don't want to focus too much on character strength with this overview; with the exception of Warly I wouldn't deduct more than 1 point for bad balancing. Wanda's problem imo is completely different to a strength problem.

[Evelo]

3 hours ago, aidancode said:

Wormwood is the weirdest character in the game to me. They're good at farming

Sanity manipulation is a HUGE factor for Wormwood. Aside from Maxwell, no one compares. His ability to create darkswords as needed is also a major part of his playstyle. Additionally, the Batbat is one of the most useful weapons for Wormwood because unlike everyone else, he does not heal from food. The skill tree doesn't lean into Wormwood's identity at all aside from the plant crafts and the affinity skills. Photosynthesis can be argued, but it partially negates his major downside. The rest of the tree is just combat stuff which Wormwood was never considered a combat character before the skilltree. Wormwood's identity lies mostly in being a plant and interacting with plants. So while DST has farming, it was a missed opportunity for utilizing Treeguards, Lureplants, and Brightshades as allies. (Woodie got Treeguard friends but Wormwood didnt?). I absolutely adore the lunar affinities though and am glad Wormwood doesn't have access to a shadow affinity. While he is excellent at sanity manipulation, and creating darkswords en masse, that could easily be translated to a lunar quirk if there was a Lunar weapon/tool that required living logs.

There wasn't a skill tree perk or to make bees not flock around Wormwood while bloomed which has been a huge hinderance in the utility of bees forever. Which is fine but given the perk "bee kind" makes it so he can harvest honey from bee boxes without angering them, it's hard to utilize if they don't make the honey because they are too busy stuffing their faces in your face, yknow? Biggest change I am most happy about with Wormwood's skill tree update, was Klei making Bramble Traps not damage fences or walls. (Even though I did really lay it on thick that it was a problem, I am still very appreciative Klei devs! )

While I would like changes (namely nerfs and shifts away from combat in favor of something else), I doubt it will happen and that's fine. It's satisfactory. Hopefully Elsewhere Wormwood (please add him I'll sell a kidney if I have to) can have some more focus on plant friends and being extra flammable.

[GamePlayer42]

i disagree with like a good majority of what youve said. since this is beta branch and were mainly talking about WX as of now ill primarily comment on what youve said about them

8 hours ago, aidancode said:

 

WX-78 is incredibly messy, as I've said. None of the ideas connect to each other much at all. WX-78 was clearly made to be the convenience character and their lack of a game plan beyond "get overpowered, stay dry" makes them incredibly dull. Now, with their skill tree, they've got more going on, but none of it has anything to do with anything else. The only real connection is the bio-data cost of a lot of things in their kit. Other than that, they've got equipable upgrades, plus they have a charge meter that barely does anything, plus they can build map explorers, plus they can build moving chests, plus they can electrocute things from a distance, plus they can make shelves from hit game Minecraft, plus they can apply a status that makes enemies take more damage, plus when they collect resources it doubles, plus they can make hoppers from hit game Minecraft, plus they can make clones. I'll give the tree some credit, though: the connection between circuits and chassis, and especially with the possessed chassis, is very cool, and is a really great nugget that I wish could have been expanded upon. If you could socket various circuits into the drones, that would be awesome. WX unfortunately gets a 1/5 from me since I think they are the worst designed character (though certainly not the lamest or weakest, but that's not what I'm grading right now.)

 

Is it weird that I have WX-78 as the worst rated character? At first I thought it was recency bias but honestly WX was always the worst character, and the skill tree didn't so much make them worse as much as it failed to make them better. At least in this regard. WX is definitely way stronger lol

affinities directly introduce a gameplan, shadow incentivises getting rifts down asap, and also feeds into wx's power potential. by activating rifts, youll gain the posessed shadow atrium as well as the shadow maul which gives wx players an incentive and an idea of what they want to achieve for their lategame whilst also having interplay with perks such as being able to get the shadow maul in the process aswell, although i do think that this point can definitely be driven further.

likewise with their lunar affinity. it gives them incentive to have and upkeep a mini army of wx's and has the uniqueness of being able to customise how you want them to behave and perform with the addition of circuits. Maybe there is a boss with an insanity aura? use the chorusbox circuit and a beanbooster. need them around for typical day to day encounters, probably just need a hunger circuit, some hp, beanbooster and maybe some electrocution circuits, maybe a spin cycle if youre going for swarm type enemies. you can even forgo the requirement for armor with that kind of build. an interesting thing about the lunar affinity is that you want to build around it, especially for chassis related perks as you really only need the perks that increase the ammount of backup chassis you can make, assuming you primarily want to upkeep your clones. this frees up some points and allows you to build your skill tree differently. personally i dig things that alter how you use mechanics and im a big fan of that specifically.

i do think that affinities need further tweaking, but i think from a design perspective they are pretty good and wouldnt need anything like a full rework of mechanics.

other perks are great in design, chassis line in general alter the way you typically played wx and allows for more flexibility and customization at the cost of resources. drones offer a unique array of helpful perks and utility that can help you alot in different scenarios, from early-midgame game mapping to item transport throughout the game. the only one i dislike is the zaptrocuter as its purpose is really strange to me. the circuit line buffs individual circuits in neat ways(although, still feel odd about the nerfs)

one of wx's biggest problem prior to his skill tree was the lack of flexibility given by the small circuit board size, and the fact that certain circuitboards like 1 speed + 1 moggle circuit tend to dominate the meta at the time. it has been resolved by this skill tree in more ways than one, and i think the changes made to flexibility are fantastic and fix the core issue that centred the character aswell as giving them new toys to play with. it is bizzare to me that anyone would consider theirs the worst tree in any faucet. it was clearly designed with intent, fixed the issues that it sought out to fix and i think it is one of the better designed skill trees.

just because it isnt what you envisioned for wx, it doesnt mean its a wholly bad skill tree. the point regarding how ideas dont connect to eachother is really bullcrap because a majority of the skills in this tree have interplay and work to give wx a very clear identity of being a character based around customisability, convenience and flexibility.

Edited April 14 by GamePlayer42

[Jussatoon]

3 hours ago, GamePlayer42 said:

i disagree with like a good majority of what youve said. since this is beta branch and were mainly talking about WX as of now ill primarily comment on what youve said about them

affinities directly introduce a gameplan, shadow incentivises getting rifts down asap, and also feeds into wx's power potential. by activating rifts, youll gain the posessed shadow atrium as well as the shadow maul which gives wx players an incentive and an idea of what they want to achieve for their lategame whilst also having interplay with perks such as being able to get the shadow maul in the process aswell, although i do think that this point can definitely be driven further.

likewise with their lunar affinity. it gives them incentive to have and upkeep a mini army of wx's and has the uniqueness of being able to customise how you want them to behave and perform with the addition of circuits. Maybe there is a boss with an insanity aura? use the chorusbox circuit and a beanbooster. need them around for typical day to day encounters, probably just need a hunger circuit, some hp, beanbooster and maybe some electrocution circuits, maybe a spin cycle if youre going for swarm type enemies. you can even forgo the requirement for armor with that kind of build. an interesting thing about the lunar affinity is that you want to build around it, especially for chassis related perks as you really only need the perks that increase the ammount of backup chassis you can make, assuming you primarily want to upkeep your clones. this frees up some points and allows you to build your skill tree differently. personally i dig things that alter how you use mechanics and im a big fan of that specifically.

i do think that affinities need further tweaking, but i think from a design perspective they are pretty good and wouldnt need anything like a full rework of mechanics.

other perks are great in design, chassis line in general alter the way you typically played wx and allows for more flexibility and customization at the cost of resources. drones offer a unique array of helpful perks and utility that can help you alot in different scenarios, from early-midgame game mapping to item transport throughout the game. the only one i dislike is the zaptrocuter as its purpose is really strange to me. the circuit line buffs individual circuits in neat ways(although, still feel odd about the nerfs)

one of wx's biggest problem prior to his skill tree was the lack of flexibility given by the small circuit board size, and the fact that certain circuitboards like 1 speed + 1 moggle circuit tend to dominate the meta at the time. it has been resolved by this skill tree in more ways than one, and i think the changes made to flexibility are fantastic and fix the core issue that centred the character aswell as giving them new toys to play with. it is bizzare to me that anyone would consider theirs the worst tree in any faucet. it was clearly designed with intent, fixed the issues that it sought out to fix and i think it is one of the better designed skill trees.

just because it isnt what you envisioned for wx, it doesnt mean its a wholly bad skill tree. the point regarding how ideas dont connect to eachother is really bullcrap because a majority of the skills in this tree have interplay and work to give wx a very clear identity of being a character based around customisability, convenience and flexibility.

Could just be bias, honestly. 

[aidancode]

5 hours ago, GamePlayer42 said:

just because it isnt what you envisioned for wx, it doesnt mean its a wholly bad skill tree. the point regarding how ideas dont connect to eachother is really bullcrap because a majority of the skills in this tree have interplay and work to give wx a very clear identity of being a character based around customisability, convenience and flexibility.

I think you've completely misunderstood, sorry. I never called the tree bad for the character. I just said it's not well designed because the ideas don't connect to each other. You have provided zero reason to why you think the skills actually do somehow work together, accept for...

You've hit the nail on the head with one thing. Convenience. That's the running theme.

WX's identity, if you can even call it that, is circumventing parts of the game.

Which is exactly what I don't like about Wanda.

Which is literally one of the primary ways I define bad design.

So the point still stands.

Is WX's tree worthless? Absolutely not. The character now does... like... anything, and has a decent power level. But that was never what I was talking about, seriously.

I want to also point out that I'm not trying to brush off WX having the lowest score as some weird coincidence. WX having the lowest score is the reason I wrote this whole thing. I wanted to talk about what other characters do well.

[gaymime]

On 4/14/2026 at 5:01 PM, aidancode said:

WX's identity, if you can even call it that, is circumventing parts of the game.

sorry to step in but isn't circumvention of parts of a game the whole complete and entire point of gathering armour, weapons, skills and attributes in games? you get x so you dont have to deal with y. having that be a character's whole deal is maybe a bit dull for some people but it is a core aspect of gaming that most players take as a necessary part of persisting in non-linear games