How SHOULD perk customization be implemented in DSE?

[aidancode]

DST of course has skill trees which are fairly controversial, but definitely not universally hated. A lot of people like what it brings to the game, but I think you would struggle to find somebody who likes all of the filler perks. I want to propose a few simple solutions for DSE.

The first solution is pretty obvious, just don't have skill trees and add a bunch of new characters to fill that diversity void instead. This is the hardest approach for sure, but would probably satisfy most people. The main downsides are of course the high effort that would need to go into it, and also you run the risk of making each individual character feel pretty bland on their own, similar to how the characters in base DS feel mostly bland.

The second solution is to have 2 or 3 variants of each character with slightly different stats. By reducing the number of options from like 25 to 3, each possible variant could be very interesting in their own way. Some games will do something like this and tie it to skins, a kind of "character alt" thing. Each variant would be pretty similar, but have maybe 5 or so different balance changes or slightly different abilities to make each fresh. This also lets Klei design exactly how powerful each variant should be at each task. I think this solution is my favorite, and don't think it has many issues. You do lose some customization, but I'm generally okay with that.

The third solution is to keep skill trees, but make the skills way more diverse. Add in incompatibilities, add in features that just wouldn't make sense to merge, really send characters on different paths. The advantage to this approach is it means skill trees no longer have to justify "why can't we just unlock everything?" which is a problem many trees in DST, such as Wilson's, Woodie's, Winona's, or Wendy's, for instance, all suffer from in my opinion. An example of this in DST is the alignment skills, which more often than not overlap each others niches and wouldn't make sense to have both. This kind of system being expanded could do the skill trees a lot of good.

Finally, the fourth solution, which is to make it so you have to re-unlock every skill in each playthrough. This wouldn't have worked with DST, since some characters have explicitly early game skills that you're meant to have by default, but with DSE, the game can be designed around skill trees being a more late game thing. By having skills unlock over time, every question about compatibility and needing to choose makes sense -- it's a type of routing! This would also potentially shake up the meta a bit; by choosing skills mid gameplay, you can be creative about which skills you want to take when while you're on your adventure, rather than just finding your favorite tree and never deviating much. This would make the skill tree itself an important part of gameplay, rather than just set dressing.

I think all four of these solutions would have massive positive effects on the game. I do feel a bit like Klei has been making a lot of odd decisions lately with the game design of DST, so I'm skeptical with skill trees, but I wholeheartedly believe that there's a way to make something work here.

[Draggofroot]

i think the problem with current skill trees is that they dont want to tread on other character's feet so much so they make osmething either too strong/unbalanced or just add filler

I feel like some things from one characters' skilltrees could be put into another's

Like wurt's amphibious tree could be put into wormwood's

wolfgang's planar damage boost can be put into wigfrid

idk if what i said makes sense tho

[aidancode]

Just now, Draggofroot said:

i think the problem with current skill trees is that they dont want to tread on other character's feet so much so they make osmething either too strong/unbalanced or just add filler

I feel like some things from one characters' skilltrees could be put into another's

Like wurt's amphibious tree could be put into wormwood's

wolfgang's planar damage boost can be put into wigfrid

idk if what i said makes sense tho

Yeah. Also some things in the skill trees could just be base kit. I would assume the reason that, say, Willow can't naturally pick up embers, or Winona can't naturally pick up her structures, is just because Klei didn't want to make too many base kit changes while making the skill trees (ignore the giant WX-shaped elephant in the room)

Just generally cleaning stuff up would be nice. Might be easier to only have like 10 skill points so those 10 can be better designed.