I am not making a tldr or resume. All information here is necessary for context.
The lunar rifts were added and I thought we were getting like new seasons, new food resources, like new mutations and LUNAR STUFF instead of just scrap scrap scrap all over the place (not that I'm not a fan of that, just that I wasn't expecting it). I was hoping for deadly winters with mutated pengull raids, lunar hail being longer and have more interesting effects in the world and be in spring only.
Like sure we got the new frog and the mutated bosses, but it really doesn't feel like the world changed forever. It just feels like there's 2 or 3 different things added that can just be ignored anyways. I can burn the bosses corpses, bananas and stone fruits don't get brightshades, and lunar hail is literally countered by standing next to a tree for 1 and a half minutes..
I just wish the developers can think about altering survival mechanics, and you know, actually implementing planar stuff the right way. Currently no one is ever fighting rift bosses without planar damage, and you just gotta kill a brightshade horde once to get fully repairable planar damage forever, where's the hardmode?
Is the community not prepared for hard mode or is the game lacking shadow and lunar alligned enemies?
What's gonna happen if you put a regular player with a hambat/dark sword against armored bearger? Are they gonna explode with anger because they can't stun the boss? or are they going to ACTUALLY feel rewarded and satisfied with planar stuff?
Klei should fix this issue imo, and force people to fight these bosses without planar. Why is it called the hardmore if you can avoid 99% of it's problem by simply ignoring it until you got planar stuff?!? That's ridiculous imo.
Isn't the planar mechanic in the game to not make regular enemies get oneshotted? Then why the hell are skill trees even a thing?!? Why are you guys saying you're "concerned with the balance of the game", but then you're giving Willow a spell blast on day 1 as a skill. You should be making it base kit and nerfing it (nerfing it early game and buffing it mid to late game with in-game *per world interactions) and then ACTUALLY make an interesting skill tree that doesn't consist of a bunch of filler skills and "meta" versions of it that everyone uses. If there's an objectively better skill tree setup of skills, then it's not situational neither balanced nor optional, It's just another set of uninspired character updates masked as skill trees.
Listen here Klei, "meta" skill trees existing is already a problem. The player should not be thinking about getting lunar or shadow aligned "skills", they should be able to choose their alignment and that's it. Lunar "skills" like Woodie not transforming in the moonlight should be separate skills from the alignment, because some characters just got bonus alignment damage while others got super cool unbalanced day 1 game breaking ones. The player should NOT be forced to choose a skill that will aligned them forever in that side just because that one is objectively better than the other one. And there's 2 reasons for this: lack of lunar and shadow aligned enemies early game and the bad placement for that skill as an alignment and not a secondary skill. Also, the reason why some skills should slowly ramp up as we play the game is not only to prevent the lvl 1 veteran player being ABSURDLY OVERPOWERED because he played the game once, but also to prevent character swapping in the portal to unlock the full potential of skill trees right there, without even experiencing anything (like what stupidity is to force the player to choose a side, but then allow them to overcome this issue the second they upgrade the portal???).
I have to reiterate this here just in case you haven't understand it yet. Willow can one shot all spider and the nest in a level 3 nest with 5 embers and still get a 2 to 3 surplus ember amount (starting with 5, ending with 7 or 8) which is stupid. Without the skill tree she would have to drag spiders one by one or let bernie tank them while she herself take 30 more seconds hitting all spiders 1 by 1 and then destroying the nest herself. Do you see the imbalance here?
Now let me question you about Wendy, why is wendy able to kill a level 3 spider while Abigail tanks everything? BECAUSE THAT'S HER BASE KIT. Now we have her lunar alignment BLOCKING her from doing this, basically nerfing the character. This is not "balancing the game", this is not a well thought out developing design, this is putting a band-aid fix to your already existing unbalanced characters and forgetting that they should also have downsides because you couldn't fix it with regular character updates. This is beyond bad. And it's making Willow players happy with a completely unbalanced character while making Wendy players unhappy with a lackluster alignment skill tree.
You guys need to be more consistent with your game, you say you don't wanna disrupt early game balanced with a 150 damage weapon, so you then add planar damage to make the weapon deal dark sword damage but still be effective against future bosses and make old weapons ineffective against them. But then you ruin everything by giving Willow early game unbalance? You guys also apparently don't care about Wendy's early game unbalance? And you guys also don't care about this hardmore since you can instantly bypass the planar with 1 brightshade horde. You can literally kill the brightshade trio in 20 seconds with less than 70% use of a Brightshade staff. Is it because you're concerned that console players won't be able to kill them without planar? THEN YOU SHOULD ADD AN EARLY HARDMODE PLANAR WEAPON WITH LESS DAMAGE. Just like you did by adding Warbis for the console. But easily bypassing them like this is nuts. Easily ignoring hail standing next to an evergreen is nuts. Hail not damaging literally anything in the game but you is nuts. Brightshades are one of the only great challenges we have, and the solution to them (forever frozen in ice crystaleyezers) is a very well thought out use of game design laws.
Willow was a character not supposed to have those magic weirdness By Design, then why are skill trees changing the whole character design instead of implementing incremental achievements to her already existing design? Isn't that the whole idea of skill trees in the first place? Why isn't the character redesigned first and THEN you can make an actual skill tree? If you wanna change her, don't mask her whole kit behind a skill tree. Also, controlled burning is completely out of character, would've been way better to add lunar flames or shadows flames, and make so THESE don't spread. THAT'S a good design. Also, flame cast is a great skill, but spontaneous combustion could've been replaced by making flame cast bigger, and fireball shouldn't be a copy to the existing star caller because you couldn't think of anything more creative than that. Like literally almost all Willow players were asking to be able to set HER on fire, and burning frenzy indicator is hardly visible in most scenarios. Also her whole bernie side is ridiculous, just a bunch of filler besides burning bernie but you gotta sacrifice the fire raisers spells to get that and it's not equally as balanced do it makes 0 sense. Again, this meta in skill trees really hurts thr balance of the game that you just so talk about all the time.
Why can't we choose between actual skill sides and have both parties be equally efficient at their own thing separate from each other? Why don't we have in-game quest-like interaction locks on skills instead of using points to unlock them?!?? You're just ruining the old Don't Starve balance. If you say so much that you hate ruining the old game so that's why you don't wanna add more biomes, then why are you hurting the balance of combat in the old game by adding ridiculous skill trees? For fun? Don't be partial, be just.
Wendy should have a lock in her lunar affinity to let her mutate Abigail at any time with Lunar Moths, making it last way way more than just some seconds, it should be like 3 minutes per moth minimum, and we should have a way to unmutate her at any time. Then they should buff the Shadow Affinity to make it also last 3 minutes and change shadow to be a mutation as well. We should be able to store both butterfly and moth wings in the casket for 6 times spoilage, and then increase the amount of *@***@*@* mourning glory require to use them. The wreath should have more locks to get to it and it should have a late game fusion with the crown that lasts longer and it's stronger. They should've at the very least added 2 more mini games to pispook quests and reduced the filler mourning glory skills, both ressurection skills should be one, and we should be able to mutate regular ghost as well, same as we can do with abigail, as we are already spending a ton of stuff relocating those graves, so why not add some pure horror and pure brilliance consumption as well?. Dark petals in the sisturn should only be placeable with a shadow affinity and it should just do the same as current lunar blossom does, and lunar blossom should be tied to lunar affinity and only affect lunar aligned abigails in the map. It's common sense.
Why are you punishing the player that chooses lunar abigail? They're losing Area of Effect damage and we can only mutate and unmutate on specific situations, when in practice we're only using those for bosses, and those are sometimes NOT SITUATIONAL, they get you by surprise!!!! Oh deerclops is coming, let me wait 3 days or the right moon cycle and then build a lunar water altar and then mutate Abigail so we can fight, It does not make any sense. It doesn't work in practice nor in theory, the skill tree feels like a failed design in my opinion. Why don't we decide to NERF ABIGAIL EARLY GAME BY DESIGN?!??? Why can't we make abigail levels be slowly unlocking her damage, light aura and health by levels and not by daytime? We had to make a potion to unlock her full potential damage and we can only use 1 potion at a time, are you kidding me? Why can't we have a progression that makes sense? Why can't abigail be weak the first few days, but be able to get stronger later? Isn't that the whole idea of "levels"???
Not to mention, but Wilson got overpowered transmutation skills, and underpowered combat skills... why?
That to me just shows how skill trees are not being implemented well, and that the outrage from a certain community a while back may actually make sense.
Wilson is unlocking transmutation with his affinity, then what? Willow can blast a whole legion of frogs in one tap and instakill a whole raid of hounds with 5 embers which she can get from her skill tree (not her plain character) and she even got bernie to help tank while wilson is just being forced to f******@ run to the closest moose/goose or beefalo herd to help him because he's apparently a joke character. His tragedy is worse than Wes. His quotes are jokes because he's basically a big joke now. If you wanna play a neutral character my beautiful friend, then you shouldn't be using skill trees, then Klei should NOT worry about noobs one shotting spiders dens because they didn't even unlock the f***@@** skill tree yet. Make it make sense.
That's also another thing I wanna discuss about, an enormous, gigantic, massive amount of players on steam reviews and youtube reviews have been saying for 10 years that the game doesn't tell them what to do, and that they feel lost while playing. You created Character quotes and the scrapbook to help the player, but quotes are in reality just in-game lore bits since they don't actually help much and the scrapbook is just a bestiary. It's about time that we actually direct and help the new players out there by doing an actual great completion system that is not just an USER INTERFACE that you can open by pressing I.
My suggestion is to literally add "notes left by someone" item that everyone spawn in with and that sticks to your inventory forever in a little slot forever and in-between worlds information but per-world analysis's, and there should be one note per world that later transforms into a book, the more you unlock the notes, the more it starts to look like the current scrapbook. These notes would then explain in in-game terms and puzzles how you can actually acquire insight points by not only surviving a x amount of days, but also interacting with the f**@*@*@ world Klei. Insight points should be gained when exploring a new area, when fighting certain bosses, when farming certain plants, when cooking certain foods. We would then slowly fill this book on boss kills, new plants etc.. And again, this book will retain information per account just like the scrapbook, but analysis per-world, as to make up for skill trees making the game unbalanced. Now we don't need the cookbook nor the gardener hat for information, we can access all in the players notes, and these notes would open an UI that looks like a book just like the scrapbook, that we can ACTUALLY UPGRADE SKILLS THERE!!!!!!! There shouldn't be 3 skills for 3 levels, it should be 1 skill that we can Upgrade it to 3 levels by adding more insight into it. Klei should separate the affinities with the regular skills, and the regular skills should not look essential to make the character work (like character designs), they should only be incremental to a survivor experience.
Some skills should be tied per world, and NO player (not even Maxwell) should be able to invoke all of those crazy game-breaking and design-breaking mechanics on day 1. If the Bee Queen is broken, then fix it. If people are cheesing something, then there's a reason why.
All damage bonuses against affinities should not be %, but added planar fixed against said aligned enemy.
Willow should only unlock her Lunar Fire Raiser skill after analyzing a Pure Brilliance in her new "scrapbook" PER WORLD. She should only unlock her Shadow Fire Raiser skill after noting "Pure Horror" in her new "Scrapbook" PER WORLD.
Scrappy werepig should spawn on day 1. And he should drop pure brilliance. It doesn't make sense that we have to kill him first down there, and then later we are FORCED to kill him up there to get more dreadstone and pure horror down there. KLEI THEMSELVES said that they only made things this way temporarily, so I think it's time to fix this. This back and forth of him spawning up and down is tedious, and his drops are mediocre until the cc is killed anyway so they should change that. If dfly respawns, then who is that? DFLY'S LONG LOST COUSIN COMING FOR REVENGE? If they can have nonsensical respawns because of gameplay purposes, then why can't we have 2 werepigs at the same time for the sake or gameplay as well? They're not even npcs.
Not only this would influence players to kill the Nightmare Werepig instead of the fuelweaver, but also the pig is available on day 1 so go figure it out instead of unlocking once with cheats and then oneshotting everything @*@**@*@, like come on Klei.
Wendy should NOT be able to get abigail leveled up so quickly, abi should take 5 days from level 1 to level 2, and then 6 days from level 2 to level 3. Abigail should get 15dmg on level 1, 25dmg on lvl2 and 40dmg on lvl 3. The sisturn should then allow petals to never spoil while in there and they should not lvl up abi faster, regular petals would only add the vex damage and subsequent percentages per petals like we're ACTUALLY leveling her up. Remember this is all base kit, and considering all skill tree suggestions I made earlier, this would make abi way better to use and way more fun and strong while still keeping her balanced and ACTUALLY making the lvl up potion good to use. There could even be space for skills to make her level up quicker there in the skill tree.
Wilson should make enemies entangled in beard hair when he's hit by them while his beard is big, and this should be a top skill in his skill tree, this entanglement should do 25 damage to anything that hits him and they get slowed by 30% for 5 seconds. Wilson should know how to craft the alchemy engine and most science stations in the game without a science machine and this should be outside of his skill tree. His iridescent transmutation has to be nerfed to 2 of each gems.
Woodie should be able to upgrade his moose form in-game by making better totems, NOT by simply getting planar on day 1 by clicking on a UI separated from the game from the other experiences you had. Some of Woodie's goose and beaver skills should also be obtained by upgrading his totems, and they should have further upgrades for late game.
Maxwell's cage should be a skill in the skill tree, and it should last longer after he analyzed pure horror and leveled up the skill futher Per World.
Well if you read until now you get the idea, the whole game is all over the place and Klei seem to not care a single bit about how the game works and the actual balance of it.
Let me ask this again, Why can Wendy solo Bee Queen easily without skill trees, but Wilson is forced to go through very expensive setups and cheeses? And why did Wilson get superb transmutation skills that help him a lot in game, but Wendy can't have actual in-game spiritism rituals to help her casual survival? (Instead we got a ridiculously undertoned and boring Wreath design because she's "already too strong" or something)
Klei, you really need to re-think what you're doing, and we're also very tired of not getting anywhere with lore. Nothing is consistent and it takes ages for us to know that gestalts can infect technology which is not a "tiny bit of lore", but an actual excuse for the lack of development. We could be getting pages of lore writings in the scrapbook, but instead we got the basic stuff that 90% of people won't read because it adds nothing to gameplay. What the scrapbook really is is an actual very hard to implement mediator between me being too lazy to go to my chest to check what's the quote by opening a non-existent UI for it. Make it make sense.