Suggestion/Concept for a new Skilltree

[geistigsenil]

I have played 7 Days to Die for a while now and generally I enjoy it a lot.
But with the Skilltree I always had my Issues:
    I think the amount of skills and recombination options are very plentyfull and fun to explore.
    But this is imo also the greatest Problem with the Skilltree, while it is fun and expansive in Theory in Practice
    you will often put points into the same Skills and Attributes and so the Resulting Builds are often very similar.
    
    For Example:
    When i play with my friends, most of the time "Lucky Looter", "Sexual Tyrannosaurus" and "Miner 69er" are
    one of the first Skills to be considered.
    But say, i want to have a character that can loot really good and uses a bow. Then i would have to invest in the
    Perception and Agility Attribute and the two Skills(obviosly).
    This requires a lot of Points, so naturally most of the Time the parallel Investment in two Attributes is not really worth it.
    The Result are very similar Builds and Skilltrees like Agility that dont really seem worth it.
    
    The second, much smaller Problem is, that it does not feel very satisfying to spend Points on Attributes.
    The first few level are fine, since they require only one Point each,
    but the later level feel very unrewarding, since you have to save up multiple points to invest into a Skill that you do
    not want to invest in at all, since it is only necessary to progress further and does not progress your desired build.
    
    
So, how to solve al this Issues:

The Issue that some Skilltrees do not feel worth it is solved very easily, we simply stop to seperate the skills into Attributes,
but instead unify them under one huge Skilltree that contains all Skills.

The Issues that there arent diverse Builds, is solved by this unification too, because
we now can select our Skills freely without having to invest in multiple Attributes first.

The Problem with the saveing of multiple points, only to spend them on Attributes is solved by
making the unlock of Skilllevels cheaper, so that the cost is only 1 Point, while increasing the needed Points
to Invest in a Skill with increasing Level of the Skill.
With this change we spend less Points on unlock of Skilllevels/Attributes and more on the actual Skills,
which should feel more rewarding because we buy stuff with our Points that we actually want instead of investing in something abitrary like Attributes.

To prevent Players from progressing to quickly, the Skilltree will be split in three Stages,
which can be unlocked with a few points, so the Player is encouraged to invest in "early" skills first or has to make the
decision to spend his first Points to get to a higher stage.
I seperated the Skills into stages based on what a Survivor would need/is a available to him at any given Timeframe in the Apocalypse.
Therefore i created these Stages:
    - Humble Beginnings:
            Everything a Survivor would need/want after recent stranding. Basic Weapons,Cooking,Looting etc
            
    - Mediocre Living:
            The Survivor has settled in and is exploring his surroundings. Some Basic Firearms, Crafting, Farming Skills.
            
    - Sufficently Advanced:
            The Survivor has succesfully tamed most Dangers and is now free to invent and tinker to ghis hearts content.
            Riffles and Automatic Rifles, Turrets, Vehicles etc.
            
Since we combined all Attributes into one Tree, we do not have the 300% Headshotdamage assosiated with the Attributes anymore.
To get this skill back into the Tree, we simply use the combined amount of Skilllevel unlocks in all Stages.
Most Skills have 5 Levels, in every Stage are 4 unlocks in order to unlock all Skilllevels, this gives us 12 unlocks (12 points).
Since the original Skill has 10 Level, the maximum of 300% Headshotdamage is granted when 10 out of 12 Skilllevel are unlocked.
                    
So that is my Suggestion for a new and improved Skilltree that should enable diverse Builds and feel more satisfying to progress through.

 

 

To Avoid confusion, heres the Explaination what i mean with "Skilllevel" and "Level":
Level are the Levels in a Skill eg: Level 2 in Lucky Looter
"Skillevel" is the maximal Level to that a Skill in a Stage can be skilled. All other Level in the Skill are locked and cant be skilled, till the next Skilllevel of the Stage is unlocked.
 Skillevel 1 : Level 1 of all Skills in the Stage can be purchased
 ...
 Skillevel 5: All Level of all Skills in the Stage can be purchased.
 
Here is a Image how i would picture the Skilltree and How it would work (or the Link to it, since i could not figure out to insert Images):

https://imgur.com/a/qXwCHNy