Some points to consider for character and boss changes

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

Winona had some interesting changes, though I don't think Klei had a good enough of an idea of what they were doing when they tried to provide good changes for the character. Won't dwell on it too much, but I think it's best if Klei follows these 4 points for characters:

1) A unique upside mechanic that will keep the player playing the character on a regular (e.g. my suggestion for Winona for instance was allowing her to craft things with half the cost as well as harvest things twice as quickly).

2) Upside that would allow the character to be useful for the team regularly (e.g. Winona's machinery already is, and some have suggested that her tape should repair armor and weapons as well).

3) A downside that is significant, but not unbearable (e.g. Winona's downside was too unbearable, but now it's almost insignificant, so having a bit more of a balance between the two would be great. I previously suggested he having x1.5 hunger drain by default and when she would reach ~50 hunger not only would she craft slower, but would also harvest slower and move slower, plus if she had the half resource crafting mechanic, that would disable as well until her stomach isn't so empty. This can be very dangerous of a downside at times, particularly if you stay in ruins for too long or are being chased by something, but wouldn't be so bad as to be too difficult to play as regularly).

4) The character should be fun to play throughout (e.g. Wickerbottom is a great character, but because of how demanding her perks are, it really doesn't become so fun to play as her).

 

On another side of reworks, some people have suggested the idea of reworking bosses, and I completely agree with the idea. Damage sponging is never really fun, and gameplay gets dull when the outcome of the battle is mostly based on whether you have enough weapons, armor and healing foods and not much else. That is, if you fight without cheese methods and just brute force them melee style. For me personally, Fuel Weaver has been the most intense of fights, despite him having only like what, 16000 health compared to some others? Sure there are cheese methods, but they aren't so easy to set up as some other bosses, and even if you take that out, the battle is still quite intense for 1 or 2 players at least, and a lot of it is due to the fact that the boss was designed with difficult to dodge attacks in mind. For this reason, I think it's a good example of how to go by designing a well thought-out boss fight. However, because of cheese methods like using lureplants + houndius shootius, that should also be taken into mind as well and the weaver himself could have some tweaks to the fight (e.g. allow him to attack lureplants and such if they are in the way of a target, make his bone cage fully cage you when you are near an indestructible object/edge of the map). So here are some points that I think, and I'm sure at least some others would agree are good trains of thought for making a well rounded battle. 

1) Make it more about the attacks and defenses the boss has, not the health. Too many bosses are just a grind of hitting it without even that much dodging till it is dead. Dragonfly and Toadstool in particular are prime examples of this, and in fact, these two bosses have a lot of potential for a lot more kinds of deadly attacks! Dragonfly could use some form of fire breath attack for one, while toadstool could not only byte at players, but use its tongue to take out items from player's inventory to chew them up, may be their equipped helmet/hat or chest armor, without which the player could be gobbled up instead. Just throwing that out there. Some bosses could be more fun if they had deadly attacks, even if they just had like 5000 or 10000 health, provided it's done well. Antlion doesn't have a lot of health, but because the fight is so deadly, it's not a boss you can always beat as easily as a tree guard (whom too should probably have some extra attack added to make them harder for professionals, while keeping it at a steady difficulty for newer players).

2) Put some focus on tuning the power of cheese methods. If someone finds one, it may be some strategy to beat the boss, but may be not make it completely useless. Players for instance have used pan flute to get dragonfly out of its enraged state. While pan flute is meant to be quite powerful, it's a bit too powerful. A wrong way I think of going about this would be making dragonfly immune to its effect. So may be dragonfly instead could stay in enraged state even when set to sleep, meaning it is still useful for giving time for players to prepare for when she wakes up, but she may still be in enraged state after waking up.

3) Walls and structures bosses/mobs can't move around or destroy. This would be part of the above point, but because it's so widely used for so many cheese tactics, I think it deserves its own point. Walls and fences are often something you can use to give way too big an edge in the game. Dragonfly's larva are a prime example. Because most mobs go around walls if they can, you either need a full set of walls around your player or around the mob that you want to abuse the AI of to keep in tact. I think that AI for moving around walls should be a bit different, so that a mob would attack walls or try to get over them instead of going around them, if it's a relatively long line of walls. Then walls become a bit more useful in the conventional defense sense and less so when it comes to a pen that had been designed to abuse AI for a much easier fight. It would mean that putting some walls around your base is a good idea, as some hounds will be stopped by walls around and would have to chew their way through, instead of having every single hound AI around them and come in through the openings. May be larva could jump over tier 1 walls, but would attack them if they are above any other height and even if it's like a line of 8 or so walls that the player is behind and not just a full pen. On top of that, structures like end tables should be something even some regular mobs should attack, like werepigs, if they are in the way of getting to their target. Goose too is a boss that can be penned behind some walls, though her main issue is lackluster attacks. It would also be great if mobs even like spiders wouldn't just attack walls for no reason, just because they are there.

4) Meleeing all the time isn't necessary a good thing. The primary resort in combat for pretty much everything is a strong melee weapon (e.g. dark sword, tentacle spike, thulecite club, morning star situationally), but that's pretty much all the fights. There are so many weapns in the game that aren't being taken use of that could be used a lot more particularly for boss fights. Weather pain became much more desirable of a weapon when Toadstool and Fuel Weaver were introduced. You don't necessarily need these weapons, but you will have a  bit more of an interesting fight and be given an edge when using Weather Pain during the fights. Some weapons that could be used more include darts, particularly the fire and sleep kind (but normal tooth and electric darts too), gunpowder (it's really only used for taking off a lot of health from a boss, but may be it could be used in some other forms for the fights?), fire staff, bee mines and tooth traps (tooth traps have a use, a way too powerful one, of killing hound waves, but it would be interesting if we could use them in some form during boss fights) and cat-o-three tails. You could may be even think of ways to make some not-so-frequently used items like one man band or the belt of hunger to be useful! May be some boss could have an attack that would involve draining player hunger?

5) Don't just have optional bosses all around. Fuelweaver was set up nicely as there's a very good reason to fight him. He is technically optional, but progressively so. Dragonfly for instance isn't really that much, at least not after the first fight, if you think the furnace blueprint is necessary. I previously had the idea of toadstool being in a new purple mushtree biome, where some mushtrees would look exactly like his mushroom he holds out, instead of it being so obvious as to where he is. May be in some form, you could get stuck in the biome and would need food and wood to get out, but that would require chopping down trees, and in one of the spots, but different every time, inside the biome, a mushtree would be toadstool instead. It would keep the game intense and encouraging while still remaining optional in a sense. Or perhaps the toadstool could linger in one of the existing biomes, and have the mushtree on his back look exactly like ones generally in the biome? Of course, there would be a lot more tweaks needed for this, in particular if you are trying to find him intentionally, but for game immersion this kind of a set up could work really well design wise. Dragonfly too seems way too optional, and it would be great to see her at times roam about in the world tracking players, being the boss of summer again. For me personally, ant lion just doesn't fill the role as well. The main issue of having optional bosses is you keep content away from a player who is not inclined to face a challenge. Having a server reset because you were too dumb to approach a boss nest is too high of an unnecessary risk. But if the boss comes for you, and then goes, you are always on the edge.

People like to megabase, and you probably would still be able to regardless of the challenge, but should that always be the incentive? Never really understood why we should be encouraged to create large elaborate automative farms, like gekko grass farm, instead of having some way of taking use of an item or a mob situationally to fill that role, like having lazy forager for picking up lots of items for you. It keeps things more compact, gives more room for the natural world and could keep the player from going insane if things go just a bit on the wrong side of what they want to happen, especially when there's so much more griefing potential from having a large base, as opposed to a relatively small one.

[Kaisen_]

I agree with changing the bosses, but IMO Dragonfly, Toadstool, all new DST bosses are okay. For me it’s bosses like Bearger, Deerclops, and Goose need changes. While bosses like Bee Queen and Dragonfly really don’t have that much variation in attacks, they still seem rewarding to kill IMO, especially Dragonfly. However, Bearger, Goose, and Deerclops are just plain boring bosses. Deerclops just swipes the ground, and Bearger and Goose do the same thing except honk or slam every predictable 3 swipes. I hope they change the original giants to more then just holding F for 2-3 seconds and running anyway. I also hate how they got rid of how Goose worked in regular DS. I wish they’d do more to the giants then just beef up their HP.

[Osbalop]

13 minutes ago, Kaisen_ said:

I agree with changing the bosses, but IMO Dragonfly, Toadstool, all new DST bosses are okay. For me it’s bosses like Bearger, Deerclops, and Goose need changes. While bosses like Bee Queen and Dragonfly really don’t have that much variation in attacks, they still seem rewarding to kill IMO, especially Dragonfly. However, Bearger, Goose, and Deerclops are just plain boring bosses. Deerclops just swipes the ground, and Bearger and Goose do the same thing except honk or slam every predictable 3 swipes. I hope they change the original giants to more then just holding F for 2-3 seconds and running anyway. I also hate how they got rid of how Goose worked in regular DS. I wish they’d do more to the giants then just beef up their HP.

I think the seasonal bosses should stay the same for the first time the player figths them, but, when the second year comes they could come back buffed up, with new attacks and everything.