I think bosses should be more rewarding

[Seero]

14 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

did you know that the ocean content isnt finish?

Sure we can get some miraculous update that ocean content suddenly becomes viable in the first 1-2 years.

But come on, will that really happen? Actually, if it does, it will be because multiple people have been talking about it. Like how I am, right now.

[thegreatJash]

I like the idea of a harpoon with Malbatross's beak.

[Souper]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Why? There's only a few of them and the combat in this game isn't exactly fleshed out.

That's the point. Deerclops, the first hurdle new players face that comes to you, drops something that will help new players in the upcoming seasons. Toadstool, the thing you go out of your way to fight that most players won't fight because he takes too long so you mostly just fight him for fun, mostly just drops things for fun. If you really think the "majority of the content" comes from fighting bosses why do you care that the trophy boss only drops trophies?

You don't think an infinite light and infinite heat source that you can just drop a dozen thermal stones next to so you don't have to sit around waiting for them to heat up is very rewarding? I would prefer a Scaled Furnace over an Eyebrella 9 times out of 10, although admittedly that's mostly because I do silly things that disproportionately values the Scaled Furnace.

Bearger's drops are some of the strongest in the entire game, especially for Wolfgang. 

I really don't get this. Do you get a reward for completing Mario stages? Do you get a reward for clearing lines in Tetris? Do you get a reward for playing first person shooters? You don't, but the games are fun. If you really think this game is just boss fights why do you care that the boss fights don't give you super amazing loot?

A majority of the content in the game is fighting bosses. Whether you believe that or not, it's factually true. If you are not fighting bosses in the game, then you are missing out on very large portions of content. Also, DST is not Mario. They are completely and totally incomparable. And even if we were comparing them, tons of boss fights in Mario reward you with extra abilities and tools to further explore and innovate. So even then your comparison falls flat. 

My entire point is that the bosses should be rewarding so that it provides players incentive to actually fight them. I'm not sure you understand where I'm coming from here. Why should one of the easiest bosses in the game (Deerclops) drop one of the most useful items in the game, while some of the harder bosses drop nothing nearly as game changing (if game changing at all)? Toadstool is just a pain in the ass, and unless you're going for a megabase I don't think mushlights are worth it. The caps are alright but certainly not worth any of the preparation for him. Malbatross has poopy drops for the effort it takes to kill her. Crab King (although his drops are unfinished at the moment) is simply not worth fighting at all. His loot is pointless and he's just a pain in the ass to search for. I will admit Dfly's drops are definitely good, and I was wrong to say otherwise in the beginning. If you seriously think Bearger's "drops" are some of the strongest in the entire game, then you must be playing a different game than me and every other player. Bearger's "drops" can be used for one thing even remotely useful, that being the insulated pack. Which only became useful after they buffed it with extra slots imo. The hibernation vest is utterly pointless when you can walk around with a thermal stone fully heated from Dfly furnace. Not to mention how invaluable a backpack is in general, I don't know anyone other than extremely inexperienced players who wear winter clothing in the chest slot.

It's just underwhelming. And it's even weirder when you consider the disproportionality of it all. Bee Queen drops legitimately the best gear in the game save for FW, but most other bosses don't even compare to that. If you were to rank the boss drops (as someone has done in this thread) You would see wildly disparate scores almost unrelated to difficulty. This tells us that Klei knows how to make strong, fun drops. But they're not at all good at dividing it out. Bee Queen has 3 invaluable drops. Why not spread that throughout the bosses rather than piling them all on a random one? And don't even get me started on Klaus who practically invalidates the incentive for fighting many bosses. The random gift mechanic is fun--don't get me wrong. But it's wildly imbalanced and further decreases incentive to pursue fighting other bosses--which I believe to be the bulk of the content in the game.

[Cheggf]

1 minute ago, Souper said:

A majority of the content in the game is fighting bosses. Whether you believe that or not, it's factually true.

Show me your work. If it's factually true demonstrate that supposed "fact" to me.

[Souper]

Just now, Cheggf said:

Show me your work. If it's factually true demonstrate that supposed "fact" to me.

Let's go over what I consider, and I believe most would consider, to be the content that DST is comprised of (in summary of course)

Survival

Arguably the biggest aspect of the game is the ultimate goal to survive. However, this goal becomes more and more trivial the later you get into the game as you get stronger from beating bosses that allow you to survive more luxuriously. (With other things as well--not just bosses of course) Eventually, survival alone gets boring and usually requires other things to entertain a player.

Exploration

Exploration is a huge part of the game. For the first many days, you are constantly exploring the map and looking for new things. Then you have the cave system to explore + the ruins. There's even more exploration with lunar islands and other content like Pearl. I would say this is the game's second biggest aspect, but it falls off eventually once you have explored everything.

Base Building

Like many other sandbox games, you are able to build up your own home and customize it to your liking, for the most part. This is a pretty big chunk of content in DST, but it's not as expressive as other sandbox games, and the building in general is extremely tedious and cumbersome. I would argue this definitely puts it lower on the tier of prioritized content. Also, base building is never forced upon you. You can play the entire game nomadically, if you so desire.

Boss Fighting

Once you have figured out how to survive, most people will either 1. Get bored 2. Build a big base or 3. Pursue other goals/challenges (which I would argue mostly comes from boss fights) If you even want to reach endgame content, then you will have to fight a boss along the way at least. A majority of the updates have added new bosses/boss gear to the game, highlighting Klei's clear focus on this aspect. As far as I can tell, the community in general is largely held up by the boss fighting and the strategies you can choose to approach them. Without bosses, you are left to engage with the other aspects I have mentioned. All of these, except base building, are either trivial (survival) or lacking permanence (exploration) past a certain point in the game. Boss fights always require some preparation, and every single boss is able to be fought again and again.

 

Maybe it is not as cut and dry as "Boss fighting is 65%, survival 20%, exploration 10%, and base building 5%..." but I think you'd have to be blind to pretend that Klei hasn't mostly focused their effort on boss-centered content. 

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Souper said:

Snip

That's not you demonstrating the fact that boss fights are the majority of the content, that's just you kind of listing off various things you can do without going too in-depth. Boss fights are a minority of the content because even if you kill every single boss unless you're doing a speedrun where you explicitly do nothing except kill bosses actually fighting bosses will be next to none of your total time spent. Even in speedruns where they fight bosses and do nothing else most of the time they spend is preparing for the fight. People spend hours, dozens of hours, even hundreds of hours building their bases and mega bases and they spend, what? 1 minute fighting a boss? Maybe if it's a tougher boss it might be 5 minutes?

It's just like your Mario comparison. You start talking about boss fights in Mario like they're some big deal when they're usually only the short ending of 1/8th of the levels in the game.

8 minutes ago, Souper said:

Maybe it is not as cut and dry as "Boss fighting is 65%, survival 20%, exploration 10%, and base building 5%..." but I think you'd have to be blind to pretend that Klei hasn't mostly focused their effort on boss-centered content. 

I think you'd have to be blind to pretend that Klei hasn't mostly focused their effort on ocean-centered content. You say a "majority of the updates" have added bosses, but in the past year they've only added 2 bosses and over the game's entire life they've only added about 7. 7 over the course of nearly 400 total updates with 48 of them being major updates.

If they're focusing all their efforts onto bosses they totally suck. Why are they wasting all that time updating the ocean over and over again, and adding that new underground biome? Those aren't even bosses!

[Souper]

2 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

That's not you demonstrating the fact that boss fights are the majority of the content, that's just you kind of listing off various things you can do without going too in-depth. Boss fights are a minority of the content because even if you kill every single boss unless you're doing a speedrun where you explicitly do nothing except kill bosses actually fighting bosses will be next to none of your total time spent. Even in speedruns where they fight bosses and do nothing else most of the time they spend is preparing for the fight. People spend hours, dozens of hours, even hundreds of hours building their bases and mega bases and they spend, what? 1 minute fighting a boss? Maybe if it's a tougher boss it might be 5 minutes?

It's just like your Mario comparison. You start talking about boss fights in Mario like they're some big deal when they're usually only the short ending of 1/8th of the levels in the game.

I think you'd have to be blind to pretend that Klei hasn't mostly focused their effort on ocean-centered content. You say a "majority of the updates" have added bosses, but in the past year they've only added 2 bosses and over the game's entire life they've only added about 7. 7 over the course of nearly 400 total updates with 48 of them being major updates.

If they're focusing all their efforts onto bosses they totally suck. Why are they wasting all that time updating the ocean over and over again, and adding that new underground biome? Those aren't even bosses!

You win. Bosses are not the majority of the content. I retract my statement. My entire point still stands.

[Cheggf]

Just now, Souper said:

You win. Bosses are not the majority of the content. I retract my statement. My entire point still stands.

What, the boss loot sucks point? I still disagree with that on everyone except Toadstool (who only needs a slight tweak to his drops) and Crab King (who currently drops an unusable item so it'll clearly become better in the future).

You're saying that items that give infinite light, infinite heat, infinite item cooking, infinite thermal stone warming for no cost suck, items that grant the most cold protection in the game and slow your starvation rate by 25% suck, items that expand your inventory and halve the rate items spoil inside (including Ham Bats, effectively increasing your damage) suck, you're saying all the best items in the game suck.

[Souper]

Just now, Cheggf said:

What, the boss loot sucks point? I still disagree with that on everyone except Toadstool (who only needs a slight tweak to his drops) and Crab King (who currently drops an unusable item so it'll clearly become better in the future).

You're saying that items that give infinite light, infinite heat, infinite item cooking, infinite thermal stone warming for no cost suck, items that grant the most cold protection in the game and slow your starvation rate by 25% suck, items that expand your inventory and halve the rate items spoil inside (including Ham Bats, effectively increasing your damage) suck, you're saying all the best items in the game suck.

I'm not going to engage with you after this because you're clearly not reading my comments, but I'll say it one last time.

Firstly, I have walked back on Dfly's loot pool. It is good and definitely provides incentive to fight her. 

Secondly,

Quote

You're saying that items that give infinite light, infinite heat, infinite item cooking, infinite thermal stone warming

All of those features are condensed into ONE item, and that is 50% of your argument that boss drops (plural) are useful?

Thirdly, yes the cold protection items suck because they are outclassed by every other option. AKA a thermal stone and a torch. Backpacks are too essential to give up a chest slot for, and if you are really struggling then you can just wear a decent insulated hat, which is far cheaper/easier to obtain and less detrimental. However I will admit the insulated backpack is quite nice. I didn't know about it's buff until recently, which I believe makes it very viable and an item you should definitely go for.

Once again for the last time, my entire point is that most bosses have no incentive for fighting them other than the challenge, but it's nice to have meaningful rewards for doing so. It fleshes out the system and makes the fights more rewarding. I don't see the downside in suggesting this here. Most fights are not very rewarding, especially when compared to others making them disproportionately rewarding, which is just sloppy game design.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

27 minutes ago, Souper said:

but I think you'd have to be blind to pretend that Klei hasn't mostly focused their effort on boss-centered content. 

only with ANR update and was to bring some multiplayer challenge to the table since all the bosses from RoG where "weak" for that aspect

[Cheggf]

Just now, Souper said:

 

All of those features are condensed into ONE item, and that is 50% of your argument that boss drops (plural) are useful?

You say I'm not reading your comments and then immediately stop reading my comment in the middle of a sentence. Look at the rest of that sentence, it's addressing every single item you said was useless:

9 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

items that grant the most cold protection in the game and slow your starvation rate by 25% suck, items that expand your inventory and halve the rate items spoil inside (including Ham Bats, effectively increasing your damage) suck, you're saying all the best items in the game suck.

 

[Souper]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

only with ANR update and was to bring some multiplayer challenge to the table since all the bosses from RoG where "weak" for that aspect

Fuelweaver, malbatross, ancient guardian, crab king, klaus, bee queen? Even if they fall under ANR, they are still a series of updates focusing on boss content.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Souper said:

Fuelweaver, malbatross, ancient guardian, crab king, klaus, bee queen? Even if they fall under ANR, they are still a series of updates focusing on boss content.

Ancient Guardian is not from Don't Starve Together.

[Mike23Ua]

I barely ever bother with the boss fights of this game- which is a shame because most of them (at least appear to) have unique gameplay features and mechanics- Take Dragonfly as an example: I throughly enjoyed this fight because I was forced to run around avoiding exploding little lava bugs, bugs that (currently..) do not exist Anywhere else in the game outside of this one highly annoying health sponge of a fight.

This could be exciting and fun content for me if it wasn’t such a chore/grind & felt super tedious/unfun to even get to the point that I can fight her.

However once I finally beat this Dragonfly boss it dropped a Blueprint for something called the Dragonscale furnace- a Permanent structure that provides both Infinite Light.. and Infinite Heat that doesn’t require any sort of fuel source to keep going- it’s just there.. and it removes the challenges of needing light source for light before night fall or materials/gear for being too cold.

Now remember- up until I finally killed this boss I had no idea such a structure even existed in this game... and had been surviving my nights and winters the HARD WAY. its how do I put this politely enough.. a thing that makes staying alive easier- the same can be said for pretty much every other boss drop item in the entire game.

And BECAUSE they make staying alive that much easier- I think that people who actually struggle to survive should be able to fight these bosses and obtain them more easily (because those people NEED these drops.. I do not.)

I actually hate how Klei focuses on so many bosses for this game, I wanted new worlds, new biomes, new creatures to fight, new craftables etc.. But I “Think” the reason they do so many boss fights is because it’s content that’s more easily able to put into the game- like it should (in theory at least) be easier to do yet another entirely optional and probably stationary boss fight- then it is to add an entire biome the same size and scope of their first Return of Them Turn of Tides Update.

But- as you can see by my post here not EVERYONE is into boss fights, and maybe my opinion on them would be changed if they didn’t literally drop items that made the challenge of staying alive significantly easier.

Dude I’m old okay? I remember the days where boss fights didn’t reward items that helped you stay alive easier- and instead dropped door key fragments to open a doorway to a much harder area of the game.

 

[Theukon-dos]

23 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

What, the boss loot sucks point? I still disagree with that on everyone except Toadstool (who only needs a slight tweak to his drops) and Crab King (who currently drops an unusable item so it'll clearly become better in the future).

You're saying that items that give infinite light, infinite heat, infinite item cooking, infinite thermal stone warming for no cost suck, items that grant the most cold protection in the game and slow your starvation rate by 25% suck, items that expand your inventory and halve the rate items spoil inside (including Ham Bats, effectively increasing your damage) suck, you're saying all the best items in the game suck.

The scaled furnace is definitly good. But it's really only worth it because Dragonfly is the easiest of the raid bosses. Once you get a wall built so the lavae won't harrass you, then it's just a matter of getting the kiting pattern down.

The Hibearnation vest is good on paper. But the issue with it is that, for most players who would be able to get this item in the first place, Neither winter 'nor hunger will ever really be a problem for them. Winter is trivialized with just a thermal stone and a torch, while food is trivialized just by planting a berry farm and a spider den.

 

And as for the insulated pack, Sure it gives extra storage slots. but it gives the same amount of slots as some grass and twigs. And then how often is that 50% spoilage rate *actually* going to help you? Sure there might be a few scenarios where you're out and about for a really long time, But these are few and far between.

 

And both of these have to content with the fact that Bearger is much more valuable *alive* than his fur is. Bearger is the single best wood gatherer in the game. both of his drops pale in comparason to being able to collect hundreds apon hundreds of logs in mere minutes.

 

And as for the rest of the bosses, most of them don't fare much better.

Deerclops, Beequeen, and Ancient Fuelweaver get a pass. They all have really good drops.

 

Moosgoose's luxury fans and weather pains are decent, but you need to kill a lot of meese geese inorder to make a few of them.

 

Toadstool's glowcaps are really only good for mega basing, And funcaps negate any hunger drain they grant by making food in them spoiler *faster*.

Klaus's loot is pure RNG. You could get loot anywhere from a Krampus sack, a Beequeen crown, 2 royal jelly and a bundling wrap BP (notice how all of those come from the same boss), Or it could be as bad as Scales, 2 steel wool, and no blueprint.  And then outside of that, his only other loot is charcoal, gold, and a lifegiving amulet. And then you can only fight him one/year, thus potentially screwing you over for an entire world length.

 

Malbatross only gives items that are good for sailing, Which is still a bit boring at the moment.

Antlion's drops are only good for Multiplayer

Shadow pieces just drop magic items and the item to fight the ancient fuelweaver.

 

Most boss drops are really just sub-par compared to the effort put in.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

14 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

And BECAUSE they make staying alive that much easier- I think that people who actually struggle to survive should be able to fight these bosses and obtain them more easily (because those people NEED these drops.. I do not.

This has no sense like saying that DF is a grindy fight

People who kill them already know how to easily survive

The furnace doesnt make the game easier, just less gridy since you dont need to chop every few days to feed a fire. You only have the furnace at base not everywhere in the map so if you leave the base you will still need know how to survive winter

33 minutes ago, Souper said:

Fuelweaver, malbatross, ancient guardian, crab king, klaus, bee queen? Even if they fall under ANR, they are still a series of updates focusing on boss content.

Just 3 (CK, malbatross and fruitfly) bosses were include since ANR. Every other update wasnt arround boss fights. Boss fights is a little portion of the gameplay, important, but not the bigger

[QuartzBeam]

42 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

And BECAUSE they make staying alive that much easier- I think that people who actually struggle to survive should be able to fight these bosses and obtain them more easily (because those people NEED these drops.. I do not.)

Turns out end game items are really useful for people who can't make it to the end game. Who would have thunk?

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

The Hibearnation vest is good on paper. But the issue with it is that, for most players who would be able to get this item in the first place, Neither winter 'nor hunger will ever really be a problem for them. Winter is trivialized with just a thermal stone and a torch, while food is trivialized just by planting a berry farm and a spider den.

Spring is trivialized by a torch and knowing how to dodge, so the eyebrella sucks. Fighting is trivialized by knowing how to dodge, so thulecite crown & suit sucks. Healing is trivialized by old bunnymen, new farming, and bluecap forests, so jellybeans suck. Sanity is trivialized by cactus flesh, sanity dishes, and knowing how to dodge, so the bee queen crown sucks. Hunger is trivialized "by a berry farm and spider den", so bundling wrap sucks. Damage is trivialized by dodging, so the bone armor sucks.

Look at that, every item in the game sucks because the whole game is easy. GG Klei, game sucks, you should've made Dark Souls Kart instead.

[Maxil20]

Personally, I never really had issues with most of the boss drops. Sure, some could be a lot better, but most drop loot that at least makes the fight worthwhile.

On my current world, I basically treat them as giant piñatas that give me loot every 20 days. Even with how much time I've sunk into that world, I always go back to the bosses since the loot given is still relevant. DFly, for instance, 6 types of gems, and compared to the amount of effort you need to kill it makes the loot pretty good if done consistently. Bee queen is one of the two only ways to renew honeycomb, so I always invest into that as well.

Most of the items you get are not revolutionary, but they are helpful at that point in the game. The only exceptions I can think of are CK and Toad, where their drops are pretty niche in their usefulness. Even the guardian provides some sort of neat reward if you pushed the world far enough to consistently use the eyes for houndius. 

Overall, I generally think that most boss drops are pretty fine, and even CK's trident at least uproots bull kelp, and toad is nice for endgame base decor with festive lights. 

[Yuma Arcl]

IMO, and based on other games, they could make some boss drops better and increase the time between respawns. Maybe make them respawn after 1 year passes, like seasonal bosses, of at the start of autumn; and make their drops better.

Someone said something about blueprints: I agree and these boss' blueprints could be used in the alchemy engine instead of by the player, just like statues work.

[Maybe a dog]

I dont disagree that there is a bit of an issue between drops vs boss difficulty, but it is not as prevalent. The only bosses that I believe should be looked at are Crab King, Malbatross and Toadstool.

Sure, Crab King's loot table is incomplete, but even if they added more, like another piece for another altar or a purpose for the mysterious energy, it would still suck. That would mean Crab King was designed not to be an actual boss (which implies rewards), but a hurdle to access more content. The Trident would be at least decent if water combat wasnt so... non-existent, and not entirely useless on land. I have been thinking using the Trident while on land could maybe cause rain.

As for Malbatross, her sails are nice, but the only time I ever feel the need to go fast would be to... find Malbatross. Lunar Island and Hermit Island are both usually close to the shore and/or trips you do rarely. And finding Crab King can be done with the Astral Detector. Her beak itself is terrible. I rarely use oars, and when I do I never think "Damn, if only this oar had lasted more!" or "Need more oar speed!". But, at least its a material for something now... For something that isnt a particularly good upgrade of a watering can. But, hey, Malbatross is an easy and rather simple boss fight, so having subpar items, it can be somewhat understandable (if the fight wasnt so annoying, but thats subjective).

Now, its not just the items themselves. Part of the issue also comes from the ocean still being kinda useless. Maybe if there were more enemies in the open, like more common Rockjaws that didnt jump on your boat to attack you, then the Trident would be more useful. Maybe if you had to run away from more threats faster sails would be worth the trouble. Maybe if they reworked Crab King's and Malbatross' fight to be less annoying I could forgive their loot being just meh.

And then we have Toadstool. Requires preparation and coordination, and all that effort for items of questionable uses. Fancy lights? They run out of juice quite fast (and you need a seasonal event item to make them infinite). Hunger reducing hat? Spoils whatever you are wearing/holding. Then Misery Toadstool on top of that, which is just artificial difficulty. Even harder fight, and you get a sleep bomb. An alternative to a pan flute, but pan flute is still better.