[Poll] On Creature Health Scaling

[GetNerfedOn]

Next on my list of questions: What do you think of health scaling for both regular and boss mobs?

As always, answer and discuss freely!

[Mike23Ua]

Let me put it this way: There’s an option to host games with More Dragonfly, Less Dragonfly, or No Dragonfly at All.

But there’s no in-Between option: People can’t enjoy fighting that boss fairly as a Solo player (aka it takes significantly longer to fight alone then it does just gathering a group of players and smashing attack repeatedly) 

And in the same light: that same boss doesn’t scale upwards to be a more difficult fight for more players instead of being a complete cakewalk.

[kuroite]

I think health is fair and balance enough. 

Things that need to be scaled with number of player should be spawn and ability like with Klaus fire /ice magic and krampus spawn or Toadstool spore cloud. 

[Ohan]

Boss health only matters if you play solo. 3-6 players make a complete mockery of every "boss" fight . if you have enough damage to stun Dfly you might as well be fighting a 27500 HP Glommer. same goes for Bee Queen

but i also dont necessarily think more HP = difficulty. more hp = more resources which again only matters if ur solo

4 minutes ago, kuroite said:

Things that need to be scaled with number of player should be spawn and ability like with Klaus fire /ice magic and krampus spawn or Toadstool spore cloud. 

i was just gonna say this too. Klaus definitely and Toadstool probably are the only bosses that actually have any kind of appropriate difficulty scaling (as a trade off for the gigantic bump in damage) when you fight with more than 1 person.

[BezKa]

Can you not add the exclamation marks? Makes me feel like a little baby when voting

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Raid bosses havent that much hp. They are bosses and bosses in videogames are usually long and stresful fights. Also their loot is really worth the fight

If you want quick fights use voalt goat jelly. Will be silly to reduce their hp when we have already this or do people want to see 10secs fw fights?

For more than 1 player the bosses are really easy but increasing their hp is an artiticial way of making them more difficult but is boring to see 4 players deleting a boss by just pressing F

[BeeClops]

Scaling would be very bad on public servers, as there very often are 6-12 players on the server, but only 2-3 team up in a fight, or even solo often enough. A lot of people are not into killing bosses, and it's fine as is, and it doesn't have to punish the ones who are into it.

[ShakerGER]

Something just having way to high HP is boring and most bosses don't even have good loot. :/

[me real life]

The issue with health scaling based on players is the same problem with mob health getting raised initially: it assumes that every single fight will be done in a group. Thing is though, DST doesn't really work that way. In my experience the only time that multiple players will be together for a fight is when it's time for a raid boss or taking out a particularly nasty ewecus/varg, the rest of the game is this sort of "playing singleplayer together" experience, where people aren't generally doing tasks together but instead are just enjoying sharing the same space with each other, while sometimes passing by at a shared base or requesting specific resources from each other.

[Caochu]

I personnaly doesn't mind doing the first kill of a Raid boss solo and taking between 10-20 minutes depending on the character and various factors.

But as I always convert all my chests in scale chests and put glowcap everywhere, I need to kill Dragonfly and Toadstool a lot. And in the long run -the short run actually) it isn't fun. I have more fun fighting Goose/Moose because its pattern is random.

I also think that abusing the deconstructing staff to duplicate both scales and skin is boring, and needs anyway to kill Fuelweaver to regen the ruins. Not fun, same problem.

 

I thought recently, why can't we have a system like if you already kill a Raid Boss, the next encounter will be shorter ? Per exemple, constructing a statue of the said boss in its surrounding at the beginning of the fight will alleviate the boss of a % to its HP. This way, the first fight is still legendary, the other ones (you already know how to deal with the boss) are just shorter.

You know, I just don't like to spend 10-20 minutes killing the same boss that is not a threat since 3 years, every 160 minutes. Make it 5-10 minutes please.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

57 minutes ago, ShakerGER said:

Something just having way to high HP is boring and most bosses don't even have good loot. :/

The only one i think that has "bad loot" (for the risk related to the fight) is ck and he doesnt have his loot complete

Lamps, furnace, bundle wrap, beequeen crown, jellybeans, bone helmet and armor, eyebrella, lazy desserter, all kind of gems, krampus sack+random loot are bad loots?

1 minute ago, Caochu said:

 

Jelly, gunpowder, armys and hondious can make future fights shorter than the 1st one when you dont have enough material and time to do it

[Karitha]

Bosses are hard for solo and easy for big teams.

Health should be reduced by number or bosses should have different attack styles that change by team size.

For example deerclops could throw ice spikes if the team be bigger than 3.

[ADM]

It's good as it is or what I've experimented : cause I have once made a mod for tests that properly scale boss only health according of the count of player involved in the fight so it's a fair scaling. (1 player = default HP, +1 player = +15% max HP). We've seen there was an issue pretty fast, if the boss get an extra sack of HP it means that it require more hits from each players in order to kill it, depending of what weapon you have it can be very problematic for the cost of weapons in your preparation on large boss, think of Toadstool, you'll have to make some extra Dark Sword for all the players (or use a Morning Star...), it can also suggests bonus armors if your team is not comfortable with them as well.
So what's important in team fight for the game to me is : if you do something solo and then in multiplayer, it should just halves your time but not ask for additional efforts. Current multiplayer offers a repartition of all the work needed between players in order to get something done faster and sharing resources equally (or have roles), that's the balance I like about it.

[MondayNight]

Do you remember, OP, all those times we saw groups of 4-5 players ganging on a lone Pigman? Yep. Me neither. As was already mentioned in above comments, except the particular cases of Ewecuses (for which you can employ 1-2 Pigs and go solo-player too), Spider Queens (again, Pigmen/Bunnymen can help) and some nasty Varg left randomly to camp map, almost never people go as groups against regular mobs - thus no health scaling is needed at all. For Seasonal Bosses and Raid bosses (the most), maybe - but only for the number of players actively participating in fight, not by counting server's total occupied slots (also, if implemented in an uncertain future, needs to be a WorldGen slider option and not the default for vanilla). Maybe but not really imo. Game's fairly balanced regarding mob fights, and bosses are suppose to be difficult endeavors in the first place - which in general they are even for most advanced players; bulk player-base (newbies/noobs/casuals) doesn't really engage in fights anyway, more so of the boss variety.

[Slynxx]

i feel like normal monsters are meant to be fought solo. therefore changes to it are not necessary. same with seasonal bosses.

on the other hand "raid" bosses feel like they are meant for a group of 6 players. so imho health should increase(or decrease if you insist...cuz the thought of 600k hp toadstool kinda scare me) for each player in the game to provide semi-same level of challenge. alson with some additional machanics(like spawn grumbles per player and etc.)

 

(IMHO)

ps: after some more thinking i want to a conclusion that unless bosses will have some anti-cheese mechanics (freeze resistance, destruction of walls(especially cruicial for toad and dfly) and etc.) if will not matter much. but the point about same experience for solo and party i guess still stands.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 minutes ago, Slynxx said:

on the other hand "raid" bosses feel like they are meant for a group of 6 players

the truth is that 6 players (or even 4) with a minimum of knowledge fighting any of the raid bosses make the fight trully dumb since they only need to smack F for few minutes (or senconds in some cases)

which isnt a bad thing because they need to repeat the fight so all players have the loot but it doenst have the feeling of fighting a boss

[Well-met]

nobody wants to smack a pig for 3 minutes like you would with a Forge mob

there's no ifs or buts about it.

[Mencken]

I thinkthe HP levels are fine as they are.    With all the perks available now it's easier than ever to solo bosses.   I don't even need a flute for Dragonfly, Wolfgang + spices + volt goat jelly = killing machine.    The only bosses I get some help on is BQ and Toad, usually set up 2-3 catapult stations.

[Slynxx]

26 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

the truth is that 6 players (or even 4) with a minimum of knowledge fighting any of the raid bosses make the fight trully dumb since they only need to smack F for few minutes (or senconds in some cases)

which isnt a bad thing because they need to repeat the fight so all players have the loot but it doenst have the feeling of fighting a boss

true. even with 3 people some bosses become easy. and with full group of 6 in one place they become trivial. that's why i said "meant"(cuz i feel that was the intention) and proposed increasing instead of decreasing hp to make experience close on each party sizes.

[RoughCactus69]

It's an interesting concept, honestly, it really is. I think there should be a switch to turn it off or on. Because you could have otherwise useless teammates that eat all the meatballs at base, or maybe you just want to relax and have a good time. Therefore it should be toggle-able. But yes, it sounds like a great idea.

 

Sincerely,

Cactus

[Terry_Rosario]

The day they do a rework to combat, I will not care if the health of the bosses or mobs scales, for now it would only be 5 more minutes of boring combat.

[Szczuku]

I think raid bosses' health should be scaled down to 80% of its original value, if the server has a 'alone' tag. Help out solo players, Klei. Raid bosses are just a resource sink

[ArubaroBeefalo]

3 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Raid bosses are just a resource sink

i dont think they are a resource sink. Only weather pains could be considere grindy but they arent that necessary since moon glasses were introduce

and, for a crafting survival game, needing to gather resources is the regular thing and more if is to combat a huge danger

[Mike23Ua]

9 hours ago, BeeClops said:

Scaling would be very bad on public servers, as there very often are 6-12 players on the server, but only 2-3 team up in a fight, or even solo often enough. A lot of people are not into killing bosses, and it's fine as is, and it doesn't have to punish the ones who are into it.

Forget public servers for a minute (Xbox doesn’t and to the best of my knowledge has never had them) Instead look at things as you bought a game, and you want to get the absolute most enjoyment out of that game that you possibly can- With or Without other players being involved.

In their current form: Bosses in DST are a resource & time sink for a Solo player- It takes significantly longer preparing for and completing the battle then it would if you just gathered a group of friends and spam the attack button.

Bosses in DST Dont scale both in health AND in terms of what attacks they can use based on how many players are playing.

For example: If you play state of decay 2 Alone enemy zombies can only ever hit and injure you, but if you play with a second player... those same zombies gain a fearsome new ability of being able to snatch you up and if your not rescued in time by your team mate: Rip you in two halves for an instant kill.

Lets apply that same mechanic to something like Malbatross, she swoops down grabs up player 3 and if not rescued in time.. kills said player 3.

Then when playing SOLO or less than 3 players Malbatross won’t have access to this multiplayer focused ability.

With each refresh Klei is adding new gadgets or abilities that lessen how difficult that is (Bernie, Abigails petal buff, Moose Woodie) the characters are getting new abilities that helps them in survival-

But you still have the option for More Boss, Less Boss, No Boss- there’s no other choice....

And that in my opinion really sucks: Because it’s content Klei designed that’s In the game and most those fights have unique mechanics: that a solo player will either avoid completely or spend significantly longer then they should need to fighting.

Lets say: Dragonfly- for solo player 10,000 Hp, can only Enrage once, only two lava pools for Larvae to be spawned from.

Dragonfly- 6+ Players: 1,500,000 hp, can enrage often, 10-12 lava pools that not only spawn Larvae... but also spawn Magma Golems..

Spoiler

she also gains a new fireflamethrower attack where she spins around in a circle breathing fire in an AoE.

It should be a little more complex then just increase/decrease health and damage.

But what it would ultimately do is allow ALL PLAYERS of ALL SKILL LEVELS & GROUP SIZES to play and enjoy content that they may otherwise: not be able to.

[BeeClops]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Forget public servers for a minute (Xbox doesn’t and to the best of my knowledge has never had them) Instead look at things as you bought a game, and you want to get the absolute most enjoyment out of that game that you possibly can- With or Without other players being involved.

I know by now we view this very differently, as i think bosses are accessible enough solo and we probably disagree here. I was referring more to scaling up, as that would be unfair since most fights are done by one ore a few of the players on the server. And you have to keep pubs in mind, even tho they're not on xbox sadly. As for someone who just bought the game, there's a lot of stuff to conquer, enjoy and discover before you get to killing the big guys, and i think general mob hp is fine.

Having different attack patterns depending on how many players fight sounds more interesting, but it's just way too complicated to be worth implementing.