Boss Hp Scaling

[NoodlemanNed]

Im sure this has been brought up in the past but heres my take on how it could work:

-reduce the max hp of every boss, some of them would receive lesser reductions than others

-give bosses damage reduction based on nearby players (so not actually hp scaling but it accomplishes the same thing)

A few more specific details of what im thinking about:

-the damage reduction would only apply if players are within a certain proximity within the boss, so players who arnt participating in the fight will not hinder the players who are

-bosses should still die faster with multiple people, so 5 players would still be able to kill a target faster than a solo player, just not 5 times faster

-it could be applied as a world preset to minimize whining

Upsides of these changes:

-less experienced solo players can take on bosses without needing to grind for as many resources

-more experienced solo players are able to use more difficult methods that are currently not viable because of how long they take (such as kiting bee queen)

-characters without damage modifiers feel less tedious against big damage sponges

-large groups of players can fight bosses without steamrolling them

Downsides of these suggestions:

-removes some challenge from solo fights (even though the current challenge comes from just spending more time resource gathering)

-upsets people who enjoyed playing in large groups in order to steamroll bosses

- damage numbers arnt as big (only applies to people using health display mods)

-players who just want to spectate a fight would cause an active disadvantage

I think something like this can be a good step in making dst combat better so if you have any suggestions on this system they would be great to hear

 

 

[Reiko24]

All of the downsides could be negated if you turn it off. People who want it will have a longer, more challenge-filled fight or if they aren't experienced and play solo - an easier fight. So this may have no downsides after all. I recently fought many bosses with my friends and they all die so fast... Only two/three football helmets maybe 5 pierogi and half a DST day of time. It's not as exciting anymore when they die so fast. I'm all for your idea!

[goatt]

Current bosses are moderately hard if you know the game play. Some bosses are really easy if you know how to play.

Bosses aren't supposed to be beaten by anyone who wants to do it. It's supposed to be impossible for new players.

Plus the difficulty is proportional to rewards.

 

I know people want to be able to achieve things, but it doesn't mean game needs to make itself easier for you to do it, especially when the high difficulty comes from the players' own inexperience.

[Bumber64]

5 hours ago, goatt said:

Current bosses are moderately hard if you know the game play. Some bosses are really easy if you know how to play.

Bosses aren't supposed to be beaten by anyone who wants to do it. It's supposed to be impossible for new players.

Plus the difficulty is proportional to rewards.

 

I know people want to be able to achieve things, but it doesn't mean game needs to make itself easier for you to do it, especially when the high difficulty comes from the players' own inexperience.

Bee Queen having 22500 HP is ridiculously grindy. It doesn't make her harder to fight. You just need to go at it for a really long time and bring additional weapons (and armor/healing depending on your kiting skill.)

You can also just bring 112 gunpowder, I guess, which knocks her down to 100 HP if you do it right.

[goatt]

33 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Bee Queen having 22500 HP is ridiculously grindy. It doesn't make her harder to fight.

It feels like you are saying BQ is too hard or grindy in general compared to other bosses in solo. Then it's not a scaling problem, it's a balancing problem.

 

[NoodlemanNed]

13 hours ago, goatt said:

Bosses aren't supposed to be beaten by anyone who wants to do it. It's supposed to be impossible for new players.

By lowering the hp of bosses it wouldnt let completely inexperienced players kill a specific boss, because they still need a basic understanding of what strategies can win a fight. I said it would be useful for newer players its because they wouldnt need to spend an entire season preparing to kill a boss if their kiting was sloppy, however this only applies to players who at least have a vague idea of how to play out a fight. If someone doesnt know how to deal with bee queen's grumble bees then it would be a near unbeatable fight whether she has 20k or 2k hp.

 

6 hours ago, goatt said:

Then it's not a scaling problem, it's a balancing problem.

Wouldnt scaling count as balancing?

[goatt]

14 hours ago, NoodlemanNed said:

Wouldnt scaling count as balancing?

Scaling is about modifying bosses' hp according to the number of the players so that overall difficulty of a boss doesn't change because of the extra helpers.

Balancing is about internal systematic fairness regarding difficulty, reward, time/resources cost, world decay, etc.

They are entirely different.

 

14 hours ago, NoodlemanNed said:

By lowering the hp of bosses it wouldnt let completely inexperienced players kill a specific boss

This is your main point, but I think it's unfair if noobs can kill bosses faster or easier than pros, or as fast or as easily.

 

14 hours ago, NoodlemanNed said:

because they (new players) wouldnt need to spend an entire season preparing to kill a boss if their kiting was sloppy

Lower skill players should be rewarded as much as high skill players? They should spend as little time on preparation as pros? They should be able to kill the same boss with same amount of equipment and time as pros? Sorry, I can't agree. If you are not good at the game, you will be hit more, you will need more armor, you will need more healing, and bosses will take you longer. Making bosses easier so that new players can have what pros do is... idk... just a bad idea.

[Faintly Macabre]

14 hours ago, goatt said:

Scaling is about modifying bosses' hp according to the number of the players so that overall difficulty of a boss doesn't change because of the extra helpers.

Balancing is about internal systematic fairness regarding difficulty, reward, time/resources cost, world decay, etc.

They are entirely different.

You are being overly specific about what scaling and balancing are, and they are not entirely different; they are intrinsically related, with one being a method used in pursuit of the other.

14 hours ago, goatt said:

This is your main point, but I think it's unfair if noobs can kill bosses faster or easier than pros, or as fast or as easily.

Lower skill players should be rewarded as much as high skill players? They should spend as little time on preparation as pros? They should be able to kill the same boss with same amount of equipment and time as pros? Sorry, I can't agree. If you are not good at the game, you will be hit more, you will need more armor, you will need more healing, and bosses will take you longer. Making bosses easier so that new players can have what pros do is... idk... just a bad idea.

Tedium is generally one of the worst ways to produce difficulty. It's important for certain things to require skills like precision and proper preparation to an extent to keep them from being trivial (e.g. a fight lasting long enough that poor execution will be punished by failure), but after a certain point you're really just testing people's patience. Lowering the effective HP of bosses is not inconsequential to high skill players: their skills will be rewarded in shorter time. Getting, say, 4 football helmets together in a timely fashion requires some knowledge and skills that getting just 1 doesn't, but getting 8 doesn't require twice as much skill as 4, 16 twice as much as 8, etc. Again, at some point it becomes less about knowledge and prowess than it does willingness to invest a bunch of time.

[goatt]

20 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

they are not entirely different; they are intrinsically related

Two entirely different things can still relate. Just because 2 things are related doesn’t mean they are the same. Scaling and balancing are related, but they are very very different.

 

22 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

but after a certain point you're really just testing people's patience.

I totally agree. That’s why there is cheese and farms. For example, there is character changing cheese (for crafting character specific items and buildings), lureplant cheese, catapult farm, iceflingomatic cheese, befriended mob cheese, etc. At this point, knowledge is power that allows you to exploit game in reasonable and diverse ways. It’s much more interesting than lowering HP and breaking game balance.

This game does not use Tedium to create difficulty. You want more but you are not willing to pay the price? You can, by creating farms. All the bosses that have more than 10k hp can be dealt with by cheese (except for celestial champion).

[Faintly Macabre]

6 minutes ago, goatt said:

Two entirely different things can still relate.

You and I and apparently have a very different idea of what "entirely different" is.

Spoiler

But not an entirely different idea what it is.

9 minutes ago, goatt said:

That’s why there is cheese and farms.

"You can do this unintended way that trivializes or subverts its design" is not a good way to balance something, and farms themselves are generally pretty tedious. "5 Bunnyman can't kill Bee Queen, but 30 can" is not a particularly interesting tidbit. The fact that you can utilize Construction Amulets and Deconstruction Staves to multiply the materials for craftables is, but how much more interesting is it to use enough to make 30 than 15? 15 than 10? etc.

20 minutes ago, goatt said:

This game does not use Tedium to create difficulty.

Then what is it using tedium for? Because until you reach a number of combatants that overall trivializes encounters' difficulty, going through 22500, 27500, 52500 HP feels pretty damned tedious to me.

[goatt]

42 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

"You can do this unintended way that trivializes or subverts its design" is not a good way to balance something

No no, cheese is still cheese. It’s rewarding but it has stigma. It’s there so people can have fun and that’s the point of cheese, it’s not about balancing. Oh, also, cheese has its own balancing. Some cheeses that were too cheesy have been patched.

Cheese was discovered to be unintended. But the remaining cheeses that are not fixed are somewhat reasonable cheeses which do not trivialize anything. Cheeses that trivialize things have been patched.

Thulecite multiplying method also requires substantial efforts. And it’s not that much of a cheese. And not everyone uses it. I have never and I’m a pro. People choose whatever way is fun for them. Methods that are tedious to you do exist, but it doesn’t mean they are tedious for everyone.

48 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

farms themselves are generally pretty tedious.

You have to understand no one forces you to use cheeses, if you wanna talk about “interesting”. Everyone has freedom to choose their ways. I usually prefer to fight the game in honorable ways despite cheese. Of course farms are tedious, cuz it’s too easy to use. People don’t build farm because it’s fun to use it. People do it cuz it’s fun to dream about it while building it, and it’s convenient. I mentioned farm in my previous reply because you emphasized players’ needs to farm items more easily in late game, which I agreed and provided this option. I had no intention to suggest farms as fun. I suggested it as more fun and meaningful than simple HP reduction, specifically for late game farming, not for new players.

For new players, I still don’t think they deserve what they aren’t capable of. They will deserve it once they level up, and that’s the fun of any game.

 

54 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Then what is it using tedium for? Because until you reach a number of combatants that overall trivializes encounters' difficulty, going through 22500, 27500, 52500 HP feels pretty damned tedious to me.

The game doesn’t use tedium, at least not intentionally. It’s not a feature or upside. It’s something to avoid.

 

22500 hp bee queen can be killed in 3 min with catapults. 27500 similar.

52500 also not too slow. I’ve never tested, but I guess 8 min? That’s good I think.

 

1 hour ago, Faintly Macabre said:

You and I and apparently have a very different idea of what "entirely different" is.

you play DST, I play DST, we have something in common. We are related. But we are entirely two different person.

balancing concerns about the relationship between players effort, game difficulty, reward, experience of progress, general game design, pace, etc.

you can argue that scaling is the balancing between number of players and bosses’ HP. But just because you use the same word balancing doesn’t mean they are the same. They concern two entirely different sets of entities and solves two entirely different problems.

[Faintly Macabre]

1 hour ago, goatt said:

No no, cheese is still cheese. It’s rewarding but it has stigma.

Rewarding is a subjective experience, and a lot of people find cheesing something unrewarding. Also, you don't have a very good definition for cheese. "Character changing" is a totally intended mechanic with expected consequences. Thulecite multiplication was an utterly predictable consequence of having both an item that halves materials used to make something and an item that returns all the required materials for making something; this was balanced by destroying items required to keep the method perpetuating itself when deconstructing, i.e. gems. Utilizing befriended creatures isn't cheese either. Expected consequences of intended behavior are not cheese.

1 hour ago, goatt said:

But the remaining cheeses that are not fixed are somewhat reasonable cheeses which do not trivialize anything. Cheeses that trivialize things have been patched.

You can shove Toadstool out of his arena and beat him to death safely while he leashes, and murder the Ancient Fuelweaver without taking a scratch with a few obstacles and a turret of your choice. How are those not trivializing?

1 hour ago, goatt said:

you play DST, I play DST, we have something in common. We are related.

Having something in common does not make us related...

1 hour ago, goatt said:

you can argue that scaling is the balancing between number of players and bosses’ HP. But just because you use the same word balancing doesn’t mean they are the same. They concern two entirely different sets of entities and solves two entirely different problems.

You seem super confident about some stuff you're just straight-up wrong about. Scale is absolutely a tool for balance. Where are you getting your definitions for all of these terms?

 

 

[goatt]

4 hours ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Scale is absolutely a tool for balance.

Yes. A is a tool for B. So A and B are related. But are A and B the same thing? No, they are entirely two different things.

4 hours ago, Faintly Macabre said:

You can shove Toadstool out of his arena and beat him to death safely while he leashes

It requires substantial effort. It includes long time ice staff / pan flute, long time tedious pushing mod or fossil displacement, it requires accurate position of lureplants or rock lobester.  And it require you to chop all the trees using glass axe or sweetened food during the fight, which is a lot of work. And the whole process still takes forever.

4 hours ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Ancient Fuelweaver without taking a scratch with a few obstacles and a turret of your choice.

Exactly. That’s why it will get fixed.

[goatt]

4 hours ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Rewarding is a subjective experience, and a lot of people find cheesing something unrewarding.

The experience and perception is subjective, but the rewards are fixed and objective. Cheese aren’t chosen because they are easier, with fixed rewards, it’s objectively more rewarding.

My definition of cheese is this: to win (a battle round) by using a strategy that requires minimal skill and knowledge or that exploits a glitch or flaw in game design — Google

But in this game, glitches will be fixed, flaws will probably get improved too. So what’s left is whatever exploits lesser flaws which consequently allows to beat bosses with minimal skill.

Switching character is a cheese, if you can only beat a certain boss with that character. You wouldn’t be able to do that otherwise. Character switching mech is indeed flawed for many reasons. One is that it’s too cheap and comes with free character-specific items.

Befriending mobs is a cheese because it essentially allows you to not participate the fight at all. Same with using eye twins to kill other bosses. They are all intended effects, but they are still cheesy cuz you are not fighting.

[NoodlemanNed]

22 hours ago, goatt said:

Lower skill players should be rewarded as much as high skill players? They should spend as little time on preparation as pros? They should be able to kill the same boss with same amount of equipment and time as pros? Sorry, I can't agree. If you are not good at the game, you will be hit more, you will need more armor, you will need more healing, and bosses will take you longer. Making bosses easier so that new players can have what pros do is... idk... just a bad idea.

newer players wont be able to do what experienced players can even if bosses die faster. If you dont understand the fundamentals of the fight youll still get hit enough to die quickly. The thing i want from this kind of change is to reduce the amount of cycles that happen in a fight.

In the bee queen fight for example a common way to deal with phase 3/4 is to run away from the grumble bees as they speed towards you, and as a character without damage modifiers you can end up repeating this cycle countless times back to back. Regardless of skill level, players who can perform this 5 or so times would be able to do it 15 times, so reducing hp in this situation doesnt make the fight mechanically easier, it just means you dont need to do the exact same thing more times than necessary.

[Faintly Macabre]

43 minutes ago, goatt said:

Yes. A is a tool for B. So A and B are related. But are A and B the same thing? No, they are entirely two different things.

Do you know what the word "entirely" means? Things that are not the same are not automatically entirely different.

51 minutes ago, goatt said:

It requires substantial effort.

It's substantially less effort than just doing it normally, at least on your own. And using ice staves and placing lureplants are not exactly brain-breakers. It completely disables 3/4 of the boss's behavior. It's the definition of trivializing.

53 minutes ago, goatt said:

Exactly. That’s why it will get fixed.

Do you know something I don't? I don't know when it was discovered, but a quick google came up with a forum thread over two years old.

[goatt]

2 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

In the bee queen fight for example a common way to deal with phase 3/4 is the run away from the grumble bees as they speed towards you, and as a character without damage modifiers you can end up repeating this cycle countless times back to back.

I agree. So in order to reduce the repetition, you reduce the HP, fair. But to make up the reduced HP, BQ needs to have increased attack damage.

[Faintly Macabre]

12 minutes ago, goatt said:

Cheese aren’t chosen because they are easier

12 minutes ago, goatt said:

a strategy that requires minimal skill and knowledge or that exploits a glitch or flaw in game design

bruh

[NoodlemanNed]

11 minutes ago, goatt said:

I agree. So in order to reduce the repetition, you reduce the HP, fair. But to make up the reduced HP, BQ needs to have increased attack damage.

This is a fantastic idea for bee queen since tanking is a common strat for her fight, but for other bosses like toadstool it wouldnt really change anything since his attacks can be avoided quickly and easily. Toad drops kinda suck so making him outright easier wouldnt be too bad.

 

1 hour ago, goatt said:

Exactly. That’s why it will get fixed.

The lureplant cheese has been known for years and has even been acknowledged by the devs, most cheese methods arnt even patched directly. Oven was nerfed in order to make flingos control fires better. The grumble cheese was recently patched because it made merms more functional as minions.

[goatt]

3 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Do you know what the word "entirely" means?

I’ve said it before, they concern two entirely different sets of entities and solves two entirely different problems. They are two entirely different concepts. If you wanna make a point, please state your logic up front. Don’t present your point using the form of question, which adds neither clarification nor new points to the table . Plus why is this so concerning you? If I used the word wrong, then I used it wrong. How about I use “very different”? I want to address a very simple point of yours, which is scaling and balancing are very very different.

21 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

It completely disables 3/4 of the boss's behavior. It's the definition of trivializing.

I said cheeses have their own balancing. If this cheese can do as much as the iceflingomatic cheese or less, then it’s not that cheesy after all.

23 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Do you know something I don't?

It’s my prediction. Even you can realize it’s too cheesy, it will get fixed, it just takes long.

16 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

The lureplant cheese has been known for years and has even been acknowledged by the devs, most cheese methods arnt even patched directly.

I agree. I think there will be workarounds. I think one simple one that I can think of is to allow fw to move freely in a larger area, so that He can cast spell while trapped, such as minion spell that heals him, and invincible spell. This will already allow Him to be unable to get killed.

[Faintly Macabre]

7 minutes ago, goatt said:

they concern two entirely different sets of entities and solves two entirely different problems.

How on god's green earth can you say that they involve entirely different sets of entities and entirely different problems after admitting one is a tool used for the other? My dude, my point is that your logic is broken. You're the one who made a (pointless and wrong) correction to someone else, "Then it's not a scaling problem, it's a balancing problem."

14 minutes ago, goatt said:

It’s my prediction. Even you can realize it’s too cheesy, it will get fixed, it just takes long.

I too often expect things to change that show absolutely no signs of doing so for years on end.

[goatt]

25 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

bruh

Congrats, you have successfully pointed out my bad English. It's like you try to focus on my typo rather than get my messages.

So let me clarify. The reason to choose cheeses isn't always because they are easier. Sometimes, people do prefer to fight legitimately, but they are just tired of the repeating of the same long fights, so they allow themselves to sit back and cheese. I'm one of them. I always defeat boss using my own fists when I'm poor in the game, but always use farms after I've beat them enough times.

 

1 minute ago, Faintly Macabre said:

"Then it's not a scaling problem, it's a balancing problem."

You said HP needs scaling because HP is too much even for pro solo-er. I said it's not too too much, because if it is, then it would be a balancing problem. Because "too much for pro" is a balancing issue. Therefore, it's not too much for solo pros, and hence, HP doesn't need balancing.

The whole sentence was "It feels like you are saying BQ is too hard or grindy in general compared to other bosses in solo. Then it's not a scaling problem, it's a balancing problem." I was saying, if BQ is really too hard, then it's a balancing problem. Please include the context.

11 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

How on god's green earth can you say that they involve entirely different sets of entities and entirely different problems after admitting one is a tool used for the other?

Here is a proof. This game doesn't scale HP according to the number of players, but it does balance. If scaling and balancing aren't entirely different, how can a game be able to balance without touching scaling?

12 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

I too often expect things to change that show absolutely no signs of doing so for years on end.

I said it was a prediction not to assert my point, but to show you that I have confidence. And I use my confidence to indicate that the bug that trivialize fw fight is real. I do not think what I predict will absolutely happen. My main paint is to show that this glitch should be fixed.

[Faintly Macabre]

33 minutes ago, goatt said:

You said HP needs scaling because HP is too much even for pro solo-er.

I said no such thing. I said the amount of HP they have makes them tedious to solo.

37 minutes ago, goatt said:

I said it's not too too much, because if it is, then it would be a balancing problem. Because "too much for pro" is a balancing issue. Therefore, it's not too much for solo pros, and hence, HP doesn't need balancing.

There's a sentence missing here or something, because nowhere in here do you explain how it's "not too much for solo pros". You just continue to misuse a word you don't seem to understand.

38 minutes ago, goatt said:

Please include the context.

The context didn't matter because bosses' HP is scaled with multiple players in mind, and scale is a tool for balancing.

41 minutes ago, goatt said:

Here is a proof. This game doesn't scale HP according to the number of players, but it does balance.

Single player Deerclops HP: 2000. DST HP: 4000. DS Moose: 3000. DST Moose: 6000. DS Dragonfly: 2750. DST Dragonfly: 27500. Their HP is scaled up for multiplayer.

44 minutes ago, goatt said:

If scaling and balancing aren't entirely different, how can a game be able to balance without touching scaling?

I am begging you to stop using the word entirely. A subset, a child of a thing cannot be entirely different from that thing. It just can't. I don't know for the life of me how I can get you to understand this. And stop complaining about me "not understanding your message," because you're the one who was trying to be pedantic in the first place.

[goatt]

9 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

I said no such thing. I said the amount of HP they have makes them tedious to solo.

Sorry, I thought you were someone else. But you did quote my reply to other people, in which you misunderstood the context. And context always matters.

24 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

nowhere in here do you explain how it's "not too much for solo pros".

Have you fought Bee Queen? It's possible to kill her within one day with simple strategies without cheese.

26 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

Single player Deerclops HP: 2000. DST HP: 4000. DS Moose: 3000. DST Moose: 6000. DS Dragonfly: 2750. DST Dragonfly: 27500. Their HP is scaled up for multiplayer.

Yes, it did "scale" up the HP. But "scale" up to how many players? 2 players? Scaling requires the number of players as input. This HP increase didn't consider the number of players, so it's a simple agnostic multiplayer balancing. Btw, dragonfly's massive HP increase is mainly due to her generous loot.

30 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

I am begging you to stop using the word entirely. A subset, a child of a thing cannot be entirely different from that thing. It just can't. I don't know for the life of me how I can get you to understand this. And stop complaining about me "not understanding your message," because you're the one who was trying to be pedantic in the first place.

So my English is bad, as I have admitted before. And I clarified the meaning behind my "entirely". And I explained my "entirely different" emphasizes on the the separation between two different concept. I said "How about very different". You don't seem to realize my well intention to prioritize communication with clarification, but remain keen on my English mistakes. I'm very frustrated, by my incapability to make you understand a simple idea, and by your incapability to understand my simple idea.

In this game, this particular HP scaling based on players is not the subset of this particular balancing regarding reward, cost and difficulty. Do not use HP scaling concept of other games in here. Here, HP scaling (specifically the one you concern, that is to scale according to the number of players) is not a subset of general balancing. This is the last time I repeat my own explanation. I'll not respond further on this topic unless you bring up new points.

[Capybara007]

health scaling would simply be an improvement over what we have now with bosses that get melted by groups that do nothing but hold f with an axe