[Suggestion] Enemies health or boss scaling according to number players

[Digi62BR]

As mentioned in the title, my suggestion is that the enemies' health increases according to the number of players or at least the boss's health...

As for the values, I'm not sure what to think if anyone wants an idea there.....

[Cassielu]

I think people have been asking for it for... probably six years.

It's best not to count on it.

[Evelo]

It's wanted, badly by so many people. Myself included as a solo player. Hopefully you are on PC so you can get mods otherwise, I am sorry.

[Owlrust]

No thanks. I wouldn't want to fight a Dragonfly with 45,000 health by myself just because there's some people on the other side of the map. Even if it applied to only those currently in the fight, how would that work? Just being in the area? What if someone just walked in, would the boss just get an automatic health increase?

It's a good idea on paper, and I understand why people want it, but unfortunately I've never seen an idea on how to implement it that wouldn't make it complete hell to deal with.

[Mysterious box]

In theory it makes the game more manageable when playing alone or with afew friends in practice your making the game a lot harder and more grindy to anything that isn't a friend group or solo play.

[SapoLover]

14 minutes ago, Owlrust said:

Even if it applied to only those currently in the fight, how would that work? Just being in the area? What if someone just walked in, would the boss just get an automatic health increase?

I think it could be implemented as armor. The more people near a boss, the less damage said boss will recieve. If someone is just walking around, the boss would gain damage reduction until that someone leaves the area.

It doesn't have to be a permanent change. It could be introduced as world setting (I don't know if that's possible), so people who play alone can have a better solo experience and people who play with many friends can experience a boss fight that doesn't end in less than 3 minutes.

I think my English in this comment is terrible, sorry for that.

 

[ADM]

I never liked the concept for a few reasons, one being that scaling the fights would only make fighting boss with friends more expensive than solo so I’d kinda never want anyone with me to fight them, if you fight by yourself you make and consume your equipment, if you bring friends, they have theirs, but especially for weapons you consume the same amount of durability from one to X players, it’s only an increased cost as for equipping everyone but the global consumption is "shared" sort of speak. If there’s a scaling element that make the boss have more health, you’d double that so much more, that won’t bring that much difficulty especially of you’d play well regardless of a boss HP and attack, but make everything way grindier as for inflicting DPS, and I don’t want Hambat to be the only viable weapon for such things. So yeah it’s really that I don’t think it’s a proper method for DST to work better with friends. There would be better scaling protocol and exclusive case to consider (Similar to how Klaus makes more Krampii with more players, this is more legit).

[maxwell_winters]

On paper, it sounds great but there are nuances. For example, you play in a group of 4. Why would you go kill a boss together and use way more resources if you can send only one or two players to kill the boss, wasting less resources? The time spent would be almost the same. This would kinda discourage killing bosses in bigger groups. 

[goblinball]

I like terraria’s boss HP scaling, however terraria and DST are completely different games, and boss hp scaling just does not work in DST.

[Faintly Macabre]

1 hour ago, Owlrust said:

No thanks. I wouldn't want to fight a Dragonfly with 45,000 health by myself just because there's some people on the other side of the map.

I think the idea is mostly for it to scale down or to scale up to where it is now from a lower number.

1 hour ago, Owlrust said:

Even if it applied to only those currently in the fight, how would that work? Just being in the area? What if someone just walked in, would the boss just get an automatic health increase?

Sure? Alternatively, instead of health scaling up or down, a modifier to damage taken could be applied depending on player targets in range. Heck, you could take it even further and increase loot drops as targets increase. There's a lot of ways this could be done. I don't think you guys are using your imagination much here.

[Copyafriend]

I think if scaling was implemented, it should be non linear. A 50% boost for a second player, 30% (to 180) for a third player 25% (205) for a forth Capping at 20% (225) more health per player and generally speaking making most bosses have slightly less health. Dragonfly with 20k instead of 27 (45000 health at 5 players) that way its still a benefit to bring more people, but the boss doesn’t get roflstomped nor is bringing only 1 person ideal. 
 

additionally i think it could work as a multiplier to their current health. If a player attacks it boosts the bosses health. So if you’re fighting with a friend and dragonfly is half dead at 15k health, your other friend josh starts fighting too, well then its current health will be boosted to its three person scaling proportionally. So it’ll still be at half health but have more health overall (from 15000 to 18000 in this example) but if a player dies the scaling could either revert itself or remain as a punishment for dying 

[Faintly Macabre]

36 minutes ago, maxwell_winters said:

On paper, it sounds great but there are nuances. For example, you play in a group of 4. Why would you go kill a boss together and use way more resources if you can send only one or two players to kill the boss, wasting less resources? The time spent would be almost the same. This would kinda discourage killing bosses in bigger groups. 

Unless it didn't? As Copyafriend just noted, this doesn't have to scale linearly. Also, more people could make it quicker than solo even if it was a linear increase for bosses with attacks that aren't very big AoEs if people resolve not to kite and just beat it to death, increasing uptime on attacking while multiple people soak up hits.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Owlrust said:

No thanks. I wouldn't want to fight a Dragonfly with 45,000 health by myself just because there's some people on the other side of the map. Even if it applied to only those currently in the fight, how would that work? Just being in the area? What if someone just walked in, would the boss just get an automatic health increase?

It's a good idea on paper, and I understand why people want it, but unfortunately I've never seen an idea on how to implement it that wouldn't make it complete hell to deal with.

You ever played Borderlands or well basically any online MMO RPG? It would work identical to that…

The cool thing about those other games is that it’s not just the health and damage they deal that scales, they also spawn in different variations, with new attacks, and (hopefully) better loot drops.

[Evelo]

2 hours ago, Owlrust said:

No thanks. I wouldn't want to fight a Dragonfly with 45,000 health by myself just because there's some people on the other side of the map. Even if it applied to only those currently in the fight, how would that work? Just being in the area? What if someone just walked in, would the boss just get an automatic health increase?

It's a good idea on paper, and I understand why people want it, but unfortunately I've never seen an idea on how to implement it that wouldn't make it complete hell to deal with.

Dragonfly already has 27,000 health. Which is an insane amount for a solo player, I dont think anyone is wanting more player to make it so the health goes up on a server, only the fewer players the lower the HP.
The main idea behind scaling (at least for me) is to make it so solo players can complete raid bosses within 1-2 days not 5-7 days. Toadstool solo isn't difficult just slow and boring because he is a damage sponge.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

except for misery toad and some gem combinations on ck i dont see any problem with boss hp

some solo players want reduced hp to get the entire boss loot for a cheap price while being many players will mean a higher resource consumption just to get a portion of the boss loot in the best scenario which makes little sense, breaks the inmersion (why the boss is stronger in some situations and weaker in others) and there is no need for that imo. Why would people some strategies like minion armies, fire, darts, aiming for better weapons like morning star, etc if the boss can easily be beaten even with little experience with a couple of log suits, few healing and tanking until the boss falls few minutes later? and imagine characters with high damage like warly, wanda or wolf... they already cut by a minimum of half the hp of bosses

DS SP and specially hamlet showed how ridiculous are optional bosses (you fight when you are ready and leave when you cant win) with low hp are

what the game needs is the removal of silly mechanics like DF stun or 1st CC's phase being locked in their defensive form that makes the fight a press F fest when there are more people, which are ridiculous mechanics that makes the fight way easier the more people are dealing damage, and needs more enemies with aoe atacks and multiple targeting like klaus, the twins of terror or 2nd and 3rd phase of CC

if someone wants to reduce the hp from bosses is as simple as using the portal because [spoiler alert] is one of the uses for it

[Evelo]

54 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

-Snippity snip-

Yknow I hadn't considered any of that. I tend to play the game with the Automatic Health Adjust mod just to find more enjoyment from the game. Reading your post actually inspired me to turn it off. Maybe the bump in difficulty due to having to scavange for more resources will make me find it more appealing and in turn actually get me to build a megabase instead of getting kind of bored with the world after 300 days just resource gathering. Oh now I am excited.

[Faintly Macabre]

People really badly misuse the idea of immersion. There is nothing significantly immersion-breaking about boss durability scaling with players, and even if there were, it'd be one of the most minor blows to immersion there is in this game. Two people can play the same character in a single server. Immersion! People from the 19-aughts make modern pop culture references. Immersion! You swing spears like axes. Immersion! This is a silly, cartoony top-down survival/sandbox game and there is not a moment where you're not acutely aware of that fact. It turns out that things that follow logical, in-universe rationale don't always make for a great game.

And tuning bosses down to be more reasonable for solo players does not have to kill creative strategies. Tuning could be done in a way that doesn't completely trivialize challenges -- there's a whole lot of ground between 2000 HP and 20000 HP. What if instead of 30 bunny hutches, you only had to build 16 or so? You really think you're just as well off with swords and armor at that point? Is 16 bunny hutches a laughable amount of work, and 30 is somehow more inherently reasonable and satisfying?

As for loot disparity, I personally think that loot should scale up for more players to help alleviate that. I do think that when it comes to boss loot, the more people you have, the less fun everybody gets to have. So this isn't even solely a solo-player issue.

P.S.: You know what really hinders immersion for me? Switching through and playing characters I don't want to play just to stack their various tools and talents to make a task as fundamental as boss killing less unbearably tedious.

[ALCRD]

3 hours ago, goblinball said:

I like terraria’s boss HP scaling, however terraria and DST are completely different games, and boss hp scaling just does not work in DST.

Terraria's boss HP doesn't really "scale" per se it just depends on what world difficulty you picked.

Tho that could work as a Worldgen settings in terms of boss HP like "Default" (no changes) , "Classic" (Boss HP scaled closer to how much HP bosses usually have in solo DS)

(Pubs would be set as "Default" obviously)

But honestly i am indifferent to this idea.

[HowlVoid]

It's not hard, tune the mechanics to accommodate more players, not the HP. Give every boss the same tunning as Klaus. 

This means: more or less spores/mush trees for toad

More or less larva spawned

More or less grumbles (During phase 1 you kill all but 1 and during other phases you outrun them so meh. Maybe decrease time between a new wave of grumbles spawned)

Less frequent healing for Crabking or takes longer for pincers to spawn

Less woven shadows spawned by FW

Etc etc. These mechanics would be tuned to depending on how many players are within the bosses' "arena". If someone joins in the mechanics would be tuned to require more people to accommodate the increase in DPS but HP would stay as it is now. If one player has to deal with easier mechanics they'll be doing more damage anyways.

[Guille6785]

I personally enjoy the guarantee that 2 wilsons will kill a boss twice as fast as 1 wilson, it's simple to plan around and if boss hp scaling were implemented I highly doubt that there wouldn't be situations in which fighting with less people would actually end up being more efficient than with more, which would be vastly unintuitive and contradictory to the concept of teamplay and coordination

Real world example where I'd find scaling to be really annoying: if you were to do a wigfrid + wolfgang duo where the wigfrid makes spears for both, you'd be dealing dps roughly equivalent to a single wolfgang with a dark sword (not counting situational aggro/multitasking advantages from having 2 players for simplicity). If having a 2nd player increased the bosses' hp to 150% like someone above suggested, which would be the same as the boss having 66% damage resistance, that dps would be brought down to only slightly higher than a single wolfgang with a battle spear, so at that point the wigfrid in the duo would be better off not fighting and instead doing something else in the meantime while the wolfgang uses her gear to kill the boss by himself, which like I said is counterintuitive and basically ruins the point of synergies like this one

I also don't agree that bosses take too long solo, with fairly standard gear for the seasons that you fight them every boss can be killed as wilson in 2.5 days or less, even toadstool can be killed that fast with 2 morning stars and a few torches while it's wet and dfly only takes about 8 minutes with barely any gear; while I would like to see minor updates to bosses like bee queen/crab king for them to be more fun for solo I personally don't care if they're made shorter

That said, imo a good indirect way of making bosses feel more fair to solo players who think they're too long without damage multipliers or character specific items would be to make extra damage somewhat more accessible (because if higher damage potential is available to all characters then all bossfights would be potentially shorter as an indirect result), an interesting suggestion that I saw recently was that the thulecite suit and crown could increase the likelihood of shadow tentacles spawning from the thulecite club

[HowlVoid]

12 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

I personally enjoy the guarantee that 2 wilsons will kill a boss twice as fast as 1 wilson, it's simple to plan around and if boss hp scaling were implemented I highly doubt that there wouldn't be situations in which fighting with less people would actually end up being more efficient than with more, which would be vastly unintuitive and contradictory to the concept of teamplay and coordination

Real world example where I'd find scaling to be really annoying: if you were to do a wigfrid + wolfgang duo where the wigfrid makes spears for both, you'd be dealing dps roughly equivalent to a single wolfgang with a dark sword (not counting situational aggro/multitasking advantages from having 2 players for simplicity). If having a 2nd player increased the bosses' hp to 150% like someone above suggested, which would be the same as the boss having 66% damage resistance, that dps would be brought down to only slightly higher than a single wolfgang with a battle spear, so at that point the wigfrid in the duo would be better off not fighting and instead doing something else in the meantime while the wolfgang uses her gear to kill the boss by himself, which like I said is counterintuitive and basically ruins the point of synergies like this one

I also don't agree that bosses take too long solo, with fairly standard gear for the seasons that you fight them every boss can be killed as wilson in 2.5 days or less, even toadstool can be killed that fast with 2 morning stars and a few torches while it's wet and dfly only takes about 8 minutes with barely any gear; while I would like to see minor updates to bosses like bee queen/crab king for them to be more fun for solo I personally don't care if they're made shorter

That said, imo a good indirect way of making bosses feel more fair to solo players who think they're too long without damage multipliers or character specific items would be to make extra damage somewhat more accessible (because if higher damage potential is available to all characters then all bossfights would be potentially shorter as an indirect result), an interesting suggestion that I saw recently was that the thulecite suit and crown could increase the likelihood of shadow tentacles spawning from the thulecite club

[Bumber64]

Don't we already have this thread?

[Guille6785]

12 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

ok im grounding you again

[Evelo]

1 hour ago, HowlVoid said:

Less woven shadows spawned by FW

Just this alone having scaling would actually encourage me to fight FW again.

I did it once with health adjust and even then it was hell. Blew through so many Weather Pains. That or reducing the amount of health healed per just flat would be nice. FW is such a stressful fight as a solo player compared to any other fight.

[Faintly Macabre]

1 hour ago, Evelo said:

Just this alone having scaling would actually encourage me to fight FW again.

I did it once with health adjust and even then it was hell. Blew through so many Weather Pains. That or reducing the amount of health healed per just flat would be nice. FW is such a stressful fight as a solo player compared to any other fight.

Assuming this isn't already where you're coming from, you should try it on a controller. Fun.