Combat/boss overhaul

[Frosty_Mentos]

Semi-controversial topics.

Topic 1: Changing the current mechanics of fighting and general boss fight pattern or new fighting mechanic changes to be more fun or slightly less cheesable. New forms similar to Misery Toad for greater and more riskier rewards.

Topic 2: Change character fighting to have new moves, with cooldowns and generally new ways of doing damage, adding sort of flavor to battles while keeping most magic items unchanged while being well effective what they do.

[Well-met]

Misery Toad isn't very good design though.

And Forge mechanics should stay in Forge, there's really not that much wrong with combat purely built around kiting.

[Frosty_Mentos]

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

Misery Toad isn't very good design though.

I know but I mean as if we can have misery toadstool reimagined and reworked while adding new kinds of versions to other bosses.

[Rylanor]

I don't think combat system itself need overhaul right now, but most boss fights do. Like, how you even supposed to fight Bee Queen without simply tanking or cheesing the 75% of the fight? Bosses like Bee Queen or Toadstool simply pale in comparison to Dragon Fly or Klaus. Recipe for perfect boss is kinda simple, make it centered around 1 player doing  main kiting and additional players assist by neutralizing boss special attacks (freezing/igniting deers in Klaus fight, freezing/distracting larvae, etc.) and if no dangers are present help main fighter with damage. While for example Toadstool already utilize such design too, chopping is boring and fight itself stops for a minute, in already long and tedious fight.

[Evelo]

Every time I play with my friend he complains about the combat in this game. It is really as simple as dodge and hold/press F. While I don't mind it, it is an extremely simple design that some people dislike.
Combat for me personally has never been the appeal of the game, it's the art style, exploration, and survival aspects that keep me coming back.

[Frosty_Mentos]

1 minute ago, Evelo said:

Every time I play with my friend he complains about the combat in this game. It is really as simple as dodge and hold/press F. While I don't mind it, it is an extremely simple design that some people dislike.
Combat for me personally has never been the appeal of the game, it's the art style, exploration, and survival aspects that keep me coming back.

The combat is mostly fine, but there's a bit of lack of skill expression when you just have to walk back and forth to do attacks and dodge the attacks is all. I just think the game could have a bit of flavor to combat.

[Evelo]

18 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

The combat is mostly fine, but there's a bit of lack of skill expression when you just have to walk back and forth to do attacks and dodge the attacks is all. I just think the game could have a bit of flavor to combat.

I don't follow? Most fights are just that, with a few exceptions being some raid fights.
Bee Queen, Smack until Grumble Bees return, run away to isolate bee queen from grumble bees, smack repeat. Screech Phase starts, wait for screech, run count to 6 run through grumbles back to BQ smack till Bees return, repeat.
Toadstool, Smack and dodge mushrooms, run out with spore, chop trees repeat.
Celestial Champion and Fuelweaver seem to be the only exceptions. with CC you have to stand in a specific place to dodge the lasers in phase 3 but phase 1 and 2 are smack run away smack.
FW is entirely unique and quite the challenge which is welcome compared to other fights.
Oh yea and Crabking which is interesting in having to deal with freezing and boat healing.

Most of the time at least with hoard mobs it is 95% kiting to get an opening to smack once and eventually whittle the hoard down.

I'm not saying it's bad, it just doesn't have that much depth to it.

[lowercase skye]

1 hour ago, Evelo said:

Every time I play with my friend he complains about the combat in this game. It is really as simple as dodge and hold/press F. While I don't mind it, it is an extremely simple design that some people dislike.

Yeah I'm one of those people, until Return of Them started there was barely any DST-exclusive content I actually enjoyed, because the focus had shifted so much to combat and bosses during ANR and so almost no content was for me. I get through it nowadays with beefalo tanking or the alarming clock or Abigail or Bernie, but most any fight that I have to do without friends is worth a groan from me. Overhauling combat is risky because it's either going to cause a complete flip from "this is annoying" to "this is actually really fun!", or it's going to simply feel like the same thing but way more involved and thus way MORE annoying and maybe the methods I use to mostly skip past it no longer work with that more involved system. It's tricky.

[Cheggf]

There's nothing wrong with the combat system. People just never learned how to use it, instead learning how to avoid it as much as possible. If you fight groups of enemies or bosses like Bee Queen, Klaus, Toadstool, and Ancient Fuelweaver the combat system is fun, interactive, and decently complex.

[Porkus]

2 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

The combat is mostly fine, but there's a bit of lack of skill expression when you just have to walk back and forth to do attacks and dodge the attacks is all. I just think the game could have a bit of flavor to combat.

Sounds like a skill issue to me

[Gashzer]

Just wait for Klei's new brawler dungeon crawler game for enhanced combat, Rotwood 

[Mysterious box]

Personally I'm in the combat overhaul camp simply because the game isn't designed to handle the additional and increasingly powerful combat methods we have it would allow for more interesting boss and mob fights as well.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i love that is simple but punishing. People underrates how fun is the stunlock mechanic and the high damage from enemies+equipment having durability

other games has more "complex" combat (more like simple action rpg combat) but are way more boring because dont have mechanics like the DS stunlock and there is barely a punish for no performing well the fights

edit: and i love that you can use followers and the many little tricks that the mechanics and perks bring to the fight like willow being near of a tree on fire for crowd control, using magic staves or weather pains, timing the casting time for the pan flute, etc

i wish klei adds more tools rather than adding ARPG mechanics

[Kur0u]

I'd rather have a weapons overhaul, things get stale fighting with the same flint on a stick over and over, and then you spice things up with a flint on a stick that decreases your sanity.

[Cloakingsumo198]

Dst's combat sucks it hasn't evolved since the single player iteration yet is an integral part of progression.

Just like the farming and crafting ui changes people are extremely against any changes just because they are used to what we have already.

Spoiler

Forge did so well because it fixed so many problems that regular combat has.

Ranged attacks drew less agro and couldn't stunlock melee enemies as hard but was consistent dps otherwise

Melee weapons had movement abilities built into them that could cause short stuns to allow repositioning on top of forcing aggro

Magic items had powerful AoE effects and actual long lasting stuns that could allow solo targeting.

It also made all items have no durability, all those abilities had cooldowns and you had no inventory which meant you could only carry one weapon at a time which regular dst doesn't have and trying to make that "work" in a survival sandbox setting would need some tweaking.

Still all those changes helped make each individual feel more impactful in combat and made their actions matter more since having your most important ability on cooldown during a crucial moment or getting all your petrified mobs broken immediately meant surviving until you can turn the tide.

 

[. . .]

The combat in DST is very boring it's basically hold F and one movement key and that's it. Games like Minecraft which the combat is basically just clicking still feels more fun and engaging to me than DST

The biggest problem for me with DST is combat is there's no variety to how you fight all weapons are pretty much the same except dealing more or less damage and all you can do in a fight is move back and forth, that just doesn't feel engaging especially after playing for thousands of hours.

Personally, for me to find combat engaging and not boring there would have to be..

• some weapons having a unique attack attack to them which isn't over the top like the forge but still is enough to feel special. for example hammers/hambat/clubs could have a slow heavy blow to knockback entities, spears could be thrown and their default attack would be like actually thrusting with the spear instead of bashing enemies with it, swords could have a slash attack which deals a little aoe damage 1-2 more entities near your attack, ect.
• proper ranged weapon (preferably a bow and arrow then feathers could be more useful) which requires manual aiming and doesn't have aimbot
• sprinting to allow variety in moving around in a fight (gives like a 25% speed bonus and drains your hunger at a faster rate while sprinting)
• some sort of dodge/roll/evade action which has a brief amount of invincibility (like .1 or .25 seconds)
• shields then players can actually try fighting several enemies at once without getting locked in hitstun (like damn frogs)

 

also, some bosses definitely need a new attack or two. like the deerclops doesn't even feel like a boss when all he does is slam the ground every 3 seconds. should have an attack like blowing some cool frosty breath clouds which freezes things inside them, a laser beam which freezes things, grabbing trees and hurling them at you, ect.

[Hornete]

I'm not really interested in combat getting any kind of overhaul because to me the simplistic nature fits with the kind of game DS/T is, Forge was very fun but I just don't think what Forge did fits with Vanilla. I think a lot of the melee weapons in the game are fine as is and the small differences between each make most worth using in different scenarios. Wishing for a trident buff still though!

I more so like it when enemies require the player to play around with their tools a bit more uniquely, RoT has had fairly unique enemies with multitudes of ways to combat them even though the combat system on the players side wasn't touched at all. 

Trap combat is sick as hell! Elephant cacti and Anenemies have been some of my favourite pieces of content to play with, setting up traps really feels in-line with the survival theme of the game and I'd love to see more focus on more traps. I was hoping Walter would have had some focus on unique utility traps being a Boy Scout, unfortunately he only got the tent craft being his only actual Scout-relating item.

All-in-all I just dont think combat is something that DS/T is all about, or should be all about(Funny to think the original design of the game was that combat was meant to be a last ditch effort, quite a long ways we've come!), and so I enjoy the fairly simplistic nature of the system we have now. Just goes to show we're a bunch of survivors trying to make our way in the world with rudimentary tools while taking advantage of the environment around us, which I pleasantly enjoy.

[Just-guy]

7 minutes ago, . . . said:

sprinting to allow variety in moving around in a fight (gives like a 25% speed bonus

You can already do that by simply changing between the Walking Cane and a weapon.

[Capybara007]

with the simple mechanics of dst the combat could be a great thing, the bosses and enemies need changes, but i dont want a totally out of place mechanic like a parry or a dodge roll

[Mysterious box]

The main issue I have with the combat system is that the game isn't built in a way that supports it beyond run up smack and run away that's the main style of combat in the game but it's not the only combat method the game in it's current state is not designed to handle followers, ranged combat, or magic they're just extremely powerful or underpowered and it's just accepted to be ok I feel like if the game was balanced around the potiental for all combat methods it would feel much better.

[Evelo]

I think the major issue with combat, at least in multiplayer settings, is the lag. Even I struggle to kite something as simple as a pack of regular spiders and have died because of the lag in the game. After reading through some of the comments the use of swapping in and out of weapons and cane different boss fights makes the simplicity enjoyable, to some extent. However comparing DST with the Alone mod and DST with natural lag it makes fighting so much less enjoyable.
Perhaps the solution isn't changing combat (or maybe it does need it, idk im fine with it personally I just want my friend to enjoy it) is fixing the over all lag. I wonder why Terraria has minimal lag compared to DST.

[. . .]

2 hours ago, Just-guy said:

You can already do that by simply changing between the Walking Cane and a weapon.

You're right. It should be a 50% speed bonus, 2x hunger drain, have a unique animation, and allow preforming a dash attack to set it apart not to mention best of all it does not need any tool to be done so you can just hold your weapon the entire time.

[Spirit Glow]

3 hours ago, Hornete said:

Trap combat is sick as hell!

LMAO! I don't mean to laugh at your enjoyment of traps but this is hardly what comes to mind when i think of combat.

 

Im all for traps being a viable way to kill enemies but that can still exist while making combat more interesting for players.

[MondayNight]

Bulk player-base en large hardly learns kiting patterns - usually most people just sit there, taking it like a champ tanking like a Wigfrid-main. If anything Forge showed, that's bulk players were quite bad even in those short, recurring 8-10 minutes play sessions. If I recall well, only ~2% of all those many thousands of players running around in Pugna's arena actually reached the end, beating its champions (KLei published some statistics when Forge 1 came to a close). On-and-on-and-on going at the same 8 minutes routine and still not managing to learn. Now extrapolate such complex fighting mechanics in Survival worlds, where casuals need to also brave the darkness, hunger, sanity, hostiles, temperatures etc - in cumulative manner. I reckon end result will be even more disappointing, with DST drop-rates way higher than present. And don't forget the sweet Dunning-Kruger effect where vast mass of low-skilled people over-estimate their performance, even demanding harder conditions for a complete hilarity of all these shenanigans. My pov is DST fighting mechanic should remain as-is, simple in appearance but rather complex through the sheer mass of foes and their combat particularities.

[Spirit Glow]

1 hour ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

If I recall well, only ~2% of all those many thousands of players running around in Pugna's arena actually reached the end

Do you happen to have link on where this info exists? I can't seem to find this specific statistic you mention.