An analysis of boss health scaling (and a possible solution to the debate)

[Cheggf]

51 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

did you even read the post

No I specifically searched for the phrase "effectively punishes players". It's the only phrase I ever read.

[Guille6785]

27 minutes ago, PetulantPansy said:

Playing alone means you accumulate resources at a slower pace too. How unfair! Should we give all players who choose to play DST solo wolfgang/maxwell/woodie resource gathering capabilities too?

we already have that, it's called pigs/forest stalker/deerclops/bearger

I genuinely don't understand the point you're making

[Cheggf]

13 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

we already have that, it's called pigs/forest stalker/deerclops/bearger

I genuinely don't understand the point you're making

Just like we already have the Celestial Portal, catapults, vgcf, mobs like bunnymen, and plenty of other ways to boost your damage. How come with damage you ignore everything and want to add a Dark Souls mechanic (because there aren't already enough damage boosts) but when it comes to gathering suddenly you bring up the existence of viable alternatives?

[HowlVoid]

21 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Just like we already have the Celestial Portal, catapults, vgcf, mobs like bunnymen, and plenty of other ways to boost your damage. How come with damage you ignore everything and want to add a Dark Souls mechanic (because there aren't already enough damage boosts) but when it comes to gathering suddenly you bring up the existence of viable alternatives?

Those are a lot more limited in practice, time, or gated behind a character. Furthermore the varnishes are meant to make combat more engaging which consistently seems to go over people's heads. It's meant to be a choice for normal noncombat characters to approach combat in a smooth and reliable manner that doesn't melt the boss in 2 seconds. They add very little if a person is already taking advantage of other ways to add damage to themselves.

Not wanting to use another character is a valid choice a player can decide to chose. While Klei shouldn't pander to any one kind of player, even those who decide not to engage in a mechanic, it doesn't mean we don't exist. Irregardless let's look at how they're limited:

Celestial orb: Which may take 60 days to spawn or longer.

Catapults: Don't add much to the fights, they simply melt the bosses health. 

Spices: Tied to the orb or locating the lunar island. These are similar to varnishes but may require constant switching and more investment for the veggies. They're stronger so it makes sense.

Mobs: Die extremely quickly to bosses with AOE and have the same problem as catapults; they're boss melters when they work. Not at all an engaging fight.

We have many long term investments that provide huge returns. We don't have short term low requirement investments that are meant to be used in small bursts.

I hope you have actual useful critiques than your constant unhelpful sarcastic remarks. I implore you to use something called "critical thinking", maybe you've heard of it? If not, Google is your friend.

[Guille6785]

16 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Just like we already have the Celestial Portal, catapults, vgcf, mobs like bunnymen, and plenty of other ways to boost your damage.

in the post I addressed exactly that these mechanics either need the player to choose a character that they may not want to play or require trivializing (cheesing) aspects of the fight like when using minions or catapults, this doesn't go against anything I said

16 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

(because there aren't already enough damage boosts)

if you ignore things that require you to play specific characters and ignore cheesy methods the game has a whopping 0 ways to increase your damage on top of the weapon damage, yep we absolutely have enough lol

16 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

but when it comes to gathering suddenly you bring up the existence of viable alternatives?

because said viable alternatives accomplish exactly the same purpose as my suggestion: they're available to every single character, most of them are accessible almost from the start (with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on how well you set them up), they don't require cheaty methods that feel like you're doing something the developers don't want you to do, etc.

 

but you're probably gonna ignore all that and just keep saying CELESTIAL PORTAL CELESTIAL PORTAL and ignore all the benefits of a proper way to increase your damage without being forced to do something you don't want to

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, PetulantPansy said:

The game is called Don't Starve *TOGETHER*.

I don't understand why the devs should spend time making the game a better single player experience. That would more or less defeats the purpose for DST to even exist in the first place. There are so many other interesting things that they could work on. 

This is also a slippery slope. Playing alone means you accumulate resources at a slower pace too. How unfair! Should we give all players who choose to play DST solo wolfgang/maxwell/woodie resource gathering capabilities too? Or just give them a permanent construction amulet...

Don't forget to varnish my pickaxe/axe too lmao

is called whatever, the truth is that there are a lot of solo players. You can check stadistics and compare the ratio players/servers

i agree that fighting bosses solo isnt that big of a deal when you can all the resources from a MP world for yourself (curious how people never ask for a balance of the ammount of starting resources, tells a lot) and that you get 100% of the loot for yourself so scaling makes little sense

[Cheggf]

If you ignore character specific options and minions (minions are cheese plus I don't want to use them) then there are a whopping zero ways to gather faster. What am I supposed to do if I want to gather faster but don't want to actually do any of the things to make me gather faster? Better go make a forum post. It's my only option.

[HowlVoid]

2 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

If you ignore character specific options and minions (minions are cheese) then there are a whopping zero ways to gather faster. What am I supposed to do if I want to gather faster but don't want to actually do any of the things to make me gather faster? Better go make a forum post. It's my only option.

You can gather faster using lureplants (wicker not needed), bearger, a magi, and any other speed granting item.

Nice deflect by the way, don't address any points and follow up with a sarcastic remark. 

If one is to not make a post with a suggestions that was meant to be a fun discussion than what? Are we not allowed to talk about anything that chefegg doesn't agree with? Would you like us to dm you for permission before we make a post.

It's tiring, it's really tiring when people like you come to a post with ill intent. Come to the post close minded with 0 intent to discuss in good faith. 

 

[Cloakingsumo198]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

Just like we already have the Celestial Portal, catapults, vgcf, mobs like bunnymen, and plenty of other ways to boost your damage.

2 of those things doesn't increase player damage and the point of the post is to avoid combat characters capabilities.

Come on egg boy you can at least try to read a little.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, HowlVoid said:

If one is to not make a post with a suggestions that was meant to be a fun discussion than what? Are we not allowed to talk about anything that chefegg doesn't agree with? Would you like us to dm you for permission before we make a post.

imagine taking him serious after all this time

remember, bees can beat every enemy in the game and end is nigh has uses

[JoeW]

Adding a message here since I am not going to hide posts. 

If you don't like somebody else's posts, put them on ignore and move on. Personal attacks do nothing but derail threads and disrupt conversation. I don't care if you think somebody is trolling, or if you think their opinion is just crap. Just move on. You're wasting your time, readers time and our time with these little arguments over a video game. 

If it's not polite, and on topic - don't post. Thanks.  

[Spep]

Personally, the real problem with raid bosses is less the raw healthpool and more the cooldowns on certain abilities, while in multiplayer you can deal with say, toadstools mushtrees or bee queens minions relatively easy, they become exponentially more painful to handle in singleplayer, have fun getting your damage in when toadstools DR is going to go into the roof again in 10 seconds!

[DVGMedia]

On 10/17/2022 at 7:28 PM, Spep said:

Personally, the real problem with raid bosses is less the raw healthpool and more the cooldowns on certain abilities, while in multiplayer you can deal with say, toadstools mushtrees or bee queens minions relatively easy, they become exponentially more painful to handle in singleplayer, have fun getting your damage in when toadstools DR is going to go into the roof again in 10 seconds!

This is kind of why theres different ways to approach these fights in single player. of course though trying to do them solo as a first time thing is always going to be rough. Like solo toadstool looks much different than multiplayer toadstool
You can do it the multilplayer way by having a butt ton of weather pains sleep and ice staffs or even build an arena for it with the flingo  star staff combo.

or you can also just ignore the trees by burning them yeah they will spawn spore clouds but  with that extra speed toad has you can trap him behind the eel ponds and do lots more damage that way.
without needing as much supplies.

or like how solo beequeen has many ways to fight it be it ai manipulation with fences and gates or running away and chipping at her health pool slowly over time.
you could also even do arena status with flingos to somewhat affect how the grumbles work in the fight.

you just got to think out of the box

ps.. anyone remember when toadstool had 100k hp and had a 5 minute timer?
 

[hhh2]

On 10/17/2022 at 9:41 PM, JoeW said:

Adding a message here since I am not going to hide posts. 

If you don't like somebody else's posts, put them on ignore and move on. Personal attacks do nothing but derail threads and disrupt conversation. I don't care if you think somebody is trolling, or if you think their opinion is just crap. Just move on. You're wasting your time, readers time and our time with these little arguments over a video game. 

If it's not polite, and on topic - don't post. Thanks.  

Joe, this is popular debate. It's always like this, and I'm sure you know. It's as human as thought. Doesn't matter where it happens online, give the people a platform and it's inevitable. It's all born from passion, and that's beautiful in it's own way, don't you think?

[Spino43]

1 hour ago, hhh2 said:

Joe, this is popular debate. It's always like this, and I'm sure you know. It's as human as thought. Doesn't matter where it happens online, give the people a platform and it's inevitable. It's all born from passion, and that's beautiful in it's own way, don't you think?

Explosions are also beautiful but if you stand near it you become bloody mess.

Yes, we tend to derail the threads sometimes, but that does not mean we should always do it.

Moderation exists for a reason.

 

5 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

ps.. anyone remember when toadstool had 100k hp and had a 5 minute timer?
 

Assume that you hit twice with a dark sword means 134hp per second.

300 seconds mean you deal 40200 damage, which is nowhere near toad's insane hp.

Heck, not even wolfgang with 2x can kill it in time.

And that's not accounting for the time you spend chopping caps. Oof.

P.p.s please bring this back, it's hilarious

[DVGMedia]

1 hour ago, Spino43 said:

 

the interesting thing about that previous time based toad fight was that toad would get a damage vulnerability while he was spawning the trees which made the fight way more manageable but still the same strats applied where you have him walk away from the center arena and whack him as much as possible. before the tree phase occured
and I think the trees didn't add damage reduction back then?
They would just increase the toads damage speed and number of boomshrooms they spawned.
was it 150k hp back then?
it shows that on some of the comments for that video.  I didn't really get the chance to play with toadstool until he was changed.

[Gashzer]

Raid bosses are meant to be hard, plus minions (bunnymen) help so much for both bee queen and pearl crab king. The game already gives you ways to make the bosses easier.

Minions are definitely not cheese, you are rewarded for the grind to set them up. Thats like saying making dark swords, thulecite crowns and healing food is also cheesing or wolfgangs double damage is cheesing. 

If you can't kill all bosses fisting only as wes with no weapons you are clearly cheesing....

I get massive satifaction/payoff feeling when i raise a bunnyman or merm guard army to destroy bee queen. Makes the grind to build the army worth it.

The real cheese is people using the indestructable fossil fragments or statues to block mobs, or abusing dsts bad pathfinding for bee queens grumble bees ( they should just fly over all walls and fences like they arnt there) or blocking mobs with other mobs.... anything that just breaks immersions.

Having an army of minion destroying bosses doesnt break immersion, it makes sense.

[00petar00]

The only reason that can justify bosses not having any health scaling is that if you play solo, you get to keep all the loot but i believe that it should be easier for solo players.

I've noticed that there are health scaling mods and i used it once and the bosses were too easy to solo and i felt like i didn't need to put in that much effort and i stopped using the mod.

I still don't think that it is a good idea to have bosses that have mechanics and high health that is difficult to overcome as a solo player.

I am the type of player that always goes for efficiency, so i practice a boss fight until i can kill the boss without taking a hit or minimal damage so i don't waste too many resources and i just try to switch to Winona and Warly so i can get the advantages of these characters and kill bosses more efficiently once i have catapults and food bundled so i can kill bosses on respawn with minimal effort over a longer period of time like dragonfly (gems) and bee queen (healing). I also need to kill Fuelweaver and Celestial Champion when i can as their loot is very useful for any player.

If you play the game long enough, you'll reach a point where bosses aren't a problem to you even if you don't use catapults or switch characters, that was never the point as i used to start new worlds just to practice runs, i realized that i prefer playing long term worlds and building up a big base, otherwise i wouldn't play the game as much.

The issue is that it isn't really that interesting of a fight when even if you have 2 people fighting a boss the fight is just so different and so much easier compared to playing solo. Not every character needs the boss drop and it is much easier to kill all the bosses the more players you have and 2-3 players is good enough that you don't compete for items or even if you do, it is okay as it is much easier to rush bosses and you don't have to focus as much or use as much of healing/sanity food while you just wait for them to respawn for the other person to get the drops as you can really kill all the bosses much easier.

[ALCRD]

I mean they added 35% damage reduction in World options.

Might aswell just go full out and add a -35% boss hp option too 

[Yuuko]

5 hours ago, Gashzer said:

The real cheese is people using the indestructable fragments...

tbh - trying to label what is "cheese" or not is just your own preference.  Its one of the worst arguments to get into.  Unless you're actually glitching, ie exploiting bugs, it should be free game.  One of the primary focuses on games like DST is your resourcefulness.  Utilizing the world for what it is.  The reason we do things like character swaps, or specific combos are ways in which we utilize the world.  Deciding to use dark swords, glass cutters, hambats etc is all about choosing how to use the game we're given.  Do you walk a boss through a forest to gather logs?  Do you run hounds to beefalo?  Look at the map boarders to find lunar island?  Use Wicker's new books?  All cheese.

One of the dumbest changes Klei ever did was decide "people using the bag to fight Klaus are cheating lets make this something he just walks through" even though Klaus demolishes trees and other objects he passes through...  so dumb.  Why? was blocking his charge with this really so bad? b queen oven was fun to set up, and for people who didn't like it - they just don't do it !  Better to leave the game in a FUN state with plenty of options then removing things b/c you don't like "cheese."  The game is only worse for these type of patches.

Back to topic I remain entirely unconvinced.  I don't think health totals are the problems at all.  They are raid bosses, they should have more health.  The problem is mechanics that prevent a player from actually engaging the fight and patches to push out their creative answers limiting the fight to a simple swing of a weapon (the least interesting method.)

What these bosses need is a rework to give them mechanics that make the fight engaging and interesting.  We need a world with challenges, and ways to answer that challenge.  The real culprit is just bad design for the bosses and Klei's recent decision to try and balance stuff like we're playing Smash Bro's...

[Pig Princess]

I also would like to share my thoughts about ways of hp scaling and possible combat additions.

I agree about fighting with 1x damage modifier being too repetitive and in some cases too grindy (Toadstool being primary example). That being said, I don't find fights boring in most cases (to the point of choosing cheesing), although some of them if not all could benefit from additional effects that player - especially if solo - could use to one's advantage, and some bosses could use tweaks on design level for their attacks and ways to avoid them to not feel so repetitive (Toadstool and misery version, Dragonfly outside of spawning larvae periods (which is very brief period compared to duration of whole fight), Twins of Terror - including more pronounced difference between Spazmatism and Retinizor).

However, reverse scaling doesn't boil down to increase of player's damage per hit directly, and in a way it already exists. Why does Klaus fight feel fair and of normal length to solo 1x character, but pre-rework Ancient Guardian felt like eternity of torture by boredom, despite latter having 33% less hp? Why does Toadstool feel so grindy and/or long, yet Celestial Champion doesn't, despite latter having similar hp pool? Personally, I didn't notice Deerclops fight becoming longer in DST compared to DS either despite DST version having 2x hp. I think the reason in all those cases is amount of time player can deal damage to boss compared to time spent to avoid attacks. In examples above during Klaus fight it's 8-14 attacks between relatively long periods that player spends dodging gem deer spells, but in case pre-rework Ancient Guardian it was only 1-2 hits before player had to run away (3-4 hits before stunlock changes, 5 wasn't consistent). One have huge periods of increased boss defense in case Toadstool, but in case Celestial Champion one can get up to 10 hits in 1st phase and 20ish in 2nd before lengthy break should be taken to avoid damage; 3rd phase is diversified by variety of boss attacks and a lot of clever repositioning to make CC break it's own crystals, so it doesn't feel repetitive, at least for me (actually in case Toadstool even for 3 players without buffs to chopping there is barely any time to deal 100% damage, and for solo 1x damage modifier player it's pure misery since increased defense of boss can be only countered with weather pain grind or burning irl sanity while bringing all those glass axes (multiple trips or lots of bundle wraps required to even bring equipment!) and endlessly chopping while endlessly spamming panflutes/ice staves). Deerclops in DS allows to hit him 2 times without taking damage, in DST it was 3-4 times before his attacks were made directional, which essentially brought his effective hp (in terms of fight length and sanity drained) to DS level for solo player; now it's 5-6 hits if player kites in circle with recent changes, so fight is even shorter (dealing 5-6 hits without being hit back requires a bit more skill than kiting linearly though, so I think it's fair). In all those cases with extra players joining fight bosses usually circle their aggro between them, reposition themselves (so each individual player deals less hits before dodging compared to solo fight), and because of that fight takes more than 1/x amount of time where x is amount of players. Speaking of Toadstool, same comparison can be made between chopping and burning strategies for Toad trees: for 1 player it's relatively ok to let them burn and leave spore clouds, while dealing decreased damage (only relatively though), and it's easy to lure Toad to the next pond and circle between 3 in that manner (in order to avoid spore clouds blocking access to boss and following trees), but for multiple players burning is not a way to go and chopping is preferred, since there are already enough spore clouds from regular attacks and luring Toad away is complicated because it reaggroes, which prolongs the fight for group compared to expected 1/x length. Yet this kind of reverse scaling doesn't break immersion, is intuitive and team can overcome this in most cases if players really put an effort in cooperation and synchronization with each other. I wouldn't mind generic items that could magnify this effect though (+ standing still for long period of time bosses wouldn't look artificial this way), for example by increasing attack period, which would be interesting for solo player to deal even more damage before dodging, but wouldn't be that interesting for group, especially if it wasn't stackable. Pan flute technically can be used like that in some cases (Bee Queen), but more options wouldn't hurt, especially if there will be enough mechanical difference. It's a shame Walter's slowdown rounds don't have this functionality though, it would fit perfectly.

Game also already has direct damage buffs for purposes of reverse scaling.

One of the already existing effects similar to proposed in OP - gestalts from celestial crown. Crown has all listed benefits: gestalt damage is independent of character damage modifier and is not character-specific thing, gestalts are not really spammable, they are not obvious win button, require extra micromanagment (tactics) if one goes for maximum dps, and even have downside of locking head slot from other than crown use. If player performs/plans poorly and gestalts miss their target, player can be at net loss of using crown in the end. It's mid- to lategame option though, but it exists.

Option that could be early- to midgame varnish already exists. It's thulecite club, and shadow tentacles in particular, but it needs buff/tweak. It would be cool if shadow tentacles could do mare than 2 hits when they appear, and if there was a way to force-spawn them (buff club), for example by fighting during new moon or during night close to new moon; another option would be craftable that could be only obtained by doing something new moon or nightmare phase-specific, and which would make shadow tentacles spawn in 100% cases for next X hits, Y seconds, as long as player remains in particular area, after N consecutive hits or M successfully dodged enemy attacks, for example. I would definitely use club then. And again, it has all things OP wants: not character-specific, accessible but not spammable, requires tactic (fighting stationary/slow mob; possibly tactics of farming activator, possibly tactics of usage), it even has downside of huge insanity aura, that nonetheless can be outplayed by using Bee Queen crown.

Another already existing effect that is good candidate for "varnish" is fire. If only non-flammable loot dropped normally from mobs that died from fire I would use fire much more. It's already useful to make mobs panic and deal more hits to them without dodging, as well as to chip away hp from Bee Queen in no-pan flute variant of the fight during 2nd phase; it doesn't break immersion, one has to use tactics to gain more than waste by using fire, it's not character-specific, it's accessible early game, definitely is not a win button, etc. Although it's more on defuff to mob side rather than source of extra damage, but it would be boring to just have N reskins of pepper spice anyway.

I would welcome more environmental buffs as well. One can view morning star as weapon with permanent varnish applied to it that just needs to be activated. If water balloons made mobs other than Dragonfly wet and/or player could obtain non character-specific item to increase world's moisture, that would do the trick. Wicketbottom doesn't count, because her book is character-specific and proposed generic item could work a bit differently/be more expensive to craft/have other properties that would distinguish it from practical rain rituals.

Would be interesting to deal extra damage to frozen enemies on hit and have more ways to freeze them. It would be only 1st hit, yet I can see how it could be used wisely to 1-shot boss minions and make window for dealing damage to boss bigger. Pugalisk wand comes to mind, although in DS it was practically unusable to freeze in AoE even with bundle wraps because it lasted 4 minutes. Damage on shatter could be flat number to match stated by OP requirements. In multiplayer it would require coordination to use as effectively, and it might be preferable to just use weapons for whole group as well.

----------------

As for minions and minion-like helpers (catapults) it's usually one of 2 scenarios: either boss melts them in a blink of an eye so one might as well not bother, or they completely nullify boss and player doesn't have to deal with any complex mechanics. If farming Been Queen with catapults/merms is interesting to someone, good for them, but I, for example, would like to have more options that are interesting to me. I like fighting alone because minions bring chaos to the fight due to lack of control and single fighter could control their actions with much greater precision, which in turn allows to adapt to complex boss mechanics rather than skip them or screw the fight. That being said, I like Webber's spiders against Bee Queen: they don't melt her completely (at least with medium-sized spider army, like 25-30 spitters and 5-10 nurses), they greatly help to make fight shorter and they require tactics and micromanagement. Key point here are better control of minions that Webber has and diversity of spider abilities (ranged attack, leap, AoE healing). But game performance definitely needs a buff in order for Webber to shine.

------------

By the way, if one takes into account characters that have indirect buffs to damage output, even though situational and character-specific, with advantage being temporary over Wilson in some cases, there are more than just Wolfgang, Wanda, Wigfrid, Warly and Wendy (latter arguably could be viewed as character with small damage buff against single target, even though there are a lot of conditions to be fullfilled; AoE support is indirect buff to damage output after all) and Webber, Wurt and Winona (minion characters). Wickerbottom has tentacles and grumble bees, Wormwood can start to use dark swords over ham bat on regular basis much earlier, Willow can keep attacking mobs on fire/that are near fire without taking damage and skip some kiting/tanking (it's a shame loot can turn to ashes though, it needs revisit). I don't think WX-78 can count as having extra source of damage since it activates only during tanking and dps pales in comparison to damage dealt by WX-78 himself. So character list without character-specific damage modifiers/solutions for boosting dsp includes: Wilson, WX-78, Woodie, Walter, Wortox, Maxwell and arguably Willow. And Wes at disadvantage by design. Wilson and Maxwell didn't receive their reworks yet, but even with them included it's still less than half of the cast. Considering there is celestial crown, situation doesn't look so bad to me. I would like more ways to do combat though and more interesting things to incorporate into strategy, like mentioned above, especially if they don't break immersion.

[Guille6785]

7 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Raid bosses are meant to be hard

The thread was not about the difficulty of bosses, it's about the length of some fights if you don't want to use cheese or damage multipliers

bee queen and toadstool are incredibly easy to solo, they're just really drawn out

length =/= difficulty

7 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Raid bosses are meant to be hard, plus minions (bunnymen) help so much for both bee queen and pearl crab king. The game already gives you ways to make the bosses easier.

Minions are definitely not cheese, you are rewarded for the grind to set them up.

Minions sound like a good solution on paper to increase your damage as a solo player but they don't actually meet the expectations I set on the post for a reliable way to do more damage and in reality are pretty problematic, in short, the majority of bosses either:

-straight up disable your minions (shadow pieces, klaus 2nd phase, bee queen)

-do aoe damage which kills them almost immediately (fuelweaver, twins, celestial champion)

this only leaves us with a handful of bosses where minions can actually be used somewhat reliably:

-dragonfly (single target damage, although you will have to build walls to prevent your minions from making contact with lava, so it's kind of cheesy if you ask me)

-pearled crab king (in this case you straight up NEED minions to do the fight without weather pains because cancelling the healing is impossible with only 1 person, and even then your fight strategy needs to revolve around countering your minions getting frozen)

-bee queen is complicated because of the constant screeching, in my experience if you try to use only 20 bunnymen they'll all be dead extremely fast but if you use 40 they absolutely melt her, it's way too unreliable to simply use minions as extra dps

 

so unless you're wurt and have an army of a few dozen warrior merms, there actually isn't a single boss where you can simply hire a few bunnies and get free dps for the rest of the fight, ALL bosses have some way to counter usage of minions and for many it's straight up impossible

[Theukon-dos]

On 10/16/2022 at 10:13 PM, Guille6785 said:

again, the point of my post is not about whether the bosses are good or bad, or whether they are properly designed for 1 player (that's a different topic), it's just addressing the (unavoidable) situation that for a lot of solo characters certain fights feel more drawn out than they need to be and varnishes would be a very elegant option to circumvent that issue that I believe fits the game nicely

See, the problem with that way of thinking is that often times, the reasons these fights are so drawn out in the first place is *because* of how they're designed.

 

What do the really long/slow boss fights have in common? They have a lot of "downtime". Periods where either the player must either stop attacking the boss to perform some other talk, or where their progress can be reversed by 

 

Look at Klaus. Klaus has 15,000 HP. But is also really easy to manage. Reliable kiting patterns with 4 hits each time, spells that don't take resources to manage. Klaus can be beaten very quickly despite their HP. Roughly 6 minutes if you're decent at the game.

Now look at Bee queen. 22k HP, but you can almost never attack her. Very small window of attack, minions that swarm you at all times, and you can't kill them. The only way to even attack Bee Queen is either by spamming pan flutes, or by leading them super far away. Thus, that 22k HP can take forever to drain.

And this applies to other bosses too.

Celestial Champion and Ancient guardian both have high HP pools that can quickly be blasted through thanks too ample opportunities to hit them (CC in particular can be killed in about 20 minutes with only a ham bat, despite having nearly 40k HP).

While Toadstool, Crab King, and Ancient Fuelweaver all have a lot of downtime in their fights, with the latter two able to heal a *ton* of damage if you're not careful.

 

Ultimately, your idea would help. After all, more damage is more damage. But these fights will still take a hella long time unless they're ever revisited to be more single-player friendly.

[. . .]

i think for an optional health scale mechanic just having bosses hp scale based on the amount of people who are currently fighting it is good. if some player doesn't hit it for a while or goes too far then the health would be adjusted again

[Baark0]

the +17 dmg for wolfgang still is worth it, just maybe not for things like vargs, as an extra 17 damage per hit adds up quickly. i feel like a scaling system that changes only if the world is singleplayer or multiplayer could work, i.e if only 1 player is connected, reduced stats, but if 2 or more, than it's the current default stats.