Why I think boss fights are “Bad”

[Capybara007]

We should defeat bosses with axes and heal with seeds, i dont use hambats because its cheating and because of that im better than yall

[Yuuko]

33 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

Playing a game easy mode is an assault to ones pride. You cannot tell me that easy modes are actually meant to be played. Nobody ever plays games on easy mode, i refuse to believe it. If someone tells me to play a game on easy difficulty, what i hear is "you have failed as a gamer". 

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Tis joke

 

Tis a joke, but also not.  I'm sure there are people who would enjoy playing Minecraft for hours upon hours in creative mode without a threat to concern them.

BUT

I couldn't do it.  When God of War offered me Easy Mode after dying in the same spot a few times they knew what they were doing...

[Mike23Ua]

5 hours ago, The Starver said:

Yes, please.

Embarrassingly, My friend and I always turn that on.

See, I think the problem @Mike23Ua has is that he doesn't want to have to spend a ridiculous amount of time on a game... just to get good enough to continue to the next part of the game, which requires tons of practice to get past. DST is a time sink, plain and simple, and he would rather spend more time on his real life than on "Gittin' Gud."

By the way, Mike, please correct me if I'm wrong, because this is just my analysis of what you've been saying.

There’s nothing wrong with toggling on an easier difficulty, that’s literally why difficulty settings exist in most games.

In 7 Days to Die you can even increase difficulty of the game by changing the Behavior of the enemies within the game, do you want slow moving zombies like in old school zombie movies? Or do you want fast running ones like the movie 28 days later?

Presenting the player with options in how they tackle content is never a bad thing.

I talk about the Mr Freeze boss fight from Arkham City because of how well this was designed per difficulty setting, on easy you only needed to use one or two of the same types of takedown to beat him, but on hard each takedown you performed.. he recalibrated his suit so you had to use every tactic within your arsenal to defeat him.

This is a prime example of making a boss fight enjoyable for players of varying skill levels.

And outside of “Pick Wolfgang” or “Toggle 40% Reduced Damage taken” DST just does not HAVE that…

DST isn’t and shouldn’t be a game based strictly on the player “getting Gud.”

Because maybe I don’t want to spend 40 minutes solo fighting a boss that would take less than 5 minutes to do in a group of 3?

Maybe me and my 4yr old nephew want to fight the games bosses but on an easier difficulty setting.

I love how people on these forums are so toxic that they throw up the fact haha you can’t beat this multiplayer designed boss but you want the game more uncompromising.

Because that is a direct insult to me and the parts of the game I actually do enjoy, such as general biome exploration.

Certain parts of the game can be too simple (biome exploration, mob encounters) and other parts of the game can be too difficult (fighting extremely high health 40 minute bosses alone)

And I find it childish that people can’t see that, that they don’t understand that maybe I Don’t struggle with sanity management or avoiding wetness or whatever, because maybe I’m good at certain parts of the game- and terrible at other parts.

But THAT my dear friends is usually where difficulty scaling comes into play.

And when players can now literally turn on an option so darkness never ever kills them..

I don’t think this “Hill to Die On” about bosses not needing any changes and I just needing to get better at fighting them holds any Merit.

Anyways I’m about done with the Icey biome I said I’d showcase here later, just a few more things I need to get captures of and then put together in one poorly edited image.

The intent is to showcase how bosses with unique special features, is holding back making general biome exploration feel new and exciting.

Im doing this without mods, without any sort of additional content being added to the game beyond what is already IN the game, and I’m doing it to (hopefully) show Klei or some extremely talented mod creators how much more beautiful the world of DST COULD be- if we were only allowed to use more of what we already have to work with.

My plan is to show off the fiery biome (already posted a few posts ago) the Icey Biome (which I’ll hopefully get to post sometime later maybe next month) and (assuming this thread doesn’t end up locked before then… ) a Sandy Egyptian like Biome…

Using ONLY content and animations that already exist within the game. 

 

[Uedo]

9 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

My plan is to show off the fiery biome (already posted a few posts ago) the Icey Biome (which I’ll hopefully get to post sometime later maybe next month) and (assuming this thread doesn’t end up locked before then… ) a Sandy Egyptian like Biome…

Using ONLY content and animations that already exist within the game. 

 

I mean... good luck Mike! Congratulations, whatever it is you want me to say! Well done dude

[The Starver]

16 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

My plan is to show off the fiery biome (already posted a few posts ago) the Icey Biome (which I’ll hopefully get to post sometime later maybe next month) and (assuming this thread doesn’t end up locked before then… ) a Sandy Egyptian like Biome…

Using ONLY content and animations that already exist within the game.

All of which I will mod in myself if I have to.

[Mike23Ua]

13 minutes ago, Uedo said:

I mean... good luck Mike! Congratulations, whatever it is you want me to say! Well done dude

I’m not expecting you to say anything, I’m not looking for congratulations or even recognition. All I’m wanting is to show people how pretty the game Could be, if content that already exists within the game were “redistributed” elsewhere.

And if you want to help with that, great.. I’d love to actually have people who are passionate about the same project as I am help to bring it to life.

[_zwb]

36 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

extremely high health 40 minute bosses

There's this thing you can do in a boss fight called attacking the boss, have you tried that yet?

[Yuuko]

46 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

And I find it childish that people can’t see that, that they don’t understand that maybe I Don’t struggle with sanity management or avoiding wetness or whatever, because maybe I’m good at certain parts of the game- and terrible at other parts.

Except you used a tent during Klaus fight which means you're struggling with something...

See that's the thing about DS/T.  Individually nothing is actually very challenging, but when you add things together it starts to get interesting.  This is why bosses have sanity auras.  Fighting deerclops is pretty easy, but add in a terror beak chasing you and things get a shake up.

Not every game NEEDS your 4 yr old brother playing through end-game bosses with you, sry not sry.

46 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Im doing this without mods, without any sort of additional content being added to the game beyond what is already IN the game, and I’m doing it to (hopefully) show Klei or some extremely talented mod creators how much more beautiful the world of DST COULD be- if we were only allowed to use more of what we already have to work with.

Nothing about Antlion having sand spikes means they cannot be used anywhere else.  Just look at the crater that was made for Antlion and how it got use in other areas already, or the boulders he used to drop now being dropped from normal cave ins.  You SAY we need to take things away from bosses in order for them to be used elsewhere but we can clearly see that is not the case.  The problem is probably that the game already lags when you walk by a swarm of spiders.  Like fr crossing a tentacle path can be death b/c the slightest lag spike might lock you in to your death.  idk all the technical details, but its likely adding prefabs to spawn these hazards everywhere could cause performance issues, and unless they provide unique valuable resources serve more as "do not enter" signs like probably 70% of the caves currently does.

[Reecitz]

He's not going to listen. Give up, or don't, wasting your own time is your own provocative, after all.

[Spino43]

1 hour ago, Reecitz said:

He's not going to listen. Give up, or don't, wasting your own time is your own provocative, after all.

Let mike cook, this is free entertainment.

[JoeW]

Please keep posts polite, on-topic and without personal attacks. 

Thank you. 

[mykenception]

On 1/29/2024 at 3:01 PM, Mike23Ua said:

Otherwise you waste 4 Darkswords thinking this guys just got a ridiculously high amount of health.

I just hambat so I never got that problem

 

are you really that short on living logs and nightmare fuel?

On 1/30/2024 at 7:52 AM, Uedo said:

Absolutely; It's like how wigfrid has/had her niche. Wig gives you a lot of margin for error, you don't have to play her to fight bosses but it's easier in ways, again, you don't NEED to though.

not to mention it's more fun to play as wig with all her new toys, tho I still wished they did something better with the songs and the, errr, beefalo part. But overall I like Wig than Wolf

Edited January 31 by mykenception

[Evelo]

This topic is still going on?

23 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t want the solution to be Build Winona Catapults, make Warly food dishes & switch to Wolfgang.

This WILL make the fights easier, but mayyyyybbbbeee I want to be able to enjoy the fights (within a reasonable time frame..) without extreme over-preparation, elaborate setups, or Expert Kiting skills to perform the whole fight no hit Flawlessly.

If I put the game on “Easy Mode” then actually being able to experience content should scale to “Easy Mode” with me.

People have given you numerous ways to make it easier, or explain how easy boss fights actually are. At some point you have to be able to look internally amongst the flood of comments. The game is perfectly accessible as it is. I keep repeating I play this game with just WASD, Q/E, Spacebar, and F, never using my mouse for combat. (Disability don't want to talk about it) So I only use it when I have to because I haven't figured out a way to place down structures. (If someone knows please let me know I'd love to remedy that so I can play completely with my left hand.)
So if I can beat every boss (except AFW which I had to cheese) then you can beat it using a controller. You only need 3 or 4 Darkswords for Klaus end story.

If you or anyone, are consistently struggling with mechanics or bosses in anyway and there is no difficulty options (possibly by design of the developers. It is their game they can choose to not have difficulty sliders! See any Souls game (which is beloved by many, just not me.)) then your choice is one of three things: Keep bashing your head against it until you eventually get it; Stop playing; Look up a tutorial.

Mike, please look internally and see this is a personal issue. That is totally fine and perfectly normal. Accept the reality of certain things no matter how upset it makes you.

I want to go into a career of Thermodynamics spurred by my rough introduction of it in Oxygen Not Included (Best game ever). As I took courses on it I hit a wall. I spent 3 years and roughly a thousand dollars for consistent failures. I just couldn't wrap my head around certain chemistry topics. It hurts because I still want to peruse that field, specifically materials in relation to temperature. I just am not smart enough. So I look for other things to find enjoyment in.

Accept the game will not cater to you. Many people here are trying to help. Listen to them and move on. Please.

Edited January 31 by Evelo

[Reecitz]

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

This topic is still going on?

People have given you numerous ways to make it easier, or explain how easy boss fights actually are. At some point you have to be able to look internally amongst the flood of comments. The game is perfectly accessible as it is. I keep repeating I play this game with just WASD, Q/E, Spacebar, and F, never using my mouse for combat. (Disability don't want to talk about it) So I only use it when I have to because I haven't figured out a way to place down structures. (If someone knows please let me know I'd love to remedy that so I can play completely with my left hand.)
So if I can beat every boss (except AFW which I had to cheese) then you can beat it using a controller. You only need 3 or 4 Darkswords for Klaus end story.

If you or anyone, are consistently struggling with mechanics or bosses in anyway and there is no difficulty options (possibly by design of the developers. It is their game they can choose to not have difficulty sliders! See any Souls game (which is beloved by many, just not me.)) then your choice is one of three things: Keep bashing your head against it until you eventually get it; Stop playing; Look up a tutorial.

Mike, please look internally and see this is a personal issue. That is totally fine and perfectly normal. Accept the reality of certain things no matter how upset it makes you.

I want to go into a career of Thermodynamics spurred by my rough introduction of it in Oxygen Not Included (Best game ever). As I took courses on it I hit a wall. I spent 3 years and roughly a thousand dollars for consistent failures. I just couldn't wrap my head around certain chemistry topics. It hurts because I still want to peruse that field, specifically materials in relation to temperature. I just am not smart enough. So I look for other things to find enjoyment in.

Accept the game will not cater to you. Many people here are trying to help. Listen to them and move on. Please.

Nice essay you got there. Would be a shame if it got ignored, like always. 

[Uedo]

6 hours ago, Evelo said:

This topic is still going on?

People have given you numerous ways to make it easier, or explain how easy boss fights actually are. At some point you have to be able to look internally amongst the flood of comments. The game is perfectly accessible as it is. I keep repeating I play this game with just WASD, Q/E, Spacebar, and F, never using my mouse for combat. (Disability don't want to talk about it) So I only use it when I have to because I haven't figured out a way to place down structures. (If someone knows please let me know I'd love to remedy that so I can play completely with my left hand.)
So if I can beat every boss (except AFW which I had to cheese) then you can beat it using a controller. You only need 3 or 4 Darkswords for Klaus end story.

If you or anyone, are consistently struggling with mechanics or bosses in anyway and there is no difficulty options (possibly by design of the developers. It is their game they can choose to not have difficulty sliders! See any Souls game (which is beloved by many, just not me.)) then your choice is one of three things: Keep bashing your head against it until you eventually get it; Stop playing; Look up a tutorial.

Mike, please look internally and see this is a personal issue. That is totally fine and perfectly normal. Accept the reality of certain things no matter how upset it makes you.

I want to go into a career of Thermodynamics spurred by my rough introduction of it in Oxygen Not Included (Best game ever). As I took courses on it I hit a wall. I spent 3 years and roughly a thousand dollars for consistent failures. I just couldn't wrap my head around certain chemistry topics. It hurts because I still want to peruse that field, specifically materials in relation to temperature. I just am not smart enough. So I look for other things to find enjoyment in.

Accept the game will not cater to you. Many people here are trying to help. Listen to them and move on. Please.

Thanks for sharing that with us dude  Slightly off-topic, but i'm a big believer in that everything can be taught if you have multiple frames of reference to use as part of your learning materials. Not something for you to be doing, but hopefully you find someone who can teach you in a method that's relatable. I believe in you dude

[The Starver]

17 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’d love to actually have people who are passionate about the same project as I am help to bring it to life.

Seriously. Of course! It's an awesome idea! I've been tossing around ideas for the Firelands; all I really need is to figure out how to create procedurally generated terrain, how to separate it from the mainland in some form that keeps players from discovering it early, and get DST on my computer!

Off-topic, I know, but I love the idea too much too let it go.

Edited January 31 by The Starver

[00petar00]

18 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

This is a prime example of making a boss fight enjoyable for players of varying skill levels.

And outside of “Pick Wolfgang” or “Toggle 40% Reduced Damage taken” DST just does not HAVE that…

DST isn’t and shouldn’t be a game based strictly on the player “getting Gud.”

Because maybe I don’t want to spend 40 minutes solo fighting a boss that would take less than 5 minutes to do in a group of 3?

I agree with Mike here, why don't we have settings for these things like boss health scaling? I do believe that a lot of people have gotten used to beating multiplayer content solo and without any trouble because kiting is that strong that you don't care if you spend a day or more fighting a boss if you don't take any hits to armor and don't need much prep.

What is wrong with wanting there to be more options? I do think I'd find a lot of boss fights boring if I enabled said options but that is only because I was forced to learn to fight every boss solo with minimal resources because I don't like wasting time.

Just because I was forced to go through this it doesn't mean that it is okay for it to be the norm and we could have more "survival" threats like dragonfly attacking you during summer if it had HP like in DS but that game is completely ignored when it comes to balance but people like to bring it up when it comes to uncompromising systems. Compare health from dragonfly from DS to DST and armor stacking and that is all I need to say for you to see how big of a difference there is and why we can't have that in DST.

Not everyone wants to get good at the game, why don't they have settings like relaxed mode lowering boss HP? Why do you need to force everyone to learn and suffer like you did if they are casual players? Also a lot of players that "learn" the boss kiting patterns on PC that are active on forums in these discussions play during beta and rollback countless times until they perfect them, that is not an experience a regular player will have if they are able to get that far.

I kind of understand the irony you bring up with Mike wanting uncompromising survival and at the other hand he wants nerfs to bosses but these don't contradict each other in a sense that someone may enjoy survival and hate boss fights even though I mostly disagree with him on most of the survival suggestions he makes.

Edited January 31 by 00petar00

[Yuuko]

6 minutes ago, kroban said:

Bee Queen is the same thing. She has the most useful loot in the entire game (OP Crown, bundles, and regeneration that never spoils). And she's supposedly an "early game boss" because of bundles and the crown. But unless you are playing Wendy she isn't doable at all with any other character as solo. The fight would be way more "bearable" if she had a version of let's say 10k rather than the 22.5k of HP, and if she had less spawning of grumble bees so you wouldn't get stunlocked.

idk if I'd say Bee Queen is an early game boss - just that a lot of people find good use for tackling her early.  I think AG, Deerclops, and Klaus are more early game bosses.  I do think if someone wants to tackle Bee Queen, and sets their sights on it as they start a world they can make it happen with any character.

There are a lot more options for Bee Queen then just Wendy.  Willow can take her out pretty easy with 4 stacks of embers and lunar flame.  Maxwell can perma-lock her in place and have shadow minions kill her while he watches.  Wanda can easily kite her out, although it takes a while its pretty safe.  Wurt can recruit a lot of default merms from a swamp and traipse on through her.  Wormwood can spam moon shrooms to keep the grumbles asleep.  Outside of character specific options anyone can build some walls to separate her from her grumbles and use a pan flute for some bonus damage opportunities.  Surely no one is going to claim all of that is cheese and somehow not "real" ways to beat her right...?

[arubaro]

20 minutes ago, kroban said:

but the main problem is that most aren't "soloable"

Except you can kill most bosses without grinding much materials and under 8 minutes...

If bosses were that bad and not "soloable" we wont encounter that much "all boss rush under 8h"... which means that for a non experience player it will take less time than the grind needed in most sandboxes to do less content...

[kroban]

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

Except you can kill most bosses without grinding much materials and under 8 minutes...

If bosses were that bad and not "soloable" we wont encounter that much "all boss rush under 8h"... which means that for a non experience player it will take less time than the grind needed in most sandboxes to do less content...

But most players aren't speedrunners that can kill all bosses with Wolfgang, a hambat and a helm. Speedrunners gave the boss hundreds of tries before the youtube vid, make the entire run purely based on the boss fight, and some even use a "cheesy" technique, like the whole "attack overlapping" bug or **** like Toadstool and the lureplants that basically becomes pressing F. The average player, even vets and in late game, require lots of grinding for the simple fact that the fight lasts easily 10 minutes, and the average players also makes mistakes. Which in "solo", after farming for hours basically because of huge HP pools, and against bosses that can despawn with 1 mistake, its horrible

Edited January 31 by kroban

[arubaro]

50 minutes ago, kroban said:

But most players aren't speedrunners that can kill all bosses with Wolfgang, a hambat and a helm. Speedrunners gave the boss hundreds of tries before the youtube vid, make the entire run purely based on the boss fight, and some even use a "cheesy" technique, like the whole "attack overlapping" bug or **** like Toadstool and the lureplants that basically becomes pressing F. The average player, even vets and in late game, would require lots of grinding for the simple fact that the fight lasts easily 10 minutes, and the average players also makes mistakes. Which in "solo", after farming for hours basically because of huge HP pools, and against bosses that can despawn with 1 mistake, its horrible

Reread my comment

We all were new but only few complain

Idk what kind of games people that complain play, honestly

[grm9]

2 hours ago, kroban said:

Toadstool is probably best example of how horrible the difference is. Its a fun fight in multiplayer. But as solo? You have to farm lots of weather pain FOR 1 FIGHT purely because of how long it takes. Also lots of sanity food, because you would need like 8 DARK SWORDS, fighting in caves, while he has -400 sanity/minute aura. And the entire fight would easily take 10 minutes in a game where anything can happen. 1 mistake, and he despawns and you lost everything you farmed

no, you're bad at the game and weather pains are unnecessary, there are more solutions and you can even use a torch and a ham bat, the boss only drains sanity while summoning mushtrees and you don't get that much sanity drained because it's big and you don't need to hug it to hit it so you don't get the full amount of sanity drained by the aura even when hitting it while it's summoning mushtrees, all other complaints are just about a boss not letting you continue the fight after any amount of mistakes, which is a good thing but doesn't even apply to toadstool because there isn't much to lose other than rotting the ham bat if you don't drop it in time

2 hours ago, kroban said:

Bee Queen is the same thing. She has the most useful loot in the entire game (OP Crown, bundles, and regeneration that never spoils). And she's supposedly an "early game boss" because of bundles and the crown. But unless you are playing Wendy she isn't doable at all with any other character as solo without using some "sketchy technique". The fight would be way more "bearable" if she had a version of let's say 10k rather than the 22.5k of HP, and if she had less spawning of grumble bees so you wouldn't get stunlocked

you're not supposed to fight it normally, you're supposed to figure out a way to kill the boss instead of simply using a weapon and armor like for a lot of other bosses, the fight is a puzzle and the fun part is figuring out how to kill it and some ways to kill are also fun

2 hours ago, kroban said:

Ironically, being the "end game boss" before rifts, Celestial Champion is probably a good example of how most bosses should be. Its way more doable as solo than BQ and Toad. Most of its attack are dodgeable so with practice you wouldn't need to farm much armor or heals, its HP pool isn't insane (and its funny that cc has less hp than Toad), and it doesn't despawns in the case of making a mistake

one of the most boring fights because p1 doesn't require a brain, all of p2's attacks are easy to dodge and you can simply go away after it does 2 attacks to avoid spin even without speedboosts and p3 requires you to wait a lot and isn't hard, letting you continue after a lot of mistakes is a bad thing because then there's less to achieve because the fight is easy, it has 37k hp which is more than all ANR bosses except toadstool

1 hour ago, kroban said:

"attack overlapping"

if you're talking about animation cancelling then it's only 17% faster in comparison to holding F

1 hour ago, kroban said:

would require lots of grinding for the simple fact that the fight lasts easily 10 minutes

what for? You don't need to grind for a ham bat and a torch

Edited January 31 by grm9

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

if you're talking about animation cancelling then it's only 17% faster in comparison to holding F

Dang it looks way faster than that lol.

3 hours ago, kroban said:

You have to farm lots of weather pain FOR 1 FIGHT purely because of how long it takes

You could use glass axes instead. They're way cheaper and almost as effective.

[Swiyss]

4 hours ago, kroban said:

Klei should definitely add a solo version of bosses while mantaining the difficulty

You can configure your world to receive less damage, also you can simply rollback in a fake world with cheats until you find a way to kill it. Practice makes perfect.

[Ridley]

33 minutes ago, grm9 said:

you're not supposed to fight it normally, you're supposed to figure out a way to kill the boss instead of simply using a weapon and armor like for a lot of other bosses, the fight is a puzzle and the fun part is figuring out how to kill it and some ways to kill are also fun

I don't recall Klei saying Bee Queen was designed to be a puzzle. I do remember them showcasing the boss by spawning in lots of healing items and armours for the server of players to kill the boss with. I'm pretty sure the whole point of the "A New Reign" raid bosses were to challenge coordinated groups of survivors. The reason people think bosses like Bee Queen are a puzzle is because they are fighting a boss in an unintended way: not enough hands on deck.

There's always been this sentiment that a boss doesn't need changes if it is killable that I disagree with because it doesn't address how miserable it is. When Toadstool was nerfed to no longer flee after 5 minutes and had a 5x health reduction (down from 156500), there were people saying stuff like this:

Quote

"We've killed it with 7 people, and no wolfgangs. We even had a wendy, who has reduced damage. In spring we went down to the caves to kill it using the wetness to our advantage and we used Morning stars. Make no mistake, just because it's impossible for you doesn't mean its impossible for everyone."

 I'm sure we agree that a boss that is too easy is lame and needs changes, but why are bosses that are too hard defended as a skill issue? I understand that anyone can practice a boss by rolling the server back before the fight began until they master it. Actually dealing with the consequences of dying and losing resources is a painful part of learning in DS and certain bosses are pure agony for this. A way to scale bosses' strength and loot appropriately to the power the player(s) present is how I think a hard boss can remain challenging and fun across the board.

And even with all that said, I still don't want Klei to prioritise boss changes over world changes. This thread was started because Mike wanted more development in the world and for bosses to take a backseat to that. He's still talking about it what kinds of world changes he wants to see. Does anyone in this thread want boss changes over any other kind of content?