Why I think boss fights are “Bad”

[grm9]

39 minutes ago, Ridley said:

Bee Queen pumping bees out faster than I can kill them

there are more methods for killing them before they respawn or attacking BQ without them preventing you from doing this than there are methods for almost any other boss in the game

[Castiliano]

Even though this is all an obvious point, I wanted to reinforce it here: I never thought it was fair for Dragonfly to have 27500 health against 1 player, 2 players... 6 players. Same for other bosses. Btw, some bosses adds new mechanics when there are more players and that's cool. Despite everything, most of us here on the forum have gotten used to it and have learned how to deal with bosses the way they currently are.

I didn't get your third point. For a second it looks like you were clamoring for bad loot that wasn't an ally in survival lul. But soon after, you ask for better loot for other bosses

Edited January 8 by Castiliano

[_zwb]

The first two points are arguments for why specific boss(es) are poorly designed, not for why boss fights as a mechanic is bad.

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

3- Boss fights in DST usually reward the player with gear that makes staying alive even easier in a game that the player wants to actively be challenged by.

Getting a reward for beating a boss is a bad thing now? Should the game punish you for being good at the game then?

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

and the thing I hate most about boss fights- once you do them once and get the rewards for doing them, you’ve pretty much “Done” them, and don’t really need to interact with that content anymore beyond personal enjoyment of the fight and it’s mechanics.

A fight which after you die to the cheap tactics a few times and eventually learn the kiting/fighting/cheesing strategies- Is pretty much just repeating the same content over and over and over and over, and over, and over, and over again? (You get the point right??)

I'd say it's the game's issue, not boss fights', survival content gets repetitive too.

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Boss fights also tend to have unique mechanics that are exclusive to the boss fight itself which sucks because the rest of the game it’s biomes, and mobs continue to be severally lacking &/or un-Updated to match the newer boss.

Case in Point- FrostJaw Arena features a skidding across Ice Mechanic, which is of course cool and makes the fight more unique, but players should also slip across ice when stepping on frozen lakes or Pengul nests- Why are the interesting mechanics reserved for some Optional boss shoved away in some obscure corner of the map somewhere?

Why can’t the mechanics of said FrostJaw fight be implemented Elsewhere? Such as for example turning the Rocky Biome into frozen Ice sheets during Winters or something?

My point is that boss fights limit the rest of the games creativity…

Nothing about Frost Jaw stops Klei from using its mechanic in other places, boss fights aren't limiting the rest of the games creativity, it's Klei not willing to put in the effort to make the game good that is limiting the game. Look at @Mr.Oshiro 's post about ruins world generation, Klei didn't even bother to respond to it despite his effort... Honestly this is a Klei issue.

You could argue that Klei doesn't have the time for using those mechanics elsewhere because the bosses took up development time, that could be true.

Edited January 8 by _zwb
grammar

[BalkanCockroach]

48 minutes ago, _zwb said:

You could argue that Klei doesn't have the time for using those mechanics elsewhere because the bosses took up development time, that could be true.

Honestly they could stop pumping out bosses for a while and implement more other features such as new biomes, mobs, environment enhancers, flora. Like im dying to get more ruins stuff. Ruins can have another branch that leads to separate part with new stuff.

48 minutes ago, Castiliano said:

never thought it was fair for Dragonfly to have 27500 life for one player

Honestly it's not just the health that makes the fight unbearable cause d-fly isn't that bad apart from the sponging, it's the minions! Especially for beequeen cause you can't catch a breath. Even CK has annoying minions is this a trend or something (it is).

For "quest raidbosses" and i mean CK and FW their healing is just ugh. Now a lot of veterans love FW and tell me he is good, while i agree he simply heals too much with too many minions. While trying to kill the hands and simultanously kill the wovens. FW trollfaces and puts me in a bone cage and i get an aneurism.

Edited January 8 by BalkanCockroach

[Mike23Ua]

11 minutes ago, grm9 said:

there are more methods for killing them before they respawn or attacking BQ without them preventing you from doing this than there are methods for almost any other boss in the game

That would depend entirely on who your playing As, and/Or rather or not your For, or Against Character Swapping.

While Character Swapping is a Topic for a Whole other Thread- Anything becomes “Easier” when you build Winona Catapults then switch to Wolfgang.

For people who are Against Character swapping though the answer usually boils down to “Build enough Bunnyman huts around her, armor them in Football Helmets then Summon her”

Not a very engaging fight to be honest…

Dragonfly- Build a large Wall to trick Larvae path finding A.I.

Same can be said about CrabKing- throw a bunch of bees on him & paddle around in circles.

Has anyone ever stopped to think WHY Players do this though?

Because the actual “fights” themselves aren’t very fun and are filled with too many BS mechanics that the players more often than not: will just want to use the most effective way (or most effective way that works for them..) to fight these things.

For example: If people sail in circles around the outer edges of CK Because his Geysers quickly demolish your boats if caught in them, And to top that off he changes your temperature if too close- and it heals itself, The fights long and drawn out enough as is.. all the other stuff was just not really needed. The Claw Pinchers shouldn’t have such high health either- All this does is make me bring 2-3 extra grass rafts to keep sailing in circles around the boss should one happen to get pinched.

Dodging Dragonflies Larvae till they wear themselves out and explode would be a unique fighting dynamic, if she didn’t spawn near infinity pools of them.

Boss fights are full of annoying mechanics like this, but IF Klei actually cared to go back and fine tune bosses- they could potentially be dare I say this- “fun”

I for one would like to give CK vs Canonballs a try, but I’m not gonna do that- Because it heals too fast, has Temperature AoE, & It’s pincher claws can be too costly of a mistake to make.

Bees for the Win.

[grm9]

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

For people who are Against Character swapping though the answer usually boils down to “Build enough Bunnyman huts around her, armor them in Football Helmets then Summon her”

why not use pan flutes?

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

While Character Swapping is a Topic for a Whole other Thread- Anything becomes “Easier” when you build Winona Catapults then switch to Wolfgang

i always kill BQ before i make celestial portal and i don't play as wolfgang nor winona 

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Dragonfly- Build a large Wall to trick Larvae path finding A.I.

or use ice staves

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Same can be said about CrabKing- throw a bunch of bees on him & paddle around in circles

could've been a good fight if they reduced claw hp and removed birds and items blocking boat placement 

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Boss fights are full of annoying mechanics like this, but IF Klei actually cared to go back and fine tune bosses- they could potentially be dare I say this- “fun”

all bosses that you mentioned aside from CK are already fun, you're using boring methods for some reason    

Edited January 8 by grm9

[BalkanCockroach]

1 minute ago, grm9 said:

use ice staves

How many do you need. I might do this. Thre wall takes too many ronks i'd rather rummage through graves.

3 minutes ago, grm9 said:

wolfgang nor winona 

Wendy? 

[Ridley]

52 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

CC has more health than dragonfly. Beequeen too, but sure as heck don't feel like it.

True, but you can go home and rest between CC phases at your leisure. You at most have to do 14000 damage to the final phase which is way easier than being subjected to "beequeen torture hell fight".

Edited January 8 by Ridley

[grm9]

7 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

How many do you need. I might do this. Thre wall takes too many ronks i'd rather rummage through graves

around 3 if you don't kill any lavaes using something else iirc   

Edited January 8 by grm9

[BalkanCockroach]

 

10 minutes ago, Ridley said:

True, but you can go home and rest between CC phases at your leisure. You at most have to do 14000 damage to the final phase which is way easier than being subjected to "beequeen torture hell fight".

I also didn't take minion hp into account lmao.

Edited January 8 by BalkanCockroach

[Yuuko]

9 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

How many do you need. I might do this. Thre wall takes too many ronks i'd rather rummage through graves.

 

Typically dfly will summon lavae 3 times in the fight, and typically summons 6 per wave.  A lavae takes 3 shots with an ice staff to freeze.

So 3 x 6 x 3 = 54

Ice staves have 20 uses each so 3 should do it for most fights, but 4 is safer in case you get extra spawns.

If you have any damage mod like Warly, Wanda, Wolfgang, you can often kill lavae 1 by 1 as she spawns them and only use ice staff if she spawns multiple from 1 pond.  For Wanda I typically only need 1 ice staff for the fight.

Edited January 8 by Yuuko

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

1 hour ago, Yuuko said:

Difficulty is its own vector.  Some roguelikes have heavy meta progression where you can die a bunch and get powered up to clear through content relatively easily, while others have very flat progression where you may start with everything you ever get to clear the game with, and others have an in-game progression where as you fight things you level up and get stronger to move on to the next task, possibly out-scaling the entire world depending on the design and what loopholes they can exploit.

I want to point out that you (and Mike) seem to be interchanging rougelikes and rougelites.

Rougelikes have the flat progression you mentioned, aka they have little to no meta progression. Good example of this is Enter the Gungeon, where all the unlockables are just new items and guns to play with.

Rougelites have meta progression, and aren't meant to be possible to beat initially. Rather you are supposed to upgrade various abilities and stats over multiple runs. Hades is an example of this, with the mirror progression ECT.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

 

[Mike23Ua]

I’ve never seen anyone in my entire time of playing DST on Xbox EVER Attempt to fight Dragonfly using Ice Staffs.

The most common method I’ve seen is people using Wolfgang, Wigfrid or Wendy with Football Helms & Hambats.

weapon swapping is significantly bothersome for console players- Klei even literally made an armor to help console players that’s how bad it can be..

I’m not trying to say people DONT use Ice Staffs to fight Dragonfly, I’ve just personally never seen Anyone on XBOX do it.

How many Ice Staffs would you even need? Lmao… ima say more than 8.

[Yuuko]

4 minutes ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

I want to point out that you (and Mike) seem to be interchanging rougelikes and rougelites.

Rougelikes have the flat progression you mentioned, aka they have little to no meta progression. Good example of this is Enter the Gungeon, where all the unlockables are just new items and guns to play with.

Rougelites have meta progression, and aren't meant to be possible to beat initially. Rather you are supposed to upgrade various abilities and stats over multiple runs. Hades is an example of this, with the mirror progression ECT.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

 

I think the idea that roguelikes and roguelites are actually different things is a bit laughable.  The entire genre has a lot of grey area, just like "fighting games" do.  Is a fighting game a 2d game?  Is it 1 on 1?  vs? does co-op or story mode count? Does it lack progression?  Is Smash a fighting game?  I see a lot of people in the FGC community try to draw the lines, but the reality is any game where the primary focus is controlling characters fighting to overcome the opposing characters, where the primary gameplay loop is the fight, is a fighting game.

There are a lot of people who will try to say one thing or another, but definitively there is no real separation between different rogue like games - b/c they are like the game rogue.  They are like the game rogue, but a lite experience.

Edited January 8 by Yuuko

[BalkanCockroach]

2 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

Typically dfly will summon lavae 3 times in the fight, and typically summons 6 per wave.  A lavae takes 3 shots with an ice staff to freeze.

So 3 x 6 x 3 = 54

Ice staves have 20 uses each so 3 should do it for most fights, but 4 is safer in case you get extra spawns.

If you have any damage mod like Warly, Wanda, Wolfgang, you can often kill lavae 1 by 1 as she spawns them and only use ice staff if she spawns multiple from 1 pond.  For Wanda I typically only need 1 ice staff for the fight.

No good for autumn kill. But i will try my luck.

[Yuuko]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

How many Ice Staffs would you even need? Lmao… ima say more than 8.

3-4.  And while its not easy to swap equipment on controller it can be done.  You may have not seen it, but it is a very approachable fight with ice staves.  imo its about the same as using a wall.

[Evelo]

3 hours ago, Uedo said:

Maybe try a non-boss focused game?

That's the thing. Don't Starve was not boss focused.

You had the big 3 in the genre: Minecraft, Terraria, Don't Starve. Minecraft was for creative building. Terraria was for Boss Fights, and Don't Starve was for survival.

Minecraft includes some survival, Terraria includes some creative building, Don't Starve has some combat.

Now the game is shifting from Survival Focus to Boss Focus since the addition of Bee Queen and Toadstool in ANR; and I (and probably others like Mike here) feel is the wrong direction for the game.

[00petar00]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

1- Enemies are scaled with the intention that multiple players are fighting them, and therefore take significantly longer time fighting if your playing without other players- rather it’s gathering more resources to cheese the fight, or just taking a lot longer than 6 players with Hambats going ham on a boss- It’s annoying & it’s boring.

I agree with this but the issue is that a lot of players have gotten used to it so they don't even question it.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

2- Bosses with Minion spam & Cheap Tactics- DST (& Don’t Starve) are games where Dying is extremely punishing to the player (especially in DS where worlds were insta-Deleted) My favorite boss in DST is Eye of Terror, but even it has its Flaws…

Endless Minion spam, which can overwhelm a solo player if not dealt with promptly.. And the second equally unfair thing in addition to endless Minion Spam- Behavior patterns the player wasn’t expecting/wasn’t prepared for- Such as when this thing gets a nastier look and begins swooping after you at a directional angle 5 or 6 times in a row while also still spitting out the minions you’ll need to keep dealing with.

Again: Not a big deal when playing with two or three players, but Also not fun or remotely fair if playing alone.

Minion spam needs to be removed from the game or there needs to be some other items to help solo players deal with them without it requiring cheesing bosses or spamming pan flute in case of BQ.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

3- Boss fights in DST usually reward the player with gear that makes staying alive even easier in a game that the player wants to actively be challenged by.

What is the point of a super late game Armored Bearger Bin that slows food spoilage If Bee Queens bundling Wraps fully prevents food spoilage?

That's kind of the point, otherwise why would players fight bosses if it doesn't make the game easier or progress them in any way?

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

and the thing I hate most about boss fights- once you do them once and get the rewards for doing them, you’ve pretty much “Done” them, and don’t really need to interact with that content anymore beyond personal enjoyment of the fight and it’s mechanics.

A fight which after you die to the cheap tactics a few times and eventually learn the kiting/fighting/cheesing strategies- Is pretty much just repeating the same content over and over and over and over, and over, and over, and over again? (You get the point right??)

There has to be repeatable content, same can be said about most of the survival mechanics that you have to deal with on repeat for example seasonal dangers like overheating and freezing.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Boss fights also tend to have unique mechanics that are exclusive to the boss fight itself which sucks because the rest of the game it’s biomes, and mobs continue to be severally lacking &/or un-Updated to match the newer boss.

I do believe that klei should refresh some of the biomes and add more content to the ones lacking any sort of reason for player to go there. I do like the skill trees but I was hoping that klei would stop character updates for at least a few years after they finished the refreshes, we need more content that can be done by any character.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Case in Point- FrostJaw Arena features a skidding across Ice Mechanic, which is of course cool and makes the fight more unique, but players should also slip across ice when stepping on frozen lakes or Pengul nests- Why are the interesting mechanics reserved for some Optional boss shoved away in some obscure corner of the map somewhere?

Why can’t the mechanics of said FrostJaw fight be implemented Elsewhere? Such as for example turning the Rocky Biome into frozen Ice sheets during Winters or something?

My point is that boss fights limit the rest of the games creativity…

Boss fights are something you’ll do a few times and then that’s that- You’ve pretty much done them, unless of course you just enjoy repetitive gameplay.

Meanwhile… Klauses Gem Deer could’ve been put to use elsewhere such as a new Season Variation, or Bee Queens Minions could’ve been Moontated versions of the games Bee Hives.

I guess the TL:DR of everything I’m trying to say is that newer boss fights are the very reason the rest of the game feels like something still left back in 2015.

I personally don’t see a reason to fight a boss if I don’t enjoy the fight, or don’t care for the loot it drops.

The same can be said about character skill trees and refreshes that have drained devs time to add more things to biomes. I believe that they are not putting enough focus on DST as a game because players only need to pay once and have access to everything and I know there are reasons DLCs don't exist currently but there have been many suggestions on how they can proceed for example if one player owns a DLC everyone connecting to his world would be able to play it. There is only so much devs are willing to do for "free" and only sell skins. DS had much more impactful updates if you consider DLCs as part of the game.

There is no reason to fight a boss if you don't enjoy the fight or want the loot drops. The point is that you have a choice and when it comes to most survival mechanics you can't really decide not to engage or you'll be severely punished. That's why I think klei added so many bosses besides multiplayer game requiring these kinds of fights.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

For me this is CrabKing, this guy probably shouldn’t heal itself at all to be honest, the rewards you get from killing it absolutely suck, and I only plan to EVER interact with it to complete pearls dumb quest & get the CC tribute pieces.

And it really gets on my nerves when every other update is yet another raid boss while the rest of the game outside of boss fights could really use some serious changes.

Klei can’t expect us to keep doing the same stuff we were doing when we first started playing DST over and over again for the rest of all eternity can they?

I mean even Solo DS EVENTUALLY at some point had to get different DLCs with new worlds, seasons & gameplay mechanics.

And as long as things like Wind Tornadoes remain to be exclusive to killing a Moose Goose boss- The rest of the games going to continue to feel dated..

So yeah there you have it-

Multiplayer focused, Unfair, Disappointing loot, Repetitive, & most importantly: has unique mechanics EXCLUSIVE to the Fights that could really make just walking around and exploring the constant a lot more fun & refreshing- But Doesn’t… because then that would make the Boss even less special than it already is.

CK has always been a boss that you are required to kill just to get to CC and it sucks, klei should refresh him at some point but I'd prefer to see BQ refresh first because I want access to honeycombs and you only need to kill CK once, at least he should have a good item drop or recipe and trident isn't it.

Solo DS sold DLCs to players and developers don't want to split the playerbase between players that buy DLCs and the others that don't. There is solution to that and I think that we really need DLCs as the content has really been drip fed to us over the years, that's why it feels repetitive.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

First off - there is room for variety.  Not every boss has to be every thing, in fact its good if they are not.  We need some bosses that are better solo, and some that are better for groups.  Even if you don't always have a group near by, you do not deserve to play every boss solo as easily as a group would.  Likewise there is room for variety in reason to fight bosses - its okay for some bosses to be forced sometimes, for some to have one time loot, and others to be repeat-able for loot, etc.

The thing is that all bosses that are "good" solo are even better in a group, so we don't need that kind of variety. A lot of bosses don't have enough aoe attacks so that means one guy tanking the damage means an unlimited amount of players can just hold F, even if we consider bosses with enough aoe attacks or minion spam you will still have a much easier time with a group.

Why don't I deserve to be able to fight every boss without the added artificial difficulty for multiplayer? Its not like there is any boss that will be harder to do with 2+ players compred to solo.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

2) DST is a simple game.  It cannot feature things like attack angles, and different directional dodges, quick time events, etc etc.  tbh it sometimes feels very unfair b/c most enemies only have 4 visible angles but can move in 360 degrees.  Ironically a lot of the fights are easier solo b/c you can at least know the enemy is aiming at YOU.  If other people are around you might move into the path of an attack b/c its too ambiguous to actually know which way a rook is charging.  For DST to add things like dodges, directional attacks, etc they would probably need to start including indicators like Forge had.

That's really not true, solo player will never have an easier time killing a boss compared to doing it in a group of equally skilled players. The only reason you believe this to be the case is because of the skill difference between the players on pubs or servers you play on. Most attacks can easily be tanked and outhealed and the more damage you can deal to the boss the faster it dies, if you have 3+ players you can literally tank almost every boss without needing to prep much at all.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

For things like minion spam - the answer is always to find your answer.  This isn't an rpg where you enter with your character and equipment, and need to pick attacks from a list to defeat the boss.  This is a whole sandbox adventure game.  Thinking outside the box is part of the game.  Its not cheese to use the environment, other mobs, constructions etc to your advantage in a fight - that is literally the game!  As "unfair" as bee queen is, there are ways to handle the minion spam.  They aren't cheese just b/c you didn't think of it yourself before you saw a youtube video about it.  AND just b/c you saw 1 way to do it in a YT video doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it.  Just try things yourself and find what works for you.

The point is that this was added for multiplayer and it is so unfair for solo players. Why should I need to cheese/build for a boss or waste a lot of resources? The difference is that it will always result in groups having to not think about how to kill a boss and you as a solo player have to look for solutions and will need to invest much more for the fight.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

I mean DST is a multiplayer game, so it is not unreasonable for some experiences to just be better with multiple people.  Obviously a solo player won't like it when it happens, and Klei has done a good job of preventing any sort of solo-lock that prevents a solo player from completing content - but its a bit selfish and greedy to think Klei MUST make every boss accessible solo.

It really isn't selfish or greedy in any way to want for every boss to be accessible solo, there are a lot of solo players so there is value for them to refresh some bosses and make them more reasonable to fight solo.

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

b/c you don't deserve anything.  I like monks and martial arts - I do not deserve to have a pugilist character or weapon set.  I like necromancy and summoning - I do not deserve to have Diablo2 necromancer ported to DST.

We can give feedback on what we want and Klei can develop what they want, and wouldn't it be great if all of that lined up for every single person?  But it does not.  So I will give my feedback that planar is nonsense but I'm not going to stop playing the game for it.

This is a terrible take, you are the consumer and you are allowed to voice your opinions or dare I say deserve to have the game catered to your playstyle if there is enough players that feel like you do. We are supporting the development by buying the game and skins.

43 minutes ago, Castiliano said:

Even though this is all an obvious point, I wanted to reinforce it here: I never thought it was fair for Dragonfly to have 27500 health against 1 player, 2 players... 6 players. Same for other bosses. Btw, some bosses adds new mechanics when there are more players and that's cool. Despite everything, most of us here on the forum have gotten used to it and have learned how to deal with bosses the way they currently are.

I didn't get your third point. For a second it looks like you were clamoring for bad loot that wasn't an ally in survival lul. But soon after, you ask for better loot for other bosses

That's what I believe, so many players are against scaling HP for bosses based on player count but I don't think there is another solution that is easy to code instead of doing this. A lot of veteran players have gotten used to the current HP of bosses and they don't want to see them nerfed but literally if any one of them goes back to DS ROG they will see how easy the game is with stacking armor and bosses  having so much less HP.

 

 

Edited January 8 by 00petar00

[BalkanCockroach]

Just now, Evelo said:

Don't Starve was for survival

I'd say that and proggression, very similar to terraria. Especially since we are getting very proggression based content updates rn.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Sussy

Do you wanna make a Raid boss rework poll or should i make it?

[Yuuko]

13 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

I agree with this but the issue is that a lot of players have gotten used to it so they don't even question it.

The thing is - I was originally one very much like Mike in complaining about bosses being unfair to solo players.

Eventually what I learned is that *I* was the problem, not the game or the boss.  The methods of handling the bosses were always available along side the boss, and have only expanded since.  I just didn't think of them, and didn't get outside my own ideas of how I was supposed to play the game to implement them.

As I learned how to tackle the bosses, and gained experience fighting them multiple times successfully and in different ways I have found that the bosses are actually good in the game exactly as they are.  Its just some people keep calling things "cheese" and saying they shouldn't need to prepare things for a fighting and well... they're wrong.

Preparing for the fights, like preparing for the seasons is essential to this game.  Removing the need to prepare some answer to BQueens relentless minion spam removes the unique element of her fight.  I would not want to fight a nerfed version of her because I know the current version CAN be beaten as any character in multiple ways - and only more ways are added as the game continues to expand.

13 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

The thing is that all bosses that are "good" solo are even better in a group, so we don't need that kind of variety. A lot of bosses don't have enough aoe attacks so that means one guy tanking the damage means an unlimited amount of players can just hold F, even if we consider bosses with enough aoe attacks or minion spam you will still have a much easier time with a group.

Iffy...  I think Klaus is great solo, but I do not like fighting it with other people around.  For most bosses I don't mind if other people are around, but while they make the fights easy they kinda make them too easy lol.  I much prefer fighting bosses alone where I can enjoy the mechanics more.  Like I've said - if anything bosses should just be scaled UP for extra players, not down for solo b/c I think most of it is already tuned for solo... except maybe Toad...

Edited January 8 by Yuuko

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

17 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

I think the idea that roguelikes and roguelites are actually different things is a bit laughable.  The entire genre has a lot of grey area, just like "fighting games" do.  Is a fighting game a 2d game?  Is it 1 on 1?  Does it lack progression?  Is Smash a fighting game?

There are a lot of people who will try to say one thing or another, but definitively there is no real separation between different rogue like games - b/c they are like the game rogue.  They are like the game rogue, but a lite experience.

Rougelikes are like the game rouge, as in they have a permadeath. Rougelites are a "light" version of rouge, because they have meta progression, making them more suitable for general audiences. These terms were made to make the whole genre less grey.

4 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

Its just some people keep calling things "cheese" and saying they shouldn't need to prepare things for a fighting and well... they're wrong.

Yeah always found the way DST player define cheese to be weird. Like, bee mines were added for a reason lol, and so were bunnymen.

[Yuuko]

5 minutes ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Rougelikes are like the game rouge, as in they have a permadeath. Rougelites are a "light" version of rouge, because they have meta progression, making them more suitable for general audiences. These terms were made to make the whole genre less grey.

Nah, the terms were mostly made for purists to try and say some other game is not a real roguelike game.

I've been playing these for over 30 years now.  The quantifiers of being turn based, perma death, progression reset, etc have been challenged even in rogue clones b/c variety is the spice of life.  Not every game tried to adhere to some dogmatic approach to the roguelike genre.

One of the roguelikes I played a lot of was Angband, which eventually got a multiplayer version MAngband where the world persisted even though each character had perma death, but you could pass loot on to your next character by leaving it in the world in some way for them to acquire - and the loot its self was spilled on the ground for others to loot - these changes did not suddenly swap the genre of the game.  Even in the inception of the genre the "rules" about what was roguelike were not set in stone.

Edited January 8 by Yuuko

[00petar00]

5 hours ago, Yuuko said:

The thing is - I was originally one very much like Mike in complaining about bosses being unfair to solo players.

Eventually what I learned is that *I* was the problem, not the game or the boss.  The methods of handling the bosses were always available along side the boss, and have only expanded since.  I just didn't think of them, and didn't get outside my own ideas of how I was supposed to play the game to implement them.

As I learned how to tackle the bosses, and gained experience fighting them multiple times successfully and in different ways I have found that the bosses are actually good in the game exactly as they are.  Its just some people keep calling things "cheese" and saying they shouldn't need to prepare things for a fighting and well... they're wrong.

Preparing for the fights, like preparing for the seasons is essential to this game.  Removing the need to prepare some answer to BQueens relentless minion spam removes the unique element of her fight.  I would not want to fight a nerfed version of her because I know the current version CAN be beaten as any character in multiple ways - and only more ways are added as the game continues to expand.

The thing is that I believe you aren't the problem, just because there are options it doesn't mean that it isn't significantly easier for 2 players and it isn't 1+1.

The argument people bring up is that you will need to kill the boss 2 times for both players to get the drops but it goes back to that 1+1 player doesn't equal to 2 solo players in a fight but at least 4, this is debatable depending on the boss but I believe in general it is correct.

It doesn't matter if a method you use is cheese or not the issue is that a group of 3+ players will not have to go that far and they don't even need to put that much thought or resources into the fight. 

Groups don't need to prepare much for BQ and you only have to do that because you are solo player and just because a boss can be beaten it doesn't mean that it is that interesting when it is a HP sponge made for multiplayer and it adds artificial difficulty to solo play that doesn't exist with multiple players and you have adapted and accepted the current state of the bosses.

5 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Iffy...  I think Klaus is great solo, but I do not like fighting it with other people around.  For most bosses I don't mind if other people are around, but while they make the fights easy they kinda make them too easy lol.  I much prefer fighting bosses alone where I can enjoy the mechanics more.  Like I've said - if anything bosses should just be scaled UP for extra players, not down for solo b/c I think most of it is already tuned for solo... except maybe Toad...

After playing for so long alone I also find most boss fights too easy even when I have just one other player with me but I still want to see changes to mechanics that make a boss fight so much harder for solo players.

I wouldn't mind if some bosses that are too easy in multiplayer were scaled up as long as other bosses that have unfair mechanics made for multiplayer are scaled down for solo play. I think that developers should invest more time into changing bosses and items in the game that currently don't have a use or aren't even close to being meta, once something gets added to the game it rarely receives any changes.

 

Edited January 9 by 00petar00

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Evelo said:

That's the thing. Don't Starve was not boss focused.

You had the big 3 in the genre: Minecraft, Terraria, Don't Starve. Minecraft was for creative building. Terraria was for Boss Fights, and Don't Starve was for survival.

Minecraft includes some survival, Terraria includes some creative building, Don't Starve has some combat.

Now the game is shifting from Survival Focus to Boss Focus since the addition of Bee Queen and Toadstool in ANR; and I (and probably others like Mike here) feel is the wrong direction for the game.

I'm so sorry, I wasn't being serious. I've exhausted all options when communicating with someone on here that I was being sardonic, Of course it's not a boss rush game, it's a survival sandbox but this person seems to enjoy playing the contrarian and is currently moaning about it being too boss focused I thought it'd be easier to just pretend they're correct, seems easier

Edit: Just to say though, I get what you mean - I just happen to be happy with the general route they've gone, I feel nowadays i'd get bored of the gameplay loop, I agree with someone who mentioned earlier (think it was @Yuuko) It just feels like the natural progression, the introduction of new survival mechanics will run dry eventually, the bosses are always a bit hard (for me at least) so I personally enjoy the progressive element of taking them down. I do get you though 

Edited January 8 by Uedo

[grm9]

13 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

artificial difficulty

what is artificial difficulty?

14 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

it adds artificial difficulty to solo play that doesn't exist with multiple players and you have adapted and accepted the current state of the bosses

it makes fights not boring when playing solo unlike multiplayer

16 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

just because a boss can be beaten it doesn't mean that it is that interesting

it is interesting in case of some methods and there are very few bosses that are interesting to fight and there probably won't be more because a 3D game with only 8 sprites per animation at most and 360 degrees sucks for making combat interesting, especially if the devs are going to keep adding bosses that are supposed to be fun because you can kill them using only axes if you dodge