Should raid bosses have solo scaling or be reworked.

[grm9]

32 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

I vote for mechanics scaling

1-Bee queen, longer cooldown between grumble spawns with less players. (Everyone ignores them anyways/otherwise)

2-Crab King, less claw hp/less claws and lower Regen/Regen interruption with less players.

3-Fuelweaver, less hp regained per woven shadow eaten/less woven shadows.

4-Dragonfly, less lavae spawned. They are already "cheesed" as solo players.

5-Toad stool, less mush trees spawned/easier to cut down.

These are just examples but the gist of it is to follow in example to what Klaus has

klaus is boring, don't nerf the bosses, they're already reasonably beatable solo, it'd be boring if FW would become easier and you wouldn't need to pay as much attention to woven shadows, the only good thing out of those is reducing CK claw hp 

[Mike23Ua]

12 minutes ago, grm9 said:

klaus is boring, don't nerf the bosses, they're already reasonably beatable solo, it'd be boring if FW would become easier and you wouldn't need to pay as much attention to woven shadows, the only good thing out of those is reducing CK claw hp 

The thing is that people joining DST having come from DS and it’s DLCs are going to be hit with a near insurmountable difficulty increase.

Your so used to fighting these Multiplayer Centric battles that when you even TRY to go back and play Solo DS you probably feel like the game is too easy because bosses die too quickly.

Originally DST was only going to ever be the Multiplayer Stand Alone expansion to Dont Starve, which would’ve been pretty much the same game- just with content scaled for multiple players in mind.

However as of 2019 Klei has been updating DST with new content that makes it less of just being Multiplayer DS, and more of an actual full blown sequel with new content and a continuation to the games lore.

If players can not overcome the Multiplayer Centric design changes of DST, then they will be “stuck” at certain points of not being able to continue or progress through the game.

From MY point of view if a play toggles On Wild Rifts from Day 1 despite this originally intended to be Late Game Content- it gives the player access to an easy to craft and repair weapon that deals more damage then a spear, doesn’t constantly drain sanity like a Darksword, or spoil out like a Hambat.

If you ask my personal Opinion Introductory Rift Content is actually an excellent way to scale boss fights without actually scaling the boss fights themselves.

You may not be thinking about it right now- But the faster you can kill a boss/more damage you can deal to it, and the quicker you can dispatch of its Minions: The Easier the fight will be.

Dragonfly even has a mechanic where if players deal enough damage to it, it “Faints” so they can get in even more free hits… lmao.

Crab King is Designed to Heal, unless its healing is constantly being interrupted.

If you can’t see how these things are clearly designed with the intention of Multiplayer & absolute Misery when attempting to do Solo then I really don’t know what else to tell you..

All that I can say for a fact is that Brightshade Hammers are an absolutely amazing upgrade from the Spears I use for most combat scenarios.. they aren’t TOO much powerful than a Spear, and also have Hammering/Pickaxe functions.

Yes I know that turning this content on ahead of activating the rifts the intended way probably wasn’t ever considered by Klei.. but I can firmly say that until proper boss scaling gets added to the game- It’s a pretty decent way to make boss fights a tiny bit more bearable- Without nerfing them into the ground.

But the problem is that under the INTENDED way of getting this gear, it would be so late into the game you don’t really even NEED them to help with previous encounters anymore.

Or in a language even Klei Devs can understand: It’s like paying 50$ for the seasons pass to Batman Arkham Knight with a bunch of cool Batmobiles to use throughout the history of Bat Media, but the *Catch* is that you can only use these batmobiles once you’ve fully completed the game- And at that point, all the bosses are locked up in prison, and there’s no crime left to fight on the streets, so your really just Joyriding around Gotham at that point.

Maybe Future Rift Updates will change that, but as it stands right NOW I can firmly say that Rift Content happens so late into the game, that by the time you gain access to the tools and weapons- There’s very little actual use for them.

Anyways the point in trying to make here is that just having a larger variety of weapons and armors can go a massively long way in helping with boss fights.

but that’s a Band-Aid solution at best… because, while I find a solo player using a Brightshade Sword to scale the fight with Dragonfly to be perfectly reasonable and fair, Nothing stops an entire group from grabbing the same weapons and armors and making said fight that much MORE easy.

So in conclusion: Bosses need “Proper” scaling based on how many players are engaged with it.

[Cheggf]

9 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Do most people play as Wolfgang or Wanda?

iirc there is a tracker for character use metrics...  idk what it is though.

Don't Starve Together - Data Visualization (resamvi.io)

Wolfgang is unusually high right now, he used to rather consistently be middle of the pack. The only thing that's always true no matter what is that Wendy is #1 by far, Wigfrid is #2 by far, then the rest of the cast is much further down with Wilson always being top 3 or 4. 

[Mike23Ua]

31 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Don't Starve Together - Data Visualization (resamvi.io)

Wolfgang is unusually high right now, he used to rather consistently be middle of the pack. The only thing that's always true no matter what is that Wendy is #1 by far, Wigfrid is #2 by far, then the rest of the cast is much further down with Wilson always being top 3 or 4. 

Does this also gather data of how many players on Consoles play a certain character? Because Wilson most certainly should not be one of the top played picks- His Skill Tree made him into even more of a joke than Wes.

Wilsons “Rework” was Supposed to be his Skill Tree, but then ALL Characters started get Skill Trees so “Wilson” got effectively Shafted on getting a Rework.

Characters who got Interesting Reworks+Cool stuff in Skill trees are going to outclass him.

And I rarely see anyone play Wilson on Xbox, The reason Wendy, Wolfgang, & Wigfrid are top picks is because of how Controller Friendly their Playstyles Are.

Wanda WOULD be a top pick, but I’m assuming that due to the lagginess of Console Version DS that playing as her takes a lot more Caution (& you have to account for Lag to avoid aging) And we all know WANDAs “Power” comes from being really old and close to death anyway, so it’s not very fun to be old age to deal boosted damage, get a lag spike and die while trying to fight a Beefalo.

[Uedo]

Nah it's fine as is, maybe slightly tune it down but the people mainly asking for scaling are expecting the HP to go to DS levels. Absolutely not - too boring. Add it as an option if needs must but never by default

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

If players can not overcome the Multiplayer Centric design changes of DST, then they will be “stuck” at certain points of not being able to continue or progress through the game.

Oooph.... It's always a bit of meme to say it, and i mean no disrespect or am i pointing this at you specifically, but you know what you do when you get stuck on a game right? Git gud. 

Sounds lousy to say, but like... sometimes it's just the case :P 

(not a brag either, i'm awful :D)

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Or in a language even Klei Devs can understand: It’s like paying 50$ for the seasons pass to Batman Arkham Knight with a bunch of cool Batmobiles to use throughout the history of Bat Media, but the *Catch* is that you can only use these batmobiles once you’ve fully completed the game- And at that point, all the bosses are locked up in prison, and there’s no crime left to fight on the streets, so your really just Joyriding around Gotham at that point.

Maybe Future Rift Updates will change that, but as it stands right NOW I can firmly say that Rift Content happens so late into the game, that by the time you gain access to the tools and weapons- There’s very little actual use for them.

I absolutely agree with you  on this - But like you say, development is continuing, I remember being frustrated at the beginning of the lunar stuff when it first came just down to the fact I felt I had hints of the future content but nothing reaaaaaaaally to use it on.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Does this also gather data of how many players on Consoles play a certain character? Because Wilson most certainly should not be one of the top played picks- His Skill Tree made him into even more of a joke than Wes.

Wilsons “Rework” was Supposed to be his Skill Tree, but then ALL Characters started get Skill Trees so “Wilson” got effectively Shafted on getting a Rework.

Characters who got Interesting Reworks+Cool stuff in Skill trees are going to outclass him.

And I rarely see anyone play Wilson on Xbox, The reason Wendy, Wolfgang, & Wigfrid are top picks is because of how Controller Friendly their Playstyles Are.

Wanda WOULD be a top pick, but I’m assuming that due to the lagginess of Console Version DS that playing as her takes a lot more Caution (& you have to account for Lag to avoid aging) And we all know WANDAs “Power” comes from being really old and close to death anyway, so it’s not very fun to be old age to deal boosted damage, get a lag spike and die while trying to fight a Beefalo.

Wilson has always been a "bad" character b/c he is lacking perks, yet he's always had a decent high play rate.  ppl like beards?  idk.

Wendy has looong been #1 and Wig #2 and I don't think skill trees are going to change that.  Its actually kinda interesting how little the power potential of a character effects their play rate.  Wanda has always been far from #1 spot even though she is a very powerful character.

I don't know if these charts are for players across all systems or just pc though.  Thing is you can't judge total player base by what you see.  You see people who play in your time zone, in servers you're interested in, etc.  This chart always surprises me.  Nice to see Ukraine is pumping out some Willows <3 

[grm9]

1 hour ago, Yuuko said:

ppl like beards? 

no, they pick the first character in the list

[BalkanCockroach]

Just now, grm9 said:

no, they pick the first character in the list

Nah, Wilson is just too good. He can literally throw torches.

[Mike23Ua]

20 minutes ago, grm9 said:

no, they pick the first character in the list

It’s probably because Wilson is the MASCOT of the Franchise more than Anything, it’s like playing Sonic Superstars- Even though there are Several playable characters each one with their own unique abilities that are arguably better than Sonics, Sonic is still going to be most well known & thus chosen character.

However from my personal friends playing preferences I’ve seen them gravitate towards namely Willow & Woodie- NO ONE plays Wilson.

Edited January 9 by Mike23Ua

[BalkanCockroach]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

It’s probably because Wilson is the MASCOT of the Franchise more than Anything, it’s like playing Sonic Superstars- Even though there are Several playable characters each one with their own unique abilities that are arguably better than Sonics, Sonic is still going to be most well known & thus chosen character.

However from my personal friends playing preferences I’ve seen the gravitate towards namely Willow & Woodie- NO ONE plays Wilson.

Wilson maybe the macot. But i think Maxwell is the most iconic. Atleast to me.

[Popian]

6 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Wendy has looong been #1 and Wig #2 and I don't think skill trees are going to change that.  Its actually kinda interesting how little the power potential of a character effects their play rate.  Wanda has always been far from #1 spot even though she is a very powerful character.

I think there is a reasonable explanation.

If you will notice the skew where the bumps in activity of Asia almost matches the bumps with pick rates of Wendy and Wigfrid and Wolfgang, and that modded servers account for at least 90% of servers, there is a good chance that most of them are playing modded servers where directly/indirectly dealing more damage and taking less damage are more valued as innate perks, especially if it can scale with things like mod weapons.

Wendy: her whole shtick is Abigail that can tank and deal damage for you, at least 40% of content (see immunity to vanilla Antlion Sand Spikes) if scaled will have to let her steamroll through (AFK) or save resources on them (the numbers are quite touchy for getting this sweet spot so I'd assume a bias towards OP side) or else no one will bother picking her for basically playing as Wes.

Wigfrid: simple damage reduction, passive healing, damage increase.

Wolfgang: does a consistent 2x damage while fighting, and if skill trees were left unchecked gets free damage on aligned mobs, does chores faster and with crits while mighty, has a ranged AoE (maybe also crowd control) hit and run option with dumbells, and can buff Abigail.

Using this data to represent vanilla character picks is probably not a good idea unless it had more filters such as "in vanilla servers" and "in vanilla servers with known mods or settings that would not majorly affect character selection".

7 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Wilson has always been a "bad" character b/c he is lacking perks, yet he's always had a decent high play rate.  ppl like beards?  idk.

Wilson's pick rate can be explained by being the pick of skin farming bots for being first on the list. This one I've actually seen where they're using the same username with incremental digits at the end.

[DegenerateFurry]

I could go for scaling as a setting when creating a world. That aside, though, I mostly just want reworks for some of the bosses that suck to fight solo, like Bee Queen (assuming you're not one of the few characters who's really good at crowd control). 

[Lardee]

Rather than scaling, raid bosses need a "Misery Toadstool" form to make them more challenging especially if you're fighting them in a group.  Hopefully we'll eventually get mutated variants of them, although it sucks that they'd be locked behind the rifts.

[Gotheran]

I am once again reminding people that bee queen and her grumble bees have very straight forward kiting ai that makes fighting them a chore unless you bring a bunch of pigs with football helmets to run interference or have a large group of players, with queen bee replacing them as quickly as you remove them. Solo its a chore and the only way I was able to come out was by ornery beefalo and abigail buffs to try and do some crowd control, ontop of nerfed queen bee health from a mod. Without the brute force approach kiting is neigh impossible between the number of enemies and queen bee's slowdown, the grumble bees and QB herself are so big they can easily push each other close enough to a fleeing player that even a glossamar saddle beef cant get away sometimes.

Just changing the grumble bees to circle the player or any mobs they deem a target in a similar method to Batalisks would drastically improve the fights feel with no other changes.

Edited January 12 by Gotheran

[Yuuko]

55 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Just changing the grumble bees to circle the player or any mobs they deem a target in a similar method to Batalisks would drastically improve the fights feel with no other changes.

Ew bats.  Only bested by monkeys for most annoying little !@#ts.

Thing is - as the game has developed these issues have all received better answers that sorta make them non-issues.

In the beginning (for me) it was mostly Wolfgang with pan flute to start with, but most characters can do this too it just takes longer.  Put the grumbles to sleep, get a few whacks in, rinse and repeat.  Then wall strats started coming in.  While these aren't as easy as they were before, they are totally viable still.  You can build different wall patterns to separate her from the grumbles giving you plenty of face time.  Don't like walls?  Build a lot of roads instead!  With a good road arena set up you can best her without much issue there either.  Wendy got her rework - and wow is she great at bee queen.  Abi basically automatically takes care of the grumbles for you, and get this - abi is also great at farming all of the spider silk you'll need for your bee hats.  In this fight you basically ignore the grumbles leaving them to abi, and maybe use a heal pot or two but not really.  Mostly you just get face time with the queen bee.  Walter joined the battle and while its kinda a meme b/c it takes sooooo looooong and soooo maany marble rounds (and he's allergic to bees) he can totally kite and kill bqueen from range.  Then Maxwell got his update with shadow prison and its basically grumbles on lock now.  He can fight the entire thing from a safe distance easier than anyone else.  Its better if you have some shadow gear, but its not really that much.  Wormwood got his skill tree and I've seen ppl put the sleep shroom shenanigans to work on her to great effect.  Willow just received hers too and combustion is a great cc as well.

So really its like...  some characters are better at some things than others, but we have plenty of options who are good at it as well as character agnostic tactics that can be employed that are actually pretty low cost.  Didn't even get into the auto fire ovens, catapults, or just using phase 2 of twin terrors and most of the cast is still waiting on skill trees.  I'm sure there are plenty more I haven't mentioned as well.

I didn't really want Klei to go this way but imo their current path is defensible. 

Edited January 12 by Yuuko

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

5 hours ago, Yuuko said:

So really its like...  some characters are better at some things than others, but we have plenty of options who are good at it as well as character agnostic tactics that can be employed that are actually pretty low cost.  Didn't even get into the auto fire ovens, catapults, or just using phase 2 of twin terrors and most of the cast is still waiting on skill trees.  I'm sure there are plenty more I haven't mentioned as well.

I didn't really want Klei to go this way but imo their current path is defensible. 

Really interesting how solo characters rose to their current effectiveness vs raid bosses. Would've never expected it given the state of the game a few years ago.

On a seperate note, I really like the behaviors of all the raid bosses and the strategies that players have formed to deal with them. However, some fights still feel like they drag on too long. That's really why I personally want health scaling. Beequeen just takes too long.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Really interesting how solo characters rose to their current effectiveness vs raid bosses. Would've never expected it given the state of the game a few years ago.

On a seperate note, I really like the behaviors of all the raid bosses and the strategies that players have formed to deal with them. However, some fights still feel like they drag on too long. That's really why I personally want health scaling. Beequeen just takes too long.

idk you want a fast bee queen?  Get twin terrors to second form and they'll kill bqueen in a single winter night.  Otherwise most methods I use for her take about a day.  I think 8-12 minutes isn't that bad.

[mmmmmmmmmmm]

On 1/9/2024 at 9:37 AM, Sanitar said:

Bosses in DST are the worst part of the game. To get at least some pleasure from the boss battle, you need to play as Wolfgang or Wanda.

Do you know why most people play for Wolfgang or Wanda? Because other characters are not capable of fighting bosses, that is, other characters will suffer on bosses. Killing a boss for 20 minutes who has one attack is not fun

first of all, most play wendy, second of all, every character is capable of fighting bosses, if you have enough skill, which i would guess that you don't, and even if that wasn't the case, besides wanda and wolfgang, webber, wurt, winona, wickerbottom, maxwell, wendy, willow, wigfried, woody, warly, and even wormwood have a damage multiplier or a way of dealing more damage, all that remains is wx, which with circutes, is arguably even more op than having more damage, wilson, which is the base character, and has no need for such a thing, wortox, which can literaly teleport and heal for a butterfly, and wes, which is a meme, or a mime (pun intended) also, if its not fun, then don't do it, or get some friends, idk

[Mike23Ua]

Bumping this thread from the depths of obscurity but after the recent & surprisingly highly controversial lureplant/spider egg changes, I asked myself why do players feel the need to cheese these fights in the first place? And the conclusion I came up with is that could it maybe perhaps be because the fights drag on for too long?

So I decided to do a little experiment and I increased the damage that bosses can do to me by 40% (a toggleable world Gen setting by the way..) AND I choose to play as Wolfgang.

The result was a fight that still felt punishing for any errors I had made, but didn’t drag on for 30 minutes.

I came to the conclusion that hopefully most people would be less inclined to use exploits if the fights were actually fun & do-able without feeling like a chore or grind in a timely manor.

I also asked myself well 40% damage increase is fun.. but what if I could up that higher? Maybe 60-80 or even 100% damage?

I know that DST isn’t a game where if you fail to dodge an attack it kills you instantly in one hit (well unless your Maxwell or Old Wanda lol..)

But what if it WAS?!?! 
What I’m saying here is that bosses can still feel like a deadly threat that requires skill, without requiring the player to spend 20-30 minutes fighting them.

Besides… when you play in a group, like your intended and expected to do, you’ll melt through these big baddies in a mater of a few short minutes anyway.

[arubaro]

8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Bumping this thread from the depths of obscurity but after the recent & surprisingly highly controversial lureplant/spider egg changes, I asked myself why do players feel the need to cheese these fights in the first place? And the conclusion I came up with is that could it maybe perhaps be because the fights drag on for too long?

So I decided to do a little experiment and I increased the damage that bosses can do to me by 40% (a toggleable world Gen setting by the way..) AND I choose to play as Wolfgang.

The result was a fight that still felt punishing for any errors I had made, but didn’t drag on for 30 minutes.

I came to the conclusion that hopefully most people would be less inclined to use exploits if the fights were actually fun & do-able without feeling like a chore or grind in a timely manor.

I also asked myself well 40% damage increase is fun.. but what if I could up that higher? Maybe 60-80 or even 100% damage?

I know that DST isn’t a game where if you fail to dodge an attack it kills you instantly in one hit (well unless your Maxwell or Old Wanda lol..)

But what if it WAS?!?! 
What I’m saying here is that bosses can still feel like a deadly threat that requires skill, without requiring the player to spend 20-30 minutes fighting them.

Besides… when you play in a group, like your intended and expected to do, you’ll melt through these big baddies in a mater of a few short minutes anyway.

Which fight did you tried? Only misery toadstool takes that long but you even complained about klaus and antlion so, which fight did you tried as Wolfgang? This smell lies once again

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

Which fight did you tried? Only misery toadstool takes that long but you even complained about klaus and antlion so, which fight did you tried as Wolfgang? This smell lies once again

Any boss that I’ve successfully killed with any other character that wasn’t Wolfgang?

That would include Deerclops, Bearger, Antlion, Ancient Guardian, Moose/Goose, Crab King, Eye of Terror, Twins of Terror, Armored Bearger, Undead Deerclops, Undead Varg, and Dragonfly (Wolfgang can actually pass her out making this fight a laughable joke BtW lol..) 

Ive even managed to kill Klaus as Wolfgang, but have not been able to achieve those same results as any other character, last attempt was as Willow but Klaus’s Ice attack kept killing her out due to instant freezing downside.

Wolfgang just existing at all effectively makes a boss fight last for Half as long.

But boss fights in this game, outside of very specifically Deerclops & Bearger (both of which spawn to bother you & destroy your world but can be ignored..) and more importantly Crab King & CC, And AG & AFW (who are all linked to unlocking new open world gameplay content) other bosses however only exist as LUXERY…

And that’s what you don’t seem to understand, lol… Do you honestly think that I actually CARE to fight Dragonfly at all as any character if the only reason I’m fighting her is for % Chance not even a guaranteed but a CHANCE to obtain the cute Broodling pet? Lol absolutely not… I don’t fancy fighting a 27,500 hp boss for that. Or in Wolfgang’s case: 13,750.

Even the Undead Versions of these bosses are a JOKE because they don’t just spawn on their own… you have to kill a normal version of the boss so they’ll reanimate to life in undead variation, and why do that when you can just ignore killing the normal version boss? You can even burn their bodies before they can reanimate so there’s also that…

However once again even the newer undead variants fall into the same category of Luxery, you’ll only be fighting them to obtain items that are going to make staying alive even easier (polar Bearger bin) Otherwise you can just ignore the bosses existence or burn it before it mutates.

Pure Luxery… and/or Elitistisim.

And I for one- Don’t particularly fancy fighting Dragonfly every time the only thing I want from her is a purely cosmetic Pet.

Edited March 24 by Mike23Ua

[Guille6785]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

What I’m saying here is that bosses can still feel like a deadly threat that requires skill, without requiring the player to spend 20-30 minutes fighting them.

there are no bosses that take this long even with basic gear and x1 damage (other than misery toad)

[Gi-Go]

17 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

there are no bosses that take this long even with basic gear and x1 damage (other than misery toad)

Unless you're Walter main 

[Y0sH]

I personally think that all bosses are fine as they are from a solo point of view but maybe they should get harder based on the amount of players that do damage to them. So in a group of 8 Bee Queen isn't dead in like 20 seconds lol. Make them harder for groups and at the same time increase the loot based on the size of the group that helped defeat them. A system that allows loot based on how much damage you done to be automatically put into your inventory would be nice to combat loot griefers too.