An idea for scaling bosses

[marshyds]

A major issue with dst has been boss scaling with players, with a lot of players meaning an easy kill and solo being difficult.

Scaling health is problematic because it incentivises killing bosses solo to conserve resources. (But is a somewhat valid solution too.)

Here is my proposed solution for scaling some bosses:

- Bosses that summon a number of objects (Toadstool trees, Grumble bees, Claws, larvae, CC crystals, vowen shadows, ect.) now gain a radius, where they will check for players.

- Depending on the number of players in this radius, the maximum minion or entity cap will change.

- If the cap increases, the boss will spawn more minions or objects. If it decreases, the minion stays but upon expiring it will not be replaced.

This makes it so that everyone in the server doesnt have to be present for a fight by having the boss scan for nearby fellows.

This makes it harder to just brute force the boss because more players equals more hazzards to deal with.

This makes it so that solo players dont have to deal with minion spam or tree chopping, as the number is lessened.

- A BOSS THAT USES THIS MECHANIC WELL! -

Klaus!

He spawns hellholes and freezepits for every player and does the same for krampii in phase 2! Theres a reason he's such a good boss solo! That!

Alternatively, the health of said minions could change too.

Boss health could be done via the world settings maximum player cap, if you have an intended max player count then the bosses could change max health when starting up the server. Make it so thay the boss just goes back to max if you shut down the server in the middle of a fight. (Could also let you set the cap way higher for a better challenge)

Thoughts?

 

[grm9]

only if current values are for solo at least

[Mike23Ua]

I’ve played a lot of games over my years and many of them will scale the games world, content drops & boss fights to match the level of players.

2009’s Drop-IN, Drop-Out, Coop game Borderlands, always gave a Notification whenever a player joined or left the world.

”Player Name has Joined- The Creatures of Pandora grow Stronger!, Player Name has left- The Creatures of Pandora grow weaker!”

In fact I have played the absolute heck out of Borderlands and can confidently say that YOU have not actually played borderlands (at least in its fully intended glory..) until you get a server full of maximum players so the world and all of its content is scaled at its toughest.

DST heavily and I mean HEAVILY suffers from this lack of drop in, drop out content, world, boss scaling.

For example a “Cluster” of Deadly Brightshades are almost impossible for a Solo player to fight on their own, but with as little as 1 other player the second player can intentionally force the plant to stretch its vines out as far as possible, so the first player can laughably easily severe their vines away.

Thats a Non-Boss fight example, but the games “Raid Bosses” are the biggest offenders in this category, even though it only has 5000 Hp even the freaking Eye of Terror (non upgraded version) can overwhelm a solo player if it is able to spit out enough minions to attack the player.

In single player ALL of these Minions are targeting you and you alone and since the game has stupid minion mob stun lock, you can and will end up literally stunned to death (it’s a problem I had with cookie cutter swarms until I went into world Gen settings and tuned their spawn rates to very little)

Bee Queen, Dragonfly, Eye of Terror, Twins of Terror and I’m going to assume now also Crab King?? Can overwhelm the player by endlessly spewing out minions.

In CO-OP however these minions would rotate between targets giving the players breathing room to heal up or to attack them without being attacked back while they chase another player.

This isn’t just exclusively a boss fight problem, Hound Waves can become too difficult to deal with reasonably alone, While in Coop they’ll separate and chase different players, during their attempting to attack another player or failing to attack them and then aggressively barking afterward, leaves them vulnerable to attacks.

Im not sure how many of you guys have ever played State of Decay 2 but in single player the freaks can only ever hit and damage you, and it’s only when your already dangerously low on health that they can actually “Kill” you, in Multiplayer However.. these freaks gain a new and quite terrifying ability to “grab” the player, and if your co-op teammates do not save you in time by beating the enemies into letting go of you, Even at full Health these freaks have an instant killing animation where they quite literally rip you in half.

Another game that scales it’s enemies based on players would be Gears of War 4 & 5, theres this thing that’ll grab you and try to drag you away off screen to kill you etc.

I think that if Klei was to rework boss fights, they should be easier to solo players, & have new more complex mechanics in multiplayer.

[marshyds]

3 minutes ago, Habakkuk said:

Good, and the loot droped could increase with more players. like Shroom Skins, Honeycomb and etc..

Every player gets a lootbag full of stuff like terraria?

[Antynomity]

18 hours ago, Habakkuk said:

I don't know how it works in terraria, but I think there is no need for lootbags just drop as normal would be good for me. 

Essentially everyone who took part in the fight has a lootbag drop from the boss that only they can pick up and the lootbags all have the same lootpools (most important drops are guaranteed for everyone tho so it's fine)

[marshyds]

39 minutes ago, Habakkuk said:

don't think it would work well in DST.
I would prefer to the drop as it it is today but as I said with more loot.

fair enough, i think the added loot would also add even more incentive to fight a boss together, since solo is only enough for 1 player

[Cheggf]

Yeah. Klaus scales well in multiplayer, so if any scaling were to be added it should be modelled after him (and also trending in the upwards direction, not downwards).

[Mike23Ua]

Something that would probably significantly help solo players (and something Klei already attempted to do once already via Varglets) is to limit the amount of Minions that an Entity can spam.

Lets be Realistic here, not even the great & praised, Gulie can defeat a spider Queen if she’s spat out 500,000 spider babies.

I can for the most part fight Eye of Terror, that is.. up until it Overwhelms me with more than about 5-10 little minion followers.

Im playing a game called Trinity Fusion on Xbox right now and there are raid bosses that are capable of spawning other enemies, however it has a Cap on how many enemies it can spawn at any given time (kill 1, a new one might spawn or kill all that’s on screen minus the boss spawning them, the same amount or more will replace them.) But this game even though it’s single player- knows it’s highly unreasonable to expect the player to be able to fight a mob that endlessly spits out other enemies.

I think that DST could and should be fixed so that the less players actively engaged in boss fight that can spawn minions, should have a cap of how many minions it can spawn based on the amount of players in the area near it.

For example, Dragonfly might only be able to spit up 3 Larvae at a time, if one player is fighting her, 6 if two players etc, etc.

The game DOES desperately need balancing changes, and while most character reworks have been given abilities to help deal with large spawns of enemies (willows combust, Wigfrids Elden Spear Dash) these abilities are useable in BOTH Single Player and in Multiplayer.

So in conclusion: The character reworks make the games minion hordes a tiny bit more manageable (except Wilson lolololol) 

However: They also make playing multiplayer with access to those same powerful abilities feel like the games becoming “power creeped”

We wouldn’t even actually NEED things like the Elden Spear dash, Combustion, or Moose Woodies charge, If Bosses (and also smaller mobs capable of spawning large hordes of minions) could only spawn so many at any given time.

This would ALSO probably (& not surprisingly) help to fix the games Optimization problems on lesser consoles like Outdated PC’s or the Nintendo Switch.

So TLDR- Yes bosses need scaling, but so do several other minion spawning functions outside of the boss fights, do it like Trinity Fusion does it’s minion spawning mobs and the game will be 125% more playable for everyone who isn’t an Uber skilled “git Gud” god, I’m also willing to bet that the amount of Wendy players would significantly drop when they could feel like the game was actually playable without letting Abigail ghost blend hordes of on screen entities.

[Antynomity]

On 5/28/2024 at 12:41 PM, Habakkuk said:

I don't think it would work well in DST.
I would prefer to the drop as it it is today but as I said with more loot.

Fair enough, but they did copy the one part of terraria that doesn't fit DST at all, which is hard mode after doing X thing, I liked DS and by extention DST because most things that weren't tied to seasons you could get in the first ~10 days of a world, and I think it sucks a lot that they are trying to add a whole ahh part of the game that is locked behind grueling and mostly so long that they arent fun quest lines

 

More loot would work tho I agree

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Fair enough, but they did copy the one part of terraria that doesn't fit DST at all, which is hard mode after doing X thing, I liked DS and by extention DST because most things that weren't tied to seasons you could get in the first ~10 days of a world, and I think it sucks a lot that they are trying to add a whole ahh part of the game that is locked behind grueling and mostly so long that they arent fun quest lines

 

More loot would work tho I agree

Hard mode after doing x has been a been n a thing long before terraria that being said I think the main reason for it is so they can add content not suited for more casual players without ruining their experience.

[DegenerateFurry]

I think it should be a feature you can configure in the world settings. The default is no scaling (the way it is now). Give us two config settings: one for boss health (minimum is DS values, maximum is something balanced so that six players is as hard as solo). The other is for boss miscellaneous, which is things like how often Fuelweaver does his cringeworthy invincibility/heal phase, how many sporecaps Toadstool summons, how often the Queen summons her bees, and that kind of thing. 

This allows hosts/solo players not only to configure their world for the number of players they expect to have, but also to adjust the difficulty of boss fights for solo as well. 

[chincer]

allow us to select if a boss have scaling mechanics or not for solo players when creating the world.

then every boss should have a "cheese" strategy, that takes a while to set up, but allow a player to kill the boss without that much trouble, like wendy on a boat to kill bee queen. but it shouldn't be faster than the regular way. 

bosses should have meaningful mechanics, just like ancient guardian, that's a good fight both solo and in a group, some bosses are just a pain, like toadstool, it isnt that difficult in terms of mechanics, it is just tedious given how much HP he has.

 

[GimplyGoose]

On 5/27/2024 at 3:44 AM, Habakkuk said:

Good, and the loot droped could increase with more players. like Shroom Skins, Honeycomb and etc..,

The only scaling loot I would like to see would be blueprints. A blueprint for each nearby player would be a good change I think.

[grm9]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

cringeworthy invincibility/heal phase

genuinely skill issue

3 minutes ago, chincer said:

then every boss should have a "cheese" strategy, that takes a while to set up, but allow a player to kill the boss without that much trouble

all of them already have those

3 minutes ago, chincer said:

allow us to select if a boss have scaling mechanics or not for solo players when creating the world

that wouldn't be applicable for solo players, current values are for solo, they'd need to scale up for multiplayer

5 minutes ago, chincer said:

bosses should have meaningful mechanics, just like ancient guardian

"meaningful mechanics, like standing behind a rock and holding F for 10 seconds after that", toad, dfly, BQ and FW have them, AG doesn't

5 minutes ago, chincer said:

it isnt that difficult in terms of mechanics

maybe because you got enough stuff to do it effortlessly, try to do it with torch, ham bat and normal axes, maybe that'll be more fun for you

[marshyds]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

The other is for boss miscellaneous, which is things like how often Fuelweaver does his cringeworthy invincibility/heal phase, how many sporecaps Toadstool summons, how often the Queen summons her bees, and that kind of thing. 

geniuenly just lessening the ammount of woven shadows and the nightmare lights for solo would work, with it scaling with more players.

[DegenerateFurry]

16 minutes ago, grm9 said:

genuinely skill issue

Genuinely theory of mind issue. Not everyone enjoys the same mechanics as you and the amount of people that complain about Fuelweaver despite having beaten him should tell you that.

[grm9]

5 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

the amount of people that complain about Fuelweaver despite having beaten him

which is?

5 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Genuinely theory of mind issue. Not everyone enjoys the same mechanics as you

last time i remember talking with you about this iirc you've complained about inventory management that isn't required in case of many strats and you didn't want to try strats that don't include it, at least try using bramble husk/abigail/catapults or something if you don't want to lead him away from woven shadows on your own

14 minutes ago, marshyds said:

geniuenly just lessening the ammount of woven shadows and the nightmare lights for solo would work, with it scaling with more players

no need to dumb the fight down, there already exist practical cheeses for it like brightshade staff

[BalkanCockroach]

24 minutes ago, grm9 said:

that wouldn't be applicable for solo players, current values are for solo, they'd need to scale up for multiplayer

If the current values are for solo then can you explain why the solo version of the game (DS) has bosses with less health? 

The reason people call these bosses raid bosses is because they are meant to be raided in a group not solo.

[marshyds]

1 minute ago, BalkanCockroach said:

If the current values are for solo then can you explain why the solo version of the game (DS) has bosses with less health? 

in what world is dst dragonfly health appropriate for solo lol 

[BalkanCockroach]

6 minutes ago, grm9 said:

cheeses for it like brightshade staff

That's not what cheese is.

1 minute ago, marshyds said:

in what world is dst dragonfly health appropriate for solo lol 

Yeah, i said it isn't.

[chincer]

27 minutes ago, grm9 said:

that wouldn't be applicable for solo players, current values are for solo, they'd need to scale up for multiplayer

except not? the Solo dont starve bosses are scale for solo players, the dont starve together bosses are scale for multiplayer, why you think toadstool summon multiple trees to chop down? why most weapons/ character combinations would struggle to stagger dragonfly while a group of players can reliably do so? 
just because you can reliably kill those bosses solo doesnt mean their mechanics are not made for group content and their health totals base on that.

you can make bosses behave differently base on how many players are involved in the fight, instantly enranged klaus for a group of players, toadstool tree summoning base on amount of players, bee queen bees, etc

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, marshyds said:

in what world is dst dragonfly health appropriate for solo lol 

I think it has an appropriate amount of health even with no damage perks/multipliers

[grm9]

7 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

If the current values are for solo then can you explain why the solo version of the game (DS) has bosses with less health?

idk, probably because the game wasn't about bosses at all, you could've also got 99.5% damage absorption and god mode for 3 mins there too, DST's bosses would've been pitiful if they would've had less than 5k hp like all DS bosses

7 minutes ago, chincer said:

why most weapons/ character combinations would struggle to stagger dragonfly while a group of players can reliably do so?

to encourage you to either bring people in a multiplayer game or figure out how to stagger it otherwise, e.g. minions

8 minutes ago, chincer said:

the Solo dont starve bosses are scale for solo players

nah, the bosses would've been a joke and feel like a waste of time if they would've had DS bosses hp, imagine BQ with 4k hp

8 minutes ago, chincer said:

why you think toadstool summon multiple trees to chop down?

because multiple things doesn't automatically mean for multiple players?

9 minutes ago, chincer said:

just because you can reliably kill those bosses solo doesnt mean their mechanics are not made for group content and their health totals base on that

they'd be really boring and easy if they would've had DS hp and less minions

12 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

That's not what cheese is

19 minutes ago, grm9 said:

practical cheeses

 

[BalkanCockroach]

5 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

I think it has an appropriate amount of health even with no damage perks/multipliers

I always use the wall cheese so i don't know if chasing her through the lavae phase makes it faster or not but it still takes pretty long. Maybe it would feel faster cause i don't have to wait for her to come back.

3 minutes ago, grm9 said:

idk, probably because the game wasn't about bosses at all, you could've also got 99.5% damage absorption and god mode for 3 mins there too, DST's bosses would've been pitiful if they would've had less than 5k hp like all DS bosses

No, it just wasn't about raidbosses.

My main gripe isn't even the health honestly yeah it takes too long but whatever. I just don't like the minion bosses they're the ones that have obvious multiplayer mechanics.

12 minutes ago, grm9 said:

practical cheeses

What's the difference of practical cheese and just cheese?

[grm9]

12 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

I just don't like the minion bosses they're the ones that have obvious multiplayer mechanics

nope, it's most fun to figure out how to deal with them when playing solo since in that case you need to think instead of having everyone hold F 

13 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

No, it just wasn't about raidbosses

i doubt that it was about treeguards, beargers etc. either

19 minutes ago, BalkanCockroach said:

My main gripe isn't even the health honestly yeah it takes too long but whatever

you yourself said that you usually use a strat that makes you wait for around 2 mins per fight