Please do not rework more old bosses

[Popian]

On 6/7/2024 at 6:03 PM, Guille6785 said:

"new design philosophy"

I think reworked Crab King better fits a "postmodern philosophy" of crowdsourced community feedback taken quite literally?

On 6/7/2024 at 6:03 PM, Guille6785 said:

-For Dragonfly, the obvious answer to most people is to wall off the lavae. This works, but can be time consuming to set up and can result in the fight going on for much longer than with other methods because the Dragonfly is not guaranteed to enrage with this method and can instead simply repeat lavae phases infinitely.

Doesn't sleeping Dragonfly before the last Lavae explodes also work? It's a matter of whether you want to spend the flute charge, which some may prefer because of a potential trip for a Deconstruction Staff.

I see this said against the fight being long because Dragonfly has high hp, but you get a good window of damage in during the time there is focus on you between spawning the last Lavae and the Lavae's expiry. And if the above sleep thing works, walls would be one of the faster and cheaper ways since the number of hits you can get on Dragonfly spawning Lavae when positioned around the ponds is unreliable.

On 6/7/2024 at 6:03 PM, Guille6785 said:

However, with a good understanding of the fight, one can even bring a ham bat as their weapon of choice; many people wrongly believe that you can't use a ham bat for this fight,

This isn't so much of a strategy as it is saving on resources. Bringing enough weapons so you don't have to spend a good portion of the time with a cane/fist is something one does for any fight. I don't recall seeing this assumption much on the forums, but I acknowledge that there is the potential that some may arrive at that conclusion.

17 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Kle patented free-boss-smacking-time

 I'm surprised at how front-loaded dodges are frowned upon when it roughly works out to be the same number of hits dealt over time. There is also the punishment condition of not getting those hits, which is something.

[. . .]

agree

[Primalflower]

i kinda hate the fuelweaver fight like i get why someone would appreciate it but the things that you do in it just arent very fun to me and i kind of wish he could get changed to be more like the newer bosses

[grm9]

8 hours ago, arubaro said:

"CK was good after you expend hundreds of hours in test worlds and reading code"

you don't need to do that

24 minutes ago, Gi-Go said:

"You blame youtubers for crab king hate, but many players hate him on their own, after trying the fight a few times and realizing it's the most obnoxious thing ever" 

most of them didn't try rowing instead of using bees or freezing

23 minutes ago, Popian said:

I'm surprised at how front-loaded dodges are frowned upon

wdym? they're talking about stuff like daywalker's, mutated bosses' and frostjaw's staggers and ig junk yard daywalker rummaging through junk

12 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

the things that you do in it just arent very fun to me

you could try luring FW away from woven shadows instead of killing them if you didn't try that yet

[Mike23Ua]

Rowing around and around in a circle with or without bee mine cheese and getting a few close up hits on crab king in between continued rowing in a circle, just wasn’t any fun at all… Period.

It was boring and highly basic fight. I won’t get to test new crab king until it comes to Xbox but from watching the dev stream it already looks far more engaging by having the player now need to deal with little minions as well as get the heck off the island before it cracks and sinks again.

[grm9]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Rowing around and around in a circle with or without bee mine cheese and getting a few close up hits on crab king in between continued rowing in a circle, just wasn’t any fun at all… Period

you're just bad at fighting him

[Gi-Go]

25 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

i kinda hate the fuelweaver fight like i get why someone would appreciate it but the things that you do in it just arent very fun to me and i kind of wish he could get changed to be more like the newer bosses

What do you not like with fuelweaver? Give me as many details as you can. 

[Mike23Ua]

14 minutes ago, grm9 said:

you're just bad at fighting him

There wasn’t any “depth” to the fight, you literally just sail around and around in a circle that was all you did, and on the odd occasion that your boat happened to get caught by the pincher claws, you built another grass raft and abandoned the one that got caught, fighting the pincher claws unlike fighting CRAWMERAX in Borderlands, did not take away portions of his health bar, you only dealt damage to king crab when you actually hit the stationary stone in the center of everything else (including Geyzers) you could just row around in circles to avoid.

I fought this thing for 2 full weeks with repeat rollbacks and many attempted strategy’s.. im pretty sure I have an informed opinion about it.

[grm9]

2 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

There wasn’t any “depth” to the fight, you literally just sail around and around in a circle that was all you did

no, you were supposed to stay close to it to be able to deal damage as often as possible and stay in an arena that as few claws target you as possible in and kill the rest

[Popian]

23 minutes ago, grm9 said:

wdym?

I'm responding to the tonal derision.

23 minutes ago, grm9 said:

they're talking about stuff like daywalker's

Let's use this as an example. Say you do 2 hits per swipe and 15 hits when it's exhausted. That's 21/3 hits, 7 hits per dodge. Slam phase is around 5-8 hits per slam depending on if you can chain slams, but it's mostly there as a way to keep things dynamic.

Nightmare Werepig as a concept is a Dragonfly rehash where you're asked to do a more position based dodge rather than a timing one and you use high sanity to "wall off" the shadows. It's not truly 1:1 so there are adjustments such as having less health.

[grm9]

3 minutes ago, Popian said:

Let's use this as an example. Say you do 2 hits per swipe and 15 hits when it's exhausted. That's 21/3 hits, 7 hits per dodge. Slam phase is around 5-8 hits per slam depending on if you can chain slams, but it's mostly there as a way to keep things dynamic

the problem isn't how many times you attack per attack but a boss just letting you hold F on it for 10 seconds, there's a difference between fighting multiple enemies and a boss that attacks once every 4 seconds or multiple enemies and a boss that's just doing nothing nearby, you can hit daywalker once in a while to prevent healing so that also doesn't matter much

9 minutes ago, Popian said:

you use high sanity to "wall off" the shadows

nah, using walls on dfly makes the fight slower, not going insane when fighting daywalker makes the fight faster

10 minutes ago, Popian said:

Nightmare Werepig as a concept is a Dragonfly rehash where you're asked to do a more position based dodge rather than a timing one

not really, you pretty much just walk to the side, there's a lot of leniency

[Popian]

19 minutes ago, grm9 said:

the problem isn't how many times you attack per attack but a boss just letting you hold F on it for 10 seconds, there's a difference between fighting multiple enemies and a boss that attacks once every 4 seconds or multiple enemies and a boss that's just doing nothing nearby, you can hit daywalker once in a while to prevent healing so that also doesn't matter much

There's also a difference between a boss that stays beside you letting you hit it while it's on attack cooldown and one that kites like a pig that's getting referenced.

21 minutes ago, grm9 said:

nah, using walls on dfly makes the fight slower, not going insane when fighting daywalker makes the fight faster

Utility is utility, this isn't relevant. Why does the Wolfgang Dragonfly speedrun use walls? (This is a rhetorical question.)

[lowercase skye]

15 hours ago, Szczuku said:

the Kle patented free-boss-smacking-time.

It surprises me how critical people seem to be about the attack chances whenever in my eyes it's the most standard thing ever to do in a videogame. Lots of bosses in the Binding of Isaac will do a big attack and then sit still for a few seconds afterwards to give you a chance to do a charged/active attack on them. Bosses in the Pikmin series cycle through a defensive phase, big attacking phase, and then a weak moment where you're encouraged to throw all your Pikmin at them. Rayman Origins/Legends bosses will do a large attack followed by a weak spot opening up as they sit there tired. Pizza Tower's bosses stop to taunt you and give a few second window to rush right at them. Plants vs. Zombies has its Zombots malfunction for a moment if attacked while rushing down a lane. The Ender Dragon in Minecraft flies around attacking you from afar, then perches at her nest where you can easily fire arrows right at her. And these are only examples from games that I instantly think of.

It looks silly on the Nightmare Werepig (on account of him being a tutorial for the idea of an attack chance, so it's hardly prompted) but the idea of a big moment to whale on a boss is old as time. I'm a big fan of it and I'm glad Klei has been sticking to such a design so much, it feels very satisfying to play defensively until the attack chance and then pull out the big guns.

[grm9]

49 minutes ago, Popian said:

There's also a difference between a boss that stays beside you letting you hit it while it's on attack cooldown and one that kites like a pig that's getting referenced

yeah, it running at you clearly indicates that it's going to attack unlike a thing that stands still and then attacks too quickly to dodge on reaction

49 minutes ago, Popian said:

Why does the Wolfgang Dragonfly speedrun use walls? (This is a rhetorical question.)

i'll answer it anyway, that's not what most people mean when talking about using walls for dfly, usually they do that without getting it far enough away from arena for it to not go to ponds to spawn lavaes

[GamePlayer42]

16 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Question - in what way? Do you propose Klei tries to mash the two philospohies together, giving us a NR-type boss with the Kle patented free-boss-smacking-time. Effectively breeding a third design philosophy. Or is it more of a 'every other boss uses the old philosophy' approach

I also like the New Reign bosses, as tiresome as they sometimes can be

imagine phase 1 of a boss is him just doing some moves and getting tired then after he locks in gets some new moves and goes crazy without a tired phase

19 hours ago, GreenBowers said:

Okay but rework bee queen next though

wait 2 year's

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, finn from human said:

It surprises me how critical people seem to be about the attack chances whenever in my eyes it's the most standard thing ever to do in a videogame. Lots of bosses in the Binding of Isaac will do a big attack and then sit still for a few seconds afterwards to give you a chance to do a charged/active attack on them. Bosses in the Pikmin series cycle through a defensive phase, big attacking phase, and then a weak moment where you're encouraged to throw all your Pikmin at them. Rayman Origins/Legends bosses will do a large attack followed by a weak spot opening up as they sit there tired. Pizza Tower's bosses stop to taunt you and give a few second window to rush right at them. Plants vs. Zombies has its Zombots malfunction for a moment if attacked while rushing down a lane. The Ender Dragon in Minecraft flies around attacking you from afar, then perches at her nest where you can easily fire arrows right at her. And these are only examples from games that I instantly think of.

It looks silly on the Nightmare Werepig (on account of him being a tutorial for the idea of an attack chance, so it's hardly prompted) but the idea of a big moment to whale on a boss is old as time. I'm a big fan of it and I'm glad Klei has been sticking to such a design so much, it feels very satisfying to play defensively until the attack chance and then pull out the big guns.

It’s a pretty standard feature in even the hardest games of all time.

DST is the odd ball out, some of its boss fights without extra tools, other multiplayer players, sophisticated structure build set ups, Unconventional and entirely Dev Unintentional Farming/AI/Cheese exploits or hiring a billion followers etc… Can quickly overwhelm a solo player. Thanks largely to not having that brief moment of tiring themselves out on top of endless Minion Spam.

I would be happy with bosses in DST being able to do enough damage to the player to instant kill them in 1 hit (adjustable in settings of course) so long as they actually had tire out phases and gave me a fighting chance.

Roguelites/Likes often have bosses that appear unbeatable at first, just highly highly unfair encounters sometimes even insta-death abilities. But the more times the player fights the boss and familiarized with its attack patterns, they’ll learn when to dodge an ability and tire the boss down to be attacked.

[Uedo]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Rowing around and around in a circle with or without bee mine cheese and getting a few close up hits on crab king in between continued rowing in a circle, just wasn’t any fun at all… Period.

It was boring and highly basic fight. I won’t get to test new crab king until it comes to Xbox but from watching the dev stream it already looks far more engaging by having the player now need to deal with little minions as well as get the heck off the island before it cracks and sinks again.

Inb4 it goes live and you complain that you can't beat him now and wish you could go back to using bee mines

[Guille6785]

3 hours ago, Popian said:

Doesn't sleeping Dragonfly before the last Lavae explodes also work?

it doesn't exactly work this way but I mentioned using flute in the paragraph

[Popian]

30 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

it doesn't exactly work this way

Okay thanks, I tried again a few more times and there is the 50% chance.

[Primalflower]

2 hours ago, finn from human said:

It surprises me how critical people seem to be about the attack chances whenever in my eyes it's the most standard thing ever to do in a videogame. Lots of bosses in the Binding of Isaac will do a big attack and then sit still for a few seconds afterwards to give you a chance to do a charged/active attack on them. Bosses in the Pikmin series cycle through a defensive phase, big attacking phase, and then a weak moment where you're encouraged to throw all your Pikmin at them. Rayman Origins/Legends bosses will do a large attack followed by a weak spot opening up as they sit there tired. Pizza Tower's bosses stop to taunt you and give a few second window to rush right at them. Plants vs. Zombies has its Zombots malfunction for a moment if attacked while rushing down a lane. The Ender Dragon in Minecraft flies around attacking you from afar, then perches at her nest where you can easily fire arrows right at her. And these are only examples from games that I instantly think of.

It looks silly on the Nightmare Werepig (on account of him being a tutorial for the idea of an attack chance, so it's hardly prompted) but the idea of a big moment to whale on a boss is old as time. I'm a big fan of it and I'm glad Klei has been sticking to such a design so much, it feels very satisfying to play defensively until the attack chance and then pull out the big guns.

part of why its upsetting to see so much hate for any sort of actual attack chance is just that with the examples i can think of of bosses that have it, (Werepigs, Zombie Bosses, Ancient Guardian) only like, Ancient Guardian & Z. Deerclops are in such a position where I would think it too difficult/cumbersome to just get damage on them the normal way. With werepigs & bearger & varg, you're still in a position where a more advanced player can totally rack up hits the normal DST way inbetween stuns. It's not like the implementation of these stuns totally removes the existing way one fights DST bosses, it's just an add-on that, in my opinion, makes the bosses feel so, so much better. Pikmin 3 had it right and its crazy how long it took for DST to catch up.

[Ridley]

I understand that these raid bosses who were designed for a group of raiders present a challenge for those who do tackle it solo. Handling the additional spawns or obstacle deletion intended for teamwork requires a solo player to do something clever and that this is an intriguing concept for veteran players who want to keep discovering something new in the game. I feel like this is making lemons into lemonade and here is my main sticking points with these raid bosses:

* Built for multiplayer, but trivialized by it. 

It is not hard to imagine how useful even one extra hand is in all these raid boss fights, never mind a group of people. It really bothers me I can't find the Bee Queen reveal vod where they demonstrated how to fight her by souping up a group with debug spawned items and then holding F to kill everything. One of the things I advocate for is that bosses have some method of scaling (stats, abilities, summons, whatever is appropriate) so that groups of players do not melt raid bosses without a challenge and solo players don't suffer because they don't have anyone to play Don't Starve with. I understand it isn't suffering for every solo player, obviously, but hoo-boy when it is, it is. 

Klaus is in my top 3 favourite Don't Starve fights because he scales and puts on a good show. The extra spell casting adds a bit of spectacle with friends, the deers cause a thorny bottleneck, the surprises he throws are a shock but not unmanageable, and I always enjoy a loot gamble even if he can't give me anything I need. He is my favorite boss to bring other players to because he behaves differently from solo (by design), it doesn't feel like I am expected to bring other players to have fun, and the only thing the player needs to intuit is that killing his pets is a bad idear.

* Extremely un-intuitive. 

Sometimes I imagine, "What if someone went to Fuelweaver going into fight completely blind to what his abilities are?" and when I do I am unable to imagine that anyone could understand what just hit them. Then again, I don't think anyone ever solves the Fuelweaver questline without looking it up, but I'd like to conduct a poll on how many people google the boss fights before attempting. There is good reason to, afterall, non-seasonal Don't Starve bosses will blindside the player with their mechanics.

I forced myself to not spoil the Nightmare Werepig fight and I went into the fight blind. I think it was a two hour shadow monster ridden grind that ended with me retreating. I had no idea at the time that he was healing while he was stalking (and wheezing for that matter) until I came back to the forums to figure out what just happened. With that knowledge I went back and won it, but the mental anguish was a fresh reminder why I also look up how to fight Don't Starve bosses before I fight them. Without knowing the basics of how they work, they suck, and this goes doubly for the much more intricate raid bosses. At least the Nightmare Werepig doesn't require a lot of resources to fight, so failure isn't so bad because the recovery process is short.

* Expensive and exhausting.

There is all this talk about how to defeat the boss, but what if a player tries to follow the plan and fails? They die, lose all the resources and hours spent leading up to the boss, and now have to recover all that before they can do a second attempt. (Can a ghost player in Endless mode even escape the Atrium if the tentapillar is back up and they need to get to the surface to respawn?) Save scumming to rewind the boss fight over and over until the player wins is sometimes mentioned as an appropriate recourse although I feel that only highlights the miserableness of suffering the consequences of losing to these raid bosses.

There are some low resource strategies a player could do like cheesy strats or just being really really good. The problem with cheese strats is that they're un-intuitive, sometimes rely on exploits, and can feel like skipping the fight. And in the case of being really really good, we have to consider the learning curve and learning process. It is such a slog to get back to a raid boss after a loss, which puts us back to where this bullet point began.

 

[AliceShiki]

17 minutes ago, Ridley said:

There is all this talk about how to defeat the boss, but what if a player tries to follow the plan and fails? They die, lose all the resources and hours spent leading up to the boss, and now have to recover all that before they can do a second attempt. (Can a ghost player in Endless mode even escape the Atrium if the tentapillar is back up and they need to get to the surface to respawn?) Save scumming to rewind the boss fight over and over until the player wins is sometimes mentioned as an appropriate recourse although I feel that only highlights the miserableness of suffering the consequences of losing to these raid bosses.

Regarding this one, I think it depends a lot on the player's approach to the fight?

Like, if they're trying to do an "All bosses run" or something similar, it makes sense for them to just accept the consequences of the loss.

But if the player is like... Doing their first attempt against a boss and wants to learn the mechanics themselves and the like, then I think it only makes sense to rollback the world to try again? It's essentially a convenience thing? Like... If you're practicing a fight, it only makes sense that you'd get back to the moment the fight starts if you lost. You're just practicing after all. Why waste time gathering resources again and again to practice the fight again?

I'd even say it's fair to use Debug Console to do all the prep work for the fight tbh. You're literally just practicing, so why bother with playing the game normally before the fight itself? (though there is a charm in doing it without Debug Console, as you can see how much you can do in a given period of time to prepare for the boss and the like. I did that for my Dragonfly fight and it was a lot of fun... I just used Debug Console to give me the gear for Ancient Guardian OTOH. It just felt more convenient to try the fight out like that.)

Like... I dunno, this is a survival game, so death must always be punishing, so... It's not so much that dying to a raid boss is punishing, but more like the raid bosses are hard, so dying to them is easy, and death itself is punishing by default. Which is why I think it makes sense to approach Raid Bosses (assuming you want to learn the fight, of course) as practice fights at first and to just keep rolling back until you win. Because you're taking a very large risk (as opposed to using any of the cheeses available for the boss, or to just not fight the boss at all) in a game where you never want to take risks. Removing the risk factor with Rollbacks just leaves the fight as a simple practice session that is fun in its own right. No stakes and serves as a simple learning experience. Then you can actually try fighting the boss properly without Rollbacks in a different server once you get the hang of it. Because the fight won't be an unreasonable risk anymore at that point.

[Primalflower]

1 hour ago, Ridley said:

It really bothers me I can't find the Bee Queen reveal vod where they demonstrated how to fight her by souping up a group with debug spawned items and then holding F to kill everything.

the best we have is the intro to a joeschmocoolstuff video where he shows off a ~40 second clip of that stream

 

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, finn from human said:

It surprises me how critical people seem to be about the attack chances whenever in my eyes it's the most standard thing ever to do in a videogame. Lots of bosses in the Binding of Isaac will do a big attack and then sit still for a few seconds afterwards to give you a chance to do a charged/active attack on them. Bosses in the Pikmin series cycle through a defensive phase, big attacking phase, and then a weak moment where you're encouraged to throw all your Pikmin at them. Rayman Origins/Legends bosses will do a large attack followed by a weak spot opening up as they sit there tired. Pizza Tower's bosses stop to taunt you and give a few second window to rush right at them. Plants vs. Zombies has its Zombots malfunction for a moment if attacked while rushing down a lane. The Ender Dragon in Minecraft flies around attacking you from afar, then perches at her nest where you can easily fire arrows right at her. And these are only examples from games that I instantly think of.

It looks silly on the Nightmare Werepig (on account of him being a tutorial for the idea of an attack chance, so it's hardly prompted) but the idea of a big moment to whale on a boss is old as time. I'm a big fan of it and I'm glad Klei has been sticking to such a design so much, it feels very satisfying to play defensively until the attack chance and then pull out the big guns.

I feel like part of the problem is the wind down mechanic feels like it's designed for a single person fighting those bosses which definitely is a better experience when fighting it alone but means that it makes any form of teamwork trivialize the bosses even harder. Also it kinda feels weird that we're making bosses much weaker but making characters increasing more overpowered like I get it klei is trying to make the game more new player friendly but it really harms the teamplay aspect and the vibe of struggling to survive together.

[Popian]

28 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

the best we have is the intro to a joeschmocoolstuff video where he shows off a ~40 second clip of that stream

You have to be careful about that what they did on stream is not proof that it's the way to go about it. Inviting a lot of players is for building hype, and spawning more than necessary is better when the group is more disorganized and resources may not be distributed evenly.

If there is something that was said about approaching it that would be more insightful, but as it doesn't look like it exists the next best thing would be entering a world and working it out with a friend.