My opinions on Player Scaling

[Jakepeng99]

This isn’t advocating for it or arguing against it, but I just wanna give a thought in it.

 

With enough players, bosses become really easy, however solo there is quite a few bosses you need to brute force. I don’t need to explain this part.

Though if player scaling was a thing, I believe it’s important to note some flaws of it in the context of dst. In games like Terraria, it works well, but I want to say some problems it has in dst.

1. Punishes players who like to go off and do their own thing.

It’s a cooperative survival game, but I like the freedom of being able to go and kill bosses myself without having to bring other players. If bosses are based on nearby players, it’s would be awkward.

2. Increased resource cost.

It would make bosses much more resource intensive depending on how the scaling works, for the same rewards. 
 

3. Game having a set difficulty.

The game having a set difficulty makes it easier to find servers or people to join as you don’t need to argue over playing “hard mode” or “medium”. If more players joining causes more scaling, it also makes it akward and encourages kicking players to make the game easier, especially noobs.

 

Overall I believe it should be a very customisable setting if it’s added. By default, it could be off.

You could manually select how much it scales, so it can scale for 4 players, regardless of the number of people in the server. 

[Zeklo]

I believe the way something like Valheim does boss scaling is the boss hp scales in accordance to the players present in when spawned. 

It does allow for cheesing such as having one person spawn the boss, and then everyone else arrive to help—but that's something you choose to cause happen, and cheese will always exist. I think it's a pretty decent solution. All things considered.

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, Zeklo said:

I believe the way something like Valheim does boss scaling is the boss hp scales in accordance to the players present in when spawned. 

It does allow for cheesing such as having one person spawn the boss, and then everyone else arrive to help—but that's something you choose to cause happen, and cheese will always exist. I think it's a pretty decent solution. All things considered.

Meh it would be immersive since the cheese is so easy.

 

Most people would use the cheese 

[Wexton]

Simply make it so the boss's drops scales with the player scaling.
Want difficulty of a singular player? Only one player gets the loot.

Of course it would be akward with loot like blueprints for structures which automaticly benefit everyone. But its something.

If people cheesed it so they get bosses balanced around a single player then it wouldn't be different from DST's experience where 90% of bosses crumble on groups by default already.

[Mike23Ua]

8 hours ago, Wexton said:

Simply make it so the boss's drops scales with the player scaling.
Want difficulty of a singular player? Only one player gets the loot.

Of course it would be akward with loot like blueprints for structures which automaticly benefit everyone. But its something.

If people cheesed it so they get bosses balanced around a single player then it wouldn't be different from DST's experience where 90% of bosses crumble on groups by default already.

The days of only one player gets the loot are from ancient times, the very first borderlands had players who were supposed to be cooperating, instead rushing to open all the loot boxes and First Come First Serve, Later entries in this same franchise allowed EVERYONE to get their own loots, (might not be the same loot but you get your share too)

Not sharing loot is literally like old school RPG games and Todays generation of gaming just doesn’t stick to those now outdated methods.

I think for a game like DST, that we should get our own “copies” of the loot (like ancient knowledge just floats out the bosses body and we all learn how to craft it/or get a copy.)

Not sharing loot just means having to fight the same boss over and over again until each player gets their own copy.

And honestly that’s too Grindy, too outdated for my taste.

As far as the difficulty scaling goes, it should scale based on how many players are present when the boss fight starts, AND to prevent players from showing up later so it gets harder only when the boss is mostly dead, or leaving the area so the boss gets easier- It should “lock” the players into the fight.

Examples of this would be Something Similar to Antlion, where the players would be caged in with the boss until the fight is over.

No one joins, no one leaves after the fight begins. Scaling is matched based on who’s there when the walls go up.