Incoming Combat Tuning and Improvements

[J192]

Hei, here's a suggestion: what about if the damage each player deals depends on the amount of people in the world? One player means full damage. 2 or more means half the damage (for bosses, koalefants, pigs, hounds etc. and not spiders, birds, bees etc.). Or something like that. Just an idea, so don't judge!

Terrible! That's the exact same thing people here are against.

I'd rather go with Rezecib's damage nerf. It's carefully thought out and is effective.

[rezecib]

@Ipsquiggle, I'm loving the combat changes so far!

 

There are a couple of things that I wanted to point out in case they got missed.

• Werepigs still have the same health, although they seem pretty clearly fight-oriented
• Spider queens still have the same health (treeguards and deerclops were both buffed). Though it would be cool if her buff involved a temporary web-creation attack or something.
• Guardian pigs still have the same health.
• Varg wasn't touched but... he's probably hard enough already o_o

Anyway, really nice stuff so far, and I'm looking forward to what's next!

[TheKingofSquirrels]

Terrible! That's the exact same thing people here are against.

I'd rather go with Rezecib's damage nerf. It's carefully thought out and is effective.

 

Against what? Not being able to play the game alone?

[J192]

Against what? Not being able to play the game alone?

People are against grindy combat. Rezecib made a better solution that prevents grindy combat and incentivizes teamwork.

[Slynx]

i've joined some random server yesterday. Dediated London i think...or something like that

while i were trying to find "the base" where majority of layers were... i were alone. saw only some crazy Willows that were committing suicides (really! i throw her to the bee hive right in front of me, the other died in the spider nest and the last tried to kill a beefalo with a lighter!). needless to say that i have no luck finding the main base even with a tips from players?

 

i don't complaining about damage or loneliness... monsters deal no damage when they can't hit you. but if you'll nerf player's damage or buff monster health by  lot... it'lll make combat too slow (and may be boring) for people trying to hunt for food to satisfy party's hunger needs, or the ones that just joined.

 

also, it's a bug or a feature that player's ghosts reduce sanity from 5+ screens away?

[rezecib]

@Slynx, It's intended that player ghosts drain sanity globally (anywhere) in Survival mode. There's some discussion on ways to tweak/change this mechanic here.

 

But have you tested today's balance changes? They're actually really good. Killing spiders and such feels way better now.

[Slynx]

@Slynx, It's intended that player ghosts drain sanity globally (anywhere) in Survival mode. There's some discussion on ways to tweak/change this mechanic here.

 

But have you tested today's balance changes? They're actually really good. Killing spiders and such feels way better now.

oh, thanks. 

it's a ity then, cuz the player that died did so because he went afk...  

anyway.. i guess i'll just have to deal with it.

 

i've just woke up, so i haven't. but i'll try them now.

[FlambeShot]

1 thing worries me.

if you count players as a "resource" - fine. do it. but you must understand that there are at least 3 scenarios of a game with others:

1) you play with friends and\or you have an established communication (talk, text, voice over ip and ect). in this case this people are a resouce indeed.

2)you join a server with unknown people or host one and some randoms join you. in this case people can't be counted as a resource. you may start in a different sides of the world, they may ignore you and and ect.

3)pvp. you know that it's a rare case when you can rely on a help of the other player you don't know, right?

 

I think that this is the main reason why the world should be a bit harsher and big fights should be harder. That's the way you better be- you'd say- if you don't wanna starve or die. Of course you'll need to team up but, like all games, I think that if you get used to a harder world then you'll get able to stand it alone if you get good at it. Good players would be rewarder and called as big survivors and would be albe to play on their own way, rookies would gather together to survive. I think it's pretty basic. 

It would be even more fun adding something like achievements for group of players and survival of lone players.

[TheKingofSquirrels]

People are against grindy combat. Rezecib made a better solution that prevents grindy combat and incentivizes teamwork.

 

What do you mean by grindy combat? 

 

What if teamwork isn´t available? Or I don´t want a team and I want to be a lone survivor.

 

This is awful.

[J192]

What do you mean by grindy combat? 

 

What if teamwork isn´t available? Or I don´t want a team and I want to be a lone survivor.

 

This is awful.

Grindy combat means having to repeatedly spam F or LMB in an unnecessarily long amount of time to the point of becoming frustrating and tedious.

 

Rezecib's suggestion is explained by this:

Wilson strikes Mob. Wilson deals 100% damage to Mob.

Willow joins and strikes Mob. Willow deals 100% to damage Mob.

Wilson strikes Mob a split second after Willow strikes Mob. Wilson only deals 60% damage to Mob.

Willow also hits Mob a split second after Wilson strikes Mob. Willow also only deals 60% damage to Mob.

Knowing that ganging up on Mob reduces the damage they deal, Wilson and Willow decided to wait a second between each strike.

Wilson strikes Mob. Wilson deals 100% damage to Mob.

Willow waits a moment then strikes Mob. Willow deals 100% to Mob.

 

Or if you want his actual quote and my reasoning, go here.

[rezecib]

@TheKingofSquirrels, @J192, The idea of the damage rebalance I suggested way back then was to make it so that if you're fighting alone, it's exactly like single-player, but if two people are fighting the same enemy at the same time, you don't get double the damage.

 

The technical details of it are that after being hit, an enemy takes only 60% damage until the time that the first thing that hit it would get its next hit out. Other hits in this period refresh the duration.

 

So the scenario you laid out would actually be more like this:

 

Wilson hits spider, does 100%

Willow hits spider at the time or after Wilson would've gotten a second hit in, hits for 100%

Wilson hits spider before Willow would've gotten another attack off, hits for 60%.

Willow completes her second attack, hits for 60%.

 

Buuuut.... That damage nerf system is pretty much obsoleted by the current rebalancing initiative. My rebalance was essentially "if we're going to use a one-size-fits all easy solution, let's at least use a smart one". The current rebalance is much better because it takes a more comprehensive look at different scenarios and whether they need to be tweaked, and how.

[J192]

Buuuut.... That damage nerf system is pretty much obsoleted by the current rebalancing initiative. My rebalance was essentially "if we're going to use a one-size-fits all easy solution, let's at least use a smart one". The current rebalance is much better because it takes a more comprehensive look at different scenarios and whether they need to be tweaked, and how.

Ah, I see.

But wait, is the new rebalance removing the damage, armor, and gold nerfs?

[XirmiX]

People are against grindy combat. Rezecib made a better solution that prevents grindy combat and incentivizes teamwork.

Hei, it was just a suggestion, not that I'm all for it, you know! And I said don't judge!

 

 

Sorry, I think I wasn't clear concerning dynamic tuning. I realize I didn't actually write what I meant in my last post! The bottom line is: we'd rather not have dynamic scaling if at all possible, because it hurts the readability so much. This applies to both global and local scaling.

 

Midnight Tea has it right; we are really trying to strike a balance. Again, the first concern is for PvE (and the name of the game is Don't Starve Together) so we're making sure that a bunch of friends or allied players in a server can't easily defeat the world. If it's a typical server with a mix of people, then you might just have to figure out how to recruit some of the others if you want to take down a boss!

 

Soloing the basic resources remains possible in all situations. And when it comes to PvP, the other players, rather than deerclops, will probably be your biggest threat. (Is deerclops your biggest ally...?)

 

In the end, there is going to be different kinds of content in the game, and you get to pick what you engage with and how you engage with it. As with all the content in Don't Starve, we always want there to be multiple possibilities for dealing with a creature or acquiring a resource. Some things will be tuned especially so it's compelling to work together (such as the Ewecus) but you still have the option of how to engage that challenge or whether to engage it at all!

 

Of course, we still want to be sensitive to places where things have a no-risk easy solution (such as 3 players perma-stunlocking a deerclops), or no obvious way out at all, let me know anywhere we're not achieving these goals.

 

In the News

 

The first wave of changes, most of the major ones, should be in the next hotfix, so get ready to pick them apart!

 

Well, if we're talking balance wise, then there are some things that need to be tweaked (not player damage, armour or weapon durability, mob health etc.); things such as Lure plants, Ham bats, Morning stars etc. there are a lot of things that aren't even balanced in the SP game! The lureplant is something you have to deal with the hard way and what you get from it is merely a piece of some weird meat that you can't even use in a crock pot (leafy meat). Ham bat's rot nerf made it almost useless. I had never used it as a weapon before and the nerf just made my curiosity of it seize. Morning star, while I like the design of it, it is a bit hard to craft (easy in a very old world if you're a pro) and what it gives you is merely a weapon with light that loses durability as you hold it. It's very lame like that. When I first made the morning star I expected it to be something that shoots the electric balls like a Houndius shootius or a Clockwork bishop, but instead it was a melee weapon and not a ranged one and what I found out from the wiki was that it just increases damage if it's wet, as if it's an emergency weapon of some sorts in a very rainy day, when you have nothing to protect yourself from the rain. It also doesn't last long if you keep holding it. Also the belt of hunger: it's one of the most difficult things to get by (not to mention it's non-renewable) and it barely holds your hunger away. When using it the first time it seemed to me like it had no point of being used at all. Hard to make and outcome is just beefalo manure.

 

The reason I'm saying this here is because it's about balance. A nightlight seems like a useless thing, but to me it seems like the most useful thing when it comes to Ruins. There's a lot of stuff in the game that are just too bad to use that none cares to even look them up in the crafting tabs anymore. Those items make people not use them at all because of the balance issues.

[rezecib]

Ah, I see.

But wait, is the new rebalance removing the damage, armor, and gold nerfs?

 

Yup:

	local multiplayer_attack_modifier = 1--0.6--0.75	local multiplayer_goldentool_modifier = 1--0.5--0.75	local multiplayer_armor_durability_modifier = 0.7	local multiplayer_armor_absorption_modifier = 1--0.75	local multiplayer_wildlife_respawn_modifier = 1--2

(the stuff to the left of the dashes is the actual value, and the first one after the dashes is what it was set to before the last rebalance).

 

Apparently there have been changes to stunlocking and stuff as well, but those are harder for me to notice and I didn't save an old version of the game to do a diff: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/45477-hotfix-119587-12052014/

[Slynx]

i have Don't Starve Together Beta v115992 on my computer. i can search there if you want (or just send you the files you need to check about stunlocking)

[Fyrjefe]

 

This is very very bad. I am very disappointed.

 

Essentially, you are handicapping players and forcing them to play together...This is an awful idea! I don´t want to have to depend on others to fight! This is ridiculous. My plans for playing Don´t Starve Together were to go off and do my own thing, and then meet with other players every now and then, and make trades and what not. But now, I can´t take a pig-man on by myself! What if I want to play when there are no people online?! What if the server is PVP and most players are hostile?

 

A good multi-player is something like Minecraft. You can play with people or you can go off and do your own thing. And before you say: "just play single-player then". You don´t get it. I like having a dynamic world where I can see presence of other players. Imagine finding abandoned bases and structures. I also like the risk that other players bring.

 

This is awful. I hope you realize that this is a mistake. 

 

 

I don't think you've read this correctly. These changes are actually a buff from the current system. You can actually do lone runs now because spiders don't take forever to kill, nor are birds able to tank boomerangs like champs, and so on. And I really don't see the need to attack pigs straight on (try not to lose me here); the game gives you a lot of ways to grind resources using the environment. Bee mines and tooth traps help tip the environment in your favour. You really want pig meat, though? Knock down heads on spikes, make a pig house near merlock houses, and watch the grind happen.

It's important to realize that in DST the rules have changed, fundamentally, and when balancing we have to account for new factors. While someone says "forcing people to play together", we are trying to look at it more like other players as a new resource. You could also say we "force you to have weapons and armor" but really those are just resources which enable you to win fights. Having other players in the world is like having a bunch of ready-made weapons lying around the world; yes, you may choose not to use them to fight creatures, but they are there and we have to balance the game like they are there. Many things will still be possible solo, and I'm fairly certain there's nothing you can't do with enough beemines.

There's all these players running around the map now, and so we're developing the game to suit. One of the main purposes of this current rebalance, as I stated in the OP, is to make sure that much of the solo gameplay remains viable, but to also add and alter the game so that working with other players is interesting and challenging.

 

As far as client-side combat: While we're focusing on PvE right now, the danger is that any kind of PvP becomes inviable, or a tech nightmare. The network guys are continuing to improve the performance and prediction, but ultimately we want to stay with a server-authorative system for practical reasons.

I like this. This is a bigger picture mindset beyond a certain playstyle. There has been a lot of theory crafting in the realm of rebalance, and I think this has been the clearest stated understanding as of late.

 

[Edited for clarity]

[tenabraeX]

im in the camp that solo play should be essentially the same as playing DS, i say essentially because they're different products and some sweeping changes may be necessary which is what i think may be being left out in this discussion.

there are two basic ways i can see to resolve this issue:

---

Numbers

Scale amount of mobs based on number of engaging players. This way I can solo a spider nest as normal, or me and 3 friends can take on a real horde. Scaling in this instance would probably be something like 150%, 250%, 400% so more players increases the risk more, but also the potential drop rate.

This may involve reducing the number of mobs that would normally spawn in order to make those mobs tougher so they're still handleable, but less exploitable. Bosses are a little more difficult, adding more, or giving them minions.

---

Buffs

Maxwell's a jerk, its his world. When multiple players engage a monster / nest Maxwell buffs them. This could be a visible buff / aura / color shift etc. This method handles bosses easily because you're making them better not more numerous.

---

Bonus option - If stunlock is an issue fix the games core broken combat engine to prevent it being an issue

[RalphKastro]

man, I would really like to be able to help(or at least give a more informed opinion on the subject), but since I don't have DST yet, all I can do is theorise and imagine crazy scenarios.

That said, I at least had a small idea. Why don't we divide mobs into passive and agressive/neutral? All passive mobs like rabbits, birds and those that pose no threat could be downscaled in health, so that killing them wouldn't be so hard(basicly, vanilla level), while the agressive or neutral mobs could have some buffs in speed, attack speed or something like that, as well as keeping a slightly bigger health. Another thing that I thought would be to reduce the stunlock duration on bigger and meaner monsters, so that you can still stunlock a small spider just fine, but a thing as massive as a Varg won't flinch so much, and something as enourmous as The Deerclops won't even feel a scratch.

Tell me how stupid and out of place my ideas seem based on your inside experience.(but if you like them, at least say it too...)

[cptCalavera]

man, I would really like to be able to help(or at least give a more informed opinion on the subject), but since I don't have DST yet, all I can do is theorise and imagine crazy scenarios.

That said, I at least had a small idea. Why don't we divide mobs into passive and agressive/neutral? All passive mobs like rabbits, birds and those that pose no threat could be downscaled in health, so that killing them wouldn't be so hard(basicly, vanilla level), while the agressive or neutral mobs could have some buffs in speed, attack speed or something like that, as well as keeping a slightly bigger health. Another thing that I thought would be to reduce the stunlock duration on bigger and meaner monsters, so that you can still stunlock a small spider just fine, but a thing as massive as a Varg won't flinch so much, and something as enourmous as The Deerclops won't even feel a scratch.

Tell me how stupid and out of place my ideas seem based on your inside experience.(but if you like them, at least say it too...)

Well, thats kind of exactly what was started in the last update. So if you didn't read about it, excellent ideas.

 

(read first post, its all in there)

[RalphKastro]

Well, thats kind of exactly what was started in the last update. So if you didn't read about it, excellent ideas.

 

(read first post, its all in there)

oh... I actually read the post, but I must have not seen or skipped those ideas... that's a rather awkward coincidence...

[Stroomschok]

All it takes is a handful of rabbit traps and one bush hat to empty a spider den. Smack the nest once and the traps could scoop all the spiders up. 

 

If you put spider dens with in a self protecting range of each, but not fire hazardous, it always makes the spiders tougher to effectively trap up. Lureplants have little effect at this point too.

 

Another possible idea is to make spider dens shaveable for silk, while turning down the spider silk loot drop rate. This is a more reliable income of silk that comes in steadier amount, and takes away the overwhelming benefit of tossing traps all over the place. Trying to catch every spider in the den with traps becomes too expensive for the little gain, but I can use teamwork to distract the spiders while someone else shaves the den. I am also conserving my grass resources this way, but I am risking my health.

 

It would be a shame to be harvesting silk and have a spider queen pop out in front of me, or discover that night is setting and the spiders are still chasing me. 

 

The rabbit traps desperately need improvement so they only take spiders out of the fight temporarily  (for as long as it takes them to destroy the trap), it definitely should stop insta-killing spiders.

 

When turfs came out, it used to be possible to dig up the spider webbing. I would like to see that back where you can dig up spider webbing and then refine that into silk, after which the spiders restore it again over time.

[Ridley]

The rabbit traps desperately need improvement so they only take spiders out of the fight temporarily  (for as long as it takes them to destroy the trap), it definitely should stop insta-killing spiders.

 

When turfs came out, it used to be possible to dig up the spider webbing. I would like to see that back where you can dig up spider webbing and then refine that into silk, after which the spiders restore it again over time.

 

No, rabbit traps are the only thing that gets spiders off of you without making the others mad. Rabbit traps should only stay useful in small and emergency amounts.

 

When the turfs came out, everyone hated how fast and buggy the spider webbing was. There was also the problem of the web turf littering the place since the only thing you could do with it was burn it. Taking away the web from the spiders give the spiders a unfair disadvantage, I'd rather it be required to shave their nest. Make the spiders come out and attack anyone who is shaving, so teamwork can be used to lure the spiders away while one person shaves.

[FlambeShot]

There's a lot of stuff in the game that are just too bad to use that none cares to even look them up in the crafting tabs anymore. Those items make people not use them at all because of the balance issues.

 

Totally Agreed. Speaking of which, will there be any change into DS single player?

I think that some adjustments might be very nice.

[gamervoid]

I understand the urge to scale and tweak to encourage or even require teamwork, but there are some key facets of the multiplayer game that really need to drive the design choices whatever they may be.

1 - player count and proximity are not predictable.

2 - cooperation is not always preferable unless you make it so.

3 - for veteran players, additions are preferable over alterations.

1- your game needs to be a solid one player experience. For many, this means making the feel similar to DS. For instance if you make armor degrade more quickly then you are changing the play time to shift towards more preparation and reducing the amount of challenging combat they can participate in. Solo players that suffer from this augment are going to be impacted more than the coop players. Scaling can help with this.

2 - Borderlands does this perfectly. More cooperation means more rewards and more challenge. And yet in many ways, cooperation seems to make the game move faster in spite of the increased challenge. Aim for that feeling.

3 - when discussing scaling I'd suggest volume of threats over other choices. More enemies is just more understandable unless you are also making the monsters visably more threatening as they scale. More monsters are a bigger threat and of course they drop more to provide a greater reward. You can also make such enemies come in a longer total duration (in more waves) but at similar scaled volumes. This would make coop battles a unique experience. Solo would feel like the normal DS skirmishes and coop would feel more like epic wars spanning full days or more.

Typing from phone. First time writing in.

[Ipsquiggle]

Whew! A guy goes home for the weekend and comes back to a forum full of great feedback. Thanks everyone! Let's see if I can address everything here...

 

@rezecib Thanks, those creature were quite missed! We've also been discussed giving spider queen some kind of webby attack, or improving her spiderling spawning, or something. Basically, as one of the proper bosses, she definitely needs a little more oomph.

 

@J192 and others: Yes as rezecib said, the idea with this update was to do more specific, fixed changes to creatures so that a general dynamic system would not be necessary (in order to keep things predictable and readable for all players). So this change removed the first-pass nerfs to attacks and armor, because those were too broad.

 

The changes to fix stunlocking basically involved a bit of additional logic in combat.lua that allows creatures to attack, even if they are in the middle of being hit. This should make it so they can always attack when they are ready, and players can never pin them down by hitting them. (Except, of course, the creatures which are supposed to be stunlockable, like basic spiders.)

 

@tenabraeX @gamervoid Yes I agree, numbers of mobs is way more readable than adjusting health and damages. I'm going to be trying some stuff like this out this week with spider dens and if it works out you'll see it on a bunch of the creature spawners. We can't scale up the numbers of mobs too far though, because it would have side effects on performance. But it's definitely one of the options we're trying out.

 

@Stroomschok @Ridley Rabbit-traps-and-spiders are on my radar, but I haven't come up with a plan there yet. I also probably won't be changing the silk economy at all in this set of changes.

 

Thanks again everyone for the feedback!