Boss Scaling

[BrandonNodnarb]

Just a suggestion, as I only usually play with one other friend (people don't usually join our server),.. to have bosses scale according to the number of people within a server as we find it extremely difficult to take down any bosses, especially the new ones. We were hoping the bee queen would be more of a mini boss but even after using tons of resources and saving up, I don't even think we were able to get her down past the first phase without dying. After being so excited for all this new content we still can't take down any bosses because we don't have enough people playing with us (not by choice our servers are always open). Scaling them down slightly for less people while still making them hard would ensure everybody gets to enjoy all content whether you prefer to play alone or together.

[Kittydub]

There actually is a mod for this. It's called Automatic Health Adjust. I don't think the new bosses are in it yet, but at least you can save resources with the other ones? 

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

This kind of mechanics cannot work well or be good at all. It basically means that the less players there are on the server, the better it is for you as it is easier to kill the boss, therefore your friends being on the server, whether they choose or don't choose to fight the bosses will result in it being better if your friends weren't on the server in the first place.

And what if you're in the middle of a boss fight, about to kill the giant and then some newbie joins in. What happens to the boss' health then?

To add to that, some players are complete professionals, others newbies who don't even know that armour exists.

[Lumina]

1 hour ago, Kittydub said:

There actually is a mod for this. It's called Automatic Health Adjust. I don't think the new bosses are in it yet, but at least you can save resources with the other ones? 

I agree, mods are probably the best option if you want boss or others monster to have not that much life if you play with few people.

[Kittydub]

18 minutes ago, Lumina said:

I agree, mods are probably the best option if you want boss or others monster to have not that much life if you play with few people.

It is. I use that mod usually, because I like to unwind after a day of work with DST and I have some 'alone' servers as well. Since OP is only usually playing with one other friend, this should be a solution for this topic. The mod just got updated today for the shadow pieces too.

[Sinister_Fang]

49 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

This kind of mechanics cannot work well or be good at all. It basically means that the less players there are on the server, the better it is for you as it is easier to kill the boss, therefore your friends being on the server, whether they choose or don't choose to fight the bosses will result in it being better if your friends weren't on the server in the first place.

I can see this mechanic working very well. With the way bosses are currently, they're either too easy, or too difficult depending on the amount of players. If bosses scaled based on the amount of players on the server then it means you could fight the boss with 2 people or fight the boss with 12 people and the difficulty would remain about the same.

52 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

And what if you're in the middle of a boss fight, about to kill the giant and then some newbie joins in. What happens to the boss' health then?

The boss scales to the new player count. Simple as that. Annoying, yeah, but overall this mechanic would do more good them harm in my eyes. Or their health could scale based not on the current player count, but on the max number of player slots on the server.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

10 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Or their health could scale based not on the current player count, but on the max number of player slots on the server.

That's a bit wiser, although still, the game then basically pushes you to play with less people to be easier.

[Zeklo]

1 hour ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

This kind of mechanics cannot work well or be good at all. It basically means that the less players there are on the server, the better it is for you as it is easier to kill the boss, therefore your friends being on the server, whether they choose or don't choose to fight the bosses will result in it being better if your friends weren't on the server in the first place.

I gotta agree with this. 

Say you're playing with 14 other people.

6 of you are gonna take on a boss but the boss is scaled for 14. Then what?

And no, a check for players currently in the fight will be too finicky to do it that way.

[Sinister_Fang]

1 minute ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

That's a bit wiser, although still, the game then basically pushes you to play with less people to be easier.

But at least it opens the doors for all the content locked behind bosses for low player counts. It seems the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion anyway.

[Lumina]

17 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

 

Say you're playing with 14 other people.

6 of you are gonna take on a boss but the boss is scaled for 14. Then what?

But at the moment, some monster or boss in DST have 2, 3 or 4 time the life they have in DS. So it's pretty much already the case. If you play with less than 4 people, monsters could be scaled for more people than you are.

[BrandonNodnarb]

28 minutes ago, Lumina said:

But at the moment, some monster or boss in DST have 2, 3 or 4 time the life they have in DS. So it's pretty much already the case. If you play with less than 4 people, monsters could be scaled for more people than you are.

Agreed, the bosses are also currently scaled for 6+ players.

However, this player count is rarely the case if you make a server, from my experience it seems people only like playing on dedicated servers and rarely stay on long enough to make a base let alone prepare for a boss fight. It would still be easier for a group of six to fight toadstool at full health than 2 players fighting him with reduced health as there is more to the fight than just the health pool. Same with bee queen, more player can take out the grumbles but two players get swarmed and would still be taking the same amount of dmg. Still easier for a large group.  

But at least it opens the doors for all the content locked behind bosses for low player counts. It seems the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion anyway.

This ^. 

Also, I am probably one of few who prefer to not play with mods. I appreciate the tip of the mod i will check it out but it still doesn't solve the issue that if you can't get enough players on your server to help you can very rarely take on the good bosses. If i could force 6 people to play with me at all times I would but it simply isn't the case.  

[Wexton]

I had the same problem with DST's bosses but they are not imposible as you may think,for example:

I killed toadstool solo by using 5 weather pains,tons of dark swords,tons of healing foods and armors. If you have a Woodie forget about the weather pains,you won't need them.

For fighing the bee queen solo you need to be the bunnymen King,just use them as cannon fodder just like she does with the grumble bees,at the third state she won't even attack them,instead she'll focus on keeping you far away from her,not even defending herself from bunnymen (Which should be fixed),they just kill her while you run away from the bees,which if you are fast enough they wont even touch you.

The dragonfly just tons of armors,healing,ham bat or dark swords and pan flaute/sleepy time stories/sleep darts for when she gets mad.Also a fully walled arena and cooblestones roads to dodge her easily.

I didn't killed the shadows in solo and i don't fully know their attacks,but bunnymen should work too.

[Sinister_Fang]

1 hour ago, Wexton said:

I didn't killed the shadows in solo and i don't fully know their attacks,but bunnymen should work too.

The shadows are actually the easiest of all the new bosses to solo. You just need a lot of healing and armor. With the latest update it should be even easier with jellybeans and renewable marble for armor.

[Zeklo]

2 hours ago, Lumina said:

But at the moment, some monster or boss in DST have 2, 3 or 4 time the life they have in DS. So it's pretty much already the case. If you play with less than 4 people, monsters could be scaled for more people than you are.

That's my point...?

It is pretty much the case. So either it'll be redundant or make things more bloated.

[mochilo]

2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

That's a bit wiser, although still, the game then basically pushes you to play with less people to be easier.

It is fixed with better drops, so players grow stronger too and have an actual point to play with a group? I mean, if a mob has a % to drop a rare item, that % should be higher and drop more of said items so every player is interested to fight and have a reward.

It's just an idea, I've never played on big groups anyway so I might be wrong. But the scaled option works on other games and would be great on DST too.

[CaptainFun]

4 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

This kind of mechanics cannot work well or be good at all. It basically means that the less players there are on the server, the better it is for you as it is easier to kill the boss, therefore your friends being on the server, whether they choose or don't choose to fight the bosses will result in it being better if your friends weren't on the server in the first place.

Doesn't this depend on the formula that the game uses to scale HP? The scenario you're suggesting is a potential pitfall of this system when done very poorly but with most games that use a scaling system like OP suggested, bigger groups of players drawing aggro/putting out more damage offsets an increase in boss HP. In Dark Souls for example (yes, yes, I know) boss HP increases by a whopping 50% with one additional player but 99% of the time a boss will be easier when cooperating. It's like that in a lot of games. 

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And what if you're in the middle of a boss fight, about to kill the giant and then some newbie joins in. What happens to the boss' health then?

I imagine that, like 99% of the games that do this, the boss health stays the way it was when the boss spawned. 

 

3 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

But at least it opens the doors for all the content locked behind bosses for low player counts. It seems the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion anyway.

Pretty much. Hardcore players will always find a way to do these things solo but for most players who play in small groups a lot of this content is out of reach since it seems to be designed for larger groups. Dragonfly was designed to be a raid-style boss for 6 players, I think? I don't think that's necessarily bad and I would want Don't Starve to remain uncompromising, but when many of the PS4 players, for example, are going to be playing with just two players in splitscreen, I can't help but think some of the content just goes to waste. 

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

1 minute ago, CaptainFun said:

I imagine that, like 99% of the games that do this, the boss health stays the way it was when the boss spawned. 

That too could be exploited; everyone exits or stays farther away (depending on how the mechanics are implemented), the boss spawns with one person nearby/present on server, everyone comes over/joins back in and beats the boss with minimal health.

[CaptainFun]

9 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

That too could be exploited; everyone exits or stays farther away (depending on how the mechanics are implemented), the boss spawns with one person nearby/present on server, everyone comes over/joins back in and beats the boss with minimal health.

I had a feeling you'd say that. It's not really an issue for other games, but if it really were that big of a deal they could scale the boss on the number of max players currently allowed by the server. I would assume that if people really wanted to cheese it they'd probably just use mods/console or other exploits. 

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

Just now, CaptainFun said:

I had a feeling you'd say that. It's not really an issue for other games, but if it really were that big of a deal they could scale the boss on the number of max players currently allowed by the server. I would assume that if people really wanted to cheese it they'd probably just use mods/console or other exploits. 

Many players most of the time have this kind of a mindset when playing "legitemately": If it's not using console, unless due to a bug in the game, I'll use it to my advantage, exploit or not.

The maximum amount of players available on the server wouldn't exactly change much. All it would do is make it harder for the players who are a few on a server where there's more slots. And knowing public servers, this is to happen pretty often.

[CaptainFun]

26 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Many players most of the time have this kind of a mindset when playing "legitemately": If it's not using console, unless due to a bug in the game, I'll use it to my advantage, exploit or not.

Endless mode is also not a bug and allows for easy play within the game's parameters. I dunno, I don't see it as being a real issue if it were to mean better balance for players who want to play the game normally. 

[CaptainChaotica]

Kitty--whoah, DUDE, I have got to download that mod like right now!  I often end up playing alone or with only one other person, and that'd be _perfect_.  Not every server always has a group of at least five or six to wail on a boss at the same time.

...Notorious

[Rellimarual]

This would be great, since I'm never able to play with more than one other person and we simply can't attempt much of the new content. Some people might exploit it, but so what?  The game is already highly customizable.  If exploiting this feature makes it less fun for some players, then they can just not exploit it. The only person they'd be hurting is themselves, anyway.

[CaptainChaotica]

And besides, I assume you could just disable the mod if needed, anyway.  I mean, you'd have to disconnect and reconnect obviously, but hey.

...Notorious

[Nicolews]

I would also love if DST included a WorldGen option to tune the world for small groups (2 people, maybe 3, but mostly two).

To explain where I'm coming from, I played 2-man games with my girlfriend, 4 and 6 man games with friends.

Based on those experience, once you get the hang of it, a coordinated 4-man group survives easily, have every important character perk available, and have enough muscle to take down mob-spawning bosses or huge health pool (I mean, you're only missing 2 fighters before the official maximum. Harder, but doable). 6 people have it easier in battle, but even when we had the hang of 4-mans, feeding, clothing and equiping the 6 man groups sometimes became a challenge, leading to a harder surviving experience. 

In a nutshell, I found the game balanced for 4-6 people, and I know I would already choose a 4-man team over a 6-man for the easier coordination and lesser strain on the survival resources, even with the current health pools.

 

The 2-man team is a vastly different animal. We have it very easy to set up shop, and we quickly got the survival part of the game to a science. Compared to the single-player game, we have very little extra strain on resources but double the manpower. We died once in summer, once before we got the hang of building a panic room, and since then... well, frankly, unless the game radically changes on year 4, the only way we get killed now is if we go out to kill bosses or explore the caves.

But as far as fighting go... My goodness, but hambatting down the 6K Goose-Goose feels *long*, and you feel you HAVE to have Wolfgang or at least Wigfrid to even the odds a little.

 

So, TL;DR: I think that 6 to 4 players games are balanced, I don't know for 3, but I feel that specifically 2 players games would benefit from a specific retuning of the damage/health pool size ratio.

[zzKratoszz]

I see plenty of comments falling into the same pit fall type of answer. The scale doesn't have to double in size because 1 person joined your single player game. It also doesn't have to just stick to health/damage multipliers. You could get so much more creative with your answers to really flesh out ideas like this one. The answer could easily just be buffing or nerfing bosses with a 5% range on its health, based on the highest server population with in the last 5 minutes. Or maybe that boss will be less likely to min max with stronger attacks against less players.

Keep in mind, we don't balance ideas here on a forum. That is done by Klei. We can only suggest what we think is balanced. Balancing bosses by player numbers sounds like a great idea on paper. But, it would be up to klei to decide if our idea is a good one. Awhile comparing it to the extra work to develop it instead of something else. Our part is to simply improve upon existing ideas.

Maybe you don't think this is realistically a good idea, but you decide to leave some feedback to improve it nonetheless. The next person to read the thread might see your positivity and share their own inspirations. Once a few people fully flesh out the idea You can much easier base your opinion on an educated guess instead of feelings.