Automatic adjustment of mob health

[Myself49]

Here is the thing. I only play this game with my girlfriend and maybe one or two cousins. All of which are rather bad at video games. I am sure that I am not the only one who just plays this game with a few close friends on a private server.

The problem is, some of the enemies were clearly balanced and made with the intent that a server full of people that have some sort of an idea on what to do will fight them. Obviously I am talking about Dragonfly and Toadstool and Queen Bee and I am sure many more to come.

I don't want to have to invite random people to help us kill these bosses and it just doesn't feel very good to be locked out of a lot of content because I don't want to play with random strangers.

I think there should be some sort of a mechanic where the health of the enemies adjusts accordingly to the number of people actually playing on the server so that even people who just like to play in a group of two have a chance of defeating the bosses and seeing and using the high end items. I think there IS a mod that does just this but I really think it should be incorporated into the game itself and be balanced accordingly by the people who are actually in charge of the game.

What do you guys think?

[Ecu]

15 hours ago, Myself49 said:

Here is the thing. I only play this game with my girlfriend and maybe one or two cousins. All of which are rather bad at video games. I am sure that I am not the only one who just plays this game with a few close friends on a private server.

The problem is, some of the enemies were clearly balanced and made with the intent that a server full of people that have some sort of an idea on what to do will fight them. Obviously I am talking about Dragonfly and Toadstool and Queen Bee and I am sure many more to come.

I don't want to have to invite random people to help us kill these bosses and it just doesn't feel very good to be locked out of a lot of content because I don't want to play with random strangers.

I think there should be some sort of a mechanic where the health of the enemies adjusts accordingly to the number of people actually playing on the server so that even people who just like to play in a group of two have a chance of defeating the bosses and seeing and using the high end items. I think there IS a mod that does just this but I really think it should be incorporated into the game itself and be balanced accordingly by the people who are actually in charge of the game.

What do you guys think?

Actually, if you know what you are doing...every single boss (I am pretty sure) can be soloed.  Many of which can be soloed relatively easily, in fact.  It is just a matter of gearing up with armor and good weapons (fresh hambats are cheap and strong).

[Sinister_Fang]

18 hours ago, Ecu said:

Actually, if you know what you are doing...every single boss (I am pretty sure) can be soloed.  Many of which can be soloed relatively easily, in fact.  It is just a matter of gearing up with armor and good weapons (fresh hambats are cheap and strong).

It usually takes ridiculous amounts of preparation, resources and time though. Kinda seems unfair to me when a team of 5 or 6 people can take out the boss quickly and without much work while a single player or a team of 2 needs to spend a season or two just gathering the materials for a bunch of bunny hutches.

Just because it can be done solo doesn't mean it's worth the all the effort.

[Ecu]

4 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

It usually takes ridiculous amounts of preparation, resources and time though. Kinda seems unfair to me when a team of 5 or 6 people can take out the boss quickly and without much work while a single player or a team of 2 needs to spend a season or two just gathering the materials for a bunch of bunny hutches.

Just because it can be done solo doesn't mean it's worth the all the effort.

Then don't fight the boss?  I dunno, I think if there were automatic adjustments of creature health, it would have to start with something around where we are now, and only get harder for more people.  I'm not completely opposed to the idea, but I feel like bosses should be a challenge to fight, forcing you to devote solid resources to doing so.

Of course, they should be worth the resources invested...but most are already.

[Sinister_Fang]

2 minutes ago, Ecu said:

 I'm not completely opposed to the idea, but I feel like bosses should be a challenge to fight, forcing you to devote solid resources to doing so.

Exactly. With the bosses health scaling the difficulty would remain fairly consistent weather you were just going at it solo, or had a whole team of 12 people. Right now with the fixed health it's either too difficult with too few people, or just too easy with too many people.

[Ecu]

Just now, Sinister_Fang said:

Exactly. With the bosses health scaling the difficulty would remain fairly consistent weather you were just going at it solo, or had a whole team of 12 people. Right now with the fixed health it's either too difficult with too few people, or just too easy with too many people.

Sure, with the exception that I feel it is perfectly fine (for the most part) as-is for solo players.  In other words, I would scale it up starting from there.  If I was to do something like this.

However, I did have one thing that kind of made me question that approach and that is...in many cases, the group doesn't get together to kill the bosses, generally only a couple do.  So if you were to implement this, it couldn't be players on the server, but instead players within an area.  Said area would have to be reasonably large as well, to avoid players hitting and then running away to make it easier.

I believe I had heard something as well, that gathering player info in an area like that continuously can be quite laggy (could be wrong), due to the engine's coding.  This is especially true if every creature has to take this into account.  Now if you did it off the players in the game, you could probably reduce such checks to reasonable levels by only checking on spawning.  However, that would mean in a full server...everything you fight is significantly harder than when playing solo, and you would always have to travel in a group.

So at the end of the day, I think the current method is probably best.  It isn't as flexible, but it better fits how people play the game.

[Pyr0mrcow]

So...here's a thought.
Every time a player hits the boss, they're transferring their current damage value. The game is checking where the damage comes from and where it goes to.
Rather than constantly checking how many players are in the area...
Transfer the player tag on-hit.
Only allow 1 copy of each unique tag.
Each player tag attached to the boss boosts its health.

Or, just check how many are nearby at the beginning of the battle and leave it at that. (Abusable, sure, but gunpowder exists; if there are enough people to make abusing that system worthwhile, they're enough to make piles of gunpowder.)

Either method should be relatively lightweight.

[Ecu]

The tagging method may indeed work, I didn't think of that.  You could also flag things like fire/gunpowder with a tag of who dropped them, so that you could apply such a tag to the boss if they were hit indirectly.  You would probably want the tags to reset if the boss resets back to home and make it return to full health as well.  I am not sure, honestly, the performance impact that this would have if applied to all creatures and not just bosses, but should be rather fine to implement for boss only fights.

Which, should allow for the challenge to be maintained regardless of players.