Tarasque is trivial (Spoilers)

[Duckroll]

I'm playing on Custom mode with settings similar to Hard with enemy damaged increased. I'm doing Co-op with 2 others, both casual gamers.

I was really excited for this boss fight because of the giant room that was obviously a boss arena and the massive size of it.

But the Tarasque almost immediately fell over and just lay there getting shot by our electric guns. It managed to get up only twice to punt someone across the room, then it was just lying around again. The actual damage was minimal and it never really made it further than the entrance.

All in all it felt very anti-climactic as we'd spent an hour discussing our strategies and building a base nearby for when we inevitably died and needed to respawn and then... the whole fight was a couple of minutes and just an "oh." from the group.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

[Monokuma]

You had multiple people all using the damage type it's weak to.

Imagine a pokemon triple battle and you have three charizards targeting one venusaur.

[Duckroll]

I assumed that the bosses would scale for co-op?

[CombatWombat]

Yes it is.

[Kai]

I think post-launch past 1.0 the devs should look into revamping all enemy AI and animations.

Give them more tactics and abilities:

For instance the pest, the simplest of them all, can gain a rare ability to 'bounce' off of a surface when aiming at a player, and rebound to re-target the player a second time. But if the pest hits the target whether it is blocked or not, it will not continue to do a second attack.

This ability would be applied to later variants of the Pest, so the Electro Pest would gain a second electrical outburst upon contact rather than from a initial launch, causing a AoE on impact if you dodge the first. This also makes taming the variants of pests handy as they have more abilities to utilize against enemies in a sense.

The Peccary would gain the ability to do a long range pounce attack instead of a charged ramming attack, which will knock back players a set distance upon impact.

The Exor Monks and it's later teleportation variants, gains the ability to do a psychic outburst when engaged up close at a low chance, if it hadn't teleport yet but has the ability to do so. It will choose to forego teleportation, to do a AoE burst damage point black at players rushing it, which launches all players back a good distance.

There is no need to modify the Exor Soldiers who shoots spikes, because they are tanky and hits extremely hard and causes bleeding often.

The Tarasque, would gain the ability to stampede, where upon seeing multiple players in a small zone a set distance away from them, they designate a straight line through to charge and stampede through all players, until they hit a wall and get staggered. The stampede knocks all players to the side on impact.

For a boss, the Tarasque would gain stagger/stun immunity during the stampede animation, so it only enters this state after it hits a wall and rebounds from the damage it's taken.

[Monokuma]

Originally posted by Duckroll:

I assumed that the bosses would scale for co-op?

I don't believe HP scales, just more enemy spawn locations / ai reactivity.

[Quarter]

The setting for custom difficulty specifically calls out that it disables dynamic scaling for additional players. I think that might be your issue here.

[Rae Nidae]

No one tell OP that you can just kite the Tarasque to a door it can't fit through and whale on it from a safe distance

[MechWarden]

Originally posted by Quarter:

The setting for custom difficulty specifically calls out that it disables dynamic scaling for additional players. I think that might be your issue here.

The only thing that I know of in terms of dynamic scaling is having less enemy around while there are fewer people, or alone. That was added several updates ago to make the game easier for solo players, or for those that explored alone on co-op.

Originally posted by Duckroll:

...
All in all it felt very anti-climactic as we'd spent an hour discussing our strategies and building a base nearby for when we inevitably died and needed to respawn and then... the whole fight was a couple of minutes and just an "oh." from the group.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

Can't say that we upped the difficulty that much on our 6 player Co-op group, but we did absolutely own the thing in our Hard difficulty game. I knew it was going to be easy, since the last time I attacked it in solo (I think in Apocalyptic difficulty), I took it out pretty fast, but was using some strong weapons. In our group we trashed it way faster than even I was expecting, since I grossly underestimated the Electron Grenades.

But yeah, we had that 'Attack it! yeah, it's down! ... (dies) oh...' moment. Though... at the risk of spoilers, there was a redemption arch.

It's yet another one of those cases of if you use the right tools (and there are several to pick from) you can trivialize the fight. Honestly, I'm not to opposed to that, especially when such things eventually turn into a resource you have to farm. But I would like the first encounter to be way more memorable and engaging.

My first encounter with it, before some changes, was I think the most enjoyment I had. Granted, I didn't realize what weapons to use, so I was fighting it like some sort of epic boss fight, using up a lot of ammo, running, dodging, and hiding; and all in all using the big area as a battle arena. Now... I know to use the right weapons for it and just harvest it like an over leveled character in the starting area.

[Owlie]

I feel the same way. Tarrasque should probably be immune to stagger to actually be threatening. Mine pretty much keel over 4 times and dies. Making the big arena feels like a waste

[Monokuma]

Originally posted by Owlie:

I feel the same way. Tarrasque should probably be immune to stagger to actually be threatening. Mine pretty much keel over 4 times and dies. Making the big arena feels like a waste

Without stagger you'll be pushing people more towards the electrothrower it's critically weak to as it would make melee encounters more difficult. Whether or not that's a good thing for game design is subject to opinion, but I think for a lot of players it would just reinforce the feeling that they're too easy to kill once you "solve" it.

[Kai]

Better to give all stronger enemies 'enrage' modes that is a dps check.
If their hp dropped to 50% within a certain period of time, they get enraged early and only take 10% of the total damage for 10 seconds. And use a special moveset where they thrash around like crazy or do something that really harms the player.

[ganthritor42]

Originally posted by Kai:

Better to give all stronger enemies 'enrage' modes that is a dps check.
If their hp dropped to 50% within a certain period of time, they get enraged early and only take 10% of the total damage for 10 seconds. And use a special moveset where they thrash around like crazy or do something that really harms the player.

I think that would really help honestly, make it much more dynamic. Also has the player make decisions on how best to engage.

[Covert Cactus]

The tarasque used to be much stronger when the game first launched in to early access. I think when the crush depth update came out that's when they nerfed the tarasque. They may have done it to help solo players but I think it went a little too far.