AI shouldn't be creating prose, poetry and art I want it to detect when I'm no longer having fun and stop the boss fight there and then. That point being when I hit skip boss fight introduction cinematic (obvs). I do not want to git gud, I want to see the rest of the content I paid for!
gotta first avoid 30 meteors and then know the difference between that unavoidable impending attack that you're supposed to take and heal through and the hard to avoid impending attack that will knock you down to 2% health
These boss fights generally are designed so you need to attempt a few times before you learn them and defeat them. it gives a greater sense of achievement. Death and failure is a necessary part of this to make it feel like an obstacle worth overcoming.
Retrying something 3x doesn't give me a sense of achievement, it just makes me feel like I couldn't figure it out the first time and only succeeded through trial-and-error.
I'm currently playing through Nier:Replicant.
And while the core combat mechanics would be amazing on their own, the boss battles are disastrously bad.
They simultaneously have a large HP bar, and a large window when they aren't here to be hit. Sometimes you can't even tell if damage is inflicted.
One of the things that pushed me away from my favourite activity in Destiny 2, and then ultimately the game itself, is when I see raiders need 5-10+ minutes to set up a single damage phase. And then 20 seconds later, it turns out they didn’t do the damage phase right so they have to start over!
literally the worst boss design choices in video games are when they make them invulnerable or stunlock you so you cant hit them nor dodge. genshin impact is so heavily guilty of this, its dogshit gamedesign.
the problem comes in when you HAVE to effectively disable your player, as in take away agency from them, for your boss to not die immediately. it means you cannot balance damage properly. its fine if you are going into a cutscene but if you do that more than once its the same issue.
THE biggest sin in video game design is taking agency away from your player. whilst it can be done right like the one quest in FFXIV's Endwalker, even that one is kind of a nuisance. if you have to rob your player of agency, NEVER do it in a high octane environment like a boss. moment will be gone.
the most important aspect of a video game is momentum, keeping the player in a constant motion that makes them feel like they are mastering the mechanics of the game and puts them into the zone, the flow state. thats how games like Dark Souls, Hollow Knight and Dead Cells become massive hits
I think this demonstrates a failure to really understand game design. There are plenty of story driven games that do not take away player control, especially in boss fights.
I, as a boss, have a shield that will make me absolutely invulnerable to EVERYTHING. I've never used it before until now. There is no reason why I don't use it every time. I'm going to use it and glare at you until those platforms sink into the lava or you kill some obvious power generators.
It's almost always far more engaging to be having to think about when you can safely hit/how much risk you're willing to take to hit the boss that's always theoretically attackable (as in active hitbox in reach) than it is to have the game just say "no lol"
Especially the Black Dragon is horrible in that game. He just spams attacks that literally does nothing to Super Sonic for 4 minutes and than gives you a small attack window with insta kill Black holes... Also barely rings.
That fight has no business being 15 minutes long. It's just criminal.
It's because most videogames are designed around a hitpoint "shoot him till he's dead" system and it's hard to make that interesting with a boss battle. Bullet sponge enemies are dumb and boring.
It's usually a very clumsy attempt to add a "Aim for his weak spot!" mechanic.
Sonic 2 has my favorite boss design out of the classic games because Oil Ocean aside there's not really a boss that makes you wait for an eternity to hit it
I like that you can either proceed carefully or chain several hits in a row if you're good
Sharpen the sword of patience and slay the dragon of frustration. You will beat the boss, until you decide you cant.
One boss in cuphead took me & my gf 4 months trying about 10 times every few days. I was stuck on the final boss of DS3 for close to a year. Dont give up!
But then you'll miss out on the Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of puzzles necessary to unlock the ability to hit the guy just once before doing it all over again!
I wanug fh a h
Why did I type that?
Anyway I am a modded terraria fiend and the thing stopping me from checking out infernum is every other boss having a desperation attack at 0 hp instead of just dying
I'd like a word with whoever designed bosses in Diablo that allow you to take them down with relative ease until they love tap you for infinite damage, when they have a sliver of life left.
Path of exile 2 is brutal for that. "Here's a multi phase fight that takes a hundred years and once the boss hits 10% hp he'll gain a new instakill skill you've never seen before! Back to the checkpoint loser, run it back again and don't get sneezed on this time!"
[Clippy popping up on your screen] It looks like you have added a lot of time where you can't hit the guy. May I suggest replacing that with time where you can hit the guy?
It's truly crazy how many indie devs especially wanna do the early 3D-era Zelda boss formula when that shit sucks ass! Let me hit the guy!
If you wanna make a boss "fight" into a level, that's fine! Perfect Chaos and Metal Overlord in Shadow Gens do that well...AND YET I'M STILL HITTING THE GUY!!
Not to unfairly give one to Nintendo but Kirby bosses have loved their teleport spam since Adventure but it lasts at most a second or two before you can hit them again. Lets them be flashy or mix up what attack is coming next without copious down time.
nah they got the gojo infinite domain until they finish their monologue on generic villainy things. then the program allows them to ultra instinct dodge until you use your tactical equipment that you haven’t had to use in 7 hours best of luck 🤞🏾
Pretty sure a lot of Sonic bosses in older games worked like that too. But yeah, always exposed weak-point bosses that you just have to hit more are way more fun so please do that :3
tbh stuff like time out spell cards in touhou and trio mechanics in xiv ultimates can be fun, but when a boss just fucks off to charge a big attack and summons adds or something its boring as hell
nothing drives me nuts than the time it takes to go through the stupid blabbering ... before the fight... and so often it's like... the protagonist who just killed 500,000 baddies like it was nothing just gives up when confronted by this boss. There has to be a better way. :D
I like boss fights where you’re both constantly attacking each other, for example, the V2 fights in ultrakill, even though you can just wait for attacks and parry only, there is nothing stopping you from delivering constant punishment
Louder, for the designers in the back who aren't paying attention! I'm here to FIGHT the BBEG, not to do a ridiculously complicated dance with him. I get that slug-fests are boring but if you can't think of any other mechanics besides adding dance steps then you shouldn't be designing boss battles.
I think the real issue is the idea that boss battles should last an incredibly long time and be incredibly harder than the rest of the game, when realistically the most beloved boss battles are often only moderately harder than typical gameplay and often end within 10 minutes of starting.
Pls for the love of god tell this to the developers of the demon slayer game, I pray that the second game has better boss fights bc the current ones are so annoying
Wish granted. The boss has a huge hitbox and is immobile, but you can only hit him when his eyes glow green after you do three minutes of dodge mechanics. It takes four rounds to kill him, if you're geared and level appropriate.
Can't think of a boss in a souls Bourne game where he does this. This is usually something that western games do. Like the tombstone fight in spiderman I was playing last night.
Western bosses might do this more literally, but there are PLENTY OF fromsoft bosses that extremely limit their windows to be hit. Every non-Gideon boss past Fire Giant, Malenia, Rellana, PCRadahn, etc
no, not at all. none of the games have ever done this. it's literally a matter of git gud here, because if you know what you're doing you can deal immense damage during the parts where they are hard to hit. western games remove the hitbox.
Nah talking about different things here. You can still hit them and do damage it's more a case that you'll get your ass handed to you if you do it at the wrong time. It's practically the same thing but having the boss feel invulnerable is frustrating for the player.
B-but chasing them around their 20-mile arena for 10 minutes and spending another 5 waiting for their combos to expose a half-frame attack window is part of the fun!!
Monster hunter is the worst for this, you have a cutscene(unskippable), then if it’s an agile monster it’ll just bounce around and you swing everywhere.
Elden Ring: Sorry, I didn't hear you. The boss will now do somersaults through the air for 15 seconds straight and end it with an unavoidable attack that takes 95% of your health while spawning so many particles it chugs your framerate
No. You must do repetitive task to briefly expose their weakpoint at least 3 times. Shoot it til it dies is played out, we need flip three switches and shoot it til it dies or do 5000 dodge rolls and whack it in the kneecap until it dies
Comments
Wouldn't it be cool to have them fly around in the background and do flips for 30 seconds?
These boss fights generally are designed so you need to attempt a few times before you learn them and defeat them. it gives a greater sense of achievement. Death and failure is a necessary part of this to make it feel like an obstacle worth overcoming.
And while the core combat mechanics would be amazing on their own, the boss battles are disastrously bad.
They simultaneously have a large HP bar, and a large window when they aren't here to be hit. Sometimes you can't even tell if damage is inflicted.
But seriously this is why there needs to be more parts falling off bosses so it atleast feels like progress even if they get harder <3
That fight has no business being 15 minutes long. It's just criminal.
i just think of old sonic bosses where you can beat them really quick if you totally disregard your own safety
It's usually a very clumsy attempt to add a "Aim for his weak spot!" mechanic.
It also adds that indescribable insult to power bit
I like that you can either proceed carefully or chain several hits in a row if you're good
One boss in cuphead took me & my gf 4 months trying about 10 times every few days. I was stuck on the final boss of DS3 for close to a year. Dont give up!
All boss fights are now 20 minute bullet-sponge slugfests. 18 minutes of hitting. 2 minutes of negotiating mechanics.
The monkey’s paw curls.
Why did I type that?
Anyway I am a modded terraria fiend and the thing stopping me from checking out infernum is every other boss having a desperation attack at 0 hp instead of just dying
gotta be one of my favorite genders
games are supposed to be fun
let me hit the guy
If you wanna make a boss "fight" into a level, that's fine! Perfect Chaos and Metal Overlord in Shadow Gens do that well...AND YET I'M STILL HITTING THE GUY!!
this is pyribbit's domain
Player: "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
SEE ONLY THE NEON STARS
https://youtu.be/83QeTZwYcvE?si=H3WaWYd3wZyoQoE1
Making bosses that you can only hit when they want you to is just easier to design
This might be one of the few things I'd call bad design, for most games at least
I know they it because people love flashy sequences, but in the original version they were all sudden surprises and you just had to shoot them
RB + LS Forward + Y
RB + B
Y, Y, -, Y
LT, LT, LT, LT, LT
RB + LS Back + Y
- Easy
- Then why did it take 45 minutes?
- It had it's arms closed and the hitspot only glows now and then
Sometimes it's both for me