What truly makes an enemy/boss hard to beat and be wary of?

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9 comments, last by Mark William Nations 9 years, 10 months ago

Okay, most of the things you have stated are more or less the same thing. Attack Cycles 1 and 2's only difference is that 2 is a combo attack. 3 and 6 are effectively the same thing. You can just increase the frequency of the one-hit-kill move in relation to how much the player's health has decreased (if there are multiples, then do a lottery for determining which). The only real "different" attack patterns are the one including a "super recovery" ability (which I presume heals the boss) and the one that has 2 random attacks occur one after the other. Also, exactly how much health does the enemy have / how weak are the player's attacks that they need 10+ seconds just to be able to deal a substantial amount of damage against the boss? If you really time it out, 10 seconds is a long time. I would go with something closer to half of that as the delay between attacks.

The diversity of possible attacks is also not necessarily the core goal of a good boss battle. The first boss of Phantom Dust (Xbox) was a character that shot long range beams of energy at the player that could warp around particular boundaries of the battle arena, so if the player didn't know the map well, they wouldn't be able to tell where they should be standing in order to use the stage as cover from the long range attacks. To add on to that, if the player used short range attacks against the boss, they teleported to another part of the map. If the player stayed back and tried to shoot at them, they got mauled by the energy beam attacks. The way to win was to A) run up close to make the boss attacks out of range and less effective, hoping for a quick strike before they teleported or B) fire off a single long-range beam of your own to get the enemy to teleport to a spot very close to you, where you then rush in for a single short-range strike before they teleport away again. Rinse and repeat until dead. The issue was that popping around a corner to hit them or rushing in were both things that left you completely exposed to the enemy's beams, so timing and cover-awareness were critical.

In this case, the boss had 1 attack move and 1 defensive move, but it was STILL a good boss battle. It was the player's initiative and awareness of their surroundings that led to them surviving the enemy's attacks (especially because parts of the stage could be destroyed, fall on the player, and damage them). It was also their perceptual ability to time the exact moment when they attacked the enemy that determined whether or not they actually landed a hit. The player would have to get in range for a short range strike, but do it quickly enough that the boss hadn't already teleported away. As a result, the player was responsible for the damage they took and for the damage they dealt. There was always a way to go through the battle without taking any damage at all, if the player were skilled enough; ergo, the complexity of a boss doesn't imply a well-crafted boss. It's the required skills of the player that really make a boss interesting. Do they have to look at the environment? Do they need to pay attention to subtle cues from the boss? Do they have to time movements or attacks in a particular manner? How often? For how long? A continuous flow of careful movement to avoid death or a storm of concentration accompanied by bits of respite as windows to attack? Balancing the amount of work on the player's mind with the player's skill level is the key to achieving a sense of challenge.

willnationsdev - Godot Engine Contributor

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