Though I find it a bit ironic that the bosses least resembling WoW bosses are the ones that are being received better.
I would suggest that this is true because WoW bosses tend to have a large amount of auto-attack. Even those with many phases or additional elements still use auto-attack as a baseline offense. While this sorta works (and is in fact necessary to give meaning to the accumulation of rare gear) with WoW and WoW's tank<>healer<>DPS role triangle, I don't believe it's the ideal approach for non-MMO bosses.
Though I find it a bit ironic that the bosses least resembling WoW bosses are the ones that are being received better.
I would suggest that this is true because WoW bosses tend to have a large amount of auto-attack. Even those with many phases or additional elements still use auto-attack as a baseline offense. While this sorta works (and is in fact necessary to give meaning to the accumulation of rare gear) with WoW and WoW's tank<>healer<>DPS role triangle, I don't believe it's the ideal approach for non-MMO bosses.
As long as your game is built for it, auto attack complicates the special abilities pleasantly. It's the difference between "Oh, I have to dodge these?" and "Oh, I have to dodge these and NOT LET THE BOSS KILL THE HEALER?" But I do agree that not every map needs the boss to swing at you.
Just a comment regarding WoW boss fight styles it requires a different style of balance, which i find is more difficult. You have to balance the attacks and defenses of the tank and boss. For the one hit you die bosses, you have to create more complex abilities (in my mind) which have collision tracking. In the end its different and it seems people tend to lean toward the OMG1HITKO bosses. :(
That's exactly why my boss has NO auto attack. When he's not using abilities, he's blinking/moving around letting people get in some damage ;) All abilities were designed in a way that there is a way to dodge/cancel the effect of the ability.
I'm not talking about your map :D
However it seems that the 3 maps that don't have auto attacks are the most appreciated, do you think that's the reason?
1 auto attack is enough to make the boss boring. There is no fun in
taking damage withouth beeing able to deny it in some kind of way...
I disagree, if you find my boss boring then i would most certainly like to know what you find exciting lol. My bosses auto attack plays a key roll in the mechanics the players have at their expense. His auto attack is a frontal aoe cleave so the players create a tank (ogre) in order to face him away from everyone while dpsing him down. The tank does not last forever you see and the bosses special abilities have huge ranges. That and someone has to single handedly run around and take care of the reactors/elite demons guarding them while the others do their best to manage the boss himself in order to defeat the boss. Read the description of my bosses abilities and you will see that he is far from boring.
My issue with auto-attack isn't that it's boring per se, I just don't believe in the idea of a dedicated healer, which an auto-attacking boss usually demands. How many of the auto attack bosses created have dedicated healer heroes/units? All of them if I'm not mistaken.
There's a reason why most FPS no longer even use medkits - I remember well the days when Call of Duty had medkits and I remember my relief when CoD stopped using them. How many modern FPSes use medkits now? Very few because gathering medkits just didn't fit in an intense action game.
Now there's a huge difference between an FPS and an RPG or RTS, but I am finding that even MMOs are trying to steer clear of the idea of a dedicated healer. If you look through discussions of Guild Wars 2, for example, you'll see they have spread the healing abilities to all classes. And why wouldn't they? If you ever played WoW for any real period of time, you've experienced the great annoyance of trying to find a healer for a dungeon/raid. Sadly, they're often in short supply - because people like dealing damage!
Anyway I'm not trying to suggest that any of the bosses here with auto-attack suck or are boring, cause they aren't. Just explaining why I personally try to design bosses without auto-attack.
It's just the wow boss design style that's boring. Bunch of attacks that need constant healing or the tank will die.
That's the boring part for me.
Even if you placed an aoe ability here and there it doesn't mean that the game becomes funny, you still have to heal your tank every second to keep him alive.
Yeah and really your boss is pretty bland and uncreative tbh bounty, only thing that makes it good is the camera & attack systrem, the boss itself would be shit from above.
Yeah and really your boss is pretty bland and uncreative tbh bounty,
only thing that makes it good is the camera & attack systrem, the boss
itself would be shit from above.
This is coming from someone who posted "I really like this map" on the Planetary Boss Hunt. Yet if we were to compare mechanics to any of the bosses on that map they would be the ones labeled as bland. I am not putting down my own map but i have come a long way imo in terms of bosses. You say the only thing that makes it good is third person right? Ok well what if Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Gears of War, or even Oblivion used an RTS camera? Do you think they would use the same mechanics? I think not. I dont know if you have played my boss with friends or not yet but i can tell you this, the boss is anything but bland and uncreative. Not to say my boss is the best one here but to say that when having liked other maps in the series strikes me as a bit odd.
People here seem to think one dimensionally about auto attacking bosses. Just because he auto attacks doesn't mean you have to continuously and constantly heal the tank. What of those WoW bosses that cannot be tanked at all? I see no real point in healing a tank that is not tanking.
Our map's first boss is the generic and simplest of tank>heal>DPS styles (the boss shown in the video). However that is the only boss where the tank takes a significant amount of damage from auto attacks. Even starting on the second boss the encounter becomes much more complex with tons of things to avoid. The tank still takes damage but very little because the second boss does nearly no damage to him with auto attacks. Instead, he uses abilities that must be countered by executing a strategy and/or positioning.
The problem is not the healing but the fact you can't dodge auto attacks. It becomes just a matter of time on killing the boss before he kills you instead of kill the boss while dodging each attack he does.
Many old games went with the 1-hit you die system, which graduated into a 2-hit you die system in where the 2nd hit could be recovered (or up to 8 hits). The mechanic of taking damage all the time was only introduced into games that were born from D&D / RPG mechanics, along with the concept of healing.
Healing on the fly during combat isn't that common in games when you think about it (outside RPG based games). Many boss fights have a mechanic built into their behavior to provide the player an opportunity to heal, or to recover hits, but seldom do you have a healer by your side pumping your life up every second with little thought to the 'healing' aspect of the fight. A good example of this I think is Super Metroid, with those encounters there's opportunities to regain health, and it's not simply freely given to you.
I think the hallmark of a good boss fight is the ability to dodge then counter. The problem with WoW-type bosses is the 'dodge' is an ability you hit to counter a damage spike (You seldom actually avoid the damage entirely), all the while you have constant incoming damage with constant incoming healing. Which ultimately begs the question: What's the point?
In arcade side-scrolling games, there was no 'healer' and everyone was in the role of "Make things die/explode." Very few mini and action games have the mechanic of constant incoming damage and constant healing. Well okay Gauntlet comes to mind with the so and so needs food badly, due to the constant ticking down of your health, but that's not a boss mechanic. It's just a personal opinion that the auto-attack/unavoidable damage mechanic for a boss fight is unnecessary for the majority of game types. Hell, it's sort of an unnecessary mechanic for the player to have as well since a lot of games it was "Press button to deal damage"
@RahnSCII: Go
I would suggest that this is true because WoW bosses tend to have a large amount of auto-attack. Even those with many phases or additional elements still use auto-attack as a baseline offense. While this sorta works (and is in fact necessary to give meaning to the accumulation of rare gear) with WoW and WoW's tank<>healer<>DPS role triangle, I don't believe it's the ideal approach for non-MMO bosses.
As long as your game is built for it, auto attack complicates the special abilities pleasantly. It's the difference between "Oh, I have to dodge these?" and "Oh, I have to dodge these and NOT LET THE BOSS KILL THE HEALER?" But I do agree that not every map needs the boss to swing at you.
@urashimakt: Go
Just a comment regarding WoW boss fight styles it requires a different style of balance, which i find is more difficult. You have to balance the attacks and defenses of the tank and boss. For the one hit you die bosses, you have to create more complex abilities (in my mind) which have collision tracking. In the end its different and it seems people tend to lean toward the OMG1HITKO bosses. :(
I prefer dodgable attacks instead of auto-hits + heal
My boss has auto attack but everything else he does is 100% dodgable.
Mine as well has an auto attack, but no heal and one ability is dogeable and the other one (at east partially) preventable.
If i wanted to fight wow style bosses..... Id play wow... I cancled my subscription to it because it all feels the same after awhile.
I guess the face of WoW and the title of WoW turned mine away from people. Curse you blizzard!!!!!!!
1 auto attack is enough to make the boss boring. There is no fun in taking damage withouth beeing able to deny it in some kind of way...
@Bibendus: Go
That's exactly why my boss has NO auto attack. When he's not using abilities, he's blinking/moving around letting people get in some damage ;) All abilities were designed in a way that there is a way to dodge/cancel the effect of the ability.
I'm not talking about your map :D
However it seems that the 3 maps that don't have auto attacks are the most appreciated, do you think that's the reason?
I disagree, if you find my boss boring then i would most certainly like to know what you find exciting lol. My bosses auto attack plays a key roll in the mechanics the players have at their expense. His auto attack is a frontal aoe cleave so the players create a tank (ogre) in order to face him away from everyone while dpsing him down. The tank does not last forever you see and the bosses special abilities have huge ranges. That and someone has to single handedly run around and take care of the reactors/elite demons guarding them while the others do their best to manage the boss himself in order to defeat the boss. Read the description of my bosses abilities and you will see that he is far from boring.
@Bounty_98: Go
My issue with auto-attack isn't that it's boring per se, I just don't believe in the idea of a dedicated healer, which an auto-attacking boss usually demands. How many of the auto attack bosses created have dedicated healer heroes/units? All of them if I'm not mistaken.
There's a reason why most FPS no longer even use medkits - I remember well the days when Call of Duty had medkits and I remember my relief when CoD stopped using them. How many modern FPSes use medkits now? Very few because gathering medkits just didn't fit in an intense action game.
Now there's a huge difference between an FPS and an RPG or RTS, but I am finding that even MMOs are trying to steer clear of the idea of a dedicated healer. If you look through discussions of Guild Wars 2, for example, you'll see they have spread the healing abilities to all classes. And why wouldn't they? If you ever played WoW for any real period of time, you've experienced the great annoyance of trying to find a healer for a dungeon/raid. Sadly, they're often in short supply - because people like dealing damage!
Anyway I'm not trying to suggest that any of the bosses here with auto-attack suck or are boring, cause they aren't. Just explaining why I personally try to design bosses without auto-attack.
@Bounty_98: Go
It's just the wow boss design style that's boring. Bunch of attacks that need constant healing or the tank will die.
That's the boring part for me.
Even if you placed an aoe ability here and there it doesn't mean that the game becomes funny, you still have to heal your tank every second to keep him alive.
@Bounty_98: Go
Yeah and really your boss is pretty bland and uncreative tbh bounty, only thing that makes it good is the camera & attack systrem, the boss itself would be shit from above.
This is coming from someone who posted "I really like this map" on the Planetary Boss Hunt. Yet if we were to compare mechanics to any of the bosses on that map they would be the ones labeled as bland. I am not putting down my own map but i have come a long way imo in terms of bosses. You say the only thing that makes it good is third person right? Ok well what if Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Gears of War, or even Oblivion used an RTS camera? Do you think they would use the same mechanics? I think not. I dont know if you have played my boss with friends or not yet but i can tell you this, the boss is anything but bland and uncreative. Not to say my boss is the best one here but to say that when having liked other maps in the series strikes me as a bit odd.
People here seem to think one dimensionally about auto attacking bosses. Just because he auto attacks doesn't mean you have to continuously and constantly heal the tank. What of those WoW bosses that cannot be tanked at all? I see no real point in healing a tank that is not tanking.
Our map's first boss is the generic and simplest of tank>heal>DPS styles (the boss shown in the video). However that is the only boss where the tank takes a significant amount of damage from auto attacks. Even starting on the second boss the encounter becomes much more complex with tons of things to avoid. The tank still takes damage but very little because the second boss does nearly no damage to him with auto attacks. Instead, he uses abilities that must be countered by executing a strategy and/or positioning.
The problem is not the healing but the fact you can't dodge auto attacks. It becomes just a matter of time on killing the boss before he kills you instead of kill the boss while dodging each attack he does.
Many old games went with the 1-hit you die system, which graduated into a 2-hit you die system in where the 2nd hit could be recovered (or up to 8 hits). The mechanic of taking damage all the time was only introduced into games that were born from D&D / RPG mechanics, along with the concept of healing.
Healing on the fly during combat isn't that common in games when you think about it (outside RPG based games). Many boss fights have a mechanic built into their behavior to provide the player an opportunity to heal, or to recover hits, but seldom do you have a healer by your side pumping your life up every second with little thought to the 'healing' aspect of the fight. A good example of this I think is Super Metroid, with those encounters there's opportunities to regain health, and it's not simply freely given to you.
I think the hallmark of a good boss fight is the ability to dodge then counter. The problem with WoW-type bosses is the 'dodge' is an ability you hit to counter a damage spike (You seldom actually avoid the damage entirely), all the while you have constant incoming damage with constant incoming healing. Which ultimately begs the question: What's the point?
In arcade side-scrolling games, there was no 'healer' and everyone was in the role of "Make things die/explode." Very few mini and action games have the mechanic of constant incoming damage and constant healing. Well okay Gauntlet comes to mind with the so and so needs food badly, due to the constant ticking down of your health, but that's not a boss mechanic. It's just a personal opinion that the auto-attack/unavoidable damage mechanic for a boss fight is unnecessary for the majority of game types. Hell, it's sort of an unnecessary mechanic for the player to have as well since a lot of games it was "Press button to deal damage"
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