[POLL] STATUS EFFECT AGAINST BOSSES

Yes, status effects should apply to bosses. This came up in the other topic, but I'll try and sum my opinion here via analogy

Playing a game is a lot like going to school (but fun!). You are slowly introduced to the basic mechanics (a day's lesson) and you are given challenges that make you practice those mechanics (homework). By doing the homework, you practice and eventually master the rules of the game presented to you (or math). Finally, your skills and everything you've learned is put to the test by a boss fight (an exam). If the game has done a good job up until now, this should push your knowledge and mastery of the rules to its limits, but victory should be within your grasp.

Making a boss immune to some of your skills is like your teacher telling you he'll dock points if you use the equation that he taught you during his lessons. It's unfair, it's frustrating, and in extreme cases may lead to the student (player) failing the test.

We've grown accustomed to this betrayal and deem it acceptable because it is included in many popular RPGs that more than make up for that flaw in other areas. However, that's no reason to continue it! It's a design flaw! Fuck tradition! Unless the status-effect/skill is adding loads of benefit to your game in other ways - and let's be honest, is it really? - why arbitrarily backstab your player and her expectations? That's breaking an inherent rule of game design and as a result the player will lose trust in the game and its rules.

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Now, lest I be accused of providing problems and not solutions, let's brainstorm some alternatives!

1) Limited effect on bosses: This is a compromise approach taken by many games. This is a good solution if the skill essentially works in a similar way and is used in similar situations. For example, a Sleep spell might work on a boss for 1 or 2 turns, or Death can be used on a bosses' minions, but not the boss itself. This allows these spells utility during these boss fights, so players feel that their mastery of these spells is still useful.

2) Status effects work on select bosses: This is actually worse than simply making all bosses immune to status effects. Once the player fights a couple bosses and learns what skills don't work on them, don't break the rule again! Arbitrarily slapping immunity on random enemies/bosses is confusing and frustrating. Unless these immunities are clearly labeled and immediately discoverable, you are misleading your player. "Scan" abilities are only a band-aid, often flooding the player with multiple weaknesses/strengths, and sometimes disappearing immediately afterward (hope you have a pen!). The only exception would be a boss whose weakness is clearly stated somewhere else (such as NPCs), which is a successful weave of exploration, critical thinking and combat.

3) Remove these status effects completely: If your spell doesn't provide strategy to your combat, cut it! A powerful status effect that doesn't work on bosses but is overpowered on trash mobs is a poorly designed spell. An example would be a Death spell: typically this spell one-shots any trash mob and never works on bosses. It's the obvious choice on trash (leaving no other optimal strategy) but doesn't work on bosses, which means when your player gets to the boss she suddenly has to learn all those other spells! When you start compensating for this spell's power via reduced hit chance, overly high MP cost, etc., try asking yourself what strategy that spell brings to the game. Be harsh. If you find yourself struggling for answers, cut it.

4) Design your bosses to work with your status effects: I believe this to be the fairest solution. It doesn't betray your player's trust - the spell is useful in the same way it always was, but now they have to be really good with it, or the boss will crush them! Design your spells with bosses in the forefront, not merely as an afterthought. Cut your death spells. Make your poison damage use standard damage, not percent-based damage. Allow your characters to break the boss's weapon, and encourage them to do so, because the boss will crush them otherwise! Make them stun the boss right before his big attack goes off! This makes for a fulfilling battle where a player has to whip out every tool in the toolbelt to succeed, and damn is it rewarding.

Changing the rules on your player because it would break the game is a design flaw, and ultimately the player will be the one left unsatisfied. Your game should reward players that master the skills you've been teaching them; when they succeed this way, they'll feel a sense of real accomplishment, not unlike getting an A+!

metaphor over!

Whew! That was fun!

I can understand using effects like Sleep or Stop on the boss can make it a lot easier, but then... those effects make the game a lot easier anyway, and why have them? Something you could do is that you could have bosses which use different attacks while asleep, like the move "sleep talk" in the Pokemon series. It could be funto see how the player reacts in that situation, where an effect like that changes the boss's strategy rather than stops the boss completely.

In the beginning of my game, status effects are a fun diversion to use and enables you to mop the floor with many enemy parties early in the game. However, the stronger enemies you find towards the late to end game sections, they are generally overpowered and will eradicate your team in no time. So the status effects are a way of leveling the playing field and forcing you to think tactically on how best to approach each set of super-hard enemies. Sure, you'll eventually grind your way out of that difficulty hole, but until that point, you have to rely on all spells/skills given to you, not just healing and pure attack-based.

It's best if bosses are immune to some status effects otherwise it would make the game far too easy. Also monsters should have certain immunity types too. I mean if I cast an ability that causes instant death and this worked on all bosses then game is completed with no effort. Or a special ability that Lvl Downs the boss Lvl and makes them far weaker. Bosses need to be designed in a way that prevents most skills that would decimate them work. There needs to be an element of strategy like in most monsters but boss strategies must be unique and more challenging to adapt too as far as I'm concerned. This is why skills that affect them well need to be limited to allow critical thinking within the game.

I have death spells in my game and I'm trying to balance them by making them effectively 85% of the time, but that's only against enemies who are vulnerable to such spells. I even have a full party death summon, but he's 50% effective when you first get him and you have to level him up to a respectable 90% success rate. But all bosses are immune to that, of course, and later in the game, you'll encounter enemies who simply shrug off instant death, so if you've been leaning on it as a crutch for most of the game...well sorry to switch up your tactics, but you've gotta change!

Secondly, even 50%, let alone 90%, is a really high chance of instant death; if it misses it turns into a wasted turn, but if it hits it can really trivialize encounters - normal enemies should never be trivialized as they are what the player will be facing far more often than bosses.

Not sure this is actually necessarily true. In lots of games, even ones with difficult normal battles, lots of enemies only survive two or three hits anyway.

I'll tell you what I did with instant death, the one time I used it: I gave it a very high hit chance, like 80%, but then I made it only usable once per battle. Then I made it share its once-per-battle limitation with several other skills - so you had to choose between the death spell, some powerful debuffs, or the character's only area attack. This made death not only balanced but legitimately interesting, and something that the game would suffer if I removed. But, of course, I hade to make all bosses and enemies that show up in single-enemy groups immune to the death effect.

I don't think "random chance to instantly kill a boss" is a great plan, period, no matter what secondary effects you attach or what limitations you impose. It just makes the game less interesting when it goes off. Plus, while normal battles are inherently much more randomized (and forgiving) in most games, so randomness in my skills in normal battles is acceptable, I prefer my boss strategies to be more or less guaranteed. Though, if the skill is also part of the best strategy even if you ignore the death effect - like if it does incredible damage, but has a five round cooldown - that would get me to use it (but would not make it even remotely an interesting choice).