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So you say your game has strategy
author=LockeZ
I'm curious why you think the max power boss makes a terrible final boss. Being the last and most difficult thing you can possibly do, it technically *is* the final boss - the plot just usually ends before you get to it. Moving the plot's ending to after the last thing the player does seems to make sense to me, though.
It's not like the thing is unbeatable, after all. It's just the hardest thing in the game - which, if you don't have an optional superboss, is what the final boss already is anyway. I have always felt like the hardest thing in the game should be the final boss.
And when you think about it, putting something after the final boss and calling it "optional" is really not that different from making it the final boss, except that one has plot-related cut scenes afterwards and the other doesn't. The only difference is the story. Gameplay-wise, there's no difference - in neither case is it necessary to beat the boss to get to anything later in the game, so it's still "optional" in that sense.
Well, to me it's all about the challenge curve. A good final boss is tough, but not really a steep increase in challenge; it builds upon what has come before in a logical fashion, and an average party and a sensible strategy should be enough to claim victory. By contrast, a 'max' boss is always a hugely steep increase in challenge, meaning that the only way to claim victory is to have an exceptional party AND a good strategy.
I'll admit, it does undermine Sephiroth's impressiveness when there are three bosses far more powerful than he is in Final Fantasy VII. However, as long as a FINAL final boss is optional and NOT mandatory for finishing the game, you can go nuts with the challenge. For example, Kagutsuchi, the giant disco ball of death, is the final boss of Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, and he's no slouch when it comes to challenge. However, the optional FINAl final boss is Lucifer, who, in order to even fight, the player must go through a long and difficult optional dungeon, fight several very difficult optional bosses, and then go through the final dungeon again. Lucifer also requires the best skills in the game to defeat, which are also very difficult to obtain. As it stands, Lucifier is a great extra challenge for players, but if he was mandatory to fight in order to finish the normal game players would have, justifiably, complained about balance issues.
author=LockeZ
I also really like status effect bosses, given the condition that the status effects are something that powers you down and makes it harder to beat the boss, but you can and are expected to change up your strategy and work around them rather than just prevent them. When status effects just disable you until you heal them, they can get fairly obnoxious if overdone. Especially if they hit more than one party member. (Disabling only one party member at a time is totally valid and definitely can make the player change his strategy up to work around it if done right.)
As with everything, it depends upon how well it is done. Status effects which reduce or increase stats can be a lot of fun. Status effects which effectively auto-kill characters are not.
So you say your game has strategy
Yes, I agree with LDanarkos; status effects should be used in moderation, or even not at all. It's no fun discovering you have run out of poison antidotes and having to limp all the way out of the dungeon back to town to buy more, just as it is no fun to watch your party be immobilized for five turns before receiving a game over.
Granted, some status effects can be useful ways to add spice to a combat system; the ever-popular attack up/down and defense up/down, elemental shields, status effect shields, speed and slow skills and regeneration and auto life, to name a few common ones.
But to avoid getting to specific about how the mechanics of a boss fight can work, since those will be different for each game engine, I will instead post a series of archetypal boss fights I have come across in my years of playing RPGs.
1) The Countdown Boss Everybody knows this one. It's a boss like Bahamut for Final Fantasy 4, or Hecatonchires from Digital Devil Saga 2. The player either has to defeat the boss before it does a devastating attack, or else buff up before that attack to weather its effects before getting back on the offensive. I personally think this kind of fight can work well at any point in the game, as coding such a boss is easy and the fight always has some tension. Heck, Tiamat from Final Fantasy VIII can ONLY do one super attack, and she's one of the last bosses in the game!
2) The 'Rainbow' Boss This is a boss that defies the conventional RPG wisdom of having just one elemental weakness, and instead rotates its elemental weakness to various different things. Variations on this can also be using different elemental attacks in a certain order to win, such as with the Time Devourer in Chrono Cross (a very apt name for a boss). I don't recommend this kind of boss for anything but the end boss or late in the game bosses, and never for regular enemies. Even if the party has all the elemental attacks it needs to win, the fight is still tedious, and if the party doesn't you force the player to go back to their last save and figure it out before the fight. So, I advise using this one sparingly.
3) The Minion Boss We've already talked about this one in the thread; it's the boss with a lot of minions surrounding it which it may or may not be necessary to kill in order to win the fight. Many, many boss fights do this, and variations can include a boss with 'mirror forms', such as Stoker from Final Fantasy V, where you have to hit the real boss or get punished with a powerful counterattack. These kinds of fights can be fun or frustrating depending on how they are set up, and to make them enjoyable I recommend reducing the randomness factor. In a case where a boss resurrects a minion, don't have the boss sometimes be able to resurrect more than one or all the minions at once. You want the player to feel smart and reward them for following a clever strategy, not frustrate them at the least minute with a cheap comeback that repeats the entire fight over again.
4. The Guard Down Boss The boss that is usually extremely tough but has a window of opportunity to be attacked 'for massive damage' at some point in the fight. Every boss in the Xenosaga series has a pattern like this, due to the various turn order systems those games have. The inversion of this boss if of course the 'Guard Up" Boss, which is something like Guard Scorpion from Final Fantasy VII, where there is a window where the player shouldn't attack. I recommend this kind of fight, since it rewards the player for paying attention and not just 'button mashing' through a fight. I advise keeping the tension up for a boss fight all the way through whenever possible, as the player will feel rewarded for claiming victory due to their own observations and conclusions.
5. The Status Effect Boss Ugh. You know this one; it's a boss that spams poison, stone, drain, death WHATEVER! As you can tell, I don't like this kind of boss, because usually there is only one way to beat it; have something that blocks against negative status effects and whack away. Granted, a boss with a status effect attack or two can add an extra bit of strategy to a fight, but when you make status effects the focus of a battle you end up with fights like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPL4EG-8xv8
6. The Form Change Boss As its name implies, this is a boss that changes its form, and with it most if not all of its stats, during the fight. Most final bosses do this, but it is also fairly common for regular bosses to have this feature. Variations include things like the famous/infamous 'second winds' from Breath of Fire 1, where a boss would come back just before it dies and the player would have to fight it again (seriously, what was the point of bosses even having a life bar in that game?). Sometimes designers get very clever with this idea and have a boss's second form reflect how the first form was defeated, such as in the case of Lost Number from Final Fantasy VII, whose second form will either be a magical or a physical monster, his first form being a balance of the two. I recommend this kind of boss, just so long as the boss doesn't have too many forms to the point where the fight drags and gets ridiculous.
7. The Gimmick Boss To an extent, all of these bosses have gimmicks, but this one takes things further. It's the kind of boss which has a really high attack and a low defense, or vice versa, the kind of boss that casts shield on itself and reflects attacks against the party, the kind of boss that uses only magical or physical attacks or is immune to one or the other, the kind of boss you fight on a timer, etc. There is no limit to what you can do with a gimmick boss, and the success or failure of this kind of boss rests solely on how much fun the gimmick turns out to be. If the gimmick is easy to figure out, then there isn't much else to the boss, but if the gimmick is really obtuse then things become frustrating. I think its good to have at least a few gimmick bosses in an RPG, but I don't think they should be the focus; if the player is just figuring out gimmicks and not actually fighting a boss with their weapons, skills, and combat strategies, then the actual mechanics of the game will seem superfluous.
8. The Auto-Heal Boss A boss which auto-heals when it is low on health, forcing the player to finish it off quickly before it gains back all of its life. DON'T. DO. THIS. This boss is far more common than it should be, and it is in my opinion the absolute worst kind of boss (yes, even worse than The Status Effect Boss). The reason this boss stinks is that, most often, the only thing it rewards is level grinding. For example, the Hydra from Grandia III (which isn't really a 'boss' boss, but it does guard a treasure) regenerates a huge amount of health each turn, meaning that the only way to beat it is to never let up with powerful attacks. It's very easy to beat if you are high enough level, but virtually impossible to beat for a party which is too low level, no matter how clever a player is with the fight. By itself, this boss requires no strategy at all, and that's why it stinks. However, while still frustrating, this kind of boss can be a rewarding challenge for a player in a game which has buff stats, as then a player has to buff up enough to kill a boss before it regenerates back to full. Even in such a situation however, I don't recommend using this kind of boss. If you're going to give a boss healing, don't give it the power to heal back to full in one turn. It's just cheap.
9. The 'Max' Boss A boss that an average party doesn't have a chance of beating due to overwhelming defense, offense, or ability. This kind of boss is almost always optional, for obvious reasons (it would make a terrible final boss, for example, at least in the normal game). Examples include the Weapons from Final Fantasy VII, Lucifer from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, Chronodia from Final Fantasy I's 20th Anniversary, and too many others to count. Since this sort of boss is for the die-hard player, it should be a decent challenge even when a player has access to all of the most powerful abilities in the game, and shouldn't just be an over-powered normal boss. A gimmick or two in this fight is forgivable, as is even an auto-heal on the part of the boss. Just make certain the player feels as though they have earned victory, instead of feeling like they have trudged through a drawn-out fight with 'just another boss.' This is an optional fight, so don't be afraid to pull out all the stops with making the boss a brain teaser. A player is only doing this fight because they want a challenge.
There are probably others I'm leaving out, but this post has gone on long enough.
Granted, some status effects can be useful ways to add spice to a combat system; the ever-popular attack up/down and defense up/down, elemental shields, status effect shields, speed and slow skills and regeneration and auto life, to name a few common ones.
But to avoid getting to specific about how the mechanics of a boss fight can work, since those will be different for each game engine, I will instead post a series of archetypal boss fights I have come across in my years of playing RPGs.
1) The Countdown Boss Everybody knows this one. It's a boss like Bahamut for Final Fantasy 4, or Hecatonchires from Digital Devil Saga 2. The player either has to defeat the boss before it does a devastating attack, or else buff up before that attack to weather its effects before getting back on the offensive. I personally think this kind of fight can work well at any point in the game, as coding such a boss is easy and the fight always has some tension. Heck, Tiamat from Final Fantasy VIII can ONLY do one super attack, and she's one of the last bosses in the game!
2) The 'Rainbow' Boss This is a boss that defies the conventional RPG wisdom of having just one elemental weakness, and instead rotates its elemental weakness to various different things. Variations on this can also be using different elemental attacks in a certain order to win, such as with the Time Devourer in Chrono Cross (a very apt name for a boss). I don't recommend this kind of boss for anything but the end boss or late in the game bosses, and never for regular enemies. Even if the party has all the elemental attacks it needs to win, the fight is still tedious, and if the party doesn't you force the player to go back to their last save and figure it out before the fight. So, I advise using this one sparingly.
3) The Minion Boss We've already talked about this one in the thread; it's the boss with a lot of minions surrounding it which it may or may not be necessary to kill in order to win the fight. Many, many boss fights do this, and variations can include a boss with 'mirror forms', such as Stoker from Final Fantasy V, where you have to hit the real boss or get punished with a powerful counterattack. These kinds of fights can be fun or frustrating depending on how they are set up, and to make them enjoyable I recommend reducing the randomness factor. In a case where a boss resurrects a minion, don't have the boss sometimes be able to resurrect more than one or all the minions at once. You want the player to feel smart and reward them for following a clever strategy, not frustrate them at the least minute with a cheap comeback that repeats the entire fight over again.
4. The Guard Down Boss The boss that is usually extremely tough but has a window of opportunity to be attacked 'for massive damage' at some point in the fight. Every boss in the Xenosaga series has a pattern like this, due to the various turn order systems those games have. The inversion of this boss if of course the 'Guard Up" Boss, which is something like Guard Scorpion from Final Fantasy VII, where there is a window where the player shouldn't attack. I recommend this kind of fight, since it rewards the player for paying attention and not just 'button mashing' through a fight. I advise keeping the tension up for a boss fight all the way through whenever possible, as the player will feel rewarded for claiming victory due to their own observations and conclusions.
5. The Status Effect Boss Ugh. You know this one; it's a boss that spams poison, stone, drain, death WHATEVER! As you can tell, I don't like this kind of boss, because usually there is only one way to beat it; have something that blocks against negative status effects and whack away. Granted, a boss with a status effect attack or two can add an extra bit of strategy to a fight, but when you make status effects the focus of a battle you end up with fights like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPL4EG-8xv8
6. The Form Change Boss As its name implies, this is a boss that changes its form, and with it most if not all of its stats, during the fight. Most final bosses do this, but it is also fairly common for regular bosses to have this feature. Variations include things like the famous/infamous 'second winds' from Breath of Fire 1, where a boss would come back just before it dies and the player would have to fight it again (seriously, what was the point of bosses even having a life bar in that game?). Sometimes designers get very clever with this idea and have a boss's second form reflect how the first form was defeated, such as in the case of Lost Number from Final Fantasy VII, whose second form will either be a magical or a physical monster, his first form being a balance of the two. I recommend this kind of boss, just so long as the boss doesn't have too many forms to the point where the fight drags and gets ridiculous.
7. The Gimmick Boss To an extent, all of these bosses have gimmicks, but this one takes things further. It's the kind of boss which has a really high attack and a low defense, or vice versa, the kind of boss that casts shield on itself and reflects attacks against the party, the kind of boss that uses only magical or physical attacks or is immune to one or the other, the kind of boss you fight on a timer, etc. There is no limit to what you can do with a gimmick boss, and the success or failure of this kind of boss rests solely on how much fun the gimmick turns out to be. If the gimmick is easy to figure out, then there isn't much else to the boss, but if the gimmick is really obtuse then things become frustrating. I think its good to have at least a few gimmick bosses in an RPG, but I don't think they should be the focus; if the player is just figuring out gimmicks and not actually fighting a boss with their weapons, skills, and combat strategies, then the actual mechanics of the game will seem superfluous.
8. The Auto-Heal Boss A boss which auto-heals when it is low on health, forcing the player to finish it off quickly before it gains back all of its life. DON'T. DO. THIS. This boss is far more common than it should be, and it is in my opinion the absolute worst kind of boss (yes, even worse than The Status Effect Boss). The reason this boss stinks is that, most often, the only thing it rewards is level grinding. For example, the Hydra from Grandia III (which isn't really a 'boss' boss, but it does guard a treasure) regenerates a huge amount of health each turn, meaning that the only way to beat it is to never let up with powerful attacks. It's very easy to beat if you are high enough level, but virtually impossible to beat for a party which is too low level, no matter how clever a player is with the fight. By itself, this boss requires no strategy at all, and that's why it stinks. However, while still frustrating, this kind of boss can be a rewarding challenge for a player in a game which has buff stats, as then a player has to buff up enough to kill a boss before it regenerates back to full. Even in such a situation however, I don't recommend using this kind of boss. If you're going to give a boss healing, don't give it the power to heal back to full in one turn. It's just cheap.
9. The 'Max' Boss A boss that an average party doesn't have a chance of beating due to overwhelming defense, offense, or ability. This kind of boss is almost always optional, for obvious reasons (it would make a terrible final boss, for example, at least in the normal game). Examples include the Weapons from Final Fantasy VII, Lucifer from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, Chronodia from Final Fantasy I's 20th Anniversary, and too many others to count. Since this sort of boss is for the die-hard player, it should be a decent challenge even when a player has access to all of the most powerful abilities in the game, and shouldn't just be an over-powered normal boss. A gimmick or two in this fight is forgivable, as is even an auto-heal on the part of the boss. Just make certain the player feels as though they have earned victory, instead of feeling like they have trudged through a drawn-out fight with 'just another boss.' This is an optional fight, so don't be afraid to pull out all the stops with making the boss a brain teaser. A player is only doing this fight because they want a challenge.
There are probably others I'm leaving out, but this post has gone on long enough.
Discouraging save scumming
Well, since none of us are doing this for money (I think?) the best one can hope to get by 'appealing to the masses' is a high score and some good reviews. When one brings a 'business standard' into an arena which isn't actually a business, there is little point in trying to pander to a specific crowd. Likewise, any measure of success is going to be pretty relative to the goals of the developer.
As developers, we are very lucky because we don't have to worry about sales, and we are more free than anyone in the professional gaming business to do what we want.
As developers, we are very lucky because we don't have to worry about sales, and we are more free than anyone in the professional gaming business to do what we want.
Discouraging save scumming
author=chana
Right, but that can also happen with limited saves.
True. I suppose it all comes down to which works best for a given game design. I'm still debating whether or not to have the save anywhere option in my game.
@Killer Wolf
Yes, and that is especially true when one is playing these games on a computer. These days gamers are a lot less patient with a game than they were back in the 80s and 90s, especially when there are so many RPG Maker games to choose from.
A player's humble request.
author=LDanarkosauthor=LucidstillnessI've never understood why so many people think obvious attack type weaknesses are strategic. Like "should I use the silver bullet on the werewolf? I dunno, tough strategic decision."
A character's normal physical attack might not do much against, say, a bird monster when compared to mage's wind spell, but if the former character has a technique that specifically targets birds then it balances things out.
What if it isn't so obvious though? Just because a monster uses an ice attack doesn't mean it's automatically weak against fire. Again, just look at the Megaten games for some truly difficult elemental strength and weakness puzzles. In those games you have to pay careful attention to what an enemy does in order to claim victory, such as observing what kind of elemental defense an enemy uses on itself, waiting until it is gone or otherwise dispelling the defense, and then using the appropriate elemental attack, all while defending against the enemy's own elemental attack (and that's just the absolute simplest example). It rewards thought and planning, and it is a far cry from the 1980s-style fire-water wind-earth routine of turn based RPGs.
Discouraging save scumming
@chana
I too am a fan of 'save anywhere', but for certain games it isn't viable. The main reason game designers don't include the option to save anywhere is to avoid having players get caught in dead end traps. For example, if a player saves in a place where they are low on health and surrounded by monsters, or where they have trapped themselves while working on a puzzle, their only recourse would be to start a new game. Obviously that is undesirable. When one includes the option to save anywhere, one must be very careful to avoid the possibility of such traps.
I too am a fan of 'save anywhere', but for certain games it isn't viable. The main reason game designers don't include the option to save anywhere is to avoid having players get caught in dead end traps. For example, if a player saves in a place where they are low on health and surrounded by monsters, or where they have trapped themselves while working on a puzzle, their only recourse would be to start a new game. Obviously that is undesirable. When one includes the option to save anywhere, one must be very careful to avoid the possibility of such traps.
Discouraging save scumming
I've played through Breath of Fire V, which had a somewhat similar system to what you are describing (you had quick saves, but you could also find items you could use to make permanent saves, scattered sparingly throughout the game). Given that the game was a race against the clock and took place entirely in a subterranean dungeon, the inability to save frequently and often did add to the dread of the experience. I knew that if I screwed up at the end of the game, it was all over and I'd lose hours of progress. Thankfully, Breath of Fire V rewarded careful strategy and planning, and there weren't any 'cheap deaths'.
Even though Breath of Fire V did this sort of thing rather well, I doubt I'll ever play through it again. Having to worry about the save system all the time is pretty taxing, and if I had ever really screwed up I probably would have just quit the game altogether.
My main design rule is making things fun for the player. Challenge is fun, and having something to lose can enhance the challenge, but I think basic features such as saving the game should be accessible and easy unless there is a good reason for them to be otherwise.
One of the most unpleasant gaming experiences I've ever had was playing The Nightmare of Druaga for the PS2. In that game, the penalty for dying was the player losing all of their equipment and having to start from scratch every time, and it was very easy to get killed in that game due to its random dungeon designs. Not only was this game based entirely on trial and error, it also went out of its way to punish the player for 'save scumming' (in this case, trying to keep your items before the game auto saved your death). If you did this, the 'Goddess' would show up and lecture the player for a good FIVE MINUTES about how wrong it is to save scum, and then ask a series of yes or no questions about whether the player understands and apologizes. You can't skip through these questions either, as the Goddess switches the yes and no answers up, forcing you to go through the ENTIRE speech again if you answer incorrectly. Even worse, if you are a 'repeat offender', the speech gets even LONGER. You can't even just copy your save game in the PS2 menu, as the designers put safeguards against that as well. I have never seen a game that punishes the player for playing it quite that much.
So yeah, I don't suggest making things harder on the player than they need to be within the existing limitations of the system. You don't want to be like the designers of The Nightmare of Druaga and create a game so punishing that it isn't any fun at all to play.
Even though Breath of Fire V did this sort of thing rather well, I doubt I'll ever play through it again. Having to worry about the save system all the time is pretty taxing, and if I had ever really screwed up I probably would have just quit the game altogether.
My main design rule is making things fun for the player. Challenge is fun, and having something to lose can enhance the challenge, but I think basic features such as saving the game should be accessible and easy unless there is a good reason for them to be otherwise.
One of the most unpleasant gaming experiences I've ever had was playing The Nightmare of Druaga for the PS2. In that game, the penalty for dying was the player losing all of their equipment and having to start from scratch every time, and it was very easy to get killed in that game due to its random dungeon designs. Not only was this game based entirely on trial and error, it also went out of its way to punish the player for 'save scumming' (in this case, trying to keep your items before the game auto saved your death). If you did this, the 'Goddess' would show up and lecture the player for a good FIVE MINUTES about how wrong it is to save scum, and then ask a series of yes or no questions about whether the player understands and apologizes. You can't skip through these questions either, as the Goddess switches the yes and no answers up, forcing you to go through the ENTIRE speech again if you answer incorrectly. Even worse, if you are a 'repeat offender', the speech gets even LONGER. You can't even just copy your save game in the PS2 menu, as the designers put safeguards against that as well. I have never seen a game that punishes the player for playing it quite that much.
So yeah, I don't suggest making things harder on the player than they need to be within the existing limitations of the system. You don't want to be like the designers of The Nightmare of Druaga and create a game so punishing that it isn't any fun at all to play.
The Screenshot Topic Returns
Ah, I thought the canopy could use some work. You can probably tell it's a graphic I didn't spend that much time on in order to get the map assembled.
Thanks guys! I shall work on a much nicer canopy next. Artist away!
Thanks guys! I shall work on a much nicer canopy next. Artist away!
The Screenshot Topic Returns
Yeah, Nintendo really needs to get their act together, lol! I'm guessing they were trying to capture the feel of the NES games, the problem being those games had simple perspective due to graphical limitations (such has having to have Link crawl across the world on his side).
Still, when it comes to a game like an old-school RPG, you can only get perspective so accurate, and chances are you'll end up 'fudging' things a bit. I've noticed that even the RPG Maker RTP fudges things a bit. I suggest an old rule of comics I read once for this issue, "If it looks good at a glance, it's good enough."
And now that I've set myself up for criticism, here is the latest version of my forest tile set:
Once again I'd love some feedback (I promise I won't post a bunch of the same images with slight variations like I did last time). How does the canopy look? Is it too hard to see the map? Do the tree trunks look good? Is there too much grass?
Thanks in advance!
Still, when it comes to a game like an old-school RPG, you can only get perspective so accurate, and chances are you'll end up 'fudging' things a bit. I've noticed that even the RPG Maker RTP fudges things a bit. I suggest an old rule of comics I read once for this issue, "If it looks good at a glance, it's good enough."
And now that I've set myself up for criticism, here is the latest version of my forest tile set:
Once again I'd love some feedback (I promise I won't post a bunch of the same images with slight variations like I did last time). How does the canopy look? Is it too hard to see the map? Do the tree trunks look good? Is there too much grass?
Thanks in advance!
The Screenshot Topic Returns
That does look really nice Radnen! I especially like the detail on the cliff faces.
It's true that perspective is pretty hard to judge when there is no vanishing point and the game engine requires rather dubious proportions of things. I find this is especially true with outdoor elements, where it is very difficult to indicate the slope of the ground. Your revision looks okay to me, though some of the smaller trees look a bit like they are lying flat against the ground. I recommend perhaps changing the position of the tree stump.
I admire you for making all of the sprites yourself, as I have undertaken a similar task with my game and know just how much work is involved.
It's true that perspective is pretty hard to judge when there is no vanishing point and the game engine requires rather dubious proportions of things. I find this is especially true with outdoor elements, where it is very difficult to indicate the slope of the ground. Your revision looks okay to me, though some of the smaller trees look a bit like they are lying flat against the ground. I recommend perhaps changing the position of the tree stump.
I admire you for making all of the sprites yourself, as I have undertaken a similar task with my game and know just how much work is involved.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
