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You can read more of Jon's thoughts on design and project management at his website. You can also find him on Twitter.
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I’m hopping off of strategy gaming for one more article in order to talk about a problem that’s prevalent in RPGs, my other favorite genre. Namely: bosses.
Okay, so maybe saying all boss battles are “broken” is a bit of a stretch. But for the most part you could say they’re… misused. This really shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as the model for boss fights that you find in most RPGs has evolved little since its crude introduction in the 1980s. At the end of every major level you’ll run into a monster just like all the others, except it has 5 times more health and does 5 times more damage with each attack. Maybe they have a special weakness, or a particularly devastating attack that you have to figure out. Yay! But once that’s done there’s no depth or strategy to be found under the surface.
More troubling still, even if the fights themselves were interesting, the fact that they exist at all hurts the overall experience of the game. Why? Well, let’s explore this topic in more detail.
Strategy… or Pattern-Matching?
One of the reasons why many fighting games and shooters are fun to play is because you never know exactly how your opponent will react. You’re familiar with what abilities or weapons are available, but that doesn’t mean your foe will attack the same way in every engagement. Sure, his character has a really devastating Strong Punch, but I know that, and he knows I know that – maybe he’ll try to get crafty and hit me with a Low Kick instead? This sort of strategic thinking, also known as “yomi” is the reason why these types of games can be infinitely enjoyable and replayable (a concept explored by David Sirlin in his excellent article).
Nearly every RPG boss fight completely lacks this strategic element. Instead, they ask the player to simply replay each battle several times, or patiently watch their enemy for as much time as necessary in order to identify its attack patterns and weaknesses. Once the formula is unraveled, the player knows exactly what to do and victory requires nothing more than spamming the ‘correct’ attack and keeping one’s health from dipping too low.
Now, achieving yomi with computer opponents isn’t really feasible. They are, after all, just lines of code being executed and not actual, strategizing humans with nuance and subtlety. But players can still be required to develop strategies and make trade-offs, even against AI enemies. How likely is it that the enemy uses Ability X versus Ability Y? How long until Ability Y can be used again? Am I willing to take some risks and perform an all-out attack this turn, or should I play more defensively? This sort of thinking requires players to actually know what an enemy is capable of, instead of make battles interesting by ‘surprising’ them. This is really no different from a single-player strategy game where the human must develop a plan for how to best proceed, identifying risks and opportunities, protecting weaknesses, and so on.
Another way bosses could be made more interesting is by imposing limits on them. Maybe they have a mana meter which can, you know, actually deplete instead of being effectively infinite. Players might know that a monster can shoot off a deadly ability one or two times per battle, but they don’t know when it’s coming. If one is too patient, the boss can whittle down the good guys with just basic attacks. Too aggressive and the enemy fires a blast that wipes the board. Varying AI personalities can give hints as to the likely outcome, but it’s still up to the player to develop a plan and weigh risk versus reward.
Bad Behavior
“I’m not going to spend my mana or potions because I know there’s a boss coming up.”
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s had this thought run through their mind. The last thing we designers should want is to actively discourage players from using the cool systems we create. Nearly every game benefits from providing long-term versus short-term trade-offs, but if players can set their watches by the frequency of boss fights then you’re not really offering players a choice – you’re just encouraging them to be conservative. Nearly every RPG I play I find myself with a full inventory at the end of the game. Is this really what the designers wanted? I obviously can’t say for sure, but I doubt that it is. It certainly wouldn’t be one of my goals.
This is a problem that owes more to the predictability of boss fights than their mere existence. If players know that every level has a midboss and an endboss, and that they’ll be roughly X% stronger than the last one they faced… they will be planning around that. Some people will still naturally hoard items and mana when they don’t know what’s coming, but this is as an issue that can be addressed in a number of ways. On the other hand, always planting bosses in the exact same place guarantees this kind of behavior.
Discovery
The last problem I’ll talk about is less discrete. Games are meant to be unique experiences, ways to escape the monotony of everyday life. Players like to explore and make cool discoveries along the way. Regular and predictable boss battles tend to provide theopposite.
You don’t want your game to become rote. Players are much less engaged and excited when they always know what’s around the next corner. The best stories are always those with unexpected twists and turns. Pacing in a game is no different.
There’s nothing wrong with sprinkling in some tougher fights to keep players paying attention and to raise the stakes. One of the best features of open-world RPGs is that you never know when you’re going to run into something really nasty while you’re just wandering around. This approah could easily be adopted by more linear games. What if some levels thrust the player into a boss battle only a minute in? What if some areas hadno boss at all? This would keep players on their toes, constantly wondering what’s around the next corner. As designers, our goal should be to prevent game experiences from turning into yet another exercise of ‘going through the motions’. Adaptation and discovery are key – not just with boss fights but also every other aspect of a game.
- Jon
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For me I think it's more the scarcity of items that drives my tendency to hoard rather than the predictability of bosses. I think even if bosses weren't as predictable you would still need to pry those rarer items from my cold dead hands.
Maybe I just play too conservative.
Though your other two points I really get. A game that really nails these is Dark Souls. I'm finding it difficult to explain why, but it satisfies in terms of strategy and unpredictability in combat. One way to describe it is that the bosses rarely feel like they were designed to be defeated. You feel like you've altered fate when you win, rather than simply fulfilling prophesy or feeling like you've broken character when you lose.
It also does a great job keeping players guessing as to whether or not a boss is right around the corner. Bosses are usually behind a fog door (though many aren't), but fog doors are also used throughout levels, seemingly only to trick you into thinking a preparing yourself for one. Sometimes boss rooms are guarded by only a few enemies, or are at the beginning of an area. At one point, after defeating one boss, you fight another only moments after you exit the first's arena. One boss you encounter by falling through the floor when you find a hidden way of revisiting the tutorial area. Many of them feel more like encounters than just bookends for the area.
As for predictability, I don't know... Doesn't it depend on the person? Personally, I tend to prefer a more structured experience.
If you need that boost in order to defeat normal enemies, then you're probably not good enough (in terms of skill, levels, whatever) to defeat the boss. If you can beat the boss by using items, then you're probably good enough that you don't need them at all against normal enemies.
One series that "solved" the item/boss issue (at least, the first two games had - I haven't gotten to the other two yet) was Phantasy Star. In those games, inventory space was severely limited and dungeons were full of decent loot. Coupled with the powerful normal enemies and relatively anti-climactic boss fights, it created a nice dynamic where you would enter a dungeon with an inventory full of healing items, spend them (hopefully) at the same rate you would refill your inventory with loot, and (ideally) get to the boss while most of your party was still alive. With few exceptions, a boss was a welcome sight because it meant you wouldn't have to deal with any more random encounters. There were also some dungeons that didn't have a boss - you were supposed to find an item somewhere, and they didn't resort to space fleas just to give you a mandatory boss fight.
Not exactly sure how to do something like that off hand, but if you were to move away from leveling to gain abilities and instead had to find them or earn them in the levels, it could work.
For me at least, I think the biggest fault of RPG battles is that they are little more than "big monsters". They often have no real strategy to them other than to be a higher level than it. It would be nice to have some real variety to how to fight them.
At the same time, I want to caution against the idea that Boss fights in RPGs are all bad. It's worth noting some of the points others made:
1. Boss fights are a natural "climax" to a dungeon experience. Players can feel that their encounters are getting harder, and that looming sensation of impending doom, as well as the (hopefully) intense, exciting showdown provide the sort of emotional payoff that all narrative rollercoasters strive for. It's certainly not the case that reducing a game to "Fetch Quest, Dungeon, Boss Fight" like Skyward Sword will please everyone, but it's important to meet the expectations you set, and so if you increase the challenge in an area as the player progresses deeper, it would be a wasted opportunity (much like if you squandered a narrative climax) to avoid boss fights for the sake of being unpredictable.
2. Boss fights are (supposed to be) interesting. Whenever a boss is the same thing you fought with a palette swap and a stronger stats, I agree, it's not clear that the boss fight was any payoff at all. That's actually pretty frustrating for me. But games like Prince of Persia (2008?), Shadow of the Colossus, and even the fighting games you talk about perfectly explain what makes boss fights interesting: they're very different from each other, and the rest of the game in general. And when a boss fight keeps you on your toes and makes you plan several steps ahead or face certain defeat, especially if it does so *interestingly*, then the boss fight was a worthwhile encounter. This isn't to say that I haven't seen my fair share of bad boss fights, but this also isn't a reason to believe that all fights need to be equally interesting. Some fights can be bigger, harder, and more complex, and if they happen at the same time as a narrative reveal, they become all the more memorable.
3. Boss fights make other fights matter more. Knowing that something terrible is coming can make decisions more interesting. Some fights you would ordinarily grind through become engaging and nail-biting because you can't afford to spend some permanent resource or risk a status ailment, while other decisions such as if that chest which might be a dearly-needed potion or another high-risk encounter become meaningful choices.
So... yes! I don't think there should be a boss fight at the end of every dungeon, nor do I think that all boss fights should occur in dungeons. But I think that a well-placed encounter which isn't just harder or longer, but is genuinely different and requires players to adapt, learn, and plan ahead is never something you can have too little of in a game.
If every fight played out like a *good* boss fight, I imagine grinding wouldn't feel like grinding at all.
Isn't that the answer to discovery, then? You watch your opponent, learn how they act in different situations so you can see where they fault, and then you punish that. Each boss is a unique experience, just like any opponent in a fighting game is an individual. Granted, the AI deciding how the boss acts is probably going to be more staid in its ways and won't adapt to your style as well, but figuring out the formula *is* the game. It's a game with very little replayability, and you can easily cheat by looking up the "correct" strategy online, but then you're only cheating yourself.
It's not as though a game with 20 hours of cutscenes is going to have great replay value anyway.
For example, too many bosses hole up and wait for the player to come to them. For narrative reasons, it makes sense to build up certain bosses, but what are they doing in their deep lairs that's so evil, anyway? Rather than chill out while their minions get slaughtered, some bosses should actively pursue the player, instead of taking a defensive approach that might contradict their character.
But, it does make sense to end a level with a large battle. Not only does it serve as closure, an exclamation point at the end of an adventure, but it could function as the final test for a learned skill, as E.Z. Knight pointed out above. To combat predictability, just don't always put the player on a grand vista overlooking the room labeled "BOSS ARENA" with a forgiving trigger volume. If the boss attacks and knocks the player into a unique area, or transforms a mundane area into an arena upon arrival (making a crater, collapsing certain walls, etc.), then you have a tense start to a memorable battle.
I haven't played through Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I hear the bosses in that game are of the worst type - the "shoot a lot". A good boss fight is a nice break from the norm, like God of War and Batman: Arkham City. Though looking through my recent games, the idea of the boss seems to be going away, except for one last challenge in the finale.