Boss design

Vedemin · Nov 5, 2016

Hello everyone!

I know that the game will be open-world, conquering etc., but why not have some instanced bosses like we had in Firefall? But the problem with Firefall bosses was that the fight was boring and not really challanging with right team setup and items (not talking about crap that came with 1.6 and 1.7). Why not try something else to make boss fights more challanging and intense?

1. Move set
That is the part that makes Dark Souls bosses so good for me. Each boss has its own moveset that we must use to our advantage. Rolling and evading is key to winning. If you are unaware the boss will just hit you and you loose quarter of your health. This is the most fun thing in boss fights for me.

2. Counters
There are some things that work better or worse for a certain boss. For example, if you are fighting a dragon in DS your lightning miracles and weapons will perform great wile fire will be weak. This is a good option to reduce class spam (only dreadnoughts+electrons) on every boss. Some bosses could be weak to EXPLOSIONS while they could be resistant to bullets. Or for example, some bosses could be weak to melee (this option would be high risk high damage lots of fun) but very resistant to bullets and ranged attacks. This could be implemented to make boss fights vary and be more fun.

3. Special attacks and passives
In 1.7 and 1.6 in FF there was a problem with electron and his damage resistance. He gave 100% resistance boomerang to the team in line and they were immortal. GG Baneclaw down. Was this a good thing? In my opinion - no. But since such things as resistances need to exist, let's make some bosses have special attacks that are special. For example, if a player is caught near while the boss is doing that special attack, the boss impales the player and drains 90% of his hp regardless of shields or resistances. This also buffs him/his weapon. This is meant to make players more aware and make them have more fun.
Next thing - passives. Some bosses could just outright ignore some things like shields or damage resistance. Other ones may heal from damaging players. Another way to improve boss fights.

4. Bosses can't OHK players with ok gear and level.
This is a bad thing in fights like Baneclaw - if you were caught in death ring - you were dead. Similar was with Ancient Dragon in Dark Souls II. Those fights aren't enjoyable at all

Instead, let us make some mistakes.

5. Small room for dodging
If we have a small time gap to dodge through the boss attack, we can master its moveset and be rewarded in a better way. Not something like the Fume Knight (too hard for casuls), but something a bit easier. Type fume knight in YouTube to see what I mean.

7. Dodging
When fighting a boss it's good to have rolls and dodges, even if we are in a mech. This could be handled similarly to some games, where you have x frames of roll when you are invincible. Works good from my experience.

8. The more players, the harder is the boss
And I'm not talking just about increasing it's health by 100% per player. It should get some new moves to make up for the amount of targets. Also, don't increase its damage, it doesn't work.

9. Reward
It should be something good, someting that makes us happy. And it shouldn't be a random drop, bosses shouldn't be a place to farm and farm, they should be a fun and challanging fight. If we succeed, we can choose something we want. And please, no "Titan Tokens", such idea is garbage, because it literally screams "farm, farm, farm". This isn't a fun thing.

In my opinion, such decisions would make boss fights more enjoyable and fun. They would also be harder. Players would have to master boss movesets and adapt to a situation.
What do you think?

Cheers - Vedemin

Torgue_Joey · Nov 5, 2016

HOW 'BOUT AN UNPREDICTABLE A**HOLE?

BADASS RABBITS WITH PREDICTABLE B*TCH MOVES ARE BOOOOORING.
BORING! YOU HEAR ME?
ALWAYS KNOWING WHEN AND WHAT SH*T IT GONNA DO....... SO UNBADASS.

IT SOMETIME DECIDE TO DEAL WITH THAT ONE PUSSEY THAT DEALT TO MUCH DAMAGE STRAIGHT ON. REALLY DEATH LOCK YOU THE F*CK UP. AND SOMETIMES TRIES TO KILL A BUNCH OF WEAK 'LIL WANNABE PUSSEY.
YEAH, A HAND FULL OF ANNOYING PUNY ANKLE BITER HURTS MORE THAN A F*CKER WITH A BAZOOKA.

LIKE I DO. KILLING F*CKING MOSQUITOES WITH A BAZOOKA. BECAUSE THEY'RE ANNOYING AS F*CK.

NO!

WHO'S GONNA HELP THOSE POOR NEWBIES THAT ARRIVED 3 F*CKING YEARS TOO LATE? NOBODY. BECAUSE WE ALREADY GOT ALL THE SH*T FROM THAT SAID RETARDED BOSS. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY REASON FOR US TO KICK HIS ASS AGAIN.

RANDOM LOOT, YES. DIDN'T LIKE THAT SH*TTY LOOT OR ALREADY HAVE THAT REWARD CRAP? SCRAP IT FOR MINERALS.

SO? YER GONNA FARM THE SH*T OUT OF THE MINERALS ANYWAY.
FARM MINERALS FROM SMALL NODES MANUALLY.
FARM MINERALS WITH "TINY-ASS" THMPR.
FARM MINERALS FROM SCRAPPING LOOTS.
WHERE'S THE F*CKING DIFFERENCE?

Kouyioue · Nov 5, 2016

Omega Boost had some great boss mechanics. It would often require you to do things like target and take out their shields and stuff before you could do actual damage among other things. Or had insane bullet spam, forcing you to take out their weapons before it was even remotely safe to shoot weakspots

They would hide themselves in small enclosed areas and do things like ram their entire body into you for damage(because omega boost flies. Exclusively). Have lasers hanging off of their undersides trying to run past you to cut you in half and stuff. Turn into two enemies if destroyed the wrong way. Quite a few of the bosses would TELEPORT BEHIND YOU and shoot VERY, VERY-- large 40-meter diameter charged laser beams at you. Omega Boost has some awesome bosses, and minibosses.

There were even some non-boss enemies that would attach themselves to you and self-destruct

Viper boost ability Vs. ANOTHER Viper boost user:

I guess if anything, learn from OCT and Warfront of Firefall !
I agree, never guarantee rewards. It makes for a very lonely " newcomer " experience. People are lazy and will never run raids again after getting their 'guaranteed reward' which screws over people who joined the game too late in its publication. High quality salvage seems about right, in that situation.

Though, In my opintion, don't even put good rewards in the randomizer unless it's as rare as the Brontodon Royal Court family members, just good boss-grade salvage and stuff

Silv3r Shadow · Nov 5, 2016

Boss instances are good.
They need mobs, certain groups in a squad will pull and agro the mobs to draw them away from the backliners.
http://images-cdn.perfectworld.com/arc/03/00/0300aed4a4ad7041875251a7a16d1d651399436230.jpg
Imo the boss itself shouldn't only do ability attacks like Firefall. The bosses are just there standing, looking at you while it takes hits, then 20 seconds later it will activate an ability, to me that's 1 big reason why bosses with no other function than casting an ability is boring.
It should be doing basic attacks, moving around focusing other plays now and then making a player kite him if they're squishy etc.

Mobs, mobs are mobs. Mobs spawn in, nothing much to it, maybe even a boss specific mob.
Also with boss abilities, gotta love the aoe warning.
https://31.media.tumblr.com/34412559c3c53bb7385d844d5e211572/tumblr_inline_nf63vzr7LN1rwqfnm.jpg

Daynen · Nov 5, 2016

Bosses in Ember should not be defined by the rewards they drop. Far too often I see an MMO with a plethora of bosses to beat, only to have most of them ignored after the first pass just because boss X has the materials and that one drop you want.

They also should not be put on the same dull, predictable, controllable routine. I want to see bosses with real ability and the brains to use it. Bosses need to be more than a loot crate behind an HP bar; they need to be a THREAT. If a boss appears in the middle of our base and there aren't at least a few people panicking, then something has been designed incorrectly.

This leads me to another point: instancing a boss just means burying it behind a loading screen and inside a cave somewhere, safely quarantining it from the rest of the world rather than allowing it to act like a threat and actually hurt our operations. Bosses need some form of autonomy and the strength to act on their goals against us. Otherwise we just have more bullet sponge loot tables and I for one am quite sick of that particular notion...

Tamás Csaba · Nov 6, 2016

Hi!
I think Vedemin is right about what he want from the new bosses, i have a point about the rewards.

I think the old method in Firefall Kanaloa the distroyer was very cool. 20 player, 5 big reward, and 1 time per a week. You can fan the boss, if you want, for lower rewards, and of course, if a team isn't 20 player, or some players do it more than 1 time, the big reward pool decrease.

I think, the methode of who should get the big reward is a little efficency and more about random. Of course not a random guy get it, who was AFK, or die in the first min, but should get chance for everyone, not just the strongest players.

Caconym · Nov 6, 2016

I have to agree with Torgue here. Bosses are, well, bosses. They shouldn't be predictable or easy to do, and they should be able to insta a player if the player is not careful. Some mistakes are fine, but if a giant death mek sits down on you, you shouldn't be able to survive.
Invincibility frames when dodging are a Dark Souls concept, and should stay there. It's quite a bit harder to have proper hitboxing in a MMO, but you're in a mech with jet boosters or something, you should be able to dodge on your own without being invincible for a short amount of time.
Rewards should not be fixed. Maybe have a specific reward for a specific boss the first time you run them, or if you meet a certain condition/challenge etc, but everything after that should be random, and good enough to keep the boss a viable run for decent-level players.
Most importantly, I think, boss difficulty shouldn't simple be more health/damage/defenses. Doing a boss at a higher level, or with higher level players present, should make the boss not more dangerous because it's tankier (although it should be, a little bit), but because it is faster, is more aggressive/defensive depending on the boss, and moves differently. Dark souls is a bad example for a MMO, but let's take Iudex Gundyr as an example: the first time you meet him, he's the opening boss. Decently fast, and has a little special something near the end of the fight. When you meet him as Champion Gundyr later in the game, he is much faster, hurts you quite a bit more per hit, and is a lot more aggressive. That's how playing the same boss with a higher level character should be.

Vedemin · Nov 6, 2016

Caconym said:

For me Fume Knight was a very good fight (dunno if you were fighting him though). Very aggresive and pretty fast, gives little time to heal and has a very strict dodge timing. It didn't one-shot you, but it still was one of the hardest bosses I've ever beaten. A boss that one-shotted you was for example Ancient Dragon. I didn't enjoy this fight at all, it was stupid because of OHK and hard to run away attacks (dodging wasn't effective for his fire breath). The point is not to make giant sitting mechs because they are just not enjoyable. Better make a boss that is hard to fight and very aggresive, but doesn't OHK.

Caconym said:

If you are a ranged build - I agree, this is ok because you can launch 50 meters from the boss and still attack. For a melee build though, it would be a nightmare. In a close ranged fight dodging (rolling) on close distance gives you an ability to attack from a flank just after the boss attacked. Jetting away denies that

And since hit boxes of let's say swords of bosses are pretty big for non-rolling enemies, they are hard to make being able to be dodged on close distance. So IMO we need a bit of invincibility for rolling.

Caconym said:

That's a very good idea

Caconym said:

I also don't think when bosses difficulty is just damage/defence, it's the worst mechanic possible. And yes, Iudex Gundyr and Champion Gundyr is a great example of how a good boss scaling should look like.

Daynen · Nov 8, 2016

There's still a lot of theme park MMO thinking going on here, guys. Most of this logic won't apply in Ember due to the nature of the game. "Boss scaling" hopefully won't be a thing, because hopefully we won't be facing the same boss over and over, and we won't be "higher level" because there won't be a traditional level chart.

Ronyn · Nov 8, 2016

Daynen said:

I could not speak to boss design or even whether or not there will be bosses in Em-8er. I do want to make a quick reminder that there will be some amount of vertical progression in this game.

zdoofop · Nov 9, 2016

Ronyn said:

2 questions:

1. Reminder? where was the first post?

2. Mark said there would be no vertical progression. Not that i'm unused to game devs breaking promises, but what changed?

Lawz · Nov 9, 2016

I recall a complaint about investing time in a new (and better) website. No better example than this. A new website would be nice if it will consolidate all the information available.

zdoofop said:

1. I actually recall a post stating there would be some vertical progression. But I cant direct you to it, sorry.

2. Nothing has changed. There will be some vertical progression. In what way I dont know. All I can tell you is that I think I read it wouldn't be in the traditional style.

I am 100% sure that I am right on point one. I might be incorrect about point two but I am sure someone else can correct me if needed.

Edit: Added a line for clarification. I am drunk so I'll probably do it again!

Ronyn · Nov 9, 2016

zdoofop said:

That is a common bit of confusion on this issue. I will see if I can help.

The original fundraiser for the forum stated that Em-8er will be-
"A shooter first, with great movement, guns and abilities. Skill matters. Progression is horizontal, opening up more options and abilities and gameplay."

In a later post he clarified what horizontal progression means in this case.

Grummz said:

Omnires · Nov 13, 2016

Funny idea
A boss that can understand what people say in chat. So you can say things to it to affect its mood. For example, likes say it is blocking most of your attacks somehow. You can yell something at it to make it mad at you so it drops its guard, although now it is going to focus aggro on you now.

Picture a super tank turtle-like boss hiding in its shell. None of your attacks can damage it while it is in there and the only time you can damage it when it is trying to move to the new spot or trying to attack you. So you yell insults at it enraging it. Now because it is mad at you, it didn't care about trying to defend itself as long as it can hurt/kill you. And the reverse can be true too. Let's say there is a boss with a lot of power AOE attacks who is also spamming them. You could try singing a lullaby to see if you can make it sleepy so it'll stop spamming the attacks.

Daynen · Nov 14, 2016

Omnires said:

Funny idea
A boss that can understand what people say in chat. So you can say things to it to affect its mood. For example, likes say it is blocking most of your attacks somehow. You can yell something at it to make it mad at you so it drops its guard, although now it is going to focus aggro on you now.

Picture a super tank turtle-like boss hiding in its shell. None of your attacks can damage it while it is in there and the only time you can damage it when it is trying to move to the new spot or trying to attack you. So you yell insults at it enraging it. Now because it is mad at you, it didn't care about trying to defend itself as long as it can hurt/kill you. And the reverse can be true too. Let's say there is a boss with a lot of power AOE attacks who is also spamming them. You could try singing a lullaby to see if you can make it sleepy so it'll stop spamming the attacks.

This would be much better if it required voice chat. Soothing voices calm it down, terrible off-key singing enrages and taunts it.

Torgue_Joey · Nov 14, 2016

Daynen said:

I'M TOTALLY GONNA RUIN IT.
YEAH, I'LL FUS RO DAH HIM TO DEATH.

PLUS. I'M AGAINST THAT IDEA. BECAUSE. SPAM.
AND OTHER REASON. LIKE 12 YEAR OLD TROLLS.

Daynen · Nov 14, 2016

Even better: singing terrible, repetitive pop music causes the boss to level up and start shooting lava at everyone at once, howling bloody rage that can be heard across the planet as it thunders towards us and never stops chasing us until every last player on the server is dead.

Then when we're all corpses, the server displays a message telling us exactly who had the fool idea to start singing Justin Bieber at the boss...

And that's when the REAL game begins...

Torgue_Joey · Nov 14, 2016

Daynen said:

OOOH LOOK, THOSE PUSSEYS BROUGHT THAT BOSS DOWN TO 10%
WOULD BE A SHAME
IF SOMEONE START SINGING JUNKIN BEAVER

Omnires · Nov 16, 2016

The reason I posted the idea of us being able to use chat to talk to bosses is because in other games the bosses do sometimes talk to us.

For example, in some games there are agents of death who are bosses. In the game Mabinogi one of the bosses is the Dullahan (the headless horseman), in it that game is not uncommon for bosses and other enemies to the use the chat to say things to players. But the Dullahan is one of the few that makes you fear what he says because of one of his abilities called Axe Throw. The Dullahan will whisper things like "Come... To the world of death." to the player when they are the target of this attack. After a short period, the Dullahan will throw an axe at the player. Axe Throw is deadly unblockable and undodgeable attack that always does 1Hp more damage than the health of the player at the moment it hits. This attack is bad enough as is, but the fact that the axe also flys at you slowly and chases you around the room while you are trying to avoid it just shows you how unless your efforts are.

I just thought it would be both awesome and funny if that could work both ways in a game. Like if I can say things to bosses that can affect their mood and change how they fight. That why if a boss does something to piss me off I can yell it at and make it know how I feel to affect it. For example, if the boss is doing something I find annoying I can stand out in the open and yell something like "Come at me bro!" that would make the boss focus aggro on me and changes the way it fights.

Gaya · Nov 16, 2016

Hi, uufortunatelly this thread is waaay to long to read the whole thing. But I did read the first 10 or so posts and here's my input:

Rewards
- No fixed loot. This is very deterimental to the gameplay, as many have already explained. Top players will not ever repeat the fight if once they got the loot.
- Random loot with high value in reprocessing. Rare crafting ingredients, obtainable only by trade or winning vs the boss. Look at "Frozen Core" from WOW:WOTLK. You couldn't get it anywhere but by killing a boss or buying it from other players.

Boss locations
- Instances kill it for me. Instances are passe. Instances defy the whole "open-world" idea.
FF had a decent idea for open world bosses and I stand behind it. The issue with FF bosses was that they were "stupid", but that's a different topic. Someone above mentioned that if a boss spawns/comes into the main area of a city players should be terrified. If they are not then there's something wrong with design. I absolutely agree. In fact, I experienced something like that in FF. A melding tornado liked to spawn very close to Sunken Harbour. Now, when you are low lvl with "white" gear - a nado right next to your re-spawn point is a horror. At least in the old times. This is how the bosses in EM8ER should be. They should be allowed to "wander into" or teleport into an allied (presumably safe) city. This is exactly the event we want and need. All should panic and take part in defeating it, otherwise we lose the city.

Boss AI
- Technically it is impossible to make the bosses behave like in DS. This is a Massively Multiplayer Real-Time Action game. How do you imagine synchronizing boss movements with your "dodges"? Ever heard of latency, bandwidth, packet loss?
- Instead, the idea with "fighting stages" where we need to destroy his armor or weapons before we can start hurting it seems much more reasonable.
- Erratic and Chaotic. This is the key - the boss must be totally unpredictable. Have you ever played Dont Starve? Seen how to fight a Deerclops? More or less "walk to it, walk back, wait one attack, walk to it, hit x3, walk back, wait aoe, repeat". This may work for Dont Starve, but would be ultra boring for an Action game. The boss should have a ton of possible attacks, some very rare, some very strong. And basing on some pRNG it should fire them periodically but without any obvious pattern. This would make every fight participant stay on their toes.

Let me know what you think

Boss design

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