[Bosses] How should they look like, behave, come to scene, their specific lore loot?

[Mr_Morningside]

We have to keep in mind - while bosses with custom death animations, a dozen special attacks and, er... removable body parts would be pretty darn fun, they also require a lot of ressources to create. It's actually hard to think of good ideas to enhance the gameplay ( or boss fights, in particular ) with a minimal investment of time and money from the developers.

I think the visual damage on bosses could potentially be done simply using a few alternate textures, which would be loaded once the boss HP drops below a certain percentage. Just use the finished boss texture as basis, paint on some exposed muscles, blood and so on - perhaps even have multiple levels of visual damage for some of the bigger bosses. There could be some sort of "blood explosion" when the next texture is loaded, or it could just fade in gradually.

As for the gameplay, I'm all for harder boss-battles! Now, I'm still playing Dark Souls, and also played Demon's Souls in the past, so perhaps due to that I've developed some masochistic tendencies... In any case, I firmly believe that a good video game boss should not only be tough, it should also be horrifying on a psychological level, especially for a game in this genre/setting. The first time you encounter a new boss, it should make you wet your pants ( well, maybe not literally ), before it proceeds to rip your character apart in a few hits, leaving you wondering what the heck just happened.

Ideally, it should take at least two or three attempts to defeat a boss monster - possibly a lot more for some of the end-game and optional creatures - and it should make you feel relieved and accomplished when you finally manage to pull it off.

What's the point of a huge scary mutant thing, if you can just walk right over it on your first attempt... ? It makes sense from the developer's point of view, as well: They spend more time on the boss encounters than most other parts of the game, and all that seems wasted when the average player can just breeze right through first try. Make the players spend some time with your creations, force them to study their attack patterns and weaknesses, make them respect their opponent and earn their victory!

[varsovie]

Originally Posted by pts

And TQ, with its non-random bosses, was?

Mostly dull, I beat Typhon with ranged attack without being hit.

There was more challenge against tigers in act 3 than any Boss battle. And believe me, I never farm or grind.

So yeah, harder, bigger, random and EPIC!