125 réponses à ce sujet

[xCirdanx]

_Loc_N_lol_ wrote...

Witness Gaxkang !

Kangaxx was way more badass [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/w00t.png[/smilie]

@Kimberly good point i haven´t thought about this. However some fights, like Branka can be realy though. A bit more varity in form of demons would have been nice, but i´m ok with that.

[cipher86]

Pretty much everything Willie and knofeta said.

Have the boss use the environment, and require the player to utilize the environment as well - this means making the environment interesting and interactive, unlike most areas in the game (adding a few ballista doesn't count. I'm talking about you final battle.)

Give the boss skills that are unique to that boss alone.

Don't simply swarm the player with a bunch of enemies and an elite "boss". This just makes it feel like more of the same.

Boss fights like the first Ogre and Uldred were... well... boring, because you either tank and spanked or kite. Uldred was a bit different because you had to pay attention to prevent him from creating more troops, but it's hard to miss him doing it, and even if he does it's just another typical enemy headed your way.

Same sort of thing for the Revenant battles - you either tank it and burn through healing pots/mana for healing and try to survive until that final blow, or you kite them around.

None of the boss fights in this game really stand out as "HOLY CRAP THAT WAS COOL". It doesn't lead to interesting conversations with friends or others about how you tackled the fight - you either tanked and survived, or kited and cheesed it. That's it. It doesn't feel like there's anything grand going on with them... like another poster said, just another "slugfest".

tl;dr I don't feel like the bosses have a distinct personality, and that's why I feel they are lacking.

EDIT:  If it makes any difference, I'm playing through on Nightmare, so I'm not numbly waltzing through the game - I am having to pause and utilize the same tactics for every battle, again and again, including boss fights, which is where I feel the battles should be designed with a different vision entirely.  As it is, it's the same battle tactics in every situation.

Modifié par cipher86, 26 novembre 2009 - 09:30 .

[WillieStyle]

Wintermist wrote...

I'm not really a fan of these so called boss fights. I'm not so sure killing a dragon without a mage would even be a very good thing to try in my opinion. I want realism more than weirdness.

Yes, in the name of realism it is essential that all dragon-killing be done with a mage; as quantum mechanics shows, doing otherwise would be entirely unrealistic. 

Ineterestingly enough, fables and lore, the notion of the lone warrior as dragon-slayer was the norm.  It's fascinating how much DnD has warped the perception of RPG fans.

[Eurypterid]

That's a good post with good feedback by WillieStyle, but I have to ask this:



of you're using your tank to take the Boss' aggro, and then using one or two other characters to fire at range, while keeping the tank healed with your final character... isn't that the very definition of teamwork? And if you use your characters' abilities, I've found the fights do get easier. As an example, use Alistair's anti magic ability (forget the name) to dispel bad effects on your party, and make sure I get Leliana flanking whenever possible while also using the appropriate Bard Song. Makes a big difference. While it's not necessarily vital you do that, it makes things easier.

[konfeta]

This game's lethality is far too high to have a "proper" mage fight. You either annihilate the mage in seconds, or the mage does the same to you.



I guess you could try to have a mage behind a forcefield trying to do stuff like crash parts of the ceiling on you, chuck telegraphed fireballs, etc. with a sub-objective of the fight to do something that would disable that forcefield... Some teleporting by the mage would also be nice, but teleportation has been expressed forbidden by this game's background lore.



But that might feel a tad arcady.

[VanDraegon]

cipher86 wrote...

No boss fight feels like such.  I actually find all boss encounters to be easier than random encounters and some general battles.

Like the four faced statue in the Deep Roads.  Uninspired and boring.

Fire up the tool set and do better yourself if it is so easy.

[konfeta]

Fire up the tool set and do better yourself if it is so easy.

Bring your own kitchen and cook the desert yourself if you find the restaraunt's offering to be ****ty.



Christ, are you actually using that as an argument?

[0LunarEclipse0]

Stanley Woo wrote...

cipher86 wrote...

No boss fight feels like such.  I actually find all boss encounters to be easier than random encounters and some general battles.

Like the four faced statue in the Deep Roads.  Uninspired and boring.

Please help us out by clarifying your criticisms.

what does a boss fight "feel" like? How do we make them equally difficult for everyone, and how can we measure that? What makes you the baseline measurement rather than someone who finds them too difficult?

And while the 4-faced statue is not a boss fight--most, I believe, would refer to that as a "gimmick fight"--how could we make it more inspired and less boring?

Random criticism is all well and good, but to help us make things better, you should also give us suggestions on how to improve ourselves. Which boss fights in which games are good examples of such to you? What makes them good? What makes them bad?

-high five- Good job. Stanley

[VanDraegon]

konfeta wrote...

Fire up the tool set and do better yourself if it is so easy.

Bring your own kitchen and cook the desert yourself if you find the restaraunt's offering to be ****ty.

Christ, are you actually using that as an argument?

Ye, sure am. That is the great thing about this game. If the player doesnt like something that can change it themselves.

[cipher86]

My problem is not limited to boss fights.  Combat feels drab and repetitive, yes, but there is more.  Now that I'm going through the game a second time, I'm actually finding more that I dislike about the game than I like (and during my initial impressions, this game would have been a 10).

- Combat, as I've stated before, is repetitive.  Zerg the mage.  Once the mage is done, the rest is literally cake.

- Loot is also boring and repetitive.  Most everything you find is vendor junk, which ends up filling up your pack and requires backtracking to a merchant several times during a questline just so you can keep your gold supply up.  It would be better if enemies just dropped money, though I understand why they don't - you are looting their junky equipment to sell to the vendor.  I'm sure some would be against simply picking up gold as it would definitely break immersion - but from a gameplay standpoint, it would make things much smoother.

- Exploration is far too time consuming.  Though I do like searching every nook and cranny, when I end up running between zones (or doing the often dreaded merchant run), I run at the same slow pace back and forth between areas.  Increased run speed (WITHOUT Haste) during exploration mode would be welcome - that, or make the areas smaller, and pack them with content, rather than sprinkling content throughout a large zone.  More quicktravel options would also be nice.  So would a Town Portal.

- Same goes for dialogue - much of it seems to be filler.  I love a good story, but I would say a good 20-25% of the dialogue could be cut.  Seduce me with a bit of opening dialogue, but get to the point and keep things moving.  Having to sit and read through thirty minutes of dialogue and have the jist of things within 5 minutes is not fun... for that is why I play games.  To have fun.

That is my largest criticism.  A lot of times this does not feel like a game... perhaps it was not designed to be.  It feels like it was more designed to be long and intentionally "epic", and because of that it does not feel so.

I want to play my games.  I don't want to have to go through extensive exploration with little action (which can be combat, puzzle solving, or making general mental notes - but the areas are repetitive and as such require very little observation skills).  I don't want to spend 15-20 minutes making a town run.  I don't want to spend an hour or two in dialogue waiting for the game to happen, but I also don't want to skip all of it because I will then miss the essential tidbits sprinkled in there and miss important portions of the game.

I think DA:O would have been best if it were a 20 hour game, but it seems to suffer the same problem a lot of entertainment does:  Quantity over quality.  Why have a 1hr20min flick when you can make it 2hr and think it is great because it is long?  Why have a 400 page book when it can be 800 and again be epic because it is long?  Why make your guitar solo a memorable eight bars when it can be flogged across thirty two?

Because epic is a word that provides length, and the sound of the word "epic" instills the idea of greatness... unfortunately the word epic rarely delivers the feeling, simply the length.

And that is what this game suffers from.  It is an epic in definition, but not in experience.  Final Fantasy IV was epic, but not in the traditional sense: it can be beat it in 12 hours.  FFIV is an epic in experience.  It had great music (something DA:O also lacks - it is derivative and forgettable aside from "Tavern Brawl"), great characters (despite the lack of dialogue and depth when it was there, their ACTIONS defined them quite well), and the story constantly pushed forward.

DA:O would be better if it trimmed the fat - and there is a lot of trimming to be done.

Modifié par cipher86, 26 novembre 2009 - 10:07 .

[Beechwell]

I think the concept of boss fights as seperate "games" withing the game is a thing of the past (except in MMOs). All fights should be engaging and interesting. No matter if its against a pack of bowmen or against a dragon. And generally I think DA makes a rather good job at that, except that the AI is too easily outmaneuvered.

[WillieStyle]

Eurypterid wrote...

That's a good post with good feedback by WillieStyle, but I have to ask this:

of you're using your tank to take the Boss' aggro, and then using one or two other characters to fire at range, while keeping the tank healed with your final character... isn't that the very definition of teamwork?

Sure, but there are two problems with this:
1) Melee characters have to specialize to be effective at melee.  My rogue with 4 rogue talents and 8 dual-wield talents is a melee fighter first and foremost.  Everytime he is forced to attack the boss from range, I have basically wasted his specialization and would be better off making him a mage.  Having fights were nontank melee specialists are particularly effective would be nice.  It gets monotonous when every fight is anti-melee.
2) Lack of dynamic decision making.  Once you set up the "pull" with your dps safely at range, and your tank holding "aggro", there's nothing more to do but heal and wait for your teammates to auto-attack the boss to death.

I'll try to give examples using abilities/features already in the game:
Imagine a boss fight where the boss has lined its lair with traps.  From time to time, the boss will make a run for a trap, stand near it and either damage the party or start to heal itself.  If you disarm the traps, you can get to the boss more easily to counter it.  If you are quick, you can disarm and then re-arm the trap so it actually makes the boss more susceptible to magical damage.  Now you have a nice synergy where the rogue sets up the boss, so the mages can take it down faster. 

Or perhaps you have a boss fight where there are moving hazards around the room (saw blades, lava, sharks with laser-beams whatever).  Ordinarily, the challenge is to move your party away from these hazards while continuing to fight the boss.  The boss of course, is smart enough not to stand in these hazards, however, if you time it right, you can have a warrior shield bash him into the hazard, or perhaps have one warrior run across the room and taunt the boss such that if he times it right, the boss runs into a hazard. 

Stuff like that would make boss fights more varied while making different party members feel valuable.

[Mikey_205]

I'm not really a fan of structured boss fights. I like bosses being tougher encounters than the normal by leaving you outnumbered and having better AI. I also don't like near God Mode versions of normal races, they should have numbers and good scripts and not just ridiculously overblown resistances, health and damage unless theres some explanation. It should be a larger group of well supported characters roughly equal in power to my own rather than a mega powerful boss who just has to be crowd controlled until the weak normal monsters around him/her are all dead making him manageable. Bosses which irritated me off the top of my head were the Tevinter Mage in Alienage, the Master Assassin in the final dungeon and Branka. If they are human/elf/dwarf they should be playing by the same rules as my characters with better equipment (which I should be able to get all of after beating them).

Good non-human bosses were the Ogre, Flemeth, the abomination, the sloth demon and the brood mother. These were good because the phasing in the last two didnt intrude and made sense and with all four their power in proportion to my characters made sense and there was lead-up to it.

I actually quite liked the trap boss even if moving everyone appropriately on X360 was really really irritating and difficult to do without messing up. Please Bioware give us a move to command with a reticule in the sequel similar to how targetting glyphs is done.

Modifié par Mikey_205, 26 novembre 2009 - 10:20 .

[Shatter77]

I felt the fight with the Arcane Warrior in the temple just before you reach the mountain top was _almost_ great. When he put up magic defenses and resisting all my spells I was thinking "Uh oh, now this guy is going to roast my ***". Unfortunately he then uses the sword instead.

[Gabo]

cipher86 wrote...

My problem is not limited to boss fights.  Combat feels drab and repetitive, yes, but there is more.  Now that I'm going through the game a second time, I'm actually finding more that I dislike about the game than I like (and during my initial impressions, this game would have been a 10).

- Combat,
- Loot i
- Exploration 
- Same goes for dialogue 

I think DA:O would have been best if it were a 20 hour game, but it seems to suffer the same problem a lot of entertainment does:  Quantity over quality. 

The first part of your post makes me feel all depressed about our gameplay . However, I do believe that for most people we did a good job. But know that we do take all the feedback we can and whenever good, feasible ideas come up, we try to incorporate them into our new designs. And all the feedback from this thread will certainly help with the boss fights.

As far as the second part, it looks like the DLC team though the same as you do, and look at how so many people are responding with hour per dollar evaluations. However, this is off-topic, back to talking about bosses!

I hope you guys at least enjoy the large creature's special movements, since those were a pain to program!

[Faerell Gustani]

Try fighting Ser Cauthrien. Now THAT is a boss fight.

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

Random criticism is all well and good, but to help us make things better, you should also give us suggestions on how to improve ourselves. Which boss fights in which games are good examples of such to you? What makes them good? What makes them bad?

A bad boss design is "Tank is tanking boss and healer healing him while team is doing damage untill dead"

A good boss design has a boss that has

-A wide range of different abilities
-Uses them clever but also random to prevent a pattern that can be memorized.
- Either different phases (as you can see in many wow bosses) OR scripted events or abilities. You DONT want the boss to be a drooling idiot that just walks towards your nearest team member with autoattack.


To show you a good boss battle ill make one as an example.


Name: Arizhgal the soulrender
Archetype: Lich/Mage

Dialogue dont teleport team, only the one going near him to talk will go into conversation. And you also get the option to attack directly before dialogue is initiated if you want.

He is a lich that has just stored his soul in a phylactery of ice on a pedestal in the frozen cave he is caught in.

He starts immune to damage  - channeling a spell to raise dead warriors, archers and mages to attack you. Designed not to be a real threat but to wear the team down. (When creating a boss battle you must make the battle a challenge and consider the players your enemy, dont underestimate your players)

After a while he is getting impatient and breaks his invulnerability shell. He now cast the spells:

Wintergrasp
Chain lightning
Spellbloom
CoC
Walking bomb
Dispel

Chain lightning means you have to interupt him, spellbloom means you can use his own spells to your advantage, Cone of cold means you mustnt stack your team close to eachother - same with walking bomb. Buffs or debuffs may be dispelled so keeping them up might be a good idea.

When he seems to be defeated he explodes in spirit energy and the protection around his phylactery is gone, you can now strike at his immortality. But when it is almost destroyed a new barrier is erected and he manifest himself again through a dead skeleton archer, warrior or a new mage killed in first phase. Which is random (Replayability factor added)

As archer he will get combat stealth, arrow of slaying, pinning shot and retain his wintergrasp and dispel. He will use combat stealth to reposition and will heal when he do so aswell as spawning 2 warrior skeletons at each 25% health which has pommel strike.

As warrior he will get Rock armor, arcane defense, flaming weapons and attack with pommel strike and two handed sweep. He will also animate skeleton archers at each 25% health wich has scattershot ability.

As mage he will cast sleep on your party followed by glyph of repulsion at his own feet (A mage that resists sleep can here cast for example glyph of paralyze to paralyze explode him) and attemt to do a spellmight+tempest+blizzard on your team, which obviously should be disrupted. If its successfull he will forcefield himself for its duration (here you can use crushing prison to get him out), if he fails he will use mana clash, paralyze, Curse of immortality, wintergrasp and lightning at random and teleport at each 25% HP lost around the room.

Difficulty should not factor in attack/defense/resist and small factors like that in the game. But rather add difficulty tiers to all game encounters by adding unique abilities and the like.

EASY: No adds will be spawned in this fight whatsoever.
NORMAL: As now.
HARD: Ice crystals will fall from the roof, marked by snowy dust - needs to be avoided or that party member will be stunned and take damage.
NIGHTMARE: Increased ice crystal frequency and increase adds to 4 per spawn instead of 2.


Analyzing the boss battle i just made:

You must disrupt his spells. You can use his spells against him. You can use terrain to your advantage by tricking enemy mobs into ice crystals (on hard+) You must face several threats at once correctly to survive and use strategy/tactics. The boss has adds, you must wach your mana, dont stack your team to much, dont stand still (hard+), you need good gear to make this battle but it wont and shouldnt carry you!

Loot dropped after difficulty. This adds replayability. If you make the game on normal you should get satisfaction of making something harder and improving yourself by playing on hard. (Adding minor toughness and statistics is a lazy and poor way of implementing difficulty to a game)

Oh and... fix the AI so they ignore the forcefielded targets. Everyone agrees that killing a dragon with your whole team naked at level 1 is just not supposed to happen?

[Wintermist]

Faerell Gustani wrote...

Try fighting Ser Cauthrien. Now THAT is a boss fight.

It's just a beefed up warrior?

[F-C]

in my opinion it doesnt really matter how many phases or abilities they give a boss.



once you know the tactics of the fight and how to win it becomes a snoozefest.



they can only make them so difficult without people coming and complaining about 'zomg i cant beat the bosses in your game'.

[Wintermist]

SomeoneStoleMyName wrote...

Random criticism is all well and good, but to help us make things better, you should also give us suggestions on how to improve ourselves. Which boss fights in which games are good examples of such to you? What makes them good? What makes them bad?

A bad boss design is "Tank is tanking boss and healer healing him while team is doing damage untill dead"

A good boss design has a boss that has

-A wide range of different abilities
-Uses them clever but also random to prevent a pattern that can be memorized.
- Either different phases (as you can see in many wow bosses) OR scripted events or abilities. You DONT want the boss to be a drooling idiot that just walks towards your nearest team member with autoattack.


To show you a good boss battle ill make one as an example.


Name: Arizhgal the soulrender
Archetype: Lich/Mage

Dialogue dont teleport team, only the one going near him to talk will go into conversation. And you also get the option to attack directly before dialogue is initiated if you want.

He is a lich that has just stored his soul in a phylactery of ice on a pedestal in the frozen cave he is caught in.

He starts immune to damage  - channeling a spell to raise dead warriors, archers and mages to attack you. Designed not to be a real threat but to wear the team down. (When creating a boss battle you must make the battle a challenge and consider the players your enemy, dont underestimate your players)

After a while he is getting impatient and breaks his invulnerability shell. He now cast the spells:

Wintergrasp
Chain lightning
Spellbloom
CoC
Walking bomb
Dispel

Chain lightning means you have to interupt him, spellbloom means you can use his own spells to your advantage, Cone of cold means you mustnt stack your team close to eachother - same with walking bomb. Buffs or debuffs may be dispelled so keeping them up might be a good idea.

When he seems to be defeated he explodes in spirit energy and the protection around his phylactery is gone, you can now strike at his immortality. But when it is almost destroyed a new barrier is erected and he manifest himself again through a dead skeleton archer, warrior or a new mage killed in first phase. Which is random (Replayability factor added)

As archer he will get combat stealth, arrow of slaying, pinning shot and retain his wintergrasp and dispel. He will use combat stealth to reposition and will heal when he do so aswell as spawning 2 warrior skeletons at each 25% health which has pommel strike.

As warrior he will get Rock armor, arcane defense, flaming weapons and attack with pommel strike and two handed sweep. He will also animate skeleton archers at each 25% health wich has scattershot ability.

As mage he will cast sleep on your party followed by glyph of repulsion at his own feet (A mage that resists sleep can here cast for example glyph of paralyze to paralyze explode him) and attemt to do a spellmight+tempest+blizzard on your team, which obviously should be disrupted. If its successfull he will forcefield himself for its duration (here you can use crushing prison to get him out), if he fails he will use mana clash, paralyze, Curse of immortality, wintergrasp and lightning at random and teleport at each 25% HP lost around the room.

Difficulty should not factor in attack/defense/resist and small factors like that in the game. But rather add difficulty tiers to all game encounters by adding unique abilities and the like.

EASY: No adds will be spawned in this fight whatsoever.
NORMAL: As now.
HARD: Ice crystals will fall from the roof, marked by snowy dust - needs to be avoided or that party member will be stunned and take damage.
NIGHTMARE: Increased ice crystal frequency and increase adds to 4 per spawn instead of 2.


Analyzing the boss battle i just made:

You must disrupt his spells. You can use his spells against him. You can use terrain to your advantage by tricking enemy mobs into ice crystals (on hard+) You must face several threats at once correctly to survive and use strategy/tactics. The boss has adds, you must wach your mana, dont stack your team to much, dont stand still (hard+), you need good gear to make this battle but it wont and shouldnt carry you!

Loot dropped after difficulty. This adds replayability. If you make the game on normal you should get satisfaction of making something harder and improving yourself by playing on hard. (Adding minor toughness and statistics is a lazy and poor way of implementing difficulty to a game)

Oh and... fix the AI so they ignore the forcefielded targets. Everyone agrees that killing a dragon with your whole team naked at level 1 is just not supposed to happen?

This is how I picture it as well, well put.

[Wintermist]

F-C wrote...

in my opinion it doesnt really matter how many phases or abilities they give a boss.

once you know the tactics of the fight and how to win it becomes a snoozefest.

they can only make them so difficult without people coming and complaining about 'zomg i cant beat the bosses in your game'.

But by that reasoning there's not really any point in making a game at all? Since once you've done it you know the tricks...

[Faerell Gustani]

Wintermist wrote...

Faerell Gustani wrote...

Try fighting Ser Cauthrien. Now THAT is a boss fight.

It's just a beefed up warrior?

By herself?  Yes.

But when she ambushes you at the Denerim estate, she has a host of troops with her.

Dealing with that fight without using AI abuse is extremely hard.  I prefer boss fights like that.  In Baldur's Gate 2 the fights I enjoyed most were the "other adventuring party" fights.  Because they were statted and equipped similar to you and used logical tactics (again provided that you don't do any serious AI abuse).

Cauthrien's fight is similar in this regard, the enemies will decimate you if you charge in blindly.  Kill order, and positioning are critical for this fight.

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

F-C wrote...

in my opinion it doesnt really matter how many phases or abilities they give a boss.

once you know the tactics of the fight and how to win it becomes a snoozefest.

they can only make them so difficult without people coming and complaining about 'zomg i cant beat the bosses in your game'.

Thats were you fix bosses so they use certain powerfull abilities 50% "clever" like AI casting inferno in an empty space in the room to limit fighting space. And 50% completely at RANDOM. There are many ways to make battles dynamic and varied to the point no fight wouldnt be the same.

[F-C]

sounds like some of you just want WoW raid bosses with that post.

[Kolaris8472]

Gabochido wrote...
I hope you guys at least enjoy the large creature's special movements, since those were a pain to program!

My thoughts upon seeing High Dragons, Ogres, and Sylvan Trees using Massive Attacks to knock my damage-dealing Rogues on their asses varied from utter frustration to sheer amazement.

Definite appreciation!