Ce sujet est fermé
Even if you don't play games for challenge, there is still a desire for progression and accomplishment. You can see a level to up, or see a higher damage number appear over an enemy, but one of the most effective ways to demonstrate said elements of progression is to give a situation that at least gives the appearance of a challenge (or at least something unique) for the player to compare to.EntropicAngel wrote...
Fast Jimmy wrote...
Boss fights are not required.
But what most people are too dense to understand is this - boss battles have been used in countless games in the past. People see dropping boss fight as a "breaking the mold" and avoiding being too "video-gamey." But they forget that the boss fights weren't used because designers love following the same formats, but because the boss fight accomplishes something for the player.
It represents a challenge to test their grasp on gameplay mechanics. It works as a milestone in the progress of the game. When overcome, it gives a large sense of satisfaction. And, lastly, it can be used to demonstrate unique or new gameplay mechanics.
Dropping a boss fight is doable... but realize that you need elements that will supplement these feelings. You still need a way for a player to feel like they have been given a challenge and won, showing they have skill in the game's mechanics. You still need a way to break up the game and offer milestones in gameplay. And you need ways to make the gameplay variable, so that it doesn't feel like the same situation across the entire game.
DA2's boss fights were bad, because while they accomplished some of these things, it did not deliver a sense of accomplishment. And aside from the Rock Wraith, it didn't introduce any new gameplay elements (hiding behind columns/environmental protection, which wasn't used/applied anywhere else). It was the same fight (kite and whittle down HP) but just with bloated enemies.
So to say "boss fights are so cliche; let's scratch them" is a fine statement, but you would need to recognize the elements that these segments of gameplay accomplish and offer something else to replace them.
In many ways, this is why DA2 failed. It experimented with a lot of things (narrative, combat, player agency, etc.) and put new things in and took old things out, which is fine. But most of it was done without realizing that the previous way of doing things wasn't just popular because it was "the way things were done" but because they were effective. Changing without showing that you understand why the previous way things were done worked isn't innovation, but rather just ignorance and arrogance.
This is all predicated on the basis of playing a game for a challenge.
Some of us don't do that.
In addition, a boss fight does not have to test player skill - it can test character skill alone. My character in Fallout 1 can have a high enough Science skill and beat the end boss without firing a shot. It's not my science skill as a player. The same for something like an explosives skill - my character may know how to disarm a bomb or set a trap, but I'm not an expert in such things as a player.
So a boss fight doesn't have to equate a twitch test of player skill, or even a test of the player's understanding of game mechanics neccessarily. But it still gives the impression that your character has gotten stronger/better over the course of the story. And I guess that is what I was really talking about.
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