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Help a dev out - DIY boss fights
nornsavant
Member Posts: 311 Arc User
Welcome to this edition of “your boss fights suck”. Normally we spend some time discussing how an endless army of adds for every boss fight makes for a transparently lazy experience, but on this edition we are going to do something different. Instead of berating the devs and possibly throwing shoes we are going to offer suggestion and submit ideas.
What do you think would be a good boss fight, entertaining and fun? Whoa, wait a sec there, hold on. Before you get too crazy with this, there are some ground rules just to keep everything within the realms of reason.
Suggestions we submit here should…
not require a certain class
give everyone something to do
not require a certain skill
not have an auto-kill, instant-kill
not require special items like horses or pets
Now put together some creative ideas and design some boss fight concepts that you think would be dynamic and cool. No real need to break down other people’s ideas. Devs can decide what in here they may like.
Feel free to tell people if you think they have a great idea though.
I’ll go first…’cause it’s my thread
Note that for these encounters additional effects are meant to replace some of the adds, so while I cede that adds may be needed to give the encounter some movement, they should be mitigated in number by the additional effects unique to each scenario.
Celestial powah!
The boss is a standard tank and spank but with a heavy regen. Adds are as normal and only a minor part of the encounter. The group cannot kill them with straight dps. But hovering nearby are huge celestial beings, transparent and ephemeral. As the healer in the groups applies healing to the pother members if the party, that healing “fills” the celestials making them more solid until they materialize and blast the Boss sending their power back to 0 to be filled by healing again.
So the group is countering the boss’s regen (possibly a little more) and the healers are powering the celestials who periodically nuke the boss.
In retrospect this one really seems better for groups, not so solo friendly, pffah, moving on.
Freedom!
The boss is presiding over some brand of prison in which several additional AI’s are kept. The group engages the boss in a keep-alive, dodge the AOE dance but every add-group that spawns and gets burned down frees one of the AIs that serve to add damage or healing to the group such that they can get more serious about the boss eventually beating him down.
You can’t take candle!
The boss hits very hard but there is a relic, achieved in the dungeon previously and required to face this boss, that makes the character holding it almost immune to the powers of the boss and their attacks generate massive threat. However this relic can be knocked from the hands of anyone holding it on a boss attack and it will fly across the room; anyone of any class or race can pick it up.
So anyone can be the tank and everyone might have their turn. Standard party make up is still required for adds and mini-bosses spawned during the fight.
Another one that would be much more fun in a group
And I’ll form the Head!
The boss begins as a groups of adds that you kill and then they for into a less numerous yet larger and powerful group and so on and so forth until the last two form into a single huge and powerful boss.
Bejewled
The boss is flanked by mages that debuff the characters and when they do they turn a color. Each of the adventurers has stones of several colors they have found in the dungeon thus far. These stones can be activated to cancel the debuff. When the Mages change color and cast a different debuff, a new stone of the same color must be activated.
Elemental, my dear Watson!
The boss is able to impose different elemental planes on the fight area and each changes the fight dynamics slightly. During the fight the boss goes inactive and untargetable while adds spawn of the element type. Killing all the adds activates the boss. Then you do enough damage to the boss to trigger the next area.
Fire – Shifting Damage areas.
Earth – Shifting slow and snare effects.
Water – Ice patches that cause you to drift across them.
Air – Shifting areas of knock-down and scatter.
If you got the time…
The boss is a master of temporal wizardry; at 75% health he invokes a time stop spell. The players just see him disappear and reappear somewhere else but everyone loses 25% of their current health (not total health). He pauses a few seconds for some trash talk here. For the whole encounter potion use triggers a wave of adds on top of the normal adds attached to the encounter.
Trash talk and some adds later at 50% he invokes the spell again and disappears reappearing somewhere else and everyone loses 50% of their current health. He pauses a few additional seconds here.
Finally at 25% health he invokes his mightiest time stop spell, disappears and reappears somewhere else while everyone loses 75% of their current health. Nearly out of power he pauses several seconds now.
When finished off he begins to invoke again but is destroyed in a torrent of uncontrolled magical energy.
The trick would be switching to defense, kiting and heal stacking when the health dips occur and then moving back into an offensive posture as the heals become effective and the fight goes on.
So there are some of my ideas, they aren't perfect but maybe they can be useful as raw material. What are some ideas you have? What would you like to see in a boss fight?
What do you think would be a good boss fight, entertaining and fun? Whoa, wait a sec there, hold on. Before you get too crazy with this, there are some ground rules just to keep everything within the realms of reason.
Suggestions we submit here should…
not require a certain class
give everyone something to do
not require a certain skill
not have an auto-kill, instant-kill
not require special items like horses or pets
Now put together some creative ideas and design some boss fight concepts that you think would be dynamic and cool. No real need to break down other people’s ideas. Devs can decide what in here they may like.
Feel free to tell people if you think they have a great idea though.
I’ll go first…’cause it’s my thread
Note that for these encounters additional effects are meant to replace some of the adds, so while I cede that adds may be needed to give the encounter some movement, they should be mitigated in number by the additional effects unique to each scenario.
Celestial powah!
The boss is a standard tank and spank but with a heavy regen. Adds are as normal and only a minor part of the encounter. The group cannot kill them with straight dps. But hovering nearby are huge celestial beings, transparent and ephemeral. As the healer in the groups applies healing to the pother members if the party, that healing “fills” the celestials making them more solid until they materialize and blast the Boss sending their power back to 0 to be filled by healing again.
So the group is countering the boss’s regen (possibly a little more) and the healers are powering the celestials who periodically nuke the boss.
In retrospect this one really seems better for groups, not so solo friendly, pffah, moving on.
Freedom!
The boss is presiding over some brand of prison in which several additional AI’s are kept. The group engages the boss in a keep-alive, dodge the AOE dance but every add-group that spawns and gets burned down frees one of the AIs that serve to add damage or healing to the group such that they can get more serious about the boss eventually beating him down.
You can’t take candle!
The boss hits very hard but there is a relic, achieved in the dungeon previously and required to face this boss, that makes the character holding it almost immune to the powers of the boss and their attacks generate massive threat. However this relic can be knocked from the hands of anyone holding it on a boss attack and it will fly across the room; anyone of any class or race can pick it up.
So anyone can be the tank and everyone might have their turn. Standard party make up is still required for adds and mini-bosses spawned during the fight.
Another one that would be much more fun in a group
And I’ll form the Head!
The boss begins as a groups of adds that you kill and then they for into a less numerous yet larger and powerful group and so on and so forth until the last two form into a single huge and powerful boss.
Bejewled
The boss is flanked by mages that debuff the characters and when they do they turn a color. Each of the adventurers has stones of several colors they have found in the dungeon thus far. These stones can be activated to cancel the debuff. When the Mages change color and cast a different debuff, a new stone of the same color must be activated.
Elemental, my dear Watson!
The boss is able to impose different elemental planes on the fight area and each changes the fight dynamics slightly. During the fight the boss goes inactive and untargetable while adds spawn of the element type. Killing all the adds activates the boss. Then you do enough damage to the boss to trigger the next area.
Fire – Shifting Damage areas.
Earth – Shifting slow and snare effects.
Water – Ice patches that cause you to drift across them.
Air – Shifting areas of knock-down and scatter.
If you got the time…
The boss is a master of temporal wizardry; at 75% health he invokes a time stop spell. The players just see him disappear and reappear somewhere else but everyone loses 25% of their current health (not total health). He pauses a few seconds for some trash talk here. For the whole encounter potion use triggers a wave of adds on top of the normal adds attached to the encounter.
Trash talk and some adds later at 50% he invokes the spell again and disappears reappearing somewhere else and everyone loses 50% of their current health. He pauses a few additional seconds here.
Finally at 25% health he invokes his mightiest time stop spell, disappears and reappears somewhere else while everyone loses 75% of their current health. Nearly out of power he pauses several seconds now.
When finished off he begins to invoke again but is destroyed in a torrent of uncontrolled magical energy.
The trick would be switching to defense, kiting and heal stacking when the health dips occur and then moving back into an offensive posture as the heals become effective and the fight goes on.
So there are some of my ideas, they aren't perfect but maybe they can be useful as raw material. What are some ideas you have? What would you like to see in a boss fight?
Post edited by nornsavant on
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CAVE IN
This Fight is in a Cave that has Stalagtites on the ceiling. Every 10% removed from the bosses health, the boss runs away temporarily spawning a TON of adds. Ranged classes can attack the stalagtites causing them to fall from the ceiling doing MASSIVE damage to Friend or Foe standing in the effect area.
You can use the Stalagtites to damage the boss or take out some of the adds, its up to you but you only have a certain number of them so use them wisely!
AVOIDE THE LAVA!
This would be a dragon fight inside a volcano. Every X% The boss flies off and summons adds. This becomes a survival game for roughly 30 seconds upon which the majority of the battle field is consumed with a fiery eruption from the volcano buring to death ALL who stand in the lava. Once all the adds are defeated, the boss comes back.
When the boss gets to 25% HP, he no longer flies off but stays on the battle field that has random eruptions that consume the area of play with lava (your job is then to find the safe place!) It is something that "fills" the field over time leaving players with a small area that is "safe" but it becomes an "avoid the lave" game since it is random every time.
At the final stages, the boss is still attacking via ranged fiery breath that you must also avoid. It does not knock down or back but DOES deal damage. Bad luck could mean you are all in a small area waiting for the lava to "harden" and get nailed with a breath that forces you recover before fighting the boss again.
Every 10% of HP lost, the player with the most threat is trapped by a trapped door that sends them down into a separate fight away from the boss. This is a double decker fight with the Boss fight up top and adds down below. The player then must finish off all the adds solo, to then rejoin the rest of the group for the remainder of the fight.
Variation of TRAPPED!
Every 25% a player is chosen via threat to get trapped below (like above) The failure of the person below (ie the death) causes the remaining adds to swarm the boss and deal damage to the boss until killed (they will obviously have the bosses threat). If the player succeeds and kills the adds, he rejoins the party however the boss then gets a buff that deals more damage!
At the end it could potentially be 2 players left versus the boss however every "wave" of adds that attacks the boss becomes larger and larger meaning that the adds would in some form help "tank" the boss.
The best way to defeat to boss is via killing all the adds solo, however, it would still be possible losing 1-2 members (probably not all three depending on who hey were).
This then becomes a threat managing game towards the 25% marks to avoid unwanted classes being taken out of the fight.
Why not throw a fight that revolves around a CW throwing massive amounts of adds off a cliff... Much like Spellplague, the object is to throw adds off the cliff away from the party. Adds will be constantly spawning, the more health lost on the boss, the more adds that spawn. They Key will be throwing the right adds, there will be MANY squishy adds but a few tougher stronger ones with more HP that deal massive damage.
TRAPPED!
The Boss fight is build around traps. The boss spawns adds, however, upon doing so will also cover a player with most threat in a red "zone" like the damage tells that follows them. This player's objective is to then move into the majority of the adds and trap them "dazing" the adds for 10 seconds (and the player) which gives the team time to burn down the somewhat squishy adds. These adds deal horrendous damage so the best viable strategy is to net as many as possible so the rest of the team can survive!
Devs are automatically and magically transported into the end game dungeons of their competitors. They are provided with level and achievement appropriate gear and told to slap that booty till it hurts. They are also provided with a clipboard, a limitless supply of paper and a very sharp pencil for taking notes.
Sadly the clipboard is used as an impromptu umbrella to shield them from the QQ tears of their customers, the limitless supply of paper used to wipe some bottom and the very sharp pencil used to, well, poke things.
There are so many examples of good end game design I fail to see why they need us to point it out. So far my favourite end game instances have been pretty much every dungeon in The Secret World and most of the dungeons or skirmishes in LOTRO.
Not require a certain class much?
I like the idea behind your thread, but your very first idea should not break your very first rule.
The boss would be high damage low HP and instead of spawning many adds it would only repeatedly spawn 2 at a time or interchanging. The first would be a running mob that does nothing but run but if not killed within say 5 or 10 seconds explodes and completely wipes the party, this would require CW's to control and dps to kill. The second mob spawned would be the same except look slightly different and would explode completely wiping the party if it gets hit at all. This would create the need to pay attention to what's happening and which mob your going after. Meanwhile the GF and Cleric on the boss. The spawn times should be within skill cool downs but fast enough that the TR cant really focus boss, the boss damage should be enough to require constant healing from cleric.
Best party composition:
GF - To tank boss like they are meant to and currently don't
CW - To control the running mob to allow dps to be put down but making sure they controll right mob or risk failure where as atm they just throw down every CC they have thoughtless process
TR - To kill the exploding mob rather than having to focus the boss like in every existing dungeon
DC - To focus healing the tank whilst he holds aggro on the boss and healing the GWF as secondary how its meant to be rather than the add group as existing dungeons do
GWF - To lay down damage on the boss and being able to take a few hits with the cleric secondarily healing him as GF will be tanking. Could also swap to killing the Add if TR is particularly bad.
Perfect dungeon that requires 1 of each class achieved
You face not one boss but two. At any given moment one boss is 'defending' and gains massive amounts of armor while the other is 'raging' and gains a massive damage boost. Once one of the bosses is down to 25% it explodes into a dozen or so weaker monsters that all look like the the original boss and the other big boss either goes defending if above 50% health or 'super rage' if below.
Defend the Switch
Setup is a boss, a portal, and a switch. Adds spawn from the portal most heading toward the switch. The switch needs to be interacted with every so often or boss is immune. Adds will reset said switch.
Touched
A single target is marked at a time. Said target will have an obvious sign and their attacks will actually hurt themselves instead of their target. Have a mcguffian area you can run to that will remove the effect but spawn an add.