I usually play games on “normal” difficulty these days, for a balanced challenge. However, I don’t particularly enjoy boss fights, or at least I don’t enjoy the extra challenge associated with them. Was thinking it would be nice if games had a separate setting so I could just set boss fights to “easy”, while not making the rest of the game less challenging as well.
Around 2010, I remember this game studio sharing a innovative technique of game design where as people failed a boss battle, the game would slowly make the battle easier.
Some companies ran with it. Nintendo gives you extra help if you die multiple times in a level. Where some studios do it more behind the scenes. For example - giving you a bit more ammo. Or slowing the boss down a little more. I can’t remember the game, but they have a feature where a boss can’t one-shot you. And they give you more of that buff the more you die, so it “feels fair”.
Zelda games have a neat scaling mechanism. If an idiot like me could beat the final boss in a couple tries, anyone can. And it’s super fun too.
Depending on the game I’d even do the opposite.
I don’t care for the 20th fight against bandits to be hard - but a boss should feel like more of a challenge and take more time to finish.
In certain circumstances, I agree. I am currently playing The Outer Worlds RPG. In the game there is a companion quest which culminates in fighting a “Mantinqueen”- a giant monster space bug. There is a ton of build up to it. The monster had previously killed the companion’s entire mercenary group. The lair was spooky and atmospheric.
Problem was, mantiqueens were creatures I’d already fought in the open world. I could demolish one is about a minute with my upgraded weapons. This made the boss fight underwhelming.
I wouldn’t want the solution to be just tacking on more healthpoints, but there are other options to make the boss creature more interesting to fight and the game took none of them.
I’m playing Jedi: Survivor on story mode right now and this is exactly how I feel. It’s a shame because even on story mode, boss fights in Fallen Order were still a little challenging.
Yeah I was going to say… in many cases bosses seem to be easier than the normal fights. The bosses sort of focus on being a novel gimmick with easily telegraphed attacks, which often ends up being easier than normal fights in some games.
I agree. I honestly hate boss battles. I love playing video games on hard mode, but for some reason boss battles have never filled my soul with joy or given me a sense of satisfaction when I’m done. They just irritate me. I definitely have games where I’m on the hardest difficulty for normal game play and then right before every boss battle I’m going into settings changing the difficulty to story mode so I can knock them down in 5 hits and move on with the game.
I’ve come to firmly believe that all games should have an invulnerability setting for the sake of accessibility. It’s probably one of the easier settings to implement for most games and it would have the most impact for the wide range of accessibility needs out there.
Agreed, I think the first game I saw this in was Tunic. It was a great addition!
Control for me! It was mind blowing. Not a difficult game but it really improved my ability to enjoy the game at some points.
That’s called cheating, and there’s usually a way to do it in most games.
If it’s pvp then sure it’s cheating but why would it be cheating for a single player game? Isn’t the point to have fun?
Anything that circumvents the design of the game to gain an advantage is technically cheating. I wasn’t necessarily saying it shouldn’t be there. Just pointing out, there is usually a wat to do it in most games. The devs have to have a way to test things and move the stories forward without playing hundreds of hours of game.
Is it cheating to skip a paragraph in a book?
Why read it in the first place if you’re going to skip paragraphs?
Maybe you’ve read it before and you want to skip to the good parts. Maybe it’s non-fiction and you’re only interested in something specific. Maybe there are parts of the story that make you uncomfortable, but you’re enjoying it overall. Maybe a page is missing. Maybe it’s an abridged version and it’s not up to you, that’s just what was available.
And to the original point, what of translations? Maybe the original author is dead, and somebody translated their book. Are you ‘circumventing’ the author’s original intent to ‘gain an advantage’? I mean, yes. Does that mean you’re ‘cheating’?
What about audio books? Was the book intended to be read on a page? Are you cheating by having the book read to you?
Calling these things ‘cheating’ is silly and unnecessarily loaded, and they assume that the goal of a work is completion. That the only reason you would start a thing is to finish it. I don’t believe that’s the case for any art. One might say that the challenge in a game is the point, but that’s only sometimes true, and challenge is relative. If something comes naturally easier to you, is it ‘cheating’ to use mods to make the game more difficult, because you’re gaining the advantage of improving your experience, against the original intent of the game? I don’t think so, so I don’t see why it is any different the other way around.
To think about it another way: if you subtract that paragraph from that book, does it cease to be a book? No, it’s just a different book, and that can still have value to people. You’re not ‘cheating’, you are making a new experience for yourself.
I could go on and on so I’m gonna stop myself here.
Yeah that’s relatable.
#Adultgamers
Right? When I was a kid I would specifically enjoy the “challenge” of trying to beat something over and over. Nowadays though… I just like playing a game for the experience. I still like feeling “progression”, so things go from difficult to easy as my character advances. But having to repeat something multiple times? Eh… just not my jam anymore.
As a kid I enjoyed the cheats. As an adult? I way way prefer the challenge.
Same, but I also already have a job, and I don’t want a game to just be more work.
I used to feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth until I beat a game. That quickly fell out. I just measure a game’s worth by my enjoyment of it now.
That is a question where the answer is very complex. You’d have to break down different game design philosophies, think them through, and then apply them to specific games.
In general, I have two gut reactions:
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If players are desiring to change the difficulty of the bosses compared to the rest of the game, the devs have to ask if there is a failure of design on their part. An example of this would be Dues Ex Human Revolution, which was an immersive sim that supported many different character builds, except the boss fights which were entirely based on combat. This created a frustrating and unfair situation to players not making a combat built character. The solution was that the boss fights were completely redesigned in the Director’s Cut release to support alternate builds. This is one example, but naturally there are many more. If a game has a “that boss”, the devs should look at it and examine if there is a problem with the design. Is a battle too comparatively difficult? Too tedious? Only suitable for certain builds (in games with builds)? Is the battle too much of a departure from standard gameplay in the rest of the game?
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A popular game is going to get mods. If there is a strong desire in the player base, the mod is going to happen regardless of dev stubbornness, so devs may as well just give the people what they want. If a game is praised but has outcry for boss difficulty sliders, either put it in officially or incorporate it into the sequel.
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I prefer games that use reactionary difficult (idk what the proper term is) where the difficulty changes based on how well you do.
Kicking too much ass? Here’s more enemies and they hit harder.
Getting gangbanged at every turn? Fewer enemies and they’re easier to kill.
This seems like the best way to make sure everyone playing has a fun experience
I’m the complete opposite. I don’t want to feel like the game is letting me win. I want to earn it, at least a little.
I don’t know if I want to be punished for doing well
I hate that. Nothing is more enraging than dying and having the loading screen say something like “hey, it looks like you suck, do you want to go back to normal difficulty?” No, no I don’t. Difficulty is part of the enjoyment fot me, having a feature that takes it out of my control would be a turnoff.
Sure, I’m generally in favour of more options when feasible. Hell, if someone wants to skip 90% of a single player game, more power to them. Hell, any non-competitive online game too, though I doubt many publishers would consider not charging extra for it…
I wouldn’t mind but I also maybe wouldn’t use it. Even though I’m with you. Boys fights are fine set pieces but not really my favorite part most the time. I’ve had ribs of fun with with ring and DS3, but what I like about then is the setting, exploration, and tension moving from bonfire to bonfire.
I’m stubborn though and would have a hard time convincing myself that it’s ok to decrease the difficulty and not cheating/missing out on the intended game.
I’d like to skip them all together. They are often gimmicky and tiresome.
Totally depends on the game. Some games, like Ratchet and Clank Size Matters, yes for the final boss. Games like Brok The InvestiGator, no because I found the combat easy on the hardest difficulty.
To me this seems like solving the wrong problem. Ever since Souls, too many games get obsessed about making their boss encounters challenging but making the main level gameplay just tedious filler. AC6 missions often feel like that. Imho the correct action is to refine the gameplay and figure out your core loop, instead of having massive difficulty spikes.
This is the gameplay equivalent of the “Whisper and Explosion” problem.
I have the opposite issue, so yes. I don’t particularly enjoy having to constantly pay attention to every enemy, but I enjoy learning a boss fight for an hour or two. I’ve also played a few games where dealing with random enemies felt harder than dealing with bosses due to sheer numbers, and it would help with that too.
So I don’t think it’s really a design problem. If you know exactly what you want your game’s experience to be, then don’t add it. But I’d argue for most games it isn’t integral to the experience how the difficulty of normal mobs vs bosses compares, and people have different preferences for it.
Yeah, also a way to skip certain missions in older GTA games. I usually play games on easy because I have a low tolerance for frustration. Hence, I tend to avoid souls-likes, etc, although I would love to play them.
My reasoning is that I already have a job, and I need my games to feel like fun, not work. I want a challenge, not a slog.
“All you had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!”
People always complain about this because they blocked out the trauma of the RC plane missions. Those were 1000x worse.
I think there is a wide difference between soulslikes and GTA. The most obvious being that soulslikes are understood to be difficult, while GTA difficulty spikes are almost random and tend to be a result of poor design.
In something like GTA there shouldn’t be a need to skip story critical missions, because those mission should be ironed out. The really frustrating missions either need to be reworked or pushed into optional side missions.
Fuck before even that, they should fix and put and easy mode on all games. Why can’t the lazy devs even to fkin that for accessibility.
I really hate FromSoft for the utter lack of a difficulty slider in all of the Souls games.
I don’t have the time to grind their games to “git gud” like they want. Just let me enjoy the game instead of wanting to pull my hair out as I play.
I’ve essentially wasted $120 on Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring because I hear nothing but utter praise for them. Then I realized I didn’t have the time or patience to grind out those boss fights, so I get <10 hours of play time out of them before I have to stop.
Saying dark souls/elden ring is not easy enought is like saying schindlers list isnt funny enought. You are missing the point of the whole thing.
Besides. There are always ways to make something easier in from games. A spell, a item, some armor. And that is by design.
Best example is the taurus deamon in dsk1. You find an item before the boss room. Use the item and the thing is done in two seconds. Of course it is also posdible to brute force it with dodge skills.
I think the one thing people dont get about from games ist that they are as much detective games as they are action rpgs.
You could just do more research before buying a game at full price and being mad that the game isn’t for you. If you want a story those games aren’t for you. There’s more story in YouTube videos about the game than what’s actually upfront in the game. I understand being upset at a bad purchase but adding a difficulty slider is counter to the developers intent and thus not made for you.
