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Feedback Unsatisfying Boss Battles

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Mile-High Hat, Aug 13, 2016.

  1. Mile-High Hat

    Mile-High Hat 2.7182818284590...

    is it just me, or are most of the boss battles kind of...bland?

    when i upgraded to 1.0, that was one of the things i was most excited for, especially with both penguin battles being shifted to minibosses (which i appreciate). however, when i got to them, i realized:
    • the Erchius Horror, while not a bad boss on its own, really doesn't fit in with the rest of them, seeing as it's the only one with a gimmick needed to defeat it. this is especially bad since, as the first boss of the game, it should be able to acclimate players to later bosses.

    • later bosses have the opposite problem: a lot of them feel like the same boss rehashed. at least half of them are a large, airborne thing, which is either barely mobile or completely immobile, and the battle ends up being you running around firing into the air at a damage sponge.

    • Big Ape and the Kluex Avatar, while feeling kind of bland due to the recurring of the boss type, do have more mobility than many of the others and each have redeeming qualities. Big Ape has a variety of attack patterns, all of which take skill to dodge, and the Kluex Avatar requires strategizing to find attack openings

    • Oftentimes the bosses are capable of spawning minions, and boy howdy. It's worst with the Ixodoom and the Heart of the Ruin; the Ixodoom fight usually ends up being an ixoling-killing spree while Nuru takes care of the actual boss, and the Heart is incredibly frustrating because it itself is not a threat - the majority of the fight is killing the minions while occasionally firing at it. honestly, i expected a lot better from the final boss

    • nearly every fighting area is completely flat and has no potential for strategizing and using the terrain

    • Asra Nox is free of many of these problems, but suffers from a separate one: her incredibly simple pattern. rather than balancing dodging and figuring out openings to attack, with maybe a short period to regroup, there's just a long dodging session (in which it's literally impossible to damage her) and then one massive chink in her armor while she rests.

    • the Bone Dragon is basically just a huge regular flying enemy. a lot of the difficulty with it is the cultists spawning in. the only particularly interesting thing about it is that its breath attack sets the ground on fire.
    altogether, i was kinda disappointed. i had fun with the boss battles pre-release, but i expected the 1.0 ones to be a lot better than what we got.
     
  2. 409

    409 Big Damn Hero

    It is also worth noting that the Ixodoom has the least polish out of all the bosses when it moves around. It doesn't seem like a lumbering, massive creature crawling on a web, it just seems like some kind of floating object with the way it moves so overly mechanically and in simple motions.
     
  3. cooltv27

    cooltv27 Heliosphere

    ive always said this about the erchius horror
    I like it as a boss, just not as the first boss
    I remember the erchius horror because it was different than all the other bosses
    I remember the apex boss because it was so chaotic
    I barely remember any of the other bosses
     
  4. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    A particularily bad thing aobut the Heart of the Ruin is that it doesn't even have an interesting pattern. Not only most of the fighting is done by either it's minions or biome mobs, but the eye beam attack is REALLY easy to exploit.
     
  5. Mile-High Hat

    Mile-High Hat 2.7182818284590...

    i know, right? the eye beams were a huge relief every time they came since they got rid of the other enemies
     
  6. starbindme

    starbindme Lucky Number 13

    I don't quite agree with some of the points you made, as the bosses distinctly reminded me of the old "Megaman X" series. I mean when they were actually good.
    But I do have an issue with Asra Nox like you. I'd much rather have him/her be a challenging boss where it really takes effort to kill her.
    Like really small opening when you can actually hit Nox, and if you fail, you get massively punished.

    The Ruin is fine as it is imo. Like many of the last bosses, it is a bullet sponge, with a bunch of things it spawns to throw at you. I feel like it's kinda fitting.
    However, the Asra Nox fight, right before The Ruin should have been extremely challenging! I mean Nox is like the ultimate genocidal psycho lord, and hence deserves to be really freaking difficult.
    The grand library version of Nox can remain as now, but the second fight with Nox right before Ruin should be the hardest fight in the game honestly.
     
  7. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    I don't agree with your depiction of Nox.

    I agree, she should DEFINITELY be more challenging! But.. massively punished for missing a really small opening..? ... That feels too rogue-like or difficult than challenging.. But other than that she should be harder, yeah.

    and.. definitely.. I always manage to get myself pumped up with whatever story I have in place for my character with those two boss fights, as they're the most personal ones for me, actual boss fights with another human/humanoid character.. yes!! but.. both times they're lackluster and the one that should be one of the most tense fights in the game (Asra Nox Fight #2 I'm looking at you) turned out to be a simple action.

    Punch her, and watch her explode into fiery flames of defeat and make foreboding remarks about the final battle. .. Sigh. Could've definitely done better. Who knows, maybe someone can mod it in?
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2016
  8. Nefer007

    Nefer007 Phantasmal Quasar

    Yeah, the bossess are kind of bland.

    Big Ape and Kluex Avatar, though, are just fine. Those are the high points.

    Asra Nox can be improved with teleport spam or something, so that she's constantly on the move during the fight (even without a shield.)
    Dreadwing could use a cryogenic laser or two.
    The Ruin could seriously use some danmaku. The main threat is the Ruin Spawned [temporary name] if you should die to him: the spawning algorithm borks out and two MASSIVE SWARMS CONSTANTLY ACCUMULATE.

    Boss drops are also kinda meh. Sure, the Kluex Staff and the Solus Katana are hella sweet, but... there should be more.
    For example, the Bone Dragon could very very rarely award a lucky player with the dreaded Heat Cleaver, the ultimate explosive 2-handed axe that tended to blow the player up just as much as everything else from pre-1.0.
    The Ruin might rarely drop the Gutterknife, a nasty little dagger that creates a spray of flesh globs (also a pre-1.0 legendary item.)
     
  9. Denny Davito

    Denny Davito Space Hobo

    They were either balls to the walls hard or underwhelmingly easy. No I take that back underwhelmingly easy
     
  10. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    There was some considerable balancing done to the bosses, given the fact that there were many who complain about the Erchius horror being too hard when it came out. That said, I don't think one hit kills would be viewed as very fun either so that's' where the rub lies. How to make it engaging for the skilled, yet possible for the less skilled. I have a feeling some bosses were glitched too, like Ixodoom did no crawling around when I was fighting it.
     
  11. Xanirus

    Xanirus Ketchup Robot

    The only boss I was bored off was the Erchius boss, but that was only because I already fought it a gajllion times in the betas, and the last boss, I was really kind of expecting some kind of involvement from the other characters of THIS boss, not the one right before. Also that last boss drop,....Tier 2 weapons? Seriously?

    Pretty sure this is the key point here, actually.

    ---------

    The bosses were ok. Not epic difficult, but felt just right to me. They probably could of made it more difficult, but they didn't need to. (And yes, I'm saying this as someone who has memorized the attack pattern of the last penguin boss back in the betas, the one who is now just a sidequest and seemingly easier now.) This is a survival(sorta?), crafting, exploration and creative type of game, so it needs to target the audience in accordance to that style of play. Also Starbound uses a mouse to fire, the game isn't meant to be a hardcore Mega Man-esque style platformer where the player can only shoot in fixed directions.
     
  12. Pyronymer

    Pyronymer Big Damn Hero

    The Erchius boss is an abomination of poor decisions that exists to confuse and drive away new players. It is the worst possible decision for a boss at the worst possible timing in the game. It is a new player killing machine invulnerable to all damage except it's secret weakness that kills it instantly, looking it up on a wiki.

    The fact that the developers even in the face of how obviously poorly received of a bad a decision the Erchius boss was when first introduced could NEVER bring themselves to walk themselves back on it even ONE BIT, delay it to some later stage, or do anything to fix it's fundamental design issues is pretty indicative of their design philosophy in general and how much they actually care about what the community wants or thinks of their creations.
     
  13. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    Actually, it isn't exactly secret. Guessing how to kill it is pretty easy, considering the huge laser cannon and the levers. If anything, the issue is that NONE of the other bosses act as puzzle bosses, which is pretty weird when you take into account that the EH is the first boss, and as such it should be the easiest and should introduce players to how other bosses behave.
     
  14. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    The thing is that boss mechanics by their very definition, change the rules of the game to facilitate a more difficult encounter(or at least, disable the tricks that would make it terribly easy). I'm not going to link the extra credits video as I think it doesn't address the meta of the problem(what happens when everyone wants to be the boss developer), but I take the complaints of the erchius horror being hard with a grain of salt.

    The erchius horror has a very visible gun at the bottom of it and switches that light said gun up, secret it is not.
     
  15. Xanirus

    Xanirus Ketchup Robot

    It's not a complicated fight at all. It just requires not hitting the beams, flipping the switches, and killing the few adds. If you pay attention enough to the beams and simply walk away from them, you shouldn't ever hit them; they stop at a certain point in each phase. Making an overly difficult first boss fight that unlocks a lot of things in the outpost, and more importantly, the ability to move your ship and explore the rest of the universe, probably wouldn't go very well for the community.
     
  16. Probalt

    Probalt Aquatic Astronaut

    There are certainly some bosses that needs work. Others are just fine.

    The Erchius Horror was extremely easy for me, not losing a single bar of health. Nice and slow paced for new players.

    The Ixodoom was okay, could definitely be made more interesting by reducing the minions and making the fight harder/more attack patterns. But I guess it's meant to be a slow curve towards the harder bosses later on.

    Asra Nox was kinda like a "What?" moment for me. She did all these moves and I couldn't hurt her, then the second she gets an opening I killed her straight away. Bit underwhelming.

    Kluex Avatar was a weird one for me. I stopped focusing on the story at that point and grinded my way to high end gear. When I fought the boss I killed it before it left the ground. Might need to replay it lol.

    Big Ape was extremely fun, frustrating, but fun. Its attacks were actually scary and made me spam my healing items. Memorable for sure.

    Good ol' Bone Dragon didn't have a variety of attacks but it was still extremely fun, one of my favourites. Fending off the cultist whilst dodging fireballs is a 10/10 in my book. Plus it looks cool.

    The Ruin was a mixed feeling. I already saw the fight beforehand and it looked underwhelming. Though I had a thrill when I played it for myself. Sure it was a bit of a generic boss battle and could certainly be improved, maybe even needs to be since it is the final boss. But fun enough to not make a big deal out of.
     

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