How hard should a episode/final boss be?

[Amuscaria]

What's your opinions on how difficult a boss monster in a doom boss ought to be? With our modern controls and ports, the original doom and doom 2 bosses are child's play and offer little challenge. With that in mind, how hard should a final boss be? Does a final boss have to be hard at all to be fun? Thoughts?

[wildweasel]

There are two extremes that a boss attack can cover:

1. Attack is easy to avoid but highly punishing.
2. Attack is hard to avoid but does not damage as badly, if at all.

The Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind cover both of those extremes. The Cyberdemon's missiles can deal you extreme damage if you are hit by one, but they are easy to dodge if you are aware of them. The Mastermind, however, relies more on luck of the draw as far as whether the hitscan bullets hit you, but don't damage you as badly and grant you a bit of leeway to get behind something.

There are other attack archetypes that can be handled; Killing Floor 2 demonstrates both of the above plus a more harmful third type: an attack that is not easy to avoid, does not deal insane damage, but also has a side-effect. The boss, Hans, can either fire his machine guns at you (hard to avoid but not high-damage), throw nerve gas (can be deadly if you get caught in the gas but is easy to avoid since he telegraphs it), or charge at a player and grab them while stabbing them with his claws (not easy to avoid, doesn't damage a lot, but the player cannot move during the attack).

A good boss fight will also have some form of exploitable weakness, to compensate for their more dangerous attacks and difficulty. Mister Falcon in ww-terror, for example, carries a very dangerous grenade launcher. His grenades fly fast and far, explode with a wide blast radius, and can damage you very badly (bypassing armor in some cases). However, he is not very good at attacking at range, and every six shots, he must reload which takes him several seconds and grants the player freedom to attack him without repercussion. The Cyberdemon's constant onslaught of rockets can be countered with circle-strafing, but a clever level design can make that difficult if the player accidentally runs into a wall.

[TheBadHustlex]

I prefer super-hard final bosses. Then, for me, it feels a lot more satisfying beating the game.
My smaller bosses are the type that Weasel just said.
When I make a bigger boss-fight, the player sometimes can only damage the boss under certain conditions, like destroying/shutting down something that goes up again a little time later, and then, the boss gains an extra-attack.

One of my bosses basically doesn't attack the player. Unless the boss gets damaged: Then he fire projectiles and jumps across the room quickly, leaving a trail of fire that hurts you. If the player stops shooting him, he will stand still again.
Another one basically doesn't really attack either, but the time the player has for the fight is limited. And the boss keeps teleporting the player away, every 30 Seconds. Somewhere in the maze-like boss-fight-area, where he gets attacked by smaller enemies.

[Reactor]

It vastly depends on the length of the game, storyline, AI and the style of the bossfight-levels. If the game is long, there should be multiple mini-bosses, who'll act as normal enemies later on the levels as the game's difficulty progresses. These are like Spider Masterminds or Cyberdemons - they're many times tougher than average cannon fodder enemies, but still easier to defeat than the very endgame boss. Of course, as the game progresses, the newer mini-bosses would become harder and harder to defeat (and ye, they'll appear later as regular enemies, just to piss off the player). If the boss enemy has some special property apart from big bad guns, that's a little extra taste! For instance, setting the enemy to be vulnerable to a certain weapon

Here is how I allocated the bosses in Tristania 3D:

Level 7: The Gate - Two bosses, one after another. The Superdrone and the deadly Ultradrone. Before facing them, the player has to beat a huge horde of mooks, namely Drones and Suicide Drones. The Superdrone wields twin bazookas, but at least it stays dead when you kill it. As for the Ultradrone, it may stay dead...but it may NOT! It is capable of respawning random times, but when you kill it once, you can grab the key and swiftly leave the stage. Plenty of ammunition, health restore, and secrets around to aid the player.
From this level, Superdrones and the deadly Ultradrones shall appear as regular enemies on almost every level.

Level 11: The Necropolis - Ten Unstoppables. These guys wear thick battle armor and wield twin Sapor assault rifles. Albeit there are 10 of them alltogether, there are tons of supplies, ammo, and even firearms lyin' around, and Unstoppables are easy to kill with armor-piercing weaponry, such as bazooka. And of course, you don't need to kill all of them to proceed to the next level, but it's highly advised, as you can easily get cornered by them.
From this level, Unstoppables shall become a common enemy.

Level 22: Worlds Collide - The Evil Empress. She has a Sapor, a bazooka, and a group of priestesses. Before facing the Evil Empress though, the player needs to survive a bunch of Tasoths and their rocket fusillades, and several traps (fireball launchers, tripmines, spike traps). The priestesses can teleport around this time, making the player's life miserable, plus there are only few amount of supplies around. New firearms are all hidden behind secrets. The Evil Empress can knock down static objects (stone pillars) to reach the player, but thankfully she will not teleport herself around whilst the player can to escape her for a brief time.

Level 25/26: Postludium - Three bosses in a row - The Evil Empress again, Evil Twirl and Baphomet. Absolutely no firearms, no ammunition, no supplies, only the Holy Bible can be used. There are some Artifacts around alright, but the entire afterlife level is a huge maze, and there are also the shadows of the previously killed mooks around, who may respawn after being dissipated (they drop some treasure sometimes, but that's such little help).

So, as you can see, the "effectiveness" of the boss vastly depends on the scenario. Thanks to the (G)ZDoom engine though, I could create lots and lots of various bosses for the upcoming Tristania 2, not just big bad fellas with guns, simply because (G)ZDoom offers so much programming possibilities that with a little help, I can create truly magnificent boss enemy concepts. So far, I have these bosses for the game (and again, they'll be demoted as regular enemies on later stages)

- Superdrone, Ultradrone, Unstoppable more or less remain the same, though they'll get higher caliber guns, immune to thermal weaponry and fire, pools of slime and lava (Superdrones and Ultradrones will no longer be able to pick up health items though)
- Empress Drone. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to kill the Evil Empress in the previous game. From her remains, the servants could breed a new type of mini-bosses. It looks like the Evil Empress, wears the same battle armor, yet, it wields stronger firearms: a Sabrine MK3 rifle and a Repeater cannon. It is stronger than the Ultradrone alright, but can not respawn.
- Ritton. The traitor of the AniTa, he eventually turns against his comrades (and the player), and will steal the grimoires, you'll have to get them back. He is of course, smaller than Unstoppables or the boss Drones, but more agile, and wearing a Heavy Mag makes him a tough nut to crack - literally! He uses Mega-Pulse and Zicca Lazer as weapons, which are quite accurate.
- Evil Ritton. One of the ultimate bosses. Evil Ritton is stronger than his previous self, plus this time he has Zicca Supercharger and Battleship-class Firebombs! Avoiding all these shots shall be harder than Syobon Action plus, there'll be absolutely no supplies or new firearms, only a few Artifacts. And before, spectres will aid Evil Ritton during the fight.
- Eye-Spy boss. A gigantic floating eye for the organic level. It attacks with rapid lightning blasts, and can summon smaller star-like stuffs to absorb the damage you cause. It has long pauses between attacks, and will not go near you, just hover in place.
- Brainiac. A huge floating brain with several nerve cells circling around (these can cause damage). This boss has the strongest single attack amongst all (anti-matter beam), but the bossfight is set in zero-gravity so it's easy to avoid. You better, as one hit can kill the player even with 200% health and 200% armor.
- The Evil Empress. Third time's a charm, ye? This time she's in the Purgatory, and not only she has 3 different kind of attacks (Plasma storm, summoning Hell Marines, Hyper Pulse). She will not move at all, yet, there are plenty of other enemies around - Hell Marines, Spherefuls - and she can be only damaged by the anti-matter beam, every other weapon is unusable against her. There are absolutely no supplies in the Purgatory, the player has to finish the final level with the current stuff he has. As you can imagine, that'll be possibly the toughest bossfight among all games in the known universe.

So far,these are the bosses and concepts I thought up. Some of them might be next to impossible to beat, but...well, Icon of Sin was not easy to beat either. And a tough, memorable boss can really give the player the feeling that he accomplished something.

[Zanieon]

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Actually i'm going make that actual common superfuckingiant boss on Hunter's Moon Dungeon, where you kill him by only hitting the nails of his toes (because this logic is SUPA AWSOM).

Nah joking, but serisouly, it will be big but nothing that Rocket Launchers can't do, and also going put some mechanics ala Korax (ACS is gud) on it because this ones are nice.

Having some mechacins to keep some strategy over a boss is always interesting since this always gives different challenges to the player, unlike Cyberdemon or Spider Mastermind that you just come and make them eat BFG balls for the Khorne's sake.

[Kinsie]

The ideal final boss is less of a bigger monster with a larger health bar and more of a final exam on the game's mechanics. If the player has an ability they've been using all throughout the game, like double jumping or projectile dodging, give the boss attack patterns, weak spot placement etc. that forces the player to use all those skills to inflict and avoid taking damage.

[Matt]

Difficulty generally...

1 - A player would actually, literally have to try to lose, provided they were still shooting at the boss somehow
2 - What you think is easy
3 - What you think is reasonable
4 - You would usually lose unless you were trying your best
5 - You do not actually intend the player to be able to win

"You" being the modder, knowing the deep mechanics of the mod and all the various secrets and glitches, and thus at a significant advantage to the player.


Bosses generally...

Should not be a sudden arbitrary spike in difficulty. (Personally I'd sometimes rather the boss encounters be noticeably easier than the regulars, given the way the stories tend to be set up - presumably the boss was hiding behind all those guys for a reason!)

The increase in difficulty should, unless specifically intended, not be a mere exercise in patience and endurance as you slowly, gradually whittle the hitpoint bar to zero.

Witty banter and recurring antagonists are definitely a plus.


Doom bosses specifically...

"Shoot it until it dies" running-and-gunning should always be an option.

Hideous Destructor's archvile is pretty much a model of my ideal Doom monster boss fight: plausibly integrated into the general gameplay (i.e., not an arbitrary arena), a "meta" ability that creates the "final exam" scenario Kinsie mentioned, relying on emergent chaos of evolving battlefield instead of a fixed pattern that the player is expected to memorize, scary duel/showdown vibe despite the lack of an arena buildup, can kill you very quickly but can be taken down with persistence, vigilance and luck. All it's missing is multiple stages with different attacks and properties.


EDIT: What Essel said. All of it.

[Nash]

It's 2015, boss fights should be quick time events

[esselfortium]

Boss fights in Doom are usually the most underwhelming part of a wad. Even in the original IWADs this was generally true.

In ZDoom mapsets, there seems to be a tendency to want to do a big final boss with complicated scripted attacks and a lot of health, and to put it in an arena that functionally amounts to a detailed box or circle. This generally makes for a tedious anticlimax rather than an exciting finale. Doom's combat generally works best when the player has multiple targets to keep track of and the environment itself is significant, whether it's being used to the player's advantage or disadvantage, like with damaging floors.

Kinsie's description of an ideal final boss is a good one, for it to test you on the game's mechanics. With that in mind, I think a good start to creating a fun Doom boss fight is to consider Doom's use of agility as defense.

One possible scenario that comes to mind is a boss fight based around crowd management, in which the player has to not only keep focused on killing the boss, but also prevent other attackers from crowding them in. It's worth noting how the archvile and pain elemental are set up in Doom II specifically to encourage aggressive play. These aren't boss monsters (well, the archvile is kind of a miniboss!) but they're both time-sensitive and require crowd management. "Time-sensitive" meaning that the player's situation will become more and more difficult the longer they keep the archvile or pain elemental alive, so they're effectively forced to play riskily and take on the 'mother' demon before it awakens any more of its children.

The Icon of Sin attempts to do something similar, but it's comparatively not as exciting due to the boss itself having no maneuverability or direct attack, and due to the setup's dependence on a switch/lift-timing puzzle that forces the player to defeat it in one specific way without much room for interpretation.

[jdredalert]

I don't have a problem with bosses with complicated attacks, but i have to agree that a bullet sponge boss with 10k health is completely boring. A boss can be challenging and fun to fight against without the need of exaggerated amount of hit points.

[Reactor]

I think the reason for many developers over-complicating (and scripting up to the eyeballs) the bossfight is that the players will keep looking for "safe spots", where neither the boss, nor its attacks can reach him, then slowly but safely, he can sip the boss' health. Having a safe spot during a bossfight is essential, but that safe spot couldn't be constant. There should be more safe spots, but none of them should remain safe for all eternity.

Bossfights under-water or zero gravity (like the Brainiac) involves little to no cover but free moving for all directions. The player must use this advantage the best he can, because this is the only advantage he has. The Brainiac can fry him in ONE hit.

As for over-scripting the boss, it might work until the player actually figures out the attack-movement pattern, then he can easily defeat the boss without even getting a scratch. Take a look on the bosses of AVGN Adventures. Watching a gameplay video, they might seem next to impossible, but once you figure out how they're programmed, you can literally kill'em without getting hit once. The best examples for this are the "Assholevania" and "Happy Candy Fun Time" bosses, but the same goes for the "Boo! Haunted House" twin bosses as well. The "Thy Farts Consumed" and "Future Fuckballs" stages involve some randomization, which indeed makes the boss unpredictable and harder to defeat.

Icon of Sin isn't much a threat all by itself (unless you're unlucky enough to get hit by one of the icons it shoots), but rather its children, and the slowness of that elevator. Sure there are solutions that "when the rocket launcher touches the chin of the face, fire them rockets, but you may still miss the hit. And the damaging floor won't help either. There is another boss-like monster in Metal Mutant where the solution is the same: find the weak spot and keep pumpin' it.

Also, what do you think about the "berserk mode"? You know, when the boss is below a certain amount of health, it becomes more agressive, more powerful and gains all new attacks.

[taufan99]

I think a final boss in DOOM should be really, really hard. I don't know why, but even though I'm not a hardcore gamer myself, I always like the idea of nearly unbeatable final bosses, and am disappointed with the fact that final bosses in DOOM aren't a big problem to deal with. Besides, most high-tier monsters of the original DOOM only have one type of attack, and once you know how they attack, you try to attack them with strong weapons and avoid their attacks until they die, that's all. So, to me, it's a good thing there are a lot of mods with an unforgiving amount of enemies with various states, like Beyond Reality.