/vr/ - Retro Games

Because to have fun and engaging bosses, first you need fun and engaging gameplay.

>>4796902
That's sometimes possible with cheeky pacifist behavior that was never intended.

>>4796683
Because till this day they havent figured out what fun is.

>>4796683
Bosses as a concept have been too "arcadey" or "gamey" (read: bad things for them) for the west since the mid 80's at least

bosses are a meme

It just wasn't a primary focus
That's it
No need for stupid fucking takes of "these games were never good"

>>4796683
what's sad is that nihilanth is one of the better FPS final bosses

It's because you can't see shit. It's difficult to create a proper spectacle in first person. Other POVs lend themselves better to dynamic or aesthetic actions for both enemies and players. I'd be willing to argue that some third person games have some fun/interesting bosses that could work in first person, but because you just can't see the whole picture you still miss out on a huge share of the experience.

>>4797514
this, the perspective makes it impossible to create good FPS bosses
luckily the base gameplay of move-point-shoot is fun enough on its own that the genre basically doesn't need bosses

The actual question is why did Western developers never figure out how to make fun and engaging bosses?

Because devs are insistent on just making a bulletsponge and/or a small platforming challenge, as opposed to something cool that actually utilizes the game's movement mechanics or variety of weapons.
Instead we usually end up playing peek-a-boo with whatever our strongest gun is, or jumping on a few platforms to win.

There were some attempts, though.
>Some Heretic/Hexen having multiple moves
>Wolfenstein 3d's mecha hitler having a second phase and his"fakers"
>Doom 2 and Quake having puzzle based boss
I think it's because these games had the concept of enemy variety in mind, which meant making monsters and baddies for these games should have been difficult enough, that some Wolf3d characters only used a certain angle in their sprites and Doom had actual clay figures and such to make for sprites.
In modern FPS, however, it's when the "it's video gamey" reason sticks out, since these are usually the type of games where enemies are always just dudes with guns, that don't do anything interesting.

>>4797553
Heretic has probably the single best 90s FPS boss, D'Sparil (played on highest difficulty).

HeXen has (in comparison to cheap ripoff of D'Sparil fight with any synergy it had), at the very least, this mini-bossfight with enemy cleric, which is also cool as fuck about the way it is staged (not to mention that those three mini-bossfights with enemy fighter, cleric and mage are probably the earliest examples of integration of botmatch into FPS singleplayer campaign).

So, these are at least two examples.

>>4797595
>(in comparison to cheap ripoff of D'Sparil fight without any synergy the latter had)

>>4797601
>(in ADDITION to the
For fuck's sake.

>>4797595
agreed, D'Sparil was awesome and what all FPS bosses should be like

>>4796683
The question is actually 'why did the FPS genre *forget* how to make fun and engaging bosses?'

>>4797732
Bullet sponge that shoots rockets at you isn't exactly genius design.

>>4797553
Read >>4797307
Their good older arcade games didn't have bosses usually as well

>>4796683
>>4797514
Because they were developed by gaijins. Japanese light gun games not surprisingly have fun bosses.

goldeneye has a fun end boss, but he is just a bot in a "multiplayer" map

>>4797738

you can describe literally anything and then go "pfff muh not genius design" and it doesn't really make a strong argument. try again, or go back to candy crush

I thought Metroid Prime did a pretty good job with bosses.

>boss is just a bullet sponge
>cheese it
>get the best gear and just one it
>it was a helicopter and it lands on you whilsts its going down
>insta killed

>>4797870
None of the bosses in doom are good. They're very basic in terms of game play and mostly repetitive due to the amount of damage things like the cyberdemon take. It's not a test of whether you can dodge a volley of rockets and weave in your own return fire, it's a test of tedium whether you can do it for several minutes.

>>4797870
Aren't the "bruiser brothers" literally just two barons of hell with no further gameplay changes.

>>4797870
He is right though. They are just more durable and harder hitting imps. You use the exact same strategy on them as you do on imps which you find on the first map.

Bosses usually give a slight curve ball, something different that you need to learn just for them to be successful.

Not retro but Metroid Prime proves you can do fantastic bosses in first person

The issue isn’t the genre, the issue is most western devs suck ass

Cyberdemon in Doom E2 is a fun boss fight.
Spider Mastermind is intense as fuck when played correctly, i.e from pistolstart.

>>4796683
That giant nutsack monster boss in halflife was fucking awesome
especially how it was dripping those little white blobs with feet that would run up and start biting you

>>4797871
>>4797907
I've only played the first Metroid Prime, but the bosses were probably the weakest part of the game. What bosses did you find enjoyable?

>>4797871
>>4797907
Metroid Prime is not an FPS, though, it's a first-person action adventure.

>>4798058
Anon is not a faggot though, he's a cock sucking homosexual fucboi

>>4797732
Doom is the prime example of uninteresting bosses. I love the game but the bosses are all boring bullet sponges with one single attack and movement pattern. Heretic & Hexen massively improved on this by having bosses like the Maulotaur with multiple moves that require you to think on your feet.

>>4798058
>being this retarded.

>>4798094
Maulotaur also has this schtick that if you bait him into the water, he can't use his most dangerous attacks (the one that leaves flaming trails on the ground).

>>4798075
>>4798105
"Combat" in Metroid prime is closer in gameplay to that seen in say, ocarina of time, than any moder or retro FPS. Key gameplay elements of the shooter genre are clearly missing. You would know this if you actually played the game.

Wikipedia also classifies it as a "first-person action-adventure". Even Nintendo themselves call it a "first-person adventure".

>b-but muh terminology!
>muh intellectual superiority!
I am afraid that it is actually you who is the retards, my friends.

>>4796902
Pretty much this

>>4798251
Imagine writing that many words just to telegraph to the world how much of a faggot you are.

>>4798251
yeah and breath of the wild isn't a open-world game, it's an open-air game

nintendo always does this shit to give the impression of being different from their competition, but that doesn't mean they actually are

>>4797553
*blocks your path*

>>4798320
You sound increadibly upset. Also, what's with your obsession with homosexuals?

>>4798321
This game was not developed by Nintendo. Also, the monicker is entirely justified, as the game places a heavy focus on exploration and puzzle mechanics. In no way am I claiming that this is "unique" gamedesign, it's been done before.

I know your type gets increadibly triggered every time Nintendo is mentioned, but not every first-person game is an FPS. Elder Scrolls games are not FPS, even though they let you shoot stuff from first person view. Deus Ex 1 is not a pure FPS either, as the game features heavy stealth and RPG elements (such as hit detection based on stats).

Games that do not fit into a single genre are a thing and your close-minded pigenholing does not change this fact.

I don't see why Bosses should even be mandatory.

>>4798058
You're in 1st person camera view and combat revolves around shooting stuff. What the fuck else do you want?

>>4798512
>You're in 1st person camera view and combat revolves around shooting stuff
So all Elder Scrolls games including Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion are FPSs when you play an archer or spellcaster, got it. Also Top Gun on NES and every and all light gun games are also FPS by that definition.

>>4798557
With exception to Top Gun which is a flight sim, yeah I see no problem with all that.

doom 2016 had some pretty good ones, I just wish halo could say the same

>>4798557
Those games have bad bosses as well. The 5th had one of the most disappointing end games of all time.

>>4796902
>Because to have fun and engaging bosses, first you need fun and engaging gameplay.

...and close thead.

>>4798058
>Metroid Prime is not an FPS, though, it's a first-person action adventure.

Kek. Even the fucking doors have to be shot so they can open up.

>>4797307
Has there ever been an arcade FPS, unless you count light gun games? Or even an arcade-like one? I cannot even think of a PC/console FPS that had limited lives. Even the earliest ones had infinite quicksaves, something that modern games rarely have anymore.

>>4796902
That's a fucking wrap lmao

>>4796683
It's hard to design an FPS boss that takes more than a minute to defeat while not feeling like just a big bullet sponge. Sometimes it's better to have the actual level serve as a sort of boss encounter without an actual boss enemy, like the last level in Halo where you need to fire rockets into the reactor.

>>4797746
Also this, name a western game with good boss design.

>>4799057
>Has there ever been an arcade FPS

The old starwars arcade game.

>>4796683
But they did.

>>4799057
Yes, literally produced by Yu Suzuki. The game is great btw.

>>4797870
True, but they are still bullet sponges. What's interesting or fun about that? It's just point and click. I love DOOM but the "bosses" suck ass

>>4799229
As opposed to what, you fucking nigger - figuratively?

>>4800143
That is literally not cool bro...

>>4800145

you sound niggered

>>4799314
>What's interesting or fun about that? It's just point and click

I don't understand why that's not fun, that's what the entire game is.... I like those types of bosses more than gimmickfests with 30 different phases of fake difficulty and artificial challenge where you have to press buttons or shoot targets.... because those don't feel like bosses, they feel like fagfests. It's nice to have to fight a big badass monster once in a while, and the bosses in doom and wolf3d actually scared me when i was little so

>>4796683
If you like boss fights, play Winter's Fury for Doom.

>>4800163
>fake difficulty and artificial challenge
you need to go back

>>4796683
The lightsaber duels from Dark Forces 2 were pretty fun.

Doom mods has some good bosses, Adventure of Square E2 for example

i think it comes down to arena design for a good FPS boss

Also to clarify, no one in the Doom thread would consider Baron of Hells good "bosses". they're barely even enemies, they're easier to fight than chaingunners. they're just big imps

The problem is that the combat in most first-person shooters revolves around fighting multiple enemies at once and knowing how to exercise crowd control, on top of your weapons being designed around fighting multiple enemies at once. You can't quite 'crowd control' a single big bad guy, and the weapon you're most likely going to use against it is the one with the highest DPS.

So the kind of bosses you end up are circlestrafe'em bulletsponges, summoner-type bosses which don't do much besides spawning normal enemy fodder, or very gimmicky bosses, or even worse, puzzle bosses. Puzzle bosses cannot be considered good by any measure (except in actual puzzle games) because the solution to beat them is by solving a completely abstract puzzle which has nothing to do with the skills you've learned and applied throughout the remainder of the game. This includes shit like Icon of Sin, or the Serious Sam TFE/BFE final bosses.

In this context, it makes more sense for bosses to be accompanied with a group of lesser enemies, with the boss acting as a high-priority target who buffs all the normal enemies or something like that. Take beat 'em ups, they're about crowd control as well (it's literally in the name, beat THEM up), so a good beat 'em up boss constantly spawns cannon fodder as well. A single boss enemy in a beat 'em up is only a matter of abusing its AI and then stunlocking it to death. Too many boss designs in first-person shooter can only think of a single big bad guy in a game not designed to fight single big bad guys, because gaijins can only ape superior nippon game design.

Bosses in first-person shooters should challenge your aim, your ability to manage weapons, health, and ammo (if applicable), your ability to move, and your ability to exercise crowd control (if applicable). After all, that's what first-person shooters require.

The one which closest fits this criteria is the final boss in Vanquish, and that's a TPS to begin with.

Painkiller had fun bosses.

>>4800293
Did you beat Heretic's D'Sparil and HeXen's enemy cleric? I don't want to spoil the specifics, but both those fights have something you omit in your analysis: synergy between boss' abilities, arena layout and presence of lesser enemies, and that synergy shapes the course of battle, extremely naturally, in a very specific way, that is extremely satisfying to figure out on your own and execute without resorting to any cheap tricks.

>>4800421
It's like, once you understand what D'Sparil fight is actually going for, it's like, goddamn, that sure was someone's starry moment of pure genius. Like, that fight alone is just heads and shoulders above the rest of the game, and you just wish the entirety of it was made as thoughtfully (instead of being straight-up Doom clone without hitscanners) as that particular fight (and arguably two previous bosses as well, although to much lesser extent) was, instead of being one giant buildup to that fight..

>>4799071
>Also this, name a western game with good boss design.
Furi

>>4800421
You're right, I did forget to mention the role of arena design in first-person shooter boss encounters.

I've never finished Heretic/Hexen, but I've looked up some gameplay of the fight and it does look rather groundbreaking, at least in comparison to most bosses in a first-person shooter. It's actually got multiple phases, for one.

On another note, I think Doom (2016) also did a (relative) decent job for its boss fights, because it's the only first-person shooter to my knowledge which acknowledges the ability to jump and climb as a means to avoid projectiles instead of just strafing. However, it still suffers from the aforementioned problems, such only having to use your best DPS weapon against them, not being about crowd control, having very little in terms of arena design, and being trivial to hit. The interesting thing about these bosses was how they had attacks which were interesting to dodge, moreso than the attacks of normal enemies, to the point I wish the bosses appeared normally alongside other enemies.

fps is about immersion, not gameplay

doom had good bosses
not retro but the destiny series has some pretty good bosses the newest one was a giant worm

>>4800674
>You're right, I did forget to mention the role of arena design in first-person shooter boss encounters.
It's not even the arena design. Hell, I'll come clean. I don't really know how to call it. Ultimately, it's just that everything about those two fights just _clicks_. Your previous experience with the game, layout, boss abilities, how the, let's say, circumstances change during the fight, everything sort of converges on a single beautiful solution. Those two fights are both puzzles and skill tests - or maybe neither - made so it's utterly impossible to separate one of those aspects from another one, they are simply two sides of the same coin. D'Sparil fight on the last difficulty really is one of the genuine high points of the 90s FPS history, even if it often ends up being overlooked.
>It's actually got multiple phases, for one.
Oh, that's nothing. That's not why it's good.
I really do hope you play at least Heretic to completion one day. Just don't forget to pick the highest difficulty.

>>4800813
The word I was missing is "Harmony". Visual beauty of these two games is a visual metaphor for said harmony.

>>4799057
Dark forces works with lives per level instead of being able to save all the time

>>4801778
And so does PC-Poweslave/Exhumed.

>>4798405
>Much exploration and puzzles
>Literally the stick of Hexen (and Hexen 2)
>Nuuuu it cannot be an FPS!!!
Get the fuck outta here with your bullshit

>>4800282
Doom mapper here.
Barons were a lot more challenging in the days of using only keyboards, nowadays they're more for applying pressure on players in close spaces because they're difficult to kill fast and fuck you up if they box you in, so they flush you out into other areas.

>>4797870
It's literally an Imp with more health that does more damage.

>>4799057
Turok has lives. You can save manually, but only at save points that are rarely found.

Deus Ex did a good thing with having them be kind of abstract, with some unconventional ways to beat them like codewords. You might argue that this nullifies the entire idea and you'd have a point, but at least it's interesting.

It's usually fantasy-oriented FPSes that have the best bosses because they're more willing to do funky shit, but most of the ones I can think of aren't retro.

>>4803609
I think the Deus Ex thing was pretty good actually, it rewarded the exploration of players if they went that route.

Not retro but Doom 2016 had some pretty damn fun bosses

>>4803659
I like bosses that you shoot the shit out of, you just hit them with everything. Then they spice things up with a set of unique attacks and a healthbar so you know you're doing damage.

>>4799057
There was:
>War: Final Assault
>Outtrigger
>The Grid
All of which came out within a few years of each other and only Outtrigger was ever ported home. Too bad, too, because having played some WFA multiplayer in the arcades years and years ago, I can tell you it's a blast.

>>4798105
>>4798512
>>4798740
>>4798320
>>4803031
>Metroid for NES is a run'n'gun game

>>4803031
bet Hexen does not have fucking LOCK-ON aiming like Metroid prime did.
it's not just "a little helping of auto-aiming", there is literally NO AIMING in combat.

battles in MP are basically: hold L-button to lock on, mash A until enemy is dead and occasionally sidejump with B. It's like playing a 3D Zelda game, but if you want to refer to this as you typical FPS, sure.

>>4800229
this. Jerek was hard as shit if you went DS

>>4796683
Because they're hard to do due to core concepts of the FPS genre.


FPS genre has two primary conceits - you have to look where you move, and look where you aim.

In general, it's very hard to move while aiming at something different.

The thing is, entire point of a bossfight is that an engaging bossfight is one where player is constantly dodging the boss' huge variety of different attacks by looking at him and watching his tells, AND at the same time attacking them.

However, in an FPS, that's pretty hard to do. To attack the boss, you have to look at him. Similarly, to dodge boss attacks, you have to look at him to learn tells for his attacks. BUT, your movement is extremely limited while you're looking at the boss to only 8 directions (forward, backwards, strafing). To have a full range of movement, you have to rotate the camera - and look somehwere else. This also means you can't get stuck on walls etc.

But if you rotate camera away from the boss, you a) can't attack the boss, and b) you can't see tells for what attack is coming next, and you're unable to react appropriately.

Closest thing to a solution so far has been simply to make bosses slow or immobile giant monsters (so you can always easily see them) in the middle of empty circular arenas (where you can't get stuck on nothing) with attacks that are pathetically easy to avoid (so you can do that while circlestrafing).

However, that is not very exciting, and it's borderline impossible to do a boss that would stray from that formula. Look e.g. at almost every bossfight in Painkiller, or in Doom 2016 - they all follow this formula almost to a T.

We see similar thing in pure platformers like Mario and Sonic - because in this game you use your movement to defend AND attack, bosses must have distinct phases where they attack you and are invincible, and phases where they're vulnerable and don't attack. Which is why bossfights in pure platformers fucking suck.

the most recent AvP game had good boss fights

I loved the guardian fight in Doom 3, too bad the final boss was a bit anti-climactic which is a shame because something like that seems hard to screw up.

>>4799057
half life 2 got a weird arcade release

>>4796683
A big open arena area one giant enemy... that's what our game is about...!

Said no FPS designer ever. Yet that's how they end them. Why indeed.

>>4803892
Didn't the PS2 port of half life have the same lock on? does that remove that ports fps classification.

And I think that the metroid prime wii collection had mouse like aiming with the wiimote instead of the lock-on?

>>4799229
Man Outtrigger was awesome. Shame I never got to play it online.

>>4803892
Whoa, almost like playing with any homing weapon in any FPS ever! For instance, Hexen's Wraithverge or Half-Life's weird alien mother bug thing!

>>4804738
Optional, can be turned off. Terrible design choice for what is supposed to be a quick, twitch-based FPS.

>metroid prime wii collection
These are indeed debateable, but I wasn't talking about those. I was referring to the original Gamecube version.

>>4804750
A single weapon does not define the entire game and gameplay, and you are a fool to think otherwise. Again, these weapons are optional features.

What you miss here is that Metroid Prime was designed around not being an FPS, which typically require twitch-based aiming skills. Lock-on mechanics were a deliberate gameplay design choice and not a compromise due to a limited control scheme. The GC had both dual-stics and dual-stick control schemes. I you were around, you'll rememeber some people were outright pissed at MPs controls, demanding more cowadooty dual-stick action.

Come on guys, this is not a difficult concept. Halo is not a "run n gun" game simply because it features both running and gunning.

>>4803835
>Metroid for NES is a run'n'gun game

Well, you run and gun a lot in Metroid, there's no need sweep it under the rug. Also no one is implying it has no exploration whatsoever, but hey: a lot of FPSs have some exploration and puzzles sometimes and literally no one complains about what it is labeled.

Deep inside you know the nintendo fan base like to call Metroid a first person adventure just for the sake of being special and not related to the FPS fever on the competition of that time. Even despite the fact that Metroid Prime 3 was announce at E3 2007 as "the best FPS controls".

>>4800429
I'm too brainlet to get it, what is so genius about the D'Sparil figh?

>>4803835
It inspired the run'n'gun genre, though. Ability to aim up in Metal Slug and Contra is directly taken from Metroid.

Also there are metroidvania run'n'gun games, try Alien 3 on SNES.

>>4803609
The problem with Deus Ex is that they work because of what the game is.

Deus Ex is an RPG heavily leaning on player agency, and being able to use any tactic you like. So you can find their killphrase, or you can be sneaky and set up mines at their legs, you can blow them up with a plasma gun or a bazooka, or you can even be a hacker, hack some turrets and let the boss follow you around to a spot where they will be riddled by turret bullets.

However, average game couldn't have a killphrase because they don't have interactive dialog/dialog trees (or it'd be harder to implement), and most FPS games don't have hacking.

>>4800229
You know, so was Bane from Batman Doom, actually.
Maybe more FPS games should have melee-only bosses.

>>4799134
That's a puzzle game.

Noone mentioned it here, but Drunken Robot Pornography (not retro) is an FPS which is basically a boss game, 90% of the game are bosses. They do some interesting stuff - you are set in giant circular arena with the boss, bosses have different attacks (usually projectiles and static lazerbeams that you have to avoid as mid-air hazards), and hordes of enemies, each has a weakness, and requires you to shoot their different subsystems.

>>4797595
>>4800421
What are you talking about? What is so special about Traductus? You are just put in a small room while he spams ghosts at you, and he dies super quickly, and if you have Icon of the Defender he's super cheesable. And you find one right before fighting him if you know what you're doing.

Like he's ALMOST good because you have to run away from the ghosts and find time to shoot at him... but he dies WAY too quickly to be a real threat.

It's not unmemorable, but it's not that good. I will take circlestrafe bullet sponge like Cyberdemon over him any day.

I think the best way to do a bossfight in an FPS would be to basically do a botmatch, where player fights a bot that moves really fast around the arena and uses a variety of weapons, switching periodically between what weapon they use.

This would create variety, be intense, and interesting. In a way, Xaero fight from Quake 3 is probably one of the better final bosses in the history of FPS, and a Hexen mod Serpent: Resurrection does something similar with grandmaster (Menelkir/Zedek/Traductus) fights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiiJlETTNfA

>>4805265
>>4805446
>Metroid is a run'n'gun game because you run and gun

>>4799134
>FPS

>>4796683
The bosses are fine. I hate mazes and puzzles in my shootahs.

>>4805884
I literally didn't say that. I said it INSPIRED the genre.
There is a small handful of run'n'gun games that precede Metroid like Rolling Thunder and Elevator Action, and they play very differently from Metal Slug/Contra/Gunstar Heroes.

>>4805446
>Metroid invented shooting upwards

Holy fuck, Nintendildos are delusional.

>>4806000
Name me ONE sidescroller where you could shoot upwards that was released before Metroid.
And I mean SIDESCROLLERS.

>>4805326
Alright. D'sparil. Thing is, the fucker teleports. Thing also is, the last difficulty is effectively -fast, so that monsters do everything quicker. That makes him wait less before teleporting. Thing ALSO is that what triggers teleporting is you merely SEEING him and the less health he has, the less he waits before teleporting. Near the end of the fight, there are moments, when he teleports literally immediately, there is a spawning in special effect, there is spawning out special effect, and between them, he, himself just isn't present there as a sprite. So, keep that in mind.

Second, him doing everything really fast, he also summons his minions in spades. So, whatever you do, in a minute or two, there will be like a couple dozen acolytes flying around. And they are deadly, they are basically less deadly version of mancubi projectile-wise, and there are a lot of them. In vanilla, despite them flying, you also trip on them. So, in order to stay alive from there on, it is absolutely necessary to KEEP FUCKING MOVING and, moreover, KEEP THEM CONTAINED IN THE CENTER OF THE ARENA, while running circles around them. You can only stop for a period of time it takes for the projectile from that center batch to get to you. Anything more, you are either dead or half-dead. So, there is point number two.

Point number three. Acolytes' presence makes camping around any teleporter pad impossible. Even if you manage to evade the torrent of projectiles long enough without sustaining unacceptable damage, in vanilla, you'll get fucking cornered, and then you are dead. Moreover the pads are spaced just so in 320x200 resolution they are barely seen from each other, and D'Sparil on a distant pad takes, like, a couple of pixels. He is possible to discern, but you have to really pay attention. Moreover, you seeing him triggers him teleporting, and by the end of the fight, the only instances where e stays for more than a couple of seconds is him summoning 3-4 new acolytes.
(cont)

>>4797904
>He is right though. They are just more durable and harder hitting imps. You use the exact same strategy on them as you do on imps which you find on the first map.
Their much, much lower pain chance can change a lot how encounters with these guys go, though.

>>4805326
(cont-d)
All of this drives home the point, that you simply don't have the fucking time to travel to the pad he is currently camping at in order to fix his face. Well, you could like continue running in circles hoping to luck out so that D'Sparil would just HAPPEN teleport to pad you would just HAPPEN to pass by, but that would probably take like an hour for the whole fight. If not more. There is a better solution.

Anyway. You simply can't, by and large, get up close and personal. What's worse is that you realize that your missiles, let's say, also don't have the fucking time to travel there. D'Sparil tends to teleport almost immediately after you SEE him. You only have like a second to react. And your shit almost invariably flies there way more than a second. The same thing that keeps you safe from acolytes, keeps D'Sparil safe from you. The fucker simply keeps moving, although in a different manner.

However, one thing that differs you from ALL the monsters in the game, is that you have ranged hitscan weapons. No monster in Heretic has those, not even bosses, not even D'Sparil, only you. Including Tome of Power modes, there are only two true hitscan guns. The starting wand (effectively, pistol - its alternate mode makes it WORSE for this fight) and dragon claw (effectively, chaingun - its alternate mode makes it non-hitscan and thus unusable for this fight). Wand is pathetically weak, dragon claw is okay, but not what you would consider final bossfight material. To make matters worse, there isn't a single other instance in the game, where them being hitscan makes any fucking difference, the way it makes in this fight. What I mean to say is that getting that you are meant to use hitscans here, is sort of framed like a bit of a puzzle here, as an "aha!" point.
(cont)

>>4805265
>you run and gun a lot in Quake
>that makes it a run'n'gun game

>>4805326
(cont-d)
Oh yeah, forgot to mention , D'Sparil camps on the outskirts of the arena, while you keep the acolytes in the center, so, well, relying on infight in order to down the boss is simply impractal. Well, you can wait for an hour or hour and a half, but, again, there are better ways to do that.

Anyway, back to the point. Problem with the wand and the claw is. Whatever you have of them, even if their ammo counts are capped by the time you trigger second D'Sparil's phase, it's not nearly enough. EVEN if you do this cheese this with slaying lizard, then activating ring of invulnerability, tome of power and blasting full torrent of phoenix rod's flamethrower mode in D'Sparil's face just as he spawns in. Even then, even if you manage to do this TWICE (which is EXTREMELY unlikely and definitely can't be relied upon without saves), you still don't have enough of the wand and claw combined to down him. Now, where could you get additional dragon claw ammo? Well, the arena has some pickups, but, again, not enough. Where could you get more?
.
.
.
Fucking acolytes.

You are running in circles. D'Sparil teleports frantically. You are hitscanning D'Sparil every time you see him (on the run, without even having time to adjust your aim, you need to get it right on the fly). D'Sparil summons minions. YOU USE EVERYTHING OTHER THAN HITSCANS ON MINIONS TO GET MORE AMMO FOR THE CLAW (basically trading ammo, unusable on the boss, for the ammo, usable on the boss).

And that's it, the correct solution.

>>4805326
Correction: you don't attack minions to down them, you are attacking minions strictly to get ammo. You also don't attack the fuckhueg horde in the center, you attack the stray ones so that you can subsequently collect the pickups.

And all of them dying at once, exactly the same moment the boss falls down, is such a satisfying cherry on top of the cake of you finally beating that abomination (provided that in the context of the fight, as I've broke down above, two are intimately interconnected). It just makes it all the more satisfying.

>>4806053
Oh, and there always ARE stray ones, since D'Sparil keeps summoning them, and they subsequently trail from the border of arena to its center in order to join the horde.

>>4798094
Cyberdemon is an alright boss. I agree on all other counts - Barons don't have enough interesting attacks, Spiderdemon has too little health to be a real threat (I saw a wad that starts you off in the first level by fighting FOUR Spiderdemons - that's how non-threatening he is), and Icon of Sin should probably be like, on some hall of fame of terrible FPS bossfights because oh boy, it's the worst part of the game.

I genuinely don't understand why people making custom WADs keep using the Icon fight, it's pretty bad.

Heretic and Hexen bosses are MUCH better than that.

>>4798251
>>4798058

>First person action adventure
Which would also describe Wolf3D, Doom and Hexen because they're all based around exploration, using items and finding hidden secrets, and even occasionally solving puzzles.

Prime is nothing special, and neither is it's auto-aim, which was normal for console FPS at the time of it's release.

>>4805735
I'll try to be brief. First, enemy fighter/cleric/mage are obviously framed as equal to you (basically botmatch), however, they don't heal up, they don't use any other artifacts, and they use last weapon only. So, it would be interesting to beat them under the restriction of not using any items, and, well, basically them using the last weapon makes your using last weapon on them okay.

Anyway, wraithverge is deadly. Maybe less so for other classes, but it absolutely fucking wrecks the mage I was playing as. Another thing is that enemy cleric seems to be way less stunlockable, than the other to, and seems to have more health to. Point being, point blank he would manage to spam ghosts at least twice, and that's game over. You need to run. This makes the configuration of arena to come into play.

It's not a small room. It's a tight triangular corridor around the small room, with the small room having access to all three sides. Once the cleric fires, you basically start running alongside that triangle for you dear life until the ghost don't die out (and stop screaming or whatever), I mean, you don't even look that way, you just run. With you running circles in the outside triangle corridor, boss naturally stays in the center room. This leads to the following cat-and-mouse tactic. You camp in the corner of the triangle overlooking the both sides adjacent to it (moreover, it being a triangle is very significant, because if it was a square, the fov being 90 would make overlooking both corridors at once very inconvenient, and for figures with more sides, that would be outright impossible; but for triangle overlooking both corridors feels pretty natural).
So, you have your weapon, you are in the corner overlooking both corridors, you don't see the boss, you don't know what the fuck he's doing but you hope he's still in the small room, and not blocking the corridor somewhere else.
(cont)

>>4805735
(cont-d)
So, eventually, he comes to one of the corridors you are overlooking, from the corresponding connector from the center room to that corridor. The moment you see him, you turn towards him, you fire your whatever weapon a single time without adjusting your aim (by that time he has probably fires his shit as well), and then you start running for your dear life screaming like a little girl DOWN THE OTHER CORRIDOR and the in circles for however much it would take for all the ghosts to evaporate. Moreover, since you dart to the corridor opposite of whatever corridor the cleric appeared, he then goes back to the center room (as it would be towards you), as he should.

Figuring out this routine and subsequently executing it flawlessly would be pretty satisfying on its own, in itself. There is a twist, however.

All the while you two do your thing, outside of this whole triangular arena, ettins continue spawning from time to time, and then they come toward the arena. And it's like, pfffft, ettins, how the hell could they pose any danger? Right? Wrong. The triangular corridor is too tight for you to walk pass the ettin, in case he obstructs it, and it would all be fine and dandy IF YOU DON'T HAPPEN TO RUN FOR YOUR DEAR LIFE FROM THE WRAITHVERGE GHOSTS AT THAT VERY MOMENT. You stumble on the ettin, you let the ghosts catch up to you.

The entirety of the game before teaches you not to spend mana on ettins because they spawn indefinitely, they don't pause any danger and they don't drop shit. And using you last weapon of all on these worthless fucks is, like, the last thing that would ever come to your mind. It's simply absurd.

Now, however, after, say, a couple of "FOR FUCK'S SAKE"s, if you are not using your last weapon still, you realize that the only way to pass ettin in time is to gib it with that very last weapon. You need that worthless shit gone, immediately, you have ghosts on your tail.

And there you have it, the full picture.

>>4805735
Well, I TRIED to be brief, it didn't pan out.

Anyway, point is, what makes this fight pretty beautiful, once you get to the boss' level self-restricting your usage of artifacts, is how it enforces you to waste the very same weapon (you don't really have much shots for) both on the boss and on its minions. It coerces you to use STRICTLY the weapon equal to what the boss is using, no more (as in artifacts), no less (as in lesser weapons that wouldn't be sufficient for gibbing ettins instantly).

Come to think of it, it's somewhat relevant to this thread. Basically, I was pretty disappointed with the Korax fight, and, well, something like a year ago, while arguing about how I would do that fight instead, I came up with something like this.
(cont)

>>4806193
>I got what I didn't like about Korax. The very fact that he had a face. I think, he should've been a shapeshifter who just didn't have any kind of his own identity, just the ability to corrupt what surrounds him. When I try to imagine how the actually satisfying for me bossfight with him would look like, I come up with something like this.

>You enter his throneroom, there, at the throne, you see a lonely ettin.
>When you approach him or exactly at the moment you press the fire button, while pointing more or less in his direction, he opens the first monster closet and shifts, the way Dark Bishops do it, behind your back, and, once you turn to him, but away from the group of monsters he's just released, he shifts one again, in their midst, and assumes the form of one of those monsters.
>When you kill any monster other than Korax, it dies, but as soon as you turn your back to it, the monster gets resurrected as a "ghost" of sorts, near the point where the corpse is (only one ghost per corpse). The "ghosts" are non-translucent (in contrast with Heretic), and they differ from the normal monsters in that they reflect all your projectiles at you, and while they can do attack animations, their attacks, being indistinguishable from "real" attacks, do no damage to you. You can also traverse through them as if they weren't even there.
>Korax, in their midst, acts "in character" (exactly as the monster that he cosplays would) when he is in your view, and out of character (activates traps, other monster closets, hurls "out of character" projectiles at you) when you don't see him (his projectiles go through "ghosts").
>Every time you hit Korax, he repositions first somewhere behind your back, where he gets at least one attack, then, after you turn to face him, somewhere close to some other monster (not ghost), that's currently behind your back, assuming its form and its attacks.
(cont)

>>4806193
>Korax only opens closets or activates traps when he's behind your back. At that moment, all the ghosts "flicker out" for, like, a second and a half, only Korax and real monsters are visible, then the ghosts "flicker" back to where they were before "flickering out".
>Again, every time Korax is hit, he either immediately repositions to some monster behind your back, assuming their form, or repositions first behind your back, then, when you face him and turn away from other monsters/ghosts - in their midst.
>By the time Korax's health is halved, he should've activated all of the closets, and the majority of the monsters contained therein, should already be ghosts.
>From that point onward, when Korax takes enough damage, a ghost will vanish from arena. So that the quantity of remaining ghosts will be proportionate to the quantity of Korax' health, that still remains. So, for the first half of the fight, the measure of progress (damage dealt to boss) is the quantity of opened monster closets, and for the second half of the fight, the measure of progress is the quantity of remaining ghosts. In the second half of the fight, Korax will still activate traps, but he will not attempt to open new monster closets (so that not to waste chances to attack, as all the monster closets are already open).
>When all the ghosts are vanished, and only Corax remains, he will start to cycle through the enemy sprites at the insane rate (once per tick, 35 times per second) and will attack with the corresponding attack at this insane rate (once per frame, 35 times per second), while standing absolutely still, as if all of these are convulsions of sorts. A couple more hits - he dies, souls fly outwards, yadda yadda.
>Anyway, my idea is that Korax is something that doesn't have any face, any sort of identity whatsoever, a parasite, which is there to corrupt, to mislead, and to distort. And that he dies, only when he has nowhere else to hide.

>>4806193
>something like a year ago, while discussing those games, I started thinking about how I would do that fight instead, and I came up with something like this.

>>4806203
>When all the ghosts are vanished, and only Corax remains, he will start to cycle through the enemy sprites at the insane rate (once per tick, 35 times per second) and will attack with the corresponding attack in absolutely random (horizontally, for each single attack) direction at this insane rate (once per frame, 35 times per second), while standing absolutely still, as if all of these are convulsions of sorts.
Sorry, that should be the last fix, I hope.

>>4805884
>>4806038

>can't read half a sentence

Kek. Thanks for trying.

>>4806165
Are you describing how your encounter went with him? 90% of the time for me he died before he could get really threatening, he dies very quickly to fourth weapon.
Plus, most people simply cheese him with Disc of Repulsion or Icon of the Defender, which make him a joke.

Yeah, it has an interesting concept for a fight, I agree, but it's kinda broken.

If player wasn't ALLOWED to use items during that fight and Traductus had more health (or player didn't get the fourth weapon before that fight), the bossfight could've been more interesting and fully realize its potential.
Currently, sadly I think you're the only person who had this experience with the cleric boss, which is a shame.

>>4806203
>>4806197
That sounds good on paper, but many players wouldn't even notice this is a bossfight. Like, everything boss does, does only out of your sight.
People would simply assume they're fighting a crowd that just happens to have the ghost resurrection gimmick, and wouldn't even notice occasional projectile hitting them in chaos of combat.

They will think they are fighting a group of monsters, and last monster is glitching out for some reason.

Player needs to SEE Korax turning into monsters, or they won't KNOW that Korax is even there.

Also what is the point of even giving him a healthbar if he can only die once everyone else is dead? What happens in healthbar reaches zero and there are still creatures to shift into?

Turok had cool boss fights. Especially the bug.

>>4806236
>Like, everything boss does, does only out of your sight.
If you turn fast enough you can catch him red-handed.
>People would simply assume they're fighting a crowd that just happens to have the ghost resurrection gimmick, and wouldn't even notice occasional projectile hitting them in chaos of combat.
You have a point.
>Player needs to SEE Korax turning into monsters
Well, if after hitting a random lizard said lizard SUDDENLY shifts Bishop-style past you all across the room, with characteristic trail (and exactly the same trail the initial ettin shifted with - not to mention that it's not in ettins' fashion to shift like Bishops do either), while most lizards in the same fight don't do that however much you hit them, then you'd probably know something is iffy.
>Also what is the point of even giving him a healthbar if he can only die once everyone else is dead?
Well, that makes it two conditions, that should both be fulfilled then. Healthbar at zero (with the maximum quantity of ghosts remaining strictly tied to that healthbar) AND everyone else (not ghosts, obviously) being dead.

That raises and interesting question. Suppose one player kills closet monsters as soon as he can, thus spawning all the possible ghosts, then tries to hunt Korax. Suppose the other player is really good at tracking Korax and seeing through his shit, and manages to make him nearly dead without touching other monsters (and thus spawning ghosts), and THEN turn on the monsters with Korax, being near, dead, being unable to turn slain monsters into ghosts anymore.

So, the way I see it, these two players would have radically different experience with basically no way to tell, which was the intended, or even better, solution to begin with. This is something I haven't thought about, thanks for bringing that up.

>>4806249
Np. It IS a good and interesting idea that in the end does play to strengths of the FPS genre (fighting ton of enemies), it just could use tweaking.

>>4806230
Well, the other two elders' fights were trivial, but with this one I had difficulty coming up with a way to do it, sort of, neatly. So I decided, to really, like get to the bottom of how this fight could be completed in the best way possible, without taking damage, without it feeling like cheating, that sort of thing. So I basically replayed it a couple dozen of times, kept replaying it long after I've first beaten that boss. And I sort of zeroed on that solution pretty quickly. Like I kept replaying it again and again because I simply couldn't get enough. It was immensely fun once I knew what I was doing, and I appreciated this sort of samurai-ish or maybe WildWest-ish showdown of two "glass cannons", but man, you just start playing, blink, and it's over.
>>4806249
>This is something I haven't thought about, thanks for bringing that up.
Moreover, it makes the fight proposed by me markedly UNLIKE two fights from Heretic and HeXen above, where it's possible to zero on a SINGLE, neat and clean, solution. And, well, that simply goes contrary to the intention I had when coming up with the fight proposed by me, I wanted to create something that felt similar in some sense, like it could really be a part of that series of games and HeXen in particular.
So, yeah. It doesn't really fit.

>>4806007
Legend of Kage.

Anyways, "looking up" isn't exactly a groundbreaking concept. If Metroid hadn't done it, somebody else would eventually.

>>4803998
First-person shooters are unique in that they can alleviate not being able to perceive objects outside your FoV through being able to HEAR. You don't have a magic third person camera in Thief to look around corners, so instead you use your ears. Other games like Devil Daggers or Rainbow Six: Siege or also largely dependent on positional audio design as a means of knowing what goes on around you, whereas the audio mixing in Doom 2016 is incomprehensible garbage.

So, a boss could *teleports behind you*, but you then clearly hear a sound behind you, so you turn around and counter. Obviously, boss enemies shouldn't be as aggressive when they get on your flanks in order to keep things fair, it sucks when you get hit by something you couldn't see. If an enemy were to attack you outside your field of vision, it should be a kind of attack with a lot of wind-up and a clear sound effect when it's being charged, so you could reasonably respond to the attack. It may be bullshit to gimp the enemies because you don't have eyes in your neck, but the alternative isn't very preferable.

Older first-person shooters always kept the enemies inside the player's anticipated field of vision (outside the occasional ambush), as it worked just fine and high-quality sound wasn't that widespread back then, and enemies in older games are too slow to even circle around you. But modern shooters like to spawn enemies around the player rather than in front, so having good sound design becomes an absolute necessity in order to keep things fair.

>>4806064
That description was tasty enough for me to get a hankering for D'Sparil fight.

>>4806998
That's one of the things that make Serious Sam fun to play. There's so many enemy types that attack you from all different directions with different movement patterns, and they make unique sounds. The whole game is just moving from one giant room to another getting swarmed by these enemies, and you use sound to dodge their attacks while whittling down what you can see