Making bosses harder...

[Mordridakon]

In my training project, I'm finding bosses too easy in general and the end game revolves around 5 optional bosses. And I'm looking for ways to make then harder without being cheap.

For example, the most recent JRPG I played, Octopath Traveler, did it by increasing independent actions per turn to two or three, but I can't find any plugins for MV that do the same thing. Does one even exist? Can it even be done? I'd use YanFly's ATB plugin and have an insanely fast boss timer, but that's been discontinued so I'm hesitant to use it.
The only two really difficult boss I have to use tricks, ones uses a paralysis effect only curable via an item(ala Red Eyes from Octopath Traveler) and the other mostly uses insta-kill skills.
So how do I do design a hard boss fairly?

 

[MushroomCake28]

Well there is a couple things you can do:

1. Make the boss use stronger skills as he lose health. He may use Fira from 60% to 100%, and Firaga from 0% to 60% HP for example.
2. Make the boss use more than one skill per turn. That would require a plugin, but I think there's a way to do that with one of YEP plugins, not sure about that.
3. Make the boss gain status effects to make him stronger as the battle goes. You could give him haste when he hits 40% HP for example.
4. Make him use powerful AoE skills as the battle goes.
5. Give him skills that can inflict bad status effects. In FF, malboros often use a skill called "Bad Breath" which could poison, blind and silence all at the same time.

I'm sure there's still many things you can do, but that is a good start. The secret is really to balance stuff out, and also make the battle progressive: as the boss loses more HP, the stronger he gets.

 

[Mordridakon]

Make the boss use more than one skill per turn. That would require a plugin, but I think there's a way to do that with one of YEP plugins, not sure about that.

That's the trick isn't, what's the plugin? I'll google around.
edit: Increase action times by 100% was one suggestion I found via google. I'll try that.

 

[gstv87]

if you mean to increase the available actions by the enemy to more than one, *I believe* you can just add an extra action times tag in the enemy's stats, and that should do the trick.

 

[MushroomCake28]

I meant (and I think OP understood) having an enemy perform 2 skills in 1 turn. I just assumed there was a plugin out there for that (YEP with Lunatic thing maybe? I have no idea how YEP plugins work). Personally I use a battle plugin created specifically for my project and included that feature, but I'm sure there's a free plugin out there that does the same. Unfortunately I don't know which one exactly.

 

[Animebryan]

You could use Yanfly's Battle AI Core to make your enemies & bosses smarter
http://yanfly.moe/2015/10/19/yep-16-battle-a-i-core/

This will allow your enemies/bosses to behave under certain conditions regarding remaining HP or if it's under a state effect, etc.

 

[gstv87]

I meant (and I think OP understood) having an enemy perform 2 skills in 1 turn

for that, you might require a plugin.
adding extra action times only causes the enemy to go again, but it doesn't guarantee it will use a specific skill.

 

[bgillisp]

Reminder: Implementation questions need to be posted under the support thread for that engine. The reason is the way it is implemented varies depending on which engine. Keep it general for this part of the forum.

 

[kirbwarrior]

The other thing Octopath does that absolutely makes bosses harder without feeling unfair is increasing the number of bosses. Without spoiling anything, compare the superbosses you fight alone with the ones that have a party. It's crazy how much even one more enemy affects things.

Another is to play around with expectations. A boss could use stronger skills as she gets weaker, but she could also pseudo counter by adding all damage dealt to her this turn to her attack. Or she can use healing skills only if she took enough damage this turn (which can play well with anti-heal states).

Some general rules of thumb I use;
Could the boss use allies?
Could the allies be "immortal"? Some allies are just different body parts that can be resurrected (which allows you to give the player Death spells without it feeling useless). Another might be an ally that isn't there but helping from afar.
What are the bosses weaknesses and strengths? Push those harder.
Can I turn the boss' weakness into a strength? One boss was immensely weak to magic. I gave it a "reflect" that can be broken down... using magic on it. Another one was not immune to and actually weak to Death... but the first time someone casts the spell the boss preemptively silenced the user with a state that couldn't be removed (but could be immune to and he didn't notice weapons with the side effect, not that you could easily have one yet...)
What is the boss' role or goal in the fight? A boss that wants a slow fight can get counter and increase damage slowly each turn. A boss that's powerful but inexperienced can get "Hyper Beam" from Pokemon, an extremely strong move that stuns the user. A leader can summon more and more allies each turn, leaving it up to the player to keep up or die under the flood.
What is the victory condition? Is it just dropping the enemy to 0HP, or do I have to keep someone alive? Do I have to win in so many turns?
How can I mess with player expectation? Final boss of Chrono Trigger uses the same formula of half the bosses in the game misleadingly. The beauty is letting the player figure it out.
Am I using all the mechanics of the game to their fullest? I might realize I haven't made a boss around a certain aspect it and push that.
Is the boss a single fight? Many bosses can instead focus on draining resources to make a later (possibly more important) boss fight harder.
Are there any more tricks I can pull out of my sleeve? Any states that a boss hasn't used yet? One of my favorites is in Secret of Mana. There's a boss fight that's honestly very hard no matter what you do... but because you're fighting yourself, it makes the battle significantly easier to just let your teammates die and turn it into a one-on-one fight that you can turn into your favor.

For superbosses specifically, I try to figure out what already exists in the game and I can turn to 11. Is the game based around weaknesses? Let the boss add weaknesses to the party. Is it based around state manipulation? Give the boss a sophisticated AI for playing with states. Do I have bosses that can heal mixed with ways to stop it? Make the boss drain. The big goal is to make the player feel puny and get a thrill of beating what feels like a huge deal.

The only two really difficult boss I have to use tricks, ones uses a paralysis effect only curable via an item(ala Red Eyes from Octopath Traveler) and the other mostly uses insta-kill skills.

Generally speaking, people might see those as "cheap" bosses, but both can be built well (Queen Zeal in Chrono Trigger being a good example how to do the latter). Since it sounds like many of your bosses are easy, what is your easiest (but shouldn't be) boss trying to do?

I forgot Red Eye had that gimmick. I, uh, was slightly over-prepared.

 

[Milennin]

The cheap and easy way would be to give bosses long-term pressure attacks/effects that the player eventually can no longer defend against or outheal, by slowly ramping up its attack every turn, or a constant damaging effect to the party. Or have an enrage mechanic that severely increases the boss's damage output when reaching a certain amount of HP or turns passed.

More difficult ways to increase difficulty would be reworking their skillsets and mechanics, but what you can do with that might depend a lot on how your game works. The more tools you give the player to work with in combat, the more creative you can get. If your game largely revolves around characters with skillsets that do little more than deal damage and heal HP, you're going to be much more limited in your options.

To have a boss act multiple times per turn, you can simply use common events linked to its skills and utilising the Force Action command.

 

[Mordridakon]

Since it sounds like many of your bosses are easy, what is your easiest (but shouldn't be) boss trying to do?

Probably the easiest is an optional orc boss whose goal is to basically hit you like a freight-train. The problem is you can debuff her attack and make her weak. She has a buff, but its hard to get it to trigger when she has a debuff. I have a plug-in addition to YanFly's battle A.I. core that I'm going to put in for the next play test go-around that I think will solve this.
Frankly, the hardest part to making bosses harder is the randomness of it. If you're using MV, Yanfly's battle AI core is almost a must.

 

[TheoAllen]

Hard is relative. And it also depends on your goal.
Do you want it to be hard because of randomness? (if the hp falls below 50%, 30% chance to deal AoE)
Do you want it to be hard because you want the player to figure out the pattern? (in turn x and after y turn has passed, unleash AoE)
Do you want it to be hard because it's reacting to what's player doing? (if it gets hit by a certain skill, it will unleash AoE next turn)

 

[kirbwarrior]

Frankly, the hardest part to making bosses harder is the randomness of it. If you're using MV, Yanfly's battle AI core is almost a must.

Even without it, I rarely let my enemies be random. They're usually reactive and/or patterned.

Probably the easiest is an optional orc boss whose goal is to basically hit you like a freight-train. The problem is you can debuff her attack and make her weak. She has a buff, but its hard to get it to trigger when she has a debuff.

A few simple solutions in my mind;
Figure out how strong you want the boss to be while debuffed, then build the fight "assuming" the player will debuff her
Have one of her skills remove certain states. You can even (without plugins) have her use it only when under a certain state
If your de/buffs aren't states, then she could constantly buff herself while attacking (called common events can help here) and force the player to stay on top of debuffing her and/or removing her buffs

 

[Basileus]

If you want a boss to be tough, then you should aim to make them feel like a human player.

Give your boss a kit with more options than raw damage. Damage is simple and often falls into a binary of either being too much and feeling cheap, or too little and not being threatening. But if you give a kit with a ton of options to a human player they will 99% of the time default to some comfortable pattern that feels effective. So to emulate this you cut out the parts of the kit that don't fit the boss' pattern to reduce random and turn-wasting options. This pattern should be some sort of "win condition" that the player needs to overcome if they want to defeat the boss' strategy.

A simple example would be a boss that casts poison abilities one turn, then follows up with a move that does extra damage to poisoned enemies. This forces the player to stop dealing damage to use their turns cleansing the poison, so they can't just burn your boss' health bar down in a few turns. Dragging out the fight with a slower and safer pattern also means your boss doesn't need to deal too much damage with their normal attacks as the player already is under the threat of a burst of damage if they ignore the poison.

Buffs and debuffs are your friend. Having a boss stack buffs on themselves and/or debuffs on the party can be a serious threat and can divide the player's attention between dealing damage and avoiding damage. Give the boss a self buff that causes his attacks to apply a stacking defense down on his targets. Have the boss remove the party's buffs the turn before he uses his super move. Wind-up actions are a great signal on what the boss is about to do, and because it gives the player warning you have license to make the effects devastating if the player ignores the warning.

For a simple boss I think a basic 2 action pattern would be fine, maybe with a 3rd action that counters the expected player response. For a big story boss you can go all out and make multiple patterns that change either in response to the player or just getting deadlier as the boss gets lower on health.

 

[bgillisp]

One thing to be careful of is as a developer, your bosses are going to feel easy to you as you know the pattern. In general, difficulty in your game will follow the following approach:

You find it very easy -> Players will find it easy.
You find it Easy -> Players will find it just right.
You find it just right -> Players will find it hard.
You find it hard to defeat -> Players will be unable to defeat it and will rage quit as your boss is just impossible to them.

 

[Mordridakon]

One thing to be careful of is as a developer, your bosses are going to feel easy to you as you know the pattern. In general, difficulty in your game will follow the following approach:

You find it very easy -> Players will find it easy.
You find it Easy -> Players will find it just right.
You find it just right -> Players will find it hard.
You find it hard to defeat -> Players will be unable to defeat it and will rage quit as your boss is just impossible to them.

Then I'm doing it right, making bosses beatable without wiping once for me, then the players will find them challenging.

 

[Fernyfer775]

This is somewhat of a shameless plug, but my game has been known to have some very challenging and mechanically diverse bosses. One of the local Let's Play peeps in these forums actually did a full playthrough of the game, recorded the boss fights, and made a very in-depth guide on how to fight them all.

You should take a look through the guide he wrote to get some ideas and examples of some of the things I did in my game to make the bosses hard/challenging: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lELuMMZsj4MMoaIkv_--1tzXgZUHj2LeiLnlX_6AS0k/edit

I think one of the most effective ways to add difficulty to your bosses is through adding a sort of "pressure" to their mechanics from the get-go, either by increasing the damage they deal every turn, or having them get buffs at certain intervals of HP that they lose, all the way to giving them access to stronger abilities as the fight goes on.

In my game, MP regen is pretty much limitless if you play right, so I had to make sure to add a lot of "hard/soft enrage" mechanics to my bosses so that players couldn't just turtle their way to victory.

 

[Aesica]

I haven't started on any boss design yet, but what I'm looking at will probably something like this:

All bosses will get several actions per turn, based on a script rather than just randomly being thrown out. For example: Use Hurricane once, Flare once, then 4 normal attacks from 100-60%, then Firaja/Blizzaja/Thundaja (one per turn, cycling through all 3 over 3 turns) then 4 normal attacks from 60-20%, then Ultima once, an aoe stacking max hp debuff once, then either normal attack or double attack 5 times from 20-0%.

In this example, you'd need someone geared to tank the normal/double hits via taunt as well as wind resistance for the otherwise-dangerous Hurricane, then as the fight progressed, you'd need resistance to fire/ice/lightning or some way to heal through the damage, then toward the end, you'd just need to hurry the hell up and kill it before it wiped out your party with excessive damage and ever-shrinking HP pools or some way to buff HP or mitigate damage as best as possible.

Another, easier approach is to have adds along with the boss that he periodically revives or spawns. Basically, you want to get your bosses using more than 1 attack per turn, and a variety of different types of attacks so that multiple strategies are required to deal with everything they throw at you. If it's just "do a big aoe" then the player can counter with their strongest aoe heal. If it's just "kill a party member every round" then all they have to do is revive them right after. The only way to really make that kind of thing challenging is to make it more damage than the player can heal through, but that just turns the battle into a war of attrition, and that's not really very fun.

So yeah, the more a boss throws at a player each turn, the more the player has to do stuff to counter its actions and thus, the more interesting the boss fight. Also, "eye candy" attacks can really go a long way with spicing up boss encounters.

 

[Snake2557]

I've always found that making a Boss scale to the strength of the party is effective, as in their abilities and vital points increase based on a variable. To be arbitrary say the party is level 12 by the time they fight the boss, have the stats of the boss increase by a constant multiplied by the level of the party, if you would like thresholds for certain level groups for example then simply have the constant divide the level of the group. So in this example it might look something like
[ 50 + (12 / 3) * 0.22]. To do this is simple, all you need to do is make a conditional branch that checks for the player level, and create several encounters that feature the boss with a variety of stats. The skills and attacks used by the boss can also be made in this way.

50 being the base level for the boss, the bracketed portion is the level threshold, and the 0.22 is the constant. Of course the numbers are arbitrary in this case, it will depend on the average stats present in your game.

The strength of this method is that you can always control the difficulty, since one of the major critiques of classic style JRPG'S is that you can grind your way through any challenge. If you have a scaling strength level then the boss will always be challenging whilst being fair to those players that skip fights. In other words it allows you to have a more direct control over the challenge.

The weakness is that your player may feel cheated by this, if they put in the time to raise their level then that work might feel like it was for nothing if the bosses stay at the same challenge level, that said if you use the range method I described above, by using certain thresholds, it remedies this slightly. Also you could have the higher "level" bosses drop rare items that cannot be obtained otherwise (types of collectables, or achievements).

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

I think asking how you can make bosses "harder" is the wrong question. I think a better question and approach is how can you make your bosses more interesting and engaging.