What makes a good warframe boss?

[KiroTheTraveler]

Both for larger sized enemies like Eidolons and smaller humanoid enemies? 

[Lutesque]

Theres no such thing possible in this game.

[Test-995]

I think every possible boss would be bad if you have to run that 100 times.

[Poisonjack]

The Profit Exploiter was a really cool boss fight, not only because of the actual mechanics of the fight, but also the context.

Another cool boss fight was Kela De Thaym, with all the gladiator-like theme.

While not considered actual boss fights, I really like the Junctions, in which you have to face other Warframes to unlock new planets.

 

Edit: I also like fighting clanmates in the Dojo, but that's something else entirely.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Poisonjack

[Regiaz20]

The orb exploiter and profit taker was a step on the right direction in my opinion

[Firetempest]

Vey Hek. Mobility, phases, arena. The arena can change, the phases are not overly long, he makes use of different areas moving the players around. But he can get nuked pretty fast and not trapped by very lengthy invulnerability. His RNG face exposure is the main downside, like all other bosses there is no bait maneuver to force a boss into a specific move, just limit their AI options Like Lech Kril, all you can do if face tank and hope he performs the correct hammer swing.

That should mean Kela De Thaym is more fun with a evolving arena right? But you are fighting a room more than a boss. Long phases of running in circles and shooting plates on walls because at the time, raids? Needed some kind of marksman test? I think Lua was around that time. It doesn't feel natural to the situation to get her out of a control room. Then her goal was to avoid you while shooting rockets you've been avoiding since Jackal but you can just easily just bring her down into the next bombardment phase because the real boss is the plates.

For bigger bosses, Eidolons have a nice gimmick. But don't hold a candle to Lephantis. Again, a changing arena designed for the fight and not a random open field. The parts exposed almost always have a vulnerable area to shoot. Again the downside is RNG face exposure but its at least guarantied to happen once before they submerge in regular intervals. But is often a highly bugged linchpin in the design.

Profit Exploiter not technically requiring specific frames and was based on avoidance at first and the given tools to weaken the first phase was a nice change of pace. But the arena was not that great and set up specific builds to succeed better anyway. Part 1 and part 2 could have been separated and there are still plenty of glitches loading between the two vastly different phases. Part 2 is mostly a team check in how quickly it will end. And both together just makes for a long tedious grind of waiting. I think the loot could have been split between the two parts and being able to choose one or the other.

 

[KiroTheTraveler]

I think we needs bosses that are agile. For example, Stalker should bullet jump and when he is los health, he tries to hide in the shadows and snipe you with his bow..

[Yousho]

As long as scaling is insane in this game I don't think a truly good boss is very likely.

[Sir_Carl]

One that does not rely on "weak points" (looking at you Sargas Ruk). Tyl Regor and Kela de Thaym are pretty good IMO.

[AKTKWNG]

This is one of those impossible questions, because everyone has different and conflicting opinions. How long should a boss take to kill? Should a boss have invulnerability periods? What about different fight phases? Should a boss force or strongly encourage playing in a group? Should it require a specific type of weapon or warframe, or should you be able to clear it with whatever you like? There is no consensus on pretty much all of these questions.

For the record, my favourite bosses so far are eidolons, exploiter, profit-taker and tyl regor. I like eidolons because they're the only bosses which encourage teamwork and a proper division of roles. Exploiter is just an interesting mechanical challenge to play. Profit-taker gets a lot of flak, but I enjoy how there's no weapon meta but you still have to carefully consider how you mod your loadout. And tyl regor is honestly nothing special, but I just love how theatrical and dramatic he is throughout the entire fight.

[-NightmareMoon-]

oh yeah, my favorite boss was that big guy with the six shields, that you have to cut strategically to get rid of them to blow his advantage and force him to go full melee,  oh wait that was from metal gear revengeance a game with good boss fights!

boss fights in this game are either boring or have long invincibility periods, they are not interesting to fight at all, im been playing this game for 4 years and not a singles boss is fun, they are either bullet sponges or die in 1 hit, the closes thing a "boss" having "good" mechanics was exploiter, and she is an event :I

Edited April 26, 2019 by -NightmareMoon-

[Ham_Grenabe]

We'll let you know when we see one. 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Good bosses... good bosses... to me, a boss is an enemy that is much harder than normal units to take down, and has some significance to the story.

A "Good" boss takes longer than most enemies to defeat, and generally has patterns to learn to know when to attack and when to defend/avoid (both defend and avoid options being viable for different frames/builds)

Weak spots are a good thing for bosses to have... if only as a mechanic of the fight to open them up to normal damage afterward.

Invulnerability phases are a "Thing" to keep most bosses alive until players have to deal with their unique attacks and mechanics, due to massive power differentials and the point at which players are expected to be able to defeat them at. (giving the expected, balanced-for-people a chance at beating them without all the min/maxing that high end players will have available to use, like having arcanes)

The boss's mechanics SHOULD allow for players to influence the course of the battle, not just be responding to the boss's pattern... cleverly breaking the boss's pattern would be rewarded with their being vulnerable, or MORE vulnerable to attacks.

Given the game features both guns AND melee, bosses should not be designed entirely around weak points being gun-target related. Melee players should also have a chance to hit those weak spots with melee attacks and good (not insane) parkour.

No boss attacks should be 1-hit-KO if you don't avoid it. Dangerous, sure, but 1-hit-KOs are not fun.

Weak minions during a boss fight are fine, and encouraged to some degree (perhaps at certain stages of the fight, boss health percentages, or due to player actions), to replenish players with ammo and health/energy orbs. (environmental interactables could be used to the same effect, given the thematics of the encounter, if minions are not fitting)

Use of the environment to interact with the boss and give players an advantage (or boss interacting to give itself an advantage, that clever players could take away through other actions) will make the fights more engaging.

 

That's a quick run-down that I can think of off the top of my head.

[Ryusuta]

I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is "What can we do to stop a Warframe boss from being BAD?"

-Don't make it a bullet sponge.

-Don't have long, protracted invulnerability phases

-Don't let it have attacks that remove your ability to play the game

-Don't force the player to be in Operator form to fight it

-Don't create only one, single, specifically defined way to beat the boss.

[KiroTheTraveler]

On 2019-04-26 at 11:34 PM, Ryusuta said:

I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is "What can we do to stop a Warframe boss from being BAD?"

-Don't make it a bullet sponge.

-Don't have long, protracted invulnerability phases

-Don't let it have attacks that remove your ability to play the game

-Don't force the player to be in Operator form to fight it

-Don't create only one, single, specifically defined way to beat the boss.

I agree. 

[Blatantfool]

These are just opinions but I should be doing more than just sinking ammo into the boss. I want to be moving around the arena available for the fight. I want to be doing things like focusing fire on specific targets. I want to be multitasking. I sink ammo into normal enemies all the time so I get plenty of that feeling out of the game, bosses should be making me do much more positioning and fine aiming.

 I consider the Tusk Thumpers on PoE to be a fantastic example of a miniboss. The amount of jumping around, sliding. The constant flow of the fight because the boss moves itself about and is highly mobile. They aren't the hardest fight but they're a very, very good miniboss. The fight is very different depending the terrain the fight is picked on too which is one of my favorite parts. You can fight three of the same thumpers and if the terrain is different enough throughout the three fights it'll feel different between all three. I also think they prove that the fun of a miniboss or boss encounter is not 100% linked to the difficulty of the encounter. There are good easy bosses and bad hard ones.

 I consider Wolf an example of a very bad random encounter boss. You can't control when you'll meet him, meaning you either play prepared at all times or risk him finally turning up when you have weaker, non-meta gear. He's an absolute brick wall. The vast majority of the fight is just how tanky he is. He is also about as thoughtful as bricks. His attacks are non-threatening despite they're chunky damage and his AI isn't very good at avoiding trapping itself. He has mobs that help him which normally means there is extra action in mob clearing but in this case you can't do that because they're invincible so they can try to help Wolf deal with you meaning that ignoring them somehow is part of the fight. The ideal wolf fight is getting the big man stuck on a ledge or corner where he can be chunked to death while he can't move properly so that you can finish the fight at a moderate speed and return to normal play. Very good evidence that being a potentially difficult encounter doesn't stop you from being an incredibly lame encounter.

 

Edited April 28, 2019 by Blatantfool

[Cuchullin]

I think a big part of how boss fights use of invulnerability periods is because of the power creep and the use of the terrain or lack thereof. An earlier post mentioned the Tusk Thumpers as great mini bosses and i agree but the main reason why that's so effective is the amount of range that you cover out on the plains. In most of the boss fights they tend to be bound to a single room which makes sense as a setup for the fight but with the AI path finding and the repetitive nature of they're attacks they can get old fast. The Tyl Regor fight is pretty decent as it requires a couple of phases to go through as with Kela de Thaym. The catch though even for these is the fact that with the inevitable power creep it is far too easy to take a fair chunk of health imitating the next phase if not outright killing them. As it is it creates a cycle of new insta kill weapon - increase bullet sponge cap - mod to max levels - more/longer invulnerability periods and repeat so unless there's a way to move in a new direction with this it's unlikely to change.

[0_The_F00l]

Hmm, the recent orb fights are good. 

And although not a boss, the umbra battles were a bit more fun. 

I hate the lech krill fight and think is the worst boss battle design. 

The sergeant is just a corpus unit with armor, they really should get that reworked. 

Kela da thaym is decent, more puzzle than boss fight but not many complaints (the token system is annoying though) 

Lephantis can be fun or frustrating depending on whether you have a good squad or not. 

The problem with most fights is you either one shot the boss or the boss has invulnerability stages. Don't think there can be better boss designs until this mindset is fixed (which needs tenno damage and enemy scaling rework) 

[Dangerbone]

What we all can agree on is that invulnerability phases are lazy and dull. To a new player, they're probably frustrating as well.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Well, there are problems...

Good boss design in Warframe is difficult because good boss design relies on consistency and control over player capabilities and what we bring to a given fight. 

We see invulnerability phases (and damage thresholds) because it's hard to balance a boss to be tough vs an opticor without turning it into a sponge vs the Braton Prime, or balancing it around the Braton Prime without turning it into cannon fodder vs the opticor.  Fat lot of good all the special maneuvers the boss can do are if they're dead in the abysmally short span of time it takes to charge up that OHK.  Coincidentally, if we could carry one of each weapon type into battle (melee, pistol, shotgun, rifle, sniper, and heavy weapon) they could more reliably create meaningful bosses.  "The AR is for hordes, the sniper is for bosses."

We see status immunity because while most players probably have corrosive in their deck somewhere, as a developer you still can't rely on it being there.  Armor as a mechanic needs an overhaul anyway.

We see CC immunity because allowing us to disarm, blind, and stun a boss will just turn them into a literal pinata waiting to be beaten to a pulp.  And building a boss to require these mechanics shuts out certain frames hard stop.  It's already annoying to know if I'm going to run XYZ boss, I should bring ABC weapon and DEF warframe or I'm just holding the team back.

Our abilities and weapon damage have run away from any semblance of balance, and every gripe regarding enemy interactivity can be traced back to DE dealing with that reality as best they can short of reworking the entire system and in the process pissing off people who enjoy their long strings of zeroes.  If we're discussing damage quantity in terms of "34k" and "230k," our numbers are too big.

What can currently be done...

A lot of smoke an mirrors, really.  Exploiter was a good fight because it didn't rely on an endless stream of high level/invulnerable adds to beat us to a pulp while we focused on a primary target.  It took away our powers and our damage, and focused primarily on things that haven't run away from any sense of balance - our aim, our awareness, and our precision mobility.  Not to say some elements of the fight still aren't bull$#!% (phase 1 turret DOES NOT need to be an amalgamation of the Bolkor dropship turret, the Corpus dropship turret, and the bombard missile, nor does the damn orb need to be rising and falling in a corner CONSTANTLY) but the fight engaged us.  That's the trick to any good boss fight - engaging the player.  Getting players to react to what is happening and proactively taking action to destroy the target, as opposed to just watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike or slamming numbers into numbers, is more of what Warframe needs in its boss fights.

 

Edited May 1, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[stormy505]

On 2019-04-26 at 3:34 PM, Ryusuta said:

I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is "What can we do to stop a Warframe boss from being BAD?"

-Don't make it a bullet sponge.

-Don't have long, protracted invulnerability phases

-Don't let it have attacks that remove your ability to play the game

-Don't force the player to be in Operator form to fight it

-Don't create only one, single, specifically defined way to beat the boss.

If a boss doesn't have massive amounts of HP or invulnerability phases it ends up usually getting one shot and forgotten. *Cough cough stalker*

With the third complaint. I can't think of any super hard locks in the game though I would be glad to be proven wrong on this note. Knock downs don't count because thoughs can be avoided by good play, certain mods, certain frames. Knock downs are a skill check or a gear check at worst.

I didn't exactly like tridolons mainly do to the time limit on the fight creating a stricter more elitist meta then there needs to be. But amps were made as a fresh gear check for the fight that forced us into a situation where even without bullet sponge health or invulnerability states. It still started out as a difficult fight before we power creeped amps to the limit. Same applies to arch guns In orb fights.

For the last point. I mean, if this was feasible without introducing new gear checks, invulnerability states, and ludicrous amounts of HP. Sure, but it I've yet to play a game that could accomplish that.

 

[Cuchullin]

2 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

That's the trick to any good boss fight - engaging the player.

That's the main point I think I haven't done much in the way of exploiter orbs yet so i can't speak to that (yet) but having an engaging fight is a big component to any game. The problem is that warframe is set up as more then a little grindy and when you throw in the progressive power creep it's not surprising that corrupted vor get's his head blown off the second he starts his monologue yet we still get his speech. On the other hand having a setup that has unique mechanics to the fight can make it that much more interesting.

For example In the tutorial fight with for the combination of being a new player and vor using the Janus key to move around and attack made for an interesting fight and a more believable invulnerability period. (True not technically a boss fight and likely ways would be found to one shot him like this as well in the current system but what can you do). But I think having corrupted vor having something similar in his fight might make a boss fight like that more interesting. I can also appreciate the Tyl Regor and Kayla de Thaym for the situational awareness of your surroundings those fight bring the same for Vey Hek.

Ultimately though the situation between the bosses and power creep meta tactics is always going to be a pretty wide gap as long as things progress the way they have at the moment. because while the weapons and frames have been progressing pretty consistently the bosses have understandably been left to the wayside in terms of progression alongside them other then increasing the invulnerability periods and such.

As a small disclaimer I also understand how difficult it would be to update boss fights to an appreciable level for the players without braking the game noticeably in either mechanics, lore or both so this is just me giving a point of view.

[Ryusuta]

3 hours ago, stormy505 said:

If a boss doesn't have massive amounts of HP or invulnerability phases it ends up usually getting one shot and forgotten. *Cough cough stalker*

With the third complaint. I can't think of any super hard locks in the game though I would be glad to be proven wrong on this note. Knock downs don't count because thoughs can be avoided by good play, certain mods, certain frames. Knock downs are a skill check or a gear check at worst.

I didn't exactly like tridolons mainly do to the time limit on the fight creating a stricter more elitist meta then there needs to be. But amps were made as a fresh gear check for the fight that forced us into a situation where even without bullet sponge health or invulnerability states. It still started out as a difficult fight before we power creeped amps to the limit. Same applies to arch guns In orb fights.

For the last point. I mean, if this was feasible without introducing new gear checks, invulnerability states, and ludicrous amounts of HP. Sure, but it I've yet to play a game that could accomplish that.

 

1 & 2: I'd rather a boss be too easy than tediously hard if I have to choose. Especially on a grindy game like this.

3: Mutalist Alad V and his mind control.