Good evening.
The increase in loot has brought a lot of attention to world bosses of late, with a rather high number of complaints about the difficulty (or complete lack thereof) in these battles. There are quite a number of requests to make the battles more epic, but not many discussions about how to go about doing that. Ergo, I thought I would wade into the mix with a ridiculously long post brainstorming better boss basics. As with some of my previous rambles, you can skip down to the infographics included alongside them for a faster read.


First, let’s brainstorm a bit about mechanics. No matter how beautiful the art assets, the fight all comes down to the nuts and bolts within the beast. Since mechanics make the match, we must first ponder the different ways bosses can function. We all know about phases, changing the pace of a boss fight based upon its health bar, but let us also take a moment to brainstorm a few other pieces of the puzzle.

Weak Points- for massive damage, always know where to hit a giant enemy crab. Weak points provide an excellent way to control player positioning, both to encourage risk and curtail gimmicks, since they force players to remain within a certain zone to actually harm the boss. Weak points work extremely well when mixed with other mechanics; a boss can shift between attacking and defending by hiding and exposing weak points, weak points can break off over time to force players to change strategies, or the points themselves can be contingent upon environmental conditions.





Phases- the second most basic form of boss fights, phases ensure the game periodically changes. A boss can shift strategy on a set interval or in response to its own health to keep cycling between different tactics and keeping players on their feet.




Environmental Attacks- some boss designs look lovely, but they cannot seem to properly attack everything in the vicinity. Rather than rely on 360 degree waves, however, these bosses can be smart and use the terrain to their advantage. Boss attacks can actually originate from the surrounding environment; ceilings can be caved in, trees can be cut down, buildings can be shattered. Flying debris and detritus make great attacks, as do electrified pools, boiling pits, frozen ground, and absurd quantities of ooze.




Firestorm- if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a fireball. Firestorm bosses exist in a constant state of attack, forcing the players to constantly dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge the endless barrage. The bosses themselves are static, but they mix different attack patterns, intensities, and directions to keep the fight mobile.
Multiheaded Foes- bosses can be made of smaller bosses. An easy way to ensure that a boss can fight everyone on the map is to split it into multiple parts, each of which has its own AI and attack patterns. Players will need to slay these parts to defeat the overall boss, and they can become more dangerous as each part is sliced away.




Fortress- bosses can also be made of physical terrain. WvW Sven’s as an excellent demonstration of a structure that can be physically walked upon, yet also targeted and destroyed. Stationary bosses can be built on a massive scale by giving them parts that players must traverse to hack at more vulnerable bits.





Chess master- sometimes the big bad evil guy is merely the figurehead of the legion. Chess master bosses lead an entire army of angry foes, and their “attacks” come from summoned minions and coordinated strikes. It is often best to ensure, however, that players do not have to choose between striking the boss and clearing the cannon fodder at the same time. Human nature will usually lead everyone to fight the boss and no one to bother with the “lesser” task. Instead, phases are highly recommended.

Kaleidoscope- a more frantic form of phases, this boss is constantly changing throughout the fight and using its own form to attack the players. Kaleidoscopic bosses do not gradually increase in power or intensity like phases. Instead, each transformation changes the rules of combat and forces players to adapt.



Full Mobility- sometimes it is best if doom walks the earth. Fully mobile bosses are far more difficult to code than their static counterparts, but they offer unprecedented challenge to the daring players and intrepid developers alike. Creating a colossal creature capable of independent movement can be tricky since one must balance a constantly shifting battlefield to ensure hero are having fun rather than running a tedious marathon. Nonetheless, the best boss concepts demand free and full battlefield mobility.




Setting aside the theorycraft, let’s ponder the ways these can be applied to the current world bosses…


You may notice that the boss list described above is far from perfect, leaving out plenty of good possibilities for monstrous mayhem. There is a reason, however, and that is based upon boss variants. Creatures with similar body structures can use the skeletons and animations of the above bosses with alternate forms and new strategies or environments. Some variants will be extremely similar to the original, while others will appear wildly different yet still save the developers time and energy.
A Jungle Wurm becomes a Plains Wurm or Frost Wurm with a simple reskin. A Kraken’s tentacles can be replaced with carniverous plants to form the Mandragora, the earth elemental fortress can be reforged with guns and metal to create a Dredge Doom Device, or a pearly white statue can be redone as a Shadowed Colossus. Some variants are more exotic; the animations of a boss might be changed, but the underlying style might remain identical, making a new boss easier to design. By using this simple method, every zone can have its own world boss with less effort than designing them all from scratch.


With the example section of the ramble done, let’s talk about a few general lessons when it comes to boss design and player psychology.
Building a great boss requires knowing your audience and what they enjoy. Unfortunately, MMO players are like a herd of cats, each with contradictory opinions on what direction they should be going. Despite this problem, there are a few general improvements that everyone can enjoy, which we can discuss forthwith…

Elaborate the Introduction
Several bosses have pre events, but these are generally quick affairs that end in a few minutes. Players rarely have any real warning about a world boss threat, relying on external applications and timers to track where to be and what to kill. The challenge should lie in the boss’s power, not remembering the appointment on your schedule.
To counteract this problem, pad the beginning of each fight. Add environmental effects (storms, blizzards, blights, etc) combined with unique events that occur during each boss’s window. More importantly, let participation in these events count towards overall participation against that boss for the reward chest (although the server still needs to win against the beastie before it is provided, of course). This will ensure that even in the worst circumstances (getting mauled in the beginning of the fight and unable to get in any whacks, disconnected, etc), a player putting in effort will still be counted as participating.

Everyone Believes They Are The Hero
Certain boss fights attempt to provide multiple things to do within the battle, creating a larger conflict. The problem, however, is that these optional jobs tend to be…..dull. You cannot expect people to be interested in protecting NPCs halfway across the battlefield when they could be attacking a giant dragon. One job is heroic and unique, the other is peon duty.
Multiple tasks are okay, so long as each is equally epic. Several distinct objectives might be necessary to survive an initial onslaught of a flying dragon, but the eventual rumble with the creature itself should feel heroic for everyone. Also, remember a crucial point: the NPCs should never be more important than the player. Escort quests are reviled for a reason, and watching someone else slay a boss is never as fun as sinking your blade into the heart of the beast.

Look Up More
This game is beautiful and magnificent, but the combat system relies too much on staring at the floor. To raise your player’s enjoyment, lift their vision upwards. Make sure that cues and telegraphs pull your player’s vision to the boss itself, relying far less on red circles on the ground. Supplement your animations with audio cues which trigger if a player is in range, close to, or away from a given attack (this is already in the game; the trebuchets in pvp trigger a warning shout if you’re about to be pulverized). Try to make these cues seamless and immersive (an incoming breath attack is marked by a loud inhaling sound, rather than someone yelling it is about to breath twelve times a fight). Make players embrace the sights and sounds of your bosses in order to fight more effectively, and they’ll soak up the beauty of the battlefield in the process.




Learn To Tell Time
The current boss design has caused a lot of controversy over guesting, because people have been getting kicked out of their own server trying to participate in events. Some of suggested curtailing or limiting guesting in response, but I disagree. The fault lies somewhere else.
Servers need to synchronize. Implement an exact clock that indicates server time, and make elements conform to its timekeeping. Day and Night shouldn’t radically shift when changing districts or moving from overflow, and for that matter, neither should bosses. Being kicked to overflow will not be an irritation if everyone is fighting a boss at the same time, allowing everyone in every world an equal chance to get in on the action.

Crush Your Players, But Remember That They Are Mercenaries
Respect is earned. If you want your players to participate in an activity, you increase the reward. But if you want your players to enjoy the activity, you have to make them earn their victory. Players do not respect a piñata, no matter how beautiful it might be or how sweet the candy might taste. To make your boss battles epic, you must give them teeth.
At the same time, you have to make sure people have a reason to show up. Let’s face it. We are gold-grubbing, money-hoarding, cash-farming loot fiends. We’re adventurers, and greed comes the job description. If the activity isn’t worth our while, no one is going to care.

To account for these opposing ideals, I propose the following compromise…
-Boss Battles have an ambient effect, A Time For Heroes. While this ambient effect is active, defeat does not break armor and travel to the nearest waypoint is free.
-All boss battles are extremely lethal, and each one can be failed.
-The bonus chest reward is increased to three objects, and can also include rare materials such as lodestones.
-The bonus chest is account bound and resets weekly.

What are the benefits of these effects?
-They form a covenant between developer and players regarding difficulty. Bosses stop flailing like infants and begin slaughtering the unwary, unwise, and unfortunate, yet those deaths do not arbitrarily set players back or break their wallets. Death is the penalty, and there is no need for further punishment, but players must bring their A game if they expect to slay a boss. Each player knows they will probably die a horrible death of screaming agony, but they can throw caution to the wind and give it everything they’ve got.
-By making the reward even greater yet reset weekly, it is okay to fail. Right now, players are constantly trying to grab every daily objective on a shifting time table, and that leads to frustration when things go wrong. If the chest is daily and the boss is hard as hell, there is going to be rage. By easing up on the timetable, however, it is okay for players to not participate sometimes, or to walk away from failure and decide to do better tomorrow.q
When your players worry less about timetables and logistics, they can spend more time living in the moment. When they face difficult but rewarding content, they rise to the occasion. When they seek out and slay the mightiest of foes and bask in the well deserved rewards of the hunt, they will sing their praises of this glorious world.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to provide constructive criticism, or to describe some of your own favorite boss fights of the past and the ways and inner workings that made them wonderful.