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Boss HP regeneration
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msw188




Joined: 02 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 9:27 am    Post subject: Boss HP regeneration Reply with quote

I've been playing Dragon Warrior IV recently, as well as reading a message board about it at gamefaqs or something like that. I've been trying to figure out why the games' battles seem so well balanced (among other reasons why I enjoy the game so much), and I was interested in this. Apparently, many of the bosses in the game are programmed to regenerate some (not very large) amount of HP every round. I'm not sure how I feel about this idea. For one thing, it would be very easy to incorporate into the OHR, but is it a good idea? How does it affect gameplay?

The only thing that occurs to me is that it prevents players from being able to play a defensive battle with, say, two characters constantly healing and only one or two giving damage. Also, as I was typing that, I realized that it makes the death of a party member more damaging, as you have fewer turns per regen of the enemy.

Does anyone here have any other thoughts on this? Good idea? Bad? Too much of an effect on gameplay, or is it really inconsequential?
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Newbie_Power




Joined: 04 Sep 2006
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's one way of evening the odds against a 4-character party. Another way that was recently developed is giving bosses two or three attacks per turn (such as Final Fantasy III DS). I would probably have invisible enemies hand out the invisible attacks.

I would have an invisible enemy with the same speed as the boss heal the boss for about 10% HP. I also thought of having status effects such as mute or the almighty stun affect bosses, but an invisible enemy casting a spell that removes stun after a short time so that the boss won't get swamped.

So... That's a bunch of invisible enemies just to make bosses more able to stand up to characters, heh.
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msw188




Joined: 02 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Multi-attack bosses go back at least as far as Dragon Warrior II for the NES. But regardless, I'm more interested in opinions on this system. I guess it can be brought down to asking which is better: bosses with higher HP and no regeneration, or bosses with mid-high HP and slight regeneration, or bosses with lower end HP and a high regeneration? What constitutes high or slight regeneration? Is it better for the player to know about it, or not? Is it better to have regeneration occur often but in small increments, or less often but in larger increments?

Or does it not matter at all? I'm still thinking about my answers to these questions.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Multi-attack bosses go back at least as far as Dragon Warrior II for the NES.
Which I never got the blessing to play. Now that I think about it, DWIV had multi-hit attacks, so please forgive me for mentioning a new game (it was on my mind because I recently played it and the multi-hit attacks were talked about in another forum).

Quote:
But regardless, I'm more interested in opinions on this system. I guess it can be brought down to asking which is better: bosses with higher HP and no regeneration, or bosses with mid-high HP and slight regeneration, or bosses with lower end HP and a high regeneration? What constitutes high or slight regeneration? Is it better for the player to know about it, or not? Is it better to have regeneration occur often but in small increments, or less often but in larger increments?
I would say...

You don't have to ask these questions...

I have my invisible enemy set at the same speed as the boss, meaning that the boss gets healed every "turn". Let's say the heal interval is set at 7% of max HP.

If you want the regeneration to go faster, you set the heal interval lower. Slower, you may want to consider giving the boss healing spells instead.

EDIT: Changed 10% to 7%, in case 10% is too high for per-turn.
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Camdog




Joined: 08 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It seems to me that in most cases a regenerating boss would not be particularly different than a boss with a higher HP total, except in cases of the player using an extremely defensive strategy.

Quote:
That's one way of evening the odds against a 4-character party. Another way that was recently developed is giving bosses two or three attacks per turn (such as Final Fantasy III DS). I would probably have invisible enemies hand out the invisible attacks.


Why not just turn up the boss speed?

Quote:
I would have an invisible enemy with the same speed as the boss heal the boss for about 10% HP. I also thought of having status effects such as mute or the almighty stun affect bosses, but an invisible enemy casting a spell that removes stun after a short time so that the boss won't get swamped.


You could also just make bosses strong to stun type attacks.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Why not just turn up the boss speed?
That wouldn't be the same. A high-speed boss would probably annoy the player more than challenge him, while three separate enemies with the same speed would mean that there's a wait period before the next set of attacks (well, there's some randomization causing speed differences, but it's still a break for the player).

Quote:
You could also just make bosses strong to stun type attacks.
There's that too, I guess, but I like to feel like I'm controlling how long Stun actually lasts (unless there's some option in the Attack editor that I missed and I can't check because I'm at school right now).
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Camdog




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not sure that's true. Because of the speed randomization, it seems to me a boss with invisible helpers set to the same speed would be functionally equivalent to a boss with a higher speed.
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Inferior Minion
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Camdog wrote:
I'm not sure that's true. Because of the speed randomization, it seems to me a boss with invisible helpers set to the same speed would be functionally equivalent to a boss with a higher speed.


One thing I really like about invisible helpers as opposed to increasing the boss speed is the customization one can achieve. The invisible helpers do not necessarily have to utilize the same attack set as the boss, allowing for a guaranteed diversity of attacks. In fact, the speeds of the invisible helpers can be skewed such that different sets of attacks happen at different frequencies, giving the creator much more control over the boss battle.

However, one pitfall is that any status effects (slow, mute, etc.) will not be applied to the helper enemies.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One way to get around the status effect inconvenience is to have the boss cast the status effect spell on his allies if he is hit by that status effect element. You would end up using up a whole element to do that, though.

If you absolutely must have the same speed for all the helpers, you can have the boss' only attack is to make the helpers' speeds 1000, and all of their attack sets are chained to making their speeds zero again (meaning that you have to make the same cure spell again just for bosses).
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Rinku




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting idea, but I particularly favor "multi-bosses" -- that is, bosses where you fight a *party* of bosses. There's one battle in SoJ where you fight three bosses at once, and it's one of the best battles in that game. I think far more RPGs should have battles against a party of bosses, it's much more interesting, and it makes more sense (you have a party, so why can't they?).
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sometimes the story calls for a single boss, sometimes it calls for multiple ones at once. These techniques for making single bosses better are going to be good for uber-villains with no equal.
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J.A.R.S.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Concerning the first question, I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but just in case... Knowing whether to set a boss with or without hp regeneration is also a question of flavor...
A troll will regen very quickly using only mid HP which makes it an attrition boss that you need to strike hard and intensively. Whereas he gets to regen, you don't, and as such, it gets your hps low for a fair while (especially good for semi-bosses, in my opinion).
Also, the idea of HP regeneration brings forth the idea of degeneration? What if there's this one boss that you can't quite kill, but if you can survive long enough (defensive) he gets closer and closer to die? I mean, we've seen heroes set to degeneration in rpgs before, why can't the bosses degenerate too? ESPECIALLY, say, a VAMPIRE in the wamn sunligh.... *cough*

About the idea of compensating the party advantage over the boss, I think party of bosses somewhat remove the epic idea... in that, if they need to be 3 to defeat you, they aren't individually that great. Don't get me wrong, lots of cases applies where it does make sense (to quote my fav rpg, once again, Slash Flea and Ozzie's battle is quite fitting). I still think breaking the major being down into "parts" (much like in Onlyoneinall's latest game) is still the way to go for epic singular bosses's matchdown. They're so tough it does matter critically whether you cut their arm or leg first because they each have their own use. I've never grown tired of boss battles where you make the choice of cutting the shielding or healing or bashing unit first, and as long as this is a choice (because they are somewhat balanced) it makes the bosses more fun, and for a fair while, can cause quite a pain to players. They DO get several attacks per turn, and it does not feel redundant since each of this attack is set from a specific pool of abilities which means there aren't really any risk of 3 similar attacks in one round.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Also, the idea of HP regeneration brings forth the idea of degeneration? What if there's this one boss that you can't quite kill, but if you can survive long enough (defensive) he gets closer and closer to die? I mean, we've seen heroes set to degeneration in rpgs before, why can't the bosses degenerate too? ESPECIALLY, say, a VAMPIRE in the wamn sunligh.... *cough*
Slight HP regeneration is for bosses in general as a way to curb difficulty. A vampire that constantly loses HP would be a specialized boss, especially if all of its attacks are drain-type attacks (*writes that down*).

Quote:
I still think breaking the major being down into "parts" (much like in Onlyoneinall's latest game) is still the way to go for epic singular bosses's matchdown. They're so tough it does matter critically whether you cut their arm or leg first because they each have their own use.
Bosses with individual limbs are another type of specialized boss. Individual helpers can't be targeted, and are for bosses that aren't so giant but are skilled enough to dish out n number of attacks per turn.

Quote:
I've never grown tired of boss battles where you make the choice of cutting the shielding or healing or bashing unit first
I consider that a completely separate concept from limbs that attack. You could have a boss that attacks 3 times per turn, but has a shield as well.

Quote:
They DO get several attacks per turn, and it does not feel redundant since each of this attack is set from a specific pool of abilities which means there aren't really any risk of 3 similar attacks in one round.
The invisible helpers are separate enemies, meaning that they have their own pools of attacks as well. Like Inferior Minion said, you can even control the frequency of some attacks that are powerful.

I'm not saying limbed bosses are bad (they'll likely be more powerful than a boss that uses invisible helpers), but we're talking about ways to make non-interesting battles a bit more balanced. Heck, you could have a central boss have multiple attacks per turn, and have limbs or teammates etc at the same time, if you can balance that out pretty well.
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J.A.R.S.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, as far as I'm concerned, the specialization of limbs is a matter of opinion. One could, in the process of making his game, decide to make all bosses limbed beings no? I do agree however that the HP degeneration doesn't apply as a general rule. It just popped in my head...

And as far as making a "non-interesting" battle more interesting, I think stats alteration is already pretty much covered. HP regen is one, but I tend to prefer the ones that play around their strength and defense. The whole ratio slowly shifting as the boss goes (I dunno how I'd do that with ohr, but there must be a way...) The boss then slowly lose all physical strength at the profit of defense, although not losing magical power for example, the result is that, the closer you get to beating a boss, the least damage you inflict, which makes it kinda fun I think "only one more attack!" o wait... "only one more attack!".
Just a thought.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Well, as far as I'm concerned, the specialization of limbs is a matter of opinion. One could, in the process of making his game, decide to make all bosses limbed beings no?
That would suck... I would rather fight a variety of bosses than just one kind of boss.

Quote:
And as far as making a "non-interesting" battle more interesting, I think stats alteration is already pretty much covered. HP regen is one, but I tend to prefer the ones that play around their strength and defense. The whole ratio slowly shifting as the boss goes (I dunno how I'd do that with ohr, but there must be a way...) The boss then slowly lose all physical strength at the profit of defense, although not losing magical power for example, the result is that, the closer you get to beating a boss, the least damage you inflict, which makes it kinda fun I think "only one more attack!" o wait... "only one more attack!".
Just a thought.
You can do that too.

And remember... Multiple attacks per turn isn't to increase the amount of damage done to a single character, it's to spread damage around more, adding a bit more strategy for deciding which character to cast Cure 3 on.

I'm trying to say that multiple attacks per turn is a GOOD thing to have for some bosses, unless a boss has a strategy that already allows for high damage capacity per turn. You can make a boss recover HP, raise its defense when weakened, degenerate, etc, but the sole purpose of multiple attacks per turn is to make healing more balanced as a skill (100% of the time, it's garunteed life insurance because you can kill a boss before MP or items run out).

If you feel like multiple attacks is too powerful, such as when the boss has quite a few powerful spells, then by all means don't do it, but it's better for bosses that have a single hit attack that is easily cured, causing a healer to be forced to choose which character to heal, or use a weaker heal-all spell.
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