What's with the lack of good bosses in skyrim mods?

[Cema]

I recently stumbled upon a webpage called "Skyrim modding contest : boss battles" and since the contest was already one year old there were links to the few mods who won the price so I tried them and ...

WHAT A BORE !


All of them were just reskinned creature with only standard attack. They had huge health bars and they did hit like trucks but ... that's all ! You could block them in a door, you just had to stay out of melee or avoid one or two fireball and ... good job !!

As a seasoned raider on warcraft this is not what a boss is supposed to be in my opinion. A boss fight should be about "finding the good strategy to survive special abilities the boss has". Special abilities or special events that happen during the encounter give bosses even more personality than just "reskin".

For example the most remarkable bosses in Skyrim in my opinion are Harkon, Miraak and ... Mercer Frey


Harkon has a shield that you must bring down periodically
Miraak summon dragons to bring him back to full health
Mercer Frey mind control one of your group and has this nasty invisibility spell

And you can notice that all of them are kind of humans, not dragons nor trolls nor giants, nor falmers. But they had a little special flavour to them.


Now I'll tell you about about a boss I really liked in warcraft : Ragnaros heroic mode (Mimiron heroic mode would have been perfect too). It's really at the other side of the spectrum. It's overly complicated for skyrim and I won't even list every capability but it's for the sake of giving you an idea of what can be done in other games. Ragnaros is a boss with several stages which means he has more and more capabilities over the course of the fight


stage 1 :
- put periodicaly a short duration malus on the tank that increase damage taken (so you have to switch tanks to reset the malus)
- put huge traps on the ground that disappear but explode and do big damage to the group when someone steps in (so since they are huge they might become a problem later in the fight and one player has to trigger them early when healers have topped all the players)

Transition : Boss disappears but plants his hammer in the ground. 10 sparks spawns at the edge of the rooms and rush to the hammer. if one touch the hammer, the room explode

stage 2 :
- put periodicaly a short duration malus on the tank that increase damage taken (so you have to switch tanks to reset the malus)
- engulf quickly different parts of the room in flame one after another but for a short duration (so you have to run quickly from one zone to another)
- throw seeds where the players stand. They do a crazy explosion after 10 seconds and create elementals that chase after players and hit like trucks (basically run and kill them at range before they hit you)
- put a malus on a player that spawns braziers at his feets during a few seconds (so this player has to move far away from the group and move non stop til the end of the malus)

Transition : Boss disappears but plants his hammer in the ground. 10 sparks spawns at the edge of the rooms and rush to the hammer. if one touch the hammer, the room explode

stage 3 :
- put periodicaly a short duration malus on the tank that increase damage taken (so you have to switch tanks to reset the malus)
- engulf quickly different parts of the room in flame one after another but for a short duration (so you have to run quickly from one zone to another)
- throw a big invulnerable meteor that chase slowly after a player and kills him if it his. launching a spell on the meteor makes him switch target

stage 4 :
- put periodicaly a short duration malus on the tank that increase damage taken (so you have to switch tanks to reset the malus)
- engulf more and more of the room in flames that can be instinguished by an item that only one player can carry, but the longer the faster the flames spread and if you are short on damage everybody dies in the flames
- periodically gains a bonus that makes him oneshot everybody if he hits the tank (so the tank has to run like mad during a few seconds ... something that becomes less and less feasible the more the flame spread ...

That is a boss.

 

That's all for the rant and the overcomplicated example. Now what can be done in Skyrim?


I'm not a god at scripting (I don't know shit about coding) but looking at the base game and many recent mods I can tell we have more than the possibility to design awesome bosses

- traps that can be triggered to kill mobs
- levers that can open doors / change the level of water (lava?)
- balistas
- mobs that can equip items
- a system of buff and debuff
- oil that can fall from the roof and explode on the ground
- platforms
- puzzle games

I have seen modders changing whole rooms into inferno through script, creating real elevators, having ghosts going through walls and behind ice ... tons of things could be done.

 

For example, let's imagine something simple :

A boss using frost spell. Everytime you are hit you take 20% more frost damage for 10 seconds. There are pillars in the room so you have to use them sometimes to hide and reset the debuff.

So far it's easy.

Now let's imagine the boss can't move from the center of the room but adds spawn periodically on the right and left side. They can oneshot you and have tons of health but they spawn near traps that can make them fall in a hole if you trigger them. So now you don't have just to play hide and seek but you also have to run to trigger the traps

Now it's a bit more difficult

But let's add something more. let's imagine the pillars you used to hide are destroyed one after another after some time. So in the end you cannot reset the debuff and you have to kill the boss quickly. This is what we call a soft enrage mechanism. It is a mechanism that makes a fight harder and harder.

Now you have a real boss. It's still quite easy in my opinion but you have to use your brain a bit to understand how it works


Let's imagine something else. A boss that can move this time, a warrior with a big blade in an arena.

There is a column of rain on one side of the room and a column of fire on the other side. The boss gains an ice or fire armor buff every 40 seconds. Ice armor makes him invulnerable and gives him additional ice damage to his attacks, fire armor makes him do fire damage to you when you hit him. You have to melt the ice armor by dragging him in the column of fire and extinguish the fire armor by dragging him in the column of water.

Easy

Now there are corpses in the room. Fallen champion who were not able to win. A little spiritual energy float around them. The boss can fus roh dah and become berserk right after for a few seconds sometimes and he hits really hard when it happens. Interacting with a corpse (like pushing a button) give you a buff that give you a fantomatic look and also increase your running speed and makes you immune to physical damage during a few seconds. But you take 100% more fire fire and ice damage and the corpse has no more spiritual energy aaaand obviously there are a limited number of corpses.

Well it's already a nice little fight.

 

All in all even if my expectations are not really high I hope we would see more interesting bosses in mods because I feel like the game is able to handle it, really.

[Guest]

Somewhat unrelated. But if you want to try some scripted fight, you could take a look at trainwiz's mods i.e. wheel of lull.

 

Personally I hate scripted fights, they're never enough responsive for my taste even with a decent fps and a low latency. And usually I can't even skip them via console, which is the worst.

[NickNozownik]

Making a challenging and responsive scripted fight takes time and effort.

Spawning a Giant with max health and max attack is easier. Pure brute force fights can be fun if boss enemy has a unique model, texture and animations. Not all modders have enough skill or time for that, some of them are lazy fucks.

[MorePrinniesDood]

"Do this, then this, then this" scripted boss fights just annoy me. I'd rather take down big game on my own terms.

 

Of all the combat in Skyrim, I still think I like the random dragon encounters best. Just you versus a strong opponent with the advantage of flight, chasing each other over whatever terrain and obstacles might be in the world.

[DeathToCaesar]

Reckon you should crack open the creation kit so. Lot of hassle just to set up attacks to hide behind pillars from. Between you and me, a lot of people were "seasoned wow players" a very long time ago. This isn't exactly original thinking.

[dTd]

I like both scripted fights and bosses which have unique styles and animations or abilities. Both seem fun in my book but I do miss the scripted battles in Skyrim, other than Miraak there aren't any good one right?

[winny257]

how many people struggling in an online RPG against such a gigantic BOSS?
20, 30 or perhaps even more!
Skyrim is a single player game, it would be impossible alone such a BOSS to defeat!
so beautiful on the carpet stay (not exaggerate) otherwise it will ridiculous!           

 

 

edit: here is this BOSS fight, and count the players. 

        so a game would I never play!

 

sorry in German