Quick thought about boss battles

[Suspicious Vlish]

Personally, I think that when you are battling a boss, you should receive no information on how much health it has. 'Health bars' should be non-existant for bosses.

 

IMHO, this makes boss fights far more climatic, and a test of the player's willpower and nerve.

[Lilith]

But if bosses don't have health bars, how are they supposed to get that low-fat energy boost to get them through the morning?

[PoD person]

I disagree.

 

Your character would be able to see an enemy starting to weaken, and there's something about that last desperate burst to kill it before it kills you (rather than just reload because you're almost dead and you don't want to watch a death screen) that makes me incensed whenever there isn't a health bar.

[Drakefyre]

Too many bosses have those recharging stations that you need to disable before you can kill them. That invulnerability is a pain.

[Alorael at Large]

Monsters with no health bar might be scary, but I am far more terrified by the monsters that eat up what I consider massive amounts of damage only to lose a tiny sliver of bar.

 

I like to know when I'm over my head before I've spent half an hour killing the same monster.

 

—Alorael, who probably should have gotten the right idea from the warnings of imminent doom and the pile of corpses by the entrance. Oh well, live and learn.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally by Alorael:

 

Quote:

Monsters with no health bar might be scary, but I am far more terrified by the monsters that eat up what I consider massive amounts of damage only to lose a tiny sliver of bar.

And they're especially terrifying when they have the ability to regain some of that lost health.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Drakefyre]

I hate the ones that you get down to that last sliver of life left and you think you deal a killing blow, only for them to not die and instead summon eight more roamers!

[Retlaw May]

Sounds like your old teacher from the school in G3. Master Hogue or something like that.

[Dikiyoba]

Master Hoge.

 

Dikiyoba feels no shame for providing such trivial knowledge.

[Randomizer]

It could be worse. In Avernum 4 there are scripted monsters that are unkillable or only killable after certain conditions are met. You can pile on the damage only to see the monster heal and you have to start all over again and heal yourself while fighting.

 

Seeing a health bar gives you an idea of how ineffective your feeble attacks are that would slay other creatures.

[Drakefyre]

Yeah, that happens a lot in Geneforge, with Pharikos and others. Geneforge has a high amount of monsters tied to machinery that recharges them. So basically they get to beat up on you as you get them down in HP before you realize that you need to disable their regeneration and run off to try to find their power sources.

[Alorael at Large]

You usually get a fair warning after the first round in which you damage the invincible monster.

 

—Alorael, who managed to completely paralyze an enemy with stunning from damage in one round. He then spent the next ten rounds keeping up the stunning and running around looking for suspicious crystals, control panels, wires, or Drink Me potions.

[Micawber]

Quote:

Originally written by Alorael:
You usually get a fair warning after the first round in which you damage the invincible monster.

Exactly. Removing the health bar for bosses would go against Jeff's sense of fairplay.

[Fort]

I think the whole psychological effect of the health bar is too good to get rid of. Seeing it change does more for your emotions and involvement in the game than a single-faced feeling of mystery ever could when the bar is not there.

[Student of Trinity]

You're fighting with blades, fire, teeth, acid, all those good sorts of things. And after 14 rounds your enemy is going to suddenly drop dead, without a scratch, as if from a heart attack? You have to see the damage accumulating. Without creating a dozen or so extra skins for every creature in the game, which is not exactly Spiderweb's level of graphical sophistication, a health bar is the only way.

 

For special monsters that showed no apparent damage until suddenly collapsing, for whatever reason, Jeff could always keep the health bar at full and then kill with a script.

[Shaper Anton]

too little health, att too strong, creates too little but too strong