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[PappaWayne]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working on a prototype for a 2d sidescroller based around boss fights. My question to you is, do you prefer your bosses to have health bars or prefer them to have visual cues indicating that they are weakening, or both?

Currently I'm leaning towards health bars as I like the suspense building as the player knows the fight is nearly over if they just get one more hit...

Tell me your thoughts

[ThemsAllTook]

My question to you is, do you prefer your bosses to have health bars or prefer them to have visual cues indicating that they are weakening, or both?

Not just visual cues, but behavioral changes too. Multi-phase fights make a boss far more interesting. Once I think I've worked out a pattern and gotten a few good hits in, throw a wrench in the works and give me something additional to worry about.

I can see arguments both ways for showing or hiding health. Overall I'd probably slightly prefer having a health bar shown. At the very least, I'd like to know how much damage my attacks are doing so I can judge what's effective and what's not.

[Dragonmaw]

Health bars are always useful for boss fights, IMO. only a few cases, like where exploration demands it, should it not be that way

[PappaWayne]

My question to you is, do you prefer your bosses to have health bars or prefer them to have visual cues indicating that they are weakening, or both?

Not just visual cues, but behavioral changes too. Multi-phase fights make a boss far more interesting. Once I think I've worked out a pattern and gotten a few good hits in, throw a wrench in the works and give me something additional to worry about.

I can see arguments both ways for showing or hiding health. Overall I'd probably slightly prefer having a health bar shown. At the very least, I'd like to know how much damage my attacks are doing so I can judge what's effective and what's not.

I agree with the multiphase aspect definitely. I currently am coding the first boss which will have 4 phases. The first two will be slight variations on each other and the second two will turn the fight on its head.

Very interested to hear what other people think

[Sik]

Lack of a health bar is only useful when the amount of hits to the boss is small and predictable (like how the Sonic games always had 8 hits for the bosses, final ones aside), otherwise show a health bar or something. Players like to be able to know how much progress they're making.

[DangerMomentum]

Both can work; if the boss is difficult, a health bar can be a tense way of measuring how much further you have until you've won. Dark Souls bosses benefit from the pressure of "Ok, I just need to survive for a few more hits" as the battle gets more and more tense. In a game where the challenge isn't so great, or when you're trying to preserve an atmosphere, you might be better off without a health bar. Either way I think the boss should show signs of their condition; smoke coming out of a robot as it gets weak, faster movement, something to indicate you're making progress. I like changing the color of the boss gradually towards a red to indicate it's getting weaker.

[Jordgubben]

The real problem is to inform the player if and when she achieves progress.

The Legend of Zelda : A link to the past did not have any boss bars because it did not need them. All bosses had made progress very clear by clever boss design. Colour and sound effects on hits, armor that breaks, clearly defined phases, increasing speed, both increasing and reducing the number of entities and "parts" on the boss. Basically every trick in the book. Frankly in this case it's not not far from being "the book".

[bdsowers]

Lack of a health bar is only useful when the amount of hits to the boss is small and predictable (like how the Sonic games always had 8 hits for the bosses, final ones aside), otherwise show a health bar or something. Players like to be able to know how much progress they're making.

I agree with this view. If you have long, drawn-out boss fights, I definitely want to see a health bar of some kind. If your boss fights only take a little while (scaled accordingly for your game's balance), I don't necessarily need to see it - but usually I prefer seeing it.

I don't have a strong argument for why I prefer seeing it. I just, as a player, want to know roughly how I'm doing against a boss. Part of that measurement is how much damage I've dealt in comparison to how much it has.