nex3
@nex3
graham
@graham asked:

Have you constructed any sort of intuitive model for "effective boss battle design in Souls Games" after all of your work deconstructing their AIs?

I think the biggest thing I took away from that is that there are a lot of different ways effective bosses can look. Some of my favorite bosses had incredibly complex AI scripts, but others were much simpler and more of the challenge was in the high danger of the few moves they presented. I think the games are at their best when there's a lot of variety in the challenges they present the player.


nex3
@nex3

@mammonmachine asks in the comments:

do you have favorite examples? maybe one of each of bosses you particularly like, and how seeing their AI tree helped you understand better what you enjoyed about them?

  • Margit is sort of the archetypal combo-heavy boss. he's actually got a more complex moveset than I'd guessed from just playing against him, which puts a lot of pressure on the player to either react more on the fly or position themself carefully to limit the moves he'll do in practice. I think that kind of counterplay is really cool—the centrality of it is why Sekiro is my favorite of these games.

  • All the Dragons have very simple AIs, with attacks that essentially never combo into one another. But they're gargantuan, so a lot of the fight is figuring out how to position yourself to reliably get damage in while avoiding their massive attacks that often have AOEs as well. The answer to this differs a lot based on which weapon you're using (and whether you're fighting on horseback), which makes them a new experience for each run.

  • Tree Sentinel (and Loretta) are middlingly complex, with a reasonable number of combos but not the sheer depth of Margit. What's coolest about them to me is the way they change throughout the game: there are three types of Tree Sentinel (torch, shield, and draconic) and two different Lorettas, and all of them have subtly different combos that share fundamentals. I think that creates a really interesting play experience where the player gets to apply existing knowledge while still exploring new corners and getting surprised.


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in reply to @nex3's post:

in reply to @nex3's post:

The AI stuff is really cool, I'd love to hear about what makes a boss like Bed of Chaos tick or learning the exact pathfinding of Micolash and what makes him choose left or right when you're chasing him, or any other fun facts you've picked up from observing boss code