[Discussion] How do you define a fun boss fight?

[Bearssi]

From infamous game WoW. Mimiron with red button and Algalon, both sadly forgotten.
A choice of difficulty. Randomness on some features. Phases. Unavoidable and coordinated damage. Target priorities. Lore with fun or immersive stuff. Mystery in mechanics "what happens if...?".
Just some or all of these so that the boss fight stands out from other encounters.

[Astarica]

A fun encounter by definition is going to be something easy. People talk about the thrill of overcoming challenges but if you can't actually beat it, it's not going to be a fun. It'd have to be an encounter that's got a lot of reasonably complicated mechanism that screws you up but doesn't wipe you, so the encounter most likely can't have an enrage timer (or at least a very generous one).

[Zfz]

I think the keywords is "unforgiving".

What if Landslide doesn't knock you back 20 meters, but knocks you back 5 meters plus give you a 3min stackable debuff that increases knockback distance by 200%? (First time knock back 5m, second time 15m, third time 45m.) What if WotL doesn't do burst damage but gives a stackable damage over time? Eating one WotL is perfectly healable, eating 3 makes you lose heath faster than the tank---but you could still be saved if the healers are very over-geared.

Or, instead of putting all the recovery responsibility on healers, we transfer some of that to the DD. For example Landslide will always only knock you back 10 meters, but each time you are knocked back, Titan gains a "Hardened" buff that lasts for 30 seconds, reducing damage taken by 5% times the number of people knocked back. Or maybe each WotL that hit you could spawn a stack of rock on your back, and you suffer a heavy effect as long as that stack exists. The rock can be targeted and destroyed, but its HP is proportional to the number of stacks. (This is to avoid the eat-it-and-aoe-it strategy.)

This way you still have to dodge things, or you will get one-shot eventually. Mistake recovery is no longer only by healers, but sometimes by the DDs.

New mechanisms are all good and well, but the key to the complaints I've seen up to now are centered on the "unforgiving" nature of the mechanics---i.e., no room for recovery.

[Tazo]

More boss fights with tank swapping.

[Trikki]

Twintania is a decently designed encounter, to use an example in FFXIV:

Multiple phases, each with their own challenges.
Tank and healer checks on Death Sentences and Snakes
DPS checks on Conflags and Dreadknights
Movement mechanics for all: Dive Bombs, Twisters and Hatches
Paying attention to debuffs: Conflags, Fireballs, Liquid Hells
Knowing timers for stuff: Dive bombs round 2, death sentence cooldown rotations, twisters, etc.

Plenty going on. In a well designed raid this type of boss would make an excellent early-mid tier encounter. Everyone has to know their role and positioning and nobody can screw up. Deaths can be recovered from, depending on who and when.

More like this would be a good start.

[zaviermhigo]

Some of these issues, seem to be player base problems also. I mean yes, insta kill mechanics aren't fun, but I notice the most fun in content I can have is with all FC members, because they are always on their A game. Duty/party finder and shout groups tend to give awful players most of the time (I do get good groups, I savor them), just straight up lazy players, I get this is a game, and it shouldn't be like a job, but also put some effort into playing and don't be a jerk. Even if a boss fight started out with interesting mechanics, often the population creates strategies that sap all the fun out of the content, because we want to clear it as fast as possible which is understandable. A lot of ambiance is lost in how we speed run things though, cut scenes skipped, strategies have 1 or 2 people doing absolutely mundane tasks to make the fight easier.

Its not like SE thought "every one is going to do it this way and it will be fun", they thought "they'd do the content as intended, have some fun", INSTEAD, it became "omg fast fast fast, I'm a spammer", I get it, I don't want to be stuck doing the same repetitive thing, and have it be slow, but in a way it is ruining the immersion and ambiance of the content.

Also as a healer the fact that most fights boil down to "dps race" is extremely boring for me, adding some other mechanics in there to make sure we do more dmg to the boss is more fun in my opinion instead of "omg DD EPEEN FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I player healer, my boyfriend plays tank, we're doing our job, but the dds just can't do enough dmg, there really isn't much we can do to win the fight past that...we lose because of gimp dds, and its not just gear, sometimes its just they don't know the proper rotations, its terribly boring for most fights to boil down to this. Some are fine, but in total there should be...some fights that the dd shine, and some fights that tanks really shine, and some fights healers really shine, maybe even different phases of the same fight that do all 3.

[Rekujen]

No more "one person screws up = wipe" mechanics... they are fun but going in this direction is terrible and repetitive.

I would like to see more sustained damage and constant spike damage if you keep screwing up, compared to "oh i stood here a split second too late, now my groups gonna rage quit"

Yes personal skill is involved but these fights become mundane, I think most of the CT fights are really well scripted and I'd love to see more of those at end-game i90+ (think bone dragon, the demons/bombs fight, behemoth)

[Orophin]

Personally I think the Extreme Primals are fun fights. It's sometimes the people you get lumped with that make it a frustrating experience.

I really like the Acheron fight. Even though mechanically it's pretty simple, just seeing all the different attacks he has and the badass music that plays, that fight is always fun for me no matter how many times I run it.

My opinion may be pretty skewed though. I don't play a tank or healer so I don't have any real position of importance in a fight apart from not doing dumb stuff to get myself killed.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Iselia is not even harder than Indalecio with limiter off. Earthquake hits everyone and seems harder to guts through. Sure she looks intimidating when she knocks a guy back for 9999X20 or whatever, but most of the time the guy getting knocked back can still parry/guts through that.

So happy I got a response to this ^^

I found indy limiter off easier than her on universe mode. Her hitting everyone so fast so many times got me very frustrated. I had to swirch to 3 mage and claude. Both very fun encounters

[indira]

all are fun when the whole party knows the fight or atleast keeps there eyes open, when you have a couple people who are saying they know the fight but keep dying its not fun.

"lag" is the excuses of excuses yeah theres lag but if you know the fight you would know where to stand, i still get lag spikes but its rare i die from it. in 1.0 it had 10 times the lag & no aoe boxes yet people finished content i mean 30 secs later you dropped dead from the lag.