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

[Lucke]

For me, most important is tactic/counter-tactic loop between the boss and players:

You decide you wanna stack BLM, boss recognizes this and counters by putting up a magic shield. Now the players have to counter that tactic, and it goes back and forth. Or it sees a SMN pet, so it decides to push them away constantly. You'll have to do something to prevent the boss from doing that to SMN pets.

Also like climbing on bosses (Like Shadow of the Colossus and Dragon's Dogma) although I dunno how that could work in an MMO. Think of a fight with Bahamut. He's huge. So everyone will have to climb on Bahamut to reach weak spots on his body. He'll shake around trying to shake you off. He'll fly all around Hydaelyn with the party hanging on. There would be some way to replenish the grip of the party though.

I did like the way you could incapacitate body parts, but there has to be a better way than 1.0. Maybe each skill will stay which body part it can incapacitate on the tool tip.

[Nightray]

I've enjoyed every boss I've done, however, I too hit the titan HM wall as many others have and those where not a happy 7 weeks.

[Sedant]

Titan Extreme only after finding and signing up to WTFast to improve connection and ping to the servers. Definitely made getting out of things enjoyable knowing I was out and wasn't dead. Skill based fight otherwise, just what the doctor ordered.

[Kith]

Honestly, the grouping issues aside, I think Crystal Tower is a fun dungeon. The mechanics for the bosses are interesting and varied and with number tuning could easily be made "hardcore" level difficulty if that was desired and, to me this is crucial, none of the mechanics outright punish you for daring to play Realm Reborn with a ping in excess of 200 like a lot of people are forced to do due to the limited server clusters.

I've done Titan (HM) but I did it by learning the patterns and timings and moving before I even saw Plumes appear because if I wait for the in-game tell (ie, graphic to appear) i'd be hit most of the time; it wasn't particuarly fun to need to do this. Just giving a longer cast time on plumes (just half a second would do it) would mitigate the high ping issue so its not like its a huge change, but it was enough to make me consider Titan "not fun" even though I can quite comfortably farm it now.

One shot kill mechanics? Fine, even interesting at times.
Rapid response required mechanics? Fine, even interesting at times.
Combining the two above with a netcode that makes what you see differ from the server? No, just stop.

[Belara]

I actually designed what I thought would be a really fun encounter, no matter how many times you ran it.

For the encounter, there would be only two types of enemies: An experimental Garlean super-weapon, and a bunch of mini-prototypes of the weapon (say, 10-15 of them). For a point of reference, think of a Dreadnought for the prototype and a waaaaay larger version of it for the boss. In part one, your party has to reach the super-weapon by going through the prototypes, similar to Turn 2 with ADS and the nodes. The prototypes start off with a fairly low amount of health, and don't hurt all that much. Defeating them does not cause them to blow up or be destroyed, simply deactivated. Every few minutes (say, 4-5 minutes), the boss uses an electronic pulse that strengthens all prototypes (increased health and damage), as well as revives deactivated ones. All reactivated prototypes will still have your location tracked, and will run towards the party to re-engage.

Part two, the real fight, begins immediately as the main boss is engaged. The main boss will deactivate all prototypes and face you directly. The defense and attacks of the boss will change based on what was used to kill the prototypes. For example, if a lot of piercing damage was done to the prototypes, then the main boss will have heightened piercing resistance. Additionally, the boss would apply various buffs to itself throughout the fight to deal with the current highest DPS threat (like a magic-damage shield if it's being nuked). The boss would also do standard dodgable aoes, as well as at least one exceptionally hard hitting attack to keep healers on their toes.

Essentially, this boss would change itself to become stronger against your specific party. No matter what you come in with, this guy will adapt to and counter it, given time. This makes the fight become a constant true struggle against a boss that is actually learning how to defeat you throughout the battle, which in my opinion allows the fight to stay fun no matter how many times you run it. Teams can make the most odd-ball strategies and successfully use it against this guy, so long as they execute it correctly. Plus, people can make a game out of the first part and see how many pulses and prototypes their group can withstand.

[kristerrr86]

It would be cool with a boss where there is an actual person controlling when it uses it moves. This would be really hard to implement

The Tank boss in Metal Gear solid on psone was fun

[Zuri]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDDhZb8aeg

Probably the funnest boss fight in the FFXIV lifespan.

To kill a Raven and the extreme version of this battle were no joke. Everyone needs to cooperate and know their jobs to the fullest potential. This was a true test of skill and at the same time it was engaging enough to be supplement enjoyment.

[Davionx]

Spend more time fighting than dancing