作者：LockeZ

RPG有许多不同的挑战类型。保存道具和MP，在地下城中寻找宝藏箱，避开200个连续的闪电球，这些都是挑战，但多数游戏中最令人难忘的挑战当属boss。它们是其他挑战所导致的结果。

boss通常可分解为它所拥有的各项技能。这些技能实际上是玩家在与boss交战过程中的单个亚挑战。玩家要战胜boss就要征服后者所使用的技能。例如在整个游戏中所有敌人的普遍特点，例如通常的攻击方式，当然在游戏设计某些节点上就很值得关注……但如果是着眼于boss，你就要收回目光关注该boss究竟为何独特。也许是它能够召唤随从，也许是它拥有自愈能力，也许是它每回都能对你的阵营造成巨大损伤，也许是它对火术免疫，也许是它每回都来两次等等。这些都是玩家必须攻克的boss技能。也是我们将要关注的层面。

让我们看看如何制作一个有趣而引人入胜的boss。我将从一个可能适用于任何挑战，但在些仅运用于boss技能和行为的列表入手。

注意，以下列表并不是我的原创清单，而是暴雪娱乐的boss设计团队的标准。毕竟他们的boss制作经验远超过我们多数人。

1.是否明确发生了什么情况？

2.玩家是否在乎？

3.玩家是否作出回应？

4.这一回应是否令人满意？

5.在这种情况下是否有意义或者符合主题？

就是这么个显而易见的列表！它却让我困惑为何许多boss在多个检验点上失败了，有时候甚至是在这5点上统统不合格。

这个列表并不是按照重要程度来排序。重要程度取决于你希望该技能给你感觉有多厉害，你所制作的游戏类型，你想强调的玩法环节，核心玩家机制，你想要的困难程度，游戏中的boss有多早出现及其他因素。你不可以忽略其中任何一点。

是否明确发生了什么情况？

玩家应该能够了解发生了什么情况。这一点毫无争议的。

唯一可以协商的是确保玩家总能理解如何回应。这并不是同件事情。在RPG、谜题游戏、战略游戏或冒险游戏中，玩家多数时候可以自己想出办法。但让玩家自己想出回应该情况的办法与不通知玩家当前情况却是两回事。如果他们不知道当前情况，那就无从想出应对办法。你就是在制作没有组件的谜题了。

这方面的一个简单的例子就是基本免疫力。如果你没有显示出破坏数字，你就没法以其他任何方式表达攻击失败的信息，玩家就不知道自己所使用技能是否具有任何效果。他不知boss在经历150个火球攻击后是否还活着，因为它的HP值相当高或火球攻击是无效的。如果游戏中其他的每个敌人都会在遭遇2-4个火球后毙命，那么你就有所感觉，但却并不能明确。另外，如果你显示了损害数字，但boss仅在火球中遭受了5%的损害，并且对其他一切东西都免疫，那么玩家就会认为自己释放火球攻击时出错招了，因为损害数值远低于通常水准。但事实上，火球攻击是最佳选项（是玩家的唯一选择），他就会为此而困惑，因为你以一种令人困惑的方式向他传达了信息。

这里还有个更复杂的RPG boss案例。你有一个boss以同玩家一样的元素进行反击，之后就对该元素免疫了。如果这发生在看不见的情况下，玩家就会极端困惑为何之前可行的咒语现在却不管用了，并且boss有时候的攻击损害减少了。

现在你可能会抱怨“但认清boss的攻击模式是一个巨大的玩法元素！”没错。但也要有个让玩家认清这一点的方法。除了无形的机制和直接告诉玩家，我们还有许多不同程度的表达方法。例如，当boss以你所使用的同种元素进行反击时，它看起来如何？反击是立即发生以提示玩家这是个直接的回应，还是boss获得了四分之一的动态时间战斗条后开始进行反击，从而削弱了这两个事件在玩家心中的联系？反击是否拥有对应元素的动画？还是与所有元素都相同的动画？屏幕上的文字框是显示“燃烧回应”或至少是“燃烧”，还是显示一些令人摸不着头脑的“死亡银河颂”？boss改变障碍时是否呈现对应的动画和符咒名称？在玩家不用某元素时，是否能够告知他们boss对此元素免疫？是否至少能够在玩家使用该元素时让他们知道该boss对此免疫？

资深玩家比新手更容易看出敌人的行为模式，因为他们之前已经身经百战。所以如果你的游戏用户只是资深玩家，或者boss出现在游戏末尾 ，而你之前已经数次使用了相同的伎俩，那你的信息传达方式就可以更隐晦一点。

不够清晰的boss技能可能对HP值最低的玩家形成肢体技能挑战，否则就无从与其他肢体技能区别开来。略带更高清晰度的这种技能可能会直接作用于那些HP急剧下降的角色——玩家看不到锁定的联系，但可以看到时间上的联系，并可能连接这些节点。而更清晰的版本则会将该技能命名为“致命一击”。更为清晰的版本会在boss使用相同技能之前给予一些非boss敌人，以便玩家在被迫了解情况或者死于boss战斗之前赢得一些反应时间。

玩家是否在乎？

这看起来像是一个最容易修复的地方，但你可能不知道设计师经常在这一点上失手。实际上，它比你想象的更复杂一点。

玩家不在乎的最简单的技能类型就种并不会造成多大损伤的技能。但究竟要多大的损伤才算“够”呢？简单的回答就是，假设玩家除了疗伤之外的回应就是“身上的损伤在挨到下一回合时仍然无法治愈”。但有时候这感觉就像是对玩家的苛刻惩罚，你会想让他们换一种在乎的方式。

让我们看看《最终幻想7》的首个boss。这是一个在两种状态间变换的巨大机器蝎。当它的尾巴下沉时，它什么都不做，所以你就可以采取攻击行动了。当它的尾巴上扬时，你攻击它就会被反击，所以你得等待时机。

在理论上听起来挺可行，不是吗？但你得拥有治愈魔法。如果boss反击你4次，你只能施放4次治愈咒语以便让自己的阵营重返满格的HP值。你可能会在治愈时用光MP，但除非你在战斗开始前将所有的MP浪费在常规战斗中，那就不是一个问题。除了反击之外，boss永远不会让你受到重创——它得花几分钟来攻击你才有可能对你造成一定的损伤。因此，你可以通过忽略这种技能，甚至是当它的尾巴上扬时，在没有风险的情况下，更快赢得战斗。

与之不同的是，《最终幻想4》、《最终幻想5》、《最终幻想6》的首个boss。它们行为方式几乎相同，除非它们处于反击模式，它们还可以变成无敌状态。玩家现在关心的是技能，困为忽略其技能并没有什么好处。

他们无法节省任何时间，无法应对任何损伤，也不会变得更安全。他们在错误的时间中进行攻击只会一无所获。所以现在他们不得不在乎了。问题解决了。

有时候，尤其是过后的游戏中玩家的决定变得更复杂时，你就会希望这里有个风险vs奖励等式，在某些情况下忽略boss技能时给玩家带来一些好处。这就需要想出这应该是哪种情况，并且想出让玩家获得好处的方式。例如，想象一下在《最终幻想7》中与巨蝎boss战斗中的时间限制。（游戏邦注：事实上，地下城中有一个时间限制，但它一直到boss战斗结束时才会开始）也许设计师的目标是当玩家用完时间时，在boss尾巴上扬时攻击它看似一个好主意，但也是个坏主意。“如果这会耗损玩家阵营3/4的最大命值，这样够吗？”你仍有可能在两个回合中轻松恢复，因为当时你在游戏中的治愈符咒几乎足以令你从1HP的状态复原。Cloud在这两个回合中几乎无法做其他事情，他只能站在那里等待boss尾巴下垂。所以玩家还是找不到在乎的理由。这种情况下的损伤量还不够，除非boss杀了你，但只因为你走错一步就杀你对于游戏中的首个boss来说未免太严厉了。也许有必要减少治愈的效率，或者让激光技能在数回合内失灵。总之，你有许多不同的方法得到所需的结果，而每个方法都有不同的副作用。

玩家是否作出回应？

要根据你的玩家能力设计boss能力，反之亦然。

如果boss技能可以干掉玩家阵营90%的最大HP，它受到了致命一击，那就胡扯了。如果boss拥有某个范围内的立即死亡技能，那也是胡扯。如果boss将你的整个阵营催眠，然后将除了你之外的人全部烧死，那也是胡扯。

我将继续强调这一点，因为你们有些人并不理解。可能有些人会说“根本不会发生这种情况”，但这并非辩护理由。我认为当玩家面临挑战时，他们应该能够采取一些措施来打败挑战。玩家不会因为运气或异常的洞察力而获胜，而要因你所赋予的技能和其他玩法机制来取胜。你当然可以在玩法中加入一些随机元素，但如果玩家在游戏中如鱼得水，几乎没有任何失误，那么就应该让他们赢。

让我们更进一步讨论。将此运用于boss挑战，以及boss能力这种亚挑战。如果玩家表现完美，毫无差池，他们就应该能够赢。在动作或平台游戏中，即使是马里奥RPG，这其中的意味就非常明显，但在传统RPG中，它却没有那么明显。玩家并不能完全避开敌人的技能。

所以你就得重新定义boss技能的“成功”。什么是成功？幸存到使用下一个技能时？得到较小的损伤？这要取决于游戏，boss以及技能。事实上，在一款你每回合都可以完全治愈角色的游戏中，你要是能在遭受攻击时存活下来就算是成功了。在一款你的MP极其有限的游戏中，你要是能最小化MP成本就是成功的；如果boss释放一种让你在下次攻击时遭遇三倍损伤的疾病时，你可是能够在下次遭受攻击前净化这种疾病那你就成功了。

在最后一个例子中，玩家可以愚弄boss令其攻击他人而非已经中招的角色，从而让自己更易于处理这种病痛。事实上，愚弄boss令其攻击那些伤势较轻的角色，而非身负重伤者是任何拥有防水层的RPG中的一种常见方法。这正是防水层在RPG中如此盛行的原因：它让玩家回应敌人所做的多数事情，这样他们就会觉得自己成功了。防水层也可能被误用——我们很难将防水层作为一个理想的玩法，但如果执行得当，它会当玩家令敌人的技能部分失效，从而创造出具有成功和失败条件、引人入胜的玩法，但却并不妨碍玩家会遭遇不可避免的损伤这种常规的RPG理念（因为你仍然会受到一点损害）。

如果玩家无从回应一种技能，那它就是一种糟糕的技能。例如，玩家在一个回合中被随机打昏，但却无法回避这一遭遇。即便你有消除这种作用的符咒或道具，它也只会延续一回合。移除它与置之不理几乎是一样的效果。

如果玩家无法回应某个技能，只会认为它让人觉得自己很失败，那就说明设计师在第4点上失败了。

回应是否令人满意？

有时候你可以给予玩家一个技术上可行，但感觉上并不像成功的方法。例如，让一个死亡角色在丧命30次后才能复活，这并不是个令人满意的方法。

这是因为角色死亡意味着电子游戏在向玩家传递失败的消息。游戏结束屏幕则是另一回事。让玩家遭遇比平常多25%的损伤是一回事，遭受反击损伤是另一回事。让你所有的增益魔法消除是一回事，让你的金子或经验值或其他点数被扣除，让你从战斗中赢取的点数奖励只能在非战斗状态中使用，则是另一回事。

当你让这些情况之一发生时，等于是在告诉玩家“这比原本的情况更糟糕”。实际上，这并不是玩家的错——这是为最佳情况设计的。你将他们的杀伤力减少95%，让boss在与玩家表现无关的情况下，随机杀死玩家阵营的领袖，也许是出于复杂的平衡机制，或因为这在理论上可行，或者只是为了调整游戏。但这样只会向玩家传达“情况有误”的信息。因为玩家已经玩够了游戏，也玩过其他的游戏，这只会让玩家将角色的死亡与自己的失败联系在一起。

这里的棘手环节在于：即使玩家潜意识中知道情况不同了，他实际上赢了，他脑中仍会触发失败的神经原。这种感觉仍然很糟糕。

另一种令人不满的成功类型就是无形的成功。当玩家成功时，他们会希望看到欢呼的人群和积分排行榜。boss华丽丽地化为灰烬和尘埃。屏幕上弹出庞大的数据，告诉玩家他们完成了多少个攻击点数。如果没有发生类似情况，虽然不会让你产生自己失败的受挫感，但也不会让你获得胜利的喜悦感，毫无满足感。

最佳满足感来自游戏机制和视觉、音效的组合。从而让你自然地看到、听到和知道自己做对了。

在这种情况下是否有意义或者符合主题？

这一点对我来说是最难以讨论的内容。如果你是一个“喜欢故事的人”，也许这就是你目前最关心的内容。也许你认为玩法并不像故事那样重要。

如果是这样，那你就是不合格的设计师了。这5个要点都会影响并依靠故事。故事是通过玩法，以及对话和过场动画讲述出来。玩家只是在经历故事，而你的职责就是让经历令人难忘。

但如果设计师反其道而行，就会出现大问题了。即使我们有时候制作了“更少故事元素”的地下城和动作游戏，也仍然需要一定的背景和主题。游戏中仍有特定的气氛。它在玩家心中创造了一种与玩法相对应的感觉。玩法会给予意义。

与boss相对应的感觉就是剧烈的战斗。这正是你其余战斗或者还有其他事件发展的目标。你希望玩家可以同时获得身在故事和玩法中的感觉。

错误的战斗机制会破坏这种感觉。例如你正在与5个恶魔首领中的一者战斗。因为它是来自地狱之火，你认为最好给予它各种各样的火术。所以你就给了它火咒，更强的火咒，区域攻击火咒，并让它对火免疫。

这看起来很简单——但也非常无聊，但它有主题，感觉也合理不是吗？但是……在游戏其余部分，恶魔并非都来自火族。事实上，它们多数是影子元素族，并使用物理攻击和诅咒。这家伙甚至无法与它们同行。

这里并不和谐，游戏告知玩家这个boss是目前最强大的恶魔之一，但它感觉却并不像恶魔。而是其他不同的东西。因此，针对其他恶魔的战斗也并不像是这场战斗的升级版。

让我们再试试看。多数恶魔都有一个弱势的阴影魔法，所以我们应该给这个家伙多种类型的阴影魔法。其他恶魔有咒语，我们就要给它真正强大的咒语。这样它才可以暂时性地缓冲自己的物理杀伤力，给予玩家部分更困难的挑战。

好，现在它看起来像是个厉害的恶魔了。但它感觉像一个首领吗？他控制谁？也许你可以一路斩杀它的小兵小将。但也许该区域也有随机战斗，这意味着附近总是有更多恶魔。这种情况下，就要令其玩法符合故事，应该让它召唤随从——其他所有恶魔都要听它派遣。也许要命令它们为之受罪，也许它还可能更邪恶，通过牺牲小兵来补充自己的威力。也许它的咒语在数回合中会令其脆弱不堪，但它靠小兵小将来保护自己。也许它的一个影子咒语会误伤自己的同盟，因为它对一切逊于自己的人都很残酷。

很好，现在我们找到了与boss相当匹配的技能。它感觉像是个十恶不赦的首领了——但在之后三个地下城中，第三个首领的随从将比这个首领更强大。从故事角度来看，这真见鬼，但从玩法角度来看，这是不可避免的，对吗？

这并非不可避免。如果它果真如此强大，你就要想出一个削弱它的游戏机制。也许玩家拥有一项可以削弱它技能的装备，也许你有咒语或同盟成员，或者NPC来削弱该恶魔首领。也许你更早发起战斗毁坏了它的宝剑。也许你与其他传奇英雄并肩作战，也许你身无片甲地潜入浴室抓住了这名首领。注意这些取胜方法都有赖于游戏机制，而不仅仅是过场动画。玩法和故事是相互交织的。

如果你不解决这些不协调的情况，故事和玩法都会受到影响。游戏中的遭遇战也会沦为毫无意义，无法激发任何感觉的混战。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

FIVE POINTS OF DESIGNING A BOSS

Design a boss’s abilities in a way to create a fun amd engaging battle

LockeZ

What makes a game fun are its challenges.

An RPG has a lot of different types of challenges. Conserving items and MP, locating a treasure chest in a dungeon, and dodging 200 lightning bolts in a row are all challenges, but the most memorable challenges in most games are the bosses. They’re what the other challenges seem to lead up to.

A boss can generally be broken down into individual abilities that it has. These abilities are essentially individual sub-challenges which the player deals with during the boss fight. The player has to overcome each ability the boss uses in order to overcome the boss. Things that are common among all enemies throughout the game, like the way that normal attacks and debuffs work, are worth looking at, of course, at some point during the game design process… but when looking at a boss you should narrow your view to what’s unique or semi-unique to that boss and focus on it. Maybe it summons minions, maybe it heals itself, maybe it inflicts passive damage to your whole party every round, maybe it’s immune to fire magic, maybe it gets two turns every round. Each of these is an ability that the player must overcome. These are the kinds of things we’ll be focusing on.

Let’s look at how to make a fun and engaging boss. I’ll start with a very straightforward checklist that can be applied to practically any type of challenge, but in this case we’ll be applying it to the abilities and behaviors of bosses.

Note, the following list is not my list. It is courtesy of the boss design team at Blizzard Entertainment. Hopefully that lends it some weight. They’ve made a few thousand more bosses than most of us, after all.

1. Is it clear what’s happening?

2. Does the player care?

3. Does the player have a response?

4. Is this response satisfying?

5. Does this make sense in this situation and fit the theme?

That’s such an obvious list! Which makes me wonder how it is that so many bosses fail on multiple checkpoints. Sometimes even all five.

The list isn’t in order of importance. The order of importance depends on how climactic you want the ability to feel, the type of game you’re making, the parts of gameplay you want to emphasize, the core player mechanics, the difficulty level you want, and how early in the game the boss is, among other factors. You can’t ignore any of them, though.

Is it clear what’s happening?

The player needs to be able to understand what’s going on. This isn’t negotiable.

What is negotiable is making sure the player always understands how to respond. That’s not the same thing. In an RPG, puzzle game, strategy game or adventure game, the player can figure that out for himself or herself most of the time. Doing so is most of the game, in fact. But there’s a difference between making the player figure out how to respond to the situation and not informing the player of the situation. If there’s no known situation, there’s nothing to figure out. You’ve made a puzzle with no pieces.

A simple example is elemental immunity. If you don’t display damage numbers, and you don’t convey failure of attacks in any other way, the player has no idea whether the skills he’s using are having any effect. He has no idea if the boss is still alive after 150 fireballs because it has that much HP or because the fireballs are ineffective. If every other enemy in the game dies after 2-4 fireballs, then you have SOME conveyance, but probably not clear enough. Alternately, if you do show damage numbers, but the boss takes only 5% damage from fire and is immune to everything else, the player will think that he’s doing something wrong by casting fire because the damage numbers are so much lower than normal. But in fact, fire is his best option (his only option!), and he’s only confused because you’ve conveyed information in a confusing way.

Here’s a more complex RPG boss example. You have a boss that counterattacks with the same element the player uses, and then becomes immune to that element. If this happens invisibly – don’t laugh, I’ve seen it done – the player will be utterly baffled that a spell that worked before isn’t working now, and that the boss’s attacks sometimes do less damage.

And now you complain at me. “But recognizing the boss’s pattern is a huge element of gameplay!” You’re correct. But there has to be a way to recognize it. There are a lot of different levels of conveyance between invisible mechanics vs. outright telling the player exactly what’s happening and why. For example, when the boss counterattacks with the same element you used, what does it look like? Does the counterattack happen immediately, to cue the player to the fact that it’s a direct response, or does the boss gain a quarter of its ATB bar and then cast the counterattack, diminishing the link between the two events in the player’s mind? Does the counterattack have an animation that matches the element used, or is it the same animation for all elements? Does a text box at the top of the screen say “Flaming Response”, or at least “Flame”, or does it say something indecipherable like “Dead Galaxy Song”? Is there a fitting animation and spell name when the boss changes barriers? Does the player have any way to tell that a boss is immune to an element without using it? Can the player at least clearly tell that the boss is immune once they do use that element?

Veteran players can be expected to recognize patterns more easily than novices, since they’ve encountered them many times before. So if your game’s audience is only expert gamers, or if the boss appears near the end of the game and you’ve used the same gimmick several times before, you can be more stingy with your conveyance.

A boss ability that fails at clarity would be a physical skill that targets your lowest HP party member, otherwise indistinguishable from other physical skills. A version of this ability with slightly higher clarity would be one that is triggered immediately upon any character dropping to critical HP – the player can’t see the targetting connection, but can see the timing connection and possibly connect the dots. An even clearer version would name the skill “Finishing Blow”. An even clearer version would give several non-boss enemies before the boss the same skill, so the player can see it happen a few extra times before being forced to understand it or die in the boss fight.

Does the player care?

This seems like it should be the easiest one to fix, but you’d be surprised how often designers still fail at it. The truth is that it’s a little more complex than you might think.

The simplest type of skill the player doesn’t care about is a damage skill that doesn’t deal enough damage. But how much is “enough”? The simple answer, assuming the player has a response other than healing, is “more than you can heal before it gets its next turn.” But sometimes that feels too punishing to the player, and you want to make them care a different way.

Let’s look at the first boss of Final Fantasy 7. It’s a giant robot scorpion that alternates between two stances. When its tail is lowered, it does nothing, so you’re supposed to attack. When its tail is raised, it counterattacks when you attack it, so you’re supposed to wait.

Sounds okay in theory, right? But you have healing magic. If the boss counterattacks you four times, you only have to cast your healing spell twice to bring your whole party back to full HP. You might run out of MP to heal with, but unless you wasted all your MP on the normal battles before the fight started, that’s probably not a concern. And aside from its counterattacks, the boss never hurts you much – it would have to spend several minutes attacking you to deal as much damage as its laser does. As a result, you can win the battle faster, and without any risk, by ignoring this ability and attacking even when its tail is up. There is nothing in place to make you care about it.

Contrast this to the first bosses of Final Fantasy 4, 5 and 6. They work almost identically, except when they’re in counterattack mode, they also become invincible. The player now cares about the ability, because there’s no benefit to ignoring it. They don’t save any time, they don’t deal any damage, and they don’t become any safer. They get nothing at all out of attacking at the wrong time. So now they’re forced to care. Problem solved. (Except that this ability also fails point #4, about the player’s response being satisfying, but we’ll examine that later. It also fails point #1, about clarity, but only because the translation from Japanese is terrible…)

Sometimes, especially later in the game when player decisions are becoming more complex, you do want there to be a risk vs. reward equation, making there be some benefit to possibly ignoring the boss’s ability in some situations. Figure out what those situations are, and then figure out a way to give a benefit in those situations but not others. For example, imagine that there’s a time limit during the fight with the FF7 scorpion boss. (In reality, there is a time limit in that dungeon, but it doesn’t start until the boss fight ends, so this is easy to imagine.) Maybe your goal as a designer is for attacking the boss while its tail is raised to only seem like a good idea when the player is running out of time, but a bad idea otherwise. This would be trickier to execute – you’d need to figure out how much damage the counterattack actually needs to do to make the player think “oh crap, that was a bad idea.” If it took away 3/4 of the party’s maximum health, would that be enough? You could still recover from it effortlessly in two rounds, since your healing spell at that point in the game can almost fully heal you from 1 HP. And Cloud wasn’t doing anything else for those two rounds; he was just standing there waiting for the boss’s tail to lower. So there’s still no reason to care. No amount of damage is enough in this case unless it kills you, and killing you for one misstep is too severe a penalty for the first boss in the game. It might be necessary to reduce the effectiveness of healing as well, or to make the laser skill inflict silence for a few rounds. There are usually a lot of different ways to get the result you want, each with different side-effects.

Does the player have a response?

Design your bosses’ abilities with your players’ abilities in mind, and vice-versa.

There is a technical term within the game development community for dying to something that you can’t do anything about – the term is “bullshit”.

If a boss has a skill that does 90% of your party’s max HP, and it gets a critical hit, that is bullshit. If a boss has an area instant death skill, that is bullshit. If a boss puts your entire party to sleep and then burns you to death while you rest peacefully, that is bullshit.

I’m going to keep emphasising this, because some of you don’t get it. I know you don’t: I’ve played your games, and I’ve listened to your justifications for the bullshit that fills them. “It hardly ever happens” isn’t a justification! It really, really isn’t. This is almost as fundamental as it gets in game design, I think: when faced with a challenge, the player should be able to do something to beat it. Not win through random chance or clairvoyance, but through the abilities and other gameplay mechanics that you give the player access to. You can certainly have some elements of randomness in the gameplay, but if the player plays the game utterly perfectly, making absolutely no errors, he or she should succeed.

Let’s take that a step further. Apply it not just to the boss as a challenge, but to the boss’s ability as a sub-challenge. If the player performs perfectly, making absolutely no errors, he or she should be able to “win” against the ability. In an action or platformer game, or even in Mario RPG, what this means is pretty straightforward, but in a traditional RPG, it gets murky. Extremely few enemy skills can be completely dodged.

So you have to re-define “success” for a boss ability. What’s success? Surviving until the next ability? Taking less damage than you can recover? It depends on the game, the boss, and the ability, in truth. In a game where you can fully heal one character each round, you can be said to have succeeded if you survive the hit. In a game where your MP is extremely limited, you can be said to have succeeded if you minimized your MP costs. If a boss uses a skill to inflict a status ailment that makes you take triple damage from the next attack, you can be said to have succeeded if you cleanse the ailment before the next time you get attacked.

In that last example, taunting the boss to attack someone other than the ailed character can make the ailment easier to handle. In fact, taunting the boss to attack someone less vulnerable instead of someone more vulnerable is a common way of dealing with threats in any RPG that has tanking. This is why tanking has become popular in RPGs: it gives the player a response to most of the things enemies do, so they can feel like they succeeded. Tanking can easily be done wrong – it’s extremely hard to make tanking an optional way of playing, for example – but when done right it lets the player respond to enemy abilities by partially nullifying them, which creates engaging gameplay with success and failure conditions, but doesn’t get in the way of the standard RPG idea of unavoidable damage that must be healed (because you’re still taking some damage).

If a skill has no way to respond to it, it’s a bad skill. For example, randomly stunning the player for one round, with no way to avoid it. Even if you have a spell or item to remove the effect, it only lasts one round; removing it has almost the same effect as leaving it alone.

If a skill has no way to respond to it except one that still feels like failure, then you as the designer failed at the fourth point:

Is this response satisfying?

Sometimes you can give the player a way that technically works, but still doesn’t feel like success, even though it is. Reviving a dead character only to have them die again 30 times in a row isn’t satisfying, for example. It feels like you are failing.

This is because a character dying is a way that video games communicate failure to the player. A game over screen is another. Dealing 25% as much damage as usual is another. Taking counterattack damage is another. Having all your buffs dispelled is another. Having gold or exp or some other kind of points deducted, points that you usually get from battles as a reward and only spend when not in battle, is another.

When you make one of these things happen, you’re telling the player “that ended up worse than it was supposed to.” In truth, the reason it ended up worse than usual isn’t the player’s fault – it was the best-case scenario. You were reducing their damage by 95% and making the boss randomly kill the party leader for some other reason unrelated to the player’s performace: possibly as some kind of convoluted balance mechanic, or because it was thematically fitting, or just to change things up. But what you’ve communicated to the player is “that was wrong.” Because the player has played your game enough, and played other games enough, that he mentally links a character’s death with his own failure.

And here’s the bothersome part: even if the player consciously knows that this situation is different, and that he did in fact succeed, the failure neurons in his brain are still triggered. It still feels bad.

An alternate type of unsatisfying success is simply invisible success. When the player succeeds, he or she expects to see an explosion, a cheering crowd, a scoreboard. The boss flashes brightly and dissolves into mist. Huge numbers pop up and bounce across the screen, telling you how many thousands of points of damage you did. You sidestep the enemy’s fireball and it flies off the edge of the screen harmlessly. Or the fireball hits you, but an energy barrier pops up in the way, deflecting it with a *ping* sound. Your critical-health ally jumps back to action as angels bathe him in light. When these things don’t happen, it’s not as bad as feeling like you lost, but you don’t feel like you won either. There’s no satisfaction.

The best satisfaction comes from a combination of game mechanics and visual and audio effects. You simultaneously see, hear, and know that you did it right.

Does this make sense in this situation and fit the theme?

This one is the most difficult for me to talk about. If you’re a “story person,” maybe this is the only one you have cared about up until now. Maybe you think gameplay doesn’t matter as long as the story is enthalling.

That makes you a bad designer. All five of these points affect, and depend on, the story. The story is told through the gameplay as much as through the dialogue and cut scenes, if not moreso. The player is the one experiencing the story, and your job is to make that experience memorable.

But it’s easy to go the opposite route and have just a big a problem. There’s a reason that even when we make “story-less” dungeon crawlers and action games, there’s still a setting and a theme to some degree. There’s still a specific ambiance. It creates feelings in the player’s mind that coincide with the gameplay. The gameplay is given meaning.

The feeling that concides with bosses is that of a climactic struggle. It’s what the rest of your recent battles – and possibly other events – have been building up to. And so you want it to feel like that: both in the story and in the gameplay.

The wrong battle mechanics can break that, though. Let’s say the boss you’re fighting is one of the five demon generals. Because it’s emerged from the fires of hell, you think it would be good to give it all sorts of fire skills. So you give it a fire spell, a stronger fire spell, an area fire spell, and make it immune to fire.

Uh, okay, that seems simple enough — boring as hell, but it’s thematic and sensible, right? But… in the rest of the game, demons aren’t all fire-elemental. In fact, most of them are shadow-elemental and use physical attacks and curses. This guy doesn’t even fit in alongside them.

There’s a disconnect, where the player is being told that this boss is one of the most powerful demons in existance, but he doesn’t feel like a demon at all. He feels like something totally different. As a result, the battles against the other demons don’t feel like they build up to this battle.

Let’s try again. Most demons have weak shadow magic, so we’ll give this guy strong shadow magic of several types. Other demons have curses, so we’ll give him a really powerful curse. And then he can temporarily buff his own physical damage from time to time, giving the player parts of the fight that are harder.

Okay, now he feels like a badass demon. But does he feel like a general? Who’s he in command over? Maybe you killed all his minions on the way in – that’s fine if so. But maybe the area has random battles, which means there are always more demons around. In that case, to make his gameplay match his story, he should be able to call for reinforcements – all the other demons should listen to him. Maybe even command them to take hits for him. Maybe he can be extra demonic and sacrifice his soldiers to feed his own powers. Maybe his curse spell leaves him vulnerable for several rounds, but he relies on his minions to protect him. Maybe one of his shadow spells strikes friend and foe alike, because he is cruel to those beneath him.

Great, we’ve got abilities that match the boss very nicely now. He feels like a badass demon general – up until three dungeons later, when the minions of the third general are stronger than this general was. From a story point of view: what the heck? But from a gameplay point of view: unavoidable, right?

It’s not unavoidable. If he’s really supposed to be that powerful, then you can come up with a gameplay mechanic that weakens him. Perhaps the player obtained a piece of equipment that nullifies his powers. Perhaps you have a spell, or a party member, or an NPC that binds and weakens the demon general. Perhaps you fought a battle earlier to destroy his sword, which was sentient on its own. Perhaps you fight alongside some legendary hero, or perhaps you engaged in a stealth mission to catch the demon general in the bathroom with no armor on. Notice that these methods of victory are being relayed through game mechanics, not just cut scenes. The gameplay and the story are woven together.

If you leave the player with those types of disconnects unresolved, both the story and the gameplay suffer. The encounter goes from being memorable and climactic to being a pointless mess that doesn’t evoke the feelings it should.（source：rpgmaker）