Bosses

[SStrikerR]

To me, bosses are usually some of the most fun things in videogames. I love a challenging fight. In PSO and PSU, most of the time if you had even a decent team, the bosses would die extremely fast. Some of them have a few cheap attacks that could be annoying, but it was never really difficult. So how are PSO2's bosses so far? On a scale of 1-10, how difficult are the fights in a team/solo? Are they enjoyable? Or is it "Everybody go spam their best attacks for 30 seconds till it dies"?

[BIG OLAF]

The bosses are epic beyond belief. Especially the first time you fight them. They take a while to go down, unless you're overleveled and/or overgeared.

Also, the fact that you can get bosses that randomly pop out of nowhere in the middle of a mission can make it even more crazy, since then you'll have more than one epic battle on your hands in the same stretch of mission.

They're thoroughly enjoyable. I can't wait to see what Dark Falz, or whatever end-game boss, is like.

EDIT: I'll through this in here for good measure. They're quite a bit more impressive in real-time, though.

[spoiler-box]http://i.imgur.com/zSGry.jpg[/spoiler-box]

[goldwing]

The bosses are epic beyond belief. Especially the first time you fight them. They take a while to go down, unless you're overleveled and/or overgeared.

Also, the fact that you can get bosses that randomly pop out of nowhere in the middle of a mission can make it even more crazy, since then you'll have more than one epic battle on your hands in the same stretch of mission.

They're thoroughly enjoyable. I can't wait to see what Dark Falz, or whatever end-game boss, is like.

EDIT: I'll through this in here for good measure. They're quite a bit more impressive in real-time, though.

[spoiler-box]http://i.imgur.com/zSGry.jpg[/spoiler-box]

Well put. The bosses are def harder solo wise and even worse when you run into two at the same time. It takes more skill even if ur over leveled. At least what we have gotten so far. You gotta see for yourself

[SStrikerR]

Sounds good so far, 2 bosses at once sounds like a blast. Hopefully SEGA can scale them well though. It seems like in most games, as players get to higher levels, they get access to overpowered equipment that is so obnoxiously strong that bosses are no longer threats, no matter what level they are.

[goldwing]

O ik what you mean. Its hard to say for pso2 with the limitations and all but i see what you me. Heres to hopeing that dosnt become the case.

[Kimil Adrayne]

The boss fights are good. I think the reduction of party sizes from 6 to 4 will really help avoid speedy deaths.

I love how you can have multiple, different bosses randomly spawn and fight eachother in multi-party areas. Makes for a good amount of epicness.

[DayDreamer]

[spoiler-box]http://i.imgur.com/zSGry.jpg[/spoiler-box]
You should still give me your computer btw.. Q ~ Q

Anyway yea the bosses are challenging for the most part. They really take pso2's new gameplay to the limit. I remember fighting the "Spider" boss in the city area..
[SPOILER-BOX]http://www.pso-world.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1947&pictureid=27266[/SPOILER-BOX]
and he climbed on the freakin walls to get around! There is no limit to where some of these bosses go.

And unlike Pso, after you defeat a boss, even if you killed him a thousand times already..
[SPOILER-BOX]http://www.pso-world.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1947&pictureid=26987[/SPOILER-BOX]Its still a rewarding feeling

In the mmo genre of games, i've never had such insane boss battles before, let alone such entertaining gameplay. Your not just clicking on an enemy and spamming hotkeys, your actively fighting the entire time.

EDIT: here is an example of 2 bosses fighting each other as stated a few posts above
this is a video from a member of this site none the less.. i just forget who it is xD


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LrGYqvvNIU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LrGYqvvNIU
Though one thing im worried about is the fact that as a ranger you can kill alot of bosses from afar without ever taking any damage, just kite around them the entire time. When I was a hunter bosses were alot harder for me due to the fact that I as a hunter you have to be in close range 24/7

[FenixStryk]

The bosses are pretty fun, but the game never felt challenging enough for me. All of the boss attacks are telegraphed so it's easy to just dash through them, and a lot of them have unusual hitboxes (body slams only hit the ground, so you can jump through them to dodge, etc.).

Hopefully Very Hard will fix this? I mean, overall they have the aesthetic down pat.

[Arika]

Sounds good so far, 2 bosses at once sounds like a blast. Hopefully SEGA can scale them well though. It seems like in most games, as players get to higher levels, they get access to overpowered equipment that is so obnoxiously strong that bosses are no longer threats, no matter what level they are.


If you are referring to high-level players come back to slaughter the old boss very easily. Then of course, it gonna happen again. This is RPG.
Says, the boss is made for level 10 players to fight. If you are level 100. How couldn't it become easy?

Rockbear was hard at level 4, but it was joke on level 14. so... yes, you can't avoid that in RPG game where you can improve status accordingly to level and gear. Unless you are going for game such as Monster Hunter whereas level is not exist. They only have hunter rank which not increase status at all.

There are two way to go around about this :

A. Make level/ status become absolutely useless, so that boss can always be challenge. But I doubt they would do it. It is not how RPG game work.

B. Make boss in different level version. just like what it is going to happen in this game too. If your level is too high for normal mode, then you go play it on hard mode instead. and there could be very hard mode and ultimate mode again.

However, in the end, Method B wouldn't completely fix the weak boss issue, because high level players could always come back to play easy mode to farm any low rank items they missed. And this method also can't fill the issue of level gap too. If Dragon is lv 10 on normal mode and level 40 on hard mode. then people level between 20-30 will have to spam the easy lv-10 dragon.

[RocSage]

Right now I think the PSU bosses are poorly designed...Hunters are pretty much forced to switch to Gunslash with bosses which is lame in my opinion, but then that might change as people get better and new ways to battle the bosses are discovered. I remember PSO bosses were always hard to defeat the first time and for a while until you figured out how to do it and then it became pretty much a cake walk.

[Ce'Nedra]

Everyboss in any game becomes easy once you figure them out. It's just that you need to figure em out that makes them annoying. Ofcourse there are still bosses who are a bitch even if you figure them out but at least you stand a chance then.

Reminds me way back with Lufia 2 Rise of Sinistrals fighting the Tarantulla boss...man I cursed at that boss so many times with its frigging posion and paralyse, it kept kicking my ass like 30 times till I figured out to get the Fire Dagger from the previous dungeon...it became a blast then.

[moremouse]

what the fug

LOL! Indeed.

[SStrikerR]

If you are referring to high-level players come back to slaughter the old boss very easily. Then of course, it gonna happen again. This is RPG.
Says, the boss is made for level 10 players to fight. If you are level 100. How couldn't it become easy?

Rockbear was hard at level 4, but it was joke on level 14. so... yes, you can't avoid that in RPG game where you can improve status accordingly to level and gear. Unless you are going for game such as Monster Hunter whereas level is not exist. They only have hunter rank which not increase status at all.

There are two way to go around about this :

A. Make level/ status become absolutely useless, so that boss can always be challenge. But I doubt they would do it. It is not how RPG game work.

B. Make boss in different level version. just like what it is going to happen in this game too. If your level is too high for normal mode, then you go play it on hard mode instead. and there could be very hard mode and ultimate mode again.

However, in the end, Method B wouldn't completely fix the weak boss issue, because high level players could always come back to play easy mode to farm any low rank items they missed. And this method also can't fill the issue of level gap too. If Dragon is lv 10 on normal mode and level 40 on hard mode. then people level between 20-30 will have to spam the easy lv-10 dragon.


You completely misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not talking about high levels players going back to lower ranked missions and slaughtering bosses, no shit it would work that way.

Take for example PSU. By the time S rank missions were available, most bosses were easy to kill quickly. When S2 missions came out, they were STILL easy to kill RIGHT AWAY. Even though the bosses levels were increased, the difficulty did not change. People still killed them easily. That's what I'm wondering about. If SEGA will be able to scale the difficulty well enough at higher levels that bosses will remain somewhat of a challenge, instead of just a bigger enemy with more HP.

[Kous]

I just feel like i want the bosses to have like more than 2 things they would do to attack like in PSO the dragon only really did was go up into the air do a spin thing or go under ground and go in circles which was easy enough to dodge once u got the hang of it;-);-). Like many people love games becuz of the great bossed. I wanna see what Sega will bring in the boss department:rant::rant:

[RocSage]

what the fug

It's not so much "need" as it is I'm not going to waste my time on something that isn't effective...

Rockbears = Hi! I'm gonna hit you now. Ow. Why'd you hit me? Let's try again. Holy shit why did you fall on me?! One more time. I like you to but please put me dowww I don't want to fly. <dead>

Caterdran = I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! Ok that's enough of that I'm just going to stay right here. <dead>

Vol Dragon = run run run run run. I hit it! Yay 2 hits in a row. Wooo we're going now! Hey are you feeling this? Oh you're leaving now? ok. Run run run run run run. Oh look, a wall of fire. <dead>

Almost every, more difficult enemy, is pretty much design to be anti-melee to the point that you end up doing very little damage over all or simply get killed quickly if you try to melee them

[BIG OLAF]

It's not so much "need" as it is I'm not going to waste my time on something that isn't effective...

We could test that. You use nothing but a gunslash on a Caterdra'n, and I'll use nothing but a partisan, and we'll see who kills it faster.


Rockbears = Hi! I'm gonna hit you now. Ow. Why'd you hit me? Let's try again. Holy shit why did you fall on me?! One more time. I like you to but please put me dowww I don't want to fly. <dead>

Caterdran = I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! Ok that's enough of that I'm just going to stay right here. <dead>

Vol Dragon = run run run run run. I hit it! Yay 2 hits in a row. Wooo we're going now! Hey are you feeling this? Oh you're leaving now? ok. Run run run run run run. Oh look, a wall of fire. <dead>

If these are actual examples of what happens when you fight bosses, then I think you're, uh, doing something very wrong.

[RocSage]

I just feel like i want the bosses to have like more than 2 things they would do to attack like in PSO the dragon only really did was go up into the air do a spin thing or go under ground and go in circles which was easy enough to dodge once u got the hang of it;-);-). Like many people love games becuz of the great bossed. I wanna see what Sega will bring in the boss department:rant::rant:

That's not true PSO's dragon had a number of attacks.

It's been a while but it had:
Fire breath
tri-fireball
meteor fireball thing
bite
hit you when it walked by
Tail swing
dive underground
circle underground


Almost every boss in PSO had 2 modes where the first mode favored melee fighting and the second mode favored ranged fighting.

All the PSO2 bosses are "run run run" until it decides to stop and then you get maybe a hit or two before it moves again save for De Ragne which is pretty much impossible to get into melee range and if you do it simply moving hurts you and it almost never stops moving so, yeah.

[Taitu]

It's not so much "need" as it is I'm not going to waste my time on something that isn't effective...

Rockbears = Hi! I'm gonna hit you now. Ow. Why'd you hit me? Let's try again. Holy shit why did you fall on me?! One more time. I like you to but please put me dowww I don't want to fly. <dead>

Caterdran = I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! where'd it go? Oh over there. I hit it! Ok that's enough of that I'm just going to stay right here. <dead>

Vol Dragon = run run run run run. I hit it! Yay 2 hits in a row. Wooo we're going now! Hey are you feeling this? Oh you're leaving now? ok. Run run run run run run. Oh look, a wall of fire. <dead>

Almost every, more difficult enemy, is pretty much design to be anti-melee to the point that you end up doing very little damage over all or simply get killed quickly if you try to melee them

Learn to cancel with dodges?

[Valkyrie Lovrina]

That's not true PSO's dragon had a number of attacks.

It's been a while but it had:
Fire breath
tri-fireball
meteor fireball thing
bite
hit you when it walked by
Tail swing
dive underground
circle underground


just to clarify.
I don't remember the PSO Dragon ever biting or Tail swinging(De Ragen does tail swings in PSU though). I also remember circling under ground was something Sil Dragon did, not the basic dragon. unless your referring to Sil Dragon too. :-?

[RocSage]

just to clarify.
I don't remember the PSO Dragon ever biting or Tail swinging(De Ragen does tail swings in PSU though). I also remember circling under ground was something Sil Dragon did, not the basic dragon. unless your referring to Sil Dragon too. :-?

You sure? it's been years since i played the game so I am likely wrong.

[Valkyrie Lovrina]

You sure? it's been years since i played the game so I am likely wrong.I'm pretty sure. I played PSO most of last year.

[Brindizer]

The boss fights are taking a cue from Monster Hunter. If you've ever played a game in that series, you'll know what to expect from PSO2.

Especially in regards to them popping out of nowhere. Happens in MH all the time.

[Zorafim]

lmost every, more difficult enemy, is pretty much design to be anti-melee to the point that you end up doing very little damage over all or simply get killed quickly if you try to melee them

I think ranger had the easiest time, since it could either kite with the rifle, or snipe with the launcher. But I was still whaling on bosses as a hunter. Once you know what attacks to look out for, it's not that hard to dodge and counter.

Actually, that's why I enjoyed bosses so much in this game. It felt like an actual fight, as opposed to PSU's PA spam and mate chug fests. It was incredibly rewarding to run up there, weave through attacks, and get a massive strike in.
And oh my god, even healing was a blast. See someone take a ton of damage, run yourself over there, charge a heal, and move on to the next guy, throwing fireballs with PP allowing. So much fun.

[goldwing]

I think ranger had the easiest time, since it could either kite with the rifle, or snipe with the launcher. But I was still whaling on bosses as a hunter. Once you know what attacks to look out for, it's not that hard to dodge and counter.

Actually, that's why I enjoyed bosses so much in this game. It felt like an actual fight, as opposed to PSU's PA spam and mate chug fests. It was incredibly rewarding to run up there, weave through attacks, and get a massive strike in.
And oh my god, even healing was a blast. See someone take a ton of damage, run yourself over there, charge a heal, and move on to the next guy, throwing fireballs with PP allowing. So much fun.

I found healing a pain compared to pso on a boss. Mates are way to slow compared to pso and even psu. But like any game i just gotta get used to it

[BIG OLAF]

I found healing a pain compared to pso on a boss. Mates are way to slow compared to pso and even psu. But like any game i just gotta get used to it

That's the point. Since mates take more time to ingest, it turns it into a tactical thing. It makes it so you can't just spam Trimates and be invincible. You actually have to wait for the appropriate time to use them.

[goldwing]

That's the point. Since mates take more time to ingest, it turns it into a tactical thing. It makes it so you can't just spam Trimates and be invincible. You actually have to wait for the appropriate time to use them.

But its sooooooo much work.... yea you have a point there tho and i love to think things through before i do it its like chess to me at that point.

[lostinseganet]

I love the fact that in pso2 the bosses can move about the level. They are not stuck in a specific spot.

[Zorafim]

I found healing a pain compared to pso on a boss. Mates are way to slow compared to pso and even psu. But like any game i just gotta get used to it

I meant being a healer. Getting people to sit still was a pain, but nothing a macro can't cure. And as was mentioned, slow healing adds to tension, difficulty, and balancing. Difficult healing means easier dodging.
So, painful healing means more fun bosses!

[catwat]

Any monster in the game is extremely easy and just a joke to defeat. Their damage is ridiculously low their attacks can be dodged easily(oh hi Forces). Well what else to say? Even a brainless can beat anything in this game if he is familiar with the game controls. Its still fun to play and im not trying to rant here at any point, just stating the facts based on my experiences. Besides im not playing PSO for a challange either, there are harder games than that.

[goldwing]

I meant being a healer. Getting people to sit still was a pain, but nothing a macro can't cure. And as was mentioned, slow healing adds to tension, difficulty, and balancing. Difficult healing means easier dodging.
So, painful healing means more fun bosses!

tis true tis true

[Drifting Fable]

By the way has anyone heard about boss weak points?

Apparently if you attack a specific spot on the boss it could be the difference between a 100 and a 500 damage point. For example the Rockbear doesn't like getting slashed at in the face.

[Halcyote]

whoever said that hunters were reduced to using gunslash for boss fights is hilarious.

[BIG OLAF]

By the way has anyone heard about boss weak points?

Apparently if you attack a specific spot on the boss it could be the difference between a 100 and a 500 damage point. For example the Rockbear doesn't like getting slashed at in the face.

Yes, we know. Dark Ragne's exposed legs and "brain", Vol Dragon's back spike, nose horn, and tail crystal, and the Caterdra'n's "stretchy" weak spots. It's common knowledge.

[NoiseHERO]

whoever said that hunters were reduced to using gunslash for boss fights is hilarious.

/Fought Vol Dragon barehanded just to troll my teammates.

[goldwing]

Also if there boosted they have a weak spot

[Macman]

The thing about fighting bosses as a HU is you have to rely solely on a counter-attack strategy. You have to wait around until the boss finally attacks, avoid the attack, then strike while the boss is still recovering from attacking.

[Titan]

PSU started out extremely difficult. It was so difficult that the majority of the population stayed in Parum 99% of the time.
Anyone that tried to go to Moatoob with a full party was completely slaughtered even before they reached the boss. Then everything from level length to enemy HP, attack speed, was all nerfed to hell while players were buffed to infinity making mid and now end game extremely easy.

I found PSO2 start game to be extremely easy. The PA system feels similar to PSU, where I just spam PA's over and over til everything is dead. After watching several TA's, I saw a lot of fast boss deaths and entire missions where the person would only kill 1 enemy to obtain a mission item and leave. I think 20 seconds was the kill record for the dragon and 35 seconds for Ragne each with only 3 party members.

[Blackheart521]

PSU started out extremely difficult. It was so difficult that the majority of the population stayed in Parum 99% of the time.
Anyone that tried to go to Moatoob with a full party was completely slaughtered even before they reached the boss. Then everything from level length to enemy HP, attack speed, was all nerfed to hell while players were buffed to infinity making mid and now end game extremely easy.

I found PSO2 start game to be extremely easy. The PA system feels similar to PSU, where I just spam PA's over and over til everything is dead. After watching several TA's, I saw a lot of fast boss deaths and entire missions where the person would only kill 1 enemy to obtain a mission item and leave. I think 20 seconds was the kill record for the dragon and 35 seconds for Ragne each with only 3 party members.

The only reason why people have such insanely fast kill times is because weak bullet was massively OP in the CB, once they nerf that down it'll balance out the difficulty a bit.

Probably about 95% of the time I was in CB I hadn't chanced upon partying with any ranger and all my boss fights took over 5 minutes typically... hell some took 15-20 minutes like my first fight with the rockbears with just me and my friend who was a force and I think we were like level 9 or 10.

If you're playing at the appropriate level and didn't have the OP skills/PAs then the game was fairly challenging.^^

[soulpimpwizzurd]

as of now the bosses are pretty easy. even more so if there's at least two people. solo it's slightly more difficult, but if there's two people, for some reason the boss will mostly focus on one dude, so if you're a hunter with sword gear you can do huge damage from behind.

i'm more curious about the snow panther boss the most, it seems like that boss will render sword gear highly inefficient, since all it does is move everywhere super fast with huge long range swipe attacks, which will make it hard to keep the sword gear gauge up.

i have a feeling due to the possible variety of speed of bosses, since sword gear is best against slow moving bosses, partisan is the safest choice of weapon throughout the entire game. it moves faster than sword and has a good array of photon arts, including a very broken PA that makes it incredibly easy to hit the weak point/s of many bosses. however simply due to challenge /possible larger damage output / fun, i'm going to stick with sword even if it may be a bad idea in the future. luckily, i personally don't find the partisan gear gauge to be necessary for the way i play anyway, so i'll just switch to partisan for bosses that need it, and if i think i can handle it, go sword.

[Omega-z]

In-fact a Force can melee the bosses too and kill them. My fastest time 1:42 with the Caterdran. It's fun to smack my rod across there head's. "ME" is very fun to use so that I can dodge every hit to the point I don't need to heal as much, But I still do at times and just wait until I can.

[Angelo]

The main reason I loved the bosses in PSO so much more than PSU is because of how well they utilized their environment. Fighting De Rol Le and Vol Opt wouldn't have been quite as memorable or dynamic had you not fought them in their respective environments. It made the battles much more than 'tank and spank'. These bosses had gimmicks and set moments of experience vulnerability like in single-player console games.

PSO2 does this to a degree, but considering the fact that bosses can randomly spawn in randomized maps means that we probably won't be seeing anything like this. Still crossing my fingers though.

[Blackheart521]

The main reason I loved the bosses in PSO so much more than PSU is because of how well they utilized their environment. Fighting De Rol Le and Vol Opt wouldn't have been quite as memorable or dynamic had you not fought them in their respective environments. It made the battles much more than 'tank and spank'. These bosses had gimmicks and set moments of experience vulnerability like in single-player console games.

PSO2 does this to a degree, but considering the fact that bosses can randomly spawn in randomized maps means that we probably won't be seeing anything like this. Still crossing my fingers though.

This is already in effect Dark Ragne can only climb on the walls in his stage, otherwise he just bounces around when he randomly appears... this actually just got me thinking though, is the desert Antlion boss going to pop up in Forest or Caves? That would be weird to see in those environments.

[SStrikerR]

PSU started out extremely difficult. It was so difficult that the majority of the population stayed in Parum 99% of the time.
Anyone that tried to go to Moatoob with a full party was completely slaughtered even before they reached the boss. Then everything from level length to enemy HP, attack speed, was all nerfed to hell while players were buffed to infinity making mid and now end game extremely easy.


I remember that. I enjoy a challenge like that though. But hey, if bosses can appear out of nowhere in PSO2, and possibly more then one at the same time? That's a start.

[Arika]

You completely misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not talking about high levels players going back to lower ranked missions and slaughtering bosses, no shit it would work that way.

Take for example PSU. By the time S rank missions were available, most bosses were easy to kill quickly. When S2 missions came out, they were STILL easy to kill RIGHT AWAY. Even though the bosses levels were increased, the difficulty did not change. People still killed them easily. That's what I'm wondering about. If SEGA will be able to scale the difficulty well enough at higher levels that bosses will remain somewhat of a challenge, instead of just a bigger enemy with more HP.

If your hope is to have old boss in "high rank" become hard for players in proper level. Well, the probability is still low still..

Because players would learn all the tactic and become expert since the lower rank version. And if it is not "ultimate mode" I doubt any A.I. from boss will change other than hit harder and more HP. SO players who know all of his pattern will do the cake walk on him.

It is so much different once you learn boss A.I. Says, I was there playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. and the final boss was very hard that most of the new team would either lose him or win but spent 50 min... Then later we fought him more to farm his item. and we could finish him off within 10 min mark time and barely take any single hit. Basically, any boss become cake walk when you learn his pattern. That is all to it. and I doubt that Sega will change boss pattern in every "level". Probability very low.

[soulpimpwizzurd]

and I doubt that Sega will change boss pattern in every "level". Probability very low.

yeah i have a feeling it's a lot harder to change enemy ai than simply increase the amount of hp/attack/defense of the boss instead. which is too bad.

ys is a great exception to this though. in a good amount of ys games, boss attacks/ai change significantly the harder the difficulty, which makes that game stand out to me.

[Randomness]

If your hope is to have old boss in "high rank" become hard for players in proper level. Well, the probability is still low still..

Because players would learn all the tactic and become expert since the lower rank version. And if it is not "ultimate mode" I doubt any A.I. from boss will change other than hit harder and more HP. SO players who know all of his pattern will do the cake walk on him.

It is so much different once you learn boss A.I. Says, I was there playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. and the final boss was very hard that most of the new team would either lose him or win but spent 50 min... Then later we fought him more to farm his item. and we could finish him off within 10 min mark time and barely take any single hit. Basically, any boss become cake walk when you learn his pattern. That is all to it. and I doubt that Sega will change boss pattern in every "level". Probability very low.

Yeah, Alatreon is a pain in the ass until you get the attacks down. Of course, having teammates who know what sleepbombing is (for anyone who hasn't played, it basically involves using a bunch of consumables at once to blow the monster up) and can do it makes it easier. I got to where I could stick on his legs well enough that he'd flinch all over the place. (Using Nardeboche)

To be fair, Ep 1 had nothing in the way of boss AI really. Dragon and De Rol Le had fixed attack orders. Vol Opt and Falz just picked a random attack and did it (Falz picking between two attack sequences at random in his final form, to the agony of players everywhere when he did soul steal over and over).

As far as PSO2 bosses go, the rockbear is trivial to learn. Ragne is a pain because of all his hard to avoid stuff (I swear the hitboxes on the discs are MUCH larger than the model). Didn't get to dragon in the CB, but the first boss of the caves was more a pain to fight (solo, anyways, much easier in group) because it burrowed if you were ever out of range and attacked quickly if you were in range... with fairly wide attack areas and no convenient self-stunning like the rockbears do.

[Chik'Tikka]

yeah i have a feeling it's a lot harder to change enemy ai than simply increase the amount of hp/attack/defense of the boss instead. which is too bad.

ys is a great exception to this though. in a good amount of ys games, boss attacks/ai change significantly the harder the difficulty, which makes that game stand out to me.

some of the Halo games showed a good amount of AI change with difficulty, eventually leading them to work together extremely well such as perform flanks, suicide runs, co-ordinated grenade tosses, etc., which was a great thing in an age where shooter difficulty (talking to you gears of war) would just increase enemy health and give them mystical headshot powers+^_^+ i hope the new challenge mode thing PSO2 has will will give us more complex AI rather then just stronger enemies+^_^+

[Randomness]

some of the Halo games showed a good amount of AI change with difficulty, eventually leading them to work together extremely well such as perform flanks, suicide runs, co-ordinated grenade tosses, etc., which was a great thing in an age where shooter difficulty (talking to you gears of war) would just increase enemy health and give them mystical headshot powers+^_^+ i hope the new challenge mode thing PSO2 has will will give us more complex AI rather then just stronger enemies+^_^+

Difficulty levels are most likely stronger enemies, possibly new attacks/forms.

Challenge mode is sounding like it's similar to PSO and PSP2: Set starting level and items (generally much lower than would allow you to finish comfortably, sometimes suicidally low - Gal Gryphon could easily blow off 90%+ of any non-cast's HP)

[Zorafim]

The thing about fighting bosses as a HU is you have to rely solely on a counter-attack strategy. You have to wait around until the boss finally attacks, avoid the attack, then strike while the boss is still recovering from attacking.

Get better at canceling. You should be able to stop your attacks, at any time, without getting hit. And once you get that counter attack is when you unload. If you do it right, it's like a proper fight, where you need to worry about offense and defense at the same time. You know, like what actually happens in fights.

[Macman]

Get better at canceling.
Next you're going to tell me to start wavedashing and shffl'ing. It's easy to unload on a boss that's distracted targetting another player, but when you're soloing you either need reflexes of a rat hopped up on crack, or have invested a ton of skill points to your dash invuln time given how tiny your window is to dodge with the HU dash.

[Zorafim]

Is this a bad time to mention I've soloed that slinky boss without any skill points at level 12 my first time doing that mission?

[Chik'Tikka]

Get better at canceling. You should be able to stop your attacks, at any time, without getting hit. And once you get that counter attack is when you unload. If you do it right, it's like a proper fight, where you need to worry about offense and defense at the same time. You know, like what actually happens in fights.

i like this, reminds me of the proper ways to play a fighter+^_^+ considering how much better HU is now, i night give it a go!!!

[Archandes]

The boss fight is quite thrilling and the random encounter is just amazing. Although most of them move quite slow compared to what i experienced in HR 60++ Monster hunter Frontier, it's still worth it.

I hope they implement difficulty/hardcore mode for more challenging & better reward.

[catwat]

as of now the bosses are pretty easy. even more so if there's at least two people. solo it's slightly more difficult, but if there's two people, for some reason the boss will mostly focus on one dude, so if you're a hunter with sword gear you can do huge damage from behind.

i'm more curious about the snow panther boss the most, it seems like that boss will render sword gear highly inefficient, since all it does is move everywhere super fast with huge long range swipe attacks, which will make it hard to keep the sword gear gauge up.

i have a feeling due to the possible variety of speed of bosses, since sword gear is best against slow moving bosses, partisan is the safest choice of weapon throughout the entire game. it moves faster than sword and has a good array of photon arts, including a very broken PA that makes it incredibly easy to hit the weak point/s of many bosses. however simply due to challenge /possible larger damage output / fun, i'm going to stick with sword even if it may be a bad idea in the future. luckily, i personally don't find the partisan gear gauge to be necessary for the way i play anyway, so i'll just switch to partisan for bosses that need it, and if i think i can handle it, go sword.

I dont know much about those gears. On my HU i only had partisan gear and it was more of a gimmick than anything. The boost wasnt that great in damage and it had a huge downtime (weapon recovery animation) to get the gear gauge fill up. I just ended up spamming and slashing my way through things and dodging to cancel out lags. Only used the gear to charge up before fights when i felt like it. Well heck I still dont even know what they all do now. I only noticed a little increase in basic attack damage.

[Blackheart521]

I dont know much about those gears. On my HU i only had partisan gear and it was more of a gimmick than anything. The boost wasnt that great in damage and it had a huge downtime (weapon recovery animation) to get the gear gauge fill up. I just ended up spamming and slashing my way through things and dodging to cancel out lags. Only used the gear to charge up before fights when i felt like it. Well heck I still dont even know what they all do now. I only noticed a little increase in basic attack damage.

Sword gear was boss as hell, Rising Edge with full Sword gear took like a second to fully charge which gave a pretty good boost in DPS compared to without sword gear where it typically takes like 7 seconds to fully charge.

[Cyclon]

I dont know much about those gears. On my HU i only had partisan gear and it was more of a gimmick than anything. The boost wasnt that great in damage and it had a huge downtime (weapon recovery animation) to get the gear gauge fill up. I just ended up spamming and slashing my way through things and dodging to cancel out lags. Only used the gear to charge up before fights when i felt like it. Well heck I still dont even know what they all do now. I only noticed a little increase in basic attack damage.

Basically, all three gauges have the same effect on about every PA; slightly higher damage(~15%?), and slightly wider aoe.

While it's not really the subject of this topic, I can't help but notice that none of you are mentionning the wired lance. Which is quite surprising since I found it quite effective and pretty cool to use. Of course, the problem might be how they're hardly of any use against bosses, and this particular topic being about bosses, but still.

So, on topic anyway, bosses were... inequal. The rockbear was, sadly, a bit uninteresting(which is a shame since it's the very first boss), as long as he's alone. Two rockbears are probably better, but alas, this never happened to me. The snake dragon thing, which I didn't bother to memorize the name of, though... sucks. Pretty much. Fighting him alone is a chore. Not that it's hard, it's just bad.

The two others, though, were incredible. Even though Dark Ragne was pretty easy once you got the hang of it, fighting him always felt epic, even more so as a random event. No one can speak about this game until they've faced him at level ~10ish in the middle of the forest, at the moment they least expected him, and been forced to unite with players they didn't even know just to survive the encounter. It's thrilling.
And Vol dragon, while feeling a bit too "monster hunter-esque" at times, is no doubt the best of the bunch. Lots of different attacks, decent challenge even after you've fought him multiple times, and lots of epicness. Great boss, thanks god he's here so that I could forget about the first "cave"'s boss, which is only decent as an emergency code.

Overall, the two "bad" bosses aren't so bad, since rockbears do have some variety, and that other thing is only a minor boss anyway. The good ones though, are just that; good. So in the end, I'm pretty happy with boss battles in this game so far.

[moremouse]

...and been forced to unite with players they didn't even know just to survive the encounter. It's thrilling.


Those moments were great. Especially when it got stupid crazy with multiple spawns/respawns.

[goldwing]

Basically, all three gauges have the same effect on about every PA; slightly higher damage(~15%?), and slightly wider aoe.

While it's not really the subject of this topic, I can't help but notice that none of you are mentionning the wired lance. Which is quite surprising since I found it quite effective and pretty cool to use. Of course, the problem might be how they're hardly of any use against bosses.
I found them very useful against bosses. Maybe its cause i love them maybe its cause i used that cyclone pa or it even could b the fact that i have distance with the wep. I used nothing but wired lances in cbt. Till death do us part. Forget you sword users lance is the way to go. Jk but i am a lance fan all the way.

[soulpimpwizzurd]

Next you're going to tell me to start wavedashing and shffl'ing. It's easy to unload on a boss that's distracted targetting another player, but when you're soloing you either need reflexes of a rat hopped up on crack, or have invested a ton of skill points to your dash invuln time given how tiny your window is to dodge with the HU dash.

lol dis guy. i'll only give you a -little- leeway because i GUEESSSS the accordion dragon has a slightly higher learning curve than the other bosses. but you just have to stay in this one area around his midsection the entire time and you'll be fine. all of his movies will get -really- close to you, but your dodge will make it just in time, pretty much every time. the hitboxes for boss attacks in this game are super precise, so it's doable. also you can guard like zora said. you don't need reflexes hopped up on crack. nor do you have to invest an absurd amount of points into the invincibility frames for hunter dash. in fact, i think investing more points than what you need for dash attack is a waste, it already moves fast enough you might as well have invincibility frames.

trust me, after you play it enough you'll be whining about how it should be harder, i'm positive.

also, in your case, you should at least practice canceling if you haven't done so. when i'm in a public ship and the mission isn't starting i usually just practice dashing everywhere. also protip that i didn't notice and you may have noticed but i didn't so i'm letting you know since it may help you play more aggressively:

spear/wiredlance/gunslash/unarmed all dash significantly faster, and recover from the dashing animation faster, than sword. which is why if you're playing sword it is imperative that you learn how to cancel to make up for it's lack of speed.

if you wanna learn more about canceling you can check out the info thread i created. it should bring you up to speed on how to dashjumpdash multiple directions. http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194622

oh yeah. theres another thing you could do. GOOO RAAAANGERRR AHAH! (:>

honestly i gotta say man this is reminding me of how i complained about the acceleration pedal on my car and how it felt stiff to my dad when i was learning how to drive. he told me to place my entire foot on the pedal and try then (i was previously doing the "big toe" thing they teach in schools looloolololol) and suddenly the pedal went down like a greased pig on a mudslide. he then proceeded to tell me this:

"don't blame the car, blame the driver."

dont blame the game, blame the player. until the game starts doing unavoidable/guardable 1hko's that are super spammy and require you to make defense mags with maximum elemental defense unite equipped for the boss you're fighting.

i gotta say in this case, pso2 has created quite a fine combat system, and no bosses i have fought are unfair.

but ay dawg at the end of the day it's all advice mayn. you can do whatever the FUCK YOU WANT! GYAHAHAHA

[Cyclon]

I found them very useful against bosses. Maybe its cause i love them maybe its cause i used that cyclone pa or it even could b the fact that i have distance with the wep. I used nothing but wired lances in cbt. Till death do us part. Forget you sword users lance is the way to go. Jk but i am a lance fan all the way.

Well, against bosses, channeled PA's are no good most of the time, in single player anyway. Some bosses move around too much, and some others destroy you during the PA's animation since you're defenseless. And Vol dragon does both. You do deal huge damage, though, especially using the "izuna drop" kinda PA. But you'll probably be dead before the boss anyway(^_^')

[Randomness]

Those moments were great. Especially when it got stupid crazy with multiple spawns/respawns.

And then you finally kill it, only to get... CHANGE OVER: CODE: DUEL! A second one immediately spawns.

[Macman]

You guys make it sound like I die to everything a dozen times. That only happened when I tried soloing Dark Ragne lv20! D:

[Finalzone]

Being caged in that trap nest is also a mini-boss by itself.

[Randomness]

Being caged in that trap nest is also a mini-boss by itself.

Code: Rescue?

Depends on what you're using. I just throw a card straight up and proceed to sterilize the area with Razonde.

[goldwing]

Well, against bosses, channeled PA's are no good most of the time, in single player anyway. Some bosses move around too much, and some others destroy you during the PA's animation since you're defenseless. And Vol dragon does both. You do deal huge damage, though, especially using the "izuna drop" kinda PA. But you'll probably be dead before the boss anyway(^_^')

huh maybe it was just me but i didn't seem to have that problem gear gauge helped damage wise but even so i didn't use much pa's unless it was the castrodon or whatever his name is and i did solo 95% of the time. i did however have to dodge ALOT maybe that's the catch with that weapon type.

[soulpimpwizzurd]

Being caged in that trap nest is also a mini-boss by itself.

i loved being the rescue-ee of the code rescue. cagefighting at its finest. all you have to do is get to the edge of the cage and circle using dash attack>pa and the kills just keep comin.

[catwat]

Being caged in that trap nest is also a mini-boss by itself.

Haha yeah happened to me when i was trying to leech off people with level 6 or so in urban recovery. Great exp though, stuff just kept coming.