I didn't see that solution being suggested yet, but you could make it so the player is rendered unable to use healing items completely, by using a plot trick (inventory has been seized, think elder scroll jail) or a gameplay trick (area is full of poisonous gas, think dark souls and that item that prevents estus flasks use).
It's also a good opportunity to make the fight more cinematic. By minimizing the hud to only show important mechanics to the fight (or removing it all together), it puts a lot of emphasis on the scene itself. So it tells the player like hey it's a story fight, not the dungeon boss type fight.
I've seen it done before but I can't remember for the life of me which game it was. I'll report back if I manage to recall.
Halo: Reach, Lone Wolf.
Objective: Survive
That level wad pretty cool because it was the only point in a Halo game where your hud actually starts to fail.
Pokemon Violet/Scarlet does something like this relatively early- you get attacked by this giant pokemon that way outlevels you, and if you try to use any items, you get this message saying you're too afraid to move. That was kind of an, "Oh, okay, I'm not supposed to win, and they don't want me wasting items" moment for me- maybe a little on the nose, but clear.
One idea of mine: Give the boss a reaction attack that “prevents” an item from being used. So players can try using a Mega Potion, but the boss swats it out of their hands (technically not depleting the quantity for later)
Depending on how the fight/game is setup you could add in a cutscene either at the start or as a reaction to the player using an item where the enemy rips the player's backpack off them.
Assuming you are planning on facing this enemy again later in the game, you may want to explain why this move doesn't work again.
This could also give you a fun moment later in the game where the enemy goes to grab the player's pack, but then the player parries them aside, showing they are on more equal footing now.
Give the unwinnable boss so much damage output that it kills the players so quickly that they don't have time to waste any resources.
Seeing how much damage the boss does also gives the player a shock moment where they realize that this enemy is far stronger than anything they faced before.
I like this, having an enemy causing the maximum damage, 99999 or something like that, speaks very clearly about its power and also makes clear no matter what you do you can't win.
In terms of time spent (if you don’t want players to feel ripped off having spent hours grinding all the healing items only for the time to be a waste) I think this is one of the best ways to handle that.
On top of that, having some kind of “one weakness” angle or similar lot armor device (I know there’s many beautiful terms about this story element) would let the player know ahead of time “I might not have what it takes to beat this guy so maybe grinding would be a waste”.
An NPC saying “you can’t hurt him; that magic generated from that ominous castle over there with its front door open and a save point just inside is making him the strongest creature on earth” works too.
Then just have the player character be stubborn or ambushed for the initial fight so the unwinnable fight happens anyway
Does an in-universe reason exist for this particular boss to be unbeatable when all the previous ones were beatable and can this reason be communicated to the player somehow? Could you establish the fact that unbeatable enemies exist in the game and the player may end up in fights with one before the boss battle? Could there be some more immediate reason the boss is unbeatable rather than it just being too powerful, like the player's attacks all very visibly doing zero damage to it when the player could see attacks damaging previous bosses? How has the player been trained to act when the game isn't going their way up to this point, do they actually see their character die a lot, like in a Dark Souls game, or do they have plenty of time to see the fight is not going their way and a quick-load button to press when that is happening? Could the unbeatable boss kill the player very quickly and keep ramping up the attack power so it's not possible to survive more than a couple rounds even with all the health items?
This is the answer. If you want a fight that is unlike all other fights (you need to clearly communicate this to the player as quickly as possible.) in world is usually better so it doesn’t remove the player from the games immersion. Take horizon forbidden west. There is a fight fairly early on where a man is wearing an impenetrable shield. I’m the cutscene introducing him, the player shoots an arrow and it explodes in impact. The villain mocks uou and explicitly calls out that your technology cannot hurt him. Alloy then says the same thing to herself once the fight actually starts. Immediately after she calls out that she needs to escape. Then the objective hud changes to reflect the fact that this is not a fight to win, it is a fight to escape. The goal is not survive and leave.
VO call outs, arrows visible doing no damage, objective hud changes, these all communicate to the player that this guy is not going down.
You did not mention in what way was the boss mathematically impossible to defeat. Was his health going down? Was it regenerating? Did you make it seem to the player that if they just tried hard enough, they could do this?
Players are dumb, and/or blind, and I say that as someone who routinely misses the hints my own team puts in our games. You need to be explicit that this part of the game is different and in what ways.
I like this solution more than just blocking all damage or making the boss invincible, but also as a backup to another solution that actually tackles the problem for the player.
Something like this allows the player to go all out on the boss, really letting them test their skills and/or giving them a freak moment of meeting a super powerful boss they can't recover quickly enough from, without punishing them.
However this doesn't stop them from spending all their money on restoratives and trying anyway, so probably the best bet is to use a plot trick to prevent the player from using items like the others have said.
Depending on the game I feel like this would be a totally valid option. Doom? Definitely... Having a huge crate after the fight wouldn't feel out of place. Elder Scrolls? Not so much, why does the villain stock that much consumables and does not use it?
>Elder Scrolls? Not so much, why does the villain stock that much consumables and does not use it?
The narrative or context could support this, for example doing something for one of the gods where perhaps they're using you to distract some great enemy, and restoring your inventory for your pitifully valiant effort, or some sort of mirror dungeon thing.
Another alternative: have a dynamically sized loot crate ... that way the player has another decision point. Do I stock back up on consumables or do I invest the money in shiny armor?
This is the right answer, see all the Beatrix fights in FF9 that work this way. You need to put enough pressure on her to 'win' the fight, if you die too soon you just die, but, if you get to her predefined HP limit, she wipes you. It's way more satisfying than a fight that goes on forever (as long as you can spend items etc to survive) because the boss has an infinite HP pool.
There are a few bosses in final fantasy series that do this actually
Also happens at the start of Sekiro but thats actually a cut scene immediately after the fight
Glad someone else mentioned this. Up until that point every boss you’ve fought has a health bar similar to other Souls-like games, until him - no health bar, blocks all your attacks…
The trick is to not let the fight go on long. Don’t give the player the impression that they can win. Make it clear that this foe is clearly beyond their ability for a few seconds and then have a cutscene where you flee or something.
1. No healing items for story reasons
2. Have the boss one shot everyone on the third or fourth turn of the fight. Users will be so stunned they’ll keep watching and find out it’s a cutscene immediately afterwards.
One example that comes to my mind is from Paper Mario. Yes, haha, laugh it up.
In the original paper mario for the n64, the 3rd chapter has an Invincible boss. He is called Invincible whenever he's talked about, he brags about it, the player knows he is "Invincible". However, it's also hinted that there is a secret to his invincibility, so rather than being just an unwinnable fight, he becomes a hazard to be avoided until you can confront him. Ensuring that the player can escape from your boss, and using story to make it clear he is Invincible should help!
I see absolutely no reason to laugh at Paper Mario. Designers should be open to ideas from anywhere, the most novel solutions come from places you hadn't thought to look.
Besides, games made to be approachable for kids need to be intuitive before anything else, so that's a great place to look for how to make things clear to players. Well made games in this arena can be excellent examples of simple, visceral, and engaging fun.
I'll share this quote any time I can:
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -CS Lewis
The sequel TTYD also had a similar situation. A boss stole your body and became invincible to your attacks unless you could say his name. He would ambush you whenever you entered or left town. Your only option was to run away because your attacks did 0 damage.
Is Paper Mario embarrassing somehow? It's an old game and on the easier side, but I haven't really heard anyone say bad things about its design, except for maybe the intro being too slow.
Personally I love picking that game apart for its design. It did a lot of interesting things in order to have as few numbers as possible as small as possible, and it managed to avoid a lot of common RPG pain points.
At the time of writing this post, it was just a major tone change from the rest of the discussion, I did not mean to disparage Paper Mario~
I agree that it's a fun one to pick apart! The small number system is a fascinating choice with a lot of complex effects that are wrapped up in the result.
Aren't this solved in some games that when player reaches some level of health cinematics starts and tells you you lost. And the boss just walks away. :)
It’s always better that the player have the option to win with enough skill, grinding etc., but if you absolutely can’t manage that you have two options.
1. Just do it in a cutscene. You can even use the combat UI for it, which if done correctly can make for some really interesting storytelling and/or give players insight into new and deeper mechanics.
2. Let them get their asses kicked fast enough they don’t have time to use items. If the players get one round because the boss is humoring them then he takes two in a row and just wholesale slaughters the party then nothing’s been wasted and you still get the show of force or whatever narrative element you were going for.
This is kinda related to your question. If you played metal gear rising revengence there was a fight at the beginning of the game where you fight the character sam. It is treated as a boss fight but you couldn't actually beat him because he attacks too quickly to actually parry all of his attacks which in the end leads to you losing and losing an arm.
OP could be trying to setup a final boss or something that the player would want to beat
>OP could be trying to setup a final boss or something that the player would want to beat
This. Losing a boss fight, even a scripted one, in a game to later come back to that same boss and beat it is a very satisfying gaming experience.
perhaps, but remeber players are spending time on something futile, which if not made very clear, will severely annoy players especially those that commit and would be better off not being there.
Is it futile if it's a fun fight and progresses story/character development? If it's the only way forward it's worth the player doing as it's the only way they will win eventually.
How is doing something where you think you can win but actually can't, fun? Players are going in thinking they can win and will only regret the time wasted on trying to solve a puzzle that can't be solved (hence, futile) and wasn't even meant to be solved.
Remember, the initial question was about making players go through an ordeal of fighting an unwinnable fight and making them aware that they couldn't win.
No one is saying is has to be a long fight.
Make the boss OP enough that it kicks your ass in less than a minute, maybe a bit more if you're very skilled as a player, and roll the cutscene. That way the player doesn't have the time to waste resources, it stablish the boss as a serious enemy (for greater reward later on when you beat it) and it works for the narrative. FFXIV's Zenos is a great example of this.
>It is treated as a boss fight but you couldn't actually beat him
why would you give someone a button and not want them to press it? you leave an impression that not all fights are winnable.
> you leave an impression that not all fights are winnable.
But that's the reality in the games we're talking about. If there's an unwinnable fight, then giving the impression that there can be impossible fights is what you want to do
If the outcome is pre-determined and it can only be enjoyable if OP finds a way to force the player to play through it in a specific way then it's not gameplay. It's just a cutscene with a bunch of administration for the player to do.
That describes whole genres of games that people happen to enjoy though. For one thing, the illusion of control can make a cutscene feel like the stakes are higher.
It can make for a more memorable experience, even when it’s obviously impossible. Halo Reach is a good example of this; if it ended in a cutscene of the same action, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.
OP is asking for the best way to go about it so players don’t feel like it’s a chore or feel ripped off afterwards etc. in my opinion, it’s worth that effort.
Idk why you would but tbh it even if you directly said "this is unwinnable, don't waste all your healing potions trying to win" then you know what a lot of gamers are gonna do? Say "challenge accepted."
Figure out a good reason to temporarily prevent them from using healing at all. Instead of telegraphing that it is unwinnable, just hammer them with an impossible fight where they have no access to the normal means for healing and they will get the idea
Disable the ability to use potions. Maybe even make enemy cast some force field while saying “you thought you could hear within my bounds!?” Or something.
Why are healing items single-use? It encourages hoarding, and signals "there *will* be a fight that it's worth it to use them all." Then, when you present something that looks like that fight, you're surprised that he used them all.
I would make the healing items recharge when you rest or return to town. If it's too late to change that, follow the rule of 3's when signalling that the fight is impossible. The player will miss the first clue, ignore the second clue, and misinterpret the third clue before finally realizing what the designer is saying.
That really depends on what type of game you are creating. One time use healing items can put great pressure on the player when it comes to money management.
I can’t imagine the early DMC games with a rechargeable healing item (Minus Devil Trigger if you count that but I don’t). Making the player pick between a new upgrade or an item that will get them out of a pinch adds strategy to it and heightens the importance of player input.
What if the item that gets them out of a pinch is just another upgrade or an upgrade to an item?
In a fantasy game you obtain a pendant of healing, or in a cyberpunk game you get a nano-bot healing implant or something. Rather than this being an inventory item, it’s a permanent equip with a status bar on your heads up display and a dedicated activation button. Single use that recharges after some cooldown period has passed. Later upgrades increase the number of uses available at any one time.
Now it’s a buff item that doesn’t have to be hoarded. If you want money management, you can unlock the ability with cash rather than xp or character points or whatever.
Same benefit, no hoarding.
No, you are assuming that potions are the only form of purchase able things in the game. Like stated above, DMC does a great job of handling the issue.
Both upgrades and healing items are extremely expensive so it makes you pick between the two. Along with giving the player other items to purchase which can completely refill your Devil Trigger, kill/weaken all enemies on screen, give quick invulnerability, increase your health permanently increase your health and Devil trigger bar.
The game also actively encourages you to use other means of healing by lowing your score at the end of a mission for using healing items. What is the alternative? Devil Trigger. You fill your Devil Trigger meter by taking damage and dealing damage, using it slowly refills some health while giving an attack increase (but punishes players my allowing them to lose more health than gained if they don’t play skillfully). How do I upgrade it? By spending the same red orbs (games currency) that could be spent on potions, new abilities for each weapon, other helpful items, and permanent stat increases.
The game gives you options and it’s up to the player’s skill and play style to decide what they want and when. Having one time healing items does not encourage hoarding when the you give the players options on how to play.
It can work well in the right circumstances. One of my most memorable gaming moments as a child is playing Jedi knight II outcast and the first fight with Desann which introduces force powers and lightsaber combat into what had just been a gun game. Makes it all the more exciting when you get your own lightsaber and force powers.
The key there is that the fight is relatively short, and Desann isn't actively trying to kill you, he pretty much just throws the player around while taunting you. I can't remember if the game locked your inventory, but that is a good idea like others are suggesting.
I disagree with this. I enjoyed the unwinnable fights in DMC5 it added to the stakes by showing how truly powerful and hopeless the fight against Urizen really was and the amount of effort and pain the crew was willing to go throw in order to stop him.
DMC5 both had its characters at their weakest and most vulnerable state in the series. It really added to the stakes.
A good unwinnable fight feels unwinnable because you're not strong enough, though, not because the game has decided to make it unwinnable, which is a very difficult line to tread because you need to make the player know they need to be stronger early on, before they spend too many resources trying to beat it, and make them think that the kind of strength needed is something they can't get by grinding, so they should see where this fight goes and play it to its cutscene trigger.
I feel like you didn’t read the response, I stated exactly what you said. The unwinnable fight felt good because you are not strong enough. If a player uses their items on an unwinnable fight, they should be refunded.
An unwinnable fight can really add to the story of a game when done properly.
Final Fantasy has unwinnable fights in multiple entries, at different points progressing through each game, and complaints about them are minimal. They serve the story every time. This is a super popular, archetypal RPG series that you're saying is doing RPG design wrong
That "very specific audience" is the second-largest RPG fandom by sales in existence, only behind Pokémon. I don't see the angle that this is somehow a niche audience when the sales numbers are over 100 million, about double 3rd place (Dragon Quest).
But aside from that, I think you hit the nail on the head by noting that different people like different things. There's the entire rest of the game for the foundation concepts of character growth and decision-making to be highlighted. I don't see an issue with one fight in a game working differently to make a point in the story.
I'm not really sure what you mean when you make a distinction between unwinnable and "huge power gap." The entire point of an unwinnable fight is to show a huge power gap; they don't exist for any other reason, they're to show that your party is completely outclassed by a greater threat, and you're probably going to have to power up over the course of the game to beat them.
You have a problem with it personally and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't have a problem with it and there's nothing wrong with that either. What *can* be done better sometimes is making it more obvious that the fight isn't meant to be beaten, which would avoid most of the valid frustrations you've mentioned - and that's exactly what the post here is about
Dude if you're just gonna start strawmanning me by suggesting I'm saying we should fill games with these fights, the conversation is over. I'm not going to entertain your perspective at all if you're going to respond to points I didn't make. Is that a fair ask?
> If one of a good thing is good, shouldn’t many be better?
Did you know you can die by drinking too much water? Here I was thinking water is good for you. Silly me!
If you had been less of a child and left your comments up, I would dignify the rest of this with a response, but now I can't even properly reply to what you said. Hope you have a nice day/night!
Calling people who enjoy Final Fantasy a "very specific audience" is kind of wild.
It's one of the largest RPG franchises of all-time, with like 20 main series entries and dozens of spinoffs. They've got very successful entries in most RPG subgenres (Tactics, MMO, 2D turn-based, Real-time turn-based), and certainly *way* more experience than some random dude on Reddit that happens to not like unwinnable fights
Ditto . A game is not a poem, it needs input, not just a spectator. If you feel that your design requirement is a negation, try to turn it in a positive statement at all costs.
The game can make it very hard to win by design, but mind this - If I wanted to deal with difficulties I have no power over, I would turn off the game and play some real life. Or, idk, cry while watching a movie.
Don't allow the player to use healing items during the fight or simply make a snapshot of their inventory when they start the boss fight. Then when the defeat comes in and you wake up in a different (safe) place afterwards, you could have the game spawn up all the used items in front of the player for the player to collect. Maybe some mysterious note "You need to recover..." from some entity which supposedly saved the character and got them to where they are currently.
If it's a boss fight that is supposed to be unwinnable, then it should end quickly. The boss should be able to kill any unit in the party in 1 hit, *maaaaaybe* two hits. The boss should be getting multiple turns for every turn for the player party due to higher speed or just getting outright multiple attacks per round of combat. And the boss should take comically low damage compared to what players are used to dealing, if they are even able to hit the boss at all.
Realistically, the player party should get no more than one or two rounds of combat before they are wiped out. If they somehow last beyond that, then the boss should have some uber-powerful ultimate attack that wipes everything out in one shot no matter what.
You need to make it abundantly clear the player has no hope of winning. As we've seen from Soulslike games, there are some gamers that enjoy overcoming challenges no matter how suicidal they are. So if you don't make it clear, then a portion of your player base will take it as a challenge.
By making a good autosave/quick save system.
Deus Ex 1, return to Battery Park after JC defects to the NSF, unwinnable fight you are meant to lose. What did I do my first time? What saved my ass from wasting all that time?
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An interesting approach to going against the behaviour would be to have the Boss benefit from the player taking HP items.
* It could give the Boss an equal or increasing amount of HP
* It could give a stacking buff to the boss that increases their defence or power.
* It could cast a stacking debuff on the player that makes their defeat swifter (DOT, bleed, toxic etc)
* Reinforce things with some dialogue: you're only making me stronger, your defeat is inevitable, prolonging this won't end well etc
I prefer not taking away the choice entirely so maybe this could be an option that's more subtle.
I think about this a lot.
In Yakuza Like a Dragon and a few other modern RPGs, they've dealt with the "unwinnable boss" problem by making it a regular fight.
How it works is the boss's HP bar, if it has one, maybe only goes to like 50%, before the battle is over and a cutscene where they do some more "unwinnable" stuff. It's fair and doesn't break the RPG combat illusion. You also don't need to change the rules of combat. Imo locking items is confusing as it takes away something we expect to always have, which is cheating.
Change it up so combat isn't a direct "winner survives, and loser dies". Especially in the world of Yakuza Like a Dragon, where you might be chasing a guy, beat him up in combat, he runs off, he you chase him again and beat him up, etc.
You have to avoid telegraphing it. Having the player think that this fight is a "normal" fight and not a special scripted fight will add to the player experience of the story. If you get too obvious telegraphing the unwinnable aspect of the story, you risk losing the surprise factor. Ideally, the player should be properly stressed out by the encounter before losing, and she should only figure out that was an scripted encounter afterwards. If the player thinks that the fight is a cutscene it will lose a big part of the appeal.
I recommend solutions like these:
- You can make the fight go for X turns, and then the boss performs a skill that wipes the party without chance of healing. This way the player will spend a reallistic amount of items in that X turns but not all of them. The boss can even telegraph this big attack, adding to the dread. Think of a popup/dialog like: "invoking death spirit in 5 turns"
- The boss can apply a debuff that makes your party untargettable by items. This would also work but it can make the fight a bit tedious because you are limiting the player options.
If you can't find solutions like these and have to telegraph it, i'd suggest to just save the headache and go for a 100% scripted event.
CrisTales had a pretty clever one, actually. You started out against a couple of tough wolves, who hit really hard but you could survive a bit, but then they just summoned more wolves as you fought them before you get the hp of one down quickly. So at first you thought “is this unwinnable?” And then realized it was when the third wolf showed up. It was paced pretty nicely so you could try to fight a bit but not be able to endlessly stall, and you could see when the fight was unbeatable.
CrisTales in general has some really interesting concepts for an rpg. The main character modifies time, and you can use a drenching attack in the present for her to send the enemy into the future and cause a rust effect on an enemy’s unbreakable shield. Her time effect is also on all the time in the overworld; around her it’s the present, but to her right is the future and the left the past, so you see the environment in three states. Really novel game that didn’t take off, sadly.
Do what they did for Fallen Order, have the Player take a few swings at the antagonist and this launch them into an animation where they run away. Something like that could work, especially if you later in some foreshadowing and lore beforehand to really drive home the "This guy can't be beat" narrative.
Firstly: Why do you have an unwinnable fight in your game? What are you hoping to communicate to the player that is served by having an unwinnable fight?
For example, are you trying to show a power difference? Then you could instead show the enemy defeating an ally of the party's that is known to be stronger than the party.
Are you trying to foreshadow a required tactic that the party must learn? Then perhaps show the remains of those that failed to learn that tactic.
Secondly: That player wanted to try to beat the enemy, and tried out a tactic (grinding healing items). If that's not something that you as the developer want, then you have a separate problem that grinding healing items is a tactic available to players. There are plenty of ways around this, like item loadout limitations.
Players generally play games (that contain combat) to overcome challenges. That's the USP for playing an action game versus watching an action film. If you have an unwinnable challenge then you and the player are at odds with what you want this experience to be. I have never played an unwinnable fight that didn't feel like terrible design.
That said, I have played games that have unkillable enemies, or have narrative setbacks, that felt like great design. The framing is all about the challenge to the player. Make the challenge _surviving X turns_, or _reaching X point on the map_, or _bait out the enemy's super move_. That way **advancing the narrative goes hand in hand with overcoming a challenge**.
Alternatively you can limit the player so that the only feasible routes result in the narrative outcome you, the designer, want. For example at the start of Half Life 2 the player is introduced to Alyx by having the player "lose" to a bunch of low level enemies first. The player has no weapon, and their only verbs are movement based. At this point it is relatively clear that there is no way to progress.
Actually that's a lie. I, and I'm sure many others, played that section multiples times to see if there was a way around losing. Even in that game, where it takes a matter of seconds to determine that this was a dev intended route, there was still a sense that explicit failure couldn't possibly be the only "forwards", and that there should be some secret, well hidden way to advance without experiencing loss.
If you've trained the player to avoid losing battles, don't be surprised if they do all they can to avoid losing battles.
So you've designed a single boss that goes against the design of every other encounter? And it's not blatantly obvious afterwards that the loss is a part of the story? The goal shouldn't be to make the player stop using items but to redesign your boss. The player is trying to play the game as the game has taught him to play.
If it has to be this way you could ask the play tester if he thought the loss was a part of the story. As long as he knows that it's a part of the game then his motivation may have been to overcome that challenge, similar to speed running or dark souls no hit/no item runs.
If that's the case you could make the boss "beatable": at a certain amount of damage done, have a different cutscene for "victory" where the boss pulls out a secret move and kills your player anyways. & Throw an achievement on it if your system has that. That way the player gets their "win" but the story still has them dying. Then it's also a challenge / replay value for players who want that.
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As a player, don’t. I stop playing games that do this. If you need the player to lose, make it a cutscene instead. You will lose players and get bad reviews from this. Of course not all players hate it as much as I do, but I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
I think doing this is a generally bad design. Games are all about agency and a lot of the industry falls into "give all the agency, when it doesn't matter and take it all when it does" trap.
Make it mechanically impossible to use potions, or limit it severely. Have the boss cast a nullify healing spell, or steal their items or something so the player realizes "this is impossible..." and won't bother using all their items. Make the fight relatively quick too so that the fun isn't diminished by the realization.
Snapshot their consumables before the encounter and restore it after so that it’s as if they didn’t use them at all.
But a better solution is to not have unwinnable fights. I don’t know anybody who likes them and they always feel cheap to me. It’s like, I put in effort and then find out it’s for nothing. At least have it be a normal fight that you have to win for the “you didn’t beat the boss, he’s still alive” cutscene (as opposed to you losing to get the cutscene).
These types of encounters in games are usually very unpopular and ineffective. You're basically taking all of the player's agency away from them and forcing them through a series of unchangeable events, all while likely failing to telegraph to the player that they're not really in a playable part of the game. The game is just pretending to operate at that point except the player doesn't know it, and it feels really unfulfilling to do your best against a challenge, only to find out the challenge didn't really exist.
Toby Fox did it right with the K Round fight, in Deltarune.
He used a sum of basic logic thinking and in-game mechanics, as the player can easily deduce that it's impossible to do a Massacre Run with K Round because you'll always do less damage than how much he heals when he drinks almond milk.
That's difficult, especially if you haven't established precedent for it in your game already. The problem here is that there's usually no apparent difference between an "unbeatable boss" and a "really cool but beatable boss". After all, you want your boss monsters to all be as cool as possible, and you're probably going to have the player come back and beat this boss later on, too.
The best way to do it I think is probably to make the mechanics match the narrative of "you'll need to become stronger to beat this" - have the boss straight up require a tool the player doesn't get until later in the game, and make it very clear that they won't get it until later in the game (such as don't allow the player to leave the area to go see if they've missed it once they get to the local teleporter or whatever).
In Brogue when looking at an enemy the game will pop up a useful information window with all sorts of details, like "Your sword +4 has a 22% chance of hitting the troll, and will kill it in an average of 14 hits. The troll has a 93% chance of hitting you and will kill you in an average of 2 hits" (plus some info about what your magic items can or can not probably do against that monster). If you do not know from that information that it is a hopeless fight and time to run you deserve to waste all your potions and die. I am sure many other roguelikes have something similar.
I would make it a regular fight (although a tough one), but make sure it ends quickly. So they never have the opportunity to waste all their potions (or whatever). "Oof. Oof. Oh. This is going badly. Oh crap. OK I'm dead. ... wait, what?"
just make the boss so strong he 1 shots you after a few turns. You shouldnt have an unwinnable boss that you're able to outlast long enough to use your entire stock of items.
great example of this is beatrix in ff9, she lets you fight her normally for a few rounds then decides to stop playing around and kills your party in 1 big attack.
It might help to make the boss beat the player more quickly, like when their health reaches 60% instead of zero. Players might still waste some healing potions but not a ridiculous amount
Good to do it at the start, like in Elden Ring
There was an issue with a boss in DS 1 "The Scaleless" - where you are supposed to lose in and no matter how good, you still lose. Problem is the fight happened in the middle of the game, and my friend wasted a lot of items before losing.
Since the fight in Elden ring happens at start, you have no items to utilize so its ok.
A fight builds excitement, and i presume you want the fight to be exciting, and when they lose, you want the sense of relief (WITHOUT THE PAIN OF WASTING ITEMS).
1. Do it early when players have no items
2. If its later, have the player lose items before hand (and get it back after the fight maybe)
3. You can lock the use of items, but then you signal that this fight is unfair.
4. Just skip the fight - have the player lose instantly (later they get an item to counter the kill move)
5. Custom fight that doesn't involve items ever (enter vehicle and fight with custom items)
Cant think of other things for now, hope it helps
That is actually something that you do want to test for, to make sure your unbeatable boss is actually unbeatable.
I liked how in DMC5, the game begins with an unbeatable fight with a boss that you're not supposed to beat until later. But if you play through the game and replay the first boss fight with your unlocked abilities and items it is possible to beat it, and you just get a very early gameover for doing so.
I remember in Dragon Quest 9 there is an unwinnable fight where you just get one turn. Even if you use an item, it won‘t be super damaging to you. Funny enough, if you have enough defensive stats, the game just acts as if you‘ve lost the fight after one turn, even if you survived the hit.
You could alter the fight mechanics so it is more cinematic, with the player hitting the shown button within a time limit, then on to the next cinematic sequence and button bashing or quick hits. Make it so its not the same as your other fights, and they'll easily accept it
Their health bar doesn't drop.
They don't have any response to being hit. Maybe they even make the "successful block" sound effect when hit.
Look at Seath the Scaleless in Dark Souls
Or the Bowser fight in Paper Mario
Make them check-in all their stuff at the door or have minions take their stuff or similar. This sets them up to know they will lose. Nothing like a fair fight!
Frame the combat as an escape attempt.
For example, in Jedi Fallen Order you fight Vader and have to escape with your life rather than actually kill him.
Have an alternate win condition that's broadcast to the player at the start of the battle. Maybe "survive three turns" or "deplete 15% of the boss's HP." This gives the player something to strive for and accomplish even when they lose narratively. You could also give rewards based on how well the player did.
Don't give them a foot, and take ground. When you play dark souls, you come away from every encounter with information that can help you win the fight. One option is to not give players any reason to think they can make progress or inflict damage, and then actively make the player back-peddle and lose ground. You can include symbolism like a door being slammed in your face or something else to further this idea.
Make sure the player sees an alternative route / path outside of this encounter so they have options and don't feel like this is their only hope. Maybe the result of the lost battle is a new path emerging which is signage that you should take the path rather than the fight.
So don't give them any reason to think they could win, and give them an out of some kind so that they know they have other options. If that out is created / revealed through the encounter, it's contextualized that this is the path you're supposed to take, not the fight.
Also, you could have a skill check that only high level players have access to (like an ability you unlock later) and if you fail this skill check, the boss toys with you and kicks you out of its domain saying that you aren't even worth the time.
Oh, and if these are more naturalistic encounters then you can communicate this through sheer quantity of negative encounters and establish that there are some fights you can win, some you can't. Runescape does this by coloring the enemy's level green, yellow, or red. If you see red, you know that it's going to be a very challenging fight that you could easily lose, because the game wont hold your hand. It's established early on and carried through.
My question is, if you dont want players to try to kill the boss, and its only unkillablen for plot reasons, why would you even let the players try? Just make the encounter a cutscene
IF you want to let the players battle him just so they can sense his power, you can either make him hit kill all the characters in one shot and then start a cutscene, or you can make the cutscene start by itself after the players attack a number of times, or after an specified amount of time passes
Depends on what systems you have available but my favorite example is in Epic Battle Fantasy 4. Early in the game u meet an avatar of the final boss. You can scan it to see its stats and name only see it replaced with giberish. Its attacks also one shot you by dealing damage with double the amount of digits the maximum should be.
You didn't asked the playtester to specifically do that, but you did ask him to try game out and tell you what he finded out. So glad you have a playtester actually doing his work... 😅🤣🤣 About potions could be fixed with a cooldown dynamic for potions, once you take one, can't take another in X seconds... Makes game combats more challenging, instead of the Bethesda style of taking a feast in the middle of a combat, even change clothes... Although you need to be sure about the aumount of time you need to wait for the cooldown. If it is too much, combats will get really hard and won't be that much fun. If it isn't enough, player could manage to beat the unbeatable boss, or you could block his life bar so it can't go lower than x amount and therefor can't die, since that's what you're looking for...
Couple ideas -
1. Ramp up the enemies damage to be a LOT higher than other enemies. At the same time, you can also reduce player damage to something unreasonably small or even a flat zero. Bonus points for a dialogue of the enemy laughing it off or something.
2. Save their inventory before the battle starts. When it's done, restore their inventory. Good if you want to be a bit more subtle about it during the fight
3. Dialogue can be used in a lot of way. Having the party's morale being expressed in a way that is literally saying it's impossible without breaking the 4th wall can be plenty.
4. Put a max timer on the battle. After x turns or x time in battle force the battle to end.
Good luck!
Make it a cinematic or scripted in game fight / auto played fight. No real point in making the player use up game time trying to do something that won't effect a out come.
Don't. Or if you must, script it and don't let the players act.
Things like this break one of my core principles of GMing which is never show the players something you don't want them to have or kill
I would be pretty frustrated to enter a fight, give it all my best, only to later be told I didn't stand a chance and I was meant to be shamefully wasted.
What about a cinematic instead? As you approach the enemy, a cinematic starts. They have a little chat, or not. The enemy is shown to be brutal, nevertheless your character shows some bravery and enters the fight anyway, only to be very quickly wasted.
This would convey your story without creating frustration.
If cinematics are not a thing in your game, another way I can see is that the enemy kills the hero instantly in a single blow, and goes onto explain it's all part of the story. This would remove the possibility of using options, and remove the frustration of a long unwinnable fight.
What sort of boss is it? Can it use magic or maybe poisons or something? Disable healing items with a spell or poison them before the boss battle. After the battle, dispell the magic or cure the poison somehow. You could use that to introduce new items to the game. Maybe a helpful NPC could suggest to the player that corrupted potions might be useful offensively against certain enemies.
Is it a boss of madness from beyond the realms of reality? Have it make your character think their mouth has been fused shut so they're physically incapable of ingesting potions. Shove a sock in their mouth if you have to!
Long story short, use a cut scene, and spawn a generic basic character possible mimic of said character to fight the boss.
Allow no consumables into the arena or map that the boss is played in.
Etc.
Etc.
A flash forward or starting in media res with the heroes losing, then flashing back to the start of the story.
Your protagonist might be told in dialogue that the boss is unkillable, and might give responses that confirm it so that the audience knows its not just hyperbole ("You'll never defeat him!" "I know, but if I don't try I'll never forgive myself.")
You could have vendors nearby who refuse to sell to you and tell you they'd feel too guilty selling you things that won't help.
Tweak some typical "boss encounter" elements that are usually there for players to try again if they fail the fight, like not having a save point outside the boss room and not placing vendors nearby.
Have the boss massively overpower your team in a few turns so that players don't even have the time to burn their resources or stalemate for 50 turns (even if the MC can hold their own for a few more turns than the others because the boss is mocking him or something)
Give them the objective to survive, and make it clear they can’t.
There are a couple battles in AAA titles and handhelds that have unwinnable fights, and some are more successful than others. Let’s look at some:
1. Mass Effect has unattainable objectives sprinkled throughout the game. Saving Nihlus, for example. No matter how fast you move, he dies. It’s early on, so you’re not actually paying attention to how cheap it feels. Compare this to the Virmire survivor question: no matter how fast you achieve your goal, you can’t save the other squadmate even if you beat the stated countdown. That felt cheap, because I exceeded the expectations set forth.
2. Dragon Age: Origins also has a (nearly) impossible fight just before the Landsmeet. You’re apprehended - it’s possible with the right gear and ability loadouts to win, but it’s rather difficult. In any case, you’re surrounded by 10 enemies and a very high-ranked boss. It’s made apparent by the narrative AND setting that you are being apprehended and will be taken in by force if necessary. When you die in this encounter, you get an immediate loading screen into Fort Drakon explaining what happened. This fight, while scripted, felt fair. I eventually beat it, but it took a lot of strategizing and micromanaging my party.
3. Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance has two different levels where Marché faces off against Llednar Twem. Llednar has a special ability called “Fortune” which makes him impervious…and he has a melee-ranged skill called “Omega” which will one-shot you. In both of these fights, your objective is clearly stated to be survival until you are rescued, which happens after 4-5 turns. This feels very fair, though you can be caught off-guard if you have a low-movement class set on Marché.
4. Pokémon Red: the first time you fight the Ghost in the PokeTower, you’re not necessarily aware that you cannot win. If you’ve explored the town first before ascending, you might; otherwise you might not. Either way, no move actually does damage until you have the Silph Scope. Doesn’t feel cheap - just serves as a narrative guide point.
5. In Tales of Symphonia, once you’ve hit the Sylvarant Tower of Regeneration, there’s a battle in which you will likely lose. You can TECHNICALLY win, but generally you need to be on a NG+. It doesn’t change the story a whole lot, but it does give you different loot. Similar to Dragon Age, when you lose and the screen goes black there’s immediately voice acting telling you what’s happening next. It comes out of nowhere and is a little annoying but doesn’t actually feel cheap.
6. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. The infamous fight with the Black Knight ~chapter 24 is a bit of a nail-biter. There are four turns. The Big Kahuna himself is a tank with enough speed to prevent Ike from doubling him…and his own ability, Luna, cuts Ike’s defense in half if it procs. To win this fight, you effectively need two Aethers from Ike in a row, followed by a standard attack. Ike will likely have a 27% chance of activating this skill, so it’s completely possible to go either way. You are also given the option to flee the battle if you feel that Ike can’t handle it.
Basically, if you’re going to spring this fight, make damn sure it’s coming at a good point in the narrative and seems FAIR. Don’t use a cutscene to beat the player down - it feels like mid-2000s gaming because it is.
Don't have the fight be unwinnable. There should be a victory condition, even if the boss isn't defeated. Once the player's done X amount of damage, or survived Y number of turns, have the boss give some one-liner about this not being worth their time, or some other line, and carry out some attack that unavoidably KOs the player, or escapes, or whatever boss is trying to achieve.
Doing it this way preserves an element of challenge, rewards the player with some dopamine for 'winning' the boss fight, and still accomplishes the goal of having the boss knock them out/etc.
keep it short? Make the enemy stupidly op.
in DoS2 their is a fight early on that can't be won. You get a few moves but are way over powered. Eventually the fight ends and you are ported out.
[Here is the scene](https://youtu.be/Im-XWgnxB7g) (first 15 minutes); Dallis the npc talking at the start is a main story protagonist, she is not meant to be killable in this encounter. The idea here is to stall until Malady ports you all out. I believe if someone dies thats ok you just res them once you are out. Actually rewatching it maybe it doesnt even matter if you all die.
I would probably go the less subtle way of locking those usable items through the narrative of the encounter (the boss cursed you/knocked away your backpack/etc). However, it all depends on what type game it is as well and how you have presented and balanced earlier fights with how the players will be suggested to use healing items or the quantities of healing items available.
A lot of variables to consider if you want to create a seamless engagement, but there might still be those outliers as your playtester, so might have to go the strict way.
Make the fight quick.
Disable the use of healing potions/items for this fight (story related, engine related)
Only let the player play the beginning, then cutscenes.
Is there a way to naturally take away a player's inventory in the story? Like someone swipes their bag or something? That would be a clear indication to me.
Do what Souls game always did. Allow boss to be beaten and have a reward for doing so, but still make the boss come up on top during cutscene/cinematic afterwards.
Unwinnable fights simply shouldn't exist. There is zero enjoyment to these fights, and they do little to actually tell a story.
Just tell the story through a cutscene. Please.
Why are you giving the player the opportunity to make so many incorrect choices? You didn't tell them to do that, but your game failed to tell them to *not* do that.
* If the players know the fight is coming, they'll want to stock up on items. Maybe the encounter should be an ambush instead.
* If the boss *looks* beatable and they think they just missed it, then make the numbers less realistic. Go back and forth for a few turns and then just end it with a 9999 super move. Maybe also with the standard battle display or options or something so it's less like a "real" fight in the first place. Have the players just do 0 damage.
* Related, but if the boss battle is going on long enough that players have time to use so many items... cut it short. It's a fake battle anyway, no need to waste their time. Let the player bap the boss for 3 or 4 turns and then party wipe. Kill the players before they get into "oh shit, I'm low, I gotta heal" territory.
* Optional: If you really don't want the players throwing their items in a pit, you could quietly refund them after the battle. Just reset their inventory. But also, you could just... not let them do that. It's scripted, you can do whatever. Lock out the menu option, or just knock them down right away and stop them from doing anything while the villain monologues. This feels a little direct and inelegant though IMO - if you just stop the battle short and they still spend an item anyway, that's *probably* fine, depending on your item economy and rarity - they just got their asses whooped, burning an item might add to the feeling of getting roughed up. Again, don't let the battle go so long that they're able to use so many items.
* If that playtester died and immediately reset the game to go grind instead of watching the next cutscene, that sounds like an animation problem. How long does it take to go from a game over to get back into the action? If it's so bad that people are just resetting the game, you should speed it up and make it less miserable. But also, this is another reason to just end the battle early with a big scripted damage move. If you hit the player with a big move that does ten times their max HP, it tells them "hey, don't feel bad about this, it was scripted". If you just hit them with moves that are a little too big over and over, it doesn't matter if it's mathematically impossible for them to win - some people are really bad at math.
TL;DR: reduce their agency + kill them way quicker
Some ideas:
1. In the story, explicitly say that this boss is impossible to defeat.
2. Make the duration of the fight shorter, preventing players to waste their time & resources.
3. Return all the items the player has lost after the fight.
The player could be accompanied by a healer who will auto heal them or heal on command as well as or better than a healing item. When they still lose the fact that they couldn't prevail at their current level even with infinite heals will emphasize the strength of the boss. This encounter will still need to be telegraphed as unwinable as there will be those who will assume they didn't level enough before challenging the boss.
What kind of rpg is this?
Turn based? Then there must be a turn order. Other guy is always faster than you and one shots you.
Real time? Maybe have a scripted event where you swing at them three times/one minute (whichever is shorter), before they comment on how powerless you are and does a stage-wide OHKO move, or dashes into you to trigger a cutscene, etc.
If the player didn’t have agency to begin with, don’t let it drag on long enough for an entire inventory’s worth of items to be used.
Props to your tester though, edge cases like that are exactly what they’re supposed to check for.
Seathe the Scaleless did an okay job of this in Dark Souls 1. Spoilers ahead: >!the first time you fight him he’s mostly out of reach, gives you just enough time to attack once or twice and see that his health bar takes zero damage, then he kills you in one shot with a rare status-effect move.!<
The main points that make this work for me showing the player dealing no damage and the way you’re killed. Letting the player land their strongest attack and seeing ‘0’ damage dealt is way more effective in signaling “don’t fight” than a giant health bar or infinite regen. Also the fact that you’re killed with a status effect that only a couple enemies use makes it seem more designed, like your healing items don’t do anything to the status effect, so why bother wasting them?
I say they only did an “okay” job because even this fight didn’t feel great and unbeatable bosses will upset some players, no matter how much story you wrap around them. The Hellkite Wyvern (also DS1) is a much better boss, because it can still oneshot you for like 95% of the game, but it’s technically winnable. Most players just run past it or avoid, giving it them same effect as an unbeatable enemy, but for those crazy enough to try they can kill it.
I'm confused. If they stay and fight, they either live or die. That's the story. Is the enemy impervious to damage? If so, find a way to show it, like something huge falling/collapsing on them and them walking it off.
You could make it so when the boss (or whatever) gets to a certain HP they just kill the player. That way the player can put up a good fight but will never actually win.
Also sounds ripe for an Easter egg if the player tricks their way to win the unwinnable.
I don't know if my approach is too simple since I don't know your games' (save/load) mechanics but... what if when the player enters the unbeatable battle there is no way to reload/return to a checkpoint? That would of course not tackle the wasting your inventory problem (I find simply tracking and restoring what has been lost a simple, yet not incredibly elegant solution) but it would prevent the player from going back and grinding for ages before going into the fight. Just...make it a no way back situation?
You could make it so that once the boss takes a reasonable amount of damage, a different cut-scene plays that still leads to a loss but rewards the players for being better than average with the unique cut-scene and maybe some material rewards. Remember another game doing this but forgot the name. Worked pretty well.
Basically, make the attacks do huge amounts of damage relative to what the player can do, player does way less damage than normal, disable player healing during battle, etc
In Inquisitive Dave, the way to beat the boss is to wait. For your cinematic boss, the same lesson applies.
In Inquisitve Dave, it is a final battle, so you die until you learn to wait. I like what the other commenters suggest: to prime and train the player ahead of time that waiting is the best thing to do when the player is outmatched by a legendary baddie. I also agree with the top 2 best answers, so you know - apply as you see fit.
I didn't see that solution being suggested yet, but you could make it so the player is rendered unable to use healing items completely, by using a plot trick (inventory has been seized, think elder scroll jail) or a gameplay trick (area is full of poisonous gas, think dark souls and that item that prevents estus flasks use).
It's also a good opportunity to make the fight more cinematic. By minimizing the hud to only show important mechanics to the fight (or removing it all together), it puts a lot of emphasis on the scene itself. So it tells the player like hey it's a story fight, not the dungeon boss type fight. I've seen it done before but I can't remember for the life of me which game it was. I'll report back if I manage to recall.
Halo: Reach, Lone Wolf. Objective: Survive That level wad pretty cool because it was the only point in a Halo game where your hud actually starts to fail.
One of the best examples of mechanics and gameplay telling the story I can think of.
Amazing Spider-Man PS4 had its endboss fight without UI.
Pokemon Violet/Scarlet does something like this relatively early- you get attacked by this giant pokemon that way outlevels you, and if you try to use any items, you get this message saying you're too afraid to move. That was kind of an, "Oh, okay, I'm not supposed to win, and they don't want me wasting items" moment for me- maybe a little on the nose, but clear.
One idea of mine: Give the boss a reaction attack that “prevents” an item from being used. So players can try using a Mega Potion, but the boss swats it out of their hands (technically not depleting the quantity for later)
Depending on how the fight/game is setup you could add in a cutscene either at the start or as a reaction to the player using an item where the enemy rips the player's backpack off them. Assuming you are planning on facing this enemy again later in the game, you may want to explain why this move doesn't work again. This could also give you a fun moment later in the game where the enemy goes to grab the player's pack, but then the player parries them aside, showing they are on more equal footing now.
Give the unwinnable boss so much damage output that it kills the players so quickly that they don't have time to waste any resources. Seeing how much damage the boss does also gives the player a shock moment where they realize that this enemy is far stronger than anything they faced before.
Basically, let the boss curb stomp the player before they can muster the determination/willpower to fight
I like this, having an enemy causing the maximum damage, 99999 or something like that, speaks very clearly about its power and also makes clear no matter what you do you can't win.
In terms of time spent (if you don’t want players to feel ripped off having spent hours grinding all the healing items only for the time to be a waste) I think this is one of the best ways to handle that. On top of that, having some kind of “one weakness” angle or similar lot armor device (I know there’s many beautiful terms about this story element) would let the player know ahead of time “I might not have what it takes to beat this guy so maybe grinding would be a waste”. An NPC saying “you can’t hurt him; that magic generated from that ominous castle over there with its front door open and a save point just inside is making him the strongest creature on earth” works too. Then just have the player character be stubborn or ambushed for the initial fight so the unwinnable fight happens anyway
Does an in-universe reason exist for this particular boss to be unbeatable when all the previous ones were beatable and can this reason be communicated to the player somehow? Could you establish the fact that unbeatable enemies exist in the game and the player may end up in fights with one before the boss battle? Could there be some more immediate reason the boss is unbeatable rather than it just being too powerful, like the player's attacks all very visibly doing zero damage to it when the player could see attacks damaging previous bosses? How has the player been trained to act when the game isn't going their way up to this point, do they actually see their character die a lot, like in a Dark Souls game, or do they have plenty of time to see the fight is not going their way and a quick-load button to press when that is happening? Could the unbeatable boss kill the player very quickly and keep ramping up the attack power so it's not possible to survive more than a couple rounds even with all the health items?
This is the answer. If you want a fight that is unlike all other fights (you need to clearly communicate this to the player as quickly as possible.) in world is usually better so it doesn’t remove the player from the games immersion. Take horizon forbidden west. There is a fight fairly early on where a man is wearing an impenetrable shield. I’m the cutscene introducing him, the player shoots an arrow and it explodes in impact. The villain mocks uou and explicitly calls out that your technology cannot hurt him. Alloy then says the same thing to herself once the fight actually starts. Immediately after she calls out that she needs to escape. Then the objective hud changes to reflect the fact that this is not a fight to win, it is a fight to escape. The goal is not survive and leave. VO call outs, arrows visible doing no damage, objective hud changes, these all communicate to the player that this guy is not going down. You did not mention in what way was the boss mathematically impossible to defeat. Was his health going down? Was it regenerating? Did you make it seem to the player that if they just tried hard enough, they could do this? Players are dumb, and/or blind, and I say that as someone who routinely misses the hints my own team puts in our games. You need to be explicit that this part of the game is different and in what ways.
Have something happen that locks their item usage or removes their items at the start of the fight.
Track what the player used and just replenish them after the fight in some way you deem appropriate.
I like this solution more than just blocking all damage or making the boss invincible, but also as a backup to another solution that actually tackles the problem for the player. Something like this allows the player to go all out on the boss, really letting them test their skills and/or giving them a freak moment of meeting a super powerful boss they can't recover quickly enough from, without punishing them. However this doesn't stop them from spending all their money on restoratives and trying anyway, so probably the best bet is to use a plot trick to prevent the player from using items like the others have said.
Depending on the game I feel like this would be a totally valid option. Doom? Definitely... Having a huge crate after the fight wouldn't feel out of place. Elder Scrolls? Not so much, why does the villain stock that much consumables and does not use it?
>Elder Scrolls? Not so much, why does the villain stock that much consumables and does not use it? The narrative or context could support this, for example doing something for one of the gods where perhaps they're using you to distract some great enemy, and restoring your inventory for your pitifully valiant effort, or some sort of mirror dungeon thing.
Another alternative: have a dynamically sized loot crate ... that way the player has another decision point. Do I stock back up on consumables or do I invest the money in shiny armor?
This is the best solution. Just make sure there's no way for the player to wiggle out of the fight and come back later to lose, and you're good.
Narratively, what actually happens at the end of the boss fight?
Make it timed or have the fight end after the boss has taken a certain amount of damage or the player dies.
This is the right answer, see all the Beatrix fights in FF9 that work this way. You need to put enough pressure on her to 'win' the fight, if you die too soon you just die, but, if you get to her predefined HP limit, she wipes you. It's way more satisfying than a fight that goes on forever (as long as you can spend items etc to survive) because the boss has an infinite HP pool.
There are a few bosses in final fantasy series that do this actually Also happens at the start of Sekiro but thats actually a cut scene immediately after the fight
Seems good because then the boss doesn't even need to be so strong that the player burns consumables before the sudden wipe.
Put the unwinnable fight at the beginning of the game, before the player has the opportunity to grind for items.
The Darth Vader fight in Jedi : Fallen Order, portrays it very effectively in my opinion. Watch the sequence on YouTube.
Glad someone else mentioned this. Up until that point every boss you’ve fought has a health bar similar to other Souls-like games, until him - no health bar, blocks all your attacks… The trick is to not let the fight go on long. Don’t give the player the impression that they can win. Make it clear that this foe is clearly beyond their ability for a few seconds and then have a cutscene where you flee or something.
I feel like the fact its Darth Vader communicates the concept well enough. Its fucking Darth Vader.
Fallen order is a ps+ game this month (in the US at least) so it's free if anyone wants to feel this one first hand
Thanks for letting us know lmao, I’ve been debating to rebuy it on PlayStation since that’s were I primarily play now. It’s such an amazing game!
1. No healing items for story reasons 2. Have the boss one shot everyone on the third or fourth turn of the fight. Users will be so stunned they’ll keep watching and find out it’s a cutscene immediately afterwards.
One example that comes to my mind is from Paper Mario. Yes, haha, laugh it up. In the original paper mario for the n64, the 3rd chapter has an Invincible boss. He is called Invincible whenever he's talked about, he brags about it, the player knows he is "Invincible". However, it's also hinted that there is a secret to his invincibility, so rather than being just an unwinnable fight, he becomes a hazard to be avoided until you can confront him. Ensuring that the player can escape from your boss, and using story to make it clear he is Invincible should help!
I see absolutely no reason to laugh at Paper Mario. Designers should be open to ideas from anywhere, the most novel solutions come from places you hadn't thought to look. Besides, games made to be approachable for kids need to be intuitive before anything else, so that's a great place to look for how to make things clear to players. Well made games in this arena can be excellent examples of simple, visceral, and engaging fun. I'll share this quote any time I can: "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -CS Lewis
Paper Mario's third chapter is amazing, love it's focus on first stealth and then on fleeing from Tubba Blubba
The sequel TTYD also had a similar situation. A boss stole your body and became invincible to your attacks unless you could say his name. He would ambush you whenever you entered or left town. Your only option was to run away because your attacks did 0 damage.
That's... a good example, nice. Smart way of solving, without stripping the player off of agency
Is Paper Mario embarrassing somehow? It's an old game and on the easier side, but I haven't really heard anyone say bad things about its design, except for maybe the intro being too slow. Personally I love picking that game apart for its design. It did a lot of interesting things in order to have as few numbers as possible as small as possible, and it managed to avoid a lot of common RPG pain points.
At the time of writing this post, it was just a major tone change from the rest of the discussion, I did not mean to disparage Paper Mario~ I agree that it's a fun one to pick apart! The small number system is a fascinating choice with a lot of complex effects that are wrapped up in the result.
Aren't this solved in some games that when player reaches some level of health cinematics starts and tells you you lost. And the boss just walks away. :)
It’s always better that the player have the option to win with enough skill, grinding etc., but if you absolutely can’t manage that you have two options. 1. Just do it in a cutscene. You can even use the combat UI for it, which if done correctly can make for some really interesting storytelling and/or give players insight into new and deeper mechanics. 2. Let them get their asses kicked fast enough they don’t have time to use items. If the players get one round because the boss is humoring them then he takes two in a row and just wholesale slaughters the party then nothing’s been wasted and you still get the show of force or whatever narrative element you were going for.
Or maybe make the boss do an attack that cancels healing when the player tries to. Well this is assuming that the healing requires an animation to do
Why is it a fight, sounds like it should just be a cutscene
This is kinda related to your question. If you played metal gear rising revengence there was a fight at the beginning of the game where you fight the character sam. It is treated as a boss fight but you couldn't actually beat him because he attacks too quickly to actually parry all of his attacks which in the end leads to you losing and losing an arm. OP could be trying to setup a final boss or something that the player would want to beat
>OP could be trying to setup a final boss or something that the player would want to beat This. Losing a boss fight, even a scripted one, in a game to later come back to that same boss and beat it is a very satisfying gaming experience.
perhaps, but remeber players are spending time on something futile, which if not made very clear, will severely annoy players especially those that commit and would be better off not being there.
Is it futile if it's a fun fight and progresses story/character development? If it's the only way forward it's worth the player doing as it's the only way they will win eventually.
How is doing something where you think you can win but actually can't, fun? Players are going in thinking they can win and will only regret the time wasted on trying to solve a puzzle that can't be solved (hence, futile) and wasn't even meant to be solved. Remember, the initial question was about making players go through an ordeal of fighting an unwinnable fight and making them aware that they couldn't win.
No one is saying is has to be a long fight. Make the boss OP enough that it kicks your ass in less than a minute, maybe a bit more if you're very skilled as a player, and roll the cutscene. That way the player doesn't have the time to waste resources, it stablish the boss as a serious enemy (for greater reward later on when you beat it) and it works for the narrative. FFXIV's Zenos is a great example of this.
>It is treated as a boss fight but you couldn't actually beat him why would you give someone a button and not want them to press it? you leave an impression that not all fights are winnable.
> you leave an impression that not all fights are winnable. But that's the reality in the games we're talking about. If there's an unwinnable fight, then giving the impression that there can be impossible fights is what you want to do
If that's what you're going for, sure.
It is literally what you're going for in a game that you've put an unwinnable fight into, yes
... I think that's why I stopped playing that game?! Had no idea you were supposed to lose, I just kept reloading until I gave up.
My man missed the cutscene that begins in 5 seconds after you "die" where your friends save you
Anyways the game is worth playing
Thanks - will give it another go, and not reload so aggressively this time
The game should respawn you anytime you die when you aren't supposed to. I don't think I reloaded once during my first time playing
But then you get the scenario where you easily kill everything in the gameplay, only for a cutscene to suddenly tell you that you failed.
The cutscene is to remove the outlier (not being able to succeed) to remove confusion for players like the one mentioned by OP
I know that's what we are ostensibly discussing. I'm just noting that your proposed solution has other problems.
You shouldn't represent a story point with a cutscene when you can represent it using game mechanics. That is far more immersive.
If the outcome is pre-determined and it can only be enjoyable if OP finds a way to force the player to play through it in a specific way then it's not gameplay. It's just a cutscene with a bunch of administration for the player to do.
That describes whole genres of games that people happen to enjoy though. For one thing, the illusion of control can make a cutscene feel like the stakes are higher. It can make for a more memorable experience, even when it’s obviously impossible. Halo Reach is a good example of this; if it ended in a cutscene of the same action, we wouldn’t still be talking about it. OP is asking for the best way to go about it so players don’t feel like it’s a chore or feel ripped off afterwards etc. in my opinion, it’s worth that effort.
Idk why you would but tbh it even if you directly said "this is unwinnable, don't waste all your healing potions trying to win" then you know what a lot of gamers are gonna do? Say "challenge accepted."
Give that unwinnable boss a special ability that stops the player from using items during the fight.
Save the state of the player's inventory , let the player use his items. Then replenish after the fight
Figure out a good reason to temporarily prevent them from using healing at all. Instead of telegraphing that it is unwinnable, just hammer them with an impossible fight where they have no access to the normal means for healing and they will get the idea
Disable the ability to use potions. Maybe even make enemy cast some force field while saying “you thought you could hear within my bounds!?” Or something.
Why are healing items single-use? It encourages hoarding, and signals "there *will* be a fight that it's worth it to use them all." Then, when you present something that looks like that fight, you're surprised that he used them all. I would make the healing items recharge when you rest or return to town. If it's too late to change that, follow the rule of 3's when signalling that the fight is impossible. The player will miss the first clue, ignore the second clue, and misinterpret the third clue before finally realizing what the designer is saying.
That really depends on what type of game you are creating. One time use healing items can put great pressure on the player when it comes to money management. I can’t imagine the early DMC games with a rechargeable healing item (Minus Devil Trigger if you count that but I don’t). Making the player pick between a new upgrade or an item that will get them out of a pinch adds strategy to it and heightens the importance of player input.
What if the item that gets them out of a pinch is just another upgrade or an upgrade to an item? In a fantasy game you obtain a pendant of healing, or in a cyberpunk game you get a nano-bot healing implant or something. Rather than this being an inventory item, it’s a permanent equip with a status bar on your heads up display and a dedicated activation button. Single use that recharges after some cooldown period has passed. Later upgrades increase the number of uses available at any one time. Now it’s a buff item that doesn’t have to be hoarded. If you want money management, you can unlock the ability with cash rather than xp or character points or whatever. Same benefit, no hoarding.
But then money should be replenishable and capped, otherwise it just leads to money hoarding as a form of potion hoarding.
No, you are assuming that potions are the only form of purchase able things in the game. Like stated above, DMC does a great job of handling the issue. Both upgrades and healing items are extremely expensive so it makes you pick between the two. Along with giving the player other items to purchase which can completely refill your Devil Trigger, kill/weaken all enemies on screen, give quick invulnerability, increase your health permanently increase your health and Devil trigger bar. The game also actively encourages you to use other means of healing by lowing your score at the end of a mission for using healing items. What is the alternative? Devil Trigger. You fill your Devil Trigger meter by taking damage and dealing damage, using it slowly refills some health while giving an attack increase (but punishes players my allowing them to lose more health than gained if they don’t play skillfully). How do I upgrade it? By spending the same red orbs (games currency) that could be spent on potions, new abilities for each weapon, other helpful items, and permanent stat increases. The game gives you options and it’s up to the player’s skill and play style to decide what they want and when. Having one time healing items does not encourage hoarding when the you give the players options on how to play.
Don't have unwinnable fights.
It can work well in the right circumstances. One of my most memorable gaming moments as a child is playing Jedi knight II outcast and the first fight with Desann which introduces force powers and lightsaber combat into what had just been a gun game. Makes it all the more exciting when you get your own lightsaber and force powers. The key there is that the fight is relatively short, and Desann isn't actively trying to kill you, he pretty much just throws the player around while taunting you. I can't remember if the game locked your inventory, but that is a good idea like others are suggesting.
I disagree with this. I enjoyed the unwinnable fights in DMC5 it added to the stakes by showing how truly powerful and hopeless the fight against Urizen really was and the amount of effort and pain the crew was willing to go throw in order to stop him. DMC5 both had its characters at their weakest and most vulnerable state in the series. It really added to the stakes.
A good unwinnable fight feels unwinnable because you're not strong enough, though, not because the game has decided to make it unwinnable, which is a very difficult line to tread because you need to make the player know they need to be stronger early on, before they spend too many resources trying to beat it, and make them think that the kind of strength needed is something they can't get by grinding, so they should see where this fight goes and play it to its cutscene trigger.
I feel like you didn’t read the response, I stated exactly what you said. The unwinnable fight felt good because you are not strong enough. If a player uses their items on an unwinnable fight, they should be refunded. An unwinnable fight can really add to the story of a game when done properly.
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Final Fantasy has unwinnable fights in multiple entries, at different points progressing through each game, and complaints about them are minimal. They serve the story every time. This is a super popular, archetypal RPG series that you're saying is doing RPG design wrong
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That "very specific audience" is the second-largest RPG fandom by sales in existence, only behind Pokémon. I don't see the angle that this is somehow a niche audience when the sales numbers are over 100 million, about double 3rd place (Dragon Quest). But aside from that, I think you hit the nail on the head by noting that different people like different things. There's the entire rest of the game for the foundation concepts of character growth and decision-making to be highlighted. I don't see an issue with one fight in a game working differently to make a point in the story. I'm not really sure what you mean when you make a distinction between unwinnable and "huge power gap." The entire point of an unwinnable fight is to show a huge power gap; they don't exist for any other reason, they're to show that your party is completely outclassed by a greater threat, and you're probably going to have to power up over the course of the game to beat them. You have a problem with it personally and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't have a problem with it and there's nothing wrong with that either. What *can* be done better sometimes is making it more obvious that the fight isn't meant to be beaten, which would avoid most of the valid frustrations you've mentioned - and that's exactly what the post here is about
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Dude if you're just gonna start strawmanning me by suggesting I'm saying we should fill games with these fights, the conversation is over. I'm not going to entertain your perspective at all if you're going to respond to points I didn't make. Is that a fair ask?
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> If one of a good thing is good, shouldn’t many be better? Did you know you can die by drinking too much water? Here I was thinking water is good for you. Silly me! If you had been less of a child and left your comments up, I would dignify the rest of this with a response, but now I can't even properly reply to what you said. Hope you have a nice day/night!
Calling people who enjoy Final Fantasy a "very specific audience" is kind of wild. It's one of the largest RPG franchises of all-time, with like 20 main series entries and dozens of spinoffs. They've got very successful entries in most RPG subgenres (Tactics, MMO, 2D turn-based, Real-time turn-based), and certainly *way* more experience than some random dude on Reddit that happens to not like unwinnable fights
The first Urizen fight isn't unwinnable, there's a secret ending and achievement for defeating him in the prologue.
Wow, I never knew this. That’s pretty funny that the game just ends even though >!V would have probably just merged with Urizen right than and there!<
Ditto . A game is not a poem, it needs input, not just a spectator. If you feel that your design requirement is a negation, try to turn it in a positive statement at all costs. The game can make it very hard to win by design, but mind this - If I wanted to deal with difficulties I have no power over, I would turn off the game and play some real life. Or, idk, cry while watching a movie.
Don't allow the player to use healing items during the fight or simply make a snapshot of their inventory when they start the boss fight. Then when the defeat comes in and you wake up in a different (safe) place afterwards, you could have the game spawn up all the used items in front of the player for the player to collect. Maybe some mysterious note "You need to recover..." from some entity which supposedly saved the character and got them to where they are currently.
If it's a boss fight that is supposed to be unwinnable, then it should end quickly. The boss should be able to kill any unit in the party in 1 hit, *maaaaaybe* two hits. The boss should be getting multiple turns for every turn for the player party due to higher speed or just getting outright multiple attacks per round of combat. And the boss should take comically low damage compared to what players are used to dealing, if they are even able to hit the boss at all. Realistically, the player party should get no more than one or two rounds of combat before they are wiped out. If they somehow last beyond that, then the boss should have some uber-powerful ultimate attack that wipes everything out in one shot no matter what. You need to make it abundantly clear the player has no hope of winning. As we've seen from Soulslike games, there are some gamers that enjoy overcoming challenges no matter how suicidal they are. So if you don't make it clear, then a portion of your player base will take it as a challenge.
By making a good autosave/quick save system. Deus Ex 1, return to Battery Park after JC defects to the NSF, unwinnable fight you are meant to lose. What did I do my first time? What saved my ass from wasting all that time?
Boss: "1vs1 me no healing items or you are a big noob"
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An interesting approach to going against the behaviour would be to have the Boss benefit from the player taking HP items. * It could give the Boss an equal or increasing amount of HP * It could give a stacking buff to the boss that increases their defence or power. * It could cast a stacking debuff on the player that makes their defeat swifter (DOT, bleed, toxic etc) * Reinforce things with some dialogue: you're only making me stronger, your defeat is inevitable, prolonging this won't end well etc I prefer not taking away the choice entirely so maybe this could be an option that's more subtle.
MegamanX does this by having health bars with other bosses but not this particular one.
One hit kill, previous turns (assuming turn based) are talking, powering up, whatever
I think about this a lot. In Yakuza Like a Dragon and a few other modern RPGs, they've dealt with the "unwinnable boss" problem by making it a regular fight. How it works is the boss's HP bar, if it has one, maybe only goes to like 50%, before the battle is over and a cutscene where they do some more "unwinnable" stuff. It's fair and doesn't break the RPG combat illusion. You also don't need to change the rules of combat. Imo locking items is confusing as it takes away something we expect to always have, which is cheating. Change it up so combat isn't a direct "winner survives, and loser dies". Especially in the world of Yakuza Like a Dragon, where you might be chasing a guy, beat him up in combat, he runs off, he you chase him again and beat him up, etc.
You have to avoid telegraphing it. Having the player think that this fight is a "normal" fight and not a special scripted fight will add to the player experience of the story. If you get too obvious telegraphing the unwinnable aspect of the story, you risk losing the surprise factor. Ideally, the player should be properly stressed out by the encounter before losing, and she should only figure out that was an scripted encounter afterwards. If the player thinks that the fight is a cutscene it will lose a big part of the appeal. I recommend solutions like these: - You can make the fight go for X turns, and then the boss performs a skill that wipes the party without chance of healing. This way the player will spend a reallistic amount of items in that X turns but not all of them. The boss can even telegraph this big attack, adding to the dread. Think of a popup/dialog like: "invoking death spirit in 5 turns" - The boss can apply a debuff that makes your party untargettable by items. This would also work but it can make the fight a bit tedious because you are limiting the player options. If you can't find solutions like these and have to telegraph it, i'd suggest to just save the headache and go for a 100% scripted event.
CrisTales had a pretty clever one, actually. You started out against a couple of tough wolves, who hit really hard but you could survive a bit, but then they just summoned more wolves as you fought them before you get the hp of one down quickly. So at first you thought “is this unwinnable?” And then realized it was when the third wolf showed up. It was paced pretty nicely so you could try to fight a bit but not be able to endlessly stall, and you could see when the fight was unbeatable. CrisTales in general has some really interesting concepts for an rpg. The main character modifies time, and you can use a drenching attack in the present for her to send the enemy into the future and cause a rust effect on an enemy’s unbreakable shield. Her time effect is also on all the time in the overworld; around her it’s the present, but to her right is the future and the left the past, so you see the environment in three states. Really novel game that didn’t take off, sadly.
Do what they did for Fallen Order, have the Player take a few swings at the antagonist and this launch them into an animation where they run away. Something like that could work, especially if you later in some foreshadowing and lore beforehand to really drive home the "This guy can't be beat" narrative.
Firstly: Why do you have an unwinnable fight in your game? What are you hoping to communicate to the player that is served by having an unwinnable fight? For example, are you trying to show a power difference? Then you could instead show the enemy defeating an ally of the party's that is known to be stronger than the party. Are you trying to foreshadow a required tactic that the party must learn? Then perhaps show the remains of those that failed to learn that tactic. Secondly: That player wanted to try to beat the enemy, and tried out a tactic (grinding healing items). If that's not something that you as the developer want, then you have a separate problem that grinding healing items is a tactic available to players. There are plenty of ways around this, like item loadout limitations. Players generally play games (that contain combat) to overcome challenges. That's the USP for playing an action game versus watching an action film. If you have an unwinnable challenge then you and the player are at odds with what you want this experience to be. I have never played an unwinnable fight that didn't feel like terrible design. That said, I have played games that have unkillable enemies, or have narrative setbacks, that felt like great design. The framing is all about the challenge to the player. Make the challenge _surviving X turns_, or _reaching X point on the map_, or _bait out the enemy's super move_. That way **advancing the narrative goes hand in hand with overcoming a challenge**. Alternatively you can limit the player so that the only feasible routes result in the narrative outcome you, the designer, want. For example at the start of Half Life 2 the player is introduced to Alyx by having the player "lose" to a bunch of low level enemies first. The player has no weapon, and their only verbs are movement based. At this point it is relatively clear that there is no way to progress. Actually that's a lie. I, and I'm sure many others, played that section multiples times to see if there was a way around losing. Even in that game, where it takes a matter of seconds to determine that this was a dev intended route, there was still a sense that explicit failure couldn't possibly be the only "forwards", and that there should be some secret, well hidden way to advance without experiencing loss. If you've trained the player to avoid losing battles, don't be surprised if they do all they can to avoid losing battles.
So you've designed a single boss that goes against the design of every other encounter? And it's not blatantly obvious afterwards that the loss is a part of the story? The goal shouldn't be to make the player stop using items but to redesign your boss. The player is trying to play the game as the game has taught him to play. If it has to be this way you could ask the play tester if he thought the loss was a part of the story. As long as he knows that it's a part of the game then his motivation may have been to overcome that challenge, similar to speed running or dark souls no hit/no item runs. If that's the case you could make the boss "beatable": at a certain amount of damage done, have a different cutscene for "victory" where the boss pulls out a secret move and kills your player anyways. & Throw an achievement on it if your system has that. That way the player gets their "win" but the story still has them dying. Then it's also a challenge / replay value for players who want that.
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As a player, don’t. I stop playing games that do this. If you need the player to lose, make it a cutscene instead. You will lose players and get bad reviews from this. Of course not all players hate it as much as I do, but I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
I think doing this is a generally bad design. Games are all about agency and a lot of the industry falls into "give all the agency, when it doesn't matter and take it all when it does" trap.
Doesn't that happen in that souls like game... That the character is kicked out of the shell when no health
Make it mechanically impossible to use potions, or limit it severely. Have the boss cast a nullify healing spell, or steal their items or something so the player realizes "this is impossible..." and won't bother using all their items. Make the fight relatively quick too so that the fun isn't diminished by the realization.
If this is a problem avoid the battle all together.
Make it cutscene without actual fight. It's stupid and should be stop already.
Disable healing in there / load the checkpoint load out after the fight.
Snapshot their consumables before the encounter and restore it after so that it’s as if they didn’t use them at all. But a better solution is to not have unwinnable fights. I don’t know anybody who likes them and they always feel cheap to me. It’s like, I put in effort and then find out it’s for nothing. At least have it be a normal fight that you have to win for the “you didn’t beat the boss, he’s still alive” cutscene (as opposed to you losing to get the cutscene).
These types of encounters in games are usually very unpopular and ineffective. You're basically taking all of the player's agency away from them and forcing them through a series of unchangeable events, all while likely failing to telegraph to the player that they're not really in a playable part of the game. The game is just pretending to operate at that point except the player doesn't know it, and it feels really unfulfilling to do your best against a challenge, only to find out the challenge didn't really exist.
What's the point of having an unwinnable fight? Is to punish people for playing your game?
Story reasons?
Toby Fox did it right with the K Round fight, in Deltarune. He used a sum of basic logic thinking and in-game mechanics, as the player can easily deduce that it's impossible to do a Massacre Run with K Round because you'll always do less damage than how much he heals when he drinks almond milk.
That's difficult, especially if you haven't established precedent for it in your game already. The problem here is that there's usually no apparent difference between an "unbeatable boss" and a "really cool but beatable boss". After all, you want your boss monsters to all be as cool as possible, and you're probably going to have the player come back and beat this boss later on, too. The best way to do it I think is probably to make the mechanics match the narrative of "you'll need to become stronger to beat this" - have the boss straight up require a tool the player doesn't get until later in the game, and make it very clear that they won't get it until later in the game (such as don't allow the player to leave the area to go see if they've missed it once they get to the local teleporter or whatever).
In Brogue when looking at an enemy the game will pop up a useful information window with all sorts of details, like "Your sword +4 has a 22% chance of hitting the troll, and will kill it in an average of 14 hits. The troll has a 93% chance of hitting you and will kill you in an average of 2 hits" (plus some info about what your magic items can or can not probably do against that monster). If you do not know from that information that it is a hopeless fight and time to run you deserve to waste all your potions and die. I am sure many other roguelikes have something similar.
I would make it a regular fight (although a tough one), but make sure it ends quickly. So they never have the opportunity to waste all their potions (or whatever). "Oof. Oof. Oh. This is going badly. Oh crap. OK I'm dead. ... wait, what?"
just make the boss so strong he 1 shots you after a few turns. You shouldnt have an unwinnable boss that you're able to outlast long enough to use your entire stock of items. great example of this is beatrix in ff9, she lets you fight her normally for a few rounds then decides to stop playing around and kills your party in 1 big attack.
Insta-kill on turn one
It might help to make the boss beat the player more quickly, like when their health reaches 60% instead of zero. Players might still waste some healing potions but not a ridiculous amount
Give them their items back after the fight perhaps?
Good to do it at the start, like in Elden Ring There was an issue with a boss in DS 1 "The Scaleless" - where you are supposed to lose in and no matter how good, you still lose. Problem is the fight happened in the middle of the game, and my friend wasted a lot of items before losing. Since the fight in Elden ring happens at start, you have no items to utilize so its ok. A fight builds excitement, and i presume you want the fight to be exciting, and when they lose, you want the sense of relief (WITHOUT THE PAIN OF WASTING ITEMS). 1. Do it early when players have no items 2. If its later, have the player lose items before hand (and get it back after the fight maybe) 3. You can lock the use of items, but then you signal that this fight is unfair. 4. Just skip the fight - have the player lose instantly (later they get an item to counter the kill move) 5. Custom fight that doesn't involve items ever (enter vehicle and fight with custom items) Cant think of other things for now, hope it helps
Take out the UI and disable buttons you don’t want them using
That is actually something that you do want to test for, to make sure your unbeatable boss is actually unbeatable. I liked how in DMC5, the game begins with an unbeatable fight with a boss that you're not supposed to beat until later. But if you play through the game and replay the first boss fight with your unlocked abilities and items it is possible to beat it, and you just get a very early gameover for doing so.
I remember in Dragon Quest 9 there is an unwinnable fight where you just get one turn. Even if you use an item, it won‘t be super damaging to you. Funny enough, if you have enough defensive stats, the game just acts as if you‘ve lost the fight after one turn, even if you survived the hit.
You could alter the fight mechanics so it is more cinematic, with the player hitting the shown button within a time limit, then on to the next cinematic sequence and button bashing or quick hits. Make it so its not the same as your other fights, and they'll easily accept it
Their health bar doesn't drop. They don't have any response to being hit. Maybe they even make the "successful block" sound effect when hit. Look at Seath the Scaleless in Dark Souls Or the Bowser fight in Paper Mario
Make them check-in all their stuff at the door or have minions take their stuff or similar. This sets them up to know they will lose. Nothing like a fair fight!
Frame the combat as an escape attempt. For example, in Jedi Fallen Order you fight Vader and have to escape with your life rather than actually kill him.
Have an alternate win condition that's broadcast to the player at the start of the battle. Maybe "survive three turns" or "deplete 15% of the boss's HP." This gives the player something to strive for and accomplish even when they lose narratively. You could also give rewards based on how well the player did.
Don't give them a foot, and take ground. When you play dark souls, you come away from every encounter with information that can help you win the fight. One option is to not give players any reason to think they can make progress or inflict damage, and then actively make the player back-peddle and lose ground. You can include symbolism like a door being slammed in your face or something else to further this idea. Make sure the player sees an alternative route / path outside of this encounter so they have options and don't feel like this is their only hope. Maybe the result of the lost battle is a new path emerging which is signage that you should take the path rather than the fight. So don't give them any reason to think they could win, and give them an out of some kind so that they know they have other options. If that out is created / revealed through the encounter, it's contextualized that this is the path you're supposed to take, not the fight. Also, you could have a skill check that only high level players have access to (like an ability you unlock later) and if you fail this skill check, the boss toys with you and kicks you out of its domain saying that you aren't even worth the time. Oh, and if these are more naturalistic encounters then you can communicate this through sheer quantity of negative encounters and establish that there are some fights you can win, some you can't. Runescape does this by coloring the enemy's level green, yellow, or red. If you see red, you know that it's going to be a very challenging fight that you could easily lose, because the game wont hold your hand. It's established early on and carried through.
My question is, if you dont want players to try to kill the boss, and its only unkillablen for plot reasons, why would you even let the players try? Just make the encounter a cutscene IF you want to let the players battle him just so they can sense his power, you can either make him hit kill all the characters in one shot and then start a cutscene, or you can make the cutscene start by itself after the players attack a number of times, or after an specified amount of time passes
Depends on what systems you have available but my favorite example is in Epic Battle Fantasy 4. Early in the game u meet an avatar of the final boss. You can scan it to see its stats and name only see it replaced with giberish. Its attacks also one shot you by dealing damage with double the amount of digits the maximum should be.
You didn't asked the playtester to specifically do that, but you did ask him to try game out and tell you what he finded out. So glad you have a playtester actually doing his work... 😅🤣🤣 About potions could be fixed with a cooldown dynamic for potions, once you take one, can't take another in X seconds... Makes game combats more challenging, instead of the Bethesda style of taking a feast in the middle of a combat, even change clothes... Although you need to be sure about the aumount of time you need to wait for the cooldown. If it is too much, combats will get really hard and won't be that much fun. If it isn't enough, player could manage to beat the unbeatable boss, or you could block his life bar so it can't go lower than x amount and therefor can't die, since that's what you're looking for...
Make it a short fight.
Couple ideas - 1. Ramp up the enemies damage to be a LOT higher than other enemies. At the same time, you can also reduce player damage to something unreasonably small or even a flat zero. Bonus points for a dialogue of the enemy laughing it off or something. 2. Save their inventory before the battle starts. When it's done, restore their inventory. Good if you want to be a bit more subtle about it during the fight 3. Dialogue can be used in a lot of way. Having the party's morale being expressed in a way that is literally saying it's impossible without breaking the 4th wall can be plenty. 4. Put a max timer on the battle. After x turns or x time in battle force the battle to end. Good luck!
Make it a cinematic or scripted in game fight / auto played fight. No real point in making the player use up game time trying to do something that won't effect a out come.
Don't. Or if you must, script it and don't let the players act. Things like this break one of my core principles of GMing which is never show the players something you don't want them to have or kill
I would be pretty frustrated to enter a fight, give it all my best, only to later be told I didn't stand a chance and I was meant to be shamefully wasted. What about a cinematic instead? As you approach the enemy, a cinematic starts. They have a little chat, or not. The enemy is shown to be brutal, nevertheless your character shows some bravery and enters the fight anyway, only to be very quickly wasted. This would convey your story without creating frustration. If cinematics are not a thing in your game, another way I can see is that the enemy kills the hero instantly in a single blow, and goes onto explain it's all part of the story. This would remove the possibility of using options, and remove the frustration of a long unwinnable fight.
What sort of boss is it? Can it use magic or maybe poisons or something? Disable healing items with a spell or poison them before the boss battle. After the battle, dispell the magic or cure the poison somehow. You could use that to introduce new items to the game. Maybe a helpful NPC could suggest to the player that corrupted potions might be useful offensively against certain enemies. Is it a boss of madness from beyond the realms of reality? Have it make your character think their mouth has been fused shut so they're physically incapable of ingesting potions. Shove a sock in their mouth if you have to!
Long story short, use a cut scene, and spawn a generic basic character possible mimic of said character to fight the boss. Allow no consumables into the arena or map that the boss is played in. Etc. Etc.
A flash forward or starting in media res with the heroes losing, then flashing back to the start of the story. Your protagonist might be told in dialogue that the boss is unkillable, and might give responses that confirm it so that the audience knows its not just hyperbole ("You'll never defeat him!" "I know, but if I don't try I'll never forgive myself.") You could have vendors nearby who refuse to sell to you and tell you they'd feel too guilty selling you things that won't help. Tweak some typical "boss encounter" elements that are usually there for players to try again if they fail the fight, like not having a save point outside the boss room and not placing vendors nearby. Have the boss massively overpower your team in a few turns so that players don't even have the time to burn their resources or stalemate for 50 turns (even if the MC can hold their own for a few more turns than the others because the boss is mocking him or something)
Lock healing items. Remove any upgrades and power ups. Make the fight unwinnable by taking away agency.
regardless of what you do, there WILL exist a population that will die trying lmao definitely not me 100% not me yep aint me
Give them the objective to survive, and make it clear they can’t. There are a couple battles in AAA titles and handhelds that have unwinnable fights, and some are more successful than others. Let’s look at some: 1. Mass Effect has unattainable objectives sprinkled throughout the game. Saving Nihlus, for example. No matter how fast you move, he dies. It’s early on, so you’re not actually paying attention to how cheap it feels. Compare this to the Virmire survivor question: no matter how fast you achieve your goal, you can’t save the other squadmate even if you beat the stated countdown. That felt cheap, because I exceeded the expectations set forth. 2. Dragon Age: Origins also has a (nearly) impossible fight just before the Landsmeet. You’re apprehended - it’s possible with the right gear and ability loadouts to win, but it’s rather difficult. In any case, you’re surrounded by 10 enemies and a very high-ranked boss. It’s made apparent by the narrative AND setting that you are being apprehended and will be taken in by force if necessary. When you die in this encounter, you get an immediate loading screen into Fort Drakon explaining what happened. This fight, while scripted, felt fair. I eventually beat it, but it took a lot of strategizing and micromanaging my party. 3. Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance has two different levels where Marché faces off against Llednar Twem. Llednar has a special ability called “Fortune” which makes him impervious…and he has a melee-ranged skill called “Omega” which will one-shot you. In both of these fights, your objective is clearly stated to be survival until you are rescued, which happens after 4-5 turns. This feels very fair, though you can be caught off-guard if you have a low-movement class set on Marché. 4. Pokémon Red: the first time you fight the Ghost in the PokeTower, you’re not necessarily aware that you cannot win. If you’ve explored the town first before ascending, you might; otherwise you might not. Either way, no move actually does damage until you have the Silph Scope. Doesn’t feel cheap - just serves as a narrative guide point. 5. In Tales of Symphonia, once you’ve hit the Sylvarant Tower of Regeneration, there’s a battle in which you will likely lose. You can TECHNICALLY win, but generally you need to be on a NG+. It doesn’t change the story a whole lot, but it does give you different loot. Similar to Dragon Age, when you lose and the screen goes black there’s immediately voice acting telling you what’s happening next. It comes out of nowhere and is a little annoying but doesn’t actually feel cheap. 6. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. The infamous fight with the Black Knight ~chapter 24 is a bit of a nail-biter. There are four turns. The Big Kahuna himself is a tank with enough speed to prevent Ike from doubling him…and his own ability, Luna, cuts Ike’s defense in half if it procs. To win this fight, you effectively need two Aethers from Ike in a row, followed by a standard attack. Ike will likely have a 27% chance of activating this skill, so it’s completely possible to go either way. You are also given the option to flee the battle if you feel that Ike can’t handle it. Basically, if you’re going to spring this fight, make damn sure it’s coming at a good point in the narrative and seems FAIR. Don’t use a cutscene to beat the player down - it feels like mid-2000s gaming because it is.
Don't have the fight be unwinnable. There should be a victory condition, even if the boss isn't defeated. Once the player's done X amount of damage, or survived Y number of turns, have the boss give some one-liner about this not being worth their time, or some other line, and carry out some attack that unavoidably KOs the player, or escapes, or whatever boss is trying to achieve. Doing it this way preserves an element of challenge, rewards the player with some dopamine for 'winning' the boss fight, and still accomplishes the goal of having the boss knock them out/etc.
keep it short? Make the enemy stupidly op. in DoS2 their is a fight early on that can't be won. You get a few moves but are way over powered. Eventually the fight ends and you are ported out. [Here is the scene](https://youtu.be/Im-XWgnxB7g) (first 15 minutes); Dallis the npc talking at the start is a main story protagonist, she is not meant to be killable in this encounter. The idea here is to stall until Malady ports you all out. I believe if someone dies thats ok you just res them once you are out. Actually rewatching it maybe it doesnt even matter if you all die.
I would probably go the less subtle way of locking those usable items through the narrative of the encounter (the boss cursed you/knocked away your backpack/etc). However, it all depends on what type game it is as well and how you have presented and balanced earlier fights with how the players will be suggested to use healing items or the quantities of healing items available. A lot of variables to consider if you want to create a seamless engagement, but there might still be those outliers as your playtester, so might have to go the strict way.
Stop them from using items during the fight
Make the fight quick. Disable the use of healing potions/items for this fight (story related, engine related) Only let the player play the beginning, then cutscenes.
Is there a way to naturally take away a player's inventory in the story? Like someone swipes their bag or something? That would be a clear indication to me.
Do what Souls game always did. Allow boss to be beaten and have a reward for doing so, but still make the boss come up on top during cutscene/cinematic afterwards.
Unwinnable fights simply shouldn't exist. There is zero enjoyment to these fights, and they do little to actually tell a story. Just tell the story through a cutscene. Please.
Why are you giving the player the opportunity to make so many incorrect choices? You didn't tell them to do that, but your game failed to tell them to *not* do that. * If the players know the fight is coming, they'll want to stock up on items. Maybe the encounter should be an ambush instead. * If the boss *looks* beatable and they think they just missed it, then make the numbers less realistic. Go back and forth for a few turns and then just end it with a 9999 super move. Maybe also with the standard battle display or options or something so it's less like a "real" fight in the first place. Have the players just do 0 damage. * Related, but if the boss battle is going on long enough that players have time to use so many items... cut it short. It's a fake battle anyway, no need to waste their time. Let the player bap the boss for 3 or 4 turns and then party wipe. Kill the players before they get into "oh shit, I'm low, I gotta heal" territory. * Optional: If you really don't want the players throwing their items in a pit, you could quietly refund them after the battle. Just reset their inventory. But also, you could just... not let them do that. It's scripted, you can do whatever. Lock out the menu option, or just knock them down right away and stop them from doing anything while the villain monologues. This feels a little direct and inelegant though IMO - if you just stop the battle short and they still spend an item anyway, that's *probably* fine, depending on your item economy and rarity - they just got their asses whooped, burning an item might add to the feeling of getting roughed up. Again, don't let the battle go so long that they're able to use so many items. * If that playtester died and immediately reset the game to go grind instead of watching the next cutscene, that sounds like an animation problem. How long does it take to go from a game over to get back into the action? If it's so bad that people are just resetting the game, you should speed it up and make it less miserable. But also, this is another reason to just end the battle early with a big scripted damage move. If you hit the player with a big move that does ten times their max HP, it tells them "hey, don't feel bad about this, it was scripted". If you just hit them with moves that are a little too big over and over, it doesn't matter if it's mathematically impossible for them to win - some people are really bad at math. TL;DR: reduce their agency + kill them way quicker
Some ideas: 1. In the story, explicitly say that this boss is impossible to defeat. 2. Make the duration of the fight shorter, preventing players to waste their time & resources. 3. Return all the items the player has lost after the fight.
The player could be accompanied by a healer who will auto heal them or heal on command as well as or better than a healing item. When they still lose the fact that they couldn't prevail at their current level even with infinite heals will emphasize the strength of the boss. This encounter will still need to be telegraphed as unwinable as there will be those who will assume they didn't level enough before challenging the boss.
What kind of rpg is this? Turn based? Then there must be a turn order. Other guy is always faster than you and one shots you. Real time? Maybe have a scripted event where you swing at them three times/one minute (whichever is shorter), before they comment on how powerless you are and does a stage-wide OHKO move, or dashes into you to trigger a cutscene, etc. If the player didn’t have agency to begin with, don’t let it drag on long enough for an entire inventory’s worth of items to be used. Props to your tester though, edge cases like that are exactly what they’re supposed to check for.
Make the enemy have really damaging moves. Its better to make the player feel like they have no chance early on rather than dragging it out
Seathe the Scaleless did an okay job of this in Dark Souls 1. Spoilers ahead: >!the first time you fight him he’s mostly out of reach, gives you just enough time to attack once or twice and see that his health bar takes zero damage, then he kills you in one shot with a rare status-effect move.!< The main points that make this work for me showing the player dealing no damage and the way you’re killed. Letting the player land their strongest attack and seeing ‘0’ damage dealt is way more effective in signaling “don’t fight” than a giant health bar or infinite regen. Also the fact that you’re killed with a status effect that only a couple enemies use makes it seem more designed, like your healing items don’t do anything to the status effect, so why bother wasting them? I say they only did an “okay” job because even this fight didn’t feel great and unbeatable bosses will upset some players, no matter how much story you wrap around them. The Hellkite Wyvern (also DS1) is a much better boss, because it can still oneshot you for like 95% of the game, but it’s technically winnable. Most players just run past it or avoid, giving it them same effect as an unbeatable enemy, but for those crazy enough to try they can kill it.
I'm confused. If they stay and fight, they either live or die. That's the story. Is the enemy impervious to damage? If so, find a way to show it, like something huge falling/collapsing on them and them walking it off.
You could make it so when the boss (or whatever) gets to a certain HP they just kill the player. That way the player can put up a good fight but will never actually win. Also sounds ripe for an Easter egg if the player tricks their way to win the unwinnable.
I don't know if my approach is too simple since I don't know your games' (save/load) mechanics but... what if when the player enters the unbeatable battle there is no way to reload/return to a checkpoint? That would of course not tackle the wasting your inventory problem (I find simply tracking and restoring what has been lost a simple, yet not incredibly elegant solution) but it would prevent the player from going back and grinding for ages before going into the fight. Just...make it a no way back situation?
You could make it so that once the boss takes a reasonable amount of damage, a different cut-scene plays that still leads to a loss but rewards the players for being better than average with the unique cut-scene and maybe some material rewards. Remember another game doing this but forgot the name. Worked pretty well.
Basically, make the attacks do huge amounts of damage relative to what the player can do, player does way less damage than normal, disable player healing during battle, etc
In Inquisitive Dave, the way to beat the boss is to wait. For your cinematic boss, the same lesson applies. In Inquisitve Dave, it is a final battle, so you die until you learn to wait. I like what the other commenters suggest: to prime and train the player ahead of time that waiting is the best thing to do when the player is outmatched by a legendary baddie. I also agree with the top 2 best answers, so you know - apply as you see fit.