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The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatev

The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatever correct action, at the correct time, you need to defeat a particular boss. It's just a time consuming chore. Edit: the "boss" escape sequences in the Ori games were also entirely frustrating and and unsatisfying to me.

scrollaway 1y ago
Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I think learning to play a musical instrument would actually give me more satisfaction because it would open more doors towards creativity. But it's all personal of course. :) Some people like boss fights (or Souls-like games) and I'm happy for them. I just would be happy with a "bypass this" button.
- BalinKing 1y ago
  I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.
  - simoncion 1y ago
    > I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end... You've clearly never heard me playing my horns! I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more. [0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    A better analogy than music might be dance: The reward for dancing well is simply the feeling of dancing well. In a properly-designed game, the game feel of successfully completing the technical challenge is itself the reward. A dance that feels unpleasant probably won't be performed recreationally, and a game that doesn't feel fun to succeed at won't see much play.
zwnow 1y ago
I agree. I used to play Path of Exile a lot, recently joined the new league in Path of Exile 2 and the balancing is so bad you have to play a particular build to beat the campaign in a reasonable time. In a game that is all about build versatility... Common responses from the playerbase: skill issue, build issue, etc. While the game clearly has a balancing issue (which is fair considering its not at v1.0 yet). Bosses should not outregenerate your damage. 90% of the playerbase is playing the same build. Its just not fun following a particular guide just to play with the highest efficiency possible. What makes videogames fun to me (especially action rpgs) is the ability to make my own build. Its also the reason why I do not play any multi-player games anymore. There are barely people who play for fun, everyone just wants to win win win.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I'm an unashamed, unabashed, could-not-care-less "casual" when it comes to games, which definitely shows up even more in multiplayer. I played Minecraft with some online friends and I was off messing around, exploring, and doing nothing worthwhile, and got back to "base" where they had like.. monster farms and stuff?! Because they were trying to finish the newly released IDK.. expansion, ASAP? It was a very clear "oh you and I are not here for the same reason" moment. :D
  - zwnow 1y ago
    Haha I barely touched the nether in Minecraft, still had a blast with my friends. Unfortunately nowadays they exclusively play competitive games so I can not join them anymore...
  - kartoffelsaft 1y ago
    I've found the way minecraft has evolved over the past 14 years to be unsatisfying for this reason. Most of the games systems feel like they exist for the purpose of being exploited, and the rest of the systems encorage the player to interact with the former. As an example, if I want to go exploring, I'm thinking I'm going to want food, so I'll want crops either to eat them directly or to breed livestock. If I want to do that in a way that doesn't require waiting I'll need bone meal. But at some point they changed it so you require more bone meal to fully grow. And now the game has funneled me into building a mob grinder when I actually wanted to explore. Sure, there are mobs out there you can fight who drop those items, and that's more engaging, but "fun" and "effective" are so misaligned in the game currently that I find myself avoiding it. So much so that I end up mostly either playing really old versions that aren't this way (b1.7.3 in particular) or modpacks that do a better job of this kind of progression.
andrewingram 1y ago
I also found the escape sequences in Ori to not be much fun at all. Though when I replayed both games a couple of months ago, somehow I did the sandworm on my first attempt -- which was a huge relief because that one induced so much rage on my first playthrough.
boppo1 1y ago
I felt this way two days & 2 hours of playtime ago. Now I'm a bit better with the controls, beat lace & am using hunter's march to farm rosaries. I think I'd be bored if it were easier. I don't want to 'press A to win'.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  > I don't want to 'press A to win'. I get that! (Edit: I mean this enthusiastically, like, I relate :) ) I think the point is, for me (and it looks like some others in the thread), beating bosses doesn't feel like "winning", it feels like completing a chore. For me, for example, the part that feels like winning (in games in general) is stuff like investing the time to travel through all the areas of a game, completing many if not all the side quests, grinding to get to max level and/or earning all the best equipment, etc. But learning the specific way to beat this one boss (often in a way that doesn't matter for the rest of the game because it's based on some timing or animation specific to that boss)? Yeah, that's a chore.
npteljes 1y ago
Same for me. I appreciate stories and standard gameplay loops more than bossfights. I did stumble upon a game where I enjoy the bossfights though - in V Rising. There is a TON of bosses in the game, but the game is so full of quality of life stuff that even dying repeatedly is not a big deal. I generally dislike when my time is a stake in the game. I have so little of it in the first place, I don't like risking it in this way.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Yeah. Although maybe I can't say my time is that precious because I'm somehow pretty happy to grind through hours of quests. Heck, I even seem to like job-like games (Hardspace Shipbreaker was amazing to me). I guess the "if you don't pass this, start over!" aspect of boss fights is the thing that irks me.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    Yeah... you're right. Ultimately it's not that my time is precious, it's that I get no satisfaction of beating a boss. I hate how overpowered are with scripted stuff, for example, and how they break most game mechanics introduced so far. And so, my time spent seems to be wasted. Looking at how other people describe their experience, it seems like the figuring out part brings them joy. I usually have that with the core game mechanics themselves. The "knowledge" I get seems useful here, because I get to apply it to the rest of the game, but learning the boss mechanics seems like a throwaway thing, and I think this bothers me. I also don't enjoy replaying parts of the game, especially as a punishment, especially when the replayed part had nothing to do with the my failure itself - like clearing the trash before a boss, or replaying parts of the bossfight before the crucial part, or getting back to the boss' place from a checkpoint. Such a slog!
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      I think we are 100% on the same page, but I wanna share one last pet peeve for the road. :D You beat the boss! BUT WAIT!!! It's not actually dead! And then you say "wow, no way!" ironically as you watch its health bar refill. Who could ever have expected this?!
fatata123 1y ago
[dead]
Insanity 1y ago
Yeah.. I've actually stopped playing games because of boss fights. In fairness, I generally don't like Single Player games, so the threshold for me to just quit one is actually pretty low, but an annoying Boss Fight is a surefire way to do so. I played through Cyberpunk, and for each boss fight I just flipped the difficulty to the easiest possible setting. It's just not fun to me. EDIT: apart from the bossfights in Cyberpunk, I actually did enjoy the game. Took me about 6 months to finish it though lol. (no DLC, and started about a year ago so when it was actually stable & playable).
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Yeah, boss fights in Cyberpunk didn't even fit the vibe. Kinda forced in.
Balinares 1y ago
I had a sobering experience with one of the Hollow Knight optional bosses, Nightmare King Grimm. After a few tries, and getting demolished in a few seconds by its relentless onslaught of attacks that span much of the screen, I realized that I'm simply too old and too slow to beat this boss. No regrets, I've had a great run -- my gaming life started back in the days of analog TV Pong "consoles". But my reflexes just aren't what they once were; and there was a boss simply beyond my physical capabilities. So it goes. To Hollow Knight's eternal credit, I just kept at it because the fight was so engrossing. There was a borderline meditative quality to it. The speed, the relentlessness. The rhythm of it. Sometimes I would just not fight back, only dodge and see how long I could last. One time, confusingly, the boss started doing a move I had never seen before. Bosses aren't supposed to do that, right? They've got patterns and phases, they don't spawn new moves out of nowhere. Yeah, so that was its death animation. I won and I never even realized I was winning. Later another DLC added a boss challenge area where you can re-fight Nightmare King Grimm with only one hit point. You get hit once, you lose. It took me two or three tries, tops. Hollow Knight will always remain very special to me for having a higher opinion of what I can achieve than I did myself, and proving to me it was right about it. (EDIT: Oh hey didn't even notice your username. Hi dude!)
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Sun?!
  - Balinares 1y ago
    The very same. XD Hope you've been okay, it's been a while!
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      Well what are the odds! :D I'm good!
vunderba 1y ago
I grew up in the era of boss rush segments towards the end of a game to add filler and absolutely hated them. FWIW, I'm also much bigger fan of difficult levels over difficult bosses. I also think that the level of perceived difficulty depending on the player plays a large part in the enjoyment. When I play a video game, I'm also imagining that I'm actually that character so every death essentially means that I was defeated in that world for real. I absolutely hate games where one of the win conditions is to be forced to die numerous times to discover an otherwise inscrutable pattern.

scrollaway 1y ago

Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.

rkomorn 1y ago
I think learning to play a musical instrument would actually give me more satisfaction because it would open more doors towards creativity. But it's all personal of course. :) Some people like boss fights (or Souls-like games) and I'm happy for them. I just would be happy with a "bypass this" button.
BalinKing 1y ago
I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.
- simoncion 1y ago
  > I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end... You've clearly never heard me playing my horns! I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more. [0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.
- bccdee 1y ago
  A better analogy than music might be dance: The reward for dancing well is simply the feeling of dancing well. In a properly-designed game, the game feel of successfully completing the technical challenge is itself the reward. A dance that feels unpleasant probably won't be performed recreationally, and a game that doesn't feel fun to succeed at won't see much play.

zwnow 1y ago

I agree. I used to play Path of Exile a lot, recently joined the new league in Path of Exile 2 and the balancing is so bad you have to play a particular build to beat the campaign in a reasonable time. In a game that is all about build versatility... Common responses from the playerbase: skill issue, build issue, etc. While the game clearly has a balancing issue (which is fair considering its not at v1.0 yet). Bosses should not outregenerate your damage. 90% of the playerbase is playing the same build. Its just not fun following a particular guide just to play with the highest efficiency possible. What makes videogames fun to me (especially action rpgs) is the ability to make my own build. Its also the reason why I do not play any multi-player games anymore. There are barely people who play for fun, everyone just wants to win win win.

rkomorn 1y ago
I'm an unashamed, unabashed, could-not-care-less "casual" when it comes to games, which definitely shows up even more in multiplayer. I played Minecraft with some online friends and I was off messing around, exploring, and doing nothing worthwhile, and got back to "base" where they had like.. monster farms and stuff?! Because they were trying to finish the newly released IDK.. expansion, ASAP? It was a very clear "oh you and I are not here for the same reason" moment. :D
- zwnow 1y ago
  Haha I barely touched the nether in Minecraft, still had a blast with my friends. Unfortunately nowadays they exclusively play competitive games so I can not join them anymore...
- kartoffelsaft 1y ago
  I've found the way minecraft has evolved over the past 14 years to be unsatisfying for this reason. Most of the games systems feel like they exist for the purpose of being exploited, and the rest of the systems encorage the player to interact with the former. As an example, if I want to go exploring, I'm thinking I'm going to want food, so I'll want crops either to eat them directly or to breed livestock. If I want to do that in a way that doesn't require waiting I'll need bone meal. But at some point they changed it so you require more bone meal to fully grow. And now the game has funneled me into building a mob grinder when I actually wanted to explore. Sure, there are mobs out there you can fight who drop those items, and that's more engaging, but "fun" and "effective" are so misaligned in the game currently that I find myself avoiding it. So much so that I end up mostly either playing really old versions that aren't this way (b1.7.3 in particular) or modpacks that do a better job of this kind of progression.

andrewingram 1y ago

I also found the escape sequences in Ori to not be much fun at all. Though when I replayed both games a couple of months ago, somehow I did the sandworm on my first attempt -- which was a huge relief because that one induced so much rage on my first playthrough.

boppo1 1y ago

I felt this way two days & 2 hours of playtime ago. Now I'm a bit better with the controls, beat lace & am using hunter's march to farm rosaries. I think I'd be bored if it were easier. I don't want to 'press A to win'.

rkomorn 1y ago
> I don't want to 'press A to win'. I get that! (Edit: I mean this enthusiastically, like, I relate :) ) I think the point is, for me (and it looks like some others in the thread), beating bosses doesn't feel like "winning", it feels like completing a chore. For me, for example, the part that feels like winning (in games in general) is stuff like investing the time to travel through all the areas of a game, completing many if not all the side quests, grinding to get to max level and/or earning all the best equipment, etc. But learning the specific way to beat this one boss (often in a way that doesn't matter for the rest of the game because it's based on some timing or animation specific to that boss)? Yeah, that's a chore.

npteljes 1y ago

Same for me. I appreciate stories and standard gameplay loops more than bossfights. I did stumble upon a game where I enjoy the bossfights though - in V Rising. There is a TON of bosses in the game, but the game is so full of quality of life stuff that even dying repeatedly is not a big deal. I generally dislike when my time is a stake in the game. I have so little of it in the first place, I don't like risking it in this way.

rkomorn 1y ago
Yeah. Although maybe I can't say my time is that precious because I'm somehow pretty happy to grind through hours of quests. Heck, I even seem to like job-like games (Hardspace Shipbreaker was amazing to me). I guess the "if you don't pass this, start over!" aspect of boss fights is the thing that irks me.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Yeah... you're right. Ultimately it's not that my time is precious, it's that I get no satisfaction of beating a boss. I hate how overpowered are with scripted stuff, for example, and how they break most game mechanics introduced so far. And so, my time spent seems to be wasted. Looking at how other people describe their experience, it seems like the figuring out part brings them joy. I usually have that with the core game mechanics themselves. The "knowledge" I get seems useful here, because I get to apply it to the rest of the game, but learning the boss mechanics seems like a throwaway thing, and I think this bothers me. I also don't enjoy replaying parts of the game, especially as a punishment, especially when the replayed part had nothing to do with the my failure itself - like clearing the trash before a boss, or replaying parts of the bossfight before the crucial part, or getting back to the boss' place from a checkpoint. Such a slog!
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I think we are 100% on the same page, but I wanna share one last pet peeve for the road. :D You beat the boss! BUT WAIT!!! It's not actually dead! And then you say "wow, no way!" ironically as you watch its health bar refill. Who could ever have expected this?!

fatata123 1y ago

[dead]

Insanity 1y ago

Yeah.. I've actually stopped playing games because of boss fights. In fairness, I generally don't like Single Player games, so the threshold for me to just quit one is actually pretty low, but an annoying Boss Fight is a surefire way to do so. I played through Cyberpunk, and for each boss fight I just flipped the difficulty to the easiest possible setting. It's just not fun to me. EDIT: apart from the bossfights in Cyberpunk, I actually did enjoy the game. Took me about 6 months to finish it though lol. (no DLC, and started about a year ago so when it was actually stable & playable).

whatevaa 1y ago
Yeah, boss fights in Cyberpunk didn't even fit the vibe. Kinda forced in.

Balinares 1y ago

I had a sobering experience with one of the Hollow Knight optional bosses, Nightmare King Grimm. After a few tries, and getting demolished in a few seconds by its relentless onslaught of attacks that span much of the screen, I realized that I'm simply too old and too slow to beat this boss. No regrets, I've had a great run -- my gaming life started back in the days of analog TV Pong "consoles". But my reflexes just aren't what they once were; and there was a boss simply beyond my physical capabilities. So it goes. To Hollow Knight's eternal credit, I just kept at it because the fight was so engrossing. There was a borderline meditative quality to it. The speed, the relentlessness. The rhythm of it. Sometimes I would just not fight back, only dodge and see how long I could last. One time, confusingly, the boss started doing a move I had never seen before. Bosses aren't supposed to do that, right? They've got patterns and phases, they don't spawn new moves out of nowhere. Yeah, so that was its death animation. I won and I never even realized I was winning. Later another DLC added a boss challenge area where you can re-fight Nightmare King Grimm with only one hit point. You get hit once, you lose. It took me two or three tries, tops. Hollow Knight will always remain very special to me for having a higher opinion of what I can achieve than I did myself, and proving to me it was right about it. (EDIT: Oh hey didn't even notice your username. Hi dude!)

rkomorn 1y ago
Sun?!
- Balinares 1y ago
  The very same. XD Hope you've been okay, it's been a while!
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    Well what are the odds! :D I'm good!

vunderba 1y ago

I grew up in the era of boss rush segments towards the end of a game to add filler and absolutely hated them. FWIW, I'm also much bigger fan of difficult levels over difficult bosses. I also think that the level of perceived difficulty depending on the player plays a large part in the enjoyment. When I play a video game, I'm also imagining that I'm actually that character so every death essentially means that I was defeated in that world for real. I absolutely hate games where one of the win conditions is to be forced to die numerous times to discover an otherwise inscrutable pattern.