Boss Skip Feature?

[Tyrant Raver]

I get the majority playerbase would be pretty new to this, or just made of casual players, but problem here is that most bosses here are story-driven or related to the story. I would rather much have an easier difficulty, rather than have skip a boss entirely.

The boss battles are the meat of the gameplay. And it's not like the game throws one boss after another aka boss rushing, iirc there's plenty of time in-between to level your character and prepare for the next stage boss.

 

[Hakan Xatos]

I would recommend like a 'Story' difficulty. I think Uncharted has those. You pretty much play for the story of the game versus easy enemies and bosses. I don't think skipping is a good option when you take in the fact that bosses reward experience and abilities. Things that should be earned. It kind of loses its appeal when you skip things in my opinion.

 

[Tyrant Raver]

^
Or the "Easy Automatic" feature in Devil May Cry, where you pretty much power through enemies and bosses with flashy automatic combos. Or like in Witcher 3 easy difficulty where the game gives you a ton of god-like buffs and more loot so that you can powerplay through enemies and still keep the immersion, pretty much play for the story.

 

[Enturax]

Oh, hell NO!!! As if video games these days weren't casualized enough as they are!!! Just like someone already said: it's a video game, not a movie! Too hard for you? Play on easier difficulty! Don't like bosses at all? Watch it on YouTube and leave the gaming industry alone!!!
Quickly! Someone delete this topic before some dev will see it, take the idea and make it as a feature for some paid DLC! >.<

 

[Enturax]

There's literally no harm in having it as an option. I don't really get why people are reacting strongly to this lol. If you wouldn't want to skip the bosses, then... don't?

That's not the point - if the game has a mechanic, someone will eventually let go of Light, even if he/she doesn't want to, and succumb to darkness. And then... game creators may develop this trend even to higher degrees and make new games overall easier because they'll see that a lot of people are taking the shallow path, so they won't have motivation to create harder and more technologically advanced enemies!!!

 

[TheWorldsConnect]

No boss skips, they are part of why this series is so great and what makes gaming so much fun.

 

[VoidGear.]

A larger amount of games implementing a boss skip feature could ultimately result in less boss battles in games, or more clumsily designed bosses in general.

This is basically my problem with it.
Why focus much on boss fight designs if a lot of the gaming community makes use of skip option features anyway? I mean, it could also turn out that hardly anyone uses it, but the idea still seems kind of weird to me, especially in RPGs where leveling is always an option.

 

[Enturax]

but the idea still seems kind of weird to me, especially in RPGs where leveling is always an option.

Yup, plus there's the difficulty option. If anything, they should add a possibility of changing difficulty mid-game (but ONLY to easier mode, so people wouldn't play on beginner/standard through majority of the game, just so they'd change on critical/proud for the last battle, so they'd get an easy secret ending).

 

[alexis.anagram]

There's literally no harm in having it as an option. I don't really get why people are reacting strongly to this lol. If you wouldn't want to skip the bosses, then... don't? But for some people who have less skill, or less ability, or physical handicaps, etc, it could be the difference between never being able to finish the game, and being able to get to the ending.

^ Agreed. I don't understand the problem, I mean people are pointing out in this thread that the games already follow convention by including multiple difficulty levels specifically geared at scaling the challenge they present; cutscenes are also routinely skippable for players who don't want to watch them...how is that not some major threat to the integrity of the gaming industry but this is? You can choose to play on Proud or Critical and get your kicks, you can choose to fight every boss and get your kicks, you can choose to watch or skip any cutscene and get your darn kicks. Options like this expand inclusivity and accessibility across the board: some people might want to play KH for the world exploration and puzzle portions or mini-games but find no joy in whacking away at Genie Jafar for the 1000th time. Some peoples' bodies (hands, wrists, fingers, eyes) might not handle the strain of repetitious and/or complex button pressing, onscreen navigation or the demands of instant reflex. Let them play their way. It's nobody else's business.

And I mean, as if KH isn't already afflicted with some artificial difficulty and poorly designed boss fights. Could any of us really blame one among us for not wanting to suffer through some of them?

 

[BlackOsprey]

^
Or the "Easy Automatic" feature in Devil May Cry, where you pretty much power through enemies and bosses with flashy automatic combos. Or like in Witcher 3 easy difficulty where the game gives you a ton of god-like buffs and more loot so that you can powerplay through enemies and still keep the immersion, pretty much play for the story.

Pretty much this. I don't see a "boss skip option" as too problematic. I mean, how is it worse than setting the entire game to Beginner Mode?

Don't get me wrong, part of the experience of video games is overcoming tough challenges through any means possible ASIDE from cutting the difficulty down. KH has a sort of tradition with flinging around an incredibly hard boss into the game every now and then and the suffering they've caused is more or less part of the fandom now. Buuuuuut at the same time, I've played The Witcher 3 and Nier Automata, games with a "super duper easy mode," and I don't think of em any less for having the option there. It's actually quite nifty if you're very interested in the story and you just don't have the time (or the in-game resources) to tackle a nasty boss. Yeah I guess part of the experience is lost by cheesing your way through like that, but you can always choose to replay and actually fight everything.

 

[alexis.anagram]

Yeah I guess part of the experience is lost by cheesing your way through like that, but you can always choose to replay and actually fight everything.

Add to that the fact that in many RPGs you eventually gain some sort of item which prevents standard enemy encounters so you can explore without hassle. And in KH you can just walk away from pretty much any group of enemies you don't want to deal with. And the fact that the hardest bosses in KH have all been optional anyway. The argument that making the combat portion of gameplay (which is not the entirety of the experience) optional would reduce the quality of developer output makes no sense. If anything, I want the KH team to focus less on combat and bosses and more on everything else.

 

[Chuman]

Pretty much this. I don't see a "boss skip option" as too problematic. I mean, how is it worse than setting the entire game to Beginner Mode?

Don't get me wrong, part of the experience of video games is overcoming tough challenges through any means possible ASIDE from cutting the difficulty down. KH has a sort of tradition with flinging around an incredibly hard boss into the game every now and then and the suffering they've caused is more or less part of the fandom now. Buuuuuut at the same time, I've played The Witcher 3 and Nier Automata, games with a "super duper easy mode," and I don't think of em any less for having the option there. It's actually quite nifty if you're very interested in the story and you just don't have the time (or the in-game resources) to tackle a nasty boss. Yeah I guess part of the experience is lost by cheesing your way through like that, but you can always choose to replay and actually fight everything.

there’s a difference between having an uber easy difficulty and literally removing important content from the game because its too hard. if you cant beat the game on it’s easiest mode, then watch the movies on YT. games are made for playing and this culture of serial handholding is both redundant and masturbatory in every sense of the word. what seperates dropping the game to beginner and using an exploit to clear a hard enemy: that workaround exists within the title’s perimeters and is on the dev’s. but take a game that people have constantly stated is already easier than most of it’s kind and appeal to an audience that can’t even enjoy the medium without cutting integral parts from it, then you have a serious problem.

i understand that games can sometimes be so difficult that they interfere with your enjoyment. hell, i still haven’t finished bloodborne after nearly 2 years. but i commend it for not sacrificing integrity just to overstate the obvious, and it has forced me as a gamer to learn and play better, which has taught me lessons i’ve been able to use in all action games beyond the genre. gaming as an artform has been compromised for the sake of accessibility, its why every single title that isn’t mindnumbingly simple gets compared to dark souls- because the gaming industry has practically forgotten how to retain it’s vision without catering to the crowd.

 

[DarkosOverlord]

games are made for playing and this culture of serial handholding is both redundant and masturbatory in every sense of the word.

I disagree.
Like, I agree with the first statement, but I don't agree on the second one as an inevitable consequence.
I wanna say two things. I might've said the first one already, I don't remember.

1) A lot of people here are giving for granted that introducing a skip feature will translate into less dedication to bosses or the game in general, with the developers assuming everyone will skip them and so they won't even bother. I can name games with skip feature that didn't do that. And likewise look at BbS, inheritor of KH II, a title with arguably some of the best and best constructed boss fights. Personal tastes aside, it's not a mystery that the boss fights in BbS are not... good. They're not well-made and full of problems.
"Yeah but that's because the team changed and it was a psp game and" And that's my entire point. Countless of factors will influence something as important as how boss fights are made, and thinking one single thing will 100% influence them in a certain way seems a bit narrow-minded to me.

In the end it's up to the developers how the boss fights will play out, and I don't think we or the people asking for a skip feature should be held responsible if they are indeed easy or less polished. Because it has been proven it can happen regardless, or it couldn't happen at all even with said feature.

2) I'm fully aware that the vast majority of gamers are young people that can dedicate afternoons or months of vacation to playing and getting better, but that's not always the case. There are people with less time that would still like to play the game because they like it, it's their hobby, but can only play for so much. Even *I*, a relatively young fella, am starting to have limited time to play my games.
What am saying is, I don't think these people should be getting the shaft just because they're a minority, especially since my first point proves skip features don't always damage the game.
Games indeed are made for playing: playing means having fun. One should be provided with the option of skipping a boring/too difficult part without their only option being "get better or be stuck here forever scrub".

Given our ages I assume most of us played KH1/KH II for HOURS trying to figure out puzzles or fights and finally succeeding, but now if an alternative that doesn't necessarily break the game is available I prefer that over imposing my own way of playing videogames to the rest of the world.

 

[Caxinuld]

If the game had that type of option, I can imagine some people purposely losing so they can skip it, but an option to make things a little easier on the player if they're struggling on a difficult boss is a-okay. KHII had the option of having Mickey rescue us during certain, questionably chosen boss battles (Mickey, why are you in the Underworld?!) So to have something similar like that in KHIII would be fine, or maybe have party members revive you at a cost such as sacrificing all their HP and can't be revived for the rest of the battle.

I would also add that Mickey should only be for bosses at the end game or ones where pressing triangle is necessary to win the fight. There is no point to put Mickey on boss fights in the early game like Shan-Yu or where his healing light reaction command interferes with the bosses' reaction commands like the Hydra.

 

[alexis.anagram]

gaming as an artform has been compromised for the sake of accessibility

That's an incredibly loaded statement and you ought to back it up with some actual examples. Let's take the KH series:
Is Critical Mode easier because of accessibility? No, the opposite is true: Critical exists for people who are actively seeking that extra challenge while other difficulty modes offer a wider variety of gameplay experiences suited for different players. Can you imagine if KH titles were all mandated to run as Critical playthroughs? It would be untenable given the range of KH's target audience.

Is Lingering Will/BbS YX/enter optional boss here suddenly easier because people don't have to fight them and they are 100% optional? No, they're the hardest bosses in the series. Again, people actively seeking that extra challenge know where to get it, but there's no mandate, and that allows for a diversity of experience to flourish.

You can extrapolate this out to any of the other games mentioned in this thread which have "easy modes" and other methods of welcoming a range of players looking for different things, but which have not been shown to have compromised the integrity and enjoyment of their more challenging modes and elements. And Darkos makes the obvious but important point that the flaws and issues which we do encounter in games are attributable to a confluence of other factors. Don't give incompetent game developers a pass by scapegoating an issue which affects the most marginalized among us.

Basically there's no evidence that any game's designs towards challenging the player has been compromised as a result of making a point of appealing to a wider audience; that's pure conjecture forwarded by a niche of ultra hardcore gatekeepers of the "artform" as you call it who think the only enjoyable kind of game is one as ballbusting and unforgiving as Dark Souls-- which is super myopic thinking, because if every game on the market was that intense and demanding, you would have no way of distinguishing them as such anyway. Gaming is not a secret special club and nobody owns the keys to it.

 

[Precursor Mar]

Here's the thing about this issue. Not only does it lead to lazy game design, the feature itself is lazy game design.

Developers who actually wanted to put in the effort to accommodate to less skilled players have come up with plenty of solutions in past, even within the KH series. KH2 alone offers difficulty modes, Micky, being able to choose between more than one world to visit and even the option to grind if you really need it.
None of these options involve skipping mandatory content.

Sure, there are games like Jak 1, which allows you to skip various missions if you so desire. But the difference is not only are you still obligated to complete a mission of at least equivalent difficulty in order to progress, but that design choice is part of the experience of having the freedom to explore an open, seamless world. The idea that this should be applied to every single game, especially a game like KH, is laughable.

Whether you choose to look at KH as a hack-n-slash or an RPG, what's at the core of both genres is learning how the game works and overcoming the challenges it presents to you. Being able to skip whatever you want goes against that. A boss being badly designed shouldn't be a reason to include a skip feature, because at that point you're not fixing the problem, you're sweeping it under the rug. You really expect me to believe that developers are above using this as a crutch? At least when they're mandatory there's a higher chance they'll be decently designed, because then the problem is at the forefront and can't be ignored.

People who bring up skippable cutscenes as a comparison are really grasping at straws. Games are interactive. They don't play out the exact same way twice. That's why people play them. If I want to skip every cutscene then I should be able to, because I want to get to the game. Same if I'm playing the game for the second time or if I die to a boss and there's a cutscene before it. If you wanna argue that you should be able to skip through the game after beating it then fine. Games already have that, it's called Level Select.


And if you're trying to be considerate of disabled gamers, then I repeat myself, the feature is lazy design. Because you're not actually solving the problem. Odds are if a disabled person is forced to skip a boss, they're gonna be disappointed they didn't get to fight it at all. Now see, if the game allowed for customizable controls so they could change the button layout to whatever is most comfortable, that would be a good solution. These people play DMC games this way. Why even give them the option to skip and if they're probably not going to get past early game anyway?

 

[Elysium]

I have to say that the argument that games are made to be played is false. Games are made to SELL, just like any other product. If introducing a boss skip feature allows for more consumer satisfaction and copies sold, that's all that would really matter in the end. And I think introducing a feature that regular gamers can easily ignore while satisfying a certain subset who would get upset if they were never able to finish the story and not buy any other game in the series in response seems like a no-brainer. *shrug* Ultimately, there would be small benefits for the company (without very little effort on their part) and no consequences.

 

[Launchpad]

That's an incredibly loaded statement and you ought to back it up with some actual examples. Let's take the KH series:
Gaming is not a secret special club and nobody owns the keys to it.

Yeah, but one can say that games tended to be much more fun when less people were playing them-- 'Mainstream' gaming has resulted in a massive uptick in tutorials, handholding, and lazy design with a disproportionate emphasis on aesthetic and narrative presentation versus control and player independence. You can extend this 'secret special club' line of reasoning to the modern younger audience that expects dumbed down design and social narratives in gaming... If the majority of games cater towards these types of players, players like myself who play games for a sense of interactivity and challenge are left out in the cold far too often. It's odd to see God of War return but with far less player control and far more walk-and-listen-to-conversation gameplay.

 

[Enturax]

Yeah, but one can say that games tended to be much more fun when less people were playing them-- 'Mainstream' gaming has resulted in a massive uptick in tutorials, handholding, and lazy design with a disproportionate emphasis on aesthetic and narrative presentation versus control and player independence. You can extend this 'secret special club' line of reasoning to the modern younger audience that expects dumbed down design and social narratives in gaming... If the majority of games cater towards these types of players, players like myself who play games for a sense of interactivity and challenge are left out in the cold far too often. It's odd to see God of War return but with far less player control and far more walk-and-listen-to-conversation gameplay.

EXACTLY!!!

To everyone here: I'm not mad at you for wanting such a feature, but think a bit - if you want such a cheap mechanic, even though you can literally choose to play on an easier mode or simply LEVEL UP and make that way bosses much easier - then you're in the wrong market. The definition of games it to PLAY them, not watch them. (I don't care what money makers wanna say on that topic)
Because gaming is becoming more and more mainstream and more and more newbies are coming to the market to more and more easy games, they won't see a problem if their games'll become even more easy and comfy. And then another generation of players comes and does the same.
While the older gamers have been pointing out for YEARS how gaming has become more boring because it's (too) much more open to unexperienced people because of which there were so many easy or simplistic games, like shooters, overproduced in recent years. Because of such people we got so many open world games which suck because they're empty vast majority of the time but said people couldn't realize that because they just started gaming and thus made us ALL suffer!!!
What I'm saying is, I know that if there's going to be some cheap mechanic in-game, people are going to use it sooner or later and, at some point, many of them will overuse it. Other developers will see it and copy the idea. And then later developers will not even care to make the mechanic if so many players'd constantly use it, they'd just simplify the game to begin with - why should they waste their time and resources to make the game harder if the players clearly don't want it??
And let's be honest - difficulty level strucks your immersion with the game too! Especially in games like Bloodborne (which has been already casualized, BTW...). And I know quite a lot of other examples where games have been produced to be easier than their prequels because of lazy and unexperienced players.
Don't you see how much of a QTE-fest KH3 already seems to be? But, hopefully, we saw all that just because they wanted to show off visuals...

So, again, leveling up and changing the difficulty level are also an options!

 

[Zul]

Those who want a narrative have the option for a book, a movie, or a game. (and other stuff, but I'm not listing those)

Those who want a narrative with visuals have the option for a movie or a game.

Those who want an interactive narrative can use a visual novel.

Those who want gameplay only have the option for a game.

So it shouldn't be surprising that people don't want gameplay design to be eschewed in favor of other aspects. If you want to skip gameplay, why are you even playing a game in the first place? You have the option to read a book or watch a movie.

Even if you're playing a game for the story(which I do a lot), you can still just watch the cutscenes, the only thing you're actually missing out on by doing that is the gameplay itself, which, if you want a boss skip feature, you are fine with missing.

And the "special club" argument doesn't hold, it's not about stopping people from playing, it's about stopping the games themselves from decreasing in quality by turning them into something they're not, and which you already had(books, movies) beforehand.