But where does the line end? Where does it become a situation where the entire game has no identity. "I don't like scary games so let me turn Alien: Isolation into Super Mario Bros?" Sounds preposterous but I think it is pulling at the same strings that the author is mocking. Where is the line? I personally don't care for Boss Battles but I am not calling for them to be completely removed from gaming. It seems different from what he is saying but is it really? I don't like scary games so the next Resident Evil should have what, a 'no fear' mode? A walk around the colorfully reimagined locale painting it with bright colors? There is already a game for that, it is called Splatoon.
What on earth are you talking about!? This is a simple statement - 'let us skip boss fights'. Along the lines of 'let us skip cutscenes'. Not 'change the entire game into another game'.
Upon completing the game I see no issue with turning off bosses in a separate mode. Cinema mode or speed run mode, or chapter select or whatever.
The core experience needs to be a fluid one from start to finish and one that should require completing the base content.
Once you beat it all bets are off though, and is fine.
How do you know if someone's completed the game before or not though? I've often deleted games and their save files after playing them. If I want to play it again and skip fights I am not interested in replaying I shouldn't need to keep my save file.
But outright wanting to skip boss fights?
What kinda pussies are these people?
Back in my days we couldn't even save the game!
So get off my lawn with your cheap ass "skip the boss fight" nonsense bullcrap.
[/grumpy old ass oldschool gamer]
Read my other post with myriad reasons to skip that aren't all "I can't beat it".
- Played it before, find the boss tedious/not fun
- Played it before, find the boss too easy and don't want to waste time
- Played it before, already perfected it, trying to learn to speed run the section after it
- Want to show a friend a cool moment later in the game
- Sometimes it's fun to cheat - 'IDDQD' is legendary as a famous cheat code. There are probably thousands of people that could still input a GTA cheat code from memory. This person's using God Mode in Doom to blow off steam. I had an example earlier of Civilization including cheats menu in the game's menu that I really enjoyed playing around with as a kid. Lode Runner: The Legend Returns in my display picture had a similar thing, cheats from a dropdown. If I recall correctly, there was a skip level option. It didn't ruin the game.
- Some people enjoy the story parts of the game more than the boss battles. Maybe they really enjoy the story of Horizon: Zero Dawn but find the bigger battles too stressful.
- Maybe the boss battles are broken or don't support the player's preferred gameplay style, i.e. the Deus Ex Human Revolution example I brought up in a previous post.
- And then, maybe this one boss battle is simply too hard for the player and they don't want to play it.
If you don't have time to watch The Godfather, sure you can skip to the end. But you didn't watch the Godfather. You skipped most of it and found out how it ends.
Sure, it's obviously
not the ideal way to experience it.
But the option is there for people who, for example, want to see a particular scene. The chapter select option isn't locked on the DVD until after it detects you have watched the film before. And it doesn't get in the way of the film for people who want to watch it all the way through (unless it has spoilers in the chapter titles, I hate it when that happens).
Games aren't movies or books, the medium is different. Of course I know that. But as a developer I have the ability to add a 'skip boss' button that won't take anything away from the game for people who want to fight them, and will allow more people to enjoy more of the game.
*buy Monster Hunter*
*skip quest*
*skip all the way to final hunter rank*
*enjoy rubies and plates*
Sure, why not?
Don't let them take their hunter online, but yeah! Maybe they've played every Monster Hunter in the series and don't want to take down any more Great Jaggis ever again and just want to see the new stuff?
Or even better,
let them take it online to play with their friends who need a fourth hunter but they just got the game and haven't had time to rank up to their status yet.
But yeah. I'm not against easy difficulties and such in general, but the concept that developers are obliged to give you the "full experience" even if you're playing on the easiest mode and skipping bosses, which naturally follows including such options in the "official" game. This almost inevitably leads to the game being dumbed down in nearly all respects (compare Doom 2016, still a fantastic game, to OG Doom in terms of level design), with harder difficulties simply being tacked on and usually not that hard anyways.
It's not the full experience - if you skip the boss, you're missing out on the fun (or perhaps not fun for some) experience of fighting the boss, the cool animations, the feeling of victory - skipping the boss is absolutely the 'wrong' way to play the game. But the option should be there.
I also think that an easily-accessible "Skip boss" button is a negative, because people have trouble resisting these things. It's like when people play Metal Slug, mash the Continue button forty times, and then complain about how the game is too short. They're ruining it for themselves, they know they're ruining it, but they can't resist Continuing when it's right there.
That's why I reckon there should be an 'enable continues' option in the main menu of the game (right next to 'enable boss skip'), so the option can be displayed as obviously
not the intended way to play the game. At that point if you're mashing continue in Metal Slug you
know you're doing it wrong. Of course, in Metal Slug's case it's because it was originally an arcade game where every continue required a coin, and now people play ports that don't require that obstacle.
Cuphead having a boss skip button doesn't make any sense because there wouldn't be anything much left. However it could have an 'infinite lives' option hidden in the menu.
Hell, the article in the OP states as much:
the article said:
There are obvious solutions. The most simple being the option to switch off the option of such a button when starting a new game, and impossible to switch on without restarting. Perfect, right? Those without the self control to impulse use it can remove the option, those who just want to enjoy the game differently than you have it on. Done. Then, if that werent enough (and it is), there can be reward mechanisms.
Clearly not, because now we have people wanting skippable bosses and shit like this and I for one am glad we are spared this garbage:
This is a topic about
skipping bosses, not overbearing HUDs and quest compasses and minimaps and stuff, stick to the topic at hand.
Having the option is not free/instant. Devs have to make it work into the game and that takes time and resources that could be spent on other things that the people actually playing the content will want.
It's true, but overall, a boss skip option is in
most cases probably easier to implement than, for example, difficulty settings.
And, again, just because someone wants to skip a boss
doesn't mean they haven't beaten it previously.
People saying "it's trivial, just add a skip button, there, done!" are completely ignoring game design and game progression.
A lot of bosses are there to teach you about core mechanics. Take early Nioh bosses for example.
[snip]
Not only do these bosses teach, and test, the player about important gameplay mechanics, they are an important part of the game content themselves and pretty much the most fun and interesting part.
Sure, the bosses in Deus Ex HR were trash and could probably be skippable, but that's because they were badly designed and didn't fit in with the game's design philosophy. But that doesn't apply to every game. Souls games, Nioh, Ys games with skippable bosses are a patently absurd idea.
Sure, you're absolutely missing out on potentially crucial knowledge if you skip a boss the first time you encounter it. If someone skips a boss it's really easy to see that they will likely struggle against other areas of the game without that knowledge. But, as I've stated, there are other reasons to skip bosses than 'it's too hard', and there are other ways of gaining that knowledge too (i.e. watching or reading a guide).
Multiplayer is massive these days too. Are you going to let people "skip" in PUBG and get to experience being that final winner? What a terrible dev, to make a game that some people just won't ever be able to win.
NOBODY here is saying that! This is a topic about Let Us Skip Boss Fights. Stop changing the topic into crazy strawmen arguments. Nobody wants the ability to hit a button to get a chicken dinner in a multiplayer game.
Yes to options, always. Or how about god mode. Every game has it during development, just give players the option to enable it, it doesn't take "so much extra time and effort!" to do it. And you still have to beat the boss/whatever, but you can't die.
I've used god mode through cheat tables in some games, including Dark Souls 2 because I thought that game was garbo compared to the other Souls titles but I wanted to see the whole game anyway, so I used god mode to go through it as fast as possible, and I got some enjoyment out of just wrecking everyone while they desperately tried to kill me.
The easiest difficulty in Persona 4 is basically god mode, and I would've never finished the game without it because I don't enjoy turn based combat at all, but I loved the other aspects of that game.
These are
great reasons for the skip to be included! Even shows how a skip can be used in Dark Souls. It doesn't take anything away from anyone else for easy mode Persona 4 to exist, and it wouldn't take anything away from anyone else for Dark Souls to have a hidden option to enable god mode or skip bosses.
I've never seen a single Souls fan or whatever entering a Journey thread to complain that the game is too easy and needed a hard mode with some challenge because they're missing out on the considerable size of the market that looks for challenge in their games. Not one, ever. The only people who seem to be bothered by the existence of games that aren't made for them are the ones asking for an easy mode.
I enjoy boss fights a lot, but I can absolutely see the benefits of adding a 'skip boss battle' option. And, again, it's
not the equivalent of an easy mode.
You used cheats in Dark Souls II? Cool. As long as you don't use them in multiplayer, I have no issues with that. It's not From Software's job to allow you to do it, though. If consoles don't give players that level of customization, then play on PC. If devs do start to give the option to enable god mode, then whatever, it's fine, I just have an issue with the mentality that they absolutely should and even thinking otherwise is elitist. They should do whatever the hell they want. You're free to ask for it, of course, as others are free to say they disagree and hope they won't include it, as I'm free to say I don't care either way.
Would it be cool if cheats came back? Sure. You know what's even more useful than hoping, though? Using Cheat Engine like you did, and applying that to any game you want. If that's only available in one platform, well, that's not the game developer's fault.
If you agree that it's fine for this player to have used cheats, then why argue against the inclusion of a skip boss fight (at least, I
think that's your position)?