In the last decade, why have the overwhelming majority of Western devs given up on the idea of boss fights?

In the last decade, why have the overwhelming majority of Western devs given up on the idea of boss fights?

did you even play the dark souls games?

they realized they sucked at it and can just have qtes instead

Its too 'videogamey'

>dark souls
>western games

I Z U N A D R O P

you might want to try reading the op again

why is nioh fighting bayonetta's gomorrah

>tfw can't play because wage slave

STOOOOOOOOOOOOOP

>they locked a skill behind the NG secret boss
nice

Boss fights implies there's a basic fundamental gameplay system that's engaging., and where you can create something that deviates from the stuff you've been killing all game.

So most of the time you're lucky if you get anything even on the level of a first dungeon Zelda boss. Shoot or manipulate some glowing things, then run up to the guy to initiate the QTE coup de grace.

There are some, but those are mostly in FPSs that are already doing pre-Halo throwbacks like Doom and Wolfenstein, and of course, bosses then were mostly just shoot things until they die.

most western games have realistic settings where bosses don't work
they still exist in fantasy and abstract games

kek boss fights are so last gen. get with the times, gramps

For the same reason they have mostly given up on concepts like level design or difficulty: their games are made as a form of content-gating, with content-delivery being the purpose of the game instead of the very process of playing.

As such, they need to make games more "respectful of the time" of their target audience, and things that cant act as permanent locks are frowned upon. Better to use some skinner box mechanic.

What? which boss?

the Jin Hayabusa fight, complete with a song from Ninja Gaiden as the boss track

After the final boss of the last DLC, a submission boss fight is unlocked. It's the founder of the Hayabusa clan, who has a chance of dropping it.

Sounds pretty sweet. just got DLC 2 so I'll have to play trough that first but cool that they added something like that

>Start way of the wise
>Immediately get an orange odachi from a revenant
How rare is ethereal stuff and how much better are they than greens? Should I bother upgrading this one (since it started at +0) or will I be getting enough by the end of WotW that it won't matter?

I haven't played in a while as I'm waiting for them to stop patching it but have they made enemies drop skills and stuff now then?

>Why have the overwhelming majority of Western devs given up on the idea of boss fights

They want every possible demographic to buy the same game regardless of thier experience with gamming. Boss fights are usually a difficulty spike that keeps the casuals from progressing through the game.

So Western devs figured out that instead of focusing on gameplay mechanics and player's agency(which is what separates games from other mediums like movies) they could focus on visuals and presentation instead, because everybody(except blind people) can enjoy those without a skill threshold filter them out.

This is one of the main reason why western games are more and more cinematic and why big AAA games feel more generic every year.

Japanese industry is far from perfect of course, but even today they are still more likely to be the ones to create new concepts and formulas than big AAA westerns(which will usually try to copy those elements). The reason for this is that they understand that if you try to please everyone at the same time you either will fail or will end with a generic forgettable game that people will driop in a month.

Instead, they make different games tha fill different niches. Each game is specialized for its niche and thus they are very memorable and popular within the gamming community. It is also why Japanese developers focus less on presentation than gameplay: If you don't have to worry about every single casual demographic you don't need to hold the game design back.

A (kind of) recent exemple of that is the souls series.It fill its niche,and it brings a lot of elements and concepts that AAA devs try to copy.

Don't upgrade from +0 you get better ethereal. Revenants have their own etheral set which can only drop from Revenants which is pretty good. There is also no reason to upgrade your stuff from +0 too +20.

There was a significant time period where hand-holdy games were considered great, and very very marketable. Especially in the massive console era of ps2/xbox/xbox360/ps3/wii. I remember when one of the Fable sequels had no ability to "die" in it. You would just scar. That was considered a fun innovative take. But the general ability to even fake "die" was quite difficult. So a lot of people would get through the whole game and get the achievement for not dying. There was no difficulty and therefore no pride in being unscarred.

There were a significant amount of developers who were worried about people missing out on parts of their game. Therefore a tough boss fight was antithetical to that approach.

As overused as it is, the notion that the soul's series brought back "difficulty" in games is true. Action games were not hard. Then Souls came along and had one difficulty. They forced big bosses that beat your shit in until you "got good".

And everybody loved it. Well, almost everyone.