[b](WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE PRETTY LONG UNLESS YOU'RE UP FOR A LENGTHY READ JUST SKIP THIS POST I MAY OR MAY NOT TRY TO SUMMARIZE IT AT THE BOTTOM. More than likely I won't though.)[/b] Hello everyone, today I'm here to drop my thoughts on Boss/Strike designs and how to improve them. I'll start by using an already existing strike "Devil's Lair" to show where improvements could be made to strike design overall in current and future content. Alright so lets get started first off I'd just like to say I chose to use Devil's lair because its the first strike you play in the game and pretty much gives you a definite example of what all the other strikes will be like and I feel the impact strikes have on this game is pretty important since you'll spend a great majority of time there farming gear, marks and reputation. [b]First up: Strike Introduction and Narrative[/b] This is already done fairly well at least in terms of the introduction at the start of the strike you are given a small bit of information on what you're doing and why so it doesn't feel entirely pointless, I do feel that interaction between the player and the Strike overseer should be toned up a bit more sort of like how the story mission in the preview for the TTK was it's small but it adds more to the strike and also helps show character personality that of your character(so long as your character actually says something) and the others you interact with. I'd also like to add that I think it would be good to allow the Strike overseer to accompany your fireteam as an NPC, In a sense it would add a bit more to the strike to actually see them in combat even if Bungie pulled the standard: "Halo Npc will break off for a short while keeping up with you over the comms and generally returns in some mini in game cutscene". With all that being said thats all I really have for this part in particular. [b]Moving on: Strike Mini Boss Encounters And Pathway Choices [/b] Mini boss encounters in many games can be fairly simple and generally don't require much but in the case of the Devil's Lair I've always felt the mini boss encounter along with the rest of the strike was far too simple and really never made you feel engaged in anything other than killing wave after wave of enemy time and time again, only to get to a super dull mini boss that doesn't really do anything special nor does the mini boss even have a feel of actually being important. This can be remedied first by giving the mini boss something unique to actually separate it from a standard enemy of the same class, if I remember correctly this bosses name is Narakis or something along those lines? He looks like a standard Captain with a different color scheme, no special armor adornments to make him look different and no special abilities to make him feel different all in all he's basic and doesn't really give a player any sense of him actually being important to kill other than just the yellow bar above his head. Bungie could do extremely simple combat adjustments to make this better such as at least giving him just slightly more hp and allowing him some specific abilities like temporarily stealthing out of view and reappearing to attack one of your fireteam members with a pretty strong melee based attack(not enough to kill them in one hit but at least enough to cause a decent amount of concern) or allowing him to grab a fireteam member and pretty much strangle them to death unless your fireteam is able to stagger him. These are just small things that could be added to boss encounters that make them better overall even if it's just a mini boss. Another thing that could be done for the first half of the strike generally leading up to the mini boss is instead of just one standard option for moving forward they could allow you to have 2 or 3 more like for instance instead of just having to use your ghost to disarm the mines and fight wave after wave of enemies you and your fireteam could vote on the option to take another path to reach the next part of the Strike(which is the Devil Walker in this case) like say for example you got to choose a more stealthy approach sorta like how you had to move through the Gorgon maze in VoG, and at the end of the path you chose the mini boss would be waiting for you, heck it could even be another mini boss that's entirely different from the normal one and possibly offer entirely different loot. I mean again this is just another thing to improve Strikes overall in terms of replay-ability even though you'd eventually do them all at least you'd never be stuck with doing the same thing twice. [b]Next up: Major Boss encounters[/b] So as we all know most Strikes generally have 2-3 bosses meaning you generally have a mini, major, and final boss or just a mini and final/ major and final. This is the middle point of the strike in most cases and generally this boss should always be harder than the first and offer a bit more in terms of a bosses abilities. Now in my opinion I felt the Devil Walker was a good boss it had a decent amount of attacks and hell it even summoned shanks every now and then. The only thing I ever felt made this boss feel lack luster was the fact that it stayed in one point of the map the entire time, and one thing I really hate in games is immobile bosses on large maps, it pretty much makes the entire map feel useless as the boss never moves around to at least cover half of the terrain and in the Devil Walkers case it just made it so players could sit back and snipe the boss without it even so much as attempting to move closer or get within range, and to me with the Devil Walker being a giant spider tank I felt that was unacceptable. Mobility is very important for bosses especially on large maps if you have a boss that is practically immobile on a large map that's a complete and total failure in boss and level design and should be revised. Other than that the only other thing I felt would have been better for this strike was giving the Devil Walker the ability to spawn different classes of shanks(granted these new variants didn't appear until HoW) I still think it would have been a good idea, Tracer shanks can snipe, Repeaters can fly into CQC and be annoying, and exploders could chase players around. Simple stuff guys, am I right? [b]Finally: Final Boss Encounters, Make'em Feel Like a Final Boss[/b] Now we all know about Sepkis Prime, and how disappointing this fight really is in terms of being a Final Boss and a high ranking enemy leader. We also know that the Fallen basically view their servitors as gods and they are pretty much the main thing keeping the Fallen alive. Now did it strike anyone else as strange when you're taking on this god like figure among the Fallen that it had no real guard? Other than a bunch of standard enemies and some shanks? Like what!? Is this a joke... Alright so lets see how this could have been done better. First off lets start with actually giving Sepkis a guard of Ultra's and Majors maybe 3 or 4 each having some sort of combat specialization, Ranged, Melee, Heavy Damage, Healing or even a Sniper class enemy. They could be a bunch of Vandals if anything if the Devil's are running thin on leadership this would at least give something more to the fight meanwhile, while attacking you Sepkis could offer buffs to his little devout followers providing maybe a shield, increased damage, or small burst of healing and as each one dies the remaining others gain more health and damage meaning you'd have to prioritize the one that would be the easiest to deal with in the end which would more than likely be the healer(Really it honestly depends on how effectively they can heal things) and progressively as Sepkis's health gets lower and his followers die he changes up his attack pattern getting more aggressive and possibly using more variations of his attacks like maybe instead of firing those big blast at you he starts to use a focused beam attack that makes him immune to crit damage and he has to be staggered in order to stop it. Just something to make this boss feel more engaging and possibly even more difficult. With that I've come to my end on how I feel you could improve a strike and it's boss encounters, I may not have talked about these things on their own separate merits in greater detail, but all of the examples/changes I've listed for Devil's Lair should give at least a slightly decent view on how to improve and change strikes and their bosses/encounters in a way that feels a lot better for the player and actually keeps us engaged in the fight rather than just sitting there with the thoughts of: (A.) This fight is so annoying I just want to camp here and avoid everything then go to the forums and complain about the strike being easy/boring/not challenging enough. Or: (B.) this fight doesn't feel engaging at all I literally don't even have to move because the boss is too simple. I'm done with my ramblings guys, if you stayed and read to the end good on ya, hope I didn't make too many errors(pretty sure I did, I'm a bit sick and didn't bother to proofread), but yeah tell me what you think and leave your own ideas/opinions in the comments.