What makes a good "boss"

[Archem]

Oh, and for the love of God, please make sure to have some kind of boss health meter. Nothing is worse than poking a giant for a good five minutes and not knowing if your attacks are even effective. Try not to make the boss too wait-y, too. Bosses that force you to sit around and wait on a weak spot to open up are tedious if they have a lot of health, or if you've died a few times against it already. If you're waiting to attack in a boss fight, it should be because you're dodging attacks.

[Prpl_Mage]

Oh, and for the love of God, please make sure to have some kind of boss health meter. Nothing is worse than poking a giant for a good five minutes and not knowing if your attacks are even effective. Try not to make the boss too wait-y, too. Bosses that force you to sit around and wait on a weak spot to open up are tedious if they have a lot of health, or if you've died a few times against it already. If you're waiting to attack in a boss fight, it should be because you're dodging attacks.

Archem makes another valid point. I you have actual damage in the game (unlike zelda where pretty much 3 successful weakspot attacks kill the boss) make sure to include some way of knowing when it will die. I prefer KHs multiple health bars on top of each other. But that's just me.

Also yes, rather give a boss several attacks that prevents you from getting close to said weakspot instead of closing it and opening when the boss get tired.

Also, like Felix said about that Girahim guy in Skyward sword, Bowser in both Galaxy games as well. It's not cool when you give the player the same boss fight with a slightly added difficulty, we already know the pattern here. Rather make the battles different on difficulty level. 'Cuz fighing the same person using the same pattern over and over gets dull. Except y'know, monster hunter because they are what you are hunting and not what is built up for with a dungeon and crap.

Funny story, everytime I die against a boss I remember the wise words of captain hammer "Don't worry if it's hard, if you're not a friggin' tard you will prevail"

[zuhane]

-Health meter is a must!
-Variation in attacks and strategies you have to form.
-Maybe include some sort of use for a previously discovered item.
-Find a heart container after beating it.

[Felix-0]

-Health meter is a must!
-Variation in attacks and strategies you have to form.
-Maybe include some sort of use for a previously discovered item.
-Find a heart container after beating it.
-Not like every legend of zelda boss ever.
-Awesome music.
-Not too long.
-Not too short.

[mari123]

being a boss itself is good, but i guess employees have to decide how good the boss is

[fruckert]

If you're not a bot, than I definitely recommend actually reading the topic before posting.
If you are a bot, then don't reply to this post.

[Archem]

I am laughing at how close that is to being on-topic.

[Bluhman]

I remember this; I took a course on it recently:

A good boss is:

• An expressive speaker, who can get a message across effectively
• An empathetic listener, capable of putting themselves in his employee's shoes.
• A persuasive leader; encouraging subordinates to get their job complete.
• Sensitive to the employee's feelings.
• An informative manager, able to keep their employees up to date on the newest developments.

Keep in mind that a boss also needs to take into account a leadership style, which, according to Robert R. Blake and Jane Mouton, fall upon a 9x9 grid representing a balance between focus on work output and concern for people. Yes, I read the topic, ｆuck you. The rankings can range from a 1,9 pairing (strong focus on people, low focus on workoutput; "Country Club" style management), to 9,1 (Authority Compliance management), to even the ideal case of a 9,9 pairing (Team-based style, placing considerable focus on both sides of the deal). These are important to understand, as a threshhold for management can be determined by examining these combinations.

[DragonBlaze]

^ Awesome.

A personal pet peeve of mine when it comes to bosses, is having bosses  that have no plot significance. There are so many boss fights in games where you are walking through a forest or a cave, and then right before you are through the level. out of nowhere a giant monster attacks you. These boss fights can sometimes be used as plot elements by having one of the characters overcome one of their flaws or by having them learn something about themselves or other characters.

Like many others have mentioned, make sure you need to think and use a strategy to defeat the boss. There is nothing worse that constantly smashing the attack button and occasionally using a potion/healing spell for 15 minutes.

[desiderata]

(Just awoke from inter-planetary stasis module.)

The doctor in the tower of Babel from FFIV I felt was a unique boss, because Reversal Gas made you have to change your tactics drastically.  But Golbez was a pain in the ***, and the only thing for him was to grind, which was a huge deterrent and put me off the game for about 8 months.