"Hard" Arcade mode boss...

[Hazelnut Pancakes]

Boss/Armored Clairen is my godforsaken nemesis.

Not only does the armor lead to an anxiety-inducing game of "poke the bear and hope they don't poke you harder", but they're also seemingly *heavier* than normal even without it. F-Strong at 100% doesn't even send them all the way off screen.

Also you have to do it on one life. Which, after 6 whole stages (7 if you count target smash, but you can't even take damage there) with damage carrying over between each one, is an unreasonably herculean task if you're trying not to use a continue. And even *with* a continue starting you from 0%, it's still a very 1-sided battle in favor of the Armored/Boss CPU.

I'm no game designer, but I believe that arbitrarily inflating numbers to make a foe stronger is one of the worse ways to make something challenging.

My suggestion?
Give each boss their own unique gimmick that plays into their natural abilities and/or the character you have to play as (since each boss is unique to each rival's arcade mode)

instead of an arbitrary numbers advantage

Starting with the aforementioned Boss Clairen (Forsburn's Arcade mode)
You could borrow from one of her Abyss runes in Rivals 1 and make her anti-projectile field passively follow her around (and give it the ability to clean up smoke/clones)

[ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2]

Yeah, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the bosses suck. Good luck with kragg and ranno. Former gave me the most problems while the latter seems to be the bane of most other players.

[Agreus]

I don´t see a problem with the bosses.
The armor and the extra weight are what makes them easier at the beginning you can just combo them in one place until the armor is gone.
That shouldn´t take more than 1 or 2 touches.
Its only after the armor is gone that the extra weight helps them but from there its a normal fight against a character that is too heavy for its speed.
If I had to complain about one thing its that I feel the game reads my inputs in those boss-fights but it could just be the case that I´m too slow and/or predictable.

[Hazelnut Pancakes]

Originally posted by Agreus:

I don´t see a problem with the bosses.
The armor and the extra weight are what makes them easier at the beginning you can just combo them in one place until the armor is gone.
That shouldn´t take more than 1 or 2 touches.
Its only after the armor is gone that the extra weight helps them but from there its a normal fight against a character that is too heavy for its speed.
If I had to complain about one thing its that I feel the game reads my inputs in those boss-fights but it could just be the case that I´m too slow and/or predictable.

it's not only the extra weight, but the increased difficulty/AI level means that the CPU also likes to crouch-cancel a lot, which means a lot of the time when you hit them, they get to hit you back for basically free. This also makes _starting_ a combo early on a *lot* more difficult than it should be.

[Agreus]

Originally posted by Hazelnut Pancakes:

Originally posted by Agreus:

I don´t see a problem with the bosses.
The armor and the extra weight are what makes them easier at the beginning you can just combo them in one place until the armor is gone.
That shouldn´t take more than 1 or 2 touches.
Its only after the armor is gone that the extra weight helps them but from there its a normal fight against a character that is too heavy for its speed.
If I had to complain about one thing its that I feel the game reads my inputs in those boss-fights but it could just be the case that I´m too slow and/or predictable.

it's not only the extra weight, but the increased difficulty/AI level means that the CPU also likes to crouch-cancel a lot, which means a lot of the time when you hit them, they get to hit you back for basically free. This also makes _starting_ a combo early on a *lot* more difficult than it should be.

I know.
What I learned is that you should never take more than one hit or two from those counter hits as long as you are low % yourself.
Just don´t get fancy with your combos normal jab spam works wonders against those cpu´s.
I even was able to do that with lox and hes really slow.

I believe the fact that jab-spamming worked against them makes it kind of easy for beginners but harder for people who try to do other stuff.
Once they have a good amount of damage just try to kill them with strong-attacks or grabs.

[ButterJiggy TTV]

I thought I was crazy when I FULL CHARGE FStronged a non-boss Fors as Zetter near the ledge at 100% and he didn't die. I tested it on normal VS and he died in the same exact situation. I'm up for a challenge but damage sponges are not challenging, they are tedious/frustrating.

[Arson]

Originally posted by Agreus:

I don´t see a problem with the bosses.
The armor and the extra weight are what makes them easier at the beginning you can just combo them in one place until the armor is gone.
That shouldn´t take more than 1 or 2 touches.
Its only after the armor is gone that the extra weight helps them but from there its a normal fight against a character that is too heavy for its speed.
If I had to complain about one thing its that I feel the game reads my inputs in those boss-fights but it could just be the case that I´m too slow and/or predictable.

you cant combo the forsburn boss as clairen, he is an immovable wall until you get him to about 15%, so the whole fight while he has armor is just to poke once and run away, because you just cant follow up on anything, and even then, because he is virtually at 0%, his CC works on everything
also, they seem to have perfect DI, and that is SUPER cringe, every combo is dead upon starting it, and you cant kill until 150%

[Agreus]

Originally posted by Arson:

Originally posted by Agreus:

I don´t see a problem with the bosses.
The armor and the extra weight are what makes them easier at the beginning you can just combo them in one place until the armor is gone.
That shouldn´t take more than 1 or 2 touches.
Its only after the armor is gone that the extra weight helps them but from there its a normal fight against a character that is too heavy for its speed.
If I had to complain about one thing its that I feel the game reads my inputs in those boss-fights but it could just be the case that I´m too slow and/or predictable.

you cant combo the forsburn boss as clairen, he is an immovable wall until you get him to about 15%, so the whole fight while he has armor is just to poke once and run away, because you just cant follow up on anything, and even then, because he is virtually at 0%, his CC works on everything
also, they seem to have perfect DI, and that is SUPER cringe, every combo is dead upon starting it, and you cant kill until 150%

Well clairen was one of the harder ones for me that I remember but I think thats a character specific problem becourse even in normal fights if she doesn´t hit her tipper she has very few real combo options.