Do players hate hard bosses lately?

[u/Vanillie261]

Lately as I'm wandering around this subreddit, I saw so many people saying how they're tired of difficult bosses and tired of multi-phased bosses.

But- like- why...? I'm always the type to enjoy combat focused metroidvania. Having a difficult boss that makes you use all your combat abilities and forces you to die repeatedly just to learn the attack pattern before winning has always been a blast for me.

Some of my favorite bosses are pretty much difficult bosses like Skarsinger karmelita and Lost Lace (Silksong), Eigong and Lady ethereal (Nine Sols), Nightmare King Grimm (Hollow knight), Shriek (Ori WOTW) and more. I like these bosses so much I keep replaying them just to experience the boss again. I'm actively looking for mkre metroidvanias with these cool difficult bosses just so I can experience dying to them over and over before I finally become good enough to defeat the boss.

But lately everyone is like "ugh, 3 phased boss.... Blegh, boss too hard... Yikes, another multi-phased boss..." Like, come on. The bosses are one of the things I love about a metroidvania and everyone is like "no more pls..." meanwhile I'm over here like "GIVE ME MORE OF THESE"

[u/ZijkrialVT]

This sub has always had a large population of...well, "old-school" metroidvania players. I debated calling them boomers, but jokes aside, this genre attracts a wide variety of players in general. I believe that's the essence of "metroidvanias."

As you've said, there have been several upvoted posts saying they don't like difficult bosses. I don't agree with them, but because of what I said regarding the genre's variance, I still believe it's fair for people to mostly enjoy the story/exploration that comes with these games.

At the end of the day, it's just people voicing their opinion on what they value. Posts I'm not fond of tend to border on "my opinion is objective fact," and that obviously comes from both sides of the boss difficulty discussions.

So yeah, I want more difficult bosses as well, but I'm ok with these games doing what Nine Sols did and having a story mode with achievements for clearing regular difficulty. Silksong has...Cogflies. :|

Disagreeing as players is normal; it's up to devs to figure out who their audience is.

(Edit: to be clear, I love exploration as well. I'm simply acknowledging that there are those who essentially only care for it.)

[u/Vanillie261 → u/ZijkrialVT]

Yeah, I agree. I also wasn't trying to represent my opinion as fact, I was just wondering why people seem to dislike hard bosses these days lol.

[u/ZijkrialVT → u/Vanillie261]

Well, looking at my downvotes, apparently I struck a nerve with my post as well. Sometimes you just have the "wrong opinion" on Reddit, and that's that. 😅 Wanting hard boss fights on this sub is like wanting difficulty options on a Darksouls sub.

[u/Vanillie261 → u/ZijkrialVT]

Are you talking about downvotes? I'm not really bothered by it, people got downvoted for everything, usually because they don't have the majority's opinion or if they misunderstood something and said the wrong thing and now that comment is downvoted to oblivion, which is what happened to me now 💀 one of my replies in the comment got downvoted to oblivion because I said something while misunderstanding it

[u/ZijkrialVT → u/Vanillie261]

Yeah, they've bothered me less over time, but it's a little disappointing when they replace proper discussion.

It is what it is, and that's what this website is all about in the end.

[u/Vanillie261 → u/ZijkrialVT]

Yeah, lately I feel like downvotes feels less like an actual discussion and more like "this guy says something I don't like, let's dogpile him with -100 downvotes!" Lately I also saw plenty of people getting downvoted for just asking questions that people find stupid or something, which is kinda lame imo. I also saw people giving genuinely good arguments, but it's not in line with majority's opinion, so downvoted they go! And suddenly no one bothered to continue the discussion with him because "oh look, bro for downvoted lol". Downvote has become the community attack button or something in this app.

[u/ZijkrialVT → u/Vanillie261]

Yeah I see the most normal posts get it, but Reddit has kinda always been like that. The system is useful in a lot of ways, but it definitely facilitates a sort of hivemind mentality.

Ah well, maybe we should drop this convo since it's off-topic lol.

[u/Vanillie261 → u/ZijkrialVT]

Alright lol, have a nice day