[Discussion] Why gw2's boss hunt was so memorable and loved.

Boss hunt has always been a fan favorite of gw2 but why exactly?

Boss hunt is a mode introduced to the player near the end of gw2's campaign missions.

Both routes introduced a boss that would have to be fought in a unique fashion different from ops boss fights. Those two were captain smasher and royal hypno flower. Sometimes I still fight these two because the mission is fun.

The boss has to be lured out with bait that must be protected from AI similar to ops for two phases.

Strangely these two are the only time AI teammates were utilized in the hunts and they're decent backup for the player since they can deal with reinforcements and provide fresh bodies if the character you're playing goes down and you need to swap.

Would have been nice if an AI filled in if a teammate disconnected until a new one could join but i also understand that they would be useless for the bigger objectives as a few mod hunts i've played have stuff like the graves to tether the guardian in spooky squash automatically activate butbhaving an extra body to fight the horde would be nice.

In the mystery portal 4 new community boss hunts were added those being Sasquatch, Brothers gnomus, spooky squash, and the Yeti King.

Once the boss spawns the player must damage them just like in ops however they are put on a time limit that once run down will cause a game over as the boss escapes.

The pots/and bots are changed in this mode in that they are now spread through out the entire map to give support by fighting all the reinforcements that will continue to spawn in to aid the boss. They will consatntly respawn after being vanquished to help the players but don't expect them to last long while drowning in a sea of enemies.

Every boss has reinforcements tailored to them such as hypno shrooms and shadow flowers for hypno flower, pirates for smasher, gnomes for the brothers, ice variants and yeti imps for the king, imp sasquatch and nature variants/blitzer for sasquatch, and halloween themed corn, rose, and chomp thing for spooky squash.

The hunts starts off relatively normal but once a boss reaches a fraction of their health gone the boss will unleash a special phase. Sasquatch for example will summon burgers to heal the damage and force players to waste time fighting him again.

However if you succeed he will proceed to go through hunger pangs inferno that when ending if the plants are not protected will ONE SHOT THE ENTIRE TEAM! That's right if you fail the entire team goes down, remember you only get one team retry and you have to do this multiple times. All the while later phases he summons heavier enemies like regular gargantuars to come beat you up and you're swarmed by blitzers in the phase you have to stay in a small circle to be saved. Even on normal you're entire team can be destroyed in seconds.

This makes boss hunt far more challenging than ops as the team must be constantly be on the move fighting the boss while dealing with never ending reinforcements under the threat of team wipes for failing objectives.

Every community boss has this. Even the gnomes can curse you and remove your abilities and if caught in a purge with a curse you will be one shot.

You do respawn after 30 seconds but that is a long time when under constant attack and makes completing objectives even harder when a man down.

Some hunts however make the boss appear to take no damage but in reality their health bar is so massive you can't deal meaningful damage to them before the quests.

I remember having 2 minutes left as the sugar rush ran out against s.squash but he had a sliver of health left so we wailed on him tell he fell with 30 seconds left since we had no time for the process.

The hunts also strecth teamwork to the limit as spooky squash forces to zombies to comepletly disengage and defend the graves while the others hunt the guardian and yeti king's damage boost can only be activated while in the wielders radius.

This improves upon ops where while you were a team you all really just ran off to different places to defend to rack up your scores regardless of your teammates and once knew the routes you could plop down and easily defend the base.

This is what made the mode so memorable: it's intense and unrelenting difficulty that stretched the absolute limit of your entire team's capabilities while constantly keeping them on the move and stretched thin to prevent you from getting too comfortable guarding one spot with the proper spawnables to deal with threats.

So why didn't the elite bosses in bfn capture that feeling?

Every boss having a boss hunt like mode in ops for elite waves? Good idea but the execution was lacking.

Why? Because of the changes to ops. When you are vanquished in bfn ops instead of being out for the rest of the wave when the timer runs out you simply respawn during the wave. This kind of kills incentive to play carefully as you will come back and your team doesnt have to worry about rescuing you.

Enemies also hit like wet tissue paper, even on harder difficulties.

Elite waves whilst a good idea are just not very unique or interesting.

Pretty much all of them follow a very simple pattern.

Have a beefier version of a boss.

Make it so when you take about 1/3 of its health you have to do a really easy minigame where you lure a boss or vanquish a few enemies/items to get rid of invincibility.

Rince and Repeat until you've beaten it.

From what I've seen there are only 4 bosses that don't follow this formula and those four are the gargantuar elites, hypno flower, spooky squash, and yeti. Aside from those exceptions, name me one boss that doesn't follow this pattern.

A lot of these bosses unlike their gw counterparts don't have unique minions or new moves to differentiate and i think the absolute worst highlight of this is Disco zombie.

His boss phase is just using his disco whirlwind move to become invincible (like it already does) except it lasts until you lure him to gramophones. If it wasn't for these activating at certain health drops he would probably perish in one go. That's not difficult that's just drawn out.

He also has no backup dancers in bfn, ya know his most iconic ally throughout the franchise. He does get electric slide which is a good choice but other than its just the same old zombies attacking you.

Yeti does get yeti imps but they can't truly freeze you anynore so they're just annoying over deadly like the king boss hunt.

Hypno flower feels good because she gets hypno shroom and nightcap helping her but the only change in her hunt is that she now has a purge mode when you're a goat.

In og boss hunt once health got low enough the boss had a chanve to call in regular bosses like gargs or a giga torchwood to beat you because if you ain't ready for those guys you ain't beating the boss. There's no shakeups like that in bfn.

"Oh well yeti and spooky squash are hard because of bad teammates!" Somewhat true but boss hunt was hard even with a good team with understanding. Bad teams can make anything harder.

Tldr the bosses arent interesting, theres no challenege when you can't fail by being vanquished, no difficulty, and a lot of the enemy variety is nonexistent.

I pray that portal gets changed.