Suggestion: Dismemberable Bosses

It's always bothered me that boss monsters look generally fine until the moment you smack the last hitpoint from them. And while I haven't seen it done very well in the past (I don't play too many games, so there may well be some out there), but I think D3 would be fun if you could slowly dismember bosses. Maybe once they lost one of their arms, they could attack in a different pattern, spice things up a bit. Maybe have one really mean boss that would take a it's own lost limb and try to beat you with it .

Aside from being a generally interesting aspect, I think the D3 engine could probably handle such things pretty easily. In the gameplay video we saw bosses change texture/behavior (the "Thousand Pounder" in the barbarian section) during combat, and during the last big fight the boss's corpse crumbled (it changed actual shape or model). This would also seem to fit with the custom player death animation we saw (which was pretty awesome, though a bit disheartening if you're playing hardcore, lol).

While it wouldn't be appropriate for every boss to be slowly taken apart, it would be nice to have some visual indicator (not a healthbar) that would show you generally what shape the boss was in, even just wounds and bleeding, damaged armor, etc. Also, if acher-class characters come back (don't see why not), arrows persisting in large bosses would be more epic. Nothing like an ENORMOUS beast, peppered with arrows, finally dying. Couldn't keep all the arrows displayed, or else bosses would look like porcupines every time an amazon (or equivalent) joined in.

Of course you'd have to track damage-type as well, monster shouldn't get slashed in half by a firebolt, it's limbs should EXPLODE OFF! . I suppose it would take quite a bit of time to make damage-threshold animations for each damage type, but I still like the idea.

I also like the idea of gaining levels, going back to a low-level area, and cutting old bosses in half in one hit, to make up for them being so hard before hand

Just a suggestion, but I thought it was worth a mention.|||That would be great, but I don't dare imagine the work on the code for it.

Maybe they could just change textures to wounds and broken armor when monster health is below 50%. Also the damage could appear only where the moster has been hit.

Less spectacular, but easier and nice. At least the player is rewarded by a little visual feedback |||Cool idea, I also like the suggestion of changing the skill animation as skills reach a higher level, say 4 animations per skill.|||The idea of a fight evolving as it runs would be the core of it, but as Phaolo said, pretty difficult from the development perspective. From what we've seen, it wouldn't be impossible, but it certainly would add a big chunk of time to the development cycle.

Skill animations changing would actually be pretty cool, like higher level whirlwinds kicking up dust and debris, or fireballs becoming an arcing stream of flame (line of sight damage!). If higher level skills had slightly different effects, gameplay development wouldn't stop at level 30, it'd be interesting till the end, and you'd always be thinking "How much more awesome can this skill get?" and yield plenty of "AWESOME" moments. Similarly though, it would take a long time to code and sort out.|||Like Alexander and phaolo said, it would take a long time to implement but it would be insanely cool I reckon Blizzard should leave it out of DIII then while we're getting all hyped up playing it, they can release it in the expansion, because let's face it, we all know there will be an expansion |||They could maybe make "simple damage visuals" for common foes and minibosses, and implement custom damage indicators for some of the major boss fights.|||Would be awesome.



"pretty difficult from the development perspective."

Care to explain, Blizzard dev? |||Ah, if only I were a Blizzard developer. However, now that I think of it, it wouldn't be that hard to actually implement. If there's a set number of hitpoints that triggers an action (i.e. zero hitpoints triggers death, experience gain) it shouldn't be hard to add additional triggers at like 50%, etc. The hard part I guess is coming up with all the animations, and if they're damage-type specific, making even more.

Would be nice if every zombie didn't die the same way though |||Quote:








Ah, if only I were a Blizzard developer. However, now that I think of it, it wouldn't be that hard to actually implement. If there's a set number of hitpoints that triggers an action (i.e. zero hitpoints triggers death, experience gain) it shouldn't be hard to add additional triggers at like 50%, etc. The hard part I guess is coming up with all the animations, and if they're damage-type specific, making even more.

Would be nice if every zombie didn't die the same way though




Two examples come to my mind.

Zombie

and

Headless_Zombie

Same creature. One just displayed with head and one arm, the other without head but 2 arms.

THotD, Boss 1 Chariot

You can shot of his "flesh" at 11 spots.|||That would be sweet!! It is kinda silly that a monster reacts the same wether it has 100% HP or 2% HP. It should look different.

Maybe they could get rid of the health bar and just change the animation up at 75, 50 & 25 % health. Then you'd visually see that you are about to kill the monster.