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The Daily Grind: What makes a boss fight memorable?
Over on his blog, 4th Edition D&D developer Mike Mearls has been thinking over the design challenges posed by a solo monster fight. In 4th Edition, solo monsters are creatures designed to be a challenge on their own, without needing a group to back them up. As Mike has observed, the issue with solo monsters is designing the encounter so that it isn't boring: 'It's important that a solo fight take place in an environment that encourages movement and interesting choices. Otherwise, you end up with the party standing around, trading blows with one monster.'We thought this was a game design point that applies every bit as much to MMOs as it does to D&D. In City of Heroes, where the environment makes little difference, fights with Archvillains used to be straightforward affairs; the AV was a big bag of hit points that got hammered. Now, with Archvillains like Romulus and his cadre of supporters, new twists have been added to keep the fight interesting. The boss fights in World of Warcraft are said to be some of the best in gaming, because they aren't simple surround-and-bludgeon affairs.What do you look for in a fight with a Big Bad? What are your best and worst experiences?
Widget Watch: The Daily Grind 2.0
Dave Caolo found The Daily Grind last month, just this week it was updated to version 2. The new version of this task-tracking widget adds colored labels and the ability to drag and drop tasks for greater organizing goodness or "simply because it's an addictive pastime."The Daily Grind v2 is donationware and available from Thomas Pilgaard Miller's site.
Widget Watch: The Daily Grind
If you have one of those jobs that requires to you track just how much time you spend on a given task (or if you're just a compulsive nut), check out The Daily Grind. It's a Dashboard widget that lets you start several individual timers, and give a custom name to each one. Plus, you can copy the results of any timer to the clipboard with a click. Pretty cool.
