So everybody and their uncles are doing “horde shooters” now, it even got its own name and with that inevitable saturation comes along some very uncreative boss (and enemy) design crimes that you guys should try your best to step away from or at least lower the usage of, both in this title’s future content and blackwaves:
Bullet sponge bosses: yeah almost every boss in vermintide is that but with the exception of bile troll and the dude from castle drachenfels, they have some nice extra steps to bring them down, i sugest you guys work on bosses that requires something more than click until it dies, without making it long and painful, something thats once you understand it, it gets easier (view the entirety of doom eternal for this sort of thing) like for example one that has a weakspot thats only visible for a temporary time during his attack, or an immortal boss thats temporarily vulnerable to push requiring players to lure it to a cliff, or a boss armed with bombs (that you can steal before explosion and use on him/her self), you guys are creative you got it, i am just pointing out what to avoid, the concorrence is growing steep but so far they are not growing smarter, everybody is doing the same thing, to stay ahead, you gotta get smarter.
Enemy behavior: now payday2 still popular for several reasons but one of them is the creative enemy behavior/systems, you get to be stealthy, theres some easy to take down enemies (guards) roaming the place unaware and if you keep them unaware you avoid everything else, its a neat risk and reward system that although vt2 version of it are the patrols, its not quite the same thing.
I think different enemy behavior shoudn’t only be applied to stealth mechanics, every “horde shooter” out there has enemies spawning and walking to the player and attacking the player, what you need to break this common design is to have enemies that do a little something else to either the enviroment or other enemies.
For example necromancers that raises skelletons out of the ground non-stop until killed, enemies that turn other enemies into worse versions, enemies that can shield other units or straight out enemies that are capable of controlling the horde in a smarter way, either making them focus on one player only, staying away from the group until ordered to or bringing unlit explosive barrels and throw it at the player (in hopes they hit it mid action thus damaging themselves)
Again you don’t have to use any of these examples but its just some direction of where to go and what to avoid, as the market gets saturated with every uncreative dev team out there doing the same, you guys are at risk of becoming obsolete as soon as someone else brings something new and unique into the genre (probably valve), not only hard work will make you through, but smart work too.
Take care!