On Bosses and Invulnerability Phases in Warframe
Boss battles are interesting. Just like everything else in gaming, a boss battle is supposed to be impactful, but bosses ramp it up to 11. Of course they do. You’ve been running around killing mooks and now suddenly here’s a challenge, demanding that you kill the big bad. However, it’s rarely as simple as “shoot them until they die”, there is always some sort of puzzle required, or a chance for you to not deal damage at all. Bosses go invulnerable and you either force them to come back or wait for them to stop.
In Warframe in particular, most bosses have either an invulnerability stage or some phase that stops us from nuking a boss instantly.
Invulnerability phases aren’t bad
I personally don’t mind invulnerability phases. Sure, it’s an easy way to extend the length of a boss battle. But it does very much depend on the boss. Quite often, an invulnerability phase is a good time for a puzzle, or a way to summon enemies so the boss can recover a little. Warframe isn’t really known for its boss fights, but Kela De Thayme does showcase a good use of invulnerability phases. She’ll hide and regain her confidence, while bombarding us with torpedoes. When we’ve done the (admittedly simple) puzzle, she’ll return to fight us some more.
Then we have things like the fight with Nihil. Nihil was the bad guy from Glassmaker, the Nightwave series no one liked at all. Nihil’s final battle itself was pretty much fine. No actual combat, mostly just dodging and throwing Nihil’s own gems at himself. However Glassmaker had enemies be covered in glass, and you’d have to shoot off the glass before killing them. Pretty much no one cared for that though, and players got sick of it really quickly.
Even new bosses have some form of invulnerability. The Jackal has one once you’ve stabbed it in the leg, where to creates big electric fields you need to avoid. And the Eidolons have invulnerability phases once you’ve shattered all their limbs, where they try to call for backup. These two uses of invulnerability are mostly fine and don’t last very long.
The real enemy is tiny hitboxes.
Bosses like Vay Hek have invulnerability phases, but they also have really tiny hitboxes as their weak points. During these phases, bosses summon enemies while they are invulnerable. Vay Hek’s hitboxes in particular are tiiiiiiny. I suppose though, at least Vay Hek makes up for it by having a second phase in which he summons his full mech. Something that rarely lasts very long because, well, it doesn’t have any invulnerability like the rest of Vay Hek does.
Lephantis is a bit of a pain as well. It doesn’t have an invulnerability phase though, it just has timed weak points. Lephantis is invulnerable unless you shoot it in its weak spots, which open and close as it attacks. The fight overall just becomes a waiting game. You wait for a head to open, you shoot it, it closes again, rinse and repeat. And then you have to do the same thing again, in a bigger room.
Better than being the Sergeant.
On the complete opposite side of this, we have bosses that can easily be one-shot. Well, mostly, we just have the Sergeant. and occasionally Phorid. Both are relics of Warframe’s past, bosses that haven’t been touched in literally years, just a slightly bigger version of a standard enemy. A typical Sergeant fight is: run to the boss, shoot boss in face, run to extraction. And that it.
But honestly? It’s nice to have a couple of easy bosses. Sometimes you just want to kick some ass then get out of there.
Way better than being Riven
I know I’m bringing up a boss fight from another game completely, but Riven is kinda the complete opposite of a boss with good invulnerability phases. There’s a huge amount of dicking around just to get a chance to shoot the giant wish dragon. Including shooting at her eyes and making sure you shoot them in the right order. Because if you don’t, the whole team just fucking dies.
At the end of the day, it’s good to have some invulnerability to make a fight last longer. The problem though is using invulnerability phases properly, so you don’t piss off players. Because if I am given the choice between a Vay Hek Sortie or a Kela De Thayme sortie, I’m going to always chose the one that also doesn’t have a fucking tiny hitbox…