"Kuroyukihime, An, be careful. This boss might be troublesome."
Looking at the lone boss standing in the distance, Fang Zheng immediately warned them. The two guild leaders were startled when he spoke, but they had already entered the boss room. With a roar, the boss battle began.
"Vanguards, be careful!"
Kuroyukihime hurriedly added, then quickly came to Fang Zheng's side and asked.
"Mr. Fang Zheng, did you notice something?"
"Do you know what game designers pay the most attention to when designing stage bosses?"
Fang Zheng did not immediately answer Kuroyukihime's question. Instead, he raised a question that left her thoroughly puzzled. Before Kuroyukihime could speak, however, he immediately explained.
"Balance."
"...Balance?"
"Stage bosses require careful balancing. If they're too difficult, they'll drive players away, especially in online games. We have to consider what players can handle. You can't let players wearing a full set of green gear clear it easily, but you also can't make it so hard that players in full endgame gear can't clear it. Under those circumstances, the simplest approach is a boss with slightly higher overall stats plus a few mobs."
As he said this, Fang Zheng sighed. Designing stage bosses for mobile games was no easier. You could not let big spenders with full five-star teams fail to clear it, but neither could you make it so easy that trash teams made of three-star pulls could breeze through. The former drove away paying whales, while the latter drove away free-to-play fodder. Balance was always the hardest thing to get right.
One boss plus several mobs was actually the simplest difficulty-design model, because the main focus was simply the number of mobs. Designers got used to adjusting that number up or down.
But a solo boss was different.
In Fang Zheng's experience, most solo bosses