When having trouble with a boss what are you more likely to do?

Rage quit for a couple hours, sometimes days. Then I play it and I beat it with no problem.

I will sit there until the boss is defeated unless its a RPG or similar leveling game and i can see that its clearly not meant for my current level.

I do all of those things.

In my World such a sutuation is called "break time" it is often good just to get away from the game atthat point, you might trip overyourself due to repeated attempts.

Pretty much

I'll usually go back and grind for a few more levels and fight the boss later. Generally though I'm usually well prepared because of the way I play I typically fight in all enemy encounters and then some so by time I reach a boss I'll have all the best equipment, spells, and items for the given area.

Option 1 and 2 falls into the Category of bad design and its most commonly found in RPGs.

I mean what kind of developer thinks Going back and grinding 10 hours just to beat one boss is a valid solution to a problem ?

So you're saying every boss should be piss easy and beaten in one go?

@SovietsUnited

Are saying Bloated stats are actually Difficult ?

You must be a Dark/Demon Souls fan, theres just no other explaination.

No you said both 1 & 2 options are bad design, so what is good design?

Bosses should be a test of what your main character and yourself learned and mastered up to that point, a closing challenge

Youtube it.

@SovietsUnited

The main character had better not be a damn weakling then. Anyway for good game design why don't you try the Victor Friez Boss Fight from Arkham City. Or for something more direct try just about any Boss from DMC games. Good game design doesn't waste a player's time like option 1 or leave the player without options like option 2 (people only do this when they don't know theres other ways to do it)

theres a massive difference between challenging and tedious.

i find out (with squinty, half-closed eyes) whether or not this is some stupid a$$, memorization, figure out the trick, crAppy, "boss fight" and cheat my way by if it is. of course, i do my best to never buy those games in the first place.

if, by "boss" you simply mean a tough enemy, i keep trying new tactics until i win.

That isn't "wasting time", if you're talking about that than the whole endeavour is wasting time. Getting in the zone, adapting to the challenge and pulling off the perfect strategy after learning from your mistakes is one of the best moments for every game that has it and makes the boss in turn highly memorable. If you don't agree, than you simply do not have a soul :P

@SovietsUnited: I wanna say that Lulu was talking about how there's some bosses that are only hard to beat because their stats are unreasonably inflated or have some borderline broken move/ability/whatever.

Anyway, for me, it depends. Sometimes I'll go back and grind a little bit, because sometimes it's just that you need to get a little stronger is all. Other times I'll try it a few times, since the first time you do it you don't really know what the boss can do and you were just unprepared and that makes all the difference. If I still lose to it, that's when I'll stop for a little while and go look up how to beat it online.

I try not to grind unless I'm doing it deliberately for fun (yes, that's only something I do for fun). Otherwise, I expect my current level character for that particular area to handle the boss well with the strategies I utilize. For non-RPG games, I just look for the weakness. If it's a tough boss, I simply try new strategies until I beat it. Only times I stop playing is if I'm too tired to properly strategize.

I don't have a great amount of patience with boss battles, unless I know exactly what it is that I must do. If I don't, I'll consult a video pretty quickly if I don't feel like I'm making any real progress in figuring out how to defeat the boss. I may sometimes do some of those other things, but this choice is the most likely one I'll do. I've only had to do the level up thing maybe just in the Borderlands games. But usually bosses are too far into levels to just backtrack, but I think I did do that in Borderlands 2 because it was a nightmare playing alone as Zero.

I'll seek assistance from a guide, especially if I'm not understanding the fundamental concept of the boss battle.

In most games I play without levels as a factor for stats, replaying a level with the goal of little to no damage inflicted on my character as the goal works to increase my overall skill with them.

For stat-based games, grinding serves its purpose well.

depends on my mood, but i usually try to get him until i actually have beaten him

Try to exploit AI glitches.

now i rage quit but before i would do walkthroughs or keep trying till i win or keep trying until i get so mad that i cry and set the controller down and come back later.

@SovietsUnited

Theres a difference between learning and memorizing things you had know way of avoiding the 1st time because the game doesn't inform you you are underpowered, you have to go there and get one shot killed to figure that out. But heres the thing, I'm not upset about the game not telling me my characters weak, I'm upset thats the best form of challenge they can come up with.