Boss Battles

S’abonner

Hi, everyone:

Boss Battles make reviewing for formative assessments fun and exciting. Free users can create one Boss Battle and Premium accounts can create as much as they'd like.

Feel free to ask any questions you have about Boss Battles!

- Mélysa Fréchette, Community Manager, support@classcraft.com 

108 commentaires
Date Votes

Hello! I have a question that I'm sure has been asked before. We are a 1:1 school with ipads. I would love for the boss battle quests to be available to the students on their ipads. Like in a true gaming system, if you try a mission and fail you can try again until you succeed while gaining valuable insight. Has there been any talk about doing this? I think this would be better than having the teacher run it from their computer because it limits how many students interact and answer the questions. If they were made available to the students then every student would have the chance to try out the quest. Thanks for reading!

Hey Mr. Hanlon,

We're working on self-correcting quizzes that will be like Boss Battles for individual students to do. :) So it's coming!

Does anybody have any recommendations on a good balance for boss HP, question damage, XP, and GP?  I'm using Classcraft for a full school year (September - May) and have the students for 40 minutes a day. I'm struggling finding the right balance of risk/reward.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Hi Jared,

I've been using Classcraft for a semester now and have been using the following for boss battles:

 

Chapter or Lesson Reviews: (Boss HP: 50) (# of Questions: 10) (Battle HP: 7)

 

Unit Reviews: (Boss HP: 100) (# of Questions: 20) (Battle HP: 6)

 

This worked very well before the critical hits and misses came online.  I used group answering, so a team that hadn't studied could find themselves taking a couple of hits if many group members answered incorrectly, but most wouldn't fall in battle unless they were already in dire trouble to begin with.  I always let students heal and prepare before boss battles.

My students really get excited about critical hits and misses, so I need to change the balance to account for it.  I'm going to keep it mostly the same, but experiment with lowering the Boss HP by 10 or 20 points.

Have fun with Classcraft!  My students and I have been having a great time!

I am so excited to hear boss battles are going to be individualized! I currently use the boss battles to grade quizzes instead of giving them.

@Stephanie Carmicheael

I use Classcraft with 3 different content areas. Would it be possible to assign boss battles to a class so that they do not all appear in every class? An import feature, similar to that used for powers and behaviors, would allow the quizzes to easily be added to multiple classes.

Thanks! 

Thanks Matthew!

Hi, Cara!

At the moment, Boss Battles aren't set up that way. However, you can add tags to your Boss Battles for easy sorting. For example: You could make tags for each of your classes.

Hope that helps!

Stephanie, 

I see how to add tags to questions, but not how to tag battles. How to I tag a battle?

 

Thanks for the help!

Do you have a time frame when you will have Boss Battles for a 1:1 class?  I would like to have review sessions for the kids as a small group or individually.  It is hard to do when only 1 kid can answer a question at a time when I have 35 in a class.  It would also be great if you can assign the teams to battle the same boss at the same time so they can work together and battle in real time.

Cara - Hmm, looks like there's a bug. I'll let our team know!

Eric - No hard ETA at the moment, sorry!

I too would love to have boss battles be for a 1:1 class!  My students all have computers and keep asking me how they can do the battles instead of one random student at a time that I display for them.

I have 22 third graders in two classes (we switch), without iPads or even great computers (we have three antiques in the back of the room). I am doing our first Boss Battle tomorrow, projecting it onto the SmartBoard. It looks good so far. I enjoy being able to weight the questions. We're a high scoring affair, so our boss has 300HP with questions ranging from 10 to 50 points apiece. I have a few extras to hopefully get this off the ground right.

I'm hoping in the future to see more animations than just the token ones. The sound effect is the same and it'd be nice to have some variance here. I'd also like to be able to rename the boss itself, not just the battle.

I was wondering if there will be an equation editor available to type questions in for the different Boss battles.  I really like the Boss battles but it is hard when I can type in math problems for my students to review.

Hi, Daniel!

We don't have that at the moment, but we may add it at a later date.

Hello everyone.  Just started classcraft and my students are loving it.  Again echoing what I have read about having battles 1:1 so that students can gain points and XP outside the classroom.  

A student also suggested to me on being able to battle other students in battle and challenging them for their XP.  I thought this was an awesome idea as it makes it realistic.

 "Adventures in the Wild" worked great! I am a Classroom Tutor in an Inclusion class, with students on IEP, students who are gifted and typical level. For that reason, I really push teamwork. I rolled out Classcraft  this week and it's been a hit. 

To get to my question. Does anybody of ideas for (countdown) "White Mountain Trek" or  (stopwatch) "The Forest Run?"   

And Aaron Snyder that idea is great. 1:1 gaming would be awesome as well. 

My students and I are wondering why sometimes our hit misses when they answer a question correctly. They do not think it is fair that even if they answer a question right that it might not always take down the character we are battling. They are wondering if it has to do with their types of weapons. 

A second question is does the computer automatically give them the XP and GP when we win a battle or does the teacher have to go in and do it?

 

Thank you!

Kelly

Hi, Kelly!

That's a video game mechanism. The idea is that students will sometimes do more damage than anticipated (critical hit) and other times miss. They could imagine the boss dodging their attack. So it's not related to their weapon. :-)

When the class is victorious, rewards will be distributed automatically.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that you can disable critical hits and misses in the boss battle options.

I'm on the fence when it comes to purchasing this. Maybe I have just not figured everything out yet (in fact, I'm sure I haven't!), but I've been disappointed when I am able to get my kids into a lab (1:1) and the quizzes/battles aren't available. During class, I'm frustrated because I don't want to display to everyone that Student X just lost all kinds of points, but that seems to be the only way to let the warriors have a chance to protect them. I don't see how this works unless everyone or every team has a device online when I'm updating the scores. I'm trying to use this as team and individual motivationa and a way to communicate with families. So far, it isn't working. The kids enjoy it, but it isn't a good use of classtime yet.

The quizzes/battles can only be used on one computer.  This means they can only play on probably yours.  I'm hoping there is a way that we can eventually create battles so students can play by themselves to earn points.

Hello,

Aaron's right: for the moment, boss battles are only accessible via the teacher's account. They are to be used as a review session in class where students answer questions out loud. However, students will eventually be able to do individual quizzes, our team's working on them!

Hi everyone,

although I know I am a little late to reply to Jared McConkey, I would like to post my views on boss stats here. Maybe they are of use for later users. As Classcraft support-staff told me, there is no way to adjust values for damage-outputs of boss and students separately, which is a huge obstacle for every game-master. Think about it: Each quizz-round equals one round of fight with potential damage on either side. Now imagine the following: A warrior (let's assume he is Lvl1) meets a small Boss (you could think of it as "lvl1" as well). Sometimes the warrior hits for - let's say - 5 HP, sometimes the boss does it vice versa. So far everything is fine. Now you let him face a terrifying opponent, drake, lvl 30. And this fierce, firebreathing, mountainlike-towering beast.....hits for 5 HP.

To make a long story short: You have control over 2 (!) values. My central lever for calculating a fair boss battle is the boss HP. If you allow me, let me explain:

  1. Create some questions for your boss. With "some" I mean 100 to 300! It is very annoying and considered unfair when you stumble over the same questions soon after the last time. 
  2. Have a rough guess on the difficulty of your questions. For example, I create my questions with a rate of 50 : 50 in mind, meaning, I expect my students to solve 50% of the questions on average.
  3. Think about how difficult you want that obstacle to be. I want my students to statistically be able to beat every opponent with 1/2 of their Max-HP left.

For further explanations, I will refer to my chart:

  • "#" means the number of students in the actual battle. My teams have 6 students and I use "Raid-Battles" once in a while with all 3 teams of 6 for a lvl 18 raid. You can extrapolate higher numbers if you like.
  • "EstHR" is the Estimated Hit-Rate, in other words the ratio of correct answers to all answers (see above). I always try to construct 50%.
  • "DMGs" is the Damage of a single student he is capable of dishing out in a round of battle. I assume a fixed value of 5. Feel free to experiment with others.
  • "DMGall" is the total amount of damge all the participating students deal in a round. Simply multiply #*DMGs
  • "Rnd" is the number of battle rounds, I wish the battle to take. As you will see later on, the number has to increase. In my case I use Rnd = #+8.
  • "HPs,avg" is the avarage value of HP a students avatar has with full health. Since warriors have 80, mages and clerics 30 and 50, you have to calculate the avarage by yourself. For my class, its 50.
  • "HPall" as you might have guessed is the total amount of HP of all fighting avatars. Usually I dont need it :)
  • "Ar" is a little more into game mathematics. As I have stated above, I want bigger enemies to bite for more damage, just like the whole group should deal lots of damage when they attack together. When my whole class attacks in 1 round, they would deal 90 DMG (see table). Since you can have only 1 value for student AND enemy side...with full-fledged lvl 18 drake biting, there are 90 dmage incoming! So we have to pipe that down. On the Bosses side I explain it with Armor (fur, scales, rocky skin...), on the students side with "diminishing returns" (problems of staying in formation, communication in the heat of battle...). Mathematically I use an asymptotic function to depicture that. Lvl 1 boss has 6,66% DMG-Rediction through armor, while the big bosses have roughly 55%. Thanks to the asymptotic character no armor can exceed 70%. Equation is Ar = (0,7-(0,7*(e)^(-0,1*#)))
  • "DMGar" is the damage that both sides deal per round of combat after considering armor or diminishing returns. It is the 1st value you need for CC: "Battle-HP"
  • "DMGar,EstHR" is the statistical value for the damage per round combined with the Hit-Rate. Since my EstHR is only 0,5: "DMGar,EstHR" = "DMGar" * "EstHR"
  • "HP boss" is the 2nd value you need for CC: "Boss-HP". It is derived from multiplying the number of rounds with the real damage "DMGar,EstHR". 
  • The last 2 columns are for controlling my calculations: "DMG avg, end of battle" is the amount of damage every participating student has taken the moment the boss goes down. As you can see, it revolves all around the 1/2 Max-HP damage I wanted. Still, bigger Bosses have slightly higher values.

I would not advice to make the big bosses more difficult. You might have the feeling the difference is not enough. But 1st: The battle is wearing the students down. Some of them might not be able to use their skills anymore, because they lack AP. 2nd: Not everyone can take a searing 37HP hit. Under unlucky circumstances, one bite means instant death (for which I dont have them roll anything so far! Its hard enough not to be able to contribute anymore during this battle).

If you have made it so far, I am happy and intrigued at the same time. Please tell me what you think about it. I am new here after all! <3


Best regards to all of you,

Vincent

_____________________________________

@Anne-Marie Menard: Please consider the possibility to change the damage-value for boss and player(s) individually

@Anne-Marie Menard: Please consider the possibilty to use powers for non-team members after game-masters approval. By this I mean that the dialog that is prompted after a student has been hit opens up, even, when the hit member is from an "enemy" team.

 

Hi, Vincent!

Your suggestions were passed along to the dev team:

Since the game dynamic is based on being part of a team, it will not be possible for a student to use their powers on a player who isn't on their team.

Regarding the possibility to change the damage value for bosses and players, that's a good idea, although we wanted to keep things simpler for teachers who are not familiar with video games. We might add that at a later date.

Thanks for your input!

Is there a way where students/ players can battle each other instead of battling a boss? 

They can be very competitive and they want to battle each other as well. :)

Also, can teachers have a graph for the results of the boss battle? I am new to this thing and I would like to use boss battle as a form of assessment. It would be neat to have some sort of chart like analytics for behavior so I can determine who answered the questions right and so on.

More power to Classcraft team! I am looking forward to a great year using Classcraft in  my classes. 

Please include individual student boss battles with self-grading quizzes. It's very important that there be a way to hold individual students accountable through the game. My students would definitely work harder on quizzes if it was coming through Classcraft instead of another platform.

Hi, Nympha!

There is no Player versus Player option at the moment.

I'll take note of the idea for a graph showing boss battle results!

Is there a way to share my boss battle with my colleagues? I am currently trying to replace our physics quizzes with boss battles for 9th graders. The thing is i am not the only physics teacher for 9th graders. So i have to share my boss battles or questions to the other teachers for all the kids to see them. Is there a easy way to do it? 

Hi, Emre!

For the moment, it's not possible to share boss battles with other teachers.

Is there a way to "store" a boss battle? I've created some that apply to lessons we've completed, so we no longer need to see them anymore. I don't want to delete them because we will use them next year.

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