Gamasutra expert blogs: From broken boss battles to konpu gacha

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including why boss battles are broken, confusion over "konpu gacha" in Japanese social games, and more.] In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the latest official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs Misunderstanding "konpu gacha" (Saul Gonzalez) Konpu gacha are getting a lot of attention at the moment, but Saul Gonazlez has seen the konpu gacha mechanism explained incorrectly in the Western media again and again. Konpu gacha is a special case of the more general gacha, and Gonzalez discusses the differences. Boss battles are broken (Jon Shafer) Former Civilization lead designer Jon Shafer examines why boss fights actually make most games LESS fun, and how they could be improved. Design case study: Unity of Command (Jon Shafer) A challenge designers face is finding ways to do more with less. Unity of Command shows us how. Diablo 3's ability system (David Sirlin) Diablo 3's ability system is a major step forward from Diablo 2's. David Sirlin looks at how Blizzard has embraced the idea of letting players fully explore any build they want at any time, and also solved the problem of experts "needing" to switch builds every encounter.