I’m not talking about the immunity phases, I’m talking about the cinematic transitions between phases.
For example with Duriel:
- From activating the fight to being able to start doing damage to him, there are 17 seconds worth of cinematics.
- From triggering an immunity phase to being able to do damage to the Pangs is 7 seconds (twice, so 14 seconds of the fight).
- From killing the last Pang to being able to do damage to Duriel again is 5 seconds (10 seconds total).
- From killing Duriel to him droping gold is a final 5 seconds of cinematics.
17 + 14 + 10 + 5 = 46 seconds of just watching the game per fight.
To put that in perspective, for every stack of mats you grind through you’ve watched a sitcom’s worth of transistions. For every two stacks it’s a TV drama’s worth. And for every four stacks, you’ve sat through a feature length film’s worth of transitions.
And this is just how the fight is scripted. There’s no avoiding this or lessoning it by dropping world teirs or increasing your damage. If anything, it gets worse because the ratio of cinematics to actual time engaging in the fight becomes greater. It’s not hard at all to get to a point where 75% or more of the fight is just sitting through the transition doing nothing.
I don’t like to bandy about the phrase “disrespecting players’ time” too much, but I think this counts…
One might even think this is a scummy way of artificially inflating playtime (Spoiler: it is).
(Yes, I know, load times and whatnot means transitions are absolutely necessary and cannot be eliminated completely. I totally get that. But the current scripting seems intentionally longer than needed, and therefore reducible.)
9 Likes
It’s all designed to keep us at our screens longer - it’s all for their metrics.
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This reminds me of the challenges of killing bosses in under 2 minutes in Diablo 3, especially Belial (ironically)… you wasted more time in cinematics than killing the boss.
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The periods of immunity when not shown as immune health bar feels bugged as well.
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It reminds me of that utility company that just tacked on an extra dollar to every customers’ bill and raked in 10s of millions before anyone noticed.
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Yes. The worst part of every boss fight is sitting and waiting for the same animation that i’ve had to watch multiple times per fight and doesn’t get more interesting with repetition.
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Neither do the fights themselves.
Give me drawn out phase-based grudge matches in campaign or on first boss kill, to unlock each lair boss.
For farming if I have the damage to one-shot, let me one-shot. If I don’t then oh well I have to do mechs.
Farming is about efficiency, not spectacle.
3 Likes
I’ve been saying this for days… and look at the recent patch notes… Blizzard almost… ALMOST… get’s it…
Developer’s Note: We recognized that backtracking to the tree to turn in Whispers made for a bloated gameplay loop. A Raven of the Tree was added to each capital city to cut down on turn in time.
So taking 5 extra seconds to teleport makes a “bloated gameplay loop” but sitting thru 25s of filler and 20s of forced “don’t step in the GFX vomit” minigame is just fine? Total disconnect from reality.
6 Likes
and i absolutely did not want ravens in every city. I want stacking whispers that i can turn in when it’s convenient… like merc rewards and season rep rewards.
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Almost as if it’s a “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” bit of tomfoolery…
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I do think he takes way too long to become targetable upon summoning him.
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It’s also long by design in order to reset all the timers of your stacking mechanics. Less damage = more time fighting which is just long enough to push them into another animation while they have immunity before the animation for the immunity phase actually begins.
It’s that they give bosses Iframes, but not us.
Evading should give us iframes.
ESPECIALLY IF THERE ARE LITERALLY ONE SHOT MECHANICS PURPOSEFULLY PUT INTO THE GAME TO ONE SHOT YOU!!!
There is probably somene doing all these things to make epic awesome bosses.
The people who design these bosses do try to make an immersive bossfight, they do not design 1 clickable pinatas.
The issue is the total void of any reasonably balance in the game. Bosses like Duriel should never ever be 1 shot materialy anyway.
You also shouldn’t non stop blasting these bosses.
It’s actualy nuts how much stuff blizz is doing that they declared “bad game design” while developing D4.
I mean they even said several times that the power creep in d3 bad and they do not want to repeat that and now look where we are.
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agree. respect the dps and respect the defenses.
otherwise just let us spam 99/12 or 99/3 keys of rewards when we open the chests so we don’t need to deal with the cinematics. its such a CHORE.
Let’s be honest… nobody wants to have a 3 minutes bossfight when you want to make 30 runs in a row…
2 Likes
A- Yes.
B- I’ll take a 3 minute boss fight if I’m actually fighting for 3 minute… Not fighting for 30 seconds, and then just watching for the rest.
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It’s the lack of challenge that makes it tedious. And if they make it challenging then the reward is never commensurate with the challenge. They simply can’t get the formula down.
Boss grinding is more boring in it’s current format with the mandatory phases than it was when you could one shot them. Now I have to one shot Duriel 3x, and watch what basically amount to cut scenes like the OP said.
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I hate them. Breaks one’s game rhythm and it’s a total buzzkill. Like going on a hot date to a Michelin 3 star that’s on the top floor of some great hotel with a view. You get on all ready to go and the next floor some kid gets on and punches all of the floor buttons and laughs as he hops out before the door closes.