Extended combat killing shopping phase in BG

Community Discussion
1

This is not a bug. This is a serious design flaw.

The fact that some comps in Battlegrounds have such a lengthy combat sequence that literally (yes, literally) no time is left for the shopping phase is just crazy.

In a game of Duos where we ended up playing leapfrogger beast + undead against (insert drumroll) leapfrogger beast + undead the recruiting phase become non-existent. The loooooong combat was immediately followed by the next combat which was followed by the next one and so on until the game ended. No input could be made. (A true “auto-battler”.)

It shouldn’t be like this. If I’m creating a build within the rules of the game then I and my teammate (and my opponents) SHOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY. I shouldn’t have to close and restart the game client mid-battle EVERY SINGLE COMBAT to force a recruitment phase and have a chance at playing card.

There’s been a lot of talk about speeding up animations to counter this problem, which is a legit idea and could work to some extent but I don’t think it’s a good enough solution. Here’s why:

There will always be ridiculously “exponential” builds that extend combat length so much that no amount of sensible speeding up would help. Sure, you could make everything happen so fast that events become impossible to follow but where’s the fun in that?

So yes, some tweaking to animation speed would be appreciated but it would help more if we had a FAST FORWARD or a SKIP TO END OF COMBAT button. Oh, but then APM builds will just abuse this by always skipping combat, you say, and you’re right. So the button WOULDN’T BE CLICKABLE UNTIL A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF COMBAT TIME HAS PASSED. By “reasonable” I mean long enough that most combats fit in it. This means the vast majority of battles would go down as usual but we would have the option to skip and save the shopping phase in the cases of outliers.

I’m not a programmer or a game dev but I imagine implementing this as a relatively simple task that would fix a very annoying problem for a lot of people. Consumer satisfaction guaranteed with low effort. Or something.

Comment or throw a like if you think this is a good idea and perhaps Blizzard will take notice. (I doubt it, though.)

1 Like
2

This could be a Dev decision “for realism”. Or it could be a Dev mistake to not just cut off the round; in reality the games are decided on THE SERVER and not on screen and you just see a replay of that; i.e. they could be decided in milliseconds and if the replay goes for more than a few seconds it would just end it and show the last few kills (i.e. “2 minutes later…”) but again that wouldn’t be realistic.

The other solution would be what most players suggest; just cut off the animations; but this is BLIZZARD: the bread and butter of the culture of the company is ART: you are not getting them easily to cut something if it looks bad aesthetically.

3

Yes, the combat is decided almost instantly - this is why you can, in fact, skip watching it by restarting the game client. You get reconnected in the shopping phase AFTER the combat.
I get the artistic and fantasy reasons for not meddling with the current system which why I’m not advocating for a general option to skip gombat or animations. I WANT to see the combat unfolding, it is part of the fun, so yes, give me the bangs and the ka-booms but if the show is not over before the recruitment phase becomes unplayably short then, and ONLY THEN, may I please have the option to fast forward or skip?

4

They’d sooner change the animations, or even the cards rotation. I’m pretty sure Blizzard has one of the least likely cultures to give someone a button that says “don’t see the visuals at all and keep doing the gameplay”.

5

Why not condense the animations to where stuff like leapfroggers DR has to trigger multiple times instead of one at a time, hwoever any times its going to trigger just have them all happen at once akin to a minor fast forward to the end of a sequence of deathrattles rattling off. SO when the frogs gotta go off 12 times per time a minion dies, it doesnt animate all 12 in a row, but animates once but with like a slight tweak to its appears to convey the idea its proc’d that many times all at once, and continue the match as normal until another high threshhold of DR animations need to rattle off again. It wouldnt be a skip to the end or anything but it would be a way to get things moving along.