How long is too long? (Instance / Boss fights).

So we've been seeing long boss fights since HoT. (And long story instances),Judging from others in the forum...not everyone likes this.I'm curious what would ye rate as "too long"?

For me an instance shouldn't take more than 30-40 minutes. If it must take longer than the various steps should have a save point of sorts.

I think a single boss, shouldn't take more than 20 minutes.It's health pool should increase based on the number of players in the instance. .so that it always takes about 20 minutes give or take.

How long do you think they should take?

I think an Instance should be 10 minutes each. Break it up between 10 minutes.A boss should not take longer than 10 minutes neither. Super long boss battles don't feel challenging or epic. The longer the battle goes on, the longer I'm wondering "Can this end soon? I was liking it before, but it's overstaying its welcome now..."

A boss fight shouldn't be more than 5 minutes overall, maybe 10 for something complex.

Once the attack pattern is survived, it's just a matter of persistence.

Wow, you're super generous. I actually think instances should be even shorter, just because if you have to quit out of them for whatever reason you have to start from scratch. I mean if they had robust save points to them where you could be playing one, crash thirty minutes in, not be able to get back in for a couple days, log in, and not be more than five minutes or so prior to where you were, then fine, but in their current state, I'd prefer something where if I crash right near the end, I won't have more than twenty minutes or so to get back to roughly where I was.

And I do think bosses should be shorter. I think each of the Daybreak boss fights should have taken about half as long, maybe even less. I thought the mechanics were fine, I was never overly frustrated, I don't think I fully died and checkpointed even once (although I was downed many times), and in many cases they were even a lot of fun, but they wore out their welcome, when I would know what I was supposed to do but have to spend several minutes just wearing them down to the next phase. I have a really poor perspective of time and I wasn't checking the clock so I have no idea how many minutes it actually took me, but however many it was, it just felt like "too many."

I don't think bosses should be HP sponges, I think they should be more pure mechanics, where the trick is to avoid their attacks and then "tag" them at the right moments, but if you do "tag" them it's not about your DPS, it's about landing the hit, and then after a few repetitions of that the battle moves on to the next phase. Make it so that if a player is successfully dodging most attacks, and landing his hits in between, then the boss will phase within a minute or two, and the only thing that drags the fight out is if the player keeps getting slapped around because he can't avoid the attacks.

Even in the little things the Daybreak bosses tended to over-extend, like the portion with (mechanics spoilers only)

10-15 minutes TOTAL for the entire instance.

Anything much longer than that makes it an effing chore if you have to start over for whatever reason.

@Taygus.4571 said:

For me an instance shouldn't take more than 30-40 minutes. If it must take longer than the various steps should have a save point of sorts.

This, except there should be save points in shorter instances, also.

I think if a single fight takes longer than 5 minutes, it should be the boss for the whole story (i.e., within an XPac or Story Season), not just one of the boss' lieutenants.

@Rauderi.8706 said:A boss fight shouldn't be more than 5 minutes overall, maybe 10 for something complex.

Once the attack pattern is survived, it's just a matter of persistence.

That's about the same I think. I just said 10 as the maximum.If it's one of those complicated/complex hard fights (not "omg too much power kills me too fast" hard, but more of "This is hard to get the pattern due to it changes between intervals AND hits hard" kind of hard), they should be about 5 or so minutes.

When like one example (she wasn't hard, but the best I can think of) is the Herald in PoF. It's she attacks a bit, she sloooowly uses her hammer, you move from that and attack her.The attack pattern no matter when you fight her is pretty much the same. Fights like that should take no more than 5 minutes.There was a few battles in PoF that was like that though. One of them was Eater of Souls.

People found it hard. It really wasn't. My issue was my first time doing it, my set up had little to no CC set up for it so I couldn't've CC'd the fool. BUT that didn't mean he was hard.He just took long because I couldn't knock him out. So the battle was a.Attack - Dodge - Attack - Dodge - Move away as he suck HP out of me - He gain a little HP back - Attack - Dodge - Attack - Dodge - Move away as he suck HP out of me - over and over and over again.This went on for I'm sure for longer than 5 minutes. The issue was for a very simplistic and very very boring boss, that thing had way too much HP (at least for my set up).

The nerf I think was way too harsh on him as now he dies in like 30 seconds.

I actually don't mind long instances, but only if ANet includes some kind of checkpoint. A single disconnect should never cost you more than 10 minutes of progress.

Instances aren’t long unless you don’t know what your doing. If you repeat the same stuff the instances aren’t long. The only boss that was long is mordremoth. Not even Balthazar was as long as mordrem. But doing regular story it’s not long.

The LS4 story instances have save points now, so if you leave the game you can start back at roughly where the checkpoint is. The bosses in LS4 felt too spongy and got tedious, and tons of AOE. I only have 2 dodges you know.

@blambidy.3216 said:Instances aren’t long unless you don’t know what your doing. If you repeat the same stuff the instances aren’t long. The only boss that was long is mordremoth. Not even Balthazar was as long as mordrem. But doing regular story it’s not long.

That's what I was thinking. Facing the Truth (the PoF story step where you visit Kormir's Library) took me at least 2 hours, because during the first part I had no idea what I was doing so the puzzle took a while to solve, and during the second part I wanted to fully explore the library, talk to everyone and listen to all the dialogue. I actually had to stop just after getting into the library and was expecting to need to do the puzzle again, but it turns out that story step does have a checkpoint so when I re-entered I was inside the library.

When I did it again to finish off the last few achievements (I'd already found all the books) it took me about 30 minutes because I had a much clearer idea of what to do and didn't need to spend as much time exploring.

It was the same with The Departing. The first time I did it the fight against Balthazar took ages because I was being really careful, trying to watch and learn his attacks, trying not to take too much damage and trying to work out what was going on since he'd made it clear before that he could kill me instantly, so there had to be more to it. The second time I already knew a bit about his attacks, and understood that the fight was largely scripted and it was just a matter of getting his health down, so I focused on that and it went relatively quickly.

One thing that made the fights extra long was a lot of extra jumping around, so much that it became hard to keep track of ON TOP of all the CC spam they put out every two seconds. It's really becoming too much.

"An instance should take 20 minutes"

For whom? Under what circumstances? Should it be designed for solo? For five people? Should all instances be the same length? Should there be more or less dialogue during 'missions' (my word for each component of an episode that leads to a reward)? Should it be the mission length that's consistent? Should the final fight of each episode be the hardest and/or longest? Should heart completion be required as part of story completion? Should each character have to follow the same FedEx (find & deliver) quests or should there be shortcuts for alts?

I don't think there's any sort of magical formula nor any number that would satisfy anything close to the majority of players in the game. Instead, I think ANet is better off using loose guidelines:

• Any five PUGs should be able to manage any of the fights; it should require skilled gameplay to solo.
• There should be checkpoints early & often; too many would be better than too few.
• It should be okay for achievements to be hard to solo and not every achievement has to be possible when leeching in a group.
• Alts should be able to reduce much of the waiting, much of the dialogue, & much of the fetching.
• If it's longer, it should also be more fun, e.g. killing 200 foes isn't four times as fun as killing 50.

I actually agree with most of ye.. 30 minutes can still be a bit much to devote to one instance. .especially like someone else of you dc right at the end. That is so so frustrating.

@blambidy.3216 said:Instances aren’t long unless you don’t know what your doing. If you repeat the same stuff the instances aren’t long. The only boss that was long is mordremoth. Not even Balthazar was as long as mordrem. But doing regular story it’s not long.May I ask exactly what "isn't long to you"?

Most instances take me about an hour...not because I don't know what to do but becausE the npc's yap too much, walk too slow, and bosses can be Health sponges.

I haven't played PoF yet but I've seen similar complaints about the instance length. And it's something Anet doesn't seem to think needs adjusting, sadly.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:"An instance should take 20 minutes"

That's what I feel it should be, to make time for other things, to break it up some, to make way for real life.

But I posed it as a question. Why should it be longer?

And I don't understand why story content should be hard to solo but easy in a party.

You realise it's hard to find parties for older content? This idea would make such content inaccessible.

Instances may be long, i believe that. But i also believe artificially long fights because of big health bars are a sign of poor design. When a fight is long i want phases, changes in strategy and ability. A fight thats longer than 10 where the first and last minute are the same is just a bore

@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:I think an Instance should be 10 minutes each. Break it up between 10 minutes.A boss should not take longer than 10 minutes neither. Super long boss battles don't feel challenging or epic. The longer the battle goes on, the longer I'm wondering "Can this end soon? I was liking it before, but it's overstaying its welcome now..."

For "The Departing" the talking alone is more than 10 minutes. -_-

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:I think an Instance should be 10 minutes each. Break it up between 10 minutes.A boss should not take longer than 10 minutes neither. Super long boss battles don't feel challenging or epic. The longer the battle goes on, the longer I'm wondering "Can this end soon? I was liking it before, but it's overstaying its welcome now..."

Yeah. One of my friends was doing it and they said they would not pay attention until they finish the past stories before PoF. They only wanted to unlock Griffon.We tried to rush it as much as we could and I think it took about 20 or more minutes to first fight, then the area with the talking, then running around to find crap, then more talking, then running around to find crap, then to follow that white thing, then more talking, then the fight, then more talking, then trying to leave, then even more talking, then finally leaving, then more talking, then it ends.

I would go back and time how fast it would take if I completely rushed it, but unless I NEED to do it (which I will later for the last 2 backs from the story), I never want to play that instance again.

I have an issue with this entire topic. When I first encountered Lupi in the Arah dungeon (all paths now), that boss took us a good ten minutes to kill, but some people kill that boss in two. So saying that it shouldn't take more than ten minutes to kill a boss is meaningless...almost literally. I know I've finished fights must faster now days than I did in the old days. Should I guy going in there in power/toughness/vitality gear be able to beat a boss in ten minutes, or a guy in vipers gear. What about a guy in minstrel's gear? You can't put a time limit on a boss, because some people will have more survivability and some people will have glass canon builds that kill on an order of magnitude faster. So how do you set the time for a boss?

Should it be balanced around ascended gear or exotic gear or rare gear? Should it be balanced around a glass canon build or a defensei build? How about the ability to do bar breaks.

Finally there's the dungeon effect. I remember how long certain dungeons took the first time we ran them. And then, as we got better we ran them faster and faster. As a guy who does the story on multiple alts and learns the story, I've come to see very few stories take a very long time. The 15th chapter of Heart of Thorns, for example, is a very fast instance, if you don't fight everything, and you don't have to.

This whole putting a time on things just doesn't work.

However, all "longer" instances should have multiple save points, so if you have to leave or you get kicked you don't have to start over. And they should all have motes to allow you to try difficult achievements without replaying the whole instance.

@Phy.2913 said:The LS4 story instances have save points now, so if you leave the game you can start back at roughly where the checkpoint is. The bosses in LS4 felt too spongy and got tedious, and tons of AOE. I only have 2 dodges you know.

If they do have save points, it would be nice if there were some visual indicator, so you'd know it's safe to restart. In the last Daybreak instance I got stuck in some terrain and spent a couple minutes trying to get myself out before I managed it. I was dreading having to reload, but if there was a savepoint, I had no idea at the time. Maybe make an obvious popup when a savepoint is crossed, and a small indicator that numbers the save points, so you can see you're on "savepoint 3" of the encounter.

@Danikat.8537 said:That's what I was thinking. Facing the Truth (the PoF story step where you visit Kormir's Library) took me at least 2 hours, because during the first part I had no idea what I was doing so the puzzle took a while to solve, and during the second part I wanted to fully explore the library, talk to everyone and listen to all the dialogue. I actually had to stop just after getting into the library and was expecting to need to do the puzzle again, but it turns out that story step does have a checkpoint so when I re-entered I was inside the library.

First time I did facing the truth, there was some sort of bug so I couldn't use my mounts, which made the first bit impossible. That was fun.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:"An instance should take 20 minutes"

For whom? Under what circumstances?

For the average player, who isn't going out of his way to explore. If you're looking in every nook and crany then it can take longer, and if you're really bad at it and die constantly then it can take a bit longer, but assuming you're mostly doing ok, it should be relatively short. And again, have checkpoints so that if something happens you don't have to redo much.

Should it be designed for solo? For five people?

Both, it (story) should be designed to be soloed, but capable of scaling up to challenge a large group. Optional Challenge motes can have mechanics that lean harder towards groups.

Should all instances be the same length? Should there be more or less dialogue during 'missions' (my word for each component of an episode that leads to a reward)? Should it be the mission length that's consistent? Should the final fight of each episode be the hardest and/or longest?

No, maybe, maybe, probably, but again, it should be kept within a reasonable duration as a soft maximum, and with clear save points in case of disruption.

Should heart completion be required as part of story completion? Should each character have to follow the same FedEx (find & deliver) quests or should there be shortcuts for alts?

Shortcuts might be nice. I don't mind that heart completion is required, so long as the hearts themselves are well designed. Some of them can take AGES to complete if you don't stumble onto them during specific events, they need to make sure that they balance completion times so that none of them take more than a few minutes to farm if you know what you're doing, and that the "farming" progression is reasonable when compared to the "event completion" progression.

I don't think there's any sort of magical formula nor any number that would satisfy anything close to the majority of players in the game. Instead, I think ANet is better off using loose guidelines:

• Any five PUGs should be able to manage any of the fights; it should require skilled gameplay to solo.

Nah. Not for story, that sets the bar too high. To max out the achievements, yes, but to clear it in a reasonable amount of time and with minimum frustration, no.

• There should be checkpoints early & often; too many would be better than too few.
• It should be okay for achievements to be hard to solo and not every achievement has to be possible when leeching in a group.
• Alts should be able to reduce much of the waiting, much of the dialogue, & much of the fetching.
• If it's longer, it should also be more fun, e.g. killing 200 foes isn't four times as fun as killing 50.

Agreed on the rest.

We've not been given any instance bosses which last 20mins. Maybe you should look at your build if you want it to go faster.

@Coulter.2315 said:We've not been given any instance bosses which last 20mins. Maybe you should look at your build if you want it to go faster.

It's possible that's true, I don't time them out, but I've certainly had several bosses that felt like they took 20 minutes to clear. Mordremoth and the Daybreak boss fight, for example.

For story, id personally put the story step with eater of souls as too long but that's because it's not broken up and the first fight (if you wish to call it that) is beyond pointless.

Outside of that one scenario i don't think we've had any story instances be too long.

If you're talking that fight at the end of LWS4E1 then that's a fine example of a cool concept of a fight that got bogged down in mechanics (like seriously did we really need 6 far flung places to bust up for an item for an Open World mechanic? after 20 min I got so bored I waited for the count down to hit zero so that I could watch that person suffocate (which of course I was robbed of even that).

I did eventually get the fight done but you could have limited those mechanic devices down to what we saw in the last fight of LWS3E5

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:"An instance should take 20 minutes"

For whom? Under what circumstances?

The point is: there's no such thing as "the average player." There are all sorts of players. ANet has to take all kinds into consideration, including whether to treat story instances as solo content that is accessible to groups as a group content that can be soloed by some.