Why does it take so long to summon NPCs?

[mbrism]

As the title, why does it take so long to summon a simple NPC outside a boss arena? And why is the "You Died" until respawn so delayed, like why does the boss continue to fight me even when im dead?

Do i need to summon NPC for the last boss to get their gear or for quests? I feel like the second phase starts much sooner when i have them with me.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by mbrism:

As the title, why does it take so long to summon a simple NPC outside a boss arena? And why is the "You Died" until respawn so delayed, like why does the boss continue to fight me even when im dead?

Do i need to summon NPC for the last boss to get their gear or for quests? I feel like the second phase starts much sooner when i have them with me.

Basically just a tradition at this point and part of the vibe. Some bosses even use that pause for monologue. Just gotta get used to it...

And no - no summoning is required to progress any of the quests. Only Dark Souls 2 did that, and keeping silly NPCs alive wasn't fun.
As for 2nd phase beginning sooner... That's either because you damage the boss faster, or there's some hidden modifier for when there are summons present that make him more aggressive.

[IchigoMait]

When you summon outside the arena a npc, it acts like a player, in terms of buffing boss stats. Inside arena, more like a spirit summon who looks like a co-op npc, and doesn't buff boss stats.
So you're better off not summoning one, unless the boss ain't that hard, basically anything else than DLC Radahn doesn't really matter who you summon along.
And yeah you don't have to summon them, this ain't Lords of the Fallen where npc quests can fail, and where you can only summon an npc if you died once to the boss.

The attacking part is yeah just because of the transition animation, if you'd turn it off, you would actually still be there for as long as he fought you.
I've seen it with Melina spirit summon, they will stay for quite a while before they instantly vanish.