So, you know how the game allows for a whole lot of builds to approach problems different ways? Like, perhaps you want to play stealthily and sneak by undetected. Or maybe stay back and take everyone out by hacking the local network and uploading quickhacks. Or any number of other things.

Wouldn't it be a great idea if the game just made a significant chunk of possible builds completely useless by locking players into combat arenas for "cinematic" boss fights? No! It's an abominable idea and literally every single person who worked on the levels should have known it, but yet somehow there are still multiple times when you get locked into a combat arena!

This bullshit means that anyone who didn't spec for direct, face-to-face, combat has to either get really lucky, or exploit the AI in a way that completely breaks all immersion and sense. Like, for example, the time when I had to use short-circuit on sasquach to stop her regen, and then dodge back outside of the arena before it locked me in and just repeatedly headshot her through a wall with a tech weapon as she just stood there with a clear path to me and did nothing. Now I've got this stupid fight with a heavily cybered-up arasaka bodyguard, and guess what, my only hope of beating him is, again, finding out some sort of AI cheese, because players can use indirect combat for 99% of the game just fine, but no, we've got to have our absolutely 100% traditional boss battles even if it makes no sense and actively punishes players for trying to use the different builds that the game encourages you to try out everywhere else.

Stop doing this! This is the one thing I can't forgive, because literally everyone involved in the game should have known it was a terrible idea from the start, and yet somehow it still happens multiple times!

It's not possible to accidentally create a boss arena and lock players in it. This was a deliberate design choice, and somehow either literally nobody pointed out the obvious problem, or perhaps whoever is in charge heard about the problem and deliberately decided that it was okay to screw over a great number of players who didn't build for face-to-face combat.
Literally anything would have been a better alternative:
Not having any boss battles would be better.
Having the boss be in a normal open area in the level with other enemies would be better.
Anything else at all would work.

How many games must do this and get flak for it before companies and/or devs learn that it's unacceptable to deliberately cripple your own game by having sections that beat people over the head with a stick for not choosing the direct combat build?

First thing I thought of with my stealth character thrown into a boss battle was how Deus Ex: Human Revolution handled the situation. DXHR offered a stealthy nonlethal option for boss fights instead of the typical run and gun approach.

the single "boss" that you happen to mention can be totally avoided by stealth.
seems you're not putting much effort into your stealth build.

Deus Ex Human Revolutions original release suffered from this exact problem. They fixed it in the directors cut.

To be fair, it's very, very hard not to spec for combat at least partially. There is simply no other options to spend perk points on (I went full intelligence and almost never got a chance to use my decently-specced pistol skills, because AOE damage over time, critting quickhacks that bounce from one enemy to the other are just that overpowered - especially once you can quickhack even enemies behind walls).

I was really disappointed until I forced myself to see the game as what it is and play it for what it is (story-driven action shooter with RPG elements rather than RPG with action-oriented combat). Now I'm only disappointed and I don't think it's even possible to really fix this game - it's bland and uninspired at it's very core. Even the setting is somewhat less futuristic than original CP2020 seemed to be. As it is, you could switch the whole setting to fantasy and the story could play out almost identically. Deus Ex HR at least knew it's limitations and it didn't try to be what it wasn't.

First, I mentioned two bosses. The arasaka bodyguard guy (the one who you have to fight when you're in arasaka tower with Hanako telling the board members who actually killed her father) who the game forces you to absolutely go to and which it convieniently gives you a "relic malfunction" just beforehand so you know you're about to be forced into a fight because suddenly you're not allowed to have your weapon out.
Additionally, the list of bosses I gave was merely an example list, not a comprehensive list.

Since you've decided to ignore my actual points and focus on nitpicks, however, allow me to give two more examples. Hanako's bodyguard who you have to fight when doing the mission to get into the parade, for example, gives you literally no alternative to direct combat with him, and you cannot avoid having him see you because the game forces it in a cutscene.
Also Placide was also a locked-in combat arena, basically, but I forgot about him because he mostly just stood still long enough for me to pump unreasonable numbers of charged sniper shots into him.

I'm certain there are others as well, but it's not required, or worth the effort, to catalogue every single example.

Also, even though you can avoid sasquatch, it's still shit design to lock players in with her if you attack, because, again, you can beat everything except the bosses easily with indirect methods. Forcing direct, face-to-face, fights is always shit design in games with alternatives. Stop trying to deflect the point.

As for "stealth", not only are you ignoring all the other possible builds that get screwed (and the fact that with my expanded list of examples, only one of them can be skipped by stealth), you have apparently forgotten that I also mentioned hacking builds (which my current build is primarily). So good job failing reading comprehension on every point I made.

Let me further illustrate my point by saying that if we actually lived in a proper cyberpunk world, getting that close to any such heavily augmented hostile person would mean that we failed miserably in the planning stages and absolutely deserved to get killed for it. In this game, however, there is no such thing as actually scoping out your target, coming up with a plan, etc. You have no option but to do things with the exact set of limited options handed to you, and there is often a linear path that you must follow to get to the actual objective. While many levels do a decent job at allowing you to approach things in different ways, the bosses absolutely don't (at least, none of the ones I've fought so far).

In conclusion, stop instantly trying to deflect and nitpick, and instead try to understand the actual general point I'm making.

Every boss fight was won by hacking for my netrunner... and i never took damage i was able to run hide and attack, use a turrent, turn a human into a psycho or melt faces.... it was refreshing i could still play my build..

did it again with my pacifist run stun lock knock out no death... every fight every time it was refreshing... I'm doing a melee run now and I'm still able to fully fight how i want too.

Arena or not I'm playing how I want with my build and not being forced to change, if you cant play how you want the issue is in how you are approaching the fight in the "arena"

There are only 3 story fights and 1 side mission I know of that has use an "arena" type zone with a stronger then average target, and you can escape the story zone if you want, it also has 3 completion methods for all play types.

Same here. Well, I didn't really check what the guns are doing. That's for another playthrough. I even had one moment where you had a gig to kill this lady and quickhacks did not work. You had to actually shoot her. I noticed I didn't even have a gun equipped. Luckily I had picked up some from enemies so I had them in my inventory. Legendary Contagion with all the extra jumps and crits is so OP that I didn't even notice I didn't have a gun equipped for a long time. I even started avoiding lethal quickhacks.

And I guess that also kinda proves OP's point. There were at least two gigs where you had to execute someone and you had to do it with a gun. No quickhacks when using the scanner. Why? Synapse Burnout is also lethal. In those gigs where you had to take the body to the trunk you could use Short Circuit, but these couple execution gigs you had to do with a gun. And my guns were whatever I happened to pick up along the way and had not sold or dismantled yet.

No clue who you could have been fighting then, as that doesn't resemble any of the boss fights I've had.

Hanako's bodyguard was just me and him alone in a room.

Sasquatch was me and her alone in a room. (Though I've seen claims that there are two possible places she can be fought.)

Yorinobu's bodyguard is just me and him in a room. Hacks take forever, and he regens faster than the unbelievably slow hacks can hurt him. Plus, I literally cannot outrun him long enough to do anything useful beyond cheesing him slightly by running in circles around terrain.
Maybe I'll eventually recieve backup part-way through the fight, but since literally none of the other boss fights have done that, I doubt it.

So have fun playing your alternate reality version of the game where things are more reasonable. Must be nice to live in a less sucky universe. So you're either the luckiest son of a bitch alive, playing on an easy difficulty, or full of shit. None in the areas, boss. Seen lots of turrets in normal zones if I had the daemon that takes them over, but there ain't any in the boss arenas I've seen. Only boss with other enemies nearby was Placide (since I only encountered sasquatch after clearing the mall). All of them were dead before I got to him though, since I clear the areas before moving forward. None were actually "with him", with him. Certainly nobody else to hack when fighting Hanako's bodyguard or Yorinobu's bodyguard. I'll be sure to remember to remotely hack the bosses from the nonexistant cameras in the arenas they're in.
And for the bosses that don't exist until a scripted sequence locks me in the room and spawns them, I'll be sure to peek around a corner and hack their nonexistant selves instead of foolishly triggering a cutscene that I can't avoid.

Excelent advice, chummer. It's really helpful.

SPOILERS (tried to be vague) BELOW:

well i fought a certain 90% android human with maxtek body guards and it had 4 turrents and 6 cameras in an arena... I fought a certain gang leader in a destroyed mall and was able to use 2 hacks to call in help and turn them BOTH psycho with no alerts...

I was able to take out all cyberpsychos without any damage, stun locks, and special gernades

I was able to fight a certain poison weak guard in a tower (you know who) by making all cameras frendly to track him and always keep a poison DOT on him via contagion using cool poison enhancements and the entire fight was 2 applications on contagion and it was over.. he was never able to heal... he had a SWEET katana too <3

Mister angy cyber guy in the very first mission with your pal i just stayed on the outside, never got caught and used the electrified quickhack over and over and over plus blind and he never touched me..

Oh and i played on hard difficulty level... my melee run is very hard, super fun and very hard LMAO

happy to help with any more questions.

Then Enter ManKind Division where the publishers hired external help to man streetfighter type boss fight in a room with walls and mines...

Square Enix are far worse than CDPR.

Things even worse in the bar where 2 valentinos harassing somebody and bartender asks you to deal with them. You tell them to leave the guy off and they attack you. They have blades implants and specced out for the fist fight, however you have guns, high damage blunt weapons, legendary quickhacks...which you cannot use there, fortunately when I was down to 20 of my health I stepped outside of the bar and shotgun was immediately in my hands, few shots and problem solved... Such a poor level design: why I have to fist fight there if I have all other means to defend myself?

Sort of off topic to the main point of this subject, but...

Yup, one of the weakest elements that CDPR markets as intentional design and great feature is the fist fighting. I ignore all fist fighting quests on all characters that are not specifically build for melee.
I read how they thought it would be a good sport addition to the world but I totally disagree with that choice. Maybe this could have been a good entertainment for some low life from slums, but making it a key part of world? Big no.
Even not knowing CP2020 one can tell it is unfitting.

Now if they made it a robot fighting, where you can either program it if you can hack or train it if you can fight your self or just use generic ones if you can neither hack or fight (maybe paying someone to make the better for you) . That would be so cool and more open to different play styles.

110 hours now and I only fought the robot once on 3 separate spec'd people.. never have i seen or have been forced into another fist fight or couldn't use another form of combat.

Im going to purposely look for these fights now, and do them on my net runner with 3 body and see how it goes :)

my V is god with cheatengine.

watching how the npcs act trying to auto-aim me is hilarious.

in fights, with dodge spec'd beyond what the npc can handle, youll see the punch or kick magically land on me.

if i dodge and am behind them, youll see their punch turn 180 degrees around to land on my block. AFTER they have animated the punch move.

'you move like they do' -Trinity

its a joke.

this like the computer flipping a coin and magically always landing on its radial edge, batman/two-face style.