Opening chests and the like. Too slow

You are surrounded by enemies, half your health is lost and you are low on flasks, then as you try to retreat you accidently click on a chest, you then go and very slowly open it all the while being shot by highway brigand archers. When the chest is finally open, the rock construct you were running from smashes you in the face with a burning rock fist. You die.

Ok, so this little story is an extreme case, but its totally plausible. My frustration isnt in the dying part because as yet that hasnt happened. My frustration is in the second or so it takes to open the chest you could have slain a few monsters.

In a fast paced game, which is the way i play it, as im sure most other ppl do, the second and a half it takes to open the chest is an annoying lull in the excitement, and it really has no use except to play out the animation. I think that if there are no other commands issued by a mouse click or the qwerty keys, then yes let the animation play out. But it should be interuptable, so you can run off if you need to, or simply kick open a chest your standing next to while continuing your assault on undead hordes.

Edit: i Realise the chest animation isnt so bad now, but the barrels, crates, vases etc are very slow.

Agreed. The animation for kicking barrels, vases etc. and opening chests is too long. I find myself avoiding opening chests completely and use aoe skills to break barrels. It shouldn't be aggravating to open containers!

Agreed as well, maybe the char could be "free" while the animation lasts, even though the loot would not be there yet.

Agreed, the slow-motion "open" animations introduce a weird break in the flow of the game. They are awkwardly slow compared to the otherwise fast-paced gameplay.

Typically I just shoot the barrels etc to blow them up - this is quicker than kicking each one open individually, especially when useing an AoE attack to do it. If we could also open chests by attacking them, then I'd be happy. :)

chests are one thing, i just open them when the battle is over.

as far as jars and barrels and pots and the like, nova skills are BA for that. hits them all and poof! floor full of loot.

That has totally happened to me.

Chest animations aren't bad actually. It's the breaking animations that are horrible. It's to the point that I don't open any objects except chests and boulders with non-spell characters.

Solution to OP:
Make chests and barrels only 'opened' when using same key pickup as you would when grabbing an item off the ground.

The "potentially getting killed" issue could be solved by making the action interruptible, but that doesn't solve the problem that it kills the flow of the game.
Making the animation a lot shorter would be the best solution if you ask me.

The whole idea of a delay on chests/barrels/rocks is to avoid exploitation of the mechanic. Essentially, every time you open one of these items, you are getting a free loot roll. There needs to be an offset in terms of cost, so there is a delay timer on these things.

One of my ongoing flippant responses to people that ask me how I get l33t gear and lots of currency is that I don't bother killing anything in higher levels, as it takes too long. I just run through and flip rocks over...