Guild Wars 2

I love the art in GW2, and I wish I could say the same about the sound, but the truth is that I find it distracting and irritating far too often. Maybe even most of the time. Some of that (as already reported by others in this forum) comes from awkward voice acting, but I think the single worst problem is that there is far too much repetition of the same speech clips.

It seems like every time I spend more than a minute or two in an area with a talking NPC, I am punished with the same voiceover… and over… and over… and over… and over… and over again. The ones that were amusing or immersive the first time I heard them become ugly defects when repeated so frequently. The ones that are poorly acted or too loud become a form of torture. Overall, this problem makes the game’s sound design seem amateurish.

I realize that lots of chatter in populated areas like Lion’s Arch might be an attempt to capture the hustle and bustle of a city, and that is a nice goal, but continual repetition of the same voiceovers not only undermines the effect, it destroys it.

I’m obviously not the only one who notices this, as evidenced by many of the posts here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1704rn/what_is_the_most_annoying_sound_in_the_game_to_you/

As I wrote in that thread, please don’t push your voice actors’ work at us all at once. Allow us to discover what NPCs have to say over the course of weeks or months instead. It will make your game more fun to explore while keeping it from sounding like a broken record.

For an example of judicious voiceover use, play Dragon Age: Origins and listen to the banter between party members. They will talk to each other while running around with you, but never make themselves sound like idiots through repetition.

I think that fixing this one problem would go a long way toward relieving the widespread frustration with GW2’s sound clips, and you could do it without any additional voice acting work. All it takes is a bit more intelligence in the code that triggers sounds.

Thank you for reading!

Well I mean the same was an issue in EQ2, the voice acting tended to get on peoples nerves after the first time they heard it. But. whatever, I still liked it. It’s called Flavor.

And more would be good, but not need to have less.

I am sure we all agree that GW2 presents a very well done game, from both an art and content point of view. And I agree with Copenhagen, and would definitely not want for less.

However, I do agree with Ocelost that the repetitive drone of some of the NPC’s is a bit grating on the nerves. Specifically, in areas where a player is most likely to spend more than a few minutes.

Perhaps one day we could look forward to a feature that allowed a player to select non-repeat for town and dungeon criers… or something to that effect.

Copenhagen.1257:

It’s called Flavor.
And more would be good, but not need to have less.

I can think of several words to describe repetition of the same lines over and over again, but flavor is not one of them. You want the NPCs to repeat themselves more often?? I am baffled by this.

I might call it flavor if they spoke more without repeating themselves, but in the absence of variety, it’s like listening to a nagging child.

LoL… Im gonna go out on a limb and suggest that she/he didnt really mean more repeating voice-overs… I think, as is common, that they simply meant more voice content. At least I hope that is the case… <chuckle> …that chuckle was a whimsical thought of imagination at the possibility of ArenaNet implementing game changes based on some of the threads in these forums…whoa… it would be a really weird game.

Yes, you’re probably right. I shouldn’t overestimate the (surprisingly many) people who like to post contrary replies in these forums regardless of whether they’re on-topic.

Rank… the tribune… (groan)
I think we have more spies!

I’m getting map completion in Mount Maelstrom right now, and this in essence sums up my experience there so far:

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ArenaNet, for all that is good and wonderful in this world; for all of the cute chubby babies and adorable little kittens; for all of the floppy-eared puppies with their too-big paws and their big eyes; for all of the birds that sing their melodies on a bright Spring morning; for all of your players who only seek to enjoy your product…please reduce the persistent audio and chat spam of your meta event NPCs. It’s incredibly annoying and frustrating and it only detracts from the other wonderful audio in the game. As it is, it’s drastically reducing the fun.

Here’s one example. It’s beyond annoying to hear this guy repeat himself 2-3 times a minute…over and over and over and over and over…

It actually drove me out of the zone.

Try playing a mes with the random boon signet. I turned my voice sound off because it was so annoying. But then the personal story cut scenes are left without voice acting (which isn’t so bad considering I am super jealous of the amateur voice actors having been paid for this – how do I get into this line of work??) “Come on hit me, I’ll hit back.” “Might makes me Right.” If these only happened half the time I’d be grateful!