Guild Wars 2

all things have the right to grow

It’s D for me. I love exploring cities, areas, talking to all NPCs and listening to their banter. But when those are put next to areas where you spend more time or visit often, they get terribly repetitive. For me it’s ‘Mark of an educated Charr’ and ‘Cubs theese days’ over and over, sprinkled with ‘You break it, I break you’.

ADDITIONALLY:
Some, if not most, Dynamic Events have NPCs conversing with each other or commenting on situation during progress. But those can be easily cancelled by talking to them, making them blurt their ’what’s up’ instead. It is especially bad where there is monsters corpses on them, since players, including me, will just spam interact button to pick them up and talk to NPCs by accident. These need to be uninterruptable! I hate missing parts of story.

People complained about the NPC voices and conversations in the cities/towns in Everquest 2 and most of them ultimately got cut out. It really reduced a lot of atmosphere and fun of those places. Guild Wars 2 has even more of what EQ2 used to have in this regard, and it is wonderful! Please don’t get rid of the greetings and conversations. Even the repetitive ones make these locations more realistic as we would hear vendors calling out to other people like that in real life. Provide a toggle instead to mute voices that people can use while crafting or other function that may require silence.

All they could do is to decrease the frequence of NPC chats or add far more of those.
It feels alive to listen to idle chatter, but it can’t happen that frequently, or if it does, make it diffenrent.

“ideas are like Koreans, good ones rise to the top” (Brazilian here, and that’s what I understood first untill I read chat)

“Seize the moment!”
“Never let a wrong ripen into evil..”
“Seize the moment!”

I think the biggest issue deals with vendor NPCs, particularly crafting vendors where people are likely to idle. When crafting and going through your inventory you are likely to hear the same lines spoken over and over and over. This becomes especially grating with the same lines spoken to the player when interacting with them are heard when OTHER players access the vendor.

There’s nothing wrong with NPC banter, it’s just an issue of “familiarity breeds contempt” amped up to ridiculous levels.

Poor Logan, he’s always ready for a fight…

DreamThief.9812:

“Seize the moment!”
“Never let a wrong ripen into evil..”
“Seize the moment!”

That’s me trying to cook and realising I am out of flour or something. I can generally tune out NPCs and I don’t craft that much at one stretch and I like the random conversations as it makes the world feel alive but even I am getting tired of the repetitiveness. I mean, if there was a bit more variety and you heard the “out house” conversation once a day it would be something but it’s like once every five minutes! So either increase the length between idle conversation or have more conversation variety to really liven-up the world!

This is kind of annoying too, but it is that big of a deal? They need to work on far more important issues at the moment.

I’m going to say A & B (more violets, less violence), but not so much C. Sometimes I stop and listen to entire conversations of C, because they’re cute. I’d be happy to have the idle chatter spaced out a bit longer, but I’m loving Sallemo’s suggestions.

lolol. what a great thread. i actually LOVE the voices and all the chit and chatter.. makes it all the more “lively” and “real” if you will. though there have been times when i do go “NO i don’t care shut up!” lol but that’s just my own problem.

i think it’s mainly when the same line is repeated over and over.

I love the little skritt in LA TP. Please don’t ruin him!

Also, the greets are so annoying. Every time a player clicks them.. oh my god. Why is this broadcasted to everyone?

I’m not bothered when I walk around but I also mute when I craft. Can’t we assume my character is so focused on crafting that the sound around him is muttered.

Seems obvious idle quotes need to be lowered in frequency, greeting quotes need to be heard just by the player who clicked the npc and for crafting to either have a mute background option or a music score to cover city sounds.

For me A is the most distracting because of the voice proximity. The other conversations going on around crafting locations seem to be a bit more quiet. When the crafting vendor greets someone, though, I do a double-take to make sure I did not initiate conversation myself.
Would it be possible to have an “initiated conversation volume” option vs a “background conversation volume” option?

D) All of the above.

Also, working at the artificer station in divinty’s the ambient laughter is just unbearable.

A nice button I could push so that I don’t hear npcs would be just great.

“The Ascalonian Catacombs are a limited access area. Identify yourself!”

that line is seared into my soul.

Faze.6948:

Try doing some cooking discovery in Lion’s Arch. You’ll leave somehow certain that you should never let a wrong ripen into evil.

That one and the Steam Screamer in Hoelbrak are the only ones that really bug me. The LA Chef NPC because he (along with every other male Sylvari VA) sounds just like Trahearne (there is NO escape!), and the Hoelbrak Steam Screamer because she is incessant.

DreamThief.9812:

“Seize the moment!”
“Never let a wrong ripen into evil..”
“Seize the moment!”

Haha… this! So much this. Seriously that ripen into evil line has internet meme written all over it.

The only thing that really bothers me is the greets. Which wouldn’t be a problem if either they only greeted once in like 10 minutes, or if I could only hear the greets initiated by myself, rather than every single solitary person who interacts with the vendor, or even if only each person got a greet once in 10 minutes or something. Just something so that it’s not a long chain of “Show me the color of your coin”, “What can I do for you?” and so on. It really does get aggravating.

I want to add that despite the complaint, I also love the idle chatter around the world, it’s great. But the frequency needs to be about 1/10th of what it is now, in my opinion.

A are the only ones that can get grating in my opinion because those are not on timers. The greetings are caused by player interaction and that is what can make them happen so often.

D) All of the above? Not trying to be rude, honest.

A) Don’t make the NPC respond with the same greeting EVERY time you interact with them. Would be nice if they only give the greeting if I haven’t interacted with them within the last 2-5 minutes. Perhaps just switching the greet to a simple “hmmmm?” until the cooldown resets. This would probably require a lot more voice/dub/code work so I don’t expect it… but a cooldown would be very nice.

B) I like the barter banter when it comes to shopkeepers, just mix it up a bit more. It doesn’t even have to be a different phrase, just repeated in a different way/tone/manner. People don’t monotonously repeat phrases in the same words & tone of voice even if they are essentially ‘saying the same thing.’

C) I like occasional white noise of conversation, but it’s a very delicate thing to pull off. On one hand, if people are standing around near each other they can’t just stand silently together… but just like in real life I really don’t like hearing people repeat the same story/joke/fact over and over and over. My limit would be ~4 repetitions per hour. Even better if it is repeated to a different NPC. Also, it would be a quantum leap in NPC banter if NPCs were finally able to discuss things from more than one topic. Suppose there is an old fisherman at a dock that generally rants about fishing… but if another old man that never fishes stops by near him they should break out into talking about “the old days” and getting old … if a kid stumbles near with a little dog, maybe he could talk about a pet he used to have… I would like to see MMOs get away from the one-dimensional NPCs that seem only capable of discussing one thing their entire “lives”… and not have to be deliberately asked by the player to talk about something else.

Think “dynamic event chains” but with NPC conversation. What might middle aged women talk about? What ways would it start, where would that lead, and how might it end. Randomize it from a large pool of options, but based on the conditions of the NPCs. That way, whatever they talk about will be inherently (albeit algorithmically) based on what they have in common …. just like in real life!

But generally, the best feedback I can give is that it’s ok for NPCs to be silent for long periods of time! Save the commotion for special events!

Arcadias.7648:

This is kind of annoying too, but it is that big of a deal? They need to work on far more important issues at the moment.

Obviously you have never worked in a project where different people/teams have different areas of expertise and different assignments. The ones that are in charge of “city design” won’t be suddenly moved to “class balancing” or anything else just because that thing is in a more dire need of fixing.

OT: May Lyssa aid you! Really, one issue here is that the greetings can be heard by other players as well. Also, I know is more difficult to implement on-the-fly, but NPCs really really need more lines/variety and a bit more spacing in between them.

One quicker fix would be to split the “voice volume” slider into 2: one for story narration and one for NPC voices.

B. the random talk lines (these are usually just a single line spoken by a nearby NPC on their own, unrelated to player activity)

When I am at cooking Station at Lion’s Arch the NPC is keep saying a line quite frequently. It would be nice if the music is getting higher in volume and at the same time the speaks around you are lowered while you stand in a crafting station for few minutes. It should be much more relaxing and pleasant in my opinion.

i’d also like to add that in devona’s rest, no matter where I am there’s a guy in the
background laughing so annoyingly that i want to pull my ears off. I have to go somewhere else to use the tp and to another city completely to cook.

Hermod.2643:

I’d like to add a suggestion, as I believe the issue is that whenever a vendor near a crafting station is being talked to (by anyone), they will be prompted to speak. If this speech was instanced to the player that is talking to the npc, then I believe it would be easier to live with them.

I’d like to chime in and bump this idea — making the greetings just play for the player talking to the NPC. I really enjoy the NPC chatter all over, even if I’ve heard the back-and-forths before (it really makes the NPCs more alive to see them wandering around and bickering or joking or whatever), but I hate hearing the same couple of vendor lines as people constantly barter with an NPC next to a crafting station or whatnot.

I like the NPC to NPC conversations as I am passing by. I’ve actually stopped for an extra second on occasion to hear the full conversation. What annoys me is when I have to stand in one area for any length of time, say when crafting, and I hear the NPC say the say lines over and over.

Saddemo.9310:

• This workshop is too small for the two of us: Make a core crafting hub inside your “home” part of the city, or separately, but make it an instanced area. Add optional dialogue, so you can finally tell those pesky vendors to go home and have kittens play while you craft.

I really like this idea! While I do NOT think that the vendors and crafters should be moved out of the common areas of the city, I would love to see implemented something where in your home instance it recognizes the two crafting skills you have selected (if any), and will place the appropriate stations and vendors in an area. That would give those seeking solace while crafting a place to go, and give us more reason to spend time in our “home” instance.

Looks like we have a lot of diversity of opinion on this issue. The same dialogues some people love are driving others bonkers. I would have to agree with these two suggestions:

- Toggle voices in sound control
- Crafting stations in the home instance

I think those might provide the frustrated players with a respite/refuge while preserving the city atmosphere that the game designers invested so much effort in creating. And letting those of us who like hearing, “My ears, how are you?” get to keep listening to cute Asura tailors.

That said, tweaking a few of the timers on repeating dialogues might be easier from a programming perspective (?) since it isn’t a structural change and if that is easier for the devs, I would support that first and foremost.

After giving it some thought, I actually don’t think instanced greets are a great idea. That would be weird from a real life perspective. When someone at the cash register in a grocery store asks the customer in front of you, “How are you today?” you can hear it Doesn’t it destroy some realism to change this in the game?

Bel Geode.8129:

Saddemo.9310:

• This workshop is too small for the two of us: Make a core crafting hub inside your “home” part of the city, (snip)

I really like this idea! While I do NOT think that the vendors and crafters should be moved out of the common areas of the city, I would love to see implemented something where in your home instance it recognizes the two crafting skills you have selected (if any), and will place the appropriate stations and vendors in an area. That would give those seeking solace while crafting a place to go, and give us more reason to spend time in our “home” instance.

I love this idea too – post it up in the suggestions section. It might get overlooked in a thread this long. I wouldn’t move anything outside the instance around, but it would be nice for extended crafting sessions to hang out at home. Eir gets to work at home on her craft!

1. Greets shall not be broadcasted for everyone.
2. Add more lines
3. Decrease the frequence of random lines by 1000
4. REMOVE STUPID ******* ********* ******* **** ******* * ** LAUGHTER FROM DIVINITY’S REACH please. Pretty please. Asylum at the loose.

Imo, the talking isn’t even that bad.

Now if I go to the tailoring station in Rata Sum, there’s a really loud mechanical sound that literally grinds some gears here.

Having to reduce volume while crafting isn’t the solution, Arenanet!

For me it’s just the greets, I can live with the other ones in general. In the crafting zone you here the same ones constantly, several a minute and some of them several times a minute. I actually have to turn the volume on my mixer down when I’m in the area to stop me punching the screen.

Fixes: greetings should only play for the person who interacts with the NPC, not everyone in the area. The greeting should have a cooldown of perhaps 2 minutes for each player so you don’t here it in quick succession if you need to visit the vendor a few times.

Perhaps increasing the distance your character can move away from the NPC but still be able to interact with them after first contact and keeping their pop up menu would help?

Rather than having a huge huddle of characters right around the trading post / merchant NPC’s you could move a little further out of earshot, as you could in gw1.

This would help with the problem and also look more natural than a metre square scrum.

More violets, less violence ^^

My idea for this is to add a /shush command. When targeting an annoying NPC, the /shush animation will fire, and your character will no longer hear their repetitive dialog.

For instance, the guy who keeps asking about latrines next to Lion’s Arch leatherworker area, and the little girl who keeps screaming “Monsters!” at the bank. I would LOVE the ability to /shush them.

The Noble and Child that walk around the Statue of Dwayna in Divinity’s Reach is on a 3 minute loop of a stupid conversation of how Dwayna seems to really be looking out for her. The reason this is stupid is because of the child. The child barely reaches her waist and this is a woman’s waist. Which would put the age of the child near 5-7 years old, yet the child responds with interest as if he is interested in Theology. What child ponders the mindset of God at 5 years old? Then tops off the conversation with assuming he knows how Dwayna feels by saying “She probably appreciates it.”

The overall conversation is shallow.

Alternatively to the issue of town voices, remove the unnecessary “greeting” interaction of average NPCs that have no bearing on the world except to block your interact key when you want to talk to a banker or trade post or merchant.

Stand at the Trading Post area in the Charre starting town for about 10 mind… ughh!

Good god the Master Tailor in LA. “Ideas are like cream” ad infinitum drives me bonkers. First of all, ideas are nothing like cream. Cream always rises to the top, therefore the analogy is flawed – all ideas don’t rise to the top. Good ideas would be like cream .. tailoring in LA makes my teeth itch .. I honestly don’t mind the “my ears” line, though :p

I seriously cannot stand Ms “It’s a bad day to travel”. I just want to strangle that kitten!

The most annoying ones are the “You must visit more often” NPCs. A lot of norn use this line. Also the “Looking for a challenge” is annoying. I hate this. In the Lion’s Arch crafting area somewhere there seem to be NPCs that always say “Looking for a challenge” if you just want to to some cooking discovery. I mean there is no skill challenge? This should be for skill challenge norn NPCs.

Please remove the talking at crafting areas or other areas where players need to be for a long time.

Other than that it is fine since you usually are moving through the other areas and not staying long there.

Edit or it was “Up for a challenge”. Have not been there for some time. But was something with challenge they were saying all the time.

When we chose to block a player it needs to block all there sounds and spell, some at the AH are spamming, one has been there for 3 straight days spamming for great justice.

LittleZoe.4970:

Btw, for the people that are annoyed: In Rata Sum at the crafting parts of the city, there are no idle conversations at all

The stations in the Black Citadel are likewise quiet.

There is really no reason to congregate in Lions Arch since we can’t P2P trade anymore.

How about being a weaponsmith. The sound of metal over and over and over, and over again. Not that sound you hear when you actually craft. It’s an ambient sound you hear when you stand at a WS crafting station. Kind of annoying to turn off the sound every time you craft. Glad I’m maxed out now.

“I only sell the highest quality goods.”

As TotalLamer said , if you spend even just few minutes in Hoelbrak for selling, walking, crafting or just staying near the Trade Commons Waypoint, you’ll listen to “Take heed! I haven’t taken leave of my senses! I’ve seen creatures of metal and steam!” very, very frequently.

So I was crafting in Hoelbrak last night and noticed that someone from ANet arranged a therapy session for that poor crazy woman. She’s much quieter, much less repetitive, and has even learned a new sentence.

Thank you!

I think this is easy to solve without ruining the “atmosphere” in cities:

Simply implement a delay on the client-side controlling how soon each player can hear a sentence that has been heard recently.

Ex.:

• The game server tells the client to play “Hello, may I help you?” using voice #7.
• Game client checks the id of that sound clip against its “recent voice lines” log (containing the last 100 lines or so).
• If that line is in the list and was played within the last N seconds, the client does not play it.
• If that line is not in the list, or was last played more than N seconds ago, the client plays the sound and adds the line to the list, with the current timestamp.
• Players can control N through a slider in the options menu (ranging from 0 to 1000 seconds, for example).

This way, if the NPC has just greeted the player, that player won’t hear the NPC repeat exactly the same the line if another player approaches. If the NPC uses a different line, then the player does hear it, adding some atmosphere without the annoying repetition. Once the NPC has used all its greetings, they will all be in the list.

This will allow the game to maintain some consistency (i.e., when NPCs says something “new”, all the nearby players hear it, so we don’t have a situation where each player is hearing a completely different thing, which can be a bit confusing), but where players who have been there for a while don’t get bombarded with the same lines over and over again.

I don’t know the details of how the GW2 client handles chatter, but I don’t think this would be hard to implement.

I don’t mind the ambient chatter, I just mind that every vendor/crafting trainer/BANK PERSON OMG says something every single time they’re used.

Stand at the bank in LA for 5 minutes, tell me you don’t want to punch kittens afterward.

AAAH! GHOOOSTS!
MOOONSTEEEERRS!

I’m considering making a guardian to push the banker a few feet out the door JUST so I don’t have to hear that >_<

another thing that irritates me:
how the hell do wine makers make money? it seems like everyday “it’s a bad day to buy wine” (“but it’s a great day to derinkit”)