In the course of wandering around the various regions I have from time to time watched with some small amusement NPC’s engaged in ‘chatting’ with each other and they normally perform this neat little animation, moving their arms, gesturing as they speak to add emphasis to what they are saying (even if silent, no dialogue) and I think it would be a great idea to add this option to player avatars. Perhaps ArenaNET might consider adding the option for say, ‘’ /banter ’’ to make your character do what the NPCs are doing – and that way, if we wished, we could have player characters standing there chatting to each other in a much more realistic manner.
UPDATE (Dec 7th) Perhaps /banter could be used to add a series of options, so that for example /banter 1 /banter 2 etc. may well activate a different animation from the available pool known to exist?
I know that emotes aren’t a lucrative investment in labor hours, but it would be nice for them to have the addition of more organic interactive emotes like this. Perhaps a back-burner project? Something they could work on when someone’s has enough time to do a little something but not enough time to start a new big project?
I can’t imagine it would be that hard to code player’s avatars to automatically use an emote upon entering a message into chat. The hardest part honestly would be adding a check box to the options menu for people who don’t want the feature.
I mean this might be oversimplifying it, but not by that much.
If (input X) {
output Y;
}
In this case input X would be you pressing “Enter” in the chat window. Output Y would be a line of code that essentially says “play this animation.”
What if you send a message whilst in combat? Would you drop out of combat to emote? That would be unfortunate. Same with running on auto somewhere. I’m not sure it should be automatically attached to using the chat box.
I’ve always liked the idea of customizable idle stances. Gem store bought idle stances. Since customization is one of the big things about GW2 it would be nice to customize your stance when idle maybe have a wimpy stance or heroic stance. It would definitely make HotM for example look a bit more alive and natural compared to everyone doing the same animations lol.
What if you send a message whilst in combat? Would you drop out of combat to emote? That would be unfortunate. Same with running on auto somewhere. I’m not sure it should be automatically attached to using the chat box.
Animations can be given priority over each other. Combat animations can overwrite emotes easily. Not only that but the actual functions of your weapon skills cancel out non-combat actions. Basically combat would override this system. And why you are typing in chat while actively in combat is questionable lol.
Off-subject for a moment here, but my reasons will become clear in a moment; I recently purchased How To Dance – Volume 1 and as you know that acts as an override which replaces the existing default dance routine with three specialist dance moves – however, this isn’t what I’m suggesting as noted above, as it effectively acts to override the existing animations.
In my suggestion, /banter would be executed by a user when they want to initiate a chatting animation and the execution of any other action, such as movement (walk, running off, jump, or the various emotes) would act to cancel out /banter – in this fashion it could be used safely as it would be no different in combat, say, to typing in /threaten – wherein the animation executes and the player continues. I mean, /threaten has it’s uses outside of activating scripted items in world, and is often used (as are other emotes) by the role playing community.
