I suppose the original complaints regarding how 2 person cutscenes disrupt immersion stem from two catagories:
1. They sometimes kick in immediately after a quest requirement has been completed eg. when an enemy was killed or after the player entered a room. This often meant that moving players were abruptly stopped while the cutscene loads and plays. This can come across as jarring and artificial.
2. Dungeon cutscenes frequently star instance owner and disrupt game flow. Particularly during the initial launch, group formation takes lots of organization and runs can be disrupted when instance owners happen to leave the group for some reason. Thus, cutscene focus on instance owner can feel unfair and explorable dungeon cutscenes are often skipped to save time.
Unfortunately, current living world season two presents its own problems that did not reduce problems caused by two person cutscenes. Interactions between player and npcs are long winded and require frequent clicks on the conversation bubble.
Traditionally, conversation bubble interactions were only used for short two person interactions. When used to interact at length with large groups like the entire Destiny’s Edge, Marjory’s group or even The World Summit, the process can even become long and dreary. I particularly disliked the portion where the players addressed the concerns of each representative individually. I feel this is more of Marjory’s responsibility, the individual player had as much input and influence in the entire Mordremoth problem as Trahearne did; and he wasn’t even there!
In context, this process was more successful in the multiplayer oriented season 1, where player-npc interactions were short and succinct and impersonal cutscenes conveyed information without getting in the way of gameplay.
In my opinion, the critical difference between the 2 seasons are that players expect dungeon runs with suitable context in group events and personal story in single player.
My recommendations for future releases are as follows:
1. Different presentation formats for different contexts
- large group discussions not involving the player should use voice sync to minimize reliance on conversation bubbles.
- Fixed single player Conversations between players and key story characters that do not involve path decisions should bring back two person cutscenes. It has been a long time since anyone has seen their characters interact with key characters up close. Imagine the immersion players would feel to speak to the Master of Peace in a reclining position.
2. Cutscenes should occur preferably only when triggered by the player and not when they have just completed combat or are surrounded by moving hostiles. This can prevent conversations from affecting immersion.
3. Dungeons and other multiplayer content should avoid cutscenes starring individual players like the instance owner. Fortunately, current content no longer does that. However, I would also suggest that personal cutscenes can be brought back in the following context; individual players view personal cutscenes in private instances, then travel into dungeons to participate in multiplayer content, then return to npcs to view any closing conversations.
