Enough with the unskippable cinematics
This was actually addressed in a similar post a while back, but the official word is they can’t make some of the cutscenes skippable because those are the ones that generally involve characters moving around and things being triggered in response to them moving around. If they make those cutscenes skippable it would cause certain flags not to trigger and simply break the entire instance (doors that will never open, enemies that will never spawn, etc.).
ANet will have to figure out a reliable way to trigger everything that needs to be triggered, or a different way of using in-game assets to generate cutscenes, in order to make all cutscenes skippable; until then keep a magazine handy, I guess.
the official word is they can’t make some of the cutscenes skippable because those are the ones that generally involve characters moving around and things being triggered in response to them moving around
I would call this a poor excuse, I’d be happy with a skip button and a shortwritten summary at the end, or just a simple pointer to the next quest…well at least until the quality of writting improves.
Acually I very often just went afk when the game was waiting for some stupid chat between NPCs to be finished, and I was always able to complete the next quest.
Oh thats funny because every game I played that even have characters moving abouts in cutscene was skippable. This is 2015 people, there is no excuse for unskippable cutscenes, we might as well go back to stone age if gaming companies think they can be lazy and make cutscenes unskippable.
It is a poor excuse and I don’t buy it. Even in GW1 you could skip cinematics and were instantly teleported to where you needed to be…
I guess it is hard to code that if the player press skip cinematic x events will be triggerd and the character will be teleported to location y.
the official word is they can’t make some of the cutscenes skippable because those are the ones that generally involve characters moving around and things being triggered in response to them moving around
I would call this a poor excuse, I’d be happy with a skip button and a shortwritten summary at the end, or just a simple pointer to the next quest…well at least until the quality of writting improves.
Acually I very often just went afk when the game was waiting for some stupid chat between NPCs to be finished, and I was always able to complete the next quest.
While it is a bad design decision IMO, its not an excuse – it is how it is.
My guess is that we won’t ever see that change.
SBI
I would call this a poor excuse, I’d be happy with a skip button and a shortwritten summary at the end, or just a simple pointer to the next quest…well at least until the quality of writting improves.
It’s not about the writing, it’s about event triggers. Here’s a simple example:
In a cutscene the an actor (either the player or an NPC) walks through a doorway, an event handler placed on the doorway is triggered, which opens a cage and drops a boss into the room; if you skip this cutscene the actor is teleported into the room, but because they didn’t actually walk through the door the cage is never opened, the boss never shows up, and you’ll be complaining on the forums about a broken quest.
This actually happens frequently even outside of cutscenes: Ascalonian Catacombs, Path 3. If Tzark dies (and stays dead) before someone reaches the wall he’s supposed to break down, it will bug the dungeon – what’s happening is that players reaching the wall is supposed to trigger his monologue, which in turn is supposed to trigger the wall collapsing, but because he’s dead he can’t talk, and because he can’t talk the wall won’t collapse, and because you’ve already triggered the event resurrecting him doesn’t do anything because the trigger only works once.
Oh thats funny because every game I played that even have characters moving abouts in cutscene was skippable. This is 2015 people, there is no excuse for unskippable cutscenes, we might as well go back to stone age if gaming companies think they can be lazy and make cutscenes unskippable.
Developers being lazy, you say?
And let’s not forget Quick Time Events, those are just unskippable cutscenes with forced button mashes to stop you from getting up and doing something fun while the game monologues you to death.
It is a poor excuse and I don’t buy it. Even in GW1 you could skip cinematics and were instantly teleported to where you needed to be…
GW1’s cutscenes also had a lot less going on in them than GW2’s. From what I recall it was mostly just standing around to talk and things would only happen when the cutscenes ended; in GW2 doors will open/close, enemies will spawn/despawn, etc. will occur during the cutscene. You’re comparing apples and apple pies.
It’s not about the writing, it’s about event triggers. Here’s a simple example:
In a cutscene the an actor (either the player or an NPC) walks through a doorway, an event handler placed on the doorway is triggered, which opens a cage and drops a boss into the room; if you skip this cutscene the actor is teleported into the room, but because they didn’t actually walk through the door the cage is never opened, the boss never shows up, and you’ll be complaining on the forums about a broken quest.
This actually happens frequently even outside of cutscenes: Ascalonian Catacombs, Path 3. If Tzark dies (and stays dead) before someone reaches the wall he’s supposed to break down, it will bug the dungeon – what’s happening is that players reaching the wall is supposed to trigger his monologue, which in turn is supposed to trigger the wall collapsing, but because he’s dead he can’t talk, and because he can’t talk the wall won’t collapse, and because you’ve already triggered the event resurrecting him doesn’t do anything because the trigger only works once.
I guess that the developers cant use if user skip cinematic then teleport character to location x and trigger required events. a moder was able do this in WC3 world editor and GW2 is a lot more advanced.
In my opinion the reason for the unsinkable cinematics is not technical, it is due to the fact that Anet doesn’t want that the majority of the player base will skip story elements that are important to understand HoT because a lot of player want to maximize thier gaming time and the story is not that important (how many player don’t even read the character/NPC text and just skip everything?).
On the story/explorable dungeon runs that i lead i tell the party that it is fine to watch the cinematics and there is no rush, to my amazement i see that most of the party members are watching it when there is no pressure to move on.
I guess that the developers cant use if user skip cinematic then teleport character to location x and trigger required events. a moder was able do this in WC3 world editor and GW2 is a lot more advanced.
In my opinion the reason for the unsinkable cinematics is not technical, it is due to the fact that Anet doesn’t want that the majority of the player base will skip story[…]
Well, it’s their official response, I don’t doubt it in the slightest. There can be a variety of reasons why they aren’t able to implement it, just because some modder was able to do something in another completely unrelated game doesn’t really mean anything (primarily because modders aren’t on a salary and are free to do whatever they want, whenever they want).