Guild Wars 2

So far, I really like the next season of Living Story. Except for one really blatant and grating detail.

Once again, it’s about these obvious GMPCs that are single-handedly hogging the spotlight from who is supposed to be important here (you).

That dialogue scene before the Festival? Where they congratulated these people I don’t care about at all for the death of Scarlet, but failed to mention the PC at all? I was hoping that’d be the end of the special snowflakes.

But here we are once again with The Superfriends while the player gets to be the goofy side characters following the real superheroes.

It’d be alright to have your GMPCs if the PCs got just as much spotlight as they did, but we don’t. We’re referred to in these off-hand ways. Last I checked we’re supposed to be the Commander of a worldwide alliance that killed an Elder Dragon. Not the GMPC’s “friend”.

As a side note, your two female characters Marjory and Kasmeer are becoming extremely grating. I absolutely do not like having to stand there for unskippable dialogue and wait for these awful pet names and painfully forced gushing to end. It’s completely incongruous to what is going on around you. In case you guys forgot, a whole lot of people died a horrible death and there’s looters all over this mass grave.

It’s getting real tiring watching the dungeon master wax on about his NPCs while we all wait for our turn to speak, you know what I’m saying? Whatever happened to those great one-on-ones from the Personal Story?

Whatever happened to us mattering at all?

I can’t agree more. In fact, being a big gw1 player I remember how I used to dislike the basic heros in Nightfall (Koss and co.) because of this forced “friendship”. However they were much more legit than this “Band of brothers” coming out of nowhere.

And please Anet, if you want to introduce lesbians (‘cause lesbians are more politically correct and gay guys, y’know) I’m cool with this, but please PLEASE stop making them look stupid and cheesy as kitten.

You’re missing one important fact. The player character is not voiced. This means you are always listening to the other adventurers even though it is your character that does the actions. Other MMOs do this too I think.

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Mister Midnight.9837:

Last I checked we’re supposed to be the Commander of a worldwide alliance that killed an Elder Dragon.

Make sure you talk to everyone. I was specifically referred to as “Commander” in the context of leading the Pact to defeat Zhaitan. I think it may have been while talking to the NPCs as part of one of the mission objectives that were labeled as “optional”.

actually you are recognized in the cutscene before the festival. Elen introduces the group of heroes and you as their leader. Obviously they cannot voice over everyone’s name so we have to be happy with titles. Sometimes we’re called commander in this case we’re the leader technically thats a promotion

No hero can accomplish everything on their own. Especially when we’re talking of things like Dragons and such that are seamingly unbeatable even when faced with entire armies. It makes sense to have a group. If anything I’d say the group is too small actually.

Good lord, yes. I can’t handle the “doll”, “honey” etc. It’s like someone just got into their first relationship. “I saw this on TV once.”

I’m glad they took the step to put them together, that’s fine. Making their interactions as inorganic as possible? Not so good.

And yeah, it’s kinda cool to be part of the next “Destiny’s Edge” group but it does feel a bit like they’re the heroes and you’re just there to help. I did at times feel like I was part of the group and that was the idea but I can see where you’re coming from.

I don’t recall the cutscene before the Zephyrites festival mentioning the PC at all, which really cheapened how much work was put into the Lion’s Arch conflict for me. I felt like The Fellowship of the Ring had just defeated Sauron, and everyone was thanking each of the Fellowship members in turn for saving the world. Here the PC is, who is basically Frodo, waiting for him to be mentioning specifically and pointing to himself with a relieved smile. The people finally say “and thank YOU, Samwise!” and that’s it. Left hanging on the high-five, you know? The group all get introduced by name, but there is no introduction for you. They don’t have to program your name in or something, a simple “And here is the Commander who played a role in Scarlet’s Downfall”

But to the point of the current living story, why is it that when the Commander of the Pact approaches a Seraph camp the guy that runs out doesn’t say something along the lines of “Wow! What brings the Commander of the Pact all the way out here?!?”. The Player Character should be a big deal, defeating Zhaitan and saving the world makes you at least as recognizable as any Destiny’s Edge member I’d say. Instead we’re overlooked while Marjory and Kasmeer toss their relationship front row and center, while they introduce some side character in her sister?

If we’re supposed to be their leader, why is it that there wasn’t a dialogue option for us to give any direction on what to do? It didn’t even have to be a multiple choice deal, just the NPCs saying “What do you think should be our first move?”. That alone would have at least involved the PC, instead of us being The Special Snowflake Brigade’s groupie.

I get that the player character can’t do this on his or her own, and that’s not what I’m asking. What I’m saying here is that it’s painfully obvious that the PC isn’t being involved enough.

The problem with The Superfriends is that there has yet to be any reason I can discern to care about them. Compare them for a moment to other characters like Tybalt Leftpaw or Seiran or Warmaster Forgal. Those three were sympathetic characters you could genuinely care about, and feel sad when they died.

Instead we’re being told these people are our friend and we’re following them around. What? Why? Why are these people apparently my friend? Nothing from the previous Living World gave me any indication as to what they matter, they just seemed like these fellow adventurers that happened to be in the same place as you.

I’d also like to echo the sentiments that their relationship is written in a way that is painful. Look I’ve played a lot of games with relationships in them, and this one is getting about as awkward as Fox and Krystal in Starfox Assault.

Well it’d be really cool if the PC could talk again like the Personal Story, but that’s not really what I’m getting at myself. Apologies if my thoughts are coming across as jumbled or rambling.

The point I’m making here outside of all of this, is that I do not feel like the PCs are being brought to the forefront as the main protagonist. Maybe we’re not meant to be the main protagonist, but it still feels like we’re not even particularly important. Like I said, I feel like we’re the sidekick characters on The Superfriends being dragged around.

Is there a way to edit posts? I can’t seem to find a button for it, perhaps I am as blind as a Dredge.

I’d also like to thank you, BobbyStein, for extrapolating on why the PCs no longer speak. That’s about what I figured, but it’s cool to see it detailed.

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

Mister Midnight.9837:

Well it’d be really cool if the PC could talk again like the Personal Story, but that’s not really what I’m getting at myself. Apologies if my thoughts are coming across as jumbled or rambling.

The point I’m making here outside of all of this, is that I do not feel like the PCs are being brought to the forefront as the main protagonist. Maybe we’re not meant to be the main protagonist, but it still feels like we’re not even particularly important. Like I said, I feel like we’re the sidekick characters on The Superfriends being dragged around.

I didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, for the first time since the Battle for Claw Island mission, I’ve really actually felt a part of the story. I play a sylvari, and when I played through my character had to make it clear to Marjory that Aerin was Soundless. My choice of race was not only taken into account, but actually made important to the story! I’m sure the same thing would have happened had I played a different race, but what counts is the fact that it felt important that I was a sylvari. I really felt like I was adding an extra perspective to the group. There were numerous other moments like this in the new release, such as Kasmeer having to explain the human class system, and given that guildies who play asura engineers have told me that that race/class combo get unique dialogue with Taimi later on, I feel like it’s not just me.

I’ve already spoken my thoughts on this, but reading that thread should tell you that not everybody wants to be at the forefront. In fact, according to this poll, only 14% of players seem to want what you want. The trouble is, there doesn’t appear to be much agreement between anyone.

The poll I linked above tells us that if you go into the game with an expectation that ArenaNet build the game that you want, not only will they fail to please everyone, but they will fail to please anyone. At some point in the last few months, the community has collectively decided that because ANet is a company that listens and gives the community a voice, that the community is entitled to the game that they demand. Except, as the threads about jumping puzzles in Dry Top will tell you, nobody can agree on what the community is demanding. So rather than telling ArenaNet how they should develop their own game, let’s just all stop, take a step back, and let them create their own vision.

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

Thank you for clarifying that! I guess I’d assumed you’d recorded voice to a much later point, but this makes sense. I hope you’ll be able to work it out, because it really does make me, at least, feel more connected. I don’t want to be a red shirt. I get the grim sense that I might be now.

eta: But unlike the ‘poll’ mentioned above, I do want to feel immersed, & I do prefer to have some choices. I’m not as happy to feel I’m just following someone else’s characters around. I like some of them a lot – I love Taimi, but unlike with Destiny’s Edge, I don’t really feel a connection with my character. (she prattles on about the 2 humans as ‘sisters,’ but I seem to be there as a dialogue dump.) Maybe because I did this part first on a human, & they’re a bit boring, I didn’t get as much, but she was my first character, so she gets to do new things first. A run through on the Asura might be more interesting, & have the better companion.

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

Hmm, have you thought about having the character voice certain generic dialogue in LS instances and cutscenes during certain NPC chatter? For example, when the golem appears at the end of the first instance of S2, maybe have the character say in their voice, “This is probably the last wave, let’s take them out!” Things like that, where they voice commentary after certain things?

Could even get creative depending on class, such as when Kasmeer is doing the long distance porting, have a very small chat between Kasmeer and the PC if the PC is a Mesmer as well.

PC (Mesmer): “How did you do that? I have yet to figure out how to pull that off myself.”
Kasmeer: “It’s something I created myself. Next time we’re on vacation, I’ll show you how.”

Question: I really cannot recall this, did the characters in the original GW refer to the PC in any way? Did they talk to us or even mention us to anyone? Or were we only the adventurer leading the party into battle?

I for one couldn’t care less about my character.
I made up a cool backstory for him but since there is no way to advance an individual backstory within the game, that’s where it stopped.
I think it’s time to get over the idea of involving the player as a character in the story. They can only be a bad character because they are replacable because they have to be replacable by any other player character.

I’m sorry, but that is not a good poll. How about “Do you want your character (who is the commander of the alliance) to be acknowledged for their contributions to the ongoing fight? yes/no”. With all those choices, you can’t get a good result.

And I agree with the OP. The other members of DE2 are grown up people. All the childish ‘puppy love’ small talk makes me feel like I’m in a badly written coming of age movie.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

I think the same way, I enjoy playing in the world where there is so much going on. For once in my gaming career everything is not 100% about me all the time. Makes me feel like I am actually part of a world rather than being the center of the game. Thank you for going in this direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

Hey Bobby, just wanted to give my 2 cents. I just came back from a about 7 month break of playing GW2. I stopped mostly due to time reasons and to play other games, yet also because I was unhappy with the Living story. For once I didn’t like the character of Scarlet, but that’s another thing. The other reason is, that I didn’t feel appreciated as a player by the NPCs. Sounds weird, however I am mostly an old school RPG player. I grew up with Baldur’s Gate and Elder Scrolls, games that always managed to give the right amount of praise to my character.
Now I don’t want to sound like a spoiled brat, especially since GW2 probably does it better than most other MMORPGs (though I don’t have played too much of them, I’m generally not a fan of the genre), yet I still can’t help myself feeling shunned. It’s not just the lack of dialog, I understand the limitations, it’s more than that for example that there is no mention of my GW1 character that I put so much time into. I know, I know, not everyone has played GW1, but there still could be references to the “Heroes of Ascalon” or whatever. While I’m aware you are not responsible for this, I feel the need to throw this in. When I read Ghosts of Ascalon and the characters started to tell each other stories about heroes of their people, my stomach started tingling. Could this be the moment my deeds, even obscured behind the title “Heroes of Ascalon” are put to print. And then all the talked about was Gwen… I personally always disliked Gwen, but when they pretty much said that Gwen is the greatest hero of humanity or at least Ascalon (it was something along those lines) there was a split second when I wanted to rip the book to shreds. I calmed myself with the thought that they probably didn’t want to confuse readers and that I will get my appreciation, when the game is released via the Hall of Monuments. Too bad the HoM was disappointing too, a ruin with 3-4 Ghosts in it, only one talking about some heroes of the past.

But ok this was GW1, now it’s GW2. My old toons will always be remembered by me, this game is for my new heroes to shine. And yet they didn’t, instead the personal story got hijacked halfway through, first by the order mentors (at least they were likable) and then by Trahearne. Why do you keep doing this Anet? Why do NPCs fill the spotlight? Again, I know for a consistent story, there need to be consistent characters that are the same for everyone. That’s why Kormir became a god and I’m one of the people who does not mind that at all. I like Kormir! She was a well written, well acted and suitable character. Trahearne is not. This is what makes the spotlight theft even worse. I hoped the Living story would change that, yet again the focus is on NPCs while I’m playing the part of the delivery boy.

Sorry I had to rant there, I needed to get this off my chest. GW2 is a MMO, so I guess I can’t expect traditional RPG stroytelling. I’m not even sure how you can fix this in the future, all I can give as constructive feedback is this idea: You could place plaques (like the Marriner plaques) in areas that had story importance in GW1. So players who never played the first one can catch up with it’s story and lore without having to buy it while old players feel a little bit more appreciated. Something like “Abaddon’s Mouth: Here the mighty Heroes of Ascalon faced Khilborn, the Orrian Lich and his army of titans.”

I hope this didn’t sound like I just wanted my ego to be stroked. I just want to feel like the hero and not the sidekick.

Thalador.4218:

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

And remove the feeling that the zones are made of living characters that have their own lives and that not everything revolve around one character only ? I wouldn’t want that, like at all. The bolded part is for me one of the greatest point of GW2.

I love the ambient chatter, actually. Games that lack it feel sterile. I park myself in Rata Sum to hear the best of it. I don’t want the story to be ‘all about me.’ Even with Trahearne, the Unloved, I was fine making someone else commander. Just not him. It seems like some people think of their character as a vehicle to run through someone else’s story, which is ultimately true. But I’m drawn in more by choices, by developing a character through choice. That worked well in the early stages – great in the racial beginnings, fine through the Orders. But I’d rather be more than a place-holder, & that’s not clear to me now.

Obviously, we’re in someone else’s world, & it will never be exactly ours. But I preferred, say, Dragon Age Origins over 2 (ignoring combat) because I felt too much that I was playing someone else’s character in 2 (and I preferred the companions in 2, just not MY character) But others may prefer that the story be about this new guild. I just felt we had more connection with Destiny’s Edge, & I found them more interesting (except for Taimi, who I do like)

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

I don’t see any reason at all to record voice in other languages than english. It costs a -ton- of money and it complicates things very very much and it gives very little gain.
Why not just have english voice and subtitles for the rest of the languages?
Makes things much less complicated and with subtitles, people who blatantly refuse to learn english for whatever reason will still understand.
The biggest part of the population in GW2 does speak english and it’s good enough to cater to the minorities who aren’t native english speaking (like me) with subtitles.

On the “no player name in the dialogs” issue, voice synthesizing technology is getting better and better and would be really cool to include if done right. The player would, similar to the japanese dating game Love+, set how they want their name to sound and then the name is synthesized whenever it needs to be said. Maybe a bit of a dream, but would be cool and quite unique.

Anarchy Online celebrated its 13th birthday this week. It was very much the world builder with dialogue only ever written, even when the tech improved. It is still better due to quality of writing than speech would probably ever give it. Did it need branching storylines? No, the strength of the world and the characters overcame that need.

TSW uses massive production resources to generate NPC speech and interaction. Its a fantastic experience, but content in terms of new maps have been churned out very slowly as a result. It did however, rightfully not give your character a voice. I dont think your character should ever be given a voice, since it is impossible for a dev to envision how you as the player “hear” your toon. I know in my head my Guardian does NOT sound like how he talks.

Personally I prefer the direction Anet is going with dialogue and interaction now than it did at the start of the game. I’m quite happy with the largely voiceless aspect or the “observer” style of my characters. It’s the world around me I care about.

Why does the game have to be open world at the expense of the PC? That’s a complete cop-out.

We’re talking about Author’s Pets hogging the spotlight from the PCs, something that made World of Warcraft’s lore characters insufferable, not making the entire game revolve around the PC.

I don’t think allowing the player to have more dialogue with NPCs, and more recognition in the NPC’s dialogue is too much to ask nor is it going to ruin the “living world”.

Look, you require your players to complete the entire personal story in order to participate in the new Living World season right? I seem to remember that. That means you need to recognize those efforts by the player later on in the storyline, not act like everyone involved with Zhaitan faded into obscurity because these people over here are new.

At the very least do not make the dialogue unavoidable. It really, really kittened me off to have to stand there and wait for the Author’s Pets to finish talking so we could keep moving forward. A good story does not have the reader rolling their eyes and going “oh boy here we go again” and wishing nothing more than to thumb the pages forward.

I only came here to complain because for the most part I really, really like this game’s storytelling. I’m that guy that /does/ talk to every NPC and sign post and animal in RPGs, I love it. But good grief guys I’m starting to dread the next part of the story because my mind is already thinking “I hope they don’t make it all about those guys again…”

BobbyStein.2315:

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

While you are at it could you have text dialogue at time reference our characters by name when appropriate. I think that would even be a good stop gap measure it also has more effect then a title. Especially when talking with close friends in some instances.

Mister Midnight.9837:

Why does the game have to be open world at the expense of the PC? That’s a complete cop-out.

We’re talking about Author’s Pets hogging the spotlight from the PCs, something that made World of Warcraft’s lore characters insufferable, not making the entire game revolve around the PC.

I don’t think allowing the player to have more dialogue with NPCs, and more recognition in the NPC’s dialogue is too much to ask nor is it going to ruin the “living world”.

Look, you require your players to complete the entire personal story in order to participate in the new Living World season right? I seem to remember that. That means you need to recognize those efforts by the player later on in the storyline, not act like everyone involved with Zhaitan faded into obscurity because these people over here are new.

At the very least do not make the dialogue unavoidable. It really, really kittened me off to have to stand there and wait for the Author’s Pets to finish talking so we could keep moving forward. A good story does not have the reader rolling their eyes and going “oh boy here we go again” and wishing nothing more than to thumb the pages forward.

I only came here to complain because for the most part I really, really like this game’s storytelling. I’m that guy that /does/ talk to every NPC and sign post and animal in RPGs, I love it. But good grief guys I’m starting to dread the next part of the story because my mind is already thinking “I hope they don’t make it all about those guys again…”

You sound as though you want a single player game? You can get everything you are looking for in a game like Skyrim.

Thalador.4218:

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

Anet doesn’t have those industry Story-Writers and an “estimated to be between $150 million and $200 million or more” to put towards development.

BobbyStein.2315:

Mister Midnight.9837:

Why does the game have to be open world at the expense of the PC? That’s a complete cop-out.

Actually, it’s the reality of game development. You have limited budget and time to work with, so scope must be adjusted to fit. Features must be prioritized, and sometimes that means cutting content or systems.

http://www.ambysoft.com/artwork/ironTriangle.jpg

The part left out of the diagram is expectations of the end user and the relationship between which features will make different people happy, and it’s not even close to a straight line, it’s a scatter chart, all you can do is just try to position that triangle to fit as many people as possible.

Which, let’s all be fair, is what they’re trying to do. I’m sure it really sucks for them to see the people that they couldn’t fit in.

I don’t get why a voiced PC benefits me?
Most RPGs went steeply downhill with the advent of full voiceovers, displaying completely unbelievably shortened dialogue and minimal character interaction, a result of needing everything voiced.

Examples include the whole bioware lineup (good as DAO or ME might be), WildStar, Diablo, etc. Even GW2 shows this.

I somewhat long back for the days of no-voiceovers. When a lot of text was still the norm, like in Planescape Torment, and you actually had somewhat believable volumes of conversation as a result.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

BobbyStein.2315:

Actually, it’s the reality of game development. You have limited budget and time to work with, so scope must be adjusted to fit. Features must be prioritized, and sometimes that means cutting content or systems.

While I get that there’s a limit with budget and time, I feel that you’re skipping the crux of the issue.

Go out, play the game, listen to the dialogue there is.

Now tell me, how much lore and story do you get out of those events? Those hours upon hours of voice acted lines in all those events? In all honesty, there are so very little lore in the events of the game, and most – if not all – of it comes from text box dialogue! That’s just downright silly to me.

If I were running that and saw how events were having no true context given in the spoken dialogue, I’d re-use generic line for NPCs of similar race and gender. Get 10-15 voice actors, one or so sessions (depending on how much one can get done in a session), and just record a bunch of generic lines – from “follow me” to “defend me” and so forth. And you have the dialogue for thousands of events – with no quality loss to the current set up of events. The sad thing is, most events already have generic sounding lines, but it’s an obviously different recording each time. While that is great for widespread immersion – NPCs don’t sound exactly the same everywhere one goes – it reduces one from the more story-related voice recording.

Already the system you have up forces lore related dialogue in events to be in text boxes. For example, most Orr events just talk about “finding a relic” but we never find out what the relic is or anything of the like. Only the beginning and ending voiced lines really need to be unique – and this is only to provide lore. And even then, not all have to be 100% unique. But that’s what you do. And like I said, it’s great for immersion, but then you lose your ability to go after the more story-focused lines. You lose your ability to actually let the players hear the lore of the game, and instead you force them to talk to the NPC in the middle of an event to read about the lore. And in sadly most cases, very little at that.

Now, I’m not saying “voice PCs” – instead, I’m saying “use generic lines for non-story/lore-giving stuff, because they’re practically all the same anyways.” And you can even alter tones and whatnot to have the same recorded line work for multiple NPCs (even races) and still sound different enough.

Honestly, I don’t care if the PC is voiced or not. Though I would have preferred them not-voiced from the get go except conditional lines, and having the tone for those chooseable amongst a set, and give the PC a dialogue tree – much like Dragon Age: Origins overall.

Just to clarify my point above: I’m not saying all events should have generic dialogue. Rather, I’m saying that if it isn’t obviously unique in feel and flavor and lore, it should be generic to save up on costs so that there can be more unique ones.

Example: my most memorable event chains are the ones revolving around Webb and Broil Cane – why? Because they have their own fully unique storyline to them. But events like the dozen ‘defend x camp from the centaurs’? They feel so similar that the fact that they have so similar-but-different lines is a bit jarring, because it feels like wasted money to give a sense of uniqueness to something that’s just not unique.

In all of the game, there are only six event (chains) that have kept to me: the two above, the one around the Dragon’s Eye, the one in Aurora’s Remains, and the chains at the Temples of Dwayna and Lyssa. The reason being is that out of all the events throughout the game, those give the most story or lore, and don’t feel like generic events. The Dragon’s Eye one barely makes it, and it only sticks to my memory due to the lore behind it, not for the unique voice acting lines (unlike the other five).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Already the system you have up forces lore related dialogue in events to be in text boxes. For example, most Orr events just talk about “finding a relic” but we never find out what the relic is or anything of the like. Only the beginning and ending voiced lines really need to be unique – and this is only to provide lore. And even then, not all have to be 100% unique. But that’s what you do. And like I said, it’s great for immersion, but then you lose your ability to go after the more story-focused lines. You lose your ability to actually let the players hear the lore of the game, and instead you force them to talk to the NPC in the middle of an event to read about the lore. And in sadly most cases, very little at that.

This just isn’t true. The problem isn’t that there’s no lore in events. The problem is just that it’s all gone undocumented. Look at this wiki page. If you looked at that, you’d think that there’s no dialogue worth documenting associated with that event; there isn’t even a dialogue section on that page. But in fact, dialogue for this event does exist, and what’s more, it contains a fair amount of lore. We learn about the Festival of Lights and a little more about Doric, and in subsequent events we finally learn more about Malchor, and we see him somehow staving off dragon corruption (these dialogues are on the wiki now, but for the first year and a half since launch they weren’t).

There’s a lot of ambient dialogue that contains lore that just hasn’t been documented, because it triggers unreliably and, more importantly, doesn’t appear in the chat box. Nearly all of the ambient dialogue in the Labyrinthine Cliffs was like this, and as a wiki editor I can tell you it made it extremely difficult to document :P In fact, it was only with the help of Project Eavesdrop that I didn’t go crazy trying to get all of the pre-Festival of the Four Winds dialogue onto the wiki! Another example is Kessex Haven; more dialogue that has been in the game since release but has only just made it onto the wiki. There’s some incredibly intriguing stuff in there, such as rumours of mountains in Giant’s Passage mysteriously rumbling, and tense centaur relations with Lion’s Arch (which hasn’t been documented yet). These are just the two examples that I’ve gone out of my way to look for, but I’m sure there are many more locations with just as much depth.

As a wiki editor and a lore fiend my request would be to turn whatever switch prevents these from being in the chat box off! They’re so easy to miss, and they require line of sight and quick screenshotting reflexes. The wiki is suffering a dearth of editors, and it’s still quite taxing to transcribe hundreds of screenshots, but I’m sure it’d still help a great deal! I’ve noticed all the ambient dialogue added with Festival of the Four Winds and Gates of Maguuma shows up in the chat box, which has been a boon to me. And once I added the ambient scenes I saw to the Prospect Valley page, other people started taking the initiative and doing so as well.

I think it’s a lot easier to get random VAs to do the random voices in the game, then it is to get the main character VAs (all 10 of them) in to do more voice work. However, I tend to agree, can’t you use our name in text based dialog?

Mikuchan.7261:

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

I don’t see any reason at all to record voice in other languages than english. It costs a -ton- of money and it complicates things very very much and it gives very little gain.
Why not just have english voice and subtitles for the rest of the languages?
Makes things much less complicated and with subtitles, people who blatantly refuse to learn english for whatever reason will still understand.
The biggest part of the population in GW2 does speak english and it’s good enough to cater to the minorities who aren’t native english speaking (like me) with subtitles.

On the “no player name in the dialogs” issue, voice synthesizing technology is getting better and better and would be really cool to include if done right. The player would, similar to the japanese dating game Love+, set how they want their name to sound and then the name is synthesized whenever it needs to be said. Maybe a bit of a dream, but would be cool and quite unique.

English is not the most spoken language on earth…
Why English? and not ont of those chinese language that has the most people speaking it?
I play in French, I love to have access to most of the game in an acceptable French (while many translated games are horrible), and I really appreciate that Anet takes the time and effort of making the game good in my favorite language.
I cannot immerse myself in a story when I have to read all text all the time.

Gw2 is one of the very few games that I play in my favorite language, because it’s good. It’s part of why I do choose to open that game instead of an other one.

All languages have their own subtelities. English is a very “prosaic” one, while french and spanish are more lyric/poetric, imho, better to carry on a story.

You should try it one day, you’d see the light it sheds on the story is very different that the light shed by the English…

Tamias.7059:

This just isn’t true. The problem isn’t that there’s no lore in events. The problem is just that it’s all gone undocumented. Look at this wiki page. If you looked at that, you’d think that there’s no dialogue worth documenting associated with that event; there isn’t even a dialogue section on that page. But in fact, dialogue for this event does exist, and what’s more, it contains a fair amount of lore. We learn about the Festival of Lights and a little more about Doric, and in subsequent events we finally learn more about Malchor, and we see him somehow staving off dragon corruption (these dialogues are on the wiki now, but for the first year and a half since launch they weren’t).

There’s a lot of ambient dialogue that contains lore that just hasn’t been documented, because it triggers unreliably and, more importantly, doesn’t appear in the chat box. Nearly all of the ambient dialogue in the Labyrinthine Cliffs was like this, and as a wiki editor I can tell you it made it extremely difficult to document :P In fact, it was only with the help of Project Eavesdrop that I didn’t go crazy trying to get all of the pre-Festival of the Four Winds dialogue onto the wiki! Another example is Kessex Haven; more dialogue that has been in the game since release but has only just made it onto the wiki. There’s some incredibly intriguing stuff in there, such as rumours of mountains in Giant’s Passage mysteriously rumbling, and tense centaur relations with Lion’s Arch (which hasn’t been documented yet). These are just the two examples that I’ve gone out of my way to look for, but I’m sure there are many more locations with just as much depth.

If you weren’t so apparently caught up in being a petty rival with me, you’d realize that I wasn’t talking about the wiki’s documentation but the actual dialogue in-game.

And if you had actually read my post in full and not just to a point where you can logically deduce a false outcome of my post as you always do whenever you argue with me in said petty rivalry, you’d realize that I mentioned the event you used as an example of one of the very few event chains that do provide lore.

I am well aware of each bit you mention, but so few of those are in actual events! MOST events’ voiced lines don’t provide any lore. There are some, but a significantly insignificant amount of events in the grand scale of things. There is lore in them, but not in the lines themselves, and you can easily replace the current lines with generic lines and not lose a single thing for most events.

Your obvious lack of reading my post in full is downright insulting. And it is further insulting to insinuate that I know nothing or little of wiki documentation and the game’s lore, despite the fact that you so obviously do as we’ve had not-too-friendly interactions over the years regarding such topics. You know that I know this, and you know that I know that you know this. To say otherwise either proves you’re incredibly forgetful, or you’re being an kitten through feigning ignorance.

BobbyStein.2315:

Thalador.4218:

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

I’m probably one of the unusual people who is actually happy with you choosing that way. I love how even after playing this game for nearly 2 years I can be exploring somewhere and hear a random voice say something that catches my interest and is something I haven’t heard before. It sometimes gets me searching if something they have said actually leads to something and they usually do. It makes it more enjoyable to take things slow and actually explore.

I just wish there could have been more effort put into the dialogue in the living story. I love Taimi she is amazing but the others have been mostly bland or annoying. Rox and Braham have improved since season 1 I think. Marjory is ok but Kasmeer is just irritating. There is nothing she says that isn’t just annoying and I’m not sure really if its the lines she has or the voice actors portrayal of it. She is too overly pathetic in everything she says and the sickening dialogue between her and Marjory that you have to listen to as you very very slowly walk through 1 part of the recent story is just agonising. I ended up muting it whenever she appeared in season 1 and I will probably be doing the same now for this season.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you weren’t so apparently caught up in being a petty rival with me, you’d realize that I wasn’t talking about the wiki’s documentation but the actual dialogue in-game.

And if you had actually read my post in full and not just to a point where you can logically deduce a false outcome of my post as you always do whenever you argue with me in said petty rivalry, you’d realize that I mentioned the event you used as an example of one of the very few event chains that do provide lore.

I am well aware of each bit you mention, but so few of those are in actual events! MOST events’ voiced lines don’t provide any lore. There are some, but a significantly insignificant amount of events in the grand scale of things. There is lore in them, but not in the lines themselves, and you can easily replace the current lines with generic lines and not lose a single thing for most events.

Your obvious lack of reading my post in full is downright insulting. And it is further insulting to insinuate that I know nothing or little of wiki documentation and the game’s lore, despite the fact that you so obviously do as we’ve had not-too-friendly interactions over the years regarding such topics. You know that I know this, and you know that I know that you know this. To say otherwise either proves you’re incredibly forgetful, or you’re being an kitten through feigning ignorance.

I did read your (first) post in full; you just hadn’t posted your second reply at the time I started writing mine. I also wasn’t insinuating that you didn’t know anything about wiki documentation; I was addressing Bobby (or whoever cared to read my post) at that point. But yeah, every response where I’m not sagely agreeing with you is probably due to petty rivalry (on my part, of course). Gosh, how embarrassing for me to have gotten so riled up in my reply.

I gave up expecting my character to have any real focus in the author’s world. Once you get that understanding, you can get back to smashing buttons in all the fun things that there is to do.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

Anet pre-release hype: This is your story.
Anet post-release: No it’s not.

Tamias.7059:

I did read your (first) post in full; you just hadn’t posted your second reply at the time I started writing mine. I also wasn’t insinuating that you didn’t know anything about wiki documentation; I was addressing Bobby (or whoever cared to read my post) at that point. But yeah, every response where I’m not sagely agreeing with you is probably due to petty rivalry (on my part, of course). Gosh, how embarrassing for me to have gotten so riled up in my reply.

I know how fast you can reply. I find it hard to believe you took that long to reply and missed my second post. And you never changed the direction of who you’re responding to, your entire post looks like you’re talking to me. So of course I’ll take it as if you’re addressing me rather than Bobby (or whoever else cared to read your post). And I never said you had to agree with me, let alone “sagely” so. This post of your insulting sarcasm was in your previous post when I read it. It’s tiresome and rather pathetic to read.

It was only at the last paragraph that it began to appear like you were addressing Bobby, which is why I didn’t quote it. Your very first sentence was responding to me, saying I’m not telling the truth, and explaining that it’s “just not on the wiki” as if you’re trying to correct me.

I could have just quoted this:

This just isn’t true. The problem isn’t that there’s no lore in events. The problem is just that it’s all gone undocumented. Look at this wiki page. If you looked at that, you’d think that there’s no dialogue worth documenting associated with that event; there isn’t even a dialogue section on that page. But in fact, dialogue for this event does exist, and what’s more, it contains a fair amount of lore.

and my reply to your would be fully accurate and the same.

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

If this is true, then you have no idea how happy that made me to read. I had the first fan girl moment of a lifetime and I don’t normally squeee at all considering I’m usually so pessimistic.

But yay! This would be incredibly awesome if my characters can speak again. Even if it starts off as being generic dialogue at first…. but to just have a voice again and not be the invisible person holding the door for other characters to walk through.

?

?

?

Braham: Hey there.

Me: Hi, how are you doing?

Braham: Did you… just talk?

Taimi: What’s going on?

Braham: I think he just talked.

Me: Hi, shorty.

Taimi: HEY! He did talk. Hey wait a minute, did you just call me shorty? You do remember I have Scruffy here.

Me: (laughs) Never Change.

Kasmeer: Hey guys? Ready to move on? Is something wrong with our friend here?

Me: Taimi is threatening to flatten me with her Golem.

Taimi: It was only a warning.

Kasmeer: Did… he just speak?

Braham: Yeah. All this time and I thought he was a mute.

Jory: I heard talking, what’s going on here?

Kasmeer: The Commander just…talked.

Jory: Right. You didn’t just talk, did you?

Me: I might have, the verdict is still not in yet.

Jory: @#$%?! Does Rox know?

Me: Well -

Rox: Oh I knew already. Why do you think I’m sitting way over here. That guy can’t shut up for two minutes.

Me: O:-)

BobbyStein.2315:

Mister Midnight.9837:

Why does the game have to be open world at the expense of the PC? That’s a complete cop-out.

Actually, it’s the reality of game development. You have limited budget and time to work with, so scope must be adjusted to fit. Features must be prioritized, and sometimes that means cutting content or systems.

http://www.ambysoft.com/artwork/ironTriangle.jpg

Not a slam on Anet – just software in general… that graphic explains the gravitation of today’s software to mediocrity.

KarateKid.5648:

Not a slam on Anet – just software in general… that graphic explains the gravitation of today’s software to mediocrity.

That is a profoundly unrealistic statement.

As a product manager for another software company, I think it was nice of Bobby to try explaining this – most end users (customers) do not understand development.

Here are your three choices:

1. Fast and high quality: very expensive
2. Fast and inexpensive: low quality
3. High quality and inexpensive: very long time

Given that this user base largely is not paying for ongoing development (argue if you like; you most certainly have gotten your $60 worth), #1 is out. No one would want to play the game if #2 was their development route. Leaves us with #3.

The 2- and 4-week sprints we’ve seen in the past nearly 2 years have made me enormously satisfied with ANet’s content delivery. If you’ve got complaints, look around at software companies that aren’t doing it right.

i personally don’t feel my character has any driving reason to be overly affiliated with Destiny’s Edge, the Living Story Guild {DE2.0}, or Trahearne..
i am also not part of this “my hero must have salutations of praise and rose petals thrown at their feet wherever they go” crowd, nor does my “hero” need to bark anything definitive at every given opportunity…
to be perfectly honest i think arena net is in a good place right now with the way they handle the storyline character interactions.. in game avatars with a mix of voiced dialogue and text dialogue.. i find the ambient open-world version of this to be very enriched content and furthermore my character feels defined more so by what they do in the game and not so much arbitrarily implemented ‘recognition.’

About those last spoilers Angel, have you thought that maybe you should make it so there are multiple fronts, and that the pact is also hot on the heels of the other elder dragons?