Voice acting is nice, but I don't mind reading

Thanks for the update. I'd rather take an episode with no voice acting than no episode at all

I don't mind reading either, but all the grunting and throat-clearing is making me laugh.

Yeah it's extremely weird hearing the smaller character noises hahaEnjoyed the first mission and some of the map, but I'm out of time today.

Yes the grunting is a bit strange. Overall it isn't a huge problem, although I keep missing dialogue sequences and having to scroll up and the propaganda stuff is just pointless since it can't be heard.

I don't think it has overly hurt my experience since I found myself reading the dialogue of the main NPCs and filling it in with their voices automatically in my head.

I muted the grunting via audio settings

They said that they want to add the missing voice acting with a future patch, so it's not a problem.

I find it really weird without the voices. Like an itch you can't scratch.

The grunting shouldn't have been added.I constantly felt like I was playing The Sims: Charrdition.

Tyria has been overrun by Minecraft Villagers!

"Hmm?""Huh!""Ha ha!""Hmm...uh urm."

I missed the voices, but good they will add later. The grunting is a bit weid, like everyone has itch in their throats :P

@Sir Alric.5078 said:They said that they want to add the missing voice acting with a future patch, so it's not a problem.

Aye, hopefully we won't have to wait long.. im looking forward to playing this new content but not without voice acting.

I just hope I don't end up waiting months to play this.. that will suck.

I don't mind reading but the speech bubbles are actualy small in this game and I had to make some effort to read them with my reltively small screen.

@trixantea.1230 said:I don't mind reading but the speech bubbles are actualy small in this game and I had to make some effort to read them with my reltively small screen.

Try turning on the NPCs option in the chat box, then it will show everything that appears in speech bubbles in the chat box. That gives you another way to see them if the speech bubbles are hard to see, and lets you review what was said later on if you missed anything.

@Fueki.4753 said:The grunting shouldn't have been added.I constantly felt like I was playing The Sims: Charrdition.

The grunting isn't new though. It is caused by the emotes the characters use during dialogue and has been there all along. It's just very noticeable now since everything else is quiet.

Removing emote sounds just for this episode, for a subset of characters, and only until the voice acting is added... Seems like unnecessary effort.

I was mostly ok with reading, though it meant not looking around during conversations. The only spot where it was a problem was in the end fight where I had to focus on the combat and thus reading the grey emote text later didn't give me context for things. Didn't even realize there were ice-charr (if there were, the dialogue implied there were, I didn't see 'em as I play zoomed out).

@Teratus.2859 said:Aye, hopefully we won't have to wait long.. im looking forward to playing this new content but not without voice acting.

I just hope I don't end up waiting months to play this.. that will suck.

I can almost guarantee that it will be months. I don't see a quick way out of the current social distancing situation and there's a heck of a lot of missing voice work to be put in place.

Heck, I'm expecting the next episode to release without voice acting too.

It's odd without the voice acting, eerily quiet really, but it's OK.

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Aye, hopefully we won't have to wait long.. im looking forward to playing this new content but not without voice acting.

I just hope I don't end up waiting months to play this.. that will suck.

I know America is going a bit overboard with some of the lockdowns, it's the same in my homeland as well, really bad there.But the country I live in is operating pretty much life as normal, few things are shut down as precautions but people are out and about like normal and most are working normally, I've heard very little about the virus being a serious issue here tbh guessing the low overall population has a lot to do with it.It's very strange how different countries are reacting to the virus.

If this really will be a long time problem that will effect several episodes of upcoming living world then frankly I'd rather see Anet pull a lot of the resources on new living world content and use them time to fix up and improve much of the older content, specially in the core game, dungeons and possibly living world 1 which they already have all the voicework and content ready to be reworked.There's literally been no better time to slow down new content and fix up the old stuff.. specially when the old stuff is always going to be the first experience new players will have in Gw2.Improving the quality of core game content could very well be enough to encourage a lot more new players to stick around and buy into the living world and expansions.

I feel it would be a big waste to continue pushing new content out unfinished and lacking one of the most important componants that sets a lot of the tone, immersion and impact of the story and the world.

I felt like playing banjo Kazooie all over again hahaha.Hopefully they will be able to add them in a few weeks, but it depends on how the US is managing it all.

No way. I'm a spoiled child and I'm used to the voice acting. I miss it. Because it allows me to look around and adsorb the environment without having to just stare at the dialogue boxes. Look forward to hearing the excellent voice acting team back in action.

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:I don't mind reading either, but all the grunting and throat-clearing is making me laugh.

Yes, the sounds are strange and weird. And I missed a lot of dialogue because the timing of the dialogue seems to be planned for voice acting and several times I thought the dialogue was over, but it was not.

And reading dialogue instead of hearing it is quite a big difference in immersion. I too want the excellent voice acting team back in action.

What sticks out the most to me is the ambient dialogue. All the little conversations between NPCs that you can miss of you done see the bubbles of chat.

Have spotted a few funny interactions so far by walking around more deliberately. Can't wait for the VO work to be done.

i got thru shoulder to shoulder simply to get the teleport scoll unlocked. thats all im playing until the voices are added. i honestly would rather have no studio voice acting then none at all. your telling me the voice acting cant be done remote? a temporary, maybe crappy recording would be fine. even if we get a random dog barking or "mommmmmmm". be better then this erie feeling, forced to change multiple quality of life settings just to read stuff. nonsense.

apart from the voice acting the new map has been really fun so far. you can really tell anet has payed attention to what maps are and/or have been played/farmed. i can really see good longevity and replayability with this map. koodos anet!

The only problem I had with it was the speech bubbles. All those old RPGs typed text out slowly like a typewriter for a reason, so that it gave you time to read it and increased the immersion too, not just popup magic text that you miss if you blink. Luckily I had NPC text in chatbox enabled so I was able to go back over the chat log and make out most of it.

But I imagine since I have autism and ADHD, which make paying attention difficult and reading kind of sluggish/haphazard, I'm a special case. But the dialogue display could still stand to be slowed down a bit, I think, even if it just typed a whole word at a time.

And I think it would be a nice QoL feature that'd make the game feel more professional.

As for voice acting, I think most people will read the text in the NPC's voice anyways by this point. It mostly affects side chatter like all the NPCs around the map that talk about random things; that's what I really found jarring to be missing. I never realised how much ambience it adds to GW2 until it wasn't present at all, its like walking around in a ghost town.

Another thing I found strangely missing from a warzone map was the combat sounds like in Fort Trinity, Silverwastes, Lake Doric, etc. Maybe it was there, but I just didn't notice it, but I think its usually fairly noticeable.

@Danikat.8537 said:Try turning on the NPCs option in the chat box, then it will show everything that appears in speech bubbles in the chat box. That gives you another way to see them if the speech bubbles are hard to see, and lets you review what was said later on if you missed anything.

This is how I've always played due to being deaf and I thank you Danikat for posting it. I hate to admit that I am quietly giggling that everyone is experiencing what quite a few of us live with in order to play this game we love. It takes a little time to adjust to slowing down to 'see' what's being/been said, but trust me when I say that it does get easier.

@Kyra Tribeca.4912 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Try turning on the NPCs option in the chat box, then it will show everything that appears in speech bubbles in the chat box. That gives you another way to see them if the speech bubbles are hard to see, and lets you review what was said later on if you missed anything.

I'm in a similar situation with GW2. My hearing is fine (except tinitus, but that doesn't affect the game) but the computer is in the main room of my house where there's usually other stuff going on and I can't and wouldn't want to shut myself off from that, so I usually play with the sound off to avoid extra noise and even with it on there's no guarentee I'll hear dialogue when it happens. Normally I'll save my first play through of a new story until I can play it with sound for the full effect, but other than that it's entirely normal for me to play the game with no sound at all, so I'm used to having to read the dialogue. I have to admit I had a similar thought that it would be interesting to see how everyone else reacts to being in that situation.

@Hannelore.8153 said:The only problem I had with it was the speech bubbles. All those old RPGs typed text out slowly like a typewriter for a reason, so that it gave you time to read it and increased the immersion too, not just popup magic text that you miss if you blink. Luckily I had NPC text in chatbox enabled so I was able to go back over the chat log and make out most of it.

But I imagine since I have autism and ADHD, which make paying attention difficult and reading kind of sluggish/haphazard, I'm a special case. But the dialogue display could still stand to be slowed down a bit, I think, even if it just typed a whole word at a time.

And I think it would be a nice QoL feature that'd make the game feel more professional.

I have the same problem, although for a different reason: I have mild dyslexia, so I read quite slowly. I usually don't notice unless I'm reading something at the same time as someone else and can tell they've finished when I'm only 1/2 way through, but it does make following the speech bubbles difficult, and if I'm doing anything else at the same time like trying to follow another character or fight it's impossible. So I'm used to having to wait for the conversation to stop and then reading it in the chat box instead.

It would be really nice if there was an option for the chat bubbles to stay up for longer. Although personally I'd prefer the text to all appear together and then stay there. Anything moving near where I'm trying to read makes it harder for me to focus, so the text appearing gradually would distract me from the word I was on, and I often find it easier to read full sentances because then I can work out tricky words from the context.

Some games have options for all these things so everyone can customise the subtitles to suit them, which is really nice, but I'm not sure how it would work when the speech bubbles are tied to the audio cues and those may be tied into other things like combat starting/ending. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a danger of breaking entire story instances if you try to slow it down or change how it's triggered. But if it is possible I'd appreciate the option.