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Story for international players?


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@Fenella.2634 said:

@Fenella.2634 said:First, the game is available in more languages than just English.

I find that hard to believe. It’s surprising enough that they have English voice actors, as they don’t like to put money into this game.

What do you mean, believe? Just change your settings and check for yourself.

I don‘t get how „it is hard to believe“ either. Checking the settings is simpler than the story, after all ;).

From the looks of it this thread wasn‘t created to discuss the story though, but more to bash the game.Hence the „simple story“ and „[Anet] don‘t like to put money into the game“ arguments.

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@Raknar.4735 said:

@Fenella.2634 said:First, the game is available in more languages than just English.

I find that hard to believe. It’s surprising enough that they have English voice actors, as they don’t like to put money into this game.

What do you mean, believe? Just change your settings and check for yourself.

I don‘t get how „it is hard to believe“ either. Checking the settings is simpler than the story, after all ;).

From the looks of it this thread wasn‘t created to discuss the story though, but more to bash the game.Hence the „simple story“ and „[Anet] don‘t like to put money into the game“ arguments.Yes, that too. :)

Also, third wrong assumption: Players with really low English language skills won't read this forum, let alone actively discuss here. So asking them about their opinion and experience right here is useless.If OP was interested in an honest discussion about the topic, they'd maybe want to go to the other official forums, not the English version of all things...

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It's another wonderful post where we get assumptions, outright lies and an opinion presented as a fact. Then drawing some completely irrelevant conclusion. You can change the game dialogue's language at any time and there are a few to choose from.

As for the question at hand, obviously the story is simple so people without a high level knowledge of the English language can follow it, just listen/read what the Asura are saying. Words we use every day, like "Exuberant" and "Rambunctious". Or are they?

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First, there are already multiple languages available, as has been pointed out. Also I wouldn't consider the Guild Wars 2 story simple or "easy to follow" although granted this probably isn't because it has an overly complex plot, but more just issues with telling a coherent story through the content delivery system of an MMO like GW2. The lore is pretty expansive and interesting, but without out-of-game discussion and fan sites I wouldn't know most of it.

For players who do not have language support, generally they are in a guild with bilingual players. For example, I am in a small Japanese guild. Some of the bilingual members will actually translate some dialog and a short synopsis of the plot in a text file and share it on the guild discord server. Don't underestimate the power of fan translations. ;) There is even a Japanese GW2 wiki, however plot details haven't been updated since PoF. I do know that these players would love to hear the voice acting in their language, but alas, I don't think a language like Japanese has the player base to even begin making economic sense to begin translation.

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@brenda lovely.8213 said:I play the game in french with french voice, and the story is pretty good.

Edit : and to be fair, it's one of the very few game i put in french, but here, the voice acting in french is amazing.

Okay, so they have French, probably Spanish and all the other “popular” languages.... What about the rest of the international players?

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@Fenella.2634 said:

@Fenella.2634 said:First, the game is available in more languages than just English.

I find that hard to believe. It’s surprising enough that they have English voice actors, as they don’t like to put money into this game.

What do you mean, believe? Just change your settings and check for yourself.

I don‘t get how „it is hard to believe“ either. Checking the settings is simpler than the story, after all ;).

From the looks of it this thread wasn‘t created to discuss the story though, but more to bash the game.Hence the „simple story“ and „[Anet] don‘t like to put money into the game“ arguments.Yes, that too. :)

Also, third wrong assumption: Players with really low English language skills won't read this forum, let alone actively discuss here. So asking them about their opinion and experience right here is useless.If OP was interested in an honest discussion about the topic, they'd maybe want to go to the other official forums, not the English version of all things...

Actually, they do read these forums. Their posts are how I realized there are a lot of international players in this game.

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The storytelling in my opinion is "simplified" (for want of a better term) for other reasons.

  • The writing appears to be done by a team. Given that teams change and team writing has drawbacks, it can cause scripts and stories to suffer. We've seen it with continuity and retconning problems throughout the franchise
  • The by far and away more likely reason is the structure of releases. The story is fitted in around the release schedule and the structure of a release. Rather than release an episode and structure it round what the story requires, the story is formatted to fit around what the structure of an action based MMO episode dictates. Given how quickly episodes also have to come out, that cuts down on time to brainstorm, to write and to record. So simplicity ends up going handin-hand with speed

It's this latter which almost certainly drives the depth and quality of the story and prevents exploring the narrative and characters in anything more than a surface level of detail. They try too hard just to keep things at a speed to match the action and demands on fast releases and we end up with a basic level of story level more often than not.

I have always believed the game would be better off releasing on a schedule that worked for the story not that was dicated by an arbitrary time frame

We do need to bear in mind that whatever criticisms are laid against the writers, they are clearly skilled and talented with great pedigrees in writing all sorts of things in game and media. This is why I think the structure of the game releases and the fast paced action focus of the gameplay restricts what the are able to do. Which is a shame because there enough glimmers of what they can do to be really excited about the story if they were essentially unleashed and not as tightly constrained by the release schedule and episodic structure like they are

I wouldn't rule out having to write for a global audience as having its own challenges, but I don't think it is tied to simplicity - because as others have said, being international is no reflection of someone's ability to appreciate complex storytelling. It might affect scripting and dialogue choices to ensure legibility, but that is about it

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It may also be because GW2 really only lets you have one story (quest) active at a time. So while other games may have side quests that flesh things out, GW2 is very linear - do A, then do B, then do C, etc. GW2 tries to get around some of this by local map events, which since they repeat on a regular basis don't real feel much like story, and by making use of collections. For example, the skyscale collection is would be a side quest in any other game, but in GW2, it is formulated as a collection as a way to get rid of the 'one active story' at a time problem.

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International players: What do you think about the story?English is not my native language.

Well written, enough plot-twists and changes to keep you busy guessing what is really going on. In most cases, you end up guessing wrong and be surprised about yet another twist in the story. The lose ends keep piling up, while playing a story/season and sometimes clear up way later (e. g. Human Personal Story => Caudecus' notes in LW3). This makes the story interesting and people enjoy discussing it - as I noticed it.

Our story-telling is more linear compared to our competitors. We do not have real decision branches, our class and race do rarely matter. This appears to be boring at first, but it offers a couple of advantages:

  • Instead of spreading their resources on multiple branches, they can focus on one path. Which means the story-instances are usually the best part of a chapter.
  • No class-specific boss-mechanics. So the encounters have unique mechanics, which are often tied to story-elements (e. g. coordination with NPCs like Aurene). The immersion is better.
  • Easier difficulty for regular players, challenge motes/hard-mode for skilled players.
  • Higher attention to detail regarding the mapping in general and key-locations. Very little use of dummy NPCs for the sake of decoration only.
  • The work intensive periods, where an episode consumes the most resources, are shorter. They can be farther ahead of the current story (e. g. IBS is done, they can work on EoD and just have to focus on balancing/polishing the remaining chapters).
  • Higher focus on Open World PvE, e. g. meta-events, world-bosses, puzzles, vendors and many more features . We have a couple of amazing maps, which are actively played until today. Although they were only part of a single LW episode.

I used to play story together with a french player. Each of us on their own client. Whenever there was an inside joke, pun or ironic/sarcastic dilalogue, we both giggled at the same time. In most cases we told each others what happened and were surprised, how close the translation actually was. They have put a lot of attention to detail to make the story work in the different languages.

So I think the "easy" story was mostly a design choice, with the whole process in mind. English is used, because it is learned in many countries around the globe, especially by the young ones. We are Pegi 12 after all. Some of the previously mentioned jokes do use expressions, which are not always the same in every language. If you want to make your stuff easy to understand, you have to remove those stylistic elements and rely on things like Simplified English.

The best approach I have seen so far is the Thing Explainer (by Randall Munroe xkcd). It is a book written with only 1,000 words, the most common used words in the English language. It explains stuff like the solar system, nuclear reactor, space-shuttle ... etc. with the most basic writing. I have a bad habit of writing too long texts with too complicated chain-sentences, using expressions and special vocabulary. It does read nicely, but it is quite confusing sometimes, especially when I talk to players with more limited English vocabulary. The book is quite inspiring, in terms of keeping explanations simple. It also shows the limits and what happens if you overdo the task. In some cases, it is better to look up a single word in a dictionary than writing three paragraphs around it.

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@Mortifera.6138 said:

@Fenella.2634 said:First, the game is available in more languages than just English.

I find that hard to believe. It’s surprising enough that they have English voice actors, as they don’t like to put money into this game.

@"brenda lovely.8213" said:I play the game in french with french voice, and the story is pretty good.

Edit : and to be fair, it's one of the very few game i put in french, but here, the voice acting in french is amazing.

Okay, so they have French, probably Spanish and all the other “popular” languages.... What about the rest of the international players?

Look at those goal posts move!"Games only in English...trash game""Ok games not just in English but its not in every language? Ha...trash"

From the looks of it this thread wasn‘t created to discuss the story though, but more to bash the game.

100% this.

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I haven't played that many MMOs with a more complex story than Guild Wars 2, tbh. MMO stories aren't single player game stories, after all. The exception's I can think of off hand are TSW and SWTOR, which was designed specifically with a Bioware storyline. I don't find most other MMO stories to be complex. I've lost count of how many times I've heard the phrase if you want a story play a single player game.

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