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Make Choices in Character Creation Great Ag... Still


Lizdeath.5143

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So the Charm/Dignity/Intimidate feature of the character creation is pretty meaningless...

And my human can only outrun a centaur and be greedy af, to the point its grating... Meanwhile my Charr and Norn think it is morally correct to punch first and forget to ask questions while punching.

Can we get more ambient voice lines for every sex/race, and have it so that Charm/Dignity/Intimidation give a character distinct ambient voice lines in addition to the current shared voice lines, giving our characters more personality?

I'm really sick of having Slowpoke lying about outrunning a centaur or taking pride in her non existent greed, and listening to Kittycow insist that punching things is the morally correct answer, but can't bear to turn off the ambient voice lines...

I might as well be Asura, statistically speaking, the female Asura speaks a lot like I do, and is relatable, though I may be a stereotype...

And that's my fundamental problem, three of five races' ambient voice lines feel like they are living stereotypes.

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I completely agree. They do feel pretty inconsequential and have no relevance (outside RP) once you have finished the early quests. It would be great for them to meaningfully affect how NPCs interact with you, but that's too much work to be going back to at this stage.

Edit: Although one could argue that these choices were only true as of character creation, and your character is best summarised (and therefore interacted with) based on the actions since then... saving Tyria etc etc.

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The RPG-lover part of me really wants this, although I recognise that it is probably just not going to happen due to being too much added work. In terms of character customisation, GW2 is ahead of most other MMOs due to having personal story choices etc, so I very much appreciate what we have already. But you're right, there is the potential for so much more.

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Sure NPC dialogue would be amazing, I'm just hoping for a dignified version of "I can outrun a centaur" or "might makes right," the ambient player character monologue. Charr aren't muscle with no brain, they're the best engineers, and clearly quite intelligent. The Norn also aren't just muscle, they're religious and have a connection to nature.

Feeling like that Charm/Dignity/Intimidation was meaningful would be nice, and could be achieved with ambient player character lines.

The more humble "Who knew I could run this fast?" would be a great Dignity or Charm alternative to the Intimidation boasting of "I can outrun a centaur!"

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@"Torzini.1523" said:GW2 is ahead of most other MMOs due to having personal story choices etc, so I very much appreciate what we have already.

Only it isn't.The story choices in GW2 present the "illusion" of choice and impact on the game world.I can choose a distinct order to join and get a few different missions but at the end of the day, my mentor dies in Claw Island the exact same way, no matter who they are. That gate closes behind Sieran, Forgal and Tybalt is the exact same way at the exact same time.

At the climax of the personal story, it's always the exact same mission, done the exact same way, with the same group of hangers-on from Destiny's Edge "helping" me.And after Zhaitan dies there is absolutely no functional difference in the story no matter what I say or do. It is very much an on-rails delivery.GW2 is years behind Star Wars The Old Republic, in terms of impact from choices in dialog or action. It is equally distant from The Secret World in terms of writing and delivery. The story, it's writing and delivery remain GW2's weakest area, and while the storytelling has drastically improved over the past 3 years, it has little do do with the tale being told getting better. It's gotten better at delivering it's below average narrative, to the point where we can actually look past some of the weaknesses.It is,however, most definitely very far behind many other games in the genre.

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@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Torzini.1523" said:GW2 is ahead of most other MMOs due to having personal story choices etc, so I very much appreciate what we have already.

Only it isn't.The story choices in GW2 present the "illusion" of choice and impact on the game world.I can choose a distinct order to join and get a few different missions but at the end of the day, my mentor dies in Claw Island the exact same way,
no matter who they are
. That gate closes behind Sieran, Forgal and Tybalt is the exact same way at the exact same time.

At the climax of the personal story, it's always the exact same mission, done the exact same way, with the same group of hangers-on from Destiny's Edge "helping" me.And after Zhaitan dies there is absolutely no functional difference in the story no matter what I say or do. It is very much an on-rails delivery.GW2 is years behind Star Wars The Old Republic, in terms of impact from choices in dialog or action. It is equally distant from The Secret World in terms of writing and delivery. The story, it's writing and delivery remain GW2's weakest area, and while the storytelling has drastically improved over the past 3 years, it has little do do with the tale being told getting better. It's gotten better at delivering it's below average narrative, to the point where we can actually look past some of the weaknesses.It is,however, most definitely very far behind many other games in the genre.

Yeah, I can get behind much of that. That's why I said there is absolute loads of potential in what they could do, yet haven't done. While I agree with your assessment of SWTOR, I'd have to disagree with The Secret World because, while TSW's writing is indeed phenomenal, they don't ever give you even the illusion of choice as far as I recall (aside from initial faction choice). That's the one particular aspect that I think GW2 deserves a little credit for; most MMO storylines don't give you any semblance of choice at all, every single character has the exact same storyline full stop. While there's lots of room for improvement, I think 'definitely very far behind many other games in the genre' is a pretty big overexaggeration.

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@"Torzini.1523" said:Yeah, I can get behind much of that. That's why I said there is absolute loads of potential in what they could do, yet haven't done. While I agree with your assessment of SWTOR, I'd have to disagree with The Secret World because, while TSW's writing is indeed phenomenal, they don't ever give you even the illusion of choice as far as I recall (aside from initial faction choice). That's the one particular aspect that I think GW2 deserves a little credit for; most MMO storylines don't give you any semblance of choice at all, every single character has the exact same storyline full stop. While there's lots of room for improvement, I think 'definitely very far behind many other games in the genre' is a pretty big overexaggeration.

Agree about TSW, but I definitely feel that the Faction choice was far more interesting and impactful than the order choice in Gw2.

I don't think I exaggerated at all.The personal story in GW2 is so heavily marred by bad storytelling and execution that it's not a matter of me splitting hairs or being overly critical. The side by side cutscenes are so poorly made it comes off as laughable. From the poorly animated lesser species, to the same VA doing multiple important characters(the Asura chapters suffer heavily here), all spouting off cliche dialog to lead you to the exact same point...well it comes off as a bad highschool play or a child's puppet show.The meme joke writing of the LW stories has become so tired with their mandatory guaranteed chuckle every 4 lines that it's effectively left me left less interested as we move forward, not more.

The last episode of the story had us face off against one of this franchise's signature villains. The villain was reduced to a cliche with "theater" dialog. A centuries old Lich, in total control of a sizable chunk of the known world and we got lines like "It's Showtime".And then, after a hard fought victory against the Lich we have that win completely taken away from us by a "oh by the way, I'm immortal" line. You know, just to invalidate all the action before it.And what happens next?Yet another Deus Ex Machina, as our pet dragon swoops in to save the day....followed, of course, by a couple "ewwwww gross" burp jokes.

I'm definitely not exaggerating when I say many other games do it much better.

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@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Torzini.1523" said:Yeah, I can get behind much of that. That's why I said there is absolute loads of potential in what they could do, yet haven't done. While I agree with your assessment of SWTOR, I'd have to disagree with The Secret World because, while TSW's writing is indeed phenomenal, they don't ever give you even the illusion of choice as far as I recall (aside from initial faction choice). That's the one particular aspect that I think GW2 deserves a little credit for; most MMO storylines don't give you any semblance of choice at all, every single character has the exact same storyline full stop. While there's lots of room for improvement, I think 'definitely very far behind many other games in the genre' is a pretty big overexaggeration.

Agree about TSW, but I definitely feel that the Faction choice was far more interesting and impactful than the order choice in Gw2.

I don't think I exaggerated at all.The personal story in GW2 is so heavily marred by bad storytelling and execution that it's not a matter of me splitting hairs or being overly critical. The side by side cutscenes are so poorly made it comes off as laughable. From the poorly animated lesser species, to the same VA doing multiple important characters(the Asura chapters suffer heavily here), all spouting off cliche dialog to lead you to the exact same point...well it comes off as a bad highschool play or a child's puppet show.The meme joke writing of the LW stories has become so tired with their mandatory guaranteed chuckle every 4 lines that it's effectively left me left less interested as we move forward, not more.

The last episode of the story had us face off against one of this franchise's signature villains. The villain was reduced to a cliche with "theater" dialog. A centuries old Lich, in total control of a sizable chunk of the known world and we got lines like "It's Showtime".And then, after a hard fought victory against the Lich we have that win completely taken away from us by a "oh by the way, I'm immortal" line. You know, just to invalidate all the action before it.And what happens next?Yet another Deus Ex Machina, as our pet dragon swoops in to save the day....followed, of course, by a couple "ewwwww gross" burp jokes.

I'm definitely not exaggerating when I say many other games do it much better.

To be fair to GW2, the GW1 story also had just as many issues with its plot, and unlike Liches in other universes..liches here have just been powerful mages that arent immortal, more like..psuedo immortality i guess, in that they can be killed, with no means of them coming back.

Joko also if i recall properly was a joker in GW1 as well, so theres some background there, and he was never a signature Villian, he was a sub plot villian nothing more, hell he wasnt even a real villian, he wasnt good sure but he also wasnt evil. Abbadon was a villian, Shiro was a villian, and the Lich was a villian. Joko..was in like 4 missions(including the DLC that focused on the battle.) and i totally forgot he existed before they brought him back in GW2, same with Lazarus to a lesser extent and i do believe Lazarus got a ending 1000x worse than what Joko did or ever could have gotten. If anet plays it out well, could have what Joko said impact the PC, and the people around him/her to a degree so far unexplored in the story.

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@Lizdeath.5143 said:So the Charm/Dignity/Intimidate feature of the character creation is pretty meaningless...

Can we get more ambient voice lines for every sex/race, and have it so that Charm/Dignity/Intimidation give a character distinct ambient voice lines in addition to the current shared voice lines, giving our characters more personality?

And that's my fundamental problem, three of five races' ambient voice lines feel like they are living stereotypes.

For me, most Charr enviromental lines, and the general voice acting through the story sounds a lot like the personality choice I decided; Dignity/Diplomatic. I'm with you in that we need more lines depending on personality choices, geez I'd even die if we had different general voice options for our characters, it is absolutely weird joining a Charr partner in their story and that his voice sounds exactly like mine. (I honestly couldn't imagine his charr having my voice in the first place, but another tone of voice by just looking at his appearance).

I'm always positivie on having more diversity options. It sums up to your character uniqueness.

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@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Torzini.1523" said:GW2 is ahead of most other MMOs due to having personal story choices etc, so I very much appreciate what we have already.Only it isn't.The story choices in GW2 present the "illusion" of choice and impact on the game world. [...]

So much this. :+1: It has been my biggest point of criticism over the years. (E.g., the majority of my characters does not want to be a member of the Shining Blade and couldn't care less about Livia's plans.)

I am still hoping for change, although the devs have always replied that there won't be any changes and going back to personal story choices or making personality matter again in the future. :/

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@reddie.5861 said:open any mmo game.go in options.look for sound options.

mute master sound [v]click escapeenjoy playing any given mmo..

sounds in mmo are so freaking annoying and waste of time to put so much time into it.

No thanks.

I love much of the ambience, I usually only play Asura and can relate to the lines. Statistically speaking, statistically speaking is a rather common phrase I use.

All I have to say about outrunning centaurs is that, as an archer, a good marksman doesn't need to, as it would only take one arrow to cripple it and make its land speed irrelevant.

Most things aren't irritating, and most things have quite a bit of charm.

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@"Ashantara.8731" said:I am still hoping for change, although the devs have always replied that there won't be any changes and going back to personal story choices or making personality matter again in the future. :/

The damage in the personal story is done for me. I have 18 Alts and I've completed personal story on 14 of them. You could redo the whole thing right now and slap a "GW2.5" label on it and I probably still wouldn't play it again.I'm not one of those who believes that a "Core Tyria revamp" would draw in more customers or justify the cost. I'm actually quite sure it wouldn't. The base game has an above average 1-80 experience. If you take the personal story out of the equation, I feel the base game is pretty strong compared to it's direct competition.

All that needs to happen is to find writers who are as engaged in the lore of GW2 as the world builders. Dialog that shows the same passion and commitment to the franchise as the Art department shows is all it would take. You don't have to do a cataclysm or retcon the old material.Just make the new stuff better.What we have right now is a writing team that seems to think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was great storytelling, mimicking Joss Whedon's "joke a minute" irony and self -depricating gags as if they were in some way something to aspire to.The franchise has lost it's way writing fresh and original stories and dialog, choosing instead to remix current box-office superhero movies as much as it can and throwing in nods to the original game's story as justification.It's become afraid to take itself seriously in terms of both story and delivery. It's chosen to follow the dialog stylings of the Avengers films instead of carving it's own niche and relying on itself, rather than gimmicks.

Changing that, going forward is all it would take for me to fall back in love. Show some passion and dedication to the lore, don't be afraid to take yourselves seriously once in a while and throw out the cringy jokes from Taimi every 4 lines.

Then I could tell my friends "hey the story in the base game is really below average, but you don't have to do it, and the new material is excellent."

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I'm always positivie on having more diversity options. It sums up to your character uniqueness.

This so much.

They don't even have to do it all at once. They could record an extra environment line here and there during recording sessions and add them as a slow patch by patch overhaul.

Additional voices would be cool, but I'd expect to pay to unlock them for the account, as that's a lot of dialogue lines to record.

They could do it as race/sex voice packs (Charr Male voice pack), and have 10 things for some amount of gems where you could buy all of them for the price of an expansion, say 240 gems per pack. It would allow players to buy voice packs for their most commonly played character type. How many VAs do they have on contract?

Can pretty easily add to the inventory of environmental lines and make that personality flair a thing by adding a few lines here and there each recording session.

As for the outrunning a centaur being a charm thing, I seem charm as being associated with being likeable and deception, dignity as being uncorruptable, and intimidation as being about punching through barriers. Each have their strengths and character flaws. Environmental lines seems like a good budget solution to make it relevant.

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@Lizdeath.5143 said:

I'm always positivie on having more diversity options. It sums up to your character uniqueness.

This so much.

They don't even have to do it all at once. They could record an extra environment line here and there during recording sessions and add them as a slow patch by patch overhaul.

Additional voices would be cool, but I'd expect to pay to unlock them for the account, as that's a lot of dialogue lines to record.

They could do it as race/sex voice packs (Charr Male voice pack), and have 10 things for some amount of gems where you could buy all of them for the price of an expansion, say 240 gems per pack. It would allow players to buy voice packs for their most commonly played character type. How many VAs do they have on contract?Sadly, a voice pack won't work because your character speaks in so much of the game. I'd argue that it'd be more jarring to hear a different voice while in the story, and after paying money for a voice pack, there'd be complaints. There's too much dialog already to redo all the old chapters. It's a nice idea, but impractical.

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@Rognik.2579 said:

I'm always positivie on having more diversity options. It sums up to your character uniqueness.

This so much.

They don't even have to do it all at once. They could record an extra environment line here and there during recording sessions and add them as a slow patch by patch overhaul.

Additional voices would be cool, but I'd expect to pay to unlock them for the account, as that's a lot of dialogue lines to record.

They could do it as race/sex voice packs (Charr Male voice pack), and have 10 things for some amount of gems where you could buy all of them for the price of an expansion, say 240 gems per pack. It would allow players to buy voice packs for their most commonly played character type. How many VAs do they have on contract?Sadly, a voice pack won't work because your character speaks in so much of the game. I'd argue that it'd be more jarring to hear a different voice while in the story, and after paying money for a voice pack, there'd be complaints. There's too much dialog already to redo all the old chapters. It's a nice idea, but impractical.

Sorry, I thought that it would be implied that a voice pack would be for every line in the game, there would be absolutely no sense in producing one otherwise.

Different concept than adding more environmental lines.

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@Lizdeath.5143 said:

I'm always positivie on having more diversity options. It sums up to your character uniqueness.

This so much.

They don't even have to do it all at once. They could record an extra environment line here and there during recording sessions and add them as a slow patch by patch overhaul.

Additional voices would be cool, but I'd expect to pay to unlock them for the account, as that's a lot of dialogue lines to record.

They could do it as race/sex voice packs (Charr Male voice pack), and have 10 things for some amount of gems where you could buy all of them for the price of an expansion, say 240 gems per pack. It would allow players to buy voice packs for their most commonly played character type. How many VAs do they have on contract?Sadly, a voice pack won't work because your character speaks in so much of the game. I'd argue that it'd be more jarring to hear a different voice while in the story, and after paying money for a voice pack, there'd be complaints. There's too much dialog already to redo all the old chapters. It's a nice idea, but impractical.

Sorry, I thought that it would be implied that a voice pack would be for every line in the game, there would be absolutely no sense in producing one otherwise.

Different concept than adding more environmental lines.That's even worse, as there are tons of lines that'd have to be rerecorded and downloaded in all the files, increasing the .dat bloat.
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I would pay to have my male human have a different voice, no offense to the voice actor, but the guy's voice is too goofy. Main reason why i'm always hesitant to play my male human character. Like I look pretty badass, i'm slaughtering all these enemies, and then this goofy voice comes out and I face palm. Sylvari male is my favorite. Really unique voice, and the guy does a really good job with his emotions. He makes it sound like he's actually there.

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