Why can't we skip dialogue [Merged]

[Lucy.3728]

I've wanted to skip the brutal suicide scene of Mordremoth since forever, but instead I'm forced to watch it again and again and again... it screws my sanity.

 

Anet please think of replayability. Every visual novel has better systems. And Guild Wars (any GW) has more text than any visual novel I played.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

On 3/6/2022 at 2:56 AM, Tuccos.8592 said:

No way to SKIP either? Why do you Developers force me to watch what i dont want to watch as a customer

 

Your option as a customer is to choose to buy a work of art or not. Not to command what the artist does.

[Taclism.2406]

On 12/24/2022 at 7:10 AM, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

They've said repeatedly that removing the story beats isn't possible. The game isn't a single-player game running on your computer, its a multiplayer game running on a server

On 12/24/2022 at 7:10 AM, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

It takes time and resources to move the set pieces into place and advance the mission, and the only way to do this without you seeing it is to slow down the gameplay with the dialogue/cutscenes

 Would the servers overheat if we didnt have dialogs? 🤣 
Joke aside, I get you're somewhat repeating their public responses to that question, but recognise the nuances between PR and truth. 

The fact is, skipping dialogs is like hiding cosmetics infusions and other reoccuring requests : It's possible, but complicated to implement due to lack of foresight that requires slowly updating the whole game instead of just a few scripts.
A well made flag system would allow most dialog skips. The checkpoints in EoD's story are essentially a more limited version of that : "Start instance with those flags checked".
A skip dialog button could function the same way, updating flag states to their "post dialog value" each time you press skip dialog. But it implies reviewing every dialog and creating these "checks" for every long dialog we'd want to skip.
The debate shouldnt be "is it possible?", but "is it worth the cost?". 

I'd suppose it is for multiple reasons : 
- Eliminates a "burn out" factor, especially for veterans that have seen/heard some cinematics and dialogs well over 100 times
- Improves the rerolling experience and hunt for some achievements
- Gives anet data on amount / frequency of dialog skipped, which is meaningful feedback to adjust the pace and quantity of gameplay/dialog in further expansions
- The longer it takes to update, the less likely it is to happen, as updating the system becomes more and more of a daunting task
- Updating your code to be more future-proof is - in my opinion - vital to make a product that will last. On the opposite, the more  spaghetti code you leave in "because its decent enough and works for now", the more you're limited when it comes to new feature implementation.

But the real question none of us but a GW dev can answer is : How much work does that actually represent - which is ultimately the biggest deciding factor for Anet as a company. Since we know Anet also started working on another game, they might already have acknowledge it'd cost too much, but took these remarks into consideration for their next game. 

Until we have more information, there's nothing better to do than to keep reaffirming it's a feature we want.

[DexterousGecko.6328]

can't necro, but are told at every turn that "this has been discussed, please use the search function".

[Shadowmoon.7986]

End of dragons story is by far the largest bm that the writing team have ever taken, and they are so proud of how big and stinky it was, they made sure none of it was skippable. 

Want a character that died 9 years ago to be put in the aphlebet crew for mah diversity and no other additions to the story, making them just a token character? Want a character to be a working mom, but at the same time leave their child and husband at the hands of suspected terrorists while they hide in their safe room and think that make sense? Want Tyria's version of Hitler to be unironically justified for committing mass murder with the statements like "Democratization through chaos". Want to self insert your self into the story as a weirdo who makes preverted shipping novels and jade toys? Want no resolution to Tiame dying for the 3rd time? And make all of this unskippable.

That why I will not do the story again, even though they added a reward for doing them, tales of adventure. 

[Khisanth.2948]

11 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

Problem is, running away doesn't work everywhere. There are plenty of times where you're trapped at a dead end and have to wait for the dialogue to finish (with nothing happening to the environment for the whole two minutes, for those who think cutscenes set up gameplay). Plus, if you do skip dialogue by running ahead, you can't read the recap at your own pace because you interrupt it entirely. This would all have been much less of an issue if ANET had stuck with the cinematics from core Tyria's Personal Story, but for some reason, people prefer looking at characters standing around with no emotion, as opposed to being able to see them move their arms and faces with half-decent lip sync. 

Running away also requires you to memorize how the instances progress. In some places it will force you to back track to F an NPC just to make them continue talking.

[Ashen.2907]

On 12/23/2022 at 11:14 PM, Rukia.4802 said:

Gotta admit EoD took it to astronomic levels of giga cringe and staring at my phone during missions isn't exactly well designed gameplay. I liked the end fight, but that's literally it. The twilight books and twitter are readily available if I want terrible writing and woke propaganda, next expansion can we just please play a game.

Indeed.

[Tukaram.8256]

EoD has the best story in a very long time, but I would still rather skip it.  I could not care less about story - point me at the critter and lets go kill it.  Game story is an unwanted distraction and a waste of my time.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

People who create something consider whatever they created as important and that you should use it.

 

• If one writes a good story and animation, players would surely want or need to watch it to understand the lore.
• Of one created some good voice acting, it surely should be listened to.
• Of one writes a program, it surely should have an icon on the desktop and start with Windows, because it is a very useful program.
• If one designs a household appliance, it should surely beep when it is done it's job. Because the user is surely waiting for the appliance to be ready and will immediately drop whatever it is using to tend to the appliance.

[Gehenna.3625]

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

People who create something consider whatever they created as important and that you should use it.

I would say that MMOs per definition are games where people enjoy different things for different reasons. So I doubt this is Anet's attitude because they know they need to appeal to a broad audience.

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

• If one writes a good story and animation, players would surely want or need to watch it to understand the lore.

But not everybody wants or needs to understand the lore.

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

• Of one created some good voice acting, it surely should be listened to.

I found the female human voice cringe. The vanilla story I played with the sound off because of it. What's good or not is highly subjective as it is.

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

• Of one writes a program, it surely should have an icon on the desktop and start with Windows, because it is a very useful program.

I don't like programs to start up with Windows, so I limit that to the bare minimum, nor do I put all programs on my desktop. 

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

• If one designs a household appliance, it should surely beep when it is done it's job. Because the user is surely waiting for the appliance to be ready and will immediately drop whatever it is using to tend to the appliance.

This is an odd one in your list and isn't relevant to your point actually. This is purely functional and not about what a person likes or dislikes. People also expect this, so it's part of the requirements. But the expectation is universal and that's the key difference and why it's not correct to use it imo.

You see, PvP is also part of the requirements if you want to reach a certain audience, but lots of people hate it. Raids are also an  expectation of an MMO, but a lot of people don't play them. Story and lore are also expectations of a certain group of people, etc. So these expectations are there but are not universal.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

3 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I would say that MMOs per definition are games where people enjoy different things for different reasons. So I doubt this is Anet's attitude because they know they need to appeal to a broad audience.

But not everybody wants or needs to understand the lore.

I found the female human voice cringe. The vanilla story I played with the sound off because of it. What's good or not is highly subjective as it is.

I don't like programs to start up with Windows, so I limit that to the bare minimum, nor do I put all programs on my desktop. 

This is an odd one in your list and isn't relevant to your point actually. This is purely functional and not about what a person likes or dislikes. People also expect this, so it's part of the requirements. But the expectation is universal and that's the key difference and why it's not correct to use it imo.

You see, PvP is also part of the requirements if you want to reach a certain audience, but lots of people hate it. Raids are also an  expectation of an MMO, but a lot of people don't play them. Story and lore are also expectations of a certain group of people, etc. So these expectations are there but are not universal.

 

You're missing my point.

My point is that when people put much work in creating 'stuff', they are likely to think that 'stuff' is important and that it must take a prominent place, while the actual users may give 'stuff' a bit less priority.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 12/28/2022 at 6:50 AM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Your option as a customer is to choose to buy a work of art or not. Not to command what the artist does.

Sorry, when did games go from being about  'fun and engaging experiences for the player to explore' to 'We don't care what our customers want as long as we get our vision out there'?

[Ashantara.8731]

On 3/6/2022 at 11:16 AM, Gehenna.3625 said:

Besides, why would you do it 9 times?

I'm doing the story with all my PvE characters as well, of which I have 9 (1 for each profession). I used to have more PvE characters, but I deleted a few during the Icebrood Saga -- it was just too tedious to do on so many characters, and not being able to skip dialogue was certainly one of the reasons.

[Ashen.2907]

On 12/28/2022 at 4:50 AM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Your option as a customer is to choose to buy a work of art or not. Not to command what the artist does.

Another of a customer's options is to provide feedback as to what the merchant can do to keep them as a paying consumer. This is a big part of why an official forum exists. The company wants this.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Maybe it's just because, skipping hurts NPC's feelings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MinniHowl.3017]

I'm so sad to search this and realize you cannot skip intros that take 10+ minutes just to get to the actual point. I'm trying to do an achievement and holy f it's annoying to listen through this so many times because I tend to screw up a bit so I have to re-do it and listen again and again... Just like 3 tries takes an hour because of dialogue scenes....

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

11 minutes ago, MinniHowl.3017 said:

I'm so sad to search this and realize you cannot skip intros that take 10+ minutes just to get to the actual point. I'm trying to do an achievement and holy f it's annoying to listen through this so many times because I tend to screw up a bit so I have to re-do it and listen again and again... Just like 3 tries takes an hour because of dialogue scenes....

Many missions have checkpoints, challenge motes or other ways to retry the achivement. There's only a few long missions that you have to replay from the very beginning.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 2/28/2022 at 2:19 PM, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

We used to have such thing, but why is it gone? It's annoying when you repeat the story.

Anet has a history of listening to an extremely miniscule vocal minority.

This minority complained about "cutscene dialogue' so now we go afk for 15m while npcs talk.

  

On 2/28/2022 at 2:22 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

Because it causes bugs due to the live nature of scenes. We had it in core because they were storyboards. Even GW1 had bugs in dialogue skips so the devs decided against a skip button for future dialogue scenes that weren’t on storyboards etc

 

That's now how coding works.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Taclism.2406]

2 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

That's now how coding works.

that's not how good coding works, but it definitively is possible when you don't put enough checks.

Fairly well known exemple from gw1 : Mallyx, the "hardest boss" in that game, can be cheesed hard by skipping its intro cinematic : During the cinematic, your group walks in the boss room, and the door closes behind you, forcing you to fight in a very small area that also spawns reinforcement for the boss.
If you skip the cinematic, it does teleport you "where the cinematic ends" (in the boss room), but it skipped the door closing, most likely because it's some invisible trigger in the cutscene that shuts it down. And there's no check to close the door if you skipped the cinematic. So you can just pull the boss out of his room, out of range of his reinforcements, and kill it easily as it lost 95% of what makes the fight hard.

[Randulf.7614]

3 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

 

  

That's now how coding works.

Take that up with the devs. They were the were the ones who stated it and they know their game and their code better than any of us.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

On 12/28/2022 at 4:50 AM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Your option as a customer is to choose to buy a work of art or not. Not to command what the artist does.

Oh no.  As a customer I'm free to command  the artists to do whatever I want.  Watch me:  Hey Rubi!  Come and wash my car!

She's not going to do it, but I can command her to.  See, this is an open forum, where we are allowed and encouraged to share feedback on the game, as well as discuss matters with other people on this forum.  When somebody makes a thread about this, what they're really saying is "Hello!  I'd like you to have money, specifically mine.  But, if you could fix one or two thing that I have an issue with, I and many other people would like to give you even more money."  Though, here's the good thing: even if I wasn't a customer, and even if this wasn't an open forum... I'm still free to speak my mind on what the people making this game should and shouldn't do with their game.  

[Linken.6345]

6 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Oh no.  As a customer I'm free to command  the artists to do whatever I want.  Watch me:  Hey Rubi!  Come and wash my car!

She's not going to do it, but I can command her to.  See, this is an open forum, where we are allowed and encouraged to share feedback on the game, as well as discuss matters with other people on this forum.  When somebody makes a thread about this, what they're really saying is "Hello!  I'd like you to have money, specifically mine.  But, if you could fix one or two thing that I have an issue with, I and many other people would like to give you even more money."  Though, here's the good thing: even if I wasn't a customer, and even if this wasn't an open forum... I'm still free to speak my mind on what the people making this game should and shouldn't do with their game.  

Yes the only problem is when you start to talk for more people then yourself.

You dont know if many other people also want those things that are your pet peeves.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

Yes the only problem is when you start to talk for more people then yourself.

You dont know if many other people also want those things that are your pet peeves.

That's not a problem.  There's a lot of people who will agree with you who are also silent on the issue for one reason or another.  An open forum also helps to gauge responses from other people to tell if other people agree with you or not.  

[Tukaram.8256]

On 8/22/2022 at 11:02 AM, Ausar.9542 said:

It give the game time to load assets

I would rather look at a loading screen. But when they start talking, it gives me time to go mix a drink. 😎

[Rivertam.1234]

I wonder what removing the videos would do to the economy.  I don't CARE what it would do, but imagine all the extra loot added to the TP because people are doing more metas, mobbing, harvesting.  I bet there would be a visible spike.