Game Design The New Dialogue System Kinda Sucks... Lets Fix That

Okay, I know bringing up the new dialogue system is a tad controversial, but change can't be made without multiple people. So here we go.

First I would like to show appreciation for what the developers were to do - "NO MORE UNSKIPPABLE DIALOGUE" - I mean its something people wanted for ages, Veteran players could speed through quests at record speed and new players could take their time and use the new Dialogue History tab (which is genius btw) if they got lost. The problem comes in the execution, with the new shift method it has nearly an opposite effect. Giving me slowness and having to shift when I could be heading to my next objective while the NPC talks, or making NPCs that I used to be able to talk to in 0.5s take 5+s to finish. It not only is more a nuance than an aid, it can be straight-up immersion breaking. Cutscenes pausing till you hit next, some dialogue acting as though its still in the old system (ie: studying the corrupt), or some NPCs cloning because I hit shift twice in the same window.

Now I wouldn't have created this thread without a solution, and although I have more gripes about the new system I think I covered the majority of peoples issues with it. So here we go, My plan has 2 steps and I believe them to achievable.

1: Revert back to the old system while keeping the Dialogue History tab, hereby allowing most of the NPCs to return to normal while speeding up gameplay overall.

2:Utilize the /toggle system, create a toggle-able command that skips cutscenes entirely, for example the moment you hop on the boat with Hopnip in a misadventure at sea, have it just teleport the player to the jail cell and have the quest book update accordingly, or when your doing realm of light just skip the elder tree dialogue and put the player where they need to be.

Now I admit it would be a lot of work and a bit of a disappointment to revert back but I do believe it would be in the best interest and could drastically improve replayability and gameplay overall which is most important. Thanks for you time.

 

I made a suggestion like this back in February, this is something we really need. Proof that this is possible with the current system is that we have a /skiptutorial. +1 from me.

 

I didn't even think about the /skiptutorial but that's a good point!

 

ok i've seen this suggested many times and a bunch of staff have said that it just wouldn't be feasible/worth the time to revert the dialogue system, and even adding a toggle for it would take way more effort than you might think

that being said having a way to skip sets of dialogue entirely, and a way to extend dialogue history so you can, y'know, read the entire RoL cutscene afterwards and not just half of it, could be very helpful in improving the new dialogue system without having to go in and clean up every cutscene ever so it flows well (also unless they removed it in 1.20.2 you can already skip the entire RoL 4 cutscene so this is definitely an option, they just haven't done it for other cutscenes)

 

While I agree it would probably take loads of work, I believe that reverting to the old dialogue system is really one of the only viable options if we are to fix some of the current issues, even if it takes time. An alternative is they could adjust the current shift system to work with right-click similar to previous iterations so those who wish to go through large lines of dialogue don't have to wait for the slow ticking the shift system forces upon us. As far as worth the time I would argue that the natural flow of gameplay is worth it, but that's up for the developers to decide.

 

I feel like reverting to the old version would not be necessary if some things about the current system could be improved, such as REMOVING THE GAP BETWEEN DIALOGUE AND THE SLOWNESS AND KEEPING THE OLD DIALOGUE IN THE CHAT LOG PLEASSEEEEEEE. Making a skip cutscene command and doing these changes would make the new system several times better.

 

I agree; while I appreciate that they tried to improve the old system and agree that they needed a fix for the old dialogue system, the new one fails to fix the main issue with the old one and honestly is worse in some ways; specifically it interrupts gameplay far more than the previous system. Slowing me down and making stop what I'm doing to skip dialogue is arguably worse than having to sit and wait for it; it interrupts gameplay even more and it makes me stop moving, which slows me if I'm trying to move along with it. It's also worse for trying to read along with it; now instead o either being able to click through and having it appear in chat, or it playing on its own, I have to read and then click through, or click through and then read in my quest book. It's literally the same except now it slows me down while it's up and takes an extra step to read if I skip through quickly. While I'd like it for a quest like A Journey Beyond, it's incredibly unpleasant for dealing with shorter NPC dialogue. Also, having to go to my quest book to read quest dialogue both ruins immersion and is just kind of an annoying extra step I wish I didn't have to do. I really think that they should make this togglable so I don't have to wait for 40 lines of unskippable dialogue in AJB, but frankly it totally ruins my desire to talk with NPCs as it is. Also, if you down click through the Talking Mushroom dialogue, it breaks it apparently. I had to relog to get it to continue with its dialogue when I failed to stop walking and spam shift when it started talking.

 

I disagree with going back to the old system (they won't do that anyway, maybe only if like 99% of the entire community loudly complained)

I just think this one needs improvement

1. Do not deactivate spells while in dialogue (causes bugs like in Hero of Gavel you can't save Siegfried while he's stuck in the web because you're in dialogue)
2. Remove Slowness
3. Keep dialogue in chat
4. Design the skip dialogue function differently, like make it a right-click or just something entirely different (I personally don't mind it that much to just hold shift, but I admit that it has happened to me, especially in cinematics that I forgot to press shift and I was just stuck at some point in a cinematic when I don't pay attention (don't blame me, I've already seen all the cutscenes and cinematics multiple times))
5. Just fix bugs such as
a. Dialogue not visible in chat even when in dialogue and the only way you know the dialogue ended is when your slowness disappears (the only moment when the slowness effect is actually useful)
b. NPCs either disappearing or doubling in the middle of dialogue
c. When holding shift, sometimes instead of finishing the dialogue, it starts all over again. This happened to me especially in the quest Out of my Mind with the starting dialogue that I had to go through 3 times in a row because I was just holding shift.
?d?. Sometimes new stage info after dialogue is complete, doesn't update - sometimes it updates itself when you click on the NPC again, but that only works if that NPC has some dialogue set when waiting for you to complete the stage, if it doesn't have any dialogue, it doesn't work (though this might be a Wynntils issue I'm not sure, that's why I put the "d" in question marks)

Also, that skip cutscene option is a GREAT idea, I might steal that and make it into its own suggestion if you wouldn't mind that (or you can do it) I feel like it won't get enough attention here

 

Ok this is perfect. They should ABSOLUTELY let us continue the dialogue by right clicking. Shifting just feels weird, and the way it gives slowness and cancels your attacks is incredibly annoying, especially in quests like ToA and the Hive.

I like the new system mostly. I like how it doesn't speed past dialogue faster than you can read, and how it let's you in theory skip past dialogue faster. But in practice it's just clunky and feels really unnatural. It breaks cutscenes, and it ends up actually going slower than the original system. The main things they need to do, at least in my opinion, are; remove the slowness; make it not prevent attacks, either replace shifting with right clicking or let either one work (you can progress the dialogue by right clicking the npc or pressing shift); and make the new system completely ignore cutscenes since if you miss the cutscene you can still use dialogue history, and having the new system completely screws up cutscenes.

 

That part is so immensely irritating. They freeze you in place for ten seconds just for one line of dialogue that'll be repeated 100 times and that has zero relevance to the game.

Please yes for the love of god.

My log folders are gonna take up a terabyte of storage if nothing changes, because someone among Wynn staff thought it would be a genius idea to duplicate your entire chat logs every single time an NPC says something.

 

Yeah the new system is kinda annoying, but I would argue that it helps in ToA and prob in the hive (haven’t tried it yet)
If the enemies are hard and u get 10 tokens the second u click the dude ur safe til u hit shift, cause they can’t attack u which is pretty useful
U can then walk right outside the tp area and hit shift as u go in so they can’t kill u
With the old one I had died right as I got the tokens a couple times

(For the record I agree with everything else tho, just think it helps with toa)

 

You can absolutely use the skip cutscene suggestion if you think it would get it any closer to implementation.

Unless you were talking to someone else's iteration

sorry it took me this long to reply

 

Sort of, the slowness is still annoying in those situations though.

 

Yeah I hate the slowness. But if u wanna get immersed in quests and stuff I love the immunity so I don’t have to fight stuff while reading the dialogue and end up missing half of it

 

That completely defeats the entire point of the new dialogue system though, it was changed because people were accidentally skipping dialogue

 

Yeah, like for me every right click advanced 2 dialogues for some reason

 

I disagree with reverting it back.
I, as many others have said, do think it could have some improvements, like having dialog actually stay in the chat's history instead of vanishing, but I disagree with reverting it.
I have a reading disorder, I used to struggle with keeping up with 90% of the game's dialog, which possed a really big issue, especially in cutscenes.
The skippable dialog wasn't just added for people who want to skip through the quest, but also for players with disabilities just keep that in mind.