Do they want me to read the mission text or not?

This is really getting tiresome. I have been doing some Tip missions recently and I find them very well written. I get into the story and then invariably at a certain point I am to talk to some NPC. The conversation proceeds through clicked dialogue and then at the end the NPC goes hostile or an ambush comes.

There is zero time to read the last bit of text, which is often multiple paragraphs before having to fight. The text box is right in the middle of the screen so I can't see what I'm doing without closing it. Sometimes I try to read it as I fight.

There has to be a better way.

Also, text bubbles of NPCs move way too fast to read and don't stay on the screen long enough, or they activate while you are attacked, forcing you to go back and sort through NPC text. I created a chat window just for NPC text but it still is more trouble than it should be.

Thoughts?

I've had the same problem. I sometimes hit Moment of Glory just so I can read the text without being killed, but that's not an option for most characters. In the Incarnate Trials I just give up. So much text, so much story, but all so hard to read with everything else going on. Storytelling in the context of a game is tough. I've tried to do it using the AE, so I have a lot of sympathy for the devs. It's a very hard thing to do. I think they're doing it better now than they used to, but I think there is still room for improvement.

What really gets me is when you get a "CLUE FOUND" message as you complete the mission. There's a few that you can switch up the order in which you complete objectives and manage to read all the clues, but there's others that I will *never* be able to read the clue for, and that bothers me since clues tend to be rather informative.

But yeah, with dialogue that is meant to be read, it would be much better if the event (hostility/ambush) happened when you clicked the final "Ok/Leave/..." rather than on the page before that.

This is a running problem with newer content, it seems. It's not that older stories had less text to read. They had more, at times. It's just that this text was wholly reserved for clues and contact dialogue, none of which fade until YOU click away. These days, so much text is delivered in a deluge of NPC chat, dialogue trees over heavy action and those ultra-fast caption boxes that I honestly feel like an illiterate buffoon. I take pride in my command of the English language, but I'm still a foreign speaker, and I simply can't read as fast as the game expects me to. In many cases, this simply robs me of an otherwise good story.

I have a few rules of thumb for mission designers to follow if they actually DO want us to read their text.

1. Never put more than two lines of NPC chatter on a critter who could degrade to a lieutenant. These can be one- or two-shotted, spilling all lines at once.

2. Never have more than four lines of NPC chatter to a conversation. That is, two lines at first spawn, two lines two lines when attacked. More often, put only TWO lines to the dialogue at all, either at first spawn or when attacked.

3. Never put more than a single sentence in an NPC chat bubble, and make sure the bubble itself isn't much longer than a single line. Not unless there is a very specific reason for it. We're operating on real world time, not comic book time.

4. Try to have caption chatter NOT trigger by combat objectives, i.e. don't trigger captions when I attack an enemy or when an ambush spawns. Remember - this is not a voice-over. We can't absorb your storyline without taking our eyes off the battle.

5. Stagger captions AT LEAST 5 seconds apart from each other. Ideally, stagger them at 10 seconds or more. Captions are the places where much text goes, usually multiple sentences over four lines. These take time to read.

6. Title your caption boxes. I need to know who's speaking. At the very least, title them in the Captions channel so I can review them at my convenience and still know who said what. Caption box colour is ambiguous and does not record in the channel.

7. If fighting needs to occur as a result of a dialogue tree, never have it happen at the last text window with multiple paragraphs to read. Always create one extra buffer step with only a couple of words on it. That way, we can read the last bit of the dialogue which explains what's happening BEFORE it happens.

8. Never overlap dialogue trees, critter chatter and caption boxes with each other, or at least avoid it whenever possible. If I'm reading a dialogue with Protean, don't have Flameaux start talking over his text. If you have to trigger a caption box, don't put it on the same trigger that causes on-map NPCs to talk.

9. Whenever possible, put as much of your text as you can in clues and contact dialogue. Clues we can read at our convenience and contact dialogue does not fade away unless WE click to make it go away.

That's all I have for the moment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I agree with all of Samuel's suggestions except the last one. Don't put so much in clues. A lot of new players don't read clues. They may see "clue found" but that doesn't mean they'll know there is a special tab for them to find and click on to read some text. Clue could simply mean they found a clue and their mission objective may soon change. Contact dialogue they have to click through so they'll know to read it.

I'm not against putting story in captions/dialogue/chatter AND doubling it up in clues, that's not what I wanted to say. I mean that, when I leave the mission, I want to have a record of what went on in case I wasn't paying attention at the time it happened.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I also get annoyed at these kinds of things. Especially when clicking to advance the dialogue sticks me with an ambush breathing down my neck before I can even begin to read the last window.

Yeah, that has been a minor annoyance of mine for awhile. It makes me want to run tips that I haven't done before at -1/1 difficulty, so I can just stand there ignoring the ambush and finish reading the text.

But...that doesn't result in a very exciting mission.

Make a tab for NPC Chatter and Caption text. It helps immensely.

And then maybe listen to Sam about fixing the thing.

There should be a default NPC dialog tab.

While we're on the subject, is there any way to have the Caption Box *only* appear in the middle of my screen? I hate that it floats off to the side, underneath where I have a lot of my UI placed. If it was in the middle I could more easily read it *while* I'm fighting, too.

Whenever I'm 'talking' to such NPCs, I summon pets and AoE damage/mez fields.

Then I keep reading while I hear some stuff happening.

When done, I then look at NPC chat for the death dialog of the one I was talking to.

The newer missions are very light on clues. This is bad. It means I miss things because I was busy fighting when they happened.

They also should take a hint from the older content (note to the dev team: they did a lot of things right and you should copy those things) and have the clue that sums up the arc so far, which updates every time you talk to your contact. That way, if someone misses something they'll still know what's going on.

Sorry, yeah, should have been more specific, I was talking about Tips as Sam and Scythus said.

I think that all ambushes should only be triggered by the "leave"/"close" part of the final text window, and that all the clues from a story should be saved as part of the story souvenir - like when you read the re-cap of the story, a little icon button should be put beside the parts that are releated to the clues you got, and clicking it would bring up a pop-up window of the clue.

Arnabas, your avatar vid is seriously cute.

I agree with all the suggestions above regarding how to fix this text issue. It doesn't seem like a hard change to make either, to trigger ambushes and hostility changes during the final click instead of the click before it.

So what are the odds the devs make this change for us?