I have a suggestion for a mod to the game...

[Wreckoning]

I have an idea for a mod to the game.  I think it would be awesome if someone could modify the code so whenever an NPC says something in-game you HEAR it.  Even if it was an artificial voice I think it would bring the game to life.  It would make the npc's around you more noticeable.  I think this would be huge for immersion in this game.

 

Thoughts?

[Snarky]

it would be loud in certain zones.  also if you are on a squishy in a zone that is tough for your character your ears are one of your best assets.  that crackle telling you a clockwork has fixated on you is really important.  Having some random NPC mention you beat down Bob the Council chief not so much.

[Grouchybeast]

I generally hate voiced NPCs in games, unless it's one of the rare cases where a) the developers could afford to employ actual skilled actors and b) the writing is high enough quality that you want to have to listen to it slowly instead of being able to skim over it.  And even worse than voiced important dialogue is voiced background comments.  They always end up being repetitive and grating.  It's one thing to have NPC dialogue ticking away in the General chat box where I can glance at it if I feel like it.  But I would find it extraordinarily irritating -- and not very immersive -- have to listen to an endless stream of "I heard that F1ame VVarri0r took down a Council base!"

[Doc_Scorpion]

20 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

"I heard that F1ame VVarri0r took down a Council base!"

Given the...  interesting pronunciations my car navigation system uses sometimes, that's about the only possible value of such a system.  Listening for it to booch up.

Otherwise, yeah.  Annoying.  Grating.  Repetitive.

/jranger

[srmalloy]

Being able to feed NPC dialog into a text-to-speech engine might be entertaining, but I'd prefer to have it limited to, say, conversations with contacts and NPC conversations that happen out of combat, and even then you'll still have gross pronunciation problems with character names, as Doc_Scorpion describes, that are likely going to be immersion-breaking for a lot of people. Looking through some of my characters here and back on live, 'Dukhovniy Stryelok', 'Goreniye Dvizheniya', 'Kuro-Gouka', 'Ledyanoy Kulak', 'Obmorozheniye', 'Te Ahi A Mahuika', and others all come out particularly poorly when pushed through an automated text-to-speech engine, just because it treats everything as English, and all of those but the last are Russian, and the last one is Maori.

[cranebump]

I’d rather have all story text accessible for whole teams.

[RikOz]

On 3/26/2020 at 3:54 PM, Grouchybeast said:

I generally hate voiced NPCs in games, unless it's one of the rare cases where a) the developers could afford to employ actual skilled actors and b) the writing is high enough quality that you want to have to listen to it slowly instead of being able to skim over it.  And even worse than voiced important dialogue is voiced background comments.  They always end up being repetitive and grating.  It's one thing to have NPC dialogue ticking away in the General chat box where I can glance at it if I feel like it.  But I would find it extraordinarily irritating -- and not very immersive -- have to listen to an endless stream of "I heard that F1ame VVarri0r took down a Council base!"

 

[Lines]

 

[Solarverse]

That would take a looooong time. I won't be putting in the hard long hours in to making that mod, lol.

[Abraxus]

I don't know.  CoH was supposed to be like a full-motion comic book, so the silence, and reading of dialog kind of keeps immersion in that theme.  I'd kind of hate to see that change.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Abraxus

[ArchVileTerror]

Supposed to, maybe, but there's a lot of things which sets City of Heroes as better for having "failed" to emulate from comics.

Even still . . . yeah, I'm in the same camp as most folks when it comes to voiceovers in-game:  Please no.

 

If it were a player-side mod, sure.  Go hogwild.  But after experiencing the Galaxy City Tutorial, I'm quite confident that I do not want voiceovers in this game for my personal experiences.

[Solarverse]

6 minutes ago, ArchVileTerror said:

Supposed to, maybe, but there's a lot of things which sets City of Heroes as better for having "failed" to emulate from comics.

Even still . . . yeah, I'm in the same camp as most folks when it comes to voiceovers in-game:  Please no.

 

If it were a player-side mod, sure.  Go hogwild.  But after experiencing the Galaxy City Tutorial, I'm quite confident that I do not want voiceovers in this game for my personal experiences.

For me, it would make it feel too much like Champions Online...and I do not want to even think of that game while playing this one, heh.

[Herotu]

On 3/26/2020 at 11:34 PM, srmalloy said:

Being able to feed NPC dialog into a text-to-speech engine might be entertaining,

I suggested this a while back. I'd love to hear what it's like in Tacotron 2!

 

 

 

 

  

35 minutes ago, Abraxus said:

I don't know.  CoH was supposed to be like a full-motion comic book, so the silence, and reading of dialog kind of keeps immersion in that theme.  I'd kind of hate to see that change.

The reason I disagree with this is that the whole point of comic books is to NOT have walls of text - which is what missions tend to be. Besides, when you're in a team, who reads to mission texts? I know the missions have great story, but often skip them through impatience or convenience. If I could have the text being read to me as I travel to the mission, it saves time, entertains me on my trip and gives to an idea of WHY I'm doing the mission. It reinforces PURPOSE!

Edited March 28, 2020 by Herotu

[Lockpick]

/jranger

[Abraxus]

41 minutes ago, Herotu said:

I suggested this a while back. I'd love to hear what it's like in Tacotron 2!

 

 

 

 

  

The reason I disagree with this is that the whole point of comic books is to NOT have walls of text - which is what missions tend to be. Besides, when you're in a team, who reads to mission texts? I know the missions have great story, but often skip them through impatience or convenience. If I could have the text being read to me as I travel to the mission, it saves time, entertains me on my trip and gives to an idea of WHY I'm doing the mission. It reinforces PURPOSE!

I suppose folks do skip over the mission text.  But, imagine how annoying it would be for the majority that do skip all of that, to have it read to them aloud instead.  I suppose if it were an option, and not something forced, I'd be ok with it.  But, I would want the default to be "Opt in", rather than "Opt out".

[Herotu]

 

2 minutes ago, Abraxus said:

I suppose folks do skip over the mission text.  But, imagine how annoying it would be for the majority that do skip all of that, to have it read to them aloud instead.  I suppose if it were an option, and not something forced, I'd be ok with it.  But, I would want the default to be "Opt in", rather than "Opt out".

Just out of interest, do you read any of the stories?

 

Are you interested in any of the stories or is that not what the game is about for you?

[Abraxus]

10 minutes ago, Herotu said:

 

Just out of interest, do you read any of the stories?

 

Are you interested in any of the stories or is that not what the game is about for you?

 

I read most of it the first time I played through content.  Less so as I went through the same content with the 25 L50 characters I had (1/3 Villains, 2/3 Heros) on the LIVE server.  In this new iteration of the game, with 6 L50 characters, and over 20 in various levels from 12 to 42, I have re-experienced much of again.  

I still read the ones that seem new to me, or things I had forgotten.  But, most of it, I've seen numerous times.

[Solarverse]

I would like to add that we do have a suggestions forums. General is not really the place to ask a suggestion. In all fairness though, I don't think the replies would be any different even if you posted it there.

[Herotu]

17 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 General is not really the place to ask a suggestion.

Nerd.

[Solarverse]

1 hour ago, Herotu said:

Nerd.

Lol! Way to call me out there, my man!  😄

[Tugzug]

Speaking as someone with 100+ Skyrim mods, at least half of which utterly destroy immersion for the sake of humor: I would absolutely love Moonbase Alpha style synthetic voices on characters. That said, it'd have to be optional for sure. I'm fairly confident most people would not be on board with it.

[Black Zot]

Hell no and no again.  Better to have no voiceovers than bad voiceovers, and bad voiceovers is exactly what you'd get with this.

 

Not to mention the noise-stacking effects this game has when a power affects a lot of targets at once are already borderline ear rape.  Stacking NPC chatter is a good way to ensure a lot of people never load up Homecoming again.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Black Zot

[Herotu]

My vision for this was a button on the quest mission text box that triggers the tts. Perhaps it could be done via an overlay, even, that could be used in multiple games? I guess it might have benefits, too, for partially sighted people in other respects (reading documents and such) but I guess those solutions already exist.

 

Hearing chatter from people on the streets of Paragon seems more complex, but not impossible. I'd certainly opt in, given that option.

... on a related note...

Here comes realistic voice synthesis. Thanks, Voice Actors, your work was appreciated - and now kindly stand aside. The robots are here to take the creative jobs and leave the boring repetitive stuff to the humans. This isn't how it was supposed to be!!!1111 Curse you and your alternate reality, Cole!

https://beta.elevenlabs.io/

 

[Greycat]

 

*sigh.*

 

[Herotu]

38 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

*sigh.*

 

Although technology is obviously progressing, it's taking time, as you highlight.