[Petition] Skip/Leave Option For Cutscenes

Everybody has seen this message before: "7 of the 8 players wish to skip the cutscene."

In the bottom right where the skip button is they need to add a second button titled 'Skip/Leave' or something like that. The function of this button would remove you from the group and skip the cutscene as if you were in a group all by yourself, loading you into the next zone. Nine times out of ten the second you get to the next area you leave the group anyways.

Or alternatively, the skip button should automatically have this functionality for areas such as Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood where afterwards you are alone regardless.

Obviously this cannot be used for all cutscenes, because some happen in the middle of missions. I also want to say that this should in no way replace the current skip option in case a guild group or some such want to keep going together. But this would allow those who do not want to watch what can sometimes seem to be lengthy cutscenes to bypass them while still letting people new to Guild Wars experience the story line without having to hear crap from people afterwards. ("Who the %$#@ didn't skip the [email protected] cutscene?") Also, this would give ArenaNet a little more freedom in cutscene length as long as middle-of-the-mission cutscenes are kept short, wheras end-of-the-mission cutscenes can be longer if desired (within reason).

Many others have brought up this topic as well. Other recommendations have been a majority vote to see or skip the cutscene (which I do not support). Another was to have a theater where players can view cutscenes that they have previously viewed (which I do support).

Regardless of any of that, 2 things need to be done during cutscenes:
1) If something attacks a player (or other important NPC) it should be killed outright or teleported away. Im sick and tired of hearing *slash slash slash* over and over again from Shiro's constructs during a cutscene where the course of history is changed forever.
2) Minions should stop loosing life. It is not fair to an MM to force him or her to skip the cutscene for the sake of his/her minions.

My one biggest hope in making this thread is to compile everyone's opinions into one place so that it can be presented to ArenaNet. Please sign/unsign for each of the three parts seperately:

1) Skip/Leave option
2) killing/removing/reseting agroed creeps
3) Stop minion degen

If you unsign please explain why.

*Edit: clarified to sign for all 3 parts seperately not all at once. (Sorry Remmeh and Lowly Peasant)

/sign
so many times this has infuriated me. however it is funny to see a MM's minions attacking NPCs during cutscenes.

/sign

It's especailly needed for the cutscene at the end of the Ice Caves of Sorrow mission. My god that's bad voice acting.

1. /not sure
I have no opinion.
2. (If you mean that anything aggroed would be removed) /signed
3. /signed. Game time should not be running while in a cutscene.

4. (NEW)
If #2 means that anything aggroed would be "unaggroed" then this does not apply. If it means something else, then I propose a new point.
There's been a few times where I have ran Iron Mines to get an infusion run, and we aggroed the nightmares. They follow us right into the cutscene which triggers. During the cutscene we are unable to do anything. The nightmares however continue to attack us during the cutscene. If everyone does not skip, most if not all of our party ends up dying in the cutscene. I don't think this should ever happen. Cutscenes should not influence game events.

/signed

Number 2 means that anything that attacks the party while in a cutscene (or NPC's the party is talking with) would be killed or removed from the area.

I agree with this and that minions should not degen during cut scenes. Is that the same thing?

/signed

All battling should stop during cutscenes, there has been many times where we lose a teamate (beacause we ran and carried an aggor) or minions (degen) because a player new to the mission and want to watch. I think a "theatre of scenes" would be a great idea.

/signed

/not signed

There shouldn't be any fighting during cutsceens, but other than that...they are only about 30 seconds on average...get over it.

15 out of the 16 members of your party want to skip this cutscene...

Damn you vizuana.

1: /signed - If you don't want to watch the scene, you shouldn't have to wait for others.
2: /signed - It is very annoying not only to hear, but on a rare occasion even have someone die because of it (for the cut scenes in the middle of a mission that go on too long).
3: /signed - Only stop degen during cut scenes.

30 seconds im sure the V.Square cutscene at the end throws the average way off, im sure thats a good 2 minutes long (feels like longer when u have to watch it for the 5th time)

/signed in order of preference 3, 2, 1

/signed

Anet made a half hearted attempt to help this problem by making some scenes availble to review at the destination town (some but not all). I do not understand why the lame attempt at a seemingly simple problem/annoyance???

30 seconds is all you need to have your entire party wiped out while you sit there helplessly watching the cutscene.

1. /signed - as long as the original skip button is left as an option also, and its only an option on the end cutscene.
2. /signed
3. /signed

/signed on all three points, for some reason that this is even still an issue after a year makes me laugh

/signed, any or all points this need to be imporved after my 4 char through an area if its the last long ass cutsecene before a town i dont want to have to watch it, nor should i be forced to just if some n00b wants too.

If you would read my post...
"There shouldn't be any fighting during cutsceens..."

Abso-freaking-lutely. I understand that some people may want to watch the cutscene and that's okay, but it should not affect the game while running. It's painful hearing all those little minions die while having to sit through the cutscene for the 10th time.

/signed

/signed
our team is under attack, we are dying and I see message like: "7 of the 8 players wish to skip the cutscene."
um yeah lets wait until we are all dead ? what about no

/signed (for all 3 petitions).

FYI - towns in Cantha have an NPC who offers to let you watch the cutscene (for that mission) over again... so the theatre does (kinda) already exist. (i'm not sure if it's ALL of the missions, but i know that i have seen it, so i assume they'd implement for all of the cantha missions)

/unsign

I often dont skip scenes when im helping out my nooby buddies so they dont feel left out and feel they have to skip

Its only hindering a few minutes, its not hurting anything. A-Net has much better things to worry about then people wasting time watching cut scenes.

/sign

- I dislike to see some movies over and over again
- Sometimes people die during movies.

Option:
If 5/8 choose to skip the sequence all should automaticalty skip it.

Most efinately not, have a majority skip option, people are still doing stuff for the first time you know. But yeah, being able to skip out/leave the group during the final cutscenes would be nice

I absolutely do not agree with the majority vote system. If one person wants to see a cutscene then they should be allowed to see it and not be punished b/c everyone else has been through before. Otherwise this would turn potential new players away.

In my original post I showed that it IS hurting people. Minions are dying and in disturbingly frequent occurances players are too without being able to do anything about it. These need to be fixed SOON.

Also, "a few minutes" is much too long for a non-skipable, potentially repeatable (if you die) cutscene. (The cutscene before the fight with the Cameleon in Kingdom Hearts is an quick example off the top of my head.) A-Net needs to keeps the middle-of-the-mission cutscenes short regardless of whether or not the rest of the problems are fixed. The ending cutscenes can be longer if wanted as long as players can skip them without having to wait for everyone else.

/signed

For those missions like Aspenwood or Quarry, etc, being able to individually move yourself back to the outpost is an excellent idea even if no other missions allow you to do it.

I specifically direct that to Aspenwood because if you have a leecher or bot, they can't skip and your time is wasted for that reason alone.

Of course, /votekick would be better! lol

As one who does Aspenwood pretty much, yes, I would really like an option to skip the scene. Or maybe disable it altogether once you've seen it once :P

I'm not that quick every time to map out of the field between gaining the faction reward and the start of the cinematic

p.s. Shouldn't this be on Sardelac?


vvv- Try playing some Aspenwood, win the game ~5 times in a row, being forced to watch that cutscene every time gets pretty dull, and the 'small time' it takes to watch the pointless cutscene quickly adds up

not signed. its a waste of time coding that in to save you 30 seconds.

seriously, in the past week, how much time have you lost actually WATCHING the cutscenes that explain the story that ArenaNet would like you to see... probably took you longer to write this post than sitting through a cutscene

/unsign
stop complaining u moron

Three things:
1) As previously stated by ETSubmariner, when you do Fort Aspenwood or Jade Quarry missions multiple times a day this can take over an hour from time you could be playing the game. But there are other cutscenes (namely the ones with the fortune teller in it) that take a long time as well.
2) When you /unsign or /sign this please list which part you are addressing as there are three points which I have presented. It take from your post Retro Knight that you only disagree with the Skip/Leave option. Please clarify this when you post.
3) Thank you for saying why you disagree with me unlike...

Your post defines "not helpful". Explain why you disagree with me and maybe post a better solution if you have one in mind. There is no reason to be throwing names around and taking out your anger on others who are honestly trying to bring a change to something that many agree needs, if nothing else, to be seriously reconsidered. Otherwise you are being a hinderance to BOTH sides of the argument.

/signed

they should make skip individual so when someone skips he can keep on with his life while the others stay behind and watch the movie.

simple suggestion : freeze the game during the cutscenes : warriors don't want to lose adrenaline, MMs don't want to lose minions, and nobody wants to get killed by the single surviving atomic llama just because somebody talked to a npc before the end of a fight.
Waiting the movie out for newcomers I can cope with.

He he, atomic llama lol

I Like the idea of freezing the game, during cinematics, But I also like the idea of going back and watching later.

/signed

Assuming we're only talking about cutscenes at the END of missions, there is no reason that people who don't want to stick around should have to.

Wow, can you believe it? Someone used their brain! Albino, I give you props. There are always going to be new people to the game (until it dies). Give them a break and watch the movie. If it is so difficult to sit through, go with a group of guildies or friends that all agree to skip the cutsceens.

The only valid idea this thread has spawned is that the game should freeze during cutsceens.

Furthermore, you don't actually have to sit through the movie. YMMV, but GW goes silent on my machine when I background it in windowed mode, _except_ during cutscenes. I usually just check my emails, and switch back to the game when the talking stops.
Then again, the transition from and to windowed mode is simply incredible (kudos to the programmers) on my totally unimpressive machines. I heard it was not that good for some people with SLI monster GPUs.

Another valid point I forgot to mention...nice job on bringing it up.

When your stuck in a cutscene, minimize GW and do something else. Go on a forum, check your email, or listen to some music.

/signed...i don't think i can take 1 more second of listening to danika.....

Minimizing the game defeats the purpose. A player should not feel so thouroughly bored with something that he or she has to find something else to entertain him or her. I bought this game to enjoy it, not be bored to tears by it (though that is being a little bit too harsh).

I completely forgot about Warriors in my original posting, my appologies. Particularly dumb of me as I am currently playing through with my warrior. This too should be held until the end of the cutscene.

As much as I hate to give pause to your idea, I doubt the solution is as simple as freezing the game. 'Cutscene' is actually a bad word for what they are. In truth they appear to be prescripted animations with some dialog thrown into the mix. They do not seem to run separate from the game as a true prerendered cutscene would (like in a normal RPG). Rather they take over control of the game itself and the characters inside of it. And that by freezing the game, you would also freeze the backend scripts that handle these prescripted animations. This is obviously just speculation as I have not seen the code behind Guild Wars, but I feel it is a safe train of thought and a point to consider.

If this is the case then you would have to freeze (which is more than likely impossible) or neutralize INDIVIDUAL parts of the game and then reset them to their previous values afterwards. But to do that you would have to save their original values somehow. For example (let's use worst case scenario just for fun), 8 Necro/Warriors get to a cutscene. Each one could potentially have 10 minions, each minion has a certain amount of health and varying health degeration. In addition, each player can also have up to 7 skills with varying levels of adrenaline built up. While highly improbible, it is still possible and therefore must be handled by the game should it ever arise. That right there is a ton of variables to consider, add to that enchanment timers, shouts, stances, etc. and the problem becomes almost astronomical in size. So I understand why this problem still yet persists, however I strongly believe that A-Net MUST fix this.

/signed
All 3 of them

My only problem with cutscenes is the length of time....if you have to do the mission in X amount of time and you are really close to that time...that cutscene can make you go over! (missed one by about 15 seconds, so a 30 second cutscene WOULD make us lose the master title).....
Make the cutscenes stop time, degen, etc.....(some of them do seem to be after the time check, but the mid-missions ones are NOT).