Test Discussion GU 52: Interaction Skipping

GU 52: Interaction Skipping

Hello again, everyone! I don't know about you guys, but I'm a busy man. Mepps is always making me put up these discussion threads, and as much as I enjoy hanging out with the iconic characters in DCUO, I sometimes just don't have enough time to sit through an entire NPC interaction.

Well now I don't have to worry about that being as much of a problem anymore, thanks to Interaction Skipping! With this update, certain interaction cams will be skippable, ending the cam and allowing you to regain your character so that you can go about your day. You will be able to tell which cams are skippable, as there will be a button prompt on the bottom of the screen indication which button you should press to skip the interaction (Left Mouse Button or 'Square' button on the controller).

Please be aware that this change only affects some interaction cams, there are many other cams and scenes that will not be skippable. That said, please leave us any bugs or feeback in this thread (aside from "hey, this cutscene isn't skippable!").

Can you post a list of what cams/scenes are skippable?

And can you tell us the reason for: Why are some skippable and others not? What's the selection criterion?

A list would help. I thought for sure the intros for the Huntress & Bizarro solos would be skippable, but didn't get any icon or prompt.

I already tried every solo instance, none had skippable sequences.

Today I found a skippable interaction! After defeating Chemo in Ace Chemicals Alert you can talk to Batman. There is a short cutscene showing Batman talking, you can skip that

I don't know but wouldn't it be nice to be able to skip every interaction/cutscene when certain conditions are fulfulled:

+ every player in group already watched the scene in full length (seeing a scene the first time forces you to see it full)
+ a vote for skipping the scene passed (vote could be simplified by the current skip mechanism [holding left mouse button means vote yes!])

I don't have a list, sadly. However, I can tell you that Brother Blood in Sheeda's Den (Chinatown nightclub) has some interactions that are skippable. I think that probably the Iconics/NPCs in the safehouses that give you missions outside of your native mentor missions have interactions the might be skippable.

I'm afraid I don't have a great answer for you. The short version is that when the interaction starts up, the server tells me if it's skippable or not and if it is, I show the prompt and let you press the button. Ultimately, I think it probably has something to do with how the camera or interaction is set up. We were talking about ways that we could make all, or at least more, cameras skippable, but that is a surprisingly complex task and we probably won't be able to work on it in the near future.

Success!

I do like the vote to skip idea. We realized that by adding in this first step, the request to make all scenes skippable would be a popular one.

Talking to Batman after defeating Chemo in Ace Chemicals has been optional as long as I recall. There are a couple of other instances in the game where a final chat with an NPS has always been optional, but I'm afraid I don't recall specifics at the moment. Oh, yeah, the Lantern solo with Sinestro, Bleez, two other bosses, and the Black Lanterns, "Spark of Parallax" is one: you don't have to talk to Sinestro, but you can; this is obviously intentional since his speech then tells you to get lost.

Great idea because after I saw a video a hundred times, I would love to be able to skip them.

My concern is, that there is no value for the players if you go live with only some (optional) scenes to be skipped. All scenes (or mabye 80% or 90%) are skippable makes sense for me.

Just a video test comparing dialogue/cutscene vs actual gameplay...


If all interaction could be skipped, I could've run this twice! Spark is a bit extreme, but there are a lot of other instances that come close to its ratio. The Huntress solo probably would have been a more legit one to do this on since it's legends.