Why is conversation with NPCs so slow?

Double click NPC, pause, zoom into NPC animation and conversation begins.

Click on keyword. Pause.

NPC replies. Click on keyword. Pause.

NPC replies. Click on keyword.

Why the pauses? They last a good 3-5 seconds and this has been happening since conversation was implemented. It's actually faster if you click on several keywords in quick succession because then it goes like this:

Click on keyword, click on keyword, click on keyword. Pause. NPC replies to first keyword, second keyword, third keyword - all at once.

So you get 1 pause for the price of 3.

This can't be by design for the sake of realism, surely? (Not to mention the camera bug afterwards that doesn't reset to your default zoom level, but I've already logged a bug for that last release.)

 

Thank you for reporting. This is a known performance issue that we hope to make smoother with future optimizations. This is most commonly observed with players that have connections with difficulties communicating with our network. Can you confirm if you observe this same issue if playing from single-player offline mode as well as online multiplayer?

 

How is single-player offline mode reached?

(No, really, I thought I missed something. Just went back to reread and scan the R27 Instructions in case I missed something. Possibly a mistake?)

 

I just went to check, but "offline mode" is greyed out for me as well.

I thought this issue was widespread? It's been this way for a very long time

 

This is how the game always has bin for me since i play it the first time.

 

I experience slow communication and even stuck conversations whenever more players (even teammates) were talking to the same NPC. Yesterday it was really awful - NPCs stood stuck to their post (normally wandering around a bit) and stopped conversating now and then. Forgot to timeout the conversation-queue and ran into memory-troubles? ;-)

 

In options, do you have the option to zoom in on conversations enabled? If you disable it, does that help? What about the option to sync conversation with the overhead text? Try toggling that.

From what I've seen, conversations are much faster than they were several versions ago. Of course, I disabled both of those options as soon as they became available.

 

I can confirm I've had this issue since the first release with dialogue. Was that R1 or R2?

 

Yep, this has always been there.

I'm assuming it's the same problem that causes delay in the charge attacks and entering combat mode.

It's more frustrating with dialogue because I often have to engage the conversation twice because the NPC won't register my input the first time:

* Double-Click *
- "Hello Avatar!"
- "Name"
...
- "Name"
- "Name"
* Double-Click *
- "Hello Avatar!"
- "Name"
- "My name is Bob!"
- "Health"
- "I'm good! How about you?"
- "Okay"
- "Could you repeat that?"

 

It was MOST frustrating when trying to do hat quests with low health and a tour guide who was around hostile mobs.

Hello!

Hello!

Help!

Answer me now I'm about to die!

....Dead Hamster.

 

It's commonly observed all the time, the quality of my internet connection doesn't seem to be related to it. It happens when I'm on a 100MBit leased line, it happens when I'm on a 70MBit FTTC. I am not sure where your servers are located, but note that I am 0.026 light seconds from Texas as the crow flies.