Such a strange take. People always hope for devs to be bit more talkative and candid. One did just that and you borderline ask for his words go be buried just bexause it happened via platform you dislike? Lol. OP, ig mostly this is all about you and the dev having different take on what is "content". Seems you speak of arcs and are mainly interested of narrative side. I bet they had good amount of previously recorded VA'd dialogue stockpiled. Its just that to any dev, writers aside, that aspect of the game is pretty insignificant in terms of workload. Mostly, was nice to see dev just talking to players randomly in candid fashion, without it being some calculated mediatrained pr exercise. Been missing that ever since nighguy left!

This is my only major issue here. They could drop all pcva completely for all I care, if it resulted in depth and rp opportunities of old school rpgs such as kotor. So far, dialogue without pcva has been just as..stingy with content as voice acted dialogue is.

I dunno, imo what gives creator their ideas and acts as inspiration can greatly differ from the political message he wants to deliver all the way to the audience. I have a funny feeling* Lucas didn't really discuss any Vietnam analogies in Star Wars til much later. Contemporary discussion about Star Warsfrom late 70's to early 90's prolly didn't really orbit the vietnam war. I'd say it was never a political statement as much as just source for inspiration and something that makes good headlines and interesting dvd commentary track anecdotes 30 years later. *And truly, it is but a feelin! I don't know enough of this and it'd be fascinating to learn more. When did Lucas begin talking about Vietnam war in context of OG trilogy?

Vietnam analogies is def something widely known today, thanks to Lucas and his inner circle spelling this stuff out in various interviews over the years. Wanting to say something about Vietnam might have been among the roots of his inspiration, but all of the surface coating of OG trilogy invokes world war II and British Empire vs American revolutrionaries-vibes in average movie goer audience. Actual deeper political undertones were buried underneath timeless good rebels versus evil opressors stuff.. I wonder if there were any/many conterporary articles released in..say, 1977-78 discussing any Vietnam war analogies. All of the largest surface level real life analogy hooks to be digested surely involve British Empire, American revolutionaries/rebels and WW II-era Germany. Disney era Star Wars isn't quite as subtle as that when it comes to their desire to wage culture wars in star wars. Underlinings are done with a brush so huge it covers what it was supposed to underline. I sometimes wonder what it feels like to grow up as a geeky white man born around..I dunno, 2000-2005 or something. From pov of a young white man in 2024, surprisingly large portions of fiction written defines what is virtuous and desireable by how unlike you the fictional characters they'd create are. That'll feel weird. Kids and teens in particular have utterly impressive intuitive ability to immediately spot and connect with stuff written " in their own time" and "for them". Much of what Disney or Nettflix does "for them" and "in their time" in AD 2024 is sexist and/or racist towards white guys.

This section of forum is bit too dead to host updates about such a nice blog! Maybe make this thread on general discussion too?

When it comes to game mechanics and overall DNA, We are speaking of a wow clone tab targeter mmo when we speak of SWTOR. One far into its development. Ie tools and foundations were designed long ago. More about furnishing rooms than building the whole house. It icertainly is comparable enough.

These two declarations come with a small contradiction at least. Dev team of 80 people sounds quite huge, I assume it isn't accurate and/or consists of lots of people who aren't actual developers. Vanilla wow was made by 40 people, just for comparsion.

Towards end of DK bits of class story, Sith Inquisitor meets certain very important NPC in Dark Temple. Extremely important,. meaty dialogue follows. One that establishes huge portions of the entire class story right there and then. About four minutes of top notch BW storytelling bliss! What's PCVA's contriobution to this dialogue? During all of those four minutes, you get the following from PCVA: What do you mean I awakened you? I am going to return my family to glory? I will handle him as I see fit. Don't worry about me. It wouldn't be worth taking otherwise. Ofc there are irrelevant changes depending on which option you pick, but it won't get any more or less beefy than this. Oh no lets all go on strike and hope game is a kill rather than lose this bliss. NPC brings the story and content. PCVA brings punctuation and paragraph changes. Completely remove each of those remarks and the actual content, actual story established in that dialogue by the NPC changes in no way. Almost all encounters work in this same way. In order to have those five practically irrelevant little comments present, amount of voice actors that single dialogue needs goes from three to nine.Or from one to three, if you wanna deal with English speaking client only. Yet, notion of losing those five practically irrelevant little comments is widely seen as utterly apocalyptic over here.

^^ I wish I'd be able to place such a massive amount of importance over getting to hear voice acting from my character. SWTOR has hundreds of hours of it. Folks who love it this unconditionally must be in 7th heaven whenever playing og class stories. Truly, I never fully get it. Almost all PCVA is of incredibly high quality. Just that they almost never say anything important. I mean, as long as we speak of Bioware dialogue wheel spinnings, PCVA is mostly about asking one liner questions or offering punctuation and paragraph changes to the actual beef of the dialogue, which virtually always is delivered by the NPC anyways. PlayerChar is almost never an important part of the conversation. I mean, let's travel to the absolute high water mark of SWTOR production values, faction capital bits of class stories. I did some of Inquisitor DK story just yesterday. Wonderful absolute top of the line Voice acting through and through, male sith inq voice is just perfect! What does that quality VA provide? Four word questions and pre-canned recycled responses make like..what, 75% of all you can ever say to anyone. - Zash: [goes on and on about her plans, why Darth Skotia must die, how killing him involves getting this Mcuffin tablet from Trandoshians.] -PC: " Don't worry about me!" - Zash: [Explains how tablet can be found underneath some statue, bit of further exposition about Skotia and Trandoshian culture. Gives isntructions how to find the statue] - PC: " On my way!" Like 17 times out of 20, PC dialogue doesn't even pretrend to have any weight of its own, it is all about getting the actual content out from the NPC. Its in the very nature and design of dialogue wheel stuff. Though I swear, first two Mass Effect games masked this much better. They are more clever and sophisticated in this regard when compared to SWTOR or DA:I for example. ..To be fair those 3 times out of 20 are often awesome. I still find it incredible people care about them as much as they do though. Each their own and all that. Like...one could do all kinds of "fun" personal experiments here. Have two pens handy, red and blue. Write down some summary of " important and memorable things said in this conversation" after each dialogue ever had in TOR. Use red pen when writing down important/memorable thing NPC says. Blue pen when you hear important stuff from PCVA. I swears, there won¨'t be much blue on your paper. "murder and mayhem await!" Or.. Completely remove what PCVA says from every dialogue and see how it looks. [Essentially unchanged, NPCs just turn more proactive, telling you what you must hear without needing questions to pull the answers from them] Now, completely remove all that the NPC says in every dialogue and see how it looks. [All of the actual content disappears, dialogue stops making sense. ]

Longevity is def the keyword here. They are in such an impossible situation really. Fully voice acted story content is what huge portion of people here want. Clearly it is just too costly or difficult to produce; amount of new story content this game has gotten since KOTET is so modest it is quite terrifying really. All story content comes with pretty modest amount of longevity by its very nature. If you get 20 minutes of new story content, it turns into old story content in 20 minutes. Small wonder no other MMO has ever done fully voice acted PC. In SWTOR; every single scene consisting of PlayerChar and a single NPC takes voice acting from 51 different people. 51 different people to act what amounts to discussion between two characters in-game. Single scene of two characters talking amounts to total of 48 different takes where 51 people read through more or less identical lines of dialogue in three different languages. That is incredibly inefficient in every possible sense of the word. ...And yet, huge portion of people playing SWTOR are here for just that and demand they get more of it. So BS are very much stuck doing their utmost to keep providing. Its just that " huge portion of people playing swtor" is clearly nowhere nearly large enough amount of people to sustain necessary amount of $$$$$$$ flows from EA. Biggest niche SWTOR has going for itself is extremely costly and inefficient to produce from devs' pov and comes with a pretty modest amount of longevity from players' pov. That makes such a perfect nightmare of an intersection really! Amount of resources voice acting budget has vacuumed from all other imaginable aspects of SWTOR development is beyond my imagination rly.

Imagine a tiny fully voice acted story patch 7.8: Echoes In Empty Room. Nothing but playerchar entering room and saying "sup Lana" and Lana replying with "hello, Commander" and that's it. Four words spoken by two characters. Patch over. If playerchar is voice acted, it takes work from 51(!!!) voice actors to do these four words by two characters. That's quite a tall order from production values of a 10++ year old mmo really.

I think it is weird how so many people talking about this sound as if they were half convinced that among the devs, dropping PCVA is seen as some cool, fun idea to experiment with. "Oh hey, let's remove player char VA, That'll be so much fun!" Yeah no. No doubt it is something they must do, not something they'd want to do. Not something that sounded like a fun idea to them. It takes 48 voice actors to do PlayerChar. That has always been beyond unreasonable. I think it a miracle BW was able to do full VA as long as they did. I believe every other imagineable aspect of this game has made so many sacrifices on the altar of fully voiced PCVA over the years. If/When they do more and more KOTOR style dialogue, hopefully it means a huge increase in roleplaying options as well.For now, dropping PCVA has in practice only meant dialogue similar to normal VA stuff in written form. As if all the VA-related restrictons were still in place. They'd be wise to show people what can be done when free of the doubtless massive restrictions of full pcva. Ie tons of class, alignment specific dialogue and so on could and should happen.

Overall I liked playing the JC story, heh. Just that it comes with this huge..challenge for immersion let's say. I always dislike it when story and gameplay of video game come with a huge disparity and seem as if at odds with one another.-. Playing some sort of a supposed diplomat in an MMO setting falls to this category almost inevitably. People always keep saying how nice it is to be this negotiator and a diplomat in JC story..yeah, okay I kinda agree, it is nice. Its just that every single high stakes situation gameplay-wise always involves you fighting and or killing stuff all the same. By high stakes situation I mean something, anything, that could theoretically lead to player failing and having to try again. There are never dialogue wheel spinnings that'd be tricky or would lead to game over screens. There are never decisions that are mistakes in some objective fashion. You cann't really make a huge mess out of things by player mistakes. This is type of gameplay and challenges negotiator or a diplomat should encounter in a story. Ofc, SWTOR just doesn't roll that way. There's no " oof how do I handle this!!" -moments to navigate in dialogue. "I'd love to join your cause but alas, imperials stole my mcuffin suitcase. Go kill the easy boss at end of the instance nearby, bring the suitcase back and we'll talk" That's JC diplomacy at its finest. It isn't dialogue revolving around diplomacy and negotiation as much as it is bit of flavor text at the end of a kill quest completion. Been a few years since I completed JC story. Ironically, Alderaan planetary mission(or was it bonus series) ended up feeling like my JC being a diplomat more than the class story ever did. Something like Telltale's old Walking Dead games or even Baldur's Gate 3 come with gameplay and ..approach to dialogue that'd offer a more fitting cage to throw a diplomat Playerchar in. In that sense, Sith War and BH stories for example are so much better fits to any MMO surrounding. I mean, if you play your Sith War as some half crazed dude who loves killing, every MMO is a pretty immersive amusement park for you to ride in.

Hmm so for the sake of clarity, what are you willing to do? Go to an instance with a companion,spend five mins killing utterly disposable mobs, pull a lever and be done with it?

Looking at like one month without a single GSF objective.. From May 21st to June 17th, Zero GSF objectives to be had. 44 different objectives in that time frame. 0 have anything to do with GSF. It'd be so nice if devs weren't so devoted in coming up with new ways to ignore GSF. Refusing to add only part of this game solely made for PvP to PvP seasons and gradually phasing it out from GS for good measure. Nice. Been seven years since GSF got new content updates of any kind. Seriously, "new ways for us to mistreat GSF community" is starting to sound like an active effort at this point. Obviously nobody who likes GSF is really even expecting any new GSF content at this point. But sidelining it so crudely even from "supportive" game aspects such as Seasons????Come on.