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Will being fully voiced hurt the game in the long run?


DarthSeidhr

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First, let me say that I love having the game fully voiced. It takes the normal "kill x creatures" and "collect x items" quests and makes them meaningful, at least for me. My concern, however, is for future content. Having to fully voice everything takes a lot of time and money. This means that the day will arrive much faster when it is no longer economically feasible to continue adding content.

 

That being said, do you feel that fully voicing the game was a bit of a myopic decision, or was it the right way to go? Personally, I like it, but I think it will decrease the shelf life of the game in the long run.

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we probaly get more pvp flashpoint/operations and daily non story kinda quests faster i gues then a real content expansion story upgrade probaly yeh ... probaly gonan take a wile ..

but i dont see it hurting the game , depending on HOW long they wil ltake to effectivly add expansions or real great story content ... like taking 4 - 5 years or something .. :s

 

but we have to see i gues , nothing but speculations at this moment :s

Edited by Genesizs
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I think I remember someone from bioware pointing out that they can do the voicing at the same time the artists are doing the coding and the engineers are doing the programming. So in terms of time it's not as big a problem as one would think.
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They've said that they have lots of Voice Acting content already done for future content patches. Also no doubt the VA's will be into some kind of contract to do more work should it be required (Which it will)

 

Also saying that they've been working on something for a year doesn't mean anything, they could have just had a couple of geezers working on it in their spare time while the meat of the game was been done.

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I wasn't worried until I watched the "Coming up in SWTOR" video where it clearly states that they've been working on 'Rise of the Rakghouls' for a year. A year for what is effectively just a new dungeon? :confused:

 

I wouldn't read too much into that. It was basically part of the game, but delayed for the sake of being able to release "new" content soon after the game went live. You can bet they have other stuff on the back burner that's essentially ready to go, but waiting 3 or 4 months for enough people to be ready for it.

 

As for the OP's question: yeah I think the extensive VO will make it more difficult for high quality content down the road. Adding new flashpoints and operations should be easy enough, but actual story additions will be expensive and probably left to full-blown expansions. EA is the kind of company that will want to charge for every little thing too, so I wouldn't expect WoW-type content updates every 3 or 4 months.

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I wasn't worried until I watched the "Coming up in SWTOR" video where it clearly states that they've been working on 'Rise of the Rakghouls' for a year. A year for what is effectively just a new dungeon? :confused:

 

You forget that they have been working on expansions and extra features WELL before release. (proof actualy is the Rise of the Rakghouls patch)

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I've heard that they kept on their full development staff after the release, as opposed to laying a lot of them off as most MMO's do.

 

That means they'll hopefully be able to churn out content/expansions faster than WoW and the like.

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No worry. After around lvl 20 they reuse most of the lines. So there is 5-6 sentences that my bounty hunter were repeat over and over until lvl 50. 90% of your time later in the game your character say completely different thing that were on wheel.

 

So It was probably quite cheap. NPC on the other hand say some custom stuff but that is not even important. I catch myself smashing SPACE after lvl 30 on all side quests since 99% of the quests look like that

 

~ idiot telling me some background story for 20s

~ i select middle answer and character say something completely different

~ idiot tell short sentence and give me quest "go and kill 40 mobs" or "go fetch this"

~ i select middle answer because top is useless and bottom refuse the quest

BONUS: in every planet there is 1 or 2 quests that allow you to choose if you want to click on 10 items or kill 20 mobs (to get to that 10 items you must kill 30 mobs) so again - middle answer

 

So when I realize this on every side missions I hit just:

~ SPACE

~ 2

~ SPACE

~ 2

Then I went kill someone and return

~ 3 to get dark or 1 to get light points

 

Bioware is not good enough to add more missions like one when you interrogate prisoners. No solving puzzles, no need to use brain at any point in game, nothing. Quests are made for idiots and monkeys I'm afraid. When I was 3 i had more challenging stuff to do like playing with LEGO or puzzles.

 

Voice acting don't hurt the game. What hurt the game is how they used it. Why the hell you use voice acting in whole game for kill and fetch quests ? If you use it, use it well. Bioware said that kill and fetch will be just an addon to other quests (to prolong the game) but as everything devs said - it was another lie and PR talk. Kill and fetch with crappy voice acting that you learn to skip after a while since everything come down to "kill 20 mobs" is waste of time, resources and talent of people who use their voice in the game.

 

Bioware should look at games like Dungeons and Dragons online. At least sometimes you have interesting puzzle. But what you can except from idiots that got 2 stupid and simple puzzles in KOTOR and could not solve it asking on forum all the time how to do it while monkey can do it with no problem.

 

Simple. Sometimes people should FAIL THE QUEST. Quest should require different skills for different people. Sometimes pure strange. Sometimes a brain. Sometimes reflex. Killing mobs over and over is a waste.

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I wasn't worried until I watched the "Coming up in SWTOR" video where it clearly states that they've been working on 'Rise of the Rakghouls' for a year. A year for what is effectively just a new dungeon? :confused:

 

These things don't just spring up overnight, even with the partially-voiced content of other games. There's programming to do, graphics to design, combat to script. It's never a fast process.

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It is a great feature but at the same time I too am worried that it will make it difficult to add new classes and makes adding new content slightly more time consuming.

 

Personally however I really do like this feature because it does help with immersion. In the other MMOs all the NPCs felt like just a bunch of pixels. They lacked the level of personality that BW has brought to this game by having cutscenes and voice acted conversations.

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I think it might. Non-vocal communication is very limited in the game. Talking to other players via speech bubbles would feel very backwards and inconsistent after the fully voiced conversations with NPCs.

 

But talking to other players is a large part of the lifeblood of an MMORPG, especially after the level treadmill is finished.

Edited by TheTurniipKing
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I think it might. Non-vocal communication is very limited in the game. Talking to other players via speech bubbles would feel very backwards and inconsistent after the fully voiced conversations with NPCs.

 

But talking to other players is a large part of the lifeblood of an MMORPG, especially after the level treadmill is finished.

 

Small problem. Try to talk with someone NEXT to you. It's hard. Loot of people use default chat where you have global chat, combat log, whisper etc. And most of the time you will miss that someone send you a message.

Bubbles are needed and that's it.

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well it is great for me because I have the unique ability to give myself a "memory wipe" as one would call it by meditating for hours in my room and not remember a thing about what I just did, and concentrate on the full game experience. That is what I do when I create new characters all the time, that exact thing.

 

Not everyone has something like I do...where they can just not even THINK about how they just did it...or when they did. They just forget it completely happened, make themself have a memory wipe of what you did on that character and BOOM, epic game experience everytime I roll a character.

 

Anyway...that's me. I LOVE this game. I can REALLY put myself into the shoes of the character and just...go with it. If you can't just go with it..and don't think and can't put yourself into your character for story..even if it's the 4th time..why bother playing this game? This game is for story junkies...and your story changes everytime you choose a different choice ANYTIME within the dialogue wheel.

 

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