An Epiphany: Voice Acted content.

[VenthiosLestaran]

I think it's coming clear. People are completely delusional, and that's why they like the voice acting, lol. I'm being serious, besides class quests, think about what it is you're doing. You are still doing WoW quests. Except being asked for more of a time sink to do it.

 

Yes, how diverse the universe is. Where there is nothing but humanoids, nearly everyone's British (even the Asians) and EVERYONE has a blank stare right after their sentences.

 

LOL.

 

And yet STILL it takes a Quarter of the time to get to max level in SWTOR than it did in WoW vanilla, and I played practically the same amount of hours per day! Incredible!

[ExBrillig]

This is not a mindless grind MMO. There are over a million of us enjoying the voice acting and the story, so I suggest you find a game that suits your tastes and leave us to ours.

 

P.S. No one wants your stuff.

[Cormey]

Yawn. I love the voice acting. It's funny that something that is so integral to todays single player games gets attacked in MMOG's. I don't consider the people who attack it to be gamers, they just want to bash through content with no real thought to the fun in it.

 

I also find the whole 'use your creativity/imagination' excuse hilarious. With that line of reasoning we might aswell not have any graphics at all and go right back to the old Zork style text games. Admittedly, I had fun with those games... many, many, many years ago. Games evolve, adding graphics and yes, sound with voice acting, is one of those things these luddites are going to have to get used to.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Cormey

[Asuka]

Any future MMO which does not include full voice acting will simply fall short of awesomeness. Might still be good but no voice acting will drop it a notch.

[VenthiosLestaran]

OK so go kill 150 boars and bring me back 50 tusks. Don't even try lol.

 

Bonus stage 1: Kill 10 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 2: Kill 30 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 3: Kill 40 Rakghouls.

 

Total Rakghouls = 80. Even as a side bonus, you're still doing the same thing.

 

Those Rakghouls? Still gonna be standing there, not moving, never doing anything but standing in the green muck on Taris, forever.

[Asuka]

And yet STILL it takes a Quarter of the time to get to max level in SWTOR than it did in WoW vanilla, and I played practically the same amount of hours per day! Incredible!

 

Really? You could get to max level in WoW vanilla in 48 hours or less. That's not happening in SWTOR. You can also get to 80 now in that same amount of time.

[JDTC]

Bonus stage 1: Kill 10 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 2: Kill 30 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 3: Kill 40 Rakghouls.

 

Total Rakghouls = 80. Even as a side bonus, you're still doing the same thing.

 

Those Rakghouls? Still gonna be standing there, not moving, never doing anything but standing in the green muck on Taris, forever.

 

thank god those rakghouls cant read this post, otherwise they'd drink themselves to death and i'd have no bonus mission to do.

[VenthiosLestaran]

Really? You could get to max level in WoW vanilla in 48 hours or less. That's not happening in SWTOR. You can also get to 80 now in that same amount of time.

 

 

Not sure what Vanilla you played in, maybe the exploiting with a mage kind? But I quested, soloed, grouped, did dungeons, got involved in World PVP, you know played the game on my main character that I liked, never had to roll an alt?

 

Took me months, played 2-4 hours a night, little longer on weekend

 

Come to think of it no, you're wrong. The 1st WoW level 60 was a player named Xenif, took him roughly Ten Days. Which is more than it takes to cap out in SWTOR if you play 24/7 as he did. Please do your research before you come out with a "fact." I'd appreciate it.

 

It's happening, much faster. Don't wear blinders.

Edited February 4, 2012 by VenthiosLestaran

[Gehoornde]

Really? You could get to max level in WoW vanilla in 48 hours or less.

 

lol???

[Zorvan]

Well... Many people didn't care much for "talking pictures" at first.

 

Trying to equate voice acting in video games ( which has been done for years ) with motion pictures becoming voiced ( a true innovation ) is laughable at the very least.

[VenthiosLestaran]

Trying to equate voice acting in video games ( which has been done for years ) with motion pictures becoming voiced ( a true innovation ) is laughable at the very least.

 

People with limited knowledge or the desire to gain more knowledge often do things like this, it's a defense mechanism. Strike any comparison they can think of, if to do nothing more than shield an idea they don't want to let go of because if they let go of it, they feel they would lose something, which is untrue.

 

Usually this is a trait of people who are easily controlled by their emotions.

[HomeSlixe]

This is not a mindless grind MMO. There are over a million of us enjoying the voice acting and the story, so I suggest you find a game that suits your tastes and leave us to ours.

 

P.S. No one wants your stuff.

 

2 million

[HomeSlixe]

Bonus stage 1: Kill 10 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 2: Kill 30 Rakghouls.

UPDATING

Bonus stage 3: Kill 40 Rakghouls.

 

Total Rakghouls = 80. Even as a side bonus, you're still doing the same thing.

 

Those Rakghouls? Still gonna be standing there, not moving, never doing anything but standing in the green muck on Taris, forever.

the difference being that the bonus objectives are not mandatory to completing the quest.

Edited February 4, 2012 by HomeSlixe

[Taren]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news....

 

Ok...ya got me...I love being the bearer of bad news.

 

There are many players that enjoy the voice acting, including me. Whether or not there is a facade to see though doesn't matter to me or others, no doubt. It's an enjoyable addition to the game in my opinion.

 

Simple as that.

[Kubernetic]

It's completely and utterly useless.

 

What I came to realize is that, it takes the same amount of time, if not SHORTER, (so the attention span argument is invalid) to just read quests instead of hearing a voice actor painfully say it slower than I can read (and in nowhere near as awesome of a voice that I hear in my head. You know, the one that my creativity gave the NPC). And, even on a personal note, it's kind of pathetic that the majority of society isn't interested in something just because they have to read.

 

Not to mention, at some point, most people turn subtitles on anyway to read, then space bar before the voice actor has finished the sentence.

 

Side rant:

I know there is a growing majority of people who do not have full use of their mental faculties (I do not mean this in a mean way), one of which being creativity. It reminds me of the case of the child who, before he was exposed to lots of artist's depictions of birds, was asked to draw a bird, and subsequently drew a rather creative bird for a kid. Then, when he was exposed to other people's renditions of birds (i.e. force fed content and have other people's creativity affect his consciousness), he drew very boring "normal" birds. Being force fed such a specific aspect of content in such a big way kind of kills it for me. Though this is just personal and in no way affects my over all post.

 

GREAT post here, found in thread:

 

Sorry. I'll have to disagree.

 

I just ran through a series of quests in another game that I play that consisted of dialogue boxes that had to be read through and phrases clicked on to get more dialogue text that had to be read and then clicked on.

 

I found myself missing the voiced scenes of SWTOR the entire way. Voices can convey emotions and subtle hints in ways that text just can't match.

 

And claiming that you would just enjoy reading text-based quests instead of listening and watching them if you only had A) more creativity, or B) more mental capability has no bearing on the situation.

 

I grew up playing text-based adventure games and the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other games by Infocom were some of my favorites of all time.

 

But there's a marked difference in having a game that is ENTIRELY based in text and playing through all of it, versus a game that is a rich visual and audio experience that stops for short periods of text reading as a way to save resources and bypass the work involved to make the parts created through text more relational and similar to the rest of the gaming experience.

 

Your mileage may vary, but "useless" is an opinion, not fact.

[Ditched]

its called boring as hell.

 

its repetative, and who wants to spend 10mins handing in a quest? There is no real choice or impact of the voice acting, its just a time sink. Its ok for class quests, but I'm damm not listening to the side quests which disguise boring kill X collect X quests and are the same for every damm character.

You ever considered hitting the SPACE BAR then, genius?

[VenthiosLestaran]

the difference being that the bonus objectives are not mandatory to completing the quest.

 

No, not at all. But they're worth commendations - commendations you need on planets to get all the items from then you'd like. Usually worth 3 at a time. That isn't the point though. The point was it was said that "They don't exist here!" in similar terms. But they do.

 

Also, wheres the link that it went up to 2 million subs? Last I saw was an awesome 1.7. If it went up to 2m that's awesome.

Edited February 4, 2012 by VenthiosLestaran

[HomeSlixe]

You ever considered hitting the SPACE BAR then, genius?

 

^this

[nilssen]

With the resources and time investment it requires I hardly see voice acting as a good fit for an MMO. The game would probably be a lot more polished if it wasn't for the voice acting.

 

Poor choice if you ask me.

[Allegata]

I want to see someone in this thread link proof that voice acting is the huge resource and budget hog that is being claimed. My counter claim is that in an MMO with a budget in the 100's of millions of dollars, the voice acting is a drop in their budgetary bucket.

[JeremyDale]

It's completely and utterly useless.

 

What I came to realize is that, it takes the same amount of time, if not SHORTER, (so the attention span argument is invalid) to just read quests instead of hearing a voice actor painfully say it slower than I can read (and in nowhere near as awesome of a voice that I hear in my head. You know, the one that my creativity gave the NPC). And, even on a personal note, it's kind of pathetic that the majority of society isn't interested in something just because they have to read.

 

Not to mention, at some point, most people turn subtitles on anyway to read, then space bar before the voice actor has finished the sentence.

 

Side rant:

I know there is a growing majority of people who do not have full use of their mental faculties (I do not mean this in a mean way), one of which being creativity. It reminds me of the case of the child who, before he was exposed to lots of artist's depictions of birds, was asked to draw a bird, and subsequently drew a rather creative bird for a kid. Then, when he was exposed to other people's renditions of birds (i.e. force fed content and have other people's creativity affect his consciousness), he drew very boring "normal" birds. Being force fed such a specific aspect of content in such a big way kind of kills it for me. Though this is just personal and in no way affects my over all post.

 

GREAT post here, found in thread:

 

I like the voice acting up to the point. But having it for every single quest, and especially the daily ones - is just irritating and I think if I play this game for much longer my space bar is going to break.

[andreas_barth]

Its my opinion that it's completely and utterly useless.

 

Fixed it for ya.

[Karkais]

It's hardly useless. You may skip through it because you'd prefer to read it...

 

But if not for the voice acting? How many people do you think would simply click the NPC, find the objectives for the quest, and hit ACCEPT?

 

Do you honestly think people read the block text that comes with most quests in other MMO's? Because I sincerely doubt most people do.

 

I enjoy the voice acting. It's useful to me.

 

In my first MMO, city of heroes, the missiongivers gave missions as blocks of text, and it could be skipped if the group leader clicked so. As a result, I never had any chance to read any of it while doing group content.

 

I vastly prefer Biowares system really. Not to mention the voiceacting massively increases immersion, regardless how generic the responses are.

[lucasomega]

And, even on a personal note, it's kind of pathetic that the majority of society isn't interested in something just because they have to read.

 

Wait, did you just pull that out of your...

 

You think the majority of people that are interested in music, television, or movies like those things because they don't have to read them?

 

Not to mention, at some point, most people turn subtitles on anyway to read, then space bar before the voice actor has finished the sentence.

 

So the same people who hate reading, do a 180, and read the subtitles? I say this because you assume the majority of people interested in SWTOR play it so they don't have to read.

 

Side rant:

I know there is a growing majority of people who do not have full use of their mental faculties (I do not mean this in a mean way), one of which being creativity.

 

The first couple paragraphs of conjecture weren't enough?

 

Quite honestly, there's nothing better than reading something, and how your creativity can interpret it, instead of being force fed something.

 

I feel like you are trying to argue that reading the book is better than going to the movie, when SWTOR doesn't have a book version (unless you mute it with subtitles on). It's a game and an entirely different entertainment medium.

 

I'm not arguing against reading by any means. My GF is a librarian. We read together a lot. We also watch TV shows or movies together. We know the difference between cinematic entertainment and reading entertainment, and what each has to offer.

 

You forgot people who can read/comprehend faster than you, who are interested in story (but don't require exposition be delivered at a snail's pace in order to enjoy it) and in endgame as well.

 

Didn't BioWare deliver exactly what they had claimed? "Cinematic storytelling" is what they wanted to bring to the MMO genre and I can't even count how many times they said it.

 

I admit the voice acting is hit or miss at times, but I think overall (say 90+ percent) it's good. Couple that with animated sequences and it's a very cinematic experience that goes far beyond reading a snippet of quest text. I never felt that quest text in other MMOs conveyed that much story anyway.

 

PS: You are incredibly rude.

 

its called boring as hell.

 

its repetative, and who wants to spend 10mins handing in a quest?

 

Quest text is repetitive and boring (the second time around). If you aren't concerned with the outcome mash spacebar and 1 or 2. It really shouldn't take you 10 mins to hand in a quest unless force it to...

 

There is no real choice or impact of the voice acting

 

The dialogue varies depending on the choices you make...and YES those choices can change the story (and not for just the class specific quests); quests, objectives, areas, outcomes, NPCs you meet. All of those are affected by the choices made. I just played through a quest chain on the Jedi Knight that I want to play through three more times now just to see the different outcomes. I was pretty satisfied with what I chose, but it left me really curious because I was torn on which way to go with it. Furthermore, I ran through the Black Talon flashpoint probably two dozen times before I got a group that didn't kill the captain, which opens up an entirely different area, story arc, and boss.

 

I won't go into every time I've done multiple versions of quests, or unique quests as a result. If you don't believe there is an impact to your choices, you aren't trying to find them. After all, you aren't going to know if your choice had an impact if you don't try it a different way the second time around...

 

TL;DR

If you want to read a book, do it. If you want to play SWTOR, do it. Just don't come back complaining that your book doesn't let you choose, while SWTOR doesn't let you use your imagination.

Edited February 4, 2012 by lucasomega

[Zorvan]

 

TL;DR

If you want to read a book, do it. If you want to play SWTOR, do it. Just don't come back complaining that your book doesn't let you choose, while SWTOR doesn't let you use your imagination.

 

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books have been around since I was a wee youngin' in kindergarten. And all of their choices effect how the book reads/ends.

 

Nothing you do in your story, no choice you make, effects where you wind up at the end of the story in ToR.

 

ToR gives the ILLUSION of choice, nothing more.