Voices and story. Are voices really that important?

[DorkTrooper]

Voices and story are very important to me. SW is why I started playing. The story is why I'm still playing.

 

Not everyone is PVP or bust.

[KhamG]

Yeah its just that the story is not very good. There, I said it.

[Megaloz]

If voices were so great why have they lost hundreds of thousands if not in the million yet of subs. Why the serves so insanely dead now?

 

Because voice is not what keeps people playing

 

Why is WoW killing it with 10 million or so subs? Is it voice? No.

But SWTOR has said they are basically cloning WoW and trying to compete with them, but ToR with voice is failing miserably, and WoW with no voice is doing outstanding.

 

I tell you why, because they neglected to put in sooooooooo many must have features in an mmo on launch day that they didnt realize that their holy voice feature would not be enough to keep people playing.

 

We had 0 guild features

We had 0 customizable UI tweaking

We had 0 LFG tools

We had 0 Open World PvP incentives to even fight

We had 0 functionality of the hyped up "Alliance" system that was on their website and for us to setup

We had 0 ways of customizing our appearance or matching sets

We had 0 use for the abysmal market system

We had 0 functionality or purpse of the light/neutral/dark system

We had 0 implimentation of the Legacy System

We had 0 ways of transfering servers

 

I can go on and on.

 

Point is.....voice in itself....is it great? Sure. Given a choice between voice and no voice, we'll pick voice. Their problem is, they forgot to add so many other must have features, that have absolutely killed this game....and unless they REALLY pick up the speed, they will continue to lose more.

 

I hate to see this game fail, because it has tons of potential, but man, these devs, really need to wake up, learn fast, and implement fast. Voice .... does ... not ... cut ... it.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Megaloz

[Bluestone]

Does the voice work really add that much to the game and how does it impact the story? Is the story, either way, even that good?

 

Short version:

Voices? Worth it? Idunno

Story good? Some of it. Spread way too thin. Too much "filler".

Companions too silent and spread thin too.

 

In my opinion no. I actually think that voice overs on every single quest is one thing that is pushing me away. I am sick of having the same conversation cutscenes when I do repeated quests (ie. Ilum/Bels/Corellia dailies). I would have personally preferred the voice overs to be on the class quests only and for more time and money to have gone into the game features/mechanics post-launch.

[GalacticKegger]

It's what I'm used to having enjoyed the KOTOR series. Besides, I'm not a click & go quester. Even in WoW & LOTRO I actually took the time to read the quests in search of story ... which usually went over like a fart in a spacesuit outside of friends and the guild. Edited May 21, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[SentinelDranoel]

wall of text for a old question that has been answered. Bioware has been doing this for years now sir, you are late.

[Shiradan]

It's amazing when I find other players' char's voice are different from mine, we should respect this great effort, don't you feel you are facing some real people rather than just data stream and floating points? That's a fantastic development of MMORPG, I would like to see every game has this feature in the future

[gregordunbar]

Does the voice work really add that much to the game and how does it impact the story? Is the story, either way, even that good?

 

This has been asked many times since I got into beta, a year before release.

 

The answer hasnt changed. Without the fully voiced story, and good story...this game would be beyond bad. It doesnt offer anything that good other than those two things which is one of the top reasons why people are not sticking around. There is no depth to the game.

 

Great story, great voice acting alone....does not a good MMO make.

[MaddenMan]

Voices and story. Are voices really that important?

 

 

Who gives a crap if you can't find anyone to play with when you hit 50?

[LeonBraun]

Absolutely.

 

Changes everything. Your character goes from a flat-screen image to a living, breathing avatar that one can actually experience. It further enhances the story line by bringing all characters to life. Lord Zash would appear far different as just a random image and a typed response in the chat window then she does now.

 

Many villains and allies in the bounty hunter quest line would not so readily come to life. Minor one's like lady of pain, Ahnaris the cat woman gain personality and depth as a result of the visual experience.

 

Though a bit primative currently, my guess is that this will become the standard by which future MMORGPS will be judged.

 

^^ This.

 

And The Secret World to be released next month is also fully voiced.

 

The voiced scenes are what drove this game to monumental heights in the first couple weeks.

 

Make no mistake, the voice acting and use of it is not the reason this game has been struggling in the past couple months.

[DirtyDiggler]

I don't think story and voice and cutscenes really belong in an mmo, because its just a different kind of genre.

 

Single players RPGS are great for what they do but work largely due to the fact its a solo game. That means choices and decisions are bear fruit and you can effect the world around you.

 

Mmos will never work that way, I kill a guy who respawns 2 mins later. I save the planet and push by the empire but they remain there still fighting just the same for the next guy.... I can never see my impact or footprint.

 

KOTOR is far better the SWTOR in story and VO and that kind of experience. You can't even kill your companions in SWTOR and in the end its all a big waste of time for an MMO....

 

The poeple that praise the story shouldn't do so comparing it to other mmo's compare its story with other RPGs and it fails very badly. Same thing with warzones which are a copy of FPS match modes, and that don't stack up as well. Jedi academy played better pvp wise.

[Valkirus]

This has been asked many times since I got into beta, a year before release.

 

The answer hasnt changed. Without the fully voiced story, and good story...this game would be beyond bad. It doesnt offer anything that good other than those two things which is one of the top reasons why people are not sticking around. There is no depth to the game.

 

Great story, great voice acting alone....does not a good MMO make.

 

I agree with this post. Well said. The voice acting is a nice thing, helps with immersion. But I found out the choices you make donot really matter in the long run. Apart from dark or light side points, which in themselves are only good for gear choices.....there is no penalty for being Dark V versus Light V. You can even choose to turn off the Sith corruption...lol. And yeah..what this game really needs to keep players is a feeling you will have stuff to do at max level. Even the stuff there is to do you can'nt if your on a low pop server.

[EJedi]

I pressed my spacebar after about five seconds of reading your post.

 

You wasted far too much time and effort typing that.

 

I have found that, on occasion, it is better to type out a rant post in Notepad, read it very closely, edit it, read it again, then simply close Notepad with the knowledge that nobody else wants to read the rant.

 

Try that next time.

[ISTrick]

Yes, they are important - for a story/lore based MMO (which this is).

 

No, they aren't important for Korean grind fests (which this is not).

 

 

I couldn't play a game with text boxes now, and I don't want to... since story/lore are extremely important to me.

[cyberfreaq]

One thing SWTOR did best was enhance the leveling experience from a MMO perspective. The leveling experience is decent to say the least. The problem is that being an MMO, this game needs features for after the leveling is complete (aka end-game). The lack of features (and I'm not talking just about cross-server stuff, but actual features) is where the problem is that. Edited May 21, 2012 by cyberfreaq

[Lazzer]

welcome to the club .. i said that voice acting would be the bane of this game.

 

How many people have actually listened to all the story of there class .. how many people listen to all the story in FPs or raids . I would wager the majority of players dont listen to the FPs or raid scenes the FIRST TIME let alone afterward.

 

That being said .. to change it now would also be silly. Its a situation they are gonna have to live with now .... a needed cost to keep up appearances. That being said .. they kinda found a way to avoid alot of chatter.

 

Look at 1.2 dailies ... 1 voice acting quest and the rest are just mission box and area quests.

 

I have listened to every dialogue in my class story on all of my characters, I have listened to the dialogue on every side quest the 1st time that I did them, I level now on class story only so as not to have to repeat quests.

 

I have listened to the dialogue and watched the cut scenes on every Operration and Flashpoint at least the 1st time through.

 

Do I use the spacebar? Yes, I use it to get rid of the cut scene of my ship taking off and landing, I use it when running HM and Ops as I've watched them all multiple times and I use it on the daily quests (which I repeat so often it's crazy).

 

Most of my 200 strong guild is the like minded, we are actually recruiting members at around 2 -3 a week and have only lost a few players.

[Lazzer]

If voices were so great why have they lost hundreds of thousands if not in the million yet of subs. Why the serves so insanely dead now?

 

Your numbers are an exaggeration, even though we have lost a lot of players, we are losing the players who don't like this style of game and keeping the ones that do. so long as BW concentrates on keeping the players that are happy with the game (like myself) then they will have a very loyal fan base. I see no issue with losing the players that don't like the game as it will mean BW won't be convinced by them to change the direction of them game.

 

 

Why is WoW killing it with 10 million or so subs? Is it voice? No.

But SWTOR has said they are basically cloning WoW and trying to compete with them, but ToR with voice is failing miserably, and WoW with no voice is doing outstanding.

 

Because people are addicted to WoW, just like I was with EQ. You have achieved a lot, got a good group of friends, have a strong economic foothold and know the environment, it's safe, secure and familiar. Ergo hard to give up.

 

 

Point is.....voice in itself....is it great? Sure. Given a choice between voice and no voice, we'll pick voice. Their problem is, they forgot to add so many other must have features, that have absolutely killed this game....and unless they REALLY pick up the speed, they will continue to lose more.

 

To be honest, I wouldn't play an MMORPG that didn't have VO any more and a very distinct story, gone are my days of reading text and standing in a "camp" to split, kill, loot for weeks at a time to get a level.

 

Certainly there is content that I would love to see added, by I'm happy with what I have so far.

 

I hate to see this game fail, because it has tons of potential, but man, these devs, really need to wake up, learn fast, and implement fast. Voice .... does ... not ... cut ... it.

 

Me too but a rushed job will inevitably be a bad one.

[Itukaaj]

1 character from launch VO was cool. At 50 I realized that every level 50 was a member of the dark council. My journey had no effect. I wasnt even addressed differently by NPCs than I was Pre 50. Now it feels like I beat the game I am supposed to roll an alt.

 

I wish the spent the money on other stuff: FPS, lag, ability delay, game features, content. They should have let people beta at 50 before they launched. This mistake is costing them more than VO did.

[Monoth]

I don't think story and voice and cutscenes really belong in an mmo, because its just a different kind of genre.

 

Single players RPGS are great for what they do but work largely due to the fact its a solo game. That means choices and decisions are bear fruit and you can effect the world around you.

 

Mmos will never work that way, I kill a guy who respawns 2 mins later. I save the planet and push by the empire but they remain there still fighting just the same for the next guy.... I can never see my impact or footprint.

 

KOTOR is far better the SWTOR in story and VO and that kind of experience. You can't even kill your companions in SWTOR and in the end its all a big waste of time for an MMO....

 

The poeple that praise the story shouldn't do so comparing it to other mmo's compare its story with other RPGs and it fails very badly. Same thing with warzones which are a copy of FPS match modes, and that don't stack up as well. Jedi academy played better pvp wise.

 

The reason it fails to single player RPG stories is because in a MMO they stretch the class story to cover 50 levels, in a single player RPG you don't have to do that so you have a continuous main story more or less.... Still if you compare ANY aspect of a MMO to a single player game its going to fail... Combat for example is horrible in all MMO's compared to single player games...

 

But given the scope of a MMO compared to a single player game thats tailored to one person is comparing apples to oranges.... So in that regard I feel it is appropriate to compare SWTOR story telling to other MMO's it competes with.

 

From what I can tell over the last several months is that the leadership of Bioware has failed to produce a great game, take for example the new custom UI, that wasn't even on Bioware's to do list, a Employee did it on his spare time and look how great it turned out, I've never seen a MMO UI that allows you to customize it to this extent.... IMO The reason it turned out so great is he didn't have the guys in charge looking over his shoulder when he created it, he had the freedom to create something without upper management red tape...

 

Biowares upper management needs to give there more talented people more freedom to create great content and not restrict them... Problem with upper management is that they think they know everything and that only their opinion matters and usually hold back talented creative people, I have a feeling this is the case with SWTOR...

Edited May 21, 2012 by Monoth

[Lazzer]

1 character from launch VO was cool. At 50 I realized that every level 50 was a member of the dark council. My journey had no effect. I wasnt even addressed differently by NPCs than I was Pre 50. Now it feels like I beat the game I am supposed to roll an alt.

 

I wish the spent the money on other stuff: FPS, lag, ability delay, game features, content. They should have let people beta at 50 before they launched. This mistake is costing them more than VO did.

 

[shrug] the story made the game very personalised for me and I enjoyed it thoroughly, each to their own.

 

You seem to forget that they got an EXTRA budget for the VO, no VO means no extra budget so what they spent money on is not really the issue at all.

[DanaDark]

The voice overs honestly have made the missions for me... without them, there is very little chance that any mission would have held my interest.

[DarthTHC]

Did not read the exposition.

 

For me, voices are good and important the first time through the story and much less so subsequent times. Pet voices are fine. I get enough interaction with them.

[Lazzer]

I don't think story and voice and cutscenes really belong in an mmo, because its just a different kind of genre..

 

MMORPG. Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. I've never understood why it was shortened to MMO, shouldn't it at least be MMOG? Or is it no longer even a game?

 

Seriously the grass roots of the genre is RPG from a huge multiplayer perspective, the RPG aspect seems to be lost and we have a generation of players coming through that seem to be metagamers and theory crafters. I'm glad we have a game here (all be it struggling) that is more RPG than technical data analysing.

[USMCjv]

One thing SWTOR did best was enhance the leveling experience from a MMO perspective. The leveling experience is decent to say the least. The problem is that being an MMO, this game needs features for after the leveling is complete (aka end-game). The lack of features (and I'm not talking just about cross-server stuff, but actual features) is where the problem is that.

I agree I liked leveling, the first couple of times, and that endgame needs work. The one thing that would have made me stick around a lot longer is if there were different questing areas for the same level. As it is you are funneled by the annoying hallways but then you are hamstrung even further by not choosing where to quest, and where you do quest the outcome is the same no matter what you choose, but being able to quest where I wanted would have made leveling and creating my own story far more enjoyable. As it is now it feels more like "my" journey is being shoved down my throat.

[Cerion]

as with all these threads:

 

yes story is important

yes the VO makes it work

No, I'll not play another MMO unless it has fully VO'd content.

The VO must be high quality, of the sort you find in any animated series or feature.

 

It's one of the main reasons I won't be playing GW2...grabbing the Copy Boy from the office and recording him reading lines for your 'story' isn't the right way to proceed, GW2. You need actors. Real actors.