WereMops Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 (edited) half of which just got laid off I must have missed something, but since when does some of an unknown number equal half of that same unknown number? Hi everyone, I’ll start off by calling out the elephant in the room: yes, there was some restructuring here at the studio recently and we had to bid farewell to some of our colleagues and yes, we are all deeply saddened by this. Edited May 24, 2012 by WereMops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tloops Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I must have missed something, but since when does some of an unknown number equal half of that same unknown number? sorry it was actually stated in multiple areas that the number was around 30% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mannic Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 You could argue the money part, but no coders are sitting in a recording studio capturing voice-overs. That has very little to do with the game being worked on by the professionals who code the game. No, but you can rest assured there are animators / coders taking that finished studio copy and synching it with the virtual actor in the cut-scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WereMops Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 (edited) sorry it was actually stated in multiple areas that the number was around 30% Source for that? I have yet found a single official post anywhere on the internet that the SWTOR part of Bioware has had a 30% layoff, "some" is the only statement that I've seen Edited May 24, 2012 by WereMops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tloops Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Not exactly a huge waste considering in 1.2 they did a cutscene for the new warzone, cutscenes for Black Hole, Lost Island and the new Operation (if ops have cutscenes, too busy on alts to play one) and they also made a ton of fixes to other cutscenes throughout the game, so i don't count having a cutscenes team as a wasted resource. Also considering 1.3 will be features heavy, and content light its likely that they are already working on update 1.4. most of what you saw in 1.2 was nearly done and was actually slated for release. 1.3 is more of the same,meant to be in the release. the only thing they have been working on that is new is rated warzones,server transfers and LFG, which all should have been in a AAA mmo at launch,i blame this on taking to much time/resources on V.O in developement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBBP Posted May 24, 2012 Author Share Posted May 24, 2012 i blame this on taking to much time/resources on V.O in developement. You could also blame politicians and have the same amount of credence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlownSi Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Well, for future expansions and content patches, I would agree that side quest should be left out of the VO, but I think planet story missions should keep VO, along with class of course (if we get expanded class stories in the future.) Just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deusBAAL Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I'd be bothered, the voiceover is usually the only thing that makes it possible for me to do those quests, in the future if they don't want to bring in voice actors they can always just get random people working at bioware to do a bit of VO I enjoy the VO and think it has to stay on a high lvl. There are so many random NPCs in the game that I am sure they use random BW employees for them (anything else would be a dumb waste of money), BUT for anything some NPCs says your char will answer something and on player chars and companion BW is "stuck" with the original voice actors to create new content. Having a player char or companion say stuff witha different voice would totally suck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBBP Posted May 24, 2012 Author Share Posted May 24, 2012 Well, for future expansions and content patches, I would agree that side quest should be left out of the VO, but I think planet story missions should keep VO, along with class of course (if we get expanded class stories in the future.) Just my opinion. Thank you for getting us back on track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackardin Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 and you know this how? it seems highly unlikely they have a team of coders waiting around just to do cutscenes, that would be a huge waste of resources on biowares part. This is part of the problem with alot of complaints on this board. People make assumptions, assume they know something, then make a determination based upon that false premise in order to support their negative argument. It is akin to saying that the fries hold up the burgers at the local hamburger joint, and therefore it would be in their best interest to stop giving fries. Self defeating prophecy based upon a false premise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackardin Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Cut scenes are the future. They've brought the characters, the adventure to life. They are here to stay. I can't see any major release going back to text again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitsinni Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 They should just put in an option to either read the quest or do the vo scenes. That way people can play the way they want. Of course people will complain about it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mannic Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Cut scenes are the future. They've brought the characters, the adventure to life. They are here to stay. I can't see any major release going back to text again. Based on what? TOR hasn't impacted the MMO industry enough to cause other developers to suddenly decide, "aww, jeez, now we gotta have voice over or we're not gonna be able to compete with that TOR juggernaut." People are leaving TOR in the hundreds of thousands. VO is obviously a poor allocation of resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitsinni Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 When was the last time someone actually took the time to read the quests in the wall of text quest games? I know I always just scanned them for the objective and moved on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galbatorrix Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I would! This game is so cinematic. I'd hate for them to take that away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kubernetic Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I don't want all non-class quests scaled back to text quests. I don't want text quests. There would have to be some HUGE trade-off in exchange for that in order to make that transition anywhere near worthwhile. And whatever trade-off that would be, if it's diminishing the non-class quests, then you're just attacking more of the parts of the game that are designed for multiple players, while other people are claiming it's a single player game in the first place. Now you want to remove all of the focus on non-class issues where players are intentionally segregated and go after non-class quests where we can play together as a team? Not sure how smart that is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZudetGambeous Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 They've already moved away from VO. New BH dailies = no VO New Ops = no VO new FP = no VO (unless you count having to enter a cutscene to hit [start hardmode] ) Bioware realized a while ago that they couldn't afford money wise or time wise to make everything fully voiced, so now they added quest "terminals" and don't include VO in FP/Ops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranid Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 VO is what made SWTOR stand apart from other MMO's in the first place. Without it, SWTOR might as well be WOW with lightsabers. Funny how this question has popped up after the Layoffs. Sounds like a Bioware plant testing the waters of how to cut the budget to save the future of the game. I suppose one must do what one must do with whatever resources that are left, but I for one do not like the suggestion of changing a major selling point of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlacke Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 VO and story are great and a big part of this game, it would bother me greatly if it was scaled back to only class quests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyla Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I would. That said I think BW could improve some things for the people that aren't (anymore) interested in the cutscenes. In repeatable content, there should ways to skip or shorten cutscenes (Not sure many people think it's really interesting to hear the cutscenes in BT/Esseles after the 100th time.Using space bar once could skip more sentences so people don't have to spam it.There could be automatic pre set answers for a specific alignment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyla Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Funny how this question has popped up after the Layoffs. It's been discussed for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master-Nala Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 i would be fine if they got rid of it all together and just pumped out more content. the voice overs is the reason this game is slow to produce new stuff. Game has been out six months. Had two updates and a world event. Last WoW content patch was in November. What do you define as slow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Ravenhurst Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Sidequest story VOs - forget it. Money and time wasted, go for mission terminals. And scale down to one epic class quest for all, one for each side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaonis Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I'd hardly notice. There's only a handful of quests where the voice acting is any good and useful, namely the first few planets. Then the quests quickly turn into the same old "Let me explain my you need to kill X amount of rabbits for me" on very planet repeatedly. I already skip those quests, I sat through them once on my first play through and found them pretty boring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthTHC Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I like the VO the first couple times through on all quests. Another MMO to be released in 2013 seems to be following in SWTOR's footsteps. They're going fully voiced too. It may become the new standard, which in this player's opinion would be pretty cool. Sadly they're also using the Hero engine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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