Voice overs potentially ToRs downfall?

[Soluss]

One must consider both the topic and the fella with the shovel.

 

TL;DR This thread was necro'ed

 

It is still a very valid discussion. Most responses didnt understand what I meant by the thread though. I suspect that they read the title and not the context of the post.

[Digimanbyte_ID]

I think most of you people have no clue how easy and less expensive it is to do voice overs nowadays. The technology at the moment is way long past the point and even now many games including single player but also other MMO's are using voice overs as the norm over standard text boxes.

 

Yeah right now most of you think this is taking up 90% of SWTOR work load, well it ain't. Most voice over actors don't need to head to a specific studio to record as most can lease time from actors in nearby studios.

 

To top it off most of you knuckle heads just want a quick grinding feel to the game that if bioware complied you will complain about 3 months later. This is what most developers lose at, trying to please the forum posters and customers with what they want instead of what they need.

 

If anything I like this new system, playing WoW I found it so boring doing the same thing over and over for badges with no change in routine that I burnt out. Having paid hundreds of dollars in subscription fews for no new content or innovative gaming with no appreciation for my patronage I left the game.

 

Finally despite not pulling so much cash as expected, this company does have a lot more connections in acting areas then other gaming companies and as such has more cost effective resources in acting development.

 

Really ask yourself do you even know the connections bioware has with EA, Lucasarts, etc. Whether you know anything about contracting voice actors for a game and how much money they get. Cause we aren't talking famous movie star actors Voice acting. We are talking regular cartoon/anime career voice actors. In the end it doesn't take any massive resources in the long run and wouldn't speed up game development if they cut that program.

 

Even now the work has been done, there isn't any real drain on resources in future development especially when they are adding a new payment model and content and graphics into the game.

[Andryah]

Thank you!

 

 

 

You could have just said... trick or treat.

[CelCawdro]

Really ask yourself do you even know the connections bioware has with EA, Lucasarts, etc. Whether you know anything about contracting voice actors for a game and how much money they get. Cause we aren't talking famous movie star actors Voice acting. We are talking regular cartoon/anime career voice actors. In the end it doesn't take any massive resources in the long run and wouldn't speed up game development if they cut that program.

 

Interesting to note: your top-tier voice actors will pull in more cash for lending their voice to a game than your most high-profile live actors.

[MOPSFounder]

Interestingly, it's funny how some people disagree and state that other factors of this game lead to SWTOR's downfall. I think VOs were one of the major parts of SWTOR becoming such a flop.

[simplius]

major part? maybe,,we dont know how much of the budget it took

 

but it surely didnt have the positive long term effect, that they hoped for

 

STOs way of doing it works better overall IMO, as a "real " short movie sequence with several scenes

 

but theirs do not have voices,,yet,,and the visul quality is nowhere near this game

[RickShan]

This thread was two or three pages behind, who the hell revived it?

Just let this troll thread die please...

[AMKSED]

Yes, voice overs were the downfall of SWTOR. Too much resources put into them when they would have been MUCH better put into something else. PvP, etc.

[AMKSED]

This thread was two or three pages behind, who the hell revived it?

Just let this troll thread die please...

 

So because someone mentions something that could potentially be true yet you disagree with it then it's a troll thread?

[antwillgreen]

Oh god not another stupid thread... whatever fine, I highly doubt it but if thats your view fine.

[Stradlin]

It never stops to amaze me why and how EA spend so much money and effort on full voice acting and at same time displayed absolutely no effort or ambition at all when it comes to writing and character development.

 

At least good 80% of all dialogue you will ever encounter is of utterly forgettable " typical vanilla wow quest log read out loud" quality.

 

Vast majority of characters you ever encounter are severly lacking in character. It is very rare to encounter anyone who'd have any personality to speak of. Part of this has to do with their oddball decision to introduce like five million NPCs. Generally speaking typical NPC gets very little " screen time" and whatever little he gets is spend on " i need droid arses. there are some in north. go pick them up. may fiorce be with you" - drivel. If you must have 100 quests in planet Y, why is it you have some..33-50 NPCs giving these quests? So many different faces,none of them has time to establish any depth.

 

It is unsettling how much better The Secret World does in this regard. Ultimately, the structure is similar. You have tons of NPCs givign tons of quests. Player does the quests. Player moves on. Yet, TSW NPCs display much more personality..they are so much more alive. They give a very credible illusion of being NPCs with worries, fears and lives of their own..rather than NPCs who stand there waiting for player to click them so they can speak about gathering droid arses.

 

Much of it has to do with Bioware's persistently sticking with typical quest log approach to the quest giver NPCs. Somewhere very early on they decided every single NPC - MUST - tell player about how droids have arses, how he needs droid arses, how there are some arses available up north and how it'd be great if player went to pick the said arses up. Game mechanics present make all of this dialogue completely unnecessry, if not unwelcome; Once you've enjoyed some 90 secs of dialogue about where's and hows of droid arses, the quest pops in your log. You get friendly big arrow pointing straight to the said droid arses. Finding the location of the arses is not part of the game, so to speak. It is not among the challenges or..aspects TOR presents to player. With this in mind, why is it necessary to sacrifice virtually all of quest NPCs screen time for this?

 

If you go with arrows and pointers leading straight to quest zones shown in map, quest logs and descriptions themselves should be way more abstract. That 90 sec screentime of an invidual NPC could be used for plot advancement or building of much needed character.

 

Class storylines themselves have some good moments here and there. At least companion-> player interaction dodges the bullet described above almost always. Sadly this vanishes in sea of dialogue about droid arses. Imagine opening scene of Pulp Fiction where Jackson and Travolta spend all of their time speaking about shotguns in truck of the car. Once that is covered they speak of where the right appartment is, how to get there, how many people are inside and how they need to be extra careful about it all. No character development, no feet massages, no trips to Amsterdam. That's TOR dialogue for you.

Edited October 31, 2012 by Stradlin

[Revanchis]

Yes, voice overs were the downfall of SWTOR. Too much resources put into them when they would have been MUCH better put into something else. PvP, etc.

 

I seriously doubt putting all that money into PVP would have fixed everything, not to mention all the narrative players and soloers wouldn't be here. I know personally I never would have given this game a second look. I'm only here as this is a sequel to KotOR.

[lklinga]

OP is flat out wrong the voice overs and story is the only thing that sets the game aside and is the only reason I play the game.

If anything there should have been more voice overs.

 

Investment in any other area would be a waste of time PVP players always whine and move on.

 

If there is mistake that has been done is to not introduce more planetary quests with several levels of it.

 

Something on the line of multiple bonus series for each planet.

[lklinga]

Interesting to note: your top-tier voice actors will pull in more cash for lending their voice to a game than your most high-profile live actors.

 

Any starting not known actor will take that job even acting students as part of their portfolio.

 

While certainly more expensive then a 3rd world data entry person like WoW is using the money is not that much higher.

 

If you do this right you pay real voice actors only for the Player characters that you hear all the time and these part timers for NPC's

 

Honestly the only people who know where they wasted so much people are the people inside the company and these threads are useless.

[MOPSFounder]

So because someone mentions something that could potentially be true yet you disagree with it then it's a troll thread?

I know. I lol'd.

[chuixupu]

Conversely, just because some people don't like the VO aspect, doesn't make it its downfall. I don't believe anyone has any solid evidence here to say one way or another.

 

It's what Bioware does, it's practically their signature. I wouldn't expect anything else.

[BobJames]

if you are going to say it's a single player game then so is wow, tera, eve, aion, dcuo, and all the rest because every single one of them you can solo easy, no problem.

 

MMO is = having hundreds or thousands (considered massive) of people all online at the same time playing with each other in a world/universe. That's an mmo.

 

I agree. It isn't like BW HASN'T emplaced tools for you to play in groups or form guilds. The mere fact they have the social system is proof of that. You aren't limited to only doing OPS, FP's, WZ's or Heroics as a group, simply grouping to do ANY mission will gain you social points. They have World general chat so you can talk to others. Because you choose not to utilize these features is not BW's failure. It is yours. YOU are choosing to make it a single player game.

 

This is a widespread issue. You can be on a planet with 100 other players and NOTHING on general at all. You try to start a convo or ask a question...no response. Or the response to your question is simply "Codex" or "TorHead."

 

Maybe it is just me and this is the way all MMO's are on US based servers. ALL my WoW time was on Aussie servers due to my work schedule it was a better fit. There's a LOT of chatter on them. They are active, even at off-peak hours. Perhaps it is a cultural thing. American's (as I am) have a tendency to be self-centered and guarded outside their circle of friends. Hell, most people don't know who their neighbors of YEARS are except for a passing head nod or "how ya doing?" Growing up as a kid and my family, we KNEW everybody on the block and across the street and behind us from one end to the other. Very few were reclusive.

 

The internet fosters isolation. To deny that is to prove the point. For some, though, it brings out the worst that humanity has to offer. No consideration for what your actions and words may have on others online.

 

But to the point, NO, SWTOR is not designed for single-play only nor is it ill-equipped to foster a healthy, active community. YOU make that choice, not BW.

[Monoth]

It never stops to amaze me why and how EA spend so much money and effort on full voice acting and at same time displayed absolutely no effort or ambition at all when it comes to writing and character development.

 

At least good 80% of all dialogue you will ever encounter is of utterly forgettable " typical vanilla wow quest log read out loud" quality.

 

Vast majority of characters you ever encounter are severly lacking in character. It is very rare to encounter anyone who'd have any personality to speak of. Part of this has to do with their oddball decision to introduce like five million NPCs. Generally speaking typical NPC gets very little " screen time" and whatever little he gets is spend on " i need droid arses. there are some in north. go pick them up. may fiorce be with you" - drivel. If you must have 100 quests in planet Y, why is it you have some..33-50 NPCs giving these quests? So many different faces,none of them has time to establish any depth.

 

It is unsettling how much better The Secret World does in this regard. Ultimately, the structure is similar. You have tons of NPCs givign tons of quests. Player does the quests. Player moves on. Yet, TSW NPCs display much more personality..they are so much more alive. They give a very credible illusion of being NPCs with worries, fears and lives of their own..rather than NPCs who stand there waiting for player to click them so they can speak about gathering droid arses.

 

Much of it has to do with Bioware's persistently sticking with typical quest log approach to the quest giver NPCs. Somewhere very early on they decided every single NPC - MUST - tell player about how droids have arses, how he needs droid arses, how there are some arses available up north and how it'd be great if player went to pick the said arses up. Game mechanics present make all of this dialogue completely unnecessry, if not unwelcome; Once you've enjoyed some 90 secs of dialogue about where's and hows of droid arses, the quest pops in your log. You get friendly big arrow pointing straight to the said droid arses. Finding the location of the arses is not part of the game, so to speak. It is not among the challenges or..aspects TOR presents to player. With this in mind, why is it necessary to sacrifice virtually all of quest NPCs screen time for this?

 

If you go with arrows and pointers leading straight to quest zones shown in map, quest logs and descriptions themselves should be way more abstract. That 90 sec screentime of an invidual NPC could be used for plot advancement or building of much needed character.

 

Class storylines themselves have some good moments here and there. At least companion-> player interaction dodges the bullet described above almost always. Sadly this vanishes in sea of dialogue about droid arses. Imagine opening scene of Pulp Fiction where Jackson and Travolta spend all of their time speaking about shotguns in truck of the car. Once that is covered they speak of where the right appartment is, how to get there, how many people are inside and how they need to be extra careful about it all. No character development, no feet massages, no trips to Amsterdam. That's TOR dialogue for you.

 

I completely disagree, I've found the personalities and writing pretty good over all for SWTOR, sure there are some dud's like the Consular Story but over all they did a pretty good job....

 

Would I've have liked a more darker story overall ? of course, but it's obvious that Bioware was trying to keep it PG for the kiddies.... thus all the fade to black scenes we got....

[chuixupu]

I completely disagree, I've found the personalities and writing pretty good over all for SWTOR, sure there are some dud's like the Consular Story but over all they did a pretty good job....

.

 

Just want to say, what is a dud for some may not be for others. While there are some stories that clearly get consistently voted as either favorite or least favorite, There's definitely a wide variety of opinions.

After all the negative things I heard about the Consular story, I was surprised to find I actually really liked it. Maybe because I didn't have high expectations in the first place. But then I know some people had a blast with the Smuggler story, but I struggled to complete it.

[Monoth]

OP is flat out wrong the voice overs and story is the only thing that sets the game aside and is the only reason I play the game.

If anything there should have been more voice overs.

 

Investment in any other area would be a waste of time PVP players always whine and move on.

 

If there is mistake that has been done is to not introduce more planetary quests with several levels of it.

 

Something on the line of multiple bonus series for each planet.

 

Agreed.... SWTOR downfall was it's strict adherence to 10 year old MMO mechanics.... Outside of Story they didn't try anything new or build upon existing MMO systems to make them better.... The ONLY thing SWTOR has going for it is it's story and voice overs..

[simplius]

wrong,,,its BW who makes the field, and we play by their rules

 

from what ive seen of GW2, they try to autogroup players during events, so there will be less problems

 

and most mmos have rewarded the worst player behaviors for many years,,so now theyre in every game

 

apparently wow is having trouble with crossrealms,,since a player is now grouped with people, he will

 

never see again, he might as well treat them like ****,,also since one of the others will do the same

 

so instead of a group working together,,,they will just ruin each others game

 

and just wait for F2P ,,i seriously believe some of those guys are REAL psychos,,the dangerous ones

[Bojangle]

Say what? This idea is almost as bad as going to comicon and having a signup sheet filled with all the fans who "want to get into voiceacting" and ask the same stupid questions over and over at panels. At best, you end up wasting Producers' time- that's a lot of time spent listening to demos. Why would they do this when they already know VAs' agents, can call someone up on the phone, fax over an NDA and script then have them come in and do it?

Actually it isn't a bad idea. You are obviously clueless about the industry. Having college students who are studying radio/television are quite capable of acting and doing voice overs and can do a good job at it. Having something like this on their resume will really help them out along with the experience. Not only that it saves BioWare a lot of money. I love how you have 0 ideas and your retort was pretty fail imo. Having "fans" do voice overs? LMAO WOW you blind. HUGE difference between people studying and wanting to be in the field vs some fan from a convention.

 

Reading comprehension is your friend!

[Darvus]

Voice overs have nothing to do with the failure of this single player online RPG.

 

I find this statement funny. Personally, I feel like it's a single player online game, as well. I actually think that this was KOTOR 3, and they adapted it. The limitations at the beginning where two people of the same class could not enter the same instance, was a pretty clear indicator.

[Arkerus]

I find this statement funny. Personally, I feel like it's a single player online game, as well. I actually think that this was KOTOR 3, and they adapted it. The limitations at the beginning where two people of the same class could not enter the same instance, was a pretty clear indicator.

 

It was never programmed as a single player game. Nice conspiracy theory.

[Korusus]

The limitations at the beginning where two people of the same class could not enter the same instance, was a pretty clear indicator.

 

You do know that you can turn that off in your preferences and have been able to do so from day 1 yes? Just checking, I don't know if this was ever advertised well enough.