Voice overs potentially ToRs downfall?

[Wraiven]

The voice overs are what sets this game apart from all the rest. It's one of the many reasons I am still playing this game. I loved it and Bioware did a great job on them.

 

It's not what they did wrong, voice overs are what they did right.

[Aelther]

Really? You think the few minutes of class story each planet is keeping players slogging through the hours of repetitive 'collect 10 womp rat butts' that they have to grind through to be able to do those few new class missions?

 

Almost all MMOs are filled with this type of quests, except that it's usually 'collect 100 boar butts'. And yes I think class stories are worth collecting those butts.

[LordArtemis]

I have an idea to help with this problem.

 

1) there is a huge collection of VO for alien and robot races in the game. Dialog can be written for this kind of speech since it is not standard.

2) there is also a good amount of dialog that can be considered story neutral...especially player responses.

 

So here is my idea...Spec Ops/Jedi Council/Sith Order missions

 

The idea is to create a single set of VO intros to the supplemental mission system. A short dialog set, contacted by a special member of the organization listed above, directs you to the mission boards.

 

On those boards missions are generated randomly, using plugins to generate/assign dialog sets. You can have three kinds of missions

 

1) Special

 

This is a retrieve or repair mission, where you are sent in behind enemy lines to destroy or repair an item. You may have a boss to kill. An alien or droid will provide dialog. Accessing systems or retrieving records can also be done.

 

2) Search and Destroy

 

This mission sends you in to attack a base, group or installation. You kill X amount of trash, and perhaps one or two bosses, no dialog except for Alien or Droid commentary.

 

3) Intelligence or Espionage

 

This mission asks you to investigate/frame subjects or do recon on a specific area. May or may not have enemy contact.

 

4) Companion missions

 

Not from terminals. Companions would offer missions that you could go on, could be any type of mission. Again, standard existing dialog is used.

 

 

The rewards would be commendations and/or orange items (empty) and perhaps class specific green items. Other drops from mobs would be regular world drops.

 

This way an unlimited supply of missions is provided. Eventually this system can be used to create space and personal ship defense/invasion missions as well.

 

Just a thought....

 

I have to add an addendum...

 

Scaling heroics.

 

The idea is to set heroics to allow scaling, using an UI setting. This way ANY heroic can be run at your level, as all mobs inside will scale based on your level or group level, and rewards will also scale automatically. This gives interest in running old content since it scales up in difficulty based on your level or group...and is optional.

Edited September 3, 2012 by LordArtemis

[Soluss]

I think he's referring to the voice overs. As in the voice overs for the content are already long done. That would explain how the dialogue from future raids is already in the game available to be data mined. Building the raids and content which includes these conversations is quite another thing entirely.

 

Honestly I don't believe the voice overs took as much resources as people are thinking. Compared to building the game itself, simply recording the conversations of the characters isn't all that difficult. Yes they have to hire a writing staff and voice actors in addition to normal staff, but its not like these guys make up the majority of the development team.

 

Its not just voice overs. Its also building the cut scenes and the coding for it. Its also building the choices and the coding for it. Its the extra coding it takes to let the database know your character has chosen "x" and not "y" "z" or "a". Its also syncing all that together. Perhaps you were not in beta but if you were in early beta there were alot of cutscense that were way out of sync. Showing the wrong frame, showing the wrong dialogue, choices poping up too soon, showing the wall instead of the characters talking. Some selections would bug quests all together and was not fixable until they actual fixed the bug. There was one I remember, in the BH story, that bugged and you couldnt continue the class story at all. That was still in, in some cases, at launch. That stuff is all extra coding work, extra art work, extra animation work and extra testing and everything else... that text quests or terminal quests dont have to worry about.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Soluss

[Vandicus]

Its not just voice overs. Its also building the cut scenes and the coding for it. Its also building the choices and the coding for it. Its the extra coding it takes to let the database know your character has chosen "x" and not "y" "z" or "a". Its also syncing all that together. Perhaps you were not in beta but if you were in early beta there were alot of cutscense that were way out of sync. Showing the wrong frame, showing the wrong dialogue, choices poping up too soon, showing the wall instead of the characters talking. Some selections would bug quests all together and was not fixable until they actual fixed the bug. There was one I remember, in the BH story, that bugged and you couldnt continue the class story at all. That was still in, in some cases, at launch. That stuff is all extra coding work, extra art work, extra animation work and extra testing and everything else... that text quests or terminal quests dont have to worry about.

 

Well thing about that part is that easy entry of dialog options tends to be built into the toolset they made for building the game.

 

Dialog options are probably fairly easy to make at this point for them. Hopefully they've also streamlined a lot of the body animations used while talking. The most difficult part that I can see for them now is matching the mouth to the words. That I can see them having to do new work for each time.

 

That being said, I don't actually know how they built their toolset. If its similar to the Dragonage toolset, and they continuously streamline it(which is probably how they were able to fix all those problems from beta, I doubt they redid their code individually on each and every cutscene, but instead fixed the toolset issues that caused the cutscenes to be buggy). Overall I'm not sure how much effort is required to add in new cutscenes. My personal opinion is that relative to the rest of the game, new warzones or new operations, which require the addition of new mechanics to the toolset, they would be easy and quick to do. It probably took a lot of resources to build into the toolset originally, but doesn't take as much resources now. Like the design of a bush might originally take a lot of work, but from the toolset its now a drag and drop(not quite to that extreme but you get the picture).

 

Of course I don't really know how they built their toolset. Given the focus of the game, its 4th pillar, I would assume they'd have tried to streamline the addition of new story content as much as possible. Nobody outside of Bioware really knows how much resources are now required to add new voice over content, so I think its hard to judge whether or not its causing a dearth of content.

[Soluss]

Well thing about that part is that easy entry of dialog options tends to be built into the toolset they made for building the game.

 

Dialog options are probably fairly easy to make at this point for them. Hopefully they've also streamlined a lot of the body animations used while talking. The most difficult part that I can see for them now is matching the mouth to the words. That I can see them having to do new work for each time.

 

That being said, I don't actually know how they built their toolset. If its similar to the Dragonage toolset, and they continuously streamline it(which is probably how they were able to fix all those problems from beta, I doubt they redid their code individually on each and every cutscene, but instead fixed the toolset issues that caused the cutscenes to be buggy). Overall I'm not sure how much effort is required to add in new cutscenes. My personal opinion is that relative to the rest of the game, new warzones or new operations, which require the addition of new mechanics to the toolset, they would be easy and quick to do. It probably took a lot of resources to build into the toolset originally, but doesn't take as much resources now. Like the design of a bush might originally take a lot of work, but from the toolset its now a drag and drop(not quite to that extreme but you get the picture).

 

Of course I don't really know how they built their toolset. Given the focus of the game, its 4th pillar, I would assume they'd have tried to streamline the addition of new story content as much as possible. Nobody outside of Bioware really knows how much resources are now required to add new voice over content, so I think its hard to judge whether or not its causing a dearth of content.

 

My opinion is that if it was as easy as you think, we would have gotten more by now. Black hole dailies are all terminal. No class stories in their first "expansion". Easy is subjective. It may be easy to do but my premise still stands.... it takes a lot longer to create then they typical MMO text / terminal quests. It also takes more money.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Soluss

[Darka]

I honestly think that Voice overs can not be used by Bioware as any form of excuse, when they agreed to go that route they would have understood the consequences and costs doing so would entail.

Story isnt bad, but i felt everyone just assumed as much time, detail and effort would go into other aspects, instead of a gamble on story being everything.

 

Its funny looking back now people would ask, what about feature X, and all we would hear is that its there, and then we heard more about story.

 

If they ever gave up on the class stories It will be sad, yet not surprising.

We have not had a class story update yet, and would like to see one before any xpacks

[DevonDs]

I love the story emphises and the VO work. It is one of the main reasons I enjoy this game and would far rather have interesting story then player houseing etc.

 

For me the big loss with the VO is that I think it means that they won't be able to set up so that subscribers can create content. That was a very cool feature on COH and in STO. I really enjoyed player made content in those games, and it kept the number of interesting quests high.

 

If they allow non VO subscriber made missions that would be great. I doubt it will ever happen however.

[SlimsPicken]

For future content I would be pleased to see limited voice work for non class quests.

 

Save money and dev time, and make the voice acting special when you do encounter it. Not something to be spacebarred.

[TUXs]

It's not the VO's at all that are the issue...it's Bioware. They're the heart of the problem.

[Kubernetic]

Im not trying to bash the game at all but ... way to be a good community member and talk down to me.

 

Let me be more specific...

 

The best part of the game. Also could potentially be TORs biggest problem (negative speculation). We all know that leveling was the best aspect of the game. I think everyone could agree it was enjoyable, atleast the first time through. I think its going to hurt the game in the long run. (negative speculation)

 

Reason 1... Voice overs are too costly to make. (unfounded negative speculation) It takes a lot of money to not only pay the actors, for all the voice over work, but to also code everything and design cutscenes for it. The game is not doing as well as they had hoped it would do. (another negative statement, omitting a few key facts) F2P may turn that around and it may not. The funding may not be there for future voice over work.

 

Reason 2 ... Time it takes to create. Voice over work takes time. Not only in recording and editing but also, like above, in coding and cut scene design... syncing etc. I think that BW was pretty ambitious about future content and what they thought they could do.

 

I believe that because voice over work is both time consuming and costly, that it may not be that often. I dont think we will see the qaulity or quantity, of the leveling game, in the future. (hey look, more negativity) I think the past products are showing this already. We have had no story updates. The new dailies are all from a terminal, instead of quest givers with voice over. The planet Makeb has said to have world arc stories but no class stories and no companion stories, even though there will be a level cap increase. Sadly, I think the best part of the game is going to fall to the wayside for quicker and cheaper content. (yet more negative speculation) I also believe that this will turn away those that play the game for that experience alone. (and again...) If that happens it will only get worse. (and again... this time piled on all of the others)

 

I think they would have been better off using voice over work for class story and companions as well as major world arc stories. I think all the side quests they should have just been like a terminal or the standard text box. This would have saved them in budget and time and those resources could have been allocated elsewhere. I dont expect to see the same quality as we had at launch, in the future. (and one last time...)

 

Maybe you've just been doing it so long now that you don't realize you're doing it? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time.

[Petnil]

class story are a bigger problem than VO

creating 8 class stories that you cant replay and only play with a very limited amount of your chars is hugely expensiive. Thats the main reason we get events instead of story . All chars can play the event, so it´s alot cheaper to develop instead of 4 class stories for each faction.

 

Now i loved my class story, but i understand why it´s not continued, at least not yet. In WoW when people asked for more classquests blizzard answered that they were fully aware that lots of people loved classquests, but they made a decision not to make more classquests as it would take away from other aspects of the game. Basicly they were saying classquests are not cost effective.

 

Expensive content should have replay value. A FP or an OP have high replay value in that you can play thoose multiple times and with multiple chars. A classquest have low replay value in that you can only play 1 of every 4 stories and 1 time only with each char.

[Lazzer]

I would say that it is only the story, voice overs and starwars label that keeps the subscribers that are left. The endgame is disjointed and limited, most other games have more endgame content due to the length of time that they have been running, there are a lot of bugs around.

 

One thing I can't understand is why players that have no interest in the story and the voice overs (thus no interest in playing a starwars tale) are still here, there are better dungeons and raids to be had in other games, if raiding was my incentive to playing I wouldn't be playing this game any more. But as it is I have played through most Ops and Fps and PvP maps on my main character, my alts are just doing the story.

[metaIsaber]

Not necessarily. They could choose races that use their own language which are already in game and "reuse" their speech and give us subtitles. While not perfect, it would get them around having to pay for voice actors. You shouldn't need to hire a voice actor for a Jawa would you?

[LARams]

How many people even bother to listen to the dialogue after the 1st run thru? I think most people hit space bar after that.. Pretty low entertainment value vs cost for development IMO. In fact I would say that it's more of an annoyance than it is entertaining.

[LordArtemis]

...and there is the point. I think we all agree the game needs some kind of mission set to be expanded. By using current assets and the mission terminals they can cut development costs dramatically over a full brand new VO mission set.

 

And introduce companion missions to boot.

[Soluss]

Let me be more specific...

 

 

 

Maybe you've just been doing it so long now that you don't realize you're doing it? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time.

 

Am i not allowed to critisize the game and strike up friendly discussion? That is what message forums are for. I didnt post this to bash the game. I have never started a thread to bash the game. I formed an opinion and wanted to discuss what others thought. Dont lump me with the "this game sucks" trolls... just because I dont put a possitive spin on everything that has happend.

[LordArtemis]

It is ok to bash the game. its also ok to support the game.

 

It is not ok to bash each other for that derision or support, nor to bash others while defending or criticizing the game IMO.

 

The game needs discussion, it needs criticism most of all IMO.

[Soluss]

class story are a bigger problem than VO

creating 8 class stories that you cant replay and only play with a very limited amount of your chars is hugely expensiive. Thats the main reason we get events instead of story . All chars can play the event, so it´s alot cheaper to develop instead of 4 class stories for each faction.

 

Now i loved my class story, but i understand why it´s not continued, at least not yet. In WoW when people asked for more classquests blizzard answered that they were fully aware that lots of people loved classquests, but they made a decision not to make more classquests as it would take away from other aspects of the game. Basicly they were saying classquests are not cost effective.

 

Expensive content should have replay value. A FP or an OP have high replay value in that you can play thoose multiple times and with multiple chars. A classquest have low replay value in that you can only play 1 of every 4 stories and 1 time only with each char.

 

This is a good point. Replay value. The class stories are excellent, but if they put all their eggs in that basket then they should have done them to the point where all the choices you made actually changed the story. The story should branch and be different, instead of the same out come for every player.

[Soluss]

It is ok to bash the game. its also ok to support the game.

 

It is not ok to bash each other for that derision or support, nor to bash others while defending or criticizing the game IMO.

 

The game needs discussion, it needs criticism most of all IMO.

 

Exactly right. Too many times, people on both sides, bash each other. There is no reason for that.

[Bobbyrab]

The assertion that VO was ultimately a waste (or, as OP put it, “will hurt long term”) is correct. Of course, I’d suggest the decision to focus so much of the resources on VO was one mistake among many Bioware made in the initial design decisions that have found us where we are today with SWTOR. Focusing so much on VO is like a car manufacturer focusing on the leather interior. Yes, people will appreciate it at first and yes, it will add enjoyment to the product, but ultimately it’s an aesthetic tool. If the AC doesn’t work, or the transmission keeps giving you problems, or there’s a leak under the car, the value of an aesthetic quickly starts to depreciate.

 

Again, one mistake as a part of the entire design philosophy which was, people play WoW. People love Star Wars. People love Bioware stories. Let’s mix the three together and triple win!!! On paper, yes. In reality…

[Blackavaar]

I seem to remember the devs saying several times that they have enough Voice Over work already completed and ready to go for content for years to come. Plus many of the voice over clips can be used (and already have been) for multiple missions. In other words they won't need to hire anyone for voice acting for a quite a while. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Edited September 4, 2012 by Blackavaar

[CosmicKat]

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.

 

They used to be MMORPG's till some marketing weasel decided the RPG designation was nerdy. They really should have dropped the two M's and kept the RPG however. The giant difference between games pre and post-WoW is that pre-WoW there was hundreds and thousands of people playing together, post-WoW they became hundreds and thousands of people playing a solo game at the same time. There's very little Massive or Multiplayer involved anymore.

[sithgreyguard]

The Voice overs are my favorite part. This thread makes no sense. :mad:

[Kubernetic]

This is a good point. Replay value. The class stories are excellent, but if they put all their eggs in that basket then they should have done them to the point where all the choices you made actually changed the story. The story should branch and be different, instead of the same out come for every player.

 

Oh I welcome the legitimate criticism. It's all the dramatic predictions and hyperbole that I think we could all do without.