Way TOR was written

[IHateDruids]

When something is rushed, It won't be half as good as something that was not. Take that how you will.

[DarthOvertone]

Personally, I really enjoyed the VO stuff, especially on the Class Quests. Was unnecessary for the other quests though, aside from possibly the main World storylines.

[AlixMV]

Have to disagree as well. Yes, the time with the NPCs are brief and not profound experiences. Most of them we don't get to know that well beyond a few broad brush strokes.

 

But neither do I think we should. There are tons of people we interact with every day who we have similarly shallow encounters with--they come into our lives fleetingly then disappear. We remember as little about them as we do these quest givers.

 

But making them fully voiced NPCs, even for 90 seconds or so of dialogue, brings texture and color to the game. It's a facade, but it gives the illusion of a living world and not just a series of check boxes to mark off as we plod through the experience.

 

Besides, I think a big thing did get missed: not all of those quest giver NPCs are one shots. I play both sides extensively (as my .sig attests to), and I've found a number of occasions where one of those bit quest giver NPCs are referenced or make cameos in quests for the other faction. Those other appearances provide weft to make the story they wrote a fabric, and not simply one offs as the OP suggested.

Edited November 1, 2012 by AlixMV

[Rykko]

The boys in marketing fell in love with the phrase "first fully voiced MMO" which committed the devs to having to squander voice acting dollars on every inconsequential kill 10 rats XP filler quest.

 

The point of VO is to engage you emotionally in a way text can't but when you use it for everything, it loses impact and devalues the times when it really matters i.e. class story.

 

They'd have been better off saving it for class and planet stories only and let the rest come from area and bounty board style text based quests.

Edited November 1, 2012 by Rykko

[chuixupu]

The boys in marketing fell in love with the phrase "first fully voiced MMO" which committed the devs to having to squander voice acting dollars on every inconsequential kill 10 rats XP filler quest.

 

The point of VO is to engage you emotionally in a way text can't but when you use it for everything, it loses impact and devalues the times when it really matters i.e. class story.

 

They'd have been better off saving it for class and planet stories only and let the rest come from area and bounty board style text based quests.

 

Again, for different reasons I think they went overboard on the voice acting, but this idea of "squandering funds on too much acting" I believe is false, for the reasons I already stated. They aren't getting paid by the quest.

[JediMB]

Where do I find the 'Droid arse ' quest? I must've missed that

 

If I could collect droid arses, I'd never turn them in. That quest would remain unfinished forever, just so I could carry around droid arses in my inventory.

[Costello]

I agree.

 

The other problem is the choice of stylised graphics. If the writers want to convey emotion to the player it helps when the people don't look like odd cartons. Its possible to ignore that I had to pick from 1 of 16 faces or 1 or 12 hair styles and 1 of 40 scars but then to be offered all this gear to purchase with cartel coins. Clearly BW/EA/Disney think looks are worth paying for but don't offer much in the game to make it matter.

 

You can dress up 3rd clone from the right all you like but he still looks like 3rd clone from the right. You can have a moving speach from some important NPC but if they look like a carton its not going to reach the same emotional conection as say if the graphics were equal to the trailers. When the jedi dies there you can see the pain on his face and the failure. When someone dies in the game you just killed Rodger Rabbit and since cartons can't really die its all right.

[Nemmar]

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 logs read out loud. Quality this is done with is well and good.. but really, it is such a small cage for the writer to live. Writer has only so much room to make something awesome out of " gather 10 droid arses"

 

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 force 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 enough 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 giving 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. They are not NPCs who stand there waiting for player to click them so they can speak about gathering droid arses. This is mostly because in TSW, main story of the area, personality and character of..characters always comes first. Quest descriptions come last. TSW's approach to briefing player about quests is much more..abstract; questgiver NPC doesn't exist there to read you a quest log.

 

Meanwhile, Bioware chose to sick with typical quest log approach when it comes to what a typical NPC has to say. Somewhere very early on they decided every single NPC - MUST - tell player about how droids have arses, how he needs to have these 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 unnecessary, 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 quest location or figuring out what to do or what to pick up once you find your way there is never 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 explaining all this to player? If map guides player to quest location and various tooltips+minimap tells player exactly what to pick up, why does all this have to be EXPLAINED and TOLD to player in such nauseating detail.

 

If you go with arrows and pointers leading straight to quest zones shown in map, quest logs and quest related dialogue itself should be way more abstract, way beyond the scope of the actiual quest. 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.

 

One word for you: OPTIONAL.

Space bar is there, use it.

 

I say this because that was your whole point. You came here and said this aspect of the game is bad, but failed to say how you think it could be done better. Quality of the dialogue is always a subjective issue and very dependant on context.

Make a point. All i saw was QQ. This is not constructive criticism. If you dont like the game... see you around. If you like it and want to stick around, share with us how you think it could be improved.

 

Is your problem the quality of writing and dialogue or the quests themselves having pointers on top of that? If it both, then you just dont want quests. Games like Skyrim, KOTOR, Oblivion, Mass effect, Fallout, all do this same thing.

Edited November 1, 2012 by Nemmar

[Stradlin]

One word for you: OPTIONAL.

Space bar is there, use it.

 

TOR comes with terrifying amount of cumbersome and hollow well produced finely acted dialogue that serves absolutely no purpose, rarely provides any character advancement for NPCs or PCs and is written without any ambition. How much or litle I caress my spacebar doesn't change the way majority of the oh so expensive dialogue in this game is roughly equal to TV static when it comes to giving storyline, world or characters any depth.

 

 

I say this because that was your whole point. You came here and said this aspect of the game is bad, but failed to say how you think it could be done better

Make a point. All i saw was QQ. This is not constructive criticism.

 

 

From OP:

Finding the quest location or figuring out what to do or what to pick up once you find your way there is never 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 in explaining all this to player? If map guides player to quest location and various tooltips+minimap tells player exactly what to pick up, why does all this have to be EXPLAINED and TOLD to player in such nauseating detail?

 

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

[/Quote]

Edited November 2, 2012 by Stradlin

[simplius]

i have to agree with OP,,smuggler story is HORRIBLE

 

bravo sir,,,very well written post,,im still cleaning myself of hot tea, thank you very much:D

[Xenirath]

I still remember much of the side quests dialog, for instance the guy who says "Theres nothing quite like watching a cave full of jedi marching straight into your own platoon to die" Or something along those lines. I can't remember word for word I'm not a video recorder.

 

But I remember the Basic message of it and always have a good chuckle, as for Story missions I remember every major part and some minor parts. But I won't risk spoiling those for others.

 

So maybe you just have a memory problem?