Voiced Convos, Companion Storylines, and the Death of Storytelling in SWTOR

[VanCali]

One of the main reasons I purchased and subbed this game almost 4 years ago was because of the story and the fact that it was all voice acted. In the past three expansions, I feel that this has diminished somewhat.

 

The Hutt and Revan expansions saw no companion stories added, so it kind of felt like they just turned a cold shoulder to you. Revan's expansion saw the introduction of the first quests were you don't actually interact with the NPC. That did not bode will in my mind. It reminded me of the older games that I thought SWTOR had already evolved beyond.

 

While I absolutely love how the new format of the storyline is reminiscent of the old KOTR games in that it keeps going and is very fluid, I do not like the narrowing of the companions or of the conversations at the end of the expansion. Also, we now all have the same story with the same four main companions (Theron, Lana, Koth, Senya). All the other companions beyond that are simply different window dressing with no substance. The conversations in Chapter 9 all turn into you replying to NPC voice acting through text replies as if it really was KOTR all over again.

 

What I think made the story so great in the original launch was the fact that you could play this game 8 times and get 8 completely different stories that intersected once in a while. Essentially, I felt like you got to play the same game 8 times and each time it felt like playing a new game all over again. Especially when you add in all the flavors of the companions, how you meet them, and how you got to know more about them through character development. I was hoping that the expansions would expand the extra quests you would do for your first companion and apply it to your other companions.

 

I guess in the end, I feel like this game is really limiting this to a single story game. Taking it from 8 stories and simplifying the overall gameplay. I'm an alt-o-holic because of these stories. From 50-60, I felt like I was grinding for the first time. Playing the same story 8 different times. With KotFE, it is apparent that I will have to do that all over again.

 

In some ways the game has improved, but when it comes to story, the thing that people play a Star Wars game for in the first place, I think that it is slowly dying.

[Darth-Obvious]

The "death" of SWTOR story telling happened when this game didn't become as successful as something like WoW, or rather didn't meet the number of subscribers they originally planned on the game having.

 

You're basically complaining that the 2.0 content forward isn't on par with the vanilla content, but that's really surprising since the vanilla game cost somewhere between 100 to 300 million dollars to make. 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 didn't have that kind of budget or even anything remotely close to that budget, not to mention the team is like a fifth or sixth of the size as the vanilla team.

 

The bottom line being that they're never (ever) going to dump another 100 million into SWTOR. It doesn't make financial sense, not with SWTOR, or any MMO for that matter. The MMO genre has been on a steady decline for awhile now.

[Sansanor]

It took me a long time to get used to the conversation style of acquiring quests/missions in this game. I came from Lord of the Rings Online, and that was my first MMO. While I was there, I enjoyed reading the quest text and getting more information than mere voice acting could give me about the quests. So, coming here was a bit of a shock for me. I can say I hated it at first. I thought it was a cheap gimmick they were using that would run its course and not be able to be sustained for long because of the sheer cost of voice actors.

 

Over time I've grown used to it and to even enjoy the conversations. So much so that at times I tell my family when they're talking too loud "SHHH! Cinematic!!" They all know what I'm talking about, as they are SWToR players, too. We have four subs in this house and play as a team much of the time. But that's beside the point.

 

The cinematic conversations are fun, for the most part. I do sometimes spacebar through them in flashpoints I've done a million and one times (exaggeration at its finest there, I know..hehehe), but not always, because at times I like to respond in a way that isn't quite how I might have at other times. And I love hearing my characters' voices in the cinematics.

 

The new Alliance conversations break immersion for me, and That Is Not OK. I came from hating the cinematics to loving them, and now you're doing this to me, BioWare??? You might as well just make it the old style of picking up a quest, with a text box and the NPC saying a few words as you're skimming over the text to find the relevant bits.

 

I know a lot of people loved KoTOR. I'm not one of them. I didn't know about it, thus I didn't play it. I don't know that I would have, had I known about the game, to be honest! Why? Same reason I resisted playing this game: Star Wars. I dreaded the thought of playing this and finding they messed up what was for the longest time one of my greatest joys. I can say this, though, from the look of the Alliance conversations, I would have abandoned KoTOR fairly quickly. How do I know? Because I've abandoned single-player games that had that kind of crappy excuse of a conversation before, for several reasons: I hate the look of it; I hate the sound of it; It feels cheap; It doesn't make me want to enjoy the story it's trying to convey, rather it makes me want to skip through it as fast as I can to get out of the boxed in feel of the picture.

 

So, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that this is an indicator of the death of storytelling in this game. It's a shame, too. This might have been a game I'd stick with for a good long time. I was with LotRO for 5 years, and still have an active sub there. Maybe I need to go give the new content over there a look again cause the new "content" here pretty much sucks.

[Darth-Obvious]

I can say I hated it at first. I thought it was a cheap gimmick they were using that would run its course and not be able to be sustained for long because of the sheer cost of voice actors.

 

Except the voice acting is this game was never a major cost factor. It's a common misconception that people constantly assume.

 

Bioware hires actors under contract. That means they can use X actor as many times as needed for however many years the contract exists. All 16 of the class voice actors are under contract. Actors like Jennifer Hale and Steve Blum are notable contract actors for Bioware which is why they show up in every single Bioware game. Steve Blum has been every update that SWTOR has had that adds new VO.

 

So, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that this is an indicator of the death of storytelling in this game.

 

Seriously? It was the Classic Conversations?

 

Things like...

 

- Class Quests going away after Chapter 3

- 2.0 only having faction storylines

- Forged Alliances having nearly identical storylines

- 3.0 having the same story line between both factions

- Ziost

 

...weren't indicators at all for you that the scope and scale of SWTOR's story telling was being reduced from what the vanilla game offered?

 

Oh and btw every time there's a new update for SWTOR people say it's the death of storytelling. For instance when Galactic Strongholds and Galactic Starfighter were both added people claimed the exact same thing. So which is it, which every time are people wrong about and which every time are people right about?

Edited November 3, 2015 by Darth-Obvious

[VanCali]

The "death" of SWTOR story telling happened when this game didn't become as successful as something like WoW, or rather didn't meet the number of subscribers they originally planned on the game having.

 

You're basically complaining that the 2.0 content forward isn't on par with the vanilla content, but that's really surprising since the vanilla game cost somewhere between 100 to 300 million dollars to make. 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 didn't have that kind of budget or even anything remotely close to that budget, not to mention the team is like a fifth or sixth of the size as the vanilla team.

 

The bottom line being that they're never (ever) going to dump another 100 million into SWTOR. It doesn't make financial sense, not with SWTOR, or any MMO for that matter. The MMO genre has been on a steady decline for awhile now.

 

I fully agree that they will never dump more money into the game, nor will they be able to afford what they had originally. The market is too fickle to stick with a game to give it enough of a large-scale guaranteed income that is needed. Also, the producers of games take too many shortcuts and cut the quality of the game which in turn causes that fickle player base to jump ship.

 

Seriously? It was the Classic Conversations?

 

Things like...

 

- Class Quests going away after Chapter 3

- 2.0 only having faction storylines

- Forged Alliances having nearly identical storylines

- 3.0 having the same story line between both factions

- Ziost

 

...weren't indicators at all for you that the scope and scale of SWTOR's story telling was being reduced from what the vanilla game offered?

 

Oh and btw every time there's a new update for SWTOR people say it's the death of storytelling. For instance when Galactic Strongholds and Galactic Starfighter were both added people claimed the exact same thing. So which is it, which every time are people wrong about and which every time are people right about?

 

After Hutt I thought I would give them a chance in Revan. They brought in decent voice actors to do work with NPCs you had a feeling would become your companions one day. But still something lacked. We were all playing the same story on all 8 classes yet again. Then with all the hype behind KoTFE I thought we might return to what we had a launch. More story arcs, more companion interaction. No, not even close.

 

This is my last roll here. I'm just waiting it out until No Man's Sky or Star Citizen launches, then I am gone, never to return just like I did with SWG, EVE, and LOTRO. The game has officially ended for me and feels greatly diminished.

[VanCali]

So, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that this is an indicator of the death of storytelling in this game. It's a shame, too. This might have been a game I'd stick with for a good long time. I was with LotRO for 5 years, and still have an active sub there. Maybe I need to go give the new content over there a look again cause the new "content" here pretty much sucks.

 

Hell, the original content to 50 took me 2 years to properly go through, and even then I had plenty of room to do more or even reroll the same class because the first time through was such fun. Now, it is painful to level each class I have because the content is exactly the same, and that is what kills it for me.

[asbalana]

The "death" of SWTOR story telling happened when this game didn't become as successful as something like WoW, or rather didn't meet the number of subscribers they originally planned on the game having.

 

You're basically complaining that the 2.0 content forward isn't on par with the vanilla content, but that's really surprising since the vanilla game cost somewhere between 100 to 300 million dollars to make. 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 didn't have that kind of budget or even anything remotely close to that budget, not to mention the team is like a fifth or sixth of the size as the vanilla team.

 

The bottom line being that they're never (ever) going to dump another 100 million into SWTOR. It doesn't make financial sense, not with SWTOR, or any MMO for that matter. The MMO genre has been on a steady decline for awhile now.

 

The original vanilla game was developed from scratch. An expansion builds on what is there and would be expected to cost much less per hour of content.

 

As far as making sense to pop $ 100M in for an expansion, if I was at Buzzard that would be exactly what I would be thinking about doing for WOW. The last expansion WoD, from what I read, was terrible. Yet it popped up numbers by over 3M players and the population did not fall back to the pre expansion point for six months. The expansion sold over 3.2M copies in the first 24 hours at $ 50 a pop for standard. Rough calculation then shows at least $ 100M in quick profit if the WoD expansion cost $ 100M to produce (which it likely did not). So if I was at WOW, I would be thinking about what could I do in this next expansion to fix the game and bring players back and keep them. I guess WOW has an expansion in the works and with Ghostcrawler gone, may get it right.

 

I agree that the MMO genre has been on a decline. I have read many theories as to why, as to fickle casual players, etc., etc. etc. My conclusion is that the games out there and expansions such as KotFE are crap and that is what is driving players who would like to play MMOs away.

[VanCali]

I agree that the MMO genre has been on a decline. I have read many theories as to why, as to fickle casual players, etc., etc. etc. My conclusion is that the games out there and expansions such as KotFE are crap and that is what is driving players who would like to play MMOs away.

 

I wouldn't say crap, but I would say not expanding the quality in ways that truly matter. Star Wars is largely about the story. If you do not build on that and expand it in further directions, you will lose a lot of your core players.

[Anaesha]

I wouldn't say crap, but I would say not expanding the quality in ways that truly matter. Star Wars is largely about the story. If you do not build on that and expand it in further directions, you will lose a lot of your core players.

 

You going to provide the work force or drop the 100 to 200 million it would take for BW to do the same lvl of work as was put into the vanilla game? No! I didn't think so.

[Aelflaed]

I do feel like MMOs have failed to achieve a balance between game play, combat, story, end game options & the social aspect. Some are good at putting you into groups, like FFXIV. Some are good at stories (SWTOR) - GW2 had a good idea, ongoing story, but I really lost interest in the story about half way through (finished on all classes, I should add, but I did stop playing quite awhile ago) Or they're too end game focused, like WoW, and stick there by way of making it almost too easy. Setting - LOTRO, though that one is feeling old & worn now. (but I haven't been back since the server merges)

 

I'm really not sure what balance would work, since we all want different things. I solve it personally by playing other games and balancing between games.

 

In SWTOR, I played all the way through Ziost on one character, my BH. (She has Blizz - or DID - so she gets to go first always) But I lost interest after that one special class bit you got on Riishi. I think I got all mine to that point, then stopped them. (mercifully, they're all at 60, so they can all just hop into this expansion without enduring that) I despised Makeb, though it was prettier than most, because - well, maybe someone else out there liked it, but if so, I haven't heard it! I want the story #1 in this game - it's what they do best. However, right now, combat is horrifying. I can't get out 3 abilities before something's dead, & the mechanics are just super-annoying. Knockbacks, stuns, spread out enemies that you deal with one by one or with a ranged aoe. I honestly hate it now. They really need to fix combat up a bit. Maybe it's the OP companions, but the fights themselves are boring, unimportant & remind me of DA2 (the combat of which was terrible)

 

Voicing - I am loving all my characters, so far. I feel like the acting has been very good, for my PCs especially. The SW feels more like herself, than in the past post-end sections - I'm grateful for that. The companions - well, there's one I adored from the first second, & that's HK... So, HKs fate... Lana is neither here nor there. I'm glad she's not a blushing padawan, but I don't find her interesting. Koth - he feels like a lesser Corso, I guess. And both of them annoy me greatly as I progress. When she says each fight was a challenge, I want to harm her, especially if it was a mob I *never got to hit.* (I have her as a healer & sometimes tank, so she won't kill as fast, but that isn't working very well, obviously.) She & Koth are too generic, and because I'm going through the same conversations on all my alts, it's getting tedious. I miss the more individual companions. And thank God, I don't care about Pierce, because I never appreciated SW's pvp, & I'm not going to start now.

 

So the story, imo, is hampered somewhat by the repetitiveness for each alt's journey (Oh, my smuggler said something slightly different! Or maybe just a different tone! -that's not enough) The new companions are hampered by blandness & generic 'romance option-ness.' I don't care about that at all, & very few of my companions did a romance, anyway. (feels forced to me) But when they DO get a great, fun character like HK - well, that didn't go as I expected. Or hoped. About romances, it's less obnoxiously in your face than in the recent patches. I hated the 'flirt with theron or lana' or say 'meh, who cares.' Now at least the 'I'm not remotely interested' part is better. I don't want to feel like this game is nothing but Dating Sims.

 

But ya, MMOs just aren't quite 'there,' and I'm not sure they ever could be. If they pick their path & do it well, that's probably the best they can do. I thought SW was going with the 'story, character' path, and I hope they are, but I'm not feeling the full commitment I'd expected. But in any MMO, you need SOME combat, some enjoyment of the actual fights. That's a real problem for me, right now.

[discosoc]

Except the voice acting is this game was never a major cost factor. It's a common misconception that people constantly assume.

 

You're partially right. Voice acting was never an 'unknown' or 'unexpected' cost, which is different than not being a major cost. This argument used to come up when talking about how expensive the game was to make, and people started saying the project costs were out of control because of the voice acting.

 

Bioware (I don't remember which dev) clarified that in an interview, stating that voice overs were a *known* costs. They've been a regular part of Bioware games for a long time, and they weren't really blindsided by anything related to them. On a side note, the costs that *did* balloon out of control were apparently related to the Hero Engine.

 

The idea that the cost of voice actors has contributed to the design changes isn't really that crazy. Yes, VO's are generally hired under contract to provide future recordings, but those terms aren't indefinite and it's not like it means Bioware can just call them up on a whim and demand another 30 hours of recording sessions. They probably still have to pay the VO's for future work (the contracts probably stipulate the VO is to be available, not that Bioware is paying them up front for all future VO work).

 

Plus, with the way the VO industry has been complaining about pay for years now, to the point that strikes are on the table, it's silly to assume the VO costs are some trivial thing that have no bearing on the game development.

[VanCali]

You going to provide the work force or drop the 100 to 200 million it would take for BW to do the same lvl of work as was put into the vanilla game? No! I didn't think so.

 

You are quoting a price to create a unique game from the ground up as if that would be the same cost for a 5 level expansion. Wrong. It would cost a fraction of the price. I would gladly pay $20-50 for an expansion that was high quality and built on the game rather than a free expansion that missed what I was expecting by half.

[VanCali]

So the story, imo, is hampered somewhat by the repetitiveness for each alt's journey (Oh, my smuggler said something slightly different! Or maybe just a different tone! -that's not enough)

 

Yep, this is essentially what I was getting at. We now have one story shared by 8 classes when the game began with 8 unique stories.

Edited November 4, 2015 by VanCali

[Darth-Obvious]

You are quoting a price to create a unique game from the ground up as if that would be the same cost for a 5 level expansion. Wrong. It would cost a fraction of the price. I would gladly pay $20-50 for an expansion that was high quality and built on the game rather than a free expansion that missed what I was expecting by half.

 

Except in reality you would need to pay somewhere around $60 to $80 for what you're asking for because there's simply not enough people willing to buy what you're asking for at that price for them to return a profit on it. That's what you don't get.

 

They can never do a proper expansion for SWTOR on the level that people want or expect from an expansion. The only company that can do that has been Blizzard with WoW and that's because they've always has millions of subs since the game's launch.

 

Also if SWTOR is profitable on it's current annual budget, which it has been for awhile now, EA is never going to give Bioware more money to work with to do what you're asking for because there's no reason to. There's no reason from EA's perspective to dump more money into SWTOR when it's profitable as is.

 

Yep, this is essentially what I was getting at. We now have one story shared by 8 classes when the game began with 8 unique stories.

 

Uh yeah and it's been that way for awhile now. This isn't something that just happened all of a sudden.

 

They simply can't produce 8 unique class stories plus planetary stories on the scope and scale that people like you are demanding.

 

Lets say they could do 8 new class missions, but they were only an hour each. Would it make more sense to do those 8 separate stories or one singular 8 hour story for all classes instead? Not to mention it's kind of hard to justify to cost of unique class content given the ratio of certain classes. For example lets say there were more Jedi Knights than any other class by a very wide margin and that Smugglers were the least played class. It would never make any financial sense to spend the same amount of time and resources on a Smuggler Class Quest compared the Jedi Knight Class Quest knowing those metrics.

 

You also have to take into account that many players only play one character in the game, and not all 8 classes, which is another big factor of them not doing 8 unique stories anymore.

 

What you're not getting is that this game basically HAD to have been a WoW type success for it have continued down the 8 unique stories route. It needs to have more players playing it and subbing to it for that sort of thing to happen.

[hadoken]

I think SWTOR IS the sith emperor at this point with the amount of times it's "died" and come back.

[VanCali]

What you're not getting is that this game basically HAD to have been a WoW type success for it have continued down the 8 unique stories route. It needs to have more players playing it and subbing to it for that sort of thing to happen.

 

You are a very negative person and I choose to just ignore your replies from here on out. They aren't very constructive. They just give reasons for why something cannot happen rather than how it can.

[jonathonpatches]

You are a very negative person and I choose to just ignore your replies from here on out. They aren't very constructive. They just give reasons for why something cannot happen rather than how it can.

 

To be fair, they DID give a reason on how it can happen... you need more subscribers and paying customers to justify the expense and expenditure you are looking for. So if you can drum up around 1 million subscribers for 6 months, we might see that.

 

However, I am on the other fence. I had my experience with 8 different stories (on 18 different characters). And while I did enjoy SOME of the other stories, I did find some of them to be boring, redundant or not very engaging (See Bounty Hunter and Consular at the top of my list). I've had my fun with the stories for the most part, enjoyed them, got LOTS of content out of them, and enjoyed my time.

 

That being said, I recognize that SWTOR is a F2P game with a subscription available, and is built on that model. Would I have liked to see more voice acting on the after quests, and perhaps a little more layering to the story? SURE. However, I also didn't pay anything extra to enjoy KOTFE other than my monthly subscription fee, so I wasn't expecting eight unique stories with 20 hours of content each. Plus it's still early, more chapters are to follow, and I am excited to see where it will lead me. This didn't cost me anything extra than what I was already spending.

 

There are not many games these days pumping out $50-$80 expansions with hours upon hours of content these days, because with the exception of WOW, no one is surviving the subscription model. WOW is the only one to do that with any regularity, and there is some suspicion you might see less of it in the future with numbers fading.

 

So I am for the most part, satisfied for now with the story so far... it's only a few chapters in. Let's see where it takes us.

Edited November 5, 2015 by jonathonpatches

[MaximusRex]

You are a very negative person and I choose to just ignore your replies from here on out. They aren't very constructive. They just give reasons for why something cannot happen rather than how it can.

 

 

"I can't accept reality, so I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and go NANANANANA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

[Nyla]

The reality is EA/BW don't understand how to handle a MMO.

 

When Blizzard launched WoW and there were so many problems, they kept their work force and worked double time to fix as much as possible as fast as possible, players saw this so even many angry ones stayed because of this commitment.

 

When EA/BW launched SWTOR, there were many bugs and missing features. Instead of doing what Blizzard did, they treated SWTOR the same way they usually do with single player games : they fired/ended contract with many devs. Players saw this, how fast things were changing and then many left too. Instead of putting more money to correct things and really save the game, they limited budgets, reduced work force which limits how fast and how big changes can be made thus developping smaller "expansions".

 

So yes things get shrinked since launch, the immediate cause is less players and free "expansion", the real cause behind is the incapability for EA/BW to deliver a good MMO at launch or right after.

[NRieh]

They simply can't produce 8 unique class stories plus planetary stories on the scope and scale that people like you are demanding.

It does not have to be all-unique experience, but there should be enough 'flavoring' to make it distinct enough. Not to mention that EACH class must make sense. Or, at the very least, it must not provoke heavy facepalming reactions. I love my main smuggler girl since 1.0, and while I DID have some weird and awkward moments during the main planetary storyline, nothing compares with the SoR final combat in solo mode. And I've already had my share of '***?!' in the KotFE (on chapter 5).

 

Dragon Age: Origins is a good example. Each origin adds greatly to the overall storytelling. Each origin is deeply tied with one of the major quests, making that very quest really personal to the player. All HoFs have the same story, same companions and same stuff, but I don't think anyone can say that playing human noble makes 100% story as playing, let's say, a City Elf.

 

Probably that's what SW:TOR intentions had been - KOTOR with the Origins. But it did not work out (obviously). They should've followed the pattern - make something like 1-10 'Origin' followed by the 'main', yet 'flavored' enough campaign. As is - the 'main' content is barely relevant for the most classes. And it's not getting better.

 

That tiny class quest on Risha? It's not great, more like decent, but I was so damn happy to have it! Just because it was something I've been missing sooo much since before 1.2 (that's when I had beaten the class story).

 

I wish it was not a MMO, with all its genre restrictions and drawbacks. DAI model (SP +coop ) + PvP would have worked so well, imo.

[Darth-Obvious]

However, I am on the other fence. I had my experience with 8 different stories (on 18 different characters). And while I did enjoy SOME of the other stories, I did find some of them to be boring, redundant or not very engaging (See Bounty Hunter and Consular at the top of my list). I've had my fun with the stories for the most part, enjoyed them, got LOTS of content out of them, and enjoyed my time.

 

A big part of the problem with class stories is that they become spread so thin, and become fewer and further between as time goes on. All 8 generally start out strong in the sense that what you're doing is very clear, your objective is very clear, and in most cases you're given an antagonist to hate early on as well. Over time though what you accomplish between planet to planet in Chapters 2 and 3 aren't as significant as what you were accomplishing per planet in Chapter 1 or rather in Chapters 2 and 3 it often feels like you have to get down multiple planets to feel any sense of story progression.

 

There's also the problem that some of the class stories could've improved greatly by combining them together. For instance think about how much stronger the Jedi story would've been had you combined the Knight's and Consular's storylines together. Even though the 4 Force User classes have separate stories, there are a lot of redundancies in them. We also probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in now with more Force focused storylines if Force users didn't represent half of the game's classes. I'm curious how things would've gone if there had only been two force classes, ie something that was a combination of the Knight/Consular or Warrior/Inquisitor.

 

It does not have to be all-unique experience

 

That's what people are asking for though.

 

Not to mention that EACH class must make sense. Or, at the very least, it must not provoke heavy facepalming reactions. I love my main smuggler girl since 1.0, and while I DID have some weird and awkward moments during the main planetary storyline, nothing compares with the SoR final combat in solo mode. And I've already had my share of '***?!' in the KotFE (on chapter 5).

 

Yes, a big problem is that from Yavin 4 onwards the stroyline has become very Force focused and a character like a Smuggler has a problem fitting in with a number of elements in KOTFE.

 

I am guessing the reason why that is though is because the game's metrics show that there are far more people playing Force classes than there are the other 4 classes, which isn't really a surprise.

 

Dragon Age: Origins is a good example. Each origin adds greatly to the overall storytelling. Each origin is deeply tied with one of the major quests, making that very quest really personal to the player. All HoFs have the same story, same companions and same stuff, but I don't think anyone can say that playing human noble makes 100% story as playing, let's say, a City Elf.

 

Probably that's what SW:TOR intentions had been - KOTOR with the Origins. But it did not work out (obviously). They should've followed the pattern - make something like 1-10 'Origin' followed by the 'main', yet 'flavored' enough campaign. As is - the 'main' content is barely relevant for the most classes. And it's not getting better.

 

SWTOR already did the Origins thing. The class quests were basically the Origins and everything post Chapter 3 has basically been the rest of Origins, ie the same story.

 

If you're saying that the first part of KOTFE should of been like Origins, then that was never going to happen, and had no chance of happening in the game's current state.

 

Also Origins (and KOTOR) was the last time Bioware did that sort of thing, having unique separate experiences, but guess why they haven't done it with any game since? Because it's become too expensive to develop content for games now that not everybody is going to play. Most people that played Origins only played a single character and while the Human Noble origin tracked very high, the Dalish Elf origin did not. In other words a lot of people played the Human Noble while a very small percentage played the Dalish Elf, so it never made any financial sense going forward to spend a bunch of R&D on unique content that not enough people are going to play especially when that R&D could be spent making the overall campaign longer or adding more companions or whatever else. That's always how they're going to look at it.

 

It's also very hard to make something like KOTFE seem unique between classes when it doesn't have much of a budget and a small team working on it.

 

It's easy to point out what would've been better or could've been done, but what was actually possible is a different story.

[tattoohero]

Except the voice acting is this game was never a major cost factor. It's a common misconception that people constantly assume.

 

Bioware hires actors under contract. That means they can use X actor as many times as needed for however many years the contract exists. All 16 of the class voice actors are under contract. Actors like Jennifer Hale and Steve Blum are notable contract actors for Bioware which is why they show up in every single Bioware game. Steve Blum has been every update that SWTOR has had that adds new VO.

 

 

 

Seriously? It was the Classic Conversations?

 

Things like...

 

- Class Quests going away after Chapter 3

- 2.0 only having faction storylines

- Forged Alliances having nearly identical storylines

- 3.0 having the same story line between both factions

- Ziost

 

...weren't indicators at all for you that the scope and scale of SWTOR's story telling was being reduced from what the vanilla game offered?

 

Oh and btw every time there's a new update for SWTOR people say it's the death of storytelling. For instance when Galactic Strongholds and Galactic Starfighter were both added people claimed the exact same thing. So which is it, which every time are people wrong about and which every time are people right about?

That's not true, BioWare hires them per game, not any blanket contract.

 

Hale and Blum have to audition for their roles, they're not under contract with BioWare for x years, they're hired per game.

 

Hale isn't in every BioWare game.

[NRieh]

SWTOR already did the Origins thing. The class quests were basically the Origins and everything post Chapter 3 has basically been the rest of Origins, ie the same story.

No, not really.

 

As I've mentioned, DAO had origin really-really matter outside the 'origin' (= 'the pre-Ostegar playable chapter') itself. And while the real changes and differences were mostly cosmetic (a line, a minor dialogue option etc), the illusion of significance was still there, and it worked (once again - compare the Orzamar \ Broken Circle for the HN & for the DN\Mage).

[VanCali]

That tiny class quest on Risha? It's not great, more like decent, but I was so damn happy to have it! Just because it was something I've been missing sooo much since before 1.2 (that's when I had beaten the class story).

 

Exactly! That one side quest is what made grinding from 50-60 bearable, sadly. 50-60 was the first time I ever felt like I was grinding a toon. Before then, I was immersed in the story of my character and could not wait until I hit the next planet.

[Artaniz]

Honestly ************ about the interactions at the end of kotfe for alliance that are not voiced is just silly. Its obv they did it in order to give us more content because paying to have the 8 main voice actors do lines for the hundreds of interactions would be to costly.

 

I know we all want to just whine and ***** and moan constantly , but can we try to realize that they have to mesh business with what we want , and i prefer this compromise voice acted interactions from the npc , and lots of options from the player.

 

The main chapters will and have remained voice acted , it is not the end of the world that the alliance grinds are not voiced,