Every time I see black bars silent conversation I want to quit

[Darcmoon]

52 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

I'm pretty certain there isn't any kind of difficulty involved in this. Any even half serious game  worth its salt  makes sure it'll be very easy and simple for devs to move players around in any and all places imaginable. Moving player characters around the world as needed just can not be difficult or time consuming to do, from pov of development and developers. Client and devs don't have to worry about permissions or authorizations or mission completions like players do. There already are various terminals and tokens available in-game that autocomplete some more or less precise part of the game via mouseclick.

 

 

If we are going to get just one imaginary class, then surely it'd be neutral. Ie perhaps said class could move freely among both factions. For sake of mechanics, maybe have em " pledge" for either major faction due to group finder and other queue pools. Unsure if even that is necessary though?  Letting players choose the faction would be much less of a headache to balance and sort out surely though,.

 

I personally think it'd  be extremely refreshing to be somebody besides The Outlander for once. It is pretty silly and tiresome how the benevolent jedi master, psycho sith warrior, selfish smuggler and havoc squadron major are all happily running  the same organization.
 

 

I don't get all this talk about senators:p Obv starfighter pilot is the only real option for a new class!

 

Maybe you are right and they could move them around easily but I wouldn’t bet on it.   If it was that easy to move us around like you suggest then I think we would have had the chance to swap factions already and they wouldn’t have run into the technical issues that prevent us from changing our combat styles.  Additionally, the tokens are set up with the idea they are for a specific faction and the standard story line.  Doing it with a toon starting outside those strictures May make it harder.  I really don’t know though. 
 

I would be hard against any new origin story that could move freely between the factions.  They would need to choose a faction and stay with it IMO. 
 

Depending on the story they came up with for the new origin they may still become the Outlander. The most cost effective way for them to add in a new origin is (assuming they didn’t just say ‘You’re level 75 and here is a hour of story to introduce you and get you to 80) making the story similar to the 1-50 one.  Then you have the expansions to play.  Even if they put out the stupid amount of time and effort needed for the new origin to take you from 1 - 80, they will still end up with you in the same spot our current toons are in.  Mainly because they won’t continue forward with a seperate story for the new origin and a different one for the other origin stories.  You may not be called the outlander but we would still effectively become them since we would somehow get command of the alliance. 

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, Balameb said:

all of SOR is maked as completed(and you get Yavin as well).

Well duh.  Yavin is part of SoR.

[Ardrossan]

I would not want AI to replace VAs, the writers' strike is based in part on AI taking their jobs, I wouldn't want that happening to Grey DeLisle or Steve Blum just to save bioware a few bucks, that entire concept sounds gross. That also to me smacks of a lack of gratitude to these amazing voice actors and the work they've contributed to this game over the years. Unless you're hearing impaired as some posters have mentioned, or hearing other language versions (still VAs in that case though) then you've benefited greatly from an incredibly talented cast, even if you didn't bother to learn their names. 

For those thinking that fans or *shudder* bioware staff could record VA instead...no. Just no. We have plenty of examples in games where amateurs voice stuff, or mods that try to use unvoiced cut content (kotor2 has a bit of this in the restoration mod) and the results are really bad. Someone mentioned mass effect above, generally the VA for that franchise was superb and on par with SWTOR, the immediate exception would be Diana Allers in ME3 voiced by Jessica Chobot, a gaming journalist they included in the game so she'd write them a nice review. She sounded like trash and made that cringe character even worse.

No, you need people who are professionally trained to do character voices and the way to do that is not to suggest shortcuts like AI or be fine with kotor costcutting, but to demand better. We're paying them, we can make our priorities known to them, and they should listen, and if they don't, vote with your wallet and find a game that does listen to its playerbase!

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

10 hours ago, Darcmoon said:

I would be hard against any new origin story that could move freely between the factions.  They would need to choose a faction and stay with it IMO. 

I'm definitely with Darcmoon on this point.👍

 

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

12 hours ago, Stradlin said:

I personally think it'd  be extremely refreshing to be somebody besides The Outlander for once. It is pretty silly and tiresome how the benevolent jedi master, psycho sith warrior, selfish smuggler and havoc squadron major are all happily running  the same organization.
 

Yeah, that was stupid as hell. I hated that. Made no sense at all.

The only discourse I want with benevolent Jedi Masters is killing them.

They might not know the power of the Darkside, but I do.

12 hours ago, Stradlin said:

I don't get all this talk about senators:p Obv starfighter pilot is the only real option for a new class!

Ya know it's hard to imagine them making a brand new class that there wouldn't be a chance in hell I would ever try. Like if they made a Senator class.

If I wanna yawn myself to death, I'll take a whole bottle of sleeping pills. =p

The Jedi Counselor storyline sounds bad enough, but at least they get a cool lightsaber and can use the Force.

But, there's no accounting for taste, and I'm sure there'd be some players that would love that concept.

StarFighter Pilot, that could be interesting and it certainly fits with the genre.

As for me, I'd want some kinda of Wookie Warrior class. I say to do it as a class instead of a race choice this way they wouldn't have to worry about all the different animations for a wookie there'd be if they could be any class. You just make the one concept and you only have to worry about the animations specific to that class.  So no worrying about Lightsaber clipplng on the Wookie body type.

It's a friggen crime you can't play a Wookie in a supposed Star Wars game!

They already have a working Wookie body type that can interact with the environment just fine. If we can have 2 Wookie companions , they have those animations already workable. You don't have to worry about Gear.  Wookies don't wear clothes. All done. You could still have gear of course, just not visible. Just like the head slot.

Already have Wookie Bowcasters that players can use, so no issues there.

Far as talking is concerned, subtitles work just fine in this game, we see aliens talking their gibberish all the time and have sub titles.

Or, hell, if Jakarro can wear a droid's head necklace that translates what he says than so can I! Just make a universal translator gadget or whatever. That'd suit me just fine.

We're never gonna get a new class anyways, so I'm just daydreamen out loud with the rest of you. =]

Edited June 2, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[Stradlin]

4 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

 

StarFighter Pilot, that could be interesting and it certainly fits with the genre.

 

Yeah it'd be so great! Too bad it'll never happen..but one can dream. PS I can tell you def miss SWG well enough? One was able to wookieee it up to their hearts content in there!

 

This kinda reminds me of some " mini classes" with " mini class stories"- idea I posted somewhere.  These would be brand new characters with small, brief  personal storylines that involve  only little bit of voice acting.  Basically, characters destined to be alts, with storylines to match -  nothing comparable to main class stories at all. None of these could tackle main storyline where you'd end up as the heroic outlander, all of these would play some supporting role in the sidelines instead.

Mini class stories such as..

* Starfighter Pilot! Story moves on by doing GSF and/or PvE railshooter. You play through the entire career of a Starfighter Pilot of Imperial/Republic Navy. Perhaps eventually ending up as the admiral in command of Outlander's fleet or something. Did I mention that story moves on by doing lots and lots of GSF? 

* Ground pvp -oriented version of the above. Story of some  Mercenary or whomnot hired to wage the wars of some powerful Sith or Jedi. Missions progress via Warzones and Arenas, just like Pilot progresses by doing GSF.

* Crafter! This character  starts as a proficient handy craftsman running his own little rerpairshop. Story advances by..crafting tons of stuff. Eventually ends up as some indistrial  mogul doing huge R&D projects for the Outlander in Onderon.

* Mandalorian! Grindy planetary mission stuff. Outlander hires them to travel the world, earning the locked supply crates you get from planetary missions. Story taking the player  through ranks and customs of Mando culture  advances by gathering tons and tons of the supply crates.

 

Each of these classes would have a story consisting of like..10 fully voice acted missions, no more.  Perhaps only NPCs are voice acted, with PC producing KOTOR style text OP of this thread loves so well:D All of these missions would be time consuming and grindy as hell, and stories involved  quite grandiose. If neither PC voice acting nor romances are a thing, one could make all kinds of more exotic races playabe as these mini classes.   BW, make it happen! 

Edited June 2, 2023 by Stradlin

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

3 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

Mini class stories such as..

* Starfighter Pilot! Story moves on by doing GSF and/or PvE railshooter. You play through the entire career, perhaps ending up as the admiral in command of Outlander's fleet or something. Story moves on by doing lots and lots of GSF.  

* Ground pvp -oriented version of the above. Story of some  Mercenary or whomnot hired to wage the wars of some powerful Sith or Jedi. Missions progress via Warzones and Arenas, just like Pilot progresses by doing GSF.

* Crafter! This character  starts as a proficient handy craftsman running his own little rerpairshop. Story advances by..crafting tons of stuff. Eventually ends up as some indistrial  mogul doing huge R&D projects for the Outlander in Onderon.

* Mandalorian! Grindy planetary mission stuff. Outlander hires them to travel the world, earning the locked supply crates you get from planetary missions. Story taking the player  through ranks and customs of Mando culture  advances by gathering tons and tons of the supply crates.

That's actually a good idea and perhaps a more realistic one, given the lack of resources that Bioware is dealing with.

I like the StarFighter Pilot one especially. That's a concept that has roots in the most classical Star Wars. We see it throughout the Originally Trilogy and is an intricale part of the destruction of the Death Star and it is at the core of Luke Skywalker's earlier years.

I'm not big on Disney Star Wars, but I do like and respect Dave Filoni as Lucas's chosen heir, who worked side by side with him and told him straight out "I'm teaching how to make Star Wars for when I'm gone." And you can see Lucas' vision in alot of his work.

I have to say though, when I saw Luke's X-Wing on the monitor in the last episode of that Season of the Mandalorian where he shows up to take Baby Yoda to train, the second I saw the X-Wing, man, I felt that Star Wars vibe run right up my spine!

It's a classical aspect of Star Wars. Even in the Prequels, we see Star Fighter Pilots dogfighting, we Anakin who loves to fly his Star Fighter and excells at it.

Just like I feel like the Wookie is classic part of Star Wars, The StarFighter Pilot concept, it's right up there too. If they made a Star Fighter Class or mini-class, that I would definitely try.

It's kinda funny because, I been playing the game for 10 years, same character, and I've pretty much tried everything. But the last few weeks I decided that because I never did the Space Missions, I figured, let's give it a try. And I have been having some fun with it, pretty easy stuff, but I dig the Star Fighter thing so it was fun. Than I got to the 'Heroic Space missions' and man, are they hard as friggen hell. Those missions take some skill and they're very unforgiving of mistakes. One mistake, it's all over and your back to square one and it takes some serious reflexes cuz some things come really fast and you smash into something, game over.

It took me some time, but I've eventually was able to finish all the Heroic Space missions, and it's a fun ride.

They're very unrepresented, and you really don't hear much about them or people talk about them, so your concept could actually work very well and give those missions some purpose and reason.

I'm toying with the idea of giving GSF a try, not sure if I will or I won't yet, but playing those Heroic Space missions, as annoyingly hard as they are, when you get it done, there's some fulfillment there, and now that I've been able to to do them a few times each, they're still hard, but the reflexes are getting better and it feels real nice when it works well.

I definitely back your Star Fighter Pilot idea. That's some real Star Wars right there.

               

[Stradlin]

20 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

 

I'm toying with the idea of giving GSF a try, not sure if I will or I won't yet, but playing those Heroic Space missions, as annoyingly hard as they are, when you get it done, there's some fulfillment there, and now that I've been able to to do them a few times each, they're still hard, but the reflexes are getting better and it feels real nice when it works well.

I definitely back your Star Fighter Pilot idea. That's some real Star Wars right there.

               

 

You should, it is the best part of the game by far! It feels terribly frustrating til you figure it out. Once you do, it gradually turns awesome. Once you become good enough to affect outcome of the matches sometimes, the whole emergent narrative aspect kicks in, and good and fun matches turn into pretty memorable stories of utter space heroism!

 

This video&channel in general does great job at teaching the very basics of GSF really quickly. Vulkk and SWTORISTA have great written guides available too.

And yeah fully agreed, precious few things are as Star Wars as a heroic main character who just happens to be a total prodigy in operating Starfighters and other ships. Luke,Anakin/Vader, Han, Rey,Poe,Lando..almost errybody is a greatStarfighter Pilot. BW would be wise to remember this a bit more often. :l

 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

27 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

You should, it is the best part of the game by far! It feels terribly frustrating til you figure it out.

On your recommendation I'll give it a try next week.

 

27 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

Luke,Anakin/Vader, Han, Rey,Poe,Lando..almost errybody is a great Starfighter Pilot.

Rey's great at everything.

=p

P.S. - I just noticed the Star Fighter in your sig.

Edited June 2, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx
P.S.

[Balameb]

3 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I'm toying with the idea of giving GSF a try, not sure if I will or I won't yet, but playing those Heroic Space missions, as annoyingly hard as they are, when you get it done, there's some fulfillment there, and now that I've been able to to do them a few times each, they're still hard, but the reflexes are getting better and it feels real nice when it works well.

Just like with Space missions, upgrading your Ships makes a lot a difference. In order to do it more efficiently and having more options i recomend that before consuming any "Ship requisition" item you get, you concentrate on Fleet requsition and purchasing all ships. That is because Ship requisition items apply for all already owned/unlocked ships.

If you have spare fleet comms from doing Space missions, you can purchase requisitions as well.

After having all ships and before converting Fleet to Ship, see to also get some crew members (follow guides to see witch ones you will use most).

[SithKoriandr]

On 5/29/2023 at 4:42 AM, LanceDefender said:

Hmmm, but in KOTOR noone had problem with that...
Hypocrisy here is strong.

I like it. Not as a substitute, but from time to time on lesser story then why not.

 

KOTOR isn't SWTOR

[SteveTheCynic]

22 hours ago, Stradlin said:

I don't get all this talk about senators:p Obv starfighter pilot is the only real option for a new class!

It was someone's suggestion for a new origin story.

[albeva]

Black bars are 10x worse in 7.3. Now is part of the main storyline. Jeez. Part of the purple quest. ARGH.

If I wanted to read and be silent type in a game, I would go play FFXIV

[Kristallia]

One thing that annoys me a bit in those black bar cutscenes is that I cannot see my chat during them, so if someone askes me to some ops or warzone group during very long cutscene I might miss it.

Not a huge issue, but still

[arunav]

On 5/29/2023 at 6:37 AM, albeva said:

The most amazing part of Swtor is the fully-voiced quest lines. This is what drew me in; this is what has me returning to the game. Whenever I see these black bars when talking with Lane feels like a slap to everything that SWTOR was good at. It is immersion breaking in a way that I want to rage quit this game. I don't even care what she has to say as I spam random numbers and a spacebar to get through those one-sided monologues that are antithetical to everything good about Swtor.

If you don't have the resources to voice them fully, how about changing how these conversations/info/lore dumps are presented? It feels cheap and unfinished.

Hindsight is easy, but I wish this had been how the game was designed from the beginning. The player character voice acting seems to be at least one roadblock to producing more story content, and text responses generally give better options for interacting with NPCs in SWTOR, i.e. more intricate story. 

A good example is the Feast of Prosperity story quests featuring the 2 Hutts and its exploration of some charitable foundations in the United States. All the responses, some of which were really great, I doubt would have been put in the game had they been voice acted. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by arunav

[SteveTheCynic]

3 hours ago, albeva said:

If I wanted to read and be silent type in a game, I would go play FFXIV

Or ESO...

[cannibithobbal]

3 hours ago, albeva said:

Black bars are 10x worse in 7.3. Now is part of the main storyline. Jeez. Part of the purple quest. ARGH.

Agreed, I hated that so much.

It's bad enough in totally extra side content or quick alliance alerts or planetary quests that you have no obligation to play to continue through the main story, but in the bulk of the story for the entire update, and a part of the main storyline that you have to get through to continue the story?  Felt cheap and lazy tbh, and completely took me out of the immersion, I just wanted to skip through it but wasn't sure if anything in the dialogue would actually end up being important. 

I get the devs are broke but can they seriously not even afford to pay the voice actors for main story content?  If they really can't, then frankly I would rather just NOT have any story that they can't afford to make voiced.  Just give me shorter, fully voiced/well animated updates and I will be super happy.  Quality over quantity 👌

Just to chime in on this entire topic also, after reading through the thread:

I want my characters to talk.  I do not like playing story games that are not fully voice acted.  I have not played a character-driven story game that is not fully voiced since, like, the late 90s, because I do not enjoy it.  For me silent protag = I don't care about anything that's happening because it doesn't feel like my characters are actually involved. 

People can compare SWTOR to KOTOR or other silent protag games all they want and say "well those games did it so why do you care" but that's just apples and oranges nonsense quite frankly.  SWTOR was fully voiced from day 1, taking that away is going backwards.  If I wanted a silent protag with 17 dialogue choices to choose from I would play a different game.  I play/love SWTOR because it's fully voiced with really good voice actors and has cinematic cutscenes, making it really feel immersive even in spite of having older graphics. 

If I had the choice of going backwards to bland static black bar silent protag scenes forever or never seeing any more of the story/never getting another update and ending the game here, I would personally choose the latter.  I hate the black bar silent protag scenes THAT much.  I'm not gonna rage quit just because they're popping up more often, but I would definitely just stop playing through the story if I knew that was all that was coming lol

Hopefully 7.3 was a one-off for including black bar scenes in the main story, and at least there were other fully voiced cutscenes in the update (even if the character animation in some of them felt very jank and unfinished 🥺).

[albeva]

13 hours ago, arunav said:

Hindsight is easy, but I wish this had been how the game was designed from the beginning. The player character voice acting seems to be at least one roadblock to producing more story content, and text responses generally give better options for interacting with NPCs in SWTOR, i.e. more intricate story. 

No. No. No! I obviously don't speak for everyone, but personally, I would have never played this game. Immersive voice acting is what appealed to me about this game from the beginning. This was in stark contrast to WoW and other similar MMOs at the time. I imagine a great many other players feel the same way.

Where they shot themselves in the foot is the sheer ambition of having 8 major fully voiced storylines at launch. (I'm glad they did, but really costs them dearly now)

[Traceguy]

I agree. During these conversations I space out (no pun intended. Both mentally and physically).

My favorite part of SWTOR is hearing my Player speaking in conversations, but now I am reading big sentences to figure out how I want the conversation to go, and it feels completely uninteresting 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Traceguy

[Traceguy]

On 5/29/2023 at 5:42 AM, LanceDefender said:

Hmmm, but in KOTOR noone had problem with that...
Hypocrisy here is strong.

I like it. Not as a substitute, but from time to time on lesser story then why not.

I never played KOTOR. It was too buggy when I tried. Not buggy like SWTOR, buggy like you can't even get past the first level.

Second, even if I had played KOTOR, this game is not KOTOR, and this game has been and always will be better than KOTOR. Your argument is the equivalent to someone complaining about slow internet in 2023, and saying no one complained in the 1980s

[bahramnima]

i agree with op

what make swtor unique in mmo world is the fact that we have DVL story telling with voice acting, it gives a lot of character development to both player character and major npcs in the game which is awesome and very immersive, if they take away voice acting, i personally would uninstall this game, i really do not have time or money or patient for text based games, it is not just swtor i generally do not play games with lot of text, voice acting helps a lot with  immersion and being immersed into the world and caring about that world is extremely important to me.  

[Lichtfaengerin]

I hate these type of conversations as well, it makes the quests so immemorable, I've already forgotten most of what happened with Lane and i don't care one bit about that character, or Master Ranos, or Amity, or every other one we talk to in that way. Even worse if it's in Alien language, the Gormak droning on and on about Voss lore (or was it lore? I forgot) was terrible, I'd actually rather just get a codex entry.

Now, if this is restricted to side stuff like seasons and bonus characters, whatever, but it's very lame as part of the main story.

I'd prefer having short cutscenes, with additional info dropped in other ways to this terrible abomination. If i wanted to play KOTOR, I would do just that.

[Stradlin]

On 6/24/2023 at 12:12 PM, Lichtfaengerin said:

 

I'd prefer having short cutscenes, with additional info dropped in other ways to this terrible abomination. If i wanted to play KOTOR, I would do just that.

Its not like this were the case of somebody at BW getting a bad idea or something. " Oo hey, maybe players LIKE a silent playerchar, lets do silent player char yaay!" Nah, they do what they must: It takes 48(!!!!) different voice actors to publish a tiny content patch where  nothing happens besides PC saying   " hello there" to an empty room. That is insane when you think of it.  Cost efficient is prolly what you want&need to be if you live dev a 11 year old MMO.  Needing 48 actors for one part is the polar opposite of efficient or cost efficient.  It is incredibly costly thing to keep in live development.

Amount of content released post KOTET makes it pretty clear how doable live dev story with a fully voiced PC is, "just barely doable, at most" being the answer imo.

That said, it is a shame they clearly aren't too big on doing   even voiced NPCs. Non voiced PC with lots of different text- only dialogue options chatting with fully voiced NPCs would be perfectly fine and immersive to me.

This rule they seem to have, of non voiced PC meaning the NPC spoken to needs to do some insuffrable low effort bleebablooba pretend-language is a very unfortunate one. Text pnly PC, fully voiced NPCs. That could well be doable. Takes 48 actors for PC to say "Hello there. " Takes 3 actors for an NPC to say " Hello there". Its quite a difference.

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Stradlin

[recalcitrantIre]

On 5/30/2023 at 12:27 AM, Balameb said:

3- KOTOR Black Bars in SWTOR were introduced in 4.0 to save a few bucks and a little time; nothing more, nothing less. Problem is that it delivers a product that is way inferior to its origional that acted/voiced even the tiniest of the side quest.

its funny how people spout this point and yet forget the very minimal player VA in 3.x sidequests/dailies

there's quite a lot of them with no player VA at all, just an ambient blurb from the mission NPC on interaction/completion

or even in a broader sense, any set of dailies that's picked up at a terminal with zero VA of any kind

its just this one feature that's touted as a cost-cutting measure, not any of these other ones

[SteveTheCynic]

8 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

its funny how people spout this point and yet forget the very minimal player VA in 3.x sidequests/dailies

Yeah.  There's a fair few where you pick a mission from a datapad or whatever, and there's an NPC voice and a pop-up panel, but no interaction.  And there's some where you pick the mission from the datapad, and there's just a pop-up with a panel full of words and no voice at all.  I think the earliest of *those* is...

Well...

It released in 1.0.  It's in the entry hallway of the tomb of Ajunta Pall on Korriban.  (Go down the stairs from the entrance and turn to the left after seeing the initial class ability trainers.)

8 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

its just this one feature that's touted as a cost-cutting measure, not any of these other ones

Especially as there's reasons to think it wasn't about cost-cutting at all:

• There was a VA strike on at the time.
• The KOTOR-style ones offer more than just three options.  (More, even, than DA:I-style ones that can be turned up to six.)  The most I've seen is a single choice with seventeen options, in the recruitment mission for Qyzen Fess.