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

[albeva]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

• 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.

And I don't care about any of them. Long-winded, boring reads. If I wanted to read quests and be the silent dummy target to be talked at, I'd play other games that do the story a lot better than SWTOR these days. FFXIV, ESO and heck, even WoW.

One thing SWTOR has that no other game in the genre can compare with are the immersive cutscenes. That is what always attracted me, what had me coming back every time a new patch is out, what kept me subbed to the game for the better part of 10 years. If this KOTOR style were present in 1.0, I would have never played past the first week. I would have forgotten the game even exists by now... like so many other MMOs that came out around that time...

[Balameb]

11 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

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

What is funny is that people don't understand similarities and diferences when trying to make a comparison.

Similarities: Both are methods to save on costs.

Differences: 3.x (and actually some from way before too) do not take your voice away, it is just dull. But Kotor style bars do take your voice out.

2 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

There was a VA strike on at the time.

When black bars are intruduced in the middle of heavy VA story, and actually include some VA work as well, reiterating that argument is just silly.

They added a companion hunt as filler that do not include content, but a potential lot of VA.

If they needed filler content to keep up with the masses complains, they could have done more MMO group content actually. You know, that thing that people actually expect to get in an MMO and usually requires less VA work.

2 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

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.

Irrelevant choices, that are rarely choices.

Regular wheel 3 choices already not always represent well what is written and what (and how) the PC actually express. So we end up using our imagination even without having 4+ choices.

But to top it all. Having a change from a 2/3 choice wheel to a list of choices, should not mean the PC Voice needs to be taken out. I mean, they are not cutting on VA cost, right?

Your two arguments are just fine examples of how mediocrity is allowed to spread.

Edited June 27, 2023 by Balameb

[Lichtfaengerin]

On 6/26/2023 at 8:44 PM, Stradlin said:

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.

Yeah I know it's there to save money and not for the fun of it. So, ideally I'd like the devs to reduce cost for something else and add a fraction more voiced dialogue instead of the terrible KOTOR style convos as part of the main story. Obviously I have no idea how exactly this game is budgeted.

20 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

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

Yavin side quests were fine, they're condensed, you don't have to endure the awkward dialogue mode and your characters even say something from time to time. Much better imo, they can gladly bring them back instead of this rubbish.

[DreadtechSavant]

The black bars don't bother me,  as it give more options then the standard 3. No voice for the option you pick is well I agree very disappointing.

 

We all have things that bother us in-game. What bothers one player won't be an issue for another. Going back to the first time I ever played this game, repetitive stuns by enemy NPC's still bother me more than the black bars no voice over. Yet don't remember this bothering any other player. But still go into one area, every mob has poisoned blade/dart as a stun, next area force choke, next area,  kickback next ears flash grenade. EVERY MOB within the area . just gets tiresome on some planets such as Oricon as a example. 

 

What you mention here however while disappointing it was done as a cost cutting excise, while as mentions is poor I do understand why it was done. 

 

Over all at least for me I still enjoy the story it's self. despite this.

[Stradlin]

14 hours ago, Lichtfaengerin said:

Yeah I know it's there to save money and not for the fun of it. So, ideally I'd like the devs to reduce cost for something else and add a fraction more voiced dialogue instead of the terrible KOTOR style convos as part of the main story. Obviously I have no idea how exactly this game is budgeted.

Yavin side quests were fine, they're condensed, you don't have to endure the awkward dialogue mode and your characters even say something from time to time. Much better imo, they can gladly bring them back instead of this rubbish.

Yeah obviosuly nobody here does.  One character requiring 48 actors must have a terrible cost though. Exactly how much of the rest of the game would you like to sactifice on this altar? Exactly what would you remove from active development  to get few more lines from Jennifer Hale and co?

 

I completely understand why people  miss huge wealth of class specific VA content of vanilla, and wish there'd be more of that happening.  I assume literally nobody has high hopes of SWTOR ever returning to that again though.

I don't understand what there is to miss or hold on to in tea spoon fed one size fits all  lackluster stuff we've gotten since KOTET.   Imho it is clear budget for producing story at any half decent rate just simply is not there.

Just playing KOTFE again after few years. Alliance alerts  where NPCs are mostly English VA  and silent  PC picks from a decent wealth of different things  to say seems perfectly fine and immersive to me. Idea of having a half decent amount of story like this,  at half decent rate of release sounds infinitely better to me than what we've gotten over last..7 years or something. I suppose dropping PC VA would also make bit more personal,  class specific storiers at least marginally more likely again.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Stradlin

[Lichtfaengerin]

22 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

Yeah obviosuly nobody here does.  One character requiring 48 actors must have a terrible cost though. Exactly how much of the rest of the game would you like to sactifice on this altar? Exactly what would you remove from active development  to get few more lines from Jennifer Hale and co?

Sure some of them have bigger salaries, I can't imagine the German ones being that expensive though. Sure it's costly over all but I don't believe that voice acting cost outweighs everything else that immensely. But no way to know. 

I don't mind the main story being shorter if the quality is better (e.g. no KOTOR conversations)