Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[supertimtaf]

36 minutes ago, wwefarming said:

IIRC when they announced 7.0, Charles Boyd implied if not straight up said that the fact combat styles weren't tied to class/origin stories anymore would allow them to possibly add new CS in the future. But since he doesn't work there anymore, we'll never know if he had an idea of new CS already or not.

But anyway yeah I agree this would be a breath of fresh air for the game if done right. Plus with some marketing (But that's on EA for this part I assume?) it could bring a good hype for current players while also bringing former and new players who are curious to see what's this new combat style(s) is all about.

Sadly, as highlighted in other posts, bringing a whole new combat style with all three disciplines is out of the question for the team. They cannot even balance properly the ones we have, let alone use non-placeholders icons in the new talent trees, do not expect them to have the budget or knowledge/skill required to create a whole new combat style. Not without some seriously massive increase in budget.

 

Edit : I just passed the 69 reactions mark just thanks to this thread alone. Sad to see that even a bitter player like me managed to make people agree more with me than with the dev team. Maybe at some point they'll answer ? Who knows.

Edited Monday at 07:07 AM by supertimtaf

[eabevella]

15 minutes ago, supertimtaf said:

Sadly, as highlighted in other posts, bringing a whole new combat style with all three disciplines is out of the question for the team. They cannot even balance properly the ones we have, let alone use non-placeholders icons in the new talent trees, do not expect them to have the budget or knowledge/skill required to create a whole new combat style. Not without some seriously massive increase in budget.

Jokes and sarcasm aside, I would be very happy if the devs balance the existing combat styles.

[supertimtaf]

2 hours ago, eabevella said:

Jokes and sarcasm aside, I would be very happy if the devs balance the existing combat styles.

So would the entire PvP population and probably the PvE one. Though the PvE is more an issue of fights being unbalanced as well.

[Wolfsbohne]

I can't stomach this ugly black frames and awkward silent Character anymore. Please bring back the complete Voice Acting. I don't need good cutscenes, just my Character standing there and talk.  

Edited Tuesday at 07:48 AM by Wolfsbohne

[ronin_chi_lao]

1 hour ago, Wolfsbohne said:

I can't stomach this ugly black frames and awkward silent Character anymore. Please bring back the complete Voice Acting. In don't need good cutscenes, just my Character standing there and talk.  

When I romanced Lana Beniko in fallen empire there was a lot of dialogue as I was running through tons of the story. Both of us conversing back and forth with no cutscenes. This was a great thing IMO.

[Grovia]

pls stop the use of kotor senes just remove does 8 useless quest you made me do form the quest boards that nobody likes at all thank you 

[Dareel]

On 6/20/2024 at 7:50 PM, AshleyRuhl said:

The mix of Standard and KOTOR scenes ensures that we can produce enough story content for the scale of each update, while also not overloading our current narrative team. It's extremely important to me, and the rest of the leadership team, that our content plans fit within our team's scope, and maintain a healthy work/life balance. While I know this is a different style than previous game updates, we are still enthusiastic about building a story that feels emotionally impactful, dynamic, and personal to as many player stories as possible.

Personally, I have no problem with partially voiced scenes, and reasons to use them make sense.

What bugs me the most is how these scenes look and by extension - how they feel.

Visual consistency in design is VERY important. It impacts everything that said design needs to deliver and communicate, as well as the way all that is perceived and experienced.

Right now there is a HUGE visual difference between 'KOTOR' style and fully voiced scenes - and this is the main reason why it alienates so much, imo. It looks like two different games, and it visually offers completely different and disconnected experience.

Fully voiced scenes have a lot bigger visible area and don't have huge obstructive panels. 

On the other hand 'KOTOR' style scenes have these huge obstructive panels, that not only take more screen space than the scene area, but also have a completely different look/feel/UI that impacts the whole experience much more than just being partially voiced or less choreographed. 

If visuals of both styles were made consistent to each other, and looked and felt like one is a natural visual extension of the other - it would remove this whole disconnection, improved user experience, and the only differences between them would be - less voiced lines and less choreography. But the fundamental experience would be consistent between two styles.

I understand the nostalgia for KOTOR, and have it too. But in this case - way too much is sacrificed for that nostalgia and negatives outweigh positives by incomparably huge margin.

[cannibithobbal]

23 minutes ago, Dareel said:

Right now there is a HUGE visual difference between 'KOTOR' style and fully voiced scenes - and this is the main reason why it alienates so much, imo. It looks like two different games, and it visually offers completely different and disconnected experience.

Fully voiced scenes have a lot bigger visible area and don't have huge obstructive panels. 

On the other hand 'KOTOR' style scenes have these huge obstructive panels, that not only take more screen space than the scene area, but also have a completely different look/feel/UI that impacts the whole experience much more than just being partially voiced or less choreographed. 

If visuals of both styles were made consistent to each other, and looked and felt like one is a natural visual extension of the other - it would remove this whole disconnection, improved user experience, and the only differences between them would be - less voiced lines and less choreography. But the fundamental experience would be consistent between two styles.

I understand the nostalgia for KOTOR, and have it too. But in this case - way too much is sacrificed for that nostalgia and negatives outweigh positives by incomparably huge margin.

Fully 100% agree that the visual difference adds even more to the absolutely disconnecting feeling of these scenes.  It is extremely jarring and feels.... silly?  Like why?  Why is there the black bars all of a sudden?  I never understood why they felt the need for the bars.

Like if they just made the scenes be basically static but with the traditional SWTOR dialogue wheel and visuals, that would be 10000% better.

However, the lack of character voice is still the biggest problem IMO.  Not the lack of fancy movie-style cinematic animations and camera work in the scenes, but the lack of a voice for my character.  Even though the KOTOR black bars are jarring, I would take those but my character having a voice over no black bars and my character still silent.  Of course I would like to have no black bars AND talking, but if I had to choose, I would choose let my character talk literally any day of the week.

I'm happy to just stand there talking with extremely basic character animations like in classic companion convo scenes, but let.my.character.talk!!

The lack of voicing is even more egregious if, as claimed in the dev posts that started this thread, animation time/effort is the sole reason for making the KOTOR style cutscenes, and that the ability to afford voice actors doing the parts has nothing to do with it.  They obviously wrote lines of dialogue already because they put them on the screen, so the writers are already doing that work and being paid.  They have the voice actors in to record OTHER scenes already, so they're already in the studio and fully available.  If affording to pay them to record more is not the problem, then just let them record every single line!  Do the super basic cutscenes, but VOICED.

[DAWUSS]

11 hours ago, eabevella said:

You raised a good point. Now that "combat styles" are not restricted to "origin stories" other than Force vs Tech, why can't we have new combat styles? It would certainly bring a new air and something people would love if done right.

Then again, making new combat styles that are new and balanced well with the existing ones means making actual, functional contents. They can't even balance the existing combat styles that all of them are viable in endgame contents *looking at marksman*

So Sages and Sorcs could both spit lightning and hurl objects?

[Dareel]

19 minutes ago, cannibithobbal said:

However, the lack of character voice is still the biggest problem IMO.  Not the lack of fancy movie-style cinematic animations and camera work in the scenes, but the lack of a voice for my character.  Even though the KOTOR black bars are jarring, I would take those but my character having a voice over no black bars and my character still silent.  Of course I would like to have no black bars AND talking, but if I had to choose, I would choose let my character talk literally any day of the week.

I'm happy to just stand there talking with extremely basic character animations like in classic companion convo scenes, but let.my.character.talk!!

The lack of voicing is even more egregious if, as claimed in the dev posts that started this thread, animation time/effort is the sole reason for making the KOTOR style cutscenes, and that the ability to afford voice actors doing the parts has nothing to do with it.  They obviously wrote lines of dialogue already because they put them on the screen, so the writers are already doing that work and being paid.  They have the voice actors in to record OTHER scenes already, so they're already in the studio and fully available.  If affording to pay them to record more is not the problem, then just let them record every single line!  Do the super basic cutscenes, but VOICED.

Unfortunately this is a problem of effort vs results, or how the get the most of investments.

If company pays for voice-acting only on one side of the dialog - these scenes cost less, and because there is no need to animate player character to deliver their voice lines - there is little reason to do full choreography. Both save time/money that can be invested into other things, like fully voiced and choreographed scenes.

When company needs to pay for more voice-acting - the need to get the most of it also increases, and that justifies additional choreography to deliver all these lines, action...

I understand that you would be ok if these scenes were in a middle - player voiced but little to no action. But I don't think it would be better, because in this case it could look like a badly made scene - everybody talks, but little to no movement and no cinema effect.

That is why, at least in my understanding, the decision was made to make full cinematic experience for some parts, cut it down for other parts, and compensate with extra dialog options to have in a conversation. If the budged is very limited and there is not a big team - the decision makes sense, imo.

[felleto]

2 minutes ago, Dareel said:

Unfortunately this is a problem of effort vs results, or how the get the most of investments.

If company pays for voice-acting only on one side of the dialog - these scenes cost less, and because there is no need to animate player character to deliver their voice lines - there is little reason to do full choreography. Both save time/money that can be invested into other things, like fully voiced and choreographed scenes.

When company needs to pay for more voice-acting - the need to get the most of it also increases, and that justifies additional choreography to deliver all these lines, action...

I understand that you would be ok if these scenes were in a middle - player voiced but little to no action. But I don't think it would be better, because in this case it could look like a badly made scene - everybody talks, but little to no movement and no cinema effect.

That is why, at least in my understanding, the decision was made to make full cinematic experience for some parts, cut it down for other parts, and compensate with extra dialog options to have in a conversation. If the budged is very limited and there is not a big team - the decision makes sense, imo.

So cutting PVP, PVE, GSF was not enough to cut their costs? Why make a game at this point. Just cut all costs and provide a text box with description and dialogues for us to pick. 

And don't fall for this whole "help me, I'm poor" argument from the dev team. This is one of the most profitable games under EA and it's a Star Wars game for god's sake. 

Edited Monday at 03:25 PM by felleto

[Dareel]

3 minutes ago, felleto said:

So cutting PVP, PVE, GSF was not enough to cut their costs? Why make a game at this point. Just cut all costs and provide a text box with description and dialogues for us to pick. 

And don't fall for this whole "help me, I'm poor" argument from the dev team. This is one of the most profitable games under EA and it's a Star Wars game for god's sake. 

I don't think they are poor. Far from it, imo.

But there are decision makers who plan budgets. Stuff like that happens in separate parts - budget for a narrative team, for PvE team, etc. They plan what content they want to do and what developers they have or have access to for hire.

Not many developers want to go and work on an old game with old tech to dig through a mess in its code that inevitably happens over the years, especially with the initial engine of this game.

So resources are limited, budgets are limited, availability limited, it is what it is. Cutting stuff can happen for more reasons then just money.

[supertimtaf]

23 minutes ago, felleto said:

And don't fall for this whole "help me, I'm poor" argument from the dev team. This is one of the most profitable games under EA and it's a Star Wars game for god's sake. 

The main issue is that the game is developped by Broadsword and published by EA
As a reminder, most publishing contracts in the videogame industry make it so most if not all of the game's revenues go to the publisher. So it wouldn't matter if they make money from the cash shop because chances are that they're not getting any of it.

This is most likely the case, with EA taking between 80% to 100% of Swtor's revenues and giving back a bit for the game's needs (that need to be budgeted by the dev team. If they don't make sufficient plans for game balance, raiding, PvP and all that this is entirely their fault for sure).

Keep in mind that you may also be in the case of a dev team saying "We need money for raiding" and the publisher saying "no" and at that point there's nothing you can do except fight your publisher for the good of your game, or simply admitting that you're getting paid anyway so why make the game better. It sucks, but they're far from the only ones in that situation.

[felleto]

19 minutes ago, Dareel said:

But there are decision makers who plan budgets. Stuff like that happens in separate parts - budget for a narrative team, for PvE team, etc. They plan what content they want to do and what developers they have or have access to for hire.

Not my problem.
 

19 minutes ago, Dareel said:

Not many developers want to go and work on an old game with old tech to dig through a mess in its code that inevitably happens over the years, especially with the initial engine of this game.

Not my problem. (x2)
 

19 minutes ago, Dareel said:

So resources are limited, budgets are limited, availability limited, it is what it is. Cutting stuff can happen for more reasons then just money.

Not my problem (x3)

To them I say: "I pay for the game. As a paying customer I would like the game to be working properly. If you can't do it stop making excuses and get to work."

Don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do

Edited Monday at 03:55 PM by felleto

[felleto]

@AshleyRuhl I wonder if the price of the subscription will change as a consequence of the change in the quality and scope of the updates.

I believe this is a fair question. 

 

[MaximusRex]

On 6/20/2024 at 12:51 PM, Pirana said:

You might fool some of the newer players with your PR, but you're not fooling the ones that have been here since the beginning. If this team, or what's left of it actually took what the players were telling you seriously ten years ago, this game wouldn't be down to a handful of servers. This game is exactly where it is because many of you refused to take our feedback seriously. It's your game, do with it what you want, look how well that's turned out for you and the rest of the team over the years. Meanwhile, over Blizzard, FF14, ESO and GW2 they're all releasing huge expansions and guess what, that's where most of us will be spending our money. This is Star Wars, no reason for it to have this small of a population and it goes back to all the questionable decisions that have been made since launch, including ones that were made during beta.

Some of us still pay and root for this game because we care and want it to succeed, maybe actually listening to the players who are far better at determining what is best for a game than a bunch of developers might be in your best interest. Good luck. 

I love this game so much, but its inability to deliver on its story and the move to solo-fication of what story we get is killing it for me.  They overreact and overcompensate for problems.  Story choices in FPs didn't work out, they stripped it from all new content entirely.  Slot Machine decos paid out too well, totally ruined them and canceled the rest of the ones they were going to offer.  I am still frustrated with the skill revamp.  It is insanely stupid that Raid Buffs and Aggro drops are not baseline, and as an Immortal Jug it hate that I have to remember to switch between Saber Reflect and Mad Dash depending on the fight.  These are not fun or interesting choices; they are annoying a terrible design.

One of the best things about the launch story was being able to play with friends, even if sometimes you had to split up for some solo phases, but planetary story and being able to roll and talk about what was happening was great, and when that didn't work ion Flash Points they stripped it more and more from the game. 

My longest gaming friend stopped playing years ago and my Ops team, and stubbornness I guess, are about the only thing holding me here.

I have been playing FFXIV as my main story game for almost 2 years now, and while I realize SWTOR isn't big enough to push out that kind of content, I think if they stopped giving away so much they could do a lot.

The SWTOR management team should go look at what Lord of the Rings Online is doing, they have a robust F2P model, but they don't give away everything for almost nothing, and they regularly put out huge expansions (at least compared to SWTOR) and have packages at multiple levels where you can pay from $50 to $150 with lots of extras added in at each tier.

[FlatTax]

Wow, what an embarrassing example or corporate word salad.

[Dareel]

1 hour ago, felleto said:

Not my problem.
Not my problem. (x2)
Not my problem (x3)

To them I say: "I pay for the game. As a paying customer I would like the game to be working properly. If you can't do it stop making excuses and get to work."

Don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do

Well, you're paying to play the game or to get whatever extra enjoyment from the game. You are not paying for a service to develop a game how you would like it, otherwise you would need to pay a lot more. If you don't like what you're getting for your money - you are free to stop.

Nothing discussed previously are your problems, my problems or anybody else's, except for developers of this game. Obviously.

For us they are reasons for the state of things. Or reasons to complain if you want to.

You can't really watch what they do without being there, without knowing details of publishing, licensing, etc. Can only imagine something convenient and say it after.

There are principles/methods how businesses are run, as well as there are reasons for the state of things. As a customers, we can provide feedback.

On the other hand - good luck complaining and demanding stuff to happen. 

[felleto]

2 minutes ago, Dareel said:

On the other hand - good luck complaining and demanding stuff to happen. 

It's a hobby of mine. Things are not going to happen regardless of what you and I say. So we are back at square one my friend. You just prefer to be a little more neutral on the matter. I'm more pissed off. 

Whatever rocks your boat because at the end no amount of PR, censorship or sugar coating will make this game better. 

Edited Monday at 08:48 PM by felleto

[Otowi]

I am happy we get some comunication at last, but it sadly reads mostly like PR speech, with a few nuggets of actual information.

The KOTOR style choices with silent PC is very jarring after years of hearing their voices, and it was very noticeable in 7.5. It was mostly the Sa'har show. Although I like her character, I feel like things was to heavily centered on her and to an extent her brother.

You also say the KOTOR style gives us more choices, but most of the choices ends up at the same points, meaning that it's not really a choice at all, but rather an illusion. If what we chose actually meant just that, then it would be so much better, but as it stands it's railroading us into the "canon" choices as it were.

I totally get that development has costs, but I wonder how much you actually save by doing the KOTOR style VS having them be voiced, if not animated.

Had you gone for fully voiced, with KOTOR style choices, there would be far less complaints, and certainly a lot less jarring.

Time will tell if this was the correct choice for the game as whole, or if a different option could have been made.

[Dareel]

Just now, felleto said:

You just prefer to be a little more neutral on the matter. I'm more pissed off. 

Nah mate, it's simple.

I'm a founder. I've been there and I get it.

At this point, I have a Star Wars itch and here to get a fix, posting some feedback and suggestions that pop into my head. If anything sticks and I'll get more enjoyment from the game - I'll play more and pay more. If not - I'll get my fix and move on till the next time.

[FlatTax]

The absence of timely, frank communication is notable and continuing.

[Quendorite]

On 6/20/2024 at 8:54 PM, LJ_Gibbs said:

When was the last time... I am being for real... that they did anything because player feedback demanded it?  I truly would like to know... because I can't remember.

Pretty recently! Not too long ago, they added a hood with visible hair under it!

 

(please nobody point out how this was after 12 years of repeatedly asking for it)

[Traceguy]

On 6/20/2024 at 11:48 AM, KeithKanneg said:

In reality, the same folks who developed SWTOR in the past, most of whom have been here for 5-10+ years, are still here and working hard to deliver

I don't see it. The quality of updates, the slowness of bug fixing, the lack of voiced dialogue says the exact opposite. No one is working hard anymore. What about @EricMusco who said 3 months ago you would have more changes for conquest? Where are these changes?

Edited Tuesday at 01:50 PM by Traceguy

[ladydjarin]

On 6/20/2024 at 5:50 PM, AshleyRuhl said:

Hi there,

To reiterate what Keith said, the team working on SWTOR at Broadsword is largely the same team that was at BioWare. Same folks, different banner. This includes the narrative team, who have been authors in this story arc since the beginning. The "Legacy of the Sith" narrative has a high-level roadmap that has not changed. But as we put each chapter into active development, we must be agile enough to accommodate big changes (like our move to Broadsword).

As our team size has changed, so has our development. We pivot, we scope, and we strategize to bring players the highest quality content that our current team can produce. To that end, starting in Game Update 7.3, we adjusted our delivery of narrative content, particularly cinematics, in the main story. As we've established a rhythm over the last few updates, I want to give context as to why we vary our cinematic scene style in crit path story content, and where you can expect it.

Currently in SWTOR story content, we have two main scene types. Our "Standard" scene type has voiced lines for the player character and the NPC characters in the scene, and dialogue choices are limited to 3 choices. The staging, animation, and camera work is more complex, requiring a lot more time from our cinematic team to build complex choreography. These are our highest effort scenes, so we reserve them for the biggest impact moments, like action scenes, romances, and important choices.

Our second scene type is "KOTOR" style. These scenes have voiced lines for the NPCs, but player lines are unvoiced and only appear as dialogue choices. The dialogue choices in these scenes are expanded beyond the 3 choices in a Standard scene, giving the player more response options. The staging and cameras are simplified, which puts less pressure on our cinematic team, and means scenes can potentially be longer/more branchy since they reuse much of the staging setup. This means KOTOR scenes can have MORE conversational depth than if they were built as Standard scenes. We use KOTOR scenes when we have conversational interactions, and we leverage this design to include additional player lines specific to the player's class, romance, and previous choices.

The mix of Standard and KOTOR scenes ensures that we can produce enough story content for the scale of each update, while also not overloading our current narrative team. It's extremely important to me, and the rest of the leadership team, that our content plans fit within our team's scope, and maintain a healthy work/life balance. While I know this is a different style than previous game updates, we are still enthusiastic about building a story that feels emotionally impactful, dynamic, and personal to as many player stories as possible.
 

I would much rather a shorter story if we had fully voiced cutscenes I understand budget and many other factors.

I think the kotor style cutscenes kinda take away that immersion