Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[septru]

2 hours ago, EricMusco said:

I wanted you to know that we’ve already been reading through this thread and having discussions internally, and there are more to come.

Too bad we can't same the same about other threads and other issues. 

[JakRoanin]

Yeah it's the pacing that gets all thrown off with the KOTOR Scenes. I don't need my PC to be fully voiced if someone is just telling me "get to this location" that's not a huge deal to me at all. But to not have an actual conversation when it comes to making decisions or influencing NPC's direction. That doesn't work for me.

[Kataret]

I'm glad to have some transparency here. From what I understand, it ultimately does come down to a time and resource matter, like a lot of us might have expected. And that's no one's fault. Just the nature of the beast.

With that said, I do want to echo what other players have said. The unvoiced nature of the KOTOR style cutscene does leave a big disconnect with our characters. And it's especially immersion breaking when the KOTOR style scenes and the voiced cinematic scenes are juxtaposed between one another. That's the big hang-up a lot of players have, I think.

So like others said, we don't need lots of fancy camera panning and choreography in these scenes. But bringing back player voices and just static camera cuts to the character speaking would go a long way. The same way most mission dialogues were executed in the vanilla game. Not sure where that falls in the realm of feasibility, but I just wanted to share my two cents.

[omeru]

4 hours ago, VilianSW said:

Thank you for popping in, Eric, but it is too little, too late. Wasn't it you who promised us a better communication? Your post should appear here couple of days after 7.5 release at most, not when people were providing feedback - constructive or not - for whole whopping four weeks. This isn't the kind of communication any players deserve, and its quality added to things escalating.

Eric promised so many things and kept none and yet we are still waiting for him to apologize once.

[felleto]

4 hours ago, EricMusco said:

That’s where things get tricky. What we are going to do, always, is try to tell the best story possible with all of our tools and resources. This includes everything I listed above, even KOTOR scenes. Sometimes you might disagree with how we use them, and that’s okay, and you can and should voice that (respectfully and constructively) so that we can continue to improve. Which segues nicely into…
 

First and foremost thank you for participating in a discussion with the community, that's what we like to see. Here's to more of that from multiple departments of the company (CM, Narrative, Community, PVP, GSF etc.)

I completely agree with what you said here @EricMusco feedback is worthless if not specific. If you don't know what your players want. How to know what is THE BEST VISION and FUTURE of the game - that is, WHAT WE the players (and paying customers) want? If you don't have that specific data available you might commit the mistake of adding more KOTOR conversations and thinking that is what your player base wanted. No problem, let me and other MMOS out there help you with that. 

What some games do when their player base is so diverse and has many different opinions is send out surveys. Ask and you shall be answered. Make specific questions about different aspects of the game. Ask us what experience we have with those aspects of the game and you will have an idea of whether our opinion is valid or not (common sense: don't listen to a player that never completed any ops what he thinks about the balance of said ops) 

The thing is we have done that in the past. With PTRs and that feedback was completely dismissed. You ask for feedback and you keep doing what you guys think is the right thing for the game. I can't speak for everyone but the reception these posts have gotten regarding KOTOR conversation probably means that people don't want that. I mean you don't need a lot of brain cells to understand that. 

Unless, you think our feedback is indeed irrelevant (which you have demonstrated with your actions) and you basically want us (veteran players, mid-aged dads) gone so you may cater to a new audience. An audience that is fine with KOTOR conversations and Cartel market items inspired by the newest Disney + show in the market. Maybe, you want us gone because we remember what the game used to be and what it could have been. If that is the case, It truly saddens me. 

As George Lucas once said (paraphrasing here) The fear of loss leads to anger. Once we have something we are afraid of losing it. We the player base may be angry, and we might be angry because we are afraid of losing this beloved game. 
 

[Girmor]

5 hours ago, EricMusco said:

I wanted to pop back in and cover a few different things that I am seeing as I have been following along with the conversation.

I agree with the people that it's little too late but we're glad you've joind, that's what most of us want to see here!
I also apologize for the previous posts, I've been talking with Community Support about it.
 

52 minutes ago, felleto said:

What some games do when their player base is so diverse and has many different opinions is send out surveys. Ask and you shall be answered. Make specific questions about different aspects of the game. Ask us what experience we have with those aspects of the game and you will have an idea of whether our opinion is valid or not

I also think it's a great idea! I also think you should reach to your community for some feedback outside of the forums, like on social media, Steam etc.

53 minutes ago, felleto said:

Unless, you think our feedback is indeed irrelevant (which you have demonstrated with your actions) and you basically want us (veteran players, mid-aged dads) gone so you may cater to a new audience. An audience that is fine with KOTOR conversations and Cartel market items inspired by the newest Disney + show in the market. Maybe, you want us gone because we remember what the game used to be and what it could have been. If that is the case, It truly saddens me. 

As George Lucas once said (paraphrasing here) The fear of loss leads to anger. Once we have something we are afraid of losing it. We the player base may be angry, and we might be angry because we are afraid of losing this beloved game. 

I feel the same way about the current situation, I'm playing this game since late 2013 (with some major breaks) and it's hard for me to accept how the priorities for the game have changed...

[miiinaa]

While I greatly appreciate Eric's communication, I feel as though the team still can't quite grasp what we're asking with the KOTOR styling. I saw multiple people in here come to a compromise where they had the same kind of basic scene composition but with the player fully voiced, or having the short stock signature lines play instead that the player says frequently throughout the game already. Both of these options would fix the entire issue I have with the scenes, and the UI adjustment another suggested would help with the immersion breaking nature of the scene. If you say that immersion break is intentional, sure, fine, but give an option to turn off the ugly black boxes and have a more streamlined UI. If you really wanted to tailor the scene blending to player experience like Ashley said what we need are OPTIONS. It's about time you took your community seriously.

[cannibithobbal]

I too appreciate the dev update and an acknowledgement that our feedback is being taken in.

Would just like to reiterate what I have seen a couple other people pointing out about the KOTOR scenes:

While there may be a very very small minority of people who actually want those scenes in SWTOR and would be upset to see them go, if those people really want that nostalgia for KOTOR, to be frank, they can go play KOTOR.  or KOTOR 2.  Or any other game from 15-20 years ago that had similar style of cutscenes.  Or any modern game that is designed specifically to be a nostalgia title for older styles of video game.  SWTOR is not one of those games.  And based on the feedback in here I feel very comfortable saying that the vast majority of players want them gone completely, with some people who are neutral (take them or leave them). 

As others have stated, using "but people want nostalgia for KOTOR" (when that has not even been the majority of the feedback given) as an excuse to not change the simplified cutscenes into something practically just as simplified only voiced without black bars sounds a wee bit silly and stubborn imho.

There were KOTOR style cutscenes in this last update that I took notice of actually already having different camera angles and my character doing basic animations and moving, to the point that literally the only things needed to make the scenes everything I (and I think most people) want are taking away the black bars, giving a traditional dialogue wheel, and giving the player character a voice.  That's all we want.  That's all we need. 

Give us the fancy fully cinematic cutscenes when possible, because of course we love those too, but where the budget requires simpler cutscenes and our character are literally just talking, give us simpler cutscenes, but no black bars and voiced.  The class stories were like that and the class stories were (and still are) great!  There is nothing wrong with mixing the classic SWTOR style with the modern SWTOR style, because at least everything will still feel like SWTOR.

If we're going to have nostalgic style cutscenes, let's have nostalgia for EARLY SWTOR, not a completely different game.

Edited June 29 by cannibithobbal

[recalcitrantIre]

7 hours ago, phalczen said:

Is it even possible to add more choices on those wheels?  My guess is that its not possible to have more than 3 answers per wheel, but perhaps I'm wrong.

given all the other 'experimental' ideas, some of which have transitioned into more well-rounded and consistent pieces of gameplay tech, I'm almost certain that the original style of conversation is hard-limited to 3 responses, which is where the KOTOR style gives them more freedom; I think possibly the Dxun story wrapper mission shows this the most with something like 12 options presented to the player at the end

[felleto]

I think I'm done with this post. Do something and let us know what it is. 

[DeannaVoyager]

4 hours ago, cannibithobbal said:

I too appreciate the dev update and an acknowledgement that our feedback is being taken in.

Would just like to reiterate what I have seen a couple other people pointing out about the KOTOR scenes:

While there may be a very very small minority of people who actually want those scenes in SWTOR and would be upset to see them go, if those people really want that nostalgia for KOTOR, to be frank, they can go play KOTOR.  or KOTOR 2.  Or any other game from 15-20 years ago that had similar style of cutscenes.  Or any modern game that is designed specifically to be a nostalgia title for older styles of video game.  SWTOR is not one of those games.  And based on the feedback in here I feel very comfortable saying that the vast majority of players want them gone completely, with some people who are neutral (take them or leave them). 

As others have stated, using "but people want nostalgia for KOTOR" (when that has not even been the majority of the feedback given) as an excuse to not change the simplified cutscenes into something practically just as simplified only voiced without black bars sounds a wee bit silly and stubborn imho.

There were KOTOR style cutscenes in this last update that I took notice of actually already having different camera angles and my character doing basic animations and moving, to the point that literally the only things needed to make the scenes everything I (and I think most people) want are taking away the black bars, giving a traditional dialogue wheel, and giving the player character a voice.  That's all we want.  That's all we need. 

Give us the fancy fully cinematic cutscenes when possible, because of course we love those too, but where the budget requires simpler cutscenes and our character are literally just talking, give us simpler cutscenes, but no black bars and voiced.  The class stories were like that and the class stories were (and still are) great!  There is nothing wrong with mixing the classic SWTOR style with the modern SWTOR style, because at least everything will still feel like SWTOR.

If we're going to have nostalgic style cutscenes, let's have nostalgia for EARLY SWTOR, not a completely different game.

I have to agree with this.

I'm old enough to know KOTOR, never finished it because I hated the combat, but I guess it makes sense the dialogue options are copied from there. However as people have said, it's an old game, it only has nostalgic value for people who played it. You can count all the younglings out of that equation. Younglings and people like me, who didn't play it even when the game was new.

The KOTOR style dialogues don't bother me that much, because I can get through them very fast with spamming 1 and spacebarring. But if they are part of the story, is spacebarring really the intended way to play? No wonder I have no clue on what's going on in the story anymore. When the story is published in bits and pieces with months between them, you might want to think of a way on how to get most players engaged with it. Maybe KOTOR style isn't the best way.
 

[Beyrahl]

13 hours ago, EricMusco said:

Hey folks,

First off, as always thank you for the feedback and discourse in the thread. I wanted to pop back in and cover a few different things that I am seeing as I have been following along with the conversation. In order, communication around KOTOR scenes, how we are using them, and your feedback in this thread. Let’s jump in.

Communication

There are a couple of different points related to communication that I have seen in this thread that I wanted to touch on. The first is just a general point around moderation or silencing discussion. This is mostly me relaying from Jackie (but I know I stated this plenty of times in the past as well), the removal of posts in this thread came entirely from one of three places:

1. People being very unconstructive or downright awful towards each other or staff members. Disagreement is fine, personal insults or threats are not.
2. Discussion of moderation – you all know this. If you talk about moderation action being taken, your post gets removed.
3. And mostly as a knock-on effect to the two above, but as a part of cleaning up quoted conversations or references to one of the offending posts from bullet 1 or 2, sometimes numerous posts can be removed even if they themselves don’t have anything wrong in them, but they are referencing ones that do. This is done to keep the conversation cleaner and on topic.

One thing I did see talked about in this thread was a greater desire that we had “told you in advance it was going to work this way” so I wanted to address that a bit more directly. The reason we didn’t is that it has worked this way in some fashion for a number of game updates now. We have especially used this variety of tools throughout the 7.0 era. Let me be a bit more on the nose with it if I can.

When we go into crit path planning we take a look at the story we want to tell and our capacity to tell it across our disciplines. Note that this in no way just means cinematics. We take everything into account across writing, cinematics, VO budget, world and encounter design, environment and character art, and more. Quite literally every game update has an entirely different balance of well… everything. From KOTOR scenes (the topic of this thread) to how many bosses appear, the rewards you can earn, etc. And as I will cover in the last section of this post, I am not saying this to invalidate any of the feedback you are sharing on KOTOR scenes, that’s all valid! 

All that said I totally understand there was concern about KOTOR scenes used specifically in 7.5 and you feel we were slow to respond.

How and Where - KOTOR Scenes

If you've read the thread, you can see that there are a lot of different (and sometimes opposing) takes on when and if KOTOR scenes make sense, from “never use a KOTOR scene in crit path” to “what was in 7.5 is fine” to “the scenes are fine but only use them this way” or “the scenes are fine but only use them that way”.

That’s where things get tricky. What we are going to do, always, is try to tell the best story possible with all of our tools and resources. This includes everything I listed above, even KOTOR scenes. Sometimes you might disagree with how we use them, and that’s okay, and you can and should voice that (respectfully and constructively) so that we can continue to improve. Which segues nicely into…

Your Feedback and What’s Next

Alright so with some additional context in place (beyond what Keith and Ashley already stated in the beginning), the part that becomes most important to you is what we can do with all of this. Right now, I am going to take all of the feedback we’ve been collecting from this thread and take it back to the team to see what, if anything, we might be able to adjust. Just to hit some of the high nails of things I have seen (not comprehensive) with some general thoughts.

• My character isn’t voiced in KOTOR scenes - Understood on this feedback but this also isn’t a simple change as this is fundamentally how these scenes were designed (without the PC speaking). Still, feedback heard.
• The UI pulls me out of the experience/immersion - This is another one that we’ll discuss as it was definitely a prominent feedback point, but I want to offer a couple of discussion points.
  • The initial inspiration for these (as they were named) was obviously KOTOR and so it goes without saying, but I will point it out anyway. If we change these, there will inevitably be some folks who get upset that it no longer looks that way.
  • Some of that “pulls me out” is a little intentional. Since the experience of KOTOR scenes is different (more dialog, no PC voice, etc) we want it to be pretty clear when you enter one of those scenes that something is different so you aren’t expecting it to be the same. But as your feedback has noted, maybe it’s too strong, or it goes back to the “how and when” of above.

Ok, I know I typed a lot of words as I tend to do in these posts so thank you if you made it this far and as always thank you for your feedback – so keep it coming. I wanted you to know that we’ve already been reading through this thread and having discussions internally, and there are more to come. As always, as soon as we have more info to share on this front we will.

-eric

Cool, that sounds great for people who enjoy that content. Sadly, I don't and haven't played the game for story since Shadow of Revan, can we get any talk related to actual end game content in the game, whether it's progression, balance, Player versus player (not just seasons, the rewards are nice! sometimes.. but doesn't change PvP meta/balance at all), Raiding and just in general cross progression like shared server wide Legacy bay, rewards like tech frags for lower levels.

So on and so forth to generally reward players time more, mainly for lower levels as it is quite unrewarding, warzone commendations were a great system and rewarded pretty well. I am mostly here just for PvP and generally progression doesn't mean as much to me but rather an even playing field for PvP. We have seen the same meta in PVP for a very long time, do anything, it'd revitalize the PvP community tenfold.

When it comes to feedback, PvPers give a ton. For example, countless threads have complained about the raised cap from 4 man to 8 man. Please do revert it. Restrictions of tanks/heals per group size should be adjusted. There's zero reason for a group larger than 4man to be able to queue into non-grouped players and there's no need for more than 2 tanks to ever make it into a warzone per team. While that system mostly works backfilling exists and there's no system for mercy either with the punishing leaving system now in place some games just feel like a lost cause. There is no more ranked so why not ease up on the leaving punishments and work on a functional mercy rule to end poorly matched games as they're inevitable? 

When it comes to grouped gameplay, at least for arena restricting groups to tank, heal, 2x dps compositions would do wonders, it'd also help matchmaking. Regarding warzones, unless there's a group the restrictions should be more lax than they are. 

 

ps.

For any balance take it with a grain of salt and see how DPS is preforming single target-wise compared to HPS. DPS is far too close to HPS output and when it comes to AoE DPS blows HPS out of the water more than not. While I don't think healers need a massive nudge, they most definitely need more help. Potentially even an HP buff to deal with the incredible amount of burst we currently have. The point is tons of feedback has been given and I have made two dedicated threads I spent a ton of time on being this and this.

[Aries_cz]

I really think the time is here to ask "do we want to continue supporting DE/FR voiceovers/translations?"

I imagine a TON of money could be saved by cutting that that could go into making cutscenes overall look better (and be voiced).

 

I feel for the few DE/FR players who would be affected by that, but ask yourselves, if this chaos of swapping between THREE styles of conversations (normal, KOTOR, ambient) within a main quest is worth it.

[Thenightvortex]

16 hours ago, EricMusco said:

Hey folks,

First off, as always thank you for the feedback and discourse in the thread. I wanted to pop back in and cover a few different things that I am seeing as I have been following along with the conversation. In order, communication around KOTOR scenes, how we are using them, and your feedback in this thread. Let’s jump in.

Communication

There are a couple of different points related to communication that I have seen in this thread that I wanted to touch on. The first is just a general point around moderation or silencing discussion. This is mostly me relaying from Jackie (but I know I stated this plenty of times in the past as well), the removal of posts in this thread came entirely from one of three places:

1. People being very unconstructive or downright awful towards each other or staff members. Disagreement is fine, personal insults or threats are not.
2. Discussion of moderation – you all know this. If you talk about moderation action being taken, your post gets removed.
3. And mostly as a knock-on effect to the two above, but as a part of cleaning up quoted conversations or references to one of the offending posts from bullet 1 or 2, sometimes numerous posts can be removed even if they themselves don’t have anything wrong in them, but they are referencing ones that do. This is done to keep the conversation cleaner and on topic.

One thing I did see talked about in this thread was a greater desire that we had “told you in advance it was going to work this way” so I wanted to address that a bit more directly. The reason we didn’t is that it has worked this way in some fashion for a number of game updates now. We have especially used this variety of tools throughout the 7.0 era. Let me be a bit more on the nose with it if I can.

When we go into crit path planning we take a look at the story we want to tell and our capacity to tell it across our disciplines. Note that this in no way just means cinematics. We take everything into account across writing, cinematics, VO budget, world and encounter design, environment and character art, and more. Quite literally every game update has an entirely different balance of well… everything. From KOTOR scenes (the topic of this thread) to how many bosses appear, the rewards you can earn, etc. And as I will cover in the last section of this post, I am not saying this to invalidate any of the feedback you are sharing on KOTOR scenes, that’s all valid! 

All that said I totally understand there was concern about KOTOR scenes used specifically in 7.5 and you feel we were slow to respond.

How and Where - KOTOR Scenes

If you've read the thread, you can see that there are a lot of different (and sometimes opposing) takes on when and if KOTOR scenes make sense, from “never use a KOTOR scene in crit path” to “what was in 7.5 is fine” to “the scenes are fine but only use them this way” or “the scenes are fine but only use them that way”.

That’s where things get tricky. What we are going to do, always, is try to tell the best story possible with all of our tools and resources. This includes everything I listed above, even KOTOR scenes. Sometimes you might disagree with how we use them, and that’s okay, and you can and should voice that (respectfully and constructively) so that we can continue to improve. Which segues nicely into…

Your Feedback and What’s Next

Alright so with some additional context in place (beyond what Keith and Ashley already stated in the beginning), the part that becomes most important to you is what we can do with all of this. Right now, I am going to take all of the feedback we’ve been collecting from this thread and take it back to the team to see what, if anything, we might be able to adjust. Just to hit some of the high nails of things I have seen (not comprehensive) with some general thoughts.

• My character isn’t voiced in KOTOR scenes - Understood on this feedback but this also isn’t a simple change as this is fundamentally how these scenes were designed (without the PC speaking). Still, feedback heard.
• The UI pulls me out of the experience/immersion - This is another one that we’ll discuss as it was definitely a prominent feedback point, but I want to offer a couple of discussion points.
  • The initial inspiration for these (as they were named) was obviously KOTOR and so it goes without saying, but I will point it out anyway. If we change these, there will inevitably be some folks who get upset that it no longer looks that way.
  • Some of that “pulls me out” is a little intentional. Since the experience of KOTOR scenes is different (more dialog, no PC voice, etc) we want it to be pretty clear when you enter one of those scenes that something is different so you aren’t expecting it to be the same. But as your feedback has noted, maybe it’s too strong, or it goes back to the “how and when” of above.

Ok, I know I typed a lot of words as I tend to do in these posts so thank you if you made it this far and as always thank you for your feedback – so keep it coming. I wanted you to know that we’ve already been reading through this thread and having discussions internally, and there are more to come. As always, as soon as we have more info to share on this front we will.

-eric
 

Give me Vaylin and I’ll forgive everything.

[SteveTheCynic]

19 hours ago, phalczen said:

Second, I do not recall any 7.5-related KOTOR-style cutscenes that had more than 5 options.  How feasible would it be to have those scenes unvoiced by player character VAs, but full screen (no blackbars) and the requisite number of options on the conversation wheel as in traditional/OG cutscenes?  Is it even possible to add more choices on those wheels?  My guess is that its not possible to have more than 3 answers per wheel, but perhaps I'm wrong.

I think that without changing the wheel (e.g. by making it larger), more than five options would be a problem, but I think four or five could be done by adding the additional options on the left-hand side of the wheel.  I take inspiration here from the wheels in Dragon Age: Inquisition(1) where they have options all round the wheel, up to six if memory serves, although DA:I's wheel is bigger.

(1) I picked DA:I because it's the only DA game that I've actually played much of.

[davidfreddie]

Constructive feedback: Kotor-style dialogue is Jarring especially when it's a critical story path. Going from beautiful cinematic cutscenes and well-voiced lines to kotor style ruins the story-immersion. While at it, it won't have the same impact as SWTOR Style cutscenes. One of the big selling points of this game is that our PC is fully voiced and it's unique in this genre of games. Taking that away ruins the cornerstone of this game that I love. 

Solutions:

1. Remove the French and German voice actors and rehire the English Imperial Agent male agent.

2. Take your time! I rather have a fully fleshed story fully voiced but wait a year or 2 years for it but it better be KOFTE or KOTET sized length.

3. Do it like KOFTE a chapter of a big story per big patch

Conclusion: SWTOR isn't KOTOR and let's keep it that way. Taking away the voice of the PCs is taking the SW out of SWTOR. 
AND IN ESSENCE QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

[meddani]

people saying "thank you for responding or communicating" like it isn't the bare minimum they should do LMAO

[FlatTax]

On 6/28/2024 at 12:00 PM, EricMusco said:

Hey folks,

First off, as always thank you for the feedback and discourse in the thread. I wanted to pop back in and cover a few different things that I am seeing as I have been following along with the conversation. In order, communication around KOTOR scenes, how we are using them, and your feedback in this thread. Let’s jump in.

Communication

There are a couple of different points related to communication that I have seen in this thread that I wanted to touch on. The first is just a general point around moderation or silencing discussion. This is mostly me relaying from Jackie (but I know I stated this plenty of times in the past as well), the removal of posts in this thread came entirely from one of three places:

1. People being very unconstructive or downright awful towards each other or staff members. Disagreement is fine, personal insults or threats are not.
2. Discussion of moderation – you all know this. If you talk about moderation action being taken, your post gets removed.
3. And mostly as a knock-on effect to the two above, but as a part of cleaning up quoted conversations or references to one of the offending posts from bullet 1 or 2, sometimes numerous posts can be removed even if they themselves don’t have anything wrong in them, but they are referencing ones that do. This is done to keep the conversation cleaner and on topic.

One thing I did see talked about in this thread was a greater desire that we had “told you in advance it was going to work this way” so I wanted to address that a bit more directly. The reason we didn’t is that it has worked this way in some fashion for a number of game updates now. We have especially used this variety of tools throughout the 7.0 era. Let me be a bit more on the nose with it if I can.

When we go into crit path planning we take a look at the story we want to tell and our capacity to tell it across our disciplines. Note that this in no way just means cinematics. We take everything into account across writing, cinematics, VO budget, world and encounter design, environment and character art, and more. Quite literally every game update has an entirely different balance of well… everything. From KOTOR scenes (the topic of this thread) to how many bosses appear, the rewards you can earn, etc. And as I will cover in the last section of this post, I am not saying this to invalidate any of the feedback you are sharing on KOTOR scenes, that’s all valid! 

All that said I totally understand there was concern about KOTOR scenes used specifically in 7.5 and you feel we were slow to respond.

How and Where - KOTOR Scenes

If you've read the thread, you can see that there are a lot of different (and sometimes opposing) takes on when and if KOTOR scenes make sense, from “never use a KOTOR scene in crit path” to “what was in 7.5 is fine” to “the scenes are fine but only use them this way” or “the scenes are fine but only use them that way”.

That’s where things get tricky. What we are going to do, always, is try to tell the best story possible with all of our tools and resources. This includes everything I listed above, even KOTOR scenes. Sometimes you might disagree with how we use them, and that’s okay, and you can and should voice that (respectfully and constructively) so that we can continue to improve. Which segues nicely into…

Your Feedback and What’s Next

Alright so with some additional context in place (beyond what Keith and Ashley already stated in the beginning), the part that becomes most important to you is what we can do with all of this. Right now, I am going to take all of the feedback we’ve been collecting from this thread and take it back to the team to see what, if anything, we might be able to adjust. Just to hit some of the high nails of things I have seen (not comprehensive) with some general thoughts.

• My character isn’t voiced in KOTOR scenes - Understood on this feedback but this also isn’t a simple change as this is fundamentally how these scenes were designed (without the PC speaking). Still, feedback heard.
• The UI pulls me out of the experience/immersion - This is another one that we’ll discuss as it was definitely a prominent feedback point, but I want to offer a couple of discussion points.
  • The initial inspiration for these (as they were named) was obviously KOTOR and so it goes without saying, but I will point it out anyway. If we change these, there will inevitably be some folks who get upset that it no longer looks that way.
  • Some of that “pulls me out” is a little intentional. Since the experience of KOTOR scenes is different (more dialog, no PC voice, etc) we want it to be pretty clear when you enter one of those scenes that something is different so you aren’t expecting it to be the same. But as your feedback has noted, maybe it’s too strong, or it goes back to the “how and when” of above.

Ok, I know I typed a lot of words as I tend to do in these posts so thank you if you made it this far and as always thank you for your feedback – so keep it coming. I wanted you to know that we’ve already been reading through this thread and having discussions internally, and there are more to come. As always, as soon as we have more info to share on this front we will.

-eric
 

Thank you for acknowledging concerns in plain language.

The original statements in this thread remain an embarrassing example of what not to do in the future.

Edited June 29 by FlatTax
Clarity

[eabevella]

On 6/29/2024 at 12:00 AM, EricMusco said:

My character isn’t voiced in KOTOR scenes - Understood on this feedback but this also isn’t a simple change as this is fundamentally how these scenes were designed (without the PC speaking). Still, feedback heard.

You typed a lot of words. Yet I see only words, not answer.

Most people, including me, don't want KOTOR scenes in the main story.

Are you going to stop using it in the main story in the future? Yes? No?

Edited June 29 by eabevella

[SteveTheCynic]

7 hours ago, davidfreddie said:

1. Remove the French and German voice actors and rehire the English Imperial Agent male agent.

Who the farble are you to demean the value of the work of the French and German voice actors and translation team?

[davidfreddie]

16 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Who the farble are you to demean the value of the work of the French and German voice actors and translation team?

I came up with solutions you may like them or not but if you can't come up with better solutions don't add me! I was presented a statistic stating that the German and french player base combined aren't bigger than the English player base. English is also the top 3 most spoken languages in the world. Even some of the german and french players have spoken out and said they would rather have fully voiced English instead of KOTOR-style cutscenes.

[eabevella]

How many non-english speaking people are playing the english version because they don't use german and french?

How many german/french players are in the game currently?

How many german/french players can understand english and/or use german/french subtitle?

You can put a cost/value to all that in a business perspective "is it worth it if we HAVE to cut corner SOMEWHERE"

But personally I think the issue with german/french dub is that the effort and expanses needed to organize 2x more voice actors (contacting all of them, making scheduled, pre- post- recording processing) is a lot (especially when half of the BW group was laid off) and it costs more than the voice actor payment itself.

[Dyne-]

15 hours ago, davidfreddie said:

Constructive feedback: Kotor-style dialogue is Jarring especially when it's a critical story path. Going from beautiful cinematic cutscenes and well-voiced lines to kotor style ruins the story-immersion. While at it, it won't have the same impact as SWTOR Style cutscenes. One of the big selling points of this game is that our PC is fully voiced and it's unique in this genre of games. Taking that away ruins the cornerstone of this game that I love. 

Solutions:

1. Remove the French and German voice actors and rehire the English Imperial Agent male agent.

2. Take your time! I rather have a fully fleshed story fully voiced but wait a year or 2 years for it but it better be KOFTE or KOTET sized length.

3. Do it like KOFTE a chapter of a big story per big patch

Conclusion: SWTOR isn't KOTOR and let's keep it that way. Taking away the voice of the PCs is taking the SW out of SWTOR. 
AND IN ESSENCE QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Pretty much this.

SWTOR and KOTOR are two very different games that embody completely different design paradigms. The dev team should be focused on staying true to SWTOR's original design while seeking improvements within its established paradigm. I'll always love KOTOR. The game isn't without its merits, but allowing SWTOR to regress twenty years really shouldn't constitute a viable development strategy.

Personally, I'd prefer that you all reuse older dialogue choices from 1.0 to 6.0 in an effort to maintain the fully voiced experience that separates SWTOR from other games. Or, consider leveraging artificial intelligence in some capacity to generate voices for future content. Either approach is preferable to the KOTOR style scenes.

 

[Kiquju]

Dear development team, thank you for communicating that the main story content won't be fully voiced anymore even if it is not what the customers would've wanted to hear.

To give a bit of background, I played a couple of characters at launch to the end of the class stories with my friend. I felt it was obvious even then that the voiced player characters was the main reason for this game to have its share of players and the reason for it to exists in the market place, backed up by an underappreciatedly good system for handling multiple people making those choices in the same conversation. The character models were also something that should last the test of time, but everything else from environments to game mechanics to quality of life was always below average or mediocre at best. I hadn't subbed after that until last winter, but I had played the rest of the class stories once I noticed you had improved the quality of life things considerably from launch. That UI editor especially is a nice one. And I appreciated how gentle your free to play/preferred/sub model was compared to what I understand it to be in other more predatory free to play games.

I always wondered how'd you manage to keep everything voiced and keep the game running but based on your websites I thought that I would have to sub to get new content. Like on a content patch by content patch level. I was happy if that and the cartel market was enough to keep your business side going. Much to my surprise this summer even the new story content was available even when I was not subbed. While I was perplexed by this, I'm not going to try to suggest you how to run your business, because I'm sure you have enough data that you know this is a more profitable way than requiring people to be subbed for every new story content patch to get them unlocked.

While many have expressed these same opinions or ones similar to these, I too would like to add my voice to these concerns regarding changes to player characters not having voiced lines in all story moments. To me there are two main issues with this. How the player character having a voice relates to what defines this game and the pure game design discrepancy in trying to mix these two incompatible systems.

Lets get to the easier one first as compared to its rivals this game has been defined by having voiced player characters. Removing them from anything other than the complete side stuff like seasonal events undermines the entire game. If you just leave mediocre MMO mechanics and content, with a smallish player base and Star Wars stapled to it then there's nothing here for anyone but the Star Wars fans and even for them it won't be anything worthwhile on its own. And as many have expressed that'd be a shame because with these voiced player characters there has been something excellent for people to enjoy that isn't available in any other game.

The harder to explicitly express is the game mechanics side of these different conversation options. So let's try to look at them separately and then bring them together. The first one is the "Bioware wheel of conversation". Even by the launch of this game it was a pretty well known system. You'd have your small text clips of what your answer might be and there might be some extra indicator on how "good" or "bad" the game would deem this choice. It was also obvious that sometimes no matter how good your command of the English language is, the hint you selected did not correspond with the actual line or tone the character would say after the selection. Usually the "good" and "bad" indicators would clean up the worst of those offenders, but not always. Now a player could play these in a way where they expect the small clips to always match the spoken lines, but that would inevitably lead to frustration and dissonance with their character when they might do something completely opposite. So this basically necessitates the players to approach this system as "try to make the choice you want but don't think of it too rigidly, it's more of a hint than a command for the character" and then to view the actual line as "mini movie clip" the "canon" of what happened not the choice they tried to make before it. And compared to unvoiced games, this "extra" voice over was also like a reward on its own, so even in cases where the choices didn't really matter (= same outcome regardless), you got that VO as a "story reward". So in conclusion for this system, the choice you click doesn't really matter as rigidly as it would for a text based system and the acted out version is basically the reward for the system in and of itself. This does not require you to spend much time making the choice, because you'll be seeing it in action soon and that's where you'll get "attached" to your characters (or not). A bit like watching a movie.

Then let's compare that to a system where the choices are just text. There the choices in text are basically all that matter from your characters story point of view. The only reward for selecting them would be that they would then offer a variety of actual choices with actual consequences that would lead to clearly different outcomes. Here it requires you to stop and put effort in to getting attached to your character when making that selection and then "poof" it's over. A bit like reading a book.

Now let's put that in to context of this game. For over a decade you have taught us through the use of that first system and the reality of developing an MMO (limited actually different outcomes) not a single player game that the selection you make is just a hint for the character on how to act. It might not lead to that different of a result all the time no matter what you select but it's ok because here is the voiced conversation as a reward. And the place where you "live"/"experience the world" as your character in these conversations is the lines they deliver. If you put a text version there, then as many have expressed here people will almost "skip the choice" by habit, just breezing through the selection and then they'll be left with nothing to connect to their characters. And since there haven't seem been actually different outcomes for these text versions they might even feel duped because not only was there no reward, there was no choice either. While it might be a financial necessity to mix these styles, there's no way through words on a forum at this point to change how horribly these mix together in the context of this game. It is like if in the middle of a movie everyone was asked to stop and read a novel/book. They're just different experiences that don't mix in the moment even if they would be just fine as completely separate entities.

So I can't offer any spiffy general solutions, the only ones I know would be to keep the story parts voiced because the use of text versions there just doesn't mix and match with the voiced ones and it just communicates to the player when it comes to this game that "this part is irrelevant". No matter how good the writing would be. But that doesn't seem to be a financial reality. The other one would be to better prioritize what kind of cut scenes to use the budget on. I understand that a fixed cutscene must be cheaper than multiple choice conversations for many characters. But looking at the two latest ones I can think of, there was a good one from a quality point of view for was it Tau and Rivix (?), but from a design point of view that didn't tell the story of the player at all so it was wasted money. Compare that to something like the Vizla vs Heta fight where the player was at least there and had something relevant to do concerning that fight. Honestly, I don't even remember what gizmo those force users were fighting over and how it related to the story. I wouldn't have even remembered the cut scene had someone not mentioned it in this thread. And that was the good cut scene. The bad one was the twilek siblings one with the machine. Now yes it did actually relate to the story and yes I can remember just about what happened in it. Points for that. But taking player agency away is bad -> don't put player fights in cut scenes, a slash or a shot is fine, anything longer and it just makes the experience worse. And having these side characters make the main character look like a fresh padawan didn't really make things better either. So putting the budget in to rigging that kind of fancy cut scenes that are something that's on top of the core gameplay experience, as opposed to using it to keep the core gameplay experience of story conversations on the minimum level the player base expects, doesn't seem to be a good allocation of budget.

I hope you find a way to backtrack back to fully voiced story content, but even if you do not, I appreciate the communication on this matter. I had thought that I'd play my next characters switching from one side to the next to get the most variety out of this game in the long term, but now I understand I should prioritize the ones I'm most interested in experiencing while they're still available.

Since I don't think I've written before on these boards and someone mentioned that only subs can write here so I won't be able to write here soon, I'd like to give a shoutout to the old male agent voice actor who was the star of the voice actors in this game as far as I'm concerned. That was something I was always able to recommend for anyone to experience even if they wouldn't have been interested in the game. And to the male bounty hunter voice that sounds like Clint Eastwood through a Vin Diesel filter that goes to over 9000. That just makes every conversation funny in a good way and is something I'd recommend everyone to try if they haven't already. Just maybe pick the trooper skillsets (or some other) instead of the bounty hunter ones, as I'm not that big of a fan of the BH resource system. And lastly thanks to the player base, while forums are what forums are, in game it has been quite a pleasant experience!

[Sofei]

SWTOR has been my game of choice since Beta.  I hail from the bad old days of the SWG/NGE "cabal" over on MMORPG forums after Sony shot itself in the backside with that game.  I never played KOTOR, so I have zero emotional attachment to that style of gameplay.  For me, it not only breaks immersion, but it's annoying as hell.  I get it - the team is under financial and time constraints. In this day and age, join the club. We all are having to do more with less. If you absolutely have to use those wretched KOTOR scenes (and I suspect you do), don't use them in the main storyline.  Put them places players can choose to avoid. Update them - there has been plenty of suggestions on how to do this. I can't remember the last time I posted on the forums, it's not my thing, I'd rather play.

I have a ton of alts, not because I want a ton of alts but because I have a very difficult time getting my characters past the KOTFE/KOTET storyline. Or as my gaming partner called it, Knights of the Eternal Psychopaths. To date, I've managed to get 1 character through to current content, and two almost there.  It's been a slog. It's just more enjoyable to go back to original content. Mind you, those two expansions are not all bad.  Gault's chapter is very much on point and fun to play.  And Darin de Paul's acting is chef's kiss superb.  He could read the ingredients section of a potato chip bag and make it interesting. Even so, I'd skip past those chapters, if the default choices going forward didn't ruin my character's canon.
 

On 6/28/2024 at 3:35 PM, felleto said:

Unless, you think our feedback is indeed irrelevant (which you have demonstrated with your actions) and you basically want us (veteran players, mid-aged dads) gone so you may cater to a new audience. An audience that is fine with KOTOR conversations and Cartel market items inspired by the newest Disney + show in the market. Maybe, you want us gone because we remember what the game used to be and what it could have been. If that is the case, It truly saddens me.  
 

I'm not a Dad, but I definitely over-qualify for the middle aged part. Nor can I argue against this idea - it has Disney's sticky fingerprints all over it.  I'd much rather they say it out loud and get it over with. 

Edited June 30 by Sofei