Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[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 Sunday at 10:12 AM by Sofei

[cannibithobbal]

8 hours ago, Kiquju said:

It is like if in the middle of a movie everyone was asked to stop and read a novel/book.

Just want to pull this out and comment because YES, omg.  This, this is such a good analogy.

As someone with ADHD who can't focus well on reading and needs entertainment more immersive that feels rewarding for my brain to stay focused on it, switching from a fully immersive game where my brain is fully engaged (the description of the voiced dialogue line being your "reward" for choosing a certain thing on the dialogue wheel is SO accurate, especially to my ADHD brain, like omg) to suddenly scenes where I have to read tons of text and it doesn't feel immersive and my character isn't even involved, and I have no voiced lines as a reward for making my choice, my brain literally drops off and I lose all interest in what is happening, like I suddenly want to do... anything else.

It really is like suddenly switching mediums. 

And for me, it's suddenly switching mediums to one which my brain specifically is not built for engagement with.  So going from fully immersive voiced game with action to those totally static black bar scenes, it feels like skipping along having a good time and then running into a brick wall 🫠

Edited Sunday at 05:01 PM by cannibithobbal

[wwefarming]

Il y a 21 heures, davidfreddie a dit :

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

As a frenchie, no I don't want them to get rid of the french (nor German) translations because just like all of you in english, I'm attached to the french VAs who does an outstanding work to give life to our characters.

But I'm gonna speak objectively here, in the hypothetical scenario they stop supporting FR/DE translations, do you really think they will go back to fully voiced content but in english only? You know, when a company starts this kind of cost cutting measures, it rarely if ever go back to what it was before, especially when in this case they mentioned they started to do more KOTOR scenes because the SWTOR voiced scenes take more time and pressure to make while trying to sell us these scenes as something with more "conversational depth". So the most realistic scenario if they stop supporting the FR/DE translations is that they will just continue the mix between SWTOR and KOTOR cutscenes but in english only and no one would gain anything from this, german and french VAs would lose a paycheck and us players still wouldn't get a fully voiced experience no matter the language.

[meddani]

16 hours ago, eabevella said:

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

i'm german and i use the english version, in fact i do this with all of my games.

i don't like hearing my native language in games (movies are fine), idk why lol.

getting rid of the german dub wouldn't bother me at all.

[eabevella]

5 hours ago, meddani said:

i'm german and i use the english version, in fact i do this with all of my games.

i don't like hearing my native language in games (movies are fine), idk why lol.

getting rid of the german dub wouldn't bother me at all.

I do the same with all the media with dubs.

It's just most of the time the dubbing is just not the same as the original, not to mention a lot of the times the translation is just off.

A bit of side note: It's also an interesting fact that countries like german and japan use dubs for foreign movies. Here in Taiwan all the foreign movies are in their original languages, we are very used to reading subtitles, it's just the default of all movie, including the mandarin-speaking one (having subtitles as default is way more friendly for deaf or hearing impaired people, I wonder why it's not a thing in movie theater in western countries that presumably care more about such things). Only Disney/Pixar animated movies will get special mandarin dubbing because it's "for children".

[EnbyDisaster_]

On 6/28/2024 at 12:38 PM, phalczen said:

I have many thoughts, but I did want to address these two points.

First, I don't think anyone chooses to stick with this game primarily because those style cutscenes evokes nostalgia of KOTOR.  Logically, if the vast majority of players would, in a resource-rich scenario, prefer fully voiced cutscenes over those style cutscenes, the number of folks angry and upset that they have more scenes fully voiced, or even just a more immersive UI, seems like an awfully small minority.  There may be a much larger percentage of people who like having more choice in possible responses, or want more content if it comes at the expense of full voice acting.  However, using KOTOR-nostalgia as an excuse for not making any improvements to the KOTOR-inspired cutscene system seems ill-advised.

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.

Definitely agree with your first point, I'd personally prefer a lack of updated textures and stuff like that if it meant we would get voiced lines for all the main story quests. This is my first MMO, and I loved hearing my little guys chitchat with everyone else, so it sucks not having that any more. Someone else said this, but I really do think the devs would find that the people who would get upset about not continuing the KOTOR-style scenes are the minority, based on these threads and in-game chatter.

To your second, I do think with the spacing, especially for players who prefer clicking to keys, having five options on the wheel they use for dialogue choices is something that isnt particularly feasible? Still doesn't change that those could be voiced lines though