Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[Pirana]

3 hours ago, KeithKanneg said:

And of course, player feedback is another important factor that plays a part in SWTOR’s development and allows us opportunities to reassess plans or make adjustments.   

 

-Keith

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. 

Edited June 20 by Pirana

[Thenightvortex]

Thanks for all your work and engaging with forum posters, it’s very nice to see.

 

I hope you’re planning on bringing Vaylin back at some point soon though…Even if it was a paid bonus HK-like chapter with KOTOR style dialogue I’d pay for it in a heartbeat. 

[supertimtaf]

2 minutes ago, Pirana said:

they're all releasing huge expansions and guess what, that's where most of us will be spending our money.

I think that this summer is going to be make or break for a good number of us. ESO just released an expansion that's good (and features the female inquisitor VA iirc :D), XIV is about to follow in a week with hopefully another banger, and WoW is almost looking good with their expansion this time. Here though, we have... 7.5, with the basilisk droid. I really hope that they'll step up their communication game this summer because I don't see how veterans will stick around for six months until the next patch otherwise.

[Pirana]

5 minutes ago, supertimtaf said:

I think that this summer is going to be make or break for a good number of us. ESO just released an expansion that's good (and features the female inquisitor VA iirc :D), XIV is about to follow in a week with hopefully another banger, and WoW is almost looking good with their expansion this time. Here though, we have... 7.5, with the basilisk droid. I really hope that they'll step up their communication game this summer because I don't see how veterans will stick around for six months until the next patch otherwise.

Yeah, ESO has already released Gold Road, I think it is, I keep getting their mails. I only lumped them in with the others because it was easier. lol  Probably heading back there in the next month, then back to WoW. I just wish the people that developed this game did actually listen to their players, more than 5% of the time... Those other games, they all take feedback seriously, even over at Blizzard, every season or expansion when one of their classes isn't performing well, they buff them by 5-10%, or nerf, depending. Look at the parsers for this game, it's clear who the bottom classes are and SWTOR refuses to do anything about it.  

[AnimatedCallum]

Honestly loving the new content and really appreciate all the love the team is still pouring into the game! Totally understand that you're working with the resources avaliable but still feeling the passion playing through the new story and other features. Of course I think everyone prefers voiced scenes but I'd rather have KOTOR style cutscenes rather than nothing at all and, at least for me, it doesn't stop me from enjoying the story. (And gotta say those animations during the combat scenes are amaaaaaazing!!) Still my #1 game after 10 years and hoping to still be playing it for many more! ❤️

[Darthjantom]

It's a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation, they do smaller story updates with only cinematic cuyscenes, people complain about lack of story content, they do a bit more with kotor style cutscenes, people complain. I personally have zero issues with the kotor style cutscenes, i'd rather have a bit more story then less story.

2 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

But I'm still fairly sure that you guys could improve the presentation of these scenes a bit more. I get the nostalgic aspect, but the "visual appearance" of the kotor scenes feel "dated". The black bars aren't that pretty, and the whole scenes feel pretty "stiff", with our character not even having an idle animation most of the time... It feels very kotor, in both the good and the outdated way. Maybe it'd be best, if you guys intend to continue on that path, to try and give the whole thing a more "modern" and "dynamic" look, even if it's just little changes.

I agree with @supertimtaf, the black bars take up a lot of screen space, and just don't look very appealing. Maybe there's a way to make these cutscene styles a bit nicer? Maybe by reducing the text boxes or something, or even elimnating them completely? Anything to maybe make those kotor style cutscenes feel a bit more appealing/modern.

[Thenightvortex]

1 hour ago, supertimtaf said:

I think that this summer is going to be make or break for a good number of us. ESO just released an expansion that's good (and features the female inquisitor VA iirc :D), XIV is about to follow in a week with hopefully another banger, and WoW is almost looking good with their expansion this time. Here though, we have... 7.5, with the basilisk droid. I really hope that they'll step up their communication game this summer because I don't see how veterans will stick around for six months until the next patch otherwise.

Tbf XIV hadn’t had any bangers since 5.0, this expansion is probably going to be mediocre too, on par with all the recent patch story in SWTOR.

[meddani]

On 6/20/2024 at 9:51 PM, Pirana said:

This is Star Wars

also one of the reasons why this is still up and running, any other IP and this game would'Ve been shut down years ago

Edited June 24 by meddani

[Pirana]

22 minutes ago, meddani said:

also on of the reasons why this is still up and running, any other IP and this game would'Ve been shut down years ago

Yep, you're preaching to the choir. They were handed the keys to a Ferrari and kept it in first gear.

[felleto]

"grabs popcorn"

[hillerbees]

Glad Keith and Asley have responded.  Really glad.  However, I too would like to see where player feedback has recently been incorporated into game development.  From my viewpoint players are seen but not heard, mostly.  For instance, in livestreams, back in the day, Charles or Musco would say "Oh, I see player x has asked an interesting question about such and such" and they would either say "This is what is happening..." or "Something is happening, not right now, but we will talk about it when we can." or "Thats not something we are looking at right now but we note your comments."  Now a livestream is "Hey we're live" and the devs go through the motions without ANY interaction with the playerbase.

I have said for years I'd pay a new game box price for new quality content.  Limping along on a sub that gets drip fed watered down content for roughly a decade is starting to wear thin.  When I bought the game, I got 8 decent stories and classes, an interesting crafting system, most of the pvp we still have, some very nice flashpoints and 1 operation that soon jumped to 2, 3, 4.  Along the way there have been improvements but the most notable thing is the funnelling down to a single or duel storyline that is so spread out I cannot remember what happened in the last iteration.

I do not want to see anyone have a horrible work/life balance but I'm off now spending my money on other games, tv subscriptions and books and music when what I want to be spending my time in is SWTOR.  When SWTOR started the price of going to an average concert was about €70-80. Now people are shelling out €100 and multiples thereof to be entertained.  SWTOR has done the difficult bit and come up with the framework of a decent game but to move forward the owners and developers need to have faith in their product and take the next big step.  This game can stay as it is and bleed its remaining players or invest in the team and the product and make it worth sticking with.   I am done with limping.

[felleto]

2 hours ago, 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'm gonna print your post and frame it. I ran out of likes for your post, but dang it sums up how I feel. 

[TonyTricicolo]

I'm sorry, I'm still waiting for our 10th anniversary celebration. Is that ever coming?

[Pirana]

15 minutes ago, felleto said:

I'm gonna print your post and frame it. I ran out of likes for your post, but dang it sums up how I feel. 

Another oddball decision, limit reactions... Well, I'll like your reply to show you some support. lol 

[felleto]

Just now, Pirana said:

Another oddball decision, limit reactions... Well, I'll like your reply to show you some support. lol 

Our relationship is healthier than my relationship with this game.

[DAWUSS]

5 hours ago, 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.
 

You know, I recall a quote from a (now former) SWTOR dev saying something along the lines of "Once you have a voiced player character, you won't want to go back to a silent character." I find the shift (which has been around for a while, actually [Star Fortress days?]) interesting for all the reactions it's produced.

Certain scenes do allow for it more - the standing around chit-chat as opposed to action sequences - though Silent PC + Stock Alien Voices do give a bit of "This is no-budget fluff that a modder could put out" after a while.

It's not all bad - the added dialog options allow me to perhaps say what I would like to say a bit more than the Wheel of 3 (where the selections are paraphrased rather than verbatim).
 

Quote

building a story that feels emotionally impactful, dynamic, and personal to as many player stories as possible.

Given how tailored these past several story arcs have been to 1, maybe 2 classes...

[DAWUSS]

3 hours ago, 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. 

Similar questions were asked in the mid-late days of SWG...

[Pirana]

5 minutes ago, DAWUSS said:

Similar questions were asked in the mid-late days of SWG...

Yeah... I was there and still play on Legends. On Live, I played on Bria and SS towards the end. The similarities between these two games are uncanny. One of the more glaring similarities are both games launching without space, a Star Wars game... no comment. lol 

[felleto]

3 minutes ago, Pirana said:

Yeah... I was there and still play on Legends. On Live, I played on Bria and SS towards the end. The similarities between these two games are uncanny. One of the more glaring similarities are both games launching without space, a Star Wars game... no comment. lol 

You got GSF... Oh wait... when was the last update we got for that? 

[DAWUSS]

2 minutes ago, felleto said:

You got GSF... Oh wait... when was the last update we got for that? 

Whenever they watered it down to where it wasn't even Republic vs. Empire anymore.

[WraithAssassin]

I'm gonna offer my 2c regarding voiced work and the KOTOR style of cutscenes.

We have a new VA for the English male Agent. It doesn't feel like we got much out of the new actor considering how much of 7.5's story was behind the KOTOR dialogue. I hope this changes drastically soon as i'm keen to hear more of the actor's style with the Agent but if most of the story update is going to be behind KOTOR dialogue... I won't be that impressed.

[DakhathKilrathi]

I am personally fine with the new cutscene style. If that's where we are, that's where we are. 

But the time to tell us about that was before the patch dropped. You knew you were doing it! You could have saved a lot of headache by being open with the community going into it.

Explaining it after three weeks of silence is a bad look. It's frustrating and disappointing to see that "drop something you know will be unpopular then go silent on the forums for weeks" is something that's part of the SWTOR team and not something that was due to red tape at Bioware. 

Edited June 20 by DakhathKilrathi

[felleto]

Just now, DAWUSS said:

Whenever they watered it down to where it wasn't even Republic vs. Empire anymore.

Man I love GSF, but I would love to have bigger maps with more players in it. Different types of ships. Maybe make a battlefront 2 mix where you can get your ship then unload inside an enemy ship and you have to go through the ship like voidstar. 

I would also love if we could have actual Space exploration like we have in SWG. Ah look at me dreaming... Can't get voice acted dialogues and I want space exploration. 

[TonyTricicolo]

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!" 

Just once I'd like the devs here at SWTOR to acknowledge the death of SWG and how this is eerily similar.

Oh and Sunrunner FTW!

[DAWUSS]

Just now, felleto said:

Man I love GSF, but I would love to have bigger maps with more players in it. Different types of ships. Maybe make a battlefront 2 mix where you can get your ship then unload inside an enemy ship and you have to go through the ship like voidstar. 

I would also love if we could have actual Space exploration like we have in SWG. Ah look at me dreaming... Can't get voice acted dialogues and I want space exploration. 

Or even have a PVE version where you're squaring up against AI. It'd be a nice alternative to the Star Fox style of those space missions which are even more forgotten about.

But yeah, we can dream.