Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[Jdast]

As is so often the case with any game, the preferences of players vary to such a wide degree it would be impossible for Broadsword to reconcile them all. With that said, here are mine. I start from the baseline assumption that if SWTOR goes under, we all lose. So here goes...

Good story can manifest itself in a variety of ways so I don't care about Player Character (PC) voice acting at all. Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is my go-to game and has been for several years now. It has zero PC voice acting, but still has enriching stories (most of the time). FFXIV isn't my thing, but it does the same.

In my case, I tend to only watch the PC cutscenes a couple times with the second time being after I haven't seen it for a while, or I'm choosing a completely different option (e.g., Dark vs. Light side). For NPC cutscenes it varies. While I appreciated the cutscene fight at end of Ruhnuk b/t Shae and Heta it went on a long time. By time #4, I spacebarred through it.

Keep in mind, for every line of PC voice acting in SWTOR, that is 48 individuals Broadsword has to pay. When an NPC is voiced (in Basic), that is only 3 voice actors they have to pay. Do the economics.

What this means for me is I would overwhelmingly side with more story-based content at a more rapid pace compared to taking the time and use of scarce recources for PC voice acting. I understand and respect that many disagree with this sentiment. I take breaks (as I'm about to do in a couple weeks) from subscribing when there is no content. I also don't purchase Cartel Coins when I'm not playing. 

In others words, for me, too much of a drought means Broadsword is not getting any money from me. I don't think I'm alone. If the drought is too long, SWTOR ends b/c Broadsword can't keep the lights on.

Important Note: In no way am I suggesting that more rapid release of content means the story will get better or worse. I am completely agnostic on this point and don't see any correlation, much less causation between the two.

So to Broadsword: The Malgus storyline has gone on way too long and there is way too much filler. 

If you're going to release content every six months or so, it needs to be impactful. I enjoyed 7.5 b/c it advanced the storyline. 7.4 was okay, but 7.3 Old Wounds was a complete waste of resources and boring. While I thought the Shine of Silence Flashpoint was fine (though not tied to Main Story), I did not appreciate picking up garbage to learn from the Three Mystics only that I'm important and will make some impactful decisions. Well, duh. 

Regards,

Dasty

Edited June 21 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

22 hours ago, 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.

 

This is the part I kinda wanna single out because this is something that's genuinely been bothering me. I'm not here to say all story content needs to be traditional cutscenes. I get the logistics behind using the KOTOR style cutscenes to ease the burden on other aspects of the team, I get it. I don't love the KOTOR style cutscenes, but if they get us more story content, okay.

 

However. With that said... can we please stop mixing the two styles in one piece of content? Hutta and Kessan's Landing both do this constantly and it's jarring as a player. To go from one scene being a traditional cutscene to the next being KOTOR style to the next being traditional, it genuinely pulls me out of the story because I start wondering why it's changing from scene to scene. There's seemingly no rhyme or reason to it, I'm sure you guys have some guideline for which ones get what based on what you said here, but as a player it's not obvious to me and it makes the content feel inconsistent and unpolished, which makes the entire update feel cheap, for lack of a better term.

 

This could mean, of course, we get more KOTOR style cutscenes. While that may be unpopular, I'm okay with that as long as it doesn't mean everything is KOTOR style. If we still get updates with traditional cutscenes, saved for bigger and more "important" stories to the main story path, then KOTOR style being used for the less "major" story beats is okay with me in exchange for a consistent style in those individual stories.

 

I don't mean any of this as a knock on the story quality itself. I liked the Hutta update from a pure story perspective and I'm glad we're moving forward with things. I just really don't like the mixing of the two styles, it's a bad experience as a player in my opinion and makes me start paying attention to the cutscene style when I should be paying attention to the cutscene itself. Set a style at the start, stick to it, and let me focus on the story please.

[DarthNillard]

P.S. - Expansions should have a start, middle, and end.  Not end with no resolution and then just a drip campaign of small story add-ons over literally YEARS.  For a story very few people actually care about in the first place.  How long was Malgus sitting chained up under the fleet?  Does anyone care about Heta Kol? Or Sahar?  Ridiculous.  Wrap this corny story up and release a proper expansion please.  Plenty of us would be happy to pay the extra $20.00 for it like the glory days if that's what it takes.

[cannibithobbal]

10 minutes ago, Jdast said:

So to Broadsword: The Malgus storyline has gone on way too long and there is way too much filler. 

If you're going to release content every six months or so, it needs to be impactful. I enjoyed 7.5 b/c it advanced the storyline. 7.4 was okay, but 7.3 Old Wounds was a complete waste of resources and boring. While I thought the Shine of Silence Flashpoint was fine (though not tied to Main Story), I did not appreciate picking up garbage to learn from the Three Mystics only that I'm important and will make some impactful decisions. Well, duh.

Funny enough, I actually felt like 7.5 had the most pointless filler out of all three updates because it didn't even introduce a daily area, it was just completely tangential content to the main story for absolutely no reason imo

But could not agree more on Malgus stiry going on way too long and on 7.3 and the utter "what did I just do all that for?" feeling I felt after getting that final cutscene with the Voss.

If the pointless filler was removed and the devs put all the man hours they are currently putting into creating that filler into instead making more quality scenes tied to the actual story, and/or using those resources to make the story cutscenes we do get all be cinematic, that would solve the issue right there tbh.

[felleto]

4 minutes ago, DarthNillard said:

Did we really just get open letters from 2 of the head people working on this game just fumbling through excuse after excuse on why the game has gotten terrible?  Nobody was sad to see EA/Bioware go away, but the same people who made terrible decisions the past decade plus still appear to be around and making more terrible decisions.  Hire new decision makers.

I can't agree more.

[DarthNillard]

5 minutes ago, cannibithobbal said:

Funny enough, I actually felt like 7.5 had the most pointless filler out of all three updates because it didn't even introduce a daily area, it was just completely tangential content to the main story for absolutely no reason imo

But could not agree more on Malgus stiry going on way too long and on 7.3 and the utter "what did I just do all that for?" feeling I felt after getting that final cutscene with the Voss.

If the pointless filler was removed and the devs put all the man hours they are currently putting into creating that filler into instead making more quality scenes tied to the actual story, and/or using those resources to make the story cutscenes we do get all be cinematic, that would solve the issue right there tbh.

I can't for the life of me figure out why the new area on Hutta did not turn into dailies at the end.  Like, why?  Seriously why?

[septru]

I know I'm late to the party, but Keith's forum post was really interesting. Not because of what it said... I personally don't think it said anything we don't already know. But Keith's post (just Keith's not including Ashley's post) just doesn't seem to have any purpose. As best as I could understand, Keith's post was a response against all the people spamming "maintenance mode." But, like, if so, why?

 

People are going to say whatever they want to say. It's not like Keith's post that "we are not in maintenance mode" is going to change people from saying that they are in maintenance mode. Moreover, the only people who read Keith's posts are the more hardcore players that actually read the forums. It's not like the casuals, whom this post is ideally directed to, are going to read this post. Swtorista actually covered this in her stream today, and I actually think she had a really based take. She thinks that the post actually had no point, and was just Keith venting. But like, if so... why now? It's not like people haven't been spamming maintenance mode in every 7.0 SWTOR twitch stream for the past 2 years. Maybe I'm psychoanalyzing a pointless post. But it just doesn't make sense.

 

Love to hear what other people think. 

[KyraMalakai]

56 minutes ago, cannibithobbal said:

I will also say, like, idk if I am alone in this, but honestly at this point if they devs just insist they can't do enough cinematic cutscenes due to time and the issue is time because of the small dev team and not money..... could they at least fully voice act the non cinematic scenes? 

It would still feel stale and less engaging to have stagnant unmoving cutscenes but if my character at least TALKED, and I got to hear the wonderful voice actors for the entire update, it would be so much better than uncinematic AND unvoiced.

I agree with this, if the problem as Ashley said is it "puts less pressure on our cinematic team" then keep the charaters static but let my girls speak.

[cannibithobbal]

29 minutes ago, KyraMalakai said:

I agree with this, if the problem as Ashley said is it "puts less pressure on our cinematic team" then keep the charaters static but let my girls speak.

Exactly.

They still need to animate the lip syncing if the characters talk but even without being a game dev myself I feel very confident assuming that is way way less work than making the fully cinematic cutscenes.

And obviously goes without saying I do not want this to ever replace the currently cinematic cutscenes, I want to keep having as many of those as humanly possible and not cut down on them any more than has already been done, but if I absolutely have to have uncinematic KOTOR cutscenes, at least make them voiced.

[VilianSW]

We were promised a better communication at some point, just after BS took over. Two posts not saying anything we wouldn't already know, after two weeks of radio silence and many weeks earlier of no substantial info from the team - how's that better?

I moved to SWTOR from FF14, because here my character has a voice and her decisions make actual impact on the world's future. Please don't take it away from me. With silent character who's just someone's sidekick, I have little reasons to stay. With multiple story bugs not even being acknowledged and boring story dragging on forever in narrow trickle, the reasons to stay are running dry. Please consider making a paid expansion, with good writing and fully voiced, like Shadow of Revan was. Please don't kill what makes SWTOR different from all the other MMORPGS.

[eabevella]

2 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

Genuine question, would you be okay to wait a year for an update the size of what we got for 7.5 ?

I feel like the 7.0-7.5 stuffs should be the "10th year anniversary expansion"

You get the Manaan story, Ruins of Nul flashpoint, R4 operation, Manaan daily, Rhunuk story and daily, Voss story, Shrine of Silence flashpoint, Ord Mantell story and daily, Hutta story.

That's a good size for an actual expansion: 1 ops, 2 fps, 1 new planets, 4 new small areas on existing planets (or 3? forgot whether Hutta has a rep track or not). And the story pacing will feel much better because it's not broken down to too many pieces over 2 years (to the point that I pretty much forget what I was doing on Manaan). And it might be less hassle if they can get the voice actors to do an expansion sized dialogues in one go.

It would be totally okay for me if we get that size of an expansion (about half or 1/3 of a story arch) annually.

There are galactic and pvp seasons, plus the new spring/summer/winter/racing/bounty/cooking events to go in between. Maybe a few some companion side quests if they are feeling generous. There will be enough stuffs to do in between expansions. People are willing to pay and stay if they know they are going to get actual good stuff every year. Heck, they'll probably sub a month or two earlier just to prepare for it.

[cannibithobbal]

1 minute ago, eabevella said:

I feel like the 7.0-7.5 stuffs should be the "10th year anniversary expansion"

You get the Manaan story, Ruins of Nul flashpoint, R4 operation, Manaan daily, Rhunuk story and daily, Voss story, Shrine of Silence flashpoint, Ord Mantell story and daily, Hutta story.

That's a good size for an actual expansion: 1 ops, 2 fps, 1 new planets, 4 new small areas on existing planets (or 3? forgot whether Hutta has a rep track or not). And the story pacing will feel much better because it's not broken down to too many pieces over 2 years (to the point that I pretty much forget what I was doing on Manaan). And it might be less hassle if they can get the voice actors to do an expansion sized dialogues in one go.

It would be totally okay for me if we get that size of an expansion (about half or 1/3 of a story arch) annually.

There are galactic and pvp seasons, plus the new spring/summer/winter/racing/bounty/cooking events to go in between. Maybe a few some companion side quests if they are feeling generous. There will be enough stuffs to do in between expansions. People are willing to pay and stay if they know they are going to get actual good stuff every year. Heck, they'll probably sub a month or two earlier just to prepare for it.

If they had offered all of 7.everything (everything released so far + everything upcoming in the same story) as a huge PAID expansion all at once, fully voiced and cinematic and released in one chunk, I 100% would have paid for that in a heartbeat and waited very patiently for it while playing seasons, etc in the meantime.

[Ollmich]

I appreciate greatly Keith and Ashley's clarification on some of the issues related to SWTOR's development. Recent changes to the main story's structure bother many players, myself included. It's also good to see that others have already mentioned in this thread some of the points I was going to write about. I'll add my voice to the chorus.

I'm not convinced that reduction of scenes with voiced player character has nothing to do with voice acting, but since Ashley talks about the complexity of the cinematics making process let's focus on that.

In short, I'd like the team to reevaluate their approach to what is shown in cinematics and how it is shown. 

• We don't need multiple points of view. Clearly, scenes featuring battles and conversations between NPCs take time and creative effort to develop. This effort could go into making "standard" scenes involving the player character.
  • Scenes showing us what Arcann/Vaylin/Malgus/Heta/etc are doing are interesting to watch for the first time. However, one of the main SWTOR's strengths is replayability of the story content - with different alts, different backgrounds we create for them and different choices we make. When you take an alt through the story, watching for the 5th time how Sa'har argues with her brother is far from being fun. You can't resist the urge to skip the whole thing (someone worked on!) and get ASAP to the interesting part - scenes where your character talks and acts.
  • There's also another point, maybe even more important. There're countless examples of first-person stories in fiction and gaming, with SWTOR's origin stories and early expansions being among them. Our character was clearly the protagonist, not just some heroic adventuring sidekick like in many MMOs, - that's also one of the features that makes SWTOR stand out in the genre. Inclusion of multiple POVs blurs our character's role in the story, reducing us to the aforementioned sidekick. Sa'har's POV fleshes out her conflict and evolution as a character, that's fine, but what about us? From patch to patch we've been having less room for further character development, less screen time and less voice.
• We could also return to more simplistic manner that's been used in origin stories. They're less movie-like, there's less action and movement, more static close-ups and notorious (famous?) butt angles. But people still replay these stories again and again despite the lack of spectacle. Why? Our character feels like an actual character with goals, motivations, challenges, friendships, romances and, well, voice.
• There seem to be an increase of voiced interactions with NPCs and enviroment outside the cinematics. I think this approach has potential. Maybe its usage could be expanded and preferred over KOTOR-like scenes?
• KOTOR-like scenes themselves need some improvements since they're being utilized more and more actively.
  • Flexibility of these scenes is overestimated, in my opinion. Dialogue options are not that varied compared to the voiced ones - polite answer, angry answer, neutral answer/question. Frankly, not a lot can be done on top of that since NPC's reaction has to be included for every PC's line. However, I like it when these scenes allow the PC to interact with the enviroment in different ways. It could be used more often.
  • The pacing of NPC's speeches is all over the place. Sometimes they're too fast, and you don't have enough time to process what's been said, especially if it's alien speech. Sometimes they're too slow, you lose patience waiting for NPC to continue talking and hit space exactly at the moment when they start a new line. It would be nice to have some options in preferences, e.g. new line starts only after player's input.
  • Can we reduce the amount of alien speech to the absolute minimum? E.g., for the spring event, I'd prefer one small introductionary "Let's do some farming!" scene with properly voiced NPC or even a datapad message over multiple missions with NPCs telling me to moolee rah kan kee kun. The same applies to galactic seasons.
  • I'd appreciate dialogue options having a bit more space between them so they were easier to read (especially the long ones).

Frankly, I'm surprised how much the inclusion of KOTOR-like scenes into the main story hinders my overall enjoyment of the game. I haven't forced myself yet into playing 7.5 story content. In the past I felt excited about every main story bit simply because I was about to see and hear my old characters in action again. I'm a simple person, I suppose.

Maybe it's not a very popular opinion, but I'd settle with 1 (one) main story update within the year, if it is fully voiced and actually moves the narrative ahead instead of dancing around and making tiny steps in some obscure direction. Other updates could introduce side stories similar to Lane&Bessi stuff or old planetary arcs (all with KOTOR-like scenes) for story enjoyers, and also focus more on multiplayer aspects.

Please, do not rob this game from its most iconic features. Look for options.

Edited June 21 by Ollmich

[cannibithobbal]

42 minutes ago, Ollmich said:

• •  
• We could also return to more simplistic manner that's been used in origin stories. They're less movie-like, there's less action and movement, more static close-ups and notorious (famous?) butt angles. But people still replay these stories again and again despite the lack of spectacle. Why? Our character feels like an actual character with goals, motivations, challenges, friendships, romances and, well, voice.

THIS omg.  THIS X1000000000.

This kind of cutscene could replace what are currently the KOTOR ones in an instant and be 1000000000x better.

Lip syncing and super basic character animations, 1 locked off camera angle facing each character talking, and everything voiced, I would take this in a heartbeat.

Basic conversation scenes do not need to be fully movie like with moving cameras and characters walking around all over the place and stuff.  Mixing those kinds of cutscenes in is of course fantastic and I love them, but for basic conversations, give us the classic class story/companion convo type cutscenes that are basically animated and fully voiced.

Take a bit longer to make each update to accomodate for doing this kind of cutscene over the KOTOR style, release one less update per year, or even just one update per year at all, and I think everyone in this thread would be happy.

Edited June 21 by cannibithobbal

[supertimtaf]

I think that by now we all have a pretty clear picture of the community reaction and it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

We're all a bit disheartened to hear the confirmation that the smaller team size and smaller budget is indeed having an impact on development. It was expected, none of us were really expecting something different but hearing it officially still brings a lot of concerns from all of us, because I think that we all enjoy this game, if not for what it is right now, for what it used to be at some point.

The message was rather clear, and I think that the community response has been both worried and also full of desire to help. Some of us with a bit of salt and tears, others with hope. We all more or less agreed that this is not a good spot for you guys to be in, and we want to help make this game be better, even if it means going back to paid expansions to ensure stability and regularity in the development process, and @KeithKanneg, that is probably something to talk about, or simply acknowledge, if only to alleviate a bit of the worries or thank the community for their desire to help.

@AshleyRuhl or @JackieKo, I don't know who's supposed to answer as well, but it's also clear that for now the community's answer regarding the "kotor cutscenes" are mitigated. I think that no one will blame you for lacking in budget, however the wording in these dev posts did not help in appeasing the playerbase. No one is asking you guys to overwork and stress yourselves, I'm fairly sure that you can scroll through every post in there and find that everyone only wants the team to succeed while staying healthy, but the first step for that would be to probably answer and talk with us on this thread. Even a simple "thank you all for the feedback" or "we're sorry that the quality of the kotor cutscene wasn't up to the standards that we previously set, we'll try our best to improve them" would be more than welcome right now.

We all want the team to do well and make this game as good as it could be. But if you guys don't want to interact with us, no matter how vocal some of us may be (and I know that there are some angry and scary people here), I'm afraid that you will not be able to find a middleground that would please everyone, including your team.

[Vorn]

I am finding it difficult to get excited about a dev post that is mostly about styles of cinematics that I maybe go through once and then space bar the rest of the time, at least since SoR when the story stopped being class specific.  I would much more like to hear from the people developing flashpoints and operations who are aligning their work with the ongoing story.  What is the plan for more engaging group content?

[DAWUSS]

57 minutes ago, cannibithobbal said:

THIS omg.  THIS X1000000000.

This kind of cutscene could replace what are currently the KOTOR ones in an instant and be 1000000000x better.

Lip syncing and super basic character animations, and everything voiced, I would take this in a heartbeat.

Basic conversation scenes do not need to be fully movie like with moving cameras and characters walking around all over the place and stuff.  Mixing those kinds of cutscenes in is of course fantastic and I love them, but for basic conversations, give us the classic class story/companion convo type cutscenes that are basically animated and fully voiced.

Take a bit longer to make each update to accomodate for doing this kind of cutscene over the KOTOR style, release one less update per year, or even just one update per year at all, and I think everyone in this thread would be happy.

You wouldn't need to worry too much about lip synching if the character isn't facing the camera - be it by "butt angle" or just back facing the camera. The "butt angle" would probably then start a series of CM equipment...
Stock facial reactions from the interacting NPC could keep things looking somewhat alive while your character speaks.

[cannibithobbal]

Just now, DAWUSS said:

You wouldn't need to worry too much about lip synching if the character isn't facing the camera - be it by "butt angle" or just back facing the camera. The "butt angle" would probably then start a series of CM equipment...
Stock facial reactions from the interacting NPC could keep things looking somewhat alive while your character speaks.

Ideally I want to look at my character while they talk as well, because, well, I want to see my character.  And they feel even more involved that way.  It can just be one basic locked off camera angle on them though, like just let me see them.

BUT I would take butt angle on my character but fully voice acted over the fully unvoiced cutscenes that exist now.  Literally anything voiced would be better than the totally not voiced that exists now.  I just want my character to talk.

[arunav]

My reaction to the 2 posts is:

1) I agree with others that the best story content in the game, the original class stories, planetary arcs, and side quests, generally had much simpler cutscenes. What has kept it the best story content, and what I'm fairly certain your metrics show is played and replayed the most, is the writing and pacing of those stories, alongside the environments they were placed in, not elaborate cutscenes. 

Nobody is expecting class stories now, but you don't need the improved cutscenes from KotXX, generally speaking, for the ongoing story. If something more intricate is required, save that for portions that don't require player voice acting (like the ending in 7.5 with Malgus and Shae), and make the rest of the cutscenes simple, though keeping them in SWTOR-style for main story updates. 

2) If the above still isn't possible with the current size of the team, consider redesigning what's presented in the KOTOR-style screen, with most of it visible like a traditional SWTOR cutscene (the large areas blocked off from the top and bottom of the screen are a problem when folks are used to SWTOR-style dialogue), and transition to mostly using it and a silent player character. Other story-heavy MMOs do this well. 

I think this would only work if a more ambitious main story is implemented, i.e. the responses from players would branch into a more involved narrative from the fully-voiced NPCs. KOTOR II was great at this, for example. Since the technology in that game is roughly 20 years old, it's probably both possible to implement and likely affordable.

Would you lose some players? Maybe. But if the stories released are much better, subscribers would get used to it, especially if these changes are accompanied with worthwhile multiplayer updates. Which brings me to... 

3) Neither of the posts addresses the lack of multiplayer content in updates since 7.3. That had 1 Flashpoint in it, and it was generally a good one (the story implementation was somewhat lacking, and the last boss was a miniature Terror From Beyond, but aside from that it was well-made). What about, to use a phrase from a previous era of SWTOR, the "MMO bits?" 

Nobody is expecting a full Operation every year (though it would have helped your game retain subscribers in the past), but updating SWTOR with new Flashpoints, Warzones, single "Liar" boss Operations, and other multiplayer content is an important part of keeping it going. If this requires a paid expansion model, even an annual one, your subscribers would be fine with it. 

4) I will never stop being amazed at how often SWTOR is able to reuse the same content in another new system, but the Venture process takes it way too far. There is no companion worth doing that many old daily areas again for. Subscriber-only quests would be far more appealing, if introducing new companions, alongside occasionally adding one to the Cartel Market (there are plenty of droid models to choose from in the existing game). I'm all for earning rewards in the game, but the Venture system, as it currently stands, is excessive in what it demands of players' time, especially when the reward is a companion.

Edited June 21 by arunav

[RikuvonDrake]

19 hours ago, wwefarming said:

Stop with that AI nonsense, like, seriously. Maybe ask some VAs their opinion about their voice being replicated without their consent and see how negative their answer is.

There will always be jobs available for good VA actors, however for companies with a limited budget, AI voices are still an amazing alternative that cuts costs significantly without losing that much in terms of quality

 

On 6/20/2024 at 9:31 PM, PlasmaJohn said:

People severely overestimate what generative AI is capable of.  While it's an improvement on some of the boilerplate code generators that were popular about 10 years ago it still has long road ahead of it before it's putting large segments of the population out of work.

My boss used ChatGPT to suggest a fix for a very specific problem and it said something like "use functional programming". 🤦‍♂️ 

I think you are confused here, the alternatives aren't AI voice or voice actors, but AI voice+subtitles or plain text, doesn't take a genius to figure out that, considering the advances made in AI voice technology recently, most players would prefer the voices.

Swtor is a game where the main drawing point for getting players to try it is the storytelling, everything else is extra, which swtor tbh doesn't do much better than the alternatives. In the some cases, u can say swtor actually does worse in say endgame pve and pvp. but storytelling is what swtor is meant to shine at, using AI voice acting instead of plain text can enhance that, and it should be used

Stubbornly rejecting new technology and advancements will just mean u won't be there in a few, and not the game in this case, the company as a whole

Edited June 21 by RikuvonDrake

[Jdast]

49 minutes ago, RikuvonDrake said:

There will always be jobs available for good VA actors, however for companies with a limited budget, AI voices are still an amazing alternative that cuts costs significantly without losing that much in terms of quality

You are ignoring or are unaware of the legal ramifications and implications from an intellectual property rights (IPR) standpoint. My understanding is you are from Europe so you may not be familiar with recent actions here in the USA.

In September 2023, 99% of the U.S. Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted in favor joining Voice Actors in authorizing a strike against 10 video game companies. In January 2024, a deal was struck but under a very important contractual caveat: to mimic, replicate, or digitally clone existing voice actors' sound / voices, the companies must first enter into a contract and agree to pay the real life humans a licensing fee.

I assure you, if I were Troy Baker (Theron), Jennifer Hale (Satele), or Laura Dawn Bailey (Kira), etc., I would make Broadsword pay through the nose to digitally clone my voice. And those are just three of SWTOR's award-winning Voice Actors.

Last month, ChatGPT learned the hard way when they digitally cloned Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. Her attorneys immediately sent a cease and desist letter, which ChatGPT had little choice but to comply with or face the wrath of her attorneys. In the case of the Voice Actors, while not Scarlett Johansson, they would have have the full force of the SAG behind them.

Put differently, while I can't speak to the technical issues or complexities about the ease of digitally cloning a voice, I am on pretty solid ground ground discussing the legal conundrums pertaining to intellectual property rights-related issues.

Bottom line: Broadsword would still be paying a lot of money unless they started with completely brand new voices. I'm sure you can imagine the firestorm that would generate amongst the SWTOR player base. Case in point, the furor over the new voice for the male Imperial Agent.

Regards,

Dasty 

Edited June 21 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!

[RikuvonDrake]

1 hour ago, Jdast said:

You are ignoring or are unaware of the legal ramifications and implications from an intellectual property rights (IPR) standpoint. My understanding is you are from Europe so you may not be familiar with recent actions here in the USA.

In September 2023, 99% of the U.S. Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted in favor joining Voice Actors in authorizing a strike against 10 video game companies. In January 2024, a deal was struck but under a very important contractual caveat: to mimic, replicate, or digitally clone existing voice actors' sound / voices, the companies must first enter into a contract and agree to pay the real life humans a licensing fee.

I assure you, if I were Troy Baker (Theron), Jennifer Hale (Satele), or Laura Dawn Bailey (Kira), etc., I would make Broadsword pay through the nose to digitally clone my voice. And those are just three of SWTOR's award-winning Voice Actors.

Last month, ChatGPT learned the hard way when they digitally cloned Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. Her attorneys immediately sent a cease and desist letter, which ChatGPT had little choice but to comply with or face the wrath of her attorneys. In the case of the Voice Actors, while not Scarlett Johansson, they would have have the full force of the SAG behind them.

Put differently, while I can't speak to the technical issues or complexities about the ease of digitally cloning a voice, I am on pretty solid ground ground discussing the legal conundrums pertaining to intellectual property rights-related issues.

Bottom line: Broadsword would still be paying a lot of money unless they started with completely brand new voices. I'm sure you can imagine the firestorm that would generate amongst the SWTOR player base. Case in point, the furor over the new voice for the male Imperial Agent.

Regards,

Dasty 

I think there's some confusion here. Many people wouldn't be comfortable with their favourite characters changing voices, as the unpopular agent swap shows, although its unclear to me if the actor left or bw changed because renewing the contract would be too expensive. Additionally, the English VA for BH is 80, two of them died (Tanno and Xalek), Forex VA got a stroke that ruined his voice, rejecting VA change is like trying to stem the tide.

A better alternative would be to write out most non-main characters and introduce new ones. There's always debate about using new technology in games, but it's not about whether companies will use it, but how they will. Rejecting new tools and technology is, again, like trying to stop the inevitable.

edit: added in the stuff about prior VA

Edited June 21 by RikuvonDrake

[Jdast]

8 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

I think there's some confusion here. Many people wouldn't be comfortable with their favourite characters changing voices, as the unpopular agent swap shows, although its unclear to me if the actor left or bw changed because renewing the contract would be too expensive. Additionally, the English VA for BH is 80, two of them died (Tanno and Xalek), Forex VA got a stroke that ruined his voice, rejecting VA change is like trying to stem the tide.

A better alternative would be to write out most non-main characters and introduce new ones. For example, the ongoing Spring event could have utilised AI voices and subtitles instead of plain text, creating a better story experience. Doing the same in the main story for side characters isn't that much of a leap.

There's always debate about using new technology in games, but it's not about whether companies will use it, but how they will. Rejecting new tools and technology is, again, like trying to stop the inevitable.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most SWTOR players are relatively smart and would by sympathetic to Voice Actor changes occuring due to external or exogenous variables intervening beyond Broadsword's control such as: scheduling conflicts, contractual disputes, death, debilitating medical crises (stroke), getting older, etc. This has nothing to do with 'stopping the inevitable' at all.

Those situations are categorically different from what the AI conversation here is about. To use the last two updates as an example, your proposed changes would impact only minor characters such as Petra, Adi, Rakit, Hutt Yusinduu, etc. Using AI for those characters would no doubt result in some cost savings, but I highly doubt "significantly" as you suggest in an earlier post above.

Of course, we could get into a (pointless) debate about who constitutes minor vs. major NPC characters b/c opinions on that will vary as is so evident by the adorant love vs. seething hatred some players have for particular characters. (See the: This is a Love Thread posts....)

To name a few: Theron, Lana, Arn, Tau, Anri, Krovos, Rivix, Rass, Jekiah, Shae, Hylo, Dr. Oggurobb, etc. I could go on but I think you get my point (or at least I imagine other forum-goers do).

But, yes, if you wipe out the vast majority of NPCs and start with brand new ones and a new story line, then AI can play a role. We already see SWTOR doing that with a lot of NPCs not speaking Basic, which I presume is even cheaper than AI.

But that is sort of stating the obvious. Clearly, the cost issue here is major NPCs and Player Character voice acting as we are talking about 48 different voice actors vice 3 per NPC.

Dasty

Edited June 22 by Jdast
Clarity / Typos

[SteveTheCynic]

On 6/20/2024 at 6:48 PM, KeithKanneg said:

A more detailed way of understanding this flow is that we are always in pre-production, production, and retrospective all at the same time across multiple Game Updates.

Just to add some experience-related observations here, from someone who *isn't*(1) a game developer, but *is* a developer(2) of other stuff:

What's said here is true in almost any "mature" (== developed over multiple years) product, whether it's a game or not

(1) I've written about this before on these forums, but in late 2008 / early 2009, I was on a job-search, and *multiple* recruiters suggested trying out for a job at Eidos (as it was then) on their football(3) management simulator.  Sadly, Eidos wanted actual dedicated footie fans, which I wasn't (and still am not).  I am *still*, fifteen GDMF years later, torn about not trying the interview anyway.(4)

(2) For thirty-five years, FGDMFS.(5)

(3) Y'all might know this sport as "soccer" == abbreviation/nickname for "asSOCiation football".  You know, actual football, played with the feet and a ball.

(4) Guiding rule: if you see something where you think you *might* regret trying it, I can say for 137% sure that later on, you *will* regret ***NOT*** trying it.  I fail miserably at remembering *every* day to apply this rule.

(5) This is an abbreviation of an *extremely* rude interjection, roughly "for deity-cursèd matrilocally-incestous's sake".  I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine *exactly* the right wording.

[RushNFour]

I have a question for Keith and the rest of the devs.

 

Do you guys love the game you develop?

 

What I have seen since the 7.0 does not look like a labor of love, it looks like a skeleton crew doing the bare minimum to keep the CM going and milking the ever dwindling subscription base and keep collecting their paycheck.

 

Class gameplay has degraded to a point where it's painfully boring, especially at lower levels.

 

The story is meandering and lost, I could care less about any of the new characters introduced in 7.x, they are soulless and there's no reason to care.

 

But my biggest issue is the arrogance, I quit in March after 12+ years of playing because of the reputation conquest nerf, or should I say, the handling of said nerf.  The dev response was borderline rude and insulting, telling us how we should be playing when just one expansion earlier it was all about 'play your way'.  I've seen countless posts from the devs saying 'Without getting too into the technical details, this is why we did this,  or this is why we can't do that' and then they go dark for weeks or months at a time.  Why don't you guys actually get into the technical details, explain to us why you are making the changes you make on this and that.  IF you walk us through the thought process or show us why, maybe we won't be so harsh.  I know I certainly wouldn't respond as poorly as I did to being told how to play the game properly.

 

I am still not playing, but I AM still watching.  This game means a lot to me and I WANT to see it succeed and return to better days.  But unless the devs start treating us as partners in this journey and communicate, it's all but over.