Clarification on SWTOR's Development

[Darthjantom]

1 hour ago, EricMusco said:

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.
 

Hey Eric; I actually have no issue with the "KOTOR style" cutscenes myself, however I did give feedback on it's visual look/UI. I understand that's it's meant to be a "nostalgic" throw back to KOTOR, but.... KOTOR is a 21 year old game now and well a lot has changed in gaming since then. I was still gaming on a 4:3 CRT monitor when I played KOTOR first time. With all the UI modernization you guys have been doing since 7.0 I do feel at least having some customization options for these KOTOR style cutscenes would be nice/appreciated.

1 hour ago, 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.

I actually have a question regarding for this one. If the voice acting itself is or might be an issue. With 10+ years of voiced dialogue for the player characters already in the game, would it maybe not be an option/possibility to re-use older voiced dialogue for our characters for responses in what you (as developers) consider to be "less important" cutscenes? I realize this would most likely lead to more generic responses from our player characters for those scenes.

[KyraMalakai]

This type of post is something that should have happened a long time ago, as it was mentioned this started mostly since 7.0 but if you guys have actually been reading the forums you would have noticed that every time a new patch drops there is a new topic where we complaint about the increase of KOTOR scenes this time it was just to much to keep ignoring.
I started playing this game because of Kotor but I hate those interactions and nostalgia is just an excuse, I doubt that there is that many players that would be really upset that you reworked the scenes so they wouldn't be so KOTOR and fit in better with the rest of the UI, when I see the blackbars I know is spacebar time, what is the point then, to give me a heads up, if that is the case, you are doing a great job.
Personally I don't need big cinematics but above all not ones were my character isn't even present, the last scene on the latest patch was unnecessary, the call and maybe one scene was all that was needed, the rivix and tau fight wasn't important they could have just told us about it, and so on, and the time, effort and budget necessary for those could have been directed to what really matters, our character.
The class/origin story are considered for many the best time and yet we spend so much of it on holocalls on our ship (when was the last time that happened?) and on calls on the way to objectives for status updates and conversations with minimal movement but the story, the choices it all mattered, lately even when we have several choices we end up with the same outcome the only thing we had left was the voice of the characters we love and the experiences we have been living through them but now you are taking that away too reducing us to no more than a puppet that stays on the side lines until you deem them necessary.

[TyrFoge]

32 minutes ago, Darthjantom said:

If the voice acting itself is or might be an issue. With 10+ years of voiced dialogue for the player characters already in the game, would it maybe not be an option/possibility to re-use older voiced dialogue for our characters for responses in what you (as developers) consider to be "less important" cutscenes? I realize this would most likely lead to more generic responses from our player characters for those scenes.

Exactly this. I have no idea his many times I have heard my characters say their blurb lines like "This is where the fun begins". I think it would/could easily make a complicated action choice while in a "KOTOR" style cutscene while making a simple yet voiced blurb line if written right.

1 hour ago, jaingskiratanuul said:

We have a settings menu and interface editor for Exactly this problem. I'll be honest, you guys are (overall) pretty good about making settings for things. Add one for this. Have it remove the black bars and fill in the missing space behind them. There, everyone wins. You don't have to pay the player VAs more, you don't have to make big cinematic shots, and we get to immerse ourselves a little bit more, should we so choose.

Also this. Just because it's a "KOTOR" scene doesn't mean we have to be looking at the back of our characters head stagnant on the left hand of the screen.  We saw some of that in the Feast of Prosperity recently where extra camera angles were used. Do that and add the ability to remove the black bars. 

Now on to my main post.

2 hours ago, EricMusco said:

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”

So this comes off a bit tone deaf. You gotta read the room man. Of those 3 opinions 1 doesn't care how you use KOTOR cutscenes at all, the other just wants them off crit paths, and the other wants them gone all together. Well that's all fine and dandy and all to realize that but if you read the posts the majority of players just don't want cutscenes in the following format:

-Fully Voiced over and cinematic

-"KOTOR" Style

-Fully Voiced over and cinematic

 

Change that in future updates and a lot more players will be happy or at least tolerant of the usage of non voiced cutscenes so you can cut budget by not hiring voice overs actors as much/often.

[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 Saturday at 12:51 AM 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

[UzumakiVideos]

The way the devs have handled this & deleting responses has been very telling for Broadsword's intentions.  👋

[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 Saturday at 08:44 PM 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 Saturday at 08:01 PM 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.