I wouldn't want "photo-realism" in this game, I think the way they went about with the graphics is fine, it's more about the work and polish put into it than the style they use for me.
Heck, I played Shadowbane for a good few years, and that's the best experience I had in any game, ever. And I can tell you, it's not because of the graphics. I know SWTOR is a completely different game, but just to emphasize that it's not about the graphics and level of realism.
The "fully voiced" aspect is cool, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it when leveling and taking my time to enjoy the content, which I plan to do, no rushing to level cap for me. But content, polish and the way that Bioware goes about fixing and balancing stuff is key imo.
A tricky poll since both add to game immersion. But for me, I'm happy with the visuals in this game and so the full voice acting will be a brilliant and worthwhile feature. Besides, When you start out in Everquest 2 and Age of Conan for example, the starter areas had full voice acting for the quest givers, as soon as you leave these areas, the voice acting ended and it was back to reading the dialogue and I remember clearly how disgruntled players were to learn the games didn't have full voice acting.
A tricky poll since both add to game immersion. But for me, I'm happy with the visuals in this game and so the full voice acting will be a brilliant and worthwhile feature. Besides, When you start out in Everquest 2 and Age of Conan for example, the starter areas had full voice acting for the quest givers, as soon as you leave these areas, the voice acting ended and it was back to reading the dialogue and I remember clearly how disgruntled players were to learn the games didn't have full voice acting.
For many, this is an important game feature.
Good point, I completly agree.
I think that the Voice acting is going to be a make it or break it part of this game. If they can pull it off, they will be in buisness for a long time.
A tricky poll since both add to game immersion. But for me, I'm happy with the visuals in this game and so the full voice acting will be a brilliant and worthwhile feature. Besides, When you start out in Everquest 2 and Age of Conan for example, the starter areas had full voice acting for the quest givers, as soon as you leave these areas, the voice acting ended and it was back to reading the dialogue and I remember clearly how disgruntled players were to learn the games didn't have full voice acting.
For many, this is an important game feature.
Good point, I completly agree.
I think that the Voice acting is going to be a make it or break it part of this game. If they can pull it off, they will be in buisness for a long time.
For me its one of the main reasons I want to play this game, I loved the starter area of Age of Conan, not for the graphics, but the fact that they spoke to me, and nothing has felt as immersive as that, just like in normal RPGs, voice acting makes you take notice of the story, and at the end of the day I don't read the quests, apart from "kill 20 trolls".
My experience with voices in mmo's is that they pull some of the worst voice over actors I've ever heard - some of them seem to like to blow their budget on one 'star' and then give you the distinct feeling everyone else is part of the extended friends/family of the developing company. 'Sure you're cousin Robert can do the voice for Morvo the Mad'......
But as others have probably said, I really don't want to have to choose, I'd like there to be both if both are done well.
But if I really had to choose....I play video games, not audio games.
Some of the best games I ever played had "inferior" graphics compared to today's standards. I would much rather ANY GAME have superior content then "artsy" or "cutting edge" graphics. Graphics to me are secondary...important...but secondary.
Name me a game where you can craft your own story 100%?
You can't because in reality every game is a themepark. Some just happen to have some sandbox thrown in. You can only do what the dev team allows you to do. That is every single game...
In SWTOR you do have the choice, just like you did in Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Fallout or other "decision" based game, where your dialog shapes your own story line. Play as a Bounty Hunter, you won't take the same path as your friend who is also playing a BH.
Second Life.
Minecraft (Not 'MMO' but I think it is to the next generation of MMOs what the DIKU MUD was to the first generation of MMO)
Anyway, did I say 100%?
There's a wide gulf between story-on-rails and a freeform sandbox, just as there's a wide gulf between icon-based combat and FPS combat. Only sith deal in absolutes. :P
I am saying that 'graphics versus voiceover' is a misplaced argument. It's about mechanics, the tools given to the players and the openness of the model, not a fight over which bit of multimedia is more important.
But this thread isn't about mechanics. The mechanics of TOR will be similar to all other mmorpgs out there. This is game is Bioware's interpretation of the genre.
And Minecraft is a sandbox yes but you can't create a story out of something that isn't there.
Thats part of the whole point, why spend million on voice over and still have the same old hackneyed mechanics that are way more boring than having to read some text once in a while. Like ... real full Bioware quality space combat!!!
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I don't think you are fimiliar with graphics. I am sure the artists Bioware has are well capable of producing photorealistic assets. And producing photoreal vs what they currently have, I do not believe there would be significant cost. They chose to go not photoreal because they wanted low end machines to be able to play the game. I'm sure they could have done photoreal and fully voice and the cost would be pretty close if not exact same.
There is quite a big difference actually, images are larger and there are 3-4 times more of them when you add bump, and specular maps for realistic textures.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Why create a game that nobody but those of us with the most powerful gaming systems could play? If everyone has to upgrade their CPU, RAM, or Video cards just to play... that will cut down on the number of sub's. And, if the number of sub's isn't some huge number, then most will see the game as a failure.
Beautiful graphics doesn't have to mean/equate to 'system intensive' all of the time, but it certainly has for most MMO's. Any game that has come out and really tried to take the graphics throne in the MMO genre has been a buggy mess. Sure, I want a great looking game. Who doesn't? But why sacrifice overall playability?
...
Fully integrated/fully voiced interaction is the way to go. Can't wait to give it a spin. It's new... innovative. To me, it will help with immersion.
What I'm going to say may sound ridiculous but here it is.
VOICE!
Why? Well 6 months ago I would definitely have said graphics. Was currently playing a new popular MMO. People were saying "HEY! CHECK OUT THESE CLIPS OF SWTOR GAMEPLAY!" So I did. I watched a LOT of SWTOR gameplay. Everything was voiced. The NPCs seemed alive. You didn't have to read crap. The quest giver NPCs acted out their quest, and it made me think "HEY! Now I know why I wanna get those 6 rat tails and bring them back to you dude. Thx!"
And then I went back to my current MMO. The NPCs were silent, stiff, they were dead. It was like a crazy silent movie, where nobody talks, just text. Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives. It felt like an boring table top board game, not a cinematic story engaging game. And I got this idea in my head that HEY! VOICE OVERS are *actually*... important?
Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives.
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
I don't understand why anyone says this. Do people fast forward through movies just to see the action scenes? Most want to see the whole movie. They want that journey.
SWTOR isn't a movie, but it is a cinematic game. You are part of the action, you are part of the cinematics. The cinematics are a game themselves. Why would you fast forward through them? I don't get it. From what we've seen it's not like WoW where you go into an area and see a bunch of yellow exclamation points and click on all the NPCs to get the quests and click accept. It seems a little more involved and engaging than that.
Wouldn't that be like playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect and skipping the dialogue? How do you even know what you're supposed to do LOL?
Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives.
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
I don't understand why anyone says this. Do people fast forward through movies just to see the action scenes? Most want to see the whole movie. They want that journey.
Wouldn't that be like playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect and skipping the dialogue? How do you even know what you're supposed to do LOL?
I think it's a matter of different tastes, some people prefer VO and like their quests to be more immersive, others couldn't care less about quests or story immersion and see them as nothing more than a tasklist on a fast road to level cap.
Although I think that even with the second group a lot of people will find out that it's better to have interesting quests and quest storylines to follow on the road to level cap than a mere easily forgettable, textbased quest trajectory.
Originally posted by i_own_u
Originally posted by JonnyBigBoss
Can I pick a third item?
How about more content instead of hours upon hours and millions of dollars on voice overs?
Like it was said earlier, this poll is simply about the games polish. Content is what makes an MMO what it is, Graphics and Voice Overs are just an added bonus.
VO becomes a part of the equation if it contributes to making the questing experience in a VO/cutscenes/dialogue choices/story focus package.
As for content, SWTOR already has a huge amount more questing content than seen in most AAA themepark MMO's.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Voices. Graphics don't really matter to me but I love being able to sit back and let the cutscene play itself through without me clicking every few seconds.
Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives.
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
I don't understand why anyone says this. Do people fast forward through movies just to see the action scenes? Most want to see the whole movie. They want that journey.
Wouldn't that be like playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect and skipping the dialogue? How do you even know what you're supposed to do LOL?
I think it's a matter of different tastes, some people prefer VO and like their quests to be more immersive, others couldn't care less about quests or story immersion and see them as nothing more than a tasklist on a fast road to level cap.
Although I think that even with the second group a lot of people will find out that it's better to have interesting quests and quest storylines to follow on the road to level cap than a mere easily forgettable, textbased quest trajectory.
Originally posted by i_own_u
Originally posted by JonnyBigBoss
Can I pick a third item?
How about more content instead of hours upon hours and millions of dollars on voice overs?
Like it was said earlier, this poll is simply about the games polish. Content is what makes an MMO what it is, Graphics and Voice Overs are just an added bonus.
VO becomes a part of the equation if it contributes to making the questing experience in a VO/cutscenes/dialogue choices/story focus package.
As for content, SWTOR already has a huge amount more questing content than seen in most AAA themepark MMO's.
True, very good point. However, I still firmly believe that if you take all the VOs away and just leave the dynamic choices, the game would still be a winner.
Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives.
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
I don't understand why anyone says this. Do people fast forward through movies just to see the action scenes? Most want to see the whole movie. They want that journey.
SWTOR isn't a movie, but it is a cinematic game. You are part of the action, you are part of the cinematics. The cinematics are a game themselves. Why would you fast forward through them? I don't get it. From what we've seen it's not like WoW where you go into an area and see a bunch of yellow exclamation points and click on all the NPCs to get the quests and click accept. It seems a little more involved and engaging than that.
Wouldn't that be like playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect and skipping the dialogue? How do you even know what you're supposed to do LOL?
if I want to watch a movie ... well you know the rest.
sitting and watching 5 minutes of movie that tell me to go ----> the video game portion of the movie is not the same as watching 5 minutes of a movie on tv / in the theaters.
The first class I play through I am likely to attempt to listen to some dialogue.
second time through I will likely be skipping it all.
my grief isnt that it's in the game necesarily, its that the 50 million (exaggerated, idk tbh but ive definitely read some large figures attached to the cost) could have been used to develop the other 40% of things that make MMOs MMOs. Things that seem simple like swimming, day/night .. all of the things that make other MMOs feel like worlds, not movies which while taken individually are easy to dismiss, when taken as a whole, trouble me. Especially if this game, or this idea of VO/Story is supposed to change the industry into movies with chat boxes and some combat (combat actually looks decent enough considering other MMOs .. and could actually be quite good, idk).
Hopefully it will be a good game. Worth the box price, give me some entertainment .. and not be copied by everyone.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
If you build a game that runs only on cream of the crop (at the time) machines, you limit your own audience, and your own profit.
That's before the customers find out the game is terrible except for the graphics.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If you build a game that runs only on cream of the crop (at the time) machines, you limit your own audience, and your own profit.
That's before the customers find out the game is terrible except for the graphics.
Vanguard had very low quality settings that made the game playable at least for me. Vanguard failed because Sigil ran out of money, and sony bought a 70% complete game and didnt finish it for release. the game wasn't even partially optimized at release leading largely to the idea that it was graphically intense (which it was anyway, but not to the extent everyone claims) .. and then there were the 9 billion bugs.
In the end the graphical nature of vanguard would have been far less an issue if not for the otherwise steaming pile sony bought and released without finishing. to their credit (which .. i can't believe i'm typing out loud) vanguard is now a very decent game
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Really like all they have done in TOR and I also like the way this team thinks. I am sure from what I see so far this game will blow me away .. and that is why I have my CE edition all ready to arrive and my code activated.
See ya on the Force side. IF YOU CAN CATCH ME> ....
Bounty Hunter for hire.
Look to the stars to know HE is with us. HE hung them as markers, of times and of seasons.
Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives.
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
Speak for yourself. I know many gamers that enjoy cut scenes and voiceovers because it brings you that much more into the world in which you are playing. Text and voiceovers are not the same thing. Voiceovers bring that text to life and since we ARE supposed to be playing a roleplaying game and not just a boring grind, I think that's a good thing.Sinlge player games figured this out a long time ago and it's nice that MMORPGs are finally catching up.
Geez, this is almost like being back in the 1920s and having to explain to traditionalists why a silent movie is inferior to movies with sound.
Comments
I wouldn't want "photo-realism" in this game, I think the way they went about with the graphics is fine, it's more about the work and polish put into it than the style they use for me.
Heck, I played Shadowbane for a good few years, and that's the best experience I had in any game, ever. And I can tell you, it's not because of the graphics. I know SWTOR is a completely different game, but just to emphasize that it's not about the graphics and level of realism.
The "fully voiced" aspect is cool, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it when leveling and taking my time to enjoy the content, which I plan to do, no rushing to level cap for me. But content, polish and the way that Bioware goes about fixing and balancing stuff is key imo.
A tricky poll since both add to game immersion. But for me, I'm happy with the visuals in this game and so the full voice acting will be a brilliant and worthwhile feature. Besides, When you start out in Everquest 2 and Age of Conan for example, the starter areas had full voice acting for the quest givers, as soon as you leave these areas, the voice acting ended and it was back to reading the dialogue and I remember clearly how disgruntled players were to learn the games didn't have full voice acting.
For many, this is an important game feature.
Good point, I completly agree.
I think that the Voice acting is going to be a make it or break it part of this game. If they can pull it off, they will be in buisness for a long time.
For me its one of the main reasons I want to play this game, I loved the starter area of Age of Conan, not for the graphics, but the fact that they spoke to me, and nothing has felt as immersive as that, just like in normal RPGs, voice acting makes you take notice of the story, and at the end of the day I don't read the quests, apart from "kill 20 trolls".
Graphics and voice overs mean nothing if the gameplay doesn't deliver.
BTW, I think the premise this game's budget had any real impact on art direction is naive at best.
My experience with voices in mmo's is that they pull some of the worst voice over actors I've ever heard - some of them seem to like to blow their budget on one 'star' and then give you the distinct feeling everyone else is part of the extended friends/family of the developing company. 'Sure you're cousin Robert can do the voice for Morvo the Mad'......
But as others have probably said, I really don't want to have to choose, I'd like there to be both if both are done well.
But if I really had to choose....I play video games, not audio games.
Some of the best games I ever played had "inferior" graphics compared to today's standards. I would much rather ANY GAME have superior content then "artsy" or "cutting edge" graphics. Graphics to me are secondary...important...but secondary.
Let's party like it is 1863!
I don't think TOR has any problems when it comes to the art style they have chosen.
Full VO all the way in my opinion.
At 110 posts now and it seems the fully voiced MMO is pretty popular with 64.9% of the votes. Interesting.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Thats part of the whole point, why spend million on voice over and still have the same old hackneyed mechanics that are way more boring than having to read some text once in a while. Like ... real full Bioware quality space combat!!!
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
There is quite a big difference actually, images are larger and there are 3-4 times more of them when you add bump, and specular maps for realistic textures.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I voted for 'voice'.
Why?
Why create a game that nobody but those of us with the most powerful gaming systems could play? If everyone has to upgrade their CPU, RAM, or Video cards just to play... that will cut down on the number of sub's. And, if the number of sub's isn't some huge number, then most will see the game as a failure.
Beautiful graphics doesn't have to mean/equate to 'system intensive' all of the time, but it certainly has for most MMO's. Any game that has come out and really tried to take the graphics throne in the MMO genre has been a buggy mess. Sure, I want a great looking game. Who doesn't? But why sacrifice overall playability?
...
Fully integrated/fully voiced interaction is the way to go. Can't wait to give it a spin. It's new... innovative. To me, it will help with immersion.
What I'm going to say may sound ridiculous but here it is.
VOICE!
Why? Well 6 months ago I would definitely have said graphics. Was currently playing a new popular MMO. People were saying "HEY! CHECK OUT THESE CLIPS OF SWTOR GAMEPLAY!" So I did. I watched a LOT of SWTOR gameplay. Everything was voiced. The NPCs seemed alive. You didn't have to read crap. The quest giver NPCs acted out their quest, and it made me think "HEY! Now I know why I wanna get those 6 rat tails and bring them back to you dude. Thx!"
And then I went back to my current MMO. The NPCs were silent, stiff, they were dead. It was like a crazy silent movie, where nobody talks, just text. Players running around completing objectives, not really knowing why they were completing objectives. It felt like an boring table top board game, not a cinematic story engaging game. And I got this idea in my head that HEY! VOICE OVERS are *actually*... important?
Full Voice won't change it. Players will click through voice like they click through text.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Graphics.
It's an online game, not a BBC Radio drama.
I don't understand why anyone says this. Do people fast forward through movies just to see the action scenes? Most want to see the whole movie. They want that journey.
SWTOR isn't a movie, but it is a cinematic game. You are part of the action, you are part of the cinematics. The cinematics are a game themselves. Why would you fast forward through them? I don't get it. From what we've seen it's not like WoW where you go into an area and see a bunch of yellow exclamation points and click on all the NPCs to get the quests and click accept. It seems a little more involved and engaging than that.
Wouldn't that be like playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect and skipping the dialogue? How do you even know what you're supposed to do LOL?
I think it's a matter of different tastes, some people prefer VO and like their quests to be more immersive, others couldn't care less about quests or story immersion and see them as nothing more than a tasklist on a fast road to level cap.
Although I think that even with the second group a lot of people will find out that it's better to have interesting quests and quest storylines to follow on the road to level cap than a mere easily forgettable, textbased quest trajectory.
VO becomes a part of the equation if it contributes to making the questing experience in a VO/cutscenes/dialogue choices/story focus package.
As for content, SWTOR already has a huge amount more questing content than seen in most AAA themepark MMO's.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Voices. Graphics don't really matter to me but I love being able to sit back and let the cutscene play itself through without me clicking every few seconds.
True, very good point. However, I still firmly believe that if you take all the VOs away and just leave the dynamic choices, the game would still be a winner.
if I want to watch a movie ... well you know the rest.
sitting and watching 5 minutes of movie that tell me to go ----> the video game portion of the movie is not the same as watching 5 minutes of a movie on tv / in the theaters.
The first class I play through I am likely to attempt to listen to some dialogue.
second time through I will likely be skipping it all.
my grief isnt that it's in the game necesarily, its that the 50 million (exaggerated, idk tbh but ive definitely read some large figures attached to the cost) could have been used to develop the other 40% of things that make MMOs MMOs. Things that seem simple like swimming, day/night .. all of the things that make other MMOs feel like worlds, not movies which while taken individually are easy to dismiss, when taken as a whole, trouble me. Especially if this game, or this idea of VO/Story is supposed to change the industry into movies with chat boxes and some combat (combat actually looks decent enough considering other MMOs .. and could actually be quite good, idk).
Hopefully it will be a good game. Worth the box price, give me some entertainment .. and not be copied by everyone.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
No one remembers the Vanguard lesson?
If you build a game that runs only on cream of the crop (at the time) machines, you limit your own audience, and your own profit.
That's before the customers find out the game is terrible except for the graphics.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Vanguard had very low quality settings that made the game playable at least for me. Vanguard failed because Sigil ran out of money, and sony bought a 70% complete game and didnt finish it for release. the game wasn't even partially optimized at release leading largely to the idea that it was graphically intense (which it was anyway, but not to the extent everyone claims) .. and then there were the 9 billion bugs.
In the end the graphical nature of vanguard would have been far less an issue if not for the otherwise steaming pile sony bought and released without finishing. to their credit (which .. i can't believe i'm typing out loud) vanguard is now a very decent game
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Really like all they have done in TOR and I also like the way this team thinks. I am sure from what I see so far this game will blow me away .. and that is why I have my CE edition all ready to arrive and my code activated.
See ya on the Force side. IF YOU CAN CATCH ME> ....
Bounty Hunter for hire.
Look to the stars to know HE is with us. HE hung them as markers, of times and of seasons.
Speak for yourself. I know many gamers that enjoy cut scenes and voiceovers because it brings you that much more into the world in which you are playing. Text and voiceovers are not the same thing. Voiceovers bring that text to life and since we ARE supposed to be playing a roleplaying game and not just a boring grind, I think that's a good thing.Sinlge player games figured this out a long time ago and it's nice that MMORPGs are finally catching up.
Geez, this is almost like being back in the 1920s and having to explain to traditionalists why a silent movie is inferior to movies with sound.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft