The title sums it up. There is no doubt that Voice Overs in SW are a hotly anticipated feature, but do you think they will become a required feature for future mmo's? Ten years ago, voice overs in single player games were rare, but were quickly becoming a hot new feature as storage space went up, and costs to produce went down. Really, the question boils down to "How important is single player immersion in an MMO?". Are the features of single player games merging with the features of mmo games to make a new and more advanced hybrid? Or, shoudl the two types of games remain separate and distinct? Clearly, Bioware is trying to merge the two, but is this something that you think will become a standard in the industry, or is it just an expensive gimmick? I think that Voice Overs and the questing system of SWTOR is one of the most distinct features of the game. We see that big, revolutionary features tend to spread like wildfire in the mmo community. An example of this would be the public quests of Warhammer that were then implemented in some form or another to great effect in other games. But, this is a feature that is unique to the mmo world. Will the same hold true for a feature that is considered the norm in single player games (and is very expensive and difficult to implement), and what other types of features do you think mmo's could benefit from by borrowing from the single player experience?
So you obviously never played EQ2, especially when it first released. EQ2 had far more VO than swtor could ever dream off,it was nearly all voiced. SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent. Walk in to any cantina and all you will hear is music and no talking unless they are quest givers.
Playing GW2 at gamescom and playing swtor and testing in the beta weekends really shows how dead and dismal bioware have drop the ball when it comes to voice overs.
Wait till you walk round divinty reach and the differance really shows.
SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent.
This is not accurate. There are NPCs who have conversations with each other which you can overhear as you are going through the city areas.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I personaly don't like voice-overs. I don't find them all that immersive...I actualy prefer the written word.
I think we'll see MORE voice acting in upcoming MMO's (at least for a while) ...... but I don't think it will be a "must have" feature....nor do I think it will be common to see fully VO MMO's.....although we likely will see more partialy VO'd ones.
Firstly it adds significantly to the expense of making an MMO. Secondly it does actualy DETRACT from certain things, like the ability to personalize dialogue to the player involved.
So you obviously never played EQ2, especially when it first released. EQ2 had far more VO than swtor could ever dream off,it was nearly all voiced. SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent. Walk in to any cantina and all you will hear is music and no talking unless they are quest givers. Playing GW2 at gamescom and playing swtor and testing in the beta weekends really shows how dead and dismal bioware have drop the ball when it comes to voice overs. Wait till you walk round divinty reach and the differance really shows.
True, I didn't play EQ2 until many years later, and even then I only played a short while. But, SWTOR is certainly getting a lot of attention for it's VO's, whatever the reason, and it might be because the genre is now ready for them (with technology getting to where it is, and with single player games using VO's as a staple now).
However, your point about VO's only being used in SWTOR during quests and story is not true. I just got finished beta testing and there are lots of npc's that talk to you, or talk to each other as you pass them about other topics. There is actually a bug in game where the VO's from npc's that you pass keep playing sometimes at full volume when you are already out of range (to be fixed). This is largely irrelvant though, I just wanted to point that out.
I skipped 90% of VO while playing TOR, most of them are unnecessary...
Well story is only nessessary if you want to hear it, if you just want to grind mindlessly then obviously it will be a hinderance.
You realize that you can have wonderful story WITHOUT voice over?
You can also have great dialog without voice over or even without cutscenes...
I really don't like polarization saying "you're not amazed by VO then you're grinder and don't care about story" <-- this is NOT true, at least not in my case.
So you want to go back to the wall of texts? really? let me answer that for you, it is because you want to go back to fucking ignoring the story. Because lets face it, Books are awesome, audiobooks are better. Quests are awesome, voiced quests are better.
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
Here's a thought: Would the VO's still be desirable even if they were the equivalent of an NPC reading off the quest text from one of the quests in WoW? What more is there to this that makes them so desirable in SWTOR?
So you obviously never played EQ2, especially when it first released. EQ2 had far more VO than swtor could ever dream off,it was nearly all voiced. SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent.
yeah... um... no
To the question at hand, all AAA MMO's that are quest or story based will need full voice acting to compete from now on. It's a game changer. (lolol pun....jk)
Well, we are talking (mmo)RPG's here. VO adds a lot to the core values of any RPG.
The only reasons that we (almost) didn't have such massive VO before in mmorpg's have been either technical (manni, manni megabytes) or financial I suppose. But games have become increasingly ambitious in scope and size in the past decade. Better prepare for more VO, gimmick-sayers.
Whether VO's justify extensive use of cut-scenes is an altogether different question.
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Nope, most companies wont be able to afford full voice over for their entire game
That is a good point. My question in response is, are VO's important enough (read will we get spoiled by them) that only companies that can afford them will be dominating the mmo market, pushing out smaller companies? Will we still be able to enjoy mmo's without voice overs as much? I know that I am spoiled for single player games, and I can't play games without full voice now anymore (unless they are some small time waster puzzle games). This could be a fundamental shift in the mmo market, where mmo's become vastly more mainstream, or it could be a fad...
So you obviously never played EQ2, especially when it first released. EQ2 had far more VO than swtor could ever dream off,it was nearly all voiced. SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent. Walk in to any cantina and all you will hear is music and no talking unless they are quest givers. Playing GW2 at gamescom and playing swtor and testing in the beta weekends really shows how dead and dismal bioware have drop the ball when it comes to voice overs. Wait till you walk round divinty reach and the differance really shows.
I played EQ2 on launch day and TOR beta and there is no comparison between the two games. EQ2's voice overs were short snips of informaiton and you still had to read the quest information to know what to do. TOR's are full voice overs including converstation branching that can be used as a replacement to a quest journal. Also EQ2's voice work was mostly level 1-20 content and they never added a single line of new voice after the game launch as far as I can tell.
Saying that EQ2 has "far more" voice over work just shows you either don't know TOR that well or you have a agenda.
I have no experience with GW2 other than videos so I don't know anythign about that.
Nope, most companies wont be able to afford full voice over for their entire game
That is a good point. My question in response is, are VO's important enough (read will we get spoiled by them) that only companies that can afford them will be dominating the mmo market, pushing out smaller companies? Will we still be able to enjoy mmo's without voice overs as much? I know that I am spoiled for single player games, and I can't play games without full voice now anymore (unless they are some small time waster puzzle games). This could be a fundamental shift in the mmo market, where mmo's become vastly more mainstream, or it could be a fad...
I think the mass market will shift, but there will always be niches that prioritize other game elements, and are willing to sacrifice the VO to get them, as well as a tiny minority of people who genuinely don't like having any VO in any of their games.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Nope, most companies wont be able to afford full voice over for their entire game
That is a good point. My question in response is, are VO's important enough (read will we get spoiled by them) that only companies that can afford them will be dominating the mmo market, pushing out smaller companies? Will we still be able to enjoy mmo's without voice overs as much? I know that I am spoiled for single player games, and I can't play games without full voice now anymore (unless they are some small time waster puzzle games). This could be a fundamental shift in the mmo market, where mmo's become vastly more mainstream, or it could be a fad...
I can give you my personal opinion on the value of interactive voice overs in MMO's and it's something I have heard others say as well. Take it for what it's worth.
Interactive voice over's really take the edge of the grind when you are playing the game. You are still doing the same kill 10 rats, pick up pakage and deliever to X quests as every other MMO but when your interacting with the NPC using voice/cut scenes you don't seem to notice it as much. In that regrad as a tool to hide the grind that is inherient in MMO's I think it's a great feature.
In this day and age, voice overs between NPCs are a must in any story driven RPG or MMORPG. That does not mean that Bioware way is the only way to do it. I really like the system in Skyrim for example, but I think Bioware does it really well for MMO especially the interaction in groups is really nice.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
I was thinking the same thing just now, because of the visual nature of MMO's *much like film" it's logical for them to be voiced over and it's not really valid to use the audiobook vs written word analogy since in that example neither are visual mediums of delivery.
I shudder to think how bad the voice over could get in a game that can't really afford to do them justice.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
Depends on what you are actualy looking for. I'd say an MMO has more in common with a "choose your own adventure book" then it does with a movie. Movie's are entirely passive experiences. MMO's come with a certain expectation of interactivity.
It's far easier to do interactivity with text then it is with voice.
For instance, you can pull an actual player characters name into the dialogue with text. You can let them do things like have personaly named companions or pets or mounts and use that in dialogue as well. You can examine what item they are holding in thier hand, what weapon the use most commonly, thier attributes, skills.....what quests they've previously done... what sort of reputation they have, etc....and use all that in dialogue with text.
All those things are alot more difficult to do with Voice because of the number of takes you would have to do to account for different variables. For example....can you ever have a voice dialogue that refers to the character by his/her own name (and let the player choose that name)? The same thing is trivial to do with text.
VO gives you better presentation values.....but text allows for greater depth and personalization in the dialogue.
Personaly I'll take depth and personalization over presentation values in an RPG any day of the week. YMMV.
Though personaly I don't see why a game needs to make a binary choice..... you can do VO for ambients and some simple dialogue and use text when you want to go deeper/more personalized.
I cannot see how most MMO companies could afford to do full VO. SWTOR has been in development since around late 2005 and by Bioware's own admission had an epic budget. While I found the VO content of SWTOR to be excellent, some of the other basic game features such as race choice, and character creation choices, for example, had to be cut down far to lean for my liking. Adding that much VO content was such a herculean task they had to cut back on game development elsewhere. While I'm sure I'm in the minority, I feel the game actually suffers badly from this. I can't imagine how hollow a game made by a company with a normal MMO budget would look if they made such an attempt.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
All I know is that I'm not a fan of voice-overs, myself. I prefer text when an NPC has something to say to me specifically, I prefer ambient sounds that imply people talking in crowded areas, I especially prefer all the options that open up when a dev doesn't have to worry about hiring actors to voice it all.
And yet somehow, I still prefer normal movies, over silent ones. Though if its a foreign movie, I strongly prefer subtitles over dubbing - maybe that'd be a better comparison?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Depends on what you are actualy looking for. I'd say an MMO has more in common with a "choose your own adventure book" then it does with a movie. Movie's are entirely passive experiences. MMO's come with a certain expectation of interactivity.
It's far easier to do interactivity with text then it is with voice.
For instance, you can pull an actual player characters name into the dialogue with text. You can let them do things like have personaly named companions or pets or mounts and use that in dialogue as well. You can examine what item they are holding in thier hand, what weapon the use most commonly, thier attributes, skills.....what quests they've previously done... what sort of reputation they have, etc....and use all that in dialogue with text.
All those things are alot more difficult to do with Voice because of the number of takes you would have to do to account for different variables. For example....can you ever have a voice dialogue that refers to the character by his/her own name (and let the player choose that name)? The same thing is trivial to do with text.
VO gives you better presentation values.....but text allows for greater depth and personalization in the dialogue.
Personaly I'll take depth and personalization over presentation values in an RPG any day of the week. YMMV.
Though personaly I don't see why a game needs to make a binary choice..... you can do VO for ambients and some simple dialogue and use text when you want to go deeper/more personalized.
So what you're saying is that when a game studio develops a voice system that can read and vocalize words pretty well without pre-recording the audio (and not sounding like microsoft sam), then voice overs will be able to replace text? Sounds like a job for an mmo developed by google =D
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
Nosferatu > Twilight films
So. At leat me.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I don't think VO will be necessary, but I do think, and hope it will lead to more choices and interaction within quests themselves. It's not JUST the VO that's different in TOR, it's also how the quests unfold as the story is told. The closest thing to it in MMO's currently released are the more pivotal parts of the LotRO epic story. But even then, in LotRO there is 100% chance that everything will go down the exact way every single time in the epic quests, and you can't respond to the events that are occuring.
While the Class and World quests don't approach Witcher 2's long reaching consequences, you can change the tone of the game drastically based on the choices you make.
Even if there were no VO at all, and in their place, text, questing would still be far different than your typical MMO.
Unless of course you're a person who just clicks "accept" to quests without reading them now, in which case you'll just be frustrated.
Comments
So you obviously never played EQ2, especially when it first released. EQ2 had far more VO than swtor could ever dream off,it was nearly all voiced. SWTOR is far from leading the way for voiced MMOs,only the quests and story is voiced all other npc are silent. Walk in to any cantina and all you will hear is music and no talking unless they are quest givers.Playing GW2 at gamescom and playing swtor and testing in the beta weekends really shows how dead and dismal bioware have drop the ball when it comes to voice overs.
Wait till you walk round divinty reach and the differance really shows.
This is not accurate. There are NPCs who have conversations with each other which you can overhear as you are going through the city areas.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
++ agreed.
gives a total diferent feeling to the game, even more if you liek the role playing element of it.
I personaly don't like voice-overs. I don't find them all that immersive...I actualy prefer the written word.
I think we'll see MORE voice acting in upcoming MMO's (at least for a while) ...... but I don't think it will be a "must have" feature....nor do I think it will be common to see fully VO MMO's.....although we likely will see more partialy VO'd ones.
Firstly it adds significantly to the expense of making an MMO. Secondly it does actualy DETRACT from certain things, like the ability to personalize dialogue to the player involved.
Me also.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
True, I didn't play EQ2 until many years later, and even then I only played a short while. But, SWTOR is certainly getting a lot of attention for it's VO's, whatever the reason, and it might be because the genre is now ready for them (with technology getting to where it is, and with single player games using VO's as a staple now).
However, your point about VO's only being used in SWTOR during quests and story is not true. I just got finished beta testing and there are lots of npc's that talk to you, or talk to each other as you pass them about other topics. There is actually a bug in game where the VO's from npc's that you pass keep playing sometimes at full volume when you are already out of range (to be fixed). This is largely irrelvant though, I just wanted to point that out.
Actually, quite alot of people prefer books over audiobooks. I'm certainly not trying to dismiss people who enjoy VO.....but please don't dismiss the written word as a medium for narritive. It has qualities that are unique to it.
Here's a thought: Would the VO's still be desirable even if they were the equivalent of an NPC reading off the quest text from one of the quests in WoW? What more is there to this that makes them so desirable in SWTOR?
Nope, most companies wont be able to afford full voice over for their entire game
C
yeah... um... no
To the question at hand, all AAA MMO's that are quest or story based will need full voice acting to compete from now on. It's a game changer. (lolol pun....jk)
Remember Old School Ultima Online
Well, we are talking (mmo)RPG's here. VO adds a lot to the core values of any RPG.
The only reasons that we (almost) didn't have such massive VO before in mmorpg's have been either technical (manni, manni megabytes) or financial I suppose. But games have become increasingly ambitious in scope and size in the past decade. Better prepare for more VO, gimmick-sayers.
Whether VO's justify extensive use of cut-scenes is an altogether different question.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Gimmick.
But a welcome gimmick.
It's a matter of the means of presentation though. A modern game that is presented graphically and lacks voiceover has more in common with a silent movie than it does with a book. How many people honestly prefer silent movies to movies with voice acting?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
That is a good point. My question in response is, are VO's important enough (read will we get spoiled by them) that only companies that can afford them will be dominating the mmo market, pushing out smaller companies? Will we still be able to enjoy mmo's without voice overs as much? I know that I am spoiled for single player games, and I can't play games without full voice now anymore (unless they are some small time waster puzzle games). This could be a fundamental shift in the mmo market, where mmo's become vastly more mainstream, or it could be a fad...
I played EQ2 on launch day and TOR beta and there is no comparison between the two games. EQ2's voice overs were short snips of informaiton and you still had to read the quest information to know what to do. TOR's are full voice overs including converstation branching that can be used as a replacement to a quest journal. Also EQ2's voice work was mostly level 1-20 content and they never added a single line of new voice after the game launch as far as I can tell.
Saying that EQ2 has "far more" voice over work just shows you either don't know TOR that well or you have a agenda.
I have no experience with GW2 other than videos so I don't know anythign about that.
I think the mass market will shift, but there will always be niches that prioritize other game elements, and are willing to sacrifice the VO to get them, as well as a tiny minority of people who genuinely don't like having any VO in any of their games.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I can give you my personal opinion on the value of interactive voice overs in MMO's and it's something I have heard others say as well. Take it for what it's worth.
Interactive voice over's really take the edge of the grind when you are playing the game. You are still doing the same kill 10 rats, pick up pakage and deliever to X quests as every other MMO but when your interacting with the NPC using voice/cut scenes you don't seem to notice it as much. In that regrad as a tool to hide the grind that is inherient in MMO's I think it's a great feature.
In this day and age, voice overs between NPCs are a must in any story driven RPG or MMORPG. That does not mean that Bioware way is the only way to do it. I really like the system in Skyrim for example, but I think Bioware does it really well for MMO especially the interaction in groups is really nice.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I was thinking the same thing just now, because of the visual nature of MMO's *much like film" it's logical for them to be voiced over and it's not really valid to use the audiobook vs written word analogy since in that example neither are visual mediums of delivery.
I shudder to think how bad the voice over could get in a game that can't really afford to do them justice.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Depends on what you are actualy looking for. I'd say an MMO has more in common with a "choose your own adventure book" then it does with a movie. Movie's are entirely passive experiences. MMO's come with a certain expectation of interactivity.
It's far easier to do interactivity with text then it is with voice.
For instance, you can pull an actual player characters name into the dialogue with text. You can let them do things like have personaly named companions or pets or mounts and use that in dialogue as well. You can examine what item they are holding in thier hand, what weapon the use most commonly, thier attributes, skills.....what quests they've previously done... what sort of reputation they have, etc....and use all that in dialogue with text.
All those things are alot more difficult to do with Voice because of the number of takes you would have to do to account for different variables. For example....can you ever have a voice dialogue that refers to the character by his/her own name (and let the player choose that name)? The same thing is trivial to do with text.
VO gives you better presentation values.....but text allows for greater depth and personalization in the dialogue.
Personaly I'll take depth and personalization over presentation values in an RPG any day of the week. YMMV.
Though personaly I don't see why a game needs to make a binary choice..... you can do VO for ambients and some simple dialogue and use text when you want to go deeper/more personalized.
I cannot see how most MMO companies could afford to do full VO. SWTOR has been in development since around late 2005 and by Bioware's own admission had an epic budget. While I found the VO content of SWTOR to be excellent, some of the other basic game features such as race choice, and character creation choices, for example, had to be cut down far to lean for my liking. Adding that much VO content was such a herculean task they had to cut back on game development elsewhere. While I'm sure I'm in the minority, I feel the game actually suffers badly from this. I can't imagine how hollow a game made by a company with a normal MMO budget would look if they made such an attempt.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
All I know is that I'm not a fan of voice-overs, myself. I prefer text when an NPC has something to say to me specifically, I prefer ambient sounds that imply people talking in crowded areas, I especially prefer all the options that open up when a dev doesn't have to worry about hiring actors to voice it all.
And yet somehow, I still prefer normal movies, over silent ones. Though if its a foreign movie, I strongly prefer subtitles over dubbing - maybe that'd be a better comparison?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
So what you're saying is that when a game studio develops a voice system that can read and vocalize words pretty well without pre-recording the audio (and not sounding like microsoft sam), then voice overs will be able to replace text? Sounds like a job for an mmo developed by google =D
Nosferatu > Twilight films
So. At leat me.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I don't think VO will be necessary, but I do think, and hope it will lead to more choices and interaction within quests themselves. It's not JUST the VO that's different in TOR, it's also how the quests unfold as the story is told. The closest thing to it in MMO's currently released are the more pivotal parts of the LotRO epic story. But even then, in LotRO there is 100% chance that everything will go down the exact way every single time in the epic quests, and you can't respond to the events that are occuring.
While the Class and World quests don't approach Witcher 2's long reaching consequences, you can change the tone of the game drastically based on the choices you make.
Even if there were no VO at all, and in their place, text, questing would still be far different than your typical MMO.
Unless of course you're a person who just clicks "accept" to quests without reading them now, in which case you'll just be frustrated.