After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
I constantly see this "if they didn't spend money on x they would have spent it on y. It just doesnt' work that way. At all.
Every component of a project, whether it's a game or a building or "whatever" gets factored into a budget and then the budget is set.
So they spend 199 million voice over and 1 million on game play?
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
Yes, Yes, and more Yes - the Voice over is what makes this game so darn fun to play.
I was on the fence when I heard they were going this route, but once I saw it in action, I was blown away! I REALLY like it.
Voice in my MMORPG, is like the diffrence between a Silent Movie, and when Actors could speak - it REALLY makes the game. I doubt that I will EVER go back to playing an MMO that doesn't have Voice Over work done.
that said, I DO like the fact that I have the option to 'space bar' through a dialog that I have seen before. Say a Flash point that I am running over and over again with a group, for loot or XP. it's Great to be able to 'skip' the dialog, but to answer your question, I DO indeed think that Voice over is the best thing since sliced bread.
Put me on the positive side of this poll please!
Dude, you have 15 hours on SWTOR
Wait till you have an entire weeks worth of people telling you their life story before you go out to collect giant droid brains or whatever incrdibly mundane quest they give you
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
games too short and easy, and getting end game gear took less time and effort then I would have liked.
but the story was nice,
but I must rather have a real challenge something that makes me care about the characters more, the whole trip was too short for me to care about the characters in the story. =(
No. Voice over for anything other than class quests, is wasted money. It would have been better kept in their pockets, or if inclined to build a solid game, then into the aspects of the game that will KEEP players around.
espescially the group quests with voice overs where awesome the first time..
(this is exactly what GW2 recognised) you'll only play the dungeons in story mode once with voice overs, after that the dungeons are set up differently for group play.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Honestly at first I wasn't too hyped up about a fully voiced mmo. Main reason was for players progression coordination (just think of the intro(s) in The Cavern of Time in WoW, after listening to it 30 times, it gets kinda old). But I was actualy quite impressed how I enjoyed these cut scenes. Thats what I like in my regular single player rpgs, just laid back and watch the movie. But I think it might have been too much for a mmo to try and add voices everywhere. Even for the class story lines, there is alot of bland fill in and the robotized anymations do not help.
And for those talking about budget, it all depends on the company. Bioware is doing pretty well and have the support of EA on this project so they can do whatever they want. They must be on a tighter leash than Blizzard (or Square Enix lulz, talking about doing whatever they want...) but I sure they arent limited in their budget. Many companies could have dealt with that kind of game in under a 100 millions just by cutting in some of the content. We're talking about Star Wars here, one of the most known franchise of all time, you can't risk to fuck it up with lack of money.
err really are you guys stoped to heard it? or just smash space to run to the choices you have to make? I know most of
people do just that skip all talking so its useless the same way.
and swtor is not the first to have VA on it, others had va on main quest and people just skiped it the same way.
now if the only way to finish quests was like mmo started, you had to read to do the quests... but now we have wikis so even with that people would just search for it....
VO is the next step in MMO evolution . There is no turning back from it . Its like going from MUD's to Everquest in 1999. The quality of the quests are irrelevant IMO . A good quest will look better in a cinematic with voiceover than one in a block of text. A bad quest will also look better in a cinematic with voiceover than a bad quest in a block of text.
I would also much prefer that everyquest (hehe) is VO'd and I had the option to skip through when I want than have to skip through lame blocks of test again.
The only thing I don't want to happen is them taking resources from other parts of the game so they can just keep making cinematics. As long as that doesn't happen cinematics with voiceover is the way to go.
After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
Hahahaha ...
Exactly my point . In this game you actually bother to listen to 600 quest givers sending you to kill robots for whatever reason . In 8 years of MMO's I doubt I have read more than 10 whole quest texts. I have no idea why I kill the dragons I kill or do the zones I do in Everquest 2 , but I definetely know who the Voidwolf is .
I absolutely love it, and didn't think I would. There are other MMO's I still occasionally log into and opening one of their quest text boxes to read whatever is there make my eyes glaze. Even before that I don't think I used to read mission quests anyway. The voice acting, dialogue, companion and team interaction mechanics have sort of spoiled me. Like someone else said earlier in the thread, going forward future successful MMO's will probably have to come with tuis feature. It really feels like going from black and white broadcast TV to color HD satellite transmission. Doesn't have to be the way it was done in SWTOR, but significant elements of quality voice acting will become as important a feature as others that make a game.
After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
I have never been asking by a quest giver to go kill 10 of anything in SWTOR.
When you go do a quest you may get a bonus if you kill X number of whatever but no quest has ever asked me to do that.
So true. Normally you are told how their soldiers are missing and wounded so could you check up on them and see if they're okay? Plus, kill whatever denizens laid their poor company to rest if they are found dead. Then you respond saying the normal, "Murder and Mayhem awaits!"
At which point your quest log updates saying 0/10 droids.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Yes because I listen to the quest/story. I got to the point in other MMO's that I didn't bother reading the quest, I skimmed the objectives and off I went. I actually like the voice over, it actually makes me give a damn.
Personally I would just like all the voice acted parts to be displayed 'word for word' on my screen with an option for me to skip the sound while the text remains. I prefer reading rather than listening, and I really don't enjoy when aliens speak in a bunch of clicks and mumbles, give me my universal translator and have them speak English.
Not sure if someone posted this in the earlier pages but you can just turn on subtitles and the conversation will be shown word for word and then you can spacebar the text
VO is the next step in MMO evolution . There is no turning back from it . Its like going from MUD's to Everquest in 1999. The quality of the quests are irrelevant IMO . A good quest will look better in a cinematic with voiceover than one in a block of text. A bad quest will also look better in a cinematic with voiceover than a bad quest in a block of text.
I would also much prefer that everyquest (hehe) is VO'd and I had the option to skip through when I want than have to skip through lame blocks of test again.
The only thing I don't want to happen is them taking resources from other parts of the game so they can just keep making cinematics. As long as that doesn't happen cinematics with voiceover is the way to go.
Voice over cinematics take resources to make. Any game development studio works with a finite amount of resources. Anything the studio does will "take resources" from anything else it does or could do. The act of creating voice over cinematics will ALWAYS take resources from other parts of the game.
My biggest problem with voice over cinematics around every corner is how anti-social they are. I'm on vent with my gaming buddies and I find myself getting irritated when they talk because they are talking over some quest NPC. That's just wrong and completely "single player game-esque". MMORPGs are supposed to encourage multiplayer social interaction. Even when I group and we're all present for the voice over cinematic, I find myself wanting to make fun of the NPCs and the ridiculous responses we give, but it's hard because no one can really hear comments over the NPCs.
Of course not. I thought it was fluff that most people would skip through, and I still think that. Voice acting has a greater chance of taking away than adding. Reusing voice actors becomes annoying, and there are far less dialogue options due to having to voice everything.
The problem is that there are too many quests, the whole quest system is crap and should never have made it's way into MMO's.
Just because there is dialogue doesn't make it less of a grind, it's still boring as fuck. I want a damned game not a milk-man simulator, cause they might aswell change all the objectives to pick up milk at A and deliver to B, rinse and repeat.
It's not an industry standard, to hell with you people. How miserable do you have to be to actually take this shit?
The problem is that there are too many quests, the whole quest system is crap and should never have made it's way into MMO's.
Just because there is dialogue doesn't make it less of a grind, it's still boring as fuck. I want a damned game not a milk-man simulator, cause they might aswell change all the objectives to pick up milk at A and deliver to B, rinse and repeat.
It's not an industry standard, to hell with you people. How miserable do you have to be to actually take this shit?
Pretty much. I am shocked at how people are enjoying SWTOR. Some people are playing it like a singleplayer game and saying it functions well that way. Well, I don't know any singleplayer games that charge me by the month. I also don't know any singleplayer games that pad out their quests as much as SWTOR does with useless tasks just to extend the gameplay. On top of that, the quests have no impact on the gameworld. Quest grinding is probably the worst feature to hit MMOs behind instancing.
After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
I have never been asking by a quest giver to go kill 10 of anything in SWTOR.
When you go do a quest you may get a bonus if you kill X number of whatever but no quest has ever asked me to do that.
So true. Normally you are told how their soldiers are missing and wounded so could you check up on them and see if they're okay? Plus, kill whatever denizens laid their poor company to rest if they are found dead. Then you respond saying the normal, "Murder and Mayhem awaits!"
At which point your quest log updates saying 0/10 droids.
So you're claiming it's a bait and switch? Don't tell them we're sending them to kill 10 droids but we really are?
Eh, you're kind of stretching the truth there. Very rarely does the quest just send you to a spot to "investigate" and then says "you're here! kill 10 of something!". In fact I can't think of an example where exactly that happened, it certainly hasn't happened 600 times. Most often the kill x whatever bonus comes up while you're doing another task.
I'm not saying many quest tasks are any less mundane but I was responding to the comment that he was tired of quest givers telling him to go kill 10 droids. We're discussing the benefits of the voiced cutscenes, yes?
After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
I have never been asking by a quest giver to go kill 10 of anything in SWTOR.
When you go do a quest you may get a bonus if you kill X number of whatever but no quest has ever asked me to do that.
So true. Normally you are told how their soldiers are missing and wounded so could you check up on them and see if they're okay? Plus, kill whatever denizens laid their poor company to rest if they are found dead. Then you respond saying the normal, "Murder and Mayhem awaits!"
At which point your quest log updates saying 0/10 droids.
So you're claiming it's a bait and switch? Don't tell them we're sending them to kill 10 droids but we really are?
Eh, you're kind of stretching the truth there. Very rarely does the quest just send you to a spot to "investigate" and then says "you're here! kill 10 of something!". In fact I can't think of an example where exactly that happened, it certainly hasn't happened 600 times. Most often the kill x whatever bonus comes up while you're doing another task.
I'm not saying many quest tasks are any less mundane but I was responding to the comment that he was tired of quest givers telling him to go kill 10 droids. We're discussing the benefits of the voiced cutscenes, yes?
The vast majority of quests in SWTOR are mundane filler kill 10 rats quests.
Comments
After the 600th person telling me why i need to kill 10 droids, it got incredibly tedious
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB
Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP
Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
So they spend 199 million voice over and 1 million on game play?
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB
Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP
Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
Dude, you have 15 hours on SWTOR
Wait till you have an entire weeks worth of people telling you their life story before you go out to collect giant droid brains or whatever incrdibly mundane quest they give you
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB
Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP
Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
games too short and easy, and getting end game gear took less time and effort then I would have liked.
but the story was nice,
but I must rather have a real challenge something that makes me care about the characters more, the whole trip was too short for me to care about the characters in the story. =(
No. Voice over for anything other than class quests, is wasted money. It would have been better kept in their pockets, or if inclined to build a solid game, then into the aspects of the game that will KEEP players around.
I mostly spacebar. I then if i have to use the questlog to get info on objectives.
Hauken Stormchaser
I want pre-CU back
Station.com : We got your game
Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!
Yes, i still think iots a good idea....
espescially the group quests with voice overs where awesome the first time..
(this is exactly what GW2 recognised) you'll only play the dungeons in story mode once with voice overs, after that the dungeons are set up differently for group play.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Honestly at first I wasn't too hyped up about a fully voiced mmo. Main reason was for players progression coordination (just think of the intro(s) in The Cavern of Time in WoW, after listening to it 30 times, it gets kinda old). But I was actualy quite impressed how I enjoyed these cut scenes. Thats what I like in my regular single player rpgs, just laid back and watch the movie. But I think it might have been too much for a mmo to try and add voices everywhere. Even for the class story lines, there is alot of bland fill in and the robotized anymations do not help.
And for those talking about budget, it all depends on the company. Bioware is doing pretty well and have the support of EA on this project so they can do whatever they want. They must be on a tighter leash than Blizzard (or Square Enix lulz, talking about doing whatever they want...) but I sure they arent limited in their budget. Many companies could have dealt with that kind of game in under a 100 millions just by cutting in some of the content. We're talking about Star Wars here, one of the most known franchise of all time, you can't risk to fuck it up with lack of money.
err really are you guys stoped to heard it? or just smash space to run to the choices you have to make? I know most of
people do just that skip all talking so its useless the same way.
and swtor is not the first to have VA on it, others had va on main quest and people just skiped it the same way.
now if the only way to finish quests was like mmo started, you had to read to do the quests... but now we have wikis so even with that people would just search for it....
VO is the next step in MMO evolution . There is no turning back from it . Its like going from MUD's to Everquest in 1999. The quality of the quests are irrelevant IMO . A good quest will look better in a cinematic with voiceover than one in a block of text. A bad quest will also look better in a cinematic with voiceover than a bad quest in a block of text.
I would also much prefer that everyquest (hehe) is VO'd and I had the option to skip through when I want than have to skip through lame blocks of test again.
The only thing I don't want to happen is them taking resources from other parts of the game so they can just keep making cinematics. As long as that doesn't happen cinematics with voiceover is the way to go.
Hahahaha ...
Exactly my point . In this game you actually bother to listen to 600 quest givers sending you to kill robots for whatever reason . In 8 years of MMO's I doubt I have read more than 10 whole quest texts. I have no idea why I kill the dragons I kill or do the zones I do in Everquest 2 , but I definetely know who the Voidwolf is .
An absolute waste of time and money.
It really feels like going from black and white broadcast TV to color HD satellite transmission.
Doesn't have to be the way it was done in SWTOR, but significant elements of quality voice acting will become as important a feature as others that make a game.
I have never been asking by a quest giver to go kill 10 of anything in SWTOR.
When you go do a quest you may get a bonus if you kill X number of whatever but no quest has ever asked me to do that.
So true. Normally you are told how their soldiers are missing and wounded so could you check up on them and see if they're okay? Plus, kill whatever denizens laid their poor company to rest if they are found dead. Then you respond saying the normal, "Murder and Mayhem awaits!"
At which point your quest log updates saying 0/10 droids.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Yes because I listen to the quest/story. I got to the point in other MMO's that I didn't bother reading the quest, I skimmed the objectives and off I went. I actually like the voice over, it actually makes me give a damn.
Not sure if someone posted this in the earlier pages but you can just turn on subtitles and the conversation will be shown word for word and then you can spacebar the text
How do you make quests better than objective based?
Give me an answer to that and I'll conceed the point that gather/kill/collect/escort quests are a necessary evil in a quest based game.
Voice over cinematics take resources to make. Any game development studio works with a finite amount of resources. Anything the studio does will "take resources" from anything else it does or could do. The act of creating voice over cinematics will ALWAYS take resources from other parts of the game.
My biggest problem with voice over cinematics around every corner is how anti-social they are. I'm on vent with my gaming buddies and I find myself getting irritated when they talk because they are talking over some quest NPC. That's just wrong and completely "single player game-esque". MMORPGs are supposed to encourage multiplayer social interaction. Even when I group and we're all present for the voice over cinematic, I find myself wanting to make fun of the NPCs and the ridiculous responses we give, but it's hard because no one can really hear comments over the NPCs.
Of course not. I thought it was fluff that most people would skip through, and I still think that. Voice acting has a greater chance of taking away than adding. Reusing voice actors becomes annoying, and there are far less dialogue options due to having to voice everything.
The problem is that there are too many quests, the whole quest system is crap and should never have made it's way into MMO's.
Just because there is dialogue doesn't make it less of a grind, it's still boring as fuck. I want a damned game not a milk-man simulator, cause they might aswell change all the objectives to pick up milk at A and deliver to B, rinse and repeat.
It's not an industry standard, to hell with you people. How miserable do you have to be to actually take this shit?
Pretty much. I am shocked at how people are enjoying SWTOR. Some people are playing it like a singleplayer game and saying it functions well that way. Well, I don't know any singleplayer games that charge me by the month. I also don't know any singleplayer games that pad out their quests as much as SWTOR does with useless tasks just to extend the gameplay. On top of that, the quests have no impact on the gameworld. Quest grinding is probably the worst feature to hit MMOs behind instancing.
So you're claiming it's a bait and switch? Don't tell them we're sending them to kill 10 droids but we really are?
Eh, you're kind of stretching the truth there. Very rarely does the quest just send you to a spot to "investigate" and then says "you're here! kill 10 of something!". In fact I can't think of an example where exactly that happened, it certainly hasn't happened 600 times. Most often the kill x whatever bonus comes up while you're doing another task.
I'm not saying many quest tasks are any less mundane but I was responding to the comment that he was tired of quest givers telling him to go kill 10 droids. We're discussing the benefits of the voiced cutscenes, yes?
The vast majority of quests in SWTOR are mundane filler kill 10 rats quests.