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Now that you've played it, do you still think 100% voice is a great idea?

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  • RobsolfRobsolf Member RarePosts: 4,607

    Originally posted by Unshra

    Originally posted by Robsolf


    Originally posted by Unshra

     

     Another example is with Star Trek: Online. Most of the episodes I played were silent, sure I read some but for the most part I just clicked. Then one day an episode pop-upped up and NPC started talking, however my reflex was to click “F” and I missed the dialogue yet I was curious “What did they have to say” (go figure) so I canceled the mission and restarted it just so I could listen to what they had to say. Simply put it added another level of depth to the game and I hope they continue to add more voiceovers in the future.

    IMO, STO's VO is a great example of VO done badly, and being more of a detriment.  here's an example:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PlgsBqwZf8

    It's essentially a wall of text being read to you by a guy that sounds like he's reading a wall of text.  Marginal acting aside, if there's no real conversation, then I don't really care about VO.

    Unless you participate in the conversation in a meaningful way, as you do in TOR and other BW games, then VO adds nothing for me.

    Edit:  Exceptions being narrations, of course.

     I think you are looking to much into what I said, also I never commented on "cutscenes" because in most MMO's they are horrible and STO is no exception (and to make it worse 90% of the time you can't skip them.) However the quest voice over work that I have experienced is not bad (again NOT cutscenes just the pop-up mission windows), it's not BioWare or Bethsoft quality but honestly few games are at that level.

    I wasn't really mentioning that to be argumentative.  Truth of the matter is I ran across that clip a while back and thought it would make a good example of "bad VO" implementation.

    Basic VO like you mentioned if fine in my book and adds something, I think, so I agree.  Clicking on a dwarven merchant in LotRO and hearing "WHAT... do you need?" does add something significant.  But that's not a particularly big expense for VO and in no way interrupts a players gaming experience.

    The whole speel in that video I linked does, IMO.  in my book it added no value at all.  When you go through all that diatribe and can in no way interact with it, it just feels like a complete waste of time.

     

  • ShazkneeShazknee Member Posts: 81

    It's alright for the class story.

     

    But I really don't care why some guy wants me to kill 5 dogs who invaded his house because his wife cheated on him, or w/e.

     

    Let's be honest, the cut scenes does not change the fact, that the majority of the quests are just plain boring, Blizzard made better and more fun quests with TBC, which is years ago, I dislike alot of the cutscenes, because I know it all boils down to me, a Sith Lord, is going to run for 10 minutes to find a stone for some loser, fun? no.

     

    Furthermore, the gameplay is severely hurt by the cut scenes, honestly, remove the cut scenes and what do you have? a really average mmo, that's it.

     

    Some people argue that we need voice acting for the RPG element in mmorpg, now I've done RP in other mmo's, who didnt have cut scenes, and I enjoyed RP'ing with other players alot more, than I do "RP'ing" with an NPC, cut scenes are for single player RPG's.

     

    It does however not surprise me, that people who enjoy SWTOR think that cut scenes are needed for the RP element, it feels as if it's the single player crowd who's all yay about it.

     

     

    I'm looking forward to a mmo, which has voice acting for the "vital" quests, text for the other quests that they've invested more time in, to make them interesting to actually do.

     

    I swear to god, people who enjoy killing 10 pigs due to the cut scene sequence who told them why... are the same people who'll buy shit if it's wrapped in nice paper.

  • FlawSGIFlawSGI Member UncommonPosts: 1,379

    Originally posted by smh_alot

    Originally posted by FlawSGI

     This post alone kinda reinforces my point and I'll add to something he said. Yes VO is better than text base and it is being used more in single player games but there is some glaring problems comparing the 2 to say VO is better. In a single player game and we can use Skyrim since it can be argued as one of the best examples, you don't do quest grinding nearly to the extent you did in TOR so the CS and VO wasn't nearly as bad. Throw in that your choices actually had more meaning in Skyrim and you can see where this is kinda showing the point I was trying to make when I posted.  In a MMO and especially a thgemepark that was as linear as TOR was and this becomes and issue for some. It becomes very repetative and tediouse to the point that I started to wish I could just read the shit and move on. It was overdone and comes off as gimmiky because of it.

     

    Come on, be honest here. This has little to do with voice work and more with quest based leveling in MMO's. I mean, it's not as if people would read all the quest text in textbased MMO's, right? What devs often have said and players as well, a hell of a lot of people skip quest text. Quest skippers in TOR are most of the times quest skippers in other MMO's as well.

     



    But I'm also sure that people on average pay more attention to quests in TOR, just like they did in AoC, and just like they'll do in GW2 and TSW, than in textbased quest MMO's due to the presentation of voice and cutscenes. Given the choice, I prefer more extensive use of voice work and cutscene presentation in MMO's than textbased questing, and I'm pretty sure that there are lots of others who share that preference.

    Oh if you read what I said I never argued that text based was better at all. Read it again and you'll see that I thought VO was good, just that the cutscenes and pointless dialogue options were overdone and overused. Personally, if they didn't add a freaking CS and dialogue option for every single quest then it wouldn't have gotten old so fast. 

    I also agree that there are some that would skip the dialogue no matter what, but to put so much emphasis on it and have the game lack in other areas was a huge flaw in my eyes. I like the way GW2 and some others have done VO for a game and it has also been done in the past pretty well and they didn't feel the need to add cutscenes AND dialogue options at every turn. So I still stand by my opinion that there is nothing wrong with 100% VO, only they don't always need cutscenes and dialogur options. I also still feel that I can still enjoy text driven as much as before. A game like TOR will not completely ruin future games if they lack 100% VO for me.

    RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.

  • killion81killion81 Member UncommonPosts: 995

    I was excited about VO in SWTOR before I started playing.  It was really cool for the first 10-20 levels, but the VO'ed side quests definitely became more annoying than exciting.  The VO is best used in SWTOR when you have to make some sort of choice, generally within your main story quests.  There's really no point in VO for the side quests when it doesn't matter what you say.  Your choices are:

    1) I would love to help you!

    2) I guess I'll help if I have time and you pay me, but I don't really want to.

    3) Decline quest.

    Options 1 & 2 are essentially accept quest and 3 is decline quest.  It's no different than a text quest that says "go do this for me and come back for a reward" with an accept and decline button.  I don't need to know your life story to go kill 10 mobs and collect 5 items.

    Now the LS/DS choices in the VO make them a little more interesting, but without any visible and tangible changes short of the next 30 seconds of cutscene, they get boring too.  Also, providing benefits to people that go all LS or all DS was a poor design decision in my opinion, as it prevents people from making the choices they want to in order to min/max, which is pretty commonplace in MMORPGs.

    Limiting VO to the "important" story quest line only means you have more money to spend on those to make them REALLY good.  Good writing, cool decisions that actually make a difference in your story, great cutscene animations, etc.

  • BLeeDzACiDBLeeDzACiD Member Posts: 55

    Its 2012 I dont play swtor, but I think voice should be a part of games of these days. Time to start moving ahead and pushing machines to there limits.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    Also, fine with it.

    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.

  • OdyssesOdysses Member Posts: 581

    In retropsect, I think BW would take out the VO for half the mundane boring quests because it takes away from the awesome class story and big quest arcs.

    It is just too expensive to do fully VO for everything and it loses its appeal fast.

    All that money could have been used to create better armor, systems and UI that are severely lacking now.

  • Jimmy562Jimmy562 Member UncommonPosts: 1,158

    Its a good idea but not everything should be VO. I liked the class story quests having VO but the side quests got a little annoying. I'd rather I could just hit accept on those straight away. 

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769

    I love it!

    Bonus:  It keeps certain players out of the game the better it is for me!!!!!!!!

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

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  • slickbizzleslickbizzle Member Posts: 464

    Originally posted by Phry

    Originally posted by matraque

    to OP.

     

    Of course it is.  It's a game changer.  Pay attention to what Blizzard will do next.

    Blizzard have always been pretty good at staying ahead of the MMO 'arms race' the big question will really be, is Bioware paying attention, because you can be sure, if they arent, then things will not go well. image

     

    Not sure what that means.  I've seen the pattern of another company coming up with ideas, Blizzard steals it, and then the fans bash the original game for copying Blizzard.

  • KuinnKuinn Member UncommonPosts: 2,072

    Yeah I love the voice acting, though it's not neccesary on the side quests, they could be walls of texts with TLDR; objectives at the bottom of the wall.

     

    On class stories and planet main stories the VO's are absolutely must now that I have gotten used to them, though, even if I think the VO's are not neccessary on every rat killing quest, I find my self listening to them often because they say something interesting (what's going on around here etc) even if the quest is trivial it self, and I find it fun to play a "minigame" where I try to please my current companion as good as I can, based on what they like or dont like :)

  • RelGnRelGn Member Posts: 494

    No it's very bad.

    Voice acting is good if u are playing single players but for mmos jsut does not work

    image
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441

    I never really thought it was a good idea.

    VOs are great for the main story and for dungeons/flashpoints (not too much thre though since waiting to long for a player who want to hear everything is a snozer) but for a game with that amount of quests it gets far too much.

    It would work if they banded together the small quests into huge long quests so you didn´t turn in more than one every 30 minutes or so but now it gets far too much, it was too much already in AoCs starting area.

    But it might be that it is the quests in itself that is the real problem, TSWs idea of one main quest and one side quest at the same time would have solved the problem with full VOs, no problem. I guess I have grown tired of a zillion short and fast quests.

  • treysmoothtreysmooth Member UncommonPosts: 648

    Originally posted by Normike

    Absolutely. Voice aciting has become a "must have" from 2011 onward. MMORPGs usually have an aspect of RPG to them. I don't know many people that would play any RPG that didn't have fully voiced quests. Singleplayer RPGs crossed the bridge from text to voice overs almost a decade ago. It's about time MMORPGs caught up. Does it increase the expense of RPGs and MMORPGs? Yes. Is it worth it? YES!

     

    Some people may skip the voice over to get the quest quicker in both RPGs and MMORPGs. But having a believable voiced character there if you want to hear it makes all the difference.

    This,  I dont' think I can go back to text boxes tbh.

  • AnubisanAnubisan Member UncommonPosts: 1,798

    Of course it is. I think SWTOR will forever change the genre with the full voice-overs. My prediction is that all AAA MMOs will have them from now on.

  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722

    @OP

    Voice Over has become a standard for me on MMORPGs. I would play any Free to Play mmo without Voice but i would think twice before buying any upcoming mmorpg with no Voice Over. The problem with Swtor and its Voice Over is that they re-used their dialog lines too many times and i think they could have added much more dialog lines for the same budget.

    Another problem (and most important IMO) that goes for every developer, not just BW, is that they focus so much in one aspect of the game that they forget about the rest of the game content. I'll give some example:

    Rift - Trion focused too much on the soul system and Rifts and left the rest of the game as a generic mmorpg.

    AoC - Funcom focused too much on realism and their visceral combat that the rest of the game is just a generic mmorpg.

    TERA - They focused so much on their "action combat" that the rest of the game is pretty generic too.

    SWTOR - They focused so much on Voice Overs and SW lore that they left the rest of the game as generic as it can be.

     

    there are more AAA mmorpgs that do this (even tons of non-mmos) but these are some of the easiest to detect that development problem.





  • ariestearieste Member UncommonPosts: 3,309

    Originally posted by rojo6934

    @OP

    Voice Over has become a standard for me on MMORPGs. I would play any Free to Play mmo without Voice but i would think twice before buying any upcoming mmorpg with no Voice Over. The problem with Swtor and its Voice Over is that they re-used their dialog lines too many times and i think they could have added much more dialog lines for the same budget.

    Another problem (and most important IMO) that goes for every developer, not just BW, is that they focus so much in one aspect of the game that they forget about the rest of the game content. I'll give some example:

    Rift - Trion focused too much on the soul system and Rifts and left the rest of the game as a generic mmorpg.

    AoC - Funcom focused too much on realism and their visceral combat that the rest of the game is just a generic mmorpg.

    TERA - They focused so much on their "action combat" that the rest of the game is pretty generic too.

    SWTOR - They focused so much on Voice Overs and SW lore that they left the rest of the game as generic as it can be.

     

    there are more AAA mmorpgs that do this (even tons of non-mmos) but these are some of the easiest to detect that development problem.

    Heh.  Nice post...

     

    how nice it would be to have AoC's combat and city building, Rift's skill system & dynamic content, TOR's voiced main quest line, GW2's dynamic questing instead of side-quests .. all written by TSW's or LoTRO's writers and coded by blizzard.  But yeah... you know, I keep hoping that one step at a time we'll get there, but it just ends up being that we take one thousand single steps around in a circle.

    "I’d rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."

    - Raph Koster

    Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
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  • AldersAlders Member RarePosts: 2,207

    For normal questing, it's so much better than reading text.

    Now if we could only combine it with an actual MMO and see how awesome it could be.

  • WickedjellyWickedjelly Member Posts: 4,990

    Originally posted by Anubisan

    Of course it is. I think SWTOR will forever change the genre with the full voice-overs. My prediction is that all AAA MMOs will have them from now on.

    Wickedjelly goes to reply, "God, I sure hope not. I like some cinematics and vo in the game but not to this degree. It is simply too much and takes away the value and importance of the main story lines when it is used for everything. It is simply too much".

    /reads over dialogue selection options

    - No I don't agree

    - I agree completely

    - (Flirt) Does this bathrobe make me look sexy?

    Hmmm, seems my reply fits "No I don't agree" so I'll select that one.

    /selects option

    "Murder and mayhem await!"

    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.

  • KaocanKaocan Member UncommonPosts: 1,270

    Originally posted by arieste

    Originally posted by rojo6934

    @OP

    Voice Over has become a standard for me on MMORPGs. I would play any Free to Play mmo without Voice but i would think twice before buying any upcoming mmorpg with no Voice Over. The problem with Swtor and its Voice Over is that they re-used their dialog lines too many times and i think they could have added much more dialog lines for the same budget.

    Another problem (and most important IMO) that goes for every developer, not just BW, is that they focus so much in one aspect of the game that they forget about the rest of the game content. I'll give some example:

    Rift - Trion focused too much on the soul system and Rifts and left the rest of the game as a generic mmorpg.

    AoC - Funcom focused too much on realism and their visceral combat that the rest of the game is just a generic mmorpg.

    TERA - They focused so much on their "action combat" that the rest of the game is pretty generic too.

    SWTOR - They focused so much on Voice Overs and SW lore that they left the rest of the game as generic as it can be.

     

    there are more AAA mmorpgs that do this (even tons of non-mmos) but these are some of the easiest to detect that development problem.

    Heh.  Nice post...

     

    how nice it would be to have AoC's combat and city building, Rift's skill system & dynamic content, TOR's voiced main quest line, GW2's dynamic questing instead of side-quests .. all written by TSW's or LoTRO's writers and coded by blizzard.  But yeah... you know, I keep hoping that one step at a time we'll get there, but it just ends up being that we take one thousand single steps around in a circle.

    I dont see it as going around in a circle or backwards like so many like to.

    Here, do this, go play a MUD, a MOO, a MUSH. Thats where we used to be, this is where we are now. Take away all the combat, the intense graphics, and put yourself back in the day the way it USED to be. And then come back here and tell me we have not moved forward in this genre. Every little bit helps, each little new thing just adds to the forward momentum. Unless of course you are a pessimist (and OH BOY do we have a LOT of them around this place).

    (DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)

  • BadSpockBadSpock Member UncommonPosts: 7,979

    Originally posted by Alders

    For normal questing, it's so much better than reading text.

    Now if we could only combine it with an actual MMO and see how awesome it could be.

    Unfortunately, this ^

  • MeltdownMeltdown Member UncommonPosts: 1,183

    This should've been a poll :P But anyways I don't think 100% voice overs is neccessary. Certain games do voice overs much better by letting the voice over give an idea of what is being discussed... I can't think of the game I played like this, I believe it was an MMO, but you would go to your normal quest giver and up pops the wall of text ala WoW. But the NPC also has a quick blurb about what they want you to do.... OH NOW I REMEMBER it was Wizard 101!

     

    The game basically would have a decent sized chunk of text telling you detailed instructions on what happened and what you need to do. But a voice over (which is usually done by a single narrator in a story-telling fashion) would say something like "Steve has lost his cat and needs you to find it down on Unicorn way" while the quest text itself is much more....

     

    Bioware took the extreme and EVERYTHING was voice-acted... I think Wizard 101 did a very good job (at least with the starter quests that are 'narrated').

    "They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath

  • VikingGamerVikingGamer Member UncommonPosts: 1,350

    I am not so sure it is necessary to have everything voiced. Class quests definitly, Heroic quests, maybe a few others that add substance to the general story line but it is not really needed to voice a quest that is really just filler. Of course the bonus quests are probably the real filler quests and they, of course, are not voiced, you just get them as you do other things. But still, there are a few quests that they could simply give me off the bounty board with no voice at all and it would be fine by me.

    All die, so die well.

  • bfpiercelkbfpiercelk Member UncommonPosts: 47

    Originally posted by arieste

    Originally posted by rojo6934

    @OP

    Voice Over has become a standard for me on MMORPGs. I would play any Free to Play mmo without Voice but i would think twice before buying any upcoming mmorpg with no Voice Over. The problem with Swtor and its Voice Over is that they re-used their dialog lines too many times and i think they could have added much more dialog lines for the same budget.

    Another problem (and most important IMO) that goes for every developer, not just BW, is that they focus so much in one aspect of the game that they forget about the rest of the game content. I'll give some example:

    Rift - Trion focused too much on the soul system and Rifts and left the rest of the game as a generic mmorpg.

    AoC - Funcom focused too much on realism and their visceral combat that the rest of the game is just a generic mmorpg.

    TERA - They focused so much on their "action combat" that the rest of the game is pretty generic too.

    SWTOR - They focused so much on Voice Overs and SW lore that they left the rest of the game as generic as it can be.

     

    there are more AAA mmorpgs that do this (even tons of non-mmos) but these are some of the easiest to detect that development problem.

    Heh.  Nice post...

     

    how nice it would be to have AoC's combat and city building, Rift's skill system & dynamic content, TOR's voiced main quest line, GW2's dynamic questing instead of side-quests .. all written by TSW's or LoTRO's writers and coded by blizzard.  But yeah... you know, I keep hoping that one step at a time we'll get there, but it just ends up being that we take one thousand single steps around in a circle.

     

    Problem is, who wants to pay more than $60 for the package and $15 a month?

    Developing all of that "stuff" into a stable release would cost as much as all of those MMO's combined, likely more, you realize...

  • ariestearieste Member UncommonPosts: 3,309

    Originally posted by bfpiercelk

     

    Problem is, who wants to pay more than $60 for the package and $15 a month?

    Developing all of that "stuff" into a stable release would cost as much as all of those MMO's combined, likely more, you realize...

    Hrm.. i don't really want to get into a game of made-up statistics that we can't actually verify, but i'm fairly sure that TOR's voiceovers alone cost more than the developement of about 10 other MMOs put together, most of which had much better (non-story-related) gameplay features.   So yes, while it IS expensive, it's not out of realm of reason for a major developer given that the money is spent in on the right things.

    "I’d rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."

    - Raph Koster

    Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
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