Jumpgate Evolution :: Spaceships Types Revealed! (Now with more screen shots)

[Nerf]

That does look pretty sweet, but all the emphasis on moving the quest text around really makes me stabby that they're not doing voiceovers.  The first 20 levels of AoC were fucking amazing because the voiceovers really added to the immersion.  Someone go yell at netdevil and tell them to get on this.

Edit: I want static-y pictures coming up with the commander giving me an order, or telling me about the pirates, or breaking up halfway through the transmission etc.  The questing experience should take its cues from AAA single-player titles, not mmos with walls of text.

[Ghambit]

A bad initial response from who?

Me!  
Nah, I've seen a few forums where folks thought JGE was missing something and needed more work.  Then again, they do indeed say that about pretty much every MMO.

[Venkman]

Where's my cockpit view? Large capital ships? Space battles involving more than a bug light and 100 gnats?

Don't care about voiceovers. This is less an RPG than it is a space sim PvP wrapped in an MMO business model. It looks awesome, but my expectations and likeability are entirely about the feel of combat.

Initial response to JGE was in part because it was originally an expansion of a game nobody really liked. The positive buzz began to increase when they showed the initial graphics and announced it as a brand new game. It's sorta only gone up from there with each successive content insight. Except for the people who keep wanting to learn more about the depth of the game. Not a lot of information has really come out there, at least not in the old school here's-our-design-document form.

[Ghambit]

I know part of the delay was due to the fact the original design didnt have a damned cockpit view (DUH).  From prior news though it's supposedly a pretty bland view; more like just an FPS in space.   Hopefully they've upgraded it since then... but, I'm certain it wont be a functional cockpit.

[Venkman]

Yea, I imagine it'll maybe hold some HUD elements, but that's all I need. I do the same thing with driving/flight games. I don't have problems watching glass cannons run around the world in flowing capes. But watching my ship while also watching a targeting reticle while also watching the enemies in a large dogfight... I just prefer the cockpit view

[Ghambit]

Are the turrets freelooked at all?

[Mrbloodworth]

You know, its very odd that a good deal of space games have not copied the wing commander HUD stuff, you know, where everything on the dash is real data and utility.

[Stormwaltz]

but all the emphasis on moving the quest text around really makes me stabby that they're not doing voiceovers. The first 20 levels of AoC were fucking amazing because the voiceovers really added to the immersion. Someone go yell at netdevil and tell them to get on this

Completely disagree with you on this, for logistics reasons. Voiceover means that making new content is more expensive, more time-consuming, and leads to heavier patch downloads.

You want voiceovers, go play a single-player game. It's insupportable in an MMG.

[Mrbloodworth]

but all the emphasis on moving the quest text around really makes me stabby that they're not doing voiceovers. The first 20 levels of AoC were fucking amazing because the voiceovers really added to the immersion. Someone go yell at netdevil and tell them to get on this

Completely disagree with you on this, for logistics reasons. Voiceover means that making new content is more expensive, more time-consuming, and leads to heavier patch downloads.

You want voiceovers, go play a single-player game. It's insupportable in an MMG.

I create online training. So I understand what you mean and all the pitfalls, however we use and outsource voice overs all the time, and the gain in attention of your user generally out weighs the cost. Same thing goes for MMO, but add in immersion. Considering I have more potential change to dialog, a shorter time frame for development, and what I am sure is a much stricter set of requirements for downloads delivery of files, AND pronunciation or wording. I can safely say, MMO's have no reason not to other than sticking to "business as usual". They need to advance in this area, not doing so, is simply cutting corners, hell, we do this shit in house for most of it, makes for quicker turn around.

Fuck, I WISH we had the compression and format choices available to game platforms.

And its not like there isn't a precedence already.  MMO's need to get with it, saying "Go play a single player game" won't cut it, this is 2009, people downright expect it in ANY game.

This also has nothing to do with jumpgate.

[Stormwaltz]

MMO's need to get with it, saying "Go play a single player game" won't cut it, this is 2009, people downright expect it in ANY game.

Speaking as someone who has worked on both an MMG live team and on single-player games with extensive voice-over, I think you're wrong. In online training, you can do the VO yourself in an afternoon. Games are an entertainment industry. We have to go through the Screen Actors' Guild. That adds a lot of cost and time delay -- especially when you're talking about wrangling hundreds of VAs.

Voice over in an MMG means fewer and smaller content additions. It means you, the end user, get smacked with downloads even larger than what you do now. It means anything with VO that needs to be updated will take weeks to get fixed, at best.

Practically, I suspect that SWTOR's full VO will translate to a paid box expansion once a year, and no content additions beyond that.

If you think that's acceptable, hey, fine -- that's a question of taste. Me, I feel MMGs are a live medium that need to be growing and evolving constantly.

[Murgos]

You know, its very odd that a good deal of space games have not copied the wing commander HUD stuff, you know, where everything on the dash is real data and utility.

I entirely don't understand why anyone, anywhere wants a static interior view of a cockpit taking up half the screen real-estate.  But, there you go, when you don't have it the whining grows to insufferable levels.

[Mrbloodworth]

MMO's need to get with it, saying "Go play a single player game" won't cut it, this is 2009, people downright expect it in ANY game.

Speaking as someone who has worked on both an MMG live team and on single-player games with extensive voice-over, I think you're wrong. In online training, you can do the VO yourself in an afternoon. Games are an entertainment industry. We have to go through the Screen Actors' Guild. That adds a lot of cost and time delay -- especially when you're talking about wrangling hundreds of VAs.

Voice over in an MMG means fewer and smaller content additions. It means you, the end user, get smacked with downloads even larger than what you do now. It means anything with VO that needs to be updated will take weeks to get fixed, at best.

Practically, I suspect that SWTOR's full VO will translate to a paid box expansion once a year, and no content additions beyond that.

If you think that's acceptable, hey, fine -- that's a question of taste. Me, I feel MMGs are a live medium that need to be growing and evolving constantly.

I think I forgot to mention my clientele. Military organizations. I do not have the benefits of things such as "Disks" (lol) or even client side data or files. My entire product is streamed to guys and gals in the desert on some of the most unstable connections you have ever seen.  Screen actors guild is quite frankly, not going to be as strict as non-tech top brass who review the content and ALWAYS request changes without any consideration for the impacts, and there is usually about 5 of them picking it apart, and that's not even the final client. You guys only need to do funny elf voices. As a point of disclosure in this conversation, we also go though actors guilds, talent agencies, and at times, even use the programmers, writers and artists.

Again, the options to you thees days, and your architecture, I wish we had. We don't.

To boot, you are dealing with people and an entertainment product, this means many many things can slide, such as download times. I feel that MMGs are also living and need to be growing, so it is odd to me while the rest of the related industry is giving voice and life to its actors, MMO's stagnate. I feel, mostly because some are holding onto old practices that are "Good enough". I am not saying your concerns are invalid, I am saying that MMO's are not MUDS anymore, and it is not tech, or resources holding you back from doing this.

Also, precedence. Your not going to let "Good enough for government" and SOE take the cake are you? 

[Venkman]

Come on now. We need to restrict this VoiceOver nonsense to the SWTOR thread. VOs are not required for PC MMOs, particularly ones that at face value are more PvP oriented. Whether done on a text-to-speech budget or using A-list talent, it's an unnecessary expense altogether when so much of the successes in this genre don't have them and all of the one that tried wasn't a success anyway. Business is iterative based on emulating success. Nobody can point to VO as a cornerstone any more than they can immersive crafting or player owned housing.

On the HUD, I really just want first person. I don't need a cockpit to take up half the screen GT/NFS/Forza style. This is the one thing from Freespace 2 I wouldn't mind living without.

[Mrbloodworth]

I mean, we can take a look at how many have done, and will be doing voice overs. I am sure that is irrelevant to those looking to compete in the future too. 

Most of us here are old guard MMO players, some of you get excited that ASCII games have been remade  . There is potential that no one here can see the direction online space is going, and I guess that's OK.
 
And I did say most of this has nothing to do with jumpgate.

[Venkman]

Ah but we do know where it's going: online-only widget-style maybe with a FR/FF/BF:Heroes style full screen experience with a strong MTX foundation built on budgets based on an every growing understanding of the percentage of people wiling to pay a little vs a lot vs not at all.

SWTOR is not some vision of the future (lore reference ftw!). It and one or two others are likely the last of the super-huge budget MMOs delivers in the one format the current audience (us) respects. But make no mistake, we're aging out of the prime demographic and the new people showing up have different expectations.

PC side anyway. Consoles MMOs will be measured by the PS3 and N'tal by default.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yes, what was I thinking! Its not like free to play macro transaction games built for a new generation of MMO's can afford, let alone deploy full voice overs... That would just be crazy talk! If they did, it would be shitty I am sure!

(Much love Darniaq and Stormwaltz, the snark is in fun)

Read up on the back-story for the team on this title, and you will see just how shameful this makes "AAA" titles look.

[Ghambit]

There's no reason why a space-shooter shouldnt have a decent cockpit view.  Absolutely none.
Also, no reason why there shouldnt be at least some kind of voiced-over element inside the cockpit.  I'd be happy if it was just the ship's AI alerting me to incoming comms or unknown contacts, etc.    TTS may also be an option... and if there were capital ship combat (which there isnt) then they could even use SR.  Positional-VOIP with radio-static-ambiance is also a HUGE (but easy to implement) value here.

All of the above are nothing special.  Doesnt take much to put it in a game and it adds a helluva lot to gameplay value.  What people seem to forget is you can get away with a LOT more bells and whistles in the sci-fi genre, let alone a space-shooter.  This is why I think it's kinda dumb not to push any kind of envelopes when designing such a game and why I got upset over JGEs initial iteration.    It was too vanilla.

[Venkman]

Yes, what was I thinking! Its not like free to play macro transaction games built for a new generation of MMO's can afford, let alone deploy full voice overs... That would just be crazy talk! If they did, it would be shitty I am sure!

(Much love Darniaq and Stormwaltz, the snark is in fun)

Read up on the back-story for the team on this title, and you will see just how shameful this makes "AAA" titles look.

Well, sure, if you want to bolt on VO after you've proven your game and business model are successful, have at it! My gripe has only been about assigning resources funds on the front end. And that's only because for the one game that already tried this was unable to sustain it.

TTS in cockpit view would actually add immersion AND not be a drain. It's not just the recording and rights clearances, but that you need to do this for all languages. Long belabored point though.

The M in MTX is "micro" btw

[Ghambit]

Moral of the story is:  the more beeps, clicks, buttons, pings, and sexay AI femme voices in the cockpit the better.  If you take all that away and just have a 3rd-person perspective shooter with generic quest text, it's no longer a sci-fi space-shooter imo.  It's at most just a glorified re-skinned 3d version of missile defense.

[Mrbloodworth]

The M in MTX is "micro" btw

Was a typo.

[Severian]

I entirely don't understand why anyone, anywhere wants a static interior view of a cockpit taking up half the screen real-estate.

Ditto, especially in space. There is no horizon and no horizontal orientation, where HUD elements are fairly harmless obstructing the ground almost below you or the highest point in the sky. In space combat, with all the three-dimensional maneuvering, the more you can see at the edges of your cone of view the better.

I have no problem if my PvP opponents want to use an optional cockpit view, though, less power to them.

[ajax34i]

I think "cockpit view" means "don't show me my own ship in the center of the screen", so first person rather than third person over the shoulder view, if that analogy could be made.  Jumpgate shows your ship, and while that has the advantage of showing you where the shots come from, I don't know if you can zoom out far enough to see the enemies behind you.  I prefer a HUD / cockpit view because (as long as there's a radar), my brain seems to be able to keep track of the fact that there are enemies behind me even if I don't see them yet.

Speaking of that video a couple posts up, what's up with the silly AI maneuvering?  One ship looks like it's trying to shimmy left and right to "shake" the player off, like a wet dog.  Where are the Immelmans, where are the actual flight school maneuvers, where are the wingmen breaking off to get behind you?

[Stormwaltz]

Also, precedence. Your not going to let "Good enough for government" and SOE take the cake are you? 

You know what you could do instead?

NPC: I need you to go [here] and [do this].

• Why?
• Accept
• Decline

Almost no reading, high clarity, and you're still free to create reams of content. In fact, it even has an advantage over VO -- players don't feel compelled to wait for the VA to finish talking (which BW has noted a trend of, even when the player's gone through the conversation before.)

Just because SOE does it doesn't mean its necessarily the best solution. Also, I seem to recall that after EQ2 shipped, the percentage of quests with VO dropped.

[Mrbloodworth]

Also, precedence. Your not going to let "Good enough for government" and SOE take the cake are you?  

You know what you could do instead?

NPC: I need you to go [here] and [do this].

• Why?
• Accept
• Decline

Almost no reading, high clarity, and you're still free to create reams of content. In fact, it even has an advantage over VO -- players don't feel compelled to wait for the VA to finish talking (which BW has noted a trend of, even when the player's gone through the conversation before.)

Just because SOE does it doesn't mean its necessarily the best solution. Also, I seem to recall that after EQ2 shipped, the percentage of quests with VO dropped.

while the rest of the related industry is giving voice and life to its actors, MMO's stagnate. I feel, mostly because some are holding onto old practices that are "Good enough". I am not saying your concerns are invalid, I am saying that MMO's are not MUDS anymore, and it is not tech, or resources holding you back from doing this.

But please, don't act like that "SOE did it" was the bulk of my argument. Thanks!

I guess if striving for mediocrity is the goal, that system will work just fine.    

[Venkman]

Yea, and how'd that work out for them. And this is precisely the example I was using earlier when I said there's no precedence worth referencing. Which is why they were able to say "the first fully-voiced MMO". Ignoring the one that came before it.

As to macro/micro, yea, I figured it was a typo, but I was in that kind of mood. :qink: Took eight hours longer than expected for the wife to get discharged. Was getting stabby.

[Nerf]

Have any of you arguing against VO's played AoC at all?  The first 20 levels of AoC are MMO brilliance.  It is easily the best questing experience I've ever had in an MMO.  As soon as you leave the newbie island at level 20 and the VO's stop, the game is a hell of a lot less fun.  By level 50 we were all so fucking bored of the lack of content and shitty quests most of us just quit - or rerolled a couple newbies and did the 1-20 stuff over again first, and then quit.

Immersion is a big fucking deal, and being a space game they've got plenty of ways to implement it without being 'boring sit in station watch cutscene then do mission' - They've already moved the majority of the quest chat to happen while you're in space, flying to your objective, so the argument of people sitting there burning time and spamming next is moot already.  They realized people don't want that, so they figured out a way to get you to read quest chat - now they need to take that to next level and have VOs to actually make it immersive.  Instead of getting a short blurb of quest chat while you're in space, your radio beeps and your commander relays you the mission information as you're going.  It doesn't even need a little HUD video popup, just staticy radio "this is your mission, oh btw, if you're playing without sound here it is subtitled too".

If Funcom had done as a good of a job on 20-80 as they did on 1-20, AoC would have been a huge fucking success.  Instead they rushed it out, killed the immersion, and it hit the den in record time.  I'd like a fun game that I play for awhile and isn't EvE, so please don't do this netdevil.

[FatuousTwat]

While I wouldn't quite call AOC 1-20 the best experience I've ever had, it was good, and the VO did add to it. I enjoyed the DM voice in DDO as well.

[Venkman]

Have any of you arguing against VO's played AoC at all? 

Yea, and how'd that work out for them?

Seriously, nobody is saying you shouldn't do VO at all. Bully for the games that are successful and retroactively add VO later.

What some of us are saying is VO shouldn't be done at the expense of more important things for launch. Like functioning stats (AoC didn't have), compelling classes and non-restrictive combat (EQ2 subsequently ripped out the sub-classes thing), a persistent world that feels like an MMO (DDO didn't, for most). SWTOR is an RPG first, MMO second, so VO makes slightly more sense there; however, if combat is boring stand-in-place dice-rolls, that is going to impact the success of the title, not whether someone felt like they were "there" or not. Same with JG:E. VO is a value add, not a core requirement.

Game first, immersion second. Yes, doing VO work is a different skill than UI and game design/balancing/QA; however, there is an overall finite project budget that gets divied up.

[Lantyssa]

The people who do design shouldn't be handling quest text.  Problems there are not a failing of having voice.

[Murgos]

The people who do design shouldn't be handling quest text.  Problems there are not a failing of having voice.

Are you implying that they have an infinite budget for this game?

Cause, all this, X resource usage does not imply Y resource starvation is, pretty much, wishful thinking.

[Lantyssa]

No, I'm simply saying that it was a false equivalency.  You can throw all the money in the world at a design and that won't make it good, either.

[Murgos]

You can throw all the money in the world at a design and that won't make it good, either.

You mean, like, doing voice-overs for every line of dialogue in an MMO??

[Lantyssa]

That won't necessarily make it good, either.

[Mrbloodworth]

You guys keep towing the party line of "Its to expensive!" and "Text is good enough!". Its not like I said that same excuses is holding all this back in my other posts or anything. Those are old excuses that are becoming irrelevant, and mostly said in fear of the old ways dieing. Most players do not even read your dam quest text anyway.

The MMO team that realizes the worth of full VO (As all players have already, as well as the rest of the related industry) and designs from the get go, including budgeting, will be waring money hats if the rest of the game doesn't suck by itself.

I never said "OMG ADD VO WITH OUT THINKING OR PLANNING" or "SOE did it so you must".

The precedence that is worth referencing, as I said, is people love VO, and love the immersion they get from it, there is zero deny-ability in that. Its now up to the developers to deliver it. Its 2009. I never said "Look at how it made SOE and EQ2 the #1 game" I said look how endearing it made those titles to player because of it, and look at how many will be doing partial, or full, or conversions to partial or full voice overs, and that new games need to evolve or become irrelevant rehash.

My point was not if adding voice overs add anything, that's has already been answered, my point was that the reasons they do not, are becoming extremely slim, or just stubbornness. It the methodology in acquisition, budgeting, and scheduling that needs to be changed, along with a whole heap of old thinking.

It is OK if you don't want to evolve, I hear there is a remake of a MUD on the Internets somewhere.

[PalmTrees]

Have any of you arguing against VO's played AoC at all?  The first 20 levels of AoC are MMO brilliance.  It is easily the best questing experience I've ever had in an MMO.  As soon as you leave the newbie island at level 20 and the VO's stop, the game is a hell of a lot less fun.  By level 50 we were all so fucking bored of the lack of content and shitty quests most of us just quit - or rerolled a couple newbies and did the 1-20 stuff over again first, and then quit.

 I recently picked up Conan on whim when d2d had it for $5 and just got done with Tortage the other night. The vo stuff didn't really do anything for me. If I hadn't been able to click through it I would've put it as a negative. It's just so much slower listening than reading and when I'm playing a game I want to do stuff, not sit back and watch like tv. When it comes to games give me stuff to do, not to watch.