SWTOR

[Goreschach]

The KOTOR animation system was an incomprehensible mess.

[Hayduke]

The KOTOR animation system was an incomprehensible mess.

I can't disagree with that.  But it's still leaps and bounds ahead of what mmo players are used to (with the exception of maybe Conan).  As with everything else they've said the key will be implementation.  They'll probably screw it up but it's a good idea imo.

[UnSub]

Within that article, it talked about the Sith using basic slashing attacks to build up a power bar he could then use to fire off more powerful attacks.

But I'll say again: BioWare appear to have started the hype train too early on SWOR and at some point they'll actually have to start talking details. Details are what will turn players off.

Details are:
 - guild size
 - combat mechanics
 - auction houses
 - cross-faction issues

and so on.

[Venkman]

Dunno what else is on your list, but of the above, only Combat matters. It's freakin' 2009 (or whatever year this launches). If they can't get an auction house and guild tools right, they deserve to fail. Not like either is some brand new concept that hasn't been heavily refined

Nobody's going to ever "solve" faction PvP issues (assuming that's what you meant) to everyone's satisfaction though. And I certainly don't expect an RPG maker to. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try. I look forward to whatever they come up with, for the sheer fun of someone coming at it from a (somewhat) new direction.

But even still, if this game is about off-the-street SW fan first, veteran MMOers suffering WoW fatigue second, as long as it isn't just EQ WoW in space with Wookiees, they'll get some forgiveness. How much and from how many depends on whether they screw up combat alone.

[Velorath]

It's not that veterans don't want change. It's that we want actual change. Adding significant cost to your development just for a feature that even casual RPGers eventually skip past does not on paper sound like that. It's a "nice to have" when I'd rather have something new.

But again, we're just laser-focused on this right now because there's nothing else to talk about. If they deliver VO and KOTOR34567 and launch-day space flight that lightly follows XvT and some type of engaging endgame (preferably PvP), then I ain't going to care about VO

See, what I'm getting from your post is that you and a few other people don't care about VO, therefore nobody does.  Major modern RPG's have voiceover these days though (Mass Effect, Fallout 3), and frankly I think that's what RPG fans are coming to expect, and that's the crowd Bioware is hoping to attract.  Call it polish, or immersion, or just plain making a game that feels modern.  Like you just said in your last post "it's freakin' 2009".  VO for at least most NPC's should be a given at this point.

[Sheepherder]

It's Star Wars.  This alone gives them a massive break in the voice department, because they could whip up a bunch of random gibberish "alien speech" and have the nearest "protocol droid" then repeat it using text-to-speech.  The utter lack of proper inflection would be a selling point, as would the drastically reduced sound archive size.

[Margalis]

It's Star Wars.  This alone gives them a massive break in the voice department everything.

[Venkman]

See, what I'm getting from your post is that you and a few other people don't care about VO, therefore nobody does.  Major modern RPG's have voiceover these days though (Mass Effect, Fallout 3), and frankly I think that's what RPG fans are coming to expect, and that's the crowd Bioware is hoping to attract.  Call it polish, or immersion, or just plain making a game that feels modern.  Like you just said in your last post "it's freakin' 2009".  VO for at least most NPC's should be a given at this point.

If this were an RPG, yea. But it's an MMO, which while many safe assumptions can be made (auction houses, items in mail, functioning configurable chat channels, dueling, quests, collectible world objects, etc), still others still seem questionable. Like good content, good story that matters, relevant PvP, non-suck crafting, stability, mobs that change in more ways than just skin, and so on.

While VO recording and coding is something that can be done in parallel to everything else, it's still money spent from a finite pool. Especially now with all the questions about rate cards over the last few years. Add this the extra set of people looking over their shoulders pushing for a higher quality result than normal, the costs of the rest of the game, how VO slows down the experience enough that most people probably do skip past, and how only huge ongoing forever success means all future content patches also get VO (unlike EQ2), yea, I feel like VO is unnecessary fluff.

But in no way do I think nobody cares about VO. Most people probably don't even think about it. But if you ask anyone if they'd rather have VO or any of the other can-still-be-screwed-up things, you know what the answer would be.

[Surlyboi]

See, what I'm getting from your post is that you and a few other people don't care about VO, therefore nobody does.  Major modern RPG's have voiceover these days though (Mass Effect, Fallout 3), and frankly I think that's what RPG fans are coming to expect, and that's the crowd Bioware is hoping to attract.  Call it polish, or immersion, or just plain making a game that feels modern.  Like you just said in your last post "it's freakin' 2009".  VO for at least most NPC's should be a given at this point.

If this were an RPG, yea. But it's an MMO, which while many safe assumptions can be made (auction houses, items in mail, functioning configurable chat channels, dueling, quests, collectible world objects, etc), still others still seem questionable. Like good content, good story that matters, relevant PvP, non-suck crafting, stability, mobs that change in more ways than just skin, and so on.

Ok, 90% of the stuff you listed as givens? Utter fucking shit. Fuck auction houses, fuck dueling, fuck collectable world objects. Give me a goodamn game I want to play.

[AutomaticZen]

It takes less time perhaps if they're available whenever you need them.  What I'm more concerned about is whether they'll be available on the regular basis that would be needed for the kind of fast content creation I think is needed for this game.  If they're not coming in every week or two to record more lines, then content creation isn't going fast enough, I think.

Besides, it still does take time to recite lines.  To get a good result from voice acting, a good director and a good voice actor are needed, in addition to enough time and takes to get it right.  It's a point that was driven home to me at this year's Anime Expo when I was able to observe the differences between how the japanese voice actors work and how most of the dub voice actors work.  The reason for dubs being generally inferior is made quite clear in that the dubbers seem to be expected to put out many more lines in the same amount of time, they don't do as many retakes and they don't seem to have as good direction.

In Mass Effect, I noticed - and I've seen the comment quite often - that male Shepard didn't sound as good as female Shepard on many of the lines.  That may have been the voice actor, or it may have been the director or the schedule, or some combination.  It may have been something as simple as Jennifer Hale being much quicker to get the character and the proper mindset, while Mark Meer needed more time and direction than was scheduled.  

The difference between well-done voice acting and even simply 'decent' voice acting is like night and day, to say nothing of poor or bad voice acting.  Decent voice acting doesn't add that much, and anything below that actively detracts from any medium.

Bioware is in Texas right?  

A good number of voice actors, (most of Funimation's stable of VAs in fact) are in their backyard.  They probably contract the work out to another studio, provide the scripts, and get a weekly (or daily) drop of recorded lines.  I doubt Bioware's doing it inhouse.

EDIT:  Hey!  Developer blog about the VA Process!

It all starts with the writing. The story is written by a team of writers and signed off by the Principal Lead Writer. Then it is handed off to the dialogue editor where it receives a pass for ‘voice’. This ensures consistency and also that the writing is the tightest it can be to be delivered by voice actors.

Once the editing passes are complete, the conversations are formatted into scripts for the actors. Like all BioWare games, dialogue in The Old Republic is nonlinear. As a player, you can select from a number of different conversation lines which, in turn, lead to multiple options for NPC responses. This creates highly complex scripts (unlike a movie or television scripts which are linear). In studio, all the various permutations of the story must be recorded - and often in a variety of orders. Because the scripts are nonlinear, we have to provide enough context for the actors to understand what is going on. We need to set the scene for them.

There are two ways we work to ensure the actors have what they need to deliver a quality performance. First, prior to any large section of the game being recorded, the Principal Lead Writer meets with the VO directors for a story summit. They spend hours discussing the story content and going into detail about many of the characters. This is very powerful for the directors and I can assure you it doesn’t occur on all video games. This gives the directors crucial information to be able to successfully direct the performance.

The actors’ voice-over scripts are another tool we use to communicate our intention. Each new conversation script starts with a synopsis outlining the setting and purpose of the conversation. As well, “voice-over comments” are provided for all lines of dialogue, so that the intention of the writer is completely clear to the actor and the director.

After each batch of dialogue is recorded, it is edited and post processed as per the character requirements. This work is then verified and put into the game.

So, how do we ensure quality and consistency across hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue? You have to work with the best and be willing to throw away the stuff that doesn’t work. Often it takes hearing a character in-game, or hearing a combination of characters together, to be sure that you have achieved the quality that you need. The LucasArts and BioWare teams each review the voice-over in the game and then make final decisions as to what will stay and what will be re-recorded. In the end, while the script calls for hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue, we will actually have recorded much more than that! And by the time this project wraps, we will have completed easily over a thousand four-hour voice-over sessions!It all starts with the writing. The story is written by a team of writers and signed off by the Principal Lead Writer. Then it is handed off to the dialogue editor where it receives a pass for ‘voice’. This ensures consistency and also that the writing is the tightest it can be to be delivered by voice actors.

Once the editing passes are complete, the conversations are formatted into scripts for the actors. Like all BioWare games, dialogue in The Old Republic is nonlinear. As a player, you can select from a number of different conversation lines which, in turn, lead to multiple options for NPC responses. This creates highly complex scripts (unlike a movie or television scripts which are linear). In studio, all the various permutations of the story must be recorded - and often in a variety of orders. Because the scripts are nonlinear, we have to provide enough context for the actors to understand what is going on. We need to set the scene for them.

There are two ways we work to ensure the actors have what they need to deliver a quality performance. First, prior to any large section of the game being recorded, the Principal Lead Writer meets with the VO directors for a story summit. They spend hours discussing the story content and going into detail about many of the characters. This is very powerful for the directors and I can assure you it doesn’t occur on all video games. This gives the directors crucial information to be able to successfully direct the performance.

The actors’ voice-over scripts are another tool we use to communicate our intention. Each new conversation script starts with a synopsis outlining the setting and purpose of the conversation. As well, “voice-over comments” are provided for all lines of dialogue, so that the intention of the writer is completely clear to the actor and the director.

After each batch of dialogue is recorded, it is edited and post processed as per the character requirements. This work is then verified and put into the game.

So, how do we ensure quality and consistency across hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue? You have to work with the best and be willing to throw away the stuff that doesn’t work. Often it takes hearing a character in-game, or hearing a combination of characters together, to be sure that you have achieved the quality that you need. The LucasArts and BioWare teams each review the voice-over in the game and then make final decisions as to what will stay and what will be re-recorded. In the end, while the script calls for hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue, we will actually have recorded much more than that! And by the time this project wraps, we will have completed easily over a thousand four-hour voice-over sessions!

The voice-over is being recorded in 5 different cities (so far); Los Angeles , London, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto

Crazy bastards.

[Margalis]

Sounds like they are recording each part separately, which invariably leads to unnatural sounding dialogue. I don't understand why the video game industry continues to insist on doing this so often.

[Velorath]

See, what I'm getting from your post is that you and a few other people don't care about VO, therefore nobody does.  Major modern RPG's have voiceover these days though (Mass Effect, Fallout 3), and frankly I think that's what RPG fans are coming to expect, and that's the crowd Bioware is hoping to attract.  Call it polish, or immersion, or just plain making a game that feels modern.  Like you just said in your last post "it's freakin' 2009".  VO for at least most NPC's should be a given at this point.

If this were an RPG, yea. But it's an MMO

I don't know about you, but I've been wanting some more RPG in my MMO's since... well, since I started playing MMO's.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't start playing MMO's because of auctions houses, player housing, crafting, PVP, clicking through quest text so I could start grinding, guilds and guild politics, etc....  Plain and simple, I wanted an RPG with a persistent online world that I could play by myself, with friends, or when the mood strikes me, with complete strangers.  That's it.

Personally I think the "screw paying attention to the quest text, I'm going to grind as fast as possible to max level" mentality of MMO players is a direct result of the journey typically being completely uninteresting (not that the destination of raiding is much better).  When it comes down to it, I don't think people really want to burn through the content as fast as possible.  At this point everyone is just used to the fact that MMO quest text and lore is generally uninteresting, uninspired shit.  Maybe I'm just being an optimistic bastard, but I think even a lot of the most hardcore catasses, if you go back to when they first got into MMO's, didn't go in with the intention of skipping through all the story.

Now maybe SWTOR's story will be complete shit also, but bless them at least for trying to put the RPG back into MMORPG's even if they end up failing completely at it.

[Sjofn]

I think Bioware is probably counting on the people who liked their RPGs to flock to this game. Giving them actual RPG elements (even though I am sure they will be MMO'd to a degree) will make sure they actually stay. :P

[Riggswolfe]

So, I've been thinking of this game and I foresee one major stumbling block in its future. Forgive me if it's been mentioned but I didn't feel like trying to go through 50 pages. One of you mentioned PvP as an end game but there's a major issue. 2 factions. And one of those factions is "cooler". I forsee Sith and Bounty Hunters being the two highest played classes in the game, perhaps outnumbering all of the Republic classes put together.

How will Bioware get around this issue and have any decent PvP? God help them if they don't at least recognize the issue from oh...Mythic's recent past.

[tmp]

And one of those factions is "cooler".

[UnSub]

Personally I think the "screw paying attention to the quest text, I'm going to grind as fast as possible to max level" mentality of MMO players is a direct result of the journey typically being completely uninteresting (not that the destination of raiding is much better). 

I'd disagree - the 'raise to max level' comes out of a raise for the best loot and character skills. Going back to the PnP roots a lot of MMOs have, D&D's appeal wasn't the excellent story or incredible involvement in the world (because that was so dependent on the DM), but on the mix of large and small in-game rewards.

There will be players who listen to every line of SWOR. However, the interesting impact will be from those who race through SWOR as quickly as possible and / or find the exploits. How BioWare treats that impact will be telling.

Of course, this title - barring $50 a month sub fees - will sell 1m+ copies. How it goes from there will depend on BioWare's choices.

[Surlyboi]

And one of those factions is "cooler".

Only if you're fucking 12.

[Velorath]

Personally I think the "screw paying attention to the quest text, I'm going to grind as fast as possible to max level" mentality of MMO players is a direct result of the journey typically being completely uninteresting (not that the destination of raiding is much better). 

I'd disagree - the 'raise to max level' comes out of a raise for the best loot and character skills. Going back to the PnP roots a lot of MMOs have, D&D's appeal wasn't the excellent story or incredible involvement in the world (because that was so dependent on the DM), but on the mix of large and small in-game rewards.

Really?  So when you were playing D&D and the DM started talking, you'd tell him to just skip past all the talking and just move the group along to the group of monsters?  Yeah, there was a desire for leveling and loot, but unless you played with the shittiest DM's ever, it never overrode the story.  For that matter, in most of the PnP groups I played with, we spent as much time joking and laughing as we did playing.  We weren't all deathly serious so we could get through the adventure in the minimum amount of time so we could get our loot, and when we'd talk about our games after, we'd talk about the shit our characters did, not all the cool shit we found or how many levels we gained.

In short, if the PnP groups you played in played anything like the MMO crowd... man I fucking pity you.

[Rendakor]

Velorath, I know a lot of MMO and even PnP players who are basically exactly what you describe. In fact I had one player in a D&D game I was in frequently fall asleep when we weren't in combat. The MMO crowd and the RPG crowd are not the same anymore; sure there is some overlap but it is nowhere near 100%. I play RPGs for an interesting story (although I despise voice acting and disable it whenever possible); I play MMOs to kill dragons with my friends.

Ok, 90% of the stuff you listed as givens? Utter fucking shit. Fuck auction houses, fuck dueling, fuck collectable world objects. Give me a goodamn game I want to play.

They are. It's called Dragon Age. Fuck off with asking devs to leave basic systems out of a game.

[Riggswolfe]

And one of those factions is "cooler".

Only if you're fucking 12.

You must not have played WAR. Chaos far, far outnumbered Order because it was widely seen as "cooler" and this was not a surpising trend to anyone except the Devs. I believe Old Republic will have the same issue. Let's see, I can dress in black, with a red sword, and shoot people with lightning, or I can be the good guys. I can hide behind the environment or I can look like Boba Fett and have a flame thrower. I will of course play on the side of the Republic but I think many, many people will go for the Sith side.

[Velorath]

I play RPGs for an interesting story (although I despise voice acting and disable it whenever possible); I play MMOs to kill dragons with my friends.

Is there some reason you feel a game can't have both?

[Ratman_tf]

I play RPGs for an interesting story (although I despise voice acting and disable it whenever possible); I play MMOs to kill dragons with my friends.

Is there some reason you feel a game can't have both?

The Developers.

[Surlyboi]

And one of those factions is "cooler".

Only if you're fucking 12.

You must not have played WAR. Chaos far, far outnumbered Order because it was widely seen as "cooler" and this was not a surpising trend to anyone except the Devs. I believe Old Republic will have the same issue. Let's see, I can dress in black, with a red sword, and shoot people with lightning, or I can be the good guys. I can hide behind the environment or I can look like Boba Fett and have a flame thrower. I will of course play on the side of the Republic but I think many, many people will go for the Sith side.

I played WAR. I played order. And yes, chaos outnumbered order and the sith will outnumber the republic simply because most of those people
are asshats who wouldn't know cool or real evil if it bit them on the ass.

[kondratti]

I played WAR. I played order. And yes, chaos outnumbered order and the sith will outnumber the republic simply because most of those people
are asshats who wouldn't know cool or real evil if it bit them on the ass.

Treating it with disdain wont stop it from happening.  The devs need to deal with it properly, otherwise it will be a major problem.

[Rendakor]

I play RPGs for an interesting story (although I despise voice acting and disable it whenever possible); I play MMOs to kill dragons with my friends.

Is there some reason you feel a game can't have both?

Variable attention spans. One player wanting to read quest text will just hold up the other people; I can only imagine the hassle that will result from the group quest decision making coming in SWTOR:

Player 1: sec, im listening to the quest
Player 2: kill teh puppy zomg sith r evil!
Player 3: actually, according to swtorhead.com, if you choose the third option it gets us the most xp
Player 4: wtf are we waiting for!?

And I'm not even talking about PUGs, I can see that happening just within the group of friends I regularly play MMOs with.

[SnakeCharmer]

Treating it with disdain wont stop it from happening.  The devs need to deal with it properly, otherwise it will be a major problem.

And just how, pray tell, do you expect them to 'deal with it'?

All they can do is provide an immersive, solid, fun gaming experience for all the classes.  Beyond that?  Not much.

For whatever reason, your post cracks me up.  SERIOUS BUSINESS I TELL YOU. SERIOUS!

[tmp]

You must not have played WAR. Chaos far, far outnumbered Order because it was widely seen as "cooler" and this was not a surpising trend to anyone except the Devs. I believe Old Republic will have the same issue. Let's see, I can dress in black, with a red sword, and shoot people with lightning, or I can be the good guys.

Except this is not WAR, and in Star Wars settings the "good guys" (jedi, smuggler) are perceived as cool by large part of potential playerbase. Also consider opposite issue that's something WoW initially struggled with -- the Horde was largely outnumbered because the pull of "evil" wasn't strong enough to overcome the pull that was having a decent enough looking avatar. Lot of people want to look nice and slay the evil, but primarily look nice. (cue blood elves) And the Sith... well, they aren't exactly scoring high on the looking nice scale.

Although the trailer makers do mess things up for themselves by putting all females so far on the Sith side of the court. But that's another story.

[Riggswolfe]

I don't pretend to have an answer. My first instinct is to say they'll need some kind of population cap on each side. Say make sure the population numbers are within 10% of each other or something.

Part of this depends on their plans. Will they have some form of rvr/world pvp? Population balance is going to be a major, major issue. Will the pvp be limited only to scenarios ala WOW? Then population balance will only matter in that one side will have longer queues to get into fights than the other.

Except this is not WAR, and in Star Wars settings the "good guys" (jedi, smuggler) are perceived as cool by large part of potential playerbase. Also consider opposite issue that's something WoW initially struggled with -- the Horde was largely outnumbered because the pull of "evil" wasn't strong enough to overcome the pull that was having a decent enough looking avatar. Lot of people want to look nice and slay the evil, but primarily look nice. (cue blood elves) And the Sith... well, they aren't exactly scoring high on the looking nice scale.

Although the trailer makers do mess things up for themselves by putting all females so far on the Sith side of the court. But that's another story.

You've never been in a talk with true Star Wars nerds then. Bounty Hunters, especially the ones in Boba Fett like armor are very popular. Sith are also very popular. Smugglers and Jedi will be the most popular classes on the Republic side by far, but they won't outnumber Sith and Bounty Hunters. It just won't happen.The numbers won't even be close.

[Merusk]

Didn't Empire force far outnumber Rebels in SWG pvp?  Hell, for a long time it was suspected the only reason Horde didn't overwhelm Alliance in early WoW was the lack of a 'normal looking' race.  The addition of Blood Elves and the balance on those servers that came up in BC kind of lent some weight to that supposition, too.

Crap tmp covered that last bit.  Still, Empire > Rebels supports the thought that Sith >>> Republic.

[tmp]

You've never been in a talk with true Star Wars nerds then.

No, and can't say i regret it    but "true Star Wars nerds" are by definition a small subset of the whole playerbase so i'm not convinced they're able to swing overall odds much in favour of either side. Is Boba Fett popular? Sure, but so is Han Solo. Are Sith popular? Maybe, but then so is Mace Windu. Ultimately, i do believe it's going to come down to which side has Twileks with more bare skin.

Plus, it's only going to matter at all if there's open world kind of PvP. With instanced stuff the only thing you get if your side outnumbers the other is the longer queue before you can actually play. (edit: but you said yourself as much; i skipped that part reading earlier and didn't notice, sorry)

[DLRiley]

Darth Maul says hi.

5:1 sith/jedi ratio.

[Aez]

Sometimes I feel like giving a fuck about this game.  Then I remember it will probably come at the same time or right after Diablo III and I'm all  .

[UnSub]

Really?  So when you were playing D&D and the DM started talking, you'd tell him to just skip past all the talking and just move the group along to the group of monsters? 

Actually, I mainly played GURPS. 

All I'm saying is that the monty haul is a major draw - slaying the dragon and being able to wave your +5 peen sword over your head is very attractive to some.

[Lantyssa]

Although the trailer makers do mess things up for themselves by putting all females so far on the Sith side of the court. But that's another story.

Women are evil.  It comes naturally to us.

WAR is a bad example for imbalance.  That Chaos classes simply looked better almost all around, and Order were all a bunch of pansies.  It wasn't until people understood the relative strength of classes that it shifted the other way.  The imbalance really wasn't surprising.  WoW had the pretty race thing going.

In SWG didn't the Empire have the lower numbers?

[Surlyboi]

In SWG, empire had the higher numbers. Again, it was because all of the fucking 12-year-olds confused being a douche for being evil.

I kinda consider myself a Star Wars nerd and I still play light side, mostly because it's a harder path. Sith is easy, be a dick and call it a fucking day.
Playing with power AND responsibility is a lot fucking harder.