SWTOR

[AutomaticZen]

They better have a fucking "skip voice overs" thing. I got pissy enough with Mass Effect, especially when shopping.

Vendor: "Greetings, Earthclan.." ME: "I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING HEAR YOUR GODDAMN LINE. I WANT TO SHOP" Vendor: "To the colonies".

ME: FUCK YOU.

The Hanar in the Emporium was the worst. I just want a fucking menu. If there's a "skip dialogue and go straight the menu" button on the 360 version, I've yet to find it.

Doesn't the X button usually skip past dialogue?

And ESC on computer.  In fact, I had to slow down in case I missed a dialogue choice sometimes.

[Morat20]

Unless a line was specifically flagged otherwise - and the hanar's shouldn't have been - X can skip through any line.

Generally dialogue was only made unskippable when it was covering a load in the background.

I think I tried that. And accidentally chose the "goodbye" option by doing so, in a fashion I still don't understand. I'll have to futz with it more. Thanks, though.

Don't get me wrong -- it was all very cool the first few times. But then, you know, I just wanted to see if the inventory had updated.

And by the way: Lacking a "Now I'd like to see mods" option of some sort, and instead making me go through the entire fucking conversation THREE TIME so I could do "Standard Items", "Non-human armor" and "Upgrades" was really ass.

[Ingmar]

Ah but EQ2 came before WoW 

EQ2 was not fully voiced, though. The PC wasn't voiced, only the NPCs. That's why they're making this claim for this one.

[eldaec]

Also not all the npcs were voiced. It was only sufficiently voiced to show that the concept will work fine, and it was sufficiently not-voiced to demonstrate that they can always just switch back to text if they get bored doing voiceovers for future characters.


SWTOR will likely be a fuckup of Hellgate:Galaxies proportions, but anyone who thinks VO is the problem here is living in crazy town. Much as predicting doom is fun, it really isn't worth moving to crazy town for. To many crazy people, wandering about all day being crazy and so on.

[Venkman]

Ah but EQ2 came before WoW 

EQ2 was not fully voiced, though. The PC wasn't voiced, only the NPCs. That's why they're making this claim for this one.

Going by that then, DA:O isn't fully voiced either. SOE at the time made the same claim that SWTOR is now. It's splitting hairs to say that the player character voice means SOE was lying in their campaign.

[Ingmar]

Ah but EQ2 came before WoW 

EQ2 was not fully voiced, though. The PC wasn't voiced, only the NPCs. That's why they're making this claim for this one.

Going by that then, DA:O isn't fully voiced either. SOE at the time made the same claim that SWTOR is now. It's splitting hairs to say that the player character voice means SOE was lying in their campaign.

I don't think DA:O was ever pushing "fully voiced!" as a marketing gimmick? I'm also not sure who ever accused SOE of lying.

[UnSub]

SWTOR will likely be a fuckup of Hellgate:Galaxies proportions, but anyone who thinks VO is the problem here is living in crazy town. Much as predicting doom is fun, it really isn't worth moving to crazy town for. To many crazy people, wandering about all day being crazy and so on.

It's not VO per se that is the problem; it's the focus on it and on some of the handwaving that is dismissing any issues about creating further fully VO'd content.

SWOR being fully VO'd will mean nothing to the majority of players once the mechanics are pulled apart and the overpowered / underpowered classes and abilities are worked out. And it will mean even less when players are clamouring for more story content and BioWare [NOT AUSTIN] has to come out and say that getting the VOs done takes time and that people should just replay with a different class.

Finally, there will be the complaints that the voices aren't right and that their character needs to sound more badass / wise / some other indefinable quality in order to not break immersion.

VO is a neat gimmick. SWOR is getting a lot of promotion for that neat gimmick, but it doesn't make or break a game.

[Malakili]

Also not all the npcs were voiced. It was only sufficiently voiced to show that the concept will work fine, and it was sufficiently not-voiced to demonstrate that they can always just switch back to text if they get bored doing voiceovers for future characters.


SWTOR will likely be a fuckup of Hellgate:Galaxies proportions, but anyone who thinks VO is the problem here is living in crazy town. Much as predicting doom is fun, it really isn't worth moving to crazy town for. To many crazy people, wandering about all day being crazy and so on.

I dunno, if you just mean a trainwreck in general I'll agree, but I don't know that it will be a train wreck for reasons similar to Hellgate or Galaxies, but I guess thats splitting hairs at this point.,

[Lakov_Sanite]

This is all assuming SWOTOR will be an online game in the same vein as eq/daoc/wow etc. It's not going to be, it's going to be more like phantasy star/guild wars.

[Merusk]

And cost $15 plus whatever DLC costs there are. 

[Grimwell]

EQ2 does have player voices. They are tied to a few of the emotes. :P

To be honest, if someone wants to get beyond hair splitting with a claim like this, they are going to need to launch a text to voice feature where what I type is voiced by my character.

There are so many lulz and CS calls in that one though... 

[eldaec]

Ah but EQ2 came before WoW 

EQ2 was not fully voiced, though. The PC wasn't voiced, only the NPCs. That's why they're making this claim for this one.

Going by that then, DA:O isn't fully voiced either. SOE at the time made the same claim that SWTOR is now. It's splitting hairs to say that the player character voice means SOE was lying in their campaign.

Players in DA are voiced, just not in cutscenes.

I dunno, if you just mean a trainwreck in general I'll agree, but I don't know that it will be a train wreck for reasons similar to Hellgate or Galaxies, but I guess thats splitting hairs at this point.,

I meant in general, but as it happens the design problems here are exactly the same as Hellgate - the execution remains to be seen.

This is all assuming SWOTOR will be an online game in the same vein as eq/daoc/wow etc. It's not going to be, it's going to be more like phantasy star/guild wars.

It is going to be exactly like Hellgate. This is another reason VO is not that big a deal.

[Lucas]

"New" playable planet revealed. Hint: a lot of sand and two suns in the sky :P

[Malakili]

I meant in general, but as it happens the design problems here are exactly the same as Hellgate - the execution remains to be seen.

It is going to be exactly like Hellgate. This is another reason VO is not that big a deal.

Now, maybe I'm wrong.   But I really think that Hellgate London failed because it was a buggy piece of shit at launch, and remained so for far too long.  Now, you could argue that the reason it was so buggy is because they tried to do way too much (single player, online, subscription online), and didn't have time to actually make it functional before they ran out of money.   But i really don't think SWTOR is going to run into that problem.  Granted, it might, but I expect SWTOR to be "working as intended."  I just don't think "as intended" is going to work.

[eldaec]

That wasn't the only reason Hellgate failed.

It also failed for the same reason that guild wars PvE failed.

They designed a single player game with optional co-op and no means to encourage interaction between players, then hamstrung by having to design it to run on MMOG servers they sat around wondering why it isn't as fun as real single player games with optional co-op.

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

[Malakili]

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

I'd say you could play WoW single player and have a better game than a lot of single player RPGs out there.  At least until max level.

[DLRiley]

That wasn't the only reason Hellgate failed.

It also failed for the same reason that guild wars PvE failed.

They designed a single player game with optional co-op and no means to encourage interaction between players, then hamstrung by having to design it to run on MMOG servers they sat around wondering why it isn't as fun as real single player games with optional co-op.

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

actually guild wars pve didn't fail. It was actually why over half the playerbase bought the expansions....

[raydeen]

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

I'd say you could play WoW single player and have a better game than a lot of single player RPGs out there.  At least until max level.

My warlock agrees.

[Draegan]

Leveling through old content in WOW might as well be a single player game, unless you're doing random dungeons.

[Ingmar]

Characterizing Guild Wars PVE as a failure is pretty  , there are a ton of people playing it as a PVE game even now. Most GW players never even set foot in PVP.

[Lantyssa]

I did the little tutorial PvP to get some important skills for my heroes.  Of course it was against NPCs...

[Velorath]

That wasn't the only reason Hellgate failed.

It also failed for the same reason that guild wars PvE failed.

They designed a single player game with optional co-op and no means to encourage interaction between players, then hamstrung by having to design it to run on MMOG servers they sat around wondering why it isn't as fun as real single player games with optional co-op.

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

It doesn't seem like you have any indication of why Hellgate failed.

[Hoax]

I did the little tutorial PvP to get some important skills for my heroes.  Of course it was against NPCs...

I believe you 3 that posted this but fuck me I understand why people trust Fox News better than I can understand someone playing GW for the pve.

As to eldaec's theories on HG:L's failures, I think his is a major part of it.  Single player online games aren't very compelling, the chat channels, guide features, trading, economy etc of Hellgate, in fact pretty much everything that involved other players felt tacked on. If not for Auto Assault though I would call Hellgate the absolute biggest pile of shit at launch ever of a "AAA" title, that is counting AO at launch, at least when you weren't lagged out that was fun.  History should have taught us though that current devs can't balance single player and online sensibilities for shit, Hellgate is an example of this but not the greatest as everything else was broken which sort of obscures the issue.

I think Borderlands is a good example of a game where they needed to fucking commit to the idea that people were going to want to play it with others and make that work instead of waffling between sp and mp expectations.

[Velorath]

In the list of problems Hellgate had, tacked on multiplayer was at the bottom of the list.  Flagship's ambition far exceeding their finances, and all their poor business decisions were big issues.  Their shitty billing system which charged a lot of people twice for their subscriptions, thus scaring a lot of people away from ever subscribing (in addition to the fact that the only real reason to subscribe was for more bank space) was a big issue.  The bugs and lack of polish, including a really bad memory leak and characters getting stuck fairly easily, were problems.  The repetition in the game environments were for me personally one of the biggest problems.

There's a lot of lessons to be learned from Hellgate.  "Single player RPG's with online elements just don't work" isn't one of them.  Especially since games like Diablo and PSO having been proving that wrong for years now.

[Rendakor]

the only real reason to subscribe was for more bank space 

This. A thousand times this. Hellgate was fun enough, and different from most Diablo clones in its core gameplay that it could have become a good game. However, they didn't give us any reason to pay them for it.

[Sheepherder]

Just how fun would it be to play WoW or EVE with nobody else on the server?

Not bad, I levelled my shaman on a nearly deserted PvE server and it was no great letdown.

[Ratman_tf]

the only real reason to subscribe was for more bank space 

This. A thousand times this. Hellgate was fun enough, and different from most Diablo clones in its core gameplay that it could have become a good game. However, they didn't give us any reason to pay them for it.

All the stuff about the bugs and memory leaks (which were legit issues) are way down the list of things I thought "killed" the game. But the wonky subscription plan, I'd put at #1. With a neon arrow pointing at it.

[Malakili]

the only real reason to subscribe was for more bank space 

This. A thousand times this. Hellgate was fun enough, and different from most Diablo clones in its core gameplay that it could have become a good game. However, they didn't give us any reason to pay them for it.

All the stuff about the bugs and memory leaks (which were legit issues) are way down the list of things I thought "killed" the game. But the wonky subscription plan, I'd put at #1. With a neon arrow pointing at it.

Can I ask why you think so? I mean, I wasn't here when Hellgate happened, so I missed the fallout on f13, but to me, it was hands down the crippling bugs.

[WindupAtheist]

Schild was all hyped for the game and bought a lifetime subscription, sight unseen. Then he realized the game blew and everyone laughed. Then he got hold of their customer service people and threatened to bring about a PR apocalypse unless they went ahead and reversed their "no refunds" policy for him specifically, which they did, and he was all like AHA WHO'S LAUGHING NOW BITCHES?

At least that's how I understand it.

[Ratman_tf]

Can I ask why you think so? I mean, I wasn't here when Hellgate happened, so I missed the fallout on f13, but to me, it was hands down the crippling bugs.

I played the shit out of the game, and my system has never been high-end. I never felt the game was crippled due to bugs. I had one quest that I couldn't complete, that wasn't a critial quest, so I skipped it. And the memory leaks never caused the game to crash or perform so poorly that I couldn't play. (Again, on a low-end machine.)

So lolz I dunno?

[Malakili]

Can I ask why you think so? I mean, I wasn't here when Hellgate happened, so I missed the fallout on f13, but to me, it was hands down the crippling bugs.

I played the shit out of the game, and my system has never been high-end. I never felt the game was crippled due to bugs. I had one quest that I couldn't complete, that wasn't a critial quest, so I skipped it. And the memory leaks never caused the game to crash or perform so poorly that I couldn't play. (Again, on a low-end machine.)

So lolz I dunno?

The lowend system might have actually helped you.  The DX9 version was more stable than the DX10 version.

[Rendakor]

My experience is on part with Ratman_tf's. I had some minor problems with it, but nothing outside the standard MMO launch shit. However, when you (as a company) have no means of extracting payment beyond box sales, you can't expect the game to survive.

If you don't know, the subscription fee got you VERY little; a larger (and maybe shared) stash, extra character slots, and access to certain loots.

[Malakili]

My experience is on part with Ratman_tf's. I had some minor problems with it, but nothing outside the standard MMO launch shit. However, when you (as a company) have no means of extracting payment beyond box sales, you can't expect the game to survive.

If you don't know, the subscription fee got you VERY little; a larger (and maybe shared) stash, extra character slots, and access to certain loots.

Yeah, I was there.  I personally crashed extremely frequently the first month or so due to the memory leak.  I also got stuck at loading screens very frequently.   I actually thought the core gameplay was solid though.  I stuck around past the first content update (stonehenge), which was fun, but still wasn't really worth the monthly fee. 
I think the game has been fixed up and is still being played in Asia right?  I wonder if we'll ever see a relaunch in the U.S.

Anyway, If we're saying SWTOR will fail for the reason that there isn't going to be sufficient reason to subscribe, then I'll agree with that.  My original point was just that I didn't expect it to fail because of a buggy launch.

[Rendakor]

Fair enough; I didn't have the problems you did, although I'm also running DX9.

[Velorath]

Anyway, If we're saying SWTOR will fail for the reason that there isn't going to be sufficient reason to subscribe, then I'll agree with that.  My original point was just that I didn't expect it to fail because of a buggy launch.

Well presumably if SWTOR ends up having a sub fee, the reason to subscribe would be to play the game.  It's a completely different situation from Hellgate.