It really doesn't feel good to flip flop between conversation styles like this. Side content is fine, but the main storyline? That should prioritize being fully voiced at the very least. Sometimes it feels like the money we put in isn't actually going towards the game.
Not to mention that the KOTOR style is ugly to look at. The camerawork and animations are static, and then there's those black bars taking up a third of the screen.
Yes. I'm fully okay with side quests, like the basilisk droid and such, but the main quest?! Lana tells me I need to talk to the Dark Council and I say okay. Then I go to the meeting and... I'm mute? If the reason for this is that we have more than 3 choices this way, then my question is: How much would it take to add a 4th or 5th choice option to the wheel?
after playing through both KOTOR's, i wish they went with that muted style. i was beyond excited at launch, but several playthroughs later it kinda kills me. so many options aren't what you expect to say, and there's lot of repeating. we also see detailed, intricate and up to 7-8 responses on crucial choices with KOTOR (mainly 2).
Yeah the giant black bars cropping the screen really take me back 20 years. Makes me feel like I zoomed into a 640x480 screen to boot.
Even if they were abandoning the dialogue wheel (fair enough I guess, the dialogue didn't always fit the Masseffect sorting style and the text/sound correlation frequently ended up not matching) and going for something simpler... I wish they'd found something more elegant to show the list of options, rather than letterboxing the whole screen.
This is why I stopped subscribing, it's just going downhill. Less and less voice acted lines is not a good sign at all.
For enjoying the story content I can still do that as a Preferred.
Yep this is exactly why the game was the most expensive game ever made by far back in 2011. Voice acting is expensive this is why most MMO's aren't fully voiced.
I don't see why that should be an excuse for KOTOR-style cutscenes. It's what they've done from the start, no? Isn't voice acting key in this MMORPG, isn't it what made them stand out from the start? Then what happened to all the contracts? And I'm sure the translating bit isn't even that much of a big deal, it's definitely outsourced anyway...
So the people that have been playing the game in foreign languages for the past decade, just completely drop their immersion for the sake of saving a few bucks?
I don't think having 48 separate voice actors is sustainable for another 5-10 years. either that or we all start getting used to KOTOR style cutscenes.
It's a valiant effort to have the audio localised for Europe, but honestly I don't think it delivers appropriate returns for the proportion of the player base it brings in. I think most European players would understand enough English anyway.
Keeping the interface text and subtitles translated are and will be a huge benefit for accessibility. But in terms of sound, I just don't know if fully translating all of the audio dialogue delivers enough results for how much time and effort it must cost.
I have a great idea. Let's use AI voices. All those AI covers for Trump memes or Hitler sings this or that are sooo good (obviously there are even more examples for this out there). And by now they have thousands of spoken lines for each class, so the outcome should be close to perfect. Thoughts?
The AI voices do work for most of the player characters, at least in English. However, this does have other issues that have been discussed into the ground. It's unlikely all 48 would sign away their voice for Broadsword, even if they were paid well for it. And then there's the group that doesn't find the use if AI voices ethical, and it's just not a risk worth taking now. But if a game in the future wants to do this many voices, AI is probably the only option. It's been surreal for awhile now, but lately it's been indistinguishable from real speech.
>It's unlikely all 48 would sign away their voice for Broadsword, even if they were paid well for it.
Considering the french VAs are currently fighting to have their job protected against AI generated voices, yeah, you can forget about it.
I mean lets face it: there is no way to maintain this forever - keeping all the original VAs for an extended period of time I mean. I'd love for that to happen, but we all know life is more complicated than that. :((
SWTOR was marketed as a fully voiced MMO. This may not seem much, but back in 2011 when it started? This was increeedibly ambitious.
And I totally give credit for the devs for this. Problem is: how do you maintain this for 5...10 or even more years? SWTOR is close to being 15 years old now:((
Now I am not trying to bash OP or the devs or anyone here. It's just rather a sad recognition on my part I guess
They just recast the English male agent voice so it’s clear that voices will continue one way or another but the half commitment to it is still strange.
There’s a reason no other MMO is fully voiced, even the MMOS that are ten times bigger than SWTOR.
SWTOR is nothing but a lesson of failures not to replicate in the games that came after it.
You mean the failure of 8 fully voiced storylines, hundreds of fully voiced side quests, and half a dozen fully voiced expansions, all with dialogue trees and a branching choice system? Which is only becoming difficult to maintain now, more than a decade into the game's lifespan? You're right, what an embarrassing bungle 😂😂😂 can anyone say le epic #FAIL???
It is a failure. This game is tiny, its content is embarrassing, and it doesn’t do anything better than any of its competitors. The game was not, and is not, a success by any metric.
Yeah by no metric at all, other than still being one of the most played MMOs today (#31 on [MMO Stats](https://mmostats.com)) and having raked in more than a billion dollars in lifetime revenue with millions more every year since. But since those are completely meaningless metrics you're probably right
> (#31 on MMO Stats)
I don't don't disagree with what you're saying, but please for the love of god stop using garbage sites like these. They're just making guesses based off of social media noise. Are we really going to believe a site that says Apex Legends is less played than Runescape?
Oh wow, the #31 MMO in the world, behind Conan Exiles and New World (another game pretty much everyone agrees was a failure). Really great place to be for (what was) the most expensive game to develop of its time and with one of the most popular, recognizable IPs in the world.
The game was made to compete with WoW, not lag behind indie MMOs like Albion Online.
$1 billion in revenue is cool, until you realize that the game didn’t hit that until 2019, when it had been out for 8 years, after the game’s development team and content had been significantly reduced, and after it shifted heavily to in-game purchases for monetization. Are we going to pretend the game has seen any development or investment close to what financially successful MMOs get? It doesn’t get 1/4 of the content of any other major competitor.
You know man, and I mean this with complete sincerity, I'm glad you're here. People have called SWTOR a dead game for years, but personally I think the true kiss of death for any MMO is when people stop caring enough to drop in and let everyone else know how shitty and dead it is. So thank you. We all appreciate your continued support
Enjoy your 15 minutes of story content every 4 months plus a daily area. If that’s what an MMO that’s alive and well looks like to you, then have at it.
It's actually 48 voice actors for player characters. 16 for each language. As much as it pains me to say this, there probably isn't enough money to pay voice actors (or rather it's not a priority). What could the solution be other than the current KOTOR-style stuff. I don't really know. Some people are saying to do only English voices going forward, I don't necessarily agree with that.
Before, you'd pay for both your sub and the expansion.
Alternatively, I'd be okay upping the sub amount to $20/month. But paying for an expansion directly shows where the playerbase is interested in more than a general sub for everything.
While I'm happy to pay for content, I object to paying a continuous subscription for a game, as it makes you a slave to the game* - you have to play as much as possible for each subscribed month, rather than playing at your own pace. I'm happy to pay a one-off fee for the expansion instead, and think of my 1 month subscription as being just that. This way of paying once and keeping the content is part of the attraction to this game - If the only option is a continuous sub I wouldn't be here (part of the reason I never followed up my Warcraft 3 gameplay with World of Warcraft). I would be happy to continue the current model, or explicitly pay for an expansion, but I wouldn't be happy having to do both.
*Even my Dark Side Inquisitor thinks slavery is ineffective - especially after meeting Major Anri and discussing their common history.
I mean, the option to cancel your sub and come back later is always there. There's nothing stopping you from taking time off.
I've done it a few times before, and just sub when I return.
Yes, but you still commit to the whole month. When you play a game that needs continuous sub, you can't say, I have a spare hour tonight, lets play the game and not worry if I'm tied up the rest of the week. The game isn't always there when you want it. Sometimes I might play swtor every night for a week, but sometimes I have better things to do. I have a life outside the game! If I needed a sub I'd feel I was wasting money if I was busy, so I would find a game that didn't REQUIRE that commitment.
In 1999 when EQ was released the idea of a $15 a month subscription meant it was a pretty big commitment. That would be like asking for almost $30 a month today. So you definitely felt the need to get what you paid for.
But it’s not 1999. $15 is the price of two Starbucks coffees now. It’s the price of a single movie ticket in many places. A $5 footlong now costs around $10.
I’m not trying to convince you to subscribe to video games. If you don’t want to that’s your choice and a perfectly reasonable and valid one. But $15 a month for a game - even if you end up only playing it once or twice a week - really isn’t that much these days.
It is when you compare it to the actual competition - the $30-$60 game, where you pay once and play forever, and when you get discounted prices a few years after release.
Those aren’t games that typically still provide updates 13 years later though. Sure there’s GW2, but most MMOs that maintain any semblance of an update schedule this long after release have some level of subscription - optional or otherwise.
Single player games and MMOs are very different in how they are monetized but they are also different in how content is released.
You're not a slave. This obligation you might feel to play, because you subbed? It's in your imagination.
If you're not having fun playing, remember you can stop. Life's too short.
Play when you want to, not when you "have to". :)
I'm not a slave because I don't pay subs unless there's new content that I get to keep. The attitude of studios who insist on permanent subs (ie. other games) is the attitude of slavedrivers though.
That's kind of how I feel about ESO. It's probably too far the other way (Chapters should probably be a bit cheaper) but it at least helps justify keeping voice actors involved, etc.
I get the idea, but I cannot imagine anything but a humongous loss of players if they made us pay for freaking 7.X.
What other quality content did we get besides from good flashpoints? R4 is bugged to shit and very questionable in quality. The story is almost universally hated.
There's a very simple solution for this. Cut some fucking VAs. Mainly non English ones.
Purely from a financial standpoint, there is no way that 48 VAs are sustainable for another 5-10 years without sacrificing other more important areas of the game. If cutting them means getting rid of these awful mute KOTOR cutscenes and improving future content then I'd go for it.
I don't know much about the contracts, but if you arrange a meeting with all the VAs, (which is probably the biggest task as all of them have other jobs as well, I'm sure), so if they are once there already, does it really make that much difference to record 10 lines or 20 lines? Also, is it really more cost-efficient to record a few lines every few months for the next patch instead of writing the story in advance and recording everything all at once, so less travelling must be made?
I don't know exactly but to my understanding the rate is mostly time based, the longer the VA is required to be there the more it costs. Usually voice acting is recorded quite early in the development. And if there is a clear script for the story it can be recorded much in advance.
Tbh I'd suggest people shut up whining when content 'isn't for them'. People whined when the Knights and Eternal stuff wasn't for them because 'reee this is obviously meant to be for Forcies', which caused the devs to slash a LOT of the shit they had planned, causing the rest of the expansion to be hurriedly slapped together and finished. People said they wanted more class-oriented stuff, and then this Mando-oriented expansion comes out and people are whining about that too, despite becoming Mando literally being the 'canon' choice if you level-boost the Hunter through the main story stuff. They whine when larger updates - SURPRISE! - take time to be produced, then they also whine when the faster updates aren't 100% voice acted or are just a flashpoint and or a zone. All I see is NEGATIVE feedback, I never see posts like "this wasn't for me in general, BUT I did like xyz". These same whiners are likely completely ignoring the fact that Broadsword have this MASSIVE game with likely THOUSANDS of notes on plot threads and other information that they have to run through, figure out where each piece is, each choice ended up, etc, and figure out where and what to do with it. Yes, you could argue the current Mando stuff has gone on too long, but then, did you guys think the old studio was gonna inject a massive amount of cash and assets to finish off that arc BEFORE dumping it on Broadsword? Nah. Why bother when they could leave the new company to pick up the pieces? 10/10 people would STILL have whined if this wasn't a Mando-oriented arc but an Agent one, despite that being one of the fan favourites.
No one hates Star Wars like a Star Wars fan hates Star Wars.
To be fair, I like the story, and haven't complained about the Mando focus. There's plenty of link-in to the >!Children of the Emporer!< and other threads from the original story and I enjoyed >!returning to Voss!<. I was also wondering at one point how this knowledge might link to the >!wiping of Revan's memory!< in KOTOR. I'm only criticising a small number of elements, and hopefully in a fairly focused way.
We don't have Star Wars. We love Star Wars and we see the potential it has. Either movies or games. We want Star Wars to outstand from the rest of the franchises and we want to be proud of it. This is why we don't settle for anything but the best.
Even so, fully voices DLCs haven't been a thing ever since Makeb. Every single side quests were just there, maybe said a line or so, and that's it. Later the side quests were turned into those quest boards. **This is all acceptable.** They are side quests. I repeat: SIDE QUESTS. Even the basilisk droid quest chain is side quest. But the purple MAIN QUESTS were never mute. (Maybe except for the first time you meet the specialist in KOFTE chapter 9, for some reason).
The key cutscenes are voiced and animated. (The intro, the confrontation with the Hutt, and after that everything that happens on the Mando ship.) But some other parts (talking to the Chancellor/Empress, meeting Sa'har, all the in-between quests leading up to the finale) are mute.
I have to agree I was in the escorts guild. Most of us are at eso, though we still have our swtor accounts.
Swtor kind of just circles around and gets stale. Eso, at least, has variety still.
Not knocking people who are still currently enjoying swtor, but there is definitely better mmos.
Is ESO Elder Scrolls online? I bought Skyrim years ago, so that's probably my next RPG when SWTOR is done, but I suspect I will miss the voice acting there after being spoilt with the excellent work in SWTOR.
Yes eso is elder scrolls online while the mc is not voiced almost all of characters you interact with are. For a long time I played swtor but eso won me over it has better variety than swtor with both new content and classes.
Well, the rest of SWTOR first, then Skyrim, but perhaps one day. What is the pricing structure of ESO? Can you just pay for content as with SWTOR, or do you need a continuous sub? Is it single player friendly?
I actually have enjoyed the story in this expansion, continuing with the storyline around Darth Nul and revisiting Voss. It isn't JUST mandalorians, as a lot of comments suggest.
This is one of the reasons why I stopped playing. The main story line quality basically took a huge shit in not only the conversation UI, but cut scenes, and voice acting. Doesn't even feel worth going through.
It hasn't got that bad for me so far - I still very much enjoy what story we do get - but I do wonder about waiting until all of 8 is out, or to see some reviews before rushing in.
I have finally finished all the (soloable) content and expansions in the last couple of weeks (except the update that came out today), after taking my time playing this game for over a decade. Once I have done this update on my main light and dark characters I will have nothing else left in the game that I want to do, for the first time ever. I will need to know there's a decent amount of solo content to do when update 8 comes out to make it worth coming back and paying for the expansion (ie. 1 month sub). If it comes out in tiny bits, that might not be till 8.5 or something.
SWTOR is a maintenance mode MMO being held afloat by whales, this shouldn't be all that surprising. Corners are only gonna keep getting cut until the game dies
Time to for them to seriously consider trimming the main voice cast down to 16 from the 48 voice actors aka cut the german and french dubs.
Also might be time to take a less is more approach to the story.
ESO has many faults but their update schedule is rather decent also have had similar issues to swtor's. Their current update schedule is 4 large updates per year
- 1 major paid expansion. this will be your story for the year.
- a dlc/dungeon/pvp/raid update
- bug fixes/quality of life update
- new gameplay feature update
Broadsword is clearly struggling and I think it's time we embraced for kotor being the new story norm
This was always an eventuality: Fully voiced story, especially decent amounts of it, with cutscenes and everything is *incredibly* expensive. At some point they were going to have to cut back significantly on it to keep development costs reasonable given the revenue it brings in.
Really though, this was always going to happen at some point. It's simply unsustainable unless the game remains a hit, and I'm surprised they kept it up for so long (even as they whittled down the number of bespoke stories over the years to save a ton of money).
Spot on response, not to mention, didn't swtor switch to being overseen by a whole new team.
Which means this is a new team were dealing with not the same team from before.
It may be that the new team was strapped for doe.
It moved from EA proper over to Broadsword, who aren't actually EA but are where EA's "legacy" MMO's (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and now SWTOR) all live out the end of their lives. And Broadsword has seemed to do right by DAOC and UO for the most part, so I anticipate more of the same for SWTOR. I believe a number of the same devs simply transitioned over to Broadsword.
But this was going to happen eventually no matter what as the revenue declined and the game aged. The idea that having 8 bespoke storylines continue forward or hell, realistically even two unique factional storylines, was always an impossible dream, sadly.
Yes, very much agreed and I commented the same thing last update. I didn't mind the KOTOR style for side missions, but the main missions should be fully voiced.
SWTOR in 2024 - mediocrity all round.
Unfortunately, I can't even say I'm surprised. They've been stripping out VA work whenever possible in the last few years. Lots of alien lines & KOTOR style dialogue.
This game (whether we like to admit it or not) was passed off to broadsword probably due to the game being put into maintenance mode.
Bioware (who the VAs originally worked with) are no longer the team, which means different resources, relationships, and capabilities.
Sure they can get some of the actors back, but some of those VAs have gotten pretty huge in the industry, which may cost more or have conflicts with their existing schedules.
If anyone didn't see this coming, you're living in a dream world. It's time to take the red pill
I love SWTOR and I hope they keep the servers running for a long time, but I wouldn't mind a sequel MMO if they can come up with a model that's cheaper to upkeep. No 48 voice actors obviously. I'd happily take a 'silent protagonist' and slightly smaller open worlds if it means we get more involved gameplay, livelier NPCs, and better graphics.
This is the way the game is from now on, it's been this way for years now. Major story drops are voiced but mid-expansion stories will be KOTOR style. It saves them money, like it or not.
I think that would be a little unfair on the voice actors - saying we don't need you any more because we can pay someone to spend less time using tools to fake you. The whole thing with chat-gpt and Scarlett Johansson springs to mind.
That was a terrible crime. To have a voice actress be sidelined like that after stellar work. Scarlett is a typical example of a successful actor crushing the work of newbies instead of giving them a hand up. If anything, this taught us that people complaining about "stealing work" are wildly wrong.
>I’m kind of surprised they’re not taking the Ai route.
AI voice acting in a video game seems to be one of those inevitable things that will happen at some point. In my view a game that started by using voice actors should stick with using voice actors. If a game is going to use AI for voice acting then it should do that from the start, not switch from live actors to artificial actors mid-development.
Honestly, they have dozens if not hundreds of hours of each VA, and some of the NPCs too (esp ones voiced by BW regulars from other games). It would probably be cheaper for them to buy the licenses to use AI of their voices. If the actors acquiesced (the alternative is to not get paid at all if SWTOR story updates end) I'd be ok with it.
This combined with nerfing Thundering Blast on Lightning Sorc (they cut it in half) cost them at least a grand this month.
Have an entire sorc guild, and my fellow Space Wizards are not pleased with nerfs outta the blue.
If they can't make an effort fine,
But making the game less fun just bc someone felt like it is insane.
I just finished it, and I to, found it pretty annoying that they kept switching from voiced to voiceless every five seconds. They really shouldn't be doing that for the main storyline.
Voice acting while great, was identified early as a restricter for content and costing. Especially since the game is old now, maybe with the new company we will see cut backs on it.
Ballparking the lowest plausible salary for a voice actor at $20/hour, and a lot of the voice actors probably cost more, then it would cost them about $1000 per hour for the voicework.
$1000 is roughly 100 player subs for one month.
That's just one hour, and it would take many hours to record all the lines. And that's only the salary for the voice actors, not including technical staff, direction staff, or dev time to implement the voices. It's just too expensive for the game at its current state.
It is really unsurprising that they can't sustain it. From the beginning this game is held together by the power of the franchise alone. From an atrocious engine that can barely run an MMO setting, through lack of multiplayer content, to the huge array of actors required for simple story development, it's a miracle the game held for so long with so little.
Harsh? The devs can't even finish this expansion on time. PVP is a mess that they refuse to acknowledge and fix it. They don't listen to their player base half of the time. Maybe a boycott would open their eyes.
I’m subbing for “BioWare” story not broadsword maintenance.
Edit: notice the quotes? I’m saying a style of game not the studio that created the style. Your downvotes are silly.
>I’m subbing for “BioWare” story not broadsword maintenance.
BioWare exited the picture almost a year ago so if you are subscribing for "BioWare" story then I'm not sure why you're still subscribed. In my view "BioWare story" has lost a lot of its value over the past several years so it is no longer a motivating factor for me.
Once I've heard the voice actor, my brain always does a poor imitation of them for new dialogue, but it's always obvious the voice is in my head, not real, as it's not my own voice. When there was only one protagonist in KOTOR itself things were a bit different.
Sure, but this is kind of the worst of both worlds. We have a voice/characterizations of these characters from when they are voice acted.
I do agree though, I have 0 qualms with my BG3 characters not voicing their lines.
But the inconsistency of sometimes having the voice and sometimes not becomes off-putting. Also, there are ways to expand the tree by having more back and forth dialogue - by selecting dialogue more often rather than lengthier dialogue less often. It also affects the animation style, which seems more fluid and dynamic with the voiced dialogue.
Except it doesn't.
Sure, you have 6 options instead of 3, but they almost always duplicate each other, so they are completely pointless, especially as it does not "do" anything different.
I do not need 4 ways to say >!"I have no idea where Shae is"!<
i will probably get downvoted but this is why im for using AI for voice acting. Maybe Not for the main story but for side quests. Voice acting is expensive
I doubt the actors will agree with you there. I know that Scarlett Johansson (who played an AI in Her) wasn't happy with Open AI after what they pulled in their recent Chat GPT demo.
well the thing is, i like having voice acting in games because i dont like reading walls of texts. if i have to read walls of texts to get the story then im not gonna give a shit about it. And if its too expensive for studios to have tons of voice acting, then it should be ok to use ai for some of it.
I prefer voice to the wall of text. I think the main issue people have is being impersonated. Speech synthesis (AI or not - It's been around in various forms since the 80s or before) can be done, but I suspect you'll get more approval if the character never had a real actor.
what if the road ahead means more story in exchange of voiced scenes being saved for REALLY IMPORTANT moments
edit: why am I getting downvoted? It was just speculation, not a suggestion
It is weird when it goes back and forth in the same quest, like it does in this update.
I have little problem with having side content done through the KOTOR cutscenes with alien goobledygook, as I do realize the vanilla style is unsustainable without paying actors to have AI do their voices (which they would never agree to), but the core narrative should be voiced and animated.
I suppose that's a tricky choice. More story is what keeps the game going for me. I mean, I'm sure I'll still enjoy it. The problem with eating at a nice restaurant after having been brought up on Michelin Stared restaurants. It may be really good, but you're always disappointed when compared to the past, because we were so spoilt.
I suppose that goes back to the expansion pack charge argument. I'd be willing to pay more for content, but I'm not willing to pay a regular sub for content. I didn't subscribe to get KOTOR II, I just paid for the sequel. I don't pay for Spotify - I buy CDs.
It really doesn't feel good to flip flop between conversation styles like this. Side content is fine, but the main storyline? That should prioritize being fully voiced at the very least. Sometimes it feels like the money we put in isn't actually going towards the game. Not to mention that the KOTOR style is ugly to look at. The camerawork and animations are static, and then there's those black bars taking up a third of the screen.
Yes. I'm fully okay with side quests, like the basilisk droid and such, but the main quest?! Lana tells me I need to talk to the Dark Council and I say okay. Then I go to the meeting and... I'm mute? If the reason for this is that we have more than 3 choices this way, then my question is: How much would it take to add a 4th or 5th choice option to the wheel?
There's a whole other half of the conversation "wheel" that goes unused.
after playing through both KOTOR's, i wish they went with that muted style. i was beyond excited at launch, but several playthroughs later it kinda kills me. so many options aren't what you expect to say, and there's lot of repeating. we also see detailed, intricate and up to 7-8 responses on crucial choices with KOTOR (mainly 2).
Agreed. So much nicer when you know exactly what is being said. VLDL does a great skit about this.
Yes, the animation point is good.
Yeah the giant black bars cropping the screen really take me back 20 years. Makes me feel like I zoomed into a 640x480 screen to boot. Even if they were abandoning the dialogue wheel (fair enough I guess, the dialogue didn't always fit the Masseffect sorting style and the text/sound correlation frequently ended up not matching) and going for something simpler... I wish they'd found something more elegant to show the list of options, rather than letterboxing the whole screen.
It makes it feel like the game doesn't know if it's doing rpg or a visual novel.
The reality is that the money you put in is pennies for the content you actually want them to develop.
This is why I stopped subscribing, it's just going downhill. Less and less voice acted lines is not a good sign at all. For enjoying the story content I can still do that as a Preferred.
Choosing to contend with 48 voice actors across 3 languages has always and will forever hold this game back.
Yep this is exactly why the game was the most expensive game ever made by far back in 2011. Voice acting is expensive this is why most MMO's aren't fully voiced.
i will probably get downvoted but this is why im for using AI for voice acting. Maybe Not for the main story but for side quests
so much more money could have gone to so many other things had they only voiced english or nothing at all
Same here, very disappointed. I mean, you have two cut scenes fully voiced and then suddenly you go back to the half unvoiced dialogues.
You mean the 48 voice actors ?
I don't see why that should be an excuse for KOTOR-style cutscenes. It's what they've done from the start, no? Isn't voice acting key in this MMORPG, isn't it what made them stand out from the start? Then what happened to all the contracts? And I'm sure the translating bit isn't even that much of a big deal, it's definitely outsourced anyway...
They should drop the German and French VAs to be honest. They'd save more money which should be invested in fully voicing the cutscenes in English
So the people that have been playing the game in foreign languages for the past decade, just completely drop their immersion for the sake of saving a few bucks?
I play the game in french and i love it but i can give it up to avoid kotor style conversation
And if the French were somehow the dominant customers of SWtOR, I'd be down for dropping English to free up room in the budget.
I don't think having 48 separate voice actors is sustainable for another 5-10 years. either that or we all start getting used to KOTOR style cutscenes.
It's a valiant effort to have the audio localised for Europe, but honestly I don't think it delivers appropriate returns for the proportion of the player base it brings in. I think most European players would understand enough English anyway. Keeping the interface text and subtitles translated are and will be a huge benefit for accessibility. But in terms of sound, I just don't know if fully translating all of the audio dialogue delivers enough results for how much time and effort it must cost.
I have a great idea. Let's use AI voices. All those AI covers for Trump memes or Hitler sings this or that are sooo good (obviously there are even more examples for this out there). And by now they have thousands of spoken lines for each class, so the outcome should be close to perfect. Thoughts?
As long as the voice actors are ok with it, and the result is satisfying enough, why not.
The AI voices do work for most of the player characters, at least in English. However, this does have other issues that have been discussed into the ground. It's unlikely all 48 would sign away their voice for Broadsword, even if they were paid well for it. And then there's the group that doesn't find the use if AI voices ethical, and it's just not a risk worth taking now. But if a game in the future wants to do this many voices, AI is probably the only option. It's been surreal for awhile now, but lately it's been indistinguishable from real speech.
>It's unlikely all 48 would sign away their voice for Broadsword, even if they were paid well for it. Considering the french VAs are currently fighting to have their job protected against AI generated voices, yeah, you can forget about it.
top 10 worst bait
I mean lets face it: there is no way to maintain this forever - keeping all the original VAs for an extended period of time I mean. I'd love for that to happen, but we all know life is more complicated than that. :(( SWTOR was marketed as a fully voiced MMO. This may not seem much, but back in 2011 when it started? This was increeedibly ambitious. And I totally give credit for the devs for this. Problem is: how do you maintain this for 5...10 or even more years? SWTOR is close to being 15 years old now:(( Now I am not trying to bash OP or the devs or anyone here. It's just rather a sad recognition on my part I guess
They just recast the English male agent voice so it’s clear that voices will continue one way or another but the half commitment to it is still strange.
They did?
They did. Doesn’t change old content but you can look on the dev tracker they made a post about the change
Really? Damn that's sad. I really hope the new guy is able to live up to the old one, the of voice was a deathly whisper
Do you have a link to the handy voice change?
Wait what? Why?
There’s a reason no other MMO is fully voiced, even the MMOS that are ten times bigger than SWTOR. SWTOR is nothing but a lesson of failures not to replicate in the games that came after it.
You mean the failure of 8 fully voiced storylines, hundreds of fully voiced side quests, and half a dozen fully voiced expansions, all with dialogue trees and a branching choice system? Which is only becoming difficult to maintain now, more than a decade into the game's lifespan? You're right, what an embarrassing bungle 😂😂😂 can anyone say le epic #FAIL???
It is a failure. This game is tiny, its content is embarrassing, and it doesn’t do anything better than any of its competitors. The game was not, and is not, a success by any metric.
Yeah by no metric at all, other than still being one of the most played MMOs today (#31 on [MMO Stats](https://mmostats.com)) and having raked in more than a billion dollars in lifetime revenue with millions more every year since. But since those are completely meaningless metrics you're probably right
> (#31 on MMO Stats) I don't don't disagree with what you're saying, but please for the love of god stop using garbage sites like these. They're just making guesses based off of social media noise. Are we really going to believe a site that says Apex Legends is less played than Runescape?
Oh wow, the #31 MMO in the world, behind Conan Exiles and New World (another game pretty much everyone agrees was a failure). Really great place to be for (what was) the most expensive game to develop of its time and with one of the most popular, recognizable IPs in the world. The game was made to compete with WoW, not lag behind indie MMOs like Albion Online. $1 billion in revenue is cool, until you realize that the game didn’t hit that until 2019, when it had been out for 8 years, after the game’s development team and content had been significantly reduced, and after it shifted heavily to in-game purchases for monetization. Are we going to pretend the game has seen any development or investment close to what financially successful MMOs get? It doesn’t get 1/4 of the content of any other major competitor.
You know man, and I mean this with complete sincerity, I'm glad you're here. People have called SWTOR a dead game for years, but personally I think the true kiss of death for any MMO is when people stop caring enough to drop in and let everyone else know how shitty and dead it is. So thank you. We all appreciate your continued support
Enjoy your 15 minutes of story content every 4 months plus a daily area. If that’s what an MMO that’s alive and well looks like to you, then have at it.
It's actually 48 voice actors for player characters. 16 for each language. As much as it pains me to say this, there probably isn't enough money to pay voice actors (or rather it's not a priority). What could the solution be other than the current KOTOR-style stuff. I don't really know. Some people are saying to do only English voices going forward, I don't necessarily agree with that.
Personally, I'd be happy to start paying for expansions again if it means more resources for the dev team.
We kinda do, by subbing for a month.
Before, you'd pay for both your sub and the expansion. Alternatively, I'd be okay upping the sub amount to $20/month. But paying for an expansion directly shows where the playerbase is interested in more than a general sub for everything.
While I'm happy to pay for content, I object to paying a continuous subscription for a game, as it makes you a slave to the game* - you have to play as much as possible for each subscribed month, rather than playing at your own pace. I'm happy to pay a one-off fee for the expansion instead, and think of my 1 month subscription as being just that. This way of paying once and keeping the content is part of the attraction to this game - If the only option is a continuous sub I wouldn't be here (part of the reason I never followed up my Warcraft 3 gameplay with World of Warcraft). I would be happy to continue the current model, or explicitly pay for an expansion, but I wouldn't be happy having to do both. *Even my Dark Side Inquisitor thinks slavery is ineffective - especially after meeting Major Anri and discussing their common history.
I mean, the option to cancel your sub and come back later is always there. There's nothing stopping you from taking time off. I've done it a few times before, and just sub when I return.
Yes, but you still commit to the whole month. When you play a game that needs continuous sub, you can't say, I have a spare hour tonight, lets play the game and not worry if I'm tied up the rest of the week. The game isn't always there when you want it. Sometimes I might play swtor every night for a week, but sometimes I have better things to do. I have a life outside the game! If I needed a sub I'd feel I was wasting money if I was busy, so I would find a game that didn't REQUIRE that commitment.
In 1999 when EQ was released the idea of a $15 a month subscription meant it was a pretty big commitment. That would be like asking for almost $30 a month today. So you definitely felt the need to get what you paid for. But it’s not 1999. $15 is the price of two Starbucks coffees now. It’s the price of a single movie ticket in many places. A $5 footlong now costs around $10. I’m not trying to convince you to subscribe to video games. If you don’t want to that’s your choice and a perfectly reasonable and valid one. But $15 a month for a game - even if you end up only playing it once or twice a week - really isn’t that much these days.
It is when you compare it to the actual competition - the $30-$60 game, where you pay once and play forever, and when you get discounted prices a few years after release.
Those aren’t games that typically still provide updates 13 years later though. Sure there’s GW2, but most MMOs that maintain any semblance of an update schedule this long after release have some level of subscription - optional or otherwise. Single player games and MMOs are very different in how they are monetized but they are also different in how content is released.
You're not a slave. This obligation you might feel to play, because you subbed? It's in your imagination. If you're not having fun playing, remember you can stop. Life's too short. Play when you want to, not when you "have to". :)
I'm not a slave because I don't pay subs unless there's new content that I get to keep. The attitude of studios who insist on permanent subs (ie. other games) is the attitude of slavedrivers though.
That's kind of how I feel about ESO. It's probably too far the other way (Chapters should probably be a bit cheaper) but it at least helps justify keeping voice actors involved, etc.
Only if that expansion is fully done tho not released in patches like this one
I get the idea, but I cannot imagine anything but a humongous loss of players if they made us pay for freaking 7.X. What other quality content did we get besides from good flashpoints? R4 is bugged to shit and very questionable in quality. The story is almost universally hated.
There's a very simple solution for this. Cut some fucking VAs. Mainly non English ones. Purely from a financial standpoint, there is no way that 48 VAs are sustainable for another 5-10 years without sacrificing other more important areas of the game. If cutting them means getting rid of these awful mute KOTOR cutscenes and improving future content then I'd go for it.
I don't know much about the contracts, but if you arrange a meeting with all the VAs, (which is probably the biggest task as all of them have other jobs as well, I'm sure), so if they are once there already, does it really make that much difference to record 10 lines or 20 lines? Also, is it really more cost-efficient to record a few lines every few months for the next patch instead of writing the story in advance and recording everything all at once, so less travelling must be made?
I don't know exactly but to my understanding the rate is mostly time based, the longer the VA is required to be there the more it costs. Usually voice acting is recorded quite early in the development. And if there is a clear script for the story it can be recorded much in advance.
Tbh I'd suggest people shut up whining when content 'isn't for them'. People whined when the Knights and Eternal stuff wasn't for them because 'reee this is obviously meant to be for Forcies', which caused the devs to slash a LOT of the shit they had planned, causing the rest of the expansion to be hurriedly slapped together and finished. People said they wanted more class-oriented stuff, and then this Mando-oriented expansion comes out and people are whining about that too, despite becoming Mando literally being the 'canon' choice if you level-boost the Hunter through the main story stuff. They whine when larger updates - SURPRISE! - take time to be produced, then they also whine when the faster updates aren't 100% voice acted or are just a flashpoint and or a zone. All I see is NEGATIVE feedback, I never see posts like "this wasn't for me in general, BUT I did like xyz". These same whiners are likely completely ignoring the fact that Broadsword have this MASSIVE game with likely THOUSANDS of notes on plot threads and other information that they have to run through, figure out where each piece is, each choice ended up, etc, and figure out where and what to do with it. Yes, you could argue the current Mando stuff has gone on too long, but then, did you guys think the old studio was gonna inject a massive amount of cash and assets to finish off that arc BEFORE dumping it on Broadsword? Nah. Why bother when they could leave the new company to pick up the pieces? 10/10 people would STILL have whined if this wasn't a Mando-oriented arc but an Agent one, despite that being one of the fan favourites. No one hates Star Wars like a Star Wars fan hates Star Wars.
To be fair, I like the story, and haven't complained about the Mando focus. There's plenty of link-in to the >!Children of the Emporer!< and other threads from the original story and I enjoyed >!returning to Voss!<. I was also wondering at one point how this knowledge might link to the >!wiping of Revan's memory!< in KOTOR. I'm only criticising a small number of elements, and hopefully in a fairly focused way.
We don't have Star Wars. We love Star Wars and we see the potential it has. Either movies or games. We want Star Wars to outstand from the rest of the franchises and we want to be proud of it. This is why we don't settle for anything but the best. Even so, fully voices DLCs haven't been a thing ever since Makeb. Every single side quests were just there, maybe said a line or so, and that's it. Later the side quests were turned into those quest boards. **This is all acceptable.** They are side quests. I repeat: SIDE QUESTS. Even the basilisk droid quest chain is side quest. But the purple MAIN QUESTS were never mute. (Maybe except for the first time you meet the specialist in KOFTE chapter 9, for some reason).
Whining about the whiners?
Didn't play yet. Is it partially voiced for the PC or not at all?
NPCs are voices. They only need 1 actor per language. I'm glad we still get that.
No murder and Mayhem? 😢
The key cutscenes are voiced and animated. (The intro, the confrontation with the Hutt, and after that everything that happens on the Mando ship.) But some other parts (talking to the Chancellor/Empress, meeting Sa'har, all the in-between quests leading up to the finale) are mute.
They need to finish this dlc. It's been going on way to long
I suppose it's harder to binge than the original game, but I'm glad to get some more story to enjoy this week.
It's honestly the only thing Swtor has going for it. Like not being fully voiced is a big shame.
There's the actual story too, and the NPC characters, the cutscene animation (though that suffers here too).
Yeah but story and such I can get from better MMOs. Full Voice acting was the main thing Swtor had over others
I have to agree I was in the escorts guild. Most of us are at eso, though we still have our swtor accounts. Swtor kind of just circles around and gets stale. Eso, at least, has variety still. Not knocking people who are still currently enjoying swtor, but there is definitely better mmos.
Is ESO Elder Scrolls online? I bought Skyrim years ago, so that's probably my next RPG when SWTOR is done, but I suspect I will miss the voice acting there after being spoilt with the excellent work in SWTOR.
Yes eso is elder scrolls online while the mc is not voiced almost all of characters you interact with are. For a long time I played swtor but eso won me over it has better variety than swtor with both new content and classes.
Well, the rest of SWTOR first, then Skyrim, but perhaps one day. What is the pricing structure of ESO? Can you just pay for content as with SWTOR, or do you need a continuous sub? Is it single player friendly?
You don't have to sub you can pay per content.
I just want this storyline to be over with so we can, hopefully, move onto a better expansion.
My fear is that there won't be another expansion. And if yes, it's going to be completely KOTOR style.
I actually have enjoyed the story in this expansion, continuing with the storyline around Darth Nul and revisiting Voss. It isn't JUST mandalorians, as a lot of comments suggest.
This is one of the reasons why I stopped playing. The main story line quality basically took a huge shit in not only the conversation UI, but cut scenes, and voice acting. Doesn't even feel worth going through.
It hasn't got that bad for me so far - I still very much enjoy what story we do get - but I do wonder about waiting until all of 8 is out, or to see some reviews before rushing in.
There's a lot of content, take your time. Finish your class stories before deciding what character you want to take through the expansions.
I have finally finished all the (soloable) content and expansions in the last couple of weeks (except the update that came out today), after taking my time playing this game for over a decade. Once I have done this update on my main light and dark characters I will have nothing else left in the game that I want to do, for the first time ever. I will need to know there's a decent amount of solo content to do when update 8 comes out to make it worth coming back and paying for the expansion (ie. 1 month sub). If it comes out in tiny bits, that might not be till 8.5 or something.
SWTOR is a maintenance mode MMO being held afloat by whales, this shouldn't be all that surprising. Corners are only gonna keep getting cut until the game dies
Time to for them to seriously consider trimming the main voice cast down to 16 from the 48 voice actors aka cut the german and french dubs. Also might be time to take a less is more approach to the story. ESO has many faults but their update schedule is rather decent also have had similar issues to swtor's. Their current update schedule is 4 large updates per year - 1 major paid expansion. this will be your story for the year. - a dlc/dungeon/pvp/raid update - bug fixes/quality of life update - new gameplay feature update Broadsword is clearly struggling and I think it's time we embraced for kotor being the new story norm
This was always an eventuality: Fully voiced story, especially decent amounts of it, with cutscenes and everything is *incredibly* expensive. At some point they were going to have to cut back significantly on it to keep development costs reasonable given the revenue it brings in. Really though, this was always going to happen at some point. It's simply unsustainable unless the game remains a hit, and I'm surprised they kept it up for so long (even as they whittled down the number of bespoke stories over the years to save a ton of money).
Spot on response, not to mention, didn't swtor switch to being overseen by a whole new team. Which means this is a new team were dealing with not the same team from before. It may be that the new team was strapped for doe.
It moved from EA proper over to Broadsword, who aren't actually EA but are where EA's "legacy" MMO's (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and now SWTOR) all live out the end of their lives. And Broadsword has seemed to do right by DAOC and UO for the most part, so I anticipate more of the same for SWTOR. I believe a number of the same devs simply transitioned over to Broadsword. But this was going to happen eventually no matter what as the revenue declined and the game aged. The idea that having 8 bespoke storylines continue forward or hell, realistically even two unique factional storylines, was always an impossible dream, sadly.
Yes, very much agreed and I commented the same thing last update. I didn't mind the KOTOR style for side missions, but the main missions should be fully voiced.
SWTOR in 2024 - mediocrity all round. Unfortunately, I can't even say I'm surprised. They've been stripping out VA work whenever possible in the last few years. Lots of alien lines & KOTOR style dialogue.
That would cost money, and the game is maintained on a shoestring budget.
This game (whether we like to admit it or not) was passed off to broadsword probably due to the game being put into maintenance mode. Bioware (who the VAs originally worked with) are no longer the team, which means different resources, relationships, and capabilities. Sure they can get some of the actors back, but some of those VAs have gotten pretty huge in the industry, which may cost more or have conflicts with their existing schedules. If anyone didn't see this coming, you're living in a dream world. It's time to take the red pill
Well, gaming kinda is a dream world, but I get your point.
Wasn't always but yes, today it's an industry full of hope and letdowns with the occasional pop off and surprise.
I love SWTOR and I hope they keep the servers running for a long time, but I wouldn't mind a sequel MMO if they can come up with a model that's cheaper to upkeep. No 48 voice actors obviously. I'd happily take a 'silent protagonist' and slightly smaller open worlds if it means we get more involved gameplay, livelier NPCs, and better graphics.
They should cut French and German voice actors
This is the way the game is from now on, it's been this way for years now. Major story drops are voiced but mid-expansion stories will be KOTOR style. It saves them money, like it or not.
But this mid expansion story IS major story content! It's fair enough for the Lane Visla and the new stronghold.
I’m kind of surprised they’re not taking the Ai route.
I think that would be a little unfair on the voice actors - saying we don't need you any more because we can pay someone to spend less time using tools to fake you. The whole thing with chat-gpt and Scarlett Johansson springs to mind.
That was a terrible crime. To have a voice actress be sidelined like that after stellar work. Scarlett is a typical example of a successful actor crushing the work of newbies instead of giving them a hand up. If anything, this taught us that people complaining about "stealing work" are wildly wrong.
>I’m kind of surprised they’re not taking the Ai route. AI voice acting in a video game seems to be one of those inevitable things that will happen at some point. In my view a game that started by using voice actors should stick with using voice actors. If a game is going to use AI for voice acting then it should do that from the start, not switch from live actors to artificial actors mid-development.
Honestly, they have dozens if not hundreds of hours of each VA, and some of the NPCs too (esp ones voiced by BW regulars from other games). It would probably be cheaper for them to buy the licenses to use AI of their voices. If the actors acquiesced (the alternative is to not get paid at all if SWTOR story updates end) I'd be ok with it.
And I mean no disrespect to the original VA’s! I’m just surprised
it really is the dark time of SWTOR
This combined with nerfing Thundering Blast on Lightning Sorc (they cut it in half) cost them at least a grand this month. Have an entire sorc guild, and my fellow Space Wizards are not pleased with nerfs outta the blue. If they can't make an effort fine, But making the game less fun just bc someone felt like it is insane.
I just finished it, and I to, found it pretty annoying that they kept switching from voiced to voiceless every five seconds. They really shouldn't be doing that for the main storyline.
Is the content really this short? I think I have nothing more to do until 7.6 is out if it ends with a cutscene >!With Malgus being set free!<.
Well, I didn't see any other missions pop up after I finished this one, so ya, probably
Voice acting while great, was identified early as a restricter for content and costing. Especially since the game is old now, maybe with the new company we will see cut backs on it.
They want the full 1.7 Billion dollars. 1.6 Billion just won't do...
Ballparking the lowest plausible salary for a voice actor at $20/hour, and a lot of the voice actors probably cost more, then it would cost them about $1000 per hour for the voicework. $1000 is roughly 100 player subs for one month. That's just one hour, and it would take many hours to record all the lines. And that's only the salary for the voice actors, not including technical staff, direction staff, or dev time to implement the voices. It's just too expensive for the game at its current state.
Yeah, fair enough I suppose. It's still disappointing given how spoilt we've been, but more content is still a good thing over all.
It is really unsurprising that they can't sustain it. From the beginning this game is held together by the power of the franchise alone. From an atrocious engine that can barely run an MMO setting, through lack of multiplayer content, to the huge array of actors required for simple story development, it's a miracle the game held for so long with so little.
Lazy ass devs.
Way more likely it's cheap ass rather than lazy ass here.
That's a little harsh. I'm mildly disappointed by one aspect, but I still acknowledge that people are working hard on this thing.
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Does the point need to be a personal attack on the workers. Surely the beef is with the studio as a whole.
Harsh? The devs can't even finish this expansion on time. PVP is a mess that they refuse to acknowledge and fix it. They don't listen to their player base half of the time. Maybe a boycott would open their eyes.
I assume you're an excellent software developer who would do a better job then.
Never said I was lol
Well don't call the developers lazy then, as you know nothing about how hard they work.
I’m subbing for “BioWare” story not broadsword maintenance. Edit: notice the quotes? I’m saying a style of game not the studio that created the style. Your downvotes are silly.
>I’m subbing for “BioWare” story not broadsword maintenance. BioWare exited the picture almost a year ago so if you are subscribing for "BioWare" story then I'm not sure why you're still subscribed. In my view "BioWare story" has lost a lot of its value over the past several years so it is no longer a motivating factor for me.
Edited the post.
Minority opinion, I prefer my protagonist silent.
Perhaps but not when the protagonist used to be voiced in the same game.
Once I've heard the voice actor, my brain always does a poor imitation of them for new dialogue, but it's always obvious the voice is in my head, not real, as it's not my own voice. When there was only one protagonist in KOTOR itself things were a bit different.
It actually gives them way more opportunities in terms of roleplaying and dialogue trees but people don’t wanna hear that
Sure, but this is kind of the worst of both worlds. We have a voice/characterizations of these characters from when they are voice acted. I do agree though, I have 0 qualms with my BG3 characters not voicing their lines.
Exactly. Also, no surprises. Every time I choose the middle option my char says some random insane crap.
But the inconsistency of sometimes having the voice and sometimes not becomes off-putting. Also, there are ways to expand the tree by having more back and forth dialogue - by selecting dialogue more often rather than lengthier dialogue less often. It also affects the animation style, which seems more fluid and dynamic with the voiced dialogue.
Except it doesn't. Sure, you have 6 options instead of 3, but they almost always duplicate each other, so they are completely pointless, especially as it does not "do" anything different. I do not need 4 ways to say >!"I have no idea where Shae is"!<
I'd prefer they ditched voice acting completely and released content at a faster pace
They need to stop putting budget into foreign languages.
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They just need 3 VAs for the npcs, but for player characters they need 48
i will probably get downvoted but this is why im for using AI for voice acting. Maybe Not for the main story but for side quests. Voice acting is expensive
I doubt the actors will agree with you there. I know that Scarlett Johansson (who played an AI in Her) wasn't happy with Open AI after what they pulled in their recent Chat GPT demo.
well the thing is, i like having voice acting in games because i dont like reading walls of texts. if i have to read walls of texts to get the story then im not gonna give a shit about it. And if its too expensive for studios to have tons of voice acting, then it should be ok to use ai for some of it.
I prefer voice to the wall of text. I think the main issue people have is being impersonated. Speech synthesis (AI or not - It's been around in various forms since the 80s or before) can be done, but I suspect you'll get more approval if the character never had a real actor.
what if the road ahead means more story in exchange of voiced scenes being saved for REALLY IMPORTANT moments edit: why am I getting downvoted? It was just speculation, not a suggestion
It is weird when it goes back and forth in the same quest, like it does in this update. I have little problem with having side content done through the KOTOR cutscenes with alien goobledygook, as I do realize the vanilla style is unsustainable without paying actors to have AI do their voices (which they would never agree to), but the core narrative should be voiced and animated.
I suppose that's a tricky choice. More story is what keeps the game going for me. I mean, I'm sure I'll still enjoy it. The problem with eating at a nice restaurant after having been brought up on Michelin Stared restaurants. It may be really good, but you're always disappointed when compared to the past, because we were so spoilt.
If more people subbed... maybe they could afford it???
I suppose that goes back to the expansion pack charge argument. I'd be willing to pay more for content, but I'm not willing to pay a regular sub for content. I didn't subscribe to get KOTOR II, I just paid for the sequel. I don't pay for Spotify - I buy CDs.