We all have either played or at least heard of the debacle of the massive amount of voice acting in swtor and how that went down with the community but is it such a terrible idea to have that kind of voice acting and cut scenes in Mmorpg's?

Id like to hear the opinions of the community on this specifically what went right and wrong.

no

Seeing that this forum is mostly 'pro-sandbox' I expect your poll to say 'No'.

A good VA enchances the game experience a lot so in that sense it is 'better'.

Whether it makes it 'better' for all players is another issue.

Obvilion had absolutly godawful VA (actually all ES series does). Will having some competent VAs behind all of their NPCs make the series 'better'? Sure it will.

Is it worth the cost / time? That is a personal call.

Originally posted by Ginaz
For an important storyline, like your class quests in SWTOR, then I would say yes.  For the more mundane and generic quests, I would say no.  Text only would be fine for those.

That echos my sentiments of what bioware should have done with the game. The generic quests had no business having voice acting and after doing a flashpoint and watching the same cut scene and voice acting the second time was idiotic.

It isn't such a black and white answer.  Voice acting can improve upon the story as one doesn't have to read every text in order to understand whats going on and thus makes the games story a bit more immersive.  However it does not mean it can make up for shallow or piss poor stories.  SWTOR went way overkill for every single damn thing being a cutscene.  They should have kept it to the class story lines or like in GW2 it was strictly with dungeons and personal stories.

EAWare did a great thing with the whole dialogue options in groups and really all MMOs should try to emulate.  Vocie actiong needs to be done in moderation.

Originally posted by Ambros123

It isn't such a black and white answer.  Voice acting can improve upon the story as one doesn't have to read every text in order to understand whats going on and thus makes the games story a bit more immersive.  However it does not mean it can make up for shallow or piss poor stories.  SWTOR went way overkill for every single damn thing being a cutscene.  They should have kept it to the class story lines or like in GW2 it was strictly with dungeons and personal stories.

EAWare did a great thing with the whole dialogue options in groups and really all MMOs should try to emulate.  Vocie actiong needs to be done in moderation.

The wheel was ridiculous IMO but my main grievance was the generic quest voice acting. I always enjoyed the class specific scenes but would've liked some to be a bit shorter. I'm not a fan of having to choose 4-5 wheels worth of opinions simply to have the npc tell me to go to Voss.

Its all about numbers. finding the right balance, The main reason i liked TSW. Quests that need minimal explaining have no video. those that have more and will tie into the atmosphere get a video. the story line gets a extensive assortment of videos.

This is different from SWTOR because in SWTOR every mission has atleast 2 or 3 videos.

The other difference was the quality of voice acting. In TSW every character you meet has their own personality, has their own like dislikes and manurisms.

In SWTOR every character Felt like a stock character.

Stock Jedi 1-5 Stock Sith 1-5 Rince Repeat Print.

If done right, yes. A good example is SWTOR.

If done badly, no. A good example is GW2.

Of course, the above is my opinion.

Voice acting is fine if they actually hire people who can, ya know act, insted of just flatly read lines off a script like in most videogames, especally ones from japan like jrpgs, where they totally butcher the hell out of the characters most of the time. There were a few decent dubs on ps2/psp, but most otherwise were complete trash. I say if they aren't going to really try just leave it in its native language and just add some subtitles, would actually save the company bringing it here money since they don't need to hire VA's who suck ass anyway. Then again for me, I can understand a little japanese when its spoken, or actually quite a bit of spoken japanese, and it really irks me when they just totally translated what was said wrong. If you play any Visual novels especally ones from Mangagamer they do this alot, where the translated text in no way is even remotely simmlar to what they actually said. With every console these days having a HDD, I really don't see why they cannot offer a free download to put in the games orignal language (usually japanese) for the voice overs. Its kinda why I like Nis America so much, they usually include both voice over tracks in their games... Mind you with the graphics of most Nis published games they have more than enough spare space.

Anyway I kinda went on a little rant there, all in all I don't mind voice overs in a language other than the game orignally came in as long as they VA's actually tried to ya know.. act, sadly they rarely do.

Originally posted by Draron

If done right, yes. A good example is SWTOR.

If done badly, no. A good example is GW2.

Of course, the above is my opinion.

Glad to hear your opinion and if you like the job in swtor there's nothing wrong with enjoying it.

All reasonable opinions are valid and welcome even if they are opposite my own.

Originally posted by Axehandle

Originally posted by Ambros123

It isn't such a black and white answer.  Voice acting can improve upon the story as one doesn't have to read every text in order to understand whats going on and thus makes the games story a bit more immersive.  However it does not mean it can make up for shallow or piss poor stories.  SWTOR went way overkill for every single damn thing being a cutscene.  They should have kept it to the class story lines or like in GW2 it was strictly with dungeons and personal stories.

EAWare did a great thing with the whole dialogue options in groups and really all MMOs should try to emulate.  Vocie actiong needs to be done in moderation.

The wheel was ridiculous IMO but my main grievance was the generic quest voice acting. I always enjoyed the class specific scenes but would've liked some to be a bit shorter. I'm not a fan of having to choose 4-5 wheels worth of opinions simply to have the npc tell me to go to Voss.

Or worse, 4-5 wheels only for them to tell you to deliver an item to a guy like 30 meters away from him. Yeah I got an issue with quest based mmo's because most of the quests are completly pointless, and they have all this writing for a quest that bascally ends up being "go kill 5 rabbits" or something. I mean, I don't need your life story npc before you ask me to kill like 5 rabbits, just tell me what you need so I can get on with it. In WoW back when I played it years back, I never read quests because to be frank I didn''t give 2 shits about why said npc needs me to kill 6 pigs. If its the mmo's MAIN story quest I may take the time to read it if its interesting after I quickly skim thru it, but for any side quests I don't bother, because you rnever going to interact with that npc again.