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Next two playable races


Lyrinna

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Echani for Imperial, I only saw these in full armour in Kotor2, so lets see what they look like.

 

I think that you might be confused because Brianna (The Handmaiden Companion in K2) is Half-Echani as were the other Handmaiden Sisters.

 

You sure you weren't thinking of the Iridonian for KOTOR 1?

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I understand it and I can see how the point appears compelling. I don't agree however.

 

Whilst it is reasonable to assert that long alien dialogue would be annoying it is not to say there isn't a way in which it can be made tolerable thus enabling players to enjoy the elements of playing a non basic speaking race that they are after.

 

Alien non basic dialogue doesn't need to spend as long saying the same thing. Something that takes 30 seconds to say in English might only take 10 seconds in Wookiee.

 

Don't forget, when its non basic alien noises you are going to be reading the subtitles anyway after which you can Spacebar.

 

Bioware/EA didn't spend all that cash on voice actors though just so we later become a wookie and listen to him growl for 2 Weeks while you level. They also aren't going to rewrite the storys dailog to accommodate a couple new races, that content is done and you shouldn't expect or even want it to be revisited. I understand how cool it would be to play as a wookie or jawa but you have to realise thats more of a fun goof around idea. Even if the voice acting wasn't the barrier swtor being a serious game is a barrier. In no way would a wookie, jawa or yoda class even fit into the class/stories we have.

 

Like I said I understand it would be cool to play those kind of fun races but it doesn't belong in a mmo like this. Playing those kind of races belong games like the force unleashed or star wars kinnect once you complete the game normally and can play through again as a wookie or something.

 

I would love to see more races added into the game though, bioware has lots of options they can go with. I hope they don't nickle and dime us for them either !

Edited by HoboWithAStick
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if people hate alien speak..... there's a REALLY simple solution to your problems. don't play that species!! omg i know, it's so cutting edge! but trust me, it works! and when you're spacebarring through your flashpoints, you still won't have to hear it! omg, right?

 

Honesty my opinion is that if you create a character who generally doesn't speak basic that somewhere in the game there's a preference toggle to set whether or not your character speaks basic or native. There could also be a 2nd toggle for "Make friendly players always speak basic in conversations" That way if I group with Tux playing a Wookie and I have native on but he has the make friendlies speak basic then on my computer the auto for a Wookie plays but on his the existing class voice over content is played.

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Someone mentioned earlier the "droid translator device" from the novels. This could be implemented fairly easily I think as there are some masks and helmets that have a synthesized sound for each voice. So they wouldn't even have to do new vo, just make that synthesized voice default for new races that don't speak basic. Just my two cents.
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Personally, I disagree. Although it completely depends on how it's done.

 

For example, myself I do not speak Japanese. Can I watch anime? Yes, most definitely. Heck, I even prefer it watching subbed over dubbed. Not understanding the language, doesn't make me want to punch in the screen.

 

Nor do I truly speak French. Sure, I can order a beer, buy some bread, etc. whilst in France. But a conversation? No, that's too far. However, I most definitely do not mind watching movies in French with subtitles. It by far makes me want to punch in the screen.

 

And the same goes for some languages in SWTOR. For example Jawa's making their sounds, are all fine to me. I most definitely wouldn't object to playing as one of them.

 

But there's also some alien language spoken by some which sounds like some sort of mutant fly is doing the talking. I most definitely wouldn't want to listen to that every quest no.

 

I love watching subtitled shows personally. This is totally different from what we are experiencing in the game, for the reason that I stated previously: They aren't real languages, they're just a small set of words that keep getting repeated over and over and it really does start to grate on me. Listening to a foreign language and listening to gobbledygook have a different effect on my brain. They're fine in small quantities, but the more I hear them the more they bug me.

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We probably would never make a non-English speaking player race. I know it seems attractive, but simply put, hearing alien for way too long drives you crazy. An early build of the game had Tython populated by a race other than Twi'leks, and after about the fourth quest, you want to put a fist through your monitor.

 

So any races we add in the future will need to plausibly be able to speak basic.

 

One thing I don't really understand is why a race like the togruta (Ashara Zavros's species) wasn't included. I remember reading your reasoning a while back for why we only had human-like species and it made sense from a cinematic perspective. It wouldn't be plausible or realistic to have a jelly fish talking to someone without them saying, "What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?" [insert Hanar joke here.]

 

But togruta is no more alien looking than twi'leks. Neither are Voss. And they are certainly less alien than cathar. This is one of the few aspects of SWTOR that is a real turn-off to me and quite puzzling. I don't understand why there wasn't more variety for playable species in a Star Wars game, a universe known for its alien creatures.

 

The whole notion about the main characters in the movies all being human misses the point. This is an MMO. Not a movie. And in an MMO, any time you sacrifice customization for cinamatics, you lose the spirit of the genre entirely.

 

Which can translate into people leaving.

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One thing I don't really understand is why a race like the togruta (Ashara Zavros's species) wasn't included.

 

I think it's simply that they couldn't include all possible species at launch, and they had a vote to decide on which ones to put in, which would be easiest to design different facial features for, outfits for, etc.. I am pretty sure Togruta will make it in at some point, especially considering 1) they're already in the game and 2) they're very popular.

 

The whole notion about the main characters in the movies all being human misses the point. This is an MMO. Not a movie. And in an MMO, any time you sacrifice customization for cinamatics, you lose the spirit of the genre entirely.

 

Which can translate into people leaving.

 

Well, not necessarily. WoW launched with the absolutely most dismal customization I've ever seen, and they've only marginally improved it with allowing people to change hair and transmogrify gear in more recent times. 25 man raids back before Cataclysm was like an army of clones. Yes, you can be some really different looking races now, but good luck distinguishing yourself from everyone else that plays that same race.

Edited by chuixupu
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I think it's simply that they couldn't include all possible species at launch, and they had a vote to decide on which ones to put in, which would be easiest to design different facial features for, outfits for, etc.. I am pretty sure Togruta will make it in at some point, especially considering 1) they're already in the game and 2) they're very popular.

 

 

 

Well, not necessarily. WoW launched with the absolutely most dismal customization I've ever seen, and they've only marginally improved it with allowing people to change hair and transmogrify gear in more recent times. 25 man raids back before Cataclysm was like an army of clones. Yes, you can be some really different looking races now, but good luck distinguishing yourself from everyone else that plays that same race.

 

I guess I should have been more specific when I said customization. I was talking about species diversity. In WoW at launch, you could play any of the traditional high fantasy races, plus cows and undead. Then they added draenei, wargen, and now pandas. That's the kind of diversity I'm talking about. They didn't just offer recolored humanoids.

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I guess I should have been more specific when I said customization. I was talking about species diversity. In WoW at launch, you could play any of the traditional high fantasy races, plus cows and undead. Then they added draenei, wargen, and now pandas. That's the kind of diversity I'm talking about. They didn't just offer recolored humanoids.

 

This is true, but it's also true that the majority of players tend to not want to play the "wierder" races. The most played races are humans, blood elves, and night elves. I read an article recently where the GW2 developers were complaining about how everyone is rolling human warriors when they thought they put their best work into the non-human races. Regardless, I think that SWTOR's cinematics are its strength and it should play to its strength. Some may feel that variety of playable races is more important than cinematics, but I think at that point you're wishing for SWTOR to have been made a completely different kind of MMO. I happen to have mostly stopped playing WoW because I like what SWTOR offers better.

 

Maybe at some point they'll make more interesting species playable, but I totally agree that they will need to speak basic. This fortunately does leave a lot of options open, still.

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Personally, I disagree. Although it completely depends on how it's done.

 

For example, myself I do not speak Japanese. Can I watch anime? Yes, most definitely. Heck, I even prefer it watching subbed over dubbed. Not understanding the language, doesn't make me want to punch in the screen.

 

Nor do I truly speak French. Sure, I can order a beer, buy some bread, etc. whilst in France. But a conversation? No, that's too far. However, I most definitely do not mind watching movies in French with subtitles. It by far makes me want to punch in the screen.

 

And the same goes for some languages in SWTOR. For example Jawa's making their sounds, are all fine to me. I most definitely wouldn't object to playing as one of them.

 

But there's also some alien language spoken by some which sounds like some sort of mutant fly is doing the talking. I most definitely wouldn't want to listen to that every quest no.

 

Hearing Japanese in an anime, and hearing Huttese in TOR are 2 thing totally different.

 

Japanese is a proper language with a vocabulary, syntaxe and grammar. You won't hear the same sentence all over the time during the anime unless it is a very basic one. You can even start to understand with time.

 

Huttese is an imaginary language, with no constuction at all, that forced devs to only record 10-20 sentences which bear no particular meaning, and which are chosen depending on its length and or the pauses it contains. In some cases, when you speak to a a NPC, you can hear the same sentence twice, bearing totally different meanings. Granted, the devs has made that it's not current, but it occurs. But now imagine that it's your character who speak an alien language... once you've reached level 5 or 6 you'll probabily have heard all the possible speeches and then you'll hear the same ones again and again all through the game. That's why you would like to put your fist in your monitor like Damion said.

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Have a look at the long running poll on new races. Wookiees and Droids have a lot of votes, last time I checked Wookiees had the most votes.

 

Cel Cawdro's Ultimate "Community Desire for Species" Poll is the thread name. BioWare doesn't like for us to link to other topics so I won't provide a link. I can update that wookiee is no longer the top vote getter in that poll but it is still very popular with the third most votes.

 

And the phrase, "the customer is always right," is idiotic. The customer may think he/she knows what he wants when in reality, he/she has no clue what the real consequences of that choice are.

 

Take wookies as a playable race, when players voted for that did they FULLY appreciate that the character would not speak basic (English)? Probably not. They just think it would be "cool" to be able to play Chewbacca.

 

Personally, I disagree. Although it completely depends on how it's done.

 

For example, myself I do not speak Japanese. Can I watch anime? Yes, most definitely. Heck, I even prefer it watching subbed over dubbed. Not understanding the language, doesn't make me want to punch in the screen.

 

Nor do I truly speak French. Sure, I can order a beer, buy some bread, etc. whilst in France. But a conversation? No, that's too far. However, I most definitely do not mind watching movies in French with subtitles. It by far makes me want to punch in the screen.

 

And the same goes for some languages in SWTOR. For example Jawa's making their sounds, are all fine to me. I most definitely wouldn't object to playing as one of them.

 

But there's also some alien language spoken by some which sounds like some sort of mutant fly is doing the talking. I most definitely wouldn't want to listen to that every quest no.

 

I had a long drawn out statement, but it boils down to this...you are exception not the rule.

 

if people hate alien speak..... there's a REALLY simple solution to your problems. don't play that species!! omg i know, it's so cutting edge! but trust me, it works! and when you're spacebarring through your flashpoints, you still won't have to hear it! omg, right?

 

But if 98% of the population (an exaggeration but probably not by much) will not play the species then why make it in the first place? Why cater to a miniscule minority when there are plenty of species that 98% will play?

 

 

One thing I don't really understand is why a race like the togruta (Ashara Zavros's species) wasn't included. I remember reading your reasoning a while back for why we only had human-like species and it made sense from a cinematic perspective. It wouldn't be plausible or realistic to have a jelly fish talking to someone without them saying, "What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?" [insert Hanar joke here.]

 

But togruta is no more alien looking than twi'leks. Neither are Voss. And they are certainly less alien than cathar. This is one of the few aspects of SWTOR that is a real turn-off to me and quite puzzling. I don't understand why there wasn't more variety for playable species in a Star Wars game, a universe known for its alien creatures.

 

The whole notion about the main characters in the movies all being human misses the point. This is an MMO. Not a movie. And in an MMO, any time you sacrifice customization for cinamatics, you lose the spirit of the genre entirely.

 

Which can translate into people leaving.

 

Because then they would have less to add and entice players with later. Every MMO does this: they come out with a core set of species, and then every so often they announce "we are adding species X." And guess what? player population goes up. Whodathunkit? It's a marketing scheme nothing more nothing less.

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Kel Dor speak Basic and Falleen's could be in the game, what just because they might not incorporate the pheromones doesn't mean that they can't be added.

 

i just want Kel Dor that was my vote for the next race i wasn't saying we couldn't have it B^P as for the Falleen... i just think it would for one be really really hard to get what they do to translate in game... and if i cant basically control people with my pheromones it wouldn't be nearly as fun nor would it be true to their race. im just saying if they are complaining about non basic speaking races being a bad idea then falleen should also fall into that category.. a lot more work would go into making them just like making a non basic speaking race.

 

as for them saying that just listening to non basic speakers in game make them want to punch the scream maybe they should have done a lil more work and not been lazy and made it sound like they were actually speaking a language and not have some bad voice actor read random words unattached and then try and peace a few together and hit repeat every few seconds. that's what i hear constantly in game is a few random words that sounds like my GPS is talking and then repeated over and over and over again.... THAT is what makes it annoying!!! and like someone else said just kuz it takes us 5 min to say something that don't mean it will take a wookie that long to say it!! Just think of Mandarin... that crap takes for ever to say a 5 word sentence but in English only a second or two

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This is one of the few aspects of SWTOR that is a real turn-off to me and quite puzzling. I don't understand why there wasn't more variety for playable species in a Star Wars game, a universe known for its alien creatures.

 

Making an alien race fully human playable is a huge amount of work, at least if you want to give players the level of customization options that they have come to expect. It takes a lot of work to make all of the customization options work together and look good, while still ensuring people still can find looks that are unique to each other.

 

The Togruta provide a unique problem in this regard, in regards to the tentacles. Yes, the Twi'leks have tentacles too, but they are typically behind the player, whereas the Togruta's canonically drape across the front of the character. This means that they struggle to work with the existing animations and gear without clipping -- indeed, the first screenshot you see for Ashara if you google her is one with her chin ridiculously clipping through her tentacle. While this may be acceptable for a companion who is frequently offscreen while fighting, or NPCs who we can dress and pose carefully, its much more problematic for player characters who need to be able to wear anything and perform any animation and still look good. (The Twi'leks clip somewhat as well, but much art was tweaked to make this a lot less prevalent than it otherwise would have been)

 

I'm not trying to pour cold water in the species discussion. Quite the opposite - if the Cathar do well, I hope to expand your options even more, and we should know the answer to that 'soonish'. I just don't want anyone to think that just because an alien is currently in the game as an NPC, that it is trivial to turn it into player art -- it's a TON of work to do that, and do it well.

Edited by JovethGonzalez
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