Voice overs potentially ToRs downfall?

I agree an example is the Male Voice actor for Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect Games. Jennifer Hale who did the Female Voice over for the Character did a much better job getting the emotions of the character across than Mark Meer did. Some actors are better at Voice acting than Acting in front of a camera or on stage. In fact many Voice Actors spend more time in a sound studio than in front of a camera or on a set. Another example is Peter Cullen who did the Voice over for Optimus Prime in the Transformer Movies as well as in the 1980's Animated Series. Also if you pay close attention many of the Character voice overs in TOR are done by actors who have done previous BioWare games which help keep costs down. A few examples : Trooper (Female): Jennifer Hale (Who also did the female version of Shepard in the Mass Effect Trilogy). The Voice Actress who did Vette was the one who did Mission Veo from KOTOR I. Must I go on? People forget that voice acting requires much more talent than acting on a stage or in front of a camera does, because it is alot harder to get a characters emotions across by strictly using someones voice than it is through Voice and body language combined.

The failing sub numbers hardly have to do with any negative critique of the game on a forum. People play through, see what the game is and then decide if it is worth staying, especially when you have to commit to pay2play. Its not worth it for a lot of people.

BW has stated that "40% of the players who left stated that sub cost was the barrier to them staying". Im sure thats close to true, but I wonder what the other 60% said about the game? Im quite sure it was not "I really like TOR, its a good game, but the forums made me quit."

Im not sure what you found challenging, it is really easy to get to the level cap, and then have nothing to do in game- and THAT is what drove out a lot of players. They effectively beat the game, and therefore felt it was time to move on.

Again, see my post above.

They don't have to record new voice over work every time they make new content. The voice over work is done. It's just a matter of editing it in.

And personally, since I've played this game, I find it hard to go back to reading a bunch of text in other games. Sure, I know you don't actually read it. You skip that too. But I actually like to know what the story is instead of just finding out the objective and bum rushing my way to it. Maybe that's just me.

Your entire post is .. well.

First, if your think the reason sub numbers are falling is because of "negativity", you are not even trying to ask yourself what is driving it. If there are people who have complaints about the game, what do you want them to do?

Let us be blunt: Bioware has stated they would do things they have not done, openly stated they would introduce elements they have not bothered to do, lied about the game never going F2P and not bothered to respond to literally hundreds of threads with key and critical issues in favor of blog posts that are in corporate legal safe speak. There is no part of this since launch that they've handled with the PR or acumen I'd expect from a first-year intern, much less a major development studio. THAT's why there's negativity.

Negativity on the forums only affects the small percentage of people who bother to read said forums, and that is not a majority of the people. EVERY MMO has negativity on the forums. Every single one, unless it's locked down and moderated to crap and beyond. They sent death threats to Star Trek Online devs and mailed burnt poo bags to Funcom!

Second, if you claim you have friends who enjoy "everything in the game except for negative posts", then I'd ask them "why bother reading the forums if that's the only thing that bothers you?" Sorry, this doesn't sound remotely believable.

Third, everyone wants to blame EA. I mean, they're the bad guys, right? Except we're told again and again that this is the brilliant insight of Bioware. I strongly doubt EA told them to go and nerf classes, or design armor that looks like Flintstone rags. Has EA messed things up, yeah. But be honest with yourself, Bioware is in no worse position that Cryptic was with Activision, and at least with Star Trek the developers leveled with us and asked us what we thought and got our input and LISTENED to our feedback. And that's under Activision and Perfect World, two of the most evil and greedy companies on the planet!

Don't lay this all at EA's feet.

Finally, the "nerfs" had nothing to do with PVP players. Go find the thread where PVP players screamed that we needed to nerf overload. You can't because it didn't happen. I'll tell you why this happened: they are nerfing classes to death in prep for the F2P transition. I suspect they'll expand the level cap and put back in skills or add new useful skills above said level increase, which is only available to paid players. It's nothing new, we've seen this in F2P conversions before.

As to the whole Voice thing, so as not to derail the thread:

Yes, we're aware there is years of voice over left to build new content with. That's missing the point.

The game actually operated on the idea that people would want to level through 8 class stories and repeat quests...just because of VO. That's not a pillar to build an MMO on. It *hasn't* retained subs and it *hasn't* kept people from being disappointed in other failings of the game.

Are they nice? Yeah, they are a refreshing change, and often quite funny. Oddly enough, the Secret World uses them as well, to great effect. TSW also tossed in non-voiced smaller quests to provide simpler filler content. (Not that TSW is any great shakes either, that combat is just fail all around, ugh).

What VO can't do by itself is force people to be interested in it. VO doesn't satisfy the people who want better crafting, better PVP, better raids, or even better RP and socialization. As part of a bigger plan it works, but as game with no sandbox , no RvR, no indepth crafting -- all it does is frustrate.

They could have spent a portion of that budget on any number of things, like maybe more QA people to catch bugs, or more robust design work for immediate content updates. That's the frustration.

I don't think they're TOR's downfall, so much as they are no silver bullet that will save it.

Mercs/commandoes get an interrupt.

Sorcs/sages get a major force speed buff.

Deception got a majorly needed buff.
Ops/scoundrels got a minor buff to their stealth.

Overall all the classes that were tweaked, were buffed, not nerfed.

And no class was nerfed in any meaningful way for end game content. You might be able to argue that soloing received a mild nerf in the forms of using knockbacks on lots of mobs, but end game pve was not nerfed.

I'd be highly suspect of ANYTHING that resembles lip service as much as promises that they have "VO in the bank" so to speak.

They seemed to serve quite a bit of pure and utter BS to us during development and post launch, and we seemed to eagerly eat it up.

I call shenanigans. Where is the content? Lost half their subs...could have released it to stem the tide if they, in fact, really had it.

Writing and voice acting the dialogue is quite easy comparative to actually making the game, or adding content. Since conversations for the first five new ops from the game(which includes 3 haven't even heard of yet) were long ago data mined, I do not think it would be unsafe to believe that they've got a lot of voice overs saved somewhere.

Nerfing knockback is not only a MAJOR nerf to solo players, it also restricts one of the few enjoyable limited physics abilities in the game.

Not only is that a huge mistake IMO, it's pretty foolish as well. Simply nerf its use in PVP. It is astounding that this team has not learned the most basic MMO design skills that have been in use for 5 years now.

Maybe they were unaware that you could nerf abilities in PVP only...and also in raids or group play.

Now that is assuming that there is not some unknown game mechanic prevents selective nerfs. I suppose thats possible, but pretty unlikely.

It is a pretty suspect statement.

Then again, if they stay on the current content release schedule of once a year VO quest additions, they may very well have enough banked content for years!

Consider this. You are paying actors to do voice work for you. You know you will need these voices again later. Should you A) Just get the few hours of voice work you need now and worry about rehiring them again later, assuming that they aren't busy with something else then or perhaps even deceased. Or B) Get the actors to read enough lines to fill out content that you haven't even started on yet?

The correct business decision would be B, get as much voice work done as you can while you have the actor in your studio, and since that is what they said they did I will take them at their word.

BioWare may have made some mistakes in creating this game, but getting the voice work done was not one of them.