The way you people do with bits of stories each update is nice, at least we get something to look at, but when my agent able to reunion with lovely Shara Jenn and the former minister? and the Watcher Three? What happened those guys and gals? BioWare seem completely ignore and forgot about them and fully focused on mandolarion and lord malgus story,

I appreciate the malgus story, I loved playing it, BUT I also want to see my former crew like people I mentioned above, you cannot forget them, they are what made our class stories awesome, especially agent, agent class story is fantastic, longer and better than sith and jedi stories.

so please bring back our class story NPCs as in a small update, thats okay too, I just want to talk and reunion with them. I want to see what happened to them hopefully nothing bad.

Keeper aka former minister seem to survive after the sor class mission which is nice, he mentioned he blackmailed the dark council by releasing important documents upon his possible death which was AWESOME, satisfying and cool. But what about Watcher two aka keeper aka shara? Don't you dare to tell me she is dead on Nathema, I got a SIS agent on that console so she must survived in my gameplay. What about that little guy Watcher three?

I want them! You can do it BioWare! Just show middle finger to the EA and say "our fans deserve better" and do this! You can do that! Yes we can! *in Obama voice*

Trust in the force!

Malgus is a character that applies to or is tied to all classes, the characters you're talking about only really apply to the Imperial Agent.

While it would be great to see more of the vanilla class-specific characters show up more or again the realities are that it economically it just doesn't really work out for the game to do class specific content.

I posted this in another thread but I'll post it here too because it kind of applies.

Note: I'm just going to be using the vanilla companions for this example to make things a bit easier all around.

 

Number of Classes: 8

Number of Class Voice Actors: 16 (1 Male, 1 Female for each class)

Number of Companions Per Class: 5

Number of Companions Total: 40 (42 counting ship droids)

Number of Companions that speak English: 33 (35 counting ship droids)

Number of Voice Actors for Companions: 33/35 (No one actor voices more than one companion nor do any of the Class Actors voice any of the companions)

Number of Languages the game is recorded in: 3

 

- The Class Actors are always signed to multi year contracts because every story update is generally going to require that they speak. The companion voice actors, more specifically the vanilla ones, don't have the same contracts/deals.

 

- The frequency with which Lana and Theorn are used is probably a good indication that their actors have similar contracts to that of the Class Actors.

 

If there was an update (expansion, etc) that used or required all the vanilla companions that would be at least 49 actors just for the English version of the game. Multiply that by 3 for the other languages at your at 147 and again note this is just for the vanilla companions.

 

The reason(s) why you don't see X character(s) show up in specific instances where those characters would make sense is because those actors aren't always available for the team to work with for any number of reasons whether it be scheduling or restrictions placed on them by SAG (Screen Actors Guild) or whatever else.

 

Unfortunately what this means is that you can't always write story conent with those characters in mind. You/they have to write a story within the constraints of what they have to work with which isn't always a lot.

That chart, while impressive, doesn't really hold up and I'm not sure why I keep reading excuses for Biowear on this topic all the time. This is not an indie title. If it were an indie title, then maybe I'd give them a pass. So the amount of voice actors needed doesn't seem like it should be an issue at all.

While I can understand having some difficulties getting the same actors to keep coming back year after year, they could always put someone else in their place. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen other voice actors play existing roles... while they're not perfect voice matches, one can generally get over it. It's not like Daffy Duck is still voiced by Mel Blanc for instance.

OP - One thing I would add to this conversation is that companions have been coming back little by little. So there's always hope we get to see more of them in the next expansion. So keep your dream alive and don't let these naysayers get ya down.

That chart, while impressive, doesn't really hold up and I'm not sure why I keep reading excuses for Biowear on this topic all the time. This is not an indie title. If it were an indie title, then maybe I'd give them a pass. So the amount of voice actors needed doesn't seem like it should be an issue at all.

 

While I can understand having some difficulties getting the same actors to keep coming back year after year, they could always put someone else in their place. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen other voice actors play existing roles... while they're not perfect voice matches, one can generally get over it. It's not like Daffy Duck is still voiced by Mel Blanc for instance.

 

OP - One thing I would add to this conversation is that companions have been coming back little by little. So there's always hope we get to see more of them in the next expansion. So keep your dream alive and don't let these naysayers get ya down.

Don't let the fact that BW may not be an indie title, but big companies will often be cheap to try to get a bigger profit margin.

Is this the case here. I can't say. But it's highly likely.

That chart, while impressive, doesn't really hold up and I'm not sure why I keep reading excuses for Biowear on this topic all the time. This is not an indie title. If it were an indie title, then maybe I'd give them a pass.

It's not a cost issue it's more the amount of time and scheduling it takes to bring everyone and everything together. If you have an update that requires 10 characters that's 30 different actors you need to assemble and record across the game's 3 languages. That takes time to do.

SWTOR doesn't have some massive development team behind it. Yes, SWTOR was originally designed to be on the scope and scale of WoW and was originally designed to receive updates on the same scope and scale too but the game wasn't as successful as EA hoped it would be and they ended up turning the game into a Free To Play game and the studio (Bioware Austin) had multiple rounds of layoffs.

The reality is that SWTOR is a bigger game than what the current dev team can support. More specifically the game was never able to continue with the expectations people/players had from it because the dev team was gutted to the point where that kind of support for the game was no longer possible.

So the amount of voice actors needed doesn't seem like it should be an issue at all.

It is absolutely an issue when the Screen Actors Guild limits the number of actors they can use. For example, there can't be an episode of something like The Simpsons that has 50 different actors on it due to SAG regulations. It has nothing to do with cost but instead is a labor union thing. SWTOR has to follow those same guidelines if they're using SAG actors which they do.

While I can understand having some difficulties getting the same actors to keep coming back year after year, they could always put someone else in their place. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen other voice actors play existing roles... while they're not perfect voice matches, one can generally get over it. It's not like Daffy Duck is still voiced by Mel Blanc for instance.

That's not what the issue is. There might a few actors here and there who are harder to schedule than others but the specific actors aren't the issue. It's things like the number of actors they have under contract, SAG regulations, etc, that present the bigger problems.

OP - One thing I would add to this conversation is that companions have been coming back little by little. So there's always hope we get to see more of them in the next expansion. So keep your dream alive and don't let these naysayers get ya down.

Or you know you/he could come up with a better solution instead of continually presenting the same band-aid solution that ultimately puts everyone and everything right back in the same place.

Don't let the fact that BW may not be an indie title, but big companies will often be cheap to try to get a bigger profit margin.

 

Is this the case here. I can't say. But it's highly likely.

Here's the biggest issue SWTOR has had for years now.

After the game went Free To Play and the development team shrank the game started to make money and it started to make money without EA having to invest much money in continued support for the game.

So, if you're EA and the game makes money as is without you needing to spend much money on it how is anyone going to convince you to spend more money than you need to, take on more risk, potentially lose money, etc, on SWTOR when you don't need to?

That is why the game never continued on the way it was supposed to or with the expectations players had from it and it's been stuck in that same place ever since the game went Free To Play.

After the game went Free To Play and the development team shrank the game started to make money and it started to make money without EA having to invest much money in continued support for the game.

Why spend resources on something like new content to play when you can sell a shiny armor set for something like 25$ on the Cartel Market? Much easier, much cheaper, much faster. Apparently it works out for them.

Why spend resources on something like new content to play when you can sell a shiny armor set for something like 25$ on the Cartel Market? Much easier, much cheaper, much faster. Apparently it works out for them.

The Cartel Market team is a different team than the main SWTOR dev team. A lot of people assume it's all one and the same but it's not.

The thing I think a lot of people get wrong is that Bioware Austin is are choosing to focus on the Cartel Market, or that Bioware Austin can just do all the things that people ask for but EA is really where most of the fault lies.

EA are the ones that you/someone would need to convince to give Bioware Austin the resources they need so that they can deliver the type of content players are demanding but then it ultimately comes back to why would EA do that when they make money off the game exactly the way the game is.