AJSB recently suggested that, in an attempt to include the (totally cool) idea of voice-overs in the game while sticking to a budget that we appeal to the playerbase for voice work. I'm here to do exactly that.
I, for one, have done voice work before for training videos and game mods for Oblivion. You need a good quality mic, not terrible acoustics and the ability to speak and be understood. I understand that many of us who THINK we would be good at it might not be for whatever and that's fine. There are enough of us in the CoT fanbase to do the job I think.
If anyone else is willing to exchange voice work for non-financial reimbursement (we're thinking KS perks and rewards), please add your name and any prior voice experience (if any) to this thread. My hope is that the Devs will give us a shot.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I believe the devs previously said they are not pursuing voice acting in CoT in favor of text and music gaming. Not just for resources but because leaving some things to the imagination was allowed for more immersion.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I do not understand this hatred towards voice-acting. Indeed. the silence of City of Heroes seemed strange to me.
Unfortunately, I have no talent for voice acting at all.
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I sometimes think what seems strange to me about voice acting in games is not the absolute lack of it but the "occasional" use of it. Sure it might be fine for the big boss to say a few lines, but why doesn't random minion number 657 say anything? The total lack of spoken speech seems more acceptable (or at least tolerable) to me than having just a few voices in special locations. Like JayBezz implied it's actually kind of immersion breaking when voice acting isn't used ubiquitously in a game - in those cases it becomes even MORE noticeable in the places where it's not used.
For what it’s worth it'd be great if they could give spoken dialog to every NPC in the game. But since that's obviously prohibitive I'd actually rather CoT not make it a priority at all, at least for launch. TBH, voice acting can probably be considered a "frill" that's not as strictly as important as getting the core game itself launched and running smoothly.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I would really love to get an answer on this idea from a dev. This could really make CoT a leading MMO, and not just an overgrown fan project.
Another version of this is to have the player base record acoustic music for street musicians.
This approach seems like the most reasonable in terms of getting any voice content recorded. I'd add to it a suggestion for the devs to provide a unique dialog id# known to the client and accessible to client-side mods, so that players can develop a means play the associated snippet of recorded voice when triggered. A way for mods to extend the in-game options menu (in this case, to add voice options such as a skip/silence keybind and voice volume control) would be helpful as well.
Treating this as a mod for now would also take away the upfront burden of requiring the devs to screen the voice actors or approve the recordings - this could all be handled by the modding team. If the mod becomes sufficiently popular and is recognized for its quality, it can be blended into the game later.
have you heard the soundtrack.. I mean it's kinda badass..
Also CO players I have two words - Green Dragon. LOL. Voice Acting works in games like Marvel Heroes where the voices are somewhat well known (don't get me started on Storm tho) but in a game like this where the characters are new.. if Anthem sounds wrong I will never like her again.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
have you heard the soundtrack.. I mean it's kinda badass..
Also CO players I have two words - Green Dragon. LOL. Voice Acting works in games like Marvel Heroes where the voices are somewhat well known (don't get me started on Storm tho) but in a game like this where the characters are new.. if Anthem sounds wrong I will never like her again.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I have usually found voice acting to be awesome if done professionally, and extremely bad otherwise. It is just like programming, art and writing; you usually need professionals for it to not suck. I believe there is a vastly greater number of professional progammers and artists available to volunteer just because there are a lot more people out there doing programming and art professionally than voice acting, and as such it is probably a good decision to not do it for the game. I think the quality you would get from a volunteer pool would be fairly poor.
The modding idea isn't bad though. Dr. Tyche did say they were going to put hooks in for voice acting in case they wanted to add it at some point, so if the hooks could be exposed, that would be cool.
I've already posted my opinion (in the thread that spawned this thread) about the negative effect that anything less than professional voice acting has on a game, so it should come as no surprise that I agree with the folks who have aired their doubts above. (I hadn't thought about Lothic's very good point regarding all-or-nothing, or Jay's point about leaving some things to the imagination.)
Could you provide evidence for this assertion, please?
I don't hate voice acting -- when done well, it can be very entertaining. It's just so easy to get horribly wrong (as many big games have done) and it just takes one bad actor to sour the whole thing.
But even if we were lucky enough to have the most outstanding voice actors in the world amongst our volunteer community, there's another consideration, illustrated by an example from SWTOR. Many of my CoX friends who migrated to SWTOR when CoX was killed stopped playing because of the voice-acting. Not because of the quality (which was excellent, for the most part), but the impact it had on the speed of play. They were folks who always played as part of a team, and they found having to wait through dialogue bogged down their experience, but they didn't want to skip it all and go into the mission with no information.
I played SWTOR almost exclusively solo, so this wasn't an issue for me, but I can understand what they're talking about. Think of the cutscenes for the early iTrials and how quickly folks asked for a way to skip them. Voice can sound cool the first time you hear it, a little less cool the next time, and eventually downright annoying when you go through a mish with your 10th alt. Or it becomes a caricature: "Then I took an arrow in the knee." Sure, there could be an option to skip spoken dialogue, but then why invest all the time and resources to put it in in the first place?
Which brings up something else... When it comes to getting story or the details of a mish, voice gives only 2 options: sit through it all or skip it all. You can't scan voice the way you can text to focus on the details you are looking for. It also makes it hard to retcon any old dialogue when there are changes in the game world.
I just see voice-acting as (1) unnecessary and (2) too risky.
On the pro side, if all the dialogue were spoken, it would keep the spelling errors from annoying me. :-)
Spurn all ye kindle.
That wasn't an assertion. It was a warning.
The standard for top tier MMO's now is fully voice acted. If you do anything less, you are immediately a B game from Beta forward. Doing less than fully voiced actually doesn't even make this the top superhero MMO. DCUO has full voice acting, and it came out in 2011. This game is coming out in 2015, which means it doesn't only have to meet the current standard, but the projected standard as well. No voice acting in 2015 is like no guild support in 2012- a completely absurd proposition. This game will be classmates with Everquest Next, Elder Scrolls Online, Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms, Wildstar, and whatever the hell Blizzard's Titan is. This game can't show up to school with jelly stains on it's shirt and still expect to be the cool kid.
This really has to be treated as an emergency. This one feature could break the game before it even launches.
samehere but sametime not read lot text implement later i.e dlc/expansion pack for Voice Acting: An Call for Actors/Actresses and npcs?
edit or make a .kickstarter for Voice Acting?
edit 2 Voice Acting see in CoT it guy here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVTsU_qSXLw
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
I'd still like to see evidence for this assertion -- proof that a feature that is present in many games is essential for the success of all other games. By the same line of thinking, one could say that the game must have corpse looting, need/greed, and gear tied to appearance to be successful because most other MMOs have it. Or even that it has to be in the fantasy genre, because most other MMOs are. I'm not seeing evidence to back up this claim.
Spurn all ye kindle.
To some extent I see valid points on both sides here, but it seems to be at risk of diverging into extremes instead of finding some common ground. Why not some give-and-take such as "I want voice acting, but I think it's most compelling for missions involving XYZ lore and well-known characters, so let's start there as a proof of concept" or "I don't like voices in MMOs, so I'd want them to not take up space on my HDD, but I can understand the appeal and would be ok with the devs giving a mod creator some code hooks for it" or "here's a list of memorable voice-acted characters in MMOs and why I like/dislike them."
I see no harm in letting this thread do some recruiting, or hosting some brainstorming on how CoT can appeal to those who want voice acting without hurting those who don't. However, we can't ignore the financial hurdles involved in this rather unusual attempt to create an MMO. Until we start seeing successful releases like the character creator, comparisons to conventionally-developed MMOs feel premature. If the devs focus on getting the core right, and we as players support side projects to shore up the outer defenses, as the OP suggests, I think that's our best hope for a successful game.
Little drops of Voice Acting sprinkled about is okay for me. Such as combat catch-phrases, screams/yells when dealing (or receiving) damage, or small clip-scenes.
Excessive use of Voice Acting, as in reading every single mission objective to me (even though I have the text appear before me) and too many movie clip-scenes, I immediately open that volume control and shut it off!
Then there are the bad voice-acting cases in general. It's easy to give someone personality in text, it's difficult to match a voice to that personality. You may notice in anime watching English dubbed vs Japenese, usually one voice is clearly better than the other because it fits the character better.
I think I'm with a few others here. Yes Voice acting would be cool if done Right. However with time and skill limitations MWM already have it would be a feature I would accept not having. Being number one MMO would be great, but we aren't aiming for that. We are aiming for a stable nitch market with hope to expand. A new home is the drive for CoT not a triple A game.
Game play wise, I agree that first time seeing the cut scene for Frostfire and hearing him talk was awesome, over and over and over and over... I did a lot of time in the Hollows, it got old fast. I miss the Ice slide more then the voice acting.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
I'd also like to hear how the devs feel about this. Specifically, the localization guys.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
For what it's worth I'll add to my last post in this thread from yesterday by saying that I'm not strictly anti-voice acting for CoT. I just don't see it as an absolute necessity for launch.
I certainly don't have any problem with the idea of voice acting being handled via "hooks" for mods at a future date or having players contribute to the effort and have voice added to the main game after being vetted from amongst the player community. My main concern is that I simply don't think CoT needs to bother making it a top priority to get a bunch of (relatively) high priced professional voice acting lined up for launch.
I read what AJSB said about professional voice acting now being considered a fundamental standard for MMO gaming and any game lacking it in 2015 would be effectively doomed to second-class failure. Again while I think it'd be nice if that could be arranged for CoT I seriously do NOT believe CoT would be marked off as a complete failure based on this issue alone. I realize all the "younglings" today expect every game to have every bell-n-whistle imaginable. All I can say to that is that I've been playing computer games for decades now and I'm pretty sure dozens of the best ones I've ever enjoyed never had a word of voice acting in it. I love everyone's desire to want to see CoT be treated as an equal to any other AAA title but honestly if a player out there decides against playing it ONLY because it might lack a little voice acting I doubt that's the kind of player who would have stayed around for any serious length of time to begin with.
This is the main reason I actually prefer to watch anime with subtitles. For me simply "understanding the words" is less important than hearing the original voice actor's tone and personality expressed as intended. Besides the written subtitle translations are often closer to the original dialog than the voice dubbing ever is.
This probably also explains why I don't think voice acting is super-critical for MMO games either. I can usually read fast enough and based on what others have pointed out the given voice actor often doesn't really do justice to the character at hand anyway. So yeah it's fine when it's done right - otherwise it's NOT a priority.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Agreed on the above points... some sound can add a great deal of feeling to the game world, without having to go overboard and voice *everything* in the game.
Hell, even going back to when WoW launched, it was one thing that made the game seem more "alive" to me, was that even just clicking on a quest giver, they would generally turn around and do a greeting... for CoX, it was dead silence.
Sure you could have a repository of stuff that can be used... and as long as you mix the recordings up, you should be able to avoid the whole case of one person voicing too many NPC's one after another (This happened in Neverwinter... not really the voice actors problem as they are just given a script, but even when he changed his voice a little bit, he voices 3 successive NPC's....)
Anyways that is just my 2p
Ok...I did NOT expect this to turn into a forum for 'if we don't have voice-acting CoT will suck' or anything like that. I agree that bad voice-acting will make a good game horrible. None of us want that. The KS results and the number of people following this site prove that CoT has a strong following. The whole CoT staff (IFAIK) is working on a volunteer basis. Obviously there is support. If it turns out that voice-acting is left out of the game due to technical issues or whatever then that's fine with me. If it turns out that it won't be added because they can't afford actors then that would be a shame to me.
Do we have enough people to make good voice-overs for the game? Maybe...maybe not. I'd like to explore it anyway. If we can work something out then good for the game. If not...it's all volunteer work anyway and it would take one Dev an afternoon to determine if the work is worth it.
Options are always better
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I'm not against voice acting work at all, as long as its done well. I don't find bits of it here and there all that immersion breaking but that's just me. I play SWTOR in the interim and I enjoy the voice acting a lot. You can skip through it when you want and not feel like you missed anything because the spoken dialog is also in text in a chat tab. The only thing I'd change is when you choose to skip (or not) and your team mates do the opposite. One of you is left staring at a "Waiting on group members" screen until they're done listening. It'd be nice if it went by leader's choice or a group vote sort of thing.
[size=12][b]TINK SMASH[/b][/size]
[url=http://dbgradio.com]DBG Radio[/url]
Actually, we would all gather around the noob and do the Hand Slap action 'till he comes too. ;)
While I can't quote when or where anymore, as someone who was all over the old forums back in the early days and am still here, I am here to assert that the Devs do not want to deal with voice acting, for multiple reasons, some of which are true regardless of quality or who does it or what it costs. Apparently producing a game in sync with voice acting is very time consuming and riddles with pitfalls, if I remember their reasons correctly. I may not.
I just remember their decision not to have it is pretty much unequivocal.
[center]--------------------------[/center]
[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
And yet they added in voice overs when they changed the tutorial!
So whilst I can agree to not doing the *whole* game, adding in *some* effects (ie a greeting when you talk to a quest NPC, small bits of chatter through the game), can add to the game as well.
Sure, give it a volume slider/setting so you dont have to hear it if you don't want to. But I would find it *VERY* unsatisfying if all the games powers had effects, you could hear birds singing in the park, the effect of shell casings hitting the floor, but not a single sound from a character or player *ever*, unless it was power orientated.
Hire Nolan North.
Have him do all the voices.
Done.
[br]
Wut?
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
And how many years AFTER launch was the tutorial updated in CoH? Just once again making the point that I'm not entirely against the idea of voice acting eventually being in a game like this - I'm just saying I could easily live without it if it's something that would be in any way too hard or difficult to accomplish by the time CoT launches. It simply is not and never will be a priority.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
*looks at Mr. North's [url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0636046/]IMDB page[/url]*
*hours later*
*blinks*
I think we'd need another Kickstarter to raise the money his experience says he's worth.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
This is why I configured SWTOR to show me subtitles for [b]all[/b] voice acting, not just the non-Basic dialog of the non-human NPCs (Khem Val's "Oufahl alizey reki'chejah" -- 'Don't try your luck, little Sith' -- for example); the first time through a particular conversation I can choose to let the voice acting play out, but the second and subsequent times -- well, I can read much faster than I listen, so I'll just spacebar over and over to advance the conversation quickly.
However, there are a number of issues with voice acting that can detract from a project, either immediately or in the longer run. First, you will, inevitably, have a limited supply of voice actors, so if the player characters are going to have voice interaction, then you're going to have to use a high-level grouping of characters for each actor. SWTOR, for example, has one voice actor per gender per basic class, so that's 16 voice actors. Where this falls down is where you have more than one character per voice actor -- either in groups, where you might easily have two female Inquisitors, for example, or with the 'social' voice acting in places where characters congregate, like the faction fleets; I've been startled a number of times when I hear "my" character's voice say something, and it's some other player's character talking. On top of that, the voice actor that you pick for a character type may not 'fit' the player's conception of what their character should sound like -- and when that happens, it's going to grate for the entire play of the character. With a limited set of options, like SWTOR's basic classes, there's less to cause that (although I feel that having all, say, male Jedi Consulars sound the same regardless of body type or whether they're human, Miralukan, Mirialan, Twi'lek, or Cathar stretches things). But for a superhero MMORPG, where the whole [i]point[/i] is to create characters that are uniquely [b]yours[/b], unlike all the others, that will be much more jarring. Thousands of heroes, all unique -- but all female Defenders sound like clones of each other...
Where it detracts later down the pike is that once you've done the initial voice acting, you're locked in; any changes you make will rely on being able to get the original voice actors back, whether it's changing an existing dialog option or adding new content with new character dialog -- or face dealing with the fallout from changing the character voice mid-play. This also works against you for NPCs if there is different dialog based on whatever divisions you make for PC voice acting -- if you add a PC type that gets its own voice acting, then unless [b]all[/b] of their NPC dialog with NPCs the other PC types interact with can re-use existing NPC dialog, you'll need the original NPC voice actors back to record new NPC dialog if you want to keep the voices consistent, although this can be handwaved to some degree. This is the excuse that Bioware keeps giving for not adding more class storyline content -- they say that they can't get back all the original voice actors.
It's far easier and far more flexible to have the interaction between the PCs and the NPCs be text-based; that way, you can add new interaction and new PC types, and the player can 'voice' those interactions with whatever they conceive the NPC and character voices to be.
Excellent points, srmalloy!
Spurn all ye kindle.
Not for or against myself, but also keep in mind with voice added you have the expense of software syncing it to the animations and extra facial modeling in case of closeups. A cutscene may take a lot longer to do vs chat bubbles. Also consider multilanguage suppport if that is a requirement, that would need a speaker for each.
It would also require dedicating bones to face movement, bones we'd have to take away from somewhere else, like wings or fingers.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Face Capture software: http://www.faceshift.com/
Example: http://vimeo.com/46916078
Don't threaten glove hands.. anything but GLOVE HANDS!
Crowd Control Enthusiast
good point o well skip all conversation and do mission
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
While voice overs are low priority for me, I wouldn't mind the occassional cut scene. I think it would be nice, say at the end of a particular story arc, your hero/villain is given the news treatment. ie...
1) quick video newscast with some captured video from the final mission in a story arc or task force. Similar too, but not as annoying, as the Ron Burgundy stuff in CO.
2) a simple newspaper headline (I know....what's a newspaper?) that takes some screenshots at various moments in the story arc or task force that is, optionally, viewable and availabe for a screenshot...perhaps a way to create a personal journal of your successes.
Personally, I found the text box form of communication in CoH totally sufficient to appease my need for communication from NPC's and most players alike. A strong soundtrack and text box I can choose to either read or disregard considering the circumstances is by far preferable too a voice that may or may not be appealing. squawking over my speakers. Besides if players wish to communicate amongst themselves vocally they will set up their own chat network, I forget what program my group in CoH used, but we had a chat feature to communicate with each other, which was also, by far, more useful then in game voice overs.
(side note: I would be totally fine with cut scenes or something around story arcs or task forces that come complete with voice overs. Something that can be given a lower level of priority, but then that bags the question, how long will we have to wait to hear 'our' heroes voice? And it just spirals downhill from there. I'd rank it at a C or D on the list of priority. )
Love is like a Rhino, short-sighted and hasty; If it cannot find it a way, it will make a way.
-Flavor text on Crash of Rhinos.
Something someone said in another thread reminded me of our old friend [b]$target[/b]. With text, NPC dialogue can be adapted to include our character name, appropriate gender pronoun*, etc. With voice, NPCs are all forced to refer to us by some generic title and gender, thus making the game feel less personalised.
* In fact, there's a whole separate thread on gender references: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/genders
Spurn all ye kindle.
It's possible to shape the game to make that 'appropriate' in many situations -- a Trooper in SWTOR, for example, can almost always be generically referred to by their rank, which is controlled by the game, so the voice dialogue can be built around it. They dance around names for Sith by formalizing the "My lord" honorific, but you still get addressed as 'Acolyte' or 'Apprentice', and the other classes all get generic forms of address; meanwhile, the loading screens are the only place you actually see your name -- the NPCs get addressed by name, but you're a faceless "Agent" or "Bounty Hunter" or "Jedi".
To be fair, there is no way that you can expect to be able to properly pronounce character names based on the spelling of the name (particularly when players -- whose play experienced would be irretrievably '[b]ruined[/b]' if they couldn't have 'their' character name -- resort to accented characters so they can slip, say, "Süþérmåŋ" past the name filters or to get a name someone else already took, destroying any connection between the spelling of the name and the pronunciation). And asking the players to enter an IPA specification of their name -- i.e., "bɑlɑmˈ–ɪʃtʃel" (Bahlam-Ixchel), "ʒestˈəkoʊst" (Zhestokost), or "iːɑderˈnɪiː oʊgoʊnˈ" (Yaderniy Ogon) puts an [i]additional[/i] hurdle in a player's face, even if you had a picktable for the non-standard characters and a "say the name" button so that they could hear what it sounded like before approving it. Text only is [i]much[/i] more flexible.
I'm currently playing SWTOR, there are things that get on your nerves about the dialogue after the fourth character you make, you tend to notice the similar patterns and tones of actors who have played the same part over and over again. I'd be quite concerned really, considering that SWTOR is created by Bioware, a company that aren't really short of cash.
But everything srmalloy said makes total sense, text is far more flexible; remembering what was done and what could be done again, be it by professionals or fans writing their own mission using Architect Entertainment (not that I know of any plans to do that kind of thing here...but you know).
I'd be all for the ocassional cutscene (providing the actors are good), but spoken dialogue at every turn?...that would just clutter things up.
Hmm.. i kinda know what you mean. Have you ever played DCUO? How the hell do they make it seem very pleasant when you hear voice acting then, compared to some other MMO's? :P
Are the Cut Scenes very Short compared to other MMO's? Is it because of the tiny talking Contact that sits out of the way? and just mumbles about like your girlfriend... and you just pretend to be listening while going about your buzinez!?! ;D (sorry, had to)
Then there the AE / Foundry. CoT bound to have some kind of player maked content system. Would it be at launch don't know, but it will happen. TEXT system would be easier and in some cases more creative, like accents or an alien language. Like the one story arc where all the Panda like aliens spoke in emoticons. Voice acting would be very generic if included in the AE system if included at all. Or how about your own personal NEMESES with Text he could have a very personal dialog where again a Voice acting system would be more generic.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
This brings to mind [url=http://megatokyo.com/strip/9]this comic[/url]:
[img]http://megatokyo.com/strips/0009.gif[/img]
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Our thinking was for generic sounds at best, a la sims.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
[img]http://reggiestake.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/airplane-movie-04.jpg[/img]
"Kids these days."
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Hey Lady, Stop Staring at his Other Leg! >:(
i make my mission one npc have 500 text and can't skip move slow lol
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Throw me in for the not really caring for Voice Acting crowd. Most of the time I ended up turning off most of my sounds in CoH because I was on Vent with my teammates playing. Nothing like having some random, unexpected loud voice go booming through my mic while I'm trying to talk to my teammates playing a game.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
My thinking is, by default CoT will not have Voice Acting. If you WANT it, then you will need to download separate Voice Over Packs (you can choose from a listing of TF's, Arcs, etc.. that were uploaded, some by MWM, and others by 3rd parties). So this way, we save on up-front download time and hard disk space, and.. only people that want voice overs can hear them using the Hooks that the DEVs put in place.
(later, Costumes( and other assets, etc... ) Packs can work in the same way. If a user hasnt gotten that Costume pack, they will just see the Alternate Costume that the player originally created, and there will be a faded out exclamation floating above their head that shows up fully opaque as you get close and closer to them. This will indicate that you cant see what that toon Really looks like (even if its just the Shoes that are being used) because you dont have the Costume pack they are using). And from the Bio Panel, you can examine the other players Profile and see what Costume packs they are using in a listing, which you can left click on or highlight and it would open up the Costume Pack in question in the Asset Store for download.
And of course, from a central Asset Store kinda GUI, you can also Delete any Voice Over packs that are already present (on that machine).
I see Izzy has a good memory.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Might just be that my memory is going, but I don't recall hearing Izzy's info before. Where was that info provided?
Also, isn't that kind of an odd strategy for costumes? I'd think surely one of the best hooks to get folks to want to buy costumes is seeing them worn by other players.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I recall seeing something about the hooks being put in place for future/3rd party use.
And I agree about the costume pack strategy being weird. Aside from the point Cinnder mentioned, I know if I'm paying for a costume pack I'd sure like if I weren't the only one who could see it. I mean I do design my character's looks for myself to enjoy but its nice having them seen and all you know.
[size=12][b]TINK SMASH[/b][/size]
[url=http://dbgradio.com]DBG Radio[/url]
That's a very good point also.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Hear here.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I was only referring to the voice packs. There was a very old proposal for that. Talking back when we were still the original Plan Z. Its not been developed or considered, but it was suggested.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Ah, ok, thanks.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Long ago, ideas were recorded for allowing player-designed costume pieces and a marketplace where players could sell them. Obviously any such scheme would require handling of the cases where a newly-designed costume either wasn't yet in the latest official patch, or was meant to be limited to local viewing until approved for wider use (like AE's test mode for custom missions). Izzy's method is one way to make it work, though I think it's best to have all MWM-designed costume packs be part of the official game patches and thus viewable by all, without a separate download.
I'm thinking, if you really want, you could enable the Option to download All New Costume Packs made by MWM by default. Another Option to download All New Costume packs made by 3rd Parties, if they are FREE! ;)
There are allot of talented designers out there, so it wouldnt be so bad to get their work to show up in CoT . At 1st they could charge as much as $4.99 for their work. After the Costume Packs start to build in popularity and saturate the Asset Store, the price could even out around $.99 for the majority of the Assets in the Asset Store.
Its not just about creating a marketplace, its about driving attention toward CoT.
And once they have enough time to perfect the Cut Scene Creator, allowing players to capture it with the Demo Recorder, it will go viral as everyone who uses Blender to 3DS to a normal Hobbyist, will want to cheaply produce movie shorts. And this in turn will make them want more and more variety in scenery (once the Mission Builder is ready), different backgrounds, different costumes, different voices, etc... which in turn will.. get allot of other MMO players interested in COT, and could take a large bite out of other MMO's. Since most of the RP'ers in every other MMO will finally get what they always wanted.. to be the STAR of their own fantasy world. MWM Might need a few more Servers after that! ;D
Its not always FREE that gets to people, its Good Quality at a Bargain Price, too. ;)
MWM could skim some of the profits to keep the servers up, say 20% to 30%?
This in turn could allow MWM to lower any monthly subscriptions down from $11.99 to about 7 or $8.99.
Later on, MWM could have a promotion to lower the monthly subscription to $6.99 (6 or so Months only) when that account holder has sold a number of Assets in the Asset Store or whatever other means will exist. Always have a monthly subscription for VIP's, even when the Asset Store is raking it in, just lower the VIP Subscriptions to make them feel Very Good for being paying members. Of course VIP's might even get some of the Assets FREE from the Asset Store the 1st Two weeks they are available on select assets. MWM would have to get the Asset creators 2 Week donation approval 1st, and if the asset creator was looking for a way to give back to CoT, that might be one way. And the asset Creator could be granted the 1st 2 Months a discounted fee.. instead of skimming 30%, lower it to 25% (or more, left to the MWM Asset Store Managers discretion, who will consult heavily with the marketing department, since a portion of the budget for Promotions will go towards wisely approaching certain asset creators and making such deals as noted earlier).
Also, to get players to keep logging back in regularly, the assets that are made free, wont be automatically downloaded in the background ( Some players wont want every free asset out there ), so in order for a VIP player to get select Costume Packs FREE the 1st 2 Weeks it becomes available, they will get into the habit of firing up CoT just for FREE Assets, even if they weren't planning on playing CoT. And those type of people will most likely see if there is a Deal on any other costumes they had their eye on, and might stumble across a really cute accessory and pay for it. ;) I bet many players from Second Life will flock to CoT. ;D
You presume much about how the costume pieces work here.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
true, but this approach could sustain CoT in the long haul.
It might mean having to create a Costume Creator (not Character Creator) just like you have the Mission Builder. The majority of the Costume Creator (at 1st at least) will be just swapping out Textures for newer ones that the designer created... and making sure it tiles, stretches( UV maps ) appropriately for the different Male / Female dimensions. (and possibly have a separate texture for each if tiling, stretching of just one texture doesn't look right)
Later on, as more Vertices are added to certain garments, they can use Morph Targets to slightly modify the height of a Collar on a Shirt, or the length of a Shirt sleeve, or the width of Stiletto Shoes Heel, etc... and apply textures that match those new dimensions perfectly.
I dont understand. The costume would download in the background as you are playing (maybe even show a very tiny download progress bar somewhere), but just because you can SEE it on others, doesnt mean you can use it on your own toons, unless you already paid! ;)
If you rather not download EVERY single 3rd party Costume pack out there, MWM could come up with a mechanic (i try to get a bit technical [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/29083#comment-29083]here[/url], very old post) that would start the Costume Pack download only when you come across another player that has a new Costume Pack (new being.. one that You haven't seen yet). And if you're on the road in some flea bitten Motel and their WiFi is shitty, you can disable the OPTION that Automatically download such assets on your laptop. ;)
I don't think I'd like the idea of having to download a costume pack. I'd rather just have all the costumes available on the game from the developers. Also not sure how this thread got derailed from the original posting about voice acting? Perhaps we could make a separate thread for costumes and get back on track for this one?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
+1. ;)
Moved to [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/game-store-costume-packs]Here[/url].
One of the other tricks that you could use would be to have custom-designed costume pieces have a 'fallback' pointer defined that references one of the 'stock' textures for that body part; if a player doesn't have the costume pack loaded for a particular piece, it uses the 'fallback' piece instead. That ensures that, regardless of whether a player had the appropriate custom art for a particular piece, there would be _something_ that would render as an approximation.
Yep Yep.. just like in Street Fighter 4 AE 2012 :) Psst.. i just beat a B+ in that game. ;)
I gather that some folks like voice-acting and cutscenes nowadays, and I'm sad to say I think this is largely influenced by the 'if I wanted to read, I'd go read a book' mentality that's prevalent among a lot of MMO players, and perhaps youth in general (See also the increase of embedded video on sites that would previpously have had long text articles).
I personally dislike voice acting in MMOs. Short cutscenes are bearable, but I'm playing FF14 at the moment and their cutscenes are interminable.
In short, I would prefer NOT to see voice acting in CoT. Call me old-school, but text boxes give me a much more imaginative experience.
And one more hideous aspect to cutscenes in MMOs - This is what they look like: NPCs hamming it up, voice acting going on and on, and my character gurning and nodding away mutely. Like a simpleton.
MrCaptainMan, Scoop Malloy, The Accelerated Man, Soundman, The Robot From Uranus, Tommy Atkins, The Dirty Promise, The Psystem, VEI8, Atomicide, Tumbleweed Jackson, Robin Copperfield, Ragtime Smith, Jacque Le Black, Tarquin Wilde...and many more.
One of my favorite toons in CoH was a Claws/Super Reflexes Scrapper named "Scrapachu" (it was my sarcastic way of poking fun at both Pokemon and RPers). I had a TON of keybinds set up to link certain emotes with bits of text in either the active chat channel or in Local (things like "Scrapa scrapa!!" paired with the backflip emote that I would use to convey excitement and/or an affirmative response). A large part of the fun of that toon is that I NEVER broke character with it. I communicated solely through use of emotes and establishing patterns of behaviors that my teammates/guildies would start to rely upon.
My biggest concern with voice-acting, for player characters, in CoT is that will render this type of toon (anything that isn't human/doesn't speak the local language) un-doable.
I don't mind having the NPCs having voiced parts, but I would prefer that my player character is not required to have them -- if only so that I can resurrect "Scrapachu".
OMG. That was YOU!?! :O
Wait, if i recall, you were the one that would run 1st into the middle of a mob and 10 seconds later be on the floor. And I always though you were a Blapper. "Noooooo, Scrapaaa Choooo!!!"
Nope... Yellow Circle next to his name... Ohh, he couldn't take the alpha. :/
If only he would have taken Spring Attack and used that to KnockDown the group and go after the Boss or Leuts 1st. He could have LIVED! At least you could have used Shockwave to KB the groups, but i can understand if you didn't want to piss off the Tanks. :P
Aaaahhhh.... Memories. Good times. ;)
I was on Virtue and on a daily basis I would try and gather a team to do 5 Hero Alignment mishes. Sometimes I would hop on my lvl 50 brute "Blue Gem", other times on my lvl 50 Dark Melee / Fiery Aura scrapper "Devious Diva". Sometimes I would alt to my lvl 50 Axe or was it Mace scrapper "Crack Jaw".
Oh wait... i think i i re-rolled "Crack Jaw" once Street Justice came around.
Man, that was fun... especially once i made Crack Jaw look like GUILE from Street Fighter. ;D Even the Spinning Strike attack felt like it belong to GUILE. ;D And once everyone noticed the flat top yellow hair and the greenish camo' army getup, they would say "SONIC Booooom!" ;)
And on a side note.. "Shin Breaker" was a TERRIBLE, Awful, animation for what was a SUPERIOR DMG'ing Attack! Awful... Just Awful! >:(
[img]http://i.imgur.com/68BWARR.png[/img]
I feel as if that power was suppose to be a low Tier power, 4 or less, but they ran out of time in re-balancing the set and shifted some of the powers around... and then just said THE HELL With It. Lets just put that power as a Tier 7, No one will question the non-believable animation as long as its Stats are Awesome! :/ That would be One of my Top Questions to the Old CoH Devs! >:<
If CoT were to have voiced cutscenes, I would much prefer to have them restricted to cutscenes where the PCs didn't appear at all, and you were only seeing the interaction between the NPCs. For example, the low-level mission into the Snakes tunnel redside, where you get the cutscene with the Snakes discussing their plans and the heroes attempting to thwart them; this would give the developers an additional facet of an NPC to flesh out by picking an appropriate voice actor. Unfortunately, it may not be practical, because a significant fraction of those cutscenes would be 'reactive' cutscenes, where the characters are talking about the actions of the player characters, and you run into the problem of having to be able to pronounce the PCs' names. This, as I've mentioned elsewhere, would make it prohibitively 'expensive' in development time/costs to create, so in my opinion it's better just to leave the dialog as text.
Now, there is one area we could use voice actors for: promotions.
For example, it struck me last night that a particular piece of lore was supposed to be a transcript of a fireside chat by FDR, and that it would be cool if we had someone who could do an impression.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Pick Me Pick me. :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTlMNogA2_Y
Oh wait, i was an extra and you didnt hear me there. :(