tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post7714599865354810216..comments2024-03-28T10:18:05.213+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: Pushing Too Hard : SWLBhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-35634014159209528102017-11-28T15:15:58.607+00:002017-11-28T15:15:58.607+00:00Taking all your comments above as one...
I think ...Taking all your comments above as one...<br /><br />I think there's no doubt whatever that most committed TSW players, those who were still playing and enjoying the game when SWL was announced, felt very badly served and let down by Funcom. Of the bloggers I know who wrote about it, some (Tyler of Superior Realities springs to mind) refused to move at all, some, like you, tried it and couldn't get into it and some (Syp for example) found it was better than they expected and are still playing. It's all anecdotal of course but my guess is that a significant majority of the active TSW playerbase won't now be playing SWL and of those that are I imagine many won't spend any more money there or progress any further even if new content is added.<br /><br />Whether there are enough new players and whether they'll spend freely enough to make the new game profitable anyway is impossible to tell. I don't get the impression that anyone is much interested in SWL any more - as Athie says, the numbers aren't showing in the places you'd expect and no-one seems to be talking about it. But Funcom are bullish, quoting big increases in profitability. They said that about Conan too, though, and that didn't last. At least, since they're a publicly quoted company, they do have to release figures so we will find out one way or another in the end.<br /><br />On the animations and voice thing, I'm going to have to log back into TSW and watch a scene, then watch the same scene in SWL I think. I still have TSW installed and anyway I notice Funcom has now restored the download link so anyone who owns TSW can re-install it if they need to. I don't think they've put it back on sale or free download for new players though so I'm sure they're hoping it will just fade away. <br /><br />I'm not sure the disconnect between voice and animation an account for what I'm hearing, though, because I have the subtitles up and i tend to read along with the voice rather than look at the characters a lot of the time. That wasn't out of sync. It was more that I was noticing the flatness of the line reading, the artificial pauses between sentences and the lack of commitment in the interpretation, all of which I would put down to uncertainty in the direction. Anyway, I'll have to go check out both versions as i said - that should tell me for sure if these are problems that were always there, which I just didn't notice before, or whether it's a result of the new systems.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-62923289414413429432017-11-28T13:49:42.394+00:002017-11-28T13:49:42.394+00:00I can say as much:
- I am still in contact with p...I can say as much:<br /><br />- I am still in contact with people of my old Cabal. All of us tried the new game, few made it over the first two weeks.<br /><br />- My wife still plays, she's a RFG DJ. (RFG= Radio Free Gaia, one of the games webradio stations. ) <br /><br />- The old RP community migrated to the new game and is still strong there. <br /> <br />- Many of the old RPers are there only for the RP, and don't really progress their characters much any more. My wife still is not past Savage Coast. In the old game she had all pre-Tokyo dungeons done in nightmare difficulty and regularily was participating in the NY raid and the Toyko dungeons on elite difficulty. (NM difficulty for those things were the only places in the game where you had to grind for high quality Aegis gear, which neither of us did. ) <br /><br />- During our wedding this autumn, a number of people of the TSW Cabal were invited. Each and everybody had the same feeling: FunCom gave us the one-finger-salute. This is especially true for the big part of people, who were very active in raids and dungeons. The new game gives you very few keys per day, after that you have to pay real money to get the loot after each boss you take down. That's implemented frustration, which effectively disposed of many people in no time. <br /><br />- Those who were there for the social aspect and RP still hold out, although they also feel misstreated. After all, many character options were removed with the changes, which matters a lot for roleplayers. (I mean, even i felt it. My old character was bald with grey hair. The bald head had a plausible skin texture. In the new installation the bald head is just "remove hair", but the head looks like it's a skin colored bowling ball. And on beards, the new game allows you any color, as long as it's one of the three hardcoded colors: blonde, brown or black. ) <br /><br /><br />I can't tell how much new players there are, but i can tell that they did a good job in kicking out the old players. If that's lucrative for them in the long run, i don't know. The whole thing with keys for dungeon chest sure requires a certain kind of player, dedicated and good enough to do those dungeons, but rich and/or stupid enough to be ready to pay real money to open the loot chests after killing a dungeon boss. I believe or at least hope that the number of people of such stupidity is lower than FC thought there would be. If SWLs monetisation scheme proves to be successful, i forsee a grim future for our games. :(<br /><br /><br /><br />Sylownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-25314323713509891882017-11-28T13:24:02.646+00:002017-11-28T13:24:02.646+00:00See my comment below. It's not just nostalgia....See my comment below. It's not just nostalgia. The rework of the game broke animations and lipsyncing. <br /><br />It's hard to pin that down. Most people will just realize that "something is odd", without being fully aware of what it is. But it makes the difference between the feeling of listening to a human or to a puppet. As SWL now has talking puppets, the cutscenes don't work as well any more. Sylownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-16272194513307823192017-11-28T13:20:06.526+00:002017-11-28T13:20:06.526+00:00Indeed conversations got worse in the new installa...Indeed conversations got worse in the new installation, it's just not easy for most people to find the reason for that. After all, the actual audio recordings are the very same as they were in the old game. <br /><br />What changed is a very different thing: animations. All the cutscenes in old TSW were handcrafted, the animation, gestures and mimics of the characters made a huge difference. But the rework of the game broke all of that. When SWL launched, most NPCs looked like talking nutcrackers.<br /><br />It's easy to see if you go ahead and watch some old TSW let's play videos, then watch some SWL let's play in parallel. The characters in TSW moved more fluent and had comparatively good lipsync. <br /><br />Mind you, that already wasn't fully true for the last chapters of TSW. Key personel was moved over to Conan, and that was not just player perception, it was also said by the developers at some time. They packed it as praise for the last chapter ever done, where they stated that the remaining people are catching up fast, and the last chapters quality was close to the earlier game again.<br /><br />The problem lies in the scope of it all. It might be that the people now are on par and can do quality as good as in the old game, but SWL was rushed out of the doorway. When it was smacked upon us this summer, talking nutcrackers were all over the world. That's a lot of cutscenes to rework and fix, even if they'd have no plans and intentions to deliver new content, the people on the job have a huge pile of work ahead of them to just get the old cutscenes back to the quality they formerly had.<br /><br />Mind you, i haven't logged in there since a few days after launch, so i can't tell if and by how much things have improved, but unless a lot of animators were brought back from Conan to help out there, i consider it absolutely impossible for the team to do significant fixes and at the same time work on new content.<br />Sylownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-23186225322157682052017-11-28T10:24:52.488+00:002017-11-28T10:24:52.488+00:00I really noticed it while listening to Beaumont do...I really noticed it while listening to Beaumont doing his supervillain speech. The writing was very comic-book, intentionally so I think, but the voice actor veered between convincing and pedestrian. There were lines that sounded exactly as though he was reading them off a card. It clearly wasn't a fault of the actor himself - it very much sounded like there were issues with the direction he was getting. <br /><br />The thing is, now I've noticed it I hear it in a lot of the voiceover - hesitancy, flatness, lack of flow... Also, the whole "click and get some random background monologuing", which was such fun the first time round, really doesn't have much replayability.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-91880844241190788842017-11-28T09:35:33.690+00:002017-11-28T09:35:33.690+00:00I've noticed the same feeling that, actually, ...I've noticed the same feeling that, actually, TSW's story isn't quite so amazing as memory seems to dictate. It's messy, convoluted and poorly structured in places. I think I can view it this way because I played the original game despite the systems, I didn't ever gel that well with the gameplay, but took solace in the story and lore of the game. On repeat I find I'm remembering a lot of the details, which leaves me less excited now to see what's next. <br /><br />Playing some Neverwinter, I see some nicely written characters, with the added bonus that some are well-known characters from Forgotten Realms lore - so I have a personal stake here that I do not have in TSW/SWL. The game's presentation of conversations is much more basic due to the game engine, but still there are some great moments. It's striking how subjective this all is. Friends keep saying how wonderful the characters are in TSW, and I'm sure they'd not say the same about Neverwinter, but I'd argue that there's a difference between presentation and great characterisation. Yes TSW has videos with good to middling voice acting, whereas Neverwinter has pretty cheap voice acting but more involved story-telling with proper conversations (not just intro videos).Telwynhttp://gamingsf.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-42592008931427280872017-11-27T16:31:36.528+00:002017-11-27T16:31:36.528+00:00I think in TSW/SWL's case it's that the st...I think in TSW/SWL's case it's that the standards in almost all other MMOs are so astoundingly low that coming across anything that wasn't actively embarrassing to read and listen to had an exaggeratedly powerful impact. Now that I go in expecting it to be good I realize that some of it isn't up to much. I used to say the writing in TSW was equivalent to a generic indie movie but I would downgrade that now to the standard of a would-be quirky free-to-air tv series. Still a couple of orders of magnitude above most MMO writing/voice acting, though.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-34230142651281040632017-11-27T16:26:52.123+00:002017-11-27T16:26:52.123+00:00That's really interesting. With the silo effec...That's really interesting. With the silo effect on the playfields it's impossible to tell in game. I did see other people while I was on yesterday but that doesn't mean much when you know the most people you can have in an instance is a dozen or so. Funcom have been talking a big game about the financial uplift, though, and I believe their publicly-quoted figures were up, so I guess we will have to wait to see if that sustains. I tend to agree with you that it doesn't seem likely.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-69078965904189515832017-11-27T15:06:27.822+00:002017-11-27T15:06:27.822+00:00For all the accessibility allegedly created by the...For all the accessibility allegedly created by the levels, changed quest flow, and “action” combat, there’s no evidence that more people are playing SWL today than were playing TSW a year ago. The relaunch surely got them a temporary bump, but Steam/Google Trends/Reddit etc user data are way down and it seems the game is back to around a few thousand active players. Either those folks are being monitized harder than before or this isn’t going to last that long. :(Athiehttp://athieingame.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-88712848012389189462017-11-27T14:59:21.037+00:002017-11-27T14:59:21.037+00:00Nostalgia is a bit of a liar sometimes. I remember...Nostalgia is a bit of a liar sometimes. I remembered this when I tried p1999. It was painful. The progression servers were amazing and joyous, though. Difference is same era but a few QoL changes were allowed to slip in that maintained the nostalgia but softened the pain points.<br /><br />(This is also why I rally against people complaining about Mass Effect Andromeda. I actually went back and played the first three and they were pretty bad, especially comparing to the new version. But we all remembered them as incredible because they were new and shiny back then)Iseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09489936780809266112noreply@blogger.com