And the mask comes off.

[opprime2828]

Okay, guys. No dying on this hill. Right now, with our _extremely_ limited budget, we're not looking into doing voice acting. We are leaving the potential for adding such into the game later, but it's probably not something we're going to launch with, for a number of reasons, not all of which involve purely monetary matters.

If we were, in fact, to add voice acting, it would be for cinematic moments, and for short greeting phrases, much in the way Wildstar does - I independently thought of the concept before it launched into beta. Enough flavor to get the feel of the person you're talking to, but not to read the entire dialogue.

We cool?

- Warcabbit

 
Very. This is exactly the way I think voice acting works best in an MMO.  NEVER have the player's character speak, since that voice is one they should decide on, the the devs, and then use it to, as you said, "get the flavor" of the world but not fully take over.   
 
And I didn't mean to hijack  the thread.  I just was expressing that I think the "costs" had been very much overstated.  Ironically, one of my current students just told me today that one of my former students just got hired full time for voice acting.  I had to laugh a little.
 
Anyway, like I said, I think you guys are doing a great job, even if I don't agree with every decision you make.  I trust you guys to make them, in the end.
:-)

[Last Known Hero]

That all assets we make use of will be relicensable to a third party/releasable to the world.  We're trying, but it is unwise to commit to anything other than "we're trying" at this juncture.

Ah my apologies. I guess I should not have assumed assets would be custom. I personally don't use anything else on released products for this reason exactly

But my point still does stand. The team can still release their work, you just added that it has the possibility that they might not be doing all the work

[opprime2828]

Yes,  yes it is. I didn't say it would be easy.  Nor that I've ever been accused of an excess of sanity, or a lack of ambition.

 
 
I really wish this forum had a "like" button. :-)

[Shard]

Ah my apologies. I guess I should not have assumed assets would be custom. I personally don't use anything else on released products for this reason exactly

But my point still does stand. The team can still release their work, you just added that it has the possibility that they might not be doing all the work

Quite, but it also becomes an issue of maintaining documentation on assets changing hands, etc.

More than once in my career I've had a project hard core hit the breaks because COTS dependancies didn't move forward or were otherwise just not available.

Now, I'll grant you that this might not ultimately be a huge issue. Texture library  unavailable? Sound library unavailable? Replacable. Not optimal, but replaceable. 

Code libraries may be a bigger deal. 

Not to mention just the general negatives we'll have to deal with if we shutter and cannot for some reason release absolutely 100% of a "roll your own CoT server" on shutdown day +1.


What we want to do and what we are ultimately able to do in the end may not be compatible. I'd rather not commit to something I cannot be certain is at least 90% attainable. I'm funny that way.

[Harpospoke]

Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.

That sounds familiar.

Heard that one a lot on the old boards for a long list of things that we eventually got.   

[Surelle]

 
 
I really wish this forum had a "like" button. :-)

And I wish it had a "dislike" button.  You're really pounding this whole voiceover thing into the ground.  No one cares at this point, the CoT devs have said forget it, CoX isn't even remotely ours yet and it's only a snapshot with no source code coming (so no changes to CoX will happen) if it ever goes back up, and Revival isn't planning on voiceovers either.  Enough already, give it up.  Like this thread isn't clogged enough.

[FloatingFatMan]

That sounds familiar.

Heard that one a lot on the old boards for a long list of things that we eventually got.   

Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.

[Harpospoke]

Sought out the opinion of the one true "gamer" I know...my brother.

Asked him about how important he thought voice work is in games in current games.   He didn't seem to think it was very important.   He also agreed that it often sounds really cheesy.

[Surelle]

Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.

And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.

[Harpospoke]

Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.

I don't think you read the post I was replying to.

This isn't talking about loading them into the game.   This was about paying someone to look at them and try to recreate your old character as much as possible.   It would be quite time consuming....and thus would require that you pay for it.

[Ankhammon]

Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.

besides, it just seems like a backdoor for pay to win.

What if they went this route, but not everyone could pay that amount...

[Harpospoke]

And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.

I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.

[FloatingFatMan]

I don't think you read the post I was replying to.

This isn't talking about loading them into the game.   This was about paying someone to look at them and try to recreate your old character as much as possible.   It would be quite time consuming....and thus would require that you pay for it.

I think it's fairly safe to say that either everyone will get their chars back, or no one will.  Anything else will just cause the new owners PR problems.

[Ironwolf]

I used to get RMT spam all the time before they blocked trial accounts from sending in-game email. I also knew a couple of people who admitted to buying influence. Always seemed a little silly to me since inf was so easy to get, but I guess some people have to have everything Right Nao(TM).

Or right Meow!

[opprime2828]

What I am interested in (not really concerned about, but definitely interested in) is how the auction house is going to shake out for awhile.

In the very beginning, there will be a distinct lack of resources.  After all, everyone is going to need all of their luck charms  . . .

Once the supply starts to actually build, then there's going to be a strong imbalance of Inf. available, since we won't have the many years of
"wealth redistribution" that occurred to empower the alts with Inf.

 
 
I was wondering the other day if it was possible for the Devs to "pre-stack" the market upon launch.  Could they examine the price ranges/availability of IOs from before the close and simply recreate the same market, only with (initially) lower costs?
 
Or even more, I'm curious how the coding for the market works at all, since it was clearly also linked to our own individual accounts.  So if they have a snapshot of Wentworths from the day the market closed, does that include at least SOME character data?

[MWRuger]

I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.

Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose? That being the case the ease of hacking or who knows about is a pointless discussion.

[MWRuger]

 
 
I was wondering the other day if it was possible for the Devs to "pre-stack" the market upon launch.  Could they examine the price ranges/availability of IOs from before the close and simply recreate the same market, only with (initially) lower costs?
 
Or even more, I'm curious how the coding for the market works at all, since it was clearly also linked to our own individual accounts.  So if they have a snapshot of Wentworths from the day the market closed, does that include at least SOME character data?

No. They shouldn't even if they could for a number of reasons that involve how the economy in the game works. If they want to make I/O's easily available, put them in the cash store and make them account bound.

If they cannot restore character data the market will be empty. Very simple. It will be just like when the markets merged but will take longer to restock.

[Ankhammon]

I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.

I think there is something lots of folks are forgetting. Leveling up could be done in a hurry without dbl exp and without PLing. Just running full teams I could get a character from about 40-50 in a Saturday. That's approximately half the exp required to get from 1-50.

While I would think doing a dbl exp weekend (or even week) at the outset (if/when) was a good idea, it's just not necessary in a game where you could conceivably hit 50 in a 3 day weekend by just playing.

[Harpospoke]

I think it's fairly safe to say that either everyone will get their chars back, or no one will.  Anything else will just cause the new owners PR problems.

So now I have to wonder if anything will be for sale.   If you sell something to one person, then others won't have it.

[Codewalker]

And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base.

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.