This is a) an accessibility issue and b) something that was already written so should not be hard to implement.
Because the game is still in development.
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notice this is in âfeedback and suggestionsâ itâs more of a rhetorical question. But thanks for the answer?
First and foremost, welcome to the LE forum!
Localisation and subtitles (and possibly even voice overs) are things EHG wants to focus on close to or with 1.0.
Because there are still parts of the story that get changed/overhauled and they donât want to spend ressources on things that possibly get touched again before 1.0.
It is just a matter of efficiency.
While feedback is always good, so EHG knows what people want to see.
This is a still a EA/Beta game and accessability features are things that are just not priority for most devs due to making a fundamentally good game is way more important during the early stages of development.
I think EHG spoke very positively about all kinds of accesability features like subtitles, colourblind mode etc. But it will come at a later point.
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Perhaps you shouldnât phrase your feedback in the form of a question if you donât want a response to it in the form of an answer to that question.
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Would you mind me asking whether youâre 100% sure about that?
I only ask because your post, which is perfectly reasonable in a vacuum, is slightly concerning due to just how often I seem to encounter this in response to feedback;
The list of things being reserved for such a small fraction of the gameâs pre-release patches appears to be unending - and, in my view, this is one of the worst items among them.
While many aspects of the game can change frequently as the designers iterate on their ideas, this is notably not true of voice acting - where any unrecorded lines the devs wish to add require paying the voice actor again & getting them into a recording studio again.
While VA isnât impossible to add to or change, it happens comparatively infrequently, and so in my opinion the argument WRT efficiency doesnât really hold water. It therefore appears to be missing out of simple indifference / laziness on the part of the devs, which doesnât suggest itâs likely to be there before or at 1.0, and certainly is unfortunate for those to whom the accessibility feature would be beneficial.
(Not trying to specifically have a go at you, @Heavy, sorry if it seems like I am.)
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Cool. Thanks for the feedback. Definitely helpful.
Iâm assuming thatâs why they have lettered updates as well.
Lots of games live in Early Access foreverâŚIâm just trying to get something in their sights at least.
Glad to see Colorblind Mode as a mention as well.
But all that aside, thanks for your additional questionsâŚI definitely feel like they should be answered as well
Probably because itâs a fairly common response from us directly. Weâre planning for a long life cycle for Last Epoch, so whenever a question is asked of âcould âxâ happenâ, the answer is almost always âmaybeâ, the future is a very long time. Accessibility such as subtitles is certainly something we want, but subtitles donât help if the game doesnât even work. While we certainly understand and appreciate different peopleâs priority for different items, there are currently higher priority items such as ensuring the core game works. Items like accessibility are âon the listâ because theyâll be scheduled in once the people who would be able to complete them arenât working on something higher priority.
The story can iterate quite considerably in Beta - and while some lines are more final than others, itâs the same reason weâve held off on as much voice acting - so we donât have to do all the VA only to re-do it with changes later (VA is surprisingly expensive). Most VA is in chapter 9 our most recent and up to standards chapter, with little bits before them.
The last thing I would say is that subtitles are not so simple a task. There isnât a checkbox for âput dialog as subtitlesâ. We have to create a subtitle system, ensure it has correct timings, ensure it doesnât have any bugs, make sure its versatile for all lengths of text, make sure it supports localization as thatâs another one of our list items, ensure it doesnât cause any interaction issues since a number of cutscenes are in-game, and things Iâm not even thinking of yet. Thereâs also not currently a lot of a dialog or cinematics aside from chapter 9 to have subtitles for - mainly just the quick opening character cutscene, and âFools, FOOLS!â - though this will likely change as we continue to update chapters to our current standards.
We absolutely want accessibility options in the game, however for us itâs currently not higher priority than some other items such as ensuring players can enter monoliths reliably in multiplayer. I most certainly understand that different people have different priorities, and I apologize that this is higher priority for you and weâre not able to get to it yet. At the very least, I can say âyes, itâs on our listâ.
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Well, thatâs a poor response.
In my post I asked someone whether they were certain subtitles would be in the game when it left Early Access, and expressed skepticism that they would be.
I donât expect them to be in the game in time for version 1.0 because of how significant a shift going from an offline-with-caveats game to a live service will be for EHG. It simply doesnât make sense from a production standpoint, if they are intended to be there for launch, to save the entirety of the workload for when the team is attempting to manage a live service and finish development of an Early Access title at the same time.
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tl;dr: Heavy insinuated subtitles would be included in v1.0. I said I doubt they would be. You decided to join the discussion, but not weigh in on what we were talking about. Though you did somehow twice refer to priorities I never even expressedâŚ
Iâll refrain from responding directly to what you said regarding the workload of adding subtitles to a Unity game out of fear youâll reply again, but ignore everything else Iâve said.
Reality does have a tendency to be disappointing.
Thereâs an infinite number of numbers inbetween any two given numbers, just because 0.9.0 is the next patch & 1.0 is launch doesnât mean that there has to be a âsmall fractionâ of the pre-1.0 patches between the two, they can continue to count up that final digit (0.9.9 â 0.9.10 â 0.9.11, etc) for as long as necessary in order to get everything they want to be in before 1.0 in before 1.0.
Also, theyâve said before that they have a lot of their resources currently working on MP so once thatâs in & working reasonably well those resources can be shifted off MP & on to everything else.
To be fair, Kain did spend a lot of the post commenting on your view that adding subtitles is easy, even if he didnât break down your post & answer every point.
Tbf I was the one who implied ease of implementation.
But, yeah, as I said priorâŚthis was more of a âlet me make sure itâs on the roadmapâ rather than a âdo this nowâ post
Yeah, I was actually thinking of the âvoice acting doesnât changeâ comment rather than âsubtitles are eezee peezeeââŚ
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Could you quote the part of my post Kain responded to where I either explicitly stated, or implicitly implied, that it is easy? Iâve re-read that post and not been able to find it.
My post can be summarised as âif it was going to be in for 1.0, it would almost certainly be further along than what it is now.â I stand by that 100%.
Ah ok that makes sense.
I take it you didnât read my second postâŚ
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