Two specific concerns regarding 2.0

First of all, let me start by reminding everyone who happens to read this that these are simply my opinions. Also, I apologize for not just making this as a single post in a general 2.0 thread, but I'm hoping to get a lot of discussion!

1. In-game voice in all four languages (Japanese, English, French, and German) after version 2.0.

This was under the Main Storyline category, so I'm assuming it's talking about implementing voice overs for every cut-scene. I imagine that the majority of the community would look forward to this, but I was honestly pretty disappointed when I read this. I found the majority of voiceless cutscenes in FFXI to be very moving, and the few I've run into in FFXIV have the same quality (Raubahn Aldynn's speech gave me chills!) I never saw it as some laziness in SE's part because its always seemed appropriate. I personally loved hearing just the fitting music in the background as I watched the characters.

To give an example: You've definitely heard someone say "Oh the book was better than the movie", right? It's because it's extremely hard (or impossible) for someone to present something to you that's better than your own imagination. Imagine if SE had added a voice to Raubahn Aldynn that you personally found to be cheesy. The entire cutscene and all of the emotions it's supposed to portray would have been ruined for you. Consider that it's also extremely hard to judge voice acting of another language when you don't speak that language or were brought up in that language. I'm not saying SE couldn't pull it off, it's just a huge risk.

I think SE feels like they need to add voices to "keep up" with some of the other recent (voice acting made SWOTR look awful in my opinion) MMO's out there, but I think it would give the game a cheaper feeling rather than a more polished feeling.

2. PvP Content (Frontlines): In this new area, the three Grand Companies of Eorzea will battle over control of newly discovered ancient ruins and the secrets that lie within.

Reading this made me a little sad! I know the Grand Companies are already competing against each other, but are they on the level of hatred to kill each other over land? I really don't like the idea of killing other players just because they're in another Grand Company, it's pretty depressing..

Obviously we won't be forced to participate, but I also think it might be a slippery slope of adding PvP content until the Developers are forced to balance classes around PvP (God forbid). If anyone has played WoW you know that it's a horrible endless cycle of whining and jobs going out of fashion, it's literally a nightmare for everyone, especially PvE only players that have to have their classes constantly changed.

The Coliseum alone sounds like it will serve the needs of PvP players perfectly. You can go in there to blow up your friends for fun, or compete against others like Ballista with teams and so on. I think the Frontlines idea came from feeling the need to implement most aspects of other modern MMO's. It might bring in some people who may have not given FFXIV a chance before but I don't think it's a good fit for the community. Final Fantasy players are all about teamwork, even if they're from another Grand Company! I swear it!

You like silent cutscenes and don't want pvp because it makes you sad?

I am a bit baffled to be honest.

You have legit concerns, but... really?

/bewildered

Who said we are "Killing" eachother in PVP? Take it as more of friendly competition to control strategic resources in the overall war effort, everyone may be playing nice to fight for the greater good...but it doesn't mean they don't want to take the spotlight when they can. Balista in XI was pretty much played out as friendly compeition to keep the troops sharp and ready for a real attack IIRC.

You recall correctly Jynx. Ballista was in fact more of a "training" program that allowed the troops to hone their skills as well as provide nation-wide morale boosts (assuming they won). They could always make Frontlines the same way. And instead of "killing" eachother it's merely "knocking them out" they might even have some kind of "capture the flag" objective to further derail the "Why are we killing each other instead of fighting the Garleans?!" thoughts. Just my thoughts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoctorMog

You like silent cutscenes and don't want pvp because it makes you sad?

I am a bit baffled to be honest.

You have legit concerns, but... really?

/bewildered

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I don't understand how my concerns could be considered mutually exclusive, they are just parts of the list from the 2.0 outline. What exactly is baffling about my post?

I would have shared your opinion of voice overs... but then I played the Old Republic beta. If they can do voice overs as well as BioWare has, I'm 100% for it.

The voice acting in the current FF XIV is awful so I can only hope they find some better actors or it's going to be painful watching these cutscenes.

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I don't really care about Pvp anyways :-)
But as long as they don't make it pvp wherever you want im not against it.

I would basically not say 'no' to voice-acting, because some people might like it. I would, however, prefer the option to turn it off, and even more so, let us choose the spoken language already, dang it! I would much prefer Japanese voices for everything like this. No dis-respect to the other languages and the voice-actors at all, it's just my preference and opinion.

Many other games have had such and option for ages and for some reason SqEX has yet to ever do it. There must be a reason to it, but like I said in another thread, it's as good time as ever to start changing!
And yeah, I can not imagine FFXI cutscenes with voice-acting, not even Japanese would fit in too well as I would often 'pause' at many scenes for a while so it would have been possibly quite erratic to listen to. I read the dialogue rather slow (for one, English is not my native language and for two, I just want to really digest what I'm reading).


Options:

Voice-Acting: on/off
- Language: Japanese/English/et cetera.
Sub-titles: on/off
- Language: Japanese/English/et cetera.


What I have been surprised about is that you can actually change the language of the client itself!
Now that already is a lot, and even more amazing is that they allow text to be copied from and to the client from outside the game, and what's more, allow the additional input methods.

I am interested to see if the chat-channels will be improved as it would seem from the 'teaser' and if they will ever add the option for time-stamps, but I digress.

I agree with you on both counts OP, but I know others are looking forward to these features. I'm hoping they will give language options, and manage to keep any kind of PvP balancing out of PvE.

I have it on my "wait and see" list, but I'm glad you brought it up because they are true concerns of mine, especially the PvP balancing.

I was sooooo happy to have voice-overs. I was tired of everyone having the same /cheer for miqo'tes. Hopefully there will be more than 3 voices per race.

PvP actually sounds fun. If you didn't play the actual Grand Company missions, you had to attack the other ones and technically kill them. I don't see the difference EXCEPT PvP will require more strategy lol

I share the dislike of voice acting/voice overs 100%, actually. I'd be very glad to see little to none of it around ffxiv/2.0. It really is more fun (to me) to get to decide what people/characters/npcs sound like.

I am pretty happy they are adding in PvP, and potentially open world (in at least one area) PvP. I love PvP.... Boss strategies are always the same, they always do the same things every time you fight them, but you never know what a different player is going to do... I've met a few people that wouldn't even try FFXIV simply because it had no PvP content. It is good to know that they are designing content for a larger audience now, they obviously need to in order for FFXIV to survive in this oversaturated market.

On the subject of voice acting, I really don't see how anyone could dislike them adding in voices for the other languages, especially when we have yet to hear them. I could understand wanting the option to possibly toggle them off, but allowing people to listen to voice-over cutscenes in their native language is never a bad thing...

Hmm...I believe (being an actor) its not the voice-acting that's the problem it's usually the direction and the script...

Also I think its funny that so many people prefer the language they don't understand and believe it to be pure gold, it makes no sense to me; in fact since I am sure most of the English community doesn't know anything more than small phrases and tid-bits of broken Japanese (see: Rein, the ONLY unofficial English translator...) you have no idea how well the language is being performed (and no I cannot reason with its in the native language crap, because you don't know what the hell they are saying save for the translated English, so it becomes like reading a book and you are still getting the same undesired effect from just having it play in English voices...) So as an actor who would one day love to work for the localization voice-acting team, I take a stand and say no way, listen to the hard work we put into the characters, and learn to love your own language.

/end_rant

That is kind of interesting. You speak as if it was out of your wallet if a player uses a different language for their game? I can't understand how or why anyone would be against more options even if they would not understand anything at all of the other language, but merely preferred it. It also takes the possibility away from those who DO understand it.

Also, there will fer sure never be an option for my language, so I guess the last part in particular does not really work towards me at all (also I do understand quite a lot of quite a many different languages, while not perfectly, I keep learning more by listening to them, using them).

Moreover, I think it is not very becoming of an actor to force him/her\itself to a customer. :]


Of course this is just my opinion in general, nothing personal. Except it is my personal preference to listen to Japanese movies and anime in Japanese audio. That is if there must be audio, as I would much prefer no voices in games like this. There are only few places I would prefer to have them.

Actually, all versions of the game are in english onry during voiced cutscenes (with the proper subtitles).

When Yoshi-P talks about having the voice acting in all languages, he simply means that JP client will have JP voice acting ,etc.