OUR VOICE

Please hire a general voice actor for male and female player characters its been years we waited everyone agrees its about time we stop nodding and start talking its not so hard to get 1 male 1 female per race and have them read lines the game is surely profitable enough. if a game like swtor can give us a voice then i see no reason a mega giant like square enix cant .

I don't think it'd be quite that simple. Every race/sex combo gets to choose from a number of different voices; they'd have to have that many voice actors, rather than one male and one female, or your character would sound jarringly diffent in and out of cutscenes. Besides, you wouldn't want a Roe and a Lala to have the same voice, right?

Also, not all members of a race will speak in a similar way; consider Guydelot, an Elezen you befriend while doing Bard job quests. He speaks with a rough-sounding Cockney accent, not the fancy courtly accent used by most Elezen you meet.

It'd be nice to have an actual speaking voice for your character, but I don't think it'd be practical in this game.

Two genders per race per language. That would be 56 voice actors that they'd have to hire. Each expansion is in effect its own game, as far as quantity of content goes, so these 56 voice actors would each have to voice four games' worth of cutscenes. That's a lot of time that the sound team would have to spend updating back content. They wouldn't find it worth it.

And even if they did, you'll never get all the highlander players to agree that the one voice they chose for highlander males is good.

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Originally Posted by SorceressVal

Please hire a general voice actor for male and female player characters its been years we waited everyone agrees its about time we stop nodding and start talking its not so hard to get 1 male 1 female per race and have them read lines the game is surely profitable enough. if a game like swtor can give us a voice then i see no reason a mega giant like square enix cant .

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Who's we? Where is this everyone? Your personal friends? I sure am not ready to stop nodding stoically.

Honestly I wish we just had more dialog, even in text. I do like it when we get some choices even if the effect is net nuthin outcome wise. Let us be able to express ourselves a bit more, even if it doesn't matter.

y our voice option is near pointless outside 4 emotes ....it would be one thing if it gave us dialong instead of us just standing there making faces and we don't get a choice of what face we get to make. or let us type out a select message that our character says out loud with the voice we picked

The stoic nods get a bit tedious, but silent un-subtitled "talking" is fine. I'd rather "fill in the blanks" and imagine what my character would say in the situation, than have the exact words given to them.

It's different in a game where the main character has speaking lines and a fixed personality from the beginning, but it doesn't really work here when there is such a vast choice of character designs. Are you well-spoken or rough? Polite or rude? Excited or restrained?

If they introduced such a thing now, unless your concept of your character matches the personality the writers give you (after all this time of working it out for yourself), it's going to seem wrong and out-of-character.

Has there ever been an MMO with a voiced player character? Genuine question, never played or otherwise investigated enough to know. I would expect the broader character customization gets, the less likely voice acting becomes.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Has there ever been an MMO with a voiced player character? Genuine question, never played or otherwise investigated enough to know. I would expect the broader character customization gets, the less likely voice acting becomes.

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MMO I have no clue, but can say there are voice actors in some Bioware games with character customization. The games have flaws, but voicing multiple dialogue options across many possible races and appearances didn't seem like a huge issue imo. Dragon Age: Inquisition has two male options and two female.

For FFXIV don't think it would work as well because like people have said the number of voice options is INSANE, and I get the sense the nonverbal thing is also to minimize any need for VA translations. It might be nice to be able to hear some of the non-verbal bits in cutscenes occasionally, like if your character laughs or cries or hmms thoughtfully or something. Idk if that would be logistically a big hassle or not though.

I mainly enjoy when we get more written dialogue options though, been loving those a lot. Seems like SE figured that isn't such an issue so they can throw it in more.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Has there ever been an MMO with a voiced player character? Genuine question, never played or otherwise investigated enough to know. I would expect the broader character customization gets, the less likely voice acting becomes.

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I depends on what you mean by "Voiced"

For example, WoW had each race having a unique voice. Mostly for giving error commands like "I'm out of mana" or "It's not ready yet!" (If you didn't disable those).

Or doing stuff like /joke where your character would spout a race specific joke.

In actual quests, your character never actually said anything. Though, to be fair, the times when characters actually said things aloud in that game were in their pre-scripted CG cutscenes that never included the player characters.

This set a precedent for all the "WoW Clones" too, which had a similar design.

If I recall correctly, SWToR had fully voiced player characters even in cutscenes. Though, it was limited to some pre-sets based on gender (Irregardless of race).

As for FFXIV:

It would be too costly to do.

Especially given that they would need to do more than 1 voice per gender:race combo due to the fact that we get to choose a "Voice" during character creation which gets used during combat as well as for certain emotes.

Since, the case is that the majority of the money that FFXIV makes, does not go back into the game, instead SE uses it to fund other games, such as making DLC for FFXV or developing the FFVII remake.

So, hiring all of those voice actors would be really expensive. Especially if they wanted it to fit in well, which would require retro-active implementation (Since it would be really odd if we were silent for tons of content then all of a sudden had a voice randomly) - Including re-writing some scenes that reference how "Quiet" we are due to our penchant for merely gesturing most of the time.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Has there ever been an MMO with a voiced player character? Genuine question, never played or otherwise investigated enough to know. I would expect the broader character customization gets, the less likely voice acting becomes.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic had fully voiced PCs. One for each class and gender. So the female Chiss agent sounded exactly like the female Human agent. Still that's 16 voice actors reading thousands of hours of lines to cover everything the PC needed to say out loud.

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Originally Posted by SorceressVal

Please hire a general voice actor for male and female player characters its been years we waited everyone agrees its about time we stop nodding and start talking its not so hard to get 1 male 1 female per race and have them read lines the game is surely profitable enough. if a game like swtor can give us a voice then i see no reason a mega giant like square enix cant .

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I'm not sure I would like this. I have a very good idea of what my character would sound like - I don't want her to have a random voice that may not even fit my own mental image of her.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I'm not sure I would like this. I have a very good idea of what my character would sound like - I don't want her to have a random voice that may not even fit my own mental image of her.

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Or the inevitable English accent. I like to think my WoL is a proud Ameriburger thank you.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Has there ever been an MMO with a voiced player character? Genuine question, never played or otherwise investigated enough to know. I would expect the broader character customization gets, the less likely voice acting becomes.

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Guild wars 2 had voice for pc for each race / gender swtor also had voice for pc as well

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Star Wars: The Old Republic had fully voiced PCs. One for each class and gender. So the female Chiss agent sounded exactly like the female Human agent. Still that's 16 voice actors reading thousands of hours of lines to cover everything the PC needed to say out loud.

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And if I remember correctly, that feature was a huge spend from the budget. I'd rather the XIV team focus the budget on other areas. This game has excellent characters, voice acting and story, it doesn't need a significant budget spent on making the PC talk within that

Please no. I really don't think Generic British Guy #8 would sound at all like my character should sound.

EDIT: The only compromise I would accept is if I could have whoever voiced Ilberd. No alternatives.

Star Wars the old republic is the rare one that have VA for your own character, but it is quite different situation. They have 2 fractions with 4 main classes in each side. No matter which race you pick you going through the same story line with some alternate path but all race share the same voice as long as they are in the same class. Some might disagree but I found SWTOR have way higher standard of BA than FFXIV have provide.

SWTOR is made by BioWare and it is hugely main story focus MMO so I guess they should have the high standard VA, while FFXIV I don’t think they are as strong as SWTOR on how “chose your own path” in main story and I have to say FFXIV VA is quite poorly perform, I think they should priorities getting better VA for MSQ and spending on other stuff and giving VA for our character

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Originally Posted by Doozer

Please no. I really don't think Generic British Guy #8 would sound at all like my character should sound.

EDIT: The only compromise I would accept is if I could have whoever voiced Ilberd. No alternatives.

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Instead of nodding your character says, "SLOPPEH"

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

And if I remember correctly, that feature was a huge spend from the budget. I'd rather the XIV team focus the budget on other areas. This game has excellent characters, voice acting and story, it doesn't need a significant budget spent on making the PC talk within that

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It was, yeah. Their budget was enormous and most of it went to this. It's why there are no separate class storylines for any of their expansions.

Personally I don't especially care about voice acting for my character. There's no possibility it'd sound like my character sounds in my head regardless. It'd be Generic English Guy #659 and who needs that.

Frankly, while we're at it can we talk about how people from literally different continents have the exact same accents as each other? Eorzea and Doma are quite far apart from each other with different cultures... why do they all sound like they're from London?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I have a very good idea of what my character would sound like - I don't want her to have a random voice that may not even fit my own mental image of her.

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Even if the budget allowed for it, this point is why they can't really add it part way into the game like this. It would be a different matter if the game had started out with voiced player characters. Then that voice would have been part of our image of our character from the outset. But in a game people have been playing for a long time and where we each have different ideas about how our characters should sound, there's no way for SE to match that.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Frankly, while we're at it can we talk about how people from literally different continents have the exact same accents as each other? Eorzea and Doma are quite far apart from each other with different cultures... why do they all sound like they're from London?

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I believe that's attributable to the Echo.

Our Echo allows us to understand all languages (Which is why we can walk into Doma and be able to speak with everyone despite never studying the Doman language)

It's possible that it will also translate other languages into specific accents too.

Kind of like the same reasoning used in Doctor Who with how the TARDIS automatically translates everything into a British accent. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Callinon

It Frankly, while we're at it can we talk about how people from literally different continents have the exact same accents as each other? Eorzea and Doma are quite far apart from each other with different cultures... why do they all sound like they're from London?

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Some NPCs have varying accents that probably only a Brit themselves could distinguish where there are from, but definitely not all of them are from London. The capital doesn't have dibs on those kind of accents after all, usually just association.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

I believe that's attributable to the Echo.

Our Echo allows us to understand all languages (Which is why we can walk into Doma and be able to speak with everyone despite never studying the Doman language)

It's possible that it will also translate other languages into specific accents too.

Kind of like the same reasoning used in Doctor Who with how the TARDIS automatically translates everything into a British accent. :rolleyes:

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I'm actually fairly certain the Echo isn't involved with translating Doman language; Lyse and Alisaie have no problems speaking to any Othardian people they encounter, and the Echo doesn't impart linguistic translation to nearby companions like the TARDIS. Moreover, Yugiri and Gosetsu similarly have no issues speaking to Eorzeans when they first arrive. I can't check the lorebook right now, but I think all the peoples at least speak 'the Common tongue' (probably not the right term) that's spoken throughout Eorzea and the Garlean Empire, presumably as a trade language and/or because of Garlean occupation.

In regards to the accent, Hien and Gosetsu at least have a slight tonal difference to their speech that suggests an East Asian accent, though I may just be hearing things. They probably didn't bother with outright East Asian accents because it might have come across as silly if they couldn't pull it off, and it's not like everyone sharing the same accent doesn't happen in other media works; I'm pretty sure none of the Japanese voice actors are effecting a British accent, for instance.

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Originally Posted by Seraph522

I'm actually fairly certain the Echo isn't involved with translating Doman language; Lyse and Alisaie have no problems speaking to any Othardian people they encounter

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Alisae specifically mentions that she actually studied the Doman language though.

It's only Lyse that is questionable in her ability to speak to the Othardians. However, one could pass it off as maybe Alisae taught her the basics of the language during the voyage over.

As far as Yugiri and Gosetsu go - Yugiri is one of the Shinobi, so it wouldn't be particularly out of the ordinary to have learned to speak other languages so as to better infiltrate and spy on enemies such as the Imperials (Who'd likely have Eorzean conscripts in their ranks so use a common Eorzean tongue). While Gosetsu worked directly for Lord Kaien whom may have occasionally used some Eorzean languages while dealing with the rebellion against the Imperials so Gosetsu may have picked up some (While not being particularly fluent, so using that stereotypical "Talk louder and hope people understand better" thing that tourists do)

Since, it's given in the lore that the Echo provides us with the ability to understand and speak all languages. Including that of the Ascians (Back in ARR there were times where the Ascians would use their native tongue and only us and Minfilia, whom have the Echo, could understand them)

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Originally Posted by Kalise

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Yeah, I think I phrased that incorrectly in my initial post. The Echo certainly translates Doman, Hingashi, etc. for us. That being said, from some digging on the lorebooks, Eorzean is at least spoken in Kugane (which makes sense, as Kugane is a major international trade port), though it isn't their native language. Doma is more questionable; Oboro and Tsubame from the Ninja job questline are able to speak Eorzean, but express lack of familiarity with it in the initial quests, suggesting that most Domans do not speak Eorzean (although they also hail from a somewhat isolated ninja tribe/clan, so who knows). Lyse being able to speak well with the Domans could definitely be explained away by Alisaie teaching her, though the real problem arises on the Azim Steppe, where everyone seems to be able to talk easily with one another despite the lore stating that the tribes mostly speak Auri and, presumably, are not as familiar with Eorzean. We can cheat with the Echo, but I don't think Alisaie ever learned Auri (though I could just be forgetting it).

The Garleans are where things get interesting: presumably, Eorzean is spoken rather widely due to the absorption of various provinces into the Empire and the high level of conscript forces, similar to how Greek remained a common trade language in the Eastern Roman Empire, but it's not clear if the Garlean elites still speak or even have their own native language (our lore on Garlemald is still somewhat lacking, probably intentionally so). Most languages in the three great continents are descended from Ancient Allagan anyways, but multiple millennia of divergence has no doubt allowed for significant linguistic differences to arise.

In general, though, the game glosses over a lot of linguistic differences in a lot of instances, no doubt for the sake of expedience in terms of storytelling.

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Originally Posted by Seraph522

Lyse being able to speak well with the Domans could definitely be explained away by Alisaie teaching her, though the real problem arises on the Azim Steppe, where everyone seems to be able to talk easily with one another despite the lore stating that the tribes mostly speak Auri and, presumably, are not as familiar with Eorzean. We can cheat with the Echo, but I don't think Alisaie ever learned Auri (though I could just be forgetting it).

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It's quite possible that on the Steppe, they all have rudimentary understanding of Doman. What with literally the capital city being not far away, as well as the fact that there are Domans and people from Isari whom come to Reunion to trade. Indicating that while the Qestir themselves don't care for learning languages, other tribes likely would in order to trade. Since, even though they like to show off that they don't care much for other tribes, many people do note how important Reunion is for allowing them access to necessary supplies.

Thus, if they knew Doman or some common language used within Hingashi/Othard, that would explain how all the Archons could communicate with those on the Steppe.

You can read the prompts aloud if you want to hear the voice.

You could even record it and submit it or stream it on twitch for others to hear.

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Originally Posted by SorceressVal

Please hire a general voice actor for male and female player characters its been years we waited everyone agrees its about time we stop nodding and start talking its not so hard to get 1 male 1 female per race and have them read lines the game is surely profitable enough. if a game like swtor can give us a voice then i see no reason a mega giant like square enix cant .

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No.
I like my stoically quiet Character.

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Originally Posted by SorceressVal

everyone agrees its about time

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No.
/10char

I'd rather they remove the voice acting they already have. It's completely jarring to go through the game and suddenly someone talks for a few sentences then goes back to silence. It also gives the game an unfinished appearance, as if the devs just chopped dialogue to save VA fees, or just stopped VA altogether in midstride to push the game out. It would have a much more cohesive and professional appearance if all dialogue were either text or voice, not both. And since we know removing VA is much easier, faster, and cheaper, they should just do it and get it over with.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Even if the budget allowed for it, this point is why they can't really add it part way into the game like this. It would be a different matter if the game had started out with voiced player characters. Then that voice would have been part of our image of our character from the outset. But in a game people have been playing for a long time and where we each have different ideas about how our characters should sound, there's no way for SE to match that.

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Late reply, but this wouldn’t apply to me because my characters have existed for years before I even started playing FFXIV (some are even from the early 2000s in terms of how long I’ve had them—though my main character was born around 2011). I know that doesn’t apply to everyone, but for those who have had their characters for a long time, even starting out with voices might conflict with their own mental perceptions.
Even the emote sounds... I spent 2 hours trying to pick the one that sounded the closest to what Hyomin has always sounded like lol

They've been adding in more personalized responses in cut-scenes for personality. It's up to us to fill that voice with our imagination. Voices for the many WoL/Ds would cost a lot and wouldn't be appreciated by all players. I could just imagine all the threads whining about how they thought their character should sound like this or that.

It's a costly can of worms. imo the no voice allows for more immersion because head-canons and all that.

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Originally Posted by Zorvan

I'd rather they remove the voice acting they already have. It's completely jarring to go through the game and suddenly someone talks for a few sentences then goes back to silence.

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I feel the same way, and actually switched off the voices a while ago. Mostly because I didn't like some of the performances, but I also hated the odd feeling at the start of every cutscene, waiting for the first character to talk, to see whether they would make a sound or not!