More budget to voice acting?

I'm the only one who is really set off by the lack of voiced content outside of the MSQ?

There are so many interesting characters or situations in other places like the Alliance Raids or the 8-mans. Heck, even at job quests... It would be awesome if we could get more voice acted content, especially since XIV is such a successful title.

Reminds me of Guild Wars 2... There, you'd find even the most common npc dialogue out in cities voice acted.

No I actually prefer that they don't blow all their budget on voice acting as it would severely hamper the amount of lines that could be given to any one quest if they all had to be voiced. GW2 has voice acting yes, but you'll notice the amount of what is said is very superficial. Between having to pay a plethora of voice actors for each line, the fact they'd have to do all this for four different languages, the fact that we'd get less lines overall to compensate for the cost, and the data considerations each sound file brings I genuinely do not believe it worth the hassle.

Believe or not they have increased the budget for voice acting over the years.

Used to have no VA lines in trials(entire ARR was text boxes, every single fight except Greg round 1), now we have them in quite a few(usually plot important ones but SB had it for the 4 Lords quest and HW had it for Sophia and Zurvan).

Used to have no Voice lines in 8 man trial fights now we have it in E8s/E8 and E5-E8 intro cutscenes. Coil had voiced cutscenes and a CGI cutscene but this was most certainly an outlier due to being a potential end to the game as a whole if it weren't successful (it was thankfully but never expect this level of money again for a raid)

24 mans used to be completely silent SB 24 mans have VAs for their fights, while ShB 24 mans don't atm who knows if 5.5 24 man won't at this point.

I say the amount of voiced MSQ quests has also gone up over the years, and I believe SE knows that this helps immersion but it is a flat money thing as they have to get 4 sets of voice actors for the 4 supported languages that is not cheap at all to do. It was one of the reasons we had the voice actors change from ARR at the start of HW it was too costly for them to keep the OG voice actors.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

It was one of the reasons we had the voice actors change from ARR at the start of HW it was too costly for them to keep the OG voice actors.

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Which is bizarre because the voice actors in AAR were terrible.

I agree OP. FFXIV is so dry more than often. Such a shame since it is really a nice game. But would i do quests in other games over here? Yea 100%

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Originally Posted by Edax

Which is bizarre because the voice actors in AAR were terrible.

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Weren't they the same we have now? I think they are good. Playing on JPN voices

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Originally Posted by Jin-

I agree OP. FFXIV is so dry more than often. Such a shame since it is really a nice game. But would i do quests in other games over here? Yea 100%



Weren't they the same we have now? I think they are good. Playing on JPN voices

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No, Edax is referring to the English voice acting, which SE changed studios for from Heavensward onward and thus the game has a different English vocal cast from ARR (they're now using a UK studio as I understand it). This had the effect of Yugiri has had three different voice actresses for instance, as tragically her first HW voice actress, Sian Blake, passed away suddenly and thus had to be recast again. Personally I agree that the voice acting has improved a lot from ARR's cheesy (even wooden) voice acting, although I admit I prefered Alphinaud's original ARR actor.).

Either way, I'm not a big fan of voice acting in the FF series, as I kind of have my own idea how characters' voices sound and it becomes jarring when the official voices don't match that. That's just me though.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Which is bizarre because the voice actors in AAR were terrible.

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Completely disagree. Some of the voices were terrible, sure (especially Alphinaud), but they were distinct and memorable. Most of the voices post-change are mediocre and very samey. It sucked a lot of life and identity out of the game.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I admit I prefered Alphinaud's original ARR actor.)

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Completely disagree. Some of the voices were terrible, sure (especially Alphinaud)

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I know it's subjective, but to me it seemed like the original voice actors were badly directed. They seemed to stumble over the olde English lines and it often felt like the characters weren't in the same room when having a conversation. For me, a lot of the original scion cutscenes in the waking sands were pretty cringy, not because of any emotional scenes, but just because they delivered so much exposition so unnaturally.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Which is bizarre because the voice actors in AAR were terrible.

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A few were fairly bad, especially Minfillias, but personally I felt the voice acting went straight downhill from HW onwards. They switched some of the better voice actors with far worse ones. I had to switch to Japanese and never looked back since.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I know it's subjective, but to me it seemed like the original voice actors were badly directed. They seemed to stumble over the olde English lines and it often felt like the characters weren't in the same room when having a conversation. For me, a lot of the original scion cutscenes in the waking sands were pretty cringy, not because of any emotional scenes, but just because they delivered so much exposition so unnaturally.

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I think it was just bad direction as well honestly. They had some amazing voice actors in ARR, with Talisien Jaffe of Critical Role fame as Thancred, Kyle Hebert as Lahabrea, Jason Miller as Raubhan (he apparently came back and provided the vocals for To The Edge for the Warrior of Light trial), and Jean Gilpin as Merylwyb. Most of the lesser VA credits weren't bad either. I think out of all of them only Amy Bolton as Minfilia could be counted as an inexperienced casting choice? But that's just because she only has one voice credit to her name, being Minfilia, though I can't find if she's worked in dramas or theater beyond that. Point being the vast majority of the voices were from well known, highly talented voice actors. Yet almost all of them - with the exception of Jean Gilpin as Merylwyb I'd say, gave very flat and uninspiring performances. At that point it's only fair to look to the director because there's no way all these fairly well known voice talents just suddenly regressed in skill without some sort of reason.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I know it's subjective, but to me it seemed like the original voice actors were badly directed.

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I feel the same way.
It feels like they were told they need to add in unnatural accents and enunciate like nuts (with the major offender being Gaius).
Also, all the Lala NPCs sounded at least partially related to Toad and his ear bleeding shrieks.

Don't forget Gideon Emery as Urianger... I miss his voice so much....

I agree, I'd certainly love more voicework in non-msq stuff. They are stepping up their animation game with werlyt and bozja, but imagine how much better those scenes would be with voice work too?

And all the voicework in Orbonne elevated it, which makes it a shame the nier raid has had no voiceacting. Hopefully if last tier was anything to go by, the final eden tier will have more voicework at least

One of the things I liked in WoW was that some random dialog for unimportant stuff / interactions (like if you went to buy something they'd often have a little quip). Of course that's not special to WoW in terms of a game, just thinking of it as the 'other' MMO. Not voice but also in general the NPCs tended to be more chatty in WoW, you'd more likely see them talk down. Slap a humanoid in this game and usually nothing will be said. It's not end of the world or anything but it is something I noticed. Super tangent but thinking on 'notice-able but not game killing differences' I enjoyed that WoW often had critters and things didn't always want to kill you lol (like even the deer in ShB were like 'death to the WoL!' and I found that a little surprising, pretty much everything wants you dead, from the caterpillars to the crows).

Also echo Edax's feeling that there was something off with the original delivery, things didn't feel natural for whatever reason (not pinning it on anyone particularly but something was very much "...huh, this feels off", there were a few voices I felt worked even though in general I wasn't too enamored with the everything). Although it is not too rare for me to skip someone's voice if I've read the text faster than it took them to talk and I don't particularly enjoy their voice (doesn't mean dislike), there are a few actors and characters that'll not skip though (like Emet). There is also times where a voice actor can make me want to silence them, like this isn't anything against the person, as a person, but the written personality + voice of Vanille.. I couldn't skip her lines fast enough. "NO TALKING, STOP". I might have liked her more if she was silent lol. Maybe she was a sort of more self reflective Rikku but to note I didn't mind Rikku's voice actor.

I think because I tend to read and then skip to the next line is also why I tend to like the little quips in WoW, seemed like a happy medium for myself (of course if someone was like "you want dialog on everything at no cost to the rest of the content?" I'd say sure lol, like I enjoyed everything was voiced in divinity but sometimes I just didn't care to let them finish talking because "I" was finished reading lol).

The voice acting between ARR and HW (and the rest of the expansions) was noticeably different. As in it was much better. ARR was like GW2 levels, and the latter's VA is cringe. HW and beyond is almost as good as SWTOR, which in my opinion, has the best VA.

That being said, I think voice acting should be contained to the MSQ. That's actually a drawback in SWTOR. Everything was voiced. So, there would be a five minute dramatic cutscene just to tell you to go kill 10 rats. Save the voice acting for critical story beats. Text is fine for everything else.

"Reminds me of Guild Wars 2... There, you'd find even the most common npc dialogue out in cities voice acted"
And how many of those NPCs have the same exact voice? How many of those say the same line over and over? I prefer how FFXIV does it, with characters actually having their own voice. Also, you should not forget that more recorded dialogs means more HDD usage, which will increase by a lot with more audio files of the 4 languages this game has.