Dear Square Enix,

[Larsille]

FFXIV is their most profitable IP. you can see it in their report for the shareholders.

[Neri]

Being rational would be that we all could agree that they finally do more voice overs as they promised us.

Did they promise such thing ?

[Felis]

Being rational would be that we all could agree that they finally do more voice overs as they promised us. The amount of voice-overs since Heavensward is almost the same. (subjective feelings)

And there is much more voice-over in Heavensward than there was in ARR.

[Maeka]

What rationality? All I'm seeing are excuses they have no way of knowing.

Money? It's Square Enix lol.

Writing/localizing issues because of a name? Right, like they have no way around this.

All of these were already addressed:

Voice acting is crazy expensive and would add loads onto the amount of funding the game needs. These resources could be spent on doing things like developing more dungeons, trials, and other content which would have a far greater impact on your gameplay than a few lines of dialogue being voiced.

Using pronouns and generic terms such as "you" "champion" etc was already explained above, it removes personalization. Mass Effect actually got annoying at times where you were forced to use the last name Shepard and your first name doesn't once come up in the game (I wonder why it's even there).

And in WoW.... every world quest.

CHAMPION! CHAMPION! CHAMPION! CHAMPION! got old after awhile. As much as I think Khadgar is a cool guy, I just grit my teeth when he yells out "Champion!" and proceeds to tell me he wants me to do something. It gets old. Fast.

[Tinibou]

Dubbing costs a lot of money ? So how MMOs like TESO can be entirely dubbed then ? And TESO is F2P

[Vaer]

Dubbing costs a lot of money ? So how MMOs like TESO can be entirely dubbed then ? And TESO is F2P

They charge expansion prices every 3 months no? The rest of the new content you have to sub or buy it separately. (At $15 each) Doesn't seem F2P to me honestly other than having game access without paying. It's almost like a sub game just presented differently.

I'd be interested in a comparison between the amount of voice acting in Stormblood base vs. Summerset or Morrowind.

I've played through the base game for ESO and I always thought it was funny that it seemed like they had the same person do the voice overs for all the generic NPCs of the same race.

[Maeka]

Dubbing costs a lot of money ? So how MMOs like TESO can be entirely dubbed then ? And TESO is F2P

QUALITY dubbing costs a lot of money.

Of course you could get any old joe to do the dubbing, but that doesn't mean it will be GOOD dubbing (why do you think the Emperor in Oblivion died in the first 10 minutes of the game? Because Patrick Stewart was NOT cheap and boy did they ever use his name as a key selling point of the game when he was knocked off at the very beginning lol). That, and these MMOs tend to have very generic/short lines and not entire plot-heavy cutscenes like FFXIV does.

That, and another thing we might want to look at, is TIME. Some FFXIV cutscenes already range in the 5 minute+ mark, and there are some cutscenes that would probably breach 10 minutes if they were fully voiced. I can read much faster than someone can talk, and the voiced cutscenes tend to be more special.

If every cutscene was voiced, the specialness would be lost, and the non-voiced cutscenes would take 3x as long as they already do.

[Random0]

Let's not forget that dubbing would cost at least 4x the amount it would most other games because the voice over scenes would have to be recorded in Japanese, English, French and German.

So now for one scene alone you need to contract 4 different actors, with 4 different studios, in 4 different parts the world.

And since everyone can change their audio preference freely no matter what region they play in, those actors/studios need contracts stipulating their work is being used internationally. If those contracts are anything like recording contracts for music labels (ever wonder why we don't see a lot of Japanese artists/soundtracks in American music stores?) then negotiating international rights takes even more time and money.

[Penthea]

It is not to expensive for them. Its an issue of net income growth. Stop telling yourself they dont have enough money for that.

You seem to be forgetting some things:

Recording voice clips takes time. Voice actors need to be guided by a director on how to portray the character. Often they will have to redo the same snippet of speech several times until the creative team is satisfied. I hope that if all msq dialogue is voiced that you won't be complaining about content taking longer to release.

Voice actors typically have contracts with several companies. Attaching voices to every piece of msq dialogue heightens the chance of inconsistent voice actors when schedules inevitably clash.

It's not as cost effective as other content. You generally experience msq dialogue only once. This isn't like music which can be experienced over and over again without making an alt. Of course SE would want to get the most out of their money so if they can they'll put the majority of it into repeatable content.

Fixing the name addressing is easy in my opinion. change <playername> to <you> and equivalent words and i dont see any problem with that

I don't fancy being called "you" and "they" all the time. In FFX the npcs constantly avoided calling Tidus by his real name because you could change it, and it was honestly off-putting as hell. It made the dialogue appear very unnatural because it frankly isn't normal to never refer to someone by name.

It also works in skyrim

It works in Skyrim because your character mostly works alone. In the main story the main character doesn't build a strong bond with anyone in particular. It's the opposite in the msq. Your character has a strong bond with the majority of the main cast because you work closely with them. It wouldn't make sense for them to never call you by name. Your character has fought, bled and grieved with those people. How could they not be close enough to drop all titles and use their real name? Exactly this happened in FFX and it bugged the hell out of me for the entire game.

[Alleo]

Its just really strange to have a cutscene being voiced and the next equally important one not. I am fine if the text that is outside of a big cutscene is not voiced but having voices in one scene and none in the next, while you are still viewing a cutscene just pulls me out a bit.