Lack of voice acting is really hurting the emotion of the story

[Felis]

Would you pay the cost to teach 24 people (if character voice get limited to 12 each gender shared by all races) to speak in 3 foreign languages (I guess the people who spoke the character voices are japanese working in the SE building)? Would it disturb you if your character will have a japanese accent?

To make it work each voice actor from the character creation have to speak fluently japanese, english, german and french

[Ghald]

No thanks I like my protagonist silent, my character voice sounds better in my head than a voice that the dev have to pick one for me.

[Kaethra]

But they have to be paid for. Which means that the funds used to pay for them have to come from somewhere, and it’s likely that they would be pulled from funding other things—such as adding in new customization for races. Or adding in another dungeon. Or creating the next Ultimate.

But I’m sure you knew that.

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

And I'll throw this one in there. I'll pay for it. They have my contact info. If its that much of a issue, I'll cover the cost. I can afford it.

So now your fears are gone.

[HyoMinPark]

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

And I'll throw this one in there. I'll pay for it. They have my contact info. If its that much of a issue, I'll cover the cost. I can afford it.

So now your fears are gone.

The funding for voice acting will be taken out of the game’s budget for other things: budget that could have gone to other departments; budget that could have gone towards making other things, such as the ones I listed, but that now lack funding all because you want your character to have a personalized voice actor. Do you know how business finances work? Because I don’t think that you do.

And, if you’re insisting on paying for it, I hope you have a couple hundred grand on-hand then. Probably more, since you’ll have to hire VAs that speak all four languages for localization purposes.

[ForteNightshade]

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

And I'll throw this one in there. I'll pay for it. They have my contact info. If its that much of a issue, I'll cover the cost. I can afford it.

So now your fears are gone.

You do understand how budgets work, yes? If FFXIV were allocated say, $40 million. That is intended to cover everything—including voice acting.

But since you're apparently a millionaire. Please, go ahead and donation your millions to SE. I'm rather certain they will appreciate it.

[MariaArvana]

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

And I'll throw this one in there. I'll pay for it. They have my contact info. If its that much of a issue, I'll cover the cost. I can afford it.

So now your fears are gone.

Except you realize games tend to have an overall budget that's split between every team working on the project? But I bet you knew that.

If FF14 is given a budget of 30million and out of that only 2mil is allocated to VA, any more funds the VA team would require is coming from that 30mil, which means less for other teams, which means -yes-, money is being diverted from someplace else.
Welcome to game development 101. From all my programmer friends I know IRL, its how the industry works in 99.9% of cases. Most AAA studios don't throw money around willy nilly unless its do-or die for a project.

If you can actually afford several hundred thousands to millions of dollars to pay for the extra VA, go purchase stocks in Square Enix.

[CazzT]

Voice Actors don't code. They don't design.

But you knew that. So again its "I don't want it, so you can't have it."

Ah. So you don't understand how budgeting works. You see, in order to pay the VAs, money has to be taken from something else. If you take money away from development, that means less resources can be allotted to coding, sound, graphics, marketing, etc. Which means less content will be made.

[Gwenorai]

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

And I'll throw this one in there. I'll pay for it. They have my contact info. If its that much of a issue, I'll cover the cost. I can afford it.

So now your fears are gone.

Holy crap, if you're willing to pay 30+ voice actors their hourly rates from now until the end of the game. Go ahead. You must be a millionaire. Including, of course, to hire out the sound studio, and to pay for Yoshida to do quality control and the likes. Then looks like everything is good! Oh, and can't forget those who have to program and tweak the sound and put it into game, don't want a voice 7 fViera happening again.

[purgatori]

Sometimes I miss the amount of voice acting present in FFXIV vs., say, The Secret World or SWTOR, but then I'm reminded that the necessity for everything to be voiced in those games was likely one of the hindrances to securing a decent volume of new content.

[Fynlar]

I do, and I know that it wouldn't affect any other department, which apparently you didn't.

I see you know that about as well as you know whether people are playing on controllers or not.