Thread: DEV REQUEST: Complete voice acting in 4.0 and beyond

I would like to see this but it will not happen seeing they have underpowered dev team and budget.

Originally Posted by AeraLure

I don't know. With the amount I keep reading about budget, staff and server limitations I kind of would prefer no voice acting at all and that money redirected elsewhere, let alone an idea like this that could cost a fortune.

The engilsh voice acting sounds bad to me anyway. Most of it is annoying british/pirates/gaunty accents with words rarely used in modern settings. My whole time in HW I'd just read the text, stop the speaking with the X button, read text, X button etc. Times I would listen is to hear the silly voices of primal's and monsters that always have a distinct way of speaking, which to me sounded more interesting to listen to than actual humanoid characters.

Quick note: FFXIV has over 5 million subscibers I believe, and we pay 10 dollars a month, that's 50 million dollars every month. Now I'm still wondering how much money they actually need for stuff like this. -_-

I'd love more voice acting for sure, at LEAST on those CS quest parts where, you know, they seem to talk important stuff.

It's true that VA doesn't make a story better (It's the writing which does), but it would make the story a tiny bit more involving with actual "voicing" going on.

No thanks. Waste of money. I would rather them use the money for other fun gameplay developement.

Originally Posted by Kling-Klang

No thanks. Waste of money. I would rather them use the money for other fun gameplay developement.

^This, and the actual development team already came out and said ages ago this is the reason why they haven't gone the 'full voiced quest' route (I can't find the thread in question but it was from one of the localization team members explained about it if my memory serves) - it would chew up far too much development time, limit the implementation of new story quests (because they would have to wait before the voice recordings for each tiny piece of dialogue was done), and also eat into development resources which are better spent elsewhere.

Additionally, it was already mentioned earlier in this thread but it's worth repeating, that another reason why we don't have all quest dialogue completely voiced over is due to the fact we are allowed to fully customize our character including their full name, and this becomes their in game identity in the storyline. Because there is simply no way for the development team to know every possible name choice by players, it's impossible to have their name spoken in dialogue.

This is why already in the game when there is a voiced over cutscene, the player's name is never directly mentioned, instead they're just referred to in a generic term ('the adventurer', the 'Warrior of Light', 'Eorzea's Champion' etc) which loses some of that customization (after all, why even give the player the choice to name their character themselves if it's just going to be ignored?).

Either way, I doubt very much we will ever see this game go the 'fully voiced dialogue' route in the future.

No, from me too.

First, there are other things I'd like to see in-game first, like more storage or houses for everyone who wants them.

Second, I'd rather be addressed by name in writing than have my character addressed in some generic term by npcs who should know her really well. It just feels unnatural.

Third, there is the problem of quality and voices changing radically when the original actors are not available for later patches.
I can't tell you how jarring Minfillia's wooden acting was all the way through ARR and how utterly disappointed I was when the Admiral went from sounding like a plausible leader in ARR to a comedy pirate in HW.

Exactly my point Colorful, though I believe the actress who originally played the Admiral wasn't approached for HW (sorry, no idea which thread I read that in). I do take your point about time-constraints affecting the acting, too.

Doing something like this well would cost a fortune and personally, I'd rather see money spent on other things.

I'm fine with the way it is. I voice acting is passable but that's not saying much. I can't imagine hearing everyone else speak, especially lominsans