DEVS: Don't waste time with voice acting.

[Coglin]

Good use of lighting effects...so? You can make a 2.5D game look just as good.

2.5D ?.....is that like having 2.5 kids?

[Jennestia]

2.5D ?.....is that like having 2.5 kids?

It's an actual term -- Super Smash Brother's Brawl for example is a 2.5D game.

[SnickleWhiskers]

It's an actual term -- Super Smash Brother's Brawl for example is a 2.5D game.

This is truth.

On another note when did people start talking about the graphics in this game? What's there to say besides everything is pretty bland.

[Llewelyn]

Like the title says, please, please please don't waste your time or resources by adding voice acting to the game.

It's such a gimick. I've played Starwars, and trust me people will skip over all your hard work and time just to get to the gameplay.

If you feel you must add VO to your game, keep it to the main story line only and to a minimum. Especially in scenarios when you are grouped up. Leave lenghty CS and VO to the solo experience. When we are grouped we are ready to roll, get us to the gameplay as quickly as possible.

I know some people will disagree with me. But I ask you this. Everytime you enter the Ifrit fight or the Darkhold, or Moogle King do you watch the CS at length? Everytime? Adding voice won't change that. You've seen/heard it once no need to see listen to it again.

The problem with stuff like voice acting (and what you really mean is... story content) is that often times it's relatively shallow and forgettable. It's not like a game with a traditional story you follow, for the most part - it's just a dressing for a boss fight or a quest.

What you don't realize is, some people DO play for the story, not the end game content. I loved XI because getting from part A to part B was a challenge that rewarded you with little tidbits of story. The writing at times was a little trite... but voice acting would have been welcome to people like me.

Sure, there's people who did their best to breeze through it and didn't give a rat's ass about story. That's not the only kind of player of MMOs, though.

The thing that keeps me hooked on games (and MMOs) is a combination of character, story, exploration, and challenge. You're basically suggesting they keep it shallow so people can get their loot without having a reason beyond getting loot. And you're describing a game I really don't want to play.

If you don't like VO, I'm sure anything they do will be skipable. But Voice acting done well is a great asset to a game, and I'd love to see it. I quite liked the voice acting in the opening cutscenes, and was immensely disappointed when later CSes had just plain ol' text.

(As a side note, the problem with the SW MMO is that it's basically WoW or Aion in different dressing. The voice acting was the gimmick to set it apart, but that doesn't mean voice acting is a gimmick.)

[Riv]

The VO in star wars is cool, but like OP said....you'll probably end up skipping over a lot. Personally i didn't skip over any VO on my first character, but when i get to the same quests on subsequent characters i just blow through the dialog. I would like to see some more in XIV though, like with the story quests that were originally in the game.

[Seif]

Cutscenes and no VO aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

SE told some of it's best stories withot sub-par actors completely ruining the mood.

XI has a 100 times more cutscenes and it has probably the best storyline with an ending in any mmo out there.

From the tiny dev team size anyone can see that they're already screwed when it comes to funding this project. Beta fees anyone?

Now people are asking for one of the most expensive features without any understanding on how much it will slow down and greatly reduce the future content in all fields.

[Rubicon]

Personally I think it's sad if you skip cutscenes in a FF game. FF is story driven. I play the series for the story, the music, and the battle system. If you are skipping the story content in FFXIV, I wonder what your goal in playing FFXIV really is. The reason people rush through a game like SWTOR, skipping story content, is because those players goal is PvP and raids and for them the game STARTS at 50. Many SWTOR players are not skipping story as their reps have said just this past week that the majority of SWTOR players are in their 20s nearly a month after launch.

I didn't skip any story in FFXI and shed tears at the end of Promathia. What if all those beautiful interweaving stories had been voiced? I can't even imagine how special that would have been. If you want to skip through all of that, fine. But if you had a choice to have a fully voiced story or not and you choose not, do you even care about the storyline?

[KiniRyris]

Personally i love voiced cutscenes. I really want to see more of them in the main story line and GC quests. Maybe some sidequests too

[Jennestia]

Only time they should have VO:

-Main Scenario
-Grand Company
-Star Onion Brigade like quest chains. (If you never played FFXI you probably wouldn't understand this xD)

If they're going to dedicate a lot of time and money (time is money by the way) towards VO work, it may as well be in conjunction with actual content -- if it's done for just really any generic quest or just random NPCs and they reuse samples (Hi~!!!) for like every other NPC, they'll get called lazy and etc even though other MMO devs does it lol.

[djjdiss]

There's voice acting in this game?

LOL is that what they call that?