Dear Square Enix,

[AshlikeSnow]

ok so what if SE dubs every cutscene BUT the only way you can get access to said dub is if you SUBSCRIBE to the DUB patch that cost 19.99 every month on top of your normal subscription. BUT in order to get access to the dub sub you need to also pay a one time fee of 49.99.

[NephthysVasudan]

I find it amusing how people assume that a given company has more than enough money when they are clueless as to how much things actually cost.

[Larsille]

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

[Larsille]

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)
GW2 can manage to do voice overs for their most important quests with their 3-4 month patch cycle (which includes the living world quests which are like a MSQ) they also give random npcs with no quests for you a voice.
And i dont think GW2 has way more revenue or even more net income than SE. GW2 is also distributed in several languages across the world. ESO has voice over for every quest even if they arent MSQ. And im sure this game gets also new quests every few months.
And here as well i doubt ESO can beat FFXIV in terms of revenue or even net income.

I stand by it, the last quest was a development choice to be lazy imho.

[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.

[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.