Way to help engagement in Main story

[Dawn_FF14]

Voice acting in Shadowbringers MSQs is phenomenal. I've been spending hours (if not days) just watching the cut scenes in the inn. However, I don't know how practical it is to go back and add voice acting to older content. Being spoiled by the ShB MSQs, I'm also not sure, even if SE have the money to add the voice, whether or not it would be of the same quality. If they can't do it as good, it's better not to do it at all.

In my opinion, to make voice acting truly enjoyable, it would require both good writing and good acting. I can't stand many audio books because no matter how good the author is, the voice just sounds so lifeless. Then, I've also heard, in some language, voice acting is good, but the dialog feels like done by google translate. When the writing is bad, I'd rather read it myself and not having someone read it out loud. When the voice acting is bad, I'd rather play the dialog in my own imagination.

[ClickOnce]

Problem with having more or all voice acting scenes is that it's not simple to do.

They would either need to hire more voice actors for different roles or keep reusing the same voice actors.

Both situations would cost more money and voice actors don't work for free and the same voice actors wouldn't do more work for same pay.

Next issue Square would have to deal with is scheduling. Voice actors, especially prominent or well known ones don't just voice 1 character or for one company forever. Square would have to schedule days, get multiple takes, clean up the sound and voice, etc..etc..

That's a lot more work. Lastly there's also this simple question of, would it be worth the extra cost and effort?

Like in the MSQ there's lots of characters who only serve 1 purpose or only exist for like 2-3 quests. That would be a lot of extra effort to voice these characters. Q

[Edax]

no reason to listen to some voice acting crap which adds nothing.

Voice acting in general is a cancer in games. people don't want to read anymore.

As far as cinema, It's a simple case that you have to hire the actors anyway to act, so part of their contract just involves speaking and isn't costing the company anymore money. Movies also tend to only last 1-3hrs, where an extremely text-heavy game like FF14 can have an upwards of 20-40hrs of voice acted content worth of text...per expansion. For multiple different languages.

Games without voice acting will forever exist simply because voice acting costs additional money to the video game companies on top of everything else they have to pay for in the development. Especially when you're a small indie studio or < 5 man team trying to create a lovely indie game on a budget, voice acting would potentially hurt the product due to having to cut expenses from other places in its stead. Not saying indie games with voice acting can exist, but everything is an opportunity cost, and for many devs, the negatives outweigh the positives.

Think About FF14. Think about the sheer, gigantic astronomical amount of text there is in this game's MSQ (lets not even dive into the even more astronomically larger side-quest pitfall) that would need to be voice-acted. Not to mention, in multiple different languages. Square as a company could easily afford it, but given that the expansion budgets are set in stone, I'm pretty sure Yoshi-P doesn't want a large % of the budget going to voice acting alone when the budget spent on the voice actors voicing the minor scenes can be spent on more important things, instead of hearing generic NPC #456789 say "go fetch this thing for me" for the #1million'th time.

It's simple priorities and budgeting 101.

Not to mention text-based games can have infinitely more charm than voice acting AAA titles if writing is lacking. take a look at how huge Helltaker blew up within a few days of it being released due to its charming dialogue and writing that gives the characters such fun personalities, without a single Voice acted line in sight.

I'm grateful that FFXIV isn't a text based game. I understand it can't all be voice acted, but I rail against the idea that it should be a completely voiceless game. Giant walls of text inherently do not support a visual medium, there's a reason so many players don't even bother reading the quest texts.