Text to Speech for Quest Dialogue Suggestion

[JoelShigakusha]

I don't know where to post a suggestion like this, but this looks to be the most correct location.

I think Text to Speech would be an exceptional addition to Final Fantasy XIV and make the already rich world's quests feel much more engaging for those who wish to experience all the content but perhaps don't like extensive reading or for those who like to multi-task while doing quests. Or for those who like looking at the characters instead of the text boxes while doing quests.

It's included as an accessibility feature on many programs including Windows 10's Operating System. It is also possible to include Text to Speech in games that encourage modding such as World of Warcraft. (Which was done at least 5 years ago)

I know that I have skipped or missed a good deal of quest dialogue just by getting distracted and missing a text box, and a large number of quests felt tedious because in order to skim the story, I had to be staring at the text box trying to read as fast as I can. I've also talked to a number of other players in game who similarly lament the lack of audio for a large number of the quests, especially newer players.

I think a text to speech implementation would be relatively affordable for SE to implement. If a few nerds with no budget could write a text to speech reader at least 5 years ago, I think a corporation like Square Enix could easily buy it from some other company, make it themselves, or directly implement one of the many publicly available open-source text to speech libraries.

[ItMe]

This would be cool from an accessibility standpoint.
And if they don't put the proper time and effort in I look forward to it mispronouncing the many fantasy words in this game (like Sahagin, amaurot, amaro, etc) and all the skills in other languages.