Thread: 2.0 Voice Acting

We all know more voice acting is going to be implemented in 2.0, but how much and at what cost? I don't want voice acting if it's going to be low quality, or if it costs to much and that money could have been put else where to make the game better. Yes, voice acting is nice, makes CS and other S's much more enjoyable. That's why I think its best to keep the Main storyline voice acted an leave the rest to text.

Pretty much I want, quality>quantity.

What do you guys think? please give your comment, hate, opinions, and generic rokien comment.

Also I would like to see random talking on the streets as I walk by npcs(don't really care about quality here, more of an atmosphere thing).

Good news from an interview!

"MP : Today, a lot of MMO are using voice over and cutscenes in their quests, even in small quests, what about Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 ?

Yoshida : For the main quests and the main scenario, we will going to have full voice over, not only in English but in French, German and Japanese as well. However, we have a concept not to voice over the general quests. The reason we decided not to voice the normal quests is because we believe having more quests is the most important thing; if we want to have an update every two months, and let's say, we add 200 quests, and if we want to have voices in four languages over these 200 quests, it's going to take four months to do the voice over. Rather than spending time in voicing these quests, we wanted to keep adding more small quests but we will make sure the main story line will have full voice over."

is there any achivement creating X number of threads?

PD: gameplay > voice acting

Yeah. I don't want every single little quest textbox to have voice acting, but still, anything warranting a cutscene definitely needs voice acting.

I guess random chatter would be more immserive, but it would get annoying fast. Maybe a toggle or something?


Also, Rokien thread.

As long as its all Main story quests even the minor ones!

Originally Posted by Rokien

We all know more voice acting is going to be implemented in 2.0, but how much and at what cost? I don't want voice acting if it's going to be low quality, or if it costs to much and that money could have been put else where to make the game better. Yes, voice acting is nice, makes CS and other S's much more enjoyable. That's why I think its best to keep the Main storyline voice acted an leave the rest to text.

Pretty much I want, quality>quantity.

What do you guys think? please give your comment, hate, opinions, and generic rokien comment.

Also I would like to see random talking on the streets as I walk by npcs(don't really care about quality here, more of an atmosphere thing).

It can be quite a waste. Just look at SWTOR and its huge budget, a lot of which was spent on worthless voice acting. But there's also areas in FFXIV which feel very muted. In this regard, some voice acting, either from the mobs or NPCs could be a worthwhile addition. Monsters and NPCs , both in and outside of the cutscenes seem so silent and dead, and that's where voice acting could improve the game.

But again, voice acting for every sidequest would probably just be a waste of resources.

Originally Posted by Rokien

We all know more voice acting is going to be implemented in 2.0, but how much and at what cost? I don't want voice acting if it's going to be low quality, or if it costs to much and that money could have been put else where to make the game better. Yes, voice acting is nice, makes CS and other S's much more enjoyable. That's why I think its best to keep the Main storyline voice acted an leave the rest to text.

Pretty much I want, quality>quantity.

What do you guys think? please give your comment, hate, opinions, and generic rokien comment.

Also I would like to see random talking on the streets as I walk by npcs(don't really care about quality here, more of an atmosphere thing).

Well, the voice acting in my head can be pretty amazing when I'm not tired. So it'd have to be even with that. Almost certainly just cutscenes for the most part, key character voices, of good quality.

Generally, whenever voices are meant for immersion or ambiance, they need to fit one other criteria: matching whatever other factors are giving those two already, generally the music or level of ambient noise already in the area. If you have an area with sweeping music going, fading on the voices should probably (though preferably toggle-able) more or less match the dynamics of the music to grant a combined feel. Ul'duh naturally wouldn't especially have this problem. If added though, there would need to be a large library of voices and dialogue, and then adjustable levels for how much dialogue you want to be hearing (all, dimmed background, responsive only, etc).

Generally I agree with Raistlin though. Gameplay > voice acting. However, I do think that voice acting can potentially parallel gameplay in many ways, as long as it contributes to the same sources or overall feel that gameplay runs on, but that takes something more drastic and wholesome, and is probably beyond SE's capabilities at this time. I realize that's fairly vague, sorry.

Edit: I wonder how efficient slave...err... fan labor would be in these regards. Fans' voice types given, voice types associated with NPCs, character dialogue styles given to the fans, additional dialogue made to best match it, then fans voice the characters they match. Name goes in credits. Happy fan. Free outside of original organization and slight management and QC afterwards, with a large vocal base to work with.