Why no voice acting?

[Aphex]

Why does an indy dev like Larian implement full voice acting AFTER the game released as a enhanced edition and a big company as Square Enix can't do it? Hey devs i heard you are cool and listen to your fans....FULL VOICE ACTING !

[Kiana]

Cost:benefit ratio. There's a MASSIVE amount of dialog in the game, so having every line voice acting would be very expensive (even with very low budget VAs, and then there'd be a flood of people complaining about the low quality of the acting) and would also inflate file sizes; Sound files are frequently a major contributor to game sizes.

Also, no one from SE pays attention to the steam forum. If you want the slightest chance of a developer actually hearing your opinion, post it on the official forum.

[Ovan]

There's a MMO that tried to be fully voice acted. It was star wars the old republic...go see how that ended. Voice acting doesn't make a MMO.

[Minka]

You've also got to think about several other aspects, including that the game has four dubbed languages (the already massive amount of work you're suggesting for even just the MSQ, nevermind what you would consider worth voice acting, would be effectively times four), and they need to be able to release both the base expansion content and the patches on a steady schedule that hitching on voice actor availability would only hinder more.

They've got to be able to realistically balance these things in an MMO, in a way they can consistently deliver this stuff to us. Do they have the money? Of course, obviously. Do they have the time? Absolutely not.

[millify]

Originally posted by Ovan:

There's a MMO that tried to be fully voice acted. It was star wars the old republic...go see how that ended. Voice acting doesn't make a MMO.

Your point being that Voice acting = kills games ?
Well, ESO still thrives (yes thrives as in having an active playerbase and not dangling to manage expenses).

[Ovan]

Originally posted by millify:

Originally posted by Ovan:

There's a MMO that tried to be fully voice acted. It was star wars the old republic...go see how that ended. Voice acting doesn't make a MMO.

Your point being that Voice acting = kills games ?
Well, ESO still thrives (yes thrives as in having an active playerbase and not dangling to manage expenses).

I'll try to explain, but i don't know if you'll understand since you failed to read what i wrote.

Voice acting doesn't make a game. Sure, it's a lot easier to immerse yourself in a game fully voice acted, but people play games first and voice acting, like story, are not necessary or even important parts to have a successful game.

Can voice acting kill a game? Yes it can, just like delays, employee overtime, feature creepy and bad management. Let your budget escape you and you'll soon have a mess of a project on hand. The starwars MMO cost 200 millions to be made, it didn't fared any better for being voice acted.

[Drevin]

They would also have to edit every single line of dialogue which mentions your character's name. In VO dialogue they try to avoid this entirely, or NPC's call you the Warrior of Light, but in non-VO dialogue there is the freedom to be called by your first or last name.

[millify]

Originally posted by Ovan:

Originally posted by millify:

Your point being that Voice acting = kills games ?
Well, ESO still thrives (yes thrives as in having an active playerbase and not dangling to manage expenses).

I'll try to explain, but i don't know if you'll understand since you failed to read what i wrote.

Voice acting doesn't make a game. Sure, it's a lot easier to immerse yourself in a game fully voice acted, but people play games first and voice acting, like story, are not necessary or even important parts to have a successful game.

Can voice acting kill a game? Yes it can, just like delays, employee overtime, feature creepy and bad management. Let your budget escape you and you'll soon have a mess of a project on hand. The starwars MMO cost 200 millions to be made, it didn't fared any better for being voice acted.

What i meant is simple, voice acting isn't a necessary factor in killing a game. It can obviously affect production, but that's secondary to the point at hand.

Like, if ffxiv wanted to have voice acting now, sure that will affect the game and it may even drive players away. But just like ESO survives with voice acting, it can too.

I'm not expecting ff to have voice acting anytime in its life, nor do i think it is feasible with the age of the game with a chance of a new ff mmo in next 5 yrs, but if it's about will ff survive going through voice acting then I say "yea it most probably will".

Lastly, it's not like "Full Voice Acting" isn't in the feature-list of the devs (atleast for expacs). ever since HW they have been slowly revamping Voice Acting to cover more and more areas with better and better actors. In user opinion, Japanese Voice Acting of the game is a lot better than English ( haven't tested myself). Back when ARR released they had little hopes of survival so they took big cut on voice acting, but right now they know ff's a titan so they have been trying to give players the immersion they cry about. However, it is unlikely they will voice the old parts (ARR), majorly because it keeps getting modified and many players outright skip it. (They probably talked about this in a recent Livestream).

[millify]

Though I'm not sure how the next expac is gonna turn out, with covid all the games/updates have been releasing in a beta state. Already, endwalker is walking 6 months later in release date than older expacs. Not to mention the big impact avengers caused on SE's budget all around (11B yen).

[Ovan]

Originally posted by millify:

What i meant is simple, voice acting isn't a necessary factor in killing a game. It can obviously affect production...

Like, if ffxiv wanted to have voice acting now, sure that will affect the game and it may even drive players away...

I'm not expecting ff to have voice acting anytime in its life, nor do i think it is feasible with the age of the game with a chance of a new ff mmo in next 5 yrs...

However, it is unlikely they will voice the old parts (ARR), majorly because it keeps getting modified and many players outright skip it. (They probably talked about this in a recent Livestream).

Congratulations, you answered your own question for why they don't use more voice acting than the pivotal moments of the story. See? It only took thinking for a minute.

[Aphex]

Originally posted by Kethriss:

Originally posted by Aphex:

Why does an indy dev like Larian implement full voice acting AFTER the game released as a enhanced edition and a big company as Square Enix can't do it? Hey devs i heard you are cool and listen to your fans....FULL VOICE ACTING !

Because there's easily several times more dialogue in one expansion than in an entire Larian game lol

You have never played a Larian game. Divinity Original Sin 1 alone is a 100+ hour rpg with tons and tons of dialogue. Keep in mind that Larian is a small studio.

[millify]

Originally posted by Kethriss:

Originally posted by millify:

Your point being that Voice acting = kills games ?
Well, ESO still thrives (yes thrives as in having an active playerbase and not dangling to manage expenses).

ESO uses the same 4 Bethesda voice actors for everything, the voice acting is mostly low quality, and they rushed it in at the last moment (the beta used Microsoft Sam for 90% of the dialogue) and doesn’t have anywhere even remotely close to as much dialogue as FF14 does.

I'm not sure about the '4' because IMDB mentions 134 voice actors for various roles and 300K+ voice lines, I couldn't find a voice actor division but i would assume there's atleast 10 different va for each region. Overall user opinion of the ESO voice acting is also good so the 'low quality' is highly subjective.

Skyrim had like 12 or so main voice actors with 50 or so minor role va for 60K lines.

Can't speak about beta or the old state, this is the current state (no idea about blackwood too)

[Ovan]

Originally posted by Aphex:

Originally posted by Kethriss:

Because there's easily several times more dialogue in one expansion than in an entire Larian game lol

You have never played a Larian game. Divinity Original Sin 1 alone is a 100+ hour rpg with tons and tons of dialogue. Keep in mind that Larian is a small studio.

Divinity original sin 1 has 89 quests. FF14 ARR, only the first part of the game has more than 2000 quests, that's not a typo.

It's like comparing a minivan to a train, then wondering why the train can't accelerate and stop as fast as the minivan.

[Duranu Lithdel]

Originally posted by Aphex:

Originally posted by Kethriss:

Because there's easily several times more dialogue in one expansion than in an entire Larian game lol

You have never played a Larian game. Divinity Original Sin 1 alone is a 100+ hour rpg with tons and tons of dialogue. Keep in mind that Larian is a small studio.

But I have lol, and I've played all the Divinity games, not just Original Sin, whats your point? We riding the Larian fan train in here or something? I have literally 3000+ hours of time since 1.0 spent in FFXIV and still havent even read a fraction of all the dialogue in the game. So yes, FFXIV runs laps around Divinity/Larian's dialogue amount

[millify]

Originally posted by Ovan:

Originally posted by millify:

What i meant is simple, voice acting isn't a necessary factor in killing a game. It can obviously affect production, but that's secondary to the point at hand.

... just like ESO survives with voice acting, it can too.


...but if it's about will ff survive going through voice acting then I say "yea it most probably will".
...

Lastly, it's not like "Full Voice Acting" isn't in the feature-list of the devs...

Congratulations, you answered your own question ....

I did after you decided not to answer.
Your point: Voice acting killed star wars so it can kill ffxiv
My point: It won't kill ffxiv.

[Ovan]

Originally posted by millify:

Originally posted by Ovan:

Congratulations, you answered your own question ....

I did after you decided not to answer.
Your point: Voice acting killed star wars so it can kill ffxiv
My point: It won't kill ffxiv.

I didn't say that, i'm sorry your brain stopped working after that little faint spark on that solitary minute.