Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
To me, Elite Dangerous isn't an MMO because there is no content that requires you to group up with others to defeat.
Simply putting all your players in a world doesn't make a game an MMO, giving them a need to team up does.
This is why a game like Path of Exile doesn't fit in the MMO genre either. It is an RPG, it is online, many hundreds play on the same server - but you can defeat all content without needing to group up, so not an MMO.
Just trying not to be too wordly.
The solo mode would be the key to the argument. If that was not a thing. I would agree that Elite is a better example of an MMORPG than the MORPGs that WOW and FFXIV are at this point.
I would also say that the only voice acting I remember in Elite was "Docking request granted". That is it. Voice acting in Elite Dangerous was far from the top of my mine when I think of passable voice acting in any game. MMORPG or not.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Hmm, no worries mate. Back to your actual on topic argument.
Fair enough. For me it totally immerses me. Not a single va in the game has felt bad in their delivery. The writing quality also isn't terrible but could have used more variance in cz's. I think that was what really made the va in the game held back from being more than just flavor. Had they made it more informational relative to nearby troop status and the ai's intentions, it'd be super fucking rad and 100% a good example of 'what va can add to a game.' But alas.
It's also nice to have a proper German and Russian voice acting that didn't sound angry or bored lol.
That being said they brought even more voice acting for odyssey and it makes me wonder if their release problems could, have been solved with more bodies. Not incredibly likely given how coding goes, but 'maybe'.
That being said, I do feel that for special class quests that advance your character, a little bit would be nice. It would add some weight to the moment, make it a little special.
I'd preffer a larger animation and design budget for those with custom character models and animations maybe even music above a va.
The more people skip over quest and finish the content the easier it will be for this game not to succeed in the long run. This game has some interesting lore and will be expanded on in its quest lines and you will have things to uncovered and discovered through playing the game. It gives meaning to the bosses your fighting. and yes it takes good writing Which I'm expecting Intrepid to have otherwise what's the point.
A successful MMO needs to have engaging quests and story, without it, It will suffer. Without good story there is no point to killing things.
"A place is only as good as the people in it"
Part of the people in the world is the NPC's that inhabit that world. Therefore the quest txt and voice have to be top notch in order for the player to care about it. Otherwise "SKIP" and now that quest and actions have less meaning.
Voice helps to add tone and helps develop a vibe to the game and the world your playing in.
unlocking an interesting storyline in a quest line s much more impactful and memorable than gaining only XP from a mundane kill 5 boars quest. We've all done these quests in previous MMO's, but once you add good writing and voice to that quest it becomes a lot more fun and rewarding and gives a story to tell your friends about.
member of Gray Sentinels
While it is a foreign game, this aspect made it FEEL like it was a foreign game. Granted, I've been in SWTOR for years, so we're a bit spoiled there - but didn't WoW have at least a single-word voice-over greeting for every NPC? Even if they have to share the same sound byte, I've always felt like this was better than silence, on NPCs.
Talented voice actors can do multiple characters.
The better the talent the more they are able to charge. Voice acting is extremely expensive when the thing you are using their voice for is going to used in replayable media.
Just look at BDO tons of voice acting. But the quality varies dramatically along with their writing quality. Some of the actors are so laughably bad I can't help but think they just asked programmers in the studio to come to the sound booth ever now and then. And there is a good reason why that may not even be an exaggeration. A good mmo has hundreds someone's even thousands of minorly important npcs(one or two lines of easily encountered diaologue). Hundreds of moderately important (npc craft guides, shop keeps, node manages, basically anyone with a menu.) And a lesser but still usually hundreds of major (quest givers) npcs. It adds up fast to fully cast your mmo.
And I will say it again for the people in the back. Mmo voice acting that is good quality is. not. cheap. The sheer scale of mmos is easy to underestimate by an end user. FFXIV prioritized who was important, be ause that's what SE could afford. Just because you cam reuse a good voice sector for different roles doesnt mean you are using less, it just means you are paying less PEOPLE (for hopefully better quality.)
I personally think your single word thing is a reasonable proposal. But I hate it. Let me imagine their voice if you are going to just cookie cutter them.
It also cost a fortune. It was one of the reasons why the game was the most expensive in history at the time of its development. It was definitely not worth it.
Granted, they took pains to make dialog actually matter; the choices you made when talking with quest NPCs affected things like what goals the quest had, what rewards you'd get, how the story of the quest proceeded, etc. And in a group you rolled (similar to how you would roll for loot) to see who got to interact with the NPCs at various points of the conversation, and you got to make dialog choices when you won. It was interesting.
...But it was a gimmick that got old after awhile. And I eventually found myself skipping dialog to move things along, especially when repeating quests. That budget could certainly have gone elsewhere.
If they add voice acting to AoC I would hope it would only be during "some" quests and not all of them. I also hate clicking an NPC and having them say the same line over and over and over and over. I don't need that. Lore/story missions that span across hours of gameplay that also utilize important NPC's to really allow us to dive in is what I hope to see. Voice acting in these would be amazing.
Like I said, I kind of think that is exactly what happened for certain BDO lines. Please let us all encourage him against this. It's laughably bad at best and cringy at worst. Either pay money for talent, or leave it unvoiced.
But proper characterization and clarity of tone and emotion is a very technical skill that deserves to be paid and is difficult for an amateur to achieve.
I jest, I jest. I don't think this would ever happen unironically or on a large scale. We will see what the future holds as far as VA goes for the game
Champions Online has voice acting so bad that it ruins cutscenes. They probably just grabbed some intern and said, “Stop making coffee and read these pages into this tape recorder.” They’d have been much better off with no voices at all.
I hope VA eventually makes into the game, but I'd rather they invest money elsewhere if it's a choice between VA and improving more important systems.