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Voice acting for player characters and NPCs - Your opinion?

ButterMeWaffleButterMeWaffle Member
in General Discussion
I have been giving it some thought as of late and I don't believe I have seen any information on the subject. This brought me here to see if my question could be answered.

As the title states I am curing about voice acting for players and NPCs. Will both have voice acting? I believe it is a safe assumption that players will have the usual grunts and battle cries for during combat but what about during quests? I personally prefer my players character to be text only for immersion and RP reasons. While I like to have NPCs voice acted for the same reason, being able to listen to the NPC tell me their woes and why they need me to help in this quest has always been big for me when playing an MMO. I was never a fan of the whole - walk up to NPC, select talk, they say "hello there!" then text is brought up with the real info on the conversation.

What are your opinions on the matter? Has any info on this been released and I missed it? If you could have it your way, what would that be and why?
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    CaptnChuckCaptnChuck Member
    Its a lot of work, so I don't mind them foregoing it for now. They'll probably add it later on.
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    Undead CanuckUndead Canuck Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Our opinion will not matter. Voice acting is very expensive in games. Intrepid has stated that there will be some, but not a huge amount.
    I assume that the only way they can afford more voice acting is if they double the subscription cost.
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    UrgroshUrgrosh Member
    It's cool and all, but I can't see them doing much more than a line or two when you click on an npc.
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    ButterMeWaffleButterMeWaffle Member
    Undead Canuck wrote: »
    Our opinion will not matter. Voice acting is very expensive in games. Intrepid has stated that there will be some, but not a huge amount.
    I assume that the only way they can afford more voice acting is if they double the subscription cost.

    This is a very good point, I didnt think about the expense of voice acting. I of course am understanding on the matter and limited voice acting wouldnt sway my current opinion of the project. I hope we do end up with at least a little voice acting, maybe for major quest lines
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    LeroherLeroher Member
    This is exactly something I wanted to ask (as after finishing my major I will dive into voice acting), but yeah, as said before, it's too expensive, but maybe big npcs within the nodes could have voice acting.
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    XenantayaXenantaya Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I agree with the other comments. Voice acting is nice to have, but it's very expensive and not something necessary to have in this kind of game, especially at launch. If the game launches and is a success, and Intrepid determines that voice acting would make it an even bigger hit, then it could start to work in voice acting.
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    NelsonRebelNelsonRebel Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited August 2020
    Voice acting in ESO is a great example to look at.


    Character NPC movements and voice acting in PvE content and open world is one of the things I can attest that they do very well.

    That being said, it is expensive. But hearing Kate Beckinsdale on my screen ingame is still pretty cool

    I hope they can incorporate it, but its not a game breaker
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    ServNiQServNiQ Member
    In a nutshell, what they said. For me it's enough for my cute little dragon pet to say 'kyuu' and a big dragon to say 'ROAR', a little bit of scenery music, and let the players fill in the rest.
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    YuyukoyayYuyukoyay Member
    They should do it for every quest that matters. I don't care what the npc has to say about killing 10 wolves though.
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    ServNiQServNiQ Member
    That's true as well. If they're including cinematic scenes I feel like it's a must have, at least for the narration.
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    NelsonRebelNelsonRebel Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    As long as the main quest has one it'll be enough until they can incorporate more
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    xXBelocXxxXBelocXx Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    There was another thread about this last week. The impact to release time, cost, continued development, etc outweighed adding voice acting. I agree it would be a "cool" thing to have but for me I am not worried about it. AoC is shaping up to be a great game with or without it.

    And this is coming from someone who has about 400 hours clocked in on The Witcher 3 cause I like to watch the cut scenes like a movie. B)
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    Valento92Valento92 Member
    Truth be told I don't really want our character to have voiced lines at all. When GW2 introduced that I ended up hating my characters, especially my human characters as humans are just regular and asura are cute. The point is that it ultimately breaks the immersion A LOT. For other NPCs I don't mind, I even enjoy it! The FFXIV approach is the one I personally love the most as my character never speaks, he either gesticulates to represent him explaining something or just text answers.
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    Aspiring Voice TalentAspiring Voice Talent Member
    Im not only a long time avid rpg mmo fan, but have been fallowing the progress if this amazing game since its inception, and I would love an opportunity to help bring more life to a character or character(s) in this game. If anyone knows who I can reach out to to provide some voice samples, ect please let me know! Thanks much
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    VirulentVirulent Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    There won't be any. And I'm glad there won't be.
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    VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    I don't want any voice acting ever. It is a waste of money, and something that I will just mute.
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    WhitneyHagasMatsumotoWhitneyHagasMatsumoto Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Personally, if voice actors are hired, I prefer the style of SEGA's Yakuza mob characters, where they only emit a very short voice as an expression of emotion.

    Well, to be honest, I'm not in a position to give a fair opinion in this discussion.
    I can't listen to English so ...... lol
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    KionashiKionashi Member
    I would really like it to have some voice acting, I don't need every little quest to have voice, but voice acting really helps giving life to the main story...
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    HellfarHellfar Member
    edited February 2021
    In a world that is built more so by the players rather than outside forces, I don't really see the need for much voice acting. The normal NPC greetings and goodbyes along with some good dungeon boss taunts and death cries will suffice for me.

    Although, if they bring the gods into the fold per the lore, they should do those characters justice and give them good voices. I do think a game with literally no voice acting is pretty dull, so I hope they invest in it to a degree.

    There may even be a voice acted intro for when your character enters the world for the very first time, explaining some backstory about your race, class, current events etc.
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    NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Vhaeyne wrote: »
    I don't want any voice acting ever. It is a waste of money, and something that I will just mute.

    I agree.

    The cost of voice acting an MMO like this just isn't worth it imo. If Intrepid have the funds to do something like that, there will always be something else they could do that would make the game better.
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    BlandmarrowBlandmarrow Member
    I'd like there to be for player emotes and some basic ones for NPCs, much like WoW has.
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    CypherCypher Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Would love as much voice acting for NPCs as Intrepid can readily afford. Much more immersive to hear dialogue than to read it.
    But for the player, probably best to keep it simple with combat vocals and that’s it. And we should be able to customize those during character creation.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    Costs a lot of money. I dont mind that tgey dont focus on it.
    I play mmos for the group gameplay, not the story. When I want story I play single players.
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    WarthWarth Member
    hard no, waste of money
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    LycancoffeeLycancoffee Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    I think that the right way to do this is to give npc’s short (variated) one liners, while giving really important story quest npcs and pivotal major quest events longer voiced dialogue.

    It doesn’t feel good “talking” to an npc and getting a silent pop up bubble/window, but I usually end up skipping like 90% of the voice conversations in games like Genshin, SWTOR, and ESO. Who has time for that? I’m saving the world here! I think WoW did a pretty good job of hitting the “sweet spot” with audio file length.
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    ILLPeonUILLPeonU Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    it does make questing more engaging, however getting voice talent can be very expensive. Now if they had Devs or inrepid emplyee's that wanted to fill that role that could be a way to keep the cost down. I know Kingdom Come used a lot of their Dev team for such a task.

    When it comes down to it though, I wouldn't want the game time schedule moved back to add such a feature at this time though.
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    WarthWarth Member
    Santanico wrote: »
    it does make questing more engaging, however getting voice talent can be very expensive. Now if they had Devs or inrepid emplyee's that wanted to fill that role that could be a way to keep the cost down. I know Kingdom Come used a lot of their Dev team for such a task.

    When it comes down to it though, I wouldn't want the game time schedule moved back to add such a feature at this time though.

    just that the kingdom come voice acting is terrible and a sizeable part of the communiy has complained about it.

    I'd rather not have any Voice Acting at all than bad VA akin to kingdom come
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    nanfoodlenanfoodle Member, Founder, Kickstarter
    If there is a main story, or large story arcs, I would love to see it voice acted. I dont need every quest voiced acted.
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    FavstFavst Member
    I hope voice acting will be implemented in cutscenes, the rest is redundant.
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    bigepeenbigepeen Member
    I skip most cutscenes, whether or not there is voice acting... So I don't mind if they spend that time on implementing other things.
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