Voice acting for player characters and NPCs - Your opinion?

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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Comments

Jamation

I like voice acting when the entire dialogue is done, instead of the NPC saying "Huulloo!" (especially for NPC's that repeat themselves "Hu-huh! Nice day for fishin' ain't it!" because that gets annoying) while some other dialogue that they're saying appears. However, based on the idea of an evolving world, I'd much rather have silent characters that have evolving text based on a few triggers in the world.

And because of the lack of forced story it'd be weird to hear it from some NPC's but not others. The only times I could see this happening would be like voice overs or whispers in the high end dungeons, or even if the bosses themselves spoke.

Coming from FFXIV I thought they had a phenomenal cast of actors which made the cutscenes come alive, but with how story-oriented that game is it makes more sense for most of their lines to be read aloud.

I know a big part of it is the cost, so if there is any I'd rather it not be a random scattering of lines across characters, but instead saved for important moments like a whispered voice over in a dungeon or a boss/god/ancient speaking so that it makes the moment even more impactful.

George_Black

People shop for water suits and head to the mountains to ski. Can't wait to hear the complains that it is cold

Khronus

I don't think our characters should have any voices at all. That completely takes me out of the immersion to be honest. If we get an MMO with a massive story that includes cutscenes.....I will be blown away to be honest but I do not expect it.

Kionashi

Khronus wrote: »

I don't think our characters should have any voices at all. That completely takes me out of the immersion to be honest. If we get an MMO with a massive story that includes cutscenes.....I will be blown away to be honest but I do not expect it.

how reading a text box is more immersive?

Ramirez

I think it s waist of resources and just slow down the progress before and after the release, when doing some new event or new content if they don't need to worry with VA will be much faster... Anyway they can put sounds like sims or yakuza xD

McShave

I would like to see voice acting added at some point in the future

Wandering Mist

Kionashi wrote: »

Khronus wrote: »

I don't think our characters should have any voices at all. That completely takes me out of the immersion to be honest. If we get an MMO with a massive story that includes cutscenes.....I will be blown away to be honest but I do not expect it.

how reading a text box is more immersive?

If the voice acting is good and the voice style matches whatever you envision that character sounding like in your head, then it's much more immersive than a simple text box.

But..........this is very rare so most of the time it's better to just have a text box and let the player imagine how it sounds on their own.

Getting top quality voice actors is expensive so unless you're really going to use them well, then there's no point.

ShieldMaiden1

I love voice acting in MMO's, it makes the story much more immersive. ESO has amazing voice acting.

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