How important is voice acting for YOUR immersion?

Hey everyone!

How important do you think voice acting is for your immersion? For me I think its important for major questlines or dungeons to be voice acted if they use humanoid characters. I understand AoC is dynamic and built by the players so this is not a theme park but I feel voice acting is still important when it comes to NPC interaction, especially in the starting areas, as you progress further into a game with a non linear story and custom node systems with their own questlines I can understand that not really being feasible, but when we're exiting that gate for the first time I'd like some voice acting to pull me initially into the story of Vera. What are your thoughts? Do you not like voice acting in games? Do you think its a vital component?

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CROW3

Caeryl wrote: »

I’ve got no idea how some people can play a game that’s completely unvoiced. May as well be reading quest info off plaques. There’s no such thing as a memorable unvoiced NPC

Imagination. The vast majority of stories in this world aren’t voiced, and while the author can provide some guide, it’s ultimately up to you as a reader to give a voice to a character. I just apply that same principle to games when I have the opportunity.

So for me, there are many more memorable unvoiced NPCs than voiced NPCs.

Gruntag

nice to have, but not required, nor necessary

Unrivaled1

It would be incredibly hard to have cringy voice acting. If the scripts are sound and they mix it well.

I’ll voice act for just an A2 key ! Send the scripts!
I’ve been told my voice is like a combination of Fergy and Jesus.

Dygz

Fippy Darkpaw

TheDarkSorcerer

To me it's important. Especially when walking through a town. I want to hear NPC's chatter, making jokes with one another, or speaking of in-game events that took place and lore of AoC. And i would love for NPC's to have awareness of your accomplishments such as "Oh look! That's the sorcerer who killed the ice dragon" etc. They do this in Elder Scrolls Online.

I would like to see voice acting for your own character as well, for the bigger story related quests. I feel it makes your character feel alive vs not speaking at all. They do not need to be cutscenes (I really despise cutscenes unless it's the intro or final story quest + they are costly). Guild Wars 2 used to do cutscenes on story quests, but dropped them later on. And now it's just your character and the main story NPC having a conversation, but you can still walk/look around while they are having the conversation. It works better with roleplaying in my opinion as well.

Caeryl

CROW3 wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

I’ve got no idea how some people can play a game that’s completely unvoiced. May as well be reading quest info off plaques. There’s no such thing as a memorable unvoiced NPC

Imagination. The vast majority of stories in this world aren’t voiced, and while the author can provide some guide, it’s ultimately up to you as a reader to give a voice to a character. I just apply that same principle to games when I have the opportunity.

So for me, there are many more memorable unvoiced NPCs than voiced NPCs.

Books are not an audio-visual medium. Video games are. If I have to imagine the tone of a character when I’m looking at their face, then the medium is not communicating effectively.

The only way for a character to be memorable if they have no voice is if they’re in a flamboyant aesthetic (a la mimes), which is tacky. FFXIV is like that where none of the characters made any impact on me at all, to point where I was convinced my game’s audio was bugged. It was that lifeless. The characters have no soul for 99% of the game. And the tiniest portion of cutscenes where they’re voiced don’t even attempt to align their lips to the words.

It’s horrendous.

CROW3

Hm… I found Iolo, Dupre, Spark, Shamino, & a number of other characters from games before voicing became a thing quite memorable.

But again, this is entirely subjective.

Gizban

Not important. Game play that fosters community is the egg of the golden goose.

Some VA for coming-of-age developments, like class quests, would be nice. The less VA elements there are, the more they'll stand out and be memorable.

tautau

Perhaps a little here and there, mostly at the beginning to get players started. But I read so much faster than people talk that having to wait to listen slows me down.

That's the same reason I don't watch many of the videos posted here, reading posts is much more efficient.

daveywavey

Adelissa wrote: »

How important do you think voice acting is for your immersion?

Not very, if at all. But, I enjoy reading, so I'm able to voice the text in my head.

Sunboy

Important enough to sacrifice fidelity of visual graphics but not to the expense of more added content.

Much love ❤️

Percimes

Not really important for a mmo. I don't mind simple greetings or acknowledgements when you select a npc though.

It could be funny, although it would probably get old pretty fast, if there was fake speech, the kind of gibberish adults sound like in Charlie Brown. Just enough to give a sense of what some races sounds like. It would have to be rather quiet by default with the option to turn it off.

Waaah woah wa woa.

Dolyem

My need for voice acting is non existent. It is one of those things that is a nice touch that can be added as long as literally everything else is working well, finished, and polished. Voice acting can be added months or even years after release as far as I am concerned, and if it never got added I wouldn't even care then.

Tatiana

I personally find it a bit jarring when there is none, so I'd say it's important but if it's poor quality then it has an adverse affect, quality voice acting costs a lot of money, and I would prefer the budget be spent on the gameplay and content development.

That said, I think there could be a happy medium where NPC's have general lines (shop keeps, ambient, etc) without having to fill the game with tons of lines of dialogue. I am also curious how they intend to tell their main story/narrative without voice acting in a way that doesn't feel outdated, though.

DaffyDux

I think for Ashes of creation the best route would be to have minimal, high-quality voice acting treated in the same way as other audio effects. Single phrases, greetings, and stuff like that.

Albion Online has some good quality fx, is a small game but when you go to a repair shop, for example, the repair guy says a little randomized line like "Let me fix that" or something to that effect. If you kill bosses they will scream out, etc. I think this would be a good way for AoC to approach voice acting.

Daggial

would love to have some voice acting in ashes too but i do realize it costs a lot of money
maybe we could have at very least some of it in starting areas and those "story based" instanced dungeons?

Sengarden

Other than the obvious rotating handful of "greeting" voice lines upon right mouse clicking on an NPC, boss one-liners, battle grunts, and ambient chatter in various tiers of node settlements, it's not necessary.

However, I will say something fun I enjoyed during my last time playing WoW was the addition of voice acted lines from main characters in primary quest chains. Especially if they have something they need to say while I'm fighting off a bunch of baddies or trying to tackle some sort of technical challenge and they aren't right next to me in order for me to read their speech bubble. If there's a story heavy quest that really affects some main lore characters story arc, having a good voice actor around to express those major moments of defeat, victory, insight, or fear can be really immersive. They don't have to record every line of quest text either, just introductions, summaries, and key points during action/drama heavy interactions. It can function as a way for the story to still be told properly for those players who would normally skip over the TL;DR text windows and infuse some additional depth for those who don't.

At the end of the day, this game has been a long time coming, and things like quest/character-progression VA are fluff imho. Actiblizzard can pull it off because they've got Daddy Warbucks around to toss a few pennies in the pond for the common rabble to fight over, but in our case, we've got a game that doesn't even really exist yet and millions of dollars already invested pre-beta for the studio's launch title. Let's get the core content out there in great shape first and think about this kind of stuff for future expansions.

daveywavey

My favourite is still from TES:3 Morrowind:

"We're watching you, scum..."

Voidwalkers

May be the cutscenes (if there's any). Otherwise I don't think it's necessary in an mmo

And if Ashes is going to have voice acting, plz either use good voice acting or NO voice acting at all.

Wandering Mist

Voidwalkers wrote: »

May be the cutscenes (if there's any). Otherwise I don't think it's necessary in an mmo

And if Ashes is going to have voice acting, plz either use good voice acting or NO voice acting at all.

That's the tricky bit though. High quality voice actors cost a lot of money, and bad voice acting is in some ways worse than no voice acting at all. ESO is notorious for these. They wanted all the quests to be fully voice acted, but didn't have the money (or inclination) to pay for good quality voice acting for all the quests.

The result is that the main story line is very well voice acted and sounds fantastic, but the minor side quests are very poorly voice acted (we're talking Oblivion town guard bad voice acting here). It's a real shame because when I played ESO, I enjoyed the side quests a lot more than the main story, but the terrible voice acting in the side quests ruined it for me.

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