VO Cons: Can easily be annoying. Can easily be badly done. It's expensive. Players with english as a second language can't understand it. Expensive to adapt to other regions with different languages.
What is so hard to understand Elikal?
Books are bad.
Books Pros:
interesting for many readers
Books Con:
Can be easily annoying
Can be badly written
Its expensive to print in the masses needed for profit
Readers with English as second language need to wait for the translation
Expensive to translate into all the various languages
Ergo: books are bad BRAVO
I don't think a game like, say, Champions Online, has more quest text than, for example, Dragon Age has VO altogether. So it seems managable in file size and cost. Eq2 had it, and why do you have to hear the quest text over and over again?? You do the quest and then another quest. Unless you make 20 alts. And even then, you can just click the text away.
Folks, this is really getting ridiculous. This debate is over. I come back when anyone has something reasonable to say.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
VO Cons: Can easily be annoying. Can easily be badly done. It's expensive. Players with english as a second language can't understand it. Expensive to adapt to other regions with different languages.
What is so hard to understand Elikal?
Fair point as well, but you seem to be confining yourself to MMO examples what about single player games like Dragon Age they are full of voice acting and they are not localized yet they provide a much needed enrichment to the already rich storyline, I dont think localization would be needed for voice acting and taking into account that ppl cant understand, that can be said about hundreds of successfull single player games out there that have english only voice overs.
With new technology it is possible to modulate a single persons voice to sound different, so what companies must do is explore these possibilities rather than having 20 guys for 20 NPCs have 1 guy read 20 different texts and modulate the voice differently, this is very possible right now and would cut down ALOT on costs.
Annoyance well there are so many things that can be easily annoying in an MMO if that if we took them all out we would have no game at all to play, even the sounds of character casting and attacking can be easily annoying most of the time mainly because its always the same over hundreds of hours of play.
Only having text doesnt bother me that much really but having voice overs as well would be a really good addition and provide alot of imersion how can someone not want that is beyond me, the technology to do it is already available the main reason we dont see this alot is because its not a standard "YET" so designers discard it and do not want to put more development time and money into it.
An MMO is different from a single player game. I still remember how incredibly annoying was to hear the quest givers in EQ2 over and over and over again.
About localization, single player games get dubbed to other languages. An MMO is much more expensive to make, has much more quests, so there isn't so much money to spend on that, and they should spend much more. And if you consider the other cons... it's clearly not worth it.
Why is it beyond you that most people find the VO annoying? Do you like to hear the same lines 20 times a day, from a teenager pretending to have a deep voice and obviously failing? And if they start using distorted voices like you mention, that would be beyond bearable.
What is beyond me is why would anyone want to spend a lot of money on something that will annoy the majority of gamers.
Who said anything about "distorted" voices? Sony for instance has made alot of progress into sound, ways to make them use one sound bank only and then mutate the sound in real time to provide different effects even completely different voices.
Its not beyond me that ppl find VO annoying I just said that there are other things that ppl find annoying yet its still in games, but since you are being so pedantic where is your source that most ppl find VO annoying or are we basing this off this single thread on a gaming forum, this has what less than 1% of the gaming population I dont see how you can draw that conclusion.
I dont mean to say that all quests should have dialog but some should have voice overs the ones that are most relevant or what we today consider "epic" quests, it would be a nice change.
I dont really get your teenager remark and why you are taking this to the realm of the ridiculous, I would like to have a proper voice actor famous or not doing the voice overs, would you like a monkey doing any game voice overs?!
Again doesnt bother me really I am just saying it would be nice, the same way I like to shoot at trees in Crysis and I like the geometry to be cut at the point where the bullets hit, its not needed but its a cool feature that def would have a place in the grand scheme of things.
VO Cons: Can easily be annoying. Can easily be badly done. It's expensive. Players with english as a second language can't understand it. Expensive to adapt to other regions with different languages.
What is so hard to understand Elikal?
Books are bad.
Books Pros:
interesting for many readers
Books Con:
Can be easily annoying
Can be badly written
Its expensive to print in the masses needed for profit
Readers with English as second language need to wait for the translation
Expensive to translate into all the various languages
Ergo: books are bad BRAVO
I don't think a game like, say, Champions Online, has more quest text than, for example, Dragon Age has VO altogether. So it seems managable in file size and cost. Eq2 had it, and why do you have to hear the quest text over and over again?? You do the quest and then another quest. Unless you make 20 alts. And even then, you can just click the text away.
Folks, this is really getting ridiculous. This debate is over. I come back when anyone has something reasonable to say.
I was reading some patch notes for WoW and Aion and something hit me about voice overs. Something that may well create an issue for those online games that use them:
MMO's change their quest content quite a lot. Many of the changes go under the radar such as rewording a sentence, clarifying a point, changing the mobs needed to be killed, changes in quest rewards, lore changes and updates, and sometimes the whole quest gets a revamp.
Fixing such things in text is no big deal.
Fixing such in voice is a much greater issue. The voice actor would have to be hired again and the whole scene may need to be redone. With text, it is a line item change, but with voice and video, not so easy.
This means patches will take longer to release and longer to DL since sound and video data takes up more resources than text.
It also means Devs will be less inclined to update dialogue to reflect changes in the game world since paying an actor along with programming video and sound is much more expensive and time consuming than altering some text.
This isn't to say such can't be done, for Aion does alter its voice dialogues in a very limited way, but it sure is a challenge that will have to be addressed by budget conscious developers.
Problem is it would cost too much money to voice over every quest, without the guareentee that most players would even care about the lore of each quest. Take WoW for example, they have over 3,000 quests. Do you know how much money it would cost to voice over 3,000 quests? A ton.
This is a rough estimation of what people could potentially make for voice overs...
For Morgan Freeman, Patrick Stewart, James Earl Jones - astronomical
For Steven Jay Blum, Wendy Lee, Johnny Yong Bosch - quite a bit
For John Doe, Jane Doe - Minimum wage
For Chevy Chase - He pays you
Honestly its fun sometimes when you hear that NPC in game and you know you have heard that guy before, but there are tons of ppl that do Voice Overs out there that can do it with as much talent as patrick stewart and probably alot cheaper as well, if its a good voice acting its good voice acting wether its patrick stewart or a guy you randomly picked on the street, a good example of this taken to the extreme is Oblivion with their patrick stewarts and some random other guy doing ALL the voices. That surely didnt make it better.
Patrick Steward did a terrible job voice acting in Oblivion. Probably his worst performance ever.
People trained in voice acting can usually do better jobs. Patrick Steward or Morgan Freeman would be fantastic for narration, but I'd prefer the characters to be voiced by voice actors rather than movie actors. Not only is an excellent voice actor typically cheaper, but they also can often convincingly play the role of more than a single character without appearing too similar. sounding.
Really, sounds like an arbitrary issue, but I found it to be one of the ruining factors for me for a MMO. Not so much in itself, but in the system. Here is why: I love to delve into a MMO world's lore. For me, it is not enough to have a nice looking place where I kill Orcs, I want to KNOW about the place, about the Orcs about the background. Otherwise I loose interest in the game pretty fast. Now call me lazy, but I just HATE to read those textboxes. I mean, WTF, is this a Legend text adventure from 1979? Heck, even the 25 years old Death Gate had FULL VOICED TEXT. TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO. Its one of the BIG BIG downs of LOTRO and Champions and whatnot, I get to some NPC, and I get a frigging text box? I mean, seriously, who the heck reads all the damn stuff? If I want to read I take a telephone book! Ok, fun aside, I really read much books, because usually they are exciting. Reading quest texts, who usually are NOT exciting to read, I tend to skip them and move on to the 1-liner who tells me who I have to kill and where he is. End of story. I am just so tired of this neolithic way of quest giving, and prolly I am spoilt by 5 years into EQ2, where almost every damn little sidequest NPC talks in lipsynch voice to you. I swear I am so done with this boring reading.
Really, sounds like an arbitrary issue, but I found it to be one of the ruining factors for me for a MMO. Not so much in itself, but in the system. Here is why: I love to delve into a MMO world's lore. For me, it is not enough to have a nice looking place where I kill Orcs, I want to KNOW about the place, about the Orcs about the background. Otherwise I loose interest in the game pretty fast. Now call me lazy, but I just HATE to read those textboxes. I mean, WTF, is this a Legend text adventure from 1979? Heck, even the 25 years old Death Gate had FULL VOICED TEXT.
I read three or four times faster than anyone talks.
I *hate* having to sit around listening to someone... drone... on... about... something whenIcouldjustreaditandbedone.
I read three or four times faster than anyone talks. I *hate* having to sit around listening to someone... drone... on... about... something whenIcouldjustreaditandbedone. My advice? Learn to read faster. Oh, and don't be a looser.
Exactly! And, combine that with the fact that almost every voice actor puts on the stupidest voices EVER for fantasy games, and you get a ridiculous load of annoying voices from people attempting to put on West Country accents and failing. The only game that's came close so far is Dragon Age, and that's a combination of how well the conversations flow, how the characters are designed and how well the accents are done. And, yet, that's a game that Elikal ALSO despises ( read his complaint on that, it's choice and amusing ).
Best part of Dragon Age voice acting is Morrigan, you'll barely notice that she uses Olde English words and phrases in her speech because it is so well written.
Comments
Books are bad.
Books Pros:
interesting for many readers
Books Con:
Can be easily annoying
Can be badly written
Its expensive to print in the masses needed for profit
Readers with English as second language need to wait for the translation
Expensive to translate into all the various languages
Ergo: books are bad BRAVO
I don't think a game like, say, Champions Online, has more quest text than, for example, Dragon Age has VO altogether. So it seems managable in file size and cost. Eq2 had it, and why do you have to hear the quest text over and over again?? You do the quest and then another quest. Unless you make 20 alts. And even then, you can just click the text away.
Folks, this is really getting ridiculous. This debate is over. I come back when anyone has something reasonable to say.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Fair point as well, but you seem to be confining yourself to MMO examples what about single player games like Dragon Age they are full of voice acting and they are not localized yet they provide a much needed enrichment to the already rich storyline, I dont think localization would be needed for voice acting and taking into account that ppl cant understand, that can be said about hundreds of successfull single player games out there that have english only voice overs.
With new technology it is possible to modulate a single persons voice to sound different, so what companies must do is explore these possibilities rather than having 20 guys for 20 NPCs have 1 guy read 20 different texts and modulate the voice differently, this is very possible right now and would cut down ALOT on costs.
Annoyance well there are so many things that can be easily annoying in an MMO if that if we took them all out we would have no game at all to play, even the sounds of character casting and attacking can be easily annoying most of the time mainly because its always the same over hundreds of hours of play.
Only having text doesnt bother me that much really but having voice overs as well would be a really good addition and provide alot of imersion how can someone not want that is beyond me, the technology to do it is already available the main reason we dont see this alot is because its not a standard "YET" so designers discard it and do not want to put more development time and money into it.
An MMO is different from a single player game. I still remember how incredibly annoying was to hear the quest givers in EQ2 over and over and over again.
About localization, single player games get dubbed to other languages. An MMO is much more expensive to make, has much more quests, so there isn't so much money to spend on that, and they should spend much more. And if you consider the other cons... it's clearly not worth it.
Why is it beyond you that most people find the VO annoying? Do you like to hear the same lines 20 times a day, from a teenager pretending to have a deep voice and obviously failing? And if they start using distorted voices like you mention, that would be beyond bearable.
What is beyond me is why would anyone want to spend a lot of money on something that will annoy the majority of gamers.
Who said anything about "distorted" voices? Sony for instance has made alot of progress into sound, ways to make them use one sound bank only and then mutate the sound in real time to provide different effects even completely different voices.
Its not beyond me that ppl find VO annoying I just said that there are other things that ppl find annoying yet its still in games, but since you are being so pedantic where is your source that most ppl find VO annoying or are we basing this off this single thread on a gaming forum, this has what less than 1% of the gaming population I dont see how you can draw that conclusion.
I dont mean to say that all quests should have dialog but some should have voice overs the ones that are most relevant or what we today consider "epic" quests, it would be a nice change.
I dont really get your teenager remark and why you are taking this to the realm of the ridiculous, I would like to have a proper voice actor famous or not doing the voice overs, would you like a monkey doing any game voice overs?!
Again doesnt bother me really I am just saying it would be nice, the same way I like to shoot at trees in Crysis and I like the geometry to be cut at the point where the bullets hit, its not needed but its a cool feature that def would have a place in the grand scheme of things.
Books are bad.
Books Pros:
interesting for many readers
Books Con:
Can be easily annoying
Can be badly written
Its expensive to print in the masses needed for profit
Readers with English as second language need to wait for the translation
Expensive to translate into all the various languages
Ergo: books are bad BRAVO
I don't think a game like, say, Champions Online, has more quest text than, for example, Dragon Age has VO altogether. So it seems managable in file size and cost. Eq2 had it, and why do you have to hear the quest text over and over again?? You do the quest and then another quest. Unless you make 20 alts. And even then, you can just click the text away.
Folks, this is really getting ridiculous. This debate is over. I come back when anyone has something reasonable to say.
I agree, and I will do the same.
I was reading some patch notes for WoW and Aion and something hit me about voice overs. Something that may well create an issue for those online games that use them:
MMO's change their quest content quite a lot. Many of the changes go under the radar such as rewording a sentence, clarifying a point, changing the mobs needed to be killed, changes in quest rewards, lore changes and updates, and sometimes the whole quest gets a revamp.
Fixing such things in text is no big deal.
Fixing such in voice is a much greater issue. The voice actor would have to be hired again and the whole scene may need to be redone. With text, it is a line item change, but with voice and video, not so easy.
This means patches will take longer to release and longer to DL since sound and video data takes up more resources than text.
It also means Devs will be less inclined to update dialogue to reflect changes in the game world since paying an actor along with programming video and sound is much more expensive and time consuming than altering some text.
This isn't to say such can't be done, for Aion does alter its voice dialogues in a very limited way, but it sure is a challenge that will have to be addressed by budget conscious developers.
This is a rough estimation of what people could potentially make for voice overs...
For Morgan Freeman, Patrick Stewart, James Earl Jones - astronomical
For Steven Jay Blum, Wendy Lee, Johnny Yong Bosch - quite a bit
For John Doe, Jane Doe - Minimum wage
For Chevy Chase - He pays you
Honestly its fun sometimes when you hear that NPC in game and you know you have heard that guy before, but there are tons of ppl that do Voice Overs out there that can do it with as much talent as patrick stewart and probably alot cheaper as well, if its a good voice acting its good voice acting wether its patrick stewart or a guy you randomly picked on the street, a good example of this taken to the extreme is Oblivion with their patrick stewarts and some random other guy doing ALL the voices. That surely didnt make it better.
Patrick Steward did a terrible job voice acting in Oblivion. Probably his worst performance ever.
People trained in voice acting can usually do better jobs. Patrick Steward or Morgan Freeman would be fantastic for narration, but I'd prefer the characters to be voiced by voice actors rather than movie actors. Not only is an excellent voice actor typically cheaper, but they also can often convincingly play the role of more than a single character without appearing too similar. sounding.
Like for real wheres the virtual reality man!
Then SW TOR will be more to your liking?
I am sick and TIRED of reading Elikal's complaints.
I read three or four times faster than anyone talks.
I *hate* having to sit around listening to someone... drone... on... about... something whenIcouldjustreaditandbedone.
My advice? Learn to read faster.
Oh, and don't be a looser.
Exactly! And, combine that with the fact that almost every voice actor puts on the stupidest voices EVER for fantasy games, and you get a ridiculous load of annoying voices from people attempting to put on West Country accents and failing. The only game that's came close so far is Dragon Age, and that's a combination of how well the conversations flow, how the characters are designed and how well the accents are done. And, yet, that's a game that Elikal ALSO despises ( read his complaint on that, it's choice and amusing ).
Best part of Dragon Age voice acting is Morrigan, you'll barely notice that she uses Olde English words and phrases in her speech because it is so well written.