Originally posted by Hariken Talk about a waste of money. The only reason we have voice acting in video games is people are lazy and don't want to read text. All the great RPG'S were made so you had to read. It should have stayed the way it was in Morrowind. You had greeting voice over only and still had to read text. A budget like this for voice acting is sick. Think where that money could have been used.
The only reason we have audio in movies is people are lazy and don't want to read subtitles. It should have stayed the way it was in the 20s.
Originally posted by JJ82
Originally posted by CazNeerg
Citation on the FIFA claim? Not going to respond either way without looking at the data myself.
Citation on the SWTOR claim? Not going to respond either way without looking at the data myself. No, facebook, twitter, a consumer agency, blog, news article is not proof. I want OFFICAL SUBSCRIPTION NUMBERS FROM EA otherwise your claim is laughable.
Ah, I see. Your lack of a citation to any source > citation to the synopsis of a professionally produced report with in industry credibility. Gotcha.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Damage control to Major Tom. Initiate BS sequence Alpha!
TESO is an MMO heavily focused on END GAME. Mostly PvP, but also attempting near raid/group instancing.
The idea that spending the time and money on voice-overs for content that gets you to end game is a WASTE because its done ONE TIME. SWTOR learned this the hard way, the idea that this makes it more like Skyrim or Oblivion makes no sense since the entire defense for creating racial/faction locks and closed off faction lands for this style of PvP is supposed to be "Sacrifices need to be made to create an MMO, because some SRPG aspects cant work".
Right, its the SRPG voice over content that doesn't work, however we have seen MMOs without racial/faction locks and closed off faction lands.
This game is bass ackwards and is repeating the same mistakes SWTOR made. With such a weak story and base game, the time and money was needed elsewhere. It could have created a far larger PvP land along with more PvE end game content.
if you think story and lore are unimportant in an rpg and especially an elder scrolls game - you should skipp on this one probably and look elswhere.
Citation on the FIFA claim? Not going to respond either way without looking at the data myself.
Citation on the SWTOR claim? Not going to respond either way without looking at the data myself. No, facebook, twitter, a consumer agency, blog, news article is not proof. I want OFFICAL SUBSCRIPTION NUMBERS FROM EA otherwise your claim is laughable.
Ah, I see. Your lack of a citation to any source > citation to the synopsis of a professionally produced report with in industry credibility. Gotcha.
massive projection issues going on here........makes sense though in your case.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
They could have done has well with a set of good voice actors who are not some of the biggest names in the business. Simply a waste of money.
When players start leaving after a couple of months because of no end game content, at least we will know it is not because the budget was poured down the drain!
Would the voice acting be significantly more expensive than what it cost in Skyrim or Oblivion? Other than the use of well known actors, what makes the use of voice acting in ESO such a big deal compared to every other time it's been used in the last ten years?
Full voice acting has only been used once for an MMORPG. SWTOR. Great game after the storylines were done wasn't it?
Yeah, see, all you guys that kept defending TESO for making its massive changes for the sake of it being an MMO do not get to now do a reversal to defend a proponent of SRPG games just like we didn't when complaining about how they didn't need to make it more DaoC and less TES. The biggest difference of course was that we were complaining about the unneeded changes because we have already seen them work in MMOs, while voice-overs have only been seen to limit them.
Have you gone through my post history to find all the posts where I've defended TESO for making massive changes for the sake of being an MMO? I think not.
Voice acting is something that was going to happen because this is an Elder Scrolls game. It's something that's gotten to be a big deal. Blame it on the "Arrow To The Knee" meme if you want. Whatever. It's something that was planned from the start. It wasn't added later. Removing the voice acting would remove the voice over budget from the game, not add money to other aspects of the game. If the rest of the game sucks, it won't be because of the voice overs. Same thing with SWToR. If the rest of the game sucked, it wasn't because of the voice acting*.
The only thing that might have fluctuated is the cost to hire known tv or movie actors instead of career voice actors. Career voice actors are a fairly well known quantity in terms of cost. All those television and movie actors are not. That would have an impact, but it wouldn't have been much.
* I'm not sure why it's a surprise that the one thing Bioware knew how to do well got done well, and everything else that they didn't know how to do when they started didn't get done well.
**
Still didn't answer the question. Voice acting figured heavily in both Oblivion and Skyrim. What makes the inclusion of voice acting in ESO such a no-no when it had such an impact on the two previous Elder Scrolls games?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They could have done has well with a set of good voice actors who are not some of the biggest names in the business. Simply a waste of money.
When players start leaving after a couple of months because of no end game content, at least we will know it is not because the budget was poured down the drain!
They could have done as well with trained voice actors who aren't big names. But it wouldn't have been nearly as effective of a marketing tool. Look at it as two expenses, the base expense of having everything voiced, then whatever additional amount they had to pay for Names is part of the marketing cost.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Some people will hate, some people will like it. This move was to satisfy the vast majority and that is not the people on this site. It's also important to note that the vast majority like LoL, Farmville, etc.
If I put down my need for a deep and meaningful MMORPG experience, i see that hiring these voice actors was the 'right' move and can only benefit ESO in the long run.
How much more though? $100,000? $200,000 total? Compared to the total game budget, this isn't a whole lot. Even if it costs a cool $1M more, it's not a huge part of the budget. It's going to bring in sales though. Elder Scrolls players who are fans of the game and of the voice acting are going to see this as a higher quality job than career voice actors. Whatever it cost them is probably worth it in terms of what it will return in sales.
You are greatly mis-informed.
The recording studio alone is going to cost more than that for using its equipment. The digitizing of that much sound is going to cost more than that. Coding that sound to the game is going to cost more than that. Matching the graphical movement of the characters to the sound is going to cost more than that.....and yes, the price of the actors is also going to cost more than that. And yes, paying the people that work in the recording studio, is going to cost more than that.
The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year and the major studios that work with these people are top level making double that. and that is just ONE person, there is an entire team of people for this kind of work.
There is no way that this is not costing them upwards of 20 million. That's 1/10th the budget if its 200 million and why its one of the biggest complaints about SWTOR, it sucked up way too much of the games funding that could have gone to bringing in another small team to work on things missing from the base game.
Wow, your numbers are WAY off! Lol! "The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year" ...bhahahaha, in your dreams!
Voice acting is something that was going to happen because this is an Elder Scrolls game.
Full circle......
No, because of how many things expected from an online TES game that isn't going to be in this game, changes made "BECAUSE WE HAD TO" due to it being an MMO. Changes were made to the core TES game, for an MMO that did not need to happen because other MMOs did them, yet this SRPG element that is a complete waste of time for an MMO is being kept!
You cant expect people to believe that design changes had to be made to make it into an MMO(when MMOs have already shown it to be wrong) and then try to tell us that we HAVE TO have voice-overs because the SRPG had them.
MMOs are long term games where the leveling is a small part of the game, and voice-overs are for THAT. its more than doubling the work for a small part of the game.
Unless of course you want to argue that TESO has little long term value, then we would be on the same page because that is exactly what voice-overs are for, part of the game done once with no real replay ability factor.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Wow, your numbers are WAY off! Lol! "The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year" ...bhahahaha, in your dreams!
You should have called me out with the "making double that" part, would have taken about 10 seconds longer to pull up a link to people working at big studios with experienced people.........
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
If even 100k players extra buy it, with the sole intention of playing it like a single player RPG, the costs of the voice acting will already be recuperated.
/shrug
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
It was a colossal waste of money for SWTOR, it's a colossal waste of money for ESO. One day, dev teams will actually learn from past development mistakes. Unfortunately, the ESO dev team is NOT that team.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Damage control to Major Tom. Initiate BS sequence Alpha!
TESO is an MMO heavily focused on END GAME. Mostly PvP, but also attempting near raid/group instancing.
The idea that spending the time and money on voice-overs for content that gets you to end game is a WASTE because its done ONE TIME. SWTOR learned this the hard way, the idea that this makes it more like Skyrim or Oblivion makes no sense since the entire defense for creating racial/faction locks and closed off faction lands for this style of PvP is supposed to be "Sacrifices need to be made to create an MMO, because some SRPG aspects cant work".
Right, its the SRPG voice over content that doesn't work, however we have seen MMOs without racial/faction locks and closed off faction lands.
This game is bass ackwards and is repeating the same mistakes SWTOR made. With such a weak story and base game, the time and money was needed elsewhere. It could have created a far larger PvP land along with more PvE end game content.
Have you ever thought of you thinking the game is heavy foccused on end-game just because you have that type of playstyle to focus on end-game?
I just don't believe the common Elder Scrolls fan would focus on "end-game" Even if they became fans Oblivion or Skyrim I don't think they enjoyed the part when they reached end level but it was everything that came along their journey.
I love the Elder Scrolls seires from the beginning but I just can't go back to a ES game without voice-acting, if done well it makes the gameworld came far more alive to me.
I guess you already experiance the PVP game ingame?
Wow, your numbers are WAY off! Lol! "The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year" ...bhahahaha, in your dreams!
You should have called me out with the "making double that" part, would have taken about 10 seconds longer to pull up a link to people working at big studios with experienced people.........
I know for 100% fact you are wrong. And I 100% know how those surveys work.
Yes, absolutely you can make 100k plus as a sound designer/composer/engineer, the top people make much more than that. But as an entry level position you are out of your mind.
I suggest you look up Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey to get a better idea, and even that is inflated.
I have no problem with voice acting,i like it however there is something to think about,the what if!.
What if they can't get those same voices back to do content past the release date?Then they would be stuck changing the voices of those characters,that would ruin the immersion big time.
The other problem is when you keep repeating the same dialogue because maybe you keep dying and have to keep going back.You have this initial feeling after talking to the npc,then when you return you here the npc utter the same words over and over,then it's gets a bad feeling.
None the less,voice acting always adds that little extra to a game ,i am all for it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by Rockniss It's not a good selling point in video games. Music rides a fine line as well when it comes to selling points and I have loved some of the music in games. It still isn't why I play and voice acting unlike music really doesn't take a high level of talent to achieve. So when your bragging about your voice acting ESO, you might as well be talking to a wall.
Here's what's shaping up, Wildstar has fallen off my radar, ESO is proving to be clueless, and Warlords of Dreanor is looking better and better. Who would have thought?
question, not telling you what games to play, but why did wildstar fall off your radar? Its still looking good on mine and gets better every day.
Have you ever thought of you thinking the game is heavy foccused on end-game just because you have that type of playstyle to focus on end-game?
No, its based on endgame because they took an IP that is open world, with no race of faction locks and created a game with racial and faction locks, closed off faction lands with a PvP area in its center that everyone is fighting over.
The entire game is based off the idea of end game PvP. From start to the very finish. It is not designed like a TES game. It takes you from level 1 and funnels you to a center at max level. Even the idea of being able to "unlock" another faction land to play in takes place AT MAX LEVEL.
There is no part of TESO that is not based off the game being END GAME FOCUSED. from the story on up. This is not a single player game, its an MMO. and every single MMO is created to make content a one time thing, the story just being something to funnel you to the same point, end game.
Now if the game was made by people actually TRYING to make a TES MMO, it wouldn't have been designed in such a way to make content a one time thing. everything would level with you making the entire world always VIABLE CONTENT. It would be more Sandbox than Themepark, not almost all Themepark with next to no Sandbox. Instead we have a game holding our hand all the way to the end, PvP with some end game group PvE.
So yeah, voice-overs are a waste of time and resources being used on stuff players are going to blow through instead of being used to make that end-game much more diverse, so we get to watch yet another company scramble and try to keep up with players.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Wow, your numbers are WAY off! Lol! "The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year" ...bhahahaha, in your dreams!
You should have called me out with the "making double that" part, would have taken about 10 seconds longer to pull up a link to people working at big studios with experienced people.........
I know for 100% fact you are wrong. And I 100% know how those surveys work.
I know for 99.99% fact that people that say they know for 100% fact something even when presented with contradictory information that they are 120% full of it.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
The idea that spending the time and money on voice-overs for content that gets you to end game is a WASTE because its done ONE TIME.
So no singleplayer game should have voice overs?
So single player games are MMOs? Good, remove the invisible walls between the faction and PvP lands and give us an actual TES game. Then toss out the limitations placed on it with their MMO designs. Because afterall, SRPGs and MMOs are the same.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Originally posted by Spawnblade It's no coincidence that Oblivion was not only Bethesda's first major introduction into voice acting, but also their first game that -required- a plethora of mods to be installed in order to be enjoyable.
well "your opinion". Other than the "bug fixes" (shame on you Bethesda) the game is perfectly fine and playable without mods.
Now, whether one requires their own special little flavor in order to maintain interest; well one's mileage may vary.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I'm keen on game design foremost, and a discussion on voice actors just serves to remind me that there is no game design in this subject. A talented voice cast is simply the product of a budget that can support it. Do the designers make this decision? Its the sort of decision that executives with no real understanding of the game could make. So instead we discuss the wisdom of how that money should be spent. Games are interesting because they're not movies or tv.. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.
So we can't discuss game design, but there's the psychology of voice acting in these games:
I like good voice acting in games that also feature a voiced protagonist, the Deus Ex and Witcher series being my (fairly recent) favourites.
In open ended games of which mmo's are lingeringly a part, where your character tends to be mute, the theory is that people will project their own thoughts onto them instead, but I've found this doesn't work, it just doesn't feel right having such a one-sided conversation and leaves you at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of player agency. This is one of the things that's always put me off Elder Scrolls games. Thank-you for the freedom to do as I wish but I'd rather be a more tangible presence and the equal of the other characters who inhabit your world. I'm sick of having Patrick Stewart lay it down for me without being able to hear my character's opinion on the matter.
I guess my point is, if your mmo is going to be a tightly controlled theme-park, you might as well give your players a voice and limit their choices so that at least they can feel like they're sharing the story of someone with a personality instead of a series of schitzophrenic written messages.
But I'd much rather they do away with voice acting entirely, let people play the game the way they want, and then everything is even. I'm sick and tired of the big productions throwing money at a front-heavy movie-style bombast without comprehending the problems this causes for the long-term health of the game and the genre as a whole. Consequently theses games have short lives these days and lower everyone's expectations for the future.
Reading these posts are a mix of hillarious and disturbing. This is a video game... Entertainment... If it doesn't entertain you then move on. Some people here need to remember that and should also seriously consider getting help with their manners. The way people talk and write these days makes me want to puke... It's discusting! Accept difference of opinion! Last time I checked neither the US or EU where dictatorships... And yes I know EU is more than one country... I live there...
And to answer the article: I loved the beta. No I don't think high profile actors are needed for the sake of them being... High profile. I remember oblivion had some famous guys as well... That preacher.. Right? He was damn good and I really think that this was the intention. No ES game without it so why not select the ones we want and who we think will be brilliant?
Had it been the other way and people complained about a lack of voice acting, citing voice acting in Oblivion and Skyrim as something that has helped define the series, the author would have argued that devoting resources to voice acting was taking those resources away from other areas of the game, and that he'd rather see this, that, and the other thing than voice acting (even though they are budgeted separately). Because that's what fanboys do.
Comments
The only reason we have audio in movies is people are lazy and don't want to read subtitles. It should have stayed the way it was in the 20s.
Ah, I see. Your lack of a citation to any source > citation to the synopsis of a professionally produced report with in industry credibility. Gotcha.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
if you think story and lore are unimportant in an rpg and especially an elder scrolls game - you should skipp on this one probably and look elswhere.
massive projection issues going on here........makes sense though in your case.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
They could have done has well with a set of good voice actors who are not some of the biggest names in the business. Simply a waste of money.
When players start leaving after a couple of months because of no end game content, at least we will know it is not because the budget was poured down the drain!
Have you gone through my post history to find all the posts where I've defended TESO for making massive changes for the sake of being an MMO? I think not.
Voice acting is something that was going to happen because this is an Elder Scrolls game. It's something that's gotten to be a big deal. Blame it on the "Arrow To The Knee" meme if you want. Whatever. It's something that was planned from the start. It wasn't added later. Removing the voice acting would remove the voice over budget from the game, not add money to other aspects of the game. If the rest of the game sucks, it won't be because of the voice overs. Same thing with SWToR. If the rest of the game sucked, it wasn't because of the voice acting*.
The only thing that might have fluctuated is the cost to hire known tv or movie actors instead of career voice actors. Career voice actors are a fairly well known quantity in terms of cost. All those television and movie actors are not. That would have an impact, but it wouldn't have been much.
* I'm not sure why it's a surprise that the one thing Bioware knew how to do well got done well, and everything else that they didn't know how to do when they started didn't get done well.
**
Still didn't answer the question. Voice acting figured heavily in both Oblivion and Skyrim. What makes the inclusion of voice acting in ESO such a no-no when it had such an impact on the two previous Elder Scrolls games?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
They could have done as well with trained voice actors who aren't big names. But it wouldn't have been nearly as effective of a marketing tool. Look at it as two expenses, the base expense of having everything voiced, then whatever additional amount they had to pay for Names is part of the marketing cost.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Some people will hate, some people will like it. This move was to satisfy the vast majority and that is not the people on this site. It's also important to note that the vast majority like LoL, Farmville, etc.
If I put down my need for a deep and meaningful MMORPG experience, i see that hiring these voice actors was the 'right' move and can only benefit ESO in the long run.
Wow, your numbers are WAY off! Lol! "The average entry level salary of a sound engineer is just under 100k dollars a year" ...bhahahaha, in your dreams!
Full circle......
No, because of how many things expected from an online TES game that isn't going to be in this game, changes made "BECAUSE WE HAD TO" due to it being an MMO. Changes were made to the core TES game, for an MMO that did not need to happen because other MMOs did them, yet this SRPG element that is a complete waste of time for an MMO is being kept!
You cant expect people to believe that design changes had to be made to make it into an MMO(when MMOs have already shown it to be wrong) and then try to tell us that we HAVE TO have voice-overs because the SRPG had them.
MMOs are long term games where the leveling is a small part of the game, and voice-overs are for THAT. its more than doubling the work for a small part of the game.
Unless of course you want to argue that TESO has little long term value, then we would be on the same page because that is exactly what voice-overs are for, part of the game done once with no real replay ability factor.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Clearly
http://www.indeed.com/salary/Audio-Engineer.html
You should have called me out with the "making double that" part, would have taken about 10 seconds longer to pull up a link to people working at big studios with experienced people.........
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
If even 100k players extra buy it, with the sole intention of playing it like a single player RPG, the costs of the voice acting will already be recuperated.
/shrug
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Have you ever thought of you thinking the game is heavy foccused on end-game just because you have that type of playstyle to focus on end-game?
I just don't believe the common Elder Scrolls fan would focus on "end-game" Even if they became fans Oblivion or Skyrim I don't think they enjoyed the part when they reached end level but it was everything that came along their journey.
I love the Elder Scrolls seires from the beginning but I just can't go back to a ES game without voice-acting, if done well it makes the gameworld came far more alive to me.
I guess you already experiance the PVP game ingame?
I know for 100% fact you are wrong. And I 100% know how those surveys work.
Yes, absolutely you can make 100k plus as a sound designer/composer/engineer, the top people make much more than that. But as an entry level position you are out of your mind.
I suggest you look up Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey to get a better idea, and even that is inflated.
I have no problem with voice acting,i like it however there is something to think about,the what if!.
What if they can't get those same voices back to do content past the release date?Then they would be stuck changing the voices of those characters,that would ruin the immersion big time.
The other problem is when you keep repeating the same dialogue because maybe you keep dying and have to keep going back.You have this initial feeling after talking to the npc,then when you return you here the npc utter the same words over and over,then it's gets a bad feeling.
None the less,voice acting always adds that little extra to a game ,i am all for it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
question, not telling you what games to play, but why did wildstar fall off your radar? Its still looking good on mine and gets better every day.
No, its based on endgame because they took an IP that is open world, with no race of faction locks and created a game with racial and faction locks, closed off faction lands with a PvP area in its center that everyone is fighting over.
The entire game is based off the idea of end game PvP. From start to the very finish. It is not designed like a TES game. It takes you from level 1 and funnels you to a center at max level. Even the idea of being able to "unlock" another faction land to play in takes place AT MAX LEVEL.
There is no part of TESO that is not based off the game being END GAME FOCUSED. from the story on up. This is not a single player game, its an MMO. and every single MMO is created to make content a one time thing, the story just being something to funnel you to the same point, end game.
Now if the game was made by people actually TRYING to make a TES MMO, it wouldn't have been designed in such a way to make content a one time thing. everything would level with you making the entire world always VIABLE CONTENT. It would be more Sandbox than Themepark, not almost all Themepark with next to no Sandbox. Instead we have a game holding our hand all the way to the end, PvP with some end game group PvE.
So yeah, voice-overs are a waste of time and resources being used on stuff players are going to blow through instead of being used to make that end-game much more diverse, so we get to watch yet another company scramble and try to keep up with players.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I know for 99.99% fact that people that say they know for 100% fact something even when presented with contradictory information that they are 120% full of it.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
So no singleplayer game should have voice overs?
So single player games are MMOs? Good, remove the invisible walls between the faction and PvP lands and give us an actual TES game. Then toss out the limitations placed on it with their MMO designs. Because afterall, SRPGs and MMOs are the same.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
well "your opinion". Other than the "bug fixes" (shame on you Bethesda) the game is perfectly fine and playable without mods.
Now, whether one requires their own special little flavor in order to maintain interest; well one's mileage may vary.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I'm keen on game design foremost, and a discussion on voice actors just serves to remind me that there is no game design in this subject. A talented voice cast is simply the product of a budget that can support it. Do the designers make this decision? Its the sort of decision that executives with no real understanding of the game could make. So instead we discuss the wisdom of how that money should be spent. Games are interesting because they're not movies or tv.. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.
So we can't discuss game design, but there's the psychology of voice acting in these games:
I like good voice acting in games that also feature a voiced protagonist, the Deus Ex and Witcher series being my (fairly recent) favourites.
In open ended games of which mmo's are lingeringly a part, where your character tends to be mute, the theory is that people will project their own thoughts onto them instead, but I've found this doesn't work, it just doesn't feel right having such a one-sided conversation and leaves you at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of player agency. This is one of the things that's always put me off Elder Scrolls games. Thank-you for the freedom to do as I wish but I'd rather be a more tangible presence and the equal of the other characters who inhabit your world. I'm sick of having Patrick Stewart lay it down for me without being able to hear my character's opinion on the matter.
I guess my point is, if your mmo is going to be a tightly controlled theme-park, you might as well give your players a voice and limit their choices so that at least they can feel like they're sharing the story of someone with a personality instead of a series of schitzophrenic written messages.
But I'd much rather they do away with voice acting entirely, let people play the game the way they want, and then everything is even. I'm sick and tired of the big productions throwing money at a front-heavy movie-style bombast without comprehending the problems this causes for the long-term health of the game and the genre as a whole. Consequently theses games have short lives these days and lower everyone's expectations for the future.
Had it been the other way and people complained about a lack of voice acting, citing voice acting in Oblivion and Skyrim as something that has helped define the series, the author would have argued that devoting resources to voice acting was taking those resources away from other areas of the game, and that he'd rather see this, that, and the other thing than voice acting (even though they are budgeted separately). Because that's what fanboys do.