I think using big actors for voice in the game is a mistake. I think it is far better to use well known professional voice actors. The reason has a lot to do with scheduling. For the initial release they have a lot of time to work out schedules and get things done, so the inherent limitations you get with the schedules of big actors isn't a huge issue. However when we move forward into fast update mode, and churning out new content ,using people who are more likely to be able to be flexible is the better choice. If you are working on a story line for one of these characters and the actor isn't available that means you either have to end up going no voice, delay the content, or change up the story so that NPC isn't involved and ending up with something not as exciting.
Of course it is possible that ESO doesn't plan to ever touch these NPCs post release, or ever do any more voice for them. In which case problem solved, kind of... I think it would have a pretty negative impact on the ongoing story.
Elder Scrolls had voice acting? Ah, if you followed the main quest line.
Those who ventured off the beaten path, never heard anyone but the enemies they fought.
I think most people do a little of both. I don't remember how much voice was in the older games, but in Skyrim I often hear the NPCs talking to each other before I shoot them in the head with an arrow. And then they run around for a bit and then say "oh it must have been my imagination."
Well for one that are in beta i have say the voice act in main storyline is really good and it feel total ok the are no bad voice at all.
I really love John Cleese voice it made feel char was little crazy after spend so many year there and honest i personal think main story line in mmorpg should have voice actor. But some voice here and there is ok it make world look and feel more alive take WoW the are hardly any voice it is mostly in there cut scene/movies and honest it the rest of world and npc feel some what dead with voice on npc go pass you and talk make world alive but on WoW the are hard no npc with voice in world that talk which my case make world feel dead.
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 stories and lore are the star of your PvE game, choosing for full high quallity voice acting is the only smart roite to go
Good quality voice acting yes, but there is a world of difference between hiring a good but little known actor and hiring someone who refuses to get out of bed for less than a million dollars just so that you can drop a big name everywhere. It's more annoying when a developer does this and then cuts back on other parts of the game like what happened with ME3 for instance.
While I dare not say anything about the relative success of TOR, I can testify that the game sports a healthy and seemingly growing population in all its facets.
It came as a surprise to me that many planets had multiple instances running when I returned some time ago. That's something I only saw at launch before.
So stories about total failure and death are very much untrue as well.
Yea the population is growing so fast they went from 214 servers to 17.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Elder Scrolls had voice acting? Ah, if you followed the main quest line.
Those who ventured off the beaten path, never heard anyone but the enemies they fought.
I think most people do a little of both. I don't remember how much voice was in the older games, but in Skyrim I often hear the NPCs talking to each other before I shoot them in the head with an arrow. And then they run around for a bit and then say "oh it must have been my imagination."
Skyrim was a tad different, as there was a lot of NPC talk. But I wasn't in cities for long to notice...
While I dare not say anything about the relative success of TOR, I can testify that the game sports a healthy and seemingly growing population in all its facets.
It came as a surprise to me that many planets had multiple instances running when I returned some time ago. That's something I only saw at launch before.
So stories about total failure and death are very much untrue as well.
Yea the population is growing so fast they went from 214 servers to 17.
They also upgraded their servers to be much higher capacity. Obviously the number of total players has dropped, but we can't estimate how much by the server consolidation because the amount it takes to reach a given designation (Light, Standard, Heavy) is much higher than it used to be.
It's a good move by ESO to go with a one server solution. Nobody will ever be able to cite the number of servers as an indicator of anything, lol.
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.
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.
As much as the design points you in the direction of a huge endgame ala camelot, that doesnt mean they have to make the journey to get there silent and non forgettable...
You are right in a way but I Think you are also wrong, there are so many diffrent people that wil play TESO, many that simply would cry if they were greeted with a small text window. You are simply NOT included in this Group
Also, I Think it's time to let go of the old and embrace the new, not that voice acting is something that feels new in games , but in MMORPG's its uncommon..
just accept it It will be "common" just the same as when they started adding Pictures and animations in RPG's instead of just using "text" and typing your actions
Or the ...addition of "in game voice" in most MMO's , so you do NOT have to use your thrusted keyboard any longer.
ESO is sounding more and more like another SWTOR all over again.. Story & Voice? I had my fill of that in TOR one time, one character and found it a big turn off.. I"m all for story and voice in single player games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, etc etc, but in my opinion they have NO BUSINESS being in a full MMORPG.. A single player game I"m living a book, but when I play MMORPG, I expect to live my OWN story, not someone else.. These mmo's today are nothing more then co-op single player games to justify MMO pricing for a bigger money grab.. The more this genre becomes saturated with co-op arcade games, the less I wish to follow this genre anymore.. Even WoW isn't what it used to be, and that was the last of the true MMO's in my opinion..
Originally posted by Rydeson ESO is sounding more and more like another SWTOR all over again.. Story & Voice? I had my fill of that in TOR one time, one character and found it a big turn off.. I"m all for story and voice in single player games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, etc etc, but in my opinion they have NO BUSINESS being in a full MMORPG.. A single player game I"m living a book, but when I play MMORPG, I expect to live my OWN story, not someone else.. These mmo's today are nothing more then co-op single player games to justify MMO pricing for a bigger money grab.. The more this genre becomes saturated with co-op arcade games, the less I wish to follow this genre anymore.. Even WoW isn't what it used to be, and that was the last of the true MMO's in my opinion..
Sandbox games is where its at. That said, I don't mind a story if its set up in a way like Guild Wars 1/2.
fastest way to destroy mmos, or as business people would describe it: "if the game can survive the initial 30 day drop, it has a chance to survive and that is free extra money then, and then we afford to transform it to f2p after 1 year". it does not make sense to (re)record content just before release, if this is their only plan to rescue the game then i can imagine its overall quality at this point.
Imo you can't compare voice acting in single player games like Oblivion/Skyrim to MMO games. The content in MMOs is (or at least has been in the past when we had MMOs with longevity) much more dynamic over the lifetime of an MMO compared to single player games.
So you either never change the MMO content or you have to make sure that your voice actors are still available later on. Or you switch to different voice actors later on which really is irritating to say the least.
Also, famous voice actors don't do much outside the american/english speaking market. E.g. over here in germany next to all englisch movies are fully synchronized. Next to no one has any clue how John Cleese sounds in reality. Ok, we can listen to the german (not so famous, which doesn't really matter) voice actors. But there you have your next issue with extensive voice acting in MMOs, you have todo it for every language the game supports.
TL;DR Voice acting in MMOs would be nice but it's drawbacks like increased costs, static content hurt MMOs more than they help. Unless you want an MMO which you play like a single player game with static content.
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.
If they had just said we are getting big names in for the marketing angle I would have been happier with that. I still would have thought it a waste of money, but the honesty would have been refreshing. Honesty form a company engenders trust, giving it to the spin doctors does not.
While I dare not say anything about the relative success of TOR, I can testify that the game sports a healthy and seemingly growing population in all its facets.
It came as a surprise to me that many planets had multiple instances running when I returned some time ago. That's something I only saw at launch before.
So stories about total failure and death are very much untrue as well.
Yea the population is growing so fast they went from 214 servers to 17.
That's besides the point.
I was there during launch, when the game's activity dropped to only 30 players online on some servers and the developers couldn't for the live of them make a decision about meaningful updates or server merges for months.
I was also there when they did end up merging the servers and for some time after that.
What I'm clearly saying is that currently, after returning to the game, TOR seems to sport a much healthier population than after the initial server merges. The game has also been improved in many areas, there is notably less grind for example and notably more customization.
But this is a thread about ESO. I think a lot of the people arguing against VO need to realise that there usually isn't one big pile of money sitting in a safe somewhere and if the VO department decides to nick 90% of that pile the rest of the game studio only has 10% left.
There is such a thing as budgets for each part of the game and projected costs, at least for any self-respecting company.
ESO also has to fill the shoes of its immediate predecessors to a degree, even if it is a different game. Not having VO would be a sure way to get all your fans up in arms.
What I do wonder about is the necessity of using high-profile actors. It's not needed to mix TV / Movie actors with games, let voice-acting grow it's own niche and give some opportunities to new people.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
While I dare not say anything about the relative success of TOR, I can testify that the game sports a healthy and seemingly growing population in all its facets.
It came as a surprise to me that many planets had multiple instances running when I returned some time ago. That's something I only saw at launch before.
So stories about total failure and death are very much untrue as well.
Yea the population is growing so fast they went from 214 servers to 17.
That's besides the point.
I was there during launch, when the game's activity dropped to only 30 players online on some servers and the developers couldn't for the live of them make a decision about meaningful updates or server merges for months.
I was also there when they did end up merging the servers and for some time after that.
What I'm clearly saying is that currently, after returning to the game, TOR seems to sport a much healthier population than after the initial server merges. The game has also been improved in many areas, there is notably less grind for example and notably more customization.
But this is a thread about ESO. I think a lot of the people arguing against VO need to realise that there usually isn't one big pile of money sitting in a safe somewhere and if the VO department decides to nick 90% of that pile the rest of the game studio only has 10% left.
There is such a thing as budgets for each part of the game and projected costs, at least for any self-respecting company.
ESO also has to fill the shoes of its immediate predecessors to a degree, even if it is a different game. Not having VO would be a sure way to get all your fans up in arms.
What I do wonder about is the necessity of using high-profile actors. It's not needed to mix TV / Movie actors with games, let voice-acting grow it's own niche and give some opportunities to new people.
I thought it was general knowledge now that the engine not the voice acting caused SWTOR's budget to spiral out of control.
Full voice acting has only been used once for an MMORPG. SWTOR. Great game after the storylines were done wasn't it?
"The Secret World" heard that, and would like to suggest that you do some research on these things before making claims about them... Everything in that game is voice acted. Including incidental, side NPCs.
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.
You are perfectly welcome to your opinion. In this case your opinion happens to be wrong. When at least half the target audience for the game is comprised of Elder Scrolls players, many of the things they expect to be there will be there. Like voice acting.
Using well known actors instead of all career voice actors is definitely an issue though. There's no way they could know how much that would cost before hand, and it would certainly be more expensive than using career voice actors. Compared to the overall budget for the game or even just the budget for the voice acting without the well known actors, this probably isn't significant.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's a story based MMO that is planning on regular (4-6 week) content updates. It's a game that requires top notch story telling and voice acting because uh.. it's a story MMO.
Comparing to SWTOR is a bit thin, that's not a story based MMO. They didn't plan regular quest, zone and lore updates; they just added more dungeons, raids and repeatable content overall.
You'd do better to compare to LOTRO, which gave you decent world updates every 3 months that progressed the story and quest lines.
Such is they're not following the traditional "here's some dungeons, enjoy" - their bread and butter is going to be the chapter updates.
It's a story based MMO that is planning on regular (4-6 week) content updates. It's a game that requires top notch story telling and voice acting because uh.. it's a story MMO.
Comparing to SWTOR is a bit thin, that's not a story based MMO. They didn't plan regular quest, zone and lore updates; they just added more dungeons, raids and repeatable content overall.
You'd do better to compare to LOTRO, which gave you decent world updates every 3 months that progressed the story and quest lines.
Such is they're not following the traditional "here's some dungeons, enjoy" - their bread and butter is going to be the chapter updates.
JJ82 is right about something, but it's not the comparison to SWToR or anything else they've actually directly said. TESO smacks of compromise. A compromise between making an Elder Scrolls game and an MMO. Even some sort of compromise between making an MMO and an MMORPG. When developers compromise between two things, they don't seem to do either one very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
I think using big actors for voice in the game is a mistake. I think it is far better to use well known professional voice actors. The reason has a lot to do with scheduling. For the initial release they have a lot of time to work out schedules and get things done, so the inherent limitations you get with the schedules of big actors isn't a huge issue. However when we move forward into fast update mode, and churning out new content ,using people who are more likely to be able to be flexible is the better choice. If you are working on a story line for one of these characters and the actor isn't available that means you either have to end up going no voice, delay the content, or change up the story so that NPC isn't involved and ending up with something not as exciting.
Of course it is possible that ESO doesn't plan to ever touch these NPCs post release, or ever do any more voice for them. In which case problem solved, kind of... I think it would have a pretty negative impact on the ongoing story.
Elder Scrolls had voice acting? Ah, if you followed the main quest line.
Those who ventured off the beaten path, never heard anyone but the enemies they fought.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I think most people do a little of both. I don't remember how much voice was in the older games, but in Skyrim I often hear the NPCs talking to each other before I shoot them in the head with an arrow. And then they run around for a bit and then say "oh it must have been my imagination."
Well for one that are in beta i have say the voice act in main storyline is really good and it feel total ok the are no bad voice at all.
I really love John Cleese voice it made feel char was little crazy after spend so many year there and honest i personal think main story line in mmorpg should have voice actor. But some voice here and there is ok it make world look and feel more alive take WoW the are hardly any voice it is mostly in there cut scene/movies and honest it the rest of world and npc feel some what dead with voice on npc go pass you and talk make world alive but on WoW the are hard no npc with voice in world that talk which my case make world feel dead.
Good quality voice acting yes, but there is a world of difference between hiring a good but little known actor and hiring someone who refuses to get out of bed for less than a million dollars just so that you can drop a big name everywhere. It's more annoying when a developer does this and then cuts back on other parts of the game like what happened with ME3 for instance.
Yea the population is growing so fast they went from 214 servers to 17.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Best thread evar
Skyrim was a tad different, as there was a lot of NPC talk. But I wasn't in cities for long to notice...
All for some ore! Ugh!!!
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
They also upgraded their servers to be much higher capacity. Obviously the number of total players has dropped, but we can't estimate how much by the server consolidation because the amount it takes to reach a given designation (Light, Standard, Heavy) is much higher than it used to be.
It's a good move by ESO to go with a one server solution. Nobody will ever be able to cite the number of servers as an indicator of anything, lol.
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.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
As much as the design points you in the direction of a huge endgame ala camelot, that doesnt mean they have to make the journey to get there silent and non forgettable...
You are right in a way but I Think you are also wrong, there are so many diffrent people that wil play TESO, many that simply would cry if they were greeted with a small text window. You are simply NOT included in this Group
Also, I Think it's time to let go of the old and embrace the new, not that voice acting is something that feels new in games , but in MMORPG's its uncommon..
just accept it
It will be "common" just the same as when they started adding Pictures and animations in RPG's instead of just using "text" and typing your actions
Or the ...addition of "in game voice" in most MMO's , so you do NOT have to use your thrusted keyboard any longer.
Sandbox games is where its at. That said, I don't mind a story if its set up in a way like Guild Wars 1/2.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
this is a PR stunt to cash in on initial sales.
fastest way to destroy mmos, or as business people would describe it: "if the game can survive the initial 30 day drop, it has a chance to survive and that is free extra money then, and then we afford to transform it to f2p after 1 year". it does not make sense to (re)record content just before release, if this is their only plan to rescue the game then i can imagine its overall quality at this point.
Imo you can't compare voice acting in single player games like Oblivion/Skyrim to MMO games. The content in MMOs is (or at least has been in the past when we had MMOs with longevity) much more dynamic over the lifetime of an MMO compared to single player games.
So you either never change the MMO content or you have to make sure that your voice actors are still available later on. Or you switch to different voice actors later on which really is irritating to say the least.
Also, famous voice actors don't do much outside the american/english speaking market. E.g. over here in germany next to all englisch movies are fully synchronized. Next to no one has any clue how John Cleese sounds in reality. Ok, we can listen to the german (not so famous, which doesn't really matter) voice actors. But there you have your next issue with extensive voice acting in MMOs, you have todo it for every language the game supports.
TL;DR Voice acting in MMOs would be nice but it's drawbacks like increased costs, static content hurt MMOs more than they help. Unless you want an MMO which you play like a single player game with static content.
If they had just said we are getting big names in for the marketing angle I would have been happier with that. I still would have thought it a waste of money, but the honesty would have been refreshing. Honesty form a company engenders trust, giving it to the spin doctors does not.
Personally I'm not pre-ordering ESO because of this.
Shows their focus is completely off if they spend a lot of time and money in voice acting for an MMORPG.That's besides the point.
I was there during launch, when the game's activity dropped to only 30 players online on some servers and the developers couldn't for the live of them make a decision about meaningful updates or server merges for months.
I was also there when they did end up merging the servers and for some time after that.
What I'm clearly saying is that currently, after returning to the game, TOR seems to sport a much healthier population than after the initial server merges. The game has also been improved in many areas, there is notably less grind for example and notably more customization.
But this is a thread about ESO. I think a lot of the people arguing against VO need to realise that there usually isn't one big pile of money sitting in a safe somewhere and if the VO department decides to nick 90% of that pile the rest of the game studio only has 10% left.
There is such a thing as budgets for each part of the game and projected costs, at least for any self-respecting company.
ESO also has to fill the shoes of its immediate predecessors to a degree, even if it is a different game. Not having VO would be a sure way to get all your fans up in arms.
What I do wonder about is the necessity of using high-profile actors. It's not needed to mix TV / Movie actors with games, let voice-acting grow it's own niche and give some opportunities to new people.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I thought it was general knowledge now that the engine not the voice acting caused SWTOR's budget to spiral out of control.
That is the sad truth and it still remains a problem for the game.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
You are perfectly welcome to your opinion. In this case your opinion happens to be wrong. When at least half the target audience for the game is comprised of Elder Scrolls players, many of the things they expect to be there will be there. Like voice acting.
Using well known actors instead of all career voice actors is definitely an issue though. There's no way they could know how much that would cost before hand, and it would certainly be more expensive than using career voice actors. Compared to the overall budget for the game or even just the budget for the voice acting without the well known actors, this probably isn't significant.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's a story based MMO that is planning on regular (4-6 week) content updates. It's a game that requires top notch story telling and voice acting because uh.. it's a story MMO.
Comparing to SWTOR is a bit thin, that's not a story based MMO. They didn't plan regular quest, zone and lore updates; they just added more dungeons, raids and repeatable content overall.
You'd do better to compare to LOTRO, which gave you decent world updates every 3 months that progressed the story and quest lines.
Such is they're not following the traditional "here's some dungeons, enjoy" - their bread and butter is going to be the chapter updates.
JJ82 is right about something, but it's not the comparison to SWToR or anything else they've actually directly said. TESO smacks of compromise. A compromise between making an Elder Scrolls game and an MMO. Even some sort of compromise between making an MMO and an MMORPG. When developers compromise between two things, they don't seem to do either one very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.