I am enjoying leveling in SWTOR again. But sometimes I'll pay attention to the voice, sometimes I SPACE BAR it. I did the same thing with old style text quests.
I guess my preference is whether it's worth reading / sitting through it or not. I'd take an awesomely written text quest over poorly written / acted voiced quests.
Definitely prefer Text to voice overs, having said that, i do enjoy playing SW;TOR, but, the voiceovers don't really add all that much to the game, if anything, having your own character be fully voiced actually detracts from the game because its just not how i imagine my own toon sounding or even the things they say, plus with voiceovers, when they're not done to a high standard, they just sound really bad, thats something that SW;TOR did really well, admittedly, but other games like ESO and even FFXIV;ARR, what voiceovers there were, were absolutely terrible, and FFXIV;ARR is one of my favourite games, i have to skip the voiceovered cutscenes because they make me cringe. So overall i prefer Text to voice overs, they sound better
Originally posted by dreamscaper 99% of the time, I prefer text. The only MMORPG I've played that the voiceovers were both well done and added something to the game was TSW. The rest of the time it's been a distraction, as I can read much, much faster than voiceovers and they normally add nothing to the game.
Voice-overs bite off too much of the budget that I think would be better spent elsewhere. Also, it takes longer/costs more for new content while adding very little to the game, for me. All things being equal I would like a nice intro in voice (quest givers and important NPCs) but still remain 90% text based.
There is only one reason i would have and that has to do with longevity of a game and it's characters.If you use voice over which i am sure most like and want,what happens if that voice is no longer employed?So then what give that character a different voice or just not have her interact with the game anymore?
That is why i scoffed at the notion SWTOR had a great story because it was nothing more than a linear questing game.A TRUE story does not end at each segment,that character should be throughout the story for the entire game,unless you are just going to kill off every character at each segment which again would be dumb.
I will use a perfect example since the op mentioned a FF game.CID everyone knows who Cid is,he lives throughout their story lines.How about YUNA from FFX ,she is in the game and story throughout.
I guess the point is that if you are going to use voice ,it pretty much has to be the same voice all the time for the existence of the mmorpg.Text on the other hand allows you to have totally different staff writers making the text and nobody would know the difference.So that way the character can live on throughout the game as the exact same character allowing the Lore and story to go untouched.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
And that's not even one of the worse ones I could find. There are others I was thinking of more specifically, but I couldn't find them on YT.
The dialog is over-done, and the voice acting is just so "blah". Hardly any inflection, flat, no personality. It sounds like someone reading from a script, doing their best impression of anger, or surprise, etc.
Now, on the other hand, you have The Secret World. A MMO developed by a much smaller developer, with much shallower pockets and not nearly the kind of experience SE has in game development.
Notice how much more personality and inflection? Notice how it sounds like someone engaging in discussion (even if one-sided), and not like someone reading from a script? This is why, despite all the problems people have with the game otherwise, The Secret World is so often cited when it comes to having some of the best cut-scenes (along with quests) in the genre.
And here's the kicker... In FFXIV, the voice acting is spotty at best. It only exists in certain cut-scenes, and only with certain key characters. And even then, it'll cut-out halfway through the cut-scene and switch to text only.
In TSW, every NPC is voice-acted. Every single one. Even the unimportant, side-characters you come across out in the world. And they're all well done.
And here's an interesting factoid. FFXIV uses some of the same voice actors as TSW. Kari Wahlgren is the voice of Kirsten Geary (in the TSW cut-scene). I'm not sure who she voice-acts in FFXIV, because she's only credited as doing various voice-overs; not anyone in particular (a mistake on SE's part, in my opinion, because she does amazing work). So you can't even say that they used less skilled voice actors in XIV. Apparently, they just have a really poor director working with them, who doesn't know how to get better performances.
So, again... if it's a MMO with quality writing, characters and voice acting like TSW, I prefer voice-acting hands-down, any day of the week. It's enjoyable. It breathes life into interesting and believable characters. It elevates the overall experience.
FFXIV? Meh. I'd rather just read and imagine the voices myself. They're more interesting that way
There is only one reason i would have and that has to do with longevity of a game and it's characters.If you use voice over which i am sure most like and want,what happens if that voice is no longer employed?So then what give that character a different voice or just not have her interact with the game anymore?
That is why i scoffed at the notion SWTOR had a great story because it was nothing more than a linear questing game.A TRUE story does not end at each segment,that character should be throughout the story for the entire game,unless you are just going to kill off every character at each segment which again would be dumb.
Just use another voice actor/actress, there are tons of talented people with similar voice, or can mimic someone's voice.
So what TOR is linear? Good story writing can be linear (as shown in many movies & also video games). Plus, they are not using really well known actors anywhere, there is no reason why they won't be back for more work, even if they cannot be replaced, which they can.
Movie like cutscenes should have voice over. If they try to show me a pretty landscape (or a devasted city), i want to be able to acutally look at it, and not have my eyes glued to the subtitles or some scrolling text.
Regular quests should be text. Faster to read, you can directly skip to the things you missed if you talk to the NPC again, it's cheaper for the developer, voice over is hard to get right, especially in multiple languages.
NPCs should have voiced random comments, and maybe some short summary.
Like:"We got attacked by xy, please kill him".
But not the whole reasoning starting a long time ago when an apple from a tree clan x owns feel on a guy from clan y, which evolved into an all out war in the last few generations..and after ten minutes he's like "so please, kill 10 rats".
If the company does have the money and got nothing better to do with it like EA etc., they may add full voice over, but a option to toggle it would be good.
Until we arrive at fully immersive games via VR technology where having a window or random lines with text just inside your field of view would be extremely weird (unless it's a sci-fi game, where it could be justified as being displayed on the HUD), i think text is the better solution overall.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
I ignore both. The stories in video games are embarrassingly lame.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
I don't like my character to talk though. ESO gives you character a selection of voice for laughs, cheers, grunts ect. no speaking though.
I hated hearing my "evil" necro talk in GW2. He spoke with an almost British noble dialect. "How can I help you my lady". Just aweful. I wanted him to sound creepy and evil.
No MMO has really mastered the art of storytelling yet.
Ideally, the best approach is ambient, voiced dialogue. Give players a little information at a time without breaking the flow of gameplay and exploration. When a player goes out of their way to reach a new location, have new NPC's voice a new part of the story in a realistic way.
Now, it should also be said that this approach is expensive. Voicing all of that has a serious cost. Which is why ambient speech bubbles might be preferable for lower budget studios or those that have their priorities in a different place. You can even attach quite a bit of charm to this by making said bubbles a natural part of the animation and art style of the game.
Personally, I believe the era of lengthy quest text should have fully ended years ago. Only with ambient storytelling can real immersion be created.
(Now, note that I am not excluding certain realistic traditional means of supplemental storytelling. Discovering and reading journals, for instance, is a tradition that has been long held for a good reason. I would still consider this to be a form of ambient storytelling, however, as said journals are an organic part of the world when placed effectively.)
Final Fantasy XI Online didn't have any voice cutsceenes all where text ones BUT there is no mmorpg ever made with better cutsceenes and better story and immersion.
Agreed. My "imaginary voices" are never bad (And it is a hell of a lot cheaper )
No Poll, OP?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Well it depends, if it's just your average wow text block turned into an emotionless long monologue.. then it might as well stay text.. But something like swtor where you can actually interact to some degree with the NPCs along with the npc moving and doing stuff having other npcs added to the conversation and what not in it then yeah it's better then a standard block of text, definitely.
Is it worth doing that for a less then 5 minute long generic kill '10 rats' quest though? I don't know.
an npc gives you quest and then starts talking about more details.
you are free to do whatever you want, including go do the new quest you just accepted
the npc starts shouting at you as you walk away "hey, wait, I didn't finish my story yet"
I like hearing people talking about stuff while you walking past them and you might even find out rumors and secret quest and secret locations this way
I like when my character talks with a predetermined voice, or a voice of your chosing.Don't really care. (TSW looked really dumb when my character smirked or just nodded along. The same applies to FF xiv, altough not as noticeable)
I don't like when i have to read a page load of text just to accept a simple quest which could have been described in 1 sentence
(ff xiv does this....I want to read the quests. I really do. But about 1 hour of reading the side quests they are so dull and offer so little extra information that you fell asleep. I've even tried to read them out loud but didn't succed. Some were good tough....so now I avoid doing sidequests in fear of missing a good story if I'm not patient. And after a long day of work, I'm nothing but)
Most games nowaday that have voices, you can see the text to, as the movie plays along. By skipping the text, you go to the next voice part. Most rpg and mmorpg do that. But not for every quest and i really don't know why.
Text is never enough. But sometimes is more convenient for developers, as well as the player who is in a hurry.
There is only one reason i would have and that has to do with longevity of a game and it's characters.If you use voice over which i am sure most like and want,what happens if that voice is no longer employed?So then what give that character a different voice or just not have her interact with the game anymore?
That is why i scoffed at the notion SWTOR had a great story because it was nothing more than a linear questing game.A TRUE story does not end at each segment,that character should be throughout the story for the entire game,unless you are just going to kill off every character at each segment which again would be dumb.
Just use another voice actor/actress, there are tons of talented people with similar voice, or can mimic someone's voice.
So what TOR is linear? Good story writing can be linear (as shown in many movies & also video games). Plus, they are not using really well known actors anywhere, there is no reason why they won't be back for more work, even if they cannot be replaced, which they can.
Bioware's had no problems getting them back so far, and they've done a good job continuing the stories with the latest update.
Apparently next year there will be a stronger focus on story again as well, which already started with SoR when each class got a unique class mission again.
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.)
Voice ... if i want to read, i read novels. VIDEO games should not ask the player to read lots of text.
In fact, not only i prefer voice, i prefer in-game scripted events to tell the story.
VIDEO = done with eyes. aka reading.
AUDIO = done with ears - aka voiceovers.
VIDEO = done with eyes only? really? are we still in the 1920s?
What video does not include audio? I don't recall i can't shut off my ears when watching a video.
Plus, eyes = only reading? really? Have you heard of "moving picture"?
"A picture says more than a thousand words."
Sorry, couldn't resist! :P
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.)
Voice. Without voice acting for characters (Good voice acting that is.) A game holds almost zero immersion anymore. It was fine to have text many years ago, but once it started being used on a large scale, it just can't go back to being text and be considered "quality" anymore.
I can still play games without voice acted bits. But I wouldn't considered them to be great games, unless they are old games from before voice acting in games.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
I prefer text unless voice is really well done. In some games you can tell that the job was given to a random person who has no experience doing voice acting, I'd rather have text then.
I like both. Voice overs for important & interesting quests while text is just fine for the more mundane quests. SWTOR went too far originally but with the Revam expac, they seem to have toned it down a bit with the "kill 10 rats" type of quests.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Comments
I am enjoying leveling in SWTOR again. But sometimes I'll pay attention to the voice, sometimes I SPACE BAR it. I did the same thing with old style text quests.
I guess my preference is whether it's worth reading / sitting through it or not. I'd take an awesomely written text quest over poorly written / acted voiced quests.
Text, hands down.
I agree that TSW has good voice.
I self identify as a monkey.
Text.
Voice-overs bite off too much of the budget that I think would be better spent elsewhere. Also, it takes longer/costs more for new content while adding very little to the game, for me. All things being equal I would like a nice intro in voice (quest givers and important NPCs) but still remain 90% text based.
There is only one reason i would have and that has to do with longevity of a game and it's characters.If you use voice over which i am sure most like and want,what happens if that voice is no longer employed?So then what give that character a different voice or just not have her interact with the game anymore?
That is why i scoffed at the notion SWTOR had a great story because it was nothing more than a linear questing game.A TRUE story does not end at each segment,that character should be throughout the story for the entire game,unless you are just going to kill off every character at each segment which again would be dumb.
I will use a perfect example since the op mentioned a FF game.CID everyone knows who Cid is,he lives throughout their story lines.How about YUNA from FFX ,she is in the game and story throughout.
I guess the point is that if you are going to use voice ,it pretty much has to be the same voice all the time for the existence of the mmorpg.Text on the other hand allows you to have totally different staff writers making the text and nobody would know the difference.So that way the character can live on throughout the game as the exact same character allowing the Lore and story to go untouched.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Text is fine for me. I'm not opposed to reading.
I enjoy voice acting as well, though, so long as the voice acting work is well done.
On one hand, take FFXIV. The voice acting makes me cringe. It's just awful, for the most part (in my opinion, of course).
Look at this video, for example. Warning! Potential Spoilers.
And that's not even one of the worse ones I could find. There are others I was thinking of more specifically, but I couldn't find them on YT.
The dialog is over-done, and the voice acting is just so "blah". Hardly any inflection, flat, no personality. It sounds like someone reading from a script, doing their best impression of anger, or surprise, etc.
Now, on the other hand, you have The Secret World. A MMO developed by a much smaller developer, with much shallower pockets and not nearly the kind of experience SE has in game development.
Yet, check out this cut-scene from The Secret World. Again.. possible Spoiler
.
Notice how much more personality and inflection? Notice how it sounds like someone engaging in discussion (even if one-sided), and not like someone reading from a script? This is why, despite all the problems people have with the game otherwise, The Secret World is so often cited when it comes to having some of the best cut-scenes (along with quests) in the genre.
And here's the kicker... In FFXIV, the voice acting is spotty at best. It only exists in certain cut-scenes, and only with certain key characters. And even then, it'll cut-out halfway through the cut-scene and switch to text only.
In TSW, every NPC is voice-acted. Every single one. Even the unimportant, side-characters you come across out in the world. And they're all well done.
And here's an interesting factoid. FFXIV uses some of the same voice actors as TSW. Kari Wahlgren is the voice of Kirsten Geary (in the TSW cut-scene). I'm not sure who she voice-acts in FFXIV, because she's only credited as doing various voice-overs; not anyone in particular (a mistake on SE's part, in my opinion, because she does amazing work). So you can't even say that they used less skilled voice actors in XIV. Apparently, they just have a really poor director working with them, who doesn't know how to get better performances.
So, again... if it's a MMO with quality writing, characters and voice acting like TSW, I prefer voice-acting hands-down, any day of the week. It's enjoyable. It breathes life into interesting and believable characters. It elevates the overall experience.
FFXIV? Meh. I'd rather just read and imagine the voices myself. They're more interesting that way
Just use another voice actor/actress, there are tons of talented people with similar voice, or can mimic someone's voice.
So what TOR is linear? Good story writing can be linear (as shown in many movies & also video games). Plus, they are not using really well known actors anywhere, there is no reason why they won't be back for more work, even if they cannot be replaced, which they can.
Movie like cutscenes should have voice over. If they try to show me a pretty landscape (or a devasted city), i want to be able to acutally look at it, and not have my eyes glued to the subtitles or some scrolling text.
Regular quests should be text. Faster to read, you can directly skip to the things you missed if you talk to the NPC again, it's cheaper for the developer, voice over is hard to get right, especially in multiple languages.
NPCs should have voiced random comments, and maybe some short summary.
Like:"We got attacked by xy, please kill him".
But not the whole reasoning starting a long time ago when an apple from a tree clan x owns feel on a guy from clan y, which evolved into an all out war in the last few generations..and after ten minutes he's like "so please, kill 10 rats".
If the company does have the money and got nothing better to do with it like EA etc., they may add full voice over, but a option to toggle it would be good.
Until we arrive at fully immersive games via VR technology where having a window or random lines with text just inside your field of view would be extremely weird (unless it's a sci-fi game, where it could be justified as being displayed on the HUD), i think text is the better solution overall.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
I ignore both. The stories in video games are embarrassingly lame.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
w/o question voice.
I don't like my character to talk though. ESO gives you character a selection of voice for laughs, cheers, grunts ect. no speaking though.
I hated hearing my "evil" necro talk in GW2. He spoke with an almost British noble dialect. "How can I help you my lady". Just aweful. I wanted him to sound creepy and evil.
No MMO has really mastered the art of storytelling yet.
Ideally, the best approach is ambient, voiced dialogue. Give players a little information at a time without breaking the flow of gameplay and exploration. When a player goes out of their way to reach a new location, have new NPC's voice a new part of the story in a realistic way.
Now, it should also be said that this approach is expensive. Voicing all of that has a serious cost. Which is why ambient speech bubbles might be preferable for lower budget studios or those that have their priorities in a different place. You can even attach quite a bit of charm to this by making said bubbles a natural part of the animation and art style of the game.
Personally, I believe the era of lengthy quest text should have fully ended years ago. Only with ambient storytelling can real immersion be created.
(Now, note that I am not excluding certain realistic traditional means of supplemental storytelling. Discovering and reading journals, for instance, is a tradition that has been long held for a good reason. I would still consider this to be a form of ambient storytelling, however, as said journals are an organic part of the world when placed effectively.)
(And it is a hell of a lot cheaper
No Poll, OP?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Well it depends, if it's just your average wow text block turned into an emotionless long monologue.. then it might as well stay text.. But something like swtor where you can actually interact to some degree with the NPCs along with the npc moving and doing stuff having other npcs added to the conversation and what not in it then yeah it's better then a standard block of text, definitely.
Is it worth doing that for a less then 5 minute long generic kill '10 rats' quest though? I don't know.
VIDEO = done with eyes only? really? are we still in the 1920s?
What video does not include audio? I don't recall i can't shut off my ears when watching a video.
Plus, eyes = only reading? really? Have you heard of "moving picture"?
Voice
But not the way it's done today.
I want something like this:
Bioware's had no problems getting them back so far, and they've done a good job continuing the stories with the latest update.
Apparently next year there will be a stronger focus on story again as well, which already started with SoR when each class got a unique class mission again.
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/
"A picture says more than a thousand words."
Sorry, couldn't resist! :P
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/
Voice. Without voice acting for characters (Good voice acting that is.) A game holds almost zero immersion anymore. It was fine to have text many years ago, but once it started being used on a large scale, it just can't go back to being text and be considered "quality" anymore.
I can still play games without voice acted bits. But I wouldn't considered them to be great games, unless they are old games from before voice acting in games.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
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
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.