Fully Voiced Quests: A good or bad thing?

Zaggeron

Here's my take on this. While I like the voice acting (mostly), I think that some significant percentage of the quests should be just text instead of voice -- maybe 25%. My reason for this is simple: the cost of adding new content. With a well designed interface, a developer could add a quest in about 5 minutes. Place some enemies, write some text, specify some conditions and, voila, new content.

This would be a relatively cheap way to add content as the biggest expense is always the production of the voice-overs. As long as the main story and guild quests and the major side quests are all voiced acted, I don't think this would detract from the perceived quality of the game.

StaticWax

I would like to be the first to dignify this thread with a response.

Tapio75

Text is yesterday.

Besides having everything voiced makes game accesible to people with visual impairments that can prevent reading text but not from playing the game.. Like me.

Then there are those who hate reading and would just skip everything of story if not voiced.

Tapio75

The price of voice overs is one thing.. Why hire expensive voice actors? Why not just ask for volunteers to make them free? I am sure there are many who would love to contribute and have their voice in a major game and also their name mentioned in some credit portion of the game.

With todays technology, it is extremely easy to record clear voice even at home.

JD2013

Goodness people really will complain about every single thing this game offers.

Zaggeron

Good point about visual impairments, but there are ways around that via larger fonts, or automated readers (they're much better than they were in the past).

With respect to "Text is yesterday" -- lots of top tier games build a ton of story into text -- it is meant to supplement the main quest experience, not replace it. In any event, I'd vote for more content with some of it text over no new content ever (or rarely) any day of the week.

Zaggeron

JD2013 wrote: »

Goodness people really will complain about every single thing this game offers.

This is not a complaint as much as it is a request or wish for them to relax their "every quest voiced" policy. Note that we already have some quests with very little voice -- some just have a voice response when you turn in what is essentially a text quest -- e.g. found some doucment/weapon/whatever in a delve now return it etc.

7788b14_ESO

Tapio75 wrote: »

The price of voice overs is one thing.. Why hire expensive voice actors? Why not just ask for volunteers to make them free? I am sure there are many who would love to contribute and have their voice in a major game and also their name mentioned in some credit portion of the game.

With todays technology, it is extremely easy to record clear voice even at home.

That's a great idea. I'm sure a lot of streamers would volunteer to voice scripts. They already have the equipment. Just send them their lines and they could send back the audio.

Zaggeron

Tapio75 wrote: »

The price of voice overs is one thing.. Why hire expensive voice actors? Why not just ask for volunteers to make them free? I am sure there are many who would love to contribute and have their voice in a major game and also their name mentioned in some credit portion of the game.

With todays technology, it is extremely easy to record clear voice even at home.

Good point, but much of the expense is post audio production and incorporating the text into the game and lip-syncing the character, etc. It would be much cheaper with amateur actors, but time-wise not much quicker from idea to in-game

doggie

In TSW they took it one step further and had these scripted movie scenes, they were so expensive to create that they ended up selling new quests as DLC's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ful70qybk1k

Mantic0r3

its a bad thing, slows down content production.

CodexMMO

What about computer generated voices? Stephen Hawking style. For those of us who don't care about the voices, we can just disable them and read the dialog. Or honestly, we can escape out of the dialog boxes as quickly as possible, then just go to the quest journal and look for the appropriate objectives.

Zaggeron

CodexMMO wrote: »

What about computer generated voices? Stephen Hawking style. For those of us who don't care about the voices, we can just disable them and read the dialog. Or honestly, we can escape out of the dialog boxes as quickly as possible, then just go to the quest journal and look for the appropriate objectives.

Yep, that would certainly address any issues relating to the visually impaired's ability to read the text.

Sphinx2318

welcome to 2015. voice acting is here to stay

Granz

The voice acting is great and one of the reasons I play this game. I am tired of WoW... Let's let that format die!

Zaggeron

Granz wrote: »

The voice acting is great and one of the reasons I play this game. I am tired of WoW... Let's let that format die!

Yes. As I said, I like the voice acting as well. Major content updates like DLC should have a large amount of voiced content. That said, are DLCs/Expansion packs the only time you'd ever want quests added to the game?

I can imagine dozens of new quests being added on a weekly or monthly basis if the cost of producing them were not so high.

Iago

The voice acting is part of what makes this game as splendiferous as it is.

Artemiisia

well I h8 that the grass is green, the sun is yellow and that there are flowers in the game

Demeos

Zaggeron wrote: »

Here's my take on this. While I like the voice acting (mostly), I think that some significant percentage of the quests should be just text instead of voice -- maybe 25%. My reason for this is simple: the cost of adding new content. With a well designed interface, a developer could add a quest in about 5 minutes. Place some enemies, write some text, specify some conditions and, voila, new content.

This would be a relatively cheap way to add content as the biggest expense is always the production of the voice-overs. As long as the main story and guild quests and the major side quests are all voiced acted, I don't think this would detract from the perceived quality of the game.

I disagree.

doggie

What they could add is journal quests, ie: you pick up a torn out page with a quest on it, with no npc interaction there would be no need for voice.

LameoveR

I'm russian and i don't care.

Vegaroth

as i play with the music, ambience and dialogue sound off, dosnt will make difference to me, anyway i think for lots of pple the voice act is important but i suppose if the fast release of new content means less quality in that aspect dont will really matter, the sacrife is worth.

nerevarine1138

Tapio75 wrote: »

The price of voice overs is one thing.. Why hire expensive voice actors? Why not just ask for volunteers to make them free? I am sure there are many who would love to contribute and have their voice in a major game and also their name mentioned in some credit portion of the game.

With todays technology, it is extremely easy to record clear voice even at home.

No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Everyone and their mother thinks they're a brilliant actor/voiceover artist. They're wrong. ZO (and Bethesda before them) went the right route here by hiring professionals.

jircris11

I am lazy, less reading i need to do while questing the better :P

Athas24

If this game didn't have voice acting, I would still be playing SWTOR. I became spoiled with their voice acting and now I demand it or I won't even attempt to play the game. In the past I never realized how much of a difference it can make but now that I've experienced it, I'll never go back Nevaaa!

stabbykitteh

doggie wrote: »

What they could add is journal quests, ie: you pick up a torn out page with a quest on it, with no npc interaction there would be no need for voice.

Soon after these quest are implemented, 20 threads appear calling the devs out as lazy and ZOS cheap for not fleshing out the quests and including voices

Jennifur_Vultee

Personally I really like the voice acting, now its hard to play the other games I played before with just text. I'm not to lazy to actually read but I just like the interaction of having NPCs talk to me and I think for some it means they may listen to the dialog rather than just click through it.

Zershar_Vemod

Best part I found in this thread is that I think the OP is serious lol...

MissBizz

I really enjoy the voice acting, helps me really get into the story. They could add the odd "found a page from a journal" (some of those already exist) quests, but I really do love hearing the story.

PKMN12

I like the voice acting, and prefer having it than not, BUT it does mean that there cannot be as much chatter for NPC's. You cannot have a bunch of long paragraphs of speech like you could in Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Arena.

frould

wut?
lol button plzz.