I usually have to play with the sound off because the room is already too noisy and I can't wear headphones, so most of the time I don't hear any of it. But when I can have the sound turned on I listen to all of it and get irritated with myself if I accidentally click before it's finished.

The exception is bankers and some other service NPCs who only have 1-2 lines. If I'm going to the same ones frequently I get sick of hearing it, but for those situations I have the Banker Shutup addon which silences them.

prof-dracko wrote: »

Only for characters or actors I like. John Cleese as Cadwell and Bill Nighy as Eneric I always let play out.

Cadwell is my absolute favourite

I recently started actually playing story stuff and playing for immersion since I was getting burnout from farming all of the events and repeatables lately, turning the HUD and music off, playing in first person (even funner in VR! I love looking up and seeing all of the detail in the area designs I have been missing so far and chatting with NPCs with an adjusted interaction camera addon is cool, feels like I am right there actually talking to them without the fake chat light/DOF/removing background noise that always happens unmodded; finishing the Elsweyr stories and there are some beautiful views and architecture to admire.)

What I am getting at, is that I really love a good story and listening to everything that the characters have to say; I make sure I go through the list and get all of the available dialogs done. I am really enjoying hearing the great voice acting in the Elsweyr story (who voices Mulaamnir??????); Abnur Tharn continues to my favorite NPC in the game; his voice and snark are perfect (and his VA really reminds me a lot of Simon Templeman's Kain - if we ever got another LoK game with new VAs, I would want him doing it LOL)

ANYWAY, I picked 75%, since when I am interested in a character or story, I listen to it all; but if the character is annoying or the quest is dumb, I blow through it since I read much faster than they talk and they aren't worth hearing lol This REALLLLLLYYYY makes me wish there was a way to replay quests on the same characters barring rewards; I would love go back through some quests that I did when I first started playing but didn't get to enjoy and don't want to roll another character, since I am not good at playing a different style than what I am used to. I am sad that I didn't get to properly do the dungeon quests for the Wrathstone story, since the Prologue mentions them but I couldn't even remember what the dungeon quests were since I did not play them at release and accidentally played it out of order!

For some reason, High Isle/Galen just isn't doing it for me, story wise, though; I skipped through pretty much ALL of the story just to get the pet, don't care about druids and the overarching plot was uninteresting to me. Even blew through most of the Delve stories, since there was that one with the sheep or whatever that felt so silly that I couldn't bring myself to care, but I did really like the one for Death's Valor Keep. I am one of those deplorables that prefers the world-ending scenarios in the stories of ESO over some political stuff, I just can't get into it since it feels like it has no impact on my character XD Maybe it's just the writing, since interpersonal stuff and character drama is very enjoyable if done right, but for some reason I can't bring myself to care what happens to the people in High Isle and Galen with the druids.

BUT YEAH, I love great voice acting and will listen to it all if the voice is good and subject matter is interesting. There's a reason why Legacy of Kain is my favorite game series; amazing voice acting and story!

Kng_Ayumayuma wrote: »

The voice acting is superb in this game.
How much of it do you listen to? Usually.

75% was my compromise vote, but the most accurate option would have been something like, "100% the first time through; after that it depends on my mood, how much time I have, how many times I've heard the dialogue before, and how much I like that VA."

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

Normally it had been 100%, but since High Isle, I sometimes just skimmed the text and then clicked to continue because all the flirting annoyed and bored me, to be honest.

This pretty much. Though not specifically the flirting, more that I can barely stand the writing and dialogue any more.

Well, it's a mixture of both, I'd say. An excess of meaningless flirty chatter combined with the lack of interesting information. Plus all the repetitions. I really miss the writing of Morrowind, CWC and Summerset.

Whaaat, @Syldras , are you telling me you don't enjoy doing quests where many can be summarised to:

@NotaDaedraWorshipper This sums it up perfectly. Sadly. Maybe they think their customers won't realize if they mix in enough "hey good-looking"s, "my dear"s and invitations to spend the night with random lady/guy npc one has just met? Considering they also seem to assume that the average player wasn't able to memorize the simpliest task they were given just 10 seconds ago, they seem to reckon we were easily distractable... If they realize that players still complain about uninspired quests and vacuous dialogue, what might come next? Even more cheap "romantic" dialogue? Bare-chested worshippers of Dibella at every street corner? A dozen of random puppies and kittens roaming through town? Or might there be a tiniest chance to improve the storywriting and quest design again? I'm not sure about that, and that's really deplorable. TES has such a deep lore, so many interesting stories could be told. Actually I had been looking forward to a Telvanni Peninsula chapter so much, but now I truly hope it will still be a few years until it's on their schedule - so maybe writing will be back to an acceptable level until then.

@Syldras I often do like it when a few character can be flirty by themselves without the player having to do it first, but not in the way ESO has been doing it lately. It just feel almost childish despite its nature because of all the bad constant innuendos, where some feels more like an innuendo of an innuendo. It's cringey and reminds me of the dev stream when they showed that "Smolder Scrolls" thing. I couldn't stand watch it because of the writing.
Then when I'm not having innuendos thrown at me, I will on my way to the next quest see those random cute/funny things that seem to be added more and more such as dancing dogs and meme refences. At the quest I will get constant repetitive dialogue and forced dialogue without any roleplaying, not even the illusion of choice, where my character will act like a fool. There seem to be so little care and love for Elder Scrolls and its lore lately, and to take some of your words but with a change and say it feels cheap, bland and cartoony, with an attempt to be mature.
It's sad isn't it? There is some chapter you're looking forward to be next one, but now you also dread it would be next with the writing and design.
We can hope with their post about to stop doing the year long stories and such that they have actually listened and will put more effort into it.

And to keep this a bit to topic, it's these things that makes it hard for me to listen to the VA lately. It's not because I don't want to, I do, but the writing just makes me speed read through the dialogue and skim most of it. No one talks like this!

TiaFrye wrote: »

Seeing some replies in this thread makes me depressed. No respect for VA these days...

I feel sorry for the VAs who has to voice the dialogue these days. It feels wasteful of their work and talent.I hope it will change.

Some of the VAs are very good and expressive which is why I try and listen to them properly (I really do appreciate good voice acting) but....yeah... the quality of the dialogue recently has made me feel quite sorry for them. The 'flirty' dialogue added in High Isle/Firesong gave me such horrible second hand embarrassment. I found myself skipping through some of the dialogue for the first time in my history with the game.

Every word except for Stuga and the TOT NPC...they're muted by addons.

For the base game and most of the expansions I listened to every word, and explored every dialogue choice.

But for High Isle I find myself reading quickly and skipping when I am done reading. The story is dull, there is a lot of repetition in the dialogues, and the voice actors are not as good as they used to be. Some characters like Frii are just flat-out annoying. And I don't explore extra dialogue lines after the point of the conversation has been reached, because I don't care.