Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet.. Why do all player characters sound the same?

As it stand.. this is my current character obsession for Role Play: http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/1545/91g0.jpg He looks to be mid teens if not a bit younger.. and yet he sounds like mid twenties if not older… NPC’s have a wide range of voices, yet us player characters are stuck with a single voice per race/gender that don’t always fit them. I’m a little miffed that this has become a “Tengu Syndrome” in which we aren’t allowed a small variety if any; to choose a voice for our character that best suits their looks. My first Charr was supposed to be a skiddish little thing and yet I’m stuck with this deep burlesque warrior voice that just says “And I cleaved his skull in two with one swing.”

Please tell me you have something up your sleeves to address this in the very near future. I don’t want to be stuck with “Tengu Syndrome”!

Why won’t a representative respond with an answer! ;w; I just want to know if you have any near future plans to fix this “Tengu Syndrome”!

The answer is pretty straight forward: not enough money to pay all of the voice actors that would be required for this.

Starscream.6498:

The answer is pretty straight forward: not enough money to pay all of the voice actors that would be required for this.

If they didn’t have enough money; they wouldn’t continuously bring back Voice Actors to voice new content in Living Stories. They don’t have to get new Voice Actors; some of the current ones would suffice.

Ravij.9856:

Starscream.6498:

The answer is pretty straight forward: not enough money to pay all of the voice actors that would be required for this.

If they didn’t have enough money; they wouldn’t continuously bring back Voice Actors to voice new content in Living Stories. They don’t have to get new Voice Actors; some of the current ones would suffice.

Voicing player characters is so much more TONS of work that the living story characters. There is a gigantic difference, certainly. Not to mention they might have just been in a different situation back then.

“some of the current ones would suffice” – I’m sure someone would come here and be distressed about how similar they sound to a random NPC.

Starscream.6498:

“some of the current ones would suffice” – I’m sure someone would come here and be distressed about how similar they sound to a random NPC.

I was just saying that if they were low on money; which I doubt they are, they could use the people they use NPC’s for.

Ridiculous. Just one species/gender combination has dozens of hours of voice dialogue, covering every line they can possibly speak in their personal story, dungeons, and in the world.. and then on top of that those voice actors have to voice any future stuff as well for consistency. There are five species, each with both genders playable, so that’s ten different voice actors voicing dozens of hours of dialogue each… and you think it’s in some way practical or realistic to expect several alternatives for each combination? Yeah, that would be a terrific use of budget.

And don’t compare dozens of hours of dialogue to a total of three minutes of NPC dialogue in every stage of the Living World content.

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

Ridiculous. Just one species/gender combination has dozens of hours of voice dialogue, covering every line they can possibly speak in their personal story, dungeons, and in the world.. and then on top of that those voice actors have to voice any future stuff as well for consistency. There are five species, each with both genders playable, so that’s ten different voice actors voicing dozens of hours of dialogue each… and you think it’s in some way practical or realistic to expect several alternatives for each combination? Yeah, that would be a terrific use of budget.

And don’t compare dozens of hours of dialogue to a total of three minutes of NPC dialogue in every stage of the Living World content.

Ok, then; Lets take a look at none-MMO game series. How many hours of dialogue do you think those Voice Actors have to put in? Not to mention reoccurring titles, adding new characters in, ect. There’s a cost to that as well. And you can’t say that Anet doesn’t have enough money when they have people constantly purchasing more than $50 a month of stuff in the cash shop. The game has been out for a year and is just as populated as some of the only surviving Pay to Play MMO’s.

Ravij.9856:

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

Ridiculous. Just one species/gender combination has dozens of hours of voice dialogue, covering every line they can possibly speak in their personal story, dungeons, and in the world.. and then on top of that those voice actors have to voice any future stuff as well for consistency. There are five species, each with both genders playable, so that’s ten different voice actors voicing dozens of hours of dialogue each… and you think it’s in some way practical or realistic to expect several alternatives for each combination? Yeah, that would be a terrific use of budget.

And don’t compare dozens of hours of dialogue to a total of three minutes of NPC dialogue in every stage of the Living World content.

Ok, then; Lets take a look at none-MMO game series. How many hours of dialogue do you think those Voice Actors have to put in?

… and in how many non mmo games do you get to choose which voice your character has? I don’t see your point, the player character VAs do just as much job as in gw in other games, or close to that. You’re asking for multiple voices of a SINGLE character, and you compare it on a normal voice act for a player character that’s the same in GW.

Starscream.6498:

… and in how many non mmo games do you get to choose which voice your character has? I don’t see your point, the player character VAs do just as much job as in gw in other games, or close to that. You’re asking for multiple voices of a SINGLE character, and you compare it on a normal voice act for a player character that’s the same in GW.

I can count a few non-mmo games that DO allow you to choose the voice of your character. The Divinity series is one such offline game that allows this. And in the Divinity series; every cut scene has your character saying something to NPC’s. I remember there being at least 6 voices if not more to choose from for both genders.

Starscream.6498:

You’re asking for multiple voices of a SINGLE character, and you compare it on a normal voice act for a player character that’s the same in GW.

Most of this statement confuses me. But again; there is another MMO published by NCsoft that had at least 4 options for character voices. Aion Online. Your character actually spoke in Cutscenes as well and the voice was different depending what you chose. I’m not saying give us 50 voices to choose from, nor am I saying give us 10. At least 3 different voices would make a difference. Young, Adult, and Veteran -or- Child-like, Smooth, and Rugged. You can come up with three varying voices, so long as they cater to the audience. I mean why even have young-adult/teenage faces if the characters going to sound like a man in his thirties.

I’d like to have more opinions from other people than just having an argumentative debate with just you. Maybe even a response from an Anet developer if they have plans or don’t have plans to do something about this.

I would love a different voice for some of my characters. I get that it’s a bit of a job but maybe we could purchase ‘voice packs’ for gems or some such.

Admit it, you’d buy a Austrian Accent voicepack for your Norn Guardian.
“Come wiv me if you vant to live.”

:D

Ravij.9856:

Dear Anet.. Why do all player characters sound the same?

Because doing otherwise would be too expensive.

Others above have already mentioned how it would be too expensive to give new voices to each race/gender combination, so I won’t go in details about that.

But there’s one thing you haven’t realized – it’s not that voice acting would be too expensive, it already is too expensive. ArenaNet already cut too many corners to make do with the current voice acting.

See Traheanne? Do you notice how he does most of the talking at the end of the personal storyline? How he is the one to give the pre big battle speech and so on? Guess why? Because it’s far cheaper to record all those lines a single time than record them 10 times.

Same with the Order storylines. If you pay attention, our characters never actually say the name of their orders during the order missions (such as the ones about helping lesser races) – they just say “my order”. Again, guess why? Because that required less voice acting than having to record 30 times (one per race/gender/order combination) similar lines.

I really dislike the toll we pay in order to have the current voice acting. The only thing that could be worse would be if ArenaNet released a new race and then used it to recorded voice dialogue for all currently existing content. This would make a new race into incredibly expensive content, for very little gain. The current personal storyline should stay only for the five current races, and new races should be kept only to new content.

My issue here is with the lines the characters involuntarily spout when getting boons, receiving conditions, leveling, etc. Why isn’t there some way to turn these off? It takes me out of the game, because they say things I would never actually have the character say, or ever say in general.

There could be a chooseble pitch for the characters voice in Character Creation… That way there is no need fo huge numbers of actors or even lines… And – it would make a huge difference, at least to me!