Guild Wars 2

The game has made so many audio conversations, even some town folks’ gossip. Why didn’t they just do a little bit more effort to make all player-NPC conversations audio, READING is NOT fun. Well for those who can read very fast, they can just click a next button then jump over the audio conversation.

Guild Wars 2 focus on a different aspect of gameplay. They only have a limited resource and they chose to focus it elsewhere. Currently full voice acting is not even on the list. Look at the last two MMOs that chose to focus on full voice acting and not on the correct part of the game play and see where they went.

Is that very hard to fulfill? Since they already have voice for pretty much each NPC you can talk to and your heros. And that not many script for each player-NPC talks. I meant they have done some many meanless audio talks, why don’t just audiolize palyer-NPC talks, which can improve game experience a lot.

What? There is barely anything to read in GW2 compared to almost all other MMOs and more voiceovers than most MMOs.

Personally I’d like MORE reading in GW2, in the form of books and stuff like that.

I’m confused. Which NPCs must we read? The Renown Heart NPCs? There are quite a few of them, that would be a lot of audio to record in 3 languages. The Merchants of every kind? Again, a boatload of audio to record. How does the written dialogue go by too fast? You usually have to click on it.

If it is not those, which NPCs are we talking about here?

Oh, and by the way….Reading is FUN (damental). ; )

I don’t know about how hard it might be but the cost of it is a different story. You would have to hire at least 2 people, a man and a woman, assuming your not going to give each one a different, unique voice. If you are going to give each a unique voice then that is a lot of interviewing and hiring. Then all that text would have to be read over then added to each of the NPCs. That’s not cheap. Any money and time they spend doing that Is money and time they aren’t spending on other projects.

Money and time always has to be considered. Is the time and money spent doing this worth it, as it takes away from other things? Most people are going to say no.

Edit: this doesn’t have a date, but it suggests a rate of $100/minute. https://www.voices.com/resources/rates
Video Games
As with cartoons, narration and character acting both come into play for video game voice-overs. The suggested rate for this type of voice-over work is $100 per minute, or $1500 for a 45-minute recording.

When you add up the time recording and rerecording voiceovers for all the NPCs, it gets expensive fast. And those rates are probably old ones.

Don’t forget it would have to be done in German and French, as well. So..either 6 people, or 2 poly-lingual ones. Probably raise the rates, then. Lol.

i’m actually a pretty slow reader, yet reading is fun.. whether it’s open world or updated lime light content, i think too much of any one component would get tiresome.. you really need a healthy mix to keep the mmo fresh imho

There’s only two ways a game can have all lines with voice:

1. Not have that many characters and therefore not that many voices.
2. Have a text-to-speech engine and synthesize voices.

GW2 definitely can’t go with 1, because there’s a MASSIVE number of NPCs.

So, looks like gaming needs realistic voice synthesis, because all existing text-to-speech engines suck dolyak behind.

There’s already over 60 feature films worth of voice acting in this game. Not enough? xD

I’m quite fine with the way it is now. Whenever A-Net feels the need to spend money I would rather like to have different voices for my different characters.^^

Reading is easy. Math class is tough.

Hm… I always prefer reading to listening.

• Reading is far, far faster way of receiving information.
• You can skip the things you, hm, already know easily.
• You can come back and re-read places you need if something is not making sense.

These are also the reasons why I always ignore Youtube tutorials and go for written ones. The only case when I prefer audio to reading is audiobooks which I can listen to during specific types of work when that channel of information is not used by the brain. I also skip most spoken cutscenes because there are subtitles, and actually reading subtitles while someone’s slowly speaking is irritating.

I agree that in movies and animation (well, I’m a “veteran” fan of Japanese animation) voice-overs contribute very, very much to the overall impression; however, in video games, especially with 3D models with default animations on a semi-static background… nah, I personally think those can (and should) be not voiced in 90% of cases.

SkyFierce.2071:

The game has made so many audio conversations, even some town folks’ gossip. Why didn’t they just do a little bit more effort to make all player-NPC conversations audio, READING is NOT fun. Well for those who can read very fast, they can just click a next button then jump over the audio conversation.

Heck no. Have you heard the quality of most of that voice talent? shiver

1st, I didn’t say making full voice conversation costs nothing. All I said that comparing to the massive audio conversations they alreayd made in this game, those player-NPC conversations(like you ask for an event that is not in your personal story) are not a big amount extra work, maybe 10-20% more extra work can make the game much better, why not.
2nd, for those who love reading, will adding voice in converstation deprive any fun of reading? It gives convenient to other people, when you still can read scripts and click next. So what’s wrong about it.

There are several things that a company will consider before it spends money. The most obvious is, is there a demand for it. After reading the forum since launch, yours is the only thread I know of asking for this and you are the only person on the thread in favor of it. So here the answer is no. There isn’t enough demand for doing this.

Your guess of 10 to 20% is just an unsupported number you made up. How many languages are we looking at? It would need at least 5. English, French and German, Chinese, and Spanish. So each NPC would need to be recorded at least 5 times. Will each NPC have a unique voice or will each of the 5 languages have one man and one woman doing all of them. They will have to arrange for the people to come in, interview them, hire, pay, have them go to recording studios and have the necessary people who do all the recording come in and work. Listen to all to make sure the sounds are clean and the people are saying what they are supposed to be saying. Put the dialog in game. And I’m sure there is more that I can’t think up.

It’s not something cheap and fast that they can do.

Astral Projections.7320:

There are several things that a company will consider before it spends money. The most obvious is, is there a demand for it. After reading the forum since launch, yours is the only thread I know of asking for this and you are the only person on the thread in favor of it. So here the answer is no. There isn’t enough demand for doing this.

Your guess of 10 to 20% is just an unsupported number you made up. How many languages are we looking at? It would need at least 5. English, French and German, Chinese, and Spanish. So each NPC would need to be recorded at least 5 times. Will each NPC have a unique voice or will each of the 5 languages have one man and one woman doing all of them. They will have to arrange for the people to come in, interview them, hire, pay, have them go to recording studios and have the necessary people who do all the recording come in and work. Listen to all to make sure the sounds are clean and the people are saying what they are supposed to be saying. Put the dialog in game. And I’m sure there is more that I can’t think up.

It’s not something cheap and fast that they can do.

Actually, Spanish has no audio, only text support in-game. I’m not sure who was responsible for the Chinese localization, ArenaNet or KhongZhong (KhongZong?).

Still, it would be much less cost- and time-effective than it would be worth, I am sure.

Voice over actors cost money also we already have a game that is almost 20G in hard drive space, more audio files more to download.

Astral Projections.7320:

I don’t know about how hard it might be but the cost of it is a different story. You would have to hire at least 2 people, a man and a woman, assuming your not going to give each one a different, unique voice. If you are going to give each a unique voice then that is a lot of interviewing and hiring. Then all that text would have to be read over then added to each of the NPCs. That’s not cheap. Any money and time they spend doing that Is money and time they aren’t spending on other projects.

Money and time always has to be considered. Is the time and money spent doing this worth it, as it takes away from other things? Most people are going to say no.

Edit: this doesn’t have a date, but it suggests a rate of $100/minute. https://www.voices.com/resources/rates
Video Games
As with cartoons, narration and character acting both come into play for video game voice-overs. The suggested rate for this type of voice-over work is $100 per minute, or $1500 for a 45-minute recording.

When you add up the time recording and rerecording voiceovers for all the NPCs, it gets expensive fast. And those rates are probably old ones.

having some work experience in this field, I´d say those numbers are up-to-date and correct. Still, in a budget like GW2, those costs are really small. But not necessary. I don´t need every merchant telling me “want to see my wares?” in audio or some heart dude I pass by once chasing off some of these worms and/or bandits.