Allods Online Forum

Quoted from "singidudum92"

i whould rly like to see(hear) npc to talk. i always wanted to read all quests , but somewhere betwen 3-4 questes i got bored reading them, so maybe if they talk it whould be a lot more easyer and fun. or also whould be cool to hear them talk those line when u approach nps that u seee in chat box white letters.
what do u guys think about this ?

Easier? Not necessarily. It might reduce the "wall of text" tendency that all non-speaking MMORPG quest-givers, quest-finishers and other quest-participants are prone to. (Really. This seems to affect all MMORPGs, and a lot of single-player RPGs as well.) However, having played some games (single player mostly, but one current MMORPG inspired by the works of George Lucas) that do speak quest dialogs, I'd have to say that I have mixed feelings about this. I can read faster than they can speak, but the Lucasian game has many non-human NPCs who speak in Alien or in Beepydroid, and they seem to have a lot of words in the subtitles but not so much in the audio track, and it can be difficult to follow. (That game doesn't provide subtitles for NPCs who speak Human, which is a problem if you want to/have to play the game without sound.)

So yes, it might be interesting, but the developers have to make sure that the speech takes long enough for people to keep up if they are reading the subtitles instead. And there should always be subtitles, because sometimes we don't have the sound on.

Ambient NPC sound is less problematic, but should not include the mercs, thanks. I don't want to hear what Rudy is gabbling about during an instance or an Astral run. Also, that leaves you open to having to listen to NPC shoppers asking for bread in another colour(*), or guards blithering about their knee injuries(**). Both of these get old very quickly. (In effect, this is an argument for these NPCs having a wide variety of things they might say, to avoid the problem of excessive repetition. Unfortunately, we spend enough time in an MMORPG that this wide variety has to be very, very wide.)

(*) In (name redacted, but might have something to do with guilds and wars, and the number 2), you can find yourself at a baker's stall buying bread, and sometimes a woman will come and ask the baker if he has "that" (meaning bread, evidently) in another colour.
(**) I don't need to identify this game, do I?

SW:TOR tried it, and it blew the pacing completely.

it's a great idea, but just doesn't work in an MMO environment

Quoted from "Dhamp"

SW:TOR tried it, and it blew the pacing completely.

it's a great idea, but just doesn't work in an MMO environment

SW:TOR screwed up, but not because of voiceovers and ESO is following it.
I think that some level of voice acting works very well in mmo /it doesn't need to be swtor grade/. It adds climate and help understand storyline. Did you ran Castle Blight instance on League side? IMO, comparing to every single other one that was implemented in Allods, both party inst and raid instances, it is the BEST instance that Allods has to offer. Whyyy ? Voice acting ! Not just dead silence when I encounter a boss -.- there, it says something (i have no idea what, cause they speak in russian, but what the hell xD). Wall of text in chat window just doesn't cut it for me This helped me immerse myself in situation, it felt that Im actualy taking part in something big, not just some random fight that i had to do in order to progress throughout the game. So, talking NPCs +1.

There are a few MMOs floating around with talking NPCs... and none that have done it well. The closest I have seen it pulled off well is in Firefall, where you don't need to stop and the voice acting is serviceable. In Neverwinter Online the pacing of the speech is just off. Every. Single. Word. Is. Enunciated. As. If. It. Is. Very. Important. And at some point it becomes HARD to listen to the NPCs, so you end up ALT+F4ing, since that is easier than going to settings and messing with that. Voice acting as a background to what is going on, like in Castle Blight (or at least used to be) is fine. But NPCs reciting their quest text has never been pulled off well, and I don't think it can in a game like this, with long quest texts - you'd have to stop and completely turn off your brain until an NPC is done playing 1 wave file. At least when reading text, you are doing something - you're reading, your brain is working. Listening - not so much, you just sit there and WAIT for him to be done.

I grew up with games that require reading and... it doesn't bother me. You don't beat Fallout 1 & 2 without reading tons of texts. Same goes for Planescape: Torment, and Baldur's Gate. ^_^