My epiphany regarding SotA’s image problem for new players

I am sure there are a lot of players here that have some skills with sound studio (software) hobbies. The vendors and NPC's already output some texts when walking by, or when talking with them. If we could find some users to voice that, and other users to modify the voices a bit with their sounds software. We could upload it for Port to use and add them to the vendors/NPC's in game. Would you guys like that?

I could initiate the start of this project and create a private repository for us to use if needed.

 

I mean, it's not quite front page news that after 4 years they finally fixed jumping a few months ago. Forgive me for not logging in each week and hitting space bar to check the progress, lol. Muh bad

 

100% correct, the lack of voiceovers which are quickly becoming an RPG industry standard is indeed a huge turnoff. Nobody wants to read huge blocks of bland text in a UI that is barely functional.

 

Its not specifically about you, it was meant in general. There are a lot of users complaining about stuff that has already been fixed.

 

A lot of players actually DO read those huge blocks of text.. Why implement quests if everyone just skips the text/story in the first place..
While we are here, if everyone just skips the text, then they probably also just skip the voice acting..

 

Lots of games don't have voice acting, SoTA is fine without it. If they do put in voice acting, please don't use the community for voices. Bad voice acting is so, so much worse than no voice acting.

 

As much as I’m a huge, huge fan of voice over in my games (particularly RPGs), I don’t think it’s the issue.

Both my 20 and 39 year old brothers have played the game on their own in some capacity in two different Outskirts scenes. One is more analitical and the other is more instinctual and they both come to the conclusion that they are lost and confused when they reach a certain point within the quests in their respective scenes.

“What am I supposed to do?” Is usually what comes out of their mouths in conversations.

No amount of voice-over can fix that.

My brothers and I get stumped in puzzles while playing Divinity:Original Sin just as well; the nuance is that, in that game, we all know what the objective is and thus can troubleshoot them much easily.

 

I don't know if it happens to everyone, but all the MMOs I played where the NPCs had voice it became "landscape" after a few days playing. I was not paying attention anymore and just kept reading.

I think the biggest point of calling new players would not be that, in my opinion.

 

Each fan who does this would have to be a sound technician, sound booths, level controls, etc., etc., would all be needed.

It would be SO much more immersion breaking to have unusual sounds, buzzes, etc., etc. from recordings done by well meaning but totally lacking in skill and knowledge voice over actors, doing it on their own time.

 

Maybe Lord British, DarkStarr and the Dev's will do it for COTO's. It would be far cheaper

 

And guild wars, guild wars 2, world of warcraft, rift, archeage, everquest 2, star wars galaxies, etc. They werent all fully voiced, but it was there.

 

If any of you are also in the Bard's Tale beta, their KS was only 1.5mil and the voice acting in this game is amazing. So are the graphics and everything else. YES it's a single player game, but for how small their budget was, I'm seriously blown away with how much they added and how well it was built. so now I'm wondering if the cost of a lot of this technology has dropped by a large degree, or how they pulled this off.

 

This. I wouldn't like it either, I already shut off the BGM. Then there's the issue that it requires recording new actors for each localized language. So multiply the cost by five or more, along with the space to store all that audio. And do not underestimate how much disk space audio takes up, especially when you multiply by the number of samples you want. People already complain about the size of updates, and this has potential to grow without bound as the game is expanded. 3D assets are much more compact, and they don't need to be created for every conversation.

I had that the first time I heard the NPCs do their "Simlish" voice, but I quickly got used to it. It's silly and simple enough to stay well out of the Uncanny Valley. Something like that can both be procedurally generated and doesn't have to follow the game text.

When I zoom out, it feels like I'm moving slower, because perspective makes the part of my view around my character smaller, which actually makes it move across the screen slower. Try zooming in a little bit.