Willing to pay for a voice pack DLC.

[Atheosis]

I'd pay for a small voice and portrait DLC, the current set was adequate within their initial means but I would more set around the $5-7.50 mark.

 

Why would you pay money for portraits when there are tons of them for free on the internet?

[Lady Evenstar]

No, thank you. First it's more VO. Then it's fewer choices, a voiced protagonist, and finally making dialogue choices based on snippets that in many cases fail to convey the substance of the choice. As for less VO in isolation, it was a sound budgeting decision that gives greater flexibility to both devs and modders.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Lady Evenstar

[luzarius]

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT MORE VOICE ACTING

 

I'm going to destroy your logic. Let's say Obsidian releases a voice pack DLC that costs them $10,000.00. I purchase the voice pack DLC for $9.95. We can be sure that POE will sell at least 2200 copies of the Voice Pack DLC. That's around $21,890.00 with 9k profit after bs. The profit can be used to enhance other parts of the game or help fund further development for POE 2.  No offense but Obsidian has a chance to profit from us who want voice acting.

 

To all those who don't want voice acting, why are you denying Obsidian $10,000.00 in profit?

 

 

I bet there are many Bioware fans who play POE and would love more voice acting.

Edited April 14, 2015 by luzarius

[Rosveen]

 

 

I'd pay for a small voice and portrait DLC, the current set was adequate within their initial means but I would more set around the $5-7.50 mark.

Why would you pay money for portraits when there are tons of them for free on the internet?

Paying for convenience, as with so many services. It saves time and ensures the portraits will fit the style of the game. Almost every time I find a portrait pack, I have to manually remove portrais I don't like. Finding individual new portraits, renaming and cropping them to the required size is also time-consuming.

[Luckmann]

I actually feel like there is a bit too much VO as it is already.  I would not like them to do more of it in future games, both because I prefer to read (or skim read) as I like and put more of it in my head and because VO requires 'locking down' the dialogue early, preventing them from just adding or changing dialogue as they go along like in the olden days (Monkey Island dialogue was pretty much made up by the programmers as they made the game, a lot of the dialogue was originally even just filler text they decided was actually pretty good).

 

This actually sorta gets to me. There's a lot more VO:s in PoE than there were in the IE games, which I don't necessarily consider bad, but none of it feels memorable. Even the voices the player has to choose from feels sorta meh. The storyteller's voice in the first slide before you even make your character was pretty good, but past that, I haven't come across anything that compares to even the CNPC:s of BG1, save perhaps Edér, but that's possibly because he just feels appropriate, rather than awesome.

 

I often harp on quantity being a quality all in it's own when it comes to CNPC:s, but when it comes to VO:s, the price tag is so high that I really feel that less is more. I'd rather have it very rarely, but when I have it, it's Irenicus, it's Xan, it's Annah, it's Dak'kon, it's Vhailor, and it's Sarevok. I won't mention Gaelan Bayle because that's a sad chapter.

[luzarius]

 

I actually feel like there is a bit too much VO as it is already.  I would not like them to do more of it in future games, both because I prefer to read (or skim read) as I like and put more of it in my head and because VO requires 'locking down' the dialogue early, preventing them from just adding or changing dialogue as they go along like in the olden days (Monkey Island dialogue was pretty much made up by the programmers as they made the game, a lot of the dialogue was originally even just filler text they decided was actually pretty good).

 

This actually sorta gets to me. There's a lot more VO:s in PoE than there were in the IE games, which I don't necessarily consider bad, but none of it feels memorable. Even the voices the player has to choose from feels sorta meh. The storyteller's voice in the first slide before you even make your character was pretty good, but past that, I haven't come across anything that compares to even the CNPC:s of BG1, save perhaps Edér, but that's possibly because he just feels appropriate, rather than awesome.

 

I often harp on quantity being a quality all in it's own when it comes to CNPC:s, but when it comes to VO:s, the price tag is so high that I really feel that less is more. I'd rather have it very rarely, but when I have it, it's Irenicus, it's Xan, it's Annah, it's Dak'kon, it's Vhailor, and it's Sarevok. I won't mention Gaelan Bayle because that's a sad chapter.

 

 

I like Eder's, Aloth & Durance's voice acting. ESPECIALLY Durance.

 

"Saw you in the flames..."

 

Durance is bat **** insane, I love it lol.

[Luckmann]

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT MORE VOICE ACTING

 

I'm going to destroy your logic. Let's say Obsidian releases a voice pack DLC that costs them $10,000.00. I purchase the voice pack DLC for $9.95. We can be sure that POE will sell at least 2000 copies of the Voice Pack DLC. That's $20,000.00 with 10k profit. The 10k profit can be used to enhance other parts of the game or help fund further development for POE 2. No offense but Obsidian has a chance to profit from us who want voice acting.

 

To all those who don't want voice acting, why are you denying Obsidian $10,000.00 in profit?

 

 

I bet there are many Bioware fans who play POE and would love more voice acting.

Because your math is completely made up and has no basis in reality?

 

You wouldn't get people to pay $9,95 for the amount of quality voice content $10,000 would buy.

 

Voice recording - quality voice recording - is incredibly expensive. Just look at the fact that you think that $10,000 would be enough for a meaningful amount of implemented voice content.

 

Nevermind the fact that every time you record something, you've locked in that line of dialogue and you are unable to change it during the course of development or patching, or expand upon it in expansions. Say Galawain as a Deity for Priests is implemented in an expansion, and there's a recorded conversation in the base game that refers to your choice of Deity. Today, they'd just add another conversation branch, a few hours work at most, assuming we're talking writer's time and not just a quick fix, in which case we're talking minutes.

 

For you, they'd pull in that specific voice actor again, pray to god that he or she is free, pay him or her the base cost, and then pay the people that puts it all together, mixes it to match the old voice files, and then code it into the game, attaching it to the relevant conversation tree.

 

There are practical considerations relating to implementation, not just the cost vs. return calculation, even if it would be reasonable by any stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's not, but clearly your imagination inhabits a separate universe to mine.

 

No, thank you. First it's more VO. Then it's fewer choices, a voiced protagonist, and finally making dialogue choices based on snippets that in many cases fail to convey the substance of the choice. As for less VO in isolation, it was a sound budgeting decision that gives greater flexibility to both devs and modders.

^ This.

 

The increased emphasis on voice-overs and cinematicism is one of the things directly responsible for the shallowing of the RPG medium. Until we have proper voice synthesization that rivals actual acting, it's going to be inflexible and prohibitatively expensive.

 

 

I'd pay for a small voice and portrait DLC, the current set was adequate within their initial means but I would more set around the $5-7.50 mark.

Why would you pay money for portraits when there are tons of them for free on the internet?

 

Because we enjoy art consistency? It's jarring enough that there's a few out-of-place portraits in the game already (placeholders that never were removed) and that Calisca's portrait never was replaced. I've yet to see portraits online that matches the style.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Luckmann

[gkathellar]

I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd be down for this idea, for several reasons:

 

(a) It would pay for itself. No cost to other players.

(b) No real additional content that non-buyers would be missing, just increased aesthetic pleasure for buyers.

© No need to waste writing/programming/design staff time, since all of the content is already written.

 

The only reasons I can think of to say, "No, I don't want this," is knee-jerk hate for DLC. This is one of those positive-sum benefit ideas, assuming it's financially worthwhile for Obsidian.

 

If anything, it's already got too much of it methinks.

You can turn VO off, you know.

[Luckmann]

[...]

 

The only reasons I can think of to say, "No, I don't want this," is knee-jerk hate for DLC. This is one of those positive-sum benefit ideas, assuming it's financially worthwhile for Obsidian.

 

C'mon, Gkathellar, there's a post right above you that has nothing to do with a knee-jerk hatred for DLC.

 

You can turn VO off, you know.

Just because you think that there's too many VO:s (instead of less, higher-quality VO:s) doesn't mean that you don't want any VO:s at all.

[Kal Adan]

For you, they'd pull in that specific voice actor again, pray to god that he or she is free, pay him or her the base cost, and then pay the people that puts it all together, mixes it to match the old voice files, and then code it into the game, attaching it to the relevant conversation tree.

True. However, there is no reason not to do so if people want it. Pillars of Eternity were made against odds, because Kickstarter project showed there is a significant market (or demand) for that kind of game, while the others (mostly big publishers) were saying: "these games didn't die out for no reason" or "this won't sell". That's why I like the idea of a Kickstarter: it helps gauging the market and the idea for game/mechanic, etc.

[Kriber22]

And people wonder why games these days are riddled with microtransactions...

 

I think PoE hits a perfect balance between voice acting and written dialogue. There's absolutely no need to have every single word anyone says voice-acted. You can have so much, much more dialogue in the game if the developers DON'T have to pay to have it all spoken out loud. Not to mention that good voice acting is incredibly expensive, while bad voice acting is incredibly cringeworthy.

 

Great written dialogue and juicy flavour text FTW.

[Atheosis]

Because we enjoy art consistency? It's jarring enough that there's a few out-of-place portraits in the game already (placeholders that never were removed) and that Calisca's portrait never was replaced. I've yet to see portraits online that matches the style.

 

 

I think you might have OCD...

[Luckmann]

 

Because we enjoy art consistency? It's jarring enough that there's a few out-of-place portraits in the game already (placeholders that never were removed) and that Calisca's portrait never was replaced. I've yet to see portraits online that matches the style.

 

 

I think you might have OCD...

 

 

I think you might not know what OCD is...

[Althernai]

Voice acting can add up, that's for sure.  The thing to also consider is that you'd have to include the designer/audio designer/QA/programmer time as well as the voice acting costs.  That's what really gets you.  If enough folks are vocal (heh... see that?) about more VO, we might be able to consider it for future projects!

I wouldn't mind more VO as long as it does not compromise the dialog. Full VO would certainly do that for a game like PoE, but having a slightly higher fraction than we currently do and particularly giving the companions more voiced lines would not be a bad idea.

 

That said, there is one exception: if a line has "grey text" (i.e. expressions, gestures, etc.) interspersed with the dialog, please don't add VO to it. It makes it very difficult to interpret properly as one must read the text synchronously with the VO and even then sometimes the VO doesn't pause in the right place (for good reason -- not all the "grey text" implies pauses -- but it's still difficult). If all of the "grey text" is at the end, then VO is fine, but if it is interspersed, then it does more harm than good.

[Dignity]

I would personally buy a voice DLC pack even if all it did was change how characters go "huh" "yeah" "yup" in the most generic way imaginable when controlling them in combat. The one thing that really disappointed me with this otherwise fine game was just how bland the companion characters are, especially during combat. Compare them to let's say Minsc, Sarevok, Edwin or Imoen from the BG series who have their very distinct personalities come through the limited voiced lines they have in those games.

 

I just know that for my future playthoughs in POE I won't even bother playing with the pre-made party members, given how uninspired they feel both on a character/personality and build optimisation level. Just my opinion, I'd get why other people might enjoy them.

[Jayngo]

Please ignore this thread Obsidian. No offense to the OP at all, but that DLC would cost a literal fortune. VO is very expensive and not completely needed in a game like this imo.

 

Spend your resources in better ways Obsidian. Like more content, bug fixes, and a second game please.

[Maviarab]

Give it a godamn rest already.

 

You want a fully voiced game, I hear Bioware are continuing to make fully voiced crap still.

[Atheosis]

 

 

Because we enjoy art consistency? It's jarring enough that there's a few out-of-place portraits in the game already (placeholders that never were removed) and that Calisca's portrait never was replaced. I've yet to see portraits online that matches the style.

 

 

I think you might have OCD...

 

 

I think you might not know what OCD is...

 

 

I think you might not know what joke is...

[Atheosis]

Please ignore this thread Obsidian. No offense to the OP at all, but that DLC would cost a literal fortune. VO is very expensive and not completely needed in a game like this imo.

 

Spend your resources in better ways Obsidian. Like more content, bug fixes, and a second game please.

 

Seconded.  The imagination-challenged who need every freaking line voiced really should be playing other kinds of games.

[Mebrilia]

Implementing voice acting means only cut content in order to meet the cost of voice actor... So in the end less dialogue... Less Narrative... Less living breathing in depth RPG....

 

I say no...again

[FlintlockJazz]

 

I actually feel like there is a bit too much VO as it is already.  I would not like them to do more of it in future games, both because I prefer to read (or skim read) as I like and put more of it in my head and because VO requires 'locking down' the dialogue early, preventing them from just adding or changing dialogue as they go along like in the olden days (Monkey Island dialogue was pretty much made up by the programmers as they made the game, a lot of the dialogue was originally even just filler text they decided was actually pretty good).

 

This actually sorta gets to me. There's a lot more VO:s in PoE than there were in the IE games, which I don't necessarily consider bad, but none of it feels memorable. Even the voices the player has to choose from feels sorta meh. The storyteller's voice in the first slide before you even make your character was pretty good, but past that, I haven't come across anything that compares to even the CNPC:s of BG1, save perhaps Edér, but that's possibly because he just feels appropriate, rather than awesome.

 

I often harp on quantity being a quality all in it's own when it comes to CNPC:s, but when it comes to VO:s, the price tag is so high that I really feel that less is more. I'd rather have it very rarely, but when I have it, it's Irenicus, it's Xan, it's Annah, it's Dak'kon, it's Vhailor, and it's Sarevok. I won't mention Gaelan Bayle because that's a sad chapter.

 

I have to agree, and I think the lack of "quotable" sayings is one of the main differences I have noticed between Obsidian and Bioware I have to say.  Bioware's stories tend to be rather flimsy when you look at them filled with cliches and stereotypes with wooden characters but they cover them up with flashy set-pieces and cheesy one-liners like with Minsc and Boo that really don't mean anything and even break the fourth wall but everyone loves to repeat, whereas Obsidian writes deep plots that actually makes sense and do subtlety and low-key but are less 'quotable' (and therefore harder to market) with even their crazy characters like Stephen Heck having very few lines I can easily quote in day to day life.  I prefer Obsidian's focus since I find it hard now to be distracted by the Hollywood style distractions Bioware uses to cover up their rather dire (in my eyes) characters and because I find their writing doesn't treat me like an idiot, but I did pick up on the lack of memorable sayings when you click on someone....

[Hassat Hunter]

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT MORE VOICE ACTING

 

I'm gonna do more realistic Math. Say VO costs 1M... you want it fully voiced after all... I suppose that's still too low, but let's roll with it.

2000 people are interested you say... so let's see

 

$500,- DLC

 

BUT WAIT... THERE IS MORE

 

Since Steam/GOG need it's cut too (IIRC it's 30%) that would make...

 

$650,- DLC

 

So if you can find us 2000 people who would pay 650 dollar for this... then we can start about making some profit here...

[Justin Bell]

This is a great conversation, VO is something folks are very passionate about.  Early on in the Kickstarter we got lots of feedback from people saying they'd rather we spend money on the game rather than VO.   When were deciding how much VO to record for PoE, the IE games were our frame of reference in terms of overall scope.  The scope of PoE's VO is comparable to the IE games.

 

I should qualify what I said earlier.  We like VO at Obsidian, love it in fact.   It's one of the things that we do really well and that we're known for.  That said we wouldn't spend money on adding VO if the result of doing so prevented us from making a good game.  The game comes first and foremost, above everything else.  

 

I can't speak for the owners of Obsidian or the production staff on Pillars.  I'll go out on a limb though and say is that a voice pack DLC is unlikely at this point.  I don't mean to disappoint anyone who is in favor of one, but the cost and risk of doing something like that is pretty high. 

 

Now, if the modding community came together to make a mod that added more VO, that would be pretty awesome.  Look at Skywind?  Those guys managed to put together full voice acting for their mod.  If they can do it for Morrowind, someone surely can for PoE.

[Hassat Hunter]

For impressive VO in mods, check The Namless Mod.

 

Of course, there are still quite a large number of 'awkward' sounding VO in that game too, it's not all top-notch.

But it's for more than this reason the best mod I've ever played.

 

From what I recall though they did pay the lead characters VO-actor... which I'm not sure most modders would do (we didn't for M4 for example).

[Mebrilia]

This is a great conversation, VO is something folks are very passionate about.  Early on in the Kickstarter we got lots of feedback from people saying they'd rather we spend money on the game rather than VO.   When were deciding how much VO to record for PoE, the IE games were our frame of reference in terms of overall scope.  The scope of PoE's VO is comparable to the IE games.

 

I should qualify what I said earlier.  We like VO at Obsidian, love it in fact.   It's one of the things that we do really well and that we're known for.  That said we wouldn't spend money on adding VO if the result of doing so prevented us from making a good game.  The game comes first and foremost, above everything else.  

 

I can't speak for the owners of Obsidian or the production staff on Pillars.  All I can say is that a voice pack DLC is unlikely at this point.  I don't mean to disappoint anyone who is in favor of one, but the cost and risk of doing something like that is pretty high compared to the return.

 

Now, if the modding community came together to make a mod that added more VO, that would be pretty awesome.  Look at Skywind?  Those guys managed to put together full voice acting for their mod.  If they can do it for Morrowind, someone surely can for PoE.

And yes i think this can be a nice solution for who loves in that manner voice acting... A team of modders can set  a project for it Skywind is a prof however many people thinks also voice acting in Skywind is not necessary...But they want to voice it all and i am fine with it since i spoken to this guys.. And they are really working hard on all front but most important... They are working it for free and this is the main reason why skywind will be total voice acted... 

 

But if you develop a game you have costs to face... And voice acting usually end to be really really expensive... This is the main reason why we have extremely short game or number of dialogues heavily reduced... Now i am not a developer but as a gamer i can see this thing with my own eyes...And Justin post pretty much confirmed it..