The problem isn't that all voice acting is bad or all superhero scripted dialog is silly. The problem is that voice dialog and the gameplay scaffolding that goes along with it is much more frictional in MMOs specifically than in single player games. In single player games the game runs at whatever pace you want. But in MMOs you have to design all (or almost all) content on the presumption that teams will run it. And SWTOR isn't considered "advanced" because of its voice scenes. Its generally considered to be "annoying" when not being played single-player.
Good design is not about using the most technically advanced features possible. Its about fitting form to function in the best way possible with available technology. With written text its possible for some players in the team to read quickly and dismiss the text at their own pace while other players can read slower, and with the right technology even go back and read it again if they can't read it fast enough. I screencapped all dialog in CoH specifically to allow myself to do that, and I'm the fastest reader I know. Absolutely no one was reading mission dialog faster than I was, but it was still convenient for me to save for future reference. Its not as easy to do that for voice acted cutscenes.
I'm sorry but you're stating a bunch of your preferences as facts. There is NOTHING about voice acting that takes any longer than any other cut scene, and in fact, can be much faster than text based cut scenes that don't have a "skippable" option. If there IS a skippable option, there is nothing about voice over cut scenes that make them somehow "unskippable" anymore than text based ones.
It sounds like you're suggestion is we shouldn't have cut scenes at all, which CoH already has. And lets not forget that voice over work can be done outside of cut scenes, as well. Why do you think they added voice over work to the newer tutorial? To make the game feel less dated than it really was.
The devs believed exactly what I'm saying: purely text based MMOs feel dated, and it's a strike against them.
You may be willing to take that strike. So may the makers of CoT/Coh 1.5, etc. But it is a strike.
And it's one that really doesn't seem, to me anyway, to offer any advantages to it that couldn't easily be countered by simply making voice over work optional.
And voice over work isn't that expensive. I know this from experience. As a matter of fact, it's something that a group of volunteers from the community could get done fairly quickly, probably for free, and in a quality that is at least as good as that on The Secret World, from the comfort of their own PCs at home. I teach Film production, I've got extensive experience in making voice overs, including with effects, etc. Even still, if you wanted to hire professionals, you can get quality services doing one hour sessions of recordings for around 500 dollars, and each addition hour being just 100 dollars. So lets imagine that if we did EVERY cut scene existing in City of Heroes, and added in just ambiance voice over work for 50 contacts (A quick "hello" when you walk up, etc.), based on my experience as a QUICK guess from memory of the game, we're talk 10 hours of voice over work, maximum. Assuming you'd need 5 male and 5 female voice actors to cover the number of contacts you have in the game, you'd be running around 14,000 dollars if you used ALL ten of them for the ENTIRE 10 hours. In reality, you wouldn't, you'd be using each one for about 2 hours, so more likely a total cost of 6,000 dollars.
6,000 dollars. That's for every cut scene in the game to have a voice over option, and for 50 of the most famous/popular contacts to have ambient voice over work.
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.
