And the mask comes off.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

If you'd like, I can post -links- to companies that provide quality voice over work/talent. community.

...just like you're doing right now with Irish Girl and APR.

I can clear up any speculation on this topic. Revival is not planned to have voice work at launch.
CoT I can't comment on, since I'm not their lead.

If you guys are willing,  I would actually appreciate it if you would post some of the informative you have on the subject over on the Revival forums.  I am actually interested to see it, and of course want to be as informed as I can be for possible additions to the game.

And to clarify, Nobody vets my work. Nate sees most Revival updates when everyone else does.

[downix]

I believe the problem is they think you are speaking of the short term, when you are in-fact speaking of the price of the long-term finished product.

I always try and think long-term here. Otherwise you run out of money.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.

I know this is going to sound like a smartass post, please understand that it is not.

Were they *good* voice talent?

[downix]

So, am I understanding ... Nate got the ball rolling, but now it's in the hands of South Korean folks who are negotiating a deal to buy the IP for a company.
And Nate will not be involved in running that company, but we don't know who exactly WILL be running that company (which may not exist but is being planned for)

So the masks for the folks who are negotiating and potentially purchasing and running and putting up the MOO-LAH for all this are still on.  No?

Or am I missing something -- I keep seeing that the structure of the company is not yet determined, but I also read that "we know who will be running the servers" --
Do we know who WILL be involved in the new IP company if the deal is successful, and we're just not saying... or does nobody know...  confus-ed.

That depends on the particulars of the deal. There are a half-dozen possible structures laid out, with different possible people depending on the structure.

It could be a lot of different combinations of bits and elements and ideas. We simply do not know yet where the cards will fall. All we do know is that we are sitting at the table, and that the cards are being shuffled before dealing.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

No.

.........
/Aggelakis?

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Right, so you'll have to wait on that to be ready, then modify it to work with COH's character model. From what I've seen of CoT character model regions so far, I don't expect them to be directly compatible.

Ragdoll only gets you part of the way there, since the "neutral" (0) position of the bones in the player skeleton is not a zero-transformation state. You'll still have to get everything rotated and positioned around the origin just right so that they'll line up when transformed back to the appropriate place on the skeleton. All those cumulative transformations will inevitably introduce a small amount of shearing or non-linear transformation, though probably only perfectionists like me would be bothered by it.

You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".

Yes,  yes it is. I didn't say it would be easy.  Nor that I've ever been accused of an excess of sanity, or a lack of ambition.

[Ankhammon]

That depends on the particulars of the deal. There are a half-dozen possible structures laid out, with different possible people depending on the structure.

It could be a lot of different combinations of bits and elements and ideas. We simply do not know yet where the cards will fall. All we do know is that we are sitting at the table, and that the cards are being shuffled before dealing.

I prefer to think that the cards were dealt, but they are now placing bets and raises. Then they will get new cards and see if anyone folds.

[Power Arc X]

All I know is that when a VO scene happens in any game it means perfect time for a bio break or go get more munchies/drinks.

[Sugoi]

All I know is that when a VO scene happens in any game it means perfect time for a bio break or go get more munchies/drinks.

Would the first option be considered to be a vowel movement?

[Remaugen]

Not that we have a vote, but I would prefer to forgo the voice over, just don't want it nor need it.

Would the first option be considered to be a vowel movement?

*Snort!*

That hit the funny bone 


We're almost there!   

[Xenos]

That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....

Let me start out by saying I personally have no interest whatsoever in spoken dialog in the game. None.

But as someone else who has hired VO talent and directed VO sessions for broadcast and corporate projects, I have to agree with the people who consider these numbers quite inflated.

• The talent rates are high, and yes, we are talking about "good" talent.
• I am not sure where you get the 12:1 ratio. The people I've worked with nail this in 2, maybe 3 takes. Nowhere near 12:1.
• Editing a V/O is comparatively easy and fast. Not like video. It shouldn't take an editor and producer long to get this sorted.
• Also 100,000 minutes sounds like a lot of dialog, that's well over 1,500 hours. I'd think this is a worst case scenario and not a minimum amount. That number I'd expect to be significantly lower. And therefore your multiplier would be lower as well.

I don't mean any offense by disagreeing, but it sounds to me like you got some bad advise when you were investigating the cost of spoken dialog.

In any case though...I am happy without it.

[Harpospoke]

For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..

Reading your response made me smile and think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

You just said you do actually care about voice acting.   

[Harpospoke]

I think the simplest way to do it is to have a "sped up" vet reward system upon launch, in reverse.  You can basically "rebuy" your vet rewards at launch for a one time fee for a limited time.  x amount per tier.  The first week of launch you can rebuy up to the last tier, for x amount.  The second week, you can buy up to the second to last tier, for x amount, and pay and additional y amount for the final tier, the next week x amount gets you to the third to last tier, and you have to pay extra for the last two, etc.   
 
This way the game gets some much needed capital, players are incentivized to return quickly because the faster they are back the cheaper the vet rewards are, etc. 

 
I would also extend this temporary sale to players who can purchase unlocked level 50s, recipe sets, etc. for a limited time, to help get the game back to full, thriving, hussel and bussel. The faster we have hamis going, incarnate trials, etc. along with new toons the more likely this is to succeed.

No problem with either idea here.        I'm not rich, but money is still much less important than time.

[Burnt Toast]

I truly wish the first post would be amended or there was a FAQ regarding this... tired of seeing the same questions and misconceptions over and over and over.


Can someone create a sticky post of FAQs regarding all of this please to help calm the hysteria over who is doing what (MWM is not running/buying CoHi23)... that Windows 9 does not mean the death of CoHi23 etc etc..


I know why people are confused...because there is so much chatter in between relevant posts and they are easily missed; which is why I think a sticky FAQ that is locked should be implemented by someone who can in PLAIN language explain things to people.

[downix]

Let me start out by saying I personally have no interest whatsoever in spoken dialog in the game. None.

But as someone else who has hired VO talent and directed VO sessions for broadcast and corporate projects, I have to agree with the people who consider these numbers quite inflated.

• The talent rates are high, and yes, we are talking about "good" talent.
• I am not sure where you get the 12:1 ratio. The people I've worked with nail this in 2, maybe 3 takes. Nowhere near 12:1.
• Editing a V/O is comparatively easy and fast. Not like video. It shouldn't take an editor and producer long to get this sorted.
• Also 100,000 minutes sounds like a lot of dialog, that's well over 1,500 hours. I'd think this is a worst case scenario and not a minimum amount. That number I'd expect to be significantly lower. And therefore your multiplier would be lower as well.

I don't mean any offense by disagreeing, but it sounds to me like you got some bad advise when you were investigating the cost of spoken dialog.

In any case though...I am happy without it.

To be clear, 100,000 minutes is for all languages needed to support. Your typical MMORPG today really should support English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese and Russian. So, reality, discussing about 225 hours of in-game dialog, which is actually pretty conservative for modern MMO's. SWTOR is a monster at over 600 hours of dialog. (I wish I was joking here)

Now, if you opt for the more conservative approach, like WoW and Wildstar, short clips which are not reflective of any mission text, you still wind up with hours of these snippets.

[Taceus Jiwede]

That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....

Ya I had a part I deleted about how that was assuming everyone could get it in 1 shot and everything was perfect the first time around.  Which has never happened in any studio session I have ever done.  And that was figured including bounce time too.  It would take several hours just to bounce that much audio.  And assuming it needed no processing at all, no de-essing, no reverb, nothing.  Also after looking at that, I think I should tell my boss to try to do more video game and movie VO.  Sounds like there is money to be made in it.

[downix]

Ya I had a part I deleted about how that was assuming everyone could get it in 1 shot and everything was perfect the first time around.  Which has never happened in any studio session I have ever done.  And that was figured including bounce time too.  It would take several hours just to bounce that much audio.  And assuming it needed no processing at all, no de-essing, no reverb, nothing.  Also after looking at that, I think I should tell my boss to try to do more video game and movie VO.  Sounds like there is money to be made in it.

If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.

[Arcana]

 
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.

1.  Voice overs are not the same thing as voice acting.

2.  I did not compare voice acting to non-voice cut scenes.  I compared voice acting to text-based dialog.

3.  There *always* exists a way to make text-based dialog run at a better pace for all players of a team than voice acted dialog.  Its called "reading."

4.  Whether voice acting is "expensive" or not is a semantic game involving the definition of "expensive" I'm not playing.  What I said was that it diverts resources from making more content without an obvious gameplay benefit.

5.  I'm unaware of any dev that was quoted as saying the lack of voice dialog made City of Heroes feel "dated," and I would consider it particularly odd if they did because voice acting is still not standard fare for most MMOs today.

6.  Rereading my post, I find no statement that could be characterized as presenting preference as fact.  That voice acting is frictional isn't a preference, its provably true (cut scenes in general were sufficiently frictional that players demanded a way to bypass them in things like the BAF, which resulted in the "skip if every character has already run the BAF at least once" code).  That most or all content in MMOs is designed on the presumption that it will be run by teams is also a fact.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and state that my observations of opinion surrounding the game is sufficient to state that there is no general consensus among players that voice acting in SWTOR is appreciated as a significant advancement, and even if it is not its not a statement of my preference being presented as fact; its an observation of player preference in general.  My statements about the process of reading text appears to be true on their face.

[Scendera]

Some people might like voice work - to me and many others it just shatters the role playing experience because it breaks whatever voice you have created and attached to that character in your mind.

Everyone likes to dish on WoW because it's biggest, but I like its approach to voice. A few major plot characters are voiced, we have the famous Blizzard cutscenes that are on par with AAA *movies*, and very few "Shut down ALL the beacons!" moments. Your character grunts when hit, has a battle cry and a death cry, but everything else is voluntary and done via commands. Most NPCs greet you, many with a few words of their native language. It all sets a mood/tone very effectively.

EQ2 was much more hit or miss. The usual range of battle cries and grunts is well done and like WoW, adds flavor...particularly the distinctive Iksar "Sup!". Sounds cheesy but it's actually pretty endearing.

The Sarnak are beautifully voice acted. For an "evil" race in a neutral city...it gives them depth instead of seeming like the programmer forgot to flag the banker to have a faction. It shows so many small points about this young, proud society...that their females are equal warriors, that they have everything from eager young ones and bad cooks to hardened sneaks willing to fight dirty. Incredibly, incredibly well done.

And then the single worst voice acting I've seen comes later in the game. It's immersion breaking and poorly done. Out in Velious, there are a couple quests which run you thru different options and your response is a very derpy "I don't know!". It's practically offensive...it's the sort of tone someone might use mocking someone with an intellectual disability.

Add to that there are only 2 voices for it...one male, one female...and it's cringe inducing. Maybe my barb SK really is a bit...slow. Not how I saw her but tolerable I guess. For my Ikky Beastlord who has an entirely different voice to use the exact same dopey sound effect was completely immersion shattering.

[FloatingFatMan]

I'm not particularly bothered by VA in MMO's really.  Whilst it might be nice to ge a greeting from your contact, it's by no means necessary.  Now, VA to add -ambience-, that I'd go with. Screams in the distance when there's a building fire, or someone getting mugged, or a giant monster rampaging, maybe the occasional half heard conversation of someone using a phone, police radio chatter as a squad car passes you by.  That kind of stuff is fine by me, but spoken mission texts and cutscenes? Not really bothered.