Characters that speak.

There's something that has being bothering about GW. When you are in battle in PvP and PvE, dont you feel tired sometimes that the only thing you seem to be able to hear is Clang! Baam! Kabooom! from skills...and the clasical warrior yelling: Arghhh Yeaahhg Whooargh

so...the sound involving characters voice...is only warriors screming like barbarians an people dying. I dont know you but thats odd

All characters are mute! completely mute. I would love to hear character voices in battle. of course NOT all voices, that would be extremedly noisy, but what about being able to hear YOUR character. Yes, Imigine your elementalist saying something like Flames to me!! (well maybe not that) or a necro "Rise lord Vader" (well maybe not that either) but you get the idea? Warriors actually shouting: "I will survive!" rangers saying "Gotcha" when they use hunters shot. "going somewhere?" when a warrior cripples someone.

so many sounds that would make your character come to life, I think it can be done, since you would only hear your own character...wich I believe is quite enough.

This would be very refreshing, in both PvE and PvP, after a while of figthing, all battles sound exactly the same wich is of course very boring.

well...thats my idea...what do you think?
(and what other things you would like to hear your characters say?)

I like the idea of more ambient noise over all. It would add a nice touch.
I think your thinking like how unreal tournment has all the auto taunt stuff.
I'm also looking forward to directsound's music expansion pack

The Fighter and Barbarian Henchmen should yell "Heal me n00b!" and "Res me cmon hurry plz!".

Ehhh.... maybe... having played many console games that involve characters talking while fighting - it gets really old, really fast. I usually turn off the character voices after I hear them repeat the same phrases over and over

In games that usually give characters "phrases" to speak, they tend to say the same thing and say it so often that it drives the actual player mad.

Personally, I don't mind my character not speaking, and besides it saves the dev team time to work on other parts of the game.

It's funny, ever since beta days, I've felt that the sound quality of GW is relatively low. It's just strange that a game that spent so much time making the visual aspect of the game so amazingly high would sacrifice excellent sound.

Welcome to the world of massively-multiplayer.

LOL yeah, huh? I admit that I've not spent a lot of time in MMP games. I have always preferred games like NWN and its multiplayer component.

On the other hand, games like UT and UT2004 and FPS MMPs have good sound so I should think that it might transfer.

ya i like the idea but when someone is down they should yell "MEDIC!!!"

Personally what I find more weird is that the character's lips never move in cutscenes. It just drove me nuts seeing Rurik talk, but.. not seeing him talk - just standing there.

And as for the sounds, I liked the way Unreal Tournament did it.. Once-per-kill auto-taunts would be nice.

Would these be kills in PvP or PvE? Either way it would probably get annoying after a while.

ITEM THEIF!!!! WHOOPS!

Whoa console flashback. I Will agree that it can sound a bit bland at times but it does get the job done. More noise would probably grate on you after hearing it the first couple of times.

PRINCE RURIC! PRINCE RURIC!

Argh it's happening again! *Runs away covering his ears*

Two words for character speech out of cutscenes: Hey, Listen!

It would be horrible if people could have voices outside of cutscenes, as people who are dead, and annoying, could spam I'm Dead! in speech. and jerks would just spam speech anyway.

Remember unreal tournament?
"Oh i'm sorry did i blow your head apart?"
"I'm on fire!"
"I am the Alpha and the Omega"

Kinda hilarious to kill your buddy in battle and have your character say that first one.

Voices make things so much more alive. If it were to be introduced, perhaps an on/off function for those who don't want it.

How about a key bind system to make your character have a speech bubble just like rurik and other NPC's use?

Actual chat binds are a big NO NO when it comes to RPG's but a bubble bind would be cool IMO, if we can't have voices.

It's only in the last few years that voice-acting has become important in RPG's (online or offline), simply because most RPG's have such an incredible amount of text, that it's very expensive and time-consuming to make all text voice-acted.

However, once you've played, for example, one of the Bioware RPG's (such as Knights of the Old Republic), which all have incredibly good voice-acting, you see how much good voice-acting can add to the story.
Also note that Everquest has almost all text spoken by NPC's voice-acted. This really is one of the strong points of Everquest.

All in all, I do miss the lack of NPC voices in Guild Wars, because it would be nice to have quest/mission givers talk to you. Now you just get a large piece of text, which most people simply skip over. For that reason, not many people would be able to tell the plot that leads the Guild Wars player through all the missions.

actually your character does speak in the cutscene for the northern wall (The mission you get to go on from the portal in ascalon city) but thats just one time. It would be great to hear your character speak in battle and stuff good idea!

Yea & just imagine if you where playing using teamspeak, how annoying would that get?

Remember that people from all over the world play this game. They can't very well dub the characters in every different language played, or even the main languages. And dubbing it in one language only makes it unfair.

They don't move their lips when they speak because their mouths are only used for eating.
The denizens of Tyria are all Telepathic you see. How else can you explain the ability to speak in a town and have everyone else hear you, or the idea of whispering to a friend who is anywhere else in the game. It's quite clear that they are telepathic.

Thee are quite a few points like this in the story. Though only the party leader gets the glory of being the only non-mute It would be a nice option but once again Anet aren't making money off monthly fees like Everquest. They are most likley on a bit of a budget. Maybe in the next expansion pack?