[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Kazgrel]

The 3.0 and 4.0 voice acting is miles better than most of the voice acting back in 2.0.

I honestly get the impression that some people are bitter simply because they're using British voice actors now rather than American. They're going for a very specific style with it these days which fits the style embraced by FFXII. A game which is frequently praised for excellent voice work.

Then, of course, there's people who will complain about the English voice acting due to some sort of bizarre obsession with Japanese voice work being better even though they don't understand it themselves.

Not necessarily aimed at anyone here, but based on Reddit/official forum discussions I've had in the past.

It could be far, far worse; they could have the likes of me doing VA work. Remember Mudmug from Mists of Pandaria? No, that's not me personally, but that's basically what I sound like, so no matter how professional I may be speaking, someone's probably listening and thinking "He sounds intelligent for a redneck" or something to that effect.

I've never found the VA work in this game to be a detraction. Personally, I like the guy who did Susano; not often do you hear a primal who sounds like it's just having a jolly ol' time beating the hell out of people (or having the hell beat out of them by said people). Fitting for the Lord of Revel.

The dream would be to have VA work for the WoL...although it's arguable we're too far down the road for that, perhaps. The whole nod thing, while endearing to some extent, is also a bit snooze-worthy at this point. I've read elsewhere that there's sidequests in SB that have the WoL with a voice, but I'm not sure if that's simply dialogue choices during the quest or actual VA work.

[Faroth]

They did a good job with Fordola and Yotsuyu despite their lack of screen time. They also do solid work fleshing out allied NPC's like Gosetsu and Hien with little screen time too. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to come up with a primary antagonist that's more than just a psycho killer. He was a very weak villain in a line up of much better written characters and they should have done much better with him. Especially when, as people here are so fond of saying, FF is a story driven game.

*shrugs* I thought he was good, up there with Kefka, one of the favorite FF villains of all time (who is crazy as hell and has come to the conclusion that life is BS so he should simply eradicate it by becoming a god himself). Different tastes. Sometimes I like a villain that's just batshit crazy evil and doesn't have some woefully tragic past that twisted them into being evil that we should feel bad for. That said, maybe there's a reason he was a short term villain and more layered characters are being kept around.

Dracula was a good and literary historic villain because he was plainly evil. Not the "oh woe is me, I so tortured soul" vampire crap of the modern age.

[Kazgrel]

I agree. Truthfully, I didn't find the JP VA's the much better than 2.0's either. Regardless, some people need to really get it out of their heads that JP VAs are always the absolute best in everything >.>

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles? If I'm going to read subtitles, there may as well be no VA work at all. I suppose that's one reason I've not watched a lot of anime that many things in this game and others tend to make references to.

[Faroth]

The dream would be to have VA work for the WoL...although it's arguable we're too far down the road for that, perhaps. The whole nod thing, while endearing to some extent, is also a bit snooze-worthy at this point. I've read elsewhere that there's sidequests in SB that have the WoL with a voice, but I'm not sure if that's simply dialogue choices during the quest or actual VA work.

Dream for you, nightmare for me. There are a lot of quests with dialogue choices, not voice acting, and I'm glad for it.

Dragon Age: Origins, the Warden was MY character. It was an extension of ME. And all I had were dialogue choices.
Dragon Age II & Dragon Age Inquisition - just like every other RPG, I'm just playing someone else's character, but I'm guiding their decisions. I didn't remotely feel a connection to Hawke and the Inquisitor like I did the Warden. I think a big part of that is not having someone else's preconceived notion of voice acting being MY character's voice.

[Remilia]

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles? If I'm going to read subtitles, there may as well be no VA work at all. I suppose that's one reason I've not watched a lot of anime that many things in this game and others tend to make references to.

Nah it's not really ignorant. It does play to preference and no real right answer. I personally prefer the original language most of the time provided there are subtitles. Of course I understand Japanese to an extent and so there's a definite bias there, but it's also something I did for games like the Metro series. Artyom sounds less like a chump and in character than the English one. Problem was background chatter wasn't subtitled but I played it through multiple times with both languages. It's just preference.

[Granyala]

Cool. I just missed 6x in a row on a 75% success chance mining node.
Wish I had that kind of luck in Gold Saucer.

[Remilia]

Cool. I just missed 6x in a row on a 75% success chance mining node.
Wish I had that kind of luck in Gold Saucer.

Glory to RNG.

[Manabomb]

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles? If I'm going to read subtitles, there may as well be no VA work at all. I suppose that's one reason I've not watched a lot of anime that many things in this game and others tend to make references to.

*Shrug* To me the Japanese voices seem more fluid with the speaking animations and fit a lot of the characters better. I couldn't stand, for example, Papalymo's English VA. That and a lot of what can be said in Japanese can be inferred through context and confirmed through subtitles, so I guess it has to do more with multi processing capability.

Not to rage on people that only do English VA's, I know quite a few people that refuse to watch anime in anything but English dub because they can't stand reading subtitles and aren't good at inferring from context.

[Kaelwryn]

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles? If I'm going to read subtitles, there may as well be no VA work at all. I suppose that's one reason I've not watched a lot of anime that many things in this game and others tend to make references to.

For me, that's not so much an issue tho I do find watching sub anime a little annoying as I don't sit down to just watch anime or anything really xd. I'm usually doing something else so trying to watch a sub anime is like impossible. When I do watch subs tho, I honestly find a lot of JP voices to be extremely annoying. I know people who say that JP VAs are more...'alive' or 'emotion' in their work but a lot of times i find it to be incredibly annoying and overbearing.

[Silver Forte]

Am I leveling wrong? I was farming fates a few levels higher than me efficiently, barely moving my XP bar. I started doing quests, I get maybe 3-5% per quest. Dungeons give decent XP but they take forever especially when I'm forced to do lower level instances where 50% of my abilities aren't "learned yet", so I end up almost falling asleep. People are saying leveling in this game is insanely fast but I found WoW without heirlooms faster than this. Also using a FC buff and always have my food buff. Any tips?

[Kazgrel]

Dream for you, nightmare for me. There are a lot of quests with dialogue choices, not voice acting, and I'm glad for it.

Dragon Age: Origins, the Warden was MY character. It was an extension of ME. And all I had were dialogue choices.
Dragon Age II & Dragon Age Inquisition - just like every other RPG, I'm just playing someone else's character, but I'm guiding their decisions. I didn't remotely feel a connection to Hawke and the Inquisitor like I did the Warden. I think a big part of that is not having someone else's preconceived notion of voice acting being MY character's voice.

Given the variety of emote voices available to player characters in this game, that dream of mine is very much a pipe dream, and no, I don't feel it (the lack of VA for WoL) detracts from the game whatsoever. Some races would be easy; male highlander emote voices basically sound like old drunk guys, heh. Meanwhile, female Highlander voices range from itsy-bitsy teenager girl to raspy chain smoker woman, with several other inbetweens. It'd be all sorts of fubar on arrival were they to try and VA the WoL.

[Granyala]

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles?

I don't know, but Japanese just sounds awesome. I love to hear the language, even if I don't understand a thing.
In FF I have the english VA and german text. The weirdness in the english is just too hilarious to choose another language. Esp when Urianger speaks.

[Katchii]

I liked Raubahn and Ilberd much better. Ilberd has a bit of a Scottish hint later HW patches. How Raubahn is a downgrade... I don't see how one feels that after his "Mad Snake. Mad Snaaaaaake!" delivery in ARR. XD

Merlwyb and Yugiri I agree. Yugiri's original voice actress returns in Stormblood, though.

I also don't care for Nanamo in Heavensward.

I'd much rather have the HW VA for that character than the one in ARR. To me she sounded like a grown woman trying very hard to sound like a child in ARR, whereas in HW she sounded more natural.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree. Truthfully, I didn't find the JP VA's the much better than 2.0's either. Regardless, some people need to really get it out of their heads that JP VAs are always the absolute best in everything >.>

For me, in anime anyway, I prefer the Japanese simply because it's much easier for me to focus on the tone of the scene and the antics of the characters rather than what they're saying. Not sure why, but being able to 100% understand the words being said takes the weight of what's being said away from the line. It just sounds so cheesy sometimes, whereas in Japanese (which I don't understand) I am able to focus entirely on the VA's tone of voice and voice inflection, the ambiance and reactions of the other characters, etc... so even if the scene is supposed to be funny..it doesn't come across as stupid, it's just humorous. I hope that makes sense because I honestly have no idea how to articulate it better.

That said, I use the English audio in FFXIV and haven't really found anything TOO cringe worthy throughout 2.0-4.0. Obviously some VA's and characters are better than others, but nothing really sticks out except Nanamo in the early 2.0 stuff...she sounds awful.

[RohanV]

At the risk of sounding horrendously ignorant...how would I find the JP VAs superior to English when I have no damn idea what they are saying without subtitles? If I'm going to read subtitles, there may as well be no VA work at all. I suppose that's one reason I've not watched a lot of anime that many things in this game and others tend to make references to.

For me, it's because I don't understand Japanese that the JP VA sounds superior. Mostly, I find English dub voice-acting and dialogue poor quality, compared to well-written English dialogue. But with subs, I always know that I'm reading a translation, and it allows me to pretend that the JP dialogue is high quality. Even though it probably isn't.

[Anzaman]

Ixion spawned couple minutes ago on Odin (EU) - server was so darn close to crashing, everybody had DC icon next to name and STILL some people cried how we didn't wait for them. Had we waited any longer, everybody would have flied off the server and boss would have despawned without giving anybody items.

[Saradain]

Ixion spawned couple minutes ago on Odin (EU) - server was so darn close to crashing, everybody had DC icon next to name and STILL some people cried how we didn't wait for them. Had we waited any longer, everybody would have flied off the server and boss would have despawned without giving anybody items.

Yeah, I bolted there the moment I got information about the spawn, but instance 3 was full (first time I see this error) and was left stranded in the Peaks. How about some actual server upgrades so it's not gonna take years to get ;_;

[StrawberryZebra]

Am I leveling wrong? I was farming fates a few levels higher than me efficiently, barely moving my XP bar. I started doing quests, I get maybe 3-5% per quest. Dungeons give decent XP but they take forever especially when I'm forced to do lower level instances where 50% of my abilities aren't "learned yet", so I end up almost falling asleep. People are saying leveling in this game is insanely fast but I found WoW without heirlooms faster than this. Also using a FC buff and always have my food buff. Any tips?

You can get a nice ring from completing all of the Hall of the Novice duties on any class that gives 30% bonus XP when you're under level 30. There's also an earring with the same effect below level 50 as one of the Stormblood Preorder bonuses too, and you'll get a +100% bonus on any job below level 60 and that's also below your highest level job. All three combined can make getting to 30 relatively fast at least.

Beyond level 60 though, it does take a while. The roulette queues are extremely long as DPS and without levequests to fill in the gaps you're stuck FATE farming while you wait. I've been having issues getting myself motivated to slog through it too - Really happy with my current 70 jobs and leveling up something thats hopefully more enjoyable. If you're a tank or a healer however, the roulette queues are both fast and offer up a huge chunk of your XP bar for the daily reward.

[Anzaman]

Yeah, I bolted there the moment I got information about the spawn, but instance 3 was full (first time I see this error) and was left stranded in the Peaks. How about some actual server upgrades so it's not gonna take years to get ;_;

Oh wow, might explain why it didn't go completely down this time.

[Kazgrel]

I don't know, but Japanese just sounds awesome. I love to hear the language, even if I don't understand a thing.
In FF I have the english VA and german text. The weirdness in the english is just too hilarious to choose another language. Esp when Urianger speaks.

Urianger with that Victorian era-ish dialect, especially in ARR, is rather hilarious. At least in SB, when other characters respond to him with essentially "the fuck did you say?", he essentially re-explains himself in more modern terms. They should always have him deliver lines in such a manner; to have everyone doing so, though...I can see why that would annoy folks.

It is amusing how being fluent in one particular language (whether or not it's your only language) can make you look at words/phrases in other language and go "Hmm...". I mean, take this old video comparing words from German to other languages:

[Remilia]

I don't know, but Japanese just sounds awesome. I love to hear the language, even if I don't understand a thing.
In FF I have the english VA and german text. The weirdness in the english is just too hilarious to choose another language. Esp when Urianger speaks.

Speaking of weirdness in language. The entire Doma part of the story line is SO HARD to read/understand in Japanese. Of course I'm not great in Japanese, and so much feudal Japan dialect. Tiny bit of Japanese. Typically when you hear "I", typically it's one of these. "Watashi 私, Boku　僕, Ore　俺" with the latter tend to be more informal. For example Gozetsu uses 拙者 when saying "I", which is an old speech in the time of samurais, which makes sense but damn.　Same with "You" that Yuugiri says as "Kiden 貴殿". It was a lot better once I got it all sorted but this is like old English in Japanese form. Took me a lot longer to go through that arc of the story than I ever thought it would.