Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Voiced NPCs are talking WAY too much!

First of all I'm not saying the voicing is bad or the game doesn't need alot of conversations.
The problem is that many NPCs are repeating the same phrases over and over and over again, it's damn annoying. For example: (no quest spoilers) the burning ship in the docks. Man, the NPCs repeated the same thing like 50 times when I was wandering by the docks and it took only 2 minutes to explore everything. The two people in the library also, they repeat the same stuff every 10 seconds.
There was also (I won't say name & etc to prevent spoilers) that guy you have to escort to the city who repeated to death that he was being attacked while in fact he wasn't, I was defending him.

Can Larian look into this issue? I can't be the only one annoyed by this.

Yeah I just watched the live stream and noted that a companion was repeating the same lines a lot. Hopefully there will be some options to disable or at least tone it down some.

Yes, they really need to add an option to disable voice on non essential NPCs.

I admit some places its obviously an issue. Ie. After the first orc fight.

If you've ever played Sacred 2 or about any MMO you know all about chronic NPC talking. :P I can't say its 'really' bad yet. Since I do enjoy the voices. But if you have NPCs idling in the same area repeatedly spamming it definitely needs to be addressed. There has to be some degree of cool down.

Indeed. Hopefully this can be modded, so if Larian doesn't do something about it the community can add a cooldown or something.

There is no need for NPCs to repeat their lines every 15 to 30 bloody seconds!
Turned off voice 30 minutes in.

I dont care if modded or otherwise but someone needs to address this..

My guess is they will address this, I wonder how much of this we are going to get? No one saw this until today, so there is no feedback until now.

Does anyone know if the dialogue shows as it loops? Continuously? If so, that may have been an oversight when adding the voices. If everyone talked in Baldur's Gate it would be equally as annoying.

However, I've notices on Twitch that some play through don't seem to exhibit this looping syndrome, or not as much, or not the same group of characters.

I'd recommend a 30-60 second (or so) timer before saying the dialogue again. Usually these types of dialogue are an indication of a quest or situation you would want to see about.

That being said, the boat on fire should spam, but a bit less. It's urgent so it needs to keep happening until dealt with.

You can always turn the voice down to 0 as we did in Beta. Not sure if this is something that need to be fixed that urgently as I am sure there are tons of other kinks they have to work out at this moment.

I like the voice work you guys do. Don't make me turn it off.

Turning the voice down to 0 isn't a solution, is a lazy workaround.
NPCs aren't supposed to repeat their lines every 5 seconds in ANY game, period.

If the game is initially design for no voices, then it can be designed to show more information. So they just need to tweak the frequency of overhead dialogue when it comes to villagers and such.

I absolutely agree. This is irritating.

I think rather than upping the timer on how often the NPCs repeat themselves, it would be better to reduce how far away voices can be heard (or at least a more dramatic reduction in the volume of the voice over distances).

I don't want to have to stop in front of an NPC for a minute or two to see if they're going to say something because I happened to arrive between comments. But that's what will happen if NPCs speak less often. Better to make it so you can't hear them until you're much closer. That will help to cut down on the crosstalk.

I'm also thinking voice volume should be linked to the character's position, not the camera's position. Being able to focus on a conversation happening down the street from you is understandable and all.. if you're Superman. Our characters are not.

maybe not so much the volume, but the reverb itself.

If I hear someone speaking far away, I want them to sound like the background vocals in Baldur's Gate (which was not a voice, but simply ambiance) where they sound far away and outside.

The background audio in that game was amazing btw. No game has matched that lately.

No, no, no, the timer definitely needs to be increased. There is currently only a few seconds between the same set of sentences, both in the chat and with the voice overs, leading to major audio and visual spam.

This is so annoying that I had to mute the voices after a few minutes in Cyseal. Please create a timer of at least 1 minute between repeating the same set of sentences. Otherwise it's a major break in the immersion. The voice overs must have really been rushed in for such an annoying problem to be overlooked.

There are some good ideas in this thread, but the frequency of the NPC voice overs should really be the main concern, as far as audio goes.

In terms of code, yeah the voices were probably rushed. But at least the performance of them WASN'T.

#1 reason why indie games suffer with voice acting isn't because of the voice actors, but the direction and how many takes it takes to be "good enough".

That isn't something you find in a voice acting studio, though having better voice actors makes it way faster.

Yeah, the music, ambient sounds and voice acting are all pretty good. I'm sure that the frequency of the V.O. will be a quick and easy fix. If they could also fade the volume and apply a muffled effect as the distance to the NPC increases, that would be even better.

Also the farm animals are a bit much too, but that is something that isn't as bad.

Well, good to see that I'm not the only one. :P