Originally posted by Ginaz
For an important storyline, like your class quests in SWTOR, then I would say yes.  For the more mundane and generic quests, I would say no.  Text only would be fine for those.

 This would be my answer.  IF the poll had a yes and no option that would be what I would have picked.  Too much of a good thing can ruin it. 

The ADHD twitchy types would still hit the space bar.

I find that my attitude to voice acting and cutscenes is very much like my reaction to quest text.  It's entertaining at first, but once the novelty wears off, I start wanting to skip through it and get on with the game. 

Well you can have the best voice acting in the game industries but if your gameplay sucks,

you will have to opt to F2P and charge extra for action bar /sigh.

I believe everything should be in moderations to balance out.

Skyrim voice over is just nice, not too heavy and not too little.

Originally posted by Ginaz
For an important storyline, like your class quests in SWTOR, then I would say yes.  For the more mundane and generic quests, I would say no.  Text only would be fine for those.

I would agree with this.

Voice acting is not only for dialogs... If the screams, grunts and chants of every character sound ridiculous, they can repel the players.

The "one-liners" most of the times, are very silly and if they aren't just wait until they get repetitive, also when they give human voices to other species, voices that could improve the way that humans sound but instead deteriorate the whole image of those other species, it can be a disappointment.

If the voice acting is good enough it should be able to fool you irl (now imagine the effect it has in the game).

Originally posted by maplestone

I find that my attitude to voice acting and cutscenes is very much like my reaction to quest text.  It's entertaining at first, but once the novelty wears off, I start wanting to skip through it and get on with the game. 

I think that's where swtor lost the plot. They did so much voice acting it started to piss people off that wanted to continue with the game. I remember the developers touting it had 200 hours of gameplay obviously hey meant if you watched every second of every story but who the hell did that.

Any feature, when well-implemented makes a game better.

Any feature, when poorly - implemented makes a game worse.

With voice acting you need two factors to be well-implemented; the acting itself but also good dialogue.

Peter O'Toole was lawrence of Arabia. He was also in Supergirl. There is quite a difference when given a good script.

So to sum up:

Good voice acting with good dialogue, implemented well can make a game better.

Competent voice acting with bad dialogue and a cliche story poorly implemented can kill a game. I.E. SWToR and GW2 for me.

Maybe during the introduction but other than that I think it's a waste of time and resources.

If they insist on using it allow me to turn it off.

Depends.

Going on GW2 as an option, VA seems ok in most of the story quests, though some can be cringe inducing, it's a hit or miss thing for me.

However, I love VA in the general world. Seems I'm one of the few people around that sees sound as an important and integral part of the experience of gaming, and always plays with both sound and music on... and one of the things I love about GW2 is to be able to walk around the towns and cities and overhear the NPC conversations.

Originally posted by Ginaz
For an important storyline, like your class quests in SWTOR, then I would say yes.  For the more mundane and generic quests, I would say no.  Text only would be fine for those.

I agree with this.

But aside from the voice acting, the story for the quests was just of better quality in TOR and TSW.  Before those games (and even some recent alternatives), I literally struggled to pay attention to the story (and I am a person that likes story).

Originally posted by L0C0Man

Depends.

Going on GW2 as an option, VA seems ok in most of the story quests, though some can be cringe inducing, it's a hit or miss thing for me.

However, I love VA in the general world. Seems I'm one of the few people around that sees sound as an important and integral part of the experience of gaming, and always plays with both sound and music on... and one of the things I love about GW2 is to be able to walk around the towns and cities and overhear the NPC conversations.

Little things like npc conversations are something I enjoy too but I think ramming it down the throat of gamers by making 99% of quests with voice acting and the ridiculous amount of choice wheels that swtor had killed the immersion.

Originally posted by meddyck
Voice acting (plus animated cut scenes) is to MMOs as 3D is to movies. Put the money spent on voice actors into making the rest of the game better and players would be far better off.

Agreed. 

Obviously dropping all voice acting budget into other parts would be silly because they should be a reasonable not excessive amount to help with immersion and role playing.

I like voice overs.  To me they do make a story more interesting, however they are such a small part of a game that it's not a big deal.

They won't save a bad game.