Character vocals in combat.

[amaelamin]

I still think this could be a joke or just not serious, in Rohan beta awful moans and ooh and aahs were put into the game which our characters spoke during crafting, combining relics or sometimes just standing around, they sounded obscene and highly inappropriate. They were never put into live, could these be the same thing? It was never confirmed whether those x-rated style noises were a joke, or if they were taken away because the info was leaked and videos appeared on youtube.

After further thought since I started this thread, I'm just not sure whether we should take them seriously. However, I have no idea why Turbine put these sort of things into beta for the general public to hear in its current state, if they have no intentions of keeping them and are placeholders.

[Othniel]

I still think this could be a joke or just not serious, in Rohan beta awful moans and ooh and aahs were put into the game which our characters spoke during crafting, combining relics or sometimes just standing around, they sounded obscene and highly inappropriate. They were never put into live, could these be the same thing? It was never confirmed whether those x-rated style noises were a joke, or if they were taken away because the info was leaked and videos appeared on youtube. .

Waaay back in the day, Bree-land (female) brigand deaths had similar sounds...or at least, I was told that's what they sounded like. :P

To be fair, many of us have envied the dwarven cries and asked for something similar for the other races. What I don't think anyone ever expected or wanted was this weird mixture of moderately reasonable and downright silly shouts.

Agreed.

[Vexendynamus]

I hate leaving negative feedback without offering some better solution. Having slept and considered this further, I believe I have a solution that will appease everyone and perhaps make Turbine some money.

Since perhaps the late 1980s, solo fantasy role playing games such as Might and Magic, with multiple characters under the player's control, have featured a voice selection dropdown for each character. For example, the player could select female voice 3 for female character 1, female voice 5 for female character 2, male voice 2 for male character 3, and male voice 1 for male character 4. In this way, each character in the player's party would say different things, making it feel more like a real party of adventurers.

I suggest including the same feature here. Add a drop-down menu for each character, allowing a player to select his or her voice. For Voice 2 of each race, use the existing, generic cries and make it the default. Now the important part: build the back end so that developers may add new Voices easily and quickly. Finally, sell new Voice sets in the store.

Example:
Female Voice 1: Blissful Silence - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 2: Generic Cries - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 3: Generic Voice - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 4: Shield Maiden of Rohan - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 5: Shield Maiden of Gondor - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 6: Healer of Lorien - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 15!

You could even break it up: Battle Voice, Crafting Voice, Idle Voice, and so on.

Inclusive. Options. Monetized. No forced changes on players who have come to know and love their characters over 7 years.

[Beaniemooch]

After further thought since I started this thread, I'm just not sure whether we should take them seriously. However, I have no idea why Turbine put these sort of things into beta for the general public to hear in its current state, if they have no intentions of keeping them and are placeholders.

You should take them seriously. These are not a joke. The phrases may be placeholders, but just think how many placeholders make it into the game for months. Anybody seen a green emerald lately? Or checked the icon for your hides?

There should be an option of some kind to disable these sounds without disabling everything. I love my little hobbit yells on live. I don't want to hear ridiculous phrases in annoying little girl voices.

[Frisco]

I suppose there's not an option to change the sounds client-side in our files? That would be a lot of fun--I remember changing all my old sounds in Starcraft to Monty Python sounds. Nothing beats a Yamato Gun that says "Have at you!".

Or picking a theme of sounds like in Worms: Armageddon would be fun. My burglar would talk like a pirate, for sure.

Seeing this seriously implemented in LOTRO, though, seems a bit out of place--and I foresee it becoming annoying quickly, hearing our characters say strange things in English. I can forgive the Dwarvish and Elvish phrases--I can make up my own translations.

[amaelamin]

You should take them seriously. These are not a joke. The phrases may be placeholders, but just think how many placeholders make it into the game for months. Anybody seen a green emerald lately? Or checked the icon for your hides?

There should be an option of some kind to disable these sounds without disabling everything. I love my little hobbit yells on live. I don't want to hear ridiculous phrases in annoying little girl voices.

Don't get me wrong, I really hate the voices, I don't think they have any place at all in the game, especially as you say the little girl hobbit voices, when I heard them it made me log out in disgust, seriously. I suppose I have a little hope that Turbine will see the error they are making with regards to this and take them out altogether and never say another word about it. When I say i can't take it seriously it means that I think Turbine's choice to add these voices onto any character is questionable and I'm not sure if they will make it to live, but I do hope they never see the light of day on the live servers, especially when I've almost retired my minstrel on live because of the mess of the trait trees, this just adds insult to injury for me as a minstrel main.

[Moochi]

Add a drop-down menu for each character, allowing a player to select his or her voice. For Voice 2 of each race, use the existing, generic cries and make it the default. Now the important part: build the back end so that developers may add new Voices easily and quickly. Finally, sell new Voice sets in the store.

Example:
Female Voice 1: Blissful Silence - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 2: Generic Cries - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 3: Generic Voice - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 4: Shield Maiden of Rohan - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 5: Shield Maiden of Gondor - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 6: Healer of Lorien - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 15!

You could even break it up: Battle Voice, Crafting Voice, Idle Voice, and so on.

Inclusive. Options. Monetized. No forced changes on players who have come to know and love their characters over 7 years.

My initial thoughts are this sounds like a great idea, with the caveat that nothing we currently have ends up locked behind a store purchase.

You should take them seriously. These are not a joke. The phrases may be placeholders, but just think how many placeholders make it into the game for months. Anybody seen a green emerald lately? Or checked the icon for your hides?

My dislike for some of the current lines is strong enough that I'd rather hear my hobbits yelling placeholders like "Pears that look like Cherries!" as they smite their foes, and "Red Emeralds! Red Emeralds of Doom!"

[Silmelin]

Example:
Female Voice 1: Blissful Silence - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 2: Generic Cries - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 3: Generic Voice - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 4: Shield Maiden of Rohan - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 5: Shield Maiden of Gondor - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 6: Healer of Lorien - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 15!

You could even break it up: Battle Voice, Crafting Voice, Idle Voice, and so on.

Inclusive. Options. Monetized. No forced changes on players who have come to know and love their characters over 7 years.

This sounds quite fun
I remember playing a game a long long long time ago where I got to choose a voice for my character and only one came even close to the look of my character XD I'd love an option like this if the voice options are good and varied and not a bunch of different whiny-old-men voices

Also, I'd prefer the voices that can be bought to be for the whole account. I rarely buy character-only stuff

[Gudbald]

My son showed me these on the beta server over the weekend. I've pretty much stopped playing this game since the Class Changes because the game just feels like a shell of its former self. I stopped my subscription earlier this year and was hoping that the upcoming Update would inspire me to re-subscribe and wield my sword again. Alas, I think not. I think changes like these are being implemented now in spite of the players, rather than to appease them. I doubt that any feedback that the good folks here give will really be considered as whilst these particular sounds may indeed be "placeholder", they are holding the place of something else that only Turbine knows is coming. I have little faith that they will be much better, if indeed different at all (Maybe just a little cleaned up in a studio). I just wish that whomever came up with this dreadful idea had have had the forthright intelligence to realise that many MMO players like to own their own character's and build their personalities in their own minds and so to have come so far and then have a totally misrepresenting voice/character thrust onto you is pretty soul destroying.

My last note is that whomever did the voice for the Hobbit Male needs to steer clear from accent voice work in the future, I have been all around this United Kingdom and I have never heard such an accent in my life. I thought the general hobbit voices in the shire were low brow before, but little did I know that they could find worse.

[Jillymala]

If this makes it to live (and we all know it will despite the huge outcry) then I hope they at least listen to what people are saying and do the reasonable thing and give us the option of shutting in game vocals off (and not make me have to buy the opt out in the store).

On a side note, this is all so surreal.. first our skill get ripped apart, then our bodies.. now our shouts... I was sure 4 months ago it couldn't get much worse lol.

[Calta]

I hate leaving negative feedback without offering some better solution. Having slept and considered this further, I believe I have a solution that will appease everyone and perhaps make Turbine some money.



I suggest including the same feature here. Add a drop-down menu for each character, allowing a player to select his or her voice. For Voice 2 of each race, use the existing, generic cries and make it the default. Now the important part: build the back end so that developers may add new Voices easily and quickly. Finally, sell new Voice sets in the store.

Example:
Female Voice 1: Blissful Silence - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 2: Generic Cries - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 3: Generic Voice - Free to all Players!
Female Voice 4: Shield Maiden of Rohan - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 5: Shield Maiden of Gondor - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 14!
Female Voice 6: Healer of Lorien - 595 Turbine Points, coming with Update 15!

You could even break it up: Battle Voice, Crafting Voice, Idle Voice, and so on.

Inclusive. Options. Monetized. No forced changes on players who have come to know and love their characters over 7 years.

This would add to the game rather than gut my character further. I had thought making a selection menu linked through the character panel, as these current versions seem more about character/race to me than appropriate combat audio.

Not to mention the combat issues. I rely on combat sounds for recognising gambits and threat taunts and other minstrel's cries, so these changes make it doubly annoying. The current cries are part of the combat mechanics for me. Many players say they use combat cries/sounds as cues for skills. So it's not just the issues of the specific phrases, dialects, and aesthetics of the sounds, (YUK!) it's also ensuring players can hear these audio cues with the new sounds. Imagine the cacophany in a group with wardens captans and dps minstrels all of different races!

Do this badly and it will alienate more players than sparkle dummies ever did. Can't wait for the 'lore monkeys' to really get started on the phrase content and pronunciation -Quenya and Sindarin and Westron all from the same Lindon elf, in a heavy US accent, all while killing a single wolf? Eru preserve us!

Please leave us the current default as a free option and pretty please with sugar on top: don't release with the current placeholders-they are just too amateur and inappropriate.

Please make them optional. With the one option being the current default sounds. For free.

[amaelamin]

Don't get me wrong, I really hate the voices, I don't think they have any place at all in the game, especially as you say the little girl hobbit voices, when I heard them it made me log out in disgust, seriously. I suppose I have a little hope that Turbine will see the error they are making with regards to this and take them out altogether and never say another word about it. When I say i can't take it seriously it means that I think Turbine's choice to add these voices onto any character is questionable and I'm not sure if they will make it to live, but I do hope they never see the light of day on the live servers, especially when I've almost retired my minstrel on live because of the mess of the trait trees, this just adds insult to injury for me as a minstrel main.

I'm quoting myself but I did sort of think they wouldn't make it to live, this is from the new release notes for Build 2:

Little Things…
Based on player feedback, we have removed the new experimental voice shouts. These will not be making their way to the live servers.

This seems to be like when they put the Hobby Horse into the store on Bullroarer and set the price at 5000 TP. It was stated that the price was never really meant to be that high, but they wanted to see what honest feedback they received for how much players are willing to pay for such an item, they set a high price to push people into making honest comments, and to see what players were willing to pay 5000 points for.

This seems the same, where they have placed these 'experimental' vocals to push the players buttons enough for us to give honest feedback, and whether we love them or hate them.

[furtim]

I hope the devs will go back to the drawing board and try again later for a future update, because I think the idea itself still has merit.

Some things that maybe would make the battle cries an easier sale, based on the criticism I've seen:

1) Sindarin battle-cries for the Elves, rather than English.
2) Change the cries for Men to be less centered around Gondorian iconography.
3) Maybe mix them with the old cries, so sometimes you get a shout and sometimes you get a battle-cry. Could help with the monotony.
4) Hobbits need a "FOR PIE!!!" cry, I mean come on.

[AaylaKheledlire]

They removed the new sounds ( Ahh..but was good idea and I loved them.