[2023] As someone who plays both, League and Dota, i can't help but wonder why Riot invests so little into voice-lines

Originally posted by QuestionableExclusiv

A few years ago we had a phase of champs getting like 30 minutes of recorded voice lines on their kits, like 3-4 different base taunts, taunts for most champions that are opposed to their faction, several jokes, the famous ashe 1 minute monologue...

But people actually said it was too much pointless talking to hear every single game, so Riot gladly took the bait and cut back on voice lines massively for newer releases/reworks. It does save them money after all.

Originally posted by QuestionableExclusiv

I was not trying to imply that the decision was first and foremost made with money in mind. Saving money however is an undeniable side-effect of cutting back on voice lines.

Originally posted by Missing42

You really had that much feedback just begging for inconsequential voicelines to be removed? Nobody liked champions with a wider personality?

yeah honestly it's as if people were rioting for less VO lines. of course you'll always have a few people like or dislike something. frankly it feels super dishonest to use those people's "feedback" as what is objectively a cost-cutting measure, whatever other reasons it may also have. I'm very confident that claiming that money savings had NOTHING to do with cutting VO lines definitely IS dishonesty.

I also don't doubt the costs (and time) associated with voice lines are not insignificant considering they need people to write them, translate them to a dozen different languages AND voice them in those dozen different languages.

Originally posted by Havel_the_sock

There probably was a better way to phrase the frustration you're facing, especially because the original comment did not make the decision out to be a

Conniving, money-grabbing backroom plot.

I didn't even notice any cynicism in the comment, it came out as "Many other factors caused it, but it's probably also cheaper for Riot too so why not?"

Just my 2 cents.

Pls no bannerino.

Originally posted by MarinaDoBeco

League of Legends in-game VO is not a good place to dive deep into story.

IT IS NOT? half of champion's characterization lies in their voice lines, it is where we get the most of their personality, ideals, thoughts and relations to other characters.

If even a big event like Ruination is not a good place to tell a story, if stories besides their bios are not, if their VOs are not, then what is? really. a promotional short-cinematic of Briar being hungry is? please.

Like, I love Arcane, it is a great media to tell stories, but not every champion has the luxury to be presented in that way, and it fells shitty to be recieving less and less of the ones we already have.

I love hearing my champions talk, I love them interacting with each other, I AM SO GLAD when they enter Legends of Runeterra because I can hear them talk more.

Player's cynicism should not be one of your worries if you guys have not even find a good place to tell stories when the game is over 10 years old

Originally posted by WoonStruck

People asking not to have minute long monologues and Riot then cutting out most effort put into voice lines as a whole isn't "a way to turn an effort to listen to our community and improve league".

Stop trying to get pity where none is deserved.

Originally posted by AobaSona

I think that when most people complained about long lines, they meant the length of specific lines, not too many voice lines in general. For example, Ashe after her VO update has like 3 whole monologues that she starts reciting from base, which is a completely different thing from a champion having many different lines and different interactions with certain champions or situations.

Another complaint in the vein of "they talked too much" was the repetition of certain lines, like Taliyah saying "just throw another rock" 1000x times. The issue in this case is triggering specific lines too often, and if anything more lines would help avoid that.

Originally posted by JWARRIOR1

when you do that shit constantly it obviously will start to blur into other areas where that may not be the case.

Originally posted by StarGuardianMain

reducing the VO so the champion keeps saying the same sentence over and over is a decision made by someone who doesn't play the game themselves. Akshan keeps repeating the same 3 phrases the whole game because of this bad decision you made. I don't understand why you're mad at us for asking for better quality on VO.

Originally posted by RprShadow

This.

I've been playing the game since season 1 and had the displeasure of watching the LoL community go from fun, supportive, and passionate to its current whiney, cynical, toxic version....

I feel this whole 'Theyre after our money' thing is universal in gaming communities now though. You hear it about every game developer nowadays. Many for good reason, but a lot of them not so much.

Originally posted by StarGuardianMain

You say you want champions to have personality, but you reduce their VO. You don't make interactions that would be interesting with champions you know from the lore. Honestly, it's so hard to believe in you

Originally posted by Sushikoko

Longer VO Lines do that? Are you sure???? We've got things like "Spark Ready!" that Zeri shouts every other second and gets 100% irritating. So short lines can cause a negative impact.

Originally posted by [deleted]

i know this is quite a big ask but would it be like a possibility for vo team to open up a one-off thread asking for constructive criticism they can take into future VOs, and what some users look for in the voiceover of a character they like or things theyd like changed in existing ones. Im sure itll come with a couple bad apples in there but i think it would be neat to have conversations on VO

Originally posted by VeN0m333

Ehhh I personally think VA can contribute a lot to lore, especially to those that don’t read anything past champion biographies.

There are some really good examples, especially if the champion drops some pretty hard bombs because said champion knows a lot of secrets within Runeterra. Some examples include but are not limited to Camille, Swain, Aatrox, Fiddlesticks and Sylas.

Of course you have the opposite end of the spectrum, champions that SHOULD have a ton of interesting stuff to say but they are so outdated that their lines are mostly meme templates for their respective subreddits (Singed, Shen, Ashe after her voice lines changed).

Not every champ should have game-breaking voice lines bred out of a Shakespearian play, because we have champions that are just spitting fun gibberish too (Gnar, Kogmaw, Mundo, Trundle) and those are wonderful because they give a break from serious stuff + devs don’t need to worry so much about putting a lot of lines.

I don’t think it’s any money-saving scheme from you guys. You genuinely saw some feedback and used it, unfortunately there were just some strange releases like the Ashe VA that made everyone take notice, then they start combing over your future efforts and begin making conspiracy theories.

On a side note, thanks for the Pentakill music, hope Arcane Season 2 development is going great, I want more Singed he’s my fav from the show ❤️

Originally posted by Satokech

I think it’s more an issue of quantity/variety.

I fully appreciate the issues that come with longer lines, and I agree that the game isn’t the best place for those. But even within the boundaries of reasonable length VO lines it feels like there’s been a noticeable decrease in the amount of meaningful lines and interactions each champion gets.

Adding a wider range of interactions, either with more champions or with more potential lines per champion, as well as more varied options for jokes/taunts/abilities allows for more opportunities for expression and personality to shine through, without overextending any individual lines to the detriment of gameplay/experience.

Originally posted by Furiosa27

Yes people usually do expect extremely profit orientated companies to prioritize money over everything else

Originally posted by HandsomeTaco

League of Legends in-game VO is not a good place to dive deep into story.

And apparently neither were short stories. And we don't exactly get consistent novels or books. And cinematics also don't fit. And LoR also can't go too long in voicelines with its own diminishing budget and VO length. And a fighting game won't fit either.

You see where I'm going with this? I'm a lore fan for years, but every single decision in the last few has been a net negative for my engagement with this universe.

The out-of-combat long move lines are perfectly fine implementations of longer VO scripts. Also, the in-game audibility implies there's no possibility for sound mixing in there somewhere.

We may have over-corrected,

Briar interacts with a total of 3 champions. In a game with over 160 champions, with a backstory of how she was used against Swain.

I don't want to antagonize or besmirch, but I don't think there's any question that you guys absolutely did overcorrect. It's one thing to say that Ashe speaks too much, which can still be improved by spacing out lines per length, proximity to enemies, and frequency, regardless of script, but she's not even the norm. I've never seen someone complain that ASol "talks too much".

Originally posted by Fit-Mention-5707

No company has done less with more for their player base than Riot Games. It's about to be 2024 and we still have no voice chat, a feature I enjoyed on NBA 2K5 on my original Xbox console in 2004 (that means you guys are two decades behind on that feature). If you wanna disagree fine, but please take your victim mentality elsewhere.

Originally posted by TropoMJ

Not sure if you can answer this but can I ask how this did get mixed up in the way it did? If I'm understanding correctly, you are defending the good intentions taken behind shrinking the number of lines in VOs, but the issues you say led to that are less about the number of lines and more about the length or frequency of them. There doesn't appear to be a connection there that means reducing the number of champion lines was necessary or even helpful for the issues at hand.

If the League team did take community feedback that voicelines had gotten too long, why was shrinking the number of lines the response? If the problem was champions talking too much, why was the response to reduce the variety in things they can say? For example, Taliyah has five different taunts, while Vex only has one. Vex is not a quieter champion than Taliyah for this difference, she is just more repetitive. That voiceover reduction doesn't seem to offer any value to the playerbase, it's just less content.

I don't want to sound like I'm calling you out, I'm just genuinely trying to understand the connection between the issue and the solution which was chosen, because I can't see the link.

Originally posted by Soluxtoral

Seconding what they said. Gonna post my own reply to this just incase but if one of those threads ever comes around I'll probably repost a variation of it there too.

The biggest thing I would takeaway from all of is this is that the playerbase at times can be notoriously terrible at providing feedback in a concise, clear manner that is digestible for the people that need to see it.

Likewise Riot has a consistent problem of taking feedback and interpreting it in the wrong way or even just directly taking actions that contradict feedback but without any given explanation.

Stuff like balance is much more common to be discussed, but stuff like VO's rarely if ever get the time of day on here or across any social media and so changes that have happened over the past lets say 5 years feel like they fall on deaf ears.

We don't expect to hear everything that goes on in your internal meetings but it would be nice if every now and then someone went "Alright hey guys we hear you on the VO length stuff, we're taking in your feedback and will get back at some point in the future with our thoughts and changes".

 

Now for the topic at hand - Realistically most people aren't and weren't asking for "stories" in their VO. They just wanted a bunch of short voice lines that gave you the personality of the character, but a lot of them so it was fleshed out and varied. Obviously you have to make them good voicelines because otherwise you start to hate them.

Nobody was complaining that champions had too many lines. Nobody. The 3 main things people didn't like when it came to some new/redone VO was:

1. Single voice lines that are too long. Sort of solved by moving some of them to the "long move" audio trigger, but now and then there are just voicelines where you click and they break some of your timing rules.

Honestly as long as they stay in the Long Move category it's fine, but people watched the video of the Ashe VO update and falsely tried to inflate that as her entire VO being too long, which I think is where a lot of the negative feedback came from.

2. Too many voicelines that can be heard by other players. This might be the biggest one I think contributing to peoples annoyance with voicelines.

"Out loud" voicelines should be saved for important skills/interactions only. Restrict it to ultimates, and vital abilities.

Gonna use my flair as example because it's something I'm used to:

Lux W and E voicelines are completely unnecessary to be heard by anyone but the Lux player. You know whats important for my allies to see? The animation of Lux herself, and the VFX her shield portrays. Nobody is listening out for the voiceline "we're in this together!". It doesn't provide any gameplay benefit.

Your enemies and allies don't need to hear Lux say "banish the shadows" and "shine bright" for the entirety of a 10-15 minute laning phase when you activate her E. People hate it. It's annoying, and again it's not like you can't see her E right there. The voiceline plays when the E explodes, so it's not providing any gameplay tools for counterplay or telling/showing you something you don't know.

This goes for her legendary and ultimate skins too. Too many repeated "out-loud" voicelines.

Technically you dont need to hear her voicelines on R, but Ultimate sort of go by a "rule of cool". It's satisfying and cool to hear the Demacian champions shout "Demacia!". It's cool to hear Renata say "kill them and suffer!" as a giant chemwave flood rushes at you.

Super Galaxy Rumble is notorious for this. "SUPER GALAXY COMEBACK BREAKER" and "SUPER GALACTIC TORPEDO" or whatever the f**k he says over and over and over for the entire game is obnoxious.

You get the idea. This applies to stuff like Ezreal saying too many "out-loud" voicelines, Morgana, Irelia's Q lines (nobody needs to hear Ru, Kai, Oni, yomama all the time).

The lines can exist, there's nothing inherently wrong with them, just make them play only for the person playing that champ.

3. Overall shortening of VO lines. Even accounting for removing overly-long lines, newer and rework champ VO's are too short overall and so you end up hearing the same things over and over and over.

Zoe has 27 minutes of VO. You could cut 1/3 off that from the skinspotlights video because of the delay before/after voicelines he used to have in older VO videos and you'd still be in a good place. Briar has a measly 8 minutes start to finish. There's a healthy middle ground between those, and the team definitely has gone too far on the "short" side of things.

Sorry thoughts are a bit all over the place because there's so much I want to address, but I'll try organise them better if there's ever a dedicated feedback thread made and posted. Those are just my main 3 points.

Originally posted by Blueeyedeevee

Agreed. What is this gaslighting attempt at trying to make it the communities fault when Riot and League of Legends is a for profit product. You guys are not running a charity here, we know every action taken is made with profit in mind, you guys were just better at being ethical about it before.

Wonder where that went?

Originally posted by Hellzpeaker

It is fascinating how some of you always find a way to turn an effort to listen to our community and improve the League game experience into some conniving, money-grabbing backroom plot

It's almost as if that's what you rioters offer in the vast majority of times so that's what people naturally expect. Yeah, some crazy rocket science, I know. I specially like when it arrives with several lies sprinkled in.

Don't complain because you lost your playerbase's trust with several scummy actions and a never ending stream of pure bullshit. That's your fault, cynicism is only natural and the only logical outcome, deal with it. Besides, there was hardly any cynicism in his post, he's just arriving to a natural conclusion that less of a job requires less money for that job.

Originally posted by fittan69

There definitely is something to be said about us having to find the right middle. From what I can gather, we haven't

Tahm Kench!

Doesn't have minute long exposition lines. Doesn't have 3 lines all consisting of bad puns. Everything about his VO tells you everything you need to know about this character; a demonic fat catfish that want to entice you into making endless deals with him and then gobble you up.

Definetly my favorite VO in the game, so much personality.

Originally posted by Stexe

Oh. Happy Cake Day too! Maybe you should celebrate it by releasing that? I'd *LOVE* to hear it!

Originally posted by RedditingForRakan

I want to add: I've dedicated hours to filling out surveys or providing feedback, paid for "cup of tea" DLC, purchased hundreds of dollars of cupcakes for a game company, and I was happy to do it. I appreciated the passion of the creators and wanted to respond in kind.

I stopped purchasing RP long before I stopped regularly signing into League. I could not see myself doing any of the above for Riot, as it seems to be right now, because the company's actions over time have made me more cynical than passionate. If it truly could bring change, I would be happy to discuss specifics. But even then I would probably see it as a futile effort, lol.

Originally posted by DarthVeigar_

Which leads to League peeps feeling like we aren't present and aren't listening.

Well you aren't listening. Did Brightmoon and Meddler not have to make a video grovelling and apologising to the playerbase earlier in the year PRECISELY because Riot weren't listening?

Originally posted by MorningMoonlight

"Rapid fire? Where's the drama in that?" One Jhin voice line that flies in the face of everything you said. No story or lore, just a funny single line that works to establish Jhin's personality and make you smile for buying an item that works well with him. I gave you the benefit of the doubt at the start of your post but I'm tired of Rioters lying to me. In what world is it better to move away from giving the characters personalities and depth to be attached to? Would it really cost that much more to do a few more voice lines?

Originally posted by WoonStruck

The cynicism that flies in our faces every day is just astonishing...

This is the line that triggered such a response in the context of the only post you decided to respond to.

Its not exactly just cynicism when its brought forward by a valid critique (lower effort put toward the game or certain areas of the game), which is exactly why it sounded like seeking pity, rather than addressing actual criticism.

Not every response was about some financial conspiracy from Riot, yet that is the one you chose to respond to: one that least deserved a response.

I don't know about you, but I'd feel better if Rioters more often tried to actually have discussions on the valid critiques that are present, rather than the conspiracy-brained ones.

I'm sorry if it felt snippy, but its hard not to be with the way a lot of community interaction is handled by Rioters, even in non-official contexts, within the past few years. It feels as if there is very little real discussion, and instead almost exclusively posting on things that realistically don't matter or won't change, even on PBE in terms of skins/icons. The balance team has most of the exceptions.

Originally posted by BugsBonnie

With all due respect, it's because in a lot of instances the reasons are nonsensical.

Never once have I heard someone complain that VO gets in the way of gameplay. VOs have existed in the game forever, with some champions having VOs that clock in at half an hour, and this is only becoming an issue now? The complaints are about length and frequency - not that a voice line overpowered ability SFX and lost someone their game. And I've been apart of many VO related threads, as one of my favorite aspects of the game.

I really try to look at things from Riot's point of view, but there are a lot of times when it's difficult because the logic just doesn't make sense. Riot makes changes nobody asked for, citing reasons no one complained about, and then wonders why the community questions it.

We're not all here just to shit on you guys and blame decisions we don't like on greediness. A lot of us are trying to work with you. It's hard, however, when a lot of this stuff comes across like random justifications for whatever Riot wants to do on the backend.

In short: People would understand if Riot cut voice lines for financial reasons. They would understand if monologuing just didn't fit the game (the lack of lore to make up for shorter VOs is another issue). They would even understand if VOs got cut because too many people were complaining about champs talking too much. What they will not understand is blaming this on VOs getting in the way of gameplay, which has never been a topic of discussion ever.

Originally posted by Tuber111

You're part of a billion dollar company, if you arent expecting criticism and actively are stating from an employee account that people with complaints should piss off, you can piss off.

Originally posted by BurrStreetX

I get your point, but holy shit can you be more of a dick?

Originally posted by coveryourselfinoiI

First, thanks for being frank on this post. I’ve read your other comments and it’s rare to see a rioter be so forthcoming about these things. It’s helped answer some of the questions we have, and I can understand your point. Though, there is something I’d like to ask.

I work in manufacturing, and there are often changes made along our production line in the name of “improvement” that makes little sense because some guy decided to convince a higher up to change said thing based off inaccurate or misleading data. If this results in an upset client, its a mad rush to reverse the change or fix it to fit our client’s wanted results. What I’d like to ask is if a change results in negative feedback from your end users, then why does it often take so long to reverse said change or amend the mistake for what seems like an easy fix? Using this issue as an example, I can’t think of a reason why reverting VOs to be longer would still not be resolved by now. Is decision-making hindered by bureaucracy from other departments? Is it that you guys need time to collect sufficient feedback on a change?

Originally posted by Objective_Banana1506

You have internal play tests and teams but yet you give ivern tons of bugs during his rework and dont fix any of them for months afterwards? I dont believe that. This happens with every update or change. Every time there is a jungle rework (almost every patch) ivern is bugged again or jungle xp gets bugged or the pets attacking gets bugged

Originally posted by legendcaleb

Do you think Riot will ever release more dev blogs where show the conclusions and decisions drawn from the data analysis? I always find those pretty interesting. I don't really post on these types of reddit threads that happen on the subreddit but I do appreciate the game you all have created and the effort you're putting in to be readily transparent.