How to change to Japanese, Korean or Chinese voice actors.

[Etniuh]

On 3/2/2016 at 5:57 AM, AsphineNytrix said:

I uploaded a video with Japanese sounds. 

 

 

 

Just beautiful Japan voice with english subs thats perfect for me

EDIT: really it can be banned for doing this? I think it's something tastes in my case I prefer the voices in Japanese and that does not mean that the voices in English are badly but I would like to hear in Japanese and if this is baneable donot could do then ....

[Cestarian]

On 4/1/2016 at 3:57 AM, Tatlong said:

I got banned a day after doing this(unsuccessfully) . Asked support and they said it was due to "modifying files" but they changed it to final warning.

 

Don't risk it like me.

Which approach did you try to use? Did you use the recommended override (mod folder) method?

And @Guinte the only (seemingly) credible report of having been banned for this so far is from Tatlong; And he said he did it unsuccessfully (i.e. he must have done something wrong); I don't know if patch changed anything; I have to reinstall the game cus I just reinstalled windows in order to check...

[Kurokazu]

You can not / should not be banned from using a voice pack. NCwest staff have said repeatedly before and after release that they will allow players to use voice packs, but will not be supporting other voice packs themselves.
Also, using a voice pack does not in any way affect gameplay or the experience of other players (such as stat altering hacks, etc). All it does is change what you hear so you can have a more enjoyable story experience.

If they go against their word, they will have a huge problem on their hands.
I would suggest going to the BnS Dojo for information about voice packs and how to apply them. You can ask any questions there.

Edit: Also as someone else has mentioned, these files ARE official game files. So files are not being altered. Just swapped with OTHER official files.

[Etniuh]

Well any mod or GM can post here saiying if is banneable or not please? or the ban comes from gameguard :/

[staahpxDD]

I talked to one of the bns support team and it doesn`t seem that using voice mod packs isn`t bannable. but i still wouldn't risk it if anything happens xD
 

Quote

Hello there,

Thank you for contacting us.

We would like to inform you that Voice mod packs are a third party program. Using such program will fall under personal choice of the user. It can be helpful in certain ways, but we would like to inform you that this program is not supported by our team. If you want to use it you may do so. Please be informed that we are not liable to any risks that you may encounter in the long run.

We hope that this answer your question.

Let us know if you need additional assistance.

Regards,

Wilfred
NCSOFT Support Team

 

[Kurokazu]

4 minutes ago, staahpxDD said:

I talked to one of the bns support team and it doesn`t seem that using voice mod packs isn`t bannable. but i still wouldn't risk it if anything happens xD
 

 

Nice response from them. Basically what they've been saying all along.

If you do it, make sure you know how to do it right. If your client gets screwed up, redownload / back up your files. Simple.
I've been using the Korean voice pack since CBT and it works 100% perfectly through every update. I am happy and I won't play the game without it ;)

[staahpxDD]

4 minutes ago, Kurokazu said:

Nice response from them. Basically what they've been saying.

If you do it, make sure you know how to do it right. If your client gets screwed up, redownload. Simple.
I've been using the Korean voice pack since CBT and it works 100% perfectly through every update. I am happy and I won't play the game without it ;)

Niice. I`ll keep that in mind :p

[Cestarian]

On 4/4/2016 at 1:53 AM, staahpxDD said:

Hello there,

Thank you for contacting us.

We would like to inform you that Voice mod packs are a third party program. Using such program will fall under personal choice of the user. It can be helpful in certain ways, but we would like to inform you that this program is not supported by our team. If you want to use it you may do so. Please be informed that we are not liable to any risks that you may encounter in the long run.

We hope that this answer your question.

Let us know if you need additional assistance.

Regards,

Wilfred
NCSOFT Support Team

Well that's one hell of an unqualified member of their support, but I guess one shouldn't expect apt support staff from a company who has insanely underqualified team of administrators to begin with (I mean the login servers are a disaster, I often have to log in TWICE, and it runs you through like 5 urls after you log in; I know like 50 better ways to do what they're doing there, and I'm just a novice, I don't even know how to use PHP (describes how much of a novice I am when it comes to web programming, HTML, CSS and SQL are what I know in that arena; and that last one I'm particularly rusty with), I do however know how to use SQL and only the basics, and ncsoft.com? They're doing it W.R.O.N.G. it's like someone who had never written SQL code before somehow duct taped together a user account backend for their websites... Hell, it's like someone who had never programmed before did it!! I've met programmers that are still in 101 classes at college who could make this website 20 times better, myself included. rant over)

 

What do I mean by unqualified, or underqualified staff member?

Voice packs are by absolutely no definition a "third party program" or "program" at all.

 

#1 It's not 3rd party, these voice packs are from NCSoft, they might not have bundled the files themselves but it are by no stretch of the imagination THEIR files with THEIR copyright and all, and these files were made precisely and exclusively for THIS game.

#2 It is not a program, unless he's saying that the NCSoft Launcher or Blade & Soul game executable are third party applications...

 

Just.. Ouch, it hurt to read that and makes me question the validity of everything else his answer contained. Did he ask anyone? Or did he just reference some FAQ section and hope his answer was somehow correct?

[Ryuukishi]

On 2016/3/13 at 8:33 PM, Cestarian said:

Lol speak for yourself, I understand almost every word with the Japanese voice pack. I'm like 50% fluent in Japanese; and since most of my vocabulary comes from media like anime and sometimes games, it's the right side of 50% for gaming.

No, you certainly are NOT 50% fluent in Japanese by simply watching animes etc.

[Cestarian]

20 hours ago, Ryuukishi said:

No, you certainly are NOT 50% fluent in Japanese by simply watching animes etc.

Languages are simpler than you think. I don't mean 50% as in I understand 50% of the entire japanese dictionary, but 50% of the most commonly spoken words, which depending on language can be anywhere from 2000-5000 words (and that's being generous, you can often claim to be fluent with simply a vocabulary of 3000 words in almost all languages, often much less than that.). I also understand japanese sentence structure which is mandatory to understand a damned thing (but luckily in japanese's case, that's super easy to get around to)

 

I went partway through a Japanese 101 class that got me the basics that anime couldn't teach me, a base to build up from. Watching anime simply gives me a wider vocabulary, and making sure the vocabulary is accurate is a mix and match of comparing translations of a word, picking whatever fits and of course translating the parts of a sentence that I understand myself before taking for granted the words translation in the subtitles. Anyhow basically I have my own technique of picking up vocabulary from anime with a reduced margin of error than just trusting the subtitles,  because I know subtitles tend to be bad (especially from crunchyroll aka horriblesubs)

 

Also you have no idea how much Anime I've watched... I've picked up the biggest part of my english skills (about 90%) from games and movies, and I've probably to be honest watched more anime than I've seen english movies and played english  games combined. Maybe even spent more hours on it total, my english seem bad to you?

The most vital parts of it though came through online conversations, starting out in mmos; I don't have this in Japanese, hence I can only listen and understand, my speaking skills are extremely limited and I acknowledge this. Having the vocabulary isn't enough, you need to be able to think in a language to be able to speak it and my capacity to think in japanese is only about 25%, but it wouldn't take very much conversation to get me up to say 80%, but that last 20% always takes longest, it's where details are refined.

I've also always been very good at picking up languages. Always the head of my class in language classes (except the japanese one which was because I did all that) without doing any of my homework lol (and for japanese that meant I couldn't learn the kana which the teacher expected us to get a grip on surprisingly fast; I could do it now if I did it over, but the teaching methods used in class were just not good enough to catch things that fast; and this is why I dropped out). Languages aren't hard, people just upscale their difficulty and complexity in their heads because of the notion that well... they're complicated... The whole purpose of languages is to simplify communication, and Japanese in particular does this beautifully. English is just a bad language, and Icelandic while sure enough is more complicated than most languages, it's hard because it prioritizes precision over efficiency when it comes to sentence construction, so it has a lot of things to add definition to any given word other languages don't usually have. I guess it might also help me that my mother tongue is Icelandic since it is more complex than most languages others might seem more easy to me in comparison than to people who started off with an easy language.

 

 

[PKaBoo]

such a long post, didn't read it all lol :c

 

I learn all the languages I know or understand more than 3 languages based on website browsing, anime watching... movies... even games as he/she says

so don't say it's impossible to be 50% fluent to languages...

some people are like "sponges" and we learn languages and other stuff more easily than others.

if someone isn't like that - it doesn't mean all are like him.

[831547_1452550035]

I've done as you said on the guide but i'm gettin an error when i launch the game... So I launch the bat, before pressing any button to continue i log in wait for the launcher to update then close it then i press any button to continue and finnaly when the game is launched i get error "Failed to connect to server (100)."

 

Please Help I really wanna play with jap voices D:

[831547_1452550035]

Up?

[Cestarian]

22 hours ago, 831547_1452550035 said:

I've done as you said on the guide but i'm gettin an error when i launch the game... So I launch the bat, before pressing any button to continue i log in wait for the launcher to update then close it then i press any button to continue and finnaly when the game is launched i get error "Failed to connect to server (100)."

 

Please Help I really wanna play with jap voices D:

Yes I know that error, I see you've gone with the junction link approach yes? (Did you try the override approach I recommended first?)

I forgot the cause of this error, but it is some issue with the "start" statement at the bottom of the batch file just so you know where the problem lies and want to troubleshoot yourself, I am testing this now, got the same error, working to see if I can fix.

 

From: http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com/topic/107362-help-error-100/

Quote

I get that error only if i bypass launcher with bat, after 2.0 patch.

sry for necromancing

 

Seems like the issue began with patch 2.0. I have one suspicion I'm gonna try out to see if it works or not.

 

 

I couldn't solve the problem, but I do have a solution to it, fear not. Launching the game will now be a two step process though (two bat files)

 

Instead of the earlier bat do this:

 

Junction Link Method:

 

1: Launch Game with this bat: http://pastebin.com/6tied3jZ
2: Do NOT close the launcher (as in the original guide)

3: Press play

4: After file verification/repairs finish run this bat before the game launches: http://pastebin.com/4K6zx8e5

5: Done!

 

Moving Method:

 

1: Launch Game with this bat: http://pastebin.com/y3WAmmKY
2: Do NOT close the launcher (as in the original guide)

3: Press play

4: After file verification/repairs finish run this bat before the game launches: http://pastebin.com/ZQVHJbJ1

5: Done!

 

There! I have tested these, and they do work. There's the slight inconvenience of needing to wait for the game to finish verifying the files and then opening a batch file fast before it launches (but thanks to gameguard, you get a big timeframe :) )

I ultimately recommend the junction link method here because it is going to be noticably faster, and it is also safer.

[Etniuh]

Well then it seems that possibly ban your account can be if you put the voices in Japanese? maybe?
The truth is that I do not like I erased all of my account and I'm playing from the third day of the server but I would like to have the voices in Japanese then this whole mess by changing the voices? It is NCsoft and there are also chances that you get ban? I do not understand
I still think if I do or not because I wouldn't do it all again

[Cestarian]

22 minutes ago, Guinte said:

Well then it seems that possibly ban your account can be if you put the voices in Japanese? maybe?
The truth is that I do not like I erased all of my account and I'm playing from the third day of the server but I would like to have the voices in Japanese then this whole mess by changing the voices? It is NCsoft and there are also chances that you get ban? I do not understand
I still think if I do or not because I wouldn't do it all again

I don't think you can get banned for either method, I have used both of the methods I described in my original post and I'm not getting banned... As you can see in the above post even, I just tested it again a few minutes ago.

 

You can probably only get banned if you're doing something wrong (e.g. if you aren't following the guide accurately). This is the risk you're really taking, but it's not like it's complicated or anything.

 

I have not received a single credible post in this thread about a person being banned. There are people who posted something like that but they never followed up when I asked about it.

Someone asked support about it, and this is what he said:

We would like to inform you that Voice mod packs are a third party program. Using such program will fall under personal choice of the user. It can be helpful in certain ways, but we would like to inform you that this program is not supported by our team. If you want to use it you may do so. Please be informed that we are not liable to any risks that you may encounter in the long run.
 

Basically it means that using voice packs is not a bannable offense, the only risk is that gameguard may freak out on you if you're not doing things right (but I don't actually think that's happened to anyone, both methods are pretty secure, I don't actually see how one could possibly *cricket* things up.)

I suggest you try it if you want it, the risk is low, just do the override method. E.g.:
 

Quote

Here is the official approach to apply these kinds of modifications with an override folder:
 

1. Download the voice pack of your choice.
2. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\NCSOFT\BnS\contents\Local\NCWEST\ENGLISH\CookedPC (Your game's install directory).
3.  Within this directory, create a folder named 'mod'.
4. Extract the voice pack files into the mod folder.
5. Launch the game with the official launcher.
6. Hold enter for ~15 seconds to skip the ambiguous package name (conflicting file) warning messages (there are roughly 350 of them, give or take; same as the amount of files in your mod folder).
7. Enjoy!

If you're REALLY scared of a ban, just create a new account and try it on that account.

[Copperfield]

Feels like a ton of work and headache just to get some quality voice acting. Already stuck on trying to figure out how to back up files to the created folder correctly. -_-"

[Cestarian]

7 hours ago, Copperfield said:

Feels like a ton of work and headache just to get some quality voice acting. Already stuck on trying to figure out how to back up files to the created folder correctly. -_-"

You know you don't have to do any of that right? Read the post above yours, I quoted my original post and this is ALL you have to do. Only if THAT does NOT work should you be going to the second part of the guide where I describe an alternative approach.

In other words, RTFM, or read the original post from top to bottom, don't just jump to the number lists....

But hey, since this is happening I added this information to the number list for redundancy (even if I wrote this right above said list before...)

[staahpxDD]

Hey thanks for the voice mod pack bro! The korean one works perfectly . Now i can enjoy listening to korean voiceovers during cutscenes and i dont have to worry about listening to those terrible english voices while im trying out kfm and waiting for the patch to continue the main story in silverfrost xD Wish ncsoft would actually put a option to choose the language >_>

[Copperfield]

On 4/7/2016 at 4:36 PM, Cestarian said:

You know you don't have to do any of that right? Read the post above yours, I quoted my original post and this is ALL you have to do. Only if THAT does NOT work should you be going to the second part of the guide where I describe an alternative approach.

In other words, RTFM, or read the original post from top to bottom, don't just jump to the number lists....

But hey, since this is happening I added this information to the number list for redundancy (even if I wrote this right above said list before...)

Ah, I see. It seems to have worked (Although I don't know if I wanna remake a character just to see if the Japanese VAs for PCs are working) Thanks for the help.

 

P.S. They seem to be there, sorta, but only the speech seems to be working, and i think a few battle cries for males and females... unless the battle cry is the same and the speech was the only thing changed for PC VAs

[Cestarian]

1 hour ago, Copperfield said:

Ah, I see. It seems to have worked (Although I don't know if I wanna remake a character just to see if the Japanese VAs for PCs are working) Thanks for the help.

 

P.S. They seem to be there, sorta, but only the speech seems to be working, and i think a few battle cries for males and females... unless the battle cry is the same and the speech was the only thing changed for PC VAs

The speech voices are changed by the "extra" voices whereas quest and cutscene voices, dialogue are part of the main voice download. It may very well be that the battle cry simply is the same across these versions; it is after all kinda pointless to do them over if they're working out in the first place. Or you might simply not be noticing that they've changed. I haven't thought much about these parts, never had problems with them, what I had problems with was the english voice acting during dialogues, voice pack solves that.

The voice pack probably isn't 100% though, the guy who ripped them from the other versions of the game may have overlooked a few files, only way around that is well.. getting those files yourself or from another source. If you find a better source, please let me know.

[GreenBunionSoup]

I usually prefer English voices in my video games, but dear god my 11 year old sister could do a better job than the voice actors in this game. I'm pretty sure she could do a better job voice acting the men too, everyone is terrible. Going to consider trying this to get the Korean voices. Not used to Korean, but it's better than English.

 

I am still insanely salty about Soha and her new voice. Juwol didn't get a new voice actress 

[Copperfield]

3 hours ago, Cestarian said:

The speech voices are changed by the "extra" voices whereas quest and cutscene voices, dialogue are part of the main voice download. It may very well be that the battle cry simply is the same across these versions; it is after all kinda pointless to do them over if they're working out in the first place. Or you might simply not be noticing that they've changed. I haven't thought much about these parts, never had problems with them, what I had problems with was the english voice acting during dialogues, voice pack solves that.

The voice pack probably isn't 100% though, the guy who ripped them from the other versions of the game may have overlooked a few files, only way around that is well.. getting those files yourself or from another source. If you find a better source, please let me know.

I'd have to check them all, which I'll try to, but a funny bonus is the "Untamed Heart" speech which sounds like some kind of monster. That one was great. Plus the Grim Tidings voice sounds good in both english and Japanese which is a bonus

[Cestarian]

13 hours ago, Copperfield said:

I'd have to check them all, which I'll try to, but a funny bonus is the "Untamed Heart" speech which sounds like some kind of monster. That one was great. Plus the Grim Tidings voice sounds good in both english and Japanese which is a bonus

I believe the best way to get a 100% voice pack or as close as you can get is by exclusion (also that way you won't have to dig through ALL the files again) basically you can start off with all the files in the japanese voice pack and extra voice pack as a base (assuming you're going with japanese) then with english interface files. Somehow sort them apart (so that you know which files are english and which files are japanese; I would probably do this by using the mod folder approach we are using to actually mod the game, adding in more and more japanese files and testing things to see if anything broke or got it's language changed to japanese (as in some menu text or something)

And then at the point where you've included all japanese files that don't break something in the english version, remember which files you added (as opposed to which were in the original voice mod) in case something breaks later and you want to see if this was the cause.

 

There might be a programmatic way to convert all audio to japanese while keeping all text strings english (if the files are not encrypted and can be read via notepad or another plain text editor, or if they can be unpacked and then all the files they contain be gone through one by one either replacing everything that isn't a text string container or replacing everything except the text strings, there are dozens of approaches to this) but at this point we'd be dealing with modified files rather than just moving files between versions of the game, which will increase the odds of gameguard flipping out on us (it probably wouldn't though either way since it seems to ignore these files so far)

16 hours ago, GreenBunionSoup said:

I usually prefer English voices in my video games, but dear god my 11 year old sister could do a better job than the voice actors in this game. I'm pretty sure she could do a better job voice acting the men too, everyone is terrible. Going to consider trying this to get the Korean voices. Not used to Korean, but it's better than English.

 

I am still insanely salty about Soha and her new voice. Juwol didn't get a new voice actress 

Well I normally prefer my content as close to it's original content as is playable for me (if I play a russian game like metro last light, I want russian voices and english subtitles, All the more if the setting is actually russian, it makes sense for you know russians to speak russian and not english) with only subtitles and interfaces translated basically.
 

This is after all how the original content authors envisioned things.

 

In this game's case, it doesn't make any sense for these Asian~ish characters to be voiced by (horrible) english voice actors at all, which is why any asian voice pack would be better than english voices.

The only exception to my rule of preferring original content I am making is here, with Japanese rather than Korean voices, the major reason being that the english subtitles were made according to the dub (not according to the korean voices or japanese voices) thus it helps to have an underlaying language that I do largely understand and can sort out what was mistranslated and what wasn't easily. The other reason is that I will probably watch the BNS anime soon enough and that one has japanese voice actors, and it's nice if the voice actors of the anime match the ones in the game hehe. 

I allow myself to be content with this because of numerous reports from people that the Japanese voices are better than the Korean for this game. If so many people think so then I guess I can allow myself to make an exception here. (Even if I know that most of the people saying this are probably huge anime fans that are biased towards japanese voices over any other voices in the world, aka weebs)

[GreenBunionSoup]

Not going to quote you because that is a huge message, and I don't know how to crop quotes without messing it up. I do agree, I like my entertainment like video games and shows in the original language. If I had to choose, I'd choose Korean for this game. When it comes to anime, I prefer Japanese. When I watch telenovelas cause I'm in the mood to laugh at something cheesy, I watch them in Spanish. 

 

I don't like ALL video games in their native language though. I'd agree with Metro, but a lot of games imported from Japan get actually good voice actors. Metal Gear series being my biggest example. I can't stomach that game in Japanese, I love the English voices too much