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Advanced Audio Settings Changes

First post
Author
Queloor Zefram
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#141 - 2017-05-10 09:16:59 UTC

Dear CCP devs,

I your infinite wisdom, would you consider the possibility that you have gone STARK RAVING MAD with your decision ?

Revert the advanced audio settings, do it now! Like today!

Ty
BR
Areen Sassel
Dirac Angestun Gesept
#142 - 2017-05-10 09:22:01 UTC
John Friar wrote:
How was the 9% calculated? Even if it is accurate, is 9% really such an insignificant number?


As mentioned upthread, if multiboxers carefully adjust one client and mute the others, it may be an underestimate...

The major pain points for me are the sounds that are constant, useless, and tied to other useful sounds.

UI Clicks. Does anyone even like these? I don't need a little noise to let me know I'm moving the mouse.

D-scan BONG, which is pretty constant when wormhole spelunking. I know I'm D-scanning, my foot's bouncing on the pedal.

Station ambience. I don't need a noise to remind me I'm docked.
Annexe
I N E X T R E M I S
Tactical Narcotics Team
#143 - 2017-05-10 09:22:10 UTC
Ok, I would like to be a bit more constructive and help CPP through these hard times. Here are some issues I have noticed, as well as a run down on how it appears to work.


That being said, let's try and decipher how these settings work. These are by no means 100% correct in how they operate, but purely what I have observed. Let's start with the original

Volume Level settings;
Music Level - Self explanatory

UI Sound Level - (this is where it begins) I have already noticed the correlation between the UI Sound Level and the Secondary Interfaces. Just from the Audio menu, you can already work out what is happening. Set the UI Sound Level max = Loud UI Clicks/Item Dragging/Scrolling. Set the Secondary Interfaces max = Loud slider sound/Map/Scanners. However the conundrum begins when you lower the UI Sound Level, as it then turns down the Secondary Interfaces level. So if you put UI Sound Level to min to remove UI Clicks, you also loose the sound of maps, probe scanners etc.

UI Speech Level - I'm going to assume this now affects the new Aura voice. I've always had this at 0. Now is not the time to turn it back up.

World Level - We seem to be getting the same affect between this setting and the Atmosphere setting that we had with the UI Sound and Secondary Interfaces. I find it hard to really work out what sounds are being affect by this, without spending the entire day playing while turning this level up and down.

Master Level - Self Explanatory


I won't mention the check boxes below, although a description of what Doppler Shift actually does would be nice.


Advanced Audio Settings
Atmosphere - It appears this setting as well as World Level BOTH affect the level of the station Interior. So it would appear that these individual sliders affect both individual settings, as well as combined settings. Again, I'm sure there are lots of atmosphere sounds.

Jump Activation
- This affects... gate jump! \o/ However, its overall volume is again affected by the World Level setting.

Secondary Interfaces
- As we saw above, this affects Maps/Scanners/Mini-games, but its overall level is also affected by UI Sound Level.

Ship Effects - (This is also tricky) Shield reps/Tethering. Overall affected by World Level.

Ship Ambience - Prop mods.(because for some reason, prop mods are not ship effects. Maybe this includes the 'modules' setting, but then, shield/armor reps are not modules?) Overall level also affected by World Level.

Turret Volume - Pew pew sounds?

Warning Sounds
- Shield/Armor/Hull/Cap levels.




Summary
It appears that the original Volume Level settings are not only affecting their own sound, but also having an overall affect on other sounds. From an audio perspective, its like running a global EQ ontop of different EQ's, but also EQ-ing itself.

I feel its imperative that certain sounds get their own settings. Having individual Warning sounds was great. Who cares if you loose shield, but going into armor might want to wake you up!


Suggestions
Hover Info - Display a brief paragraph of what sounds the slider affects when hovering over. Simply tell us what each slider is affecting to allow us to quickly work out what we want to change.

Separate the affects from the original Volume Level settings and the Advanced Audio Settings

Group audio settings into categories such as; Ship, Environment, UI.




BUGS:
The Secondary Interfaces level drops when the ESC menu is open and also when the Probe Scanner window is active.




Annexe

ITAI - VIP

"i will pop your wreck with faction loot"

Annexe
I N E X T R E M I S
Tactical Narcotics Team
#144 - 2017-05-10 09:31:28 UTC
For best settings:

Music: 0
UI Sound: 10
UI Speech: 0
Atmosphere: 5

all others default: 50

\o/

Annexe

ITAI - VIP

"i will pop your wreck with faction loot"

Ocilan Ardishapur
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#145 - 2017-05-10 09:31:56 UTC
Alright. so most of what i'm gonna say has been mentioned already, but i feel like it's necessry just to reinforce a few points:

The Atmosphere setting: Wormhole status sounds need to be removed from this group. being able to hear if a wormhole is reduced is absolutely important and valuable information to have, whereas the constant buzzing and humming in stations or around gates absolutely isn't.

The UI sound level: First of all, the UI sound level apparently also includes secondary interfaces, which effectively removes an entire slider. I would like to be able to configure the soundsgrouped up in UI sounds and secondary interfaces independently from each other.
Then there's is simply not enough customizability for all the sounds in these two groups to be satisfactory whatsoever. A lot of very useful and important sounds have been bunched together with some of the most mindboggingly annoying **** i've ever had the misfortune of hearing. The UI clicking sound is seriously driving me insane and forced me to get rid of all kinds of really important sounds, just because they're grouped together, like all the Crimewatch alerts and the locking sound. Similarly, secondary interfaces entails both useful things like the probe warping/scanning sounds and incredibly annoying ones like the d-scanning gong, there just need to be a lot more options here.
Actually, after checking again, UI sound level and secondary interfaces seem to have some issues anyways, as turning off UI sounds apparently also affects the map volume and UI Interaction volume (both supposedly in the secondary interfaces category) but does not affect the ship tree volume.


Just because people only used a small amount of sliders in the old systems doesn't mean that you can bunch everything together and everything will be fine and dandy, especially since some of the (probably) most used sliders like turning off the insult that is the UI clicking has been bunched up with some of the most important sounds in the game.
Silgus
The Tuskers
The Tuskers Co.
#146 - 2017-05-10 12:02:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Silgus
This change is ridiculous. Aside from all the gameplay points mentioned above about some sounds being necessary and others being annoying what advantage is there to removing options from players even if only 9% of people use them?

If someone has an issue with the volume of a certain sound they fix it, I guarantee you nobody thought 'this sound is too loud/quiet' went into the options and thought ''nah **** it, too many sliders'.
Ralph Shepard
Ascendance
Goonswarm Federation
#147 - 2017-05-10 12:06:39 UTC
So? Another case "Thank you for feedback", which you will ignore?
CCP Antiquarian
C C P
C C P Alliance
#148 - 2017-05-10 13:26:02 UTC
Ralph Shepard wrote:
So? Another case "Thank you for feedback", which you will ignore?


I've been reading and forwarding points from this thread and Reddit to the Audio Director and to the producer for Team Trilambda.

And not that ethos and pathos arguments are particularly useful in this context, but my main lives in W-space and my playstyle is affected by these changes so I'm personally invested in getting alterations made to the functionality while keeping the necessary backend changes that precipitated this work. Invested enough that I skipped dinner last night going through all the comments to provide support and use cases for iteration.

Speaking of which, thanks Annexe for coming back with more input.

"Singularity pilots are helpful pilots."

@CCP_Antiquarian - for immediate fulfillment of your archaic social media needs.

HyperFlareX
Perkone
Caldari State
#149 - 2017-05-10 14:06:55 UTC
And I just lost a ******* DST to these sound changes. Thanks, CCP.

NB: You need UI sound level to be above 0, or the Shield/Armor/Hull threshold warnings will not play at all, despite the "Warning sounds" setting being cranked up to the max. This makes it especially enjoyable on an industrial char, where you will now be able to fully appreciate the terribleness of UI click. Or change your sound settings every time you undock. Roll

To reiterate on my earlier feedback: Give a seperate UI click slider again, please, please. The DSCAN sound can go there as well. Those are two very annoying sounds for a lot of people. The previous settings allowed me to get rid of them (DSCAN only with collateral damage) without having to sacrifice important sounds (like locking or WARNING SOUNDS).

I appreciate the work, Antiquarian, but so far everyone I've been agitating for to post on the forums took the stance of "They didn't give a damn about the feedback when it was on SiSi, why would they care now". I'd love to prove them wrong, so I'll hold my breath. Don't let me suffocate.
Denny Britva
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#150 - 2017-05-10 14:18:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Denny Britva
Dear CCP Antiquarian we all, at this topic, just want to tell: Audio setting was great system before lats patch. Please return previous version of Audio setting it will be reall good.
TehHouse
The Grumble
#151 - 2017-05-10 14:20:17 UTC  |  Edited by: TehHouse
Galileo Shihari wrote:
Disclaimer: I have no idea how anything works here. I have never once in the years of me playing this game felt the need to use the EVE forums before, until today, that is.

So I logged in half an hour ago to have a look at the new suns, only to find that, curiously, I couldn't hear my warp animation. At first I figured that I had accidentally left the audio turned off, as I sometimes do for more performance in large fights. I was wrong. Turns out that the entire page of advanced audio settings has been deleted, and replaced with a few general basic options.

Why was this not better mentioned, and easier to see?

I heavily used these settings. I needed to have the ambiance low, because the tethering effect of more than 200 ships results in a BRWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM loud enough to shake the house through my subwoffer, legitimately rivaling the THX theme. I needed the warp animation turned up so I can hear it when people land on gird near me.

I understand wanting to streamline things, and remove unneeded settings, but I would have liked to have known beforehand that this was happening.


We were warned when it was on SiSi. People tried to fight it or at least get it to where it wouldn't ruin game playability, but instead of fixing it on Singularity before releasing to TQ, they went ahead and pushed it live anyway with the maddeningly compressed options we have now.

Quote:
Or change your sound settings every time you undock.


If they don't revert this, I fear having multiple sets of sound settings you switch between for different activities is going to be the new normal. Its the only way, for example, to have the tactical benefits of atmosphere (despite what's been said elsewhere in this thread, while wormhole activation are under jump activation, state changes are not) without having to hear 5 instances of the station interior when I'm docked.
Ocilan Ardishapur
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#152 - 2017-05-10 14:49:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Ocilan Ardishapur
HyperFlareX wrote:
And I just lost a ******* DST to these sound changes. Thanks, CCP.

NB: You need UI sound level to be above 0, or the Shield/Armor/Hull threshold warnings will not play at all, despite the "Warning sounds" setting being cranked up to the max. This makes it especially enjoyable on an industrial char, where you will now be able to fully appreciate the terribleness of UI click. Or change your sound settings every time you undock. Roll


I did not realize that it is not only secondary interfaces that are influenced by the UI sound volume slider, but also the warning sounds. Frankly, this is absolutely inexcusable. Effectively this means that sound customizability has been reduced a lot more than CCP Antiquarians original post here may make it seem.

At the very least, UI sound level and secondary interfaces need to be split up into something like primary, secondary and tertiary interfaces, which are all controlled by the UI sound levels (which then would control the volume of all three, but not contain any own sounds itself). This would allow to put absolutely essential sounds like crimewatch and targeting to be put into primary interfaces, put useful but not essential ones like probes warping/scanning into secondary interfaces and use tertiary interfaces for all the useless stuff like radial menu and the menace that is the UI clicking sound.

Also, this whole change hardly achieved its goal of making the settings easier to understand for new people, as long as there aren't any in-game tooltips that will tell them what which slider actually does.
HyperFlareX
Perkone
Caldari State
#153 - 2017-05-10 14:57:03 UTC
Ocilan Ardishapur wrote:

Also, this whole change hardly achieved it's goal of making the settings easier to understand for new people, as long as there aren't any in-game tooltips that will tell them what which slider actually does.



word.
Neonen Enderas
Doomheim
#154 - 2017-05-10 15:15:51 UTC
Hi CCP,

in my humble opinion, this change was needed. It showed very well how good you, the developers, understand the needs of your clients, us. We never really wanted the advanced sound settings, as they just bloated the menue with useless sliders that let you turn up the volume on specific aspects of the game. Terrible indeed.

With the smaller number of settings we can finally concentrate on the game itself and anchor more citadels during AU TZ. As a clever man pointed out today, a hundred Astrahus vulnerable during worktime in AU TZ cost as much as titan. So huhs people, enjoy the free space in your menu! Now it can be filled with ads for the better PLEX.

No seriously, can we please have the old sliders back? The new ones are terrible in every aspect. Even the simplest one, that you dare call it 'Advanced Settings' without well.. advanced settings. It's as good as the fleet change you propsed last year. That one was terrible too.

Please please, do a rollback on your patch. And add functions AFTER you programmed them properly.

Sincerely,

Neonen
Axhind
Eternity INC.
Goonswarm Federation
#155 - 2017-05-10 15:24:27 UTC
CCP Antiquarian wrote:
Ralph Shepard wrote:
So? Another case "Thank you for feedback", which you will ignore?


I've been reading and forwarding points from this thread and Reddit to the Audio Director and to the producer for Team Trilambda.

And not that ethos and pathos arguments are particularly useful in this context, but my main lives in W-space and my playstyle is affected by these changes so I'm personally invested in getting alterations made to the functionality while keeping the necessary backend changes that precipitated this work. Invested enough that I skipped dinner last night going through all the comments to provide support and use cases for iteration.

Speaking of which, thanks Annexe for coming back with more input.


Then how exactly did you manage to miss just what kind of terrible change this is? Every single player I have asked about it has complained (although most don't come here as they are already used to being ignored) about the new system that completely ruins the ability to remove the purely annoying sounds (anything repetitive that doesn't bring any additional information).

I realise that having no sound would save you dev time and costs but what the hell are we paying this game for? We are paying you to work on EVE, not on various other adventures that never bring in any money. 9% of all your users (at the minimum as has been said about multiboxers and how they use it) use this feature and appreciate it a lot. I don't know about you but in most places pissing on minimum 9% of your customer base might be considered a bad idea.

The way it was pushed through doesn't really improve the situation either.

Would it be too much to ask for CCP to learn from past mistakes and start behaving as if you actually want our money?
McDerp Derpness
MongStars
#156 - 2017-05-10 15:30:05 UTC
I'm not usually opposed to changes, but this change hits us wormholers pretty hard.
I doubt that I'm able to add to any of the worries listed in the thread, I merely wanted to state my personal discontent with this change.
Pippan
MongStars
#157 - 2017-05-10 15:30:29 UTC
Please for the love of Jove let me turn that god awful UI clicking off. It's like nails on chalboard for me.
I loved the way Eve lets me customize everything about my client.

Also as many point out, the wormhole people really needs these options to stay aware of changes in their systems.

/Pippan
Elliott Spitzer
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#158 - 2017-05-10 15:54:37 UTC
I literally have my volume down to 2 on my computer while playing eve and yet I can clearly hear that ridiculous annoying D-SCAN bong. Why is that not listed in the volume options (Unless I'm missing something) and why is it so ffrikkin loud to begin with?

CCP please get rid of these annoying sounds (UI clicking) or have an "annoying sound" slider so we can turn them all down at once.

Pippan
MongStars
#159 - 2017-05-10 15:57:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Pippan
At the very least let us turn off the garbage you keep introducing. UI click and scanner pings are so unnecessary it hurts. Don't need a slider for them, just a checkbox to turn it off without muting every UI sound as well (Crimewatch, Locking, Radial Menu, Notifications, DAMAGE WARNINGS ffs, etc.).

/Pippan
Sayod Physulem
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#160 - 2017-05-10 16:37:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Sayod Physulem
I see why you want to simplify things, but I am also missing some options. I fall into the category of players that want a strictly informative audio. If I want to listen to music, I can turn on my own.
I think I will be able to structure my feedback better if I tell you which sliders you can probably group:

  1. Shield/Armor/Hull/Cap Warnings (I doubt anyone is going to turn one on but not the other)
  2. Jump Activations/3rd party warp (Anything that tells you someone is moving)
  3. Turret/Explosions/Impacts (If you like one, you probably like the other)
  4. Locking, Crimewatch, Aura (Informative UI)
  5. Radial Menu, UI Interaction, UI Click (D-scan, Kill, etc.) (Feedback UI - don't tell me what I already know please!)
  6. Station Interior, Map and Ship Tree, EVE store, Planets, Atmosphere
  7. Station Exterior, Stargates, Ship Ambiance, Engines, Warp Effect, Modules
  8. Music Dungeons, Music General
  9. Wormhole Ambience, Hacking


And the explaination:
1 and 2 could maybe even be put together, most people would have those things on anyway I think – balanced gate activations with wormhole activations would then be nice though.

I would personally turn Atmosphere all the way down anyway but other people might want to split those, so from what I read I put together 6-8, which might work for people (I would turn all three off though), but some people seem to want ambience in space but not for the station interior, planets, map and ship tree (and I have no idea what "atmosphere" is, so I just threw it in there).

By now I have reduced the old categories to 8 categories. But I have Wormhole ambience and hacking left over. Which doesn’t really fit in, as it is kind of informative, but I wouldn’t want it as loud as the other info sounds but it might be useful (I actually didn’t know until now that you can tell the wormhole status from the sound so I’ll have to test this – but this seems like a nice thing just like the Wormhole colours are)
I think someone said something about the hacking sound being useful? So maybe you could put Wormhole ambience together with hacking?

A lot of the categories are similar. But I think if you split the UI into Informative and Feedback UI you can already please a lot of people. Apparently that split seems also needed for atmosphere (which I would just all turn down though).

And then there are some considerations how to split the sounds in 2 and 9. Personally I like high jump activation sounds regardless if it is a wormhole or gate - it is always informative, but I get that travelling in high sec could make gates annoying if you do it a lot. So wormhole ambience and gate vs. wh activations seem an issue.