Sound design on certain things

[Chaos-]

So, with the latest patch, I've been trying different skills, thanks to the addition of the Bonejaw Helmet as a safety net on top of some sustain gems. And what I've found out is... I just don't like using a lot of things due to how harsh the sounds are compared to everything else. The biggest offender is probably the Floracrane skill line. Pretty much every part of the skill makes my ears hate themselves part of the way through a run. Then there's the new Fist Pound skill that grants you +10% crit chance per use until your next crit. A friend uses this skill often and it honestly gets really grating on my nerves to hear the fist pound noise hundreds of times per run. Other skills like the new Bonejaw's Charge or the old Groady Gulp aren't *as* offensive but can still get repetitive. Same with Gourdo's Community Garden. The new proximity mines on the new cannon can also get repetitive but that's a more minor sound that can get drowned out by normal combat.

Probably the biggest issue and the reason I decided to make this post in the first place (other than the Floracrane skills): I have a growing, extreme dislike of the healing sound. I've been trying out the Regen Gems, and while I like them, I don't like the noise they make every. single. room, to the point where I ended up ditching them and going back to the Gourdo set with full healing gems (and yes the healing sound is still here, but it's in controlled chunks). Funny enough, the healing sound changes if you grow in size, and I prefer that sound over the normal-sized healing noise. For this I'd say to either not play the healing sound for every second of healing (for example, play it on the first tick and maybe the last couple ticks?) or just make it a chunk of healing instead of regen over time (why does it need to be regen in the first place? I guess it would be a nerf to some things like "gain crit chance each time you heal" power, but...). Or change the healing sound itself. Also if you made it a chunk of healing, you'd be wasting less time sitting around in rooms like the mid-way point, or the mysterious stranger room, where you finish quickly but it's optimal to wait for your regen to finish.

And related to healing, the sound effect of the Gourdo's Community Garden weapons, the part that deals damage if you heal more than 10 hp at once, that noise can get really grating as well, particularly in large rooms while I have the Vampire power and it's just constant pop pop pop pop. (I did leave this feedback on another post but I think it's worth mentioning again). As much as I like using the healing set to support my friends, I do feel bad subjecting them to that noise.

There's probably some things I'm missing, but... I dunno. Maybe some people will just see this post as whining, but stuff like this bothers me. To use another game as an example, certain chase themes in Dead by Daylight make me not ever want to play certain killers. I know for Rotwood, I can simply turn down my sfx volume, but I'm not bothered by *most* of the effects, and I don't want the attack sounds of rots to be lowered as well. Maybe some other people share my (overall mild, not game-ruining) annoyance. Klei and the developers seem really nice and willing to consider and make changes based on community feedback, so I feel like it's worth a shot to say something here.

[AviatorBean]

i don’t find any issue with the sounds, even if you do you can just turn down the sfx volume

[Chaos-]

28 minutes ago, AviatorBean said:

i don’t find any issue with the sounds, even if you do you can just turn down the sfx volume

I literally said this already and why I don't find it to be the best solution.

[AviatorBean]

14 hours ago, Chaos- said:

I literally said this already and why I don't find it to be the best solution.

I don't think it really needs a solution? i like the sounds, the gourdo trait hit sound makes it satisfying, it adds to game feel and it makes it easier to know what's happening while focusing on something else . i think that's more of a personal problem.

[jambell]

Hey @Chaos-,

Don't worry, our sound designers are always happy to receive feedback of all kinds -- they'll be quite happy to receive such a thoughtful post. As a sound designer in the past myself, I know it can be quite a tricky balance finding the sweet spot for sounds that happen constantly like the healing sound or the Gourdo weapon sound. Every sound designer knows the feeling of hunting that balance between "great feeling, present feedback" and "omg just let me turn this sound off", and that line is very different for different people. It can be especially tricky to satisfy folks of all sorts of different types of tastes and dispositions, which is why we definitely want to hear as broad of opinions as we can get.

Knowing that you stopped using this build because some aspect of the presentation is very important to us. And @AviatorBean, thanks for letting us know that it does hit the mark for you.

When a specific sound like this is causing issues for some people it means we have further improvement to do on the implementation of the sound, and our technical sound designer in particular loves working on things like this. I'll make sure this gets to him -- he'll have great ideas for how to find that sweet spot.

We might not have time to work on it soon, but I will make sure this post gets to them!

Quote

Maybe some people will just see this post as whining,

I don't take this as "whining", and I guarantee they won't either! Thanks for the post!

[Chaos-]

4 hours ago, AviatorBean said:

i think that's more of a personal problem.

I mean, yeah? Opinions on the sound design are gonna be super subjective and up to everyone's taste and tolerance, as jambell said. You don't need to act like I'm crazy or wrong for not liking some things.

@jambell thanks for the quick response and the understanding and explanations. I feel a lot better about making this post now. I understand y'all have other things to work on and this is pretty low priority, but I'm glad it'll at least be looked at, even if you guys end up not changing anything.

[Zoralink]

7 hours ago, AviatorBean said:

I don't think it really needs a solution? i like the sounds, the gourdo trait hit sound makes it satisfying, it adds to game feel and it makes it easier to know what's happening while focusing on something else . i think that's more of a personal problem.

That's indeed how feedback about more subjective things works, people give their opinion on things.

And yeah, audio design in Rotwood can be a bit hit or miss, one of the bigger things I noticed is that the audio tends to be far louder seeming for player actions while enemies tend to be quieter than they should be. Combined with the repetitious hit/skill audio and it makes the game a lot less clear than it could be. (And some of them get grating long term)

[MrMyther]

Healing audio 100% needs to scale with the intensity of the heal, same goes for Gourdo trait damage.

In a typical run its not that bad, since you wont be healing in massive bursts, but powers like Bloodthirsty and Morale Booster make it frequent enough to the point where it becomes super grating.
Gourdo weapons emphasize this quite a bit in combination with either of these two powers, it can be satisfying to have a big chunk of these effects but its far too prominent when it is constantly applied.