Guild Wars 2

Sometimes, when there’s a dynamic event brewing nearby, you hear some of the NPCs talking about it (e.g. they’re preparing, or talking about the prospects of success, or arguing, or something). I appreciate that this is meant to alert you aurally to there being something brewing nearby, but it’s genearlly TOO kitten LOUD, it sounds like it’s right in my ear, like they’re right next to me, even though they’re several hundred game “yards” away. I’m sure you could have the same alerting effect with them being much quieter and a bit more muffled with distance.

Generally sounds are great in this game, and well balanced, but personally, this particular feature (or bug?) is becoming a positive annoyance that jerks me out of immersion.

Sorry I didn’t see this sooner, but I used to have this problem, too.

I remember a post last year from someone who had figured out what was causing the issue— namely, NPCs that were within earshot but not in view. Whichever component calculates the relative volume of the NPCs, it wasn’t able to determine the location of the source, so it defaulted to “inside the listener’s head.”

But that was in the fall of last year, and at some point after that, I started noticing fewer occurences of the ridiculously disproportionate volume. Instead, I notice that I’ll sometimes hear one side of a conversation quite clearly, but the other side (from the NPC standing just on the other side of the first speaker) is completely silent, presumably because it’s just out of range. While it’s not ideal, perhaps, it’s still far better than hearing the first NPC normally and the second one as a telepathic intrusion on my inner monologue (that is to say, obnoxiously loud). Perhaps they reduced the “earshot” range or something when your view is obstructed. I don’t know.

Also, I’ve used several different headsets over the past year (my old Creative HS-1200 started falling apart after 4 years, my stereo Bluetooth headset couldn’t handle Mumble well, and now I’m enjoying my Corsair Vengeance 2000). I haven’t really been paying attention, but I know that the Creative and Corsair units have their own 3D sound drivers. Perhaps you could mitigate the problem by tinkering with your sound settings (Windows or headset-specific)?

So, to summarize, I don’t know what’s going on with your situation, but there have been times in the distant past when I’ve encountered the same issues. If you have a different headset on hand, you could try that. If you currently have some kind of 3D sound drivers, try it without 3D. If you don’t but have some way of testing it with 3D sound, maybe try that.

I’d just like to go on record saying this really bugs me too. I actually hope it is a bug and not a game design decision, because I feel it’s super immersion-breaking. The whole idea of dynamic events occurring in the world around you is centered around cues instead of holding the player’s hand (as the traditional “quest” format does), so having some “important” event-related dialogue from some NPCs half a mile away being played through your speakers as if they’re right next to you really works against that I think.