Please give boss attacks audio cues

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

I have noticed that almost all bosses lack proper audio cues for their attacks. And with all the effect spam going around (which reduces their visibility), having sound to react to would be very helpful.

So please, add loud and clear sound effects leading up to a boss attack. Give us something we can react to in all the effect clutter.

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cody Crichton.7516

Cody Crichton.7516

Sound Designer

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Hello Mad Queen,

Not all attacks made by bosses need to be audibly telegraphed ahead of time in order for players to know they need to react to them. For instance, bosses can use instant skills and there is no telling when they may fire. Another example is the case where there is nothing visually to tie the sound to since something has to sensibly make the sound, it can’t be placed in arbitrarily just before a boss uses any of its skills.

However, bosses sometimes have a strong visual tell for their attack (such as a warmup of some kind). We agree with you, that often these types of attacks need audio tells to coincide with them—and in so many cases they do already have one.

Which boss were you fighting that didn’t have a clearly audible tell for a warmup-type attack? Unless your report is made specific, there is very little chance of audio-tell bugs getting a fix.

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Imperios.2543

Imperios.2543

Hello Mad Queen,

Not all attacks made by bosses need to be audibly telegraphed ahead of time in order for players to know they need to react to them. For instance, bosses can use instant skills and there is no telling when they may fire. Another example is the case where there is nothing visually to tie the sound to since something has to sensibly make the sound, it can’t be placed in arbitrarily just before a boss uses any of its skills.

However, bosses sometimes have a strong visual tell for their attack (such as a warmup of some kind). We agree with you, that often these types of attacks need audio tells to coincide with them—and in so many cases they do already have one.

Which boss were you fighting that didn’t have a clearly audible tell for a warmup-type attack? Unless your report is made specific, there is very little chance of audio-tell bugs getting a fix.

I shall also note that bosses also need to speak as well so that they would have actual personalities. I mean, no Toxic or Molten Alliance member has so much as a name!

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cody Crichton.7516

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Cody Crichton.7516

Sound Designer

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I shall also note that bosses also need to speak as well so that they would have actual personalities. I mean, no Toxic or Molten Alliance member has so much as a name!

This is actually feedback for the Living World writing/design teams. There’s nothing that the audio department can actually do to address this. Please head on over to the Living World subforums and offer some suggestion feedback when you have a moment.

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Which boss were you fighting that didn’t have a clearly audible tell for a warmup-type attack? Unless your report is made specific, there is very little chance of audio-tell bugs getting a fix.

Scarlet’s hologram’s massive aoe attack (that sends you flying across the room), the pull attacks of Scarlet’s Knights, Lupi’s grub summon, to name a few.

Would it be possible to give these sort of attacks a clear audio cue? Or do they have in fact an audio cue, but am I simply not hearing them?

Because a good clear sound could really help with the timing of a dodge roll for some of these bosses.

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cody Crichton.7516

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Cody Crichton.7516

Sound Designer

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Thanks for the feedback!

While the sounds of player combat is likely loud during these encounters, as designers we try to take this into account when mixing our boss battles.

Scarlet’s prime hologram does have an audio-visual tell for when it is going to do its close AOE attack (sounds like a laser beam charging up), which I know I could definitely hear during the fight, but that particular sound for the tell is not extremely intense or anything. Similarly, the Assault Knights have an audio-visual tell for the AOE pull as well (it launches up with a huge blast out of its jetpack).

As for Giganticus Lupicus, it’s been a long time since that boss has been given any attention design-wise, and it’s on a list of bosses I have saved somewhere, a to-do list of bosses to spruce up, so I would say that one is a known-issue.

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: hendo.1940

hendo.1940

Please, please, PLEASE don’t change Lupicus. He’s probably the best boss fight in the entire game and it’s a blast performing solo kills on him.

Rezardi – [DnT]
Game over, yo.

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Posted by: Tree.3916

Tree.3916

Whatever you do please do not change Lupicus. this is possibly the best designed boss in the game, there is absolutely no revamping that could possibly be done that would make the experience better. Please please please do not try to fix something that isn’t broken.

Edit
Should add a sound effect that triggers when you get within 1200 range of Kholer in AC that sounds like an alert and a robot voice saying “Warning this boss is optional” so anyone that gets near the boss knows it is an optional encounter.

DnT Apply today if you think you can hang with the best of the best
http://www.twitch.tv/tree_dnt || https://twitter.com/Tree_DnT
The meta is changing at an alarming rate!

(edited by Tree.3916)

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cody Crichton.7516

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Cody Crichton.7516

Sound Designer

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Let’s be clear, I am only talking about slight polish to sound effects, and not about the gameplay of the encounter whatsoever. I can’t, nor would I want to change anything about the tactics or strategies that players would use when fighting the boss.

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

All I’m saying, is that an important attack from any boss, should have some sound cue to warn the player.

His Holiness Lupicus included. (besides, its not like that would dramatically alter the battle)

As for the Scarlet battle and the knights, I really can’t hear anything but battle noise while fighting them. Not even when I turn the music volume down. Maybe boss attacks should be played at a higher volume by default? Just an idea.

And BTW Cody, thanks for the replies on this issue. It’s comforting to know there are people watching out for issues such as these.

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

(edited by Mad Queen Malafide.7512)

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cody Crichton.7516

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Cody Crichton.7516

Sound Designer

Hey Queen,

Just to reply about the Scarlet hologram battle, each of the phases of the battle and every single action that the boss makes is accompanied by a fittingly loud sound that should be quite audible over the din of the players battling around her, and in fact they should dwarf the player sounds by quite a lot. I’m wondering why you’re having trouble hearing the boss sounds.

Have you set the ‘Audio Quality’ slider to the far right? This allows for the highest number of sounds to play. Even though the boss sounds definitely take priority over any quieter sounds (such as player sounds) and will play in favor of them, this is a good place to start. Though setting to the far left will be less taxing for your CPU, which depending on the hardware you’re using might be provide preferable performance.

Also try to ensure that the audio volume sliders in the audio panel are not set too far to the left in the ‘Effects Volume’ category.

Other than that, there may be other things to troubleshoot in order to hear the appropriate sounds. Check back if any of my suggestions don’t allow you to hear the boss’s sounds in the Scarlet Hologram boss fight, which is one of the loudest encounters we have in the game, right along with Tequatl, the Great Jungle Wurm and the Marionette.

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Cold Hearted Person.6154

Cold Hearted Person.6154

(OK, i know that its a 2 weeks old thread, but ther is no point in creating another thread about the same issue, especialy if the issue wasnt resolved and the thread is still on 1st page. )

Thats something that bothered me for quite a long time, lack of proper audio cues.
I played many games wher special effect were so intense that at times your screen would go completly white, it was manly in hack&slash games, and yet ther was no problems in avoiding some bigger attacks cause of proper audio cues.

Now, im not only talking about some random noise that plays during the charge up animation, im talking specifically about voiced cue, like character screaming, during the animation, “This one will hurt!!!” which clearly indicate that you must avoid that attack.

Ever played game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Wallker? in that game you were ofen in a fight againts at tank or other heavy armored vechicle, it was man vs machine kind of fight, your opponent were shoting at you with main cannon fairly offen, needless to say that geting hit by main cannon of a tank took quite a bit of your HP, and that was exacly the reason why that attack had an voiced cue that indicated the danger of it.
The cue was voiced by the pilot of the vechicle just before attack, here is few example:

  • “This one will take a punch!!!”
  • “Main cannon ready!”
  • “Cannon loaded!”
  • “Take this!!!”

With cues like that you can instantly tell that you should focus your atention on dodging next attack.

Voiced cue also increase immersion, Boss that actualy speek, assuming that character
belong to race that can speek, during the fight makes you feel that your are up against an intelignet opponent or at least someone with a personality.

Also, lets not forget the fact that if the cue its some strange noise it must be
a noise that player can instinctively link to the attack that boss is planing to use
, i.e. Laser cannon attack cue should be something like generator being charged up, or generaly energy chargeing sound, but im sure that much is obvious, right?

Btw, if ther is a post about something being an issue than ther is a reason for it, if the current audio cues would be enoug people would’t have a reason to complain about it.

(edited by Cold Hearted Person.6154)

Please give boss attacks audio cues

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Posted by: Twyll Blackleaf.9641

Twyll Blackleaf.9641

Saw this thread, sorry I’m adding to it a tad late, but: would it be at all possible for there to be an audio slider for “enemy sound effects” and a separate one for “player sound effects,” similar to options that allow you to amplify or mute player instruments, or visual options like showing or hiding nameplates to keep them from getting in the way? I understand if that would be hard to do based on how the game decides what sounds are played on the client’s side. I have noticed that my character’s quips about how her enemies are dumb and will die and leave dumb corpses, or that she’s faster than a centaur, play at different times on my computer and on my friends’ computers when we play together; not sure if that means that sounds produced by other players are just considered “sounds made by things that are not me” by the game or something and therefore are hard to differentiate. However, if it is possible, that would help a lot, especially for players with computers that can’t handle terribly much graphics-wise, I think— and being able to weed out player sounds would make it a lot easier to react in huge fights where visibility is hard no matter what your graphics settings.

I have pretty bad hand-eye coordination but better hand-ear coordination (musician!), so I think I might end up being a lot more useful in larger events if I could turn down sound effects created by players and player skills to be able to focus on the sounds that are actually relevant to the fight. I do recall there being audio cues for Scarlet’s attacks during the holo fight, but I also recall them being drowned out by player noises at times— and the afklasers (which were great at dealing with afkers but also had the side effect of dealing with people who were just trying to fight Blue from behind!) made fairly quiet “charging-up” noises for something with such powerful knockdown and damage. Ironically, the one attack I can recall having a very distinctive sound build-up, in terms of how little it was covered up, was the laser attack you couldn’t dodge! (Granted, this would help if I had a way to apply Aegis, but, well, Thief.) And I could hear the skylaser noises just fine while out and about in Lion’s Arch… until we were fighting the Aetherblade Grenadier, where they’re really rather important, and they got drowned out by the noise of the zerg.

Have you set the ‘Audio Quality’ slider to the far right? This allows for the highest number of sounds to play. Even though the boss sounds definitely take priority over any quieter sounds (such as player sounds) and will play in favor of them, this is a good place to start. Though setting to the far left will be less taxing for your CPU, which depending on the hardware you’re using might be provide preferable performance.

Even though boss sounds take priority over player sounds for… sound-culling?, there’s still the problem of lots of player sounds overwhelming the sounds that the boss makes. In that case, wouldn’t it actually be better to turn the slider all the way to the left, so fewer player sounds come through and only boss sounds come through? I might actually try reducing my Audio Quality setting to see if that makes large bosses sound clearer, since I didn’t realize that it was essentially a culling thing.

EDIT: Just realized that the undodgeable laser being clearly audible actually makes a lot of sense because there wasn’t anything for players to be attacking while the laser was charging up, as it happened after most of the mini-Scarlets were killed— so it wasn’t competing with spell and attack noises.

(edited by Twyll Blackleaf.9641)