Guild Wars 2

It would be so much more pleasant & useful if placable siege weapon sounds were categorized under “Effects” instead of “Enviromental” sounds.
There are occassions when you want to mute all those excessively loud enviromental noises [bird chirping (Lost Precipice), rain (Green wvw/eotm teams), wind and ofcourse the annoying waypoint hum we all been hearing since 2012], but we still want to hear siege weapons triggered near our location.
Although it’s debatable whether it is an enviromental sound or not, it is only triggered by players in wvw which is the most important factor imo.

There’s a huge number of sound effects in the game. For any particular sound (or set of sounds), there’s a fraction of the player base that can’t stand them and wants them muted. I don’t see how ANet can get the balance right, so I’d rather that they either do nothing or create new categories of sounds to selectively mute/quiet.

In other words, I don’t see anything about siege deserving of special treatment, at least not when compared to all sorts of other sounds.

I agree they should perhaps make more sound categories, seems alot of stuff was just shoved into Enviromental without actually being a correct term.

Did some analysis of the siege. Siege weapons have atleast 2 main sounds assosiated with it, but those 2 main sounds are usually in 2 seperate sound categories! Usually 1 sound comes from the siege itself as “triggering/reload” sound (Effects), then the actual structural damage impact (Enviromental) and also explosions if any (Effects).

In short, siege weapons with no explosion blasts but that deal structural concussive damage to a structure will categorize the main hitting sound under Enviromental! LOL.
HELLO SILENT RAMS & CATAS :-)

Result: If you mute Enviromental sounds in wvw, you wont hear the enemy ramming the gate you are standing next to (heh), or trebs/catapults impacting on the nearby walls, etc. If you mute Effects, but keep Enviromental sounds on, you can hear siege weapons much better! This is the result, but I presume not actually the devs intention.

I can’t seem to come up with a reason to have those in 2 seperate categories really. Because you would usually want both those sounds active when in gaming mode, and listed easily under a single Effect category.
[Perhaps a Siege Weapon & Structural DMG sound category would be a good idea, useful for the game. ] Sound categories should be used for game logic & ease of use (whenever possible), and not the actual physical real world sound categories its trying to simulate.