[Feedback] Neverwinter Audio-related Feedback

sominator · August 2013

Hey all!

We'd like to request your feedback on the audio in Neverwinter. Please feel free to post any audio-related feedback here!

If you have an audio-related bug report, please post it here.

Thank you!

achtung2000 · August 2013

The NPC voices are still repeated way too often, I really don't need to hear that a smart fighter quits while he's ahead any more than necessary. Maybe add an option that lets to disable other player companion sounds.

azlanfox · August 2013

One annoying thing that always slightly annoyed me was how companion voices, their 'just summoned' comment, could be heard through the descent down the portals cut scene when transitioning primary areas in the Chasm.

Other then that, I've no major complaints or issues.

kwsapphire · August 2013

It would be great to have the option to quiet other sounds when someone is speaking in voice chat. This may actually already be an option but if so, it's not clear. I'd like the ambient sounds, power execution sounds, NPCs, etc all to drop to a low volume while someone in the team is chatting, rather than having to readjust all my volume settings all the time.

srazy · August 2013

KIll the howler sound or make it so only the owner get pestered by it, i hate having people near me while they are mounted on it.
Reduce the amount of noise feedback companion or pets do.
Add different tunes to the enclave, the main theme is soo closed beta :P
Add ambient music to the wilderness areas, but subtle music.

diogene0 · August 2013

I don't like the wounded dog noise when a wolf (including pet ones) dies. ~~

gowrygabriev · August 2013

In certain areas, I have popping sounds coming from my rear left speaker. It only happens in certain places, and I've not heard it elsewhere.

baeyorn · August 2013

Voice chat needs to be looked at.
On several occasions, people in our party would simply not be able to hear us.
Yes, we and they have voice chat enabled.
Things would be working fine and boom.. silence on their end all of a sudden.
about 50% of the time, reloading the game would reset voice chat so it would work again.
When ti doesn't, we just run silent using party or guild chat..

Note that we use push-to-talk, with default V key.

chaoscourtesan · August 2013

I would really really be grateful if the player powers' sounds could be GREATLY subdued in Protectors Enclave or when not in combat in general. I have a couple of characters 'dry-docked' at the permanent altar. Seems every time I log in, some CW is there trying to entertain(?) everyone with his/her lightning or storm calling spell, and it is deafening. Other than that, is there anyone who would be willing to cast a spell of silence on the Wondrous Bazaar lady?? I'll pay 5 gold. Hahaha..

kwsapphire · August 2013

baeyorn wrote: »

Voice chat needs to be looked at.
On several occasions, people in our party would simply not be able to hear us.
Yes, we and they have voice chat enabled.
Things would be working fine and boom.. silence on their end all of a sudden.
about 50% of the time, reloading the game would reset voice chat so it would work again.
When ti doesn't, we just run silent using party or guild chat..

Note that we use push-to-talk, with default V key.

My team noticed this Saturday night. We had 4 people on the team; two of the people could hear the third person, but I couldn't. Then randomly I could.

ambisinisterr · August 2013

First and foremost I love the audio! I have a few things which I would like improved but by in large I love the game audio.

kwsapphire wrote: »

It would be great to have the option to quiet other sounds when someone is speaking in voice chat. This may actually already be an option but if so, it's not clear. I'd like the ambient sounds, power execution sounds, NPCs, etc all to drop to a low volume while someone in the team is chatting, rather than having to readjust all my volume settings all the time.

I have to second this. I probably can adjust the sound settings manually but the default values have the game volume much, much louder than the voice chat volume. You absolutely can not hear people's voices over the game without manually adjusting it.

The game volume should reduce if there others are using voice chat.

Mounts:
New Horse Summoning Sound is...well...it sounds like a dying pig.
Howler Sounds needs to be reduced.

Ambient:
The city has too much stress on music. There should be bustling city sounds such as background voice muttering and other various city sounds.

Tower District needs more orcish shounds such as distant battle cries. Perhaps even occassional battle sounds.

Icespire Peak: Howling Wind sounds should be expanded.

Castle Never is dead silent. It needs more ambient tones though I have no suggestions.

Overall the audio tracks are fantastic! But ambient sound is what brings immersion into a game and the ambient sounds all around are lacking. Anything you could imagine should/could be in an area should be added both for the Official Content and for UGC Authors.

komatakia · August 2013

There are many minor problems with the volume of the different kinds of audio.

I don't like the soundtrack personally so I've turned it off completely, ramping up the ambient sounds. Playing like this, without the music masking the problems, you notice that for example, the wind is sometimes way too loud, the combat sounds are often too loud, other times too quiet. I'm sorry I don't have anything concrete to report, someone should unfortunately play the quests from the beginning with the soundtrack off, keeping notes.

Since this is an audio-related feedback thread, have I said that I don't like the soundtrack? It's repetitive, random, boring, could have been white noise. No melody and does not match the environment (outdoors / dungeon / mountains / sea / road / tavern / marketplace).

beckylunatic · August 2013

At some point in the past, a "fire" sound effect was added which really gets under my skin. It sounds more like weird chanting, and it's especially noticeable in the Tower District where you encounter Eyes of Gruumsch, but you hear it any time you get near a fire, like a burning building or pile of rubble. This is a sound I could do without entirely. It was not present when I started playing.

There's one seal vendor whose voice acting is an inaudible mumble. Manticore, iirc.

jigles · August 2013

achtung2000 wrote: »

The NPC voices are still repeated way too often, I really don't need to hear that a smart fighter quits while he's ahead any more than necessary. Maybe add an option that lets to disable other player companion sounds.

LMAO... i hear that all the time! Even in my dreams! o.O

spirals999 · August 2013

Hey guys! Spirals here. I am an audio designer at Cryptic and I want to say how happy we are to see such a great response in the audio feedback thread only a day after the sticky was created. Here at the audio department we take great pride in the work we've done on Neverwinter. The robust gameplay that Neverwinter has to offer presented us with some unique challenges and some great opportunities to really polish many of our audio implementation techniques.

That being said, we know we can always make things better and we welcome your feedback. We will do the best we can to monitor your suggestions and use them to continue to make Neverwinter a great game to listen to as well as play.

kwsapphire wrote: »

It would be great to have the option to quiet other sounds when someone is speaking in voice chat. This may actually already be an option but if so, it's not clear. I'd like the ambient sounds, power execution sounds, NPCs, etc all to drop to a low volume while someone in the team is chatting, rather than having to readjust all my volume settings all the time.

As a gamer myself, I agree with this. I've seen other posts regarding this issue as well. I will speak to a programmer to see if this is an option we can implement in the near future.

gowrygabriev wrote: »

In certain areas, I have popping sounds coming from my rear left speaker. It only happens in certain places, and I've not heard it elsewhere.

Always good to have feedback from players with Surround sound. If you could identify which areas specifically you encounter this problem in, we can work towards finding the issue. Thanks!

baeyorn wrote: »

Voice chat needs to be looked at.
On several occasions, people in our party would simply not be able to hear us.
Yes, we and they have voice chat enabled.
Things would be working fine and boom.. silence on their end all of a sudden.
about 50% of the time, reloading the game would reset voice chat so it would work again.
When ti doesn't, we just run silent using party or guild chat..

Note that we use push-to-talk, with default V key.

I'd like to assure you that the error has been noted by our programmers here and we're working on a solution. We know voice chat could use some improvement and we hope we can deliver on that in upcoming patches.

beckylunatic wrote: »

At some point in the past, a "fire" sound effect was added which really gets under my skin. It sounds more like weird chanting, and it's especially noticeable in the Tower District where you encounter Eyes of Gruumsch, but you hear it any time you get near a fire, like a burning building or pile of rubble. This is a sound I could do without entirely. It was not present when I started playing.

Exactly the kind of feedback we like to see. We can't have our ears in all parts of the game all the time so sometimes we miss things like this. I just went in and rectified the problem and the fix should go out next week.

Thanks again! Keep the feedback coming!

baronvonboom · August 2013

There is still the bug where your character makes animal/orc noises when they jump/attack etc, I had it on my main in Beta and it just happened again with another toon.

Howler - Kill it please kill it..

Private Wilfred - The least inspiring of any of the characters in the game, considering his role in the intro his voice and even appearance needs some serious buffing;)

Storm Pillar? - That scream the CW's let off when casting it gets a bit tedious around PE at times

Companions - "Smart fighter quits while hes... " BOOM! an there I am dead after hearing it a million times..

Invoking - Maybe a selection of different sounds instead of just the one? Maybe that will make the invoking area in PE a nightmare or better? who knows...

Death - Give us a real death scream:) I wanna feel some hurting in pvp or dread when I bite the dust in pve

beckylunatic · August 2013

spirals999 wrote: »

Exactly the kind of feedback we like to see. We can't have our ears in all parts of the game all the time so sometimes we miss things like this. I just went in and rectified the problem and the fix should go out next week.

I think I love you.

beckylunatic · August 2013

baronvonboom wrote: »

There is still the bug where your character makes animal/orc noises when they jump/attack etc, I had it on my main in Beta and it just happened again with another toon.

Supposedly this is caused by a bugged cloak.

baronvonboom · August 2013

beckylunatic wrote: »

Supposedly this is caused by a bugged cloak.

Haha!

Just tested that to see an yep I can confirm that for me its the Uncommon Maelstrom Cloak..

Gold star headed your way;)

baeyorn · August 2013

spirals999 wrote: »

Hey guys! Spirals here.

-- voice chat error --
I'd like to assure you that the error has been noted by our programmers here and we're working on a solution. We know voice chat could use some improvement and we hope we can deliver on that in upcoming patches.

Thanks again! Keep the feedback coming!

Spirals, you are da King.. in a kindly strictly bro kinda way!!

Thanks for the reply!!

melodywhr · August 2013

when i click on the auction house button at the top for the first time after logging in, i'm always greeted by the auction house guy "what can i do for you..."

as long as i stay logged in, changing between characters, i'm fine. but the moment i log out and back in... the next time i access the auction house, i am greeted. i don't know if this could be randomized with him saying something else or perhaps it happens the first time you access the auction house and then no more after that?

and for the record, i love my howler. i love the new changes coming up with it in the next patch.

beckylunatic · August 2013

Melody, that happens with all kinds of merchants and questgivers as well, where they'll have the audio for the first interaction but if you need to interact with them again, you'll just get the interface. I got the AH-introduction quest on two new characters I'm levelling during the same play session and Knox's audio only played on the first one, and I just saw the text on the second.

greeniewolf0 · August 2013

I know this would not be easily implemented, but better 5.1/7.1 compatibility would be nice. Most of the time this is okay, but sometimes the game seems to decide to randomly flip the orientation so that it sounds like everything is happening 30 feet behind me instead of right in front/around me. This pretty much only happens during battles, and for some reason more often on my guardian fighter than on any other character.

kaltastic · August 2013

Echoing comments on the main soundtrack. What is in the game is very good, it is just way too repetitive. Needs some diversity.

beckylunatic · August 2013

From the sounds of things (hah!), recent changes to the cat companion's audio are not going over well
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?455971-Cat-companion-now-really-annoying

popeyetsailor · August 2013

The growling and grunts of animals, spell and sword sound effects, should be turned mute in the AH and Postal areas, maybe the Coaster Market, and Bank as well. Hard to do any long term concentration with children playing games with the sound. (My head phones come off, or sound gets turned off, are the only controls I have right now.) The repeated sayings of multiple companions becomes a thorn as well. ('My momma always said', and 'This one time, at band camp' come to mind... it's the same, but different!) Like the music so far, esp. the PE and forest themes. There really is so much good world/celtic and renaissance bard/band music available, maybe pick up a few more titles for the game. Thanks. (But the repeated sword and spell and animal and companion sounds in the AH and Postal area have got to go!)

denton23 · August 2013

I have some trouble with the voice chat and no setting seems to solve it but it worked until a week ago.
Since I have opened a ticket inside the game and can't see it under "My-Tickets" I gonna ask for help here.

If I am in a party and my mates are voice chatting I cannot hear them but they can hear me just fine, if I test my mic via the Voice Chat>Test Microphone I see a peak from speaking but I can't hear myself. Nothing changed in my system and I had it working before.

Do you by chance have any pointers for me?

beckylunatic · August 2013

beckylunatic wrote: »

From the sounds of things (hah!), recent changes to the cat companion's audio are not going over well
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?455971-Cat-companion-now-really-annoying

Confirmed, the cat-yawn sound cycle is like an orc. I'm pretty sure it used to have meows and purrs that I thought were alright. Please change it back?

spirals999 · August 2013

baronvonboom wrote: »

There is still the bug where your character makes animal/orc noises when they jump/attack etc, I had it on my main in Beta and it just happened again with another toon.

Pleased to report that we found the issue with the aforementioned cloak and have resolved the issue. A patch should go out in a couple weeks which fixes the cloak.

baronvonboom wrote: »

Howler - Kill it please kill it..

After reviewing the audio for summoning a howler we have decided to make the howling sound audible only to the player doing the summoning. Nearby players will not hear the howl but will still hear audio for the summon fx. We've also decided to slightly lower the volume for the Howler's Antics.

beckylunatic wrote: »

From the sounds of things (hah!), recent changes to the cat companion's audio are not going over well
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?455971-Cat-companion-now-really-annoying

Yep. Good catch. Found the problem today and for some reason our cat companions wanted to be panthers and yeth hounds. A fix should go out in the next couple of weeks.

denton23 wrote: »

I have some trouble with the voice chat and no setting seems to solve it but it worked until a week ago.
Since I have opened a ticket inside the game and can't see it under "My-Tickets" I gonna ask for help here.

If I am in a party and my mates are voice chatting I cannot hear them but they can hear me just fine, if I test my mic via the Voice Chat>Test Microphone I see a peak from speaking but I can't hear myself. Nothing changed in my system and I had it working before.

Do you by chance have any pointers for me?

Unfortunately I do not have any specific feedback regarding a fix for this. As a general note about problems with our voice chat feature I spoke with one of our programmers regarding some of the common issues we have been seeing. I can assure you we are aware of the problems and doing our best to resolve them. Here is the response I got from one of our programmers regarding some of the issues we've been seeing with not being able to hear party members even though they can hear you:

"
A: Sadly, there’s a lot different reasons that could happen. Such issues could be related to the voice chat client and/or server code (I’ve already fixed numerous bugs in here), our regular chat code that’s responsible for managing channels (**** fixed a bug in here), network connections between our servers and Vivox’s servers, bugs in Vivox’s server and/or client code, and the end user’s hardware. Unfortunately, these issues are generally pretty hard to figure out without being able to locally reproduce them. To that end, I’ve been working with QA to test & identify some of the potential causes using our in-game debug tools. Most recently, I modified the behavior for both our regular & voice chat audio systems with regard to the user’s selected device. This had originally been setup up slightly weird so that it’d prefer your last used device when you started up the game, wasn’t allowing users to change devices for the regular sound system post-launch, and would have issues if you tried to switch between identically named devices. "

We're working on it and appreciate your patience.

kwsapphire wrote: »

It would be great to have the option to quiet other sounds when someone is speaking in voice chat. This may actually already be an option but if so, it's not clear. I'd like the ambient sounds, power execution sounds, NPCs, etc all to drop to a low volume while someone in the team is chatting, rather than having to readjust all my volume settings all the time.

I'm also pleased to report that we've put in a request for just such a feature today. I was told that it should not be difficult to implement. However, I cannot make any guarantees as to when we will see something like this go live, but it has been requested and is in the works.

We hope you're enjoying Fury of the Feywild! Before our next content update We've been looking at some of the older ambiences in the game and improving them as able. Personally I've been working on improving the audio for the dracolich as he needs a bit of an overhaul. We've also been reviewing some of the VO for our critters and trying to get them to stand out a little more.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Keep your ears open out there and we'll keep squashing the bugs and making things better!

kwsapphire · August 2013

spirals999 wrote: »

I'm also pleased to report that we've put in a request for just such a feature today. I was told that it should not be difficult to implement. However, I cannot make any guarantees as to when we will see something like this go live, but it has been requested and is in the works.

Outstanding, thank you very much! (And a thumbed nose at all the people who say the developers don't listen to player feedback! :P)

sianeka · August 2013

I love the audio in this game, great job!

Glad to hear Howler noises will be reduced in volume a bit; don't mind hearing them, but it is a bit obnoxious to hear them drown out all other sounds. Now, please adjust those Control Wizard (storm? lightning?) spells - too loud when they cast them over and over (and how do they do that, btw? My CW has a cooldown period after casting them once...)

More and varied/different ambient music for the different areas would be awesome.

Volume controls for Voice Chat were almost unmanageable ... could not adjust volume of other players easily, except to mute them or make them scream (extreme ends of slider toggle). Haven't played with my group for a little while now, so not sure if it has been fixed, but I hope so. It's annoying that one cannot adjust the volume of how you hear the other players in the group. Slider toggle wouldn't work in increments except randomly. Only could reliably slide it to one end or the other to effect a change in volume. It would "slide" away from other settings attempted and not stay at the point where the curser was slid to.

[Feedback] Neverwinter Audio-related Feedback

Comments