A Letter to the Devs (Sound Nerfs)

[Solarverse]

Dear Devs of Homecoming City of Heroes,

I remember back when this game came out, one of the primary things about this game that I loved was how the AoE sound effects would stack per NPC that it hit. It was completely amazing and this was the first game I had ever played that brought that level of realism to a game. It made you feel like you were actually there. I fell in love immediately. It was a level of class from a sound team that had never been done before. The sound team for this game thought outside the box and brought to this game something that no other game had achieved, and it was powerful, invigorating and completely immersive.

Then came the people rushing to the forums who wanted the sounds nerfed. First the toggles would fade out, leaving shield powers feeling very bland. Then came the Cone AoE for Warshades, then came the nerf against the sound effects for Kins. It seemed that one nerf lead to a new cry for more more more, it was never enough, it was never going to be enough until every last sound in game that made that stacking effect were finally obliterated from existence. In the end, the cries for nerfs won, that battle has been lost, that battle was lost right here on this very server.

However, before that happened, when this game was brought back to the players, I quickly got to work making sound mods that toned down these sounds that people took issues with, I did this for people who didn't like them, this way there would no longer be any need for a sound nerf and those of us who loved them would be allowed to keep them. Adding these sound mods for the player base was made to be extremely easy; and I will quote from a famous commercial; "even a cave man could do it."

Sadly, for whatever reason, my efforts were in vain when your staff decided to pretty much nerf every sound in game that stacked, thus completely removing that level of fun that I once had. I fought hard against that nerf before it was ever implemented, was called names by certain players, told that I just liked to troll people, even after other players made them aware of my mods that did the very thing that they wanted, to nerf sounds. Imagine that, me, a guy who spent endless hours creating sound mods to tone down sound effects for people who did not like them, or change them outright, being called a troll for wanting to keep those sounds even though I made a real effort to help make sound mods that people could use to alleviate those sounds so that those of us who loved them could keep them. It no longer matters, because your team nerfed them anyway.

My Mods were the one thing that players could use in which everyone was happy. If you hated the sounds, you could just download my mods, all made easy to use and implement. If you loved the sounds, I had a long list of mods that would even change sound effects, it gave another level to the game that all could enjoy. There was already an option players could use to turn off those stacking sounds. It already existed, no nerf was ever needed.

I ask in the most calm way I can muster, because honestly, I sting from that nerf every single day, I have not played this game a single day since those nerfs came out, but still I muster the strength to ask as politely as I can...why? Why was this done when an option existed already? Why remove that level of fun for everyone else?

Why did you nerf the sounds when there was already in place a method for players to tone them down or even outright remove them all together? There was already a system in place that made it an option instead of a forced removal. An option existed, yet you nerfed them anyway. Why would you remove those sounds instead of putting in an option for players to remove them on their own? If anything, you could have brought back the long list of sounds that were already removed and added in an option to remove those sounds, while letting other players keep those sounds. Instead, what you did was completely remove those sounds all together and left us with a game that quite frankly, I can no longer enjoy.

I don't expect that you will answer this question, it's not an easy question to answer, I'm sure. However, hopefully this letter will get you all talking at the round table and hopefully this letter will lead to solutions.

Thanks for lending an ear. Your once loyal fan, Kal Trail.

[cranebump]

Let's assume I don't want to run your mods (and that I don't run mods, in general), and that I don't really pay much attention to the sound (I do have a volume knob I can use, after all). Let's also assume you're in the minority when it comes to the importance of sound in your game experience. Is it possible to offer a mod that restores the type of sound you want, allowing it to serve said minority, without making everyone else (i.e., the majority) have to DL a mod to not have the stacked sounds? In other words, can we assume most of us are happy with the default mode, and provide a service for those who want more, rather than forcing "more" as a default, and forcing most of us to have to DL your mod?

[Techwright]

4 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Let's assume I don't want to run your mods (and that I don't run mods, in general), and that I don't really pay much attention to the sound (I do have a volume knob I can use, after all). Let's also assume you're in the minority when it comes to the importance of sound in your game experience. Is it possible to offer a mod that restores the type of sound you want, allowing it to serve said minority, without making everyone else (i.e., the majority) have to DL a mod to not have the stacked sounds? In other words, can we assume most of us are happy with the default mode, and provide a service for those who want more, rather than forcing "more" as a default, and forcing most of us to have to DL your mod?

 

As one who doesn't really know how these things work (not my "techwright" wheelhouse), is it just a matter of modding something back to an "on" position, or were things removed and are not there to mod?

[Snarky]

I honestly have no idea what the discussion is about.  To me I cannot tell the difference.  

 

Then again I am trying to hear the difference between Apfel and Apfel with an umlaut A in German.  Right now I would swear I was being catfished, it's the same sound!  (It is a very short A with a slightly different intonation. I am guessing if you do not know the speakers regular tones you guess by context....maybe I'm wrong....)

 

But it would be nice if there was an overall option in Menu/options/graphics and audio.  Like where some games have blood and no blood.

 

Ooooooo,  Threadjack attack!

Can we get more BLOOD?  Please? I'm dying for this stuff.

[lemming]

It would be nice if the game could have this stuff adjustable without having to download mods, but I assume it's not an easy thing to spin up.  And for a lot of people, even with mods being easy to install for many, some people are not that technically minded.  (I find the mod program easy, but I also have been figuring out computers for 40+ years)

 

Of course, even if it was in options, we'd still have people confused.

 

A lot of differences in opinion on what is a cool effect and what is an annoying effect.  And tons of overlap.  This is with visual and sound.   And sometimes it's how much it may repeat.

 

I think one example:  Demons.  I don't have a huge problem with them, but I can see the problem with their constant noise.  The mod for turning them into cat noises is great, but I can't run it because it annoys my wife and my cats.

 

 

[Jiro Ito]

I don't run the game sound at all.  I just can't listen to Hasten spinning up anymore.  I have music playing on another app.  The only exception is if I need to find a blinky.

[0th Power]

11 minutes ago, lemming said:

The mod for turning them into cat noises is great, but I can't run it because it annoys my wife and my cats.

 

 

That sounds like a win/win to me

[lemming]

8 minutes ago, 0th Power said:

That sounds like a win/win to me

It's a lose/lose/lose.   I live in a small space with them and I don't like annoying others, especially if I live with them.

[0th Power]

4 minutes ago, lemming said:

It's a lose/lose/lose.   I live in a small space with them and I don't like annoying others, especially if I live with them.

I like to pester my wife to the point just before she gets angry.  Its a delicate game that I lose big sometimes.

Edited April 19, 2023 by 0th Power

[Solarverse]

1 hour ago, cranebump said:

 Is it possible to offer a mod that restores the type of sound you want, allowing it to serve said minority, without making everyone else (i.e., the majority) have to DL a mod to not have the stacked sounds? In other words, can we assume most of us are happy with the default mode, and provide a service for those who want more, rather than forcing "more" as a default, and forcing most of us to have to DL your mod?

 

Well, before Homecoming, the Default was with the stacking sounds. As far as which crowd is in the minority, I honestly can't imagine it being the ones who don't want the sounds, but I could be wrong. As far as what can and cannot be done with the sound files, the short answer without getting in to the technical aspect of it, is no. Sound modders can quiet sounds or even change them to something entirely new, but we cannot add back a stacking effect once it has been removed. We can overlay sounds, but the outcome is just a huge static of noise, that happens even if you only hit one entity.

[Solarverse]

34 minutes ago, Jiro Ito said:

I don't run the game sound at all.  I just can't listen to Hasten spinning up anymore.  I have music playing on another app.  The only exception is if I need to find a blinky.

 

There used to be a mod just for that, I made it myself. It was on PK's Modder Tool, I offered my sound mods up to other modders to claim as their own, so I don't know if it is on the new sound modder tool or not, since I stopped playing just before PK quit and shut down his modder tool. So it's possible another sound modder picked it up and uploaded it to the new tool.

[cranebump]

1 minute ago, Solarverse said:

 

Well, before Homecoming, the Default was with the stacking sounds. As far as which crowd is in the minority, I honestly can't imagine it being the ones who don't want the sounds, but I could be wrong. As far as what can and cannot be done with the sound files, the short answer without getting in to the technical aspect of it, is no. Sound modders can quiet sounds or even change them to something entirely new, but we cannot add back a stacking effect once it has been removed. We can overlay sounds, but the outcome is just a huge static of noise, that happens even if you only hit one entity.

Ah. I see. Well, I don't know who is the minority now, but I assumed people don't care much one way or the other, in only because I just haven't seen much discussion/complaint about sound on the boards. I also did not notice any of the sound nerfs, personally. I guess other people did, which is why sounds are the way they are in the game now. I can't imagine it getting switched back if there, indeed, was a great outcry against the stacked sounds, as you more or less wrote there was. 

[Solarverse]

48 minutes ago, lemming said:

It would be nice if the game could have this stuff adjustable without having to download mods, but I assume it's not an easy thing to spin up.  And for a lot of people, even with mods being easy to install for many, some people are not that technically minded.  (I find the mod program easy, but I also have been figuring out computers for 40+ years)

 

Of course, even if it was in options, we'd still have people confused.

 

A lot of differences in opinion on what is a cool effect and what is an annoying effect.  And tons of overlap.  This is with visual and sound.   And sometimes it's how much it may repeat.

 

I think one example:  Demons.  I don't have a huge problem with them, but I can see the problem with their constant noise.  The mod for turning them into cat noises is great, but I can't run it because it annoys my wife and my cats.

 

 

 

Honestly, making it an option would not have been that difficult. Switching it to On would simply rerout the sound command to utilize the nonstacking sound files rather than the files that do stack. They would have simply had to create a new path for those sounds that would be utilized by the On/Off switch in options had they made one. Seeing what they can do with this game since they have let others play it, I would say this was well within their capabilities. I am the firm believer in that you don't make changes like this without making them an option. People were not quitting the game over it. Otherwise people who didn't like the sounds would have quit years ago. Those sounds have been in the game for over 18 years. If they were going to quit, they would have done so a looooong time ago. By removing those sounds without making it an option, I did however quit and absolutely will not return unless that is reverted and made an option.

As far as the mods go, I mean, if somebody can download this game, they indeed had the ability to download the mods. The modder tool was far easier than downloading this game. Personally I feel anyone who used, "I don't know how" as their excuse is just pure lazy, especially since the alternative was to get the sounds nerfed and screw it up for everyone else. Well, waht's done is done, now I am just hoping that the Devs either help me understand why, when other options were available, or even more preferably, at some point bring back those sounds...all of them...with options.

[Solarverse]

57 minutes ago, cranebump said:

 as you more or less wrote there was. 

 

Not that I am consciously aware of. Honestly, I think the people who gave a shit quit just as I did. I remember players quitting over the shield fade effect. So little by little over a long stretch of time, players who enjoyed the sounds kind of faded out. I seem to be the last player in City of Heroes who gives a shit. I could be wrong about that, but if others exist, I am most certainly the only player left who has said anything about it.

 

Edit: Failure of comprehension of what you wrote. You were saying that I wrote that there was an outcry over sounds stacking. Yes, I did write that. I thought you meant that I wrote that players were upset over the removal of those sounds, which to my knowledge, only a select few players have made complaints about it on the Test Server forums. I assume those players quit over it, they were pretty upset. So I don't know if they are still here or not.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Solarverse

[Spaghetti Betty]

I'm on both sides of the fence here. There are some AoE sounds which definitely needed a slight tuning down (Healing Aura, Full Auto), but some iconic SFX are now almost nonexistent (RIP Foot Stomp, Soul Drain, Spinning Strike).

 

But miniguns are still just as loud. Yup.

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I remember back when this game came out, one of the primary things about this game that I loved was how the AoE sound effects would stack per NPC that it hit. It was completely amazing and this was the first game I had ever played that brought that level of realism to a game. It made you feel like you were actually there.

It works the other way, too. Something I found, when I was playing with headphones on to block out outside noise, that when I was running the "Cure Lost" mission to close out Montague Castaneda's arc to gain access to the Midnighter's Club, is that when you cured the first Lost in a spawn, the other mobs in the spawn would attack the retransformed civilian — about half the time, these attacks would be simultaneous, with the mobs all pulling out their weapons and shooting as one — and when the game decided to give all the minions in a spawn shotguns, the stacked simultaneous blasts of eight or nine shotguns going off was physically painful. And I started noticing that other stacking sounds could cause the same problem — the individual sounds were fine but some of them have a sharp enough start that, when stacked, were painful to hear. That's why I argued for a change to the stacking — not to eliminate it completely, but to scale the effect so that each additional stack of a single sound increased the volume by less than the previous one, to keep them from becoming painful.

[Solarverse]

3 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

It works the other way, too. Something I found, when I was playing with headphones on to block out outside noise, that when I was running the "Cure Lost" mission to close out Montague Castaneda's arc to gain access to the Midnighter's Club, is that when you cured the first Lost in a spawn, the other mobs in the spawn would attack the retransformed civilian — about half the time, these attacks would be simultaneous, with the mobs all pulling out their weapons and shooting as one — and when the game decided to give all the minions in a spawn shotguns, the stacked simultaneous blasts of eight or nine shotguns going off was physically painful. And I started noticing that other stacking sounds could cause the same problem — the individual sounds were fine but some of them have a sharp enough start that, when stacked, were painful to hear. That's why I argued for a change to the stacking — not to eliminate it completely, but to scale the effect so that each additional stack of a single sound increased the volume by less than the previous one, to keep them from becoming painful.

 

That would have been the better option, however, honestly, just making stacking sounds an On/Off option would have been far easier than making it do what you ask here. What you suggest would take some serious code work. Both options take code work, but the one you ask for would take much much more than just making an On/Off button.

[ChzBoi]

1 hour ago, 0th Power said:

.... sometimes......

....highly doubtful it's only 'sometimes'........ 🙂

[Astralock]

As a Darkness Affinity Controller, I miss honking off teammates by obscuring their costumes via Fade, and then deafening them via Howling Twilight. 😞

[Solarverse]

48 minutes ago, Astralock said:

As a Darkness Affinity Controller, I miss honking off teammates by obscuring their costumes via Fade, and then deafening them via Howling Twilight. 😞

 

A real life debuff, lol.

[ZemX]

The big downgrade for me was when Surround Sound went away.  This game is so old it uses DirectSound3D and that hasn't worked since Windows XP.  There are some workarounds, such as Alchemy and IndirectSound that sometimes work with old games, but none of them has worked for me.  The 3D Sound option stays stubbornly grayed out in the menu.

 

I have to switch to stereo speaker mode when I run the Homecoming client now or the sound doesn't even have a left/right component.

[Solarverse]

11 minutes ago, ZemX said:

The big downgrade for me was when Surround Sound went away.  This game is so old it uses DirectSound3D and that hasn't worked since Windows XP.  There are some workarounds, such as Alchemy and IndirectSound that sometimes work with old games, but none of them has worked for me.  The 3D Sound option stays stubbornly grayed out in the menu.

 

I have to switch to stereo speaker mode when I run the Homecoming client now or the sound doesn't even have a left/right component.

 

What helped for me, was having a Left, Right and Floor Model Bass Speaker. Sounds amazing. You don't get the surround sound, but it's still a good crisp sound.

[ZemX]

15 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

What helped for me, was having a Left, Right and Floor Model Bass Speaker. Sounds amazing. You don't get the surround sound, but it's still a good crisp sound.

 

I game on headphones, so I set speakers to stereo and the sound driver to 100% Surround.  This gives it decent separation and I have no trouble finding glowies, but it's still a far cry from real 3D positional sound or even just discrete multi-channel surround.   

 

Point being, I don't ever recall being annoyed by sound effects in the old Live game and I think it's because I could play with actual surround sound.  You didn't have the sounds all ganging up and getting shot into your left ear or something like that.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Solarverse said:

That would have been the better option, however, honestly, just making stacking sounds an On/Off option would have been far easier than making it do what you ask here. What you suggest would take some serious code work.

Not necessarily; it depends on how it's currently implemented. If it's currently set up as 'volume = base * count', then you can change it to 'volume = base * (1 + log(count))', with a check for count=1 to skip the log function if you want to be clever.

[Techwright]

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

Then again I am trying to hear the difference between Apfel and Apfel with an umlaut A in German.  Right now I would swear I was being catfished, it's the same sound!  (It is a very short A with a slightly different intonation. I am guessing if you do not know the speakers regular tones you guess by context....maybe I'm wrong....)