[MEGATHREAD] Can You Hear the Audio Issues? I Bet You Can! 🔇

EDIT: Somehow this got moved into Technical Support, I guess by a mod, but I don’t want it to go there. This needs to be kept in front of the Overwatch community so more people can raise flags about the issue. Talking about this major problem in the Bug Forums hasn’t accomplished anything, it’s just been sitting and persisting for months with no action by Blizzard. I want to get more voices talking about it and that’s not going to happen if it’s moved to another forum and left to die like all the others that people have posted about this problem. If I were more cynical I’d almost be convinced Blizzard is intentionally trying to silence discussion on this major bug issue.

I’m at my wits end here. Missing audio and weird volume inconsistency has been breaking this game for me and others over the past few months. This has NOTHING to do with my setup, I’ve uploaded videos of the audio issues directly from my PS4 to YouTube so anyone can hear these issues for themselves on their own systems. Check them out in all their horrible glory.

Here in a quiet area a WB right behind me requests heals, and the only thing you hear is the chat feed sound effect:

Here a Symmetra shoots energy blasts at me from the side point blank, you don’t hear the charge up or the firing and can only barely hear when the shots land. Wait a moment later and in the killcam you can hear these sound effects, but they’re low:

Here a Roadhog uses a jumppad to flank kill me, but the sound effect for the jump is barely audible. In killcam you can hear the sound effect as he uses it, but the volume is absurdly low, but when I respawn and use the jump pad you can hear the sound effect at normal volume.

Here, besides seeing a baby D.Va shooting with no sound effects at all, a Brigitte literally walks up to me from behind and kills me out of nowhere, no footsteps sound effects at all. You can see in the killcam she’s not crouch-walking:

And this time with a Mei who apparently is floating over the ground, even though moments earlier Widow’s footsteps are so loud it’s like she’s tapping her stillettos directly into your ear:

Here I walk right into a venom mine and guess what, no sound when I trigger it:

Here Symmetra’s sentries are firing their lasers at me, but the laser doesn’t make any sound effect at all. You can hear the initial sound effect when the sentry engages and the burning sound as the lasers hit me, but not the laser itself, which means I can’t tell where the attack is coming from:

Here’s a bonus Widow sound effect issue. For some reason her shots make this weird metallic sound when they hit enemies. From a far distance I miss a few shots intentionally to show what it sounds like without the weird sound, and then I land a few hits on a training bot where you can hear the sound, as though it’s right next to you:

Another bonus missing sound issue: lootboxes not playing voicelines when you select them:

Seriously, I’m getting so frustrated with all these audio issues in the game. And these are just the one’s that I personally am experiencing, other people have been complaining about this off and on over the past few months as well. I even made a post listing out all their complaints:

I keep posting about this in the Bug Reports forum and haven’t gotten any feedback, and obviously nothing has been updated on this front as I and others continue to experience these issues.

If anyone else is experiencing these problems, make your voice heard. This is getting ridiculous and needs high profile attention pronto. :unamused:

[This is a bug report and needs to be posted in the correct location so the correct teams can look into it. Post moved back to Bug Report forum by Forum Moderator.]

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Let’s make some NOISE about this so it can get fixed! :clap:

EDIT: Since the OP has been locked so that I can’t actually add in more evidence or send it back to General Discussions for community scrutiny, I’ll update this comment with new audio issue videos and a list of player threads over the past few months from people who have encountered this issue:

New Audio Issue Videos

No Sound FX on Health Packs

Player Audio Issue Threads

It starts to add up after awhile, y’know? :unamused: And keep in mind, in many of these threads there are multiple people who comment saying they’re experiencing the same issue.

EDIT: Here are some more:

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I noticed this with reaper ulting a few times. Like no teleport sound or even his walking to get into position. Glad to know it not just him and me imagining it.

I have had many questionable audio moments in the last few months. Def need to be resolved

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Yep, it’s been happening with Reaper too, sometimes McCree I’ve noticed as well. This guy made a post about it about a month ago:

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bigger voice issue is when you respawn as widow and you hear your gun fires SO LOUD AND NON STOP and the only when to stop it is from actually shooting your gun. it’s been in the game since i started playing (september of last year… so almost a full year)

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As Mercy, when you’re healing a teammate sometimes the heal sound effect will cut out as well. It has always done this rarely but now it happens atleast 4 times a game.

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Oh man that’s been happening to me too! It just keeps shooting and the only way to stop it is to shoot.

Also been getting the issue where no music plays on the splash screen announcing the map you’re going to fight on. You’ll just hear “Now going to Ilios” but there’s no music at all.

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also voice commands don’t work on busan but i guess it’s just a bug for now

It’s also a PC issue, but there was a patch addressing something or rather to do with sound, and I would need to play a bit more to figure out if its still a thing. Not something you can instantly tell since yknow, it’s silent xD

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Happened to experience the same issues a lot of times!

But sometimes I can’t even hear Ultimates!

Like dying from “High Noon” without hearing the voice line or SFX!

Or when Mercy uses Valkyrie - the voice line bugs and you can’t hear it when she start using it.

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My audio issues I have are voice chat. It’s horrendous.

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The no-Ultimate sound problem has happened to me, too. I was on Hollywood and my teammate Hanzo ulted, and I heard it. But as I walked out onto point the enemy Hanzo’s dragon barrelled right into me out of nowhere, it was completely unannounced. It’s happened to me with McCree and his “High Noon”, too.

Not hearing an ult announcement is definitely high on the list of problematic audio issues. I wish I had recorded them when I experienced them, but sometimes my PS4 runs out of memory because of too many captures so I can’t post.

If these things happen to anybody make sure to record and post about them here! We need to let Blizzard know what’s going on so they can prioritize this issue!

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It seems like a mod tried to move this topic into Technical Support. Don’t move it where nobody can see and talk about this problem, where it will just be left to die forgotten like all the other posts people have made about the issue.

I really hope it isn’t an indirect attempt at “silencing” discussion on this major problem. :unamused:

I’ve experienced not hearing ults (A lot of enemy McCree going “Draw!” and enemy D.Va going “Nerf this!”) lately or only hearing the last few seconds, footsteps sounding wierd or nonexistent, along with the sounds of shots, including my own disappearing or shattering my ears for awhile now.

I play mostly on PS4 but I hear it on PC too. It can really throw you off.

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Me too, I’ve had exactly these issues! I play on PS4 as well and have also been hearing from PC players experiencing the same. It doesn’t happen all the time but when it does it definitely messes up matches.

It’s good to hear from someone who can vouch for this issue happening on multiple platforms. This is very important, because it suggests there’s something wrong specifically with the game code itself, and not the system or audio setup.

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The amount of times i just get 1 shot out of nowhere by a Reaper and in the kill cam he teleported right behind me/next to me or walked right up behind me with zero sound is absurd.

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You’re not alone, other people have been reporting the no-Reaper sound problem over the past few months. At first you wonder whether or not it’s just balancing to make it easier for Reaper to kill, but according to the original GDC presentation on the game’s audio design they originally experienced exactly what you are as a problem, and made changes to the system to prioritize audio so that specifically flanking Reaper’s would have counterplay. Apparently it’s all reverted back to the original problem, either as a bug or intentionally as a temporary fix for an even bigger problem.

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These are definitely issues however I’m pretty sure some of them can’t be heard due to the other audio clutter in the game.

In many of the videos I posted there aren’t any other sounds that would be interfering. But it is true that possibly the audio priority in the game is getting messed up somewhere, and other sounds are unintentionally knocking the audio priority of more important, closer sounds down such that their assigned volumes are low or inaudible.

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I guess the question is: what do you expect Blizzard to do about it? Programming for consoles appears pretty far outside their expertise. :slight_smile: