Just wanted to shout this out, since I hadn’t noticed it in the patch notes before experiencing it in-game.
For those who haven’t been affected or heard about the longtime issue, the past several patches (and for some people even before that, apparently) didn’t play audio from sources through walls. For example, if I were standing next to a wall, listening carefully for a Roadhog’s footsteps, the Roadhog could walk around the corner without crouching, and the first audio I would hear to warn me that he was coming would be when his foot touched the ground after he entered my sight.
While this patch overcompensates to a comical degree, making it so people walking behind walls sound like they’re standing an inch away from my ear, I’ll take this version any day over the near-complete lack of audio from the previous patch.
It will take some getting used to before I stop turning around to try to melee someone who’s actually in a totally different room, but now we have access to the spatial information we’re supposed to have, and that’s the important part. So, thanks.
I think it just makes everyone’s much louder, especially if there’s a wall/obstacle between you and the audio source. Mercy, Widowmaker, and Symmetra’s footsteps are naturally more perceptible in general, because they wear high heels, so their footsteps have a much sharper and higher-pitched sound than most characters.
Yes, got jumped repeatedly by Doom, McCree, Brig, Hog among others in DM and when I mentioned there was a sound bug in play people just laughed and said “git gud”
This has gone on since about 1 month before Echo’s release.
Yeah, I was having the same issue. It was always incredibly frustrating to walk around a corner and silently come face-to-face with Junkrat/Reaper/Roadhog at point-blank, and then watch the kill cam to see that they were just walking around normally the whole time.
I thought some things sounded way louder, glad I’m not going crazy. I’ve still noticed a few bugs where some sounds don’t play, but they seems to be a lot less frequent. I’m glad it seems they’re finally starting to fix the audio issues
This is just a guess without seeing the audio files, but they’re probably not technically any louder than others; we probably just notice them more. Our brains are a lot better at identifying quick, high-pitched sounds than extended, lower-pitched sounds.
I’m a game dev myself and occasionally do some basic audio engineering (need to fill multiple roles in small shops sometimes). Several years back, I put in a sort of “ka-ching” sound for collecting money in a game, with a sharp, high-pitched ring to it. People would always playtest with padded headphones or even in-ear buds for audio, but nothing could stop that sound from carrying. It didn’t even seem especially loud when playing, but everyone else could distinctly hear that specific sound coming from people’s earphones on the opposite side of the office every time it happened.
But it. Isn’t. Me! It game!