The revamped sound design in 7.0

[Lazy Gecko]

So now Blizzard finally made a big push in completely revamping most of the SFX for combat abilities. Problem is... I just find it to be way too much of an overbearing cacophony now, and significantly less readable than how it was before. It feels to me like most of these were created in a vacuum with little regard for how they would actually fit in an actual ingame context, like "Hey, this new Stormstrike sounds way more powerful and awesome than it did before!" and then never bothered to test how it would gel with the fast pace of combat and all the other sounds occuring. And honestly, that's kind of the hallmark of a rookie mistake which I would not expect from a company of this calibre.

[Smank]

Sounds fine to me

[wombats23]

Yeah, some specs have really annoying sounds that remind me of how annoying some old hunter pets were before they "fixed" the pets' noises. It hasn't hampered my ability to discern some more important sounds in pvp (mainly when someone uses a kick on me), but the whole non stop whish-whooshing stuff sub rogues do is really starting to get on my nerves. Always fun to hear outlaw roll dice though. Until they get that once in a blue moon 6 buffs, then it's just bad news bears.

I don't personally find enh's noises to be too disruptive but I can certainly understand why someone who plays enh as a main spec would dislike them.

I can't imagine raiding as melee with these noises though. That sounds like a shit storm. I guess all things considered I would prefer the old sounds, but it's still too early for me to make a definite decision. I wonder if there's an add on that can mute sound SFXs?

[Deleted]

Yeah, some specs have really annoying sounds that remind me of how annoying some old hunter pets were before they "fixed" the pets' noises. It hasn't hampered my ability to discern some more important sounds in pvp (mainly when someone uses a kick on me), but the whole non stop whish-whooshing stuff sub rogues do is really starting to get on my nerves. Always fun to hear outlaw roll dice though. Until they get that once in a blue moon 6 buffs, then it's just bad news bears.

I don't personally find enh's noises to be too disruptive but I can certainly understand why someone who plays enh as a main spec would dislike them.

I can't imagine raiding as melee with these noises though. That sounds like a shit storm. I guess all things considered I would prefer the old sounds, but it's still too early for me to make a definite decision. I wonder if there's an add on that can mute sound SFXs?

I don't know whether ther is one but I know that this can be done. There was/is an addon that changes the gunsound to the old one since the new one was too wimpy for the creator or something.

[Pull My Finger]

It feels to me like most of these were created in a vacuum with little regard for how they would actually fit in an actual ingame context

And honestly, that's kind of the hallmark of a rookie mistake which I would not expect from a company of this calibre.

Sure, that's how it was. You got it figured out.

I love the new SFX, there's a lot more weight and sense of impact to melee now.

[oblakoff]

This is my new favorite complain, just after the BoP guild tabards

[Srg56]

It seems they didn't take into account the fact that you will hear these sounds non stop for years to come. It reminds me of the TBC Shattrath flight master area which was situated next to a bunch of NPCs which were sparring with their shields. I used to start flying from anywhere on the map and leave the speakers on for when i would inevitably land in the vicinity of these NPCs and start hearing the "clanks" and booms of their shields, alongside their yelling. That signaled that i had arrived in Shattrath, and i could hear it from across the house.

Now, it's Shattrath non stop, all day long, but it gets worse.

They also added voice acting to certain attacks like Death Strike for deathknights, Hammer of the Righteous for palllies, Ignore pain for warriors and to all taunts. For what reason, i do not know. It gets very, very tiring, the voices don't match as if they used other actors than who they had previously, it's jarring to hear them scream their lungs out and not pleasant to listen to at all. On my draenei paladin for example, she sounds like she's getting hit in the face with a shovel every time i use HotR and i had to pick blessed hammer instead because i couldn't stand it anymore.

On my shaman, suffice to say, i finally understood why for so many years we didn't have actual thunder sounds paired with any spells.

I haven't played WoW with sounds turned off ever, since the music is top of the industry, however the ability/spells sound design this expansion makes me want to turn everything off.

[Pull My Finger]

I haven't played WoW with sounds turned off ever, since the music is top of the industry, however the ability/spells sound design this expansion makes me want to turn everything off.

Ambience/SFX/music/dialogue sliders are all seperate, dude.

[Srg56]

Ambience/SFX/music/dialogue sliders are all seperate, dude.

Playing only with some sound effects on isn't my idea of enjoying the game. It's all or nothing, dude.

[Pull My Finger]

Playing only with some sound effects on isn't my idea of enjoying the game. It's all or nothing, dude.

Since your problem are the sound effects, wouldn't it make more sense to turn them down a bit, instead of playing only with sound effects, duder?

[thealmightymoo]

on the beta as a vengence demnhunter, the artifact ability has a very loud swoosh noise that is very annying, but beta is beta, but otherwise i have no problems with it

[Soulstorm]

I've made an "AddOn" that replaces new melee auto-attack sounds with new ones, making you hear when you actually cast a spell. To change sounds it's just a lot of manual labor... but I'll bring back most of the old sounds I'm missing, and if someone prefers new one it's just to delete the sound file of old one.

Link contains only auto-attacks, and there's a known issue with NPC's mace attacks not overwriting.

https://wow.curseforge.com/addons/classicmeleesounds/

[Srg56]

Since your problem are the sound effects, wouldn't it make more sense to turn them down a bit, instead of playing only with sound effects, duder?

The issue isn't the sound volume, duderer. You really think the first thing i tried wasn't turning everything except the music down? It's about hearing a car crash everytime i'm tanking or in party with any amount of melees. Metals are banging on each other non stop and people are screaming their lungs out in pain.

[Mirishka]

So now Blizzard finally made a big push in completely revamping most of the SFX for combat abilities. Problem is... I just find it to be way too much of an overbearing cacophony now, and significantly less readable than how it was before. It feels to me like most of these were created in a vacuum with little regard for how they would actually fit in an actual ingame context, like "Hey, this new Stormstrike sounds way more powerful and awesome than it did before!" and then never bothered to test how it would gel with the fast pace of combat and all the other sounds occuring. And honestly, that's kind of the hallmark of a rookie mistake which I would not expect from a company of this calibre.

Yeah, so listen. You not liking something doesn't automatically = 'rookie sound design mistake' - there are a lot of people, myself included, who love the animation/sound overhaul.

Seriously, the world does not begin and end with your opinion. At all.

[Pull My Finger]

The issue isn't the sound volume, duderer. You really think the first thing i tried wasn't turning everything except the music down? It's about hearing a car crash everytime i'm tanking or in party with any amount of melees. Metals are banging on each other non stop and people are screaming their lungs out in pain.

Seems like you're dramatizing a bit, dudeista. Well. Guess it's hard luck for you soundwise in Legion.

[Srg56]

Seems like you're dramatizing a bit, dudeista. Well. Guess it's hard luck for you soundwise in Legion.

Guess you're right. Hope i didn't trigger you too much with my differing opinion.

[Pull My Finger]

Yeah, so listen. You not liking something doesn't automatically = 'rookie sound design mistake' - there are a lot of people, myself included, who love the animation/sound overhaul.

Seriously, the world does not begin and end with your opinion. At all.

Yeah ... it's not "wrong" just because you don't like it.

I'm used to everyone complaining and having some issue with somethng, but the idiotic rhetoric sometimes is so annoying. It's always a catastrophy, a slap in the face, fundamentally flawed, amateur work, broken, lazy, dishonest, etc.

The kids just can't handle the fact that sometimes someone did something because they liked it that way, and thought that's how it should be. It reminds me of early stages of child development where the toddlers still don't understand that the world doesn't revolve around their perception of reality.

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Guess you're right. Hope i didn't trigger you too much with my differing opinion.

What? I can't hear your whine, I got these amazing combat sounds turned up really loud!

[Lazy Gecko]

They also added voice acting to certain attacks like Death Strike for deathknights, Hammer of the Righteous for palllies, Ignore pain for warriors and to all taunts. For what reason, i do not know. It gets very, very tiring, the voices don't match as if they used other actors than who they had previously, it's jarring to hear them scream their lungs out and not pleasant to listen to at all. On my draenei paladin for example, she sounds like she's getting hit in the face with a shovel every time i use HotR and i had to pick blessed hammer instead because i couldn't stand it anymore.

The new and more frequent combat voices might actually be the biggest part of the problem here. I play as a female orc, and starting with WoD they radically altered the noises they make during combat. They now have frequent extremly loud growls, screeches, and other guttural noises which is exponentially worse than how it was before. They sit so loud in the mix that they simply drown out any other sounds altogether. What's worse, these don't even seem to be grouped/categorized under the dialog slider, so turning that down in the options changes nothing about them.

I've made an "AddOn" that replaces new melee auto-attack sounds with new ones, making you hear when you actually cast a spell. To change sounds it's just a lot of manual labor... but I'll bring back most of the old sounds I'm missing, and if someone prefers new one it's just to delete the sound file of old one.

Link contains only auto-attacks, and there's a known issue with NPC's mace attacks not overwriting.

https://wow.curseforge.com/addons/classicmeleesounds/

The new auto attack sounds are a bit louder and brighter than the old ones, although I'm not sure they really contribute that much to the issue. This is one aspect where they actually seem to have excercised some restraint. It's the special combat abilities that now generally cover a much wider frequency spectrum, with most sounds having both lots of high and low end, and several of them tend to linger in length for so long that they overlap with how often they are spammed, which really helps turn everything into an impenetrable wall of noise.

All of these issues betray how sound is supposed to fill a functional purpose and not just an aesthetic one. It's another means for the player to orientate themselves and be aware of what's going on in their surroundings. With this new soundscape it becomes much harder to, say, identify sound cues for important abilities in a hectic PvP battle.

[Ryxxi]

Nothing wrong with new sounds. Gotta find something to complain about....

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You clearly havent played arpg games.

[Irian]

I actually completely disagree with this. In fact, my experiences have been the opposite. The smooth clangs and crashes of the new combat sounds are so much more fluid and feel like, for lack of a better way to put it, real combat than the previous. OP, I would give it a while before you say you dislike it, because it may just be that 10+ (however long you've played) years of nearly the same combat sounds has made you a bit jarred by new ones.

Oh, but since someone brought it up...I want the new combat voice files to DIAF. Although some races are fine, some have absolutely horrendous new voices that didn't even pretend to sound similar to the previous voices. Female blood elf stands out as probably the most hilariously bad one.