Originally Posted by Deitri
Originally Posted by Gyson
I finally got to the marketplace in Cyseal (and even toured the entire town) to see what all the complaining about.

I didn't hear anything even remotely annoying with the voice volume or frequency. Certainly nothing as bad as this thread makes it sound. To me, the market sounded like a marketplace (and the friend I was playing with also agreed). It's not supposed to sound like a library. And I didn't have a problem hearing the personal conversations I was having (with other NPCs, nor with my friend on voice-chat).

I really feel some of you are blowing this out of proportion. Maybe the volume could scale down more quickly with range, but I personally don't see anything drastic needing to happen here.

Now, I will say that the one place the voices do tend to get both loud and annoying is in closed environments where a lot of reverb occurs. I think the amount of echo is over the top.


Like thisisnighthawk said, it's not about the volume, it's about the incessant loop of same phrases.


So, you're suggesting people would be happy with the same amount of background chatter, but in the form of more unique lines to cut down on how often the same statement is repeated?

I found that doubtful, and it's also highly unlikely that the developers are going to be able to add in more unique voiced lines. Which, unfortunately, leaves us with only two solutions:

1) Increase the impact distance has over volume, so distant chatter is more quiet, heard less clearly, and less often from far away.

2) Increase the amount of "dead air" time between comments.

I'm not a big fan of that second option, as I would rather have constant chatter in a place like the market instead of a lot of eerie silence. Having played the alpha/beta I'm familiar with how silence in the marketplace sounds, and it feels much more alive now by comparison.

I think the first option is worth trying out before taking the more drastic route of the second. In the end, people on all sides of this are going to be disappointed with the results. Where as one person may be satisfied with a 30 second interval between NPC statements, another person won't be happy until it's 1 minute, or 2 minutes, etc.

Also, some of you may need to tweak your voices volume setting, because it really isn't as deafening as some of you are making out, and I can only assume your voice setting is cranked too high.