Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Voiced NPCs are talking WAY too much!

Bumping this thread for justice.

no one has as many friends as a man with many cheeses!

i just registered on the forums to add my voice (no pun intended) to the complaints about the incessant NPC chatter. i love this game, but this bug is bordering on game-breaking

it just kills the superb immersion that has been built up by the devs. I really hope its patched ASAP.

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.

No it's not blowing it out of proportion. This needs a fix asap. It's not about volume but how often they repeat their lines. It's annoying and distracting. After 10 minutes in town I had enough.

It's not blown out of proportion in the slightest. In about 25 years of playing most all PC RPG's that are released, I've never heard any spammed voice audio as ridiculous as what's going on in certain areas of this game.

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

as others have said, its not about the "VOLUME" but rather the frequency of repetition. standing on the pier for about 2 mins and i hear the same 2 or 3 lines voiced over and over about 7 times. and from a HUGE distance away

Agreed, too repetitive, especially in some areas. It's too bad since the voice acting is actually really good.

This needs to stay on the first page. Game is really awesome and I actually like the voice acting, but this NPC repetition is driving me nuts.

100% agree with this thread. While I love the chatter while entering a marketplace, it is repetitive to a fault. Plus, you need to be far away before it doesn't sound like they are yelling in your ear. Voice acting is great and just fine, just need to lower the volume, increase the timer where they repeat, (if repeating is necessary) or add more dialog. The latter would be harder to implement, so I'm all for lowering the frequency.

Also created an account just to agree with this thread. Who knows, maybe it's a grand ploy by Larian to get more people signed up! Seriously though, this HAS to be fixed. Between the moaning she-orc and the groaning sick men while I'm trying to read dialogue I thought I was going to rip out what little hair I have left. Incredibly disappointing and confusing why this thread on here, nor on Steam, hasnt gotten any official response.

Vendors should probably bark only like once every two minutes, and staggered so they don't all bark at the same time.

And of course, as we've said before many times, the range at which you can hear the voices, and the range at which the NPC chatter enters the dialogue box should be reduced to match your hearing stat (which is around 12m). A 30 meter range is just too large, even if it is just text. It spams the log terribly with a 30m range. What the heck is the point of the "Hearing" stat if it doesn't actually do anything?

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.

There's a certain goblin merchant on a certain bridge yelling at a certain pack animal, and the loop has 0 delay. It's incredibly distracting, especially with the character's way of speaking. It sounds like he's just speaking a single, unending sentence.



Please, please, please make it stop. >_<

I think I'm one of the few that simply doesn't notice all the chatter much. It hasn't seemed as overbearing as some are implying in my experience. I know it is there, but it's not overwhelming. This might be because I'm not playing the game with headphones, and am running sound through my computer speakers.

That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to staggering the NPC chatter, and lowering the distance it could be heard from. I would still like to hear a dull buzz in the background when in a city simply for immersion. A city environment shouldn't be devoid of ambient sounds and the "hustle and bustle", but all of that also shoulnd't be so overwhelming as to distract the player.

In addition to the suggestions here, I think it would also help that while in dialogue, voices automatically toggle off, or are reduced to like volume 1 or 0. I'm hearing plenty of people say they shut off their volume as soon as they engage in dialogue to help them read.

This is really getting to me now. I can't concentrate on the story or the dialogue, it's ruining the game for me.

I am going to put it down until something is done about it.

How cool is that? Thank goodness I don't have to stop playing.