Poxburster audio gets drowned out by other enemy audio far too easily, it’s a crime. Poxbursters are now the most lethal special because of how often they’ll approach players with other enemies covering their sound for them in auric.
Also poxbursters behind doors are completely silent.
Steps to Reproduce (Required):
Regular play conditions
Poxbursters
Other enemies such as maulers, crushers, snipers, mutants, dodging bullets, daemonhosts
The amount of times I lost half hp or just popped zealot passive for no better reason then poxburster being silent amongst a group of 30 men is beyond me.
I whole heartedly hope and pray that fatshark can finally fix the audio or allow for some kind of audio prioritization where bursters/trappers/hounds can always play over other audios, though I do not really have an issue with hounds its much more of an issue with trappers and bursters.
Also doorbursters are one of the most unfun things in the game where I can literally just walk next to a door to push off some enemies and get hit by a completely silent bursters from inside the door and no way to counter it other than literally stay the hell away from every door in the game because a silent burster can spawn and totally screw up your run.
Also I swear bursters can very rarely explode on their own without being triggered just a spontaneous combustion lol.
The first case and the last case sounds like a volume issue. A game changing special enemy that close should be heard. Still, how loud is depending on the context. Wthishat happened before that sequence is also important in terms of what priority the Poxburster sound got. Still, it should be heard in some way.
The middle one is a bit tricky. There’s a lot of competing sounds with the same high priority (all those specials coming in at almost the same time). We are working on the systems that calculates what should be heard in these situations. It’s hard from such a short clip to give you an explanation why the Poxburster wasnt heard. But it should definitely be heard and we hope our work in these systems will deliver better in these situations going forward. When these sound system fixes are in they will be mentioned in patch notes so keep an eye out!
With the latest hotfix I am noticing it never plays the ticking at all until the last second before it activates and then dives+explodes. Killed multiple runs now. I didn’t take a video but you can look at any place people can complain about it to find evidence.
Not only Poxbursters but all specials suffer from this audio bug. Poxbursters and disablers are the most painful though.
It didn’t used to be this bad and this should be the #1 priority to fix for Fatshark.
It happens about 5 times per damnation run and players shouldn’t be reliant on a visual mod.
Here I got a bit more context hopefully. The burster started making sound as it was about to blow next to our faces. I am aware that psykers create their own volume clutter but at the same time none of my other teammates were even looking at the direction of the burster because there was no audio until the very last second.
You can also see the red line (which I failed to notice in my run) from a mod that as far as I’m concerned reads when the game THINKS the sound for a specific mob is being played out. I can hear zapping, my allies talking for some reason but not the walking deathbomb that should be pinging from miles away. There is a door to the right but still, we should have heard at least a click or two and if not maybe the burster spawn sound but nope nothing until it was pretty much too late.
in OPs second video, you can hear the mutie immediately get muffled/turned down soon as the character starts talking and gets turned back up soon as she stops talking. she then starts talking again and you can see the mutie muffle during the burster push
it is this turning down of the audio all the time everywhere thats the problem. can we get rid of this feature? is there some limitation for letting all the audio play and let our brains sort out whats priority? i mean, we def don’t need a system telling us what to hear and when. let us determine what is priority. thats literally a skill that needs developed.
If this helps you there is a mod which adds a visual cue each time a sound of a special should be played for you, therefore reducing the probablity of a silent trapper/burster Spidey Sense at Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Nexus - Mods and community
I run it as a safeguard until they fix the sound.
Can you give us an option where there is no audio priority and all sounds gets played at the same or similar level? Why is the game lowering sound levels for enemies when characters speak? Why is that even a feature in a game like this? Prioritizing noises should be a player decision, not a system decision.
Silent specials became much worse after crusher sounds were turned up.
I could dump an endless amount of videos about this issue. How much time before/after do you need? How many clips do you want? 10? 20? More? I can probably get 5-10 perfect examples per match.
This is incredibly frustrating. Of note with that clip is the 2x trappers and flamer were also silent. Audio indicated 1 hound and 1 mutant. That is very different threat level than 1 hound, 1 mutant, 2 trappers, 1 flamer.
Yeah, this is every game so far, poxbursters are the worst offenders. When a trapper starts shooting you can dodge, hard if you never get a warning they exist, but you can do it. But right now when a poxburster starts making any sound at all its too late to do anythign at all…
Last game was egregious, had a PB running from the front, it ticked 2 times, then stopped ticking all together while running towards us… basically the only enemy on the screen and no other spawns coming so it was easy to deal with, but there is definitely something very wrong with audio right now.
If audio priorities HAS to be made due to engine/audio limitations, then just make audios shorter, remove player voices, remove gunshot sounds, explosions, mob voices, but keep the warnings of attacks and spawns. A single mutant dont need to have 15 seconds of shouting and footsteps while it runs to you, with the burster thats now 3 seconds away from you is quiet.
Had a fun one where a Poxburster straight up stopped ticking when running towards us, only enemy on screen pretty much, was watching it, and ticking just… stopped… until we killed it.
It’s insane to me how bad the audio is right now - whether its because your ears are getting blasted out by mutant screaming or poxbursters and trappers go completely under the radar because the game decides you didn’t need to hear them. Even in cases where the sound isn’t actually bugged, it can be super difficult to pick important audio cues out of all the screaming, dialogue, explosions, etc. And the extreme frequency with which the audio actually is bugged completely exacerbates this issue. I can’t remember the last game I played where I felt like that audio was helpful.
It hurts just how much QoL got lost going from V2 to darktide, though I guess this issue in particular wasn’t nearly as bad before recent patches… don’t even get me started on crafting…
Glad to hear you guys are working on it but I’ll definitely say it’s right now the worst it’s ever been. Silent specials were never as plentiful and consistently silent as in this patch. Whatever you guys changed made it far worse than before.
