There might be a silver lining here since Pawel Sasko responded positively (I mean constructively at least) to yet another inquiry about the issue on his latest stream to date :
Two segments interaction.
Part 1
Part 2
Hopefully his note-taking will lead to CDPR audio engineers addressing the issue in the most constructive manner...
Thanks for finally actually addressing it Pawel as I'm personally yet to receive any response to my "bug" report/inquiry from support ! Incredible...
(That ain't the way to get that best community support award
)
Two segments interaction.
Part 1
Hopefully his note-taking will lead to CDPR audio engineers addressing the issue in the most constructive manner...
Thanks for finally actually addressing it Pawel as I'm personally yet to receive any response to my "bug" report/inquiry from support ! Incredible...
(That ain't the way to get that best community support award
)
Poor Mister Pawel. Just wants to stream, enjoy his time and answer interesting questions, but instead gets questions about bugs
I appreciate the heads up, though don't worry about not getting an immediate response. They have too many tickets to go through. Right now I am simultaneously discussing at least 11 different bug reports with Support through emails.
So it gets crazy when there's no communication for a month or two and then suddenly they start replying back to every single one you submitted.
I appreciate the heads up, though don't worry about not getting an immediate response. They have too many tickets to go through. Right now I am simultaneously discussing at least 11 different bug reports with Support through emails.
So it gets crazy when there's no communication for a month or two and then suddenly they start replying back to every single one you submitted.
So it seems it didn't make it into the "final" update...
Seems like it might have... reading in between the last two lines quoted here...
Haven't tried 2.1 yet but reading this, I'm clearly not in a hurry.
This is infuriating ! How difficult is that for you people at CDPR to add a f*$!ù£ toggle for this ?!
You added a bunch of them altering the whole UI design (under the accessibility umbrella but still) but for this, you can't actually provide one...
Given the reports on how the metro is a gimmicky feature lacking both actual immersion and user-friendliness (teleports, no waiting on the side of the rail, walking around the station and seeing the carts arrive, carts' exterior not matching the interior.. basically, the mod was almost better), I doubt we'll ever get what we want back.
All we'd like is a toggle ! Just add one !!
I'd say give it another shot. I feel it's definitely better and more playable now than it was before. I tweaked the volume sliders a bit and I think I'm at (Home Theatre Dynamic Range preset - Master Volume 100%, SFX 100%, dialogue 85%, Music 90%, Car Radio 70% though different songs have different volumes so I often change it) and feel it's sort of ok. The nice thing now is you can quickly change car radio volume on the fly, when you hold R to bring up the radio menu. Still wish it was just not changed from 2.0 though I agree.
And yeah, the metro is still quite fun when you're on it but it does feel limited. Not being able to walk around the platform, or even walk around the train car is unfortunate. Then the teleport-style transitions also aren't ideal. That's exactly what so many (rightfully so) criticized Starfield for. I'm guessing it's a fairly large technical issue but it's still too bad CDPR couldn't spend more time on it, to really make it seamless and awesome.
At least many other aspects of the game were improved with 2.1. For me personally, I'm amazed they finally fixed sprinting being interrupted/cancelled by even the tiniest little obstacle. Before if you were sprinting and dropped off a curb or small ledge, it would cancel your sprint and I'd have to press shift again to sprint. This was so unbelievably annoying to me lol. This might never have been an issue with toggle sprint, but I much prefer to use "hold shift" for sprinting and boy does it movement feel so much nicer now.
Only bug I've noticed so far is in the mission The Beast in Me. Claire isn't firing her weapon as she hangs out the side of the window during the entire first race. Amazing experience so far, Metro is awesome.
I simply cannot bear this sound design decision, it does not make sense at all (however softened/reduced they made it) and it is totally immersion breaking, thus unacceptable.
They spoke yet again about immersion in their 2.1 announcement video, yet they weren't even able to do the very minimum required for it to not be broken by this metro addition which isn't even properly implemented given the aspect and size mismatch which can't be a design decision, it's a f*ç$-up.
(Funnily enough, Pawel Sasko had on several streams of his repeatedly answered the "add a metro system (there's a mod so it can be done)" requests by saying the mod wasn't immersive and not done well enough for a comparable implementation to be done to their standards.
From everything I've seen from the new metro, their implementation isn't up to these standards, period.)
Reason I brought the Metro up is it's yet again a typical way of doing things at CDPR (oversell, overhype, underdeliver - seems they just can't do things properly) and our vehicle sounds muffled down issue sadly is a perfect example :
Tiny adjustment to a bad system after wrongly implementing it instead of just either reverting or actually working on mixing to do a proper job ! Or the ideal workaround : an effing toggle !
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I should add that despite the tiny adjustment which doesn't address the core problem of this change, the fact they now added the RadioPort ("for more immersion") should even more than ever put the vehicle sounds back to the center stage, making them of higher importance than radio when driving because part of the reason players were complaining about not hearing the radio enough was they couldn't enjoy listening to radio otherwise but now that we can in even more circumstances thanks to RadioPort, there's no point in having vehicle sounds lowered anymore.
So definitely, that toggle is a must-have for immersion, accessibility and user-friendliness.
Edit: Alright, after a lot of getting used to, I must admit it's really possible to enjoy driving sounds and radio at the same time once again thanks to those 2.1 changes.
However, the overall mixing of sound levels is still unrealistic and harms immersion whenever a collision occurs, any NPCs close by are talking (all that even with radio off) or simply still having the muffling effect (although significantly reduced and somewhat better integrated - couldn't be worse than before anyway) when having radio on.
The driving sounds really are still underwhelming in how they are felt compared to the rest of the world and to achieve any decent balance, you have to set radio volume to around 75% on my end which is there again a let down as it's in fact now compromising both on driving sounds and radio sounds just to have those not-even-balanced-to-the-world sounds levels.
The only real positive in this 2.1 change is the sound stage is quite better now in that it gets good and useful panning of our issue's audio objects and delivers a more consistent and less compromised width and depth to the atmosphere.
Still, I do think the raw and (arguably) sometimes violent driving sounds from launch up to 2.0 where really better and this all should come down to a toggle for the (now lessened but still there) muffling effect and or a slider for vehicle sounds level.
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Hmm I just tested it again and for me it seems to be fixed. If I turn the radio volume completely down and hit RB to start and stop the radio while doing a burnout the changes in terms of audio treble is very subtle. It is day and night against how it was before. I don't like those artificial things, the radio volume with a higher end output like 120% would have been sufficient. But this way I can at least play again
Sadly it is not fixed.
It is not as bad as before, but still pretty bad. Some cars are almost completely inaudible with the radio on. If you're cruising with the Porsches for instance, i.e 25-40% throttle, you cannot hear it at all with music on. The Makigai Tanishi T400 and Kuma can barely be heard, either.
I will never understand why they thought this was a good idea.
They need to give us full control of the engine volume. Please let us hear our cars while listening to music.
It is not as bad as before, but still pretty bad. Some cars are almost completely inaudible with the radio on. If you're cruising with the Porsches for instance, i.e 25-40% throttle, you cannot hear it at all with music on. The Makigai Tanishi T400 and Kuma can barely be heard, either.
I will never understand why they thought this was a good idea.
They need to give us full control of the engine volume. Please let us hear our cars while listening to music.
I agree that the issue has improved with update 2.1, but there are still glaring issues for me - primarily that, while using the radio, the reverberated engine sounds of your vehicle are still louder than the source, which is jarring and feels uncanny. Also, the audio of certain vehicles seems to be balanced better than others - some are adequately loud, others are still drowned out by the radio too much.
It also seems that when the radio volume is set to 0, the vehicle audio ducking is now disabled, which is good. But if the radio volume is 5% (or greater), the vehicle audio ducking is fully applied. Perhaps if they made the amount of ducking scale relative to the radio volume it would be a better compromise? But I really wish they would just add a toggle in the audio settings to disable the audio ducking outright.
It also seems that when the radio volume is set to 0, the vehicle audio ducking is now disabled, which is good. But if the radio volume is 5% (or greater), the vehicle audio ducking is fully applied. Perhaps if they made the amount of ducking scale relative to the radio volume it would be a better compromise? But I really wish they would just add a toggle in the audio settings to disable the audio ducking outright.