[Suggestion] 3 new audio options - Disable Horn Sounds, Default Horn Sounds, Horn Volume Slider

original post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/3nu1p1/suggestion_2_new_audio_options_disable_horn/

Please add these 3 new audio options:
1) Default Horn Sound - Overrides custom horn sounds on client-side only so he only hears the default "Beep" horn

2) Disable Horn Sounds - Just like the option to disable VOICE comms entirely, unchecking this option will make it so no horn sounds are heard at all, friendly or enemy.

3) Horn Volume Slider - a slider option to decrease / increase the sound level of all horn sounds. If we can do it to individual voice com channels (Platoon chat at 100% while Command Chat is at 20%), why not have a "Horn Channel" with its own volume level

Horns are annoying. I can't be the only one who thinks so. They are of no use in the game. Sure, lots of people either love them or just don't care either way. But when you have dozens of air and ground vehicles all spamming their custom horns non-stop, it gets tiresome very fast. Even when it's just 1 Galaxy or 1 harasser spamming their whale / toilet horn over and over and over again. It really wears on my nerves and adds to the "bad player experience".

There are options to control voice com volume, mute players, or turn off voice com entirely. Even block /whispers. Please add audio options to control horns.

Forumside has delivered another Skull for the Skull throne.

"Horns are OP".

Why would they do that? It's a paid cosmetic, which loses it's value if other people can just disable it on their end.
And that is a dangerous road to go down for a F2P game.

Get them to fix the ******* audio ducking on muted squeakers first -- that's a much bigger annoyance than a vehicle basically screaming "THROW C4 HERE!"

Yes, but, would you the horns?

You can only imagine the Honk rate when the ANT comes out.

yeah a lot of paid cosmetics are for the user themselves, it doesnt lose any value, but by your thinking you believe cosmetics to be a dick waving contest that is very crucial to the gameplay.

Last i checked i think the developers said they were running out of "space" to fit simple decorations on the map, i think we'd all benefit from being able to turn off rendering of infantry cosmetics so everyone looks like the default soldier. That may help people with low end computers that cant afford to render every vibrant multicolored neon clown.

I also would like to be able to choose not to hear certain sounds, in huge battles ive noticed not all sounds get processed, and id really like honking to not end up being a priority over a max's footsteps.

Though i know camo probably needs to be rendered much like every other cosmetic, the option to turn them off should exist. I mean we put this game on DX9 and made it 32bit to run on low end computers but you force people to have to render all this extra bloated content.

Otherwise you may as well make flora always on max rather than giving people the option to turn it off.

32 bit support was dropped a while back. Welcome to the modern world.

Oh no you seem to misunderstand. I have horns on the vehicles I like to use (sunderer, harasser, magrider) and I honk them, partially for my own amusement but to annoy others is also a big reason. Or to alert them of me being there.

And that's just the horn. Same can be said for the other cosmetics I own. Sure I want them to look cool to myself -but also towards others-. It's what I get for having spent money on the game. If it only showed up on my screen then I probably wouldn't have bothered and PS2 would never have survived past its infancy.

yeah so when do we drop dx9, useless bloatware cosmetics, and the Adobe flash hud?

im honestly being sorta sarcastic about sounds and honking being a problem, im more upset that developers have stated many times in the past that they were running out of "resources" and "space" but continued to pump out cosmetics while removing things like terminals and map decorations for bases and continents.

this always has angered me, honking isnt a huge issue, but if i recall they had a "low quality sound" option in planetside 1 as well as others to simply improve performance while disabling everything that wasnt absolutely necessary to run and play the game, of course without breaking it.

graphic settings have too many individual things id like to turn off or on clumped under one thing.

When rewriting the entire engine for DX11 is actually worth the cost and when the devs no longer need to make money to pay for meals and homes. I have no idea what you are talking about with the HUD.

Annoyed by the all or nothing nature of particles?

I paid good money to annoy freebies. No nerf needed for the horn sounds.

Unless its a 499DGC item that goes into the boost slot and lasts 30 days. You want to ignore what I paid for? Pay up for the privilege.

The honking shall never be silenced....it will be heard for miles.....it will haunt Pikachu's dreams....it will make Balto hide under the tables.........not even wrel will be safe.

So far, i got 3 people replying and saying "i paid real money, so i have the RIGHT to ANNOY and TROLL other people with my cosmetic."

Ok then. Lets talk about "Paying for the RIGHTS to annoy and troll". Lets I'm a paying member. I pay $10-15 a month (depending on how i'm paying for membership). Now that i'm paying money, I now have the RIGHT to ANNOY and TROLL people using /whisper and Voice Coms and you can't mute or block me. And i'm not talking about offensive things, like using fowl language. Maybe i want to take the time to /whisper you for the next 30-60 minutes and tell you about my day and how my boss makes me mad. Or about the new puppy i bought and how cute it is. Text after text after text after text after text after text.... and you CAN'T BLOCK ME. I pay money and you HAVE to receive every text I make. I don't care if you miss the /orders chat that the Biolab needs help. I demand you read about my new puppy. And guess what, 10 of my friends got a new puppy too and want to /whisper you about it, all at the same time. Nope, you can't block any of them, they all paid money too.

Oh look, I found the Proximity Chat button on my keyboard. I LOVE the song "It's a Small World" and want to share it with the 96+ zerg i'm traveling with. So i spam the Prox chat with the song i love...... and you CAN'T MUTE ME. You can't turn down my volume either and you also can't turn off Voice Coms. They HAVE to stay on. I pay money, so i have the RIGHT to ANNOY and TROLL EVERYONE. I PAY MONEY for the RIGHT to FORCE other people to listen to what i want.

Oh, but wait. There IS a "block" function for chat messages. Oh look, there are Voice Comm options to mute individual players, or turn their volume down, or the option to disable Voice Comms altogether so i dont have to listen to anyone... ever.

No online multi-player game exists where it doesn't have the option to mute or block people who are trolling and annoying you.

ok. what about people who buy armor and helmets with station cash. Now they look fancy and unique. So if you are standing in front of me, and you have a flaming skull helmet and super glowy armor or whatever, and there's all these particle effects and whatever. If i'm running on all Ultra setting and look at you, you look amazing, all decked out. But maybe i have a **** PC and run on all LOW settings. So, instead of seeing all your cool bought armor, i see nothing but the default armor. I say, "you look like every other light assault i see, you are not unique." So, you're like, "Screw that, i paid real money to look cool. the Dev's should make it so your setting at to be set to ultra to see me in all my "real money coolness", even if it affects your game play and game experience in a negative fashion.

Now, i'm not sure if armor textures work like this in Planetside 2 or not. I also play Guild War 2 where that example is true. There are lots of cool armor with particle effects. But if you run in low settings, it sets all players to standard models. But this should also be an option to help low end PC users.

YOU bought the horn for your own pleasure / amusement, you press the horn button, YOU get to hear the horn. But you want to spam the horn to "troll" other players, whether they are friend or foe. You are a negative impact to the player experience of other people. Those people should have the option to turn off or lower the volume of the horn, whether you paid for it or not.

Lets just say they add the 3 options i suggested. That doesn't mean 100% of the player base is going to outright disable the horn. Maybe they just want to turn it down so they can hear other, more important stuff. I've only see 2 arguments against having these 3 audio options added: "I paid money to annoy and troll you" and "My $5 horn purchase loses its value if the option to disable it from being heard even exists on the client's side, whether people actually disable it or not".

If you add to the "bad player experience", people will stop playing the game. It doesn't matter if they are Free-2-Play people or members who stop playing. If less people are playing, the game become less fun to play for those around. If the game becomes less fun to play, more people will stop playing and move to other games. And THAT is your downward spiral to a dying and dead game.

Troll, show off, what you call it doesn't actually matter.

What does matter is that you do pay for the right to stand out from the crowd (now whether or not this is the case is another matter entirely). This is the very lifeline of f2p games such as PS2, there HAS to be enough incentive for people to spend money, especially if it is for cosmetic stuff. Just to dress up for yourself might be enough of a reason to some, but not everyone.

Let's look at CS:GO, why do people spend money on weapon skins or knife models etc? Because they want to show off to other players. To some extent the same is also true for a game such as Dota2. And Planetside 2. And so on and so forth.

But grant people the ability to simply toggle this off? Less of a reason to spend money => bad for the game longevity.

What happened to this thread?

No idea, but I'll make my own thread about a real issue. An issue that affects us all as Planetside players! A topic so dire, I may need dramatic music.