Hearing impaired Killers need help too!
So survivors are getting some kind of visual aid update to help with the killer terror radius.
hey great!
but uh… hello, mcfly! What about killers getting visual aid for survivor sounds?
This works both ways you know.
I’m deaf in one ear and I can never tell where survivor sounds are occurring around me so like 90% I rely on visuals.
Comments
Killers are not allowed to hear. But, I can see a visual vignette as the chase music starts.
difference is giving a visual heartbeat for survivors is not an advantage as they already can hear it so it only helps people who can't but killers getting visual info on where survivors are in chase is a huge advantage.
I mentioned this in another thread relating to this topic:
There should be a visual notification when a boon is lit, because it's only an audio cue currently and of course shadowstep takes away scratchmarks which are extra essential when you can't hear any sounds.
I bet there will be no visual assistance for killers and no changes to FOV for motion sickness concerns. BHVR only seems to care about accessibility for survivor gameplay.
So people who are hard of hearing or deaf just don't get to play? We don't actually know what the visual indicator for TR is, but it could also be directional (and should be IMO, because the sound is directional)
So assuming the TR visual will be something like a heart icon that appears and grows more pronounced/brighter/beats faster the more intense the TR is, what would be the difference for showing the killer an icon of a set of footprints representing the sound of steps, or an icon of a face for injured survivor sounds.
In reality, I think certain killers are simply not meant to be able to hear this stuff while in their powers. Look at Plague or Dredge. The background noise while in their powers is so loud that it drowns out all but the closest and loudest sounds from survivors. Audio is almost used as a balancing tool in some cases.
lol not Nurses anymore. I literally mute my game when I play Nurse now. The ######### were the devs thinking with that music.
Since when have Terror Radiuses ever been directional?
Wiki specifies that lullabys are non-directional, so i assumed they were directional. In my headset i definitely hear them differently on either ear, but lullabys i don't.
They change as the Killer gets closer or further away. Ergo, by listening to how they change, you can tell the direction a Killer must be.
Yeah, i'm probably explaining it wrong, based on the distance and the map layout, you can 100% tell which direction the killer is coming from.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter. My point is, killer accessibility is terrible. My hearing isn't getting any better as i age and it doesn't help when there's such a disparity in how loud certain survivors are.
its just spine chill. if you used current spine chill. the way it works is that the meter fills itself the closer the killer is. If its stealth killer. the perk is highlight fully but does not show proximity. If its 1-1, then its definitely going to weaken stealth killers so I am not entirely sure how those killers will be compensated. In general, you will see survivor hold-W before chases and staying away from the killer before the chase begins. I do not think people realize how impactful... that change is.
a lot of survivor do not really how TR works and visual indicator could be massively improve their performance. scary.
Mind leaving some explanation to go with your linkdrop?
I hope it's not something as incredibly stupid as "this person plays muted therefore nobody ACTUALLY needs hearing even if they're not a strong Nurse main playing this one match".
Nurses music is so loud you can't hear anything else in game. Its easier to play with the game muted and just have music on then listen to the jarring new Chase Music. They made her so annoying to play now just with the new Chase Music, it wasd done as a nerf
Ah, yeah, Killers having stupidly loud chase music is... interesting. Spirit gets slapped with it too, and her whole THING is sound.
And I swear Wesker is trying to cause hearing damage.
A killers means of tracking survivor is visual (scratch marks) while a survivors means of tracking killers is auditory (terror radius). There are colour blind settings to help killers who are sight impaired to better track marks, and now there will be something to help hearing impaired survivors. And it's in a way that doesn't benefit those survivors who can hear perfectly fine.
Adding auditory benefits to all killers helps more than just hearing impaired killers. It would be a buff to the entire killer base. No more mindgaming killers when out of line of sight, since they'll know when youve left the area. If the killer is distracted then its okay, they'll get told there's a survivor nearby so dont leave the area.
That's proximity, not direction.
And if you can determine proximity, you can determine direction. Triangulation is a thing, especially with knowledge of the local geography.
Possibly, if the map geography is telling enough. Oftentimes it isn't. And regardless of a given player's intuition, a terror radius is not inherently directional.
Terror radius is non directional, while survivor's running, breathing, grunting....are directional
I understand but I dont know how can Devs help on it.
I once suggested a perk that allows killers to directionally hear a survivors heart beat within 16m. Originally this was my response for allowing killers to have something that counters the newly buffed Lucky Break at the time, but it turns out LB wasn't as popular as I had figured it would be. I mean, it removes survivors scratch marks, noises, and blood trails, which lead me to believe that killers only had direct sight of the survivors to rely on, and rightfully so, but it's honestly odd that more survivors didn't take up using that perk tbh.
Here's the Perk Description I made:
Pulsating Fear:
Your senses are finely tuned to the hearts of your fearful prey.
When chasing a survivor, their heartbeat becomes directionally audible to you within 8/12/16 meters. This effect lasts for 6 seconds after the chase is broken.
Of course... in the original post I made for it, this got lambasted by survivor mains as it was "un-counterable" perk that gives away survivor positions within an area that is far to generous, most saying that it should only affect 4-6 meters at most. I however saw it as being generous by reducing it to 16 meters, since that is the entire size of the shack + 4 meters if you are standing in the center of it, so... idk. I just like the idea of perks countering perks, like how Iron Will used to counter Stridor, or Autodidact/Inner Healing counters Sloppy Butcher, and at the time thought to myself: "If the survivors have a perk that removes all traditional tracking, then it should be ok to introduce another way of tracking them right?"
While this wouldn't help with hearing impaired killers, It could easily be adjusted to showing the survivors hearts within 16m, or even showing a pulsating directional indicator when in that range, to even providing Vibration feedback on controllers as well. Idk... Just something that the devs would have to do to enhance accessability.
Anyway everyone, please let me know your thoughts, especially considering the current state of the game.
And here's a link to the Original post, incase anyone is interested:
theyre trying to buff survivor so hard.
Sounds coming from a survivor are precise, where as terror radius is omnidirectional, you mostly don't know where the killer is coming from except for when you have game knowledge you assume where he is coming from depending on where you are and the kind of loop you are in.
While I would LOVE for killers to have more accessibility I just can't see a feasible way to give it to them for chase mechanics without it basically showing where a survivor is on the other side of the wall, one thing (that I think DBD Mobile does) is gen progress for the killer without having to directly look, that's always something that can be looked into.
you can just have a visual indicator for sounds, it doesn't have to show their exact location lol
like someone else suggested in this thread, if you hear footsteps there could be a little indicator on your screen showing footsteps, maybe the direction they came from too
"Maybe the direction they came from". That's the issue, footsteps come from the survivors feet, showing you where the footsteps are on the other side of the wall is precise information, it is their exact location.
You can already... hear the direction footsteps are coming from, though. This isn't giving you any extra information.
If it's "showing you their exact location", then you already KNEW their exact location... so it is telling you nothing.
Not really, survivor can run forward, double back, fake windows and double back, they can walk etc, and you don't hear all that all the time, the terror radius is one singular thing that only gets louder or quieter, footsteps and survivor sounds and showing you where they are during a mindgame is very different.
Killers need help with audio in general. The amount of times I didn't hear a survivor leave a jungle gym because any sort of wall no matter how thick just completely silences the footsteps.
If you can't hear it, then there's no reason it would show something you can't hear, the proposition was not for the system to give you information you wouldn't have access to normally, just to let you use your eyes where you might usually use your ears.
The fact of the matter is just because you can't hear it, doesn't mean the audio isn't playing - the terror radius and chase music is there to aid survivors in being somewhat stealthy instead of stampy moaning characters, but that doesn't mean in moments of quietness during the music you can't occasionally get info from footsteps, and that audio is always still playing regardless, just because you didn't hear it / pin point it doesn't mean it didn't play, which would obviously still make the feature being suggested activate giving you information you may not have had.
so your argument seems to be "if your hearing isn't good enough you don't deserve to have the information that's given to you", except the whole reason you would add an accessibility feature is to counter that specifically, so it sounds like you just have a fundamental disagreement with the concept of accessibility features in DbD.
Luckily though BHVR does not feel the same way, as made evident with the incoming visual terror radius.
No - that's not what I'm saying at all.
The chase music is designed to mask survivors sounds and make it harder to pin point survivors, this is intentionally hiding information to make chases more fun, footsteps + moaning isn't supposed to be 100% accurate because chase music is there on the killer side for this reason.
When part of a chase music is lower, you can hear the cries / footsteps better, when it's louder, it's intentionally louder to hide those cries / footsteps to make chases more interesting, however, it doesn't mean the audio for those isn't there, it's just a lower volume than the chase music INTENTIONALLY to make chases more interesting.
So it's not information you're supposed to have all the time, unlike a normal terror radius, which you can always hear, and always gets louder and quieter depending on the distance of the killer, there are perks and certain powers that turn the terror radius off, but never mask it, unlike chase music for footsteps.
Unimpaired people don't hear the precise direction of the footsteps and stuff because of built in sound of killer powers, chase music and ambient sounds like the fire barrels (always made me mistake them for survivor footsteps).
Giving a semi precise directional visual indicator wouldn't only help hearing impaired people but also the ones that don't need it and "buff" them in an unfair way.
They would need to blurr or fade the indicator in some way in relation to the in-game soundscape and it's volume.
Like you said, when the chase music intensifies or the killer makes use of their power it would need to become way less precise and blurry or something in that line.
But i don't think it would be a solution that hearing impaired people would be satisfied with.
But i also can't come up with a form to this indicator that wouldn't be either uselessly imprecise or brokenly unfair.
Like, my worry is that, survivors moving makes sounds, some are quieter than others, and a killer could walk over to a gen, kick it or whatever, a survivor could be hidden and slightly taps a key to get a better angle and PING, an indicator shows up showing the direction they're in simply because they tapped a key slightly.
I would love there to be a perfect solution but like you said, it would either be useleslly imprecise or ridiculously accurate, it's hard to get an inbetween.
unlike a normal terror radius, which you can always hear
Sacrifice SFX has entered the chat.
(To clarify, I agree with your overall point.)
I'm finding it very hard to find the correct words to explain it really, lol.
In my experience noises for killer really only makes any difference only once a match, so i can kinda get why they havent bothered
You must not be playing against very good survivors then.
Yeah it would need to be tailored in accordance with the in-game soundscape.
I don't even know if in your scenario the survivor would even make an audible sound and much less if the killer would be able to hear it over everything else, their own footsteps included.
It would need a live emulating code that compares sound sources and their volume and emulate what an unimpaired person MIGHT hear and create a similar visualization.
And even then it wouldn't be a real substitute because how would it work to show something is behind you and be vague enough to represent the miniscule nature of the sound that might be heard.
It seems like such a complicated issue for such minority that, afaik, doesn't have such an accessability feature in any first person game like a shooter were directional sound awareness is truly necessary. I just can't see bhvr being the first to make such an effort.
I’m colourblind and haven’t found they make any difference at all.
I still can’t see scratch marks on many maps, and still can’t see downed or hooked survivors on farm maps.
I don’t think they affect scratch marks at all tbh?
Hmmm, maybe your colour blindless is more acute or something? I (as far as I'm aware) am not colour blind, and can absolutely see a difference in Scratch mark colours.
For what it's worth, I think people should be able to choose their own scratch mark colour / map dependant coloured scratch marks.
Default is red
Deuteranope is a light orange/brown
Protanope is a pinkish-red
Tritanope is a more vibrant red
I feel like everyone is ignoring a very obvious answer...aura reading perks/addons. I already have hearing damage in my left ear pretty badly and I just run an aura reader or two and I don't usually have a problem keeping up with survivors.
But the auditory clues tell you the same information. That is the point. If i hear a survivor on the other side of the wall, i heard them, i know they are there. If someone is hearing impaired, why should they play at that disadvantage?
Right, so then you wouldn't HEAR that information, so they wouldn't show a visual indicator. I am missing the point here.
Yea that's evident, even though you can't hear it, doesn't mean the sound isn't playing, if you turned the chase music off, the steps would be playing, but the game can't determine what your brain heard, so you may have heard that grunt, or grass move etc, or you may not have, but that audio is ALWAYS there, so you would always be getting info from the visual indicators.
I literally am struggling to see how people aren't understanding this, if a survivor behind a pillar presses w, the audio plays, but it doesn't mean you heard it or recognised it as a survivor movement, the game however knows what that is, it knows it's a sound a survivor would make, and would just ping the "visual indicator" showing you that a survivor was there.
It's simple.
If the audio played, and it was physically possible for the killer to hear it thus knowing "where" the survivor is relatively speaking, then an indicator is shown for people who are hearing impaired.
if the audio cannot physically be heard, due to being too quite, too far away, iron will, chase music, etc. Then the indicator is not shown.
But that doesn't factor in ambient sounds.
And also, what keeps unimpaired players from using this as an additional advantage?
If i use a killer with loud ambient voice or am standing right next to a fire barrel then i won't hear breathing or food steps, but with your solution it would show an indicator either way since the sounds played and SHOULD BE audible even when they aren't for unimpaired people because they were masked/overshadowed by ambient noise.
Turn your music on full blast, have someone tap the floor, sometimoes you'll hear the taping, sometimes you won't, the game cannot decide when you would and wouldn't hear this, brains are dumb and smart. HOWEVER the systems in the game will always see both of these happening and show you even if you didn't hear it.
My problem with using stuff like chase music to make things hard to hear is the same as my problem with trying to use darkness to make things difficult to see, or having no crosshair available.
You're giving a huge advantage to people willing to use external software, which isn't available at all for console players, and isn't practically bannable either.
Everyone already knows about NVIDIA filters for visuals. But Windows itself has a volume normalization option that makes footsteps and the like much easier to hear, and lowers the volume of the chase music. If you're truly sweaty, you can even use an equalizer and tune it to boost those sounds even further or use a compressor (the only ppl ive ever heard of doing this are spirit mains though.) All of this is super common in other FPS games like PUBG.
How about the devs for once dont screw over killers when they touch something sound-related?
I think its been atleast thrice they tweaked something resulting in worse hearing for killers. Like x0,8 x0,8 x0,8.
Remember when they added sound ocvlusion and you now cant hear generators through a wall? (Its old but relevant)