Golden words beat swords - Potential of player's instrumental voice.

[Shpick]

As of so far, the player's voice lacks IMPACT, DYNAMICS, UTILITY. 

IMPACT - This instrumental feature is mainly inspired by Dont Starve's (DS) voices, but if you notice in the latter, while the voices are quite obnoxious, their volume is never too loud or too long to obscure sounds that a player must hear, anecdotally, i long to hear Wilson repeatedly examine a nearby tree as i am waiting for the night to end, that must mean it isnt as obnoxious as VS. What i suggest for impact, is to shorten and soften the players voice in VS, and have settings for vocal volume. maybe even have the settings to change how harmonious or abrasive the notes composed are in the player creation.

The player could have different intensity depending on how much damage he takes, if its like 1dmg it could be very short and lower-pitched than normal. Taking more than 50% of health damage would obviously warrant an instrumental weep for mercy in long and higher-pitched drawn-out notes, maybe even after taking damage the player would grunt instrumentally. 

When suffering hunger damage, instead the voice would be minimized, as of right now the notes are too long and too loud, how about every half minute the player makes a short sound, while in between his stomach grumbles? The notes become longer and the grumbling more intense as the health nears 0.

DYNAMICS - You type something in the chat....and...wheres your voice? you devs got a really cool and interesting idea of every player having a unique player-customized voice, and we dont get to hear it work in ingame conversation!!?? it could vaguely sound the letters or words written, obviously the volume and length of notes should be optimised so it isnt annoying.

UTILITY - Not all predators are hungry, but some are scared and caught offguard by you barging in, thus they attack you, however if you are further away and loud and yell about maybe they will roar back to alert you so you know not to go there, maybe they will run off, or roar and hunt you. What if your voice could be heard? Imagine you are hunting a bear and it just runs away and goes to sleep, so you type "AAAAAAAAARGH" in the chat, and the bear hears it and moves towards you? i mean you could achieve the same by throwing a stone, but realistically you could also yell.

Maybe different types of instruments and pitches scare different predators, like high pitched sounds would scare monsters but would attract predators while low pitched screams would have a chance to scare animal predators but attract monsters. 



Every Instrument would have a unique gimmick to it, trumpets are the sounds of Heaven, end of days, it would probably not just scare away monsters, maybe reveal the hidden ones (now i know the monsters dont really hide, but if that was ever implemented...), maybe it weakens monsters or slightly changes their combat behaviour? 

Accordions may attract monsters, have a small chance to either pacify or even anger a monster. maybe uplift the mood of other players and up their stats? 

Alto Flute may work on fish, maybe slow them down or attract them towards you, maybe monsters would sleep from that voice, but you would invite more monsters to spawn near you.

Harmonica can lower the spawn rate of monsters, but may attract wild animals.

Oboe can revive monsters but it also heals you and other people, it can stop monsters but it lures animals.

Tuba attracts fish especially if its low pitched.

obviously these are crackshot ideas for every instrument, i would need to look up more on historical folklore relevancy and mythology surrounding instruments themselves. They should all have a negative downside that would fit well for them and counter their upsides. They are not supposed to be strong, but can let players experiment with their playstyle.


 

[ifoz]

32 minutes ago, Shpick said:

Every Instrument would have a unique gimmick to it, trumpets are the sounds of Heaven, end of days, it would probably not just scare away monsters, maybe reveal the hidden ones (now i know the monsters dont really hide, but if that was ever implemented...), maybe it weakens monsters or slightly changes their combat behaviour? 

With the instruments being implied in the "Ghosts" short story to be a representation of different accents, it's very funny to imagine monsters being drawn to/scared of a specific accent. 

It's an interesting suggestion though, and I do agree with the damage noise ideas. I feel like the hunger noise has been changed in 1.22 though, I was testing the release candidate and it seems shorter and a little lower pitched than I remember.

Edited yesterday at 01:08 PM by ifoz

[PoisonedPawn777]

Along with the fall damage, I barely hear a noise when taking a tiny amount of fall damage in the rc. I'd like the ability to yell at creatures in game, having the different instruments have different functions may be a bit far.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Shpick said:

The player could have different intensity depending on how much damage he takes

This is a thing in 1.22. I'm not sure what the threshold is, but for hunger damage and tiny falls the character vocals are rather muted.

 

2 hours ago, Shpick said:

Maybe different types of instruments and pitches scare different predators, like high pitched sounds would scare monsters but would attract predators while low pitched screams would have a chance to scare animal predators but attract monsters. 

I like the idea that the player could use emotes to potentially scare away wildlife, but I don't think it should be a tactic that works on monsters since, well, they aren't normal creatures. If monsters were attracted to player-made sounds that might be different, since that is a thing in the "Ghosts" short story, but I'm not sure how well it would actually work in practice in the game.

 

2 hours ago, Shpick said:

Every Instrument would have a unique gimmick to it, trumpets are the sounds of Heaven, end of days, it would probably not just scare away monsters, maybe reveal the hidden ones (now i know the monsters dont really hide, but if that was ever implemented...), maybe it weakens monsters or slightly changes their combat behaviour? 

Accordions may attract monsters, have a small chance to either pacify or even anger a monster. maybe uplift the mood of other players and up their stats? 

Alto Flute may work on fish, maybe slow them down or attract them towards you, maybe monsters would sleep from that voice, but you would invite more monsters to spawn near you.

Harmonica can lower the spawn rate of monsters, but may attract wild animals.

Oboe can revive monsters but it also heals you and other people, it can stop monsters but it lures animals.

Tuba attracts fish especially if its low pitched.

It's a neat idea, but not a thing that should be in the game, in my opinion. Players should just pick the vocals they prefer to listen to. If those vocals have unique game effects and aren't just sound, then players are going to feel pressured to pick the "best" option for the class they intend to play, which might not be something they find pleasant to listen to. Sure, they could just adjust things via mods, but I don't think that's ideal in this situation.

[williams_482]

 

3 hours ago, Shpick said:

As of so far, the player's voice lacks IMPACT, DYNAMICS, UTILITY. 

IMPACT - This instrumental feature is mainly inspired by Dont Starve's (DS) voices, but if you notice in the latter, while the voices are quite obnoxious, their volume is never too loud or too long to obscure sounds that a player must hear, anecdotally, i long to hear Wilson repeatedly examine a nearby tree as i am waiting for the night to end, that must mean it isnt as obnoxious as VS. What i suggest for impact, is to shorten and soften the players voice in VS, and have settings for vocal volume. maybe even have the settings to change how harmonious or abrasive the notes composed are in the player creation.

The player could have different intensity depending on how much damage he takes, if its like 1dmg it could be very short and lower-pitched than normal. Taking more than 50% of health damage would obviously warrant an instrumental weep for mercy in long and higher-pitched drawn-out notes, maybe even after taking damage the player would grunt instrumentally. 

When suffering hunger damage, instead the voice would be minimized, as of right now the notes are too long and too loud, how about every half minute the player makes a short sound, while in between his stomach grumbles? The notes become longer and the grumbling more intense as the health nears 0.

Damage noises are frequently complained about and you do a good job digging into why. I hope the current crudely synthesized noises are placeholders and making them more generally pleasant is in the long term vision, but who knows. 

3 hours ago, Shpick said:

UTILITY - Not all predators are hungry, but some are scared and caught offguard by you barging in, thus they attack you, however if you are further away and loud and yell about maybe they will roar back to alert you so you know not to go there, maybe they will run off, or roar and hunt you. What if your voice could be heard? Imagine you are hunting a bear and it just runs away and goes to sleep, so you type "AAAAAAAAARGH" in the chat, and the bear hears it and moves towards you? i mean you could achieve the same by throwing a stone, but realistically you could also yell.

Maybe different types of instruments and pitches scare different predators, like high pitched sounds would scare monsters but would attract predators while low pitched screams would have a chance to scare animal predators but attract monsters. 

I haven't yet decided if I actually want this in the game, but it's a delightful and hilarious idea. 

[Shpick]

4 hours ago, ifoz said:

With the instruments being implied in the "Ghosts" short story to be a representation of different accents, it's very funny to imagine monsters being drawn to/scared of a specific accent.

ah lolll, sorry though - i didnt even know about that since i havent went through the quest line, but i had to get the ideas out of my system hehe

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

This is a thing in 1.22. I'm not sure what the threshold is, but for hunger damage and tiny falls the character vocals are rather muted.

Oh?! thats great! i wasnt online lately so sorry for not being up to date, ive yet to experience 1.22.

 

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's a neat idea, but not a thing that should be in the game, in my opinion. Players should just pick the vocals they prefer to listen to. If those vocals have unique game effects and aren't just sound, then players are going to feel pressured to pick the "best" option for the class they intend to play, which might not be something they find pleasant to listen to. Sure, they could just adjust things via mods, but I don't think that's ideal in this situation.

Thank you for the observations. Thats a very understandable reaction, but all of the instruments could be equally good and bad, none are the best. And in Dont Starve, if a player loves to play as wilson but have a voice of wolfgang, well its kinda his problem, i mean imagine if you want to dress up in fancy dainty noble clothes but have plated armor stats? 

every instrument should have balanced and optimised effects that could go with ANY class, so players shouldnt be pressured, infact it should further immerse the players into that voice that they have, it could be miniscule like a gimmick as ive once said, and a gimmick doesnt have to be gamechanging.

for example i love to play as a wizard in general so in DS, the closest one to me personally is either Wickerbottom or Winnona (waxwell too, but he isnt the only one), and i dont like playing as females (idk why), but i grow to appreciate their playstyle and aesthetics it pushes me out of my boundries and thats what games should do to players.

But i do see your point, i think both sides are right, i think it would be ok if all the voices ever were, was just an aesthetic choice, but i also do see value in it further immersing the player by having an effect on the world and entities and not just the eyes. It just depends on whether the game is more meant to be an Aesthetic or a Game.