Feedback: game SFX too loud (can't hear voicechat)

So I've been playing this for a while now (got 78 Hours clocked on Co-op so far). and I have to say.... ouch my ear drums
the game is so darn loud, its hard to hear voice chat 90% of the time.

Biggest issue is that you only have 3 voice adjustments;

  1. Master Volume
  2. Music Volume
  3. Voice Receive Volume

The Master Volume also lowers the Voice Receive Volume and because of this you can never manage to turn the game lower then voice chatter. and nearly all sound effects are way louder then voice chat by default. and right now, I can barely hear my team mates talk while artillery shells, even at a great distance, hurt my ears.

TL:DR; Add a SFX Volume Slider please!

Agreed. It's impossible, to me anyways, to hear voip when in the middle of firefight.

The "problem" with the voice chat is that is only partially on your end. The quality and the volume also depends on how the person talking his set up his microphone. But I agree that you should have a additional game audio volume in order to tune things better.

@MeFirst well I am assuming that people who voice chat often will have their microphone dialed in to a volume level so that other people on say, discord for example, don't have to turn you up or down because your microphone is too quite or loud.

Yeah but this is often something that you could describe as a closed circle. Short example of my personal experience in Discord in Teamspeak.

Somebody is loud or too low on volume. I turn him individually down or up in Teamspeak or Discord. I think this is more likely then people always asking if you can hear them properly. You often play with the same people and so the volume for "you" is fine after a couple of sessions, but their overall volume never changed. And so when they use voip in Insurgency etc, their volume can be off.

You just nee to go into game settings and windows setting sounds and balance it out for you to hear, i had the same problem but works great for me

Adjusting for voice chat basically means instant tinnitus from all the gun fire and explosions in the game.

I'd really like to see an SFX slider feature so I can actually hear people when I play the game at its intense moments.

~ Stezz.

(no please dont say something about realism or inb4 "hur durr gun and explosion sounds are over 120 decibels ofc ur not going to hear someone saying something in the mic in a real battle" its a fucking game i'd like to actually enjoy people talking thanks)

last edited by stezz

I made a thread awhile back about the sound in this game being damaging. Voice chat need to be separate from the sound effects volume. I turned my master volume down as far as I could and still hear footsteps (barely). Voice chat is really low now.

I agree on having different controls for SFX vs music (vs voip) but I also think it's a cool bit of realism that it's basically impossible to communicate when there's full-auto fire and explosions everywhere.

Which reminds me, ArmA ACE (Advanced Combat Environment) mod has a really cool option for simulating hearing damage; if you don't put on your earplugs (which of course makes it harder to hear soft sounds) then in a firefight you'll soon only be hearing the virtual ringing of your characters ears.

@dogman-ad said in Feedback: game SFX too loud (can't hear voicechat):

You just nee to go into game settings and windows setting sounds and balance it out for you to hear, i had the same problem but works great for me

I don't use discord while playing Insurgency, i used it as an example as to how my microphone volume and that of my friends was setup.

@stezz said in Feedback: game SFX too loud (can't hear voicechat):

Adjusting for voice chat basically means instant tinnitus from all the gun fire and explosions in the game.

I'd really like to see an SFX slider feature so I can actually hear people when I play the game at its intense moments.

~ Stezz.

(no please dont say something about realism or inb4 "hur durr gun and explosion sounds are over 120 decibels ofc ur not going to hear someone saying something in the mic in a real battle" its a fucking game i'd like to actually enjoy people talking thanks)

Completely agree.
makes one wonder why the SFX slider is missing, it wasn't missing in the previous insurgency game.

@mashiara said in Feedback: game SFX too loud (can't hear voicechat):

I agree on having different controls for SFX vs music (vs voip) but I also think it's a cool bit of realism that it's basically impossible to communicate when there's full-auto fire and explosions everywhere.

Which reminds me, ArmA ACE (Advanced Combat Environment) mod has a really cool option for simulating hearing damage; if you don't put on your earplugs (which of course makes it harder to hear soft sounds) then in a firefight you'll soon only be hearing the virtual ringing of your characters ears.

I used to play Arma 3 a lot so I know what you mean. mainly used the TaskForce Radio a when I was still part of the 501st star-sim, but even so you could still adjust the SFX volume separately from the built in voice chat.

@stezz said in Feedback: game SFX too loud (can't hear voicechat):

(no please dont say something about realism or inb4 "hur durr gun and explosion sounds are over 120 decibels ofc ur not going to hear someone saying something in the mic in a real battle" its a fucking game i'd like to actually enjoy people talking thanks)

Actually, with modern electronic hearing protection with integrated comms, it's not usually a problem. Which is actually what's modeled on the "high cut comms" headgear option for Security. 😄

I actually don't have any issues with hearing people over the SFX. I'm not sure why that might be, I've not done anything crazy with my sounds settings. More granularity in the sound setting would be welcome. We certainly have a ton of options for mouse sensitivity.