Personally I have made a solid effort to remove as many of the alarms and alert sounds in the game as I could. I actually recently published a mod called “No more flare sound” due to teammates spamming and me not wanting to completely remove the visual alert on the minimap. After 1500 games or so the alarms had just simply become a nuisance.
ANYWAY someone recently suggested that I make a mod to create an alert or alarm sound when a villager is attacked by a boar, and thinking about this I can honestly say this is one alarm I would like to have added to the game. I do not believe a regular person can mod this into the game however so I wanted to post the idea here and see what you guys think.
I never thought about it but this is something I’ve always wanted and I think a lot of other people would agree.
Credit to SHOGUNCHAOSMK2 for the idea, or at least realizing it and saying it out loud. lol
I really dislike the alarms and alert sounds (their loudness as the main issue), and find it a little odd that only one or two people have ever been annoyed by them and seem to have ever commented on it, including myself. I don’t want them removed, just lowered in volume and a slider that lets me, the individual player, choose how frequently I want to hear them. Doesn’t sound like a big ask, but I’ve been trying to get this for years now.
I got tired of waiting with AoE2:HD and ended up modding the battle horn sounds there (and some others, like a particular monk sound) to be lower volume. This made the game much more enjoyable! Now, I’m stuck with loud battle alarm sounds of DE.
Honestly, some of the audio decisions in DE may be enough to sway me to choose HD over DE more often. (Doorbell chat alert sounds, symphonic/orchestral soundtrack choice only, loud battle alert sounds, etc. Sometimes I just want the digital clarity and punch of the old keyboard synth soundtrack instead of the new cinematic, airy symphony, you know?) One friend already jumped ship and went back to HD due to lots of changes made in DE (wall/tower nerfs, colors/fire/explosion revisions, audio, etc.)
The plethora of poor audio decisions in AoE3 is a huge reason why I have no desire to play that game ever again.
The flare sound in DE annoys me, as well. I used to love their subtle whoosh sound in AoE2:HD, iirc… but DE made it obnoxiously loud and intrusive. I cringe and roll my eyes every time a flare is used in DE. And if too many happen, I have to stop what I’m doing to lower the entire game’s volume
If you ever mod the alert volume levels to be lower in AoE2:DE, I will gladly use it. Loud enough to notice them, yet blended in enough to not be nearly as annoying. And I’ll still hold out hope that official devs will make a ‘frequency of occurrence’ slider for the battle alerts
Interesting idea; however, this flare would only be used in a particular situation and therefore, the need for such a feature is very little, if any. Instead, those who struggle with boar luring should pay closer attention when luring is taking place to ensure that their villager does not die. Cheers.
I agree alarms need a rework - they are a distraction more than anything and when they are genuinely important they are often missed because of DOODOO spam from a skirmish. I didn’t know my base was being over run because I was being spammed by horns because I was attacking their city.
Boars could simply adopt the “your villagers are being attacked by wild animals” alarm, it’s good enough for me to realize when I’m being eaten by wolves. Doesn’t need a horn. Maybe a boar sound instead of a wolf sound.
What might be a nice improvement is to have varying degrees of battle alarm sound depending on how close the skirmish/attack is to one of your Town Centers.
For a skirmish on the other side of map (including when you’re attacking their base where you already know there’ll be lots of skirmishes that you triggered), then have a more mellow, muted alarm sound and not too frequent
But skirmishes/attacks close to one of your Town Centers (or maybe just close to your original starting TC, where there’s likely a very well established economy going on?), then have a slightly louder and more frequent alarm that sounds
This way, audibly, you can better tell where on the map the skirmish is… so you’re better able to decide if you need to apply energy to it or not.
Possibly using binaural sounds or whatever, even (if that’s not already done) to help you audibly determine where on the map the skirmish is – e.g., a faded sound based on distance from your current viewport, and aural directional info, too, so you know what area of the map it’s at. With this, you should be able to get a feel for if the skirmish is way off in the left side of the map, or close by to your left, etc.
Exactly true. It’s like I grow numb/apathetic to them because they are so frequent once the game reaches a certain point, and/or you have no idea which alarms are important and not important or where they’re at because the alarm sounds become incessant. I like this thought I had of a proximity-based alarm system to determine the frequency and likelihood of alerting the player based on sound library choice and/or volume