I’m right there with you, K405NK0NFU510N! In fact, I posted the following back in 2017 for AoE:DE… and have similarly mentioned a number of times in various places for AoE2:HD and AoE2:DE hoping to reach someone within the company with some pull who agrees to incite the change and implement the improvement.
- “May we have separate audio sliders to adjust the volume of certain ‘loud’ and/or repetitious sounds? For example, the battle horn in AoE2 and 3 are very loud and repetitive, and a few of the units are, similarly, annoyingly loud/frequent (monk conversions and twinkles). Just use your best judgment to give us a few extra sliders you think a fair number of people might want. For battle horn, maybe even (also have) a ‘frequency’ slider so we can adjust how often it sounds (e.g., |infrequent|----|normal|----|frequent|)”
For AoE2:HD, I had to personally customize the volume of each of the above sounds using my own audio editing software, which I don’t feel should be necessary.
I’m actually very surprised by how so few people are bothered by the loud and incessant battle horn sounds. Or at least if they are annoyed, nobody ever speaks up. Which means the devs won’t change things I will have to customize the sounds again on my own, if DE lets me like HD did… but I will probably have no control over how often they play.
Early on in a match, I see the benefit of having more frequent battle horn sounds; probably every time you’re attacked. Makes sense. But as the match progresses and battles are constantly going on, the sound happens wayyyy too much. We know battles are raging constantly and everywhere, we don’t need a sound to remind us every 2 seconds.
Maybe a visual cue can be added and leveraged. An icon in the lower-right corner, for example that pulses red for a moment or something. Or a thin red line that displays along the top-border of the lower-right panel. I won’t go so far as saying having a visual pulse around the entire perimeter of the game’s viewport… that’d be way overkill. Something subtle, yet noticeable and not in-your-face. A visual cue, if even necessary, would serve as a balance so we don’t hear nearly as many battle horn sounds.
Plus this visual feedback would help those who don’t hear very well… so there could be an Accessibility component to it – unless this kind of visual indicator battle horns is already in the game for that.
In the end, all’s I’m saying is, surely, there must be a better way…??