still no GNB sound change :)

[Valic]

I honestly thought the original sounds were on point with a fantasy designed weapon. It's a gunblade... They're not real. Every sound we have for our jobs isn't real akin to RL, it's enough to resemble what the weapon is for what we know of from media and understanding sounds. If we're going the route of "it should sound like this because guns and swords IRL", then let's note something here.

RDM's rapier doesn't sound like an IRL rapier.
DRK's great sword being swung doesn't sound like one because 1. it's magic based, we don't have actual magic IRL sorry. 2. No one uses hunks of metal that way near half your own body weight.
Even NIN and PLD's weapons don't sound like actual daggers and swords
And have you even heard MCH's stock sounding AOE that sounds like it comes from a 1890's black and white movie?

By the end of this, we have as close to what we can to pay tribute to our "fantasy" idea of how something should sound. Not the "REAL" way it should sound. We want to hear a Samurai's sounds be sharp, piercing, hinge on speed, swiftness, and steel breaking the sound barrier. The truth of it though, a samurai sword does not sound like how it does in FFXIV without a LOT of fake sword play akin to what most would find in theaters, movies, and etc.

Now, what we CAN do is figure out what a weapon should sound like based off what we know about it compared to IRL. Knowing this, we shouldn't make it exactly like what we hear IRL, but what we "think of" when we see such a device. Like how we know ghosts are associated with "boo!" and ghoulish moaning.... rather than just blatant screaming or something generic. Again, we're dealing with fantasy elements it must be treated as one... not with realism.

SO... Let's assume we're talking about the gunblade in this scenario. Well, it's not a real mechanism, but we know about swords and guns... Guns don't all go boom, pistols, revolvers, muskets.. they click, make trigger sounds, and have piercing projectiles that end with sharp but dull sounding impacts. However, this weapon lore-wise, doesn't shoot projectiles. We know some guns go "boom"... but specifically only cannons and larger ideas of firearms do that... And considering we're looking at what looks like a revolver with a blade on its barrel rather than a cannon with a knife on it, it's probably safe to assume we don't want too loud of explosions. At the same time, this is all coming from FF8 and FF13, so maybe we'll include something akin to that, but maybe not over the top (hence what we have as our "explosions" now in our sounds... but they're very over the top). So far now, we've confirmed just a couple of sounds for the weapon itself... Let's keep going. Majority of gus have bullets... and those usually have some way to load, or have shells that come out like seen in many movies, games, and media. Shells dropping on the ground is a common stock sound too, but considering the device doesn't use bullets... maybe it shouldn't be the highest priority.

So just off the gun half we confirm a few things we can for sure add as sound to fit the device.
- Majority of guns we think of have triggers or can be cocked in some fashion mechanically
- Some guns make loud booms
- Guns usually load in some fashion, or have shells

We've so far got an idea of what we could include for sounds. Hence why our starting sounds have trigger pulls, explosions, and some shell dropping sounds very minutely heard in them. Alot of this is great, because it's easily identifiable and fits the idea of the job so far that we've heard(and yet, goodbye cool sounding trigger pulls). We've associated "gun" with the job and its' weapon so far, so let's try the other half.

So it has a sword as well.. Well we already have rapier, daggers, axes, greatswords, katanas, and lances as our sharp melee weapons. We have to make it sound like a sword still, but we can't have it too similar to our currently existing jobs. Considering the models we're making, the size of the weapon is roughly larger than an average one handed sword, but smaller than any broadsword or two handed weapon. So we probably don't want the same weight as a paladin weapon, but not as heavy as dark knight's(this is where this goes horribly wrong as we currently have what sounds VERY blunt for such a blade for our current patch). So let's give them something piercing, not like a lance that dragoon uses, but something that sounds swift and clean. Something similar to Samurai but not as eastern based(this is where we started with our 5.0 sounds, crisp, clean, piercing). We also need it to have the expected "wooshes" that anything makes when swung that people associate swords with.

In this case, its hard to identify how exactly to do the blade considering how many jobs already have these types of sounds as is for blades. Making something unique would be difficult, however in conjunction with the gun portion, they can do something unique. Just how DRK has a blade but with magic it can sound unique.

Well... Gunbreaker's lore is that it uses cartridges of compressed aether rounds for its ammo for strengthened attacks and defense. That's magic I would assume.... and cartridges that use aether? Well, how about to make this weapon unique from the other blades, we highlight the idea of it being a gunblade specifically, it's a mechanical device. It has to compress and use these cartridges to make explosions, shields, and swifter attacks. Cue what we ave in 5.0 again.... We now have a combination of trigger pulls, light explosions, swift sounding slashes, and mechanism sounds like ricocheting bullets and mechanisms clicking within the gunblade... It's a fantasy weapon, so having these ideas fits fantasy of what a "gunblade" could sound like in a universe of magic. However... what went wrong then? People compared it to other games and to IRL, and said it doesn't sound "impactful enough".

The devs I can imagine then went "well, I guess to remedy this, we'll have to make the slashes and wooshes more heavy in pitch. But to couple that to match, we'll also have to give the explosions something louder sounding and more akin to cannon fire."
And so we now have what is horrifyingly the loudest, most obnoxious, and blending sounds available. Everything is overdone and not right. No one should be able to say a gunblade shouldn't sound mechanical, because again.. THEY DON'T EXIST. And for what they started with, sounded great and appealed to the fantasy of one. No one complained during the trailer for it either.

Tl;DR: long story short, this new idea of what a gunblade sounds like, isn't correct either. It shouldn't be RL related, it should build upon the fantasy of one. 5.0's sounds did that, and very well at that, they didn't need a 100% change and by having everything sound "more impactful" has now created a less impactful all around job with sounds that don't fit the fantasy of the idea being called "a gunblade".

For those who aren't satisfied with this big ass post... Lemme add this to it.

https://twitter.com/Very_Merri/statu...41671247200256

I won't get into our gnashing fang combo, because that is always going to come down to preference of the job. Keen edge's combo however we can easily identify here. Above is a post by Very Merri, a popular streamer comparing the sounds of our keen edge combo, the first set being what we have now, and the latter being what we had. I'ma note what I hear below.

The first set combo
- Blunt strikes, no piercing, slashing, just very hard "booph" sounds as if you were hitting a piece of cardboard, especially the final hit of the combo
- very deep toned woosh effects for the swinging of the blade, it sounds far too heavy for a weapon being swung with one hand
- Nothing intricate going on, nothing that sounds like a gun, or sword for that matter.

The second set combo (begins at 9 seconds of the video)
- A somewhat deep tone woosh for the swing, but it's not quite as heavy as what we have now. This fits a sword that's probably heavier than a one handed sword for having a barrel and a heavy firm grip for a handle
- Crisp, clean swipes. They're not quite sword swings like we've heard, but they're very piercing in tone to sound like something is being cut, not bashed bluntly. the second combo also very faintly, has almost what you could hear as someone "gripping" something and letting it go midway through the combo. It's hard to describe it, but it fits the action being done with two sword swings upward in a loose fashion.
- My most beloved detail that was lost... I hear a trigger pull. Not of a firearm we know of IRL specifically, but I hear a click of something and a compressed "compounding" sound. There's something mechanical going on by the end of the slashing combo that makes it believable you're holding a weapon tat contains aether cartridges. This even more helps mechanically in game with an audio cue that helps the player understand "I gained a cartridge" for their gauge.


When comparing the two side by side.. The one we have now is only less in quality. It's louder, blunt, and blends with other sounds too easily. what we had sounded clean, crisp, still unique from the other dozen blades we have. We need unique, identifiable, and "fantasy-like"... how else can I prove this? Look at all of our models for gunblades in the game right now. Most of them change shape, have pipes on them, unique barrels, oddly placed triggers/guards, they all look mechanical and unique from one another. It stands within reason that the idea of a gunblade they want to give us, is that it has complex inner workings while still being a blade to swing swiftly. The 5.0 sounds accomplished this. Our current ones do not and make our weapons sound more like the bat from pvp wolf marks.