Audio popping issue

[Sorenthaz]

I've played since 1.0 with no audio issues then as soon as the spatial audio thing is slapped into the game its a nightmare. Its occasionally so bad that the clipping audio makes me disoriented in raids and it sucks that I have to basically play in silence sometimes when audio (and audio queues) are such a big part of the experience.

Same here. Pandaemonium 4 is pretty much unplayable because of how bad it is, and I know it's got to be due to the spikes most likely and how objects that come up out of the ground seem to be what's creating problems. I've never had this issue up until Endwalker's launch and it feels like it's been steadily getting worse. I finally caved and decided to at least try out the spatial audio trial to see if that helps at all, as there's no way that the issue isn't related to changes made in order to accommodate that "optional" third party "enhancement". But I ran P4 twice and both times the sound issues were so bad that it was disorienting me and hurting my head. The only options were to try and adjust my camera angle to often look at my own character away from the boss (making it very difficult to see tells and whatnot), or turn audio off altogether which is what I ended up doing both times in the end.

Like it's good that this isn't such a widespread issue that it's creating massive backlash, but it feels horrible that Square Enix hasn't addressed this issue to those of us who are suffering with the audio bugginess, and it feels like we're kind of getting swept under the rug to push sales on the stupid spatial audio thing.

[miragedive]

As someone who’s been dealing with this issue for nearly a month, I feel strange coming here to defend Square but here we are. To everyone saying that we’ve had no feedback, you’re wrong. Mr. Soken has made it very clear on his Twitter that the sound team wants to investigate the issue but cannot do so without proper bug reports and system information in the relevant forum. Those who did post on the bug reports forum can see that the first post reporting the issue has been moved to Accepted Bugs and is currently being investigated before it gets confirmed and we (hopefully) get an official timeline for the fix. It’s a holiday season, and the team deserve a break after the gruelling process of releasing 6.0 and 6.01, plus preparing 6.05. No one is ignoring the issue, or belittling it just because it’s not widespread. It’s just the first time they’ve come across something like this so naturally the process will take some time.

Please have some patience and compassion. Yes, it sucks that we can hardly play the game if at all, but there is nothing more we can do beyond waiting, and supporting the team with any additional information they ask for.

[Jizu]

I don't know why I feel compelled to defend them after a month of near-total radio silence, but I'm seeing this sentiment a lot and they did walk it back a bit.

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they blamed old hardware because using an old CPU was the most reliable way they could trigger the bug in their test environment. Still not the best look to go with that excuse right after the bulk of the 2002 problem turned out to be on their end as well, but considering the majority of bug reports seem to have been sent in AFTER that post, they may genuinely not have known any better.

No matter how they go about it, though, intermittent posts by one community manager in one forum thread are not enough to make this right.

Like ClaraKitty said, I'd like to believe that they're staying quiet until they have a guaranteed fix ready to go - after all, the last time they said they fixed it they just made it worse. But at this point, outside of this thread and Soken's twitter, we've received no official assurances that this bug is being looked into at all, and I for one would feel a heck of a lot better if they said anything at all on Lodestone. I know the EN Community Team is away but even their twitter post said they had people still on board watching for problems. This seems like a problem to me. EDIT: I avoid social media like the plague myself, but is anyone making noise about this?

As someone who’s been dealing with this issue for nearly a month, I feel strange coming here to defend Square but here we are. To everyone saying that we’ve had no feedback, you’re wrong. Mr. Soken has made it very clear on his Twitter that the sound team wants to investigate the issue but cannot do so without proper bug reports and system information in the relevant forum. Those who did post on the bug reports forum can see that the first post reporting the issue has been moved to Accepted Bugs and is currently being investigated before it gets confirmed and we (hopefully) get an official timeline for the fix. It’s a holiday season, and the team deserve a break after the gruelling process of releasing 6.0 and 6.01, plus preparing 6.05. No one is ignoring the issue, or belittling it just because it’s not widespread. It’s just the first time they’ve come across something like this so naturally the process will take some time.

I get what you guys are saying and I'd say I'm a very patient person. I don't want any problems with SE or anyone involved.
I don't want to feel this resentment bubbling up when I even boot the game up to check for new/updates/anything.
All I'm asking for currently (besides a fix) is an official response. Not a Twitter post. Not some Forum acknowledgement about it being investigated.
The very first time we "made it" onto the 'Known Issues' List was on the 7th. That was already very late IMO to give us an official response when it started on the 3rd. And since 6.01 the "public" only knows that it's been 'fixed'.
No one in my personal circle has the sound issues. No one in my FC has the sound issues. They have no clue anyone is having major Problems with the Release STILL. (Besides me venting once, but they're to busy chatting about the raids anyway..)

We all agree that usually SE is VERY good with customer service and direct connection to the community, it pains me to feel so left alone.

If they really are investigating it gives us something to feel seen. None of this 'search the forums, search the Twitter', because even when I went directly to Soken's Twitter and looked through his posts/responses/likes I could not see a recent acknowledgement. (I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying its not easily found.)

This game is for many people, and I'm sure there are a good handful that aren't as involved in PC's and the Internet as we believe we all are. Old and Young play this game. There is a Recent Info Panel on the Launcher for a reason.

[Nommers]

We all agree that usually SE is VERY good with customer service and direct connection to the community, it pains me to feel so left alone.

If they really are investigating it gives us something to feel seen. None of this 'search the forums, search the Twitter', because even when I went directly to Soken's Twitter and looked through his posts/responses/likes I could not see a recent acknowledgement. (I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying its not easily found.)

For the most part I agree with miragedive, but I think what Jizu said here is really the core of my concerns at this point. Official communication, that sense of having a direct line to a highly responsive dev team, has been a major pillar of this game's success, especially over the last year. I think it really speaks to CBU3's reputation that this thread is even a fraction as civil as it is. When they said 6.01 would fix the stutter, I had absolute faith in them. I've seen Soken's tweets (they're there, just... buried), and obviously I've seen the forum posts. I don't doubt that the problem is being investigated. But I think it's natural to feel a little shaken by seeing Lodestone so neglected for so long when the issue is as severe as it is for many of us.

It's been a month already - we all just want to go back to enjoying the game. Throw in the business angle with Immerse and you have a recipe for doubt and diminished trust. One quick update that everyone can see saying it's a known issue would calm a lot of nerves.

With all that said, if the silence IS because of the holidays, then I genuinely do hope the team are enjoying their break. I was lucky enough to finish Endwalker before the stutter became truly unbearable and they certainly deserve it.

[shandreax]

Why do we need a fix just give us an option to use original sound options it worked great prior. This is taking to long to set up a toggle option from the login screen.

[Ifrinne]

Using the immersive soundpack helps with the stutter and makes it much less but this means id need to spend more just to enjoy. Also the immersive audio misses out on the more high pitched sounds when moves are used making it sound muffled. I cannot seem to improve this

[HeavenlyBrush]

I don't count soken saying "please report any sound issue to the forums" as acknowledgment of our issues. I went to his twitter yesterday specifically to see for myself and that's the only thing i could find there. I think it's fair to say that we have been exceedingly patient in regards to this. It's been a full month since the issue first started and while they fixed the sound disappearing completely, the camera position related stuttering is still there. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to expect these issues resolved in a timely manner, all of us here are paying customers and deserve at the very least a timeline or some sort of explanation of what is going on.

You say we should be more compassionate to the dev team, but what about them being compassionate to us? Keeping us in the dark is what is causing most of the frustration here, not the issues themselves. If they can't speak for legal reason they should say so, if they can't speak because they don't know when it will be fixed they should say so. I want a clear answer so i can stop stressing out about this. Are we being strung along hoping for a fix? I wouldn't make this argument myself but if someone else did i wouldn't be able to blame them...

[GorthRedsteel]

I don't count soken saying "please report any sound issue to the forums" as acknowledgment of our issues. I went to his twitter yesterday specifically to see for myself and that's the only thing i could find there. I think it's fair to say that we have been exceedingly patient in regards to this. It's been a full month since the issue first started and while they fixed the sound disappearing completely, the camera position related stuttering is still there. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to expect these issues resolved in a timely manner, all of us here are paying customers and deserve at the very least a timeline or some sort of explanation of what is going on.

You say we should be more compassionate to the dev team, but what about them being compassionate to us? Keeping us in the dark is what is causing most of the frustration here, not the issues themselves. If they can't speak for legal reason they should say so, if they can't speak because they don't know when it will be fixed they should say so. I want a clear answer so i can stop stressing out about this. Are we being strung along hoping for a fix? I wouldn't make this argument myself but if someone else did i wouldn't be able to blame them...

I'm fairly new to the game, but from what I have seen so far XIV community needs to grow some balls. If the company releases a damaged product, you should not feel any shame with voicing your disappointment and DEMAND for it to be resolved. No matter how "good" they had been in the past. Present counts as much, and we suffered thanks to either their incompetence - or perhaps for worse - greed. Soon, it's going to be a full month without a proper action from them. That's not how you treat people that cherish your game.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

I wonder how many posts can we make before it gets fixed. We have reached over 700 of them in less than a month, and there is no way it's gonna get resolved at 4th of jan.

700 in this post alone. There's reddit, several other posts here... everywhere people are complaining about this. Can't believe someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea to change the sound system to accommodate a paid piece of junkware (that somehow "fixes" the issue) in a paid game with subscription service (and paid dlc's, and an "optional item & services" shop). Activision/EA will hunt this visionary man...

BTW, I saw people commenting both sides about the damn thing: it either fixes the issues or causes more issues (have lower quality than the normal in-game system) with sounds in the game.

[Grimno]

Thought this was interesting.
Was doing the Steps of Faith trial in my roulette and was doing some tests.

My CPU is a AMD FX 8320
With no spatial pack on, total computer CPU usage was at 58% and there was non-stop audio choppyness
With the trial spatial pack on, CPU usage was at 50% and there was no choppyness
I know a lot of folks have less choppyness with the spatial pack, so I'm not going "Oh wow guys the audio pack fixes it!" cause it doesn't and audio sounds like underwater garbage...
But it was curious to see the game taking that much more CPU when there was no audio pack added.

Which is weird because, in Shadowbringers I know CPU usage is still the same when I monitored it during hunt trains back when i thought my CPU was dying, but discovered the game Foxhole that I play is so poorly optimized it turns any PC into an oven, and it was triggering my CPU's emergency shut-off due to overheating but only during the massive battles that create haze of war. Only game that runs that hot. Nothing else