Will killers get hearing accessibility buffs?
Apologies if this has already been posted as a topic and I missed it. The accessibility improvements for survivors with respect to hearing issues was great. Will killers get similar accessibility improvements? Something like basekit killer instinct within a certain distance equal to the distance at which you should be able to hear them?
Comments
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I would definitely appreciate that. "Killer Instinct" might be too much, but some visual info for footsteps would be fair (similar to "Ghostface" when revealed)
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See, it's weird, because unlike survivor who gets a loud af terror radius approaching, survivor sounds are deliberately meant to sometimes be missable. There's not even really a fine line between useless and OP here. Don't get me wrong, I want something too, but I'm not sure how it could be implemented in a balanced way.
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Basekit killer instinct isn’t an accessibility feature. It’s a huge buff. The visual terror radius doesn’t give survivors information they don’t already have (assuming they aren’t deaf), but giving killer instinct or some other ‘visual’ auditory feature wouldn’t have the same effect because blind people aren’t playing DBD.
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I believe it's in the works bc I can't imagine BHVR decided to work on hearing accessibility for one side but not the other. Idk anything about game development but I assume it's more complicated to put in place for killers as there's no obvious survivor sound like the TR, there's grunts and footsteps but they change depending on perks, the ground, if the survivor is running, walking... Not to mention there's potentially 4 survivors around you so it's probably complicated HUD wise as well.
In any case, I have good hope we'll get it at some point, but i think it might take a while
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Mobile has this implemented pretty well: instead of killer instinct, its red soundwaves on the edge of your screen pointing towards loud noises (healthy survivors running, injured survivors, generators with progress, survivors healing, etc.) Nothing a player with normal hearing would be able to use as an advantage.
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What about killer players who have trouble hearing? Being able to locate survivors by sounds, especially injured ones, is a huge part of the game. A similar visual indicator for killers also would not give them information that they don’t already have if they have good hearing ability.
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Also boons only have an auditory notification when they are first lit, so survivors could be using shadowstep and a hearing impaired killer wouldn't even know there is a boon up until seeing the boon despite having to deal with even less visual tracking info. Also when the killer is in the area of the boon there is no visual notification but there is a loud auditory one. There should be at least an icon on the hud that shows that a boon is lit. The change to lightweight last year, which is a general perk available to all survivors, also made the game much harder for the hearing impaired and even more inaccessible. It seems like BHVR doesn't consider the deaf and hard of hearing at all when it comes to the killer role.
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The problem is that you cannot just compare those two because they are not even compareable in the game without any hearing issues.
Terror Radius is not directional while Survivor sounds are directional (which is logical, since they are emitted by the Survivor itself). So if you would get directional queues where a Survivor is, it would be a huge buff and every Killer player would just turn it on instantly, because they get a clear indicator of the exact position of the Survivor.
Sadly I dont think that it is really possible to give Killers such a accessibility feature, except it is either really useless or OP.
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I don't think Killer instinct is the proper indicator for sound clues in dbd. I'm all for killers to have this option as well, but killer instinct is designed as a tracking tool and it would be a buff to turn a tracking tool into an accessibility feature.
There are other ways to represent direction of sounds and their intensity on screen that don't involve giving Killer instinct.
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But you are thinking about this as a person without a hearing issue. If i hear a survivor to my left, i know they are to my left. How is that any different than getting a visual indicator showing that there is a survivor to my left?
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Visual terror radius has proven to be pretty strong against Sadako.
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I am not hearing impaired but I use the feature in order to dunk on sadako even more lmao.
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Why are you bullying the poor girl. she's even good XD
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Bhvr seems unable to touch killer hearing without making it worse. I recall it happening twice, couldve been more by now.
Thin wooden walls eat all generator sounds lol. Chase muasic gets made louder and louder. Etc.
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DBD Mobile already have this for killers.
It looks somewhat like ghostface lines when is revealed.
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Honestly sound needs to be fixed as a whole as well. The amount of times I can be behind someone and I just don't hear their footsteps is amazing. Like even before chase music kicks in it doesn't even play.
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Would be decent buff for me I have hard time sometimes locating were injured sounds come from and I would be able to play spirit. I don't have any hearing issues.
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Killer have scratch marks and the loud noise notification
If any hearing accessibility is added to the game then scratch marks and loud noise notification need to be removed
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It would be just like the visual terror radius, where you only get visual survivor noise indicator if those noises should be audible. The current way sounds work is unhealthy, because they encourage killers to blast their headphones at dangerous noise levels, just so they can hear more. This game should not be encouraging potential hearing loss, and should instead implement visual survivor noises, so killers can play the game at safe noise levels.
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That is an absolutely nonsensical statement to make.
Loud noise notification is highly specific to a very limited set of actions. Scratch marks are by design meant to be more misleading than leading. You can even see this in action as a survivor if you run Fixated and see how they generate and again they only come from a highly specific situation, survivors sprinting.
The actual thing that would need to change is Stridor as it would be another instance of people who are hard of hearing most likely using a perk in place of an accessibility option. Survivors got an accessibility feature without losing anything in the name of "upholding game balance" which was the right call. The accessibility feature they got was created in DBD mobile without taking away anything which was the right call. Porting the feature killers have access to there to the main game can be done the exact same way.
The changes to balance do not outweigh the need for proper accessibility.
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Isn’t that only because she has a lullaby (she shouldn’t)?
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Yes that’s exactly why, and plenty of people fail to realize it and use this as an excuse to complain about an accessibility feature.
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I am almost deaf in one of my ears, and I agree with Aven fwiw.
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And yet you fail to describe exactly what the issue is with my statement. How exactly are those different? If i can physically hear a survivor is on the other side of a wall, why can't i also have a visual indicator showing that?
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Wouldn't it affect mindgames? It'd be like a permanent aura reading. Survivor wouldn't even be able to leave the tile as the killer would know exactly where they are
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And it shouldn't be a thing.
Just like some player has hard time for hearing terror radio,so they need to make a visal notice, because it shouldn't be a thing for not hearing that.
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Aven literally said it in their post, which is what I was agreeing to in the first place
"Terror Radius is not directional while Survivor sounds are directional (which is logical, since they are emitted by the Survivor itself). So if you would get directional queues where a Survivor is, it would be a huge buff and every Killer player would just turn it on instantly, because they get a clear indicator of the exact position of the Survivor."
I feel like your post reads as you white knighting, tbh, and I felt like I had to give my two cents that i agree with them, as someone who has perspective, and many of us (we are not a monolith obviously) because you said "But you are thinking about this as a person without a hearing issue."
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I think it's probably unrealistic to expect anything for sounds.
No reason to not have an FoV slider though.
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Again, you are missing the point. You are thinking it is going to show exactly where they are all the time, but it only does that, if you already knew where they were from their sounds to begin with. That is how it works. I just don't understand how people keep thinking its going to give anyone any more information than they already have now, the difference is people who are hearing impaired will be able to actually play killer.
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Go ahead and accuse me of white knighting again. As someone who also has hearing problems, i find that astounding.
Secondly, you still haven't answered the question. How EXACTLY does me physically HEARING the survivor to my left, on the other side of a wall and be able to pin point where they are because of that, differ in ANY way, to getting a visual indicator that i "heard" the survivor, on the other side of the wall, to my left?
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The thing is people who aren't hard of hearing will use it too. It will be a huge buff for them. I don't have to worry about hearing survivors... I just wait for my screen to pulse red. Then I know there's a survivor near by FOR SURE.
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I can hear them all. Maybe your volume is too low?
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Could give a faint border glow to a screen edge based on the quadrant a sound comes from (Ignoring the up/down of the camera, and instead focusing on the orientation of the character model), the intensity and opacity of the glow dependent on how loud the sound is, based on distance and a hardcoded max value.
Could make it dark fog instead of a glow. Akin to The Entity "Whispering" being visible, pointing towards something.
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If you play Spirit you can clearly notice the lack of footsteps that most maps have and not to mention the lack of breathing sounds some survivors have. A GhostFace-like spider sense would be cool when you pass a survivor which you should normally hear the breathing off.
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Something like a more specialised but lower-range Whispers crossed with Ghostface's reveal indicator would be really helpful. I'm not hard of hearing per se but have an auditory processing disorder that means I struggle to filter out and interpret sounds sometimes and it can be really hard for me to pick up on some sounds in the game. I can't even reliably hear Survivor footsteps when using the stupid Freddy add-on that amplifies them, and there are some Survivors who are practically silent when uninjured and extremely quiet even when injured (I'm looking at you, Ace and Sheva). The sound design in DBD feels extremely inconsistent compared to other pvp games where audio cues are relevant. There's no reason for Killer not to have at least some accessibility options, and I fully believe that it can be managed in a way that's not an overall buff to every Killer (and even if it is, there're plenty of Killers who could use a buff).
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This is true, but a pin-point notification would be too much. It would have to be quite vague. Because even while you hear a Survivor on the other side of the wall, you wont know their exact location. However, with sounds being directional in this case, a visual indicator would point to them.
The thing is, if it would be like the visual terror radius, it would be an improvement to having nothing, but it would not be compareable in usefulness to the survivor equivalent.
Because as Survivor, if you are in the Terror Radius, you will start looking around. And with the visual TR players get the information to start looking around. However, this would not really be useful as Killer. If I get a notification that a survivor sound (obviously there are other sounds like Generators as well, but lets not include those) was done nearby, looking around would not give me any more information and probably just be a waste of time.
Yeah, this would work. But it would be more vague than the information people without hearing issues would be getting, but I think this is the best that can be done without the feature being OP.
Obviously sounds like Generators can be more clear with the indicator (because the Killer can see Gens anyway), but having such a vague indicator that the Killer knows the general direction of the Survivor but not their exact location could work.
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I was thinking quadrants (left, forward, right, behind).
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It's all in the implementation.
If you already heart it, then there's no difference (with exception to precision, I play spirit quite some and have good headset - and I can in some extreme cases still misplace survivor sometimes by even 5m radius from real position). The problem is, that the implementation would need to carefully discern when to give the warning and when not to. For example - it's very hard to hear any footsteps next to half-repaired generator - the only thing you can hear is grunts of pain. The same thing applies to active boon. Or destroyed hex (this one is the reason why I dropped plaything on spirit - you wouldn't believe how many chases I lost because of cleansed hex at the wrong time). During chase, you basically don't hear anything. And if you are not really close, you also don't hear anything.
Meaning - it might be too hard to implement in a way where this would be fair to all players (survivors for not being screwed over by huge generic and universal killer buff (making it absolutely NOT an accessibility feature) and killer for it to actually be beneficial). For very same reason Onryo got recent buff for survivor accessibility to not turn on until her lullaby is actually loud enough.
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If we do get accessibility related to hearing for the killer role, I somewhat doubt it'll be for stuff you'd hear in chase, or for tracking survivors. That's not to say nothing can be done, though, and I even had an idea myself;
Currently, the killer can see static auras of generators through walls. Those auras don't move, and don't reflect generator progress, which is mostly for good reason. However, I think it would be fair if the pistons would start moving on generators auras if you're within the range that you should be able to hear the generator.
This'd help both players with poor hearing (raises hand), and the times where audio breaks and you don't get information you should have had.
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I just want to say I apologize I came off rude like that, it's just how I read it, and I have been dealing with it a lot lately with people in my life trying to speak over me or for me to do so and I projected it onto you.
Back on topic. But that's not even the point that is being made though. The point of it being that how do you make a system like this that is not overpowered and used outside of accessibility, but not entirely useless to the point of it being "well we got something, hope it helps".
You could have it indicator that there's footsteps, in which I read your other apply to someone who said that and I still don't understand what you're even trying to say with it, because I feel like it implies that you are already hearing something where you might have already missed that sound because not all sounds are equal.
Your argument is this:
"You are thinking it is going to show exactly where they are all the time, but it only does that, if you already knew where they were from their sounds to begin with. That is how it works."
If we factor in breathing, footsteps, etc in chase - how do we develop a system that can only be used purely for accessibility that does not break chase potential and mind games? Meaning, soft sounds of locker opening/slow vaults, falls, and lowered pain grunts from iron will/no mither, slow vaults, environmental noises, and chase music, what have you, which yeah you could hear as a killer but you might not always hear it or look out for it - as compared to a lullaby or a tr which you will always here. And doing so without making these completely unviable/useless things to do, but also making an accessibility feature that is not useless.
And more importantly, what is your thoughts on how this would even be implemented in the first place. I don't believe you've actually said this, and without any baseline on what you are arguing a system to be like, is me making assumptions, and not even sure what I'm arguing against. Is it sort of how coffeecrashing pictures it?
To me it's the same issue of why the visual terror radius is only for terror radius and lullabies, and not for other sounds. There could be a visual indicator for the wraiths pug noises, or Mikey's breathing, or the hunteesses' noises she makes when winding up and fully winding, but this completely breaks stealth in ways for wraith/mikey, for instance, no, and make it easier to juke hatchets preemptively?
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But i DO know the exact location. If you can PHYSICALLY hear a person on the other side of the wall, you KNOW where they are. If you don't know EXACTLY where there are, it is simply because your hearing is not good enough or because the sound wasn't loud enough. If it is the former that is precisely the point of creating accessibility features, for the latter, these features can be built in a way to give only general information JUST LIKE THE HEARTBEAT they just made. Where the heart beat only kicks in after a certain sound threshold that you can hear.
The same can be done with the visual indicators for killer, by having indicators that point more clearly where the survivor is based on the sound, or less clearly if you only "barely" heard it.
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If you can "hear" something but only "barely" then that is simply about how good of hearing you have, which is an accessibility problem, not some "skill" you can learn and hone. Because someone who is hard of hearing won't hear it, but someone else who has good hearing will hear it.
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What I mean it's skill issue for me sometimes when I hear injured sound I go to look for wrong direction and the lose the survivor. But giving visuals would help and I think many else also can't always locate where sounds come so it would be buff for hearing killers as well. Like the heart beat is for hearing survivors.
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But that's already skill thing too. Acting on the sound, discerning what was background noise and what's sound of interest. Some people can only track grunts of pain while others can track silent footsteps. Slowvaults also makes brief faint sound (super strong thing for spirit), that can be used in chase by all killers.
If your idea is to make these things accessibility thing, then why not make an accessibility feature that will vault/not vault a window for me or change direction by killer's behavior? It's also just an accessibility feature to equalize my slower reflexes compared to quicker players and why should I be disadvantaged.
Right after this one someone might argue, that he can't come up with good mind games compared to others, because he is not smart enough and demand accessibility feature for that one - all in name of inclusion of all people no metter the IQ.
I hope you get my point by last 2 paragraphs - there's one thing in alleviating peoples disadvanteges and there's another with asking the game to be played for you by demanding perfect help.
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So ######### deaf people then? They just shouldn't play killer?
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What? No!
1, even deaf people can play killer now perfectly fine. They just have it harder (but not impossible). Meaning they already are not screwed (but I agree they are challeged more).
2, you totally missed my point. The fact, thet you are not Usain Bolt does not preclude you from ever going for a hobby run. If you however have no legs at all, it's fine to give you wheelchair. But it's not OK to give you electric version that is so speedy as Bolt. And I thought I made this point well enough in previous paragraph.
So not using any metaphor - it's ok give you a benefit that most people already have by having average ears. It's not ok giving you for free things, that best people in the world can somehow figure out after a lot of effort and self training. You are asking for perfect echolocation, which almost nobody can get. (And if that's ok, then why not delete any human differences by same argument - and only watch as PC plays against itself)
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- Why should they have to have it harder when survivors have now been given the same kinds of tools to allow them to better play survivor?
- That is a false comparison, because you can TRAIN to run faster. And if you have some kind of disability or "don't have legs" they have actual competitions for those kinds of people. But this is a video game, not some physical activity. These are problems that can be solved.
Lastly, nobody has been able to clear explain to me. How is having a visual indicator different. Let me visualize it:
o = injured survivor
x = killer
| = wall
| | o | x | |
I'm the killer, and i HEAR that a survivor is injured on the other side of this wall, i know they are right next to me on the wall in the very middle of it because i can physically HEAR them. For hearing impaired people, they can turn on a feature to give them an indicator to show that there is an injured survivor "in that direction" and then can, just as they could with hearing, deduce that they are on the other side of that wall.
Then another one mentioned.
o = survivor
x = killer
G = generator
T = tree
o G T x
I am the killer, and this is a loud generator that makes it so you can't hear survivor footsteps. This survivor is not injured and they are crouch walking around this generator, but i don't know they are there because i can't hear the footsteps. So i walk away thinking they are elsewhere.
I am now someone who has this accessibility feature turned on, a hearing person was unable to hear the footsteps because the generator blocked the sound of the footsteps from being heard, so, because the footsteps can't be heard, i get no visual indicator, and i think the survivor is not there and i walk away.
How exactly is this giving the hearing impaired person some kind of advantage?
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I already wrote you the answer. You just decided to ignore it. But let me visualize.
A, because even healthy person can wrongly identify it like this:
o |
|
| x
|
|
B, because there are some people that would hear the footsteps even thru gen and tree. You can't normalize for them. U need to normalize for "normal" people - which is hard - taking into account all background noise (examples from top of my head - boon, hex, barrels, flickering lights, main in lerys, music in safe rooms on RPD (each map has some loud area btw), fast vaults/failed skillchecks by other players, screams, chase music, killer's own footsteps/abilities, etc) makes it very hard.
But as I stated at the very beginning. If devs a tually manage to pull this off so that it would be useless for "normal" people, but useful for "challenged" people, then such a feature would be awesome. But there's so much room to make this feature OP instead of just accessibility, that it would be very hard.
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Maybe if you don't have headphones, but i guarantee you, you can't mistakenly identify it that way, and if you do, then you have a probably have a hearing issue or we aren't playing the same game. Surround sound headphones clearly point out where people are when they are injured.
And regardless, they need to something for deaf and hearing impaired people. In some parts of the world they actually have a legal obligation to provide accessibility features.
At the end of the day. If they release a feature and it effects balance, so what. Why can't we then make balance changes to address that very problem? The survivor terror radius indicator has completely destroyed sadako, and nearly every single survivor streamer, hearing impaired or not, is using the feature. So obviously an already released feature already has problems. And not doing the same thing for killers is heavily biased.
Lastly, there are TON of features they can do for deaf people. Look a this FPS that has an entire feature that shows visual indicators for sound, even taking into account audio occlusion:
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The survivor terror radius indicator has completely destroyed sadako, and nearly every single survivor streamer, hearing impaired or not, is using the feature.
And that's why they rightfully did this in patch 6.7.1:
- Terror Radius Visual Feedback
- The Terror Radius Visual Feedback is now displayed when the audio level reaches a certain audible threshold to avoid the indicator being shown when the audio is barely discernible.
Also. For someone that "also has hearing problems", you do hear more then average survivor (if that wasn't true, all spirits would be unjukeable in their power). Because exact location pinpoint is not normal for everyone (but most people can pinpoint approximate location). Especially because most of survivor noises are intermittent (meaning you hear it for a split second and then it's silent and then you hear noise again and then it's silent for some extra time).
Considering our debate so far - it sounds more like you are totally healthy, but you just want wallhacks and hide it in the name of "accessibility". That is absolutely not cool from you.
0 - Terror Radius Visual Feedback
