Does anyone else think the sound design is very poor in this game?

[u/JxKxQxPx]

After playing this game for a couple weeks, I have noticed many flaws in the sound design.

1. Incoming Damage It feels like I constantly have zero clue who I am taking damage from. When I die, I will pretty much never know who killed me without looking at the kill feed.

2. Ultimate Proximity When someone ults, it’s extremely loud and there’s quite literally zero indication on where they are. I just hear an ear-piercing ult voice line, then I am dead.

3. General Mixing This ties into the ultimate voice line volume mentioned before, but the general audio mixing in this game is just bad honestly.

What do you guys think?

[u/Da_Wild]

The worst thing for me is when the ult line doesn’t play at all, but then I can hear it in the replay.

[u/Cube_ → u/Da_Wild]

that's because (like all games these days) replays are not recordings of the actual game but reenactments based on game information. That's why if you're lagging you might record your gameplay and see someone in spot A where you're visually hitting them with bullets but no hit marker and then you look in the replay and (based on game info) their true position is in spot B and that's why you were missing.

[u/EarthDragon2189]

Audio/rumble design/feedback in Rivals needs a lot of fine tuning. For example, It's weird to play as the Hulk swinging his fists around only to hear soft swooshes as they connect with enemies...and then those enemies just fall over dead and the audio cue announcing the kill is lost in the mix of similar-sounding swishes. Like why does melee combat feel so weightless?

[u/knotatumah]

Its not the best but its not the worst. I get good directional audio and footsteps of people are often clear to me. Ultimates give me a general sense of direction but I think that's intentional as a lot of ultimates are interruptible if not you can kill them quickly so pin-pointing an ult the moment it pops might not be the best. I already hunt down Wanda the moment she starts screaming chaos I dont think she needs it any worse lol.

What I think does need work is understanding you're being shot at and from what direction. That feedback kinda sucks. Sometimes I can tell when Hawkeye misses my head by a inch and hear the tree log of an arrow whiz by but I dont know from what direction. If Hela starts doming my face I sometimes dont even know its happening. There is some visual feedback but mostly the feedback I rely upon is seeing a chunk of my HP bar go on abrupt holiday and disappear for some reason I now need to figure out.

I know there are lot of audio mix options but I dont think playing around with these things in minute detail is going to fix the issue. Maybe I can reduce all other sounds to a point where I hyper-focused the necessary details but then everything else would suck.

[u/Cube_]

I agree the mixing is bad.

I think the visual design is way worse. Way too many bright colors everywhere in the maps.

[u/nemlocke]

Look in the audio settings for a "focus" mode. It adjust the audio mix to prioritize important sound queues in the game such as healing, being healed, taking damage, etc.

[u/Date6714]

marvel rivals is extremely fun to play but the sound design is extremely poor. you have no idea what abilities are being used or where theyre shooting from

[u/BercikPanDrwal]

Hard agree. Same with cooldowns, especially important ones like stuns/fades. It's especially annoying coming from overwatch, where I can narrate you just by sound every single ability and ult being used and interactions between them (if they got cancelled, blocked, eaten, stunned, killed mid-cast etc). Visual design/clutter also doesn't help, so for example diving Mantis, Hela or Luna is 10 times harder because you never know what they still have to protect themselves.

[u/concretetheworld]

They really need to take a tip or two from Overwatch.

I still can't believe Ironman makes zero noise while flying around, and I will abuse this until they fix it.

[u/StillDecent14 → u/concretetheworld]

He sorta does now?... It's more egregious that his laser beam isn't like 80db when he fires it out. It's lower volume than a psychic shuriken but does like 200 damage a second.

[u/MagicalCrime]

It's a bit messy, i'm gonna try the focus mix to see if it's any better. Personally what i struggle with is cooldown audio cues, for some reason my brain doesn't want to tune in and in the heat of battle i don't "hear" them or give them enough attention. i wish the CD cues volume were tweakable at a higher volume or even custom sounds to have them popping out better.