There is some good news for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players, as the developers have announced that reworked sound mechanics is coming this year. The new rework has been detailed in a Sound Improvement Plan dev letter. One of the most important aspects of PUBG is the sound play. The various sound effects that players hear are an extremely important factor in gameplay, as they give you key information about enemies and the environment. Over the next several months, devs will be improving sound across the board in PUBG.
But this plan to improve the audio is something that the devs have worked on since the beginning. The letter mentions that the sound team thought it was a good time to evolve the sound play. These will be done along the line of new trends, which will focus on sound effects in 6 main areas.
1. Improve player QoL regarding sound
2. Adjust sound balance related to gameplay
3. Improve various character animation sounds
4. Improve gun firing sounds
5. Improve vehicle sounds
6. Improve indoor reverb sounds
This new plan is part of the August update.
PUBG PC: Reworked sound mechanics
August Update
Instant volume reducer feature
Some of the game’s sounds are quite a bit louder than others, such as the starting plane and red zone explosions, which can make it difficult to communicate with teammates over voice chat. Until now, players have had to use the CTRL+M mute function during these times, which cuts the sound completely. To help remedy these loud sounds without cutting off your auditory information completely, we’ve added a new feature that allows you to temporarily reduce sound volume at the push of a button.
By pressing F7 while in a match, your game’s volume will be uniformly reduced by a certain percentage, allowing you to freely voice chat with teammates and still hear what is going on around you at the same time. Pressing F7 again will return the volume to the normal level.
Volume adjustment guide feature
Many PUBG players set their overall volume to very loud in order to catch even the slightest sounds, such as footsteps, made by another player as these sounds are very important in PUBG gameplay. However, this also means that loud sounds like gunfire are played even louder and can hurt a player’s ears.
In order to help players prepare for different volumes of sounds, the devs added a “volume adjustment guide” feature. This new feature allows you to listen to the loudest sounds in the game by pressing the play button. You can then adjust the overall volume to one that best suits your own preferences.
September Update
While August is more focused around convenience, September will see an adjustment to character motion sounds, such as landing and ledge-grab, along with a balance of footstep and red zone sounds, which are important factors in gameplay. The rebalances in this update will include.
– Footstep sound rebalance
– Red zone sound rebalance
– Landing sound improvement
– Ledge grab sound improvement
Long-term goals of the Sound Improvement Plan
– Gun firing sounds
– Vehicle sounds
– Indoor reverb sounds
– Character animation sounds
– Overall sound volume rebalance
The full dev letter can be checked out here.
