Before this season you could hear enemy footsteps from like hundreds of meters, and that was cool because you always knew where enemies were and it was pretty much impossible for people to kill you by sneaking up on you.
This is the first season where I feel I can get kills by just shooting someone before they even knew I was there. It’s also the first season where I get killed by enemies who surprised me.
Why did they do this ?
A lot of people had just the opposite problem as you. Before this season enemy footstep audio was either too quiet, too easily masked, or absent altogether. The changes were meant to address it. Like you I never really experienced the problem myself, but I certainly haven't had any instances of anyone sneaking up on me this season. I haven't tried to sneak up on anyone myself - it would never occur to me to try - so not quite sure why things would have changed for you in that regard. Unless you just switched over to Revenant, who makes noise by design.
I had bad audio before this season, but this season it's just much worse. I barely hear any enemies close by. All the noises of grenades/knuckle clusters etc etc are a lot louder instead of the "adjusted" volume it should have. Audio in this gameis just... ugh.
