Accessibility - Tinnitus settings not working
Disclaimer: I understand this won’t resonate with a lot of people, especially young people and people that never experienced tinnitus or something like it. But please keep an open mind, I never had these issues before. I have played a lot of games and never experienced it like in this beta, even the older battlefield gameswere never a problem, and I played quite some bf4 the last few weeks.
I tested a lot of different audio settings to eliminate unwantend and very anoying sounds, especially the high pitch ones. I noticed the tinnitus settings are not working or doing anything noticeable. Even playing with the following setting doesn't seem to help at all:
Sound System => Auto & Headphones
Audio Mix => Default & Night Mode
Tinnitus SFX Volume => 0
Tinnitus Pitch => 2.000hz
Music => 50
Sound Effects Volume => 50
Night Mode
Lowering the Sound effects volume even more helped sort of, but that's not really an enjoyable way to play the game, because you end up almost not hearing any sound effects. I also tried using a 3rd party equilizer, but if you want to eliminate the most terrible sounds, it ends up screwing up the whole game experience.
To be honost, for me personally the game is unplayable like this. Like I mentioned I played quite a bit of BF4 before the open Beta started and yes the game is maybe a little bit less immersive, but I never had any issues while playing that game.
I really hope it's just a bug, because there are quite some really anoying sounds for people that have tinnitus or simular hearing problems. It really lowers the Accessibility of the game in my opinion. There's not a single game I have played the last years, where I had simular problems.
Here's a list of some of the worst sounds in my opinion, and I really hope there will be a switch or options to turn these off, or adjust them seperatly.
- Speeding up respawn when u get downed. (Terrible sound)
- Moment when u get downed an shot, and while you wait for revive (Also a realy bad one)
- Shooting with a sniper
- Flying with a jet, or when a jet flies by
- Some vehicles have some anoying high pitch tones in them
- Radio sounds, background noise, sqeeching and distortion
- Wind and explosions
I understand people want an immersive experience and you are trying to deliver on that. I also understand not a lot of people will have these issues. But for those who do, this game is just unplayable. If this problem isn't adressed, this game will be a big pass for me, and I expect for a lot of people with simular hearing problems.
For people who will complain it should feel and hear like a Battlefield, I completely agree, but I don't understand why we are playing a game in the short future, where you have exceptional gear, weapons and vehicles, but apparently ear protection isn't one of them. I mean there is allready tons of ways to cancel loud noises and certain ranges. It's not like soldiers run around without any ear protection these days.