Path of Exile Audio Team Q&A

How do you design sounds to be noticeable in the middle of 5000 effects all at once for PoE?

For example, Crystal Skinned has an audio cue, but it's hard to notice, much like the actual crystals are. Still, it helps, a bit.

SOUNDS TO BUY IN SHOP

Are you planning to add in-store purchases of ambient sounds to hidouts like cicadas, rain, storms, ghosts etc. Because it would be nice to be able to personalize the hideout this way. I wish it were so.
Two soundtracks at once - music from hidout and ambient background.

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Second options:
Selling sounds to existing spells and skills.
Sales of character sounds (yell when casting spells - different voice, e.g. more creepy - you know what I mean .. i play ( Shadow character ) necromancer style).

For now I am forced to buy "Deepwater Frog Pet" to have frog sounds in my Ghost-lit Graveyard hideout, which is generally not bad either but there are only these frogs.. There should be many more of these things.
I bought some other companions to check if they have sounds, e.g. Weta companions but it turned out they didn't have any sounds.
Some players dont like companions with sounds because they use them in a standard way - they play/run with them. There should be sounds that we would normally buy from the store.

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Will there be an option to add your own music to the game - to add mp3s to a folder and to have your own music played for e.g. in the hidout automatically?

Personally, I have been listening to this background music for many years for e.g. when I play my Necromancer character on HC:

"A Tergo Lupi - Vesper [Full Album]"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bB5WUoLoig&list=PL2ozNEM5o5ljPCfj6haT7bRNK3smNVkWa&index=4&t=1s

"Paleowolf - Direwolf"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB52YNnsbjo&list=PL2ozNEM5o5ljPCfj6haT7bRNK3smNVkWa&index=4


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Best regards to the HC players and all GGG. Thank you for best game ever made!

I really enjoy the soundtrack in the catacombs, bone crypt map, etc.

Is it possible to see(hear) more of this style in the future?

Is there any considerations for player quality of life? For example, any build that uses lots of charges will know that the drop off sound of charges is TERRIBLE to hear every 5s - most (including me) turned off sound completely because of that one issue that is unresolved for years even though people asked multiple times.

I love music and voice acting in this game. Izaro, Rigwald, Shaper and Sirus - are my favourites.
But one thing I was disappointed with is when I found out that I can't use Pale Court music in my hideout. I liked the encounter design, and the music was cool. Why is that ost unusable?

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Deus_Vitae wrote:

Its such a shame about the old ACT 1 music, Solaris Temple, etc being replaced. I know there was DRAMA but yah...

I really miss the old soundtrack as well… the login screen, strand, and lioneye’s watch songs still give me chills :(

1) Is any work being carried out to minimise the profound effect that sound effects have on lag for many players?

This has been a known issue for at least the past 3 years:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ei3d1u/performance_tip_you_can_actually_reap_the_nosound/

2) Are you able and willing to allow granular volume control over specific sounds? For example, I would be overjoyed if it was possible to reduce the volume of "losing charges", or disabling sounds except for status effects (corrupted blood)/on death effects (toxic balls).

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Want to know more about what goes into the music and sound effects of Path of Exile or how they're made?

· Do you plan to implement dynamic mixing of separate but harmonically homogeneous instruments, according to the events happening at the game?

· What are the advances in the "musical" engine that you have in mind?

· Which are the classical music instrument libraries at Kamil disposal at this moment?

Thank you!

Ok so few questions! I am a sound designer doing movies myself so excuse any confusion born out of my limited understanding of game sound design.

Do all the audio team members use the same daw? If not, how do you manage integration and review between units. If yes, is it reaper? If yes, would you care to shed a little light on you scripts and workflow.

How does the workflow go from creation to release and how much creative freedom is given proportionally to visual design?

What kind of quality control and control of loudness do you use? Are you monitoring through a loudness meter or do you simply have normalized workstations?

Do you mostly work with headphones or speakers? Why?

How big is the sound team?

How early in the design process is the sound team taken in or are you just "sound engineers" who make the vision™ possible?

Cheers!

Why are you not using audio cues more to improve clarity of your mechanics if the visuals are suffering from cluttering? Diablo 2 did this very well, DotA2 does this very well, but PoE doesn't, for example an AN mod like Corpse Detonator could use a bit of a bigger audio cue. It seems like you only telegraph things visually but never with audio as well.

So many iconic sounds in Diablo 2 I can think of (meteor sound, lightning enchanted monsters, curses, being poisoned, hell even hit registration sounds!), in PoE besides a frozen monster shattering or the level up sound I could not think of one.