hey guys cant wait to play this game! but from the videos i have watched the sound in the game is pretty bad. The doors sound bad, the weapons sound light like they have no weight to them, same thing with the doors. The bow sounds terrible to me dosent sound like a bow at all. i really cant wait for this game but the sounds to me are going to be very annoying. Is this just a beta thing? are they just placeholders or what? the skyrim sounds for weapons and doors where alot better than this and those weren't even that great.

Even WoW doesn't have sounds that are that great. You can't expect single-player quality stuff from an MMO.

why is that does it have something to do with all the players?

Among other things, yes.

The average cost of building an MMO is so much higher than a single-person, that even wehn they cut overall sound/graphic quality the costs end up being insanely over the top. I mean for a simple MMO the project typically costs between 60-100 MILLION for any studio. For a massive project like ESO with genre-redefining mechanics and this "super server" they're planning on implementing?

I'm going to estimate that that tech, on top of server cost and game maintenance, is the reason that Zeni can't push out Skyrim: the multi-player.

Basically yes, to have a successful MMO you have to cut corner that single-player games do not. And they try to cut corners where they can most easily get away with it so it hinders your gameplay in the least possible way. With stuff like graphics and sounds, we have suspension of disbelief. But imagine when you started to play, the server started crashing every 20 minutes? Or when you started to PvP, but your class and chosen trees and racial choices were intensely underpowered? That stuff can't happen in single-players or isn't really noticed, but in MMO's it's crippling to our enjoyment and thus the developer.

Basically it all comes down to maintenance and balance, and these svck money from studios.

Zenimax is being really ambitious with their project, which I respect, and I personally feel that a lot of the stuff they're implementing will be worth the trade off.

audio takes a lot of time to record and implement. im not saying that the sound fx aren't complete. but the game is still in beta and still 6 months or so from launch. I wouldn't worry about the sound just yet.

to those suggesting that they cannot afford to hire a quality sound engineer, that is ridiculous as sound plays a very important part in gameplay. it helps make combat feel more visceral and helps create immersion in the game world. sound is definitely a very important part of any game and not a corner they should/would cut.

also to the op. could you provide some links to the examples you are referring to? id like to hear these sub-par sound fx for myself.

Sound being realistic maybe. But neither do many games devote massive parts of their resources to audio as well. The cost for quality audio probably has a steep incline for a short amount, then levels off, and then starts to increase exponentially as at that point you get to the point where games hire high quality orchestras and large amounts of sound engineers for not much of an improvement.

I'm just saying that, typically, sound is more important than balance in an MMO. To be frank, so is immersion, but obviously the game is dead without the both of them so the point is kinda moot. It's a tendency for MMO's to have less quality in their sound and sound immersion over all, though, at least from what I've experienced. Compared to single player games of an equivalent scope, at least.

sound is a huge part immersion. as far as the orchestra thing. the sound track and the sound fx are completely different beasts. an orchestra performing a score and using said score as the background noise in a zone does not equal a guy chopping a head of lettuce in half and using that sound for a sword hitting flesh. also single player games are nowhere near the scope of aaa mmo's.

Yeah, this pretty much. I mean we can probably expect some pretty awesome music, but probably not as awesome as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwbyU_QuBNs (they had a full orchestra for it). Keep in mind though that ZOS has a budget of $300 million, which could quite possibly allow them to have some really good stuff in terms of audio there.

normal single sounds like opening or closing door, or clashing weapons are not that hard to record. i don't understand why it would be harder to make sounds for mmo than for a singleplayer game. to me the challenge stays exactly same. they're still same sounds.

Well I'm mainly talking about quality game music and background music depth, which are generally easy to get good T, but very hard to get great at.

But you'd be surprised at how much money goes into getting the "right" sounds. Heck there's tons of companies out there that sell almost basic-ish sounds for over a hundred dollars per clip! And if you try to find free alternatives they're almost never the best quality or the type of sound you want. It's just one of the problems I run into as an indie dev.

What are you basing this on? Hopefully not leaks or the livestream.

the op was talking about sfx. im sure zos has their own sound studio. they aren't an indie dev. and they have millions of dollars to pay someone to get the 'right' sounds. if im not mistaken we already know that Jeremy Soule did at least part of the games score.

If Jeremy Soule did any of the music in this game, then should know by now that it will be [censored] amazing.