Can the sound team add 'echos' in small areas and environments?

Ser Lobo · June 2018

I realized that my horse sounded funny walking through the streets of Alinor because the stone walls were so close but his hooves made only default noises.

I realized a placeable zone marker where screams, footfalls, horseshoes and other player made noises are repeated in echo might go a long way for a small ambiance touch.

Marginis · June 2018

I'm not sure the way the audio engine is put together can really allow this (someone from ZOS, correct me on this if I'm wrong). It appears to me that the audio is put together like a lot of other games that have more content than something like an action shooter that loads only a single map at a time. This is to say ESO doesn't necessarily apply effects to audio, so much as piece together a bunch of audio that has had effects applied to it before being put in game. This allows audio to be run in-engine much easier than if audio had to go through all that post processing. In Halo, for example, a sniper shot could go off, and then the game would have to determine the direction from you the sound is, how far away it is, how close to you the bullet goes, etcetera, and then apply several filters based on those things. Halo only has to do that with a single multiplayer map, however. ESO has a large zone with way more other players in addition to a load of NPCs and other assets, so all they can really afford to do is choose a sound and whether to play it or not. Applying too many filters would take up too many resources. Basically, what you're asking would be to create all new audio and place it in different places in the game, rather than just set certain types of spaces to apply an effect. These are very different size endeavors.

It's like instead of applying an echo effect to all sounds when you're in a cave-type area (which would be relatively simple), it would be creating an echo version of footsteps, and echo version of every NPC voice, an echo version of every effect - you get the idea - and then putting all those into cave-type areas. This is not even to mention the effect on game performance we might see - and isn't Summerset choppy enough as is? All things considered, yes, it would be nice to have the game more immersive and such, but with current hardware restrictions and all the other stuff we should prioritize for ESO... echoes are probably not of much importance.