Hitmarkers Overhaul (Accessibility Setting)

No.

This would be a bit broken I think. Suppose you are fighting someone in a storm, a lot of the time your view is blocked by the rain and waves. Letting anyone get feedback to whether they hit or not would be a bit OP, obviously you get feedback for cannons, but killing the people on board remains a mystery.

And if you are in a situation where you can see who you are shooting, then you can probably see the effect from whenever you hit.

If anything, we are probably better off muting all in game sound when the impact noise plays so that is all you hear.

But hitmarkers for every sort of projectile doesn't really seem necessary.

@targasbr said:

Hitreg is already a problem now, I'm imagining with these extra calculations...

As far as I know, hitreg is a problem right now because of desync issues. The hitmarkers we get are client side.

So with this example, when a person hits a ship, they see a small ship icon flash. Whether or not they actually hit or got cannon regged is another story, but at least they will know that they should have hit.

I see no problem with suggestions like this, or an additional visual indicator for when the wheel is centered. It's all QoL accessibility stuff that no one has to use if they don't want to, but would improve the experience for those who need it.

We already have that quick and sudden * that appears on screen.

A lot of these accessibility seetings that keep being suggested all seem to revolve around the issue of sound

So I have a solution to solve all of them.

While playing, there is an optional setting for: "emphasize key sounds"

What this would do is when an important sound plays (e.g. the sound that plays when you hit a boat with a cannon, the sound the plays when you kill someone, ships wheel moving past the centre) all other unimportant sounds are briefly muted.

So it would be like this for a cannon shot:

• Normal sound of cannon fire and waves playing

• Shoots cannon

• Hits opposing ship

• All sound muted

• Celebration Sound

• Sound returns to normal.

I think this would be the best way to implement accessibility options without filling the screen with notifications saying exactly what is happening.

@targasbr said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remeber Rare said the hitreg problem is about floating object calculations.

I don't think you're wrong about that, but the hitmarkers OP is suggesting would presumably be seen client-side first (as hitmarkers are now; correct me if I'm wrong), and wouldn't depend on those calculations.

Currently when a bullet lands, we get a hitmarker on our end, but that doesn't always represent actual damage calculated by the server.

Likewise, these could be feedback cues independent of calculations for whether or not something regged. It would just tell the player that their shot should have landed.

The feedback cues for cannon hits already exist in the form of music. All this would do is add a visual marker to that music.

@ottyman8687 said in Hitmarkers Overhaul (Accessibility Setting):

A lot of these accessibility seetings that keep being suggested all seem to revolve around the issue of sound

So I have a solution to solve all of them.

While playing, there is an optional setting for: "emphasize key sounds"

What this would do is when an important sound plays (e.g. the sound that plays when you hit a boat with a cannon, the sound the plays when you kill someone, ships wheel moving past the centre) all other unimportant sounds are briefly muted.

So it would be like this for a cannon shot:

• Normal sound of cannon fire and waves playing

• Shoots cannon

• Hits opposing ship

• All sound muted

• Celebration Sound

• Sound returns to normal.

I think this would be the best way to implement accessibility options without filling the screen with notifications saying exactly what is happening.

not so helpful if you can't hear sound at all, but I appreciate where you are coming from here...

@bekkbloodaxe96

Oh yeah just realised that. I think a feature like this though would be ideal to be used with sound.

The main issue I have with putting notifications on the screen for different audio prompts (I'm imagining something like the ring in Fortnite), is about a few audio prompts that could be a bit OP. The main one being footsteps. Obviously there is a footstep noise, but currently it is so quiet that if you are at a fort, for example, you generally can't hear someone sneaking around on your boat due to music, etc.

With notifications, you would be told exactly where the person is, which does seem a little OP.

However, if people are going to benefit from a change like this, then I don't really have an issue with it, but I worry it may end up being something that could grant someone an advantage. Therefore if this feature did go forward Id hope there would he some testing to try and balance it a little.

@ottyman8687 I'm sure the devs would consider all of this very carefully in terms of PVP, I expect this is part of the reason we don't already have an accessibility feature supporting these audio cues.

@ottyman8687 said in Hitmarkers Overhaul (Accessibility Setting):

A lot of these accessibility seetings that keep being suggested all seem to revolve around the issue of sound

So I have a solution to solve all of them.

While playing, there is an optional setting for: "emphasize key sounds"

What this would do is when an important sound plays (e.g. the sound that plays when you hit a boat with a cannon, the sound the plays when you kill someone, ships wheel moving past the centre) all other unimportant sounds are briefly muted.

So it would be like this for a cannon shot:

• Normal sound of cannon fire and waves playing

• Shoots cannon

• Hits opposing ship

• All sound muted

• Celebration Sound

• Sound returns to normal.

I think this would be the best way to implement accessibility options without filling the screen with notifications saying exactly what is happening.

Fun fact: it's confirmed by Rare that the sound cues we rely on when hitting a ship or killing a player, are hard-coded and tied to the Music slider in the audio settings. If you don't have music on, you're playing an even worse guessing game if your shots hit or you successfully killed someone, especially in a panicked scenario where having confirmed accuracy is vital to the situation.

This suggestion was made to be a feasible workaround an issue like that, especially for those that don't care for the monotony of fortress music or meg/skeleton ship encounter music in the middle of an intense fight, and would feel more inclined to use their own music to play instead to either calm down or jam out to mid-fight. This would also be very applicable to the hard of hearing because hitting a ship does not mean you hit a player, if you're aiming for a sink, you're not necessarily supposed to be looking for the current hitmarker graphic, you're apparently supposed to see how low the enemy crew is in the water, or how less often the enemy is shooting their cannons, which isn't enough feedback for someone hard of hearing I feel.

Keep in mind this suggestion is mainly targeted towards combat scenarios, to help transmit better info to the user who may not like hearing/be able to hear the game's music while doing things but still rely on audio cues to perform optimally in combat.