[2019] Vertical Audio Issues /w Examples

So I was pretty "lucky" in that the first night of the patch I disconnected for an entire raid. I couldn't interact with anything and nothing interacted with me, and all the players/raiders on labs were walking in place making noise. I used this chance to check out the audio changes and see what I should get used to hearing and discovered there's a lot of issues with vertical sound occlusion.

From what I can tell, the sound changes are implemented in a simple yet effective way: the game checks the overall thickness of the material between your head and the originating point of the sound, and alters the sound based on that. Then sound is changed much differently depending on how much vertical distance is between you and the sound as well, and that's where it starts to get messed up. There's no check to see if the material between you and the sound is just a small pillar or short wall in an otherwise very open area, and so you can't hear someone making noise 5m from you if they're slightly below you on some stairs if there's anything slightly in the way like for example: This or above you, even when just the stairs' railing is in the way: This This issue seems to be much worse for wood and metal footsteps than concrete footsteps for some reason, you can still slightly hear concrete steps but not metal or wood steps if something like this occurs.

Essentially what this means is if they're slightly below or above you, you often cannot hear them unless you can see them. This occurs on all stairwells, any open multi-level areas, or even if you're just on a rock on woods. It's wildly inconsistent however, because it's dependent on the amount of material directly between you and the audio source as well as possibly distance so you can get things like: This So you end up with really inconsistent sound when the sound's origination isn't on the same vertical plane as you, with footsteps suddenly being audible and just as suddenly disappearing, even though they have been walking around the whole time. You can't hear players coming up/down stairwells at all, only the last few steps. Oddly, doors can be heard through everything and are never occluded so they always sound like they're on your floor.

You can watch my entire 15 minute testing Here

Overall I think this is a great step in the right direction, it just needs to be tweaked. I think a good short term solution would be to make no sound inaudible within a certain distance, just muffled, until something more complex can be done. It would stop issues like this but it would allow you to hear players in floors below you more easily, though you'd still know they weren't on your floor at least. But then again I'm biased because I'm tired of not hearing players coming up stairs right next to me.