Dynamic music

Wandering Mist · May 2020

I'm curious to here your thoughts on dynamic music, or in other words, music that is played at specific times such as during combat. A number of games including FFXIV and GW2 have this and sometimes it can add to the excitement of combat, but other times it can be downright annoying.

What are your thoughts on it?

Plateau · May 2020

I think dynamic music is an obvious upgrade if it's done well. There are plenty of games with amazing OSTs that really enhance each part of the game by playing appropriate music for appropriate gameplay. The only problems come from how you transition between tracks. There are some really in-depth systems for this (matching up leitmotifs and stuff, idk, I'm not a music nerd), but I think it's fine if they just do two really basic things: fade the current track out (literally anything but an instant switch is fine) and compose the next track such that it starts with an appropriate amount of build-up. So like if it's a sudden ambush, there can be sudden loud battle music, but if you're gradually approaching a boss arena, the boss music should start with a slower, ominous build-up.

I don't think the requirements are that high to make a good dynamic music system, just a lot of common sense rules. And a lot of good music. Especially boss themes. (Although that relates more to a different topic: having iconic bosses.)

My number one annoyance though is repetitive battle music that you hear literally everywhere. Especially the first 10 seconds of it, which you could hear several times in a minute if you're mob-farming and every mob is a new fight. So please, just make a lot of different battle songs, and don't restart at the beginning of the song unless it's been a few minutes since it was last played.

Ishka · May 2020

I think it would be nice to have such things, but it'll be very hard to make it that it won't be become an annoyance. Imagine farming the same monster for 3 hours, and the music is repeatedly changing every 20s.

As long as there is an option to disable it, I'm fine with this. What I wonder is how will the dynamic music "activate" do you need to be in fight, or does it works by being aggroed or targeted. Because it'll end up giving the info that you're being targeted in open world pvp.

Or it'll do the same thing as Skyrim when you angered a mudcrab at 1km and you're looking everywhere to find the threat.

So in the end, I wonder if it's worth investing time in doing it. Looking at the whole picture, it seems very hard to do properly.

Hexcat · May 2020

That would be so nice to have and i dont think is too hard to implement.
Intrepid can start by doing it little by little and expand the music options with each patch
for example 10 simple tracks for basic combat with random monsters
5 tracks for each race towns
and 3 tracks dependind on the biomes
and then start to add more and more
On the other hand maybe is the little details that can make the music part a great success or a horrible failure, you can have amazing music, but if the transitions, the moments, the continuity and the duration doesnt match exactly with the dynamic in the screen it could become really annoying really faster

WizardTim · May 2020

I think music should be both seasonal (there are seasons in the game), and location based.

As in, no combat music just because you're "in combat". Dungeon music if your in a dungeon could be made to intensify the situation, along with sound effects, but combat music is... meh...

Combat specific music just overly complicates the scores. I'd rather have well done music that plays continuously and helps me feel like I'm actually traveling from scene to scene than something with less attention paid and constantly interrupted while I'm out snarking about.

NOW... A clever developer might come out with a way to add a combat theme to the music you're hearing. So instead of listening to just the same music in an area, when you enter combat, a second hidden track is faded in that intensifies the regional music and makes it more pronounced with additional drum beats or what not.

Jamation · May 2020

I'd be happy with any combination of music style because after playing in near the same areas after a while I'll usually lower the game sounds to watch videos or streams while I play anyway. The only music that I desperately hope gets added is that each major boss gets their own unique music score because there have been a ton of games where I would listen to the music way before I even considered buying the game and eventually would be the driving factor for making me purchase it. Think Nier Automata or FFXIV's boss themes because to this day I could still sing the lyrics for some of these songs, but only played through the boss once

ataulfos · May 2020

i would love to see some fantasy music like gogo penguin that is instrumental in ashes of creation for travel or even for combat, just think about it big games with big music bands working together for 1 goal

Makinoji · May 2020

Music in any game can immediately change the tone. I can't imagine playing Skyrim without its iconic dovokin track. I am not sure about others but I will usually visit a certain zone in an MMO just for that music. Perfect examples for me at least are Vvardenfell in ESO and TERA Scythera Fae.