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11/30/20, 02:16 PM   #1
@Moulting_Deity
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 11
Audio Duration Reminder

There are a number of buff tracker addons out there. As far as I know all of them primarily use visual cues to indicate when an ability is going to run out. IMO this works well enough in front of a dummy but it's a crutch in actual content. It adds distracting visual noise and hurts your situational awareness.

Wherever possible, I use audio instead of visual cues to keep track of timers. On my magsorc, I need to track frags, daedric prey, and Unstable Wall (there are other timers but they line up with wall so I just cast them together). I do this with S'rendarr, ADR (restricted to Prey only) and BuffTimers2 respectively.

It works alright for magsorc since the first 2 are audio cues and that leaves just one rather long timer, but depending on the spec or meta it gets messy. Add Channeled Acceleration, Crit Surge, Degeneration, etc. and you start to have problems -- or more timer bars than I would like anyway.

I would love to see an addon like BuffTimers2, only with no visual components. I know on some level this is reinventing the wheel, but IMO that would allow for both the breadth that addons like S'rendarr get ypu and a cleaner UI. With any luck the work done on existing add-ons can be repurposed.

CORE CONCEPT
Like BuffTimers, it would let you add any number of effect trackers and assign an audio cue to each of them. Options should let the user select what sound plays to indicate that this effect is ending as well as how many seconds before of the end of the effect that sound should play (similar to ADR's popup warning). Sounds and "look-ahead" duration should be specified separately for each timer.

ISSUES AND SIDE NOTES
  • The main issue I can think of is that having multiple timers ending at once would just become confusing as 3-4 sounds play on top of one another. I don't know how much of a problem this would be in real use cases.

    If it is, maybe it could be addressed by staggering the cues, meaning even if 3 timers end at once, the add-on would play the corresponding sounds one after the other -- maybe a global setting can control how much time the addon waits between sounds when it's staggering abilities. Effect priority rankings could be used for this. In my case, it's more important to recast Wall over Frags, and Frags over Prey. I would like to be able to assign priority 3, 2, 1 to them. (So if Wall, Curse, and Frags sounds are meant to play at the same time and I have my stagger time set to 100ms, Wall would play normally, Frags .1 second after, Curse a total of .2 seconds after)
  • There are a number of effects that should behave differently from standard abilities, like Frags. I don't have all of them in mind so it's difficult for me to say how they should all be handled off the top of my head. Abilities that cost ult might need to be handled differently. Potion cooldowns would also be a nice thing to have a cue for.
  • The sound choice UI should ideally have a dropdown menu with names corresponding to a selection of dissimilar sounds, not a slider with numbers.
  • Recast warning: one of the reasons why I switched from S'rendarr to BuffTimers is that S'rendarr indicates that an effect has ended with the *absence* of a timer, whereas BT has (optionally) persistent timers. You get to actually see that you don't currently have Wall active in the same place that you check for when it runs out, IMO that's important. Optionally, this audio reminder addon could replay the reminder sound once if x seconds have been spent in combat without the skill being reactivated.
  • A checkbox for each effect should make the addon play a sound whenever the effect ends early (I'm thinking primarily of damage shields being consumed). Possibly a different sound for when that happens.

Last edited by @Moulting_Deity : 11/30/20 at 02:39 PM.
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11/30/20, 03:27 PM   #2
Baertram
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I'd try Action Duration Reminder, disable the visual effects like the swithc bar and enable the sound notification.
Maybe ask the author if he could add some additional settings for buffs so you can add buffs like within Srendarr on your own and specify one of the given sounds for it.

But I'd say this will make it very noisy and LOUD as eso tends to play sounds loud if you put them over each other, or they will be played in a queue which will make them not play properly as the effect ends if other effects glidein between...
so imo ths will be no good deal to have only audiio notifications as they will not fire correctly in many cases.
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11/30/20, 06:39 PM   #3
@Moulting_Deity
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 11
Originally Posted by Baertram View Post
I'd try Action Duration Reminder, disable the visual effects like the swithc bar and enable the sound notification.
Maybe ask the author if he could add some additional settings for buffs so you can add buffs like within Srendarr on your own and specify one of the given sounds for it.

But I'd say this will make it very noisy and LOUD as eso tends to play sounds loud if you put them over each other, or they will be played in a queue which will make them not play properly as the effect ends if other effects glidein between...
so imo ths will be no good deal to have only audiio notifications as they will not fire correctly in many cases.
Yeah I basically already use ADR that way. I will ask in that thread though, I guess that addon would be the easiest to adapt.

IMO it's fine if it can get loud; that's just the equivalent of video clutter. This would just let users choose audio over visual noise if that's what they prefer.

Point taken about audio "desyncs" though.
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12/01/20, 02:37 AM   #4
Baertram
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With loud I meant really loud, not that ear friendly
But it somehow only happens if "the same" sounds play ovrlayed over each other as it seems. So maybe this wouldn't be the point here, only if you got skills with ~1s durations and use them very frequently.
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12/02/20, 10:37 AM   #5
@Moulting_Deity
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 11
It turns out BuffTimers2 has this built in pretty much completely. I just missed all the notification options.
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