I have several of the Ambient Machine decorations set up in one of my strongholds that I use for a weekly social RP event. The Ambient Machines have very little volume behind them and only cover a small area (both issues which multiple people have reported on before and which have received no dev acknowledgment) so I need to use multiple ones to try to "saturate" all the RP area. I spent a large amount of credits getting all the copies I wanted to produce the proper atmosphere for the stronghold.

 

Today I was going through activating them all in preparation for my RP event only to discover they are ALL broken. You can still activate them, and they will start to produce their sound effects. However, as soon as you move your toon a few steps away out of the radius of the sound effects, they will stop producing sound, even if you move back into range of them! The decorations still show as activated, but no sound comes out. You can deactivate and reactivate them to get the sound effects going once more, but they will cease as soon as you move away from them again. And since the radius of effect is literally just a few steps away, that makes them absolutely useless unless you're going to just keep all your toons in one corner of one room the entire night.

 

This was not happening before 6.0 dropped. I set these all up last week for the event with zero issues. C'mon EA, how does a patch that has nothing to do with strongholds manage to break decorations AND the ability to invite people into your strongholds at the same time? What are you doing over there?

Edited October 24, 2019 by AscendingSky

Don't forget yet more decorations with duplicate names, so you can't use half the pair.

After so many, you'd think they'd scold the dev to search existing names before creating a new deco.

It doesn't get more basic than that.

 

BUT on this topic -- even when I'm in the very small range, it sounds "muddy" -- distorted, unclear.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Xina_LA

The one that does the temple whispers has always been the worst with not being able to hear it. When and if they fix this new issue it would be nice if they could turn up these decos volume so one can actually hear it over other environmental noise as well. Edited October 25, 2019 by TyrFoge

Don't forget yet more decorations with duplicate names, so you can't use half the pair.

After so many, you'd think they'd scold the dev to search existing names before creating a new deco.

It doesn't get more basic than that.

 

BUT on this topic -- even when I'm in the very small range, it sounds "muddy" -- distorted, unclear.

 

Yeah, that deserves a whole other thread in and of itself. The fact that the devs don't spend a whole 5 seconds determining if a decoration name has already been taken is shameful. We still don't have any fixes for the decorations they introduced in the last Nightlife event and it's been 5+ months now!

 

Also, I thought the noise quality was just a me thing, but if you're also hearing the 'muffled' quality then it looks like it's part of the same bug. Hopefully this will be fixed along with the issue of the decoration ceasing to broadcast noise when you walk a few steps away from it once issue, but I'm not that optimistic.

I can confirm the problem....

 

the problem seems to be a culling issue. sounds are only added to the players "visibility" table when initially turned on, then culled when they leave it's "visibility" radius... but never added back when they reenter that radius. New characters to the area NEVER hear Ambient Machine sounds unless they are turned off then on.

 

problem existed to some extent pre-6.0 (noticed in NS SH)

 

Solution: use the same environmental audio channel behavior that the "waterfall" decoration uses

 

PS while you guys are at it, remove the timeout on their activation behavior, and add "Floor - Small" to the Ambient machines attach table... it's hell to place them

Bumping this thread as these decorations STILL remain broken following the latest patch. People have spent real money on obtaining these decos, EA, either through packs or direct purchase. Please don't leave these broken like you have so many other decorations and stronghold issues over the years.

Bumping again because EA continues to refuse to acknowledge many bugs in 6.0, including this one.

I truly wish that Bioware would dedicate a small team to fixing SH decorations in this game, because so many of them are either outright broken, or have misconfigured hook requirements, or just can't be obtained anymore (e.g. Manned Blaster Turret from Colicoid Wargames). There so much missed opportunity here, and with their focus on Cartel Market items, it's hard to understand how this facet of the game continues to be so woefully neglected.

 

But the sad truth is that I don't think we'll ever see this change unto the ending of the game. The biggest indicator of this is the Massive Artillery Turret, which has been missing its barrels for almost 5 years now. Numerous bug reports and forum posts have been submitted for that deco alone, and yet it still remains unfixed. FIVE YEARS LATER. It gives me absolutely no hope that they'll address this very valid issue you've raised with the Ambient Music decos.

Bumping this as well:
Just bought party chatter for a upcoming party event in the guild am part of they still dont work and we could really use a fix already