No more loading screens

No more loading screens

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Posted by: Firefly.5982

Firefly.5982

Oh, I know, this is a big one – but I will suggest it anyway.

I haven’t been playing much over the past few months, because the game has more and more lost its charm for me. I know everything, I’ve been everywhere, I’ve played through it all over and over and the one thing, that keeps me from coming back and play just for the sake of playing, even without new content, is the missing immersion.

Loading screens kill immersion. Nothing kills it, like loading screens. When walking into a city there shouldn’t be a loading screen. There should be a big city gate through which you step directly into the city. When changing zones, there shouldn’t be a loading screen. There should be stone arches, caves and tunnels through rock, a winding road, a canyon through which you walk – natural gateways through which you enter new zones.

Loading screens are the one thing that make GW2 feel like a game, instead of a stunning world of its own into which I can immerse myself fully, until I chose to turn off my PC.

Please. Find a way to get rid of loading screens.

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Posted by: Dean Calaway.9718

Dean Calaway.9718

What you’re asking for would require, to put it simple, making a brand new game. Everything from the graphics engine till the server structure, would all have to be redone.

The loading screens aren’t there just because, it’s a necessary evil, anet wouldn’t have the time or money to get rid of them even if they considered the suggestion.

Victoria Cross [VC] – Desolation [EU]

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Posted by: Rash.6514

Rash.6514

I completely agree with you, Firefly, and Dean is correct. Not to let you down, but this is certainly a no-go. Even if all players on the forums signed.

Not just that, but I am somewhat sure that this, exactly this, is the thing that allows ANet to keep the game free-to-play. A server to handle instanceless games is a huge deal.

Look at that: http://youtu.be/Em0Sd60iI2w?t=1m59s Remember that video? That gave me a lot of hope back in 2009 that the game would be instanceless (no loading screens), but no. You can see the portals there. I am pretty sure ANet forgot to remove the video from YouTube, since it is inaccurate today. What’s that, Black Citadel? What’s that bone dragon entrance? What’s that Rata Sum entrance?

Who knows maybe Guild Wars 3…

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Posted by: Beorn Raukar.4328

Beorn Raukar.4328

I completely agree with you, Firefly, and Dean is correct. Not to let you down, but this is certainly a no-go. Even if all players on the forums signed.

Not just that, but I am somewhat sure that this, exactly this, is the thing that allows ANet to keep the game free-to-play. A server to handle instanceless games is a huge deal.

Look at that: http://youtu.be/Em0Sd60iI2w?t=1m59s Remember that video? That gave me a lot of hope back in 2009 that the game would be instanceless (no loading screens), but no. You can see the portals there. I am pretty sure ANet forgot to remove the video from YouTube, since it is inaccurate today. What’s that, Black Citadel? What’s that bone dragon entrance? What’s that Rata Sum entrance?

Who knows maybe Guild Wars 3…

An instance is very different from a series of maps. While you do have to load up every map independently each map is persistent, it always exists regardless if you (or any player) for that matter is there or not. While I do agree that the design decision of cutting it to maps has something to do with lower budget in server infrastructure and development maps, keep in mind that the overflow system exists because of this design. If we had one single huge map, overflows would be unusable, because a lot of people champ farming in Frostgorge would create an overflow of the entire map, waste of resources and making each overflow (outside of this farming areas) feel more empty that it already feels.

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Posted by: Rash.6514

Rash.6514

Well, that’s why I mentioned instanceless. It would be one single “instance” for all players, overloads wouldn’t exist. So ANet would have to support all players on a server on any corner of the map. If you played WoW for a while you would know that’s ridiculously difficult (unless the servers handled less players at a time, which is boring as hell). WoW, which has been a monthly paid game for 7+ years with a good base of players, crashed several times when players decided to recreate the Dark Portal event. Blizzard said they would never do anything like Wintergrasp again (which is a huge PvP zone right in the middle of the map). So I wasn’t surprised when I heard the zones on GW2 would be “instanced” (I guess we shouldn’t use that term because it is not really a “copy of the map created just for you”). I guess I am already happy that we can see other players on the maps. On GW1 that was a real instance, created just for you. It was very lonely.

(edited by Rash.6514)

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Posted by: shujin.8904

shujin.8904

Or at least make them short. I dont want to buy an ssd just because anet isnt able to shorten the loading screens. Who wants to wait longer than 3 seconds to get from one point to another! And dun tell me that i have a slow connection cause i have 5mbit! My pc is also a power pc just without an ssd!

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Posted by: uknortherner.2670

uknortherner.2670

It takes on average seven seconds to load a map on my PC using a normal HDD. In all honesty, what are you going to do with seven seconds that’s so time-critical?

I stole a special snowflake’s future by exercising my democratic right to vote.

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Posted by: Rash.6514

Rash.6514

That’s totally true. I thought the loadings times were bad just on my PC. I’ve also noticed that sometimes, even after waiting a long time to load, the game would come up with sound effects missing, player skins missing, etc. That has improved (as loading times got worse).

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Posted by: Dean Calaway.9718

Dean Calaway.9718

Or at least make them short. I dont want to buy an ssd just because anet isnt able to shorten the loading screens. Who wants to wait longer than 3 seconds to get from one point to another! And dun tell me that i have a slow connection cause i have 5mbit! My pc is also a power pc just without an ssd!

Honestly and SSD isn’t as faster compared to a normal HDD as people often think, and often times (like in all PC games) devs are limited by the minimum system requirements, it could down right break the game in some machines if they push it too much.
As for the connection, that doesn’t cause much of an impact on the loading times.

Nobody likes to wait, in a packet LA it can seem for ever, but the sad bit is loading times are “reasonable” I don’t think they’ll invest any time/money on that ever on this game.

Victoria Cross [VC] – Desolation [EU]

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Posted by: shujin.8904

shujin.8904

Or at least make them short. I dont want to buy an ssd just because anet isnt able to shorten the loading screens. Who wants to wait longer than 3 seconds to get from one point to another! And dun tell me that i have a slow connection cause i have 5mbit! My pc is also a power pc just without an ssd!

Honestly and SSD isn’t as faster compared to a normal HDD as people often think, and often times (like in all PC games) devs are limited by the minimum system requirements, it could down right break the game in some machines if they push it too much.
As for the connection, that doesn’t cause much of an impact on the loading times.

Nobody likes to wait, in a packet LA it can seem for ever, but the sad bit is loading times are “reasonable” I don’t think they’ll invest any time/money on that ever on this game.

The funny thign is that the higher ur settings are the longer u have to wait-.- I noticed that on my macbook air 13 2012 with an ssd loads faster on LA than it does on my pc just because it has an ssd and low settings!-.-

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Posted by: Dean Calaway.9718

Dean Calaway.9718

The funny thign is that the higher ur settings are the longer u have to wait-.- I noticed that on my macbook air 13 2012 with an ssd loads faster on LA than it does on my pc just because it has an ssd and low settings!-.-

To put it simple, when you change zones your machine needs to go in the hard drive and copy the stuff to the RAM then start to draw.

If it’s on low settings, well, its lower quality lighter data that gets handled much faster.

If you get everything on min, including the sample (you have low, native and supersample if I’m not mistaken) you’ll see a huge difference. Couple that with the marginal faster SSD and there’s gonna be a huge difference.

Victoria Cross [VC] – Desolation [EU]

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Posted by: shujin.8904

shujin.8904

The funny thign is that the higher ur settings are the longer u have to wait-.- I noticed that on my macbook air 13 2012 with an ssd loads faster on LA than it does on my pc just because it has an ssd and low settings!-.-

To put it simple, when you change zones your machine needs to go in the hard drive and copy the stuff to the RAM then start to draw.

If it’s on low settings, well, its lower quality lighter data that gets handled much faster.

If you get everything on min, including the sample (you have low, native and supersample if I’m not mistaken) you’ll see a huge difference. Couple that with the marginal faster SSD and there’s gonna be a huge difference.

Still they should make improvements because i didnt assembled an 800€ pc for low setting -_-

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Posted by: CureForLiving.5360

CureForLiving.5360

Well ok then, so loading screens apparently kill emergence, but there are very real technical issues. How about a way to hide the loading screen rather? A short video showing your character entering a city or a new area? Perhaps spice up the loading screen a bit with some flavour text?

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Posted by: Dean Calaway.9718

Dean Calaway.9718

Well ok then, so loading screens apparently kill emergence, but there are very real technical issues. How about a way to hide the loading screen rather? A short video showing your character entering a city or a new area? Perhaps spice up the loading screen a bit with some flavour text?

That would definitely be the way to go, something like Assassins Creed or GTAV.

Victoria Cross [VC] – Desolation [EU]