Guild Wars 2

No loading screens.

You know, like Everquest II, World of Warcraft, etc. Wouldnt it be so cool to walk from Ganderren Fields to Lions Arch and walk through the gate without a loading screen. It would bring a lot of immersion into the game.

Is the game engine capable of accomplishing something like that?

FPS would tank soooo very much, guaranteed!

Wouldn’t that ruin the Fast travel vibe Gw2 has got going for it? No idea how it works in WoW as I gave up on it, but I’m pretty sure that if the WHOLE map of Gw2 had to be loaded at the start a lot of PCs would never handle the insane amount of graphical jump and a lot of complaints from lower end PC users (Like me). In short, great idea, but so not worth it.

Although, I will add, putting it as an option would definitely be cool if PCs can handle it

An SSD will shorten your loading screens a lot…Though not getting rid of them.

What about an animation instead of a loading screen? For example, if you enter an Asura gate (or one of the inter-region portals) you fly through a simple ‘stargate’ like effect. Same loading time, but it feels like you’re actually moving.

That sounds like a terrible idea. Performance would tank drastically and the gain would be minimal. Even for a game like Skyrim where they do that performance tanked for the most part.

Riku.4821:

That sounds like a terrible idea. Performance would tank drastically and the gain would be minimal. Even for a game like Skyrim where they do that performance tanked for the most part.

I’m not sure what you’re envisioning, or what Skyrim does, but it doesn’t have to be anything complicated and it would definitely have to be an option for those who want to sacrifice a little performance for a greater sense of continuity, rather than something forced on everybody.. ahem…

All I’m suggesting is a simple wormhole effect with few polygons and textures which would run on the client while it’s downloading data. Effects like this were common in the ‘old’ days of computing, where clever programmers achieved amazing results with just a few kilobytes of code to create amazing screensavers and tech demos. I did muck around in this area back then so I’m not talking completely out of my hat. Anyway, we both know it’ll never happen so what’s the harm in a little imagination?

A seamless map? doubt gw2 can handle with that :\ since the world would be 1 shard/instance that would make 70 player across world per instance….no ty.

If the game could handle all players in one shard that would be diferent but would be a blob fest for every one…

There seems to be an assumption here that a ‘seamless’ transition between zones requires the entirety of Tyria to be loaded into memory.

We need to separate the goal (provide a seamless transition between zones) from the implementation – of which loading everything into memory is one approach, but not a particularly feasible one with the current technology.

A more elegant solution, provided by the original Half Life years ago, is to have some narrow tunnel a player has to go through between zones and the new zone is loaded in the background while the player is unable to see the new/old zones. They player has the impression that it’s seamless (mostly). Likewise, gw2 could have simple tunnels between zones where the player is occupied walking for a bit as the zone loads.

Of course, the load time depends greatly on the rig, the internet and other factors, and it would be hard to create a suitable tunnel to accommodate all possibilities. Which is why I mentioned the stargate approach (see my posts above). It would be much easier and more flexible than a tunnel.

These are by no means the only, or even the best, approaches to create the illusion of a seamless world. Putting aside the issue of cost/effectiveness and the problem that it may not help with immersion due to the subjective nature of immersion, my answer (as a layman) to the OP’s specific question of whether it’s possible is this: given what I know of the subject and what I can see of the engine, I can see ways in which it would be possible, though the final result may or may not meet your criteria for what you consider ‘seamless’.

A total seamless word I think is impossible, but i think it would be a nice start, if Anet for example could merge regions together that are near to each other

Example: Merge the lvl 60 instance island thats only relelevant sadly so far only for the PS to Bloodcoast Shore, so that we can visit it again whenever we want, find some new dynamic events that are related to it, like a new meta event of defending Lions Arch from an Orrian Invasion kind of thing

Other maps that would be nice to get merged imo are Kessex Hills and Brisban Wilds or Gendarran Fields and Harathi Hinterlands and the Sparkfly Fen + Timberline Falls (especially this to make this small unexplorable strip in between explorable) as also Straits of Devastationr + Malchor’s Leap and what should be merged also too is Metrica Province with Caledon Forest

If that would happen, then the maps would become more populated, because of the level range from players that are in the same map becoming in some regions biggers, while others that share the same level area share then also the player populatino from multiple playable races that play then together (Asura/Sylvari) what would be only logical from a locatzion point seen, as their hometowns are also so very close to each other and their starting zones are directly beneath each other, so why make not just 1 zone out of it… Fields of ruins could get merged also with Blazeridge Steppes when I think over it now…

PS: plus the map design would look then also nicer, because of lesser ugly artificial borders that make no sense and let the map look like some kind of cubic patchwork design

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

What about an animation instead of a loading screen? For example, if you enter an Asura gate (or one of the inter-region portals) you fly through a simple ‘stargate’ like effect. Same loading time, but it feels like you’re actually moving.

I’ve either heard this suggestion before or had a similar thought. I really like it. Animated loading screens would be quite exciting. A transition into the portal and then a transition out of the portal once the new map loads, and in between a twisting turning tunnel of lights?

I don’t know if lore people would freak out though? The gates are supposed to be instant, as described in the novels and otherwise.

I would love to see a “continuous” world. I’m not sure of the code behind it but I’m guessing it would be doing a lot of unloading and loading rather than a load of an individual map. I’m also guessing you’d take a ping hit but I may well be wrong there

Great idea though!