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Age of Loading ...
Lobotomist
Member EpicPosts: 5,981
LOADING SCREEN.....I just can not stand it anymore.
We have been warned that there are loading screens in AOC , but i could not imagine this even in my most nightmarish vision.
Did you play Witcher ? Witcher is a great game , but it has one big problem - every area , house , room you enter - you get a loading screen. And not just a harmless 5 second one , you get up to 3 minutes loading screens, even if you enter an empty room. Developers of Witcher are now developing and releasing completely new version that cuts this loading screens to minimum.
AOC is a carbon copy of Witcher , when it comes to loading screens.
Every area you enter , you get loading screen. You open the door , you get loading screen. You die , you get loading screen. You enter the dungeon , you get loading screen. You open a door in dungeon , you get loading screen. You enter PVP minigame , you get loading screen. You die in PVP minigame , you get loading screen.
The bigger the area , the longer is the load - up to wopping 6 minutes loads !
It is a game you need a book handy to play. So at least you can read while waiting on loading screen.
Now ok. Some people would say : Hey EQ2 also has loading screens !
Well yes. But , once loaded EQ2 areas are huge comparing to AOC ones. At least 10 times the size.
and they load at least 10 times faster (actually there is no area in eq2 that takes longer than 20 seconds to load)...
SO.... small tiny zones separated by huge loading times , enough to make you dont want to move from zone to zone at all.
I spend more time loading than playing ....
Comments
Yep. You are right. Not much else to say really...
Dying 1 foot away from a rez location causes 10-15 seconds + of a load screen. Going into new zones for the first time can take 1-10 minutes.
Yes there are some fixes to slightly better load times, but overall a lot of the load times, 'bettered' or not, are way too long for a MMORPG, especially one that claims a fast paced enviroment.
To be honest with the lethargy that is combo combat in AoC + loading times, we're looking at a VERY slow game play.
Well like you said at least you have found time to read that book you've been wanting to read.
<---- Lazy
I had a bad feeling it was gonna be just like the Witcher, I'll wait for warhammer, they think people are gonna like the video clips too
It can suck, I admit.
Different builds have different loading times, I've noticed. I think they are still playing with the efficiency, trying to trim the time down.
The saving grace is that once you get out in the world, you can play for several hours without loading in some areas that I've seen.
Personally, it doesn't bother me as much as some other ppl, since I played AO for many years, so I'm kind of used to it.
And the new patch only made load times worse....
One would think other companies learned something from one other popular title , that just so accidentaly has next to none loading times after you enter the game....
The way you describe the loading screens reminds me of when I played Oblivion on the Xbox360. Every single house, every single cave, the screen would take 1-2minutes to load it. It got extremely annoying in some cases.
__________________________________________________
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
I agree.
I've been making a few characters. The loading time to get in the game has shifted from aruond 2 min 30 seconds one night to 20 seconds the next. The loading times to get into that first tavern anywhere from 40 seconds to about 5.
It really is all over the place and I'm not sure why.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's been said that once out of Tortage it's a lot more open, but I really hope that it has more freedom of movement. Like being able to wander in one direction for 5 minutes and only make it halfway across the map. Anyways this is what will make or break the game for some people, a lot of people don't want to explore a land that's like Guild Wars - not the instancing mind you, but the way you really couldn't "explore" in Guild Wars, more like moving through a pre-designated path.
From what some closed beta people have said, it does get a lot more open though. And then there's some CB people who say that it doesnt. It looks like that in order to find out, you'l have to wait for release day and leave TOrtage yourself, or wait a few days and read reviews.
I get 1 mins 30 sec at most of loading area for the first time than it gets better , would say never more than 45 sec , what's your config ?
Mine is quite good but 5 mins ?? would mean your's is horrible....
I agree.
I've been making a few characters. The loading time to get in the game has shifted from aruond 2 min 30 seconds one night to 20 seconds the next. The loading times to get into that first tavern anywhere from 40 seconds to about 5.
It really is all over the place and I'm not sure why.
Perhaps it would be due to the fact that less people are on when it takes 5 seconds, and more people are on when it takes 40 seconds to load. This is a stress test, so that could be likely. Hopefully they are trying to find out why the loading seems to be going slow.
__________________________________________________
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
I feel your pain, Lobo. Its really not cool to always see this loading screen.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Dying should not cause a load screen IMO if the rez point is in the same zone.
If its in a different zone, there needs to be that load screen.
They probably just took a mentality of "If somone dies, use the load screen all the time just to be safe", and they will probably update it to check for the zone of death vs. the zone of ressurection.
Perhaps this has already been done.
It probably won't be "polished" to everyone's expectations for a few months after release, but thats fine with me and I'll bear with the problems in the meantime.
As long as I can cut off the heads and limbs of helpless souls, I'm happy.
Yes, i've played the witcher... It's a great game, but to be honest... I've never had any loading screens that
were over 5-8 seconds max. My PC is neither good or bad, probably a bit above average ( E6750 @ 2.66GHz
2 gigs of ram & Radeon X1950 Pro ) I dunno about AoC yet... I'll find out tomorrow though
I can peg some of the loading time, almost half of it, to network latency. Often, when I'm going into an instance the load times almost turn to zero, when it's the single player 'night' zones, but when I enter a 'day' zone then it takes double the time to load, depending on how many players I'm sharing the same zone with. So I suspect this will be largely dependent on the network. The rest seems to be due to the fact that the FP beta installer literally throws the files all over my partition. I've had to run Tuneup Utilities' Drive Defrag when I installed the client. No other game I've installed does this. I hope FC gives the installer a liberal shakedown on this because it shouldn't be doing this despite NTFS being a terrible filesystem. *shrugs*
-- Brede
I pretty much don't care anymore. Will play AoC till Warhammer is released.
Five seconds to a minute is all it takes for me too and i have a sucky old computer. It's also about how the shaders are loading and weather you have them already in a given area.
My witcher loading screens never got beyond 10secs even though my pc specs are not the best.
Regardless they can get really annoying, especially in an MMO though 6mins is a lot and I think it has to do with your PC specs.
Dont like the sound of this..
Yes, it will take longer to load if you have maxed all your settings because more information needs to be compiled.
So having a high end system, and wanting low load times, you're required to scale down graphics considerably. Doesn't seem like fun to me
3 seonds in thirsty dog inn and out again, 9 seconds to the underground system below tortage, 1 second if I die for the rez tab to come up. Going to White Sands in the boat 7 seconds. And this is on bare minimum pc specs, on a 25 down and 1gb upload connection.
If your in OB you have no idea how large the zones are, you still on noob island.
If you own guild wars log onto that and zone to the guild hall or out of town and count, for me it can be 20 seconds sometimes.
Once you have zones loaded into memory next time you do it its quicker. When you have the retail version, and have defragged it, I bet it will be faster.
Their aim for main zones in crossing is 8 seconds, and thats dev quoted for retail.
1-10 seconds on average
I really dont have much of a problem with it if the load times are only 1-10 seconds. Now if the load times are 1-10 minutes, I would most likely be fed with up it also.
I am surprised that they used so much loading screens though. I was hoping that we could get away from using that kind of stuff in a MMORPG. I know that there will always be a loading screen, but it sounds like they are using a ton of them. I have heard that it helps with lag and better graphics in game. LoTR only has a few of them when entering dungs and instances, and it has a very high level of detail in game. I know it can be done. But, I guess we get what we get in AoC. My main concern is that all the problems in game (tech problems) get fixed before the game hits the stores. and it sounds like it has from the latest patch!
/agree
I once started loading the game and went to my kitchen for a couple minutes -- when i got back i found my computer rebooting. /sigh
And thanks Lobotomist for the hilarious post -- i needed a good laugh.
Yes, every new area.. there is a loading screen. However, in small houses, inns.. they are 1-2 seconds at most.. barely even noticeable, in fact.. you can barely even see the loading screen before it fades away. The first load when you log in is at the most, 10 seconds. Now, I have 8Gigs of DDR2 800, but even if it were 20 seconds for 2-4Gigs, that isn't that bad. The PvP loading screens are between 3-5 seconds.. you're really making it sound way worse than it really is. Don't die, you won't have to see those loading screens.
It seems to me that you're playing on a bargain basement PC and have very little skill when it comes to gaming. I'm not flaming or bashing, I'm just pointing it out that it isn't nearly as bad as you claim. The patch didn't effect me at all actually. My load times may even be faster. I crash less often.. my FPS hasn't dropped at all either. Sounds like you need an upgrade.
Once I've fully explorered an area and have all its shaders cached, my loading times are instant. As its really only a one time thing, it doesnt bother me.