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Couple of questions from a former hater
RodimusPrime
Member Posts: 114
in Guild Wars 2
I have been doing research on this game, and don't get me wrong, I hate the first one with it's invisble walls and lack of jumping, but after watching a ton of videos I can say now that I am impressed and the game truly brings back some of the old school playstyle back into the genre. I have noticied a lot of loading screens in the videos I have watched. Is that just people traveling between waypoints or does it really have that many loading screens? I will probably pick up the game after feed back from the stress test and next BWE .
Comments
Zone maps are big. Really big. You won't be seeing load screen between them very often because you won't need to switch zones very often. And because the maps are that big, people will often take a shortcut by using waypoints and that will trigger a load screen. I also found that there are a few load screens within cities, much like the one leading to your home instance. There seem to be a couple of mini-instances in cities, that seem designed to accommodate separate cutscenes later, probably associated with your personal story. I think I came across two or three per city and they often lead to special points of interest on the map that you will gain XP for when you find them.
Aside from that, I think the only other place you'll see them is when entering dungeons or when you enter your personal story at an ingress point located in the world. But when just playing and doing events, you only see them when moving between the zones unless you choose to fast travel. You could easily play for hours and hours in just one zone and never have a need to leave it, so you'll never be exposed to a load screen. It mostly depends on how you like to play.
Loading screens I found in BWE
- Entering / leaving Cities
- Using Waypoints
- Between Zones (Zones are big enough for you to have several hours of fun in one before going to see next area)
- Using elevators in Cities (usually just flashed, but with slower machines might show it for few seconds)
- Entering / leaving Home instance
Not real fan of loading screens, but these were pretty fast and can be lived with (IMO).
on the bright side, for me at least. they all loaded in a second or two.
Its just fast travel in most of thoes videos or editing that didnt cut it out. You will get a few load screens right away between the starter instance, going to the closest major city, and personal quests. But once you are out in the world the only time you will get them is switching between zones (which are pretty good sized, not nearly as small as GW1), fast traveling, personal story, or instanced 5man dungeons. It honestly didnt feel anymore intrusive than most other MMO's. Also, once the game is more optimized the load times will be much faster and I think they are pretty fast already. I never saw more than 5 seconds and thats when I was trying to log into the main cities. During the BWE main cities where insanely laggy due to all the people.
The loading screens are pretty dang fast and they are so far away from each other that you shouldn't really have an issue with them. The only loading screens I got annoyed by in beta weekend were the personal story instances for the Charr where I just zoned in, walked through a cool automated door, talked to only one NPC, and then zoned back out. One place some people might dislike the loading screen at lower levels is the loading screen between the cities and the starter zones, because while cities are large sometimes you need to only make a pitstop and head back through the loading screen. Luckily at higher levels though you'll probably just fast travel everywhere and don't need to walk through those loading portals more than once if you always keep enough money on you.
By Sunday of the BWE the load screens were fine and went by pretty quickly.
OP, just wanted to add that the issues you outlined were/are my biggest irritation with the game. Loading screens and especially invisible walls bug the shit out of me. If I am going through an Asura gate, no worries. But when I see a grand city and I can't just walk through the front, I am a bit annoyed. When I am passing from one zone the the next and I have to go through a loading screen, I am a bit annoyed.
That said, during the BWE I never really found myself especially bothered by the loading screens. That is, having played the game now, I found that my annoyance at this design decision ultimately had less effect on me than I thought it would. I think primarily because I found the gameplay to be so enjoyable. And as the others have said, they are really fast and the zones are huge.
I wouldn't let this design decision keep you from giving the game a go. I was pretty well blown away by what the game offers, loading screens or not.
I suggest you hate this one as well. Really, it's not for you.
I have been playing SWTOR since it came out so they do not bother me that much, as long as they don't make the game seem as disjointed as SWTOR can be, also as long as there not as long as SWTOR loading screens sheesh.
its no different than WoW when someone is summoning you to a dungeon - and you are still in the same zone as they are. U still get a breif load screen.
Same thing with way points. if you were to Walk from point A to point B you would NOT see a load screen. however if you teleported from the same A to the same B, you would have a quick load screen.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
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Maps are big !!!! and the loading sreen u saw was probably someone teleporting to another waypoint or people going in or out WvWvW map or structured pvp....
Depends where A and B are located
This remains one of my points of criticism for GW2: it is most definitely not completely open and "seamless" in the way that WoW is considered to be seamless by many. Semantics aside, to the extend that WoW allows for fluid transitions between nearly every single zone--completely absent of loading screens--this is what I am calling "seamless" for the purposes of this discussion.
One of my absolute favorite aspects of MMO gaming is simply existing in, exploring, and absorbing the MMO environments. Of this, my absolute favorite component is traversing brilliantly executed zone transitions. The walk from sunny Redridge into the haunting, gloomy forest of Duskwood in WoW comes to mind. These moments are responsible for the my personal greatest sensations of MMO wonder and awe. Unfortunately, they are non-existant in GW2. Loading screens completely disrupt this sensation. What's more, some of the transition loading screens seem to give the option to travel to one of a number of locations. It seems as if there was a transitory passageway that they decided to forego entirely and just have players teleport past.
That said, each GW2 zone is huge in its own right, and often features a variety of environments, sometimes so distinctly different that it feels as if you are making the transition to an entirely different zone. And god are the cities beautiful. They are entire zones in and of themselves. They make me wonder how we've settled for so little for so long. If I had to choose between GW2 cities, and WoW seamless zone transitions, I would absolutely choose GW2's cities. Unfortunately, I shouldn't have to choose.
I was initially also skeptical of fast travel to waypoints, but my stance on that has completely shifted since playing Skyrim and the GW2 beta. I find that I can fully explore whenever I want to, and should I want to reach a point immediately, I can. (And given the sheer enormity of some of the GW2 zones, especially the cities, I found myself tremendously grateful for the waypoints on numerous occasions.) Overall, I didn't find the fast travel system detracted my exploring tendencies at all.
Concerning loading screens, teleporting to a waypoint within the same zone was nearly instantaneous. My screen would flicker, and the image of a loading screen would appear, but it was gone before I could even read anything on it. Teleporting to another zone, however, resulted in the same sort of loading screen as one would encounter by traveling to another zone manually. Compared to other games, they certainly did not feel lengthy, perhaps lasting 3 or 4 seconds. They were immersion interuptions nonetheless.
guild wars 2 beta loads faster than swtor retail. that game just took ages to load.
It's more optimized than SWTOR in everyway I can think of. Load screens are much faster. WvWvW is smooth compared to Illum.
It's definitely leaps and bounds ahead of the original. I tried to get into the original twice and couldn't play it for longer than a couple hours.
It isn't static like most traditional mmo's. It's almost a combination of traditional mmo's and an action rpg. Some blend of the two.
As others have said, most of the loading screens you experience will be due to waypoint travel, either the voluntary type or due to a defeat. The zones are massive and if you don't decide to travel to other starting areas to check them out or adventure with friends, you won't be seeing zone transition loading screens very often.
For me, the load times were lightning fast. Waypoint travel within the same zone ususally less than two seconds. Maybe up to 5 seconds for transition to/from the city or to far away places.
One thing I love about the game is that log in times are as fast as these load screen transitions. If you want to switch characters, or even just take a break, the time between entering your password and selecting your character can sometimes be less than a second and only a couple seconds between selecting your characters and hitting enter and actually being in game.
This, combined with no server queues, makes it very easy to hop in and out of the game with out having to worry about sitting in front of your computer, twiddling your thumbs, waiting for waht always tends tio seem like forever to get back in game.
Back to load screens for a second, because they are so quick and way point travel just so awesome, I actually didn't even register most of the loading screen events. It's usually just enough time to wiggle your fingers, take a bite of food or grab a sip of a drink and you are in.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
^^^ This. ^^^
Dear OP,
you have not been the only one to criticise that. And ArenaNet has responded to that with GW2. You are going to love it!
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Traveling between zone has a loading screen that takes noticeable time.
Traveling between waypoints in a zone puts up a perfunctionary load screen that takes almost no time.
Generally you don't switch zones much, although due to the way the personal story makes out you might make a number of transitions between the city and starting area.
However if you solely leveled on dynamic events, which is easily possible, you would probably not zone at al for 5-6 hours of play easy.
Oh, there's nothing anything close to as obnoxious as that... I played SWTOR. There came times where the thought of having to put something in my ship's hold wanted to make my cry. Run down long, long hall. Door. Load screen. Door. Load screen. Ship. Door. Take off. Load screen. Inventory. Reverse.
Nothing like that... OMG. So not like that...
Leaving or entering the main city will be your biggest loading screen frequency. It's one screen and on a pretty fast rig like mine, it was over in less than two seconds I guess... The same with personal-story instances. Very quick. Never had time to read them or really get any sort of impression of what I was looking at. Just too fast.
I can't remember how fast the other zone loading screens are. I didn't do a lot of zone changes because they were so big and i was trying out classes more than exploring that I didn't really get out of the starting zone until Sunday... And, by then, I was tired 12-hour gaming days and not paying a lot of attention. So, obviously, it must have been fairly quick as I don't really recollect it...
The elevators in the city... I didn't even know there was a loading screen. I really never saw one, just a quick-redraw as the game moved me. The teleporting with fast travel... Depended where I was going. Loading screen across zones. Otherwise just a redraw (unless it was too fast like the elevator).
But hardly at all.
GW1 is nothing like GW2. I hated GW1 myself which is sad because I will miss out on HoM stuff but ohh well. With that being said though there are loading screens between Major Cities i.e. Lion's Arch and between each zone i.e. between the 1-17 zone and the 15-25 zone. But in 3 days of hardcore PvE'ing I rarely went through a zone because I spent alot of time in 1 particular area. So no you wont be zoning every 10 mins, but on average you may have to zone once an hour at most if you play the game routinely.
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Then I'd say have no fear. GW2 managed to flow well despite the inclusion of loading screens(to my surprise). Nothing at all like the "disjointed" feeling one gets from traveling in SWTOR. I suspect the only time you'll be bothered by them is when you travel from one zone to the next on foot. But again, they load really really fast.
I only encountered one invisible wall and that was when I tried to swim out of the Lion's Arch harbor. I then looked down to see a giant whale cruising below me and forgot about the wall. Well played ArenaNet, well played...