Black figures when loading is on purpouse?

winterbornb14_ESO

Everyone knows about the black placeholders for characters as you load into the game after the patch. This is a bug from the patch obviously right, or was it?

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

It totally kills the visual immersion of the game for your core customer base (PvE) as a cheap way to prevent a issue in PvP that you can not correct properly. This can not be your permanent solution, no one is that well............you know.

Please fix your poor excuse for a PvP solution ASAP.

mklundub17_ESO

This has been on the ps4 version since release, I assume they're just placeholders until the textures are loaded so the loading screens aren't as long. This is the first I've ever heard of them being used as a deterrent from preventing PvP from unloaded characters. Though loading into areas with a lot of people (PvP, Rawl'Kha) they tend to last longer than you would like.

Sallington

NOOOOO!!!!! MY IMURSHINNNNSSSSS!!!!!!!

Mitchblue

It's kind of cool Imo. Look like thieves dressed in black. Cat burglars..

winterbornb14_ESO

I don't understand the so called logic behind ruining the visuals of the game for everyone when they could use one or more mechanics to prevent the PvP issue.

Maybe that's too hard for them?

Sallington

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

I don't understand the so called logic behind ruining the visuals of the game for everyone when they could use one or more mechanics to prevent the PvP issue.

Maybe that's too hard for them?

Whoever told you this was for PvP doesn't know what they were talking about. It was for faster load times in general.

Which is funny because load times have been borked since the patch.

AhPook_Is_Here

Well on a + note, no video hard locks since that. Maybe there was a buffer-overrun before and this solved that till the textures can all cache. I really don't mind it if it is preventing crashes, only happens in over-populated areas anyway.

winterbornb14_ESO

Sallington wrote: »

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

I don't understand the so called logic behind ruining the visuals of the game for everyone when they could use one or more mechanics to prevent the PvP issue.

Maybe that's too hard for them?

Whoever told you this was for PvP doesn't know what they were talking about. It was for faster load times in general.

Which is funny because load times have been borked since the patch.

You mean that this wasn't even to fix a issue for the PvP customer base?
This is how they deal with lag.........OMG : (

RizaHawkeye

Mitchblue wrote: »

It's kind of cool Imo. Look like thieves dressed in black. Cat burglars..

... that suddenly change into women dressed in pink and orange armor. Right.

I don't find the black figures terribly annoying (on my machine it's like 2 seconds at the most), but the actual loading issue (screens and other resources) is getting damned annoying.

starkerealm

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

This is partially true. It also reduces overall load times. So you can load into the game, rather than staring at a loading screen hoping the game hasn't crashed. Which resolves an issue where players trying to log into banks and other high traffic areas could end up with +5m loading screens. Also, the PvP thing.

Ruben

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

This is how they deal with lag.........OMG : (

This is in no way for lag. This is to speed up load times.

Olen_Mikko

Elder Scrolls Online - Silhouettes unlimited

Who really cares, they are there like 5 seconds.

cjthibs

If you've got a problem with seeing these the solution is very simple.

Get a better video card. This is tied to how fast your system can load and render textures.

Kuroinu

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

Everyone knows about the black placeholders for characters as you load into the game after the patch. This is a bug from the patch obviously right, or was it?

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

It totally kills the visual immersion of the game for your core customer base (PvE) as a cheap way to prevent a issue in PvP that you can not correct properly. This can not be your permanent solution, no one is that well............you know.

Please fix your poor excuse for a PvP solution ASAP.

Go to UserSettings.txt and SET PlayerStandInsEnabled.2 "0" - The default is "1", setting to "0" should remove them.

There is also an option to SET PlayerStandInsMaxPerFrame "8" - I have left this at its default of "8" since I've disabled the "PlayerStandIns"(as shown above) so perhaps this value has no effect, but I'm not certain on this.

Divinius

cjthibs wrote: »

If you've got a problem with seeing these the solution is very simple.

Get a better video card. This is tied to how fast your system can load and render textures.

Incorrect. You can have the fastest system ever, but the game still needs to know which textures to load, which it doesn't until the server sends the info for what every person standing near you is wearing. Unless your system is abysmally slow, it's the data transfer over the internet that's delaying the textures, not your video card.

SirAndy

cjthibs wrote: »

Get a better video card. This is tied to how fast your system can load and render textures.

Complete BS ...

It's client/server lag. The client is waiting for the server to send info about the player details it needs to correctly render the players.

This is 100% on ZOS!

cjthibs

SirAndy wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Get a better video card. This is tied to how fast your system can load and render textures.

Complete BS ...

It's client/server lag. The client is waiting for the server to send info about the player details it needs to correctly render the players.

This is 100% on ZOS!

Which will be an extremely small payload.
I've seen these things pop up once since IC's launch, and I've listened to many others talk about them over TS and guild chat.

ZigoSid

5 seconds, at the moment when you haven't even started to do something ...

"OK"

david31741

It is most likely to reduce server load in that server can send the info to the client as able. By product is also reduce client crashes and load times.

SirAndy

cjthibs wrote: »

Which will be an extremely small payload.

The size of the payload is irrelevant if the server is too busy to answer ...

cjthibs

SirAndy wrote: »

cjthibs wrote: »

Which will be an extremely small payload.

The size of the payload is irrelevant if the server is too busy to answer ...

Sure, which isn't the case.
If the server was too busy to respond, it would be more random as to who is affected.
I always hear the same folks talking about it.

Asherons_Call

They're called shadow people. Don't you listen to coast to coast am?

rb2001

I've played 100s of top graphics games, and many online games. None has done this.

Starting with lower res textures at immediate load, and then pop in the large textures is what is usually done.

I don't really think this is acceptable in a top tier game like ESO.

SirAndy

cjthibs wrote: »

Sure, which isn't the case.
If the server was too busy to respond, it would be more random as to who is affected.
I always hear the same folks talking about it.

Have you done any profiling on the ESO client/server communication?
Because i have and you're wrong.

I have posted suggestions on how to fix some of those issues over the last 2 years, alas to no avail.

I do this stuff for a living and ESO has one of the worst client/server interactions i have ever seen in a game.
And before you ask, yes, i have been working in the game industry for many years.

Kuroinu

Stop squabbling like a couple of nabs. If you don't want to see these black silhouettes refer to my previous post.

Divinius

rb2001 wrote: »

I've played 100s of top graphics games, and many online games. None has done this.

Starting with lower res textures at immediate load, and then pop in the large textures is what is usually done.

I don't really think this is acceptable in a top tier game like ESO.

Which would help, if the delay was in the client's ability to load the textures...

But it's not. As I said earlier (regardless of whether people believe it or not), the vast majority of the delay is in the server being able to send the data to the client about what textures to display.

cjthibs wrote: »

Sure, which isn't the case.
If the server was too busy to respond, it would be more random as to who is affected.
I always hear the same folks talking about it.

Then the people complaining are the ones with slower internet connections, not the ones with worse hardware.

Between my wife and I, we play this game on 3 different systems, of various speeds. My main gaming PC is a monster, with the game loaded on an SSD. I have virtually no client-side load times. I still get the black silhouettes, on ALL the systems, for about the same amount of time, especially when my internet is being slow.

I also notice it more during peak game times, so ESO server latency is also a primary cause. Regardless, it's all in how long it takes the server to tell your client which textures to load. To repeat what I said before, unless your hardware is very slow, virtually all of the delay is in the data transfer between server and client. Your system is a negligible portion of it.

{edited to fix some horrifying grammar}

ZioGio

I'm all about immersion and losing oneself in the game world, but the black silhouettes don't bother me (other than they remind me of shadow people for those who ghost hunt) because they only last for a couple of seconds when I first log into the game.

Per the patch notes:

"Player characters that have not yet fully loaded into the game will appear as black silhouettes instead of being invisible. This is to prevent being attacked by enemies that are invisible to you."

I originally read that as PvP, but it says "enemies" and not "other players" so the change may not be wholly (or even marginally) related to PvP.

apostate9

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

Everyone knows about the black placeholders for characters as you load into the game after the patch. This is a bug from the patch obviously right, or was it?

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

It totally kills the visual immersion of the game for your core customer base (PvE) as a cheap way to prevent a issue in PvP that you can not correct properly. This can not be your permanent solution, no one is that well............you know.

Please fix your poor excuse for a PvP solution ASAP.

Just...I don't don't even...


STOP CRYING.

Twilix01

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

Everyone knows about the black placeholders for characters as you load into the game after the patch. This is a bug from the patch obviously right, or was it?

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

It totally kills the visual immersion of the game for your core customer base (PvE) as a cheap way to prevent a issue in PvP that you can not correct properly. This can not be your permanent solution, no one is that well............you know.

Please fix your poor excuse for a PvP solution ASAP.

I suppose loads of people suddenly appearing out of thin out doesn't ruin the visual immersion then? As a fairly experienced roleplayer here it doesn't bother me one bit to see the silhouettes, in fact I like not having to wait to see if people are around when I load into an RP spot I'm fond of, I know immediately someone is there without waiting for the model to load or someone to speak up.

winterbornb14_ESO

Yeah I may not have 4 Titans in my rig but its not due to my hardware.

I have the best DSL available to me in my area, granted its not the best but that's all there is and I don't have a issue with ANY other game.

I wish it was for just a few seconds, for me and my wife it can lasts a good minute or so.
So you log in and then these black placeholders start to pop into the game even though the rest of the world is in FULL detail with no loading texture issues. Then they one by one start to load into player characters about the same time some of the NPC's become visible. By this time we have ran to the bank or shrine etc.

Why put a placeholder at all if was not a poor way to address a PvP issue? Why not just let player characters load in slowly like they do with the NPC's ?

Maybe when you fall through the world when zoning, its just a way to reduce lag and we should all be ok with it?

Come on, this is lame and everyone knows it.

P.S. thanks to the guy with the settings tip I will try that.

UrQuan

winterbornb14_ESO wrote: »

Everyone knows about the black placeholders for characters as you load into the game after the patch. This is a bug from the patch obviously right, or was it?

I was told in game chat that they did this on purpose as a design feature to reduce being attacked in PvP by a unloaded character that is still invisible?

If this is true........ WTF!

It totally kills the visual immersion of the game for your core customer base (PvE) as a cheap way to prevent a issue in PvP that you can not correct properly. This can not be your permanent solution, no one is that well............you know.

Please fix your poor excuse for a PvP solution ASAP.

Seriously? That's what bothers you? There are lots of things in the game that should be changed or fixed. I guarantee for 90%+ of the people playing this is a total non-issue. Why would you care if for a very short time after you load you see silhouettes before the textures load? How is it any more immersion-breaking than not being able to see the characters who are there until they suddenly appear?