Log in times (and the resulting load screens) are too long.

aresula

Well all load screens in general TBH. It's just ridiculous and you shouldn't be forced to buy the newest model of SSD just to have bearable load screens in an old aging MMO. Trying to keep all my alts up to date with the stables trainer is exhausting. For 8 characters it can take 20-30 minutes of just sitting in load screens just to talk to an NPC I logged out in front of and swap to the next alt. This time adds up, especially with 180 days of this.

Meanwhile to do anything similar in WoW I can swap to 15 characters in 3-5 minutes to check all their mails. A game which had ungodly load screens for Legion due to a bug that finally got fixed. Making me lead to believe that ESO is just poorly coded especially since you can be walking around Vivec and randomly flung into a load screen when NO OTHER GAME IN EXISTENCE HAS EVER DONE THIS TO ME BEFORE. A load screen for something that isn't even an area transition?

I also don't want to hear this "what are your addons" or other basic copy/pasted CM spiel since people have been complaining about the load screens for years on various different types of hardware with and without addons.

Drachenfier

Well, to be honest, SSD are becoming a must with games today. And I wouldn't compare WoW to ESO, you could run WoW on a cellphone.

aresula

Way to miss the point btw. The game used to have long load screens until they fixed some programming bugs that led to it. Because I had 3-6minute load screens on the same exact PC that I play it today. Legion was just bugged. BFA fixed it.

ESO has the same lazy programming because literally no other game has loading screens this long. This is also like a 5+ year old game built to run on the even more outdated hardware of console platforms so having to waste precious SSD space on a giant MMO isn't the solution.

Like please explain to me why the load screen FOR THE CHARACTER SELECT MENU needs to take more than two minutes to do? What is it loading exactly? Every other MMO getting back to this screen is instant.

aresula

For example, BDO has much better graphics and is a slightly newer game with more demanding system requirements than ESO... and the load screens are hardly noticeable.

Plus you can even skip the character select screen all together. Because the game allows you to be in the game world on one character. Click into a side panel and select any of your alts to teleport to and log in as. I don't see why I need to waste 10+ minutes sitting in load screens to get back to the character select menu EVERY SINGLE DAY just because they can't just make mount training account wide. It's an exhausting experience that by the time I'm done with it I don't even want to play the game anymore.

LadySinflower

Even on console we have this problem and we can't change any of the hardware. Yesterday just going through a door I got a two minute load screen. I mean, come on! It's ridiculous!

Tandor

aresula wrote: »

Way to miss the point btw. The game used to have long load screens until they fixed some programming bugs that led to it. Because I had 3-6minute load screens on the same exact PC that I play it today. Legion was just bugged. BFA fixed it.

ESO has the same lazy programming because literally no other game has loading screens this long. This is also like a 5+ year old game built to run on the even more outdated hardware of console platforms so having to waste precious SSD space on a giant MMO isn't the solution.

Like please explain to me why the load screen FOR THE CHARACTER SELECT MENU needs to take more than two minutes to do? What is it loading exactly? Every other MMO getting back to this screen is instant.

It's impossible to answer that without knowing the information you don't want to discuss - for the simple reason that for some it's a matter of seconds to get back to the loading screen, pretty much instant if you log out in a city.

EDIT: To clarify: I just tested it on my mid-range desktop PC (8GB ram, no SSD) and logged in from the desktop icon to a character appearing in Daggerfall in exactly 2 minutes, and after running through Daggerfall and doing mount training and a bit of thieving I logged back to the character screen in 12 seconds. This was on PC EU which is apparently completely broken post-patch so normal times might be a bit quicker.

aresula

Like I can understand why loading back into the game might take a minute or two. It has assets to load, npcs to generate, players to render, etc. But the journey back into the character select screen takes just as long, if not longer, when there's nothing to load but a menu? This screams bad programming to me. No other game I can think of does this to me. One time I accidentally hit log off instead of exit game I just ended up alt+F4ing because that was literally faster than waiting for the load screen to figure out how to show me a list of 8 characters.

Then it doesn't explain why there are constant reports of players walking around either in Cyrodiil, a city, or anywhere in the world really and being thrown into a loadscreen without going into an area transition. Because the game bugged out and has to randomly reload every asset all over again. Please name me another game that gives you surprise loading screens like that cause I can't think of any.

Normally when you load into a game a thing that speeds up the load screen is clever area transitions. Like an elevator ride, or a cutscene. But since those can't really be used in a game like this you'd have to resort to actually dripfeeding the fully rendered assets as they load. Rather than holding the player hostage in a blank screen until everything is neatly loaded. An example, would be like me loading into Overwatch for the first time and my character's gun is invisible briefly for like a second or two. Since rather than make me sit through a screen it'll just load the assets one by one as it gets to it. Or how other games maybe switch some assets switch from low res to hi res if you got a sharp eye and catch the transition. Not a single one ever takes full control away from the player and says LOL LOAD SCREEN for no good reason when you're walking around in the world.

Unless the game is trying to render absolutely everything at once within a certain radius. Which isn't supposed to be how games are rendered. Normally only the cone PoV from your camera is what gets loaded and everything behind the camera is either gone or put into a glitchy non priority state. And if that's the case with ESO refusing to follow basic game design rules then that might explain the behavior... that or just bad programming in general.

itsfatbass

ESO is NOT an "old, aging MMO". It's been out for 5 years since beta, and player numbers are skyrocketing every year.

That aside though, I do agree that load screen are completely out of hand.