On the Quality of Loading Screens

Aka_

Why are the new loading screen images of such a lower quality than previous additions? Is anyone else bothered by the zoomed in images of random people's chests? What happened that this passed any inspection? I know it's a small nitpick at best, but they are just straight up strange and low quality. Surely there was a mistake in their rendering, but if not, please remedy them.

loosej

Personally, low quality loading screens would bother me if the rest of the game works, but since it doesn't, they're the least of my concerns.

Aka_

Yeah, it's more of a demonstration that they're not even getting the loading screens right anymore that bothers me.

Treeshka

The other problem is that some of the images character head is covered in black.

Jaraal

I think it's a new minigame... guess the character. But the "she-troll's" armor is pretty identifiable.



Naryu(?) and the other Dunmer guy are harder to guess.

Jaraal

Aka_ wrote: »

Yeah, it's more of a demonstration that they're not even getting the loading screens right anymore that bothers me.

Agreed... the overall drop in quality is rather disconcerting. And even more so considering all the recent publicity their QA department has gotten. Also, still not even an acknowledgement of the broken achievements introduced with Update 37 that we can't complete. And the new break free related combat desyncs in Cyro are quite alarming as well.

DinoZavr

i use 21:9 ultrawide and see beheaded legless corpses.
something developers missed to check before release

Carcamongus

Jaraal wrote: »

I think it's a new minigame... guess the character. But the "she-troll's" armor is pretty identifiable.



Naryu(?) and the other Dunmer guy are harder to guess.

"The eyes are up here, buddy!"

code65536

I posted about this in another thread
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7831379/#Comment_7831379

I'll repost the relevant bit below:

---

[T]ake a look at the image when it's in the 16:9 aspect ratio that the vast majority of players will see:


You're missing a good chunk of her head.

For reference, the original image as extracted from the game's data is this:


All ESO load screens are in a 16:10 aspect ratio. So when they're displayed at the 16:9 aspect ratio of most people's monitors, the top and bottom are cropped. Furthermore, there's space reserved at the top and bottom that gets covered in black (it serves as the background for the spinning logo and load screen text). So the end result is that a large chunk of the top and bottom are cut off on most people's screens, first from the cropping from 16:10 to 16:9, and then again from the back backgrounds that are added to the top and bottom.

Here's another example; the first is the raw load screen image that I extracted from the game's data, and the second is how it actually appears to players on a typical 16:9 monitor in-game.



And the worst one:

DinoZavr

This is how it looks on the ultrawide:

Poor Lyris


Poor Naryu


Beheaded dunmer

TaSheen

Yep, that's what I see too.

BaalMelqartu

I'm on a fairly regular sized screen laptop and it's all OFF WITH THEIR HEADS for me as well.

Faulgor

Aka_ wrote: »

Yeah, it's more of a demonstration that they're not even getting the loading screens right anymore that bothers me.

I suppose they don't have any concept artists anymore that could paint new loading screens, and the AI generated ones aren't yet up to the task.
Simply using some screenshots is the lowest amount of effort possible, so all the artists are freed up to continue working on new crown store stuff.

Just consider how many new styles they pump out, and then realize they couldn't even make ONE unique spear style for the new and "improved" Templar jabs.

Tannus15

just adding mine in here...

Deter1UK

Nobody seems to be considering that it is being done on purpose?

That the darkness is going to increase each week until Necrom release.

I dunno, I'm just an old retired theater person but it's he first thing that occurred to me. Not that it was an easily fixable error that Marketing/Publicity (of ALL departments) couldn't be bothered to flag...

DinoZavr

Deter1UK, nope.

Imagine you made a great game.
which of these two loading screens you would prefer?

Option 1


Option 2


New loading screens (by the way, having replaced old quality ones) are the example of the lazy approach for me.
Just make a screenshot and that would do, instead of spending many hours drawing an awesome painting, would not it?
Time pressure, lack of skilled personnel, sabotage, or what are the other reasons of this noticeable decline in the quality?,

Jaraal

DinoZavr wrote: »

Time pressure, lack of skilled personnel, sabotage, or what are the other reasons of this noticeable decline in the quality?,

I know a lot of people say that they don't play their own game, but honestly.... you would think that someone would have logged in to the game from the beginning of the PTS to the time that Update 37 was released? Surely the devs are using 6:9 monitors or ultrawides? Surely this must be intentional, and we just aren't privy to the reasons why.

K9002

I went the other way. This is what happens with old aspect ratios such as 4:3. Looks like a failure in every horizontal type of display. With the way images were selected (no spare space above character heads), it'd fail even with phones and tablets in vertical mode.

shadyjane62

Since they seem extra slow these days, would wish for a speed up on the worm turning.

Tannus15

more great loading screens

Aztrias

The new loading screens are so bad

LunaFlora

huh i dont remember seeing any of these characters without heads in my loading screens.
weird

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan

DinoZavr wrote: »

That was my favourite loading screen, I miss it.

TaSheen

vsrs_au wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

That was my favourite loading screen, I miss it.

I have it as wallpaper on my main screen. The other screen has a slideshow of screenshots taken by friends in Skyrim, plus a couple from the Midjourney AI thread, and the April Fools Stuga one.

Tessitura

DinoZavr wrote: »

Deter1UK, nope.

Imagine you made a great game.
which of these two loading screens you would prefer?

Option 1


Option 2


New loading screens (by the way, having replaced old quality ones) are the example of the lazy approach for me.
Just make a screenshot and that would do, instead of spending many hours drawing an awesome painting, would not it?
Time pressure, lack of skilled personnel, sabotage, or what are the other reasons of this noticeable decline in the quality?,

I hate to break this to you but I think a lot of the old loading screens where just screenshots with a paint filter over them. Not all but a lot, so they didnt spend that much time on them.



It still looked better and I could be wrong, but I am pretty damn sure this is a screenshot with a filter and maybe a few touch ups. I mean, look at the ground, I don't even think the filter applied to that. Now why they dropped the filter I can't say, maybe it doesn't work well on up close characters so they just went without? Or maybe it had something to do with the memory they needed to free up for Necrom? It wouldn't free up much, but when you are cutting fat you sometimes take anything you can get.

FayJolyn

I think the real problem in the new loading screens is that none of them keep the rule of thirds in mind. Humans are naturally inclined to look for faces in portrait. The fact that all of the characters faces are so far up to the edges of the screen just screams that it was a rush job. All artists know that the most important part of a focus should preverably be within the rule of thirds. The black edges changes the composition in a way the loading screens just look wrong. There is a reason in comics there is a trimming edge that artists keep in mind to not draw important details in those areas, because those get cut off during printing progress. Clearly in this case, there was no thought given or it was a rush job.
Example of rule of thirds here.

JMadFour

what the heck kinda screens are you guys playing on, because I always see the full loading screen image.

I've not ever seen one cut off like ya'll are showing in this thread.

TaSheen

Mine are 28 inch Acers, 3840 x 2160. A couple of them aren't cut off for me - Naryu got a fix, and one of the other ones was always okay for me, don't remember which one it was - oh, it's the vampire one.

JMadFour

Here is a loading screen on my 15-inch laptop monitor, through XCloud.

And then the same loading screen on my TV.

I took both pictures with my phone so you can see the full dimensions of the displays I am using.




I am utterly confused by the screenshots in this thread.

JMadFour

TaSheen wrote: »

Mine are 28 inch Acers, 3840 x 2160. A couple of them aren't cut off for me - Naryu got a fix, and one of the other ones was always okay for me, don't remember which one it was - oh, it's the vampire one.

none of the ones that have been posted in this thread have ever been cut off like that on either my tv or my laptop. I've always had the full image.

that's just weird and I have no idea what the issue is there.

TaSheen

Ah yeah, Khamira's fine for me too. The Dunmer with the theodolyte though is cut off head and legs as are many others.