No Loading Screens

jackleminer55 · February 2016

So I follow game development quite heavily and like watching videos of in progress work and explanations of how things work. To that extent, I realize that this would be extremely hard to incorporate - maybe even impossible. The feature I am suggesting is no loading screens when you walk into delves and dungeons, and even better: between zones. Please don't jump down my throat saying how hard it would be: I understand. I also know that other people have mentioned this too. All I am saying is that it would be super cool to be able to walk around and between zones with no loading screens, and have the door to a house open and just walk through it. Obviously we would need them for wayshrines, etc. but examples like being able to climb up a ladder into the bright sun would be a really cool thing to see, and add insane immersion, not to mention add to the overall Elder Scrolls feel.

They could do this by having a zone system where the engine only loads in what you are currently able to see, as well as some of the surrounding area. It could then stream in new assets and environments as you move around, instead of loading it all in one big chunk. I am not really expecting this to ever be the case, but it would be amazing to see it added.

Also, higher view distance in some areas would be great. I realize that fog is purposely put in place for some places, but it is not necessary everywhere and it was said that ZOS was working on a view distance upgrade ages ago.

Zheg · February 2016

You get random load screens in cyrodiil 'just because' sometimes. The best you can hope for is for them to patch the game to have "No ETA" show up on the load screen instead of the normal same 'old same 'old.

Arkadius · February 2016

I would have loved an open world. I assume, ZOS decision to use zones instead, has something to do with consoles. During ESO development, XB360 and PS3 were current gen consoles, and I doubt these could have handled an open world mmo.

Drakilian · February 2016

The best way to deal with loading screens is to have a punching bag set up in the same room as your gaming room.

In fact, this is the also the best way to deal with a lot of things in the game (like ambush spam, being hit with 49 attacks at once because of lag, or being stuck running in place for 5 minutes because Cyrodil was split evenly between the rendered part and the unrendered part and you just had to toe that line.

deleted008293 · February 2016

@jackleminer55 what are you talking about is mostly related to texture streaming which was introduced in game later and it didn't had the best result for some players but it worked great for the ones with low end machines and maybe on high end too. The game MUST load files from HDD so there must be one loading screen. Regarding to the open world? The game isn't build like that. But each dungeon and each zone is build separately. Thats why we get them loading screens. Personally I think the way it is is just perfect. I mean... the way the game world was loading when this game was launched. One huge loading screen per zone. No texture streaming. No random screens. No other issues. Also the loading screens are quite awesome. Each zone, each dungeon, each new location giving you some ideas on what will be going on in the area opening before your eyes.

Also regarding to other issues about loading screens:
From what I understood from some old Live ESO Show, loading screens were added as a feature.
- First... due to the 32 bit client, in order to save as many memory as possible, the game world was no longer loaded upon loading. Instead it will only load the surrounding areas. The result? Constant steaming of objects and textures.
- The other issue that is even more painful and it is also related to the 1st problem... Because the game is so big, and hardware sometimes can't keep up with the demands, objects weren't loaded in due time. Due to that a very strange bug came to hunt some of the players. If there was no ground texture... players were falling through. Due to this and due to streaming the loading screens were even more common. Simple logic.
- Last but not last players wanted to wait less upon loading. But this ended up with steaming and again random loading screens.
- Some bugs gave some of us endless loading screens.

Either way people were complaining... and later the solution came in form of the random loading screens and texture streaming that are haunting us to date. When this game was launched I personally had absolutely no issue. No lags, no random loading screens, no missing textures, no texture streaming, co crashes, no disconnects. And I was playing this game for hours each day for first 2 months. Just so you know. My PC specs weren't the best but 4GB RAM were quite enough. Very rare CTD. But I suspect people with slower PC's had more issues so they had to nerf the game. Most of these issues appeared around IC / Console launch.

Solutions?
- The 64 bit client. Having more memory to play with will force ESO to no longer save memory and textures might no longer needed to be steamed.
- Game world should load ALL assets upon load. This way it will eliminate the hardware issues when the items could not be loaded in time.
- I preffer long loading screens when you load the zone for the first time. That way we no longer get random loading screens here and there.

Another problem might be related to the networking part. Is the game played on our PCs or on the server side? Do other players latency cause problems especially loading screens for the others?

Thevampirenight · February 2016

Well, the load screens were needed, it helps allow the game to load in buildings and other things. It is annoying when they happen at certain times like when running from something or running in cyridill then come out dead, yeah they tend to like to happen when you don't want them to but at least, it helps speed up loading of buildings and other stuff because I remember before the random load screens nothing would load up fast enough a vast majority of buildings were not loaded in, and you had to wait for them now you don't have to, the load screens do help the server speed up loading.

Mojmir · February 2016

clash of clans on my tablet is open for loading screen times.

Asherons_Call · February 2016

Asherons call pulled off an open world MMO. 16 years ago