Is removing some load screens a possibility?

spitfire1525 · November 2021

Just curious if this is a possibility? As the game is now aged (players PC's have improved / possible server-side optimziations / etc..)
Not to major regions, but some of the cities or buildings within cities (inns/taverns/guild etc...)
Basically is already no load times for these.

brandon · November 2021

I would hate if they removed any locations from this game tbh. Hope that never happens.

SeaGtGruff · November 2021

I don't think the OP is asking about removing any locations-- merely removing some of the load screens.

Jaraal · November 2021

Have you not noticed that as the years pass, ZOS is introducing more and more multiple zone cities? And Fargrave is the worst yet, as the crafting area is it's own separate zone, and has to be passed through to get to the other side.

It's a wonderful idea, but unfortunately they are going in the exact opposite direction.

spitfire1525 · November 2021

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't think the OP is asking about removing any locations-- merely removing some of the load screens.

Yes i'm talking about the load screens

umagon · November 2021

They might not be able to some of the buildings and areas work where you click on the door and your char gets teleported to the “inside” of the building that is actually a room under the map or outside of it. Years ago when the various charge skills were bugging out my character fell through the map and I saw some of these rooms.

Danikat · November 2021

They probably can't make going into a building completely seamless because the inside isn't actually inside, it's under the map (which is how they can have buildings where the inside and outside don't match and why we can't see through windows). So there has to be a pause of some sort as you teleport down there, but maybe they could cut out the actual loading screen.

zaria · November 2021

umagon wrote: »

They might not be able to some of the buildings and areas work where you click on the door and your char gets teleported to the “inside” of the building that is actually a room under the map or outside of it. Years ago when the various charge skills were bugging out my character fell through the map and I saw some of these rooms.

Yes, this is to make it easy for the graphic card to know that to render.
This is not an real loading screen just an teleport one like using an wayshrine to port to another part of the zone doing an quest, delves and public dungeons work the same way.
Outlaw refuges are real load screens, same with solo quests instances and houses.

If you get significant load time on none instance changes its an client issue. You need enough memory to hold all the outfit styles people are wearing inside the bank after all.
Stuffs who help is more graphic memory, more memory and an fast ssd. Having 64 GB memory for other reasons I found putting ESO on an fast SSD was kind of disappointing.
And this problem will get worse as we will get more pets, mounts and styles.
Hint letting us hide armor pieces might help a bit.

Ermiq · November 2021

2014 - cities are a part of the map. No loading, just fade out/fade in and you're there.
2019 - Senchal palace has a short loading screen. Dragon guard headquarters is a separate zone with full loading screen between it and the rest of the Southern Esweyr.
2020 - Solitude is a separate zone within the West Skyrim zone with full loading screen at the city entrance.

Didn't see the Blackwood yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has even more loading screens.

spitfire1525 · November 2021

I don't get why they'd go backwards in terms of immersion with each xpac....
I don't have any load times going into city buildings... only inquiring about a more seamless world simply for immersion purposes. I guess its not happening =\ o well , its not preventing me from playing

Elsonso · November 2021

Ermiq wrote: »

2014 - cities are a part of the map. No loading, just fade out/fade in and you're there.
2019 - Senchal palace has a short loading screen. Dragon guard headquarters is a separate zone with full loading screen between it and the rest of the Southern Esweyr.
2020 - Solitude is a separate zone within the West Skyrim zone with full loading screen at the city entrance.

Didn't see the Blackwood yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has even more loading screens.

Leyawiin is 2 exterior zones, the city and the castle, but Gideon is still in the overland zone. The ability to just ride into a town or city without a loading screen was one of the nice things about ESO. Now, it is more like Skyrim, and I have to say that it will probably continue to get worse in that respect.

Nestor · November 2021

Back in the Day, Inns were used for special events and gatherings of players, so there were good reasons for them to be a loaded area. To do what the suggestion is would require the Inn to be loaded into memory with the rest of the city. This would be a longer city load screen just in case you want to go into an Inn. And, the Inn would still have to render in some way due to the fluid population.

Vevvev · November 2021

One thing I loved about ESO's zones was you could walk into the city seamlessly. Since Greymoor that's been a thing of the past for the major settlements of a zone.

Djennku · November 2021

A solution to long load screens would be to try capping your fps. I have adjusted mine to cap at 60 FPS (there's an awesome thread in the forums on how to do it), and load screens are very short.

The reason load screens can take forever is because they have made it so there is no fps cap during loading screens, which was implemented a few patches ago (can't remember how long though).

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan · November 2021

Elsonso wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

2014 - cities are a part of the map. No loading, just fade out/fade in and you're there.
2019 - Senchal palace has a short loading screen. Dragon guard headquarters is a separate zone with full loading screen between it and the rest of the Southern Esweyr.
2020 - Solitude is a separate zone within the West Skyrim zone with full loading screen at the city entrance.

Didn't see the Blackwood yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has even more loading screens.

Leyawiin is 2 exterior zones, the city and the castle, but Gideon is still in the overland zone. The ability to just ride into a town or city without a loading screen was one of the nice things about ESO. Now, it is more like Skyrim, and I have to say that it will probably continue to get worse in that respect.

Skyrim had (still has) a mod that removes the load screen for actions like entering/exiting city gates. I don't know if ESO has a similar mod, though, I haven't looked.

katanagirl1 · November 2021

zaria wrote: »

umagon wrote: »

They might not be able to some of the buildings and areas work where you click on the door and your char gets teleported to the “inside” of the building that is actually a room under the map or outside of it. Years ago when the various charge skills were bugging out my character fell through the map and I saw some of these rooms.

Yes, this is to make it easy for the graphic card to know that to render.
This is not an real loading screen just an teleport one like using an wayshrine to port to another part of the zone doing an quest, delves and public dungeons work the same way.
Outlaw refuges are real load screens, same with solo quests instances and houses.

If you get significant load time on none instance changes its an client issue. You need enough memory to hold all the outfit styles people are wearing inside the bank after all.
Stuffs who help is more graphic memory, more memory and an fast ssd. Having 64 GB memory for other reasons I found putting ESO on an fast SSD was kind of disappointing.
And this problem will get worse as we will get more pets, mounts and styles.
Hint letting us hide armor pieces might help a bit.

This is what I am wondering about - the outfit styles.

I read something here lately where in a discussion with devs they stated that the character achievements are growing and that is causing a problem. Each update adds a fairly same (linear) amount of achievements so I can’t see that is bad.

The only thing I see skyrocketing is the number of those style pages. They are increasing geometrically if not exponentially.

It would be something If the lag and number is loading screens is going up because of this.

It would be a shame, as well. Too much emphasis is being placed on cosmetics versus being able to play the game and optimizing it.

Elsonso · November 2021

vsrs_au wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

2014 - cities are a part of the map. No loading, just fade out/fade in and you're there.
2019 - Senchal palace has a short loading screen. Dragon guard headquarters is a separate zone with full loading screen between it and the rest of the Southern Esweyr.
2020 - Solitude is a separate zone within the West Skyrim zone with full loading screen at the city entrance.

Didn't see the Blackwood yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has even more loading screens.

Leyawiin is 2 exterior zones, the city and the castle, but Gideon is still in the overland zone. The ability to just ride into a town or city without a loading screen was one of the nice things about ESO. Now, it is more like Skyrim, and I have to say that it will probably continue to get worse in that respect.

Skyrim had (still has) a mod that removes the load screen for actions like entering/exiting city gates. I don't know if ESO has a similar mod, though, I haven't looked.

Doubt that is possible in ESO. However, my guess is that all that would result from such a change is you staring at a black screen while waiting for the transition to end. The load screens are there to distract you while the game loads the next area. I would be surprised if they kept them up longer than necessary for that to happen.

tomfant · November 2021

I second this request. Cutting zones into more and more slices separated by a loading screen is awefull. Slicing cities like Leyawin into several zones is even more awefull. I hope this trend does not continue in future updates.

Wolf_Eye · November 2021

Elsonso wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

2014 - cities are a part of the map. No loading, just fade out/fade in and you're there.
2019 - Senchal palace has a short loading screen. Dragon guard headquarters is a separate zone with full loading screen between it and the rest of the Southern Esweyr.
2020 - Solitude is a separate zone within the West Skyrim zone with full loading screen at the city entrance.

Didn't see the Blackwood yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has even more loading screens.

Leyawiin is 2 exterior zones, the city and the castle, but Gideon is still in the overland zone. The ability to just ride into a town or city without a loading screen was one of the nice things about ESO. Now, it is more like Skyrim, and I have to say that it will probably continue to get worse in that respect.

Skyrim had (still has) a mod that removes the load screen for actions like entering/exiting city gates. I don't know if ESO has a similar mod, though, I haven't looked.

Doubt that is possible in ESO. However, my guess is that all that would result from such a change is you staring at a black screen while waiting for the transition to end. The load screens are there to distract you while the game loads the next area. I would be surprised if they kept them up longer than necessary for that to happen.

I also remember that Skyrim mod to be....very buggy, to put it kindly. And it conflicted with a ton of mods, making it not so ideal for a lot of set ups.

mickeyx · November 2021

I am surprised more people are not using SSD and nvme's these days seeing how cheap they are. My loading screen lasts for two or three seconds.

zaria · November 2021

katanagirl1 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

umagon wrote: »

They might not be able to some of the buildings and areas work where you click on the door and your char gets teleported to the “inside” of the building that is actually a room under the map or outside of it. Years ago when the various charge skills were bugging out my character fell through the map and I saw some of these rooms.

Yes, this is to make it easy for the graphic card to know that to render.
This is not an real loading screen just an teleport one like using an wayshrine to port to another part of the zone doing an quest, delves and public dungeons work the same way.
Outlaw refuges are real load screens, same with solo quests instances and houses.

If you get significant load time on none instance changes its an client issue. You need enough memory to hold all the outfit styles people are wearing inside the bank after all.
Stuffs who help is more graphic memory, more memory and an fast ssd. Having 64 GB memory for other reasons I found putting ESO on an fast SSD was kind of disappointing.
And this problem will get worse as we will get more pets, mounts and styles.
Hint letting us hide armor pieces might help a bit.

This is what I am wondering about - the outfit styles.

I read something here lately where in a discussion with devs they stated that the character achievements are growing and that is causing a problem. Each update adds a fairly same (linear) amount of achievements so I can’t see that is bad.

The only thing I see skyrocketing is the number of those style pages. They are increasing geometrically if not exponentially.

It would be something If the lag and number is loading screens is going up because of this.

It would be a shame, as well. Too much emphasis is being placed on cosmetics versus being able to play the game and optimizing it.

The achievements table in the eso database is likely very large, its not only the visible achievements but also all the underlying ones, every quests done, all locations found bosses killed and skyshards collected, fish fished and so on, and its for all characters and number of characters go up. I can imagine that is an table who is updated very often. That is an server issue.

All the styles is an client issue.

Elsonso · November 2021

mickeyx wrote: »

I am surprised more people are not using SSD and nvme's these days seeing how cheap they are. My loading screen lasts for two or three seconds.

Yup. A good SATA SSD can be added to any system likely to be use with ESO. A good NVMe can be added to many newer systems as motherboards that support them are pretty common.

I am actually in the process of upgrading a 1TB NVMe to a 2TB NVMe. The only non-SSD drives I use anymore are for backup purposes, not as primary data store.

zaria wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

If you get significant load time on none instance changes its an client issue. You need enough memory to hold all the outfit styles people are wearing inside the bank after all.
And this problem will get worse as we will get more pets, mounts and styles.
Hint letting us hide armor pieces might help a bit.

This is what I am wondering about - the outfit styles.

I read something here lately where in a discussion with devs they stated that the character achievements are growing and that is causing a problem. Each update adds a fairly same (linear) amount of achievements so I can’t see that is bad.

The only thing I see skyrocketing is the number of those style pages. They are increasing geometrically if not exponentially.

It would be something If the lag and number is loading screens is going up because of this.

It would be a shame, as well. Too much emphasis is being placed on cosmetics versus being able to play the game and optimizing it.

The achievements table in the eso database is likely very large, its not only the visible achievements but also all the underlying ones, every quests done, all locations found bosses killed and skyshards collected, fish fished and so on, and its for all characters and number of characters go up. I can imagine that is an table who is updated very often. That is an server issue.

All the styles is an client issue.

Outfit styles are a server issue, in the sense that they are all stored in the database for each character. Don't forget that each character can have multiple outfits, and that all adds up. As long as they don't increase the number of characters per account, that should be pretty stable, though. (Side issue... think about account wide outfit style slots and armory slots in this context... Even blank slots need some amount of database space)

Rich has not said what the top secret Cyrodiil performance project is. You can tell he wants to, though. I think it is a way of restructuring how character data is stored and used so that they don't have to drag along this massive history of the character, probably including achievements and outfits, every where the character goes just so they can do the occasional query against it. (Side issue... this may be another reason why they are not doing Armory in Cyrodiil... they don't want to drag the stored armory data around in Cyrodiil)

zaria · November 2021

Elsonso wrote: »

mickeyx wrote: »

I am surprised more people are not using SSD and nvme's these days seeing how cheap they are. My loading screen lasts for two or three seconds.

Yup. A good SATA SSD can be added to any system likely to be use with ESO. A good NVMe can be added to many newer systems as motherboards that support them are pretty common.

I am actually in the process of upgrading a 1TB NVMe to a 2TB NVMe. The only non-SSD drives I use anymore are for backup purposes, not as primary data store.

zaria wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

If you get significant load time on none instance changes its an client issue. You need enough memory to hold all the outfit styles people are wearing inside the bank after all.
And this problem will get worse as we will get more pets, mounts and styles.
Hint letting us hide armor pieces might help a bit.

This is what I am wondering about - the outfit styles.

I read something here lately where in a discussion with devs they stated that the character achievements are growing and that is causing a problem. Each update adds a fairly same (linear) amount of achievements so I can’t see that is bad.

The only thing I see skyrocketing is the number of those style pages. They are increasing geometrically if not exponentially.

It would be something If the lag and number is loading screens is going up because of this.

It would be a shame, as well. Too much emphasis is being placed on cosmetics versus being able to play the game and optimizing it.

The achievements table in the eso database is likely very large, its not only the visible achievements but also all the underlying ones, every quests done, all locations found bosses killed and skyshards collected, fish fished and so on, and its for all characters and number of characters go up. I can imagine that is an table who is updated very often. That is an server issue.

All the styles is an client issue.

Outfit styles are a server issue, in the sense that they are all stored in the database for each character. Don't forget that each character can have multiple outfits, and that all adds up. As long as they don't increase the number of characters per account, that should be pretty stable, though. (Side issue... think about account wide outfit style slots and armory slots in this context... Even blank slots need some amount of database space)

Rich has not said what the top secret Cyrodiil performance project is. You can tell he wants to, though. I think it is a way of restructuring how character data is stored and used so that they don't have to drag along this massive history of the character, probably including achievements and outfits, every where the character goes just so they can do the occasional query against it. (Side issue... this may be another reason why they are not doing Armory in Cyrodiil... they don't want to drag the stored armory data around in Cyrodiil)

Yes outfits are on top of armor and you can have multiple but that is not much data. Most character has only one.
Few has 18 characters but pretty sure people add more over time.

You don't need that much data about other players, you need their look, as in character creation settings ornaments and outfit, name, title and some other stuff. Position direction, active weapon resources both total and current, active weapon and that they are doing as in using abilities changes all the time.

Server need to know more like that in gear they are wearing, slotted skills and quick slots, skills including passives, inventory and probably bank and craft bag. You notice your own bank is instant but guild bank has an short delay.

The point about outfits including armor styles and costumes, mount and pets is demanding on client is that its a lots of textures and models who has to be in graphics memory to show them if some nearby is using them

magnusthorek · November 2021

In theory, contained cell blocks would run smoother / allow more placeable elements than everything "loose" on the map (a solution for the imposed housing limits, perhaps?). Sure, it didn't work for Clockwork City but still...