What are bioware going to do about load screens & feeling of disconnect?

i haven't been able to ask this question at any of the developer blogs, which is a shame and i haven't seen any response made about it, yet to everyone i speak to , this issue is one of their biggest gripes with SWTOR and the solution to fix it is so simple and been unainimously praised by everyone that has heard it.

The problem is there are lots of loading screens which puts a lot of downtime for slower computers, but since 1.4/5 though things hav been loading faster, it is not the frustration of waiting that was the biggest issue about loading screens, it was the feeling of disconnect they give.

OY feel like your loading modules rather than actually moving from one place to another..I am talking about moving from one zone to another, but not restricting it from a planet to another, or ship to planet to flashpoint/emergency pass.. but even from a zone like the fleet hwere you go from one floor to another, or in a building where you have to go to the next floor.


No tansition is shown at any time so you really don't feel one floor is connected to the other or have a sense of where your new location is. Worse of all is having to stare at a picture so many times.

What is bioware going to do about this? in my mind it is the biggest advnatage other mmos like WoWhave over ToR, and i believe ToR has many things better, but this is one that is seriously off putting.

Why Can't you Continue a cinematic during the load screen?
it solves 2 problems, with so many load screens, the downtime gives an even greater sense of amovie, killing the frustratinon cos you're seeing something, but even more, the cinematic willl connect one zone to another by showing the transition journey.

e.g 1. Take a shuttle from section X to Black Hole Coreiila? -- instead of seeing a load screen, the cinematic plays of you entering shuttle, shuttle lifting off and flying out of the section X portion of Belsavis through the atmosphere into the planets orbit .. ( you can even who the space orbital station at a distance to drive home section X is on a different side of the planet to minimum security section you do the other dailies and level 44 missions. Ship jumps to light speed, enters over coreilla, then flies into the atmosphere... to a different portion of the planet than the cinematic will show for entering the space port for normal coreilla... seeing an aerial view of what city on Ceoreilla Black hole is actually in and it lands.

e.g 2. Take the elevator to another section of Justicar territor, zoom out and show a 5s clip of you moving from floor 150 to floor 431... so you have asense you are moving through a super sky scraper rather than buried somewhere with no sense of where in super city planet strucutre you are. elevators don't have load times, so i wont' expect something like that to show all the time, but it needs to be seen occasionally, so at least some form of connect is done.


Now do clips for every combo journey.. i'm sure having aplanet in tihe background and jumping to light speed and coming out of light speed to new location be it planet, fleet or orbital station is easy, as all the orbital stations look alike, the clips to entering them can all be the same just hte ship varies. The clip of going into the planet and flying out of it can e done too, you jus thave to haveone for each location for each faction.

trickier to do would be when you use emergency fleet passes, shuttles to fleet from worlds, and legacy direct trasnports. legacy direct trasnports can be left without a clip, as you only use them once in a while so you would have to travel by other means and get the cineamtic during those loading screens, or those loading screens of the legacy transports instead show the arrival cinematic, rather than the leaving since you can take them from any point. SHuttles on each world can have their own leaving cinematic cos they are always in the same place and it loks cool to be able to see them take off rather than just see a stationary shuuttle, click on door, and boom loading screen and you[re in your lfeet's mission deck.. so they will have to have a take off and enter fleet cineamtic.. in a situation like that, you would have the opportunity to actually show the mission dock docking port used for poriority 1 mission shuttles, and see how it connects to which part of your fleets station. .worth doing.

Emergency fleet pass can work like legacy transport,. unless its easy to have a clip of a shuttle land at your location a nd take off from the planet, then jtl then come out of light speed at your fleet and dock into it. otherwise, just show the arrival part of the cineamitc.

So this way.. although you have to have load screens, they don't feel like loadscreens becuase the cineamtic shows the journey going on.. rather than the half clip that is only shown when you enter your ship and leave port.

You never played Everquest did you?

Stop being spoiled and deal with it. Some games have loading screens, some do not. GW2 has them. Play or quit, but stop whining.

They're probably not going to do anything about it. It'd be a fair amount of work for not a lot of gain (although there are places where they could remove loading screens and not lose anything, like certain elevators).

Your constructive, thoughtful and helpful response to criticism is a credit to the community of this game.

I don't think they can do anything with loading screens, they seem to be an artifact of 3 issues.


1. Story quests in orbital stations giving us more loading screens than are needed.

2. The game loading entire planets at once (and hiding this with a splash screen).

3. Some problem with the game freezing in mid-load making loading screens longer than they should be.




What would help though is a "summon" ability, like the one they removed in Beta, and perhaps a few more direct flight options like they put in for Daily Quest planets.

Honestly, I'd rather not fill up my hdd with 50 useless cinematics. Besides, different computers load at different speeds. You'd have to cater to the slowest machines, which means that everyone else would have to watch the entire cinematic instead of getting on with what they were doing. That would also feel like a disconnect.

Add me to the, apparantly empty, list of people who do NOT have a problem with this.

And whilst youre at it, add all the members of my current guild, and my old guild and my RL friends that i play with.

But hey, im sure that eeeeveryone youve talked to this is 100% behind you, just like you make it sound in your overly-long rant...

they just need to introduce phased loading for the planets and it will be fine. There's absolutely no reason for me to load the dune sea while I'm in the spaceport on Tat

I use load screens as necessary breaks, they are not that long anyway. Does not bother me at all. Make some pushups and squads... in waiting time... will be good for you

Dude, go back to your cage.

OP isn't "whining". He highlighted a problem, prosposed a SOLUTION (a good one at that).

That is not whining. That's constructive criticism.

They should make it a default feature to load the entire client into memory for people with enough memory.