I like TOR a lot, but there is a lot of loading screens in this game.

By a lot you mean one when you arrive on a planet and one where you depart from it? I can live with that.

By a lot you mean one when you arrive on a planet and one where you depart from it? I can live with that.

Overall, it seems like I see more loading screens in this game than I have seen in other games. It could be that maybe I notice them more in this game, I dunno. It's a small annoyance but it is something I think about each time I play. I like the rest of the game a lot, this is just one area of improvement I would really like to see.

Overall, it seems like I see more loading screens in this game than I have seen in other games. It could be that maybe I notice them more in this game, I dunno. It's a small annoyance but it is something I think about each time I play. I like the rest of the game a lot, this is just one area of improvement I would really like to see.

Every MMO I can think of has as many or more loading screens as SWTOR. During leveling process, if you are not traveling off world a lot for Fleet/FP access you wont ever see a loading screen until you move to the next planet.

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

I never start threads unless I'm attempting to be constructive

I will, however, respond to threads that are started by whiners (especially those asking for a base change) over issues that are at the most trivial

To answer the question in the title two possibilities:

1. Nothing.
   
2. Everything will improve ... Soon!!(™)
   

Why are mmo's the only genre where people get upset over a loading screen? I play console and othe PC games and never get mad or frustrated over a loading screen. It's the by product of computers. Every program does it and will remain that way till aliens come down and give us instant processers. So until then loading screens are a evil necessity.

Not all games or MMORPGs do it, and haven't for a long while now. Early ones like EQ1 certainly did though.

Also, the elevators are not loading screens. It's a fade to black, a screen/ setting transition, not a loading screen.

Actually if those splash screens don't work you sometime see the world loading in.

The strange thing about the loading screens is they seem to take mini-breaks in the process, that has to be something that could be optimised.

Getting a faster hard drive will make your load screens go faster. Mine were horribly long on my old comp but they're pretty fast now with the exception of Corellia, which is always long for some reason. And my HD isn't even SSD.

I agree.

You have to understand that the game is marketed at WoW players though, and WoW players are generally casual PC users who think state of the art is a machine they bought 10 years ago to surf the web and email.

Getting a faster hard drive will make your load screens go faster. Mine were horribly long on my old comp but they're pretty fast now with the exception of Corellia, which is always long for some reason. And my HD isn't even SSD.

I'm on an old WinXP pos with 4G of RAM (1G for the OS so 3G available) and also have dc & loading screen issues. But then it has issues with pretty much everything - including Internet Explorer. Though I can't say it's a whole lot different than some of the the load times on my 320G Xbox.

Conversely I built my wife a killer rig with 16G of RAM to go with a 2G graphics card and the eye candy in this game on a PC with horsepower is pretty stoney. She never dcs and her screens load in a matter of seconds whereas I can sometimes be waiting for almost a minute.

While it would be nice, how much guys do you think it would cost to make the new cut-scenes?

Then consider you can have the artists either do this or actually working on new content.

Thing is long term after the first few landing/take off you're going to automatically skip the cut-scene.

Must be new to gaming, loadscreens is about as common as it gets

I was saying there are not many load screens in TOR...

While it would be nice, how much guys do you think it would cost to make the new cut-scenes?

 

Then consider you can have the artists either do this or actually working on new content.

 

Thing is long term after the first few landing/take off you're going to automatically skip the cut-scene.

Two different departments. So hopefully any new content will include interactive voice animation to the same degree as the game has now if not more. It's what this game is built on.

I was speaking about 3D artists, texture modelers, animators and so on.

stop trying to manage my expectations. Things i like i expect and require them to be the best, i have a lot of respect for ToR, I expect more, and i won't be satisfied with excuses like it's not that big a deal because it very well is.

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.

So big a deal it was in Everquest, that wow was intenitonally designed to eliminate a loading screen all togehter, and hailed as a milestone for the way they designed their world. Its nearly 15 years after Ever Quest, as technology has moved on we expect more, just cos EQ hasd loading screens that were annoying ashell doesn't mean i'm going to be okay with my favourite game being anything less than the best it could be and put up with that annoying feature.

Sure its better, and SwTOR employs something EQ never really could in such fine detail... those cut-scenes.. yep.. in fact, it already does a little of what i suggest they ecxtend to over the laoding screen issue..every time you go into your class hangar at a space port, you do see a take off cineamtic.

This needs to be extended.. rather than switch to loading screen , the cineamtic should continue showing the journey of you excitin g the planet into space, then jumping to light speed, arriving at destination, and docoking at orbvital station or landing on oplanet. Whiles it loads in the background.

There are two reasons why this is important... one is to kill theannoyance of lots of loading screens, the other is to make the experience between going rom one planet to another a lot more contiuous. if you just keep literally flashing in between loading screens and black screens as youmove from one section to another, it feels very disjointed.. if instead during the load screens or for some of those elevator trips, you actually show the journey in a short scene, it stops feeling disjointed. and bingo.

add some lovely cantina music while loading and it'd be less dull

another thing taht would also help, is give access to chat.. guild chat, fleet chat, party chat whiles loading and whiles the cinematic is playing.

i never get tired of seeing my space ship take off or land when such thigns are available, so i doubt i'd get tired of the cineamtic that shows the journey during the loading of the new world.. afterall that is far more exciting than staring at a picture. Saying that though the ability to chat, and also to spacebar skip the rest of the ccineamtic if the planet has loaded befor ethe full length is shown would be great.

the thing is what they may have done was originally made journey cineamtic very short to only show your ship take off from the spaceport, assuming everyone would have pcs that would load the world like they do at their developement centre..pehraps its why tat cineamtic is short.. so i say, extend it to show the full journey and start shoiwng what happens when jumping on elveators and going from A to B so it doesn't feel so disconnected..it's a little extra that makes a lot of differnece

Cutscenes while loading?

1. They'd have to either make "prerendered" scenes, which presumably means they'd need something different for every class, or in-engine scenes.

2. Eitherway, processing/etc. time would be spent on the scene, meaning the actual load would take longer. And for in-engine scenes, it would also take up some of the memory/etc. available for the actual environments.

 

i.e. No thank you. It's a stupid idea. I don't want longer loading times/less content so you can get a silly travel cinematic.

no they won't, they already have cut scenes druing loading.. i'm surpirsed you hanve't realised that, it's the first hting you see when you start a new character, a cineamtic is playing as the world is loading in the background.

also every time you enter your class ship, a cinematic pops, immediately, there is no load time for it, and i think the world is loading in the background whiles it's playing, the thing is it's way too short. and also only shows the ship taking off from the port, the rest of the journey isn't seen

no they won't, they already have cut scenes druing loading.. i'm surpirsed you hanve't realised that, it's the first hting you see when you start a new character, a cineamtic is playing as the world is loading in the background.

 

also every time you enter your class ship, a cinematic pops, immediately, there is no load time for it, and i think the world is loading in the background whiles it's playing, the thing is it's way too short. and also only shows the ship taking off from the port, the rest of the journey isn't seen

Hate to break it to you, but there isn't any loading going on during those cutscenes. They're completely unneccessary additional filler that simply pad out the load times. Take off from your ship. Wait until the cinematic is just about over. Hit escape. Presto. You're still right where you were with no need to load back into the world you had "left". (though I'll admit, it *has* unloaded some things... your ship sometimes takes a while to pop back in, but heck, it sometimes takes a while to pop in when you run into the zone. I expect it's much the same thing.)

Why? Because it hasn't unloaded that world yet to start loading wherever you're going... and, as I said. If they WERE doing cinematics during the load, it would slow down the load... for the sake of worthless cinematics. I'd be willing to bet 90% of the people playing this game hit "space" after the first time they've seen aany enter/leave planet cinematic. Heck, I'd expect the majority haven't even SEEN the enter/leave cinematics for any planet after the first one or two.

So even if I'm completely wrong, and they ARE doing cinematics during the loads... it's still a bad idea and they should stop.

('course, as I indicated, pre-rendered FMV sequences probably wouldn't significantly increase the length of the load on most computers, but it WOULD still increase it... and unneccessarily so)

no they won't, they already have cut scenes druing loading.. i'm surpirsed you hanve't realised that, it's the first hting you see when you start a new character, a cineamtic is playing as the world is loading in the background.

 

also every time you enter your class ship, a cinematic pops, immediately, there is no load time for it, and i think the world is loading in the background whiles it's playing, the thing is it's way too short. and also only shows the ship taking off from the port, the rest of the journey isn't seen

They loaded the Cinematic during the "elevator" ride to your ship hanger. And there really isn't much background loading going on during the ride. If it wasn't for this cinematic we wouldn't need the loading screen to get to your ship hanger.

One issue for the long load screen when you arrive at a planet is that they load most of it at once. Including the huge background image. Other games only load a fraction of the game and slowly load more as you travel. they do this with very low-res distant features and a sharp edge to the "world" covered by "fog."

While load screens can be annoying, the one thing that seems useless is "fade to black" revive. I'm not really sure what it's needed for, and I don't remember it during beta weekends.

I never start threads unless I'm attempting to be constructive

 

I will, however, respond to threads that are started by whiners (especially those asking for a base change) over issues that are at the most trivial

There's a long, well-followed thread over in the Suggestion Box pertaining to small quality-of-life changes that could be made to the game to make it feel smoother, more polished and friendlier. It's extremely well-received by the community, engaged with by Bioware staff, and many of the "trivial" changes suggested have ended up being implemented.

Small issues are worth discussing too. Nobody's entitled to **** but what we all want is the best damn game Bioware is capable of producing with the resources they have available. Sometimes that means fixing the bug where you crash to desktop after a couple of hours. Sometimes that means letting you hide your companions' hats.

If your post to this thread is a good example of your contributions to other people's threads, well... congratulations on being a net negative on the game. Well done.

I actually wonder why the loading screen exists at all. If you look at the border of the screen itself its just a super imposed image over the game world. So what exactly is it that needs to load that requires the game world to be hidden from the player?

I noticed this too. I suppose its like loading a youtube vid and it says 'Buffering'?

I dont really mind the Load, but I understand that it does feel almost disconnected. Im still trying to figure what the hec the background is meant to be on the loading screens..