Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

I don't have a SSD and loading screen took only 1 or 2 seconds maximum. I use two old school Western Digital 1TB Sata III HDDs in raid 0 mode.

Ah, good to know. I had no basis for comparison as all of our PCs now have SSDs. I was imagining loading being an actual hinderance based on how much of an issue it seems to be for some, while it wasn't even something that crossed my mind in GW2. 

Thanks.

Hehe well the main reason I don't have a SSD yet is that the price / capacity ratio is still very bad. You can get modern HDDs (SATA III high transfer speed, low seek times) with a 10x higher capacity for the same price. The day they make 500gb or higher SSDs for a decent price, I'll make the jump - but for now, my PCs work just fine with "old tech".

end of off topic =P

EDIT: and this is my post 666 here... I'm scared now o_O

The zones seem to provide as much content as Alan Wake did with similar intensity and quality. I don't mind a short break a.ka. loading screen in games in general.

Well yeah I like seamless and zoneless world much more as well.

Loading screens is not main reason I dislike zones as well. 

I just like when world is one big coherent thing and not chopped into bits.

Well but saying that I still like GW2 and will play it.

For my seamless , sandboxy experience I will have to wait for AA though.

Then I will have 2 games for my diffrent needs and moods hehe

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

I don't have a SSD and loading screen took only 1 or 2 seconds maximum. I use two old school Western Digital 1TB Sata III HDDs in raid 0 mode.

Ah, good to know. I had no basis for comparison as all of our PCs now have SSDs. I was imagining loading being an actual hinderance based on how much of an issue it seems to be for some, while it wasn't even something that crossed my mind in GW2. 

Thanks.

This is just another pitiful and desperate attempt to bash/troll GW2 people and their game.

YOU STINK OF FEAR!!!!!

    Hey Palladin, forget these people giving you crap over your opinion. What will ultimately matter is if you wind up having fun playing. Since you've pre-purchased, you'll soon have a chance to see for yourself.

    One thing I can add on the zoning, though, is this: Keep in mind that fast travel is a part of GW lore. (Yes, actually a part of the lore!) So, you'll find that, like every other game with some form of teleporting, fast travel, etc. (not talking about slow-assed gryphons) you do have some form of loading as the game puts you into the content you just fast-travelled to. This will be the norm in GW2, not using the portals. Basically, you'll enter a new zone through a portal and unlock waypoints as you travel around in the new zone. Now let's say you travel to a major city to unload... pull up the map, fast travel, do your thing, pull up the map and fast travel back to the closest point near where you were. In a nutshell, you'll only (likely) see the portals themselves once, or at the worst extremely rarely. All the rest is via fast travel, and when you accept that that's a part of the game and the lore it isn't immersion breaking in the least.

    I do agree with others on the size of the zones as well, they are huge. I don't know about other games or how they did them (load as you go, etc), but these zones you can easily spend hours or days in without seeing everything.

    Ah, I suppose I should add one more thing regarding the zones and the necessity of them... keep in mind dynamic events. Things are constantly going on in the world, triggered by various things. If you think behind the scenes, it makes a lot more sense to split the load required to keep track of, run and maintain all these dynamic events (currently 1500+, will be constantly increasing) across multiple shards to minimize performance issues. If a single shard had to keep track of thousands of active people and every event in every stage they're in... well, I think performance would take a serious hit. From a technical perspective I think the zones wind up making a lot of sense, and I do feel from personal experience that the fast travel ultimately does a great job of masking the zones themselves.

I've never understood why this is such a deal breaker for some. If they were long load screens then maybe but they are like 5-10 seconds. Has society really gotten to the point we cannot wait that long?

Originally posted by Palladin

Originally posted by Amjoco

Originally posted by Palladin

 

I really hopethe other aspects of the game that I do like will be enough to offset this major "flaw"

Apparently you missed SWToR. Anyway, this topic has been discussed over and over.

 

NO i tried TOR canceled my sub two torturous  weeks into the free "trial" month for this very reason zone laoding is old school crap and no game these days should release with it.

Dude, have you never modded or made a game?   All games have trade-offs in what can be accomplished and having a hissy fit about something you don't apparently understand just doesn't change the fact that computers have limited resources with with to render a world, therefore, you must make the world fit into those resources.

The first option to make seamless zone loading is that you have to make the maps substantially smaller.   This tends to break-up/destroy epic, grand-scale, large-area PvE due to map-size restrictions.    This option would pretty much destroy the scope of the DEs being developed by ANet.    It has additional problems when you get to corner boundaries.   This means you have to restrict area transitions on the map.     You have to force people to go through these areas sequentially because loading four or five or six areas at some intersection is very problematic.     So, effectively, what you doing is to funnel everyone though chokepoints that are, essentially, interactive loading zones for the next area.   STO did this on many of it's planets. As many of us know from first hand experience, STO's planets were complete and utter crap and a major problem for the game.

This is a rooms and tunnels approach.   The tunnels are your loading screens, the rooms your small areas.  Shooters do this a lot.  

A second option, to keep those maps large,  you have savagely edit them down for content.    You no longer can have a forest made out of individual trees and shrubs, rather you end up with some trees and shrubs in front of  placeable 'tree walls' you can't walk through.   This option would pretty much destroy the enviornments in the game,  pushing them backwards to old-school crap like NWN or Team Fortress 1.

This is also your typical flight-simulator map.   It's big.  It's seamless.   It's butt-ugly.   Warband Mount and Blade also does this.  The overland map on which you naviagate is huge.   Gigantic.   But low-detail and butt-ugly.

A third option is to make an area that won't load on a 32-bit O/S machine and will crush all but the elite 64-bit O/S machines.   That certainly wouldn't play well...    And this where the inexperience modder always seems to start...   Because he wants what he wants and doesn't understand that he can't have it....    He does it.  Puts it on Fileplanet, or whatever, then his mod breaks and people think he has an  Eye Dee Ten Tee problem and he gets a lot of one-star reviews and nasty comments.

I'm sure there are other options.   But when I used to mod, those were the options we basically dealt with.  

Originally posted by Volkon

    Hey Palladin, forget these people giving you crap over your opinion. What will ultimately matter is if you wind up having fun playing. Since you've pre-purchased, you'll soon have a chance to see for yourself.

    One thing I can add on the zoning, though, is this: Keep in mind that fast travel is a part of GW lore. (Yes, actually a part of the lore!) So, you'll find that, like every other game with some form of teleporting, fast travel, etc. (not talking about slow-assed gryphons) you do have some form of loading as the game puts you into the content you just fast-travelled to. This will be the norm in GW2, not using the portals. Basically, you'll enter a new zone through a portal and unlock waypoints as you travel around in the new zone. Now let's say you travel to a major city to unload... pull up the map, fast travel, do your thing, pull up the map and fast travel back to the closest point near where you were. In a nutshell, you'll only (likely) see the portals themselves once, or at the worst extremely rarely. All the rest is via fast travel, and when you accept that that's a part of the game and the lore it isn't immersion breaking in the least.

    I do agree with others on the size of the zones as well, they are huge. I don't know about other games or how they did them (load as you go, etc), but these zones you can easily spend hours or days in without seeing everything.

    Ah, I suppose I should add one more thing regarding the zones and the necessity of them... keep in mind dynamic events. Things are constantly going on in the world, triggered by various things. If you think behind the scenes, it makes a lot more sense to split the load required to keep track of, run and maintain all these dynamic events (currently 1500+, will be constantly increasing) across multiple shards to minimize performance issues. If a single shard had to keep track of thousands of active people and every event in every stage they're in... well, I think performance would take a serious hit. From a technical perspective I think the zones wind up making a lot of sense, and I do feel from personal experience that the fast travel ultimately does a great job of masking the zones themselves.

The problem with his opinion is that it's just self-centered and childish.   He's ignoring the reality of tradeoffs and pitching a fit.    You want seamless loading?  Play in a habitrail.   Because that's what you're going to get.   Memory is finite.   Only so much can be put there.

http://criandohamster.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/habitrail_armado.jpg

But you won't get GW2.   You can't do GW2's environment, DEs, etc., in a habitrail game.

Originally posted by Palladin

Originally posted by RedKatana

If you want a world like that then wait for Archage :)

 

I've tried researching Archage but right now the game seems to be a pipe dream. Very little info on it ...I avoid games with anime character types where you can't tell the male from the female toons.

It's interesting from the screenshots and videos.  But the world suffers from the typical barrenness of large-zone games.    And they do, btw, a fantastic job of hiding it as far as it can be hidden.   But it's obviously there in the canyon-like areas.   The large, empty expanses with little detail beyond maybe some bump-map texturing for depth...

You know, trade-offs.   You don't get loading screens, but you suffer something else.

Six of one, half-a-dozen of another.  

Originally posted by Saxx0n

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

I don't have a SSD and loading screen took only 1 or 2 seconds maximum. I use two old school Western Digital 1TB Sata III HDDs in raid 0 mode.

Ah, good to know. I had no basis for comparison as all of our PCs now have SSDs. I was imagining loading being an actual hinderance based on how much of an issue it seems to be for some, while it wasn't even something that crossed my mind in GW2. 

Thanks.

This is just another pitiful and desperate attempt to bash/troll GW2 people and their game.

 

YOU STINK OF FEAR!!!!!

Sorry, is that supposed to be a joke of some sort or did you possibly misread something?

I pointed out that loading screens go so fast I can't even read the flavor text at the bottom in GW2 on a solid state drive (that's a huge positive in my book - the speed, not the being unable to read it fast enough bit), he mentioned that even without SSD it was loading for him in a second or two anyway.

The only way that could be misconstrued as bashing is if you didn't actually read it.

Wait, you're joking right? Was that sarcasm posssibly?

Originally posted by Kidon

Come on guys, to whoever played GW2 BWE, you know you played the best MMO ever, dont loose yourself explaining to the rest, it doenst matter if the rest plays it :D we will ,  only the ones that played the beta weekend know how GW2 is insanly awsome.

I don't know about that. I played the weekend beta, had tons of fun, and look forward to the next one and realease, but I'm not sure that I'd say the game is the best mmo ever. Only time will tell, I enjoyed the game but giving it a best mmo title after one weekend, I don't think anyone could do.

Originally posted by MosesZD

Originally posted by Volkon

    Hey Palladin, forget these people giving you crap over your opinion. What will ultimately matter is if you wind up having fun playing. Since you've pre-purchased, you'll soon have a chance to see for yourself.

    One thing I can add on the zoning, though, is this: Keep in mind that fast travel is a part of GW lore. (Yes, actually a part of the lore!) So, you'll find that, like every other game with some form of teleporting, fast travel, etc. (not talking about slow-assed gryphons) you do have some form of loading as the game puts you into the content you just fast-travelled to. This will be the norm in GW2, not using the portals. Basically, you'll enter a new zone through a portal and unlock waypoints as you travel around in the new zone. Now let's say you travel to a major city to unload... pull up the map, fast travel, do your thing, pull up the map and fast travel back to the closest point near where you were. In a nutshell, you'll only (likely) see the portals themselves once, or at the worst extremely rarely. All the rest is via fast travel, and when you accept that that's a part of the game and the lore it isn't immersion breaking in the least.

    I do agree with others on the size of the zones as well, they are huge. I don't know about other games or how they did them (load as you go, etc), but these zones you can easily spend hours or days in without seeing everything.

    Ah, I suppose I should add one more thing regarding the zones and the necessity of them... keep in mind dynamic events. Things are constantly going on in the world, triggered by various things. If you think behind the scenes, it makes a lot more sense to split the load required to keep track of, run and maintain all these dynamic events (currently 1500+, will be constantly increasing) across multiple shards to minimize performance issues. If a single shard had to keep track of thousands of active people and every event in every stage they're in... well, I think performance would take a serious hit. From a technical perspective I think the zones wind up making a lot of sense, and I do feel from personal experience that the fast travel ultimately does a great job of masking the zones themselves.

 

The problem with his opinion is that it's just self-centered and childish.   He's ignoring the reality of tradeoffs and pitching a fit.    You want seamless loading?  Play in a habitrail.   Because that's what you're going to get.   Memory is finite.   Only so much can be put there.

 

http://criandohamster.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/habitrail_armado.jpg

 

But you won't get GW2.   You can't do GW2's environment, DEs, etc., in a habitrail game.

    Everyone's opinion can seem self-centered and childish to those that don't agree with it. He already has come around and will be playing GW2, and he's most welcome to. He has an issue with the zones, I'm trying to put out an explanation as best as I can that doesn't need to resort to any types of attacks. Let's face it, it's far too easy for a thread to degrade into insults, losing any value that was to be had.

    I have no problem with him not liking the zones. I see it as simply not fully understanding the hows, whys and how it fits into GW2. I fully think that as he plays the game it'll all begin to feel natural and the zones will become a non-factor due to the masking effect of fast-travel. That's all.

zone loading exists because it has less stress on the server. If the whole world was seamless the server would lag like crazy.

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by Saxx0n

This is just another pitiful and desperate attempt to bash/troll GW2 people and their game.

 

YOU STINK OF FEAR!!!!!

Sorry, is that supposed to be a joke of some sort or did you possibly misread something?

I pointed out that loading screens go so fast I can't even read the flavor text at the bottom in GW2 on a solid state drive (that's a huge positive in my book - the speed, not the being unable to read it fast enough bit), he mentioned that even without SSD it was loading for him in a second or two anyway.

The only way that could be misconstrued as bashing is if you didn't actually read it.

Wait, you're joking right? Was that sarcasm posssibly?

 ...and another attempt by you. Relentless aren't you?

YOU STINK OF FEAR AND MAD DOG KIWI LIME!!!!

Originally posted by Djildjamesh

I don't mind a loading screen per sé.

However after the 'revolution' of the genre thing ... yes i think they kind of underestimated the importance of an open world. The loading screens are about the only part of the game i don't like.

That being said. Im fine with them choosing for zones, but i'd just much rather have an open world.

I do think you understand what I am trying to say.

As I ahve said the game is feature rich and I am sure I will like it well enough. I would have loved it without the segmenting of all the various zones

Originally posted by Palladin

Originally posted by Djildjamesh

I don't mind a loading screen per sé.

However after the 'revolution' of the genre thing ... yes i think they kind of underestimated the importance of an open world. The loading screens are about the only part of the game i don't like.

That being said. Im fine with them choosing for zones, but i'd just much rather have an open world.

I do think you understand what I am trying to say.

As I ahve said the game is feature rich and I am sure I will like it well enough. I would have loved it without the segmenting of all the various zones

There is a simple test that can be done: is the game immersive?  If it is then portals are irrelevant - their use is a drawback that is balanced by the benefits it brings.  Sure no Portals would be even better, but perhaps no portals would have meant the memory cost of dynamic events would have been prohibitive etc etc.  It is the final overall product that matters (rather than focusing on 1 element in isolation)

Originally posted by SoulOfRaziel

Originally posted by Palladin

Zone loading.

 

WTF this isn't the late 80s early 90s.

THis game would have been far far better if it have one huge seemless zoneless world to explore (ala Fallen Earth)

I've already bought the game but I really am not sure I will be able to swallow this sour pill. Load screens in this day and age just piss me the ^%$# off.

It really does not bother me...

Same... I really don't get the drama, and I didn't find it at all heavy anyhow. The odd screen really is no big deal.

I guess people are more sensitive then me out there though.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by Quizzical

Chess is seamless.  You know why?  Because the world is small enough that you can load the whole thing all at once.  If you want a bigger world than you can load all at once, then you have to have zones to determine what gets loaded and when.  You can make the zones invisible to players by automatically loading the next zone over as a player gets close to the boundary.  But then you're doing heavy loading while a player is playing the game, and that runs a serious risk of hitching.  Having to have multiple zones loaded simultaneously also takes more memory.

I do think that there will be future movement in the direction of seamless games, even with games as complicated as Guild Wars 2.  But the price tag for it will be system requirements that include running the game off of a good SSD and having at least 8 GB of system memory.  There isn't yet a big enough market for games to put that in the system requirements.

I also feel there will need to be some improvements to networking throughput.  The good old N^2 communication problem as you increase number of characters in a small area.

Networking isn't the problem.  There's already too much going on in a given zone to send your computer data about everything that is going on on the other side of the zone.

All right, Palladin.  I tell you what.  Go here and read this:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/350767/The-future-is-seamless-but-its-not-the-near-future.html

Then maybe you can understand what you're talking about before you continue your rant.

Originally posted by Quizzical

All right, Palladin.  I tell you what.  Go here and read this:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/350767/The-future-is-seamless-but-its-not-the-near-future.html

Then maybe you can understand what you're talking about before you continue your rant.

  Says it all, +1.