Will you be able to chat to everyone in the world. Like a general chat? Or is it like WoW, everytime you enter a new level zone, you enter a new general chat for those levels?
I'm not concerned about loading screens. I've played both Age of Conan and Star Wars: The Old Republic (among others), which have plenty of loading screens themselves (especially SW:TOR), and it didn't bother me when I played them. Thank you for the heads up.
Valid concern, though playing gw1, you knew gw2 was going to be an mmorpg, but that they would not be a true mmorpg. The world doesn't really feel persistent whatsoever.
Some of you may also note that each zone has a specific player cap. If the cap for each zone is reached player trying to access the full zone will be moved to an "overflow" server where they will play with everyone else waiting to get into that zone (from their respective servers).
It's basically like SWTOR's instances of zones, except it only happens when the player cap is full in that specific zone.
Do you mean, it's like GW in the sense that between each zone there's a portal?
I wonder if people have already discovered what currently the player cap is for an area, and if it's the same for all areas, or if it's variable.
There's a portal between each zone. In total there are over 20 zones. Each zone is designed for several levels and has several hearts. The zones themselves are rather large (just as SWTOR) and provide you with several hours of gameplay... not to mention you have several zones for the same level brackets providing alternative places to level alts (or to simply level in if you get tired of your current zone).
The estimated cap is about ~500 per zone for the human starting areas (which is 3 or 4 zones I believe... can't remember). I am unsure if when the cap is reached if the zone creates multiple instances (a la SWTOR) or if it just moves people to other low population servers to fill their zones for the moment while being queued to enter their zone in their server (aka overflow servers).
If that is the case, then it would be nearly impossible for the game to have queues during launch as the population would be evenly spread out throughout all the servers -- even though not everyone playing that server will be FROM that server (if that makes sense).
ALSO, the world feels very much alive due to the nature of dynamic events. It may not be seamless, but the scenery between zones transition very well.
Some of you may also note that each zone has a specific player cap. If the cap for each zone is reached player trying to access the full zone will be moved to an "overflow" server where they will play with everyone else waiting to get into that zone (from their respective servers).
It's basically like SWTOR's instances of zones, except it only happens when the player cap is full in that specific zone.
Do you mean, it's like GW in the sense that between each zone there's a portal?
I wonder if people have already discovered what currently the player cap is for an area, and if it's the same for all areas, or if it's variable.
There's a portal between each zone. In total there are over 20 zones. Each zone is designed for several levels and has several hearts. The zones themselves are rather large (just as SWTOR) and provide you with several hours of gameplay... not to mention you have several zones for the same level brackets providing alternative places to level alts (or to simply level in if you get tired of your current zone).
The estimated cap is about ~500 per zone for the human starting areas (which is 3 or 4 zones I believe... can't remember). I am unsure if when the cap is reached if the zone creates multiple instances (a la SWTOR) or if it just moves people to other low population servers to fill their zones for the moment while being queued to enter their zone in their server (aka overflow servers).
If that is the case, then it would be nearly impossible for the game to have queues during launch as the population would be evenly spread out throughout all the servers -- even though not everyone playing that server will be FROM that server (if that makes sense).
ALSO, the world feels very much alive due to the nature of dynamic events. It may not be seamless, but the scenery between zones transition very well.
Thanks for the concrete, detailed info, much appreciated
Sounds like they're using the same map size and zone structure as in GW, with the difference that in GW2 the areas are persistent. The overflow server system, where the overflow of players gets directed to low(er) population servers I find a stroke of genius. This could enable the lower population servers to get a regular influx of players from other servers, if ANet don't go overboard with creating too many servers at launch.
Can't blame you by not wanting to watch this entire vid I linked, but there are some moments that he goes through multiple loading screens in quick succession. All in all (I didn't actually count them) between 12 and 15 loading screens in 40 minutes. Kind of hard not to notice that.
Rewatched, from what I can tell he's playing the Norn starting area, and going through the story quests. So, yes, there's a lot of loading screens if you are doing a lot of story quests (1 to get into each event, 1 to leave) in addition to all the waypoints and such.
Very few of the loading screens were from him actually changing between major areas. It would be cool if they had a system similar to what TOR did (have a loading portal that you can kinda seamlessly load through), but I don't know if their system is setup for that or not.
However, I can see how that amount of loading screens can be jarring at times.
I already made the point, but some might be missing it. TB isn't just doing the Personal Story for himself. He's in a group with other people who are also doing Personal Story content. When you are grouped with someone, if they select a Personal Story Instance to enter, you are given the option to join them in the instance, even if you aren't right there with them. That accounts for a lot of the instancing in the video.
Just watched & listened to Cynical Brit's overal impression so far. Essentially 40+ minutes of continuous gameplay in the Norn area and despite the environments looking pretty appealing I couldn't help noticing a couple of things really impacting the "open worldness";
The big one:
- The amount of loading screens. Every time you zone in or out of town, personal instances or fast travel: pretty hefty ones too (on his system around 30 seconds each, it looks like he even short cutted some of them (as some bars run to 100%, others are suddenly cut short at low percentages), probably to make the vid more appealing). (EDIT: apparently some loading screens can in fact skip from 5% to 100% and the vid might not have been edited afterall)
This reminded me very much of Swtor or AoC, even though Swtor's "worlds" are larger than GW2's zones, you frequently had to travel between them; i.e. staring at loading screens a lot. To me personally that became a frustrating aspect. It looks like in GW2 this may even be a bit more impacting due to the frequent use of fast travel (as the time spent physically traveling towards an objective will be much shorter once you discovered an area for the first time and once you are done with something, you can instantly fast travel out it seems).
Specifically personal story related ones:
- Conversation breaks: pulling you out the world around you and into a conversation setting, playing out a predetermined exchange of lines (without choice it looks like). This is a lesser interuption in my eyes but it will mean a lot of skipping for many people.
- Instanced areas in the open world: running into certain areas prompts you into accepting entering an instance or not and another loading screen, venture too far out and you leave the open world instance.
In total it ammounted to an impressive number of interuptions from the immersive flow of an open world experience: fight some mobs, fast travel to town *loading screen*, run to npc, fast travel back *loading screen*, run to objective, enter instanced area *loading screen*, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town *loading screen* , etc. (It's obvious how the fast traveling mechanic, rather than a natural, real time means of transport is responsible for most breaks).
I hope they will be able to optimize the game somewhat more in order to make the loading screens less time consuming but I reckon people would do good to invest in a SSD if they haven't already, to cut the annoyance down somewhat.
What remains to be seen if these frequent interuptions are typical for mainly storyline gameplay or not: it could be that while doing mainly random dynamic events in the same zone, they are much less of a factor.
Anyway, this might sound a bit dramatic but I was a bit disappointed about that aspect while watching this vid. I didn't expect to see them so frequently in a 40 minute session and it drains some of the "persistance magic" out of the beautiful surroundings and turns them into a series of somewhat more artificial back drops, rather than a consistent world which might change dramatically around the next corner while you physically travel without interuptions between destinations.
So what's your thoughts on this?
edit: Changed the description of when loading screens happen: loading screens between open world zones themselves (while not fast traveling) haven't been confirmed yet.
edit: added description to kinds of occurances to reflect the difference between personal story and other content.
Wow Pony...I expected a little bit better from you...
Ok where should I start..
Fast travel
First of all, if a game has instanced travelling, you would kind of expect these to have loading screens. Just look at Skyrim for instance. It is not even an mmorpg and does not have hundreds of people running around in an ever-changing world and yet, it cannot avoid loading screens in instanced travels.
As for some loading screens that take a while for instance travel, that is obviously subject to optimisation. When the game is about 3-4 months from its release date, the devs have plenty of time to optimise the game.
However the main point here is: loading screens are to be expected in instanced travel even regardless of the game's genre and are unavoidable (maybe due to technical limitations?)
Personal instances
Think about it, how can you include these areas - which is integral part of the game - without any loading screens? You expect to seamlessly enter your home instance along with 4 others in your party? Mate, that is just not going to happen. Just think about it for a sec: how in the world can you make the whole experience seamless when you go back and forth between the open world and your instance? There HAS to be a loading screen to indicate the transition as instances are made for you and your party only. Again, this is most likely a technical limitation, but it is also relevant for any other game.
You can argue "but why put personal instances in the first place?" Easy answer. Personal story and home instances would NOT exist without personal instancing. Personal instance, again, is an integral part of the game that: gives your character an identity, that opens up great variety of gameplay options; and caters to those players who simply enjoy single player rpg games with co-op thrown in it (think Diablo 2, or Borderlands for instance [no pun intended] which I personally enjoyed).
Zoning in and out of towns
To be honest, I don't really have a valid argument for this one. The only thing I can say is that it may be a technical limitation given the nature of DEs and how huge and detailed these towns are.
Conversation breaks
Really unavoidable. What is better: having a simple voice dialogue or a wall of text trying to immerse you in the story and make youa attached to your character or a conversation cutscene for the same purpose?
It must also be noted, like others here have done, that conversation breaks are ONLY for your personal story. So if you won't follow your personal story much, you will not get these conversation breaks.
Instanced areas in open world
Now that is very poor wording. Open world is divided into zones where hundreds of people can play together. You are talking about the loading screen that happens when you transit to another zone? That is very common across many mmorpg games. The devs may have avoided these loading screens all together had they not included DEs. So it is more of a technical limitation. Having said that, what is better: loading screens that last few seconds or having conventional quests?
fight some mobs, fast travel to town *loading screen*, run to npc, fast travel back *loading screen*, run to objective, enter instanced area *loading screen*, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town *loading screen*
This sentence got me a bit annoyed. It seems to me like here you are stuck in old mindset. Either that or a very poor example of trying to get a point across that the game has too many loading screens.
You get DEs notifications as you explore the world. Once you complete any of these, you get your rewards immediately based on your participation and through the mailing system (an award of some sort from an npc). You do not need to run back and forth between exploration areas and towns to submit or get another "quest". You would only go back to the town to buy/sell/craft stuff or to just hand out with others in town.
Bottom line: It would not have been possible to make an mmorpg that redefines a lot of aspects of conventional mmorpgs without many of the loading screens due a lot to technical limitations. It comes down to a question of: do I want a very fresh and new experience in my mmorpg even though the mmorpg is not fully open world or would I rather stick to same-old but with more of an open world feeling?
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
?? This doesn't sound right, unless other areas are many times larger than the racial starter areas and demo areas that have been shown so far.
From what I've seen so far, the GW2 zones are more akin to GW zones when it comes down to size. There were even maps on the GW2guru site a while back that showed a 1-on-1 overlay of some zones in GW and in GW2 that matched exactly, with some recognisable terrain features at the exact same spot on the overlay map in both GW and GW2.
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
?? This doesn't sound right, unless other areas are many times larger than the racial starter areas and demo areas that have been shown so far.
From what I've seen so far, the GW2 zones are more akin to GW zones when it comes down to size. There were even maps on the GW2guru site a while back that showed a 1-on-1 overlay of some zones in GW and in GW2 that matched exactly, with some recognisable terrain features at the exact same spot on the overlay map in both GW and GW2.
It's not right. GW2 zones are around 3-4 times the size of starter SWTOR planets and about 3-4 times smaller then the larger SWTOR planets.
Wow Pony...I expected a little bit better from you...
Ok where should I start..
Fast travel
First of all, if a game has instanced travelling, you would kind of expect these to have loading screens. Just look at Skyrim for instance. It is not even an mmorpg and does not have hundreds of people running around in an ever-changing world and yet, it cannot avoid loading screens in instanced travels.
Yeah, I realize that, but I don't happen to be a great fan of Skyrim's (or Oblivions, or Fallout's) fast travel either: when I play Skyrim I restrict myself to only the cariage npc's and travel from city to destination by foot or horse. That makes the world feel much more consistent and makes the experience more "real".
As for some loading screens that take a while for instance travel, that is obviously subject to optimisation. When the game is about 3-4 months from its release date, the devs have plenty of time to optimise the game.
However the main point here is: loading screens are to be expected in instanced travel even regardless of the game's genre and are unavoidable (maybe due to technical limitations?)
Yes, you are right I suppose. But it's only now that I saw a good chunk of storyline gameplay, that I saw how frequently you need to sit through them (at least when doing your storyline, that is).
Personal instances
Think about it, how can you include these areas - which is integral part of the game - without any loading screens? You expect to seamlessly enter your home instance along with 4 others in your party? Mate, that is just not going to happen. Just think about it for a sec: how in the world can you make the whole experience seamless when you go back and forth between the open world and your instance? There HAS to be a loading screen to indicate the transition as instances are made for you and your party only. Again, this is most likely a technical limitation, but it is also relevant for any other game.
You can argue "but why put personal instances in the first place?" Easy answer. Personal story and home instances would NOT exist without personal instancing. Personal instance, again, is an integral part of the game that: gives your character an identity, that opens up great variety of gameplay options; and caters to those players who simply enjoy single player rpg games with co-op thrown in it (think Diablo 2, or Borderlands for instance [no pun intended] which I personally enjoyed).
Yeah I realize that, and the "storyline only" loading screens you'll encounter are the lesser kind it seems and that content is optional anyway, but they do stand out when you just sat through a fast travel loading screen, run a short distance to your personal story destination and get presented with another loading screen pretty much right away. (Essentially what you see happening in the vid a few times). It's more like the quick succession and the amount of them which I find a concern.
Zoning in and out of towns
To be honest, I don't really have a valid argument for this one. The only thing I can say is that it may be a technical limitation given the nature of DEs and how huge and detailed these towns are.
Yeah, I don't blame them for those, really but they do add to the total amount.
Conversation breaks
Really unavoidable. What is better: having a simple voice dialogue or a wall of text trying to immerse you in the story and make youa attached to your character or a conversation cutscene for the same purpose?
It must also be noted, like others here have done, that conversation breaks are ONLY for your personal story. So if you won't follow your personal story much, you will not get these conversation breaks.
Yeah, I know it's personal story only, but I saw how it worked out in Swtor: as much of a negative as a positive and it pulls you out of the game into something else and amounts to the total of interuptions I saw in the vid. Not sure if it would be better without doing that. It seems the npc's aren't doing things other than talking in them so I wouldn't mind a system that doesn't pull you out of the gameworld so much. Or make the convo play out more like AoC or Swtor did: a view of the actual scene itself where only the the npc is "instanced" so he can personally address you, (in order to make the world-convo-world transitions as seamless as possible).
Instanced areas in open world
Now that is very poor wording. Open world is divided into zones where hundreds of people can play together. You are talking about the loading screen that happens when you transit to another zone? That is very common across many mmorpg games. The devs may have avoided these loading screens all together had they not included DEs. So it is more of a technical limitation. Having said that, what is better: loading screens that last few seconds or having conventional quests?
I think I was refering to more storyline instances here.
fight some mobs, fast travel to town *loading screen*, run to npc, fast travel back *loading screen*, run to objective, enter instanced area *loading screen*, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town *loading screen*
This sentence got me a bit annoyed. It seems to me like here you are stuck in old mindset. Either that or a very poor example of trying to get a point across that the game has too many loading screens.
That was just a rough excerpt of the video I linked.
You get DEs notifications as you explore the world. Once you complete any of these, you get your rewards immediately based on your participation and through the mailing system (an award of some sort from an npc). You do not need to run back and forth between exploration areas and towns to submit or get another "quest". You would only go back to the town to buy/sell/craft stuff or to just hand out with others in town.
I wasn't talking about the DE system, that is one of GW2's main attractions, tbh.
Bottom line: It would not have been possible to make an mmorpg that redefines a lot of aspects of conventional mmorpgs without many of the loading screens due a lot to technical limitations.
It comes down to a question of: do I want a very fresh and new experience in my mmorpg even though the mmorpg is not fully open world or would I rather stick to same-old but with more of an open world feeling?
In the last two lines it seems you make a huge leap. Like others pointed out: You actually don't need loading screens at all to enjoy DE content (which is by far the biggest innovation GW2 is offering us), nor in smart content difficulty scaling, nor in any other of their innovations. GW2's innovations and staring at loading screens (at least the fast travel ones) are not mutually inclusive.
So many replies since I went to bed 0_0
I'll have to restrict myself to addressing this one by Vaultar since he put so much time in it.
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
?? This doesn't sound right, unless other areas are many times larger than the racial starter areas and demo areas that have been shown so far.
From what I've seen so far, the GW2 zones are more akin to GW zones when it comes down to size. There were even maps on the GW2guru site a while back that showed a 1-on-1 overlay of some zones in GW and in GW2 that matched exactly, with some recognisable terrain features at the exact same spot on the overlay map in both GW and GW2.
It's not right. GW2 zones are around 3-4 times the size of starter SWTOR planets and about 3-4 times smaller then the larger SWTOR planets.
Yeah, this is what it looked like to me from what I've seen so far.
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
Great point and may I also add that unlike every other INSTANCED based game the majority of the population will be out in the world actually hunting instead of sitting on their sparkle ponies or other crappy flying mounts in 1 capitol city waiting on that next dungeon/raid/battleground queue to pop.
Because of the prime game philosophy of a truely dynamic open world, ripe with explorable crooks and crannies, the world will be more alive then anything else in this genre.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
well I guess its a valid negative that the world is zoned and not entirely open.
but on the subject of loading screen times I think your being plain stupid, making assumptions based not only on a video and not the actual game but also a video of beta. surely if anything is subject to change in a beta its technical aspects of the game.
Sure, it might be subject to optimization, but don't call me stupid for going by the information we have at our disposal now.
secondly have you played gw1?
Yes.
I assume gw2 has the same cool system where when you first load a zone you download it, but after that its very fast.
Could be, who knows? We can only go by what we see in these press vids so far. To me the amount it took zoning in and out of Holbroek, for instance, didn't seem to change. ( ... Oh crap, I said "instance", If you read this, I didn't mean in THAT way, Sylvarii).
This massively reduces the time to download the game and meaning everyone doesn't have to download files they might not need. its a good system; I redownload gw1 recently and it took mere minutes to get playing again because of this system, whereas to trial just the first small areas of swtor I had to download a 20+ GB client, even tho I only needed a tiny faction of that data. especially retarded when the trial is for a weekend and it takes a day or 2 to download.
Now you are talking about the client download outside of the game right?
Don't think we were discussing that, really. But personaly I don't care how big files are or how long it takes, as long as it fits on my HD and I can eventually play it.
well I guess its a valid negative that the world is zoned and not entirely open.
but on the subject of loading screen times I think your being plain stupid, making assumptions based not only on a video and not the actual game but also a video of beta. surely if anything is subject to change in a beta its technical aspects of the game.
Sure, it might be subject to optimization, but don't call me stupid by going with the information we have at our disposal now.
secondly have you played gw1?
Yes.
I assume gw2 has the same cool system where when you first load a zone you download it, but after that its very fast.
Could be, who knows? We can only go by what we see in these press vids so far. To me the amount it took zoning in and out of Holbroek, for instance, didn't seem to change. ( ... Oh crap, I said "instance", If you read this, I didn't mean in THAT way, Sylvarii).
This massively reduces the time to download the game and meaning everyone doesn't have to download files they might not need. its a good system; I redownload gw1 recently and it took mere minutes to get playing again because of this system, whereas to trial just the first small areas of swtor I had to download a 20+ GB client, even tho I only needed a tiny faction of that data. especially retarded when the trial is for a weekend and it takes a day or 2 to download.
Now you are talking about the client download outside of the game right?
Don't think we were discussing that, really. But personaly I don't care how big files are or how long it takes, as long as it fits on my HD and I can eventually play it.
I just love the poking stick in your new signature pony...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I seen it as well. Basically you firstly get a load screen when you enter or leavethe town, You also get one every time you teleport but the last one is something you get in "seamless" games like Wow as well.
Those I don´t have any big issue with. I don't plan to use much fast travelling at all and I certainly wont run in and out of the town all day long. That would leave me with a few loading screens every day, not enough to be really annoying (and I have 4 raided SSDs).
I am more worried about those stuff that invited him to instances when he was far out in the map, I don't get if those were part of the personal story or what they were. They can get annoying and might be something to worry about.
Thats your personal story indeed
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
My thing is this, if you have a huge map that's fine but when you don't really fill it with much of anything other then stationary npc's statically doing the same things over and over again, no critters, hardly any ambience, and other then holocrons nothing really to run around and explore for anything, does a bigger world make a difference? Really? If that's the case then WoW would have never lost any subs at all because everyone would be eternally content with a static world.
Secondly, every video i've seen (other then the edited ones by TB because i follow many channels) the loading time in the game is neglegable. Other then very rare instances like dungeons, solo story, and entire zone changes the teleport system is entirely optional. When you sheath or use your speed boosting abilities you really won't need much teleporting unless you are playing with friends. The teleportation isn't like a World of Warcraft flight path, you know from vanilla days, where they FORCE you to teleport (flight path) to every teleport (flight path) in between the one you are at and the one you are heading to before you get there.
and it's certainly not going to be like this:
Run to Hanger
Watch Cut-Scene loading into hangar.
Run to ship
Click on ship's door
Watch Cut-Scene
Enter ship
Run to ship's terminal
Click planet
Watch cut-scene
Run to exit door (same door you came in on)
Click on exit door
Watch cut-scene
Take considerably long to load into planet (at times you won't even load at all) Reboot in that case.
Taken from THIS post about a typical day in SWTOR. Now i know that they have made some improvements but i'm pointing out that Anet isn't going to make the mistake of making load times unbearable.
My thing is this, if you have a huge map that's fine but when you don't really fill it with much of anything other then stationary npc's statically doing the same things over and over again, no critters, hardly any ambience, and other then holocrons nothing really to run around and explore for anything, does a bigger world make a difference? Really? If that's the case then WoW would have never lost any subs at all because everyone would be eternally content with a static world.
Secondly, every video i've seen (other then the edited ones by TB because i follow many channels) the loading time in the game is neglegable. Other then very rare instances like dungeons, solo story, and entire zone changes the teleport system is entirely optional. When you sheath or use your speed boosting abilities you really won't need much teleporting unless you are playing with friends. The teleportation isn't like a World of Warcraft flight path, you know from vanilla days, where they FORCE you to teleport (flight path) to every teleport (flight path) in between the one you are at and the one you are heading to before you get there.
and it's certainly not going to be like this:
Run to Hanger
Watch Cut-Scene loading into hangar.
Run to ship
Click on ship's door
Watch Cut-Scene
Enter ship
Run to ship's terminal
Click planet
Watch cut-scene
Run to exit door (same door you came in on)
Click on exit door
Watch cut-scene
Take considerably long to load into planet (at times you won't even load at all) Reboot in that case.
Taken from THIS post about a typical day in SWTOR. Now i know that they have made some improvements but i'm pointing out that Anet isn't going to make the mistake of making load times unbearable.
I would agree, but there are much worse offenders in this area than TOR. While their worlds were static they at least put some effort into making most planets look somewhat unqiue and pleasant on the eyes. In contrast look at some old sandbox games, with giant maps, yet nothing that was eye catching at all. Bland scenery copy & pasted all over, sparce content, no artistic styling, etc.. In comparison TOR is lively, GW2 looks more so for sure, I think DEVS are realizing quality outweighs quantity in this department by a long shot, that's a good thing.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It beats alt-tabbing while auto-walking. Now I got to figure out if I can find something I can alt-tab to during those 30 seconds. The only thing I can think of is using the time to swap music playing on the computer or glancing at forum posts.
Wow Pony...I expected a little bit better from you...
Ok where should I start..
Fast travel
First of all, if a game has instanced travelling, you would kind of expect these to have loading screens. Just look at Skyrim for instance. It is not even an mmorpg and does not have hundreds of people running around in an ever-changing world and yet, it cannot avoid loading screens in instanced travels.
Yeah, I realize that, but I don't happen to be a great fan of Skyrim's (or Oblivions, or Fallout's) fast travel either: when I play Skyrim I restrict myself to only the cariage npc's and travel from city to destination by foot or horse. That makes the world feel much more consistent and makes the experience more "real".
Fair enough and this point really comes down to taste as I do not look at it that way. To me, it is about getting to a particular place where you left off from as fast as possible to continue discovering the place or joining in a DE without going thru the same place over and over and over again no matter how much a speed boost your mount gives you. It would be a good option to add mounts to those who want them I guess but time will tell if the ArenaNet do end up adding them to the game.
***However, the point I was trying to make with my statement is that despite Skyrim being a single-player game, it still could not avoid a loading screen in fast travel. To me that says that it is a technical limitation that many games have in common that have fast travel included in them. I believe Borderlands also had a loading screen in fast travel***
As for some loading screens that take a while for instance travel, that is obviously subject to optimisation. When the game is about 3-4 months from its release date, the devs have plenty of time to optimise the game.
However the main point here is: loading screens are to be expected in instanced travel even regardless of the game's genre and are unavoidable (maybe due to technical limitations?)
Yes, you are right I suppose. But it's only now that I saw a good chunk of storyline gameplay, that I saw how frequently you need to sit through them (at least when doing your storyline, that is).
Can't argue here :P. We just have to see how it pans out further along the personal story. Though the good thing here, and I know this goes a bit off-topic, is that more emphasis is going to be placed on the gameplay and the kind of things you will be doing between the cutscenes rather than making the cutscenes the focal point a.k.a SW:TOR. Maybe this change will help you to grow less tired of the frequency of cutscenes? Who knows..
Personal instances
Think about it, how can you include these areas - which is integral part of the game - without any loading screens? You expect to seamlessly enter your home instance along with 4 others in your party? Mate, that is just not going to happen. Just think about it for a sec: how in the world can you make the whole experience seamless when you go back and forth between the open world and your instance? There HAS to be a loading screen to indicate the transition as instances are made for you and your party only. Again, this is most likely a technical limitation, but it is also relevant for any other game.
You can argue "but why put personal instances in the first place?" Easy answer. Personal story and home instances would NOT exist without personal instancing. Personal instance, again, is an integral part of the game that: gives your character an identity, that opens up great variety of gameplay options; and caters to those players who simply enjoy single player rpg games with co-op thrown in it (think Diablo 2, or Borderlands for instance [no pun intended] which I personally enjoyed).
Yeah I realize that, and the "storyline only" loading screens you'll encounter are the lesser kind it seems and that content is optional anyway, but they do stand out when you just sat through a fast travel loading screen, run a short distance to your personal story destination and get presented with another loading screen pretty much right away. (Essentially what you see happening in the vid a few times). It's more like the quick succession and the amount of them which I find a concern.
Can't argue there as I can see this becoming common if you are simply focusing on storyline.
Zoning in and out of towns
To be honest, I don't really have a valid argument for this one. The only thing I can say is that it may be a technical limitation given the nature of DEs and how huge and detailed these towns are.
Yeah, I don't blame them for those, really but they do add to the total amount.
Conversation breaks
Really unavoidable. What is better: having a simple voice dialogue or a wall of text trying to immerse you in the story and make youa attached to your character or a conversation cutscene for the same purpose?
It must also be noted, like others here have done, that conversation breaks are ONLY for your personal story. So if you won't follow your personal story much, you will not get these conversation breaks.
Yeah, I know it's personal story only, but I saw how it worked out in Swtor: as much of a negative as a positive and it pulls you out of the game into something else and amounts to the total of interuptions I saw in the vid. Not sure if it would be better without doing that. It seems the npc's aren't doing things other than talking in them so I wouldn't mind a system that doesn't pull you out of the gameworld so much. Or make the convo play out more like AoC or Swtor did: a view of the actual scene itself where only the the npc is "instanced" so he can personally address you, (in order to make the world-convo-world transitions as seamless as possible).
Ya that is a good point also. i guess ArenaNet just wanted to do it differently. There are mixed reactions to how they approached this, but what I gather it isn't that it isn't too bad and does it job.
Though no doubt, it has a lot of room to be improved. Another suggestion would be to keep the same concepted art background style but change it to reflect the placethat the npc and you are talking in so if you and the npc are talking in a bar, the cutscene would show parts of the indoor areas of the bar there too. Along with more active approach to camera use, the cutscenes would stand out much more than in their current state.
Instanced areas in open world
Now that is very poor wording. Open world is divided into zones where hundreds of people can play together. You are talking about the loading screen that happens when you transit to another zone? That is very common across many mmorpg games. The devs may have avoided these loading screens all together had they not included DEs. So it is more of a technical limitation. Having said that, what is better: loading screens that last few seconds or having conventional quests?
I think I was refering to more storyline instances here.
Yep.
fight some mobs, fast travel to town *loading screen*, run to npc, fast travel back *loading screen*, run to objective, enter instanced area *loading screen*, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town *loading screen*
This sentence got me a bit annoyed. It seems to me like here you are stuck in old mindset. Either that or a very poor example of trying to get a point across that the game has too many loading screens.
That was just a rough excerpt of the video I linked.
Yep I now I understand where you coming from and again, it is going to be a common thing.
You get DEs notifications as you explore the world. Once you complete any of these, you get your rewards immediately based on your participation and through the mailing system (an award of some sort from an npc). You do not need to run back and forth between exploration areas and towns to submit or get another "quest". You would only go back to the town to buy/sell/craft stuff or to just hand out with others in town.
I wasn't talking about the DE system, that is one of GW2's main attractions, tbh.
I misunderstood you there (no wonder I found it strange that you should be questioning the DEs given your reputation in the forums lol) but having read your previous replies above, I understand that you were referring to personal story.
Bottom line: It would not have been possible to make an mmorpg that redefines a lot of aspects of conventional mmorpgs without many of the loading screens due a lot to technical limitations.
It comes down to a question of: do I want a very fresh and new experience in my mmorpg even though the mmorpg is not fully open world or would I rather stick to same-old but with more of an open world feeling?
In the last two lines it seems you make a huge leap. Like others pointed out: You actually don't need loading screens at all to enjoy DE content (which is by far the biggest innovation GW2 is offering us), nor in smart content difficulty scaling, nor in any other of their innovations. GW2's innovations and staring at loading screens (at least the fast travel ones) are not mutually inclusive.
Maybe I should have specified GW2 instead. However, I am speaking of the trend that is happening in this genre. Look at SW:TOR for instance. No other mmorpg before it attempted to go to such lengths with its story and that is riddled with cutscenes. Look at the upcoming TSW where towns are social hubs (loading already right there) and again, many dialogue cutscenes in the game. As you well know, TSW is trying to make things different by eliminating leveling and introducing classless characters where different skill builds can be switched on the fly for any type of situation to fit in a role of a healer, tanker, or dps.
Now look at Aion or the upcoming TERA. Both of these games are more of the same (in terms of questing which is a big part of mmorpg) but with a more open world feel to them due to less loading screens.
It will be interesting to see whether this trend will continue but this is going off-topic.
As for GW's innovations and staring at loading screens being not mutually inclusive, I agree with that to some extent (take combat for example, or no kill/loot/exp stealing etc) but not when the world is run by DEs everywhere. The DEs in all zones were designed to only be for that zone or extend across a few zones. Basically, zones are needed to make DEs such as the ones GW2 uses to make them work. Either that or it is just the case of technical limitation. I am sure ArenaNet would have gone with the seamless world if they had the chance.
As for the bit in the bracket regarding fast travel, obviously I do not agree with after discussing about it in earlier points. You simply NEED loading screen when fast travelling. It is a technical limitation no more no less as is proven by Skyrim and borderlands.
So many replies since I went to bed 0_0
I'll have to restrict myself to addressing this one by Vaultar since he put so much time in it.
Don't know why, but the line above made me feel special. Thanks Pony haha .
Actually it's a strange way to sell their game. The starting areas seem a lot like WoW. In those you need to talk to npcs and do certain things. It's not so good for them, because it's really difficult for people to get out of the talk-to-quest-givers-mentality. They really should have done something more in the spirit of gw2 instead of the fixed path. But what can you do? its hard to introduce those elements like that.
Totalbiscuit is not selling anything, he is summing up his beta impressions. That he used the personal story vid in the background is not really the point of what he say and he have made vids about the DEs as well.
TB is a game reviewer, not a paid employee of Arenanet. He is also one of the best since he is honest and actually mention what he doesn't like as well as what he likes in games he review.¨
I never claimed TB was selling anything. I am talking about ArenaNet, and their tutorials. I was referencing how they were "selling" - as in them being hooked on the game.
The game brands itself on this no-more boring quest world, but the starter area contains the normal conventions. that's a strange way for ArenaNet to go about it.
Comments
Will you be able to chat to everyone in the world. Like a general chat? Or is it like WoW, everytime you enter a new level zone, you enter a new general chat for those levels?
I'm not concerned about loading screens. I've played both Age of Conan and Star Wars: The Old Republic (among others), which have plenty of loading screens themselves (especially SW:TOR), and it didn't bother me when I played them. Thank you for the heads up.
After playing EQ for 7 years, a little zoning here and there is nothing to me.
Hell even with the zoning in EQ the world felt larger and more alive then half the "try to be all open" mmos these days.
Valid concern, though playing gw1, you knew gw2 was going to be an mmorpg, but that they would not be a true mmorpg. The world doesn't really feel persistent whatsoever.
There's a portal between each zone. In total there are over 20 zones. Each zone is designed for several levels and has several hearts. The zones themselves are rather large (just as SWTOR) and provide you with several hours of gameplay... not to mention you have several zones for the same level brackets providing alternative places to level alts (or to simply level in if you get tired of your current zone).
The estimated cap is about ~500 per zone for the human starting areas (which is 3 or 4 zones I believe... can't remember). I am unsure if when the cap is reached if the zone creates multiple instances (a la SWTOR) or if it just moves people to other low population servers to fill their zones for the moment while being queued to enter their zone in their server (aka overflow servers).
If that is the case, then it would be nearly impossible for the game to have queues during launch as the population would be evenly spread out throughout all the servers -- even though not everyone playing that server will be FROM that server (if that makes sense).
ALSO, the world feels very much alive due to the nature of dynamic events. It may not be seamless, but the scenery between zones transition very well.
Thanks for the concrete, detailed info, much appreciated
Sounds like they're using the same map size and zone structure as in GW, with the difference that in GW2 the areas are persistent. The overflow server system, where the overflow of players gets directed to low(er) population servers I find a stroke of genius. This could enable the lower population servers to get a regular influx of players from other servers, if ANet don't go overboard with creating too many servers at launch.
I already made the point, but some might be missing it. TB isn't just doing the Personal Story for himself. He's in a group with other people who are also doing Personal Story content. When you are grouped with someone, if they select a Personal Story Instance to enter, you are given the option to join them in the instance, even if you aren't right there with them. That accounts for a lot of the instancing in the video.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Wow Pony...I expected a little bit better from you...
Ok where should I start..
Fast travel
First of all, if a game has instanced travelling, you would kind of expect these to have loading screens. Just look at Skyrim for instance. It is not even an mmorpg and does not have hundreds of people running around in an ever-changing world and yet, it cannot avoid loading screens in instanced travels.
As for some loading screens that take a while for instance travel, that is obviously subject to optimisation. When the game is about 3-4 months from its release date, the devs have plenty of time to optimise the game.
However the main point here is: loading screens are to be expected in instanced travel even regardless of the game's genre and are unavoidable (maybe due to technical limitations?)
Personal instances
Think about it, how can you include these areas - which is integral part of the game - without any loading screens? You expect to seamlessly enter your home instance along with 4 others in your party? Mate, that is just not going to happen. Just think about it for a sec: how in the world can you make the whole experience seamless when you go back and forth between the open world and your instance? There HAS to be a loading screen to indicate the transition as instances are made for you and your party only. Again, this is most likely a technical limitation, but it is also relevant for any other game.
You can argue "but why put personal instances in the first place?" Easy answer. Personal story and home instances would NOT exist without personal instancing. Personal instance, again, is an integral part of the game that: gives your character an identity, that opens up great variety of gameplay options; and caters to those players who simply enjoy single player rpg games with co-op thrown in it (think Diablo 2, or Borderlands for instance [no pun intended] which I personally enjoyed).
Zoning in and out of towns
To be honest, I don't really have a valid argument for this one. The only thing I can say is that it may be a technical limitation given the nature of DEs and how huge and detailed these towns are.
Conversation breaks
Really unavoidable. What is better: having a simple voice dialogue or a wall of text trying to immerse you in the story and make youa attached to your character or a conversation cutscene for the same purpose?
It must also be noted, like others here have done, that conversation breaks are ONLY for your personal story. So if you won't follow your personal story much, you will not get these conversation breaks.
Instanced areas in open world
Now that is very poor wording. Open world is divided into zones where hundreds of people can play together. You are talking about the loading screen that happens when you transit to another zone? That is very common across many mmorpg games. The devs may have avoided these loading screens all together had they not included DEs. So it is more of a technical limitation. Having said that, what is better: loading screens that last few seconds or having conventional quests?
fight some mobs, fast travel to town *loading screen*, run to npc, fast travel back *loading screen*, run to objective, enter instanced area *loading screen*, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town *loading screen*
This sentence got me a bit annoyed. It seems to me like here you are stuck in old mindset. Either that or a very poor example of trying to get a point across that the game has too many loading screens.
You get DEs notifications as you explore the world. Once you complete any of these, you get your rewards immediately based on your participation and through the mailing system (an award of some sort from an npc). You do not need to run back and forth between exploration areas and towns to submit or get another "quest". You would only go back to the town to buy/sell/craft stuff or to just hand out with others in town.
Bottom line: It would not have been possible to make an mmorpg that redefines a lot of aspects of conventional mmorpgs without many of the loading screens due a lot to technical limitations. It comes down to a question of: do I want a very fresh and new experience in my mmorpg even though the mmorpg is not fully open world or would I rather stick to same-old but with more of an open world feeling?
Looking forward to EQL and EQN.
This OP claimed that the GW2 zones were smaller then the SW:TOR planets. Having played both games somewhat extensively I would say many of the GW2 zones are 3 to 4 times the size of SWTOR planets. Even a few of the major cities in GW2 are the size of the smaller planets in SW:TOR. I mean I have even ehard some rumors from devs at PAX and Gamescom about 25% more unseen playable zone places that have to be discovered through exploration. I saw the lake cavern that took almsot 5 minutes of continous running just to get to the other side and it was only a small part of a dungeon which was a small part of a much larger zone. GW2 devs claim that GW2 will ahve as much playable land as WoW did on release. And to be honest just form what I ahve played and seen I think they are shortselling themselves.
?? This doesn't sound right, unless other areas are many times larger than the racial starter areas and demo areas that have been shown so far.
From what I've seen so far, the GW2 zones are more akin to GW zones when it comes down to size. There were even maps on the GW2guru site a while back that showed a 1-on-1 overlay of some zones in GW and in GW2 that matched exactly, with some recognisable terrain features at the exact same spot on the overlay map in both GW and GW2.
It's not right. GW2 zones are around 3-4 times the size of starter SWTOR planets and about 3-4 times smaller then the larger SWTOR planets.
I have an SSD.
Win!
No I hated the loading screen in TOR - huge immersion breaker when compared to WoW and such.
I really can't say either way how GW2 will be without playing it myself, but I am hopeful.
So many replies since I went to bed 0_0
I'll have to restrict myself to addressing this one by Vaultar since he put so much time in it.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Yeah, this is what it looked like to me from what I've seen so far.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Great point and may I also add that unlike every other INSTANCED based game the majority of the population will be out in the world actually hunting instead of sitting on their sparkle ponies or other crappy flying mounts in 1 capitol city waiting on that next dungeon/raid/battleground queue to pop.
Because of the prime game philosophy of a truely dynamic open world, ripe with explorable crooks and crannies, the world will be more alive then anything else in this genre.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I just love the poking stick in your new signature pony...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Thats your personal story indeed
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
My thing is this, if you have a huge map that's fine but when you don't really fill it with much of anything other then stationary npc's statically doing the same things over and over again, no critters, hardly any ambience, and other then holocrons nothing really to run around and explore for anything, does a bigger world make a difference? Really? If that's the case then WoW would have never lost any subs at all because everyone would be eternally content with a static world.
Secondly, every video i've seen (other then the edited ones by TB because i follow many channels) the loading time in the game is neglegable. Other then very rare instances like dungeons, solo story, and entire zone changes the teleport system is entirely optional. When you sheath or use your speed boosting abilities you really won't need much teleporting unless you are playing with friends. The teleportation isn't like a World of Warcraft flight path, you know from vanilla days, where they FORCE you to teleport (flight path) to every teleport (flight path) in between the one you are at and the one you are heading to before you get there.
and it's certainly not going to be like this:
Run to Hanger
Watch Cut-Scene loading into hangar.
Run to ship
Click on ship's door
Watch Cut-Scene
Enter ship
Run to ship's terminal
Click planet
Watch cut-scene
Run to exit door (same door you came in on)
Click on exit door
Watch cut-scene
Take considerably long to load into planet (at times you won't even load at all) Reboot in that case.
Taken from THIS post about a typical day in SWTOR. Now i know that they have made some improvements but i'm pointing out that Anet isn't going to make the mistake of making load times unbearable.
I would agree, but there are much worse offenders in this area than TOR. While their worlds were static they at least put some effort into making most planets look somewhat unqiue and pleasant on the eyes. In contrast look at some old sandbox games, with giant maps, yet nothing that was eye catching at all. Bland scenery copy & pasted all over, sparce content, no artistic styling, etc.. In comparison TOR is lively, GW2 looks more so for sure, I think DEVS are realizing quality outweighs quantity in this department by a long shot, that's a good thing.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It beats alt-tabbing while auto-walking. Now I got to figure out if I can find something I can alt-tab to during those 30 seconds. The only thing I can think of is using the time to swap music playing on the computer or glancing at forum posts.
Same!
Looking forward to EQL and EQN.
did you saw his sig?
You misunderstand my post sir.
I never claimed TB was selling anything. I am talking about ArenaNet, and their tutorials. I was referencing how they were "selling" - as in them being hooked on the game.
The game brands itself on this no-more boring quest world, but the starter area contains the normal conventions. that's a strange way for ArenaNet to go about it.
That was what I meant:)