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
Don't worry, I'm not even going to disagree with this or pick it apart.
Infact I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about Zone-bounaries and "invisible walls".
Anyway.... yeah I need to get an SSD nomatter what simply b/c it's gettin about that time when my only Hard-Drive crashes (It's like waterpumps on a car, after going through 8 fucking harddrives over a 16 year period, you just get a "sense" for when one's about to go).
Though I also look at it as a Convenience thing... having all these Zones broken up and separated by loading times. I'll tell you what... MMO's on the Unreal Engine are a lot worse in my opinion... Maybe ya'll played a few of them? ...APB or DCOU or TribesAscend for example? HUGE MASSIVE SPRAWLING zones that you only have to wait about 10 seconds to get started in right? ....right?.... Then when you start roaming around them at a decent clip with faster travel methods, SHIT GETS UGLY.
Maybe it's the residual Autism/Aspergers from my childhood talking, but I crave structure. To me, convenience is knowing where the boundaries are. I love it here in the Mountains of Colorado and could never imagine living anywhere else in the world, simply because.... Clear and and obvious boundaries. It's not living in a maze. It's just clear and obvious Geography. I like that. I don't want to end up "wandering off the zone parameters" into another zone without being aware of it. I don't want to accidentally wander into Dynamic Events that were way above my current capabilities just b/c there was no clear and obvious zone boundary between them. And most of all, I don't want that shitty....choppy rubberbanding client lag I get in Unreal-3-Enginge MMORPGs because I outran the server-client cache harddrive synch. It's just like TF2... 30 extra seconds of loading screen will save me 4 minutes of Choppy shitty Frame Rate in the long run.
Yup the loading screens are very numerous and very immersion breaking. I would avoid this game if you dont want to be in the cycle of
*play a few minutes*
*loading screen*
*play a few minutes
*loading screen*
etc. etc.
Can you post an example of a recent GW2 video that shows an example of a loading screen "every few minutes"? And I'm talking about one with a player out in the world doing dynamic content, not the 3 second loading screen one gets when one fast-travels to an already found location.
Thanks in advance.
"Loading screens" are not "instances". Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Am I the only one who knows that every one in this thread knew this awhile ago(I think atleast once everyone posting in this thread mention this or commented about this in some other threads and such) I know the "What don't you like about GW 2." threads I can almost remember all the names but oh well.
But any way umm
I saw a size debate, I will say quality use of the size is more important than a bigger size with less quality, just saying.
Umm, zones are huge, if you don't use instant teleport, then you won't see it, umm it's not annoying or anything from the videos.
Interesting discussion going on.
Damn. I have been coding up an MMO whose content was all one long map 200 feet wide and 5,000,000 miles long with only one mob at the very end. Now you ruined my marketing campaign saying its the largest open world completely non-instnaced MMO ever created with 3 years of content (since you have to run the whole way).
Actually it does fit into the lore of the game because the Asura really did invent teleporters...
... just say'n.
Well then, the lore is pretty lame. Just sayin'...
That seems a bit over the top to me. Aside from any number of other mmos that have instant teleporting, there are also examples in highly regarded fantasy literature. Just consider the Wheel of Time series. The lore for that series includes Traveling which allows characters to instantly travel from any place in the world to any other instantly. The only restriction being that you have to 'know' the location you start from (which can be gotten around). You don't even need to 'know' your destination in the same way in order to Travel there.
You may think teleportaion is bad in/for the game and that's perfectly valid, but to then state that teleportaion in and of itself causes lore lamenessness is a bit off.
Do you have anything, say, that comes from the recent footage from either press beta? Specifically, I am looking for loading screens that occur every couple of minutes.
Thank you in advance.
"Loading screens" are not "instances". Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
That's over a year old and a short clip. Do you have anything, say, that comes from the recent footage from either press beta? Specifically, I am looking for loading screens that occur every couple of minutes.
Thank you in advance.
lol, wasn't really in response to you. it was to show a zone to zone transition. people like to say that that norn area is part of the map but it was sectioned off and not shown on the gendarren field map in the demo. it's another zone with its own weather, flora, fuana and content. there's also a yogacast video where they swim to another zone without loading, that's what i was trying to show.
anyway, this game does not have loading screens every couple of minutes. trolling should be recognized a mile away.
That's over a year old and a short clip. Do you have anything, say, that comes from the recent footage from either press beta? Specifically, I am looking for loading screens that occur every couple of minutes.
Thank you in advance.
Yep, and more recent videos have had the commentators specifically mention that anything you can LOOK at off in the background, you can actually GET TO and climb on as well. So going off some old Pax demos that Anet had already told us at the time were "Partitioned off / Very limited" is completely inaccurate at this point.
Comments
There are a LOT of examples of teleporters and way gates and portals etc. in a lot of very well established fantasy lore.
Specifically for MMO games, let's see...
Only going off the top of my head here, I'm sure I'll miss a couple...
Ultima Online, Warhammer, World of Warcraft, Rift, Tera...
If your point is that most fantasy lore is pretty lame, sure I'll take that.
If not, you can certainly do better.
Don't worry, I'm not even going to disagree with this or pick it apart.
Infact I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about Zone-bounaries and "invisible walls".
Anyway.... yeah I need to get an SSD nomatter what simply b/c it's gettin about that time when my only Hard-Drive crashes (It's like waterpumps on a car, after going through 8 fucking harddrives over a 16 year period, you just get a "sense" for when one's about to go).
Though I also look at it as a Convenience thing... having all these Zones broken up and separated by loading times. I'll tell you what... MMO's on the Unreal Engine are a lot worse in my opinion... Maybe ya'll played a few of them? ...APB or DCOU or TribesAscend for example? HUGE MASSIVE SPRAWLING zones that you only have to wait about 10 seconds to get started in right? ....right?.... Then when you start roaming around them at a decent clip with faster travel methods, SHIT GETS UGLY.
Maybe it's the residual Autism/Aspergers from my childhood talking, but I crave structure. To me, convenience is knowing where the boundaries are. I love it here in the Mountains of Colorado and could never imagine living anywhere else in the world, simply because.... Clear and and obvious boundaries. It's not living in a maze. It's just clear and obvious Geography. I like that. I don't want to end up "wandering off the zone parameters" into another zone without being aware of it. I don't want to accidentally wander into Dynamic Events that were way above my current capabilities just b/c there was no clear and obvious zone boundary between them. And most of all, I don't want that shitty....choppy rubberbanding client lag I get in Unreal-3-Enginge MMORPGs because I outran the server-client cache harddrive synch. It's just like TF2... 30 extra seconds of loading screen will save me 4 minutes of Choppy shitty Frame Rate in the long run.
Can you post an example of a recent GW2 video that shows an example of a loading screen "every few minutes"? And I'm talking about one with a player out in the world doing dynamic content, not the 3 second loading screen one gets when one fast-travels to an already found location.
Thanks in advance.
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Damn. I have been coding up an MMO whose content was all one long map 200 feet wide and 5,000,000 miles long with only one mob at the very end. Now you ruined my marketing campaign saying its the largest open world completely non-instnaced MMO ever created with 3 years of content (since you have to run the whole way).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SVkI9bbGok#t=3m9s
That's just a small area of the region.
That seems a bit over the top to me. Aside from any number of other mmos that have instant teleporting, there are also examples in highly regarded fantasy literature. Just consider the Wheel of Time series. The lore for that series includes Traveling which allows characters to instantly travel from any place in the world to any other instantly. The only restriction being that you have to 'know' the location you start from (which can be gotten around). You don't even need to 'know' your destination in the same way in order to Travel there.
You may think teleportaion is bad in/for the game and that's perfectly valid, but to then state that teleportaion in and of itself causes lore lamenessness is a bit off.
Do you have anything, say, that comes from the recent footage from either press beta? Specifically, I am looking for loading screens that occur every couple of minutes.
Thank you in advance.
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
lol, wasn't really in response to you. it was to show a zone to zone transition. people like to say that that norn area is part of the map but it was sectioned off and not shown on the gendarren field map in the demo. it's another zone with its own weather, flora, fuana and content. there's also a yogacast video where they swim to another zone without loading, that's what i was trying to show.
anyway, this game does not have loading screens every couple of minutes. trolling should be recognized a mile away.
Yep, and more recent videos have had the commentators specifically mention that anything you can LOOK at off in the background, you can actually GET TO and climb on as well. So going off some old Pax demos that Anet had already told us at the time were "Partitioned off / Very limited" is completely inaccurate at this point.