test content
  • Games
  • Social
  • Arc News
  • Support
  • Zen
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion
Options

Loading screens and instances

darthpetersendarthpetersen Member Posts: 0 Arc User
edited January 2015 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
I've never played an mmo, where you see lot of loading screens like in STO and have to wait so long for a map transfer. Maybe one reason is the small size fo maps and intances.

A long time ago i've read about one big sector space? Whats happened with this great plan? When we can fly trough one big galaxy?

Why does the map transfer take a long time, so taht i can go in the citchen to take a cup of coffee?

Why are a lot of maps so small, like the space maps e.g. arround planets? Whats happened with the big solar systems in our galaxy? Why dont put for example Bajor and DS9 in one big system?

Why is the Quarks and the promenade on DS9 on different maps? Why not open the Quarks to the promenade like in the tv show with a bar and chairs and tables and that you here the noises from the bar on the promenade? The promenade in STO remember me on a pipe, but not on that promenade from the tv show.

Another problem is the limit of players in one instance. If you want meet with small groups of fleet members on a map like DS9 its hard to find an instance. Or you are alone with your fleet on that map.

Please reduce the loading screens in that game, because its disturb the atmosphere, especially if you have to wait minutes for a map transfer.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by darthpetersen on

Comments

  • Options
    shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    Don't we all wish for stuff like this to happen, but until that day we are stuck with the ever annoying L.O.A.D.I.N.G. bit.
    tumblr_nq9ec3BSAy1qj6sk2o2_500_zpspkqw0mmk.gif


    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • Options
    taschenbillard12taschenbillard12 Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    play swtor and enjoy minimal loading times in sto ;)
  • Options
    thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    If you change the Patch On Demand feature in your Launcher you will download another couple of gigs of data, and you'll have bigger patches each week, but it can greatly reduce your zoning time because then the map only needs to place the PCs and NPCs rather then create everything you're zoning into.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • Options
    darthpetersendarthpetersen Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    Maybe the longevity of the map transfer is the result of the STO database and their bad performance.

    On many situation there are lags in the game. Like map transfer or if you open your fleet window. Sometimes your fleet holdings appear late. In the last weeks their never got load for a lot of times.

    Also a transfer of items from your bank or inventory to your character, your ship or your bridge officers takes very long. Sometimes an item displayed twice in your inventory and in the character slot.

    It feels, like the database gets slower and slower every day or with the words of James T. Kirk: "Space docking procedure is getting longer and longer every time!"
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • Options
    darthpetersendarthpetersen Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    If you change the Patch On Demand feature in your Launcher you will download another couple of gigs of data, and you'll have bigger patches each week, but it can greatly reduce your zoning time because then the map only needs to place the PCs and NPCs rather then create everything you're zoning into.

    Patch on demand is allready disabled. ;)
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • Options
    grtiggygrtiggy Member Posts: 444 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    in the wise words of CCP "instancing is the devil" understandable we need some sort of transition to different areas/missions but especially in space id rather have something like THIS its pretty much a seamless transition, it wouldn't be hard to modify it to look like your in warp from star trek since there is only one instance where star trek would use a wormhole transition lol.
    "...just look at my track record for making the improvements that I said we would with the KDF and judge by that." - Dan Stahl
  • Options
    cgta1967cgta1967 Member Posts: 86 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    taschenbillard12 wrote: »
    play swtor and enjoy minimal loading times in sto ;)

    lol....so true...heh. That game does load a bit longer than most.


    STO I have very little load time. zones load within seconds from I enter them, has always been that way for me, been here since beta too, same with CO and NW. Games work very efficiently IMO.

    maybe its a client to client, processing speed or connection issue rather than just STO's end for your issues OP ?

    thought this as well the other day when somebody posted a thread that the PWE websites are not functioning fast enough.

    who knows.....
    _______________________
    ---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----
  • Options
    darthpetersendarthpetersen Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    Its not on every map transfer. ESD takes longer, the own bridge too and some other transfers. STFs and fleet alerts are faster. But the duration isn't the only reason for this topic (don't know why a Mod has merged my database thread with this one, because it's an own topic).

    The topic is, why are so many loadings screens and such a fragmented world in STO. Maybe loading screens like in EVE are not so destructive to the atmosphere of this game. But it's not the solution for the small instances and the small worlds.

    Maybe the old Cryptic engine is just wrong for this game.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • Options
    shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    darthpetersen wrote: »
    Its not on every map transfer. ESD takes longer, the own bridge too and some other transfers. STFs and fleet alerts are faster. But the duration isn't the only reason for this topic (don't know why a Mod has merged my database thread with this one, because it's an own topic).

    The topic is, why are so many loadings screens and such a fragmented world in STO. Maybe loading screens like in EVE are not so destructive to the atmosphere of this game. But it's not the solution for the small instances and the small worlds.

    Maybe the old Cryptic engine is just wrong for this game.

    Most likely their poor programmers can't develop a smoother transition between instances, so we are stuck with fragmented areas like they are. My load times are decent, but there are times where it takes longer than needed imo if I enter an area not previously visited during the day or has too many people in certain instances causing it to figure where in the hell it's going to put me.
    tumblr_nq9ec3BSAy1qj6sk2o2_500_zpspkqw0mmk.gif


    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • Options
    szerontzurszerontzur Member Posts: 2,723 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    You know.. this is a somewhat non-sto specific quandary, but I've always been curious why MMOs don't keep the chat up when you enter a loading screen. I get that things are getting loaded and unloaded to/from memory, but for games of a social nature, it seems like something that should be "standard" for the genre.
  • Options
    grtiggygrtiggy Member Posts: 444 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    the small areas on the map especially make the slipstream drive feel pointless cause you can get from one end of the map to the other and have slipstream to spare for when you load up the other area but it automatically gets turned off, it should just be one large area of sector space not tiny tiny blocks. i use transwarp drive more for the fact i will avoid more loading screens than actually just getting somewhere faster. its amazing how this game makes space feel so small.
    "...just look at my track record for making the improvements that I said we would with the KDF and judge by that." - Dan Stahl
  • Options
    purplegamerpurplegamer Member Posts: 1,015 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    szerontzur wrote: »
    You know.. this is a somewhat non-sto specific quandary, but I've always been curious why MMOs don't keep the chat up when you enter a loading screen. I get that things are getting loaded and unloaded to/from memory, but for games of a social nature, it seems like something that should be "standard" for the genre.

    I noticed FFXIV does this and it surprised me. It shouldn't be a surprise because as you say, these are supposedly social games.
  • Options
    thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    grtiggy wrote: »
    the small areas on the map especially make the slipstream drive feel pointless cause you can get from one end of the map to the other and have slipstream to spare for when you load up the other area but it automatically gets turned off, it should just be one large area of sector space not tiny tiny blocks. i use transwarp drive more for the fact i will avoid more loading screens than actually just getting somewhere faster. its amazing how this game makes space feel so small.
    Is that a map/instance problem or is it a problem with the fact that ship routinely go warp 30+ in this game now? :)
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • Options
    chris919ukchris919uk Member Posts: 189 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    While we're talking about loading screens. Is there any reason the Foundry missions sometimes take forever to load?

    I really would like to play more Foundry missions but the ones that have numerous changes of location seem to take forever to play through. No disrespect to the authors of those missions I just find the long loading times tedious.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
  • Options
    grtiggygrtiggy Member Posts: 444 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    Is that a map/instance problem or is it a problem with the fact that ship routinely go warp 30+ in this game now? :)
    erm... i guess a little of column A and a little of column B :-P but yea. and also for the romlan flotilla at the start of the romulans game the instance size is 5.... that's retardedly small
    "...just look at my track record for making the improvements that I said we would with the KDF and judge by that." - Dan Stahl
  • Options
    thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    chris919uk wrote: »
    While we're talking about loading screens. Is there any reason the Foundry missions sometimes take forever to load?
    I assume the Foundry is on a separate databate - which is why Foundry missions can't just be ported onto the Holodeck. We know there's a lot of bugs in the Foundry system, and Dan has stated they will get worked on when Cryptic's Foundry Team - this team has nothing to do with STO - is done working on NWN's Foundry.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • Options
    elemberq333elemberq333 Member Posts: 430 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    The ones that seem to take the longest are the missions you would get on a quest like "Explore Strange New Worlds" These are sort of random generated missions when you enter each anomaly the mission is chosen and it is one of several different mission...

    Scan 5 anomalies

    Help the distressed ship

    Search for wreaked freighters, scan them and report findings to local aliens

    Assault the underground base or the variation on that, access the computers in that base to determine what the base was for...

    There are probably a few more but you get the idea, it is choosing a mission randomly from a list of premade missions, so why does it take so long to load? I think it must be randomly generating the mission content and if they are premades why bother with that? Just use same content and make it load faster!...
  • Options
    maddrivermaddriver Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    By design, loading a system map or a planet surface/starbase map cannot be done without loading screens. It just can't. There is no actual real way that the loading screens can be skipped when entering a system or a planet's atmosphere. Unless anyone wants the game to demand more resources in order to seemingly load an entire galactic map - thus drastically increasing the minimum system requirements.

    However, the devs have specifically stated that they want to revamp sector space, to make it one big map, instead of maps of specific sectors. That sounds good enough, however it is not an easy thing to do, given that they have to modify and adapt the engine for such a big change. At least we know it's on its way.

    Saying that no other mmos have so many loading screens is not quite fair considering that, at the moment, there is no mmo out there on the market like STO, which allows both ground and space combat/movement in the same game. I say that, given the nature of the gameplay, they did pretty well so far. It could have been far worse.
    Ignum Campaign NWS-DBBV2EY9G
    "The quest for the Book of Ignum"
    Chapter 1 Path to the Underworld NW-DA4N8EOZD
    "I have seen your future. I have seen your end"
  • Options
    cantrill1cantrill1 Member Posts: 47 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    i seem to be timing out on the stronghold mission, it seems to take like 10 mins then just gives me an error saying i cant enter
  • Options
    qjuniorqjunior Member Posts: 2,023 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    cantrill1 wrote: »
    i seem to be timing out on the stronghold mission, it seems to take like 10 mins then just gives me an error saying i cant enter

    Because Necromancers have to keep out ! :P
  • Options
    alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,412 Arc User
    edited January 2015
    The small maps, boxed-up galaxy, diced up by loading screens containing images that have nothing to do with the current space you're trying to travel through, are immersion breaking.

    Here's an old thread on the topic: "Fix open sector space with 4 tiny changes" http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=124487

    Other MMORPGs manage smoother transitions and much larger maps, keeping one absorbed in the universe.

    If PWE only cares for metrics, I am sure that by not constantly breaking the game flow results in more time gaming, more enjoyment, and more spending.
    Y945Yzx.jpg
    Devs: Provide the option to Turn OFF full screen flashes from enemy ship explosions
    · ♥ · ◦.¸¸. ◦'¯`·. (Ɏ) V A N U _ S O V E R E I G N T Y (Ɏ) .·´¯'◦.¸¸. ◦ · ♡ ·
    «» \▼/ T E R R A N ¦ R E P U B L I C \▼/ «»
    ﴾﴿ ₪ṩ ||| N A N I T E S Y S T E M S : B L A C K | O P S ||| ₪ṩ ﴾﴿
Sign In or Register to comment.