Why are loading time so long (PS4 Pro + SSD)

[fced]

After some years, i thought the developpers would improve the loading time, but sadly no.

I enjoyed POE a lot, but the thing which made me stop playing it was the very very long load time, each time you enter a building or a single room, you had to wait a long time before the game load and of course a loading time when you exit te room...

I am on PS4 with an SSD, and clearly this don't come from the hardware but from POE and Deadfire code...
I really hope the developpers will improve this in a future patch, because there is a lot of buildings/room/shops to explore and having a long loading time at each enter/exit, is the best way to make players flee to an other game (or to prevent them to buy POE Deadfire)...

Edited February 2, 2020 by fced

[xzar_monty]

My understanding is that it has something to do with how the game engine is constructed. However, I cannot be more specific because I don't know the details, and probably wouldn't understand them well enough anyway. I do agree that the loading times for both PoE and Deadfire are too long and tend to test your patience.

As for future patches: I don't think there's any chance that there are ever going to be more patches for these games. They're done.

Edited January 31, 2020 by xzar_monty

[Boeroer]

On 1/31/2020 at 12:13 PM, fced said:

After some years, i thought the developpers would increase the loading time...

Eh? I guess you meant "decrease loading time" or "increase loading speed"?

Loading times (on PC) of Deadfire compared to PoE are significantly shorter. I can't say anything about consoles (they are less potent so it might take a lot longer in general) but on the same PC hardware it's very obvious.

Obsidian tries to address the loading time issues of PoE with an asset streaming in Deadfire and at least for me it worked.

I don't think that the long loading times are 100% to blame on Unity3D but more on an unfortunate interaction of Unity3D and the PoE/Deadfire "2.5D" approach.

But yes: all in all they are still pretty long compared to other titles.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Boeroer

[fced]

On 1/31/2020 at 12:47 PM, Boeroer said:

Eh? I guess you meant "decrease loading time" or "increase loading speed"?

Loading times (on PC) of Deadfire compared to PoE are significantly shorter. I can't say anything about consoles (they are less potent so it might take a lot longer in general) but on the same PC hardware it's very obvious.

Obsidian tries to address the loading time issues of PoE with an asset streming in Deadfire and at least for me it worked.

I don't think that the long loading times are 100% to blame on Unity3D but more on an unfortunate interaction of Unity3D and the PoE/Deadfire "2.5D" approach.

But yes: all in all they are still pretty long compared to other titles.

Sorry :), you are right (i meant : reduce the long load time), i corrected my post... tbh i can't remember enough precisely to compare both games, but on POE this prevented me to continue playing, after 2 game, i stopped because i was tired of waiting...
On Deadfire, it is the same each time you enter a place you have to wait...
When i was playing POE i hadn't a SSD (i got it for Anthem), so i couldn't say, but even with ssd it take some time to enter a room, a shop, any place... i can't imagine what it would be without a ssd...

Edited February 2, 2020 by fced

[daven]

How many seconds?

[Panda Pandaren]

4 hours ago, daven said:

How many seconds?

Port Maje - around 1m 30s

Neketaka - around 2m

around 1m every time you change from a location to a world map
so... it's ridiculous. you're loading more then you are playing.

I have PS4 Pro (regular, no SSD). I finished PoE I on PS4 with a lot of patient (actually, two times as I was for a platinum trophy), but at least it was playable. PoE II freezes every time you change a single item on any character. It was freezing on the first cut scene in Neketaka. I couldn't pick up one crew member in a cave, as two enemies were not counted as enemies and I couldn't finish the event (re-load didn't help, re-loaded two more earlier point and skipped location..). Sometimes cursor is disappearing in the trade menu, and I can't buy anything - at least quitting the game and reloading helps here.

Instead of having some useful link on a touch map (usually it's a map), there's a link to tutorials. You won't need tutorials the most part of the game. This option could be customized, but no, it's not.

I finished PoE II on GOG on the release date, and I waited so much for PS4 release... But, unfortunately, it's a frustrating nightmare. I'm not sure if I'm going to play it anymore. I'm in Neketaka now, and I'm scared realizing how many times I need to go in or out from buildings and see these load screens...

[AwesomeOcelot]

Long loading times are a staple of Obsidian games, in a number of different engines, games like New Vegas, NWN2, PoE, and Deadfire. My theory is that they don't segment enough so there's a lot of unnecessary loading, and they don't cull at all, so the problem keeps getting worse. Modern games also load stuff in the background during gameplay, even things you might not need to store them in RAM, just so it's faster to access, I don't think Obsidian does that. Also games like NWN2, PoE, Deadfire have incredibly small areas, with so many loading screens, gives me nightmares.

Edited February 3, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[Boeroer]

7 hours ago, Panda Pandaren said:

Port Maje - around 1m 30s

Neketaka - around 2m

 

 

 Woha...

5 hours ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

 Modern games also load stuff in the background during gameplay, even things you might not need to store them in RAM, just so it's faster to access, I don't think Obsidian does that. 

Deadfire uses asset streaming (unlike PoE). It helped a lot on PC. No idea why the loading times in PS4 are that ridiculously long...

[fced]

20 hours ago, Panda Pandaren said:

Port Maje - around 1m 30s

Neketaka - around 2m

around 1m every time you change from a location to a world map
so... it's ridiculous. you're loading more then you are playing.

I have PS4 Pro (regular, no SSD). I finished PoE I on PS4 with a lot of patient (actually, two times as I was for a platinum trophy), but at least it was playable. PoE II freezes every time you change a single item on any character. It was freezing on the first cut scene in Neketaka. I couldn't pick up one crew member in a cave, as two enemies were not counted as enemies and I couldn't finish the event (re-load didn't help, re-loaded two more earlier point and skipped location..). Sometimes cursor is disappearing in the trade menu, and I can't buy anything - at least quitting the game and reloading helps here.

Instead of having some useful link on a touch map (usually it's a map), there's a link to tutorials. You won't need tutorials the most part of the game. This option could be customized, but no, it's not.

I finished PoE II on GOG on the release date, and I waited so much for PS4 release... But, unfortunately, it's a frustrating nightmare. I'm not sure if I'm going to play it anymore. I'm in Neketaka now, and I'm scared realizing how many times I need to go in or out from buildings and see these load screens...

I feel there is only few difference with and without ssd, i will try to measure the time it take to load Port Maje (without it be in the cache memory) and post my results...

[thelee]

20 hours ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

Long loading times are a staple of Obsidian games, in a number of different engines, games like New Vegas, NWN2, PoE, and Deadfire. My theory is that they don't segment enough so there's a lot of unnecessary loading, and they don't cull at all, so the problem keeps getting worse. Modern games also load stuff in the background during gameplay, even things you might not need to store them in RAM, just so it's faster to access, I don't think Obsidian does that. Also games like NWN2, PoE, Deadfire have incredibly small areas, with so many loading screens, gives me nightmares.

related, with BG-style games, the problem is that you are loading in one gigantic map, so i'm not sure there's as much streaming/segmenting that you could do compared to a shooter. and it's not like an RTS where it's essentially tile-based with assets and design optimized for fast load.

it would be "clever" if obsidian did some smart predictive thing and started to stream in areas as soon as you clicked on an exit indicator (like a door or map edge), but ehm given the developer bandwidth they have this might have resulted in even buggier behavior (there was a pernicious issue with quicksaves/quickloads not correctly restoring state, which would be the closest analogue to this smart-streaming idea).

 

edit: but sweet jesus, 1.5m to 2m for a single area is insane. are you sure you don't have a failing storage medium? even on my ancient haswell-based PC i don't have load times nearly that long.

Edited February 3, 2020 by thelee

[AwesomeOcelot]

Open world games 2D Isometric and 3D can manage it with gigantic worlds. Dungeon Siege 1 had streaming, modern shooters have had for a long time. I don't see the fundamental problem with a BG-style game from doing it. The maps in PoE weren't gigantic, and Deadfire isn't that much better. You could definitely segment or tile the maps in Deadfire, but they weren't. I think it takes work to do it because you have to make sure players can't interact or meet the segments before they load.

The same thing with saves in these games being ridiculous with how large they get, and how long they take to load, because they don't follow modern game design, they keep a model of the entire interactable game world, that all has to load, not just what's needed. Maps are the same, the map is an entire functioning model that's running, that all has to load at once.

The Outerworlds has huge maps in comparison to Deadfire and is very fast loading. I think it takes advantage of Unreal Engine's streaming? Where as Deadfire's engine is more bespoke and would require Obsidian to design streaming into their 2D background technology.

[Panda Pandaren]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

but sweet jesus, 1.5m to 2m for a single area is insane. are you sure you don't have a failing storage medium? even on my ancient haswell-based PC i don't have load times nearly that long.

I only have this problem with PoE I and II. Civ 6 is taking some time to build a huge map, but it takes some ok-ish time and you don't reload constantly. W3, RDR2, GoW -no issues there. Fallen Order had some freezes, but compare to my friends with regular PS4 mine freezes were nothing.

I will measure exact timing and will post here. Will do a video with a timer.

Actually, will do a video with PoE I as well, it's interesting to compare, I think I still have it installed. As I was keeping the saves. Which turned out to be another frustration because of no save import in PoE II on PS4

[fced]

I took measure when i returned to Port Maje, i was on the island and to load Port Maje (Kraken eye) it took 45 Seconds...

To exit Kraken Eye and enter Port Maje city it take 40 Seconds..

From Port Maje to Satahuzi 40 seconds...

Edited February 3, 2020 by fced

[thelee]

 

18 hours ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

The maps in PoE weren't gigantic, and Deadfire isn't that much better.

PoE1 had long load times because of a bug where the more items you collect (even if you sell them) the save file inflates dramatically. Deadfire doesn't have this issue, and at least on PC/macOS has much faster load times as a result. I in fact will never touch PoE1 again because the load times were just so awful by comparison.

Edited February 4, 2020 by thelee

[fced]

11 minutes ago, thelee said:

 

PoE1 had long load times because of a bug where the more items you collect (even if you sell them) the save file inflates dramatically. Deadfire doesn't have this issue, and at least on PC/macOS has much faster load times as a result. I in fact will never touch PoE1 again because the load times were just so awful by comparison.

It remind me the bug with Skyrim on PS3, the more you progress the more the save file became big, and at one point loading a save was endless...
I can confirm, at start in POE (without ssd) the load time were correct, decent, but after 50 hours in the game, enter any room was really long...

[Boeroer]

PoE had some other problems as well. For example if you sorted your inventory in a certain way (like let's say by value) it would not "keep" that sorting but would apply the sorting algorithm every time you opened the stash. With a lot of items in the stash (which is limitless on PC) you'd run into severe performance issues.

In the earlier version also every summon you cast would find its way into the saved state of the game, never disappearing in memory. This got fixed at some point. 

Save game files wouldn't need to grow like crasy if players wouldn't expect to get back all the stuff they dropped/sold. But because players want to have the opportunity to place stuff into chests or sell stuff and be able to buy it again later for an unlimited amount of time the save game needs to take care for all those items you don't carry around anymore, too. It would help if the shop owner simply sold your stuff after some time (remove from shop) or random lootes would empty chests (that are not on your ship or in your stronghold).  

I don't know if tiling the maps would be so simple. PoE and Deadfire are 2.5 D games where 3D objects get placed on a handdrawn, 2D maps. Elevations and obstructions are mostly optical illusions. You can see that when you are trying to cast a spell like Iconic Projection up a staircase. So maybe it's difficult to split up such a map that's a rather wild but nice-looking conglomerate of 2D and 3D game objects. No idea though. Just a thought.

 

[thelee]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Save game files wouldn't need to grow like crasy if players wouldn't expect to get back all the stuff they dropped/sold. But because players want to have the opportunity to place stuff into chests or sell stuff and be able to buy it again later for an unlimited amount of time the save game needs to take care for all those items you don't carry around anymore, too. It would help if the shop owner simply sold your stuff after some time (remove from shop) or random lootes would empty chests (that are not on your ship or in your stronghold). 

ironically, the actual BG games had your items disappear from the ground and many containers (hence why a stronghold was useful). in the manual, it even provided an in-universe explanation (people are coming by and taking items), so it's not like people coming from a nostalgia angle had an in-built explanation about items lasting forever. it could have lent itself to soft-locks if you left behind an important quest item, but IME that's a solvable problem (Deadfire definitely makes sure quest-important items stay on your party at all times; i've had characters equipped with quest items get annihilated [stupid disintegrate] and while everything else falls into a pile on the floor like loot, the quest item explicitly goes into my stash).

 

whatever, Deadfire doesn't have the problem, so that's good enough for me.

[IST]

After talking to a friend who is playing on Pro with ext SSD, I yolo'd a Samsung T5 SSD today and moved my game to that...and it's so, so much better than HDD.

20sec or less on nearly all load screens...vs 1 min or more previously, it's totally changed the game for me!!

(40 hours in, keeping 9 saves total).

To anyone struggling with the load times on reg hard drive, if you can get a a deal on a SSD your whole experience will be much better (way closer to PC load times).

[Jill7894]

This is very disappointing. I actually pre-ordered torment tides of numenara for the PS4 and it had pretty similar problems, I even reviewed it by listing the numerous activities I could complete during each load screen and completely lost confidence in inexile, especially with it being my first game from inexile. I vowed to never pre-order games ever again. I was hoping that the PS4/Xbox release might prop POE 2 up some more, but I'd say it'd be pretty unrealistic to assume that most people who are new to the series or to POE 2, at least, and are trying it for the first time on consoles are going get a good impression with all of these problems listed. Honestly, I'd be pissed, which is very sad because this is one of my favorite games.

[chrch2]

Am 6.2.2020 um 15:57 sagte IST:

Nachdem ich mich mit einem Freund unterhalten habe, habe ich heute eine Samsung T5 SSD gekauft und mein Spiel darauf verschoben ... und es ist so, so viel besser als HDD.

20 Sekunden oder weniger auf fast allen Ladebildschirmen ... im Vergleich zu 1 Minute oder früher hat sich das Spiel für mich total verändert !!

(40 Stunden in, 9 speichert insgesamt).

For all the load times in the drive have: Wenn Sie sich auf eine SSD begeben, ist Ihre gesamte Erfahrung viel besser (viel näher an den Ladezeiten des PCs).

@IST, thank you for the tip with the SSD. Ist's so much better to play.

[Boeroer]

Mal nonchalant den Google-Translator angeworfen, wa?  

[Wormerine]

On 2/3/2020 at 9:49 PM, AwesomeOcelot said:

The Outerworlds has huge maps in comparison to Deadfire and is very fast loading. I think it takes advantage of Unreal Engine's streaming? Where as Deadfire's engine is more bespoke and would require Obsidian to design streaming into their 2D background technology.

Doesn't a problem lie in loading and streaming high definition 2d images, as opposed to reading data and generating it into on screen graphics an a go? Outerworlds is full 3d and "maps" are generated - while majority Deadfire's maps are high definition pre-rendered images with effects simulated on top of it (lighting etc.). 

[Jill7894]

6 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Doesn't a problem lie in loading and streaming high definition 2d images, as opposed to reading data and generating it into on screen graphics an a go? Outerworlds is full 3d and "maps" are generated - while majority Deadfire's maps are high definition pre-rendered images with effects simulated on top of it (lighting etc.). 

Hypothetically, wouldn't the same premise of pre-rendered images with effects simulated on top of them apply to a game like Resident Evil 1 remake, which loads perfectly fine? I know that they're completely different engines, but I've seen this type of terrible loading and other bugs happen in numerous isometric RPGs on console made by different developers.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Jill7894

[IST]

8 hours ago, Rainer Kammermeier said:

@IST, thank you for the tip with the SSD. Ist's so much better to play.

No worries mate!

I no longer fear opening doors or entering new areas, SUCH a game changer for me!!

Eothas bless the External SSD on PS4!

[IST]

On 1/31/2020 at 11:13 PM, fced said:

After some years, i thought the developpers would improve the loading time, but sadly no.

I enjoyed POE a lot, but the thing which made me stop playing it was the very very long load time, each time you enter a building or a single room, you had to wait a long time before the game load and of course a loading time when you exit te room...

I am on PS4 with an SSD, and clearly this don't come from the hardware but from POE and Deadfire code...
I really hope the developpers will improve this in a future patch, because there is a lot of buildings/room/shops to explore and having a long loading time at each enter/exit, is the best way to make players flee to an other game (or to prevent them to buy POE Deadfire)...

Hey OP, my load times with an external SSD are 15-20 seconds most of the time, 25 secs on the high end: is this what you're getting too?