Reduce the Loading Times...

[SlickMajestic]

Great game Obsidian, and good job recreating the old Infinity feel with a more modern spin. Not here to rehash on all of the positives, but I do want to make a quick comment and hopeful suggestion moving forward:

 

Reduce the loading times, please. 

 

Honestly, in the year 2015 it gets tiresome to sit for a cumulative total of hours (in a given 60 hour play through) watching slow loading screens. I expect this from Bioware (Dragon Age being a massive culprit, but it's also fully 3D) but for an old-school game that is relatively graphic-friendly it gets a little old each time I have to move in and out of a building. Take the Stronghold for example: it's a medium sized map with about 7 or so instances, including instances within instances (such as your inn/bed). Just getting around this place is extremely slow due to the timely loads encountered in PoE. 

 

As you guys move forward please try to either reduce the loading time from a technical perspective (ideal) or if that can't be done, at least plan better layouts so we aren't twiddling our thumbs for 10+ seconds each time we zone in and out of a building. Again, using the Stronghold, it's nice we have 4 separate buildings for 4 different vendors to make the Stronghold "seem" bigger, but in reality I'd rather all of those vendors just setup shop in the middle of the keep with tents, similar to how the outside vendors are in Defiance as it's simply more efficient. The keep is a dead zone IMO - not much going on in it - and why I have to constantly load, load, load just to get to an inn or vendor is beyond me. Then I have to get out! 

 

It's a big pet peeve of mine as I get tired of playing these games where I have to sit so long loading. And folks, I'm not sitting here with a weak computer - we all suffer this. A game of this nature should have maybe 5 second max loading screens, if that. Not 12-16 seconds. 

 

On average:

• I find going into a building is around 6-7 seconds. 
• Going out of a building and into a larger zone, such as Defiance or Stronghold, is around 12-16 seconds.

This isn't Dragon Age. Let speed things up a bit, please.

 

[PBJam]

do you have the latest patch? it fixed some bug with loading times

[mrmonocle]

post your specs

[Daemonjax]

Loading times are acceptable on my system (2xSSD in raid 0 -- maxes out sata3 controller bandwidth)

[manageri]

My loading times aren't that bad but I agree, it does get a little bit tedious at times. The keep merchant cluster suggestion is definitely good to work around the issue.

[LadyCrimson]

There was a bug/glitch/whatever with loading times, something about the longer you played/bigger the saves and maybe some temp files that are created during saving get, the longer quicksaving/loading and loading in general became. I haven't yet experienced it myself but it was supposedly addressed in the patch - however like with all such issues it might still not be fixed for everyone. 

[Hogfather]

I just find the need to load a whole new level clumsy in a lot of cases.

 

There's no technical need for my computer to unload Brighthollow level one and load level two so that I can rest. Surely its possible to load all of Brighthollow onto a single map surface and just declare region boundaries so you don't see the upstairs when you click on M, and teleport the party around regions instead of loading whole new levels? 

 

Same goes for basically all of the small shops in the cities. I can live with zone transitions between major areas and dungeon levels, but a lot of the loading just channels the IE experience just a little too closely

Edited April 6, 2015 by Hogfather

[CoM_Solaufein]

Different systems have different load times depending on your computer specs. I haven't had to wait long... yet.

[Azureblaze]

My loading times actually increased with 1.03 -- just by a few seconds but it's noticeable. I have SSD's in Raid-0 so not quite sure why. Maybe the extra checks during a save/load is why?

[luzarius]

OP, get a job, get some money and upgrade your god damn PC.

[Tigranes]

5 year old PC, under 10 second loading screens.

[Iankas]

I'm using a fast SSD as well but ..

it's about the interruption more than anything else.

 

Yes it is merely 5-10 seconds but it happens rather frequently and at times excessively so.

I remember one particular instance in Act 2:

Dunryd Row (told to go to Crucible) -> In Crucible, got their support, told to go back to Dunryd -> in Dunryd told to go to the Duke's Palace. It was like 20 loading screens before I finally get to have more than 1 minute of gameplay.

 

The annoyance sometimes prevent me from using a game feature.

For example I was done doing the Endless Path since my party is low on health. After exiting to the Stronghold courtyard map I briefly considered going to Brighthollow room to sleep but decided against it since it would require FOUR loading screens just to go back to where I was.

 

I'd rather sleep on the road and waste 75gp on camping supplies.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Iankas

[LadyCrimson]

Outside of glitches, an option to turn the auto-save off would help a lot. The auto-save every time you enter/exit an inn, for example, especially multiple times for a side quest say. Super annoying, even if it is only 5-6 seconds (on my HDD). I really don't like constant auto-save functions, myself.

[Badmojo]

I am pretty sure loading plus auto saving each loading screen is one of the culprits.  It wasn't that big of a deal early in the game, but as time passes and you have to go back and forth a lot for quests/other, it got more and more annoying till it turned into a special hell.  I agree about brighthollow, it should have just been turned into one big map with boundries, there is no reason to break it up like that.  Also, why only load one map at all?  Why not load maps that are close together at the same time in the background, that way when you transfer from one, to another, it is instantaneous.  

[Serdan]

Outside of glitches, an option to turn the auto-save off would help a lot. The auto-save every time you enter/exit an inn, for example, especially multiple times for a side quest say. Super annoying, even if it is only 5-6 seconds (on my HDD). I really don't like constant auto-save functions, myself.

Just in case you didn't know: http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/14/?

It hasn't yet been updated to the newest version though and it isn't compatible with IE Mod.

[Horrorscope]

Isn't is doing an autosave as well each load? I beleive someone has a mod that shuts that autosave off, however being in game option would be much better. (As mentioned not updated or compatible with the main mod)

 

I agree with this if someone has suggested it... Being the year 2015 of our Lord, with the Ram we have, can we not keep the main map in memory when you enter things like buildings and caves. So when you exit back out into them, they are instant? I dunno...

Edited April 7, 2015 by Horrorscope

[Thrasher91604]

Optimization hasn't been an Obsidian's priority, but this is an area worthy of attention. The loading associated with all the back and forth is getting irritating and I haven't gone further than Defiance Bay.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Thrasher91604

[Nokturnal Lex]

All my loading times are like 3 seconds, only using a HDD, 8 gbs or ram and an AMD 6900 series. 

Pretty sure anyone complaining about the loading times either needs to upgrade or fix their own computer or it's a bug.

[Bryy]

Loading times are a tad more complex than a quick fix, as well.

[Gallenger]

I'm mainly confused as to why the BG option wasn't used - in BG you hardly ever get a loading screen when going into a building - you will when you transition map areas however.   A shame we can't get the same functionality   The auto-save per load transition would make a lot more sense too. 

 

Unfortunate

 

 

For my part I'm on 5  year old hardware and a non-SSD and my loading times aren't extreme.   Of course.... I *do* remember having to constantly switch floppy disks, so maybe my concept of time is off. 

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

I'm mainly confused as to why the BG option wasn't used - in BG you hardly ever get a loading screen when going into a building - you will when you transition map areas however.   A shame we can't get the same functionality   The auto-save per load transition would make a lot more sense too. 

 

Unfortunate

You do get loading times in BG when entering buildings. They're very quick, however, and on modern PCs you probably just don't notice them. But I definitely noticed them back when the game was new.

 

The clever thing with BG is that it doesn't autosave when entering normal buildings, and doesn't require your party to stay together either. So presumably it does what Hogfather suggested earlier, and allow for loading all indoors and outdoors areas on a single map simultaneously. (or near enough. There's still some lag when switching between party members in different areas.)

 

I'm not sure why PoE doesn't do this either. Your suggestion sounds good to me, but I'm afraid it's too late now to implement.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Iguana-on-a-stick

[Tigranes]

All IE games have loading screens for every indoor area. In modern PCs, many smaller ones load fast enough that they're 'instant'. The simple improvement indeed would be to let individual party members enter smaller buildings, but maybe, given that POE is more resource intensive, many PCs would have problems with it?

[Valsuelm]

Ha.

 

Load times are fine. Much of the time I don't get to finish reading whatever tip is being displayed on the loading screen before the load completes.

 

Anyone with long loading times: It's time to upgrade your computer. Mine's 3 years old and the load times are fast.

[Althernai]

All my loading times are like 3 seconds, only using a HDD, 8 gbs or ram and an AMD 6900 series. 

 

Pretty sure anyone complaining about the loading times either needs to upgrade or fix their own computer or it's a bug.

If that is the case, then I'm pretty sure it's a bug. Here are my specs:

 

Crucial MX100 512GB (SSD)

Core i7-2720QM (2.2 GHz)

Radeon 6770M

8 GB RAM

Windows 7 64-bit

 

The save file is around 3MB in size. I timed it and it takes around 15 seconds to load and around 5 seconds to save. Area transitions likewise take around 15 seconds. Unless it is doing some heavy compression/decompression under the hood, I don't understand what can be taking so long. Also, if I click through the opening screens on startup, it takes around 3 seconds merely to load the list of saves. The SSD is operating properly in all other contexts (e.g. a cold boot of Windows takes about the same time as loading a PoE game, maybe even a little less) so I think there is something wrong here.

[Mungri]

Loading times are acceptable on my system (2xSSD in raid 0 -- maxes out sata3 controller bandwidth)

Huge problem with this is my raid 0 SSDs are not my windows drive. PoE saves games to my windows drive.