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Loading times! This is becoming the single biggest hindrance to enjoyment of game.

Idleray
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Idleray

Idleray

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I'm only 20 hours in and already the loading times are becoming unbearable.

 

There is a clear difference between how long it takes now and how long it took at the beginning. Simply transitioning from room to room, building to building in the many errand boy quests in defiance bay takes upwards of 10 seconds, and using your Stronghold is similarly annoying.

 

I've read somewhere about issues of save data being clogged up by useless information like the junk items you sell to vendors... could this be the issue? How can I optimise the loading times?

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Phoynix

Phoynix

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Um... what loading times?

 

Loading screen comes up then almost immedately disappears in 2-3 seconds max.

My comptuer is only midrange, I suspect you have a crapload of programs autostarting and even a virus.. or just a slow computer.

 

I wont insult you by telling you to get a new computer... im sure you spend what you feel is acceptable... but you may want to look at whats running in the background how much memory is free for the game... and try a third party(not windows) disk defragmenter which can greatly speed up loading... While virus scanners that scan on hd access(each time the game loads a file) can vastly slow things down.

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andysonofbob

andysonofbob

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I agree with the OP.  I too find it frustrating and can break immersion.

 

On some maps it became a joke.  The Earl dude near the start.

 

5 second loading times going from room to room is a bit of a hassle especially on maps where you walk in and out of buildings; it is quite embarassing.  5 second load, 5 second to run party to door, 5 second load, 5 second to run party to door leading to outside courtyard, 5 second loading, 10 seconds to walk up a level to next door.  Loading screen to the count's room etc.

 

Why are there loading screens in this game?

 

edit: I only have a HDD.  I would say PC is otherwise average to good. 

Edited by andysonofbobahoo
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Night Driver

Night Driver

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I'm using the Mac version, so I don't know if this will be helpful to anyone using a different platform. Nevertheless, transferring all but the 5 most recent save files from the game's dedicated save folder into a separate storage folder on my desktop reversed most of the slow-down for me. Now I'm more careful about the number of saves I make, relying more on the auto and quick save slots.

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Idleray

Idleray

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oh dear ten seconds is soooo long

 

10 seconds by itself is fine, but in a place like Defiance bay where there's a lot of different game areas close to one another it breaks immersion.

 

I get a quest from guy A that tells me to see guy B. I exit the building, that takes ~10 seconds. I transition to another part of Defiance bay. It's ~10 seconds. I enter the building guy B is in. 10 seconds. Finish the quest and exit building etc etc. You get the idea. It's not very enjoyable.

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Idleray

Idleray

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I'm only 20 hours in and already the loading times are becoming unbearable.

Have you installed the latest patch? It fixes some of the issues causing increased loading times.

 

 

I have steam which auto-updates...sooo.

 

I will trying defragging and so on. I have a fairly good rig for playing an isometric 2d rpg with, so I doubt that's the problem.

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Horrorscope

Horrorscope

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Um... what loading times?

 

Loading screen comes up then almost immedately disappears in 2-3 seconds max.

My comptuer is only midrange, I suspect you have a crapload of programs autostarting and even a virus.. or just a slow computer.

 

There has been imo a large enough swelling of reports on this to the point I feel it stands out that it is more game related, than pc related. At first the loads were pretty good, the more I played the slower it got. This isn't the first time a game has had that issue, I think every time that has been reported it ends up being on the game and not a pc. So it's not "your pc sucks dude" type thing, if it ran good 2 days ago, nothing else has happened other than progressing further into the game, game. When enough report it, makes it a point of focus for devs. This is where you throw down the "blame it on Unity" card!

 

They have addressed one bug in assocation to this issue, why not a fair chance there is more?

 

My pc I keep it pretty lean and clean and when I read my performance vs others with other games, seems to be on par. Most games there isn't complaints of long saves or loads, sometimes though. So when you get more posts about load/save speed, probably game related.

 

You say you can transition in 2-3 seconds max, that is a save and a load, yes that is very quick and I don't think you'd hear a word if that was happening for almost everyone, or even double that. The complaint part that pushes me towards software is "it gets slowers are you get deeper in the game" and they found 1 bug already that if you used X that caused a problem. So perhaps you haven't used X yet.

 

History: DA:O had bad load times, people complained, someone threw down "your pc sucks dude" card. DA:2 comes out, fixed, because Bioware addressed loading in DA:2, it was on their end.

Edited by Horrorscope
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Ink Blot

Ink Blot

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You say you can transition in 2-3 seconds max, that is a save and a load, yes that is very quick and I don't think you'd hear a word if that was happening for almost everyone, or even double that. The complaint part that pushes me towards software is "it gets slowers are you get deeper in the game" and they found 1 bug already that if you used X that caused a problem. So perhaps you haven't used X yet.

 

History: DA:O had bad load times, people complained, someone threw down "your pc sucks dude" card. DA:2 comes out, fixed, because Bioware addressed loading in DA:2, it was on their end.

 

Same with the Witcher when it was first released. Load times on that one were atrocious, and it was made with a modified Aurora engine (the NWN engine). Devs addressed it and improved it dramatically.

 

I've noticed longer loading times as well as the game progresses, and I have the game installed on an SSD (granted, my load times are faster than some people are reporting, but there is a noticeable difference between the beginning of the game and later on in, say, Defiance Bay when it comes to load times). So I don't think it's everyone's rig that's causing loading issues. There's some optimization that still needs to be done on the game with regards to this, IMO.

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Phoynix

Phoynix

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IT could be a bug... I can only give my experience and advice on ways to fix it... Even if a bug exists not everyone seems to have it and as such you are arguing from view that it MUST be a bug on his end... even if it is a bug I find many people have programs loaded that can decrease system performence... Like Virus scanners that check every file on disk access... which can be good when using a untrusted program but should be turned off when dealing with known programs so its only on exe access.

 

 

Also

DaO had massive maps and large amounts of data including textures... DA2 sucked balls had console graphics and rather small maps.

 

Trading long loading times for multiple short loading times that add up to about the same isnt fixing anything.

 

 

Um... what loading times?

 

Loading screen comes up then almost immedately disappears in 2-3 seconds max.

My comptuer is only midrange, I suspect you have a crapload of programs autostarting and even a virus.. or just a slow computer.

 

There has been imo a large enough swelling of reports on this to the point I feel it stands out that it is more game related, than pc related. At first the loads were pretty good, the more I played the slower it got. This isn't the first time a game has had that issue, I think every time that has been reported it ends up being on the game and not a pc. So it's not "your pc sucks dude" type thing, if it ran good 2 days ago, nothing else has happened other than progressing further into the game, game. When enough report it, makes it a point of focus for devs. This is where you throw down the "blame it on Unity" card!

 

They have addressed one bug in assocation to this issue, why not a fair chance there is more?

 

My pc I keep it pretty lean and clean and when I read my performance vs others with other games, seems to be on par. Most games there isn't complaints of long saves or loads, sometimes though. So when you get more posts about load/save speed, probably game related.

 

You say you can transition in 2-3 seconds max, that is a save and a load, yes that is very quick and I don't think you'd hear a word if that was happening for almost everyone, or even double that. The complaint part that pushes me towards software is "it gets slowers are you get deeper in the game" and they found 1 bug already that if you used X that caused a problem. So perhaps you haven't used X yet.

 

History: DA:O had bad load times, people complained, someone threw down "your pc sucks dude" card. DA:2 comes out, fixed, because Bioware addressed loading in DA:2, it was on their end.

 

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Althernai

Althernai

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Posted

Um... what loading times?

 

Loading screen comes up then almost immedately disappears in 2-3 seconds max.

My comptuer is only midrange, I suspect you have a crapload of programs autostarting and even a virus.. or just a slow computer.

We have this discussion almost every day (see, the one from yesterday here) and every day somebody comes to point out that for them, it only takes 2-3 seconds. At this point, this is not very helpful -- we know that for some people it works fine and we know that it is more or less hardware independent (some hard drives take 2-3 seconds, some solid state drives take 15 seconds).

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archangel979

archangel979

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I also noticed loading times becoming longer. I don't have a SSD. I do have 10 or more saves I use, I don't know if that is a problem somehow.

 

I like how in BG1EE and BG2EE loading time are practically non existent and how many areas like upstairs of an Inn you can get without a loading screen. I wish PoE used same system.

Edited by archangel979
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Moira

Moira

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I'm only 20 hours in and already the loading times are becoming unbearable.

Have you installed the latest patch? It fixes some of the issues causing increased loading times.

 

 

I have steam which auto-updates...sooo.

 

I will trying defragging and so on. I have a fairly good rig for playing an isometric 2d rpg with, so I doubt that's the problem.

 

The bug corrected in the patch had to do with extra objects that were left lingering in the game so they bloated saves. Part of that problem was fixed - summons and Chanter's traps I believe. But the merchants continue to have huge inventories from sold objects, and there may be other save bloaters as well. Another issue is the amount of save files, moving some of them to a different folder is probably worth a try.

 

There's a mod for disabling the auto-saving during area transfers, if things become unbearable. And yeah, I also very much hope the loading times will eventually be addressed properly.

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Elizabeth Sterling

Elizabeth Sterling

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Posted (edited)

Really? That's too long for you? Similar to Wafflebum I had to load BG1 on a 32x CD player because I only had 1GB HDD space. (Wow, trippy to think I now have 4500 times that...) Or PST, which as I recall was even slower to load. (I also remember the joyous day I made my first upgrade to run BG2 better. 64MB ram to 128MB ram. Damn, that was a revalation.)

Edited by Elizabeth Sterling
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Junker

Junker

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Sometimes I feel like I'm playing on a Sega CD because of all the loading screens I stare at in this game. It's not that they're long, because they probably hover around the 5-6 second mark, but it's the sheer number of them do to the nature of the map layout and gameplay that make me take notice. Cities are the worst, of course, and you can easily stare at a loading screen 10 times in 5 minutes. If we were spending more time on maps that would be one thing but they are relatively small and I crank through them for the most part so it's loading screen city up in here.

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