Can we spice up the teleporting with some scenes?

[Suzsi]

If this comes to pass, and slow travel forces me to needlessly burn through xp tokens because the devs completely screwed up the opt-out option in implementing it, I won't be a happy camper.

 

That's what quick travel is for, and the legacy perks that decrease it's timer. Those who don't want to see the scenary. On planet taxi's are wasted now in the new content because you don't even get to see them. What even was the point of giving us a great looking taxi on Onderon when we don't even get to see it fly? So dissapointing.

Edited April 3, 2021 by Suzsi

[BRKMSN]

Btw. there is a suggestion forum.

 

Exactly. Unfortunately people choose to post them here instead where there is more activity. Maybe if people stopped posting suggestions outside of the suggestion sub-forum, there would be more activity in there.

[Macetheace]

That's what quick travel is for, and the legacy perks that decrease it's timer. Those who don't want to see the scenary. On planet taxi's are wasted now in the new content because you don't even get to see them. What even was the point of giving us a great looking taxi on Onderon when we don't even get to see it fly? So dissapointing.

 

Thank you. I think someitmes when you develop or play a game for a long time, especially a multiplayer, and you've seen it all coutnelss time, you just wantt os kep everything, so you can do your quick rounds and exit player. The wonder of immersion gone, you've done it to death.

 

I can understand that, this is why there is QT, you can spacebar, but some of these guys just simply forget that new players and immersion loving players need this stuff.

 

They also forget that this is what draws players from the outside, you mass public isn't a hardcore gamer streamlining everything, they're te ones going to be impressed when they see your big *** ship, and they see a beautiful vista of your ship flying into Voss, or Oricon or wherever.

 

And it is scenes like that that help make up for some of the very dated maps and graphics in some areas, that would keep players interested in a game like this for the next 5 years at least. And not feel it is super dated.

 

If they fail to attract new players, they'll die.

 

but I don't understand him, if he doesn't want it, it doesn't impact him, he's got the skip option. Who will think of the new player and the immersive player ? not every one plays a game to min max and streamline, and some of us who do, actually enjoy the immersive content too.

[BRKMSN]

And it is scenes like that that help make up for some of the very dated maps and graphics in some areas, that would keep players interested in a game like this for the next 5 years at least. And not feel it is super dated.

 

If they fail to attract new players, they'll die.

 

This game will run its course. There's already a strong enough base maintaining this game, allowing them to add content (slowly). The main appeal of this game is Star Wars and the commitment to story. Non dialogue, cut scenes aren't going to add to the player base. People prefer actual playable content and/or story.

 

This game will eventually meet it's end when another Star Wars game replaces it (which is probably a couple years away right now). At that point, they will probably maintain the servers for a couple more years, but no longer add new content. It will have been a pretty good run for SWTOR, especially considering the limitations of the engine they used which has never taken advantage of modern gaming rigs.

 

Again, it will have nothing to do with loading screens or the cinematics during them. Your suggestion is a valid suggestion (just not in the proper forum) and you have demonstrated how much it means to you personally. Assuming suggestions actually get read outside of the suggestion forum, I'm sure they will consider yours as much as any other suggestion ever posted.

Edited April 4, 2021 by BRKMSN

[Macetheace]

This game will run its course. There's already a strong enough base maintaining this game, allowing them to add content (slowly). The main appeal of this game is Star Wars and the commitment to story. Non dialogue, cut scenes aren't going to add to the player base. People prefer actual playable content and/or story.

 

This game will eventually meet it's end when another Star Wars game replaces it (which is probably a couple years away right now). At that point, they will probably maintain the servers for a couple more years, but no longer add new content. It will have been a pretty good run for SWTOR, especially considering the limitations of the engine they used which has never taken advantage of modern gaming rigs.

 

Again, it will have nothing to do with loading screens or the cinematics during them. Your suggestion is a valid suggestion (just not in the proper forum) and you have demonstrated how much it means to you personally. Assuming suggestions actually get read outside of the suggestion forum, I'm sure they will consider yours as much as any other suggestion ever posted.

 

Maybe you're right, you probably are, I don't know for sure, but, as long as this keeps going, surely it's worth doing things that keep improving things, right? it will make a difference to me and it will help. Truth be told you want to give yourself every advantage.

 

The game already has fly in scenes and fly out scenes for most destinations, they aren't used, and instead we get a picture and porting about everywhere like were' in some disjointed place.

 

1. it is not a major feat of software engineering to have the fly in scenes play on travel based on where you are travelling form and two, and to add this to happen during loading . I wish they'd just do it.

 

I'm not talking about a graphical overhaul, or some big ask, this is an easy thing to do right of the bat.

 

It is not for us to determine either, whether something would be profitable to the game or not, first of all, we cannot show or prove this because we don't have the data, and besides that's not for us to worry about. We also don't know what is coming out there, new star wars games have been rumoured to come from other studios, so it imight mean a direct competitor for this, EA are going to want to keep this going, or maybe they are not. Weren't they talking about a big graphical overhaul coming?

 

I can only state, that it would be nice, and it would look good, and I will enjoy it - and it's an easy way to make the game look much better as such scenes can be high quality. Whether what I enjoy matters or how popular it may or may not be and all these things, I can't give metrics for that to a shareholder or boss, I don't know. I can tell you how I feel though, and what will do it more for me.

 

At some point in time, they must decide whether they want to do things because they are good things for the game even if they predict it may have small impact, or whether to do things based on how popular they are or a demand is for them. Again, that is their choice to make, forum people seem to think that only popular ideas they can drum up support for would ever come to pass. Meanwhile always forgetting we get tons of things no one asked for, and some of them have an enormous impact, even though they're quite small. Small investment huge gain. (but sometimes you do need huge investments, like a graphical overhaul)

 

I'll just say this, sometimes it is the little things , the things that seem small or insignificant, especially to the noisy crowd, that actually have the biggest impact, make the most difference, sometimes you will hear about it a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes hardly, but it would have made a difference, you might not even be able to measure, because sometimes people see a nice thing and go oh that's nice, or cool, and it makes their experience better, but they're not going to rush on to the forums to pat you on the back.

 

They may have continued playing anyway, but maybe, just maybe, they play a little longer than intended, or when they leave, they come back later, because they remember some of the cool stuff including the new planetary scenes they encountered. But some of the biggest impacts, is the friend or partner that sees something really cool, like some of the conversation scenes or a cool fly in and basically gets drawn to this from what they've seen. Face it, some of the environments in-game aren't going to attract anyone, , but with all the porting around we do, if there were cool scenes playing in the interlude/load, man, they are quite eye catching .. look at that Voss fly-in?

 

now can you imagine if they went the extra mile on all of these, did really good models for fleet and orbital stations in the fly-outs/fly ins, . and did interesting things, like on Coruscant you see streams of ships flying in, super busy traffic, right now, what if they added, massive planetary weapons systems in Balmorra's atmosphere? a massive prison grid you can see on Belsavis fly in.

 

WE can't fly our ships about in space, fly in scenes are the only place to see us actually travelling through it, they make me feel A and B are connected and are a reminder this is star wars, space is a part of it, and it's one of the things i love about sci-fi. I lose that sense completely through all the porting we have with no fly in scenes. So i think this would help. It will help a lot immersive players like me and new players.

 

And with the option to turn it off, those like that other guy earlier in the post, are never that effected.

 

As much as you can do that is good, looks good, small or large, do it.

 

 

The planet models in the fly in scenes needed updating, so they did that, whether you barely see them or ot, taking this a little further by adding scenes for every location where they don't exist (and that's only a handful that don't have), and arranging them to play when ever you transport (by whatever means, quick travel, teleport, LFG tool..

[Macetheace]

EXAMPLE

 

Currently: If i use LFG tool to get to Taris, or the quick transport from the heroic terminal wherever (fleet/Odessan), I just get loading screen, but a fly in scene exists for Taris.

 

1. Would be so much cooler if I saw that during loading whenever I used the LFG tool to get their for solo heroics or the item in my inventory from the misison I may have picked up at fleet. - becuase it gives me a sense of travelling, continuity, like the place is connected. As soon as I hit that transport button, I see my fly out scene from whatever planet i'm from, and the fly in to Taris.

 

2. it makes sense if this plays during loading screen, more so than it does if it plays before or after the destination has loaded, but:

 

3. Should be an option to turn it off, especially if it sgoign to play before loading, or after (because some people just wanna skip it.), if ti plays during loading then you're not wasting any time for those time hurried people.

 

Also if it's going to play during loading screen, they have to show a progress bar, and it should flash when full, with the option to hide the progress bar for those who don't want it - this has been a

Edited April 5, 2021 by Macetheace

[xordevoreaux]

3. Should be an option to turn it off

 

If this idea of yours ever comes to pass, and the devs for some ungodly reason decide an "off" toggle won't be part of the implementation, or decides that even with an "off" option that certain features of this implementation must be shoved in every player's face, and slows down people who don't want to be slowed down, your forum handle will be immortalized in bronze on my wall as someone who screwed over the entire player base.

Edited April 5, 2021 by xordevoreaux

[robertthebard]

You know, this just feels wrong.

[Macetheace]

If this idea of yours ever comes to pass, and the devs for some ungodly reason decide an "off" toggle won't be part of the implementation, or decides that even with an "off" option that certain features of this implementation must be shoved in every player's face, and slows down people who don't want to be slowed down, your forum handle will be immortalized in bronze on my wall as someone who screwed over the entire player base.

 

If they do that, then they would not have learnt from KoToR 2.

 

The solution was not to remove scenes from the load up, it was to show a progress bar so people would know when they could skip, and have the option to turn it off. Because, some people love it, some like it for the first run, but afterwards it's annoying to them.

 

Anyway, if that's what you are afraid of, simply remind Bioware that you'd like an option to disable this, otherwise you'd rather not. But they should be aware enough people exist that would rather not, to make that viable. For every 4 people that loved this idea, 1 did not care for it, that's a large amount.

[DarkTergon]

Removed as my contributions appears to be unwanted Edited April 17, 2021 by DarkTergon

[Macetheace]

They don't learn, that is one of their biggest flaws. They aren't subtle in what they do, they use a hammer when a feather could work, they destroy something when it just needs a tweak. Chances are, if they implement this, it wouldn't be optional, it would be bugged, and it would P*** off a lot of players. Too much has been ruined because they either don't listen properly, or just don't care.

They do learn, that's the reason we get scenes before and after loading instead on loading. The problem is they learnt the wrong lesson.

 

They failed to understand what the problem in KoToR 2 was.. it wasn't htat you had scenes, everyone loves scenes, but it became irritating because it had no progress bar or indication when yourarea was loaded, so the impression the playing populace got was that this was wasting time after the nth replay..

 

But everyone appreciatest hese secnes the first time or first few times round... and the lessonfrom KotoR was understanding hte psychology.. wehn you are in a hurry, you don't want to sit through thigns you either don't liek or don't have to, or have seen 100 times.

 

this is the case for the guild flagship loading screen, the problem is not that one is there, the irritation is that after using it quite alot, I know it''s a scene that serves little purpose and since i use it often, would rather turn it off because it happens BEFORE loading screen, so it's FEELS like a waste of time to have to view this, then wait again for load up.

 

if it played during the loading screen instead, this is better because I know whether I switch to static picture or scene, this is time i have to wait anyway, I can rail at the engine's limitaiton, not the otherwise good fly-in scene. However, if the scene played with no indication my zone was ready, i may , and that is a MAY begin to resent having to sit through an entire scene i could have had it shorter.

 

this is why. If scenes are available they have to be:

 

1. done during loading, rather than before/after

2. Have a visible progress bar by default that shows loading progress and flashes when complete (you can hide this bar in options for full cinematic effect if you prefer or hide ui function.

3. Be able to skip (via space bar) the different scenes to hurry it up, they could decide that skipping is only possible once the laoding has completed or opt instead to allow skipping but if you skp to the end before the loadign is completed the last scene is the static picture which:

4. You have the option to switch to in option, so if you actually despise fly in scenes, you can opt to have the current static picture that shows during load up.. It saves no time except for the occasional scene that takes longer than the load time, which is fine, you can spacebar skip, but ifyou'd rather just not, there must be an option for pictures.

 

except, when 99% of the forum users were against an idea, it still went through, because either the 1% screamed the loudest, or a dev team member was part of the group, or influenced by them.

 

I've seen many a great idea in these types of games (looking at you WoW and TESO), fall, or fail to be implemented because the CM in his wisdom judged the screamers to be more influential , and either never passed the idea on, because they were out foxed by these guys who camp social media to put pressure on devs to give them what they want, meanwhile not reflecting what most players either want or like.

 

This is why devs have to themselves come up with good ideas, and if they feel players will like something they need to give it, regardless of whether it's screamed about or no one says a word.

 

 

Take these fly -in scenes, for an aged game, a really nice looking fly in scene make the game look a lot better at those key moments, just like some of the conversations do. With a cool entrance scene, you might forgive the dated graphics of some of the old worlds, and get more into your story.

 

it's different or might be different when you become a vet that only logs on to heroic/FP hop, and no longer questing, but the biggest clientele are the masses of less vets you want to pull into the game to stay long enough to get to the stage where they are constantly subscribing and doing all content.

 

These are your new guys that come on and try it, your guys who are more into the story etc, they really appreciate cool scenes in convos, cool fly in scenes, and their adventure looks better when you have a decent scene.

 

if they upgraded some of these fly ins by updating the planets, and updating some of the ship models even the space map, it would look SOOO cool

[DarkTergon]

Removed as my contributions appears to be unwanted Edited April 17, 2021 by DarkTergon

[robertthebard]

They do learn, that's the reason we get scenes before and after loading instead on loading. The problem is they learnt the wrong lesson.

 

They failed to understand what the problem in KoToR 2 was.. it wasn't htat you had scenes, everyone loves scenes, but it became irritating because it had no progress bar or indication when yourarea was loaded, so the impression the playing populace got was that this was wasting time after the nth replay..

 

But everyone appreciatest hese secnes the first time or first few times round... and the lessonfrom KotoR was understanding hte psychology.. wehn you are in a hurry, you don't want to sit through thigns you either don't liek or don't have to, or have seen 100 times.

 

this is the case for the guild flagship loading screen, the problem is not that one is there, the irritation is that after using it quite alot, I know it''s a scene that serves little purpose and since i use it often, would rather turn it off because it happens BEFORE loading screen, so it's FEELS like a waste of time to have to view this, then wait again for load up.

 

if it played during the loading screen instead, this is better because I know whether I switch to static picture or scene, this is time i have to wait anyway, I can rail at the engine's limitaiton, not the otherwise good fly-in scene. However, if the scene played with no indication my zone was ready, i may , and that is a MAY begin to resent having to sit through an entire scene i could have had it shorter.

 

this is why. If scenes are available they have to be:

 

1. done during loading, rather than before/after

2. Have a visible progress bar by default that shows loading progress and flashes when complete (you can hide this bar in options for full cinematic effect if you prefer or hide ui function.

3. Be able to skip (via space bar) the different scenes to hurry it up, they could decide that skipping is only possible once the laoding has completed or opt instead to allow skipping but if you skp to the end before the loadign is completed the last scene is the static picture which:

4. You have the option to switch to in option, so if you actually despise fly in scenes, you can opt to have the current static picture that shows during load up.. It saves no time except for the occasional scene that takes longer than the load time, which is fine, you can spacebar skip, but ifyou'd rather just not, there must be an option for pictures.

 

 

 

I've seen many a great idea in these types of games (looking at you WoW and TESO), fall, or fail to be implemented because the CM in his wisdom judged the screamers to be more influential , and either never passed the idea on, because they were out foxed by these guys who camp social media to put pressure on devs to give them what they want, meanwhile not reflecting what most players either want or like.

 

This is why devs have to themselves come up with good ideas, and if they feel players will like something they need to give it, regardless of whether it's screamed about or no one says a word.

 

 

Take these fly -in scenes, for an aged game, a really nice looking fly in scene make the game look a lot better at those key moments, just like some of the conversations do. With a cool entrance scene, you might forgive the dated graphics of some of the old worlds, and get more into your story.

 

it's different or might be different when you become a vet that only logs on to heroic/FP hop, and no longer questing, but the biggest clientele are the masses of less vets you want to pull into the game to stay long enough to get to the stage where they are constantly subscribing and doing all content.

 

These are your new guys that come on and try it, your guys who are more into the story etc, they really appreciate cool scenes in convos, cool fly in scenes, and their adventure looks better when you have a decent scene.

 

if they upgraded some of these fly ins by updating the planets, and updating some of the ship models even the space map, it would look SOOO cool

 

KotoR 2 was made by Obsidian. Obsidian is not developing swtor.

[Tofu_Shark]

Epically stupid question: what would it display while it was loading the assets for the loading-screen cutscenes?

 

Alternative version: I'm not sure that it's a good idea to have loading screens while waiting for a loading screen's animations to load, but if the loading screen has an animation, there would be a loading screen for the loading screen.

I commend you for resisting the temptation to respond with the Xzibit meme.

 

If this comes to pass, and slow travel forces me to needlessly burn through xp tokens because the devs completely screwed up the opt-out option in implementing it, I won't be a happy camper.

I'm pretty sure you've supported changes that have removed immersion. You'll then know how players have felt about those kinds of changes.

 

And before that cut-scene can begin playing, it has to be loaded. For sure it doesn't have to load as much stuff as the planet(1), but it still has to load whatever's drawn in the cut-scene. The more "between things" scenes there are, the more time is spent loading those scenes.

 

Sort of, but how does the game have the assets that are required to play the scene if it doesn't load them?

 

There's sometimes a visible delay, especially where the conversation is accompanied by a location change as it launches. Or like all those cut-scenes in KotFE/ET where you get to see what Arcann and co are talking about while you're not there either before or after. Unless it loads them along with whatever you're doing otherwise.

 

If they are in new locations where the player is not just before, and where the player will not be just after, yes, they very much *do* need load times. It might be possible to background-load them just for players with the relevant mission open, but I'm not convinced they do that.

 

The speed of 2019-2021 systems, sure, with fast SSDs and so on, but remember there are still people playing this game on machines from 2011 that still have 90MB/sec "spînning rust" hard disks. *Those* people will notice the extra load time more than I will. (Unless I'm playing on my old from-2011 machine that I used for four and a half years to play SWTOR, that is, which I still do from time to time, for purposes of helping my other account, or of using my other account to give characters on my main account some Social points.)

 

The actual cinematic button on the character screen (the one that plays the trailers, "Hope" etc.) plays pre-rendered stuff, so is of no importance in this discussion, but when you create a new character, yes, there's a loading time for the scenery and so on that appears in the intro cut-scene. That stuff loads during the crawl, probably, but if you Esc out of the crawl and press Space really fast when prompted *on*a*slower*machine*, you'll see a small delay while it loads the assets for the cut-scene. (Probably a mix of the cut-scene assets and the real-planet assets, but that's not relevant for e.g. fly-in scenes as you arrive on planets, since you never hang around in outer space while you are on the planet/in the orbital station, and the version of the planet you see from the docking bay looks nothing like the one in the fly-in.)

 

Not a loading *screen*, but it will spend a short time loading the first fraction of a second of the video(2), but that's a very short time. The rest loads as the video plays. That cut-scene rendered by the game engine probably has to load all the assets for the whole cut-scene of e.g. the Inquisitor flying in to Korriban and strolling over to see Harkun before it can play *any* of it.

 

(1) Even there, they don't load *everything* about the planet as you arrive. They have to do a trade-off between how large an area they pre-load around you (and how much memory that takes up) versus how often they have to load new pieces and whether they can do it fast enough to keep up as you move. One of the ingredients in that trade-off is the maximum travel speed they want to allow (with the caveat that taxis follow a fixed path and therefore have reduced requirements of what they must pre-load and can go faster).

 

(2) If the video in question is on a DVD or Blu-Ray disk, of course, it takes a *lot* longer to get going than an MP4 on your hard disk / SSD, but it still only loads a small initial amount.

I don't think it does load during the crawl. The crawl sequence itself is prerendered. The only way to truly tell if the assets are loading in the background is to have a dev comment on it since there's no debug mode we have access to.

 

 

 

OP, you've got an uphill battle here. I wouldn't mind if when you used Quick Travel, a shuttle swooped in or a transport pulled up or a speeder bike stopped next to you (This wouldn't make sense indoors though.) but many of us don't trust BioWare to competently implement what you're proposing, which isn't even what I just said. Too many times, they screw up. They have a tendency to use an axe when a scalpel should be used. I share in this distrust concerning your suggestion, because it is convoluted, increasing the chances of implementation being blown. Perhaps there is a more elegant solution than what we currently have, but I don't want to chance it and have a damn loading bar obscuring my cutscenes that I can't hide, for instance. Also, suggestions should go in the Suggestions forum.

[eabevella]

Let Quick Travel be QUICK.

Its function is to provide convenience to the players, not to provide story content/immersion/whatever.

You can ride your own mount and slow travel to your destination, that's the most realistic, game immersing way, you know?

Edited April 10, 2021 by eabevella

[mike_carton]

Let Quick Travel be QUICK.

Its function is to provide convenience to the players, not to provide story content/immersion/whatever.

You can ride your own mount and slow travel to your destination, that's the most realistic, game immersing way, you know?

 

QFT. The scenic route has been available for those seeking it.

[robertthebard]

QFT. The scenic route has been available for those seeking it.

 

It used to be required to open the fast travel points. I don't recall when they changed that though.

[Tofu_Shark]

That may have been one of the 4.0 changes, but it could've happened earlier. Edited April 12, 2021 by Tofu_Shark

[mike_carton]

Game Update 3.2: Rise of the Emperor

 

Several travel-related changes:

• All Taxi Destinations are now available to all players.
  
• All Quick Travel Bind Points within a map region are now automatically discovered when the region is revealed.
  
• The cooldown on the Quick Travel ability has been reduced. For Subscribers and Preferred players the cooldown is now 6 minutes, and for Free-To-Play players the cooldown is now 26 minutes.
  
• The Legacy Travel I, II, and III unlocks now reduce the cooldown of the Quick Travel ability by 2 additional minutes each.
  
• The cooldown on the Emergency Fleet Pass ability has been reduced. For Subscribers and Preferred players the cooldown is now 90 minutes, and for Free-To-Play players the cooldown is now 180 minutes.
  
• The Legacy Fleet Pass I, II, and III unlocks now reduce the cooldown of the Emergency Fleet Pass ability by 30 additional minutes each.
  ...
  

[SteveTheCynic]

I commend you for resisting the temptation to respond with the Xzibit meme.

I have to admit that "Yo dawg" *did* wander through my head when I wrote that.