Removal of loading screens

[Naoki34]

Doubt it. They've denied many things due to server limitations or some other excuse. Otherwise this would have happened by now if it was going to.

The Ps4 is perfectly capable of handling a full open world game like TESO or Black Desert Online.
So yes, if it was wanted it would have been done long ago.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Seriously, Blizzard solved this problem already in 2004. You had loading screens when you made a continent switch or when you entered an instanced area. But those situations were very rare. In FF14, which is younger than WoW vanilla you have loading screens everywhere. And now we have 2021. I cannot understand that it is still in this game.


Cheers

As someone who was around for vanilla WoW; while it didn't have loading screens between zones on the same continent, there were definite load times between zones. I had a fairly bad PC at the time (I could not run through Orgrimmar worth a damn), so if a zone was busy while I crossed over, I could see things popping into existence. It's also why most WoW zones don't place mobs or other important interactions near area transitions, and why, if you look from the air (both in vanilla/Classic while on a flight path, or after the Cataclysm revamp on your own flying mount), there's a lot of empty terrain in the borders between zones. Blizzard didn't solve the problem, they just used a different work-around for it.

[Jeeqbit]

There's no point in removing loading screens when we just teleport everywhere. Removing loading screens wouldn't affect teleporting, it would affect walking from one zone to another which other than in a city, you only do while questing at the start of an expansion.

Even in a city, you can teleport around with the aethernet so we would still have loading screens. It's already been pointed out how fast teleporting actually is with an SSD, even by SE themselves who have a video of the load time on a PS5.

[Catwho]

I've been on an SSD drive for years and I honestly don't even pay attention to the load screens any more. Now I'm on an M2 drive and it's more of a "teleport successful!" message than anything else. Literally takes 2 seconds to teleport to most zones; Limsa took me 4 seconds. Of course, teleportation isn't the same as a fully connected zone.

But seriously - take a look at how far apart some zones are on the overworld map. Those used to be tunnels in 1.0 and if they were to connect the zones into a seamless, walkable path, it would be 5-10 minutes of jogging to get from Middle La Noscea to Eastern La Noscea. If we could fly, much faster, but it's still extremely boring terrain with no reason to bother including it. The loading screens are comparatively a mercy.

The only argument I agree with is recombining the cities, but if having them as separate active zones lets them stuff twice as many objects in each zone, I'm still okay with that as well.

[Rinhi]

What do you mean?

1.0 was on a completely different engine most likely written in a completely different coding language, it's unlikely that any kind of 1.0 code is present in XIV

[Cortawraith]

Instead of demanding that SE wastes their precious resources on something like the removal of loading screens, I'd rather have work on more pressing matters:

-adding difficult light party content (Savage-dungeons if you will), ppl have been demaning stuff like this for quite some time.
-limited Housing needs some fixes (more housing servers, higher item-limits)
-getting the occasional DX11-Crashes fixed for quite a number of gamers (even livestreamers have those and FF14 is one of the very few games that crash sometimes on my PC (even on my old PC's, have tried several with different hardware))
-increase the overall content in between the patches, again (they've cut the numbers of dungeons per expansion for example)
-either improve or scrap PvP for good.
-get the "currently" popular demands done really really really fast so that they can allocate the resources back to actual content, again instead of being stuck on a new gender for races or adding the dead-on-arrival Umbrellas that like 1% of all players actually use...I swear almost nobody uses them at all, haven't seen one in months and I'm online like 99 of 100 days (don't really want to know how much resources that stuff took from other possible contents...)
-Deep dungeons (for the majority, again ppl have been asking why there wasn't one in Shb (pre-covid-era))
-1-2 new ultimates (for the minority, if must be)
-Hildibrand quests (been a long time)
-crafters have been complaining that crafting has gotten too easy (I'm aware they were going for accessibility)

there are quite a bunch of other things but I'm sure most ppl will agree that loading screens aren't really a priority

[raelgun]

Blizzard don't have to take console into consideration, and it's not like wow is a graphical monster compared to 14, granted 14 has some terrible textures.

Its true Blizzard doesn't ever have to take console into consideration but I think you are underestimating WoW graphics, its way more detailed and has way more textures on just about everything in FF14, FF14 has flashier spells but thats about it.

[Cortawraith]

after they overhauled the graphics in WoW. Back then it looked shittier compared to FF14 (even during the time FF14 was released)

[Lanadra]

Some people don't quite seem to get that it's not as simple as 'just remove the transition barriers and load screens and let me walk that distance between maps', as some have said, the 2.0 maps really weren't designed for seamless zoning. They aren't the 1.0 maps imported into 2.0. All of the 1.0 areas, Thanalan, Coerthas, La Noscea and Black Shroud were completely rebuilt from the ground up, this is also why getting the 'missing maps' from Coerthas and Black Shroud is not that straightforward.. because they'd have to make them. The way these 2.0 maps work is by design and they're not designed to interconnect, which means that it would require considerable work to 'glue' these maps together into one whole in a way that doesn't feel half assed.

The towns.. the city states, I suppose one could argue there.. as all three are in essence mostly the same maps from 1.0, I dare say you could probably return Ul'dah and Limsa to single map city states with a degree of effort that would be within reason. Gridania I'm not sure about.. Gridania had these really lengthy tunnels in between what is now Old and New Gridania.. I suppose it depends on if they're entirely intact and just inaccessible.. or simply not there at all.

Personally doing away with the duo zone cities from 2.0 and 3.0 is really something I want.. as there really is no reason for it to be that way anymore.. as Stormblood and Shadowbringers have shown us. But that means putting dev time into turning for example Ishgard into one functional city that flows seamlessly from Foundation into The Pillars.. rather than putting it into new content.. and that's always tricky.. it's always easier to justify making a new shiny than it is to polish up the not-so-shiny old stuff.

[ItMe]

1.0 was on a completely different engine most likely written in a completely different coding language, it's unlikely that any kind of 1.0 code is present in XIV

I'm sorry, but as much as we all wish they had, ARR was not made independently of 1.0.

They did not code an entire MMO from scratch in 2 years, let alone do so in secret while still supporting 1.X.

ARR was built on the back of 1.0 and loads of code is still present. That's where all these "spaghetti code" issues come from.