Lets talk about that.
Do any of you feel comfortable playing hardcore while loading screens can kill you? I personally keep going, but the anxiety it gives me is severe and I know there are many who don’t bother because of that issue. Anyone else still trying it anyway to see how far they can get before the reaper comes? I won’t deny the realism that this has added. 
I’m curious as to how the rest of you feel.
I play game on SSD, but loading times still makes me angry. But i didnt experience risk of dying because of that yet.
Same here with the SSD. I haven’t personally had a problem yet, but even those few seconds seem scary enough for me lol
I can’t include links in this post, but I have an image of someone dying at level 88 from walking into cows. The chances seem about the same as being struck by lightning, but still enough to put me on edge. Its those 1-2 seconds (at most for me) where you can run around with your character during the loading screen that concerns me sometimes.
Would most of you say that I over worry about this? I’m fully open to criticism about this topic.
I am honestly a lot more scare of disconnect or game crashing when i am teleporting or doing travincal.
I have seen cows clip, not sure if its the same bad its bad. I know that cow king can spawn pretty much next to red tp in rare occasions so…
That is a very good point. Perhaps I worry too much.
I edited my message before you post response. Yes cows are dnagerous because of red portal can spawn next to cow king.
Yup. That’s the same exact picture I was going to post. Well, its useful to remember at least. I don’t want to stop my HC druid because of the things I see from other HC players lately. I’ll just continue. Maybe thats why I made this thread afterall. I do hope that they can fix some of the issues, but you made a good point in that the servers are priority at the moment anyway.
Thanks for your input.
It’s strange how long the load times become at seemingly arbitrary times. Several times I’ve had an issue where taking a tp to town would cause a couple second load time, but back in the world was instant. I mean I’ve got a nvme pci 4.0 ssd with a 5800x cpu so load times shouldn’t be this long on a 20 year old game. Who knows what the problem is.
Only one time have I died to wp loading, I went from act 4 to the Frigid Highlands in act 5. So when I began playing hardcore I made sure to always go to the act town before going to wp, and I’m still alive.
I’ve had zero issues in HC with loading screens or disconnects/crashes. And I’ve played for hundreds of hours since launch. My character levels are:
97 barb, 88 sorc, 83 pally, 78 zon, 73 nec, 73 asn, 70 druid
You need to build characters to survive first and foremost. Standard softcore builds aren’t safe. My sorc, for example, has 0 mana teleport, 69% Energy Shield, and max telekineses. And 53 base str to pump vitality. Life is everything in HC.
I spawned multiple times on top of the cow king and was dead before the screen loads. Thankfully I’m playing sc so not a problem
As i read here about people that already died to this in hc i dont think you over worry. Im glad i play SC
We used to stack pile cows by the red portal and wait for noobs to enter game and loot the corpses… That was like 2002
I lost a few high level HC to disconnects.
Still play it though, makes SC feel soft and stupid, for weaklings !
If I don’t feel the thrill of looming death, I’m not fully playing the game. I wish it was even more deadly, frankly. much more so.
Honestly lag/disconnect and load screens were always killers, and were always way worse than now. Duriel’s cave was built with HC bones. If you ever played HC there’s no real reason not to now, it’s the safest it’s ever been.
The loading screen duration seems tied to fps somehow. If I turn on vsync or have my fps capped, I can sit at the loading screen for 3 to 5s. But uncapping my fps reduces that to less than 1s. Something’s weird.
Still, I left HC after seeing my zon freeze right in front of Baal, unable to move or do anything. It’s one thing to encounter known issues for which I can take countermeasures, but it’s just weird to play a game that can randomly decide that you can no longer participate. I haven’t encountered the bug for a while now, but I also haven’t seen a patch log that says it’s fixed, and I don’t feel like risking a high level zon to such randomness.
You can move and use skills during the loading screen. As long as the bad mans aren’t literally preventing your movement with body blocking and you aren’t being rubber-banded by lag you can avoid death. I haven’t tried spamming potions yet. Maybe you can spam potions during the loading screen too hmm
Hardcore is the only way to play. No self respecting hardcore player can tolerate more than the single playthrough on Normal Softcore that, thankfully, is no longer a requirement.
Accepting the risks of HC always included bad WP’s the black wall of death and other crazy things. Load times are just a new thing.
I always change to the act before going into the “field” and I never touch the mouse while it loads. Hopefully that keeps me from dying!?!
We have to be careful.
tele’ing out of a hot situation can get you killed.
when my HP is below 30% I move to a clear space and tp out to avoid the long loading screen to town, otherwise you are dead.
Blizzard has so much work ahead of them to get this game working right.
My biggest wish is for [classic] to get the shared stash same as LoD did.
By taking away our ability to create accounts [classic] is a mess.