Can’t they improve it by shortening the loading time?
The loading time is just how long it takes for a system to transfer what the game requires to start into memory. And so it’s limited by one’s hardware specs. For example, an SSD will dramatically decrease loading time compared to an HDD.
In Coop, your ally’s hardware appears to limit both players (just based off watching 100’s of loading bars). Meaning the player with the slower hardware will slow the loading time for both. There’s times when I get an ally and we both load in about 5-7 seconds. Other times I’ll get someone and we load in 30 (or more) seconds.
The only way to shorten the load time is to load less at the start. But that means anything needed after that must be loaded on the fly (during the game). This isn’t ideal because slower systems will constantly lag spike as assets are requested and transferred over. That’s why the community had to create arcade ‘games’ such as the Unit Preloaders: it got all the lag spikes out of the way before playing a real game which was a huge help to slower systems.
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To add on to what Leviathan has said, your first time load of a game each session will always take longer than subsequent loads, as the computer will be putting what it can into RAM to speed up in the future.
The more RAM you have, and the slower it writes, will increase the time of that first load as the computer will be trying to put as much as it can of what it needs to run the game on it. Naturally, the more RAM you have, and the faster it reads, will also speed up subsequent loads as well, as it won’t replace the information in RAM until it is no longer needed (i.e. you’ve closed the game) this will speed loads as it doesn’t have to read from storage for the information on the sticks, as modern RAM is considerably faster than even an SSD. The game being primarily multiplayer, you will encounter other people doing that first load while you play as well.
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Dude, give Amon a break. He’s fighting hundreds of players. All he’s asking for is a breather every now and then.
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Thank for clarification! just hope that the waiting time can be shorten but seem like quite unavoidable…
thanks for the point!
oh, i almost forget that… feel sorry for him
The game loads within 5 seconds provided my ally has a PC that is at the same level as mine or better. But usually it’s double that or more if my ally has a weaker PC. The only exception to this is when Blizzard launches new content for a game, then the servers spike because of the high traffic of logins. Even World of WarCraft can cause lag on SC2, which it probably is since the Shadowlands expansion just came out.
One thing that I think can make loading longer is when the ally already quitted.
I really wish we had access to the chat during the load to confirm this kind of thing, or if the ally want to run away from Cradle of Death leave as soon as the map begin, like that he would be able to do it sooner after telling you, allowing you to also restart the game which may be faster than waiting for the match start then quit.
The usual indicator to avoid sitting there is if you’re still loading and their loading bar hasn’t budged by the time the loading screen music ends, they’ve alt+F4’d out of the game.