Poll: Elevators or loading screens? Poll.

[DudeistBelieve]

loading screens.

It was very rare to have chatter in the elevator or the radio playing, and if your gonna do that I demand to be entertained. Or at least give me control of my character so that I can run in circles or do something, your giving me the illusion of playing but really I'm not.

I honestly got to the point where I wondered what Biowares problem was and why they couldn't of made the normandy more load time efficient. It was incredibly annoying to have to wait 2 minutes to talk to the other half of my crew and then a another 2 minutes to come back up.

 

[Jodah]

Loading screens if they have progress bars, are relatively short, and their placement makes sense.

 

[DSK-]

The loading screens broke up the gameplay way to much for me. It was always stop and start in ME2. In ME1 it felt like I was actually playing through an entire level. Sure, I had to travel in elevators and stuff but at least I was doing something instead of staring at screens and magically appearing in places.

 

[Cursed Frogurt]

This is why developers need to stop listening to whiny "fans". The elevators and Mako were fine.

 

[Telemachus]

loading elevating screens

but no really, probably elevators. unless the loading screens are nice and pretty full of useful information about how i can kill bad guys by shooting them

 

[Pakkie]

Games need an option (for PC only I would presume) to start loading the next level, DURING THE CURRENT LEVEL.
Considering how many people are moving to quad cores, ssd's and 4+ gigs of ram it shouldn't be too hard, at least in the near future anyway.
(Consoles would probably struggle a lot with this due to their tiiiny amount of ram, Maybe next gen consoles could do something like this)

 

[mexicola]

Loading screens if they have a progress bar. And playing on powerful enough PC, elevators sometime prolong the loading just so they can play out the elevator animations.

That being said I liked the elevator and crawling loading times on Dead Space 2 enough, what I really hate is the ones used in ME where you were basically stuck in one place without the option to move so any pretence of "Oh, nothing happening here player, just a normal elevator *nudge nudge*" is completely out the window.

 

[Wolfram23]

Whatever is faster - usually loading screens.

 

[Twitchy Racoon]

You what they should do in Duke Nukem for a loading screen? A POLL DANCER. THat would be fucking perfect

 

[aaronobst]

PORTAL 2 the best of both worlds

 

[Wicky_42]

This bugged me in Portal 2 because in the original the lift was fairly plain and they had no loading screen, just the inside of the lift. You couldn't move for a little while but I thought it was much better. Although I like the glass lifts in the sequel the loading screens sort of break up the wonderful flow the first game had.

This. Portal 1 did it great - the loading stutter was so small for me on the PC I barely even noticed it. Portal 2 broke the immersion with a full-screen hammer - I was disappoint.

Mass Effect loading screens are so nearly acceptable, with all that animation. They would be ok if the 'entering FTL' or 'changing level' animations ACTUALLY MARRIED UP TO LOADING PROGRESSION - like a fully and intricately animated loading bar rather than just some pretty gif filling up the screen. Just a teensy bit of effort could have made the loading screen something of a feature and actually functional. Oh well - doubt they've changed anything for the third instalment either.

 

[GeorgW]

For ME, elevators. The loading screens there are so damn boring. But I don't know, some loading screens are both informative and funny.

 

[Rhinzual26]

I like the Soul Reaver approach. Everything is loaded as you walk through a door or similar, the only loading message you ever get is when loading a saved game. It was fluid and completely seamless.

 

[Sean0925]

I prefer to be kept in the game because it at least gives the illusion that I'm still doing something. Fifa games do this rather well in that when waiting for the game to load a match you get to play around in the arena taking shots at the keeper while you wait.

 

[aussiebee]

Elevators. They don't make it impossible to do something else while you wait for the next area; personally I go straight into steam overlay and chat to people or browse wikis or whatnot. When you have stuff like the random squadmate banter added it's even occasionally entertaining, which loading screens never are in my experience.

That said, if an elevator doesn't fit into the setting and some loading needs doing, I'd rather not have elevators/travelators in places that make utterly no sense. I just wish they'd give me a loading screen that didn't lock me out of doing ANYTHING on my computer.

 

[Owlslayer]

I wasn't bother by the elevators in ME1 at all. I actually really enjoyed them, new news all the time,s sometimes even quite funny. However, a loading bar seems so boring, just look at the bar and wait for it to fill out....yay!
So, yeah. I say: elevators!

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

I don't mind either, as long as they're interesting. Hidden loading screens can be boring, like the elevators in Mass Effect, but some can be alright, like in the God of War games, where you're at least seeing some nicely-rendered scenery as you go.

On the other hand, loading screens are abrupt and can take ages to get past, which makes hidden loading more preferable, but some examples have pretty funky loading screens, like in Devil May Cry 3, where you could attack the loading screen.

 

[mjc0961]

Loading screens by far. They don't break immersion at all. It's when they try to hide them that immersion is broken. You want to use Mass Effect as an example? Those elevator loading sequences were bad because they frequently broke immersion rather than maintained it. After all, this is a universe where we have all kinds of fun new technology like space travel and guns that have seemingly infinite bullets. But we don't have any faster method of traveling between places in a structure than elevators slower than what you'd see in real life?! The fuck is up with that?

Now, loading screens on the other hand, they're nice and honest. Obviously you will still know it's loading because it tells you "Hi, I'm loading." And you know that no matter what, it has to load. But at least with a loading screen, they aren't making some aspect of the world become totally unnatural and unfitting with the rest of the game. No matter what, loading exists and it breaks immersion, but loading screens do it less than being in a high-tech future elevator for 2 minutes.

Proberly the best way to load a game i've played in was the Metroid Prime system

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Metroid Prime had a terrible method of loading the game. Shoot a door. Wait a minute for the door to finally open, during which you have nothing to do but remember that it's a GAME and a poorly written GAME at that if you have to sit here for a minute at every door while it loads. Bam, immersion broken.

Bottom line, if you're not going to be honest and use a loading screen, you had better make damn sure your load times are short. If you don't use loading screens but your load times aren't any shorter than a game that does use a loading screen, you're only breaking immersion by making the player stand there with their thumb up their ass during a gameplay segment as they wait for the world's unnaturally slow elevators or door opening mechanisms.

 

[Veloxe]

I would say loading screens if they have a progress bar.

This. I don't know why progress bars suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth but I liked them! At least they gave me a general idea of "You are about this close to playing again" instead of sitting their staring at a shiny loading screen wondering if I'm ever going to get to play again.

Otherwise just figure out a way to integrate the loading screen into gameplay (elevators or whatever).

 

[SalamanderJoe]

I prefer interesting loading screens, like DiRT2. Or Bayonetta. Bayonetta has very good loading screens mainly because you're still playing.