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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#141

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

blowski wrote: post #135
s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this. This is the definition of a flippant comment. Why should society require we become the lord of our own domain or a political chameleon just so that we can advocate for decent standards? Should people who live on flood plains "just move" when the tide comes in? Ridiculous. Understanding the bigger p…

What makes you think they didn’t understand the developers’ point of view? Maybe they understood it, but didn’t agree with it.

> Give me a PM (or good engineer) that understands the bigger picture every time.

I was referring to this sentence: you're now telling us that the ideal good engineer understands the developer's point of view but doesn't agree with it. It sounds like you just want to be surrounded by yes men to me. The perfect recipe for a failed startup.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#142

Post by p49k »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #39
blibble wrote: post #10

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

Think about how many human lifetimes worth of extra minutes were wasted from everyone waiting for this x number of players X years this has been a problem. Even if you can’t implement bubble sort on a whiteboard in your sleep, 5+ minute load times should have been setting off alarm bells in many engineers heads. I’m sure this did actually cost R* real money. Bounce rates for websites increase 32% for 1s vs 3s load ti…

Your comment reminded me of this:

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#143

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

pdimitar wrote: post #140
blowski wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an extremely false dichotomy. There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this. I’ve worked around too many startups ruled by developers. They’re being run into the ground because those developers think technical NFRs as defined by them are the be all and end all. They’re not. Those same developers will happily spend months fiddling with…

Even if your parent comment presented false dichotomy, you responding with the other extreme isn't convincing. As a senior programmer I respect business priorities and I don't go fixing technical debt for months. That being said, we the people suck at moderation. See, the problem I faced was exactly the opposite of what you encountered: I've been too accommodating and allowed myself to be micro-managed to the point o…

Exactly. Managers are there to facilitate people and communication, business leaders are there to facilitate capital and strategic vision, engineers actually make the thing and master the detail in the process. Good businesses learn to listen: not just to their customers, but also to their domain experts.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#144

Post by foobarian »

sreekotay wrote: post #113
s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw this. Developers should advocate for their craft and for quality, and business metrics should hold an adversarial position to balance things out. We definitely should not be accepting the narrative that developers just do what they are told and don't push back on what we know is good for product - we are in a unique position of power, we should recognise this and use it for the betterment of the industry as a w…

Very much agree with this. That said given the quality of what they have put out, I'd surmise the issue here is morelikely they don't feel the same pain on load times? Bandwidth too good, rigs too powerful, dev envs overpowered, etc. to enable developer velocity can often also mask real world problems. Hell, even hot reload can mean you don't see load as often and are able to easily rationalize as "not that big a dea…

I don't know, this seems like it was a pure CPU problem on good hardware. But anyway a developer who has 10 hour days and backlog stretching beyond the horizon will not have idle time to go try things out. It needs to be someone's explicit job to go hunt down things like this.

And given it was data-size dependent, I wouldn't be surprised this was not an issue at the start while someone who's job it was to look for this kind of issue was looking. And the issue appeared after they got retasked to something else.

In fact maybe this is the only kind of issue that you end up with after all is said and done. Just like in WW2 they reinforced the parts of the fuselage on returning fighter craft without bullet holes, because if a bullet hit there, the craft would not return.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#146

Post by jml7c5 »

asdff wrote: post #117
seanp2k2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how many human lifetimes worth of extra minutes were wasted from everyone waiting for this x number of players X years this has been a problem. Even if you can’t implement bubble sort on a whiteboard in your sleep, 5+ minute load times should have been setting off alarm bells in many engineers heads. I’m sure this did actually cost R* real money. Bounce rates for websites increase 32% for 1s vs 3s load ti…

We are in the era where its impossible to be bored. In the elevator? Phone out on instagram. Loading screen? Same thing. Instant dopamine the minute you need a drip. The playerbase clearly doesn't care. To be honest, these loading screen times are as bad as they've always been for console games (especially considering it was only a generation ago that they ran off a disc).

From complaints I saw online, users emphatically cared. It was a common complaint, and some users would report that the load times would deter them from playing the game.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#147

Post by jgust »

sassy_quat wrote: post #71
jrlowe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It takes intense systemic conditioning to suppress their natural curiosity. Yep, the public school system in America excels at squelching curiosity and any desire to learn.

Just to be clear, you are saying, matter of factly, that the whole point of the American education system, is to suppress free thought. You better tell Congress, the last thing they want is for America to fall into totalitarianism.

I found this on the ground, did you drop it?

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#148

Post by tshaddox »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103
blowski wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should developers necessarily be trying to cut loading times? Perhaps GTA is phenomenally successful because they have good BAs and POs who are able to identify and convince engineers to work on what matters to the bottom line.

Screw this. Developers should advocate for their craft and for quality, and business metrics should hold an adversarial position to balance things out. We definitely should not be accepting the narrative that developers just do what they are told and don't push back on what we know is good for product - we are in a unique position of power, we should recognise this and use it for the betterment of the industry as a w…

> Developers should advocate for their craft and for quality, and business metrics should hold an adversarial position to balance things out.

What makes you think this isn't the case? Business metrics holding an adversarial position over other interests obviously doesn't preclude business metrics defeating other interests.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#149

Post by asdff »

baby wrote: post #124
asdff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably nothing. Loading times in rockstar games on consoles have always been this bad. GTA4 was just as bad too.

You're probably wrong. I remember e-commerces trying to quantify how many millions of dollars they would lose when clicking would take too much time on their websites. EDIT: things like https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cos... > Amazon’s calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google has calculated that by slowing its search results…

That's ecommerce. This is a video game and a unique one at that, so there are other factors at play. I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." There could even be a bullwhip effect, a long load time might make you want to stay playing for a longer period of time.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#150

Post by [deleted] »

Tarragon wrote: post #136
lostgame wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I wanted to call you out for just being an asshole, but seriously - is this account just a bot? And who cares about karma on HN?

Both things can be true. There's clearly a bot here but ddtaylor has commented on this thread, so there's also a person in there somewhere.

[deleted]
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