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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#211

Post by birracerveza »

darylteo wrote: post #165
terafo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game was out for almost EIGHT YEARS by the time this bug was fixed. There can be no reasonable explanation for them not fixing that. 5 minute load every time you try to go into multiplayer. The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. This bug was a reason why I never played GTA online, for example.

Performance issues are one of those things that are easily waved off with broad explanations like "well there's a lot of assets to download", "their internet connection may be slow" etc. it may not have been clear to anyone at that stage that it was a "bug".

If was the number one complaint about the game. R* is one of the biggest studios around. It would have cost them nothing to just hire a developer whose only task is to hound down that bug and fix it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#212

Post by baby »

asdff wrote: post #149
baby wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From personal experience I can't disagree more with you. I tend to play video games that have less loading time and tutorials because I just don't have the time to play and when I want to play I don't want to sit and wait for what will be mostly a 10-20min session.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#214

Post by terafo »

belter wrote: post #203
terafo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game was out for almost EIGHT YEARS by the time this bug was fixed. There can be no reasonable explanation for them not fixing that. 5 minute load every time you try to go into multiplayer. The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. This bug was a reason why I never played GTA online, for example.

GTA Online player count statistics indicate 2.5 million GTA Online players every month. A reduction in total waiting time for all the players of 18.5 years every month.

That's assuming each player only logs once in a month, which is definitely not the case.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#215

Post by terafo »

darylteo wrote: post #165
terafo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game was out for almost EIGHT YEARS by the time this bug was fixed. There can be no reasonable explanation for them not fixing that. 5 minute load every time you try to go into multiplayer. The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. This bug was a reason why I never played GTA online, for example.

Performance issues are one of those things that are easily waved off with broad explanations like "well there's a lot of assets to download", "their internet connection may be slow" etc. it may not have been clear to anyone at that stage that it was a "bug".

It could've been waved off if there wasn't single player part of that same game that loaded few times faster.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#216

Post by terafo »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #204
terafo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game was out for almost EIGHT YEARS by the time this bug was fixed. There can be no reasonable explanation for them not fixing that. 5 minute load every time you try to go into multiplayer. The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. This bug was a reason why I never played GTA online, for example.

That no one on the team maintaining the game looked into it likely means they don’t play the live game themselves. Developers and managers on up the chain. Understandable given the heavy crunch it sounds like Rock Star works in. If you’re a developer spending 60+ hours a week working on it, you’re not going to play that in the few personal hours left over.

Your argument is a valid reason why this bug wasn't fixed when the game was first released. But no crunch lasts 8 years. And complaint about loading times were everywhere for all this time.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#217

Post by terafo »

badlucklottery wrote: post #163
terafo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game was out for almost EIGHT YEARS by the time this bug was fixed. There can be no reasonable explanation for them not fixing that. 5 minute load every time you try to go into multiplayer. The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. This bug was a reason why I never played GTA online, for example.

>The amount of revenue lost to that one single bug is staggering. The players who are still there are used to it so the value is likely near zero. It's the sort of thing that's 100% worth fixing before launch or soon after so you don't lose players in the first place. But the fix loses value every day it goes unfixed because you're already lost those load time-sensitive players. Keep in mind that years after release…

It is definitely non-zero, I think since the launch of game the number of revenue lost to this single bug is in tens, possibly hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering that game made somewhere around 10 billions USD, 1-2% of total revenue lost to loading time seems plausible, given how horrible the problem was.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#219

Post by belter »

terafo wrote: post #214
belter wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTA Online player count statistics indicate 2.5 million GTA Online players every month. A reduction in total waiting time for all the players of 18.5 years every month.

That's assuming each player only logs once in a month, which is definitely not the case.

I was trying to make the fact nobody decided to fix it for years, less outrageous that it is...

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#220

Post by logifail »

shultays wrote: post #207
chii wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying organizational problem then becomes the fact that performance isn't priority number 1. I would suspect that if the perf was taken seriously, some time spent on profiling would immediately reveal this issue.

It is (probably) taken seriously, I am sure they were pushing things to limit to render just one more car or have a one more AI etc. My assumption the loading times just somehow slipped off and no one thought it was a solvable problem or it is just loading performance is not taken as seriously

> My assumption the loading times just somehow slipped off and no one thought it was a solvable problem or it is just loading performance is not taken as seriously

That does sounds like awfully like confirming that indeed no-one was curious, because they were too busy chasing KPIs or whatever other metrics management were using.

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