About the Locking-In Timer...

(Hunterwclf) #1

Hello everybody. I’m fairly certain that every single one of you don’t really like the Locking-in timer.

So let’s talk about it.

What is the Locking In timer?
When you join a server that’s already in game you’ll have to wait an extra 15 seconds after you loaded in to get into the action.

Why is it there?
It leaves time for everyone to load your different loadout cards (mercs/skins) and for you to load theirs.
It’s meant to be somewhat long to give slow-end pcs time to load them in.

Can’t we just skip it?
Yes, there are a couple ways to do so, but it’ll lead to some errors. Mercs with wrong loadout skins most of the time.

I have a couple ideas :

Spectate the game during locking in.
Even with weird camos, it would be both useful and entertaining to see how well our team is doing.

Do it BRINK style
BRINK used to load in default skins at first and switch to the actual ones when they were loaded.

Load everything that’s needed during loading time.

What do you think? I’ll love to have some devs answer to this aswell.
Thanks for reading all this!
Have a cookie !

(frostyvampire) #2

Spectating could be nice but the missing textures would be annoying and your game will be laggy (at least it is for me when not everything is loaded). But it’s better than waiting 15 seconds doing nothing

Loading everything that’s needed during loading time is not possible (I think) because the game can’t know which loadouts and mercs you will use. And loading all the 20 mercs (I counted Turtle) with all the ~15 skins (I don’t know how many skins there are exactly so don’t correct me on the number) for each one of them might be a bit too much.

BRINK style sounds great. But I’m pretty sure it will still cause some lag while all the skins load, imagine you look at a Skyhammer and then suddenly all his clothes change to shiny blue ones.

(Hunterwclf) #3

Example of what happens if you skip the locking in timer

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/144508080740369694/701183614417719BCE14A05BD5703CA3931FD93F/

(Chris Mullins) #4

It’s a valid point and something we want to address by improving the game flow (insert comment about Casual Matchmaking here).

As @FrostyVampire says, if you went straight to spectate you’d see a lot of broken stuff and it doesn’t give off a good image to the player. Veteran players wouldn’t mind, but if you were new to the game you’d be confused and think your PC or game was dying.

As for loading in default skins it’s a cool idea, but that doubles the amount of items that would need to be loaded so sadly wouldn’t resolve the issue. They could be loaded during the map loading for example, but the cost of that versus getting into the game quicker, it wouldn’t be worth it.

It would be cool to load everything before you get into game during the map loading screen, but at that point your own Mercs and Loadouts haven’t been locked in and could change so other players would still need to load those. Also by allowing that extra time reduces/eliminates lag spikes players could get when loading your assets and no one’s a fan of hitches.

(Mc1412013) #5

Needs an ssd mode for us ssd users im usualy first in map waiting for every one else to load up. Maybe people with fast drives could have one of the discused options

(ZGToRRent) #6

@stayfreshshoe How about variable in shootergame.ini where we can change deploy time to something smaller? So new players will use 15 secs as default, but veterans and especially ssd users will have option to change the time.

(Herr_Hanz) #7

we can do what Battlefield Heroes did, people would show up with default skins, and skins would be loaded while you were spawning in after dying

(Szakalot) #8

this is probably the most veteran-friendly option.

the only issue is that the new players might still see the blue-skin veteran joining in

(Mc1412013) #9

I got it. Remember the old days of flash player(yes im an 80’s/90’s kid). when you loaded a long cartoon it some times had some cheesey game to pass the time simce they took a whilento load on 56k modems. How about while its loading the stuff it pops up a cheesy game like dodge the sticky or wheres the phantom(wheres waldo) or hit the concentric rings made out of paper while not hiting the yogurt.

(Teflon Love) #10

The thing I find most annoying about the 15 seconds is that they seem to be arbitrary and don’t work for either side. People with fast computers have to wait unnecessarily long while people with potato rigs still won’t be finished loading.

So even if the lobby was a proper 6vs6 the first spawn wave might be a 4 vs 2 because one team had more potatoes than the other.

I’d find it more useful if the round only starts once a player threshold from the lobby has been reached, e.g. both teams have 4 players. After that, schedule the remaining players in pairs once each side has one more player finished loading, gradually increasing to 5vs5 and then 6vs6.

If everyone has a fast rig, the game starts after 5 seconds. On a potato infested server, you might as well have to wait 30 seconds.