Comment by mdoms
5 years ago
Me and my twice-a-week gaming group enjoyed GTA V but abandoned it years ago simply because of the load times. We have 2x short slots (90-120 minutes) each week to play and don't want to waste them in loading screens.
We all would have picked this game back up in a second if the load times were reduced. Although I must say even with the same results as this author, 2 minutes is still too long. But I'll bet that, given the source code, there are other opportunities to improve.
I wonder if a paid subscription would have fixed this? If you left a paid MMO, they'd probably ask you to fill out an exit survey, and you could say "I'm canceling because load times are terrible", which would (hopefully) raise the priority of reducing load times. But since GTA online is "free", there's not a single exit point where they can ask "why did you stop playing".
Gta has made billions off of its shark card micro transaction system. So the incentives are probably pretty similar for player retention. Granted, the players leaving over load times are probably not the players who are invested enough to spend thousands in micro transactions.
That's my point though, you don't get to survey people not buying the microtransaction because they quit due to terrible load times, whereas you could survey people who cancel a subscription. I guess they could still gather data by reading reviews, looking through forums / Reddit / whatever, and tallying up complaints, though.