Drobot Dean - stock.adobe.com Gamers revisiting expansive titles on modern hardware find that the elimination of load times fundamentally alters gameplay loops and immersion far more than visual upgrades. A recent post on r/patientgamers sparks a deep dive into this phenomenon, with one redditor observing: "Faster loadings can completely transform experience with the game." They continued: I'm probably not discovering America here but It just occurred to me as I started playing Fallout 4 on the PS5. I played some of this game before but now when I switch from open world to interiors and vice versa almost instantly, I like the game so much more. Its more than qol, it makes it that much closer to a real open world. It literally makes me want to play it 10x more. In the thread, gamers discuss how instantaneous transitions breathe new life into older, segmented worlds. The open-world game-changer Ideally in a game, you want to be able to hop in and out of buildings immediately. It turns out that removing that layer of friction makes people want to explore more, rather than dreading the next door they have to open. Comment in r/patientgamers I had the same experience replaying the original Half-Life recently. It used to be that 'Loading...' broke up the play, but now it's a sub-second thing that I barely noticed. Comment in r/patientgamers I'm playing through Fallout 3 on my PC for the first time since I played the 360 version at launch. Having virtually no loading times between zones is a literal game changer for me. Comment in r/patientgamers I played Bugsnax on the PS4. The load times in that version were bad, much longer than in the PC/PS5 version. They were so annoying that it had an effect on how I played, like "that quest tells me to go to the beach and catch a bugsnak, but that's four loading screens away, so I'm gonna wait until there are some more reasons to go in that direction". So much time back We all have war stories about staring at a black screen long enough to contemplate our life choices. It's wild to look back at how much time we wasted waiting for a texture to pop in during the early 2000s. Comment in r/patientgamers Man we waited half hours to play morrowind on the Xbox Comment in r/patientgamers I can brush my teeth and get a snack while waiting for gta4 to start on the ps3 back in the day lol Comment in r/patientgamers Child of the 80s here. I remember when you'd literally start loading a commodore game at dinner time, go have dinner, then it might be ready to play when you came back. I've no idea how I had the patience for that, but I guess that's just how it was.Nowadays anything more than about 20 seconds and I'm ready to bin the whole thing off. The downsides of speed Believe it or not, there is a weird downside to instant gratification. Sometimes you miss the lore tips, or the pacing feels off because you do not get that mental breather. Plus, some modern games seem to be sliding back into bloat territory. Comment in r/patientgamers Another downside to this is for games with tips / instructions on their loading screens. Nowadays they disappear so fast you don't have a chance to read them. Comment in r/patientgamers i don't think loading times ever mattered to me. Maybe older games conditioned me to be okay with minutes of loading if needed I will feel impressed at fast loading, like Ghost of Tsushima, but it's not something that makes a difference to me. If anything some loading screens are too fast for me, i don't want to start playing in seconds. Sometimes i want to start up then go take a pee or grab something, throw out some junk, anything Even with my SSD i only put games on it that actually benefit from it during actual gameplay, not just loading times. It's a waste of space that could be used for games that demand it. 5 seconds or 50 seconds, no difference Comment in r/patientgamers Another downside to this is for games with tips / instructions on their loading screens. Nowadays they disappear so fast you don't have a chance to read them. Comment in r/patientgamers I sometimes get the opposite experience when loading screens contain gameplay information that I now can’t read in the 0.75 seconds they display. “Old save files are automatically deleted so if you…” Wait - what did that say?? While it's harder to break away for a snack, the era of staring at progress bars is one nostalgia trip we are happy to leave behind. Jump into the comments and tell us which game was saved for you by an SSD upgrade. Want more gaming takes like this? Read more opinions in r/patientgamers, or explore similar communities like r/TrueGaming and r/GamingSuggestions. This story highlights the perspectives of Reddit users, not Reddit, Inc. Some posts or comments may be lightly edited for clarity. Questions or concerns? Contact us at upvoted@reddit.com.