Hi all, took a break from LM3 Scare Scraper running and just came back recently. Noticed when I've been doing my runs the game takes about 25 seconds on my timer to load to first cutscene while other runs I've watched range from 14-16. The only thing I can think of is that I'm playing on digital and I imagine many are playing on cartridge but I wanted to see if there was anything to that theory. For any active Scare Scraper runners are you playing on cartridge and is there any knowledge of how to speed up load times?

Hi Parachu, 25 sec sounds average and I usually get about the same loading time. Sometime it takes very long. because the game need to place a lot of ghosts in a lot of different rooms... that is what i heard! I hope you get more clarify answer from experts. I also play on digital.

Update to this post. I did some testing with a friend of mine who has a physical copy and they had a 14 second load time. It seems as though the physical cartridge is about 50 seconds faster on a 5 floor run.

It may also apply to multiplayer runs if any member has a digital copy since when my friend and I did multiplayer, no matter who hosted, we had a 25 second load time.

Why this happens I genuinely do not know but all signs point to a physical cartridge having faster loads. If anyone has information on the contrary please let me know.

Update #2

I bought a physical cartridge of LM3. The time from the countdown ending to the Scarescraper intro cutscene is down to about 20 seconds from 25-26 before. I timed Groundhog's 16:07 run for comparison and the same timing only took 14 seconds. With no other changes the physical version does seem to be about 5-6 seconds faster per floor.

After a lot of testing including messing with system settings and downloading the dlc neither of which did anything, I moved the player data to be stored on the console instead of on my microSD which got me down to 14 seconds.

Also for some reason the system sleep settings seem to have some effect on load times. Using never sleep as a baseline, 1hr can add anywhere from no time to 4 seconds. 2hr can add anywhere from no time to 2 seconds. I haven't tested any others but never sleep seems to be the fastest option. However I will note that this only saved time on my switch with an initial 21 second load time. My friend who has a 14 second load time saw no substantial impact.

Finally my friend and I went back into multiplayer to test the timing. Our load times were 30, 14, 12, 13 ,12 for each floor. Before changing my settings we got a 25, 22, 20, 20, 19. None of these factor the results screen in between floors which take about 10 seconds each and don't seem to be affected by load times. It seems like you can make your multiplayer loads faster if all players have faster single player load times but it's less consistent.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Howdy.

I conducted some tests with Jennuflect on the matter. I own a Physical copy, they own of a Digital copy. My copy is the on switch itself, their's is on the SD card. Both on version 1.4, without costumes, and the same general geographical location.

Entering the Scarescraper solo, after about 40 total tests (20 for each of us, 10 using local option and 10 using online option, remaining solo), we both came to around the same general loading time.

Timing: As soon as the game screen starts zooming in after the 0:00 countdown, to just as the purple fog begins to lift to reveal the hotel.

For local, mine was an average low of 13 seconds, theirs was an average low of 14 seconds. We both had an average high of 17 seconds.

For online, both of ours were an average of 15 seconds. We both had highs reach as much as 25, as well.

Note, that there could be slight discrepancy in how both of us timed our loads, but we tried to coordinate it as best as possible, I wouldn't expect more than a 0.5-1.0 second discrepancy.

This tells me that there MIGHT be an ever so slight difference between owning a physical vs. digital version of the game, however it seems to be no more than a second or so per floor should this be a fact. Similarly, it would appear being on SD vs. Console shouldn't matter much at all, given the previous concern that SD may be slower, since it appears despite my being Physical+Console, and Jennuflect's Digital+SD, our differences again are merely a second at best. Despite this statement though, I believe there can be another reason for the loads being different at all.

What I am lead to believe is going on regarding higher loading times is various factors, such as simple RNG on the room generation, the health of the console and/or SD card, the connectivity to the Nintendo servers, and if physical, the health of the cartridge. These are all factors that can impede on loading given the nature of ScareScraper. Connectivity is what I presume to be the largest culprit, as whoever has the slowest connection should naturally make everyone else wait longer as well. Jennu and I are very near each other, relatively speaking, so our connection strengths should be similar and thus may have helped lead to the similar load times on the Online testing, but you never know what else may be going on as you try to connect to the servers, and what may be a good connection one day can be bad the next. When you did your tests, was anyone else in your home also using the internet at any point?

Overall, it would seem we have conflicting data. Yours seems to show there is a very clear discrepancy, while mine shows there is practically none. I would be lead to believe that in an isolated environment of just purely Physical over Digital, there is no difference, but whatever else factors that may exist on a person-to-person and console-to-console basis can greatly change things.