Regular/chronic flashing "load screens"

Aca2017

I run the game on PC. I play in the NA realm. My current ESO is "patch 5.3.8", running on Windows 10 Pro x64/1909 (18363.752) (I check for and install OS patches regularly, several times a week). Several NVidia drivers have been in use recently, culminating in v445.75 for WIndows 10 x64, GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (I check for and install graphics drivers regularly, several times a month). This is a recently integrated system, a matter of 6 months old. Having said all of this, I play several games, none of which have any problems (i.e. this appears to be unique to ESO).

During normal game play, when I am engaged in an "idle" activity (interacting with an in-game merchant/banker/crafting station, looking at my character's inventory, or simply standing idle doing nothing), the game will switch to a load screen, without warning. It does this often, both in isolated instances, as well as repeatedly every 1-3 seconds, many times in a row. The load screen is visible for a very brief interval (less than 1 second for each instance). It does this on latency numbers under "100".

I believe this started with "Update 25", but I am not certain exactly when. It has become a severe/chronic problem this week (after one of the small updates in the past few days).

Historically, this also happens while I am moving through the game world, but in a much more isolated fashion, a single short-duration flash to a loading screen (i.e. without a repeat of the incident), perhaps once or twice an hour as I play. This less severe manifestation has been occurring for a very long period of time (since Elsweyr, at least, possibly before). It looks exactly the same, from the user's perspective.

So far, this has not happened during PvE "activity" (gathering, fighting with NPCs, etc).

This is a problem seemingly different from the problem when the 3D world disappears when the player character reaches certain locations in the game world (which has been documented elsewhere, was easy to reproduce, and in any event did not happen when engaged in an "idle" activity).

Every time this happens, it tosses me out of whatever I am doing (interacting with merchant, banker, crafting station, looking at character inventory, or moving through the game world, in which case I stop in place), which requires me to re-start the activity (including fresh keyboard input to re-initiate movement). In the past few days, this has become EXTREMELY disruptive, especially when it happens in rapid succession (often, I have only enough time to re-initiate interaction with the merchant/banker/crafting station, or open my inventory, before it happens again and tosses me out; of course, if it happens when I am standing idle, it is much less disruptive, there is no interaction to be interrupted). At its worst, in renders the game unplayable.

Connectivity between client and server is not interrupted, this manifests purely as a user interface glitch. There seem to be no relationship with how I connect to the game (directly/via VPN, wired/wireless, etc), and seems to bear no relationship with the quality of my network connection (latency, regardless of whether it is mild or severe, does not appear to induce this problem). The client is not disconnected, it just interrupts whatever I am doing in-game (including doing "nothing", no keyboard/mouse input at all), wherever I am doing it, with a loading screen, without warning and without apparent cause.

Hopefully others are experiencing this as well, and can supply additional information. Hopefully you can find a way to reproduce this and isolate the cause. Its bad news.

Update: this can also interrupt the logout process... serially for sustained periods of time. This necessitates closing the game client window, or killing the game client with the Windows task manager.

Aca2017

Update: experienced a series of the load screen flashes. just moments ago, several in rapid succession, while [trying to] doing a provisioning daily at the cooking fire in the inn in Belkarth/Craglorn. When the final load screen flash ended I was "falling through the world" (player character model in a falling animation in the middle of an empty blue sky). After several seconds of falling, I was presented another load screen, legitimate this time, and materialized at the Belkarth/Craglorn wayshrine.

I was presented with the following LUA error stack trace. I have disabled various addons, including "ESO Master Recipe List", to see if they affect the load screen flashing problem, and the problem continues. But this stack trace clearly involves that addon, so I am going to disable it and see if the problem repeats. Hopefully I can get another stack trace involving some other apparent cause, and that will teach us something.

I will also report this to the addon author.

bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table/struct expected, got nil)
stack traceback:
[C]: in function 'ipairs'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Tree/ZO_Tree.lua:259: in function 'ZO_Tree:ComputeEndOfPathControlFinalBottomOffset'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Tree/ZO_Tree.lua:293: in function 'ZO_Tree:SetScrollToTargetNode'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Tree/ZO_Tree.lua:404: in function 'ZO_Tree:SelectNode'
user:/AddOns/MasterRecipeList/MasterRecipeList.lua:3867: in function 'hookFunction'
EsoUI/Libraries/Utility/ZO_Hook.lua:18: in function 'OnOpenAnimationStopped'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Tree/ZO_Tree.lua:121: in function '(anonymous)'
[C]: in function 'Stop'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Templates/ObjectPoolTemplates.lua:9: in function 'Reset'
EsoUI/Libraries/Utility/ZO_ObjectPool.lua:159: in function 'ZO_ObjectPool:ReleaseAllObjects'
EsoUI/Libraries/ZO_Tree/ZO_Tree.lua:63: in function 'ZO_Tree:Reset'
EsoUI/Ingame/Crafting/Keyboard/Provisioner.lua:370: in function 'ZO_Provisioner:RefreshRecipeList'
user:/AddOns/MasterRecipeList/MasterRecipeList.lua:1645: in function 'func'
EsoUI/Libraries/Globals/globalapi.lua:207: in function '(anonymous)'

Aca2017

Cleaning out my saved variables seems to have reduced the frequency of this problem. But it continues, and the character of it has changed. I am now experiencing "falling through the world" incidents, and "teleporting elsewhere and floating in the world" incidents, while standing at crafting stations.

The screenshot below resulted from interacting with the upstairs blacksmith crafting station in Belkarth/Craglorn (the one against the wall, adjacent/to the right of my character as pictured, versus the one near the window). I had half a second of loading screen, and then reappeared in the depicted position. I floated in the air for a minute or so, drifing around (my UI was completely unresponsive to all keyboard and mouse input), and eventually fell off the edge of the awning and landed on the ground.



Below is a screen shot typical of "falling through the world" (captured just a couple of minutes after the above screenshot), this time while interacting with the enchanting crafting station in Belkarth/Craglorn. Again, a brief flash of loading screen, followed by falling. After a few seconds of falling, there was another flash of loading screen, and I rematerialized at the wayshrine in Belkarth/Craglorn. I am going to start selectively disabling addons, to see if I can identify any that might be affecting this problem.

ZOS_Bill

@Aca2017

Thank you for the detailed rundown of this issue and what you've tried so far to resolve it. We recommend opening a ticket with customer support for further help with this issue.

HowellQagan

I have them too but only in Craglorn so far. Not even Earthtear Cavern (same assets). But then again I also have these weird flickering textures in Craglorn (those are not new) but not in any other zone, not even in newer ones such as Elsweyr or Summerset which would surely put more strain on the GPU than just plain old Craglorn?

Cathexis

Things I would try (in this order specifically)

- Use a hardline and NOT wifi
- (With the game off) delete your shader.cooked from the ESO documents folder and start the game (faulty shader cache perhaps)
- Move your add-ons folder and test the game
- Check that your network cables are secure and that your network connection is stable (speedtest.net)
- Run a repair in the game client
- Download DDU, uninstall in safe mode, install up to date drivers directly from manufacturer website
- Update your OS/Bios
- Remove and clean your graphics card (reseating the graphics card can resolve issues as well)

Aca2017

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I also experience flickering textures in Craglorn, and this seems related to my load screen flashing/falling through the world. I will try moving my crafting efforts to a zone other than Craglorn. Summerset/Alinor has a compact crafting hub, I will give that a try.

I backed out to the latest NVidia "Studio" driver (version 442.19 for GeForce RTX; the "Studio" drivers receive additional vetting, and are supposed to be more stable). I renamed/moved aside my ESO documents folder (i.e. all addons, all saved variables, shader.cooked... everything "gone" from the perspective of the ESO client).

(Network connection is already wired, shows no problems. The system is relatively new, OS/BIOS are up to date, and NOTHING else is experiencing any problems; I doubt cleaning/reseating graphics cards will do anything meaningful, but I will try it.)

Beyond this, absolutely NOTHING ELSE on my system is experiencing any problems (this includes several other online games, and a wide variety of other applications).

The problem persists. It really looks like a problem unique to the ESO game client. If it turns out to be unique to the Craglorn zone, that would be exceptionally bizarre.

In lieu of a repair, I am reinstalling the game, and will try to persevere despite these problems.

I have opened a ticket. Past experience suggests it will take days/weeks to get through the automated response system, which will tell me repeatedly, over and over, to do all of the things I have already done, but hopefully a human will eventually respond and a useful diagnostic effort of some sort can begin.

HowellQagan

Cathexis wrote: »

Things I would try (in this order specifically)

- Use a hardline and NOT wifi
- (With the game off) delete your shader.cooked from the ESO documents folder and start the game (faulty shader cache perhaps)
- Move your add-ons folder and test the game
- Check that your network cables are secure and that your network connection is stable (speedtest.net)
- Run a repair in the game client
- Download DDU, uninstall in safe mode, install up to date drivers directly from manufacturer website
- Update your OS/Bios
- Remove and clean your graphics card (reseating the graphics card can resolve issues as well)

I'm glad someone actually came to answer with suggestions but please don't make suggestions that are obviously bs. I'm not here to create drama just would like to point out why some of these suggestions are totally unrelated.

* no wifi → this has nothing to do with this bug, textures and mid-play loading screens have nothing to do with the internet connection. If my connection is bad (I can simulate this by restricting the amount of traffic ESO's client can use) it drops me from the game completely, it won't force an environmental flicker or reload.
* shader.cooked → this is actually a good advice since the problem is obviously client side and not server
* Move your add-ons folder and test the game → may be worth a try but disabling all the addons should be the same since the game shouldn't load them then
* Check that your network cables are secure and that your network connection is stable (speedtest.net) → as mentioned above, has nothing to do with the network connection
* Run a repair in the game client → another actually good advice, already did that before commenting here, did nothing for me
* Driver update → they are up to date for me and it still happened
* OS/BIOS → don't see how this would be relevant but already done and not becuase of a glitch in ESO...
* Remove and clean your graphics card (reseating the graphics card can resolve issues as well) → I mean if it's really dirty it could help, but wouldn't it cause issues in other zones and/or other games too if it were a hardware issue?

So yeah, it's obviously a client side software issue, and probably not related to addons at all.

Aca2017

Another update:

This seems to be a "state" that the game client gets into after a period of activity. This state is entered after a random period of time after entering the game world with a character. The period of time before this state is entered is variable, but can be quite short (sometimes just a few seconds, sometimes an hour or more). Logging out of a character (i.e. leaving the game world) appears to clear the problem. Just reloading the UI (i.e. without leaving the game world) does not affect the problem. While in this state, in addition to load screen flashing, "glitches" (flashing, movement, tearing) in the rendering of supposedly stationary terrain features (rocks, primarily, especially in proximity to the sky) can be observed. Once this state is entered, the problem increases in severity until the load screen flashes occur almost continuously (every 1-5 seconds, without cease), and the game client has to be "killed" externally (there is no way to logout/quit coherently, the process is interrupted by the problem, and even simple access/traversal of the user interface dialogs involved in logging out/quitting is interrupted too regularly/often even to initiate the process).

This happens even after a clean re-install of the game. This happens, or does not happen, regardless of the presence/enabing/absence of addons. This happens even after cleaning/reseating my graphics cards. This happens on a wired network connection, with or without VPN, regardless of published latency (i.e. it happens at a latency of "60", and at a latency of "500"+, and every other degree of latency). I can identify no environmental correlation with the problem. Nothing else about the operation of my system is exhibiting problems of any kind (i.e. this is confined to the ESO game client).

So far, I have not observed this outside of Craglorn/Belkarth, not even a single occurrence (I do all my crafting and gathering in Craglorn, and at the moment with the Jubilee, I am crafting religiously on every single character, every single day, to maximize the aggregate volume of daily quest rewards from the Jubilee, so I spend a lot of time in Belkarth and have observed the problem regulary there). So far, I have observed it only while crafting or standing around idle (not actively moving through the world, as one would while travelling, gathering, questing, etc). I zip over to Southern Elsweyr every day to kill a few dragons as part of the zerg operating there, which awards a couple of event tickets as part of the Jubilee (dragons are world bosses); I have not observed it there. I have spent a few hours in Northern Elseweyr on a couple of characters the past few days, working on "Savior of Elsweyr" achievements; I have not observed it there. I do not PvP, to speak of, and so have no observations in Cyrodil to report (though one of my bucket list items is to get in there and finish collecting skyshards, and another is to clear Dolmens for achievements, so maybe I can work on some of that and see if I can reproduce these problems in Cyrodil).

At this point, I can't think of anything else to do, short of buying a duplicate separate system ($10K), and trying to reproduce that way. I am still waiting for a response to my ticket. Hopefully Zenimax will have things for me to try that will help reproduce (and even work around) the problem. Once it can be reproduced, work on a fix can begin (and if there is a workaround, it can be applied, pending a fix).

Salva_Mea

I have had the same thing in Cyrodill. I also play on the NA server (but from england) so my ping is slightly higher. I have no addons installed and have only reinstalled the game in the last 7 or 8 days as i have reactivated.

I experience all of the same issues that you have. I realise this isnt much help but youre not alone in experiencing this. I also followed all of the advice above. I thought it was just a server under load thing because there were lots of people in the pvp area at the time.

Truewavesound

I am having the same happen today in craglorn, load screens every couple of seconds.

Cathexis

HowellQagan wrote: »

Cathexis wrote: »

Things I would try (in this order specifically)

- Use a hardline and NOT wifi
- (With the game off) delete your shader.cooked from the ESO documents folder and start the game (faulty shader cache perhaps)
- Move your add-ons folder and test the game
- Check that your network cables are secure and that your network connection is stable (speedtest.net)
- Run a repair in the game client
- Download DDU, uninstall in safe mode, install up to date drivers directly from manufacturer website
- Update your OS/Bios
- Remove and clean your graphics card (reseating the graphics card can resolve issues as well)

I'm glad someone actually came to answer with suggestions but please don't make suggestions that are obviously bs. I'm not here to create drama just would like to point out why some of these suggestions are totally unrelated.

* no wifi → this has nothing to do with this bug, textures and mid-play loading screens have nothing to do with the internet connection. If my connection is bad (I can simulate this by restricting the amount of traffic ESO's client can use) it drops me from the game completely, it won't force an environmental flicker or reload.
* shader.cooked → this is actually a good advice since the problem is obviously client side and not server
* Move your add-ons folder and test the game → may be worth a try but disabling all the addons should be the same since the game shouldn't load them then
* Check that your network cables are secure and that your network connection is stable (speedtest.net) → as mentioned above, has nothing to do with the network connection
* Run a repair in the game client → another actually good advice, already did that before commenting here, did nothing for me
* Driver update → they are up to date for me and it still happened
* OS/BIOS → don't see how this would be relevant but already done and not becuase of a glitch in ESO...
* Remove and clean your graphics card (reseating the graphics card can resolve issues as well) → I mean if it's really dirty it could help, but wouldn't it cause issues in other zones and/or other games too if it were a hardware issue?

So yeah, it's obviously a client side software issue, and probably not related to addons at all.

Actually, they all do.

Wifi signals can have interference and drop off sporadically or cause latency as a result of poor connection that could prompt a load screen if content isn't loading as the player moves and interacts with the environment.

Add-ons affect the UI and could be prompting the UI to have an erroneous reload.

Faulty cables or connections can cause interference the same way wifi can.

Drivers being up to date may not necessarily mean that there wasn't a problem with the driver itself or the installation process.

OS and BIOS updates interact with the graphics card, network card and peripherals, and older versions may be missing critical updates.

As for reseating it's entirely possible that it would only affect certain areas even if it is unlikely. If for whatever reason it's an issue with graphics loading properly, anomalous graphical glitches can be unpredictable, even if they typically are not.

Troubleshooting this game doesn't have a silver bullet, and most issues arent client side, but all you can do is try client side solutions. Also this particular issue is probably to do with crag itself, but if you want to try things, these are things to try.

Aca2017

I am still waiting for a response to my ticket (going on 10 calendar days), though it continues to affect me daily, typically mere seconds after I log in.

Miraslova

Same here, I thought I was alone but apparently not. So definitely bugged.

Azirel

I have exactly the same issues in Craglorn.

Clipping and perma screens, it got so extreme I don't even bother to check the traders there as everything is getting interrupted to the level I had issues teleporting out of the zone.

Also, my tickets been ignored for a similar amount of time as yours :')

Aca2017

I went into Cyrodiil yesterday, collected Imperial City skyshards and Aldmeri Dominion skyshards (completed both of those achievements). Spent a couple of hours in the zone as a whole, and experienced no problems whatsoever. (I confined my actions to NPCs, and attacked no enemy players in the process. Enemy players were inoffensive in return, tended to ignore me, which was nice, saved me quite a bit of time.)

I received a response to my ticket. My original ticket included a link to this forum thread. They asked me whether my game reinstall affected the problem (something I had documented in this thread days before, which suggests they did not read this thread). I answered (no, it had no effect). Another 10+ days before they respond again? Hopefully their next interaction with me will be less redundant, more relevant to actually addressing the problem.

Aca2017

Went into Cyrodiil again, completed the Daggerfall Covenant skyshard achievement. This time, I experienced heavy load screen flashing, very disruptive. Had to relog repeatedly to clear it, however briefly. Regardless, it always returned, generally within 90 seconds.

So, I can confirm the Cyrodiil problem.

HowellQagan

It seems to be related to the amount of players in a zone. I've had it in other zones a couple times too but mostly Craglorn. I also keep getting it at the same time as someone else I play with in Craglorn, with a different PC setup, playing from a physically different location. Mine is Steam version, theirs is not. I have lots of addons, they have none.
Craglorn is perfectly fine during non-peak time. Then in peak time it's fine for a while, then it does a loading screen every couple minutes. Then it's every couple seconds.
It's probably good ole' memory leaking once again. Let's hope the Greymoor patch fixes it to some extent.

MilkJugg24

There have been a couple threads regarding this issue in the past month. Here is another one which also references these issues in Craglorn: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/518903/load-screen-flashes

For those of your having this issue, if you haven't already, using the in-game chat, type /bug and submit an appropriately categorized bug report for this issue. Feel free to link this thread as a reference, so the developers know what considerations to make while coming up with a solution.

The various end-user solutions I've seen suggested are a bit overkill in my opinion. If you previously were able to play the game normally, and spontaneously started having these issues, it is likely not due to addons, computer drivers, BIOS versions, etc.. The farthest I would go is re-naming your Elder Scrolls Online user folder (found in C:\Username\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online) to something else, to temporarily isolate any 3rd party and problematic settings. If the issue is still happening, revert the newly created Elder Scrolls Online folder with your old one, so your settings and addons are back to normal.

Aca2017

Apparently (see below), I received another response to my ticket. In this most recent response, they claim that they read this forum thread (finally), but AGAIN all they could do is instruct me to do things that I HAVE ALREADY DONE and documented in this forum thread... none of which had any effect on the problem.

In short, they want me to beat my head against a brick wall... a brick wall of their construction.

However, I received no email notifying me that my ticket had been updated (yes, their defect management system is itself defective... why am I not surprised?), so had no idea there was any sort of response (however blitheringly incompetent). At this point, the ticket has been closed. If I want to pursue this, I will have to open ANOTHER ticket, and initiate Zenimax's so-called "customer service" process all over again.

That's right: more senseless conflict with a brick wall.

My conclusion: my attempts to document this problem and facilitate a solution appear to have been a complete waste of time. Zenimax has demonstrated very clearly that they have absolutely NO CAPACITY, much less the interest, to support their own product. Why did I bother?

Being treated like this makes me angry.

So now it seems it is time to decide whether I want to continue with this game. I have no choice but to ask myself: is there any reason to purchase or pay subscription fees for defective products the manufacturer is clearly not prepared to support? Beyond that, the "customer support" process itself is a defect-ridden time-sink and source of frustration. Is there any utility to me that justifies this? Again, why should I bother? I am having difficulty answering these questions.

Unfortunate, but it seems like it is time to face the facts.

MilkJugg24

@Aca2017

I completely agree with you. Its been an interesting couple of weeks checking-in on this forum. There are a lot of people having issues, and hardly any developers are around to ask technical questions, take DirectX Diagnostic information, anything.

Other companies or developers would have at least acknowledged this as a known issue, and addressed it more clearly. I feel like there's a conglomerate of problems that are all at the fault of ZeniMax's internal systems.

I kind of feel bad for the support ticket team, because it's probably super hectic trying to fix all of these problems that they shouldn't be dealing with anyways.

If you do not feel comfortable playing the game in its current state, then it's more than fair to stop paying and playing. I wish we knew more information about what's going on internally. There are so many bugs that have existed since launch in this game. It's kind of mind-boggling how disjointed the community is with the developers of this game.

jivefly

I'm having the exact same issue. Visual glitches, texture flashing and stretching across the screen, and the loading screen flashing onto the screen at random intervals. I have a VERY fast internet connection due to running a business from home, with both 1000+MB/s up and down, so it's not an issue of internet stability. My system is also fairly top notch, in that I'm running the following:

CPU • 3900X
AIO • Enermax LiqMax III
GPU • EVGA RTX 2080 Super
RAM • 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3600 CL16
M.2 • Sabrent Rocket 500GB PCIe 4 NVMe
SSD • Samsung 960 EVO 2TB (game drive)
HDD • WD Black 6TB
PSU • EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2
MOBO • ASUS Strix X570-E Gaming

I'm running the latest chipset and graphics drivers. I think I might try going back one version on the GPU driver and see if that might help, but still. This makes the game completely unplayable. I'll be talking to a quest giver and this loading screen will flash up, and it'll kill the dialog completely, and I will have missed out on everything the quest giver was saying, with no recourse for speaking about it again.

jivefly

The issues I'm having are also in Craglorn. They're BAD. I can't even open the map, because the constant loading screen flashing onto the screen closes any menu I open. It's insanity. I can't even begin to play this game like this, and I came back after years to give it a shot. Oh well.

Itzmichi

Yeah have the same issues, but I started having them after I upgraded my GPU to a Nvidia RTX 2080ti,before i never had that issue.

Speccs:

AMD Ryzen 9 3950x
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
32 GB G.Skill F4-4000 DDR4
2 x NVMe Samsung SSD 970 500GB/1TB

Its not happening all the time, was just wandering around craglorn earlier and now i happen to fall through the map and have the flickering / constant loading screens one after another.

HowellQagan

Today's update:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Fixed an issue with unnecessary loading screens showing up while moving across some areas. This was particularly prevalent in Craglorn.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6921086/#Comment_6921086