My Chat is Gone

Shawn_PT · October 23

As wel all know, ESO instances are known for getting notoriously more unstable and riddled with bugs the more times a group wipes on them.

Last night I went into a vet DLC dungeon. Some players hadn't done it in a while, didn't remember mechanics, we wiped a few times on Moon Hunter Keep. Then things started to become bad.

From skills not firing, to mechs completely broken (the whole group being instantly wiped even though everyone was standing on the right/safe symbols, enemies just killing people with no telegraph or animations displayed).

Then the bread-and-butter issue came around. During the fight, a little message pops up on the middle of the screen telling me a quest/action Failed because I've logged OFF. Sure thing, my character vanishes from the game and I have to force-quit because I'm stuck in a frozen game that refuses to acknowledge it has kicked me out.

This happens twice. After I log back in for the second time, my chat box is broken. The box itself is there. I can see my tabs. It looks like a regular empty chat box after a clear log in. However the typing box is about 5 pixels tall, it doesn't show anywhere where the current channel is (Like Say or Zone) and it doesn't allow me to pick one either. I can see a minuscule flashing cursor, but I have no idea whether what I type shows up or not.

Cannot see what other group members type because nothing shows up on the chat at all. Even the chat bubbles that appear on top of other characters when they write something , show up completely black.

Now. I have tried all things I can think about and the issue persists.

Relogged/Quit/Restarted PC.

Turned off all addons.

Removed all addons.

Repaired game.

Uninstalled game, restarted my PC, installed it again.

Completely removed the Documents folder containing Live, ESO_BUILD_BRANCH, and allowed the game to build a new one upon start.

Nothing has worked. I still cannot use the chat at all.

I have however logged into an alt account. And this one is working fine. I don't understand what's going on, and at this point I have no more ideas on what to try to fix this issue. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: forgot to add it only happens with TWO of my characters, the one I was playing last night, and the one I logged into to check if it was an account-wide issue. All the others are fine.

loosej · October 23

I had a similar issue with chat recently. Wasn't able to figure out what caused it (I assume an addon), but all my chat settings were wiped. Under settings/social, font size was set to zero and all channels were set to black. The "fix" was to just reset chat settings for all characters. I also thought it was happening for just one character, but it turned out that the settings got messed up when logging out, so there's a chance the character you used to check if it was account-wide will have the issue next time you log in.

You'll probably also need to check the different tabs in your actual chat window, good chance every channel on every tab is deactivated.

Shawn_PT · October 23

I was skeptical at first but that's it. You are totally correct. My text size has been changed to zero (technically it says "8") and all channels show up as color=Black.

Thank you so much for that heads up. We can add "game will totally bork up your chat font after it's done borking up your dungeon run" to the list.

loosej · October 24

Just logged in to the same issue again...

If you happen to figure out what causes it, could you post it here? Having to set things up again for each individual character was bad enough the first time, really not looking forward to this being a regular thing...

Shawn_PT · October 25

Well I have been kicked from the game in a DLC dungeon's final boss again last night while the boss was at 1%, everyone else was dead, and I was just a split second from managing to resurrect someone. You should have heard the screams of frustration. But it only happened once (after that we nuked the boss fueled by nothing but pure rage) and the bug did not repeat itself. Luckily.

First time it happened was exactly after being kicked from the server mid-fight and having to force-quit the game, otherwise I'd sit there for a while, having everyone else stare at the wall while the game made up its mind and placed me back on the log-on screen.

Were you forced to Alt+F4 out of it? Maybe that's what messes up the settings.

I have changed the .ini settings so that force quitting and starting the game again is faster than waiting for a log out because as soon as I click the icon, I'm in the log in screen. No Bethesda, Havok, blah blah blah press any key to advance screens. But I doubt that's the cause.

loosej · October 25

I wouldn't call it forced, but I did exit using Alt+F4 the night before. I was already annoyed after entering Cyro and seeing what a sad sight it was, and when the game claims I'm not allowed to log out at a time like that I'm pretty quick to force quit. My pc, my power bill, I'm allowed to do what I want with it.

So far it looks like only that one character was affected this time, so it's definitely possible that force quit was a factor. But the first time I had the issue with nearly all my characters, and I'd logged out the regular way on all of them. The only exceptions were a few characters who run a minimal amount of addons, just enough for daily writs, so I'm still thinking that one of them is the root of the issue.

I'll make sure to update this thread if I ever figure out how to avoid it, but fingers crossed that it won't be necessary.

Oh and a side note on the topic of force quitting: Windows has an optional feature that lets you kill a process by right clicking it in the taskbar. I'll sometimes get stuck on a loading screen, with Alt+F4 not registering, and no way to Alt-tab to a different window. The taskbar will become visible at those times, but the eso loading screen will still be rendered on top of the active window. I'd be able to start task manager but it would be invisible, so now way to kill the process from there.

You can activate the feature under windows settings > system > for developers > end task, after doing so you can always get out of the game like this:

freespirit · October 25

My son told me very recently that you can set Task Manager to always appear on top of everything......

Makes life so much easier, I had no idea!! 🤣

loosej · October 25

freespirit wrote: »

My son told me very recently that you can set Task Manager to always appear on top of everything......

Makes life so much easier, I had no idea!! 🤣

Thanks for the advice, I also didn't know about that option!