Why is logging in/zoning so slow?

Tinolyn

PC/NA.

All of my characters are incredibly slow to log in, and to zone. We're talking several minutes... first to log in from the home screen, then for the "character load." And sometimes zoning is a real long wait too.

Can you look into this?

AMD FX 8350
8GB Ram
1 TB HDD
GTX 960

Tinolyn

That includes logging out when switching to another character, also.

susmitds

Tinolyn wrote: »

AMD FX 8350

There is your issue right there.

Being a former user of the same processor, my overall gaming experience was pretty sour the last two years or so. The processor did not date well, shared primary resources like FPU between cores causing bad bottlenecks in modern games, which have an adverse effect on both loading and runtime. Also, majority of the games are just not optimized for the FX series in general.

Swapped to Intel i7 8350k and no issues right now. AMD Ryzen series also offers great performance, afaik.

Perwulf

Connection issues and server response time are also to blame.

This is what I hate in ESO because loading screens are still server dependent that even if you're pc specs are NASA grade, it'll still be very slow when slowing down/disconnection occurs.

Darcwolf

These answers are all bs. Please tell me how my 8700k, 1080ti, 16gb 3200mhz ram and a samsung evo 960 on a gigabit connection are slowing down my connection. My ping tests never run more than 7ms and I have no packet loss, in game I average about 117ms. This is something on ZOS side that they will never fix.

It doesn't matter what pc I'm on, what connection, it's always bad.

rabidmyers

Darcwolf wrote: »

These answers are all bs. Please tell me how my 8700k, 1080ti, 16gb 3200mhz ram and a samsung evo 960 on a gigabit connection are slowing down my connection. My ping tests never run more than 7ms and I have no packet loss, in game I average about 117ms. This is something on ZOS side that they will never fix.

It doesn't matter what pc I'm on, what connection, it's always bad.

haha true

Asardes

Two things that have made a huge difference for me:
1) Installing the game on a separate SSD has cut my load times a great deal since I have a relatively slow HDD.
2) Reducing the number of addons loaded per character - I have turned most off from the account menu then selectively turned on some on each char depending what I play. The biggest offender is by far MM and that adds 30-60s of load screens for the only character that has it on compared to the others.
3) The location - large locations with lots of buildings load noticeably slower than those with less, all other things being the same. I've chosen to keep all my characters in a less crowded town.
4) The number of players online - this is actually mostly server side. My morning logins (hirelings, research tracking) are noticeably faster than my evening ones, on the same characters.

Hamrb

something that has helped many guildys of mine is to make sure not to log out in heavily populated areas. i have some friends that loathe logging into mounhold deshaan, but have no trouble in a place like the outskirts of malabal tor

chaz

Tinolyn wrote: »

PC/NA.

All of my characters are incredibly slow to log in, and to zone. We're talking several minutes... first to log in from the home screen, then for the "character load." And sometimes zoning is a real long wait too.

Can you look into this?

AMD FX 8350
8GB Ram
1 TB HDD
GTX 960

susmitds wrote: »

Tinolyn wrote: »

AMD FX 8350

There is your issue right there.

Being a former user of the same processor, my overall gaming experience was pretty sour the last two years or so. The processor did not date well, shared primary resources like FPU between cores causing bad bottlenecks in modern games, which have an adverse effect on both loading and runtime. Also, majority of the games are just not optimized for the FX series in general.

Swapped to Intel i7 8350k and no issues right now. AMD Ryzen series also offers great performance, afaik.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv14PrXjAcU

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-8350-vs-AMD-FX-4350/1489vs2880

RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Intel® Core i5 2300 or AMD FX4350
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 2GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750 or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850) or higher
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 85 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card

Wavek

Do you have addons? If so, have you turned them all completely OFF (uncheck them from character select screen) to see if that speeds it up? I know that if I turn them off loading a character is much faster.

UPrime

It's server load. Before the end I was loading very fast when pop was low. Now everyone is logging in and zoning all over the place and it's super slow.

Shadowshire

susmitds wrote: »

Tinolyn wrote: »

AMD FX 8350

There is your issue right there.

Being a former user of the same processor, my overall gaming experience was pretty sour the last two years or so. The processor did not date well, shared primary resources like FPU between cores causing bad bottlenecks in modern games, which have an adverse effect on both loading and runtime. Also, majority of the games are just not optimized for the FX series in general.

Swapped to Intel i7 8350k and no issues right now. AMD Ryzen series also offers great performance, afaik.

Although I do not question or disagree with your remarks, FWIW, the AMD FX-4350 or higher is in the Bethesda/ZOS recommended system requirements.

PC Recommended System Requirements (quoted and re-formatted as a forum list):

1. Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
2. Processor: Intel® Core i5 2300 or AMD FX4350
3. System RAM: 8GB
4. Hard Disk Space: 85GB free HDD space
5. GPU: Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 2GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750 or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850) or higher
6. Sound: DirectX compatible sound card
7. Internet: Internet Broadband Connection

It is odd that this is the first time that I have seen the recommended Internet connection specified as it is. There has never been any mention of the amount of bandwidth which the player's Internet connection must or should have. The term "Internet Broadband Connection" implies using an ISP that has coaxial cable to the computer's location (i.e., for cable TV). I don't know whether the Internet bandwidth and type of service are currently included in the ESO Game Consultant report.

Also interesting, until recently the recommended GPU requirement was the NVidia GeForce GTX 730, which has 2 GB DRR5 RAM, instead of the current recommendation of a GTX 750.

Some Support dufus replied to an inquiry that I made about connectivity that my system did not meet the minimum GPU requirement, which was, and still is, the "NVidia GeForce 460" (actually, GT 460). After I pointed out that the GTX 730 to which I upgraded met the recommended requirement and was superior to the GeForce GT 460, another dufus replied that I was wrong and closed the ticket. Evidently, ZOS/Bethesda has illiterate idiots on their team.

IMHO, drawn from 4 years of experience with TESO, beginning with the minimum system requirements in 2014, and during the course of hardware and Internet bandwidth upgrades since:

• The Bethesda network and megaserver priortizes processing and communication with players whose computers are currently the best-performing equipment, with the highest network (Internet) bandwidth that their ISP can sell.
  
• If a player's computer system and/or bandwith are mid-tier, they will be at a disadvantage in many contexts. But they will have a priority advantage in comparison to players whose computer system only satsifies the minimum requirement and/or whose bandwidth purchased from their ISP is a lower tier.

This evident prioritization of service results in a false reading for network latency as being higher than it actually is. It also results in a lower FPS than the player's computer and connection are capable of displaying. It might also be responsible for whether the player experiences some of the connectivity problems which we have been reporting and discussing since September 2018, at least.

Tinolyn

Still waiting for any kind of response. Problem is NOT better.

Tinolyn

Gave up trying. 7 times in 30 minutes just tells me to forget it.

Tinolyn

This continues to be an issue. Anyone home at ZOS interested in fixing this (incredibly annoying) problem?

If anything, it got worse after the PVP event ended.

DrOuttaSight

As ESO player base grows the worst it will get,

like trying to get into the buildings you own in the game (evenings where ever you live in the living world)

In other words at peak times.

The solution is to invest in more hardware, if this does not happen, then ESO onliners will continue to suffer.

JohnT379

So is this the unspecified "ongoing issue" that required maintenance down-time for two extraordinarily lengthy periods this week [28th and 30th January 2019]?
In my experience, the problems of timeouts and extra long logouts/zone changing did not begin to occur until the time of the launch of the doomed Fallout 76 which satisfied nobody's expectations. And the problem got considerably worse around Xmas time when Bethesda/Zenimax Online started heavily proton ESO with extra competitions and then reducing the overall price of the game to considerably less than those of use who have paid full whack and ESO plus since the launch of ESO.
Can one draw any conclusions from that? Other than maybe some networking hardware on the server side has been transferred to serve Fallout 76, and certainly Bethesda/Zenimax Online have failed to keep up the capacity to serve the seemingly hugely increased number of players.

Vanguard1

while hardware does play a role, part of the problem is each zone is like loading a new game.

Trinity_Is_My_Name

susmitds wrote: »

Tinolyn wrote: »

AMD FX 8350

There is your issue right there.

Being a former user of the same processor, my overall gaming experience was pretty sour the last two years or so. The processor did not date well, shared primary resources like FPU between cores causing bad bottlenecks in modern games, which have an adverse effect on both loading and runtime. Also, majority of the games are just not optimized for the FX series in general.

Swapped to Intel i7 8350k and no issues right now. AMD Ryzen series also offers great performance, afaik.

Disagree. I have a 32 Gig setup with FX 8350 and I never have long loads at all. Logging in normally takes about 15 seconds at most, same for character loading. Zone to zone is usually about 4 to 6 seconds. Most likely the issue is Latency and Internet speed.

Wavek

Tinolyn wrote: »

PC/NA.

All of my characters are incredibly slow to log in, and to zone. We're talking several minutes... first to log in from the home screen, then for the "character load." And sometimes zoning is a real long wait too.

Can you look into this?

AMD FX 8350
8GB Ram
1 TB HDD
GTX 960

Initially getting to the character select screen is a bit long for me (30 seconds or so) then the first time I login with a character it can also take up to 30 seconds. However, loading screen when changing zones or wayshrining inside a zone are very fast (10 seconds or so). However, I have noticed that if I enable certain addons it takes MUCH longer (Master Merchant for example).

CPU is a big part of loading screens, as is HDD vs SSD. The CPU you have is a pretty slow one compared to modern CPU's so I would expect it to take longer.

IzzyStardust

Tinolyn wrote: »

PC/NA.

All of my characters are incredibly slow to log in, and to zone. We're talking several minutes... first to log in from the home screen, then for the "character load." And sometimes zoning is a real long wait too.

Can you look into this?

AMD FX 8350
8GB Ram
1 TB HDD
GTX 960

I feel ya - same thing. Hate it.

erio

Honestly swapping my OS over to an SSD and moving ESO with it was one of the best decisions. Im no longer afraid to rezone to get my mail

Silverforte

UPrime wrote: »

It's server load. Before the end I was loading very fast when pop was low. Now everyone is logging in and zoning all over the place and it's super slow.

This is the only thing even close to a real answer here. It's server-side, not client-side. The range of peoples' hardware still showing long loading times is proof of that. I also kind of am starting to think (tin foil hat) that Zenimax artificially increases loading screen times to keep the PC port in line with the console ports. I'm starting to see things that lead me to believe that, like when I die in Cyrodiil and respawn, I hear my character's voice before the load screen finishes and I can hear things going on around me... yet the load screen takes 15-20 seconds? I also don't see how loading into an EMPTY CAVE results in a 30 second load time.

That sewer area in the Imperial City with vendors and all that stuff takes me a full minute to zone into, even if there are only a couple people in it. I was in the beta and it was this bad then. I doubt it's going to improve.