U21 launch day load times and how you can help

Olupajmibanan

OrdoHermetica wrote: »

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

My main concern is that you can't just let the loading screen finish. You'll get booted for inactivity. So you have to move the mouse and click elsewhere frequently in order to not get disconnected. We are supposed to sit at loading screen that lasts couple of hours, great. At least, this feature should have been turned off.

You only get booted for inactivity once your character is fully loaded in, which happens at the very end of the loading screen. Presumably your character will not fully load in until this update is done. I would be genuinely shocked if they expected people to periodically click the mouse or whatever on a black screen for up to two hours, especially since there's no reason for them to do it that way.

The problem is that after some time, you are in a character screen but you are still spinning snakes.

I get long loading screens after every big update. I can remember more cases when I was still spinning snakes but got disconnected because I forgot to move and click my mouse.

Radka

I wont get my daily reward because of this yay \o/ or perhaps I should call to work that I am sick and wait for the maintenance to be over lol

OrdoHermetica

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

OrdoHermetica wrote: »

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

My main concern is that you can't just let the loading screen finish. You'll get booted for inactivity. So you have to move the mouse and click elsewhere frequently in order to not get disconnected. We are supposed to sit at loading screen that lasts couple of hours, great. At least, this feature should have been turned off.

You only get booted for inactivity once your character is fully loaded in, which happens at the very end of the loading screen. Presumably your character will not fully load in until this update is done. I would be genuinely shocked if they expected people to periodically click the mouse or whatever on a black screen for up to two hours, especially since there's no reason for them to do it that way.

The problem is that after some time, you are in a character screen but you are still spinning snakes.

I get long loading screens after every big update. I can remember more cases when I was still spinning snakes but got disconnected because I forgot to move and click my mouse.

Yeah, but that's usually a matter of your addons initializing and updating and the like after your character has loaded, not the game itself still being in the process of loading. Those have to come at the end of the character load, because they're third-party software. It would be a baffling decision to load you into the game world and then do the database update (and again, unnecessary since they can choose when to actually physically load your character into the game world and start that idle timer).

chrisbennb16_ESO

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

... could vary anywhere between 5-10 minutes to a couple hours...

ESO has problems no other MMO has! Back in the day - why release a client that needs to load so much?
Why not replace or code the client so it does not need to load that much? Just like every other MMO...

Why not just do it as all the other DEVs did it with the other MMOs on the planet? It works so much better!
Why release a patch where your players must look at a load screen for up to a couple of hours?!
Then my computer can just be there loading?! I have had 3 friends quit ESO because of the ridiculous amount of loading! It breaks the immersion totally! They said they can´t play a game with questionable DEV competence and unsubbed and never looked back!

dan958

I've got my PC on ready. As soon as the update hits, I'll remote into my Pc from work to make sure it is all ready for when I get home.

blacksghost

My guess is if it’s ours it’s going to count.

Tonnopesce

SantieClaws wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

You got Marie Kondo writing code for you now?

If that is the case this one would like to state that every single ball of yarn she has gives her much joy and she is not parting with any of them.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

RodneyRegis

Anyone know of an up to date add-on which records inventory offline? Have a couple for sets but not total inventory including craft bag/storage chests...

Shaie

sevomd69 wrote: »

Soooo...people are actually spending multiple hours to clean up their inventory to avoid a possible 2 hour load in...????

That's not why I did it. My concern was that if I could stack everything that could be stacked & log my characters out in a non-congested area (sadly I did not manage to get my crafter, the one with the largest backpack which is full, moved to the house because they shut the server down at midnight rather than 1 a.m. as they usually do >.<) then when it came time to scan all my stuff there might be a lower chance of something going wrong. I'm STILL waiting until at least Tuesday morning to try logging in though, just for safety's sake. 15 years of playing WoW taught me that large patch days are NOT for logging in!

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Nicely communicated Zos, thank you for the heads up.

Elsonso

Keryss wrote: »

By the way... what about the materials bag ??? ouch !

One of the comments that they made about the craft bag, and why it was allowed to be "unlimited", is that they have a complete list of everything that can possibly go into that bag. That is actually a finite list of things, and much smaller than the total number of items that can be held in inventory, which leads me to believe that the Crafting Bag is not an issue today.

chrisbennb16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

... could vary anywhere between 5-10 minutes to a couple hours...

ESO has problems no other MMO has! Back in the day - why release a client that needs to load so much?
Why not replace or code the client so it does not need to load that much? Just like every other MMO...

Why not just do it as all the other DEVs did it with the other MMOs on the planet? It works so much better!
Why release a patch where your players must look at a load screen for up to a couple of hours?!
Then my computer can just be there loading?! I have had 3 friends quit ESO because of the ridiculous amount of loading! It breaks the immersion totally! They said they can´t play a game with questionable DEV competence and unsubbed and never looked back!

My belief, which is totally from imaginary voices in my head, suggests that the client logging into the game triggers a server-side database action. The client is just sitting there waiting for the server to finish, not actually doing the work.

The voices are also telling me that they are doing it this way because they need the account authenticated to a certain level to perform the task accurately, and/or doing it on demand allows them to bring the server up faster so that everyone does not have to wait while 11+ million accounts are processed during patch maintenance.

The voices are also telling me to eat this sweetroll here, so that is all I have to say, for now.

JPS

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Now, this loading is actually directly tied to the total number of bank items, inventory items, and mail attachments everyone has. This means if you’re able to clear out excess items in your inventory and attachments before maintenance begins Monday morning (or even just reduce them), this will greatly help the amount of loading the client will need to do! Additionally, once you’re at the load screen, please just wait until you’ve made it into the game; closing the client will not speed things up.

Can this be somewhat elaborated, so we can maybe get a sense of how long it will take? In my logic, the data of 1 item would surely not be greater than 1kb. So let's take 480 filled bank slots and 1800 bag slots, that makes 2280kb...

With a 240/60 connection and running off of an SSD, I really don't see how this should take more than 10 minutes....

I'm just curious...

Elsonso

JPS wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Now, this loading is actually directly tied to the total number of bank items, inventory items, and mail attachments everyone has. This means if you’re able to clear out excess items in your inventory and attachments before maintenance begins Monday morning (or even just reduce them), this will greatly help the amount of loading the client will need to do! Additionally, once you’re at the load screen, please just wait until you’ve made it into the game; closing the client will not speed things up.

Can this be somewhat elaborated, so we can maybe get a sense of how long it will take? In my logic, the data of 1 item would surely not be greater than 1kb. So let's take 480 filled bank slots and 1800 bag slots, that makes 2280kb...

With a 240/60 connection and running off of an SSD, I really don't see how this should take more than 10 minutes....

I'm just curious...

The work is probably not happening on the client, so it does not matter how fast your PC or internet connection are.

Larry78

This is called collecting data, our privacy is dead.

Keryss

Sure... If they work on the database engine, the migration will take place on server side... No matter the pc configuration you have !

ZOS_GinaBruno

Just to clarify a few things:

• Craft Bag and Guild Trader contents are not included - we're doing this part during downtime.
• This has nothing to do with collecting data.
• Remember the load times aren't tied directly to your account/items, it's the total number. So if you have 5 items but someone that's still trying to log in has 40,000, you'll still need to wait a bit.
• The load time may actually be minimal, but there's a chance they could be long. Hence this heads up

VaxtinTheWolf

That would have been nice to know in advance, but we are already all waiting so.. I accept my fate.

For anyone that has to log in behind me, I apologize. I don't have ESO+ outside of the free trials so all my crafting materials are split between several of my characters and my bank. I also have all the quest disguises, and furnishing items on a mule since I don't even have an Inn closet.. And like 3600 soul gems on another, and one alt with several stacks of event items..

You know, I'll just stop there.
---

Reverb

What’s the plan for future messaging? We know that most players aren’t here on the forums or Reddit. People who only play on weekends will be blindsided by an eternal load screen at their first login, but the news will be recent enough for the, to find answers quickly.

But what about people who play every few weeks? Or students who won’t be on again until their spring break? Or people who only come for major releases and will login for the first time in months when Elsewyr drops? They’ll be irritated at an eternal load screen and won’t understand why.

I’m guessing there’s no plan for this, those players will open a support ticket, further bogging down the already ineffective support team, will wait days for a response, and will turn their backs on ESO.

protofeckless

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Just to clarify a few things:

• Craft Bag and Guild Trader contents are not included - we're doing this part during downtime.
• This has nothing to do with collecting data.
• Remember the load times aren't tied directly to your account/items, it's the total number. So if you have 5 items but someone that's still trying to log in has 40,000, you'll still need to wait a bit.
• The load time may actually be minimal, but there's a chance they could be long. Hence this heads up

How can someone have 40,000 items? For 15 toons + storage boxes no account will have more than 4,000 or so. Stacks = 1 yes?

Basically, the advice is wait a while and log-in after the initial rush. OK.

theyancey

Doesn't look like leaving the patcher open to do the download while we are doing other stuff will work this time. Instead of the usual message that the server is unavailable while maintenance is being performed I am getting a message that I am attempting to log in with an outdated patcher/client. We may have to actually open the patcher from scratch to get it to update and then the client will update.

protofeckless

Reverb wrote: »

What’s the plan for future messaging? We know that most players aren’t here on the forums or Reddit. People who only play on weekends will be blindsided by an eternal load screen at their first login, but the news will be recent enough for the, to find answers quickly.

But what about people who play every few weeks? Or students who won’t be on again until their spring break? Or people who only come for major releases and will login for the first time in months when Elsewyr drops? They’ll be irritated at an eternal load screen and won’t understand why.

I’m guessing there’s no plan for this, those players will open a support ticket, further bogging down the already ineffective support team, will wait days for a response, and will turn their backs on ESO.

What Gina just said basically is these folks aren't expected to have an absurdly long load time after the community rush to update is over. The warning is over potential slowdown when the updating population of players at once is high.

tjbhunter

protofeckless wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Just to clarify a few things:

• Craft Bag and Guild Trader contents are not included - we're doing this part during downtime.
• This has nothing to do with collecting data.
• Remember the load times aren't tied directly to your account/items, it's the total number. So if you have 5 items but someone that's still trying to log in has 40,000, you'll still need to wait a bit.
• The load time may actually be minimal, but there's a chance they could be long. Hence this heads up

How can someone have 40,000 items? For 15 toons + storage boxes no account will have more than 4,000 or so. Stacks = 1 yes?

Basically, the advice is wait a while and log-in after the initial rush. OK.

You're forgetting mail and possibly furniture in your houses (?maybe) Furnishings are theoretically tied into your account... So its possible?

Casdha

All I want to know is, that this change does not store any inventory client side in the sense that If I loose a hard drive and have to re-download the game my full inventory will still be there and up to date ?

Another concern , if I loose power while playing (its happened before) I don't loose recently acquired items or other things that could cause rollbacks because item counts are not actively tracked or you've changed how this works.

Things like this would not even enter my mind if I had not experienced Rollbacks in the early days of this game.

aussie500

I accept my fate as well, I am a pack rat, only tidying up I managed to do in the 30 minutes I got to play before the server went down was empty the mail. If ESO can manage to actually get the update up and running before I have to leave in the morning (6 hours time), I will just attempt to load a character and hope she is loaded by the time I return in the afternoon. I am a bit dubious they can actually get the game put back together in that time without something going wrong, but I will be sleeping while they sweat it out chasing the bugs down. If they fail it would not be the first time I missed an entire day from ESO because the game was not available, or not working.

And I always have long load times anyway, which often fail to actually load the game, or leave me unable to interact with anything, despite my internet working perfectly fine. I lasted this long, one more stuff up if it happens is hardly going to ruin my day. But hopefully it works right the first time and some get to play soon, I am going to sleep.

Grimm13

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Just to clarify a few things:

• Craft Bag and Guild Trader contents are not included - we're doing this part during downtime.
• This has nothing to do with collecting data.
• Remember the load times aren't tied directly to your account/items, it's the total number. So if you have 5 items but someone that's still trying to log in has 40,000, you'll still need to wait a bit.
• The load time may actually be minimal, but there's a chance they could be long. Hence this heads up

Well I guess that's good for the console players to know. To late for PC users to do anything about this.

protofeckless

Casdha wrote: »

All I want to know is, that this change does not store any inventory client side in the sense that If I loose a hard drive and have to re-download the game my full inventory will still be there and up to date ?

Another concern , if I loose power while playing (its happened before) I don't loose recently acquired items or other things that could cause rollbacks because item counts are not actively tracked or you've changed how this works.

Things like this would not even enter my mind if I had not experienced Rollbacks in the early days of this game.

If you log-in on a new computer, you will have the same inventory. So no. The inventory is not stored on your local machine except perhaps as a cache.

DaveMoeDee

Casdha wrote: »

All I want to know is, that this change does not store any inventory client side in the sense that If I loose a hard drive and have to re-download the game my full inventory will still be there and up to date ?

Another concern , if I loose power while playing (its happened before) I don't loose recently acquired items or other things that could cause rollbacks because item counts are not actively tracked or you've changed how this works.

Things like this would not even enter my mind if I had not experienced Rollbacks in the early days of this game.

It doesn't sound like they are storing things client side. It sounds like they are updating the back end on a per-character basis and that the update is initiated during first log-on.

It is actually quite normal to do large database updates in small batches. Per character sounds like a reasonable unit of work. I have no idea what their backend design is, but the stuff I deal with would prefer to not have 10k such updates happening in parallel, which could easily happen here. Very implementation dependent.

The benefit here is that by only doing work as needed, they avoided a potentially multiple day update. As someone who has experienced messing with large data sets where it took days to complete a needed report, I can appreciate this approach. As I have mentioned earlier, my main concern would be the straggler accounts that would be left in an old format. I would assume that they would, after a period of time, go ahead and update all the remaining accounts to only have one inventory format in the product. It is scary to think of all that could go wrong maintaining heterogeneous data formats.

Nestor

15 alts, most with full inventories, about 5 houses with maxed or near maxed inventories, almost every other house in the game furnished, 350 items in my bank, maxed out housing storage...

I will be in the two hour plus load screen lol...

theyancey

Restarted launcher and it is updating now!

HappyLittleTree

I'm doing my part by cleaning up my inventories.
Do you?