looong loading screens in Trials and Dungeons

LeandraC

A week or 2 ago my loading screens takes ages within a trial or dungeon. My team mates are out almost half a minute before me. If I recall correctly it started after the maintenance when Gold Road hit PTS but I am not sure.

Usually, when I enter a door/get teleportet in trial, I have a blackscreen and after a few seconds the supposed loading screens pops up for another long period. As example today in Frostvault, after the skeever phase I died because the fight already picked back up while I was still loading in again.

Anyone else with simular problems? Any idea what it could be? I didnt change anything on settings/addons (besides updating them)

Cobble123

Yes I’ve been suffering from this for the past couple of weeks on PC-EU. I assumed it was my system since there’s been no chat about it. Spent ages testing all my add-ones without any luck, ran hard drive tests to see if it was slowing down for some reason, and ended up reinstalling both Windows and ESO last week, again without solving the problem.

In trials I can hear the battle music start whilst I’m waiting to load in, and team-mates tell me that they can see my character standing inside the door, but not moving. Running RND’s are a nightmare because pulls are nearly finished by the time I actually reach them. In trials I need to ensure that I’ve swapped gear before going through doors because I will be straight into combat once I’m given control of my character.

droperix

Been having similar issues, its not trial/dungeon only for me, since I had long loading screen when joining battlegrounds. After a minute of loading compared to few seconds normally...

BeckieMA

Same issues assumed was just be loading into dungeons is hell. Had issues getting through doors and then finally got it to register wanted to go through then long load screen

The_Mightysquirrel

I encounter similar issues randomly when teleportiong around Tamriel or entering a Fighter's guild, the black screen before the loading screen with a picture lasts sometimes about 1 minute. It started around two weeks ago.
I supposed my hardware or my addons were the problem but I tested it and ran other games that worked without any issue.

The most annoying part is in trials and dungeons. I died several times in vSE on chimera HM because there were very long loading screens when entering or exiting portals. I'm not the only one to have died because of it in my prog group.
Yesterday I tried to get in random dungeons and it was awful, loading screens were taking about a minute even inside the dungeons. I tried without any addon active and it was the same...

BansheeVT

Not impacted myself but can confirm that this is happening to many people based on the discussions on our Discord. Can we expect a fix anytime soon?

pizza666

I had similar issues in trials. Mainly in Sunspire when going through the doors to the add pulls. Had whole group pass through before me and almost been late for trashpulls as tank. And from what i have heard others in my FL have also experience these issues.

Cobble123

Another evening of being first to the door, but porting in half-way through the fights.

LeandraC

There is now also a post about it in the german forum. There must be more out there who haven't commented yet

Necrotech_Master

havent really noticed anything on my main desktop, but i have ESO installed on an M2 SSD so my load times are rarely longer than 10 seconds

my laptop with a super slow storage drive does sometimes have 1+ minute load screens though

tom6143346

Same problem here very long loading screen s

erdbeerheld

Figured this is going to occur more and more.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8097601/#Comment_8097601
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8103654/#Comment_8103654
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8090559

The last link has a temporary workaround (deleting the cache files/directory). I am running a test with setting the max number of cached days for the trader history specifically to a lower value than the default 30 days in UserSettings.txt, so far it is looking good. (SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_trader "5")

I can only encourage everyone facing this issue to open a /feedback report back to the devs.

LeandraC

erdbeerheld wrote: »

Figured this is going to occur more and more.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8097601/#Comment_8097601
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8103654/#Comment_8103654
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8090559

The last link has a temporary workaround (deleting the cache files/directory). I am running a test with setting the max number of cached days for the trader history specifically to a lower value than the default 30 days in UserSettings.txt, so far it is looking good. (SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_trader "5")

I can only encourage everyone facing this issue to open a /feedback report back to the devs.

Thank you very much! I'm gonna give it a try and see if it helps me as well and will also do the feedback thing

JAZZKa

Yea this has been an irritating issue lately... Trying to play dungeons or trials, or any group content has become embarrassing and I constantly feel ashamed loading in for minutes through some doors. I'll try the fix as well and see if it helps!

erdbeerheld

Trying to summarize the two options in a step-by-step description.

Option 1 (Temporary Workaround)

1. Close ESO
2. Open File Explorer and go to folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\Elder Scrolls Online\live\CachedData\GuildHistory (you can copy and paste this path directly in File Explorer)
3. Either delete the *.dat files in that directory or delete/rename the GuildHistory folder (ESO will recreate the directory)
4. Restart ESO

The problem will eventually come back over time, as the game will pull history data from the server and store it in the cache files.

Option 2

1. Close ESO
2. Open UserSettings.txt (usually in Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live)
3. Search for entry SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_trader "30" (this is the default value)
4. Change this to a lower value (e.g. 7), that you feel comfortable with and suits your situation, and relieves the loading screen pain.
5. Save UserSettings.txt
6. Note: You can retrieve history data beyond the configured timeframe, but it isnt stored in the cache files (1).
7. Restart ESO

Each category in the Guild history has its own config entry in UserSettings.txt, but the trader history is usually the biggest chunk, thus resulting in a significant file size increase causing these loading screen issues.


(1) looks like there is a bug, it actually IS stored in the files as long as you dont close ESO. As soon as you restart ESO, and the cache files are rewritten, it only stores the history for the configured timeframe.

JAZZKa

Thanks for the detailed summary, as for the life of me I couldnt understand the fix suggestions from the other thread. Will give these a try tomorrow and see if they help

Vulkunne

Yep experiencing the same.

RealLoveBVB

For me the long loading screens started with U41.
I hope for a fix pretty soon, because it makes trials, especially portal mechs unplayable.

Ephemeraldeception

I can confirm in my own case that the load times - changing zones and in dungeones has a direct correlation to the speed of your pc and the volume of logs in your trade history, - at least since they changed the mechanism.

So before trying anything else I would follow what "erdbeerheld" wrote above - clear cache and or limit retention of the logs.

In my case I have one very active guild and one much less. Its the active guild logs total log volume thats impacting not the duration in itself.

Pseronally I have just cleared the cache for now but limting the retentiion may help in your config management. Trouble with that is it can get reset on any patch etc..... As soon as I get a noticable delay I reset cache for 'log histoire'.

Note to devs - Good operational practice for log management are thresholds on time (retention) AND / OR volume (size) and size of an individual log before it increments and rotates. At the end of the day the current setup is filling our Disk/ssd with junk and needs better managed out of the box.

Ephemeraldeception

In addition to my post above - imo there is in any case a design fault in the code as it is re-reading the full cache every time you change a zone and on every load screen. It should instead be part of a managed job schedule or something instead + a min time between scans unless end-user initiated a refresh the history.

Ilumia

I am not sure I understand this, so forgive me if this is completely wrong, and I am angry about a nonexistent problem.

I'm having the loadscreen issues, and it makes parts of the game annoying and other parts very hard or impossible to play. I didn't have 1-2 minute loadscreens in dungeons, before the last big update, not to mention long loadscreens everywhere else.
And the only way to fix this is basically to remove my 30 days of data from my trading guilds? I am certainly not ok with 7 days of data. I already think 30 days is a bit too little.

If I understand it right, and their change to how guild data works now caused this, it is completely unacceptable. Either I can choose dungeons and trials, or I can choose to be able to do trading. I used to be able to do both.

erdbeerheld

So to clarify, deleting the cache files in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Elder Scrolls Online\live\CachedData\GuildHistory" and/or setting the retention to <30 days does NOT affect your saved data in ATT/MM.

The cache files are only used to populate the data in the games Guild History UI, without the need to pull that data from the server. You can still see data beyond that point, with the "Show More" option (but it would need to pull the data again from the server).

Example, if you logon every day, you would pull the missing data from the server (so the data since your last login/since you last updated ATT/MM), ATT/MM would retrieve the data and save in the SavedVariable directory. And independent of your Guild History cache settings, you will be able to look through all of the collected and saved data from ATT/MM.

The Guild History cache settings would only affect you directly, if you need to look through the Guild History UI itself regularly beyond the configured range. Then you would need to manually retrieve the data again using "Show More".

Hope that explains it a bit better.

Cobble123

I’ll give this a try today.

Pugging vKA HM last night resulted in 60 sec loading screens into each boss. Rather embarrassing.

Ilumia

Thank you so much for being understanding and explaining you are the real mvp for helping and figuring all of this out
And I'm sorry I'm so dense, but I still don't really understand.
Right now I use the show more, to update my att data everytime I log in. That only takes five minutes and it's ok.
But if I follow your (really nicely written btw) guide, then will it still be the same? Will I still be able to see 30 days of sales data in att?

I'll share this link/guide in my trading guild discord, because a lot of people are reporting this loadscreen issue as well, and they'll probably be really grateful a player found a workaround.

erdbeerheld

Ilumia wrote: »

Right now I use the show more, to update my att data everytime I log in. That only takes five minutes and it's ok.

And that will stay the same going forward.

Ilumia wrote: »

But if I follow your (really nicely written btw) guide, then will it still be the same? Will I still be able to see 30 days of sales data in att?

Correct, ATT data itself is stored separately in the \SavedVariables folder (under "Documents") and not affected by this.

Ilumia

Fantastic, thank you for the patience
I almost didn't dare try in case it messed up the data, that didn't work either after the update. Now I did (2) guide, and my loadscreens are nice and short again, and I can play for dlc speedruns again.
My husband however is a bit disappointed, he was kinda hoping I'd finally be so frustrated I'd quit and focus my attention elsewhere

Cobble123

Can confirm that this works \o/


Ran vKA and had no delays whatsoever.

furiouslog

Cobble123 wrote: »

Yes I’ve been suffering from this for the past couple of weeks on PC-EU. I assumed it was my system since there’s been no chat about it. Spent ages testing all my add-ones without any luck, ran hard drive tests to see if it was slowing down for some reason, and ended up reinstalling both Windows and ESO last week, again without solving the problem.

In trials I can hear the battle music start whilst I’m waiting to load in, and team-mates tell me that they can see my character standing inside the door, but not moving. Running RND’s are a nightmare because pulls are nearly finished by the time I actually reach them. In trials I need to ensure that I’ve swapped gear before going through doors because I will be straight into combat once I’m given control of my character.

I've had this exact same issue for a few weeks.

Gandalf_72

furiouslog wrote: »

Cobble123 wrote: »

Yes I’ve been suffering from this for the past couple of weeks on PC-EU. I assumed it was my system since there’s been no chat about it. Spent ages testing all my add-ones without any luck, ran hard drive tests to see if it was slowing down for some reason, and ended up reinstalling both Windows and ESO last week, again without solving the problem.

In trials I can hear the battle music start whilst I’m waiting to load in, and team-mates tell me that they can see my character standing inside the door, but not moving. Running RND’s are a nightmare because pulls are nearly finished by the time I actually reach them. In trials I need to ensure that I’ve swapped gear before going through doors because I will be straight into combat once I’m given control of my character.

I've had this exact same issue for a few weeks.

Same for me too.
PC EU.




EDIT:

Checking add-on folder I noticed that GuildHistory moved by default to add-ons in documents folder.
By default now is the following: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\GuildHistory

Gandalf_72

Thank you @erdbeerheld !

Thank you @LeandraC for suggesting me in Discord:
"do this. This is really helping. It's not an addon, its the cache file of eso itself and it worked perfectly for me"

It worked for me too !!


I did also the following changes:

sinnereso wrote:

Not sure if this is related to addons at all or just the ingame code but something else related to the new guild history has been discovered..

MANY are experiencing brutally long 15-20sec delays using watshrines or porting in general due to the below setings in usersettings.txt.. The following changes fixes it.

SET GuildHistoryCacheAutoDeleteLeftGuilds "1"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_ava_activity "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_activity "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_milestone "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_trader "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_banked_currency "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_banked_item "7"
SET GuildHistoryCacheMaxNumberOfDays_roster "7"

Pasted from this comment



EDIT:

Checking add-on folder I noticed that GuildHistory moved by default to add-ons in documents folder.
By default now is the following: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\GuildHistory

barney2525

I fixed that problem

I don't do Trials or group Dungeons