Game freezes up for a few seconds...then resumes normally

raymo666

Something changed with the game client over the past week or so. It started for me right after a patch. Once every couple of minutes on average, the game will freeze up from 1 to 10 seconds, then resume normally. The duration of the freezes seems to increase both in frequency and duration the longer the game client has been running. I played in the beta months before launch and have been playing daily since the beginning of the 5 day early access. I never experienced a single freeze up previously until this past week.

I haven't made any changes to my PC at all during this time.(no new hardware or software) My specs are:

I5-2500k processor
Windows 7- 64 bit
AMD HD6950 video card 2 gigs
8 gigs memory

I started out playing with game settings on high quality(without any issue for the first 3 weeks or so after launch) but even if I reduce all settings to the lowest, I still get the freeze ups with the same frequency.

I have resinstalled the game client from scratch and updated my video drivers. It made no difference at all.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions on what I can do to fix it?

Fenbrae

I have this problem as well.
It only happens once a day or so and it only lasts for 2 seconds.
I always thought it happened because i tend to run YouTube in the background, but i guess it's serverside.

Eldarth

I've had something similar only the audio goes into a weird staccato loop as well. It lasts about 10 seconds or so, and then continues on.

Hozec

Had a similar issue and the addon "ESO head" was making me lag/ freeze on load screens. got rid of it and good as new. Don't know if you are using add ons but could also be source of the problem

raymo666

For me, the audio will loop during the video freeze up too. If the freeze up is in the 10 seconds plus range, the audio will cut out entirely and go silent for the remainder of the freeze up after looping for the first 5 seconds or so.

Eldarth wrote: »

I've had something similar only the audio goes into a weird staccato loop as well. It lasts about 10 seconds or so, and then continues on.

raymo666

I'm only using 3 add ons at the moment and haven't added any new ones recently. I had about a week of good game performance after the last one was added before the freeze up issues started.

It is a good place to check though. I haven't yet tried disabling add ons and seeing if that helps. I will be trying that tonight!

Hozec wrote: »

Had a similar issue and the addon "ESO head" was making me lag/ freeze on load screens. got rid of it and good as new. Don't know if you are using add ons but could also be source of the problem

VYMM

Same here

GossiTheDog

Two things you can try:

- Disable all addons. Some patches have broken addons (or addons have broken patches, rather) - noticably esohead with patch 1.0.2 caused the game to slow to about 3 fps.

- Set eso.exe priority to High in Task Manager.

Also, make sure you aren't in a group. Group causes hanging when people join and leave the group.

Reenlister

I have had this issue, and thought it was only me and my system till I spoke to some others also having it. None of us have addons yet it does occur. No idea what it is....

raymo666

Thank you for the suggestions. I haven't tried any of them yet and they sound like good ones. I'll be trying these tonight as well!

GossiTheDog wrote: »

Two things you can try:

- Disable all addons. Some patches have broken addons (or addons have broken patches, rather) - noticably esohead with patch 1.0.2 caused the game to slow to about 3 fps.

- Set eso.exe priority to High in Task Manager.

Also, make sure you aren't in a group. Group causes hanging when people join and leave the group.

GossiTheDog

No problem. Engine hanging has been an issue since early beta, for reference. There's also a usersettings.txt change you can make, I'll dig it out.

Kyosji

This was an issue that was heavy in the beta, and it's come back since the last patch. Just like the horse issue, it seems some of these updates were written over older releases, so some of the old bugs are coming back.

What these freezes are are small issues in game causing the CPU to spike. Was fixed for launch, but not anymore.

eobethb14_ESO

If you close the launcher after the game client loads you may stop having this issue. I usually shut it, but when I forget and I stutter in town, as soon as I close the launcher, I never have the stutter step again.

raymo666

That sounds like that is it. I did notice that my CPU usage goes up to 100% during the in game freeze ups.

Kyosji wrote: »

This was an issue that was heavy in the beta, and it's come back since the last patch. Just like the horse issue, it seems some of these updates were written over older releases, so some of the old bugs are coming back.

What these freezes are are small issues in game causing the CPU to spike. Was fixed for launch, but not anymore.

raymo666

Another good suggestion. Thanks!

eobethb14_ESO wrote: »

If you close the launcher after the game client loads you may stop having this issue. I usually shut it, but when I forget and I stutter in town, as soon as I close the launcher, I never have the stutter step again.

potsherds

I've been having the CPU spikes since beta and while it's been happening with changing frequency over the weeks, I don't know that I ever noticed it completely going away, such that I though a specific patch fixed it.

I remember reading in some notes somewhere that the devs are aware of the CPU spikes and hadn't yet come up with a fix (that was sometime around launch).

I'll have to try the suggestions above. I didn't realize there was anything that could be tried to remedy the problem.

Thechemicals

yeah this was happening for 2 days to me then stopped. Hoping it doesnt come back

raymo666

I'm hoping that I can make it stop as well. It's getting to the point where it's making the game very frustrating for me since the freeze ups always seem to happen at inconvenient times which has resulted in quite a few deaths or missed boss kills.

It's the type of thing that would likely cause me to unsubscribe if I couldn't get it resolved within a month or two. I hope it doesn't come to that. I love this game.

Thechemicals wrote: »

yeah this was happening for 2 days to me then stopped. Hoping it doesnt come back

samtolkennub18_ESO

eobethb14_ESO wrote: »

If you close the launcher after the game client loads you may stop having this issue. I usually shut it, but when I forget and I stutter in town, as soon as I close the launcher, I never have the stutter step again.

I did the same thing, and it stop too.

raymo666

Thanks to everyone that offered suggestions. With your help, the problem has been resolved.

Closing down the launcher after logging into the game client did the trick. In 3 hours of game play, I didn't freeze up once after closing the launcher.

Wintermist

Happens to me too, going to try closing the launcher as suggested, sounds like a weird placebo solution, but worth checking atleast.

Adalich

I've had the same problem, Its a problem on their servers and nothing you do will fix it.

raymo666

I was able to fix it. I went from 3 to 10 second freeze ups every few minutes when I left the launcher running to none at all when I closed the launcher after loading the game client.

Adalich wrote: »

I've had the same problem, Its a problem on their servers and nothing you do will fix it.

eobethb14_ESO

raymo666 wrote: »

I was able to fix it. I went from 3 to 10 second freeze ups every few minutes when I left the launcher running to none at all when I closed the launcher after loading the game client.

Adalich wrote: »

I've had the same problem, Its a problem on their servers and nothing you do will fix it.

Yes, I am very glad it worked for you as well.

I was having the same experience as you were. I was so glad when I stumbled across the "close the launcher" advice. It made my gameplay much more enjoyable.

Jeremy

They should really make a public announcement about this.

GreasedLizard

Mine never occurred until the Hotfix they did. After that it's pretty common. Changing task priority to High does stop it from occurring, at least for my machine.

Win7 x64 - i5 2500k @ 4.4GHz - RipjawsX 1600 7-8-7-21 - MSI Lightning480GTX

Oh, and just run the executable, skip launcher entirely. Then you don't have to remember to close it

Only run it after maintenance / patch day

Soulzek

Yeah. This happens to me all the time on a constant basis. I knew it wasn't my computer when I turned the graphics settings down to minimum and still had the freezes. It's definitely server side. It does, however, look like they're trying to fix it with this last patch they have attempted. (General fixes) Hopefully when they've figured out why the patch isn't working that this fix with help with the ongoing issue.

GossiTheDog

Just for info, in the v1.0.6 patch it has a fix for exactly this issue. That patch has been pulled for now, however I understand it will roll out this week.

glennyrd

I have this same issue. Only happens maybe once per session. Sometimes it occurs 40 minutes into the game and sometimes 3 hours into the game. I think it has something to do with the games engine rendering details. Who knows?

Garkbit

I've been having this problem since beta (January) and none of the suggestions above fix it - Although it isn't as bad as it used to be. If does seem to get slightly worse the longer I play.
Have tried:
Closing Launcher
No Addons
eso.exe to 'High' priority
Graphics setting to low

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO

I only get that phenomena in Cyrodiil