Been a problem for a while. Seems a little worse since Summerset. Eternal load screens or "Failed to join group", which prevents you from even porting to someone that's made it into the dungeon. Then there's the ever present "Someone declined the group invitation" when forming a group, even though no one actually declined or timed out.
Yeah, I've seen the "Failed to join" plenty, this is just the loading screen for who knows how long, let it run 5 minutes already before closing out. It's not just dungeons, but I've gotten it in delves plenty of times too.
I get them too. I wish ZoS would consolidate and direct PC players to a central "long load times and disconnects" thread as they did for console issues.
this has been a regular occurrence since the game first came out, they never have got to the bottom of the problem in all that time, don't think they ever will either
I have been waiting and waiting for the loadscreens to go away, but actually they've gotten way worse. It used to only happen in Cyrodiil and in super populated areas but now it's porting into trials, home instances, any instance at this point. I can go grab a glass of water, come back and it's still loading me into Vvardenfell.
All they have said is the usual they're looking into it, similar to the other bugs and exploits in this game. Game performance is really a joke at this point, comparing to before Summerset and comparing to other MMOs.
I think you’re waiting in queues for instances or for instances to be spun up during these load screens. Total speculation. It’s not hard disk activity or disk speed. UI design 101 says to update user on what is happening to make times seem shorter. Or more tolerable.
Generally you can have an infinitely spinning icon at the least. And they do. But if your screen looks like Linux booting up while you’re loading the game, players will be okay with long wait times. If you have not watched old school Linux distro boot, then forget that analogy.
To simply state what is happening would solve most of this psychologically. “Looking for instance, found instance!, queuing for instance, reticulating splines, negotiating connection, etc”
Just make some of it up. Make it sound technical. Maxis figured this out. Bonus points for seeing Maxis reference above.