Insane loading times

furiouslog · February 2020

I've been trying to diagnose this for ages now. It's killing my ability to play in Cyrodiil because it takes 2-3 minutes to load into keeps, camps, etc. My guild just goes on without me because they know I'm going to be stuck in a loading screen when I die or port, to the point where it is a joke.

Here's an excerpt of the interface.log. All I'm doing here is logging into the game from the character screen to one of my toons in Rimmen. Here goes:

2020-02-08T15:02:54.072-05:00 Load Screen - OnAreaLoadStarted - (974) Northern Elsweyr
2020-02-08T15:02:54.072-05:00 Load Screen - Show
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, KEEPS, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, RENDERER, GAME_DATA, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT, RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND, FIXTURE_PHYSICS, PLAYER,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - GAME_DATA Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, KEEPS, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, RENDERER, GAME_DATA, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT, RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND, FIXTURE_PHYSICS, PLAYER,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - RENDERER Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, KEEPS, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, RENDERER, GAME_DATA, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT, RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND, FIXTURE_PHYSICS, PLAYER,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - KEEPS Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, KEEPS, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, RENDERER, GAME_DATA, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT, RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND, FIXTURE_PHYSICS, PLAYER,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.096-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, KEEPS, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, RENDERER, GAME_DATA, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, SHARED_CHARACTER_OBJECT, RESUME_FROM_SUSPEND, FIXTURE_PHYSICS, PLAYER,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.285-05:00 Load Screen - PLAYER Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:54.285-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, TERRAIN_GEOMETRY, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, FIXTURE_PHYSICS,
2020-02-08T15:02:54.955-05:00 Load Screen - Show/Hide - Animation Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:58.483-05:00 Load Screen - TERRAIN_GEOMETRY Complete
2020-02-08T15:02:58.483-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED, FIXTURE_PHYSICS,
2020-02-08T15:03:01.598-05:00 Load Screen - FIXTURE_PHYSICS Complete
2020-02-08T15:03:01.598-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_GEOMETRY, FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:03:04.351-05:00 Load Screen - CHARACTER_GEOMETRY Complete
2020-02-08T15:03:04.351-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: FIXTURE_ASSETS, DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:03:42.467-05:00 Load Screen - FIXTURE_ASSETS Complete
2020-02-08T15:03:42.467-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, USER_INTERFACE, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:11.717-05:00 Load Screen - USER_INTERFACE Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:11.717-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:12.388-05:00 Load Screen - DYNAMIC_OBJECTS Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:12.388-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:16.849-05:00 Load Screen - DYNAMIC_OBJECTS Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:16.849-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: DYNAMIC_OBJECTS, TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:17.180-05:00 Load Screen - DYNAMIC_OBJECTS Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:17.180-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: TEXTURES, CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:17.195-05:00 Load Screen - TEXTURES Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:17.195-05:00 Load Screen - Waiting On: CHARACTER_ACTIVATED,
2020-02-08T15:04:17.531-05:00 Load Screen - CHARACTER_ACTIVATED Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:17.531-05:00 Load Screen - Systems Loaded And Not Waiting For Teleport
2020-02-08T15:04:17.531-05:00 Load Screen - Hide
2020-02-08T15:04:17.531-05:00 Load Screen - Hide - Wasn't Already Hiding
2020-02-08T15:04:32.927-05:00 Load Screen - Show/Hide - Animation Complete
2020-02-08T15:04:32.927-05:00 Load Screen - Hide - Animation Complete

It takes a total of 98 seconds to load in. That is actually pretty fast compared to my times in Cyrodiil, which are usually double that. Trials have similar issues.

If I take out all addons and boot vanilla, it takes 19 seconds, so you have a benchmark there. Does anyone have any experience diagnosing and correcting these loading times? Is there a specific add-on that could be exacerbating this issue? It slows down considerably when it loads the following assets:

FIXTURE_ASSETS (38 seconds)
USER_INTERFACE (29 seconds)
CHARACTER_ACTIVATED to Animation Complete (15 seconds)

Disabling various addons, I can get the UI time down which makes sense - I just need to decide what is worth it there. I can't tell what is causing the FIXTURE_ASSETS to take forever to load in.

Does anyone have any experience with particular add-ons that considerably add to load times? Is it a library versioning thing? I'm just looking to see if anyone out there has been through this process than can share their experience. Thanks!

ZOS_Bill · February 2020

@furiouslog

Do you still experience loading issues with no add-ons enabled?

Another troubleshooting step that can help with loading issues is to change your current graphical settings.

Log into a secondary character.
Press [Esc] to bring up the options menu.
From that menu, select Graphic Options.
Under Presets select Low.
Log back into your main character to see if you can now enter the zone.

furiouslog · February 2020

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@furiouslog

Do you still experience loading issues with no add-ons enabled?

Another troubleshooting step that can help with loading issues is to change your current graphical settings.
Log into a secondary character.

Press [Esc] to bring up the options menu.

From that menu, select Graphic Options.

Under Presets select Low.

Log back into your main character to see if you can now enter the zone.

Thanks for the follow up @ZOS_BillE, but that stuff is pretty standard stuff to test and I'd been through that process already. I was looking for specific insight into what each of those assets is related to and how it could cause longer times for those particular assets. Anyway, I knew that it was probably addons. I have a pretty solid PC (i7 with 1080Ti, 1TB m2, 64G RAM) and it can handle the high settings. Loading screens with vanilla approach 20 seconds - this does not get measurably better when I change graphics settings to low, so that's a benchmark for anyone who has anything additional to add.

For anyone who stumbles upon this thread, here's a follow up. I started deleting addons one by one and the common thread with those was that some addons deploy their own versions of libraries, and they don't always match the most recent releases. Some deploy a lot of libraries. I just deleted some of those outright, and others I added code to the text file to create a dependency on the official library. That broke some addons, but most of them worked. I've gotten my load screens down to 45-50 seconds now. It still hasn't fixed many Cyrodiil issues, but that's obviously all server side problems.

For people that have this issue, I found that Master Merchant is one addon that really added to the loading times and additionally caused a lot of UI issues. I stopped using it. I only have one trading guild, so it does not collect enough useful information anyway. TTC is a lot more efficient, even though it does not track sales (although it seems to me that it definitely could with some additional logging and back end database management).

Silverforte · February 2020

This has always been a problem and always will be. I heard this patch was supposed to improve performance and I figured it wouldn't. Logged in just now, 20 seconds to get to the character screen, 14 seconds to load into the game (into an empty Delve), 15 seconds to port to a town. I was in the beta and the load times were like this. They're worse on busy nights like Friday or Saturday. It's a server problem.

If you look up similar threads, you'll notice several people with SSDs claiming they have this problem and these posts date back years. I have an SSD, yet long load times only on this game. I can load games like Witcher 3 or No Man's Sky fine, but not ESO. It's not a end-user issue. I also have zero addons and a fresh install.

Silverforte · February 2020

I was wrong. I don't know if it's something that was changed on the server side after my last post or I was just being stupid, but as of right now the game is loading much faster, in some cases almost instantly.