Question for people who have solved their long loading screen issus

Elvenheart · May 2023

Hi! I've been suffering the long loading screen issue for some time, and I've heard some say it could be because of certain addons. I was wondering if anyone has found this to be true, and what addon(s) caused the issue for you?

markulrich1966 · May 2023

when I still had my old xbox (One S), I solved it by buying an external SSD for maybe 80 Euro with case. That was before covid, so no idea about current prices.
Moved the game on that drive, long loadscreens gone, and everything looked more detailed, as now the best textures were loaded immedeatly, and not low-res textures first.

Last year then I got a new gen console (Series S), with even faster internal SSD. It is even faster now loading zones, but the difference is not THAT huge as switching from HD to SSD on the old one.

So if you suffer from long loadscreens and black player silhouettes and run the game from a harddrive, a small SSD might be the best option.

colossalvoids · May 2023

Honestly most impactful thing was going with ssd than anything lmao. Add-on wise any of those that are always in work (trading ones primarily) would most probably be ones to look at first, if even giving any issues. I'd suggest troubleshooting it with disabling all/most add-ons and going through one by one porting in and out of zones you having issues with the most, preferably with some timer going to actually measure it not relying on gut feel etc. Some might just get too bloated with data also, so clearing mm from time to time, or clear installing them (erasing all data) might be a good idea.

Dr_Con · May 2023

I don't use most of the merchant add-ons (AND LIBRARIES) for my main account anymore, I use an account dedicated to trading just to avoid the long load screens issue, which can sometimes take 30+ seconds.

harvey07 · May 2023

nothing helps for me....esp in cities. i have 1-2 min loading screens....most times up to 5 mins if i am in Vvardenfell Vivec crafting area - where i like to keep my alts for their dailies. my load screens are when i go fold laundry, feed a cat and check on something else around the house. i folded an entire basket of clothes the other day and came back and still had not zoned into Vivec. is insane.....even with no addons.

i am just at the point of: it is what it is.

redlink1979 · May 2023

A SSD will solve those loading times.

Soarora · May 2023

Too many addons/libraries makes the load screens longer. I only have addons turned on that the specific character may need. Some addons are heavier than others too.

robwolf666 · May 2023

Getting hold of a Series X seems to have fixed long loads for me, haven't had one for ages. Plus, making sure there's loads of space on the internal drive, instead of it being crammed full of games I don't play regularly seems to help too.

Lumsdenml · May 2023

Agree 100% with those who suggest an SSD. With my old computer, went from HD to SSD and cut my load screens from about 90 seconds to about 30 seconds. Got a new computer, and the longest load screens I have now are probably about 10 to 15 seconds.... and that is loading in a character. Porting to a new zone is probably half that time.

Tandor · May 2023

I believe that the number of quests in the journal can also impact loading times.

Basically, the more information that has to be loaded in each time you enter the game or a zone the longer it is likely to take.

SilverBride · May 2023

Do you have an SSD? If not that is probably the biggest factor. If you do then it may be an add-on.

Try disabling all add-ons and see if that helps. If it does then enable one at a time until you find the culprit.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

putting the game on an SSD helps a bit

most of my load times with an SSD are <10 sec

zaria · May 2023

redlink1979 wrote: »

A SSD will solve those loading times.

An SSD better if its M2 not SATA. Lots of memory also help because of cache, 8 is little today.
If you have 8 or even 16 GB and has 20 open chrome or edge tabs you have an problem.
Game can use more memory so it don't have to reload stuff all the time.
Ram is still way faster than an M2 SSD.
You can offload lots of stuff to standard HD as in everything who don't need to reed gigabytes now.

SeaGtGruff · May 2023

Elvenheart wrote: »

Hi! I've been suffering the long loading screen issue for some time, and I've heard some say it could be because of certain addons. I was wondering if anyone has found this to be true, and what addon(s) caused the issue for you?

I use no addons whatsoever, and I've been suffering from very long loading screens, so I doubt that it has anything to do with addons per se.

What I've found is that if I do Alt-Tab to move the game behind something else-- such as the launcher window, or (if I've closed the launcher window) the Steam window-- it seems to help shorten the loading screens, although it doesn't really make any sense why that should help and I can't say whether it's actually making a difference or is just some kind of coincidence.

All I know is that if I sit there and wait for the loading screen to end on its own, I can be sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting before it finally goes away and I'm in the game or in the zone; I've actually gotten up, gone out into the kitchen to feed the cats or fix a cup of coffee, and come back several minutes later to find that the loading screen is still there. But if I press Alt-Tab then the loading screens seem to take significantly less time.

It's been suggested that the problem is probably my hardware, and that things would be much improved if I were to use a SSD. I don't know, but my computer has an Intel Optane+932GBHDD, which seems to have a pretty good rating as far as speed, and if the problem was related to my HDD then I don't see how using Alt-Tab could apparently be making a difference.

But on the other hand, if Alt-Tab is indeed making a difference (as bizarre as that sounds) then it would seem to suggest that the issue is indeed something to do with my system-- not with my hardware per se, but perhaps something to do with focus or priority, or background processing versus "foreground" processing, or something like that (and I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about here).

All I do know is that it's really starting to drive me crazy.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

@SeaGtGruff do you know if you have the multithreading option enabled in the game settings? depending on your CPU it might be more or less efficient to turn on multithreading (which would also affect load times/game performance)

ArchMikem · May 2023

Solid State Drives were a milestone in technology, it makes so much difference. Xbox Series X comes with internal SSD and long load screens are nonexistent.

Lumsdenml · May 2023

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Hi! I've been suffering the long loading screen issue for some time, and I've heard some say it could be because of certain addons. I was wondering if anyone has found this to be true, and what addon(s) caused the issue for you?

I use no addons whatsoever, and I've been suffering from very long loading screens, so I doubt that it has anything to do with addons per se.

What I've found is that if I do Alt-Tab to move the game behind something else-- such as the launcher window, or (if I've closed the launcher window) the Steam window-- it seems to help shorten the loading screens, although it doesn't really make any sense why that should help and I can't say whether it's actually making a difference or is just some kind of coincidence.

All I know is that if I sit there and wait for the loading screen to end on its own, I can be sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting before it finally goes away and I'm in the game or in the zone; I've actually gotten up, gone out into the kitchen to feed the cats or fix a cup of coffee, and come back several minutes later to find that the loading screen is still there. But if I press Alt-Tab then the loading screens seem to take significantly less time.

It's been suggested that the problem is probably my hardware, and that things would be much improved if I were to use a SSD. I don't know, but my computer has an Intel Optane+932GBHDD, which seems to have a pretty good rating as far as speed, and if the problem was related to my HDD then I don't see how using Alt-Tab could apparently be making a difference.

But on the other hand, if Alt-Tab is indeed making a difference (as bizarre as that sounds) then it would seem to suggest that the issue is indeed something to do with my system-- not with my hardware per se, but perhaps something to do with focus or priority, or background processing versus "foreground" processing, or something like that (and I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about here).

All I do know is that it's really starting to drive me crazy.

A standard HD just can't compete with the speed of an SSD. Your drive has a Sequential Read speed of 307 MBytes/Sec and has a passmark benchmark rating of 2,070. The CORSAIR Force MP600 Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 SSD (Which goes for about $65 on Amazon) has a Sequential Read speed of 3,194 MBytes/Sec and a benchmark rating of 29,273. This is why you see such a drastic difference when upgrading....

Dark_Lord_Kuro · May 2023

Moving frome og ps4 to ps5 solved them rigith away so i guess its the ssd

Elvenheart · June 2023

Thanks to all who’ve commented, it really gives me a lot to think about!

ZOS_Phoenix · June 2023

Greetings,

After review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic (Players Helping Players, as the OP was requesting that other players provide input on how to reduce loading times).

Thank you for your understanding.

NeuroticPixels · June 2023

I was told a decent way to see which addons are bogging down your game is by looking at your saved variables. Bigger files tend to make loading screens longer. Simply deleting the saved variables probably wouldn’t change anything. You’d need to fully remove the addon to see any improvement. Master Merchant is a big performance hog. 🤷‍♀️ I personally find it too helpful to remove, but to each their own.

SeaGtGruff · June 2023

One thing about SSDs-- if you DO get one, turn off any auto-defragmentation setting in your system, because (1) defragging is bad for the life expectancy of your SSD due to the extra read/write cycles and (2) it shouldn't be necessary anyway due to the fast access times of SSDs.

ixthUA · June 2023

Game uses CPU a lot during loading times, so if your CPU is old - loading will be long.
Also, having installed the game on a PCI-Ex 3.0 x4 SSD - i haven't seen even 500 mB/s read speed when loading ESO, so a regular $30 SSD will do.

SeaGtGruff · June 2023

I changed my settings to allow multithreaded rendering, although I don't think it made much difference the last time I tried it.

One thing I did notice was that there's a setting to limit the FPS when the game is running in the background, which is turned on and the background FPS is set to 30 FPS max, so that might gave some bearing on why using Alt-Tab seems to help-- but there's nothing being rendered in the game while the loading screen is there, so...?

I might try the setting that doesn't try to render things which are behind other things, or whatever it is, but I'll have to look up where to go to change it. It does seem like a lot of the problems I've been having didn't start until the last several months, so I figure there have been changes being made which apparently don't sit well with my system. My computer is only 2 years old, and the game ran great during that first year.

ZOS_Bill · June 2023

As there are multiple threads on this topic, the discussion is being closed.

You can find troubleshooting in our FAQ below to help with infinite loading issues.

What do I do if I can login and select my character, but then get stuck on an infinite loading screen?