Help for game crash on MacBook Pro

Maxamoo · August 2023

Starting Thursday, (8/24/23) my game has been crashing trying to load the character select screen. I run on a MacBook Pro, 2021 with Apple M1 Pro Chip. I have tried a repair thru the launcher and all the suggested fixes by tech support, none of which worked. Since I run on an M1 Mac, customer service has told me there is nothing more they can help with. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am willing to uninstall and reinstall game, but may need some help, since I am a computer phebe. Thanks for your input!

AutomaticPushcart · August 2023

Same problem. On MacBook Pro M1. The game worked great the day of the update, with the exception of noticing fps were lower than what I usually see on max settings, so I lowered my graphics settings. Every day since then, I haven't been able to get to the character load screen. Game crashes after logging in. All add ons are turned off. Tried setting graphics to lowest setting before logging in. Tried deleting user settings file. Will try a clean install this weekend to see if that will fix.

ZOS_Bill · August 2023

@Maxamoo

Do you have your support ticket number?

We can look into the ticket and provide any updates.

Maxamoo · August 2023

First off, thank you both so much!!
Here is the support ticket number: [230824-007542] Elder Scrolls Online Support Ticket
Would appreciate any help you can suggest.

Maxamoo · August 2023

I was able to get the game back up and running by doing a uninstall and reinstall, removing all add-ons. It runs nicely and I am in the process of adding back add-ons one at a time to see if I can identify the problem further. Thanks again for your help!

ZOS_Phoenix · August 2023

@Maxamoo

We're glad to hear that you were able to get the game running properly again and hope that you have good and issue-free times in Tamriel going forward!

@AutomaticPushcart

Did the issue resolve for you as well with the clean install? If not, please open a ticket with us so that we can take a look. If you already have, please let us know the ticket number so that we can provide an update.

AutomaticPushcart · August 2023

@ZOS_Phoenix

Hi, a clean install of the game fixed the problem (woohoo!), but changing my graphics settings reproduces the issue.

Once a graphics setting (not sure which one(s) yet since I was changing multiple at a time) is changed, the game starts crashing between the login and the character selection screen and there's no reverting back. Switching back to the default settings from the clean install or the minimum settings doesn't fix it once a change is made and continues to crash.

The only way I could get a working game again was to create a new user login on my machine and launch from there. I'll create more test login accounts and experiment this weekend to see what specific setting is causing the crash.

AutomaticPushcart · September 2023

@ZOS_Phoenix

Figured out the following settings are each individually causing the crash between login and character load screen: shadow quality, screen space reflection quality, and planar reflection quality.

On the new machine login I created to test this, I was able to stop the crashing behavior by changing the 3 settings back to my default install values (shadow - high, screen - med, and planar - off) then restarting my machine. Without a restart, the game continued to crash.

However, on another login account on my machine that was experiencing this problem, I cannot restore these 3 settings back to the default install values. Instead, turning all 3 of these settings to off and restarting the computer stops the crashing.

Hope that helps anyone having the same problem.

ZOS_Bill · September 2023

@AutomaticPushcart

Thanks for sharing the steps you took to resolve these crashes on your end!

Voiddreams · November 2023

On my M3 MB Pro, I turn off all the settings such as Bloom and the three close to it. Initially it crashed. I turned off all addons and it loaded. Then ran through the addons slowly. It appears like the cache for the addons had to be recreated or the whole system was dead to load.

Now i have all the addons and the M3 running. I turned up all my graphics except for the bloom and associated setting.

ZOS_Bill · November 2023

@Voiddreams

Thank you for sharing these tips!