Prioritize NPCs/Enemies over other Players

Nathrai · June 16

Sorry for the n00bish question, but I haven't played in a long while ...

Is there a way (be it setting or addon) to set the display order of entities?

Whenever I join an incursion, I have 50 players load in first and only THEN enemies start displaying. And while I love my fellow players and their lovely outfits, I'ld much rather prefer to see what to attack / who's about to kill me.

Same problem in cities. I have to wait for all the other players to load in before I can finally hand in my quest, which at times takes well over a minute.

TybaltKaine · June 16

I don't know that it will help prioritize NPC's, but I have my Character Resolution option set to Low. This should limit how many players get loaded in and restrict it to the close ones, and should also lower the textures for all the other players nearby. In theory it speeds up loading times in these situations.

The option is near the bottom of the video settings, just above Bloom

Nathrai · June 16

Thanks for the reply!

I set that one to low at release, but sadly it doesn't seem to do anything to alleviate the problem. I THINK I get more players to load in as black placeholders at first, but I still have to wait until they are all loaded before NPCs start appearing.

(On an additional note: I seem to be able to damage invisible enemies with AOE, but not target them with direct attacks. Talking to invisible NPCs is impossible, too - I can only start the conversation once they are fully loaded in.)

Nathrai · June 17

Has nobody else run into this problem and found a solution?

Estin · June 17

Where do you have the game installed? If it's on a hard drive, unfortunately the only fix for this problem would be to install the game on a SSD. This game has so much to load in these days that it puts you at a significant disadvantage if you play on a HDD. I made the switch last week and went from having the stable master npc in rawl kha take a full minute to load in and be intractable to having them loaded in and intractable as soon as I loaded in once I moved the game to a SSD.

Nathrai · June 17

sh4d0wh4z3 wrote: »

Where do you have the game installed? If it's on a hard drive, unfortunately the only fix for this problem would be to install the game on a SSD. This game has so much to load in these days that it puts you at a significant disadvantage if you play on a HDD. I made the switch last week and went from having the stable master npc in rawl kha take a full minute to load in and be intractable to having them loaded in and intractable as soon as I loaded in once I moved the game to a SSD.

Thanks, that sounds reasonable, I'll give it a try!

(How naive of me to think a 10-year-old game could run on a rig that can play all recent games on ultra settings from my backup drive ... the only other game I've ever had HDD problems with was Starf... oh ... I see ...XD

Sad thing is, ESO is the only game on Steam that doesn't support moving files between discs, so I'm off to re-downloading 118 GB ...

)

Nathrai · June 17

After a couple of incursions and dailies, the issue itself persists - I still have to wait for ALL 50 players to complete loading in before I start to see NPCs. But at least now that only takes a second or two, so it's okay-ish now ...

Thanks again to both of you for helping out with that!

SeaUnicorn · June 17

Nathrai wrote: »

Sorry for the n00bish question, but I haven't played in a long while ...

Is there a way (be it setting or addon) to set the display order of entities?

Whenever I join an incursion, I have 50 players load in first and only THEN enemies start displaying. And while I love my fellow players and their lovely outfits, I'ld much rather prefer to see what to attack / who's about to kill me.

Same problem in cities. I have to wait for all the other players to load in before I can finally hand in my quest, which at times takes well over a minute.

Hide the group addon does something similar

TaSheen · June 18

Nathrai wrote: »

sh4d0wh4z3 wrote: »

Where do you have the game installed? If it's on a hard drive, unfortunately the only fix for this problem would be to install the game on a SSD. This game has so much to load in these days that it puts you at a significant disadvantage if you play on a HDD. I made the switch last week and went from having the stable master npc in rawl kha take a full minute to load in and be intractable to having them loaded in and intractable as soon as I loaded in once I moved the game to a SSD.

Thanks, that sounds reasonable, I'll give it a try!

(How naive of me to think a 10-year-old game could run on a rig that can play all recent games on ultra settings from my backup drive ... the only other game I've ever had HDD problems with was Starf... oh ... I see ...XD

Sad thing is, ESO is the only game on Steam that doesn't support moving files between discs, so I'm off to re-downloading 118 GB ... )

That's why I dropped steam for anything - don't use it at all, wiped it off my drive, never going to use it again. GOG for Skyrim now, and ESO works perfectly totally without steam. I started with ESO on steam, and very quickly decided I couldn't be bothered with a garbage front end I didn't need....

I actually hate game front end stuff. I've been playing CRPGs since 1985 and the only time I've EVER had issues was with Skyrim and ESO - on steam. Not touching it again. There is literally nothing out there I want to play that I would have to use steam.

Of course.... I ONLY play TES - so that's pretty easy for me to say!

Nathrai · June 18

(Sorry for the late reply, didn't see the notification.)

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Hide the group addon does something similar

But doesn't that just hide group members?

Groups are fine, even with the game installed on HDD I never experienced any problems with just 4 players around. It's more about incursions and cities, where there's tens of players around.

TaSheen wrote: »

That's why I dropped steam for anything - don't use it at all, wiped it off my drive, never going to use it again. GOG for Skyrim now, and ESO works perfectly totally without steam. I started with ESO on steam, and very quickly decided I couldn't be bothered with a garbage front end I didn't need....

I've gotten used to Steam over the years - not happy with being forced to use it, but it is what it is. And I recently switched to the Steam version so I'ld be able to play on GeForce Now, in case I had to.

I know ESO has had it's fair share of problems on Steam before, but so far it seems like everything is working fine now. And I'ld have to do the switch from HDD to SSD with the original client, too.

TaSheen · June 19

Nathrai wrote: »

(Sorry for the late reply, didn't see the notification.)

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Hide the group addon does something similar

But doesn't that just hide group members?

Groups are fine, even with the game installed on HDD I never experienced any problems with just 4 players around. It's more about incursions and cities, where there's tens of players around.

TaSheen wrote: »

That's why I dropped steam for anything - don't use it at all, wiped it off my drive, never going to use it again. GOG for Skyrim now, and ESO works perfectly totally without steam. I started with ESO on steam, and very quickly decided I couldn't be bothered with a garbage front end I didn't need....

I've gotten used to Steam over the years - not happy with being forced to use it, but it is what it is. And I recently switched to the Steam version so I'ld be able to play on GeForce Now, in case I had to.

I know ESO has had it's fair share of problems on Steam before, but so far it seems like everything is working fine now. And I'ld have to do the switch from HDD to SSD with the original client, too.

If you have "real broadband" instead of satellite only, steam probably does work fine for you.