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Load times have become a joke.

Vulon

By Vulon,
in Fallout 4 Technical Support

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
Posted

Behold. 

 

 

It's gotten so bad. 

 

Initial load time -- 1 minute, 10 seconds. (actually better than my new average of 2 minutes)
Load time from Institute to Sunshine Tidings -- 3 minutes, 24 seconds. 
Load time from Sunshine Tidings to Rocky Cave -- 36 seconds. 
Load time from Rocky Cave to Recon Bunker Theta -- 1 minute, 16 seconds.
Load time from Recon Bunker Theta to Diamond City Market -- *smashes computer with sledgehammer* 

 

I initially wrote out a good few paragraphs explaining in detail everything I could think of that might possibly be relevant, but then I was an idiot and accidentally backspaced out of the post and lost it all, so I'll just provide the bullet points. 

 

- It wasn't like this for a good 120+ hours of gameplay. The massive spike in load times was fairly sudden. 

 

- I created a new character to escape the horrors of these load times. It was futile. Load times are roughly equivalent for the file in which I've accumulated 6 days of playtime and the file in which I've accumulated 16 hours. 

 

- The instance in the above video in which I tab out into the task manager was the first time I've noticed my disk usage maxed out. Additionally, the reported memory usage seems odd, considering I get the same ballpark 60% usage reading when FO4 is using over 4gb of memory. It's only using 2gb here. 

 

- CPU usage fluctuates when I tab out and spikes a couple times, but normally Fallout 4 seems to utilize between 60-70%.

 

- The problem isn't my rig or my settings. It could very well be my HDD, but I still find it odd that the sudden, massive spike in load times came about so...suddenly. If the issue was isolated to my HDD I would think that it would have surfaced much earlier. 

 

I've defragmented my HDD. Cleared out a couple hundred gigs of additional storage just in case. I've run numerous HDD benchmark tests, which have resulted in decidedly average or slightly above average results for read/write times. 

 

Right now I'm planning on backing up my saves/mods and doing a re-installation, since I don't know what else to do aside from shelling out the money for an external SDD for the sole purpose of playing FO4. I've never, ever encountered load times this frequently atrocious -- not even when I was playing through a severely bloated Skyrim save on the ps3 back in 2012. 

 

Prior to this, Fallout 4 was the most stable Bethesda release I'd ever experienced. I can recall the relative speediness of the load times I used to enjoy like it was yesterday. I think the longest one I sat through was probably 30-40 seconds tops, and I averaged anywhere between 10-20 seconds for exterior loads and significantly less for interiors. I just can't pinpoint the cause of these new-fangled load times for the life of me. 

 

I read somewhere that uncapping the framerate was verified to have an effect on load times. I tried it out of desperation, and while it made the loading screens themselves move around probably 1.5x their normal speed and made scrolling through menus and attempting to lockpick nigh impossible in the face of the hilarious/horrifying increase in literal game speed...it had zero impact on load time itself. Changing settings/resolution doesn't work...nothing works. Help. Please. 

 

Here's a list of my currently installed mods, if it's of any use in determining the cause. 

 

Current mods

Vault Booty

Harness Wardrobe

Daisy Nukes

Better Piper Outfit

FAR

Optimized Vanilla Textures

Enclave Standalone Paintjobs

Wearable Shoulder Bags

Hubrics Comics Shoulder Bags

Fogout

Enhanced Color Correction 1.2

CBBE 

 

EDIT - MYSTERY SOLVED! FOGOUT WAS THE CULPRIT ALL ALONG. LOAD TIMES HAVE GONE BACK DOWN TO NORMAL AND I NOW FIND MYSELF ONCE AGAIN SUCKLING UPON THE TEAT OF JOY. ALL IS WELL IN THE WORLD. 

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Kashyr

Kashyr

Posted
Posted

Rip.

 

But no really I have no idea. Something clearly broke, whether its the base game or the mods idk. You could try uninstalling your mods and trying to load that old save. Bethesda's game tend to have software cracks people fall into and they don't fix them for months. GL. 

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Kaz Aanh

Kaz Aanh

Posted
Posted

Thats why you shouldn't use .esp based mods if there is no official editor tool yet.

 

Game save got most likely fucked up and clogged up by mods scripts/leaks/whatever else . Its sad but true, I have 160 hours without any mods ( not counting texture-replacer ) and my game loads fairly well for me. ( and is very stable )

 

But could be also a possibility there was some kind of game engine memory leak and your save got corrupted , but you were using mods so . . .  yeah. No wonder why Bethesda has tried to lock modding in the latest patches, because you are not supposed to mod your game yet. It will only cause game instability and player frustration.

 

And "use mods at your own risk"

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ttaga

ttaga

Posted
Posted

Maybe this can help

 

How to enable modding

 

 

  • Navigate to your Fallout 4 Folder at the following location "Documents/My Games/Fallout 4"
  • Within this folder will be a number of .ini files, highlight "Fallout4Prefs.ini" and "Fallout4.ini".
  • Right Click, select Properties and ensure that these are NOT marked as read only.
  • Open Fallout4Prefs.ini with your favourite text editor (we use Notepad++).
  • Navigate to the very bottom and you will see the line [Launcher]. Directly underneath this, add the following line: bEnableFileSelection=1
  • Save and Close
  • Open Fallout4Custom.ini with your favourite text editor. * Note that this file was changed from Fallout4.ini following update 1.2
  • Add the following lines to your Fallout4Custom.ini [Archive] bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 sResourceDataDirsFinal=
  • Save and close...
  • Find the line that reads: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\
  • Replace this with the following text: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\
    * The above settings were deprecated as they were known to cause abnormally long load-times.

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Dont know if it helps, but tried removing any graphic/texture mod?

I have a hard time believing any of the visual mods I've installed would have a negative impact on performance, since Fogout simply removes interior and LOD fog and the other visual mods are for optimization, but it's worth a shot. 

 

 

Maybe this can help

 

How to enable modding

 

 

  • Navigate to your Fallout 4 Folder at the following location "Documents/My Games/Fallout 4"
  • Within this folder will be a number of .ini files, highlight "Fallout4Prefs.ini" and "Fallout4.ini".
  • Right Click, select Properties and ensure that these are NOT marked as read only.
  • Open Fallout4Prefs.ini with your favourite text editor (we use Notepad++).
  • Navigate to the very bottom and you will see the line [Launcher]. Directly underneath this, add the following line: bEnableFileSelection=1
  • Save and Close
  • Open Fallout4Custom.ini with your favourite text editor. * Note that this file was changed from Fallout4.ini following update 1.2
  • Add the following lines to your Fallout4Custom.ini [Archive] bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 sResourceDataDirsFinal=
  • Save and close...
  • Find the line that reads: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\
  • Replace this with the following text: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\

    * The above settings were deprecated as they were known to cause abnormally long load-times.

 

I should have clarified in my original post that I'd already done this. 

 

I'm going to try disabling mods one by one and loading up saves to see if I notice any marked improvement. Barring that, I'll just back up everything, reinstall, and hope for the best. 

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ttaga

ttaga

Posted
Posted

 

Dont know if it helps, but tried removing any graphic/texture mod?

I have a hard time believing any of the visual mods I've installed would have a negative impact on performance, since Fogout simply removes interior and LOD fog and the other visual mods are for optimization, but it's worth a shot. 

 

 

Maybe this can help

 

How to enable modding

 

 

  • Navigate to your Fallout 4 Folder at the following location "Documents/My Games/Fallout 4"
  • Within this folder will be a number of .ini files, highlight "Fallout4Prefs.ini" and "Fallout4.ini".
  • Right Click, select Properties and ensure that these are NOT marked as read only.
  • Open Fallout4Prefs.ini with your favourite text editor (we use Notepad++).
  • Navigate to the very bottom and you will see the line [Launcher]. Directly underneath this, add the following line: bEnableFileSelection=1
  • Save and Close
  • Open Fallout4Custom.ini with your favourite text editor. * Note that this file was changed from Fallout4.ini following update 1.2
  • Add the following lines to your Fallout4Custom.ini [Archive] bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 sResourceDataDirsFinal=
  • Save and close...
  • Find the line that reads: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\
  • Replace this with the following text: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\

    * The above settings were deprecated as they were known to cause abnormally long load-times.

 

I should have clarified in my original post that I'd already done this. 

 

I'm going to try disabling mods one by one and loading up saves to see if I notice any marked improvement. Barring that, I'll just back up everything, reinstall, and hope for the best. 

 

OK.

Well maybe Bethesda fucked up something with the latest patch, I dunno...

Best of luck

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D_ManXX2

D_ManXX2

Posted
Posted

2 minutes is ridicules but i read somewhere that adding stuff in fallout4.ini could make your game super slow ?? That is why you need to edit the custom ini now instead of directly the fallout ini. btw some mod gave the option to edit ini in order to make the textures show correctly with thelatest patch allot of thew older stuff got undone. So it is best just deletin the ini and allow fallout 4 to create a new one for you then you can be sure it wasn't an wrongly edited ini file that is causing this for you.

 

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
  • Author
Posted

How old is your HDD, its possible FO4 is working its arse off like never before and now its starting to throw a conrod.

 

It's not old at all. I built my current PC less than a year ago, and according to my Amazon order history, I purchased the HDD (WD Blue 1TB) on January 30, 2015. 

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I disabled steam cloud synchronization, that helped my load times a lot.

Yeah, I disabled steam cloud sync after like a week of playing when I started noticing some general instability. It definitely helped.

 

Man I feel your pain. I get some insane loading times as well sometimes. It's really random too. Sometimes the loads are instant and sometimes the loads are infinite.

 

It's not the mods you're using. Angry Joe review highlighted the BULLSHIT loading screens in his positive video:

 

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aorKjw71ckQ"frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Haha, actually, in this case...it WAS one of the mods. :D A fellow member saw this thread and was kind enough to PM me and help out. They tested out my saves on their rig and everything seemed perfectly fine; they mentioned that none of the mods I used were inherently harmful since the only scripted mods used vanilla scripts, but Fogout edited cell/world info, and it turned out to be the culprit. I removed it and my load times INSTANTLY went from 2-3 minutes down to 20-30 on average. 

 

The highest load time I've had since was 46 seconds, and I tested this in a location where the transition from interior to exterior resulted in 3+ minute load times just yesterday (the exit from Railroad HQ to North End). Still a pretty long load time, but I'd gladly take 46 seconds over almost 4 minutes any damn day of the week. 

 

I think I'll still probably end up shelling out the cash for an external SSD anyway, though. The fact that I'm excited about my load times being "only" half a minute long now somehow seems a bit wrong in today's day and age, y'know? 

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Eriagle

Eriagle

Posted
Posted

 

Maybe this can help

 

How to enable modding

 

 

  • Navigate to your Fallout 4 Folder at the following location "Documents/My Games/Fallout 4"
  • Within this folder will be a number of .ini files, highlight "Fallout4Prefs.ini" and "Fallout4.ini".
  • Right Click, select Properties and ensure that these are NOT marked as read only.
  • Open Fallout4Prefs.ini with your favourite text editor (we use Notepad++).
  • Navigate to the very bottom and you will see the line [Launcher]. Directly underneath this, add the following line: bEnableFileSelection=1
  • Save and Close
  • Open Fallout4Custom.ini with your favourite text editor. * Note that this file was changed from Fallout4.ini following update 1.2
  • Add the following lines to your Fallout4Custom.ini [Archive] bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 sResourceDataDirsFinal=
  • Save and close...
  • Find the line that reads: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\
  • Replace this with the following text: sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\

    * The above settings were deprecated as they were known to cause abnormally long load-times.

 

 

Wait... So now with the current patch you need to add only sResourceDataDirsFinal= in Fallout4Custom.ini instead of Fallout4.ini to use mods and texture/mesh/sound etc replacers?

Not the whole string/, textures/ blah blah line anymore in Fallout4.ini? Should it be kept as an empty line in there like in the custom.ini, or how the original line was when the launcher configured your settings for the first time?

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Some people say that enormous amount of save files may be a problem.

I did not check this myself, but as far as I know If you delete or replace the unnecessary saves out of their directory, loading procedure might become as fast as it was before.

 

I can confirm that having too many files in your save folder makes certain aspects of the game reaaally sluggish -- mainly just scrolling through the UI and actually saving/loading the game, in my experience. I don't remember having any issue with loading times before I cleaned out my saves folder, but sometimes I would have to wait up to 20 seconds just to bring up the menu and another 10-15 seconds to load/save. 

 

The issue with my loading times has been resolved, though. :) It turned out to be the mod 'Fogout' that was causing the extremely long load times. Since removing it, I've tested out my saves with mods/without mods and I get almost identical load times either way. 

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Marisa Kirisame

Marisa Kirisame

Posted
Posted

That's nothing. On my desktop I get 5-minute loading times. on EVERY single loading screen. Sometimes I even hit loading screens while walking around the Commonwealth because the game can't load overworld cells faster than I can walk. I've also fallen through the floor and had a lot of things fail to load. Really, I have 8GB of RAM, a still decent CPU and GPU, a fast enough HDD... and this happens. I also had to just stop playing altogether because the audio glitches out so badly it hurts my ears, it starts sounding all grindy and stuttery, even if the game is running smoothly at 60 fps, only going into the main menu or the pip boy stops it, but then it starts all over again.

 

Either this is really shoddy programming, or my computer is just REALLY that bad.

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Vulon

Vulon

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Hmmm...as noted in a couple of my earlier responses, removing Fogout effectively fixed loading times for me. Or at least, it did until just last night, when I noticed the sudden return of 2+ minute load times. I disabled each of my remaining mods one by one in an attempt to identify the culprit and had no luck whatsoever. Even without any .esp based mods active, I was still seeing ridiculous load times.

 

I booted up the game this morning and my Fallout4Custom.ini was somehow reset. None of my mods loaded as a result, and my load times went back down to about 20 seconds. 

 

So...I have no idea. I think I might just stick to a completely vanilla playthrough until the CK is released. 

 

I checked my custom ini after playing and noticed the following change had somehow been made. 

 

The original text, 

 

[Archive]

sResourceDataDirsFinal=

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1

 

Had reverted to simply

 

sResourceDataDirsFinal=

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1

 

Without the 'Archive' header the game reverts to fully vanilla, though I still see the option to craft custom armor/clothing in Chemistry stations and apply unique paint jobs to my Power Armor unless I deactivate the .esp files that add those features in the first place.

 

So...I guess I would recommend that anyone else having issues with load times simply tries removing the "[Archive]" header from Fallout4Custom.ini to see if it makes a difference. 

 

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vram1974

vram1974

Posted
Posted

I think the saves just get bloated fast the more you play.

 

You would certainly think so! But no, that's not true.

 

I have 108 hours on my save game (played since release) and I'm using 88 plugins. My save game is 12.1 MB.

 

Which is crazy, since in Skyrim after about 30 hours your save is 30MB and begins crashing all the time.

 

I have to admit I'm impressed so far with the lack of CTD and save bloat.

 

However when GECK drops and modders start using scripts I imagine save game bloat and CTD will increase.

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