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Insufferable lag

ok ive tried everything and im bout to give up and go back to fantasy grounds. when i clik stuff...try to do anything as a dm EVERYTHING takes forever to load...maps statistics ANYTHING!. I have tried everything..turning of malwarebytes...disabling autocomplete all of that. NONE of my other games or online services do this...it is only HERE! someone has got to give me some worthwhile information to fix this or i am done. I have been trying to make a single 1st level character in the charactermancer for 50 minutes. It is taking that long for each tab to load the next page. I am at a loss for a solution to this :( pls help!
And now..i just finally got to the finish and apply ....and its sitting there...doing nothing due to the excessive load times.
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Lag can be difficult to diagnose. There are best practices that can help (some of them you have tried, but I am being completist to help anyone else who might be following along), including: Running lean. Keeping the number of characters in the game below 150/200 helps, even smaller if you have a lot of spellcasters. Definitely only put spells on a character if they are actively needed, not just because "a cleric can cast all of these". Eliminating extension conflicts. Some extensions such as Last Pass have been known to cause lag. Ones that are built to enhance Roll20 specifically can add nice features, but they make diagnosing really hard. There are some questionable ones that can actually damage your game or keep devs from being able to help you. Try to keep maps smaller and Dynamic Lighting simpler. I can run some absolutely huge maps (16,000 pixels across) even on my pokey old Chromebook, but I wouldn't dream of trying that with DL. If on Firefox particularly, turn off autofill and autocomplete. These are well-known lag sources. You can try toggling hardware acceleration in your browser. For some folks it works better on, others off. Although only Firefox and Chrome are officially supported, you can try alternatives. One of my players had his lag vanish by switching to Edge. Not supported, but if it works, it works. I'll post the standard troubleshooting steps below the line. They can often help to find out where a problem is occurring. Could you please carefully work through these steps of our guide to  Solving Technical Issues ? Step 1: Make sure to use the right browser Please check if these issues persist when using both Chrome  and  Firefox. Step 2: Ensure that there are no extensions/addons interfering with Roll20 Please disable  all  add-ons/extensions. Step 3: Clear your cache If none of the above succeeds, please thoroughly work through  Step 4 .  (Don't forget the complete Console Log!)
Does running lean and 150/200 characters mean tokens on that map or characters in the journal? If the latter, how should I manage a campaign where that number is easily exceeded?
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Characters in the journal. You can exceed that of course, but the more the number increases and the greater the complexity of those characters, the more lag you can run into. I usually keep mine down below 200, but do have the advantage of the Transmogrifier (a Pro feature) to move excess characters to an external  Library Campaign . Keep in mind that "Archiving" a character only removes it from view, not from memory. I also tend to link many tokens to a single sheet. For instance, I have well over a hundred tokens with different portraits, names and identities linked to the single "Commoner" sheet. There may be some strategies like this that can help. Can you describe what your needs are that include so many sheets? There may be some strategies to reduce the overhead.
Thing is...im just running basic roll20. no extensions nothing, im on firefox which is spose to be a browser thats recommended and its been just progressively getting worse.
in the corner i keep seeing this downloading from j.stripe thing is that normal?
Only thing I can offer is commiseration - the lag was incredibly bad last night but it isn't always which leads me to suspect it is on Roll20's end.  If you play at "peak" times (generally US evening hours) you're going to get some lag.  Last night was particularly bad. -Adam
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Kefrem said: Thing is...im just running basic roll20. no extensions nothing, im on firefox which is spose to be a browser thats recommended and its been just progressively getting worse. Have you tried Chrome to see if the experience is different? (Or Edge or Opera? Technically they are unsupported, but there is anecdotal evidence at least that some folks have seen better performance on them.) 50 minutes for Charactermancer is not normal and not the typical experience. What about the other things mentioned: number and complexity of existing characters, for instance? Hardware acceleration?
I also tend to link many tokens to a single sheet. For instance, I have well over a hundred tokens with different portraits, names and identities linked to the single "Commoner" sheet. There may be some strategies like this that can help. Can you describe what your needs are that include so many sheets? There may be some strategies to reduce the overhead. Sure, I figured out that you don't need to have separate characters for mooks or commoners or the lot. But I got like 5-10 flavors of orcs. Rinse and repeat for all the main baddies. I got a campaign with higher level characters and we like to fight different monsters. Most recently, they are going to fight a band of NPCs they defeated earlier, and that have been revived by the evil necromancer. I duplicated the old npcs' sheets, each of which had their own sheet, b/c, well, they were unique, so now I have another 4 unique characters. I guess I use a lot of named, unique NPCs. Maybe others don't.  Think about it this way, the MM is some 300 pages, with what, 1 monster/page. So, even if I stick to stock, non-unique monsters, I can only do about half of them. Other books' monsters, anything unique, anything original I create is beyond that. Tbh, I can't see how ppl DON'T have hundreds of characters unless they run short campaigns or single modules or have very focused campaigns or have some way to store them, beyond the archive feature. I mean, I guess I should just create a new campaign for every 5 levels, and then I can use that as a way to store them? Is that what you suggest?
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
At the Plus level, you have access to the Character Vault, which is not nearly as good a solution as the Transmogrifier, but can perform the same general function. But the truth is that different tier levels have different optimization strategies. One of the advantages of things like the Monster Manual, is that the characters in them do not count against your storage, so as long as you are using the stock statblocks, you can add and delete to your heart's content. Not a perfect solution for homebrewers, but like I said, different tiers have different strategies. You came into this thread in the middle, so I'm not sure if you are suffering the same lag as the original poster was reporting. Is this the case? Have you tried the suggestions already posted? Also, the NPCs you are talking about, are you building them as NPCs, using NPC statblocks, or are you using Charactermancer? NPCs built as PCs can build up overhead faster than the official method as the sheets have many, many more attributes to track.
Thx again, keith, for the reply. Yes, all NPCs are NPC characters. Yes, I've done all the usual things listed here and elsewhere. Just now I was looking into compendiums and just now realized how compendiums worked wrt memory vs all those characters I have. My problem was that I was assuming the game only loaded those characters and maps it needed, i.e. that weren't archived. That I could "store" characters and maps in the game. I also cannot create my own compendiums. It makes sense now. To actually play an involved campaign you have to buy the compendiums and upgrade to Pro. Fine. I get that now and why, but that was really not clear to me before. 
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
It sounds like you've got a handle on it. Some clarifications for anyone following along: 1. When you load a game, virtually everything is loaded into your browser's memory. This is double edged. It does mean that a large campaign can take a lot of memory, but if it were not loaded this way, every time you accessed an attribute on a character sheet, it would require getting that info remotely. For a large campaign, that could give incredible lag. Hence the need to run lean, if possible. 2. The "Archive" function in the game is cosmetic only. It should probably be better labelled as "Hide". Things in the archive still get loaded, they are just hidden from display. You can still use their attributes and abilities, for instance. 3. The ability to create custom compendiums that function like the regular compendium are unlikely to ever appear, IMHO. I have seen the back end. It is functional, but not simple. I doubt the average user would get much from it. Cut and paste, manual entry, or API-driven tools are really the only alternative. 4. Purchasing a compendium is not necessary, but it does make life much easier. Particularly for very large or involved games.
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Kraynic
Pro
Sheet Author
Keep in mind that while you don't have the transmogrifier at the plus subscription level, you still have access to the character vault.  I don't recommend trying to store your monsters in there, but you can use it to move any currently unneeded npcs to a bestiary game and delete the instances from the vault to keep it from being too big to find anything.  That way you can save your work and still be able to use it again if you ever need it.  Just an import/export from the vault, and the npc would be ready to go in any game you need it.