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Lag so much lag soooo much lag

1642135231

Edited 1642135255
Any time I update any tokens, character sheets, anything really... the game lags to the point where it's unplayable.  Once I refresh it's fine, but it's quite annoying to need to refresh any time I do even the smallest update.   I'm running on a quite high end PC with amazing internet.  
1642142181
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
PC speed is rarely an issue. Ex. my midrange Chromebook runs Roll20. It's almost always some other issue. Internet speed can be a factor, though. Since yours is good, there must be other factors. Some things to check: See if lag occurs on a different browser, or in a private browsing window. Turn off autocomplete and autofill in your browser; that has caused lag in the past while editing any text. Check the size of your game. Is it unusually large (Hundreds and hundreds of characters, many with spells? Try deleting cache and cookies. I'll post the standard checklist below the line, in case any of the links might be might be helpful. 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!)
Vizual said: Any time I update any tokens, character sheets, anything really... the game lags to the point where it's unplayable.  Once I refresh it's fine, but it's quite annoying to need to refresh any time I do even the smallest update.   I'm running on a quite high end PC with amazing internet.   I have even provided a video of this to them, they don't even believe the visible proof bud.  They think I have extensions running when its a pristine session on multiple OS's at this point and the players experience the break too, where the entire UI just breaks and you have to reload the session to be able to do anything again.  They broke something with the last patch, I dunno what.  FWIW it only happens for me when I mess with anything related to tooltips, when I abandoned the idea to utilize it and we just stopped using them altogether the problem stopped happening.  
Okay, tried running on Chrome - Wiped Cache and Cookies - turned off autofill - nothing else at all open on my pc - 100% fresh start of the smallest campaign in DND Lost Mine of Phandlelver No API's turned on, no chrome extensions running, literally nothing at all running in my background.   Starts out fine, edit one token..... unplayable lag.  All I did was changed the name on the character sheet, assigned the character to the player, tried to add a png art token and hit save..... complete freeze up, have to refresh.  Once I refresh its okay again until I edit the next sheet.     Did the same thing with Firefox...... unplayable lag.  
1642173969
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Hi Vizual, Thanks for trying those things. FWIW, I think your best bet is to capture a Console Log ( Chrome ,  Firefox ) from the time where the freeze occurs, and use it to file a  Help Center Request . On the forums, it is most likely to be community support. That being said, there is something going on, but I don't think it is a systemic Roll20 issue. Lag reports are perennial, but always a small proportion of users. I can only suggest things to investigate and ways to winnow out what is not likely to be the culprit. Could you have some security feature at some level that is making it difficult for your computer to access Amazon Web Services? You've narrowed out the browser settings, but you could have something at the firewall level that is gating your access? I have seen a few anecdotal reports of the latest flavor of Windows causing some issues. Do you have another completely different computer you can test on? Like a work computer, or a computer at a library or friends house? That could help rule out anything in your whole ecosystem, and would narrow the problem down to either a game setting or a Roll20 issue. You can rule out anything at the account level by creating a  Dummy Account  and testing there. You won't have access to a large module game to test with, but there are a number of small free ones (ex. The Master's Vault) if you want to test a campaign with existing assets. In your tests, are you using any Dynamic Lighting? If so, the current system or the legacy system? If current, try turning off Explorer mode. If legacy, try turning off Advanced Fog of War.
Both my laptop and gaming PC are suffering the same lag.  Laptop is a higher end laptop less than a year old that I only use for 3d rendering and nothing else.   As far as firewalls go, I have all of mine turned off as I don't use my computer for any web browsing other than DNDBeyond and Roll20.  This is my primary gaming pc, so all my normal internet usage is done on my other other laptop "if that makes sense" lol.   As far as dynamic lighting, yes it's on.  I use the current system and explorer mode is turned off.  I've tried changing over to legacy as well to see if that was the issue, and it was doing the same thing.   The application does not lag when playing normally.  I can play for hours with no issues.  It's as soon as I start editing things.  "Token names, the lighting that the tokens have, hit points, assigning character sheets to players".  Things of that nature, that's what causes the application to all but freeze up completely.   A simple refresh fixes it, until I make another change.  Then I have to refresh again.   It almost reminds me of the old school RAM leaks I used to get in some video games back in the day.  
I have been seeing lots of lag the last couple of days too. One player doing something and no one else seeing it until minutes later.
Our session tonight was laggy for everyone, and I think all seven of us had our browsers crash from memory issues.  Earlier in the day, when it was just me, preparing for the evening, performance was never a problem; it was as the players connected that it got worse and worse, with me (the DM) crashing first. The map is large, granted, but we've been playing this level for the last five or six sessions, and while we've experienced lag in the past, it has never been this bad, nor have we had crashes, let alone across the board.
Something is 100% messed up.  I am on multiple very large discord communities and a vast majority of the DM's are transferring their campaigns over to either fantasy grounds or other VTT's.   I have so much money tied up into this, hopefully they can fix whatever they broke.  
I'm typically not your doom and gloom kind of fella, but I hear ya.  When I started paying  monthly years ago for this service, I saw a massive upside and a huge potential.  Now..... I just hope I can play in a lag free session from time to time.  
1642364987
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Vizual, did you get any response from a  Help Center Request ?
keithcurtis said: Vizual, did you get any response from a  Help Center Request ? No I don't work for the Roll20 IT department.  I pay them with the hope that they provide me with an adequate product that will work reliably, not to troubleshoot their broken software for them.   On all of my community DND Discords, every single DM and player has been complaining about the lag since the most recent update.  To say it's a small portion of the player base I think is absurd.  I think it may be a small potion that has brought it to the teams attention, but when Roll20 lag complaints are the main topic on all of my servers with over 100 players in total and not D&D related conversations, I think it's safe to assume it's not just a small problem.   Anyways, hope it gets fixed soon, but I wont be the Guinea Pig to do all the testing for them.  I'll just transfer my assets elsewhere and wont purchase anything new until it's resolved.  
Well the main reason why lag is a complaint in those communities is because 90% of those communities are utilizing the third party tools and getting sessions shared to them to host with.  The third party tools generate input lag on low to mid range machines.  This is perceived as lag  because you would need to peel those tools from their cold dead hands before you were able to show them that is the cause of most of their problems.  Case in point, half the support forum posts are almost always pictures and complains about the third party tools with them not realizing its not part of the product.  There is most definitely a systemic problem with the latest version of their service and I've posted videos of it already.  Something breaks the UI and then you have to refresh your browser and at first I thought it was api related but now I think its just random and happens way more often when the system is bogged down.  Ultimately though I think all of us pro users need to come to a solid realization here.  We are not the revenue generators we think we are.  The majority of their profit comes from ads.  They don't care if the service is poor, they only care that we are visiting their site and guess what generates more views?  Hitting that refresh button.  Its actually genius if you think about it.  They provide a poor service but get profits from clicks, and we invite all of our friends to view their ads while occasionally getting to roll some dice between page refreshes.  
Ultimately though I think all of us pro users need to come to a solid realization here.  We are not the revenue generators we think we are.  The majority of their profit comes from ads. I suspect we're getting dangerously off topic here, but I'm truly curious if you have some info to back that up. I don't recall seeing any breakdown anywhere of where the revenue comes in, but I'd be amazed if the marketplace + subscriptions make up less than ad revenue. Ads are notoriously low ROI, it takes truly massive scale for them to be a substantial revenue stream. This is why news websites have all had to move to paywalls.
1642647692
Victor B.
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Yep terrible lag
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Kraynic
Pro
Sheet Author
I just finished a 2.5 hour session (3 including prep).  I and one other person had to refresh once.  No lag for sheets or rolls, but chat quit scrolling for me once, and there was a map issue for the other.  Not too bad for me.
1642652248
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Only lag I saw tonight was opening sheets. Even from minimized, they sometimes took a second to resolve. Of course, I've never played using the Pathfinder sheet before, so I don't know how much that might have had to do with it. Nothing Game breaking or even mildly annoying, though.
I'm seeing lag over the last few days too. My players (using Firefox) found their maps would freeze when moving tokens, and they lost the ability to manipulate their tokens at all. Two players had to refresh browsers three times during the two hour game. While I didn't see any appreciable lag on my end (using Chrome) I did see when working on my game settings a few times the compendium was not available, nor the character sheet. I also did run a test using my other computer and connected to my game - I was able to see what they saw. Slight lag on chat input, lots of lag using the battle map.  So I would have to agree with the other posters that something has changed somewhere. Different people, on different computers, with different browsers all complaining about lag in my games over the past few days makes me believe it's a R20 issue.  FG2, Foundry, and Astral do seem more appealing every time I see these issues. I have started migrating a few of my largest games to these other platforms as  a backup for when R20 fails -- and I expect if the failures continue those backups will eventually become the primaries.
I have noticed this as well.  Its really bad any time i'm inputting creatures.
I notice lots of lag too, using firefox browser, have killed all extensions but chat text lags.. token movement lags. Also I notice the jukebox has been acting weird the past few weeks.  When I hit play, it plays a split second and stops and I have to hit play again - I always assumed it was something with the browser. Now, when you hit play on a new track, it plays both the previous track AND the new track, which is just so strange. I have to hunt down the old track and stop it. And it's not on auto-repeat or anything.  I assume its also related to these lag issues.. I just dont know.
Always some, but seems to be consistently getting worse for our players as well, firefox, chrome doesn't matter. Good internet connections, modern hardware doesn't matter. Happens in multiple games, and dynamic lighting definitely compounds it when used. One of the games that I play in has switched entirely back to fog of war only because of all the lag issues.
They programmed a brain ...that can't handle the workload...THERE IS NO FIX FOR THIS...ROLL20 IS CAPPED
1646329363
Bryan W.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
I am curious to know if most of you have seen the lagging worsen as you increased the # of character sheets and/or macros?  I use the standard 5E Roll20 sheets. I just added about 50 macros for some Kobold Press weapon options.  Lag was not really an issue until after I added these.  It is only during start-up.  Once the game gets going, it seems to be fine. However, my previous campaign reached a point at the end where the lag forced me to give up.  It ran for 5+ years and had tons of character sheets, macros & maps.  The start-up would effect me and all of the players.  It usually took 5-10 minutes on average to start up the campaign  (seeing the red error screen about connection).  It eventually got worse and started happening during the sessions.  Clearing cache seemed to help some of the time, but other times, it made no difference (and yes, I did all the standard checks). Like many of you (I assume), I have 1,000's of hours invested in Roll20, so switching to another platform is not something I want to do.  The lag is starting to show its ugly face again in my new campaign (per my first paragraph).
The only things I've added to my games are 4 character sheets for my players.  The second I go in to adjust their tokens like set their token to their specific character sheet, adjust the name on the tokens, change the tokens lighting and vision, ect ect, the site all but stops working and I need to refresh.   My players are also having issues as well when adjusting anything on their character sheet.  Game bogs down, and they need to refresh.   I've all but given up hope that Roll20 staff will address the issue, they have until my current 2 campaigns are done to fix whatever it is they demolished, if it's not fixed by then, my entire community of players are going to go to another VTT.  
1646339156
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Bryan W. said: However, my previous campaign reached a point at the end where the lag forced me to give up.  It ran for 5+ years and had tons of character sheets, macros & maps.  The start-up would effect me and all of the players.  It usually took 5-10 minutes on average to start up the campaign  (seeing the red error screen about connection).  It eventually got worse and started happening during the sessions.  Clearing cache seemed to help some of the time, but other times, it made no difference (and yes, I did all the standard checks). There are limits to how much a browser-based system can handle. Roll20 is working on pushing those limits (continually), but realistically, a very huge game as you describe would almost certainly benefit from a  Library Campaign . 
1646339255
Andrew R.
Pro
Sheet Author
My 13th Age Glorantha game last night had no lag at all, and I had to restart my API sandbox just once at the 2 hour mark. 
1646339335
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Hi Vizual, For lag like you describe there are typically two culprits to check first. Most likely: Check to make sure that you and all of your players have toggled on Hardware Acceleration for your browser of choice. As Roll20 has modernized, this has become near-essential. Less Likely: Changing field values can sometimes be improved by turning off Autocomplete and Autofill in the browser, usually Firefox. This used to be a much more common issue, but I mention it for completeness' sake. Vizual said: The only things I've added to my games are 4 character sheets for my players.  The second I go in to adjust their tokens like set their token to their specific character sheet, adjust the name on the tokens, change the tokens lighting and vision, ect ect, the site all but stops working and I need to refresh.   My players are also having issues as well when adjusting anything on their character sheet.  Game bogs down, and they need to refresh.   I've all but given up hope that Roll20 staff will address the issue, they have until my current 2 campaigns are done to fix whatever it is they demolished, if it's not fixed by then, my entire community of players are going to go to another VTT.  
Same situation