Severely Degraded Map Loading Performance

Over the past few days, server performance related to map loading has clearly changed, and not in a way that can be ignored. Several players in my group are no longer able to load maps that they have been loading without any issue for a long time. These are maps that are admittedly complex, with many tokens and images, yet they have always worked reliably until now. Something appears to have changed in how the servers handle graphics and assets, and the result is that playing has effectively become impossible for part of the group. That kind of disruption points to a substantial modification on the backend, and the outcome is objectively worse than before. Even on my side, where maps still load, performance is noticeably lower than it was very recently. Loading times are longer, responsiveness feels degraded, and the overall experience no longer matches the standard we had grown accustomed to. A rollback of these settings seems necessary. Game experience depends heavily on stable and predictable performance, especially for groups running complex maps. What we are seeing now represents a clear regression compared to what was available until a short time ago, and it seriously undermines our ability to play.

I fully agree. The situation is the same on my side, and it has made playing effectively impossible. A map that used to load without any problem now causes the client to freeze during loading. The screen turns completely white, then small images start appearing one at a time, extremely slowly. During this process, the session frequently disconnects me. Voice and chat stop working, and I get kicked out before the map finishes loading. Reconnecting leads to the same result, so there is no practical way to rejoin the game. Performance at this point is unacceptable. The system no longer supports normal gameplay, even with maps that were previously stable and reliable. Whatever changed on the server side has clearly broken something fundamental, and the current state does not allow regular play.

Yes, that’s true. On some maps the game is completely unplayable now. Even when I set everything to low resolution, the problem does not go away. Apart from the fact that the game experience is no longer enjoyable at all, some maps simply do not load anymore. These are maps that I was able to load and use without any issues just a few days ago. Whatever has changed, it has clearly made things worse rather than better.

I can fully support this post. Please restore the previous way maps and images were loaded, before the latest change you introduced. Since that update, performance has clearly gotten worse, not better. Map loading is slower, stability is lower, and the overall experience is degraded. Whatever optimization was attempted is having the opposite effect, and it is making everything harder to use and far less enjoyable to play.

Roll20 Help Center use "Send a Request" to report it to Roll20 Team:&nbsp; <a href="https://help.roll20.net/hc/en-us/requests/new" rel="nofollow">https://help.roll20.net/hc/en-us/requests/new</a> This forum is usually Community members helping with a specific question on how to use Roll20. Performance issues like that are best directed to the developer team.&nbsp;

Hey folks! I have passed this on to the dev team, and I urge you to make&nbsp; Help Center Requests . Out of curiosity, the timing of these posts are very tight. Are you all in the same group and game, perhaps? If so, that would be important information for the devs to have. I've seen no other reports of this issue, so it might be pointing to corrupted data, or problems with a particular pipeline (for example, there have been historical issues with regions served by a particular ISP).

Can you folks test&nbsp;whether turning Enable Performance Enhancements off in Settings &gt; Graphics resolves the issue? If it does, that might be something the team could use.

I just tested this with two of my maps: One that's&nbsp; 84 x 105 grid squares showing a&nbsp; three story building using dynamic lighting, 127 light sources and 6 tokens with vision; It took less than 10 seconds to load. Another that's 88 x 124 grid squares with DL, daylight mode and 6 tokens w/vision came up almost instantly. keithcurtis said: Hey folks! I have passed this on to the dev team, and I urge you to make&nbsp; Help Center Requests . Out of curiosity, the timing of these posts are very tight. Are you all in the same group and game, perhaps? If so, that would be important information for the devs to have. I've seen no other reports of this issue, so it might be pointing to corrupted data, or problems with a particular pipeline (for example, there have been historical issues with regions served by a particular ISP).

Just adding I have noticed slight lags loading bigger maps, but usually within 10 seconds it loads.&nbsp; I usually do the zoom all the way out, all the way in, and it is fine.&nbsp; My players noticed slight delays as well, but same thing, it does load usually within 10 seconds.&nbsp;&nbsp;

I have created a new map (I am speaking about big campaign outdoor maps 2800*2800 px, small maps are still manageble), and it loads each element slowly. It takes some 30 seconds to load the entire map. However, the real issue is that a couple of players, who have less performing pc and have never had any issues before, cannot load the map at all... they are ejected from the game when they try.&nbsp; The server has become extremely slow when loading the background together with all the individual elements that compose the map, each of which is a separate small image. Load times have increased dramatically, and in several cases the process fails altogether.&nbsp; This has never been an issue for years! Keithcurtis. Thank you for your reply. Yes we tried with&nbsp; Enable Performance Enhancements off in Settings &gt; Graphics and all the settings... Nothing works. A workaround I have tried is to get the entire map flattened into a single image and used as one background asset instead of a background plus all the separate elements. In practical terms, this means loading one image rather than many. This approach, however, creates serious design problems. The map becomes effectively static. Any player-driven change—burning part of a forest, destroying structures, altering terrain—cannot be handled dynamically. Individual elements cannot be removed or adjusted. Any modification, even a minor one, requires rebuilding the entire map image from scratch and re-uploading it. That is a heavy, inefficient workflow and clearly not a viable long-term solution. What makes this particularly troubling is that this issue never existed for many years. Map composition using multiple layered assets worked reliably and without noticeable performance penalties. Something has changed on the technical side, either in image handling, server-side processing, or client optimization. Whatever the cause, the impact is severe. The consequences are most visible for players running less powerful machines. These users struggle to complete the loading process and are frequently disconnected while the map is still loading. From a gameplay perspective, this is unacceptable. It creates an access barrier that did not exist before and undermines the stability of ongoing sessions.

When it was in multiple pieces, how many images would you estimate made up a typical map (typical meaning typical for one that is now giving you problems)? I'm having difficulty understanding what's going on in your map shot above, I.e. what's an image and what is the natural background of the page, where all the narrow lines/rectangles are coming from, etc.

In the Screenshot you have "Hex Labels: ON". You might try disabling Hex Labels (under Page settings) and see if that helps or not. It's not necessarily or likely to be the cause of this, but it would be a good test to see if it makes any difference. Years ago on Roll20 if you had a Hex Map with a lot of hexes (like 200x200), this was something that occasionally was known to cause a glitch, so maybe worth a try.&nbsp; MASTER said: