Users with low end computers in large campaigns

So Recently I've run into an issue which has countered my Monster Manual (5E) Preperation. I have imported every monster and handouts akin to STK into a single campaign. I had planned to copy this and use it as a base for all my future games I run. However I find when users join the game, they start to lag horribly and can't do much of anything.  My only theory is that their computers and connection are on the low end of the spectrum and thus Roll20 tries to load all the assets even they can't see and their machine struggles to do so. I find this a similar issue with Dynamic lighting. Just using a basic wall or two. (thats what they report, i'm fine.)

Yes those with older or lesser computer will struggle to handle roll20 with all the bells and whistles running due to the limitations of their computer. While the "lesser computers" (I prefer to call them matured) struggle with all the enhancements, the GM might have to plan around the fact that he might have to run his game without the enhancements. It also depends on how many windows, programs, and how long the computer has been running along with the cpu and ram. If they have been active all day long with opening and closing programs, surfing the web, having a streaming service running, etc... then they need to clear their virtual memory and such by just restarting their computer. This usually gives them a fresh start and reduce their resource load so that the matured computers have the resources to handle roll20 and some of it's enhancements. The bare basic roll20 can be ran in most computers within the last 10 years with ease but the more demanding aspects do need more modern or more robust components. 

Pat S. said: Yes those with older or lesser computer will struggle to handle roll20 with all the bells and whistles running due to the limitations of their computer. While the "lesser computers" (I prefer to call them matured) struggle with all the enhancements, the GM might have to plan around the fact that he might have to run his game without the enhancements. It also depends on how many windows, programs, and how long the computer has been running along with the cpu and ram. If they have been active all day long with opening and closing programs, surfing the web, having a streaming service running, etc... then they need to clear their virtual memory and such by just restarting their computer. This usually gives them a fresh start and reduce their resource load so that the matured computers have the resources to handle roll20 and some of it's enhancements. The bare basic roll20 can be ran in most computers within the last 10 years with ease but the more demanding aspects do need more modern or more robust components.  Even just loading the character tabs and handouts? I had it on just basic stuff and it struggled for them apparently.

Without getting any data on the usage and actual components of the machines in question prior to loading the game which is actually an offtopic direction for the forums as this site is not a computer talk forum, I really can't say. I do know from experience that the STK initially loading caused my computer to struggle and it is not that old (it is a laptop that is about 6 to 7 years old) but I was also running it all day long, watching a netflix movie while working on a text document in my word processor on another screen. I do remember the devs posting about the map pages being optimized not to load anything unless it was on the screen (displayed) but the Journals do get loaded (if I understood it correctly) so there is a resource drain there from the initial load. This is why there is many discussions about creating journals in an unused game and using the transmogrifier to shuffle them as needed or storing character sheets (npc, pc, and monsters) in the character vault until needed for that or the next session. Those are all about reducing the resource load and any lag in the game.

The amount of material you as a GM have has no impact on the loading time of your players. One update they did to Roll20 at some point was that the browser loads only components it has access to at the time of being opened, meaning that the GM will take much more time to load than the players unless the GM has set everything to be public and editable. Even then what causes games to lag are unoptimized and outdated browsers themselves (other than outdated hardware), I have edited and delved in dangerous realms to make sure my google chrome uses all of the possible processing time for all the materials that I have, but even then it takes my game at least 2 minutes to become operational after a refresh compared to the couple of seconds that is needed for my players. Then we have dynamic lighting...

A Game that contains a large enough number of Attributes will inevitably cause issues for an old enough computer. Saevar L. "Liquid-Sonic" said: I have imported every monster [...] into a single campaign. Presuming your Game is using a Character Sheet that provides numerous Attributes to each Character, you're talking about an addition of thousands (or even tens of thousands) of Attributes into your existing Game. It is not surprising that players using computers 'on the low end of the spectrum' are having issues. In your situation, I would recommend deleting any rarely-used Characters (or Characters that you can easily enough replace via an API Script or Compendium drag-and-drop). Some GMs (e.g. those that experience similar issues) opt to use a separate game as storage for Characters that they can Vault/Transmogrify in later, as Pat said.

Silvyre said: A Game that contains a large enough number of Attributes will inevitably cause issues for an old enough computer. Saevar L. "Liquid-Sonic" said: I have imported every monster [...] into a single campaign. Presuming your Game is using a Character Sheet that provides numerous Attributes to each Character, you're talking about an addition of thousands (or even tens of thousands) of Attributes into your existing Game. It is not surprising that players using computers 'on the low end of the spectrum' are having issues. In your situation, I would recommend deleting any rarely-used Characters (or Characters that you can easily enough replace via an API Script or Compendium drag-and-drop). Some GMs (e.g. those that experience similar issues) opt to use a separate game as storage for Characters that they can Vault/Transmogrify in later, as Pat said. Yes, it does but my PC can handle this just fine. It was more the fact that my players seem to struggle to load into the game even they cannot see any of those assets whatsoever. i'll just have to do this in future it seems. I had not considered that it would be such a hefty impact on lower end systems like this.  Brother Sharp said: The amount of material you as a GM have has no impact on the loading time of your players. One update they did to Roll20 at some point was that the browser loads only components it has access to at the time of being opened, meaning that the GM will take much more time to load than the players unless the GM has set everything to be public and editable. Even then what causes games to lag are unoptimized and outdated browsers themselves (other than outdated hardware), I have edited and delved in dangerous realms to make sure my google chrome uses all of the possible processing time for all the materials that I have, but even then it takes my game at least 2 minutes to become operational after a refresh compared to the couple of seconds that is needed for my players. Then we have dynamic lighting... Dynamic lightning I cleared off since it was not really needed. Yet if what you say is true, then something else must be an issue since they all suffered this in my game when they could not access that material nor see it.  They apparently just see the connection error window and then the whole thing freezes for them.

I'm hearing conflicting answers from Brother Sharp and Silvyre (or at least I'm interpreting it that way). Does a campaign with many, many character sheets impact my players, or just me as a DM?

Character sheets do affect your players. They may not be able to open all the sheets, but they still need access to those attributes/abilities as they can use the target keyword to call them. Pages don't affect your players (or really you as GM I think) (at least in the "1000's of pages" sense) as they are loaded dynamically as you visit pages and as you move around/adjust zoom on them. A large (200X200 for an example) crazy complicated map made up of single square tiles for the entire thing is still gonna slog because of all the objects on the map that have to be calculated and rendered.

Scott C. said: Character sheets do affect your players. They may not be able to open all the sheets, but they still need access to those attributes/abilities as they can use the target keyword to call them. Pages don't affect your players (or really you as GM I think) (at least in the "1000's of pages" sense) as they are loaded dynamically as you visit pages and as you move around/adjust zoom on them. A large (200X200 for an example) crazy complicated map made up of single square tiles for the entire thing is still gonna slog because of all the objects on the map that have to be calculated and rendered. So it loads all character sheets and handouts even if the players cannot see them? I'm talking about things that they have no rights to edit or see. 

I noticed an increasing lag for both myself as GM and my players as my campaign grew in all areas.  I recently bought SKT and my game was larger than SKT.... Now the solution I came up with might be useful. I split the game into multiple Roll20 Campaigns.  This causes a little bit of extra work copying the PC's between the campaign as they enter/leave each one  - but the smaller campaigns load much faster! Hope that helps.

Jim W. said: I noticed an increasing lag for both myself as GM and my players as my campaign grew in all areas.  I recently bought SKT and my game was larger than SKT.... Now the solution I came up with might be useful. I split the game into multiple Roll20 Campaigns.  This causes a little bit of extra work copying the PC's between the campaign as they enter/leave each one  - but the smaller campaigns load much faster! Hope that helps. Yeap that answers all my questions. :) Guess that means I've got some more work to do now, le sigh.

That's strange, my players always load faster than me and are able to get their tokens moving and edited while I have to wait a solid 2 minutes due to the enormous amount of entries that I have. And for sure their computers are not better than mine. Maybe it's the character sheet? What sheet are you using?

I've just setup Vault games for my 2 13th Age games and I'll see if it improves response time for my players, some of whom have noticed lag.

Brother Sharp said: That's strange, my players always load faster than me and are able to get their tokens moving and edited while I have to wait a solid 2 minutes due to the enormous amount of entries that I have. And for sure their computers are not better than mine. Maybe it's the character sheet? What sheet are you using? 5E shaped

You could archive or use the Vault, to hide the stuff you aren't using. That way you don't lose all your work like you would just deleting.

(Note that Archiving a Character will not prevent that Character's Attributes from initially loading.)

I have a Monster Manual game where I load all my monsters, then I transmogrify in what I need to my play campaign. 

As Silvyre said roll20 gets laggier the more fields that exist. That means sheets (each sheet has X amount of fields) and spells (each spell has X amount of fields). Add all those up and that's where the lag comes from. It's unfortunate that this isn't optimized to only be loaded by a GM as you say. As you can see many have found workarounds to the current behavior and you'll simply have to do the same. For my games I just setup the campaign creatures that I'll need which is probably <100 so it's not too bad.

External Journals are another way to reduce the load.  All the background stuff in another game, which everyone can access and link to the external Journal.

Thankfully I set up my monster manual as its own campaign. Just a tad frustrating tis all! Luckily the new mm release might be worth it enough to buy!