Games not loading/red errors

[xobxela]

Over the past week or so, over half of my turn-based games have problems loading completely. Games seem to take over a minute on the loading page and sometimes never completely load. Sometimes I get multiple red errors at the top of the screen and sometimes the page just remains at an unloaded state indefinitely.

I get this happening both at home and at my place of work (different computers) although both using Ubuntu and chrome browser. I appreciate it might be just an issue that is mainly affecting me (although a friend in my city has also reported similar issues) but I would like some help to try to troubleshoot the problem.

For example I started writing this post while a New Frontiers game had already been loading for a minute. At least 5 minutes have now passed and this is its current state, and you can see it has almost completely loaded but not completely:

[xobxela]

Other things I didn't mention in my original post but might be useful:

I did a speed test to see if my internet was playing up at different moments but it always seems to be pretty stable, this is the most recent read:


I thought it best in this forum as the bug reporting system seems to be game specific and I feel like this must be a me issue not a site issue as nobody else seems to have any issues on the discord server.

It appears to affect certain games more than others, specifically Gaia Project, Feast for Odin, New Frontiers.

I did not include any of the red errors I mentioned that sometimes appear, so here is one example (they are all pretty similar I think):



When I don't get red errors, I will often get a page saying that a module has not been found, next time it happens I will add a screenshot.

[xobxela]

I'm currently on the third refresh of a Gaia Project game, the previous two just led to an uncompleted box image similar to the one I posted in the first post of this thread. These were the red errors I encountered on my third refresh:



I eventually managed to get into the Gaia Project game only after refreshing 5 times.

[xobxela]

And here is an example of the module not found message that I have just got:



It is on the game Century Spice Road: https://boardgamearena.com/2/century?table=210697886

[RicardoRix]

Some of those games are Alpha, so you can expect all sorts of red error messages at any time.

BUT New Frontiers isn't. Things you can try:
-Use another browser, at least to test if the problem goes away.
-Clear your browser cache.
-Clear your cookies, but this has the side effect of logging you out of every website. (If you're adventurous there are ways to clear cookies from specific website domains).

[xobxela]

I appreciate the suggestions and tried them that same day. Here I am unfortunately still with the same issues however. I would appreciate it if there are any other suggestions of possible actions.

Weirdly, in Firefox I couldn't even get the website to load properly, it just hangs with the logo flashing. At least when I use Chrome I can get into most of my games on first time of asking at least half of the time. However, I'm currently unable to access 4 of my 20 odd games because I keep getting the "An important BGA module could not be found, and your game cannot be loaded." message.

I also added a bug report but it still hasn't been acknowledged so I imagine it will just sit there indefinitely.

[dschingis27]

I am afraid I don't have more suggestions. But I want to point out how polite and well written your opening post is. You explain what you already tried and provide relevant information about error messages, device, browser and OS. In future, I will use your post as a best practice example on how to ask for help.

When you read the forums a lot, you find many posts of people who immediately blame BGA for their issues and give no background information.

[JAH711]

We had something similar happen, only with a bad outcome. Lost Explorers table #213872548, in Training mode, failed to start with dozens of red errors scrolling past. It was never clear if these were errors on the game/BGA side or caused by Firefox browser. When things stabilized we were left in a state of "waiting for JAH711 to accept" although I had accepted. Eventually, we both quit the game, in order to restart it, but my friend found that they were then in the state of being banned from BGA for not respecting the BGA terms of use. Their IP address is now blocked and they don’t know how to fix this erroneous situation. They can’t post on the forums and have not gotten a response from an email to contact@boardgamearena.com. They had not had any prior email warnings. My login is still active.

The table shows that it was game abandoned. I am listed as losing and my friend as winning. Is there any other information that would be helpful?

[Een]

We had something similar happen, only with a bad outcome. Lost Explorers table #213872548, in Training mode, failed to start with dozens of red errors scrolling past. It was never clear if these were errors on the game/BGA side or caused by Firefox browser. When things stabilized we were left in a state of "waiting for JAH711 to accept" although I had accepted. Eventually, we both quit the game, in order to restart it, but my friend found that they were then in the state of being banned from BGA for not respecting the BGA terms of use. Their IP address is now blocked and they don’t know how to fix this erroneous situation. They can’t post on the forums and have not gotten a response from an email to contact@boardgamearena.com. They had not had any prior email warnings. My login is still active.

The table shows that it was game abandoned. I am listed as losing and my friend as winning. Is there any other information that would be helpful?

This seems to have been technical. So many errors were created that the account was considered a bot and banned to protect the website. As it is not the case, I have reverted the ban.

Please note that the proper way to contact BGA is through the support page https://boardgamearena.com/support, not via direct email.

Also, this is different from OP's issue which are about loading static elements (images and such). As this is not a general issue, it may come from their network or computer (or their internet provider as OP mentions another friend in the same city also reported issues), see our FAQ about technical issues https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=faq_issues

[blinktwice]

Many thanks for reverting the ban, Een!

I ran the trouble shooting tool pointed to on the FAQ page you indicated and everything came up fine, so I still don't know what went wrong.

Please note that the proper way to contact BGA is through the support page https://boardgamearena.com/support, not via direct email.

Unfortunately, it is hard to reach the support page once one has been automatically blocked as a bot. There seems to be a presumption of bad behavior without an "emergency escape hatch".

Again, thanks for the helping hand,
blinktwice