Stuck in Loading Screens while hearing sounds of the area

Hello,

As of patch 3.17, my loading screens became longer and I can hear various sound effects of whatever is happening in maps or town areas before the loading screen is even over. I suspect that this might be a connective issue, because this also happens in zones that I've been in recently and that should have been in memory and load quickly (for example, if I enter a map and leave immediately I still load my own hideout super slowly).

This is affecting my ability to trade. Yesterday I got kicked out from a party because I didn't accept a guy's trade. Also, I am concerned that I am making people leave the map and wasting their time, so this whole situation is no good.

In 3.16, whenever I entered other people's hideouts, items and assets in general would be invisible and asynchronously loading in the background (as expected) as I moved in their hideout. My loading screens were super fast and I could get trades quickly, but now, under the same setup, I can't.

I contacted support and support asked me to post it here. I checked previous threads and tried most of the basic pieces of information that are out there but nothing solved it (defragging using the tool in the poe folder, defragging my disk, setting up firewall exceptions, re-installing the game, downloading the game from steam).

I want to be able to join people's hideout with the old behaviour of everything being invisible and asynchronously loading. How can I force that to happen? Some leagues the game does run like that, but other leagues out of nowhere stuff gets out of whack. It is never consistent.

SAME. Hearing sounds of map that fully loaded but stuck in loading screen.

Having same issue. This is first league where I'm seeing crazy slow loading times. I can hear the sounds of the zone, but takes forever to load. Previously I loaded withing a second or two, now it oftens takes up to 10 or more seconds.
I'm on fast connection with SSD and good video card.

I don't speak English fluently, I'm sorry if there are any mistakes. same problem with me in patch 3.16 everything was normal the loading screens and i always played through vulkan and it never happened with the slow screens, and now in patch 3.17 it started with this. I ended up noticing that when switching to dx11 the slow screens stop but the game starts to freeze and on vulkan the only problem is the slow screens, in this case both have problems 1 does not load and the other freezes everything

Same issue here. Could play no problem until 3.17. Since 3.17 loading times have significantly increased. I also hear sounds before the area actually loads in. Hardware and settings did not change at all. Lowering settings etc does not matter it seems. Even if I go back and forth between the same areas it still seems to load. Ran CrystalDiskMark and SSD is fine. Windows Firewall is disabled and there is an exception for windows defender for the entire steam directory. I even played with defender disabled but the issue persisted regardless.

Pretty much the same thing, used to get into maps and other areas almost instantly. Now it takes anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds on average, and the game gets super laggy when a lot of stuff is going on, even if I'm solo. Tried everything with updating drivers, chkdisk, game settings and what not, nothing matters. Excellent ping seems to make little to no difference! Gaming rig with M2 drive, nvidia GTX 1070 hybrid, and all the other goodies, yet with this new league my gaming rig is performing like a commodore vic 20.

Still the same issue. Stuck in loading screens while hearing the environmental sounds of the area, people using skills, dashing or whatever.

unplayable after Sunday February 27

Same issue, still happening

have the same issue since this league (8.18)...

i hear sound, monster are aggro and attack but the loading screen desappear much more later...