Steps to Reproduce:
- Make sure both Online Features and Update Check is Enabled
- Click on empty space on the title screen to go to level preview screen, load a different level pack from the F2 menu, or click on Style Manager from the F3 menu
When doing any of these three actions in Step 2 with both settings enabled, there is an extremely long pause (easily seen because the scroller text stops scrolling) of at least 10-15 seconds. Once the game does unpause, doing these same actions in the same session, i.e, if you haven't yet exited out of NL, will be fine, loading after only a second. After you exit NL, the long pause problem returns. IIRC, the NL player didn't have this problem before the most recent server move when both were enabled, only happening not long after the move was complete, so it might be related to it, but I'm not certain. v12.9.4 and below are not affected, so you can have both settings enabled and there will be no long pause.
A temporary workaround appears to be to have one or both settings disabled. Then there won't be the long pause problem. I have already tried doing an antivirus scan and adding a firewall exception and/or whitelist NL, but these didn't fix the problem. I think before the server move I never had the long pause problem when both settings were enabled on v12.10 or beyond, and I prefer to have them both enabled. In the meantime, one of the settings disabled will do for now.
update: If online features is enabled, the long pause only occurs when clicking style manager or when prompt to download missing styles when trying to load a level with missing styles. The other two occurrences of clicking to go to the preview screen or loading a different level pack will not have the long pause problem when online features is enabled.