I'm wondering if this is an issue with my comp or if it's affecting everyone. New Romulus loads very poorly. I see all the trees and plants load 2 or 3 seconds after I spawn. It's similar with the cut scenes. I see the characters load sometimes after they start to speak.

And the initial fly-through camera work that introduces New Romulus is really choppy. I get to watch the landscape slowly load in each screen.

Are these issues affecting everyone, or do I need a new comp?

New comp =/= good comp of course. I'm running a GTX 560 ti, a recent generation card, and it can be the same story. I can render the entire China Town scene from Hitman Absolution without issue (and high frame rate) at max graphic options (this scene has hundreds of people and environmental clutter), yet I can get slow loading in Cryptic games where characters literally have no face for a second, until I see them being built up by the GPU.

Its so odd. Plus, Season 7 appears to have broken the Distance Detail render slider in the graphics menu. It will constantly reset to 100% (as opposed to the max of 200%), causing a very noticeable lack of detail... at distance.