Sorry guys, .304 still deleting saves.

[AndyT]

Hi guys,

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news (particularly just before the weekend) but I just lost a save on .304, same as before. 

I had died yesterday (a proper in game death) and made a new save in TWM as I hadn't been there yet. When I came back to load that save today I got the unavailable/"dink" sound and... as before... on exiting and then reloading TLD it then showed no save at all (just asked me what difficulty when I selected Sandbox.

One thing that may or may not be relevant is that when I started TLD for the first time today and TLD was still on the "press any button to continue"/Disclaimer screen I went back to the Xbox dashboard (leaving TLD running) as I remembered there was a YouTube video I meant to watch. I watched the video in YouTube and then came back to TLD and it loaded straight away (as it was still running) that's when I got the unavailable save symptoms.

Could be entirely unrelated, and is a pretty niche use case but I thought I'd mention it.

Other things that come to mind...

While TLD was running and I was in YouTube, the Xbox controller I was using powered down (due to inactivity) while I was watching a video. I'm not sure if that could have confused TLD as to who was signed in.

Also while in YouTube my wife was signed in due to being recognised by Kinect (she doesn't have a save but again maybe it confused TLD in the background).

[Patrick Carlson]

Thanks for the report on this, and for being so detailed. I'll forward it to the tech team. 

[AndyT]

I did have a go at recreating all of the above but my save stayed put, so all the above are either red herrings, or the problem is intermittent. 

[Sfgeneral]

I have the same problem, just lost my game save.........

 

 

 

[Fuarian]

You can't just quit the game on any map if you haven't saved it for the first time that run. So if you start on TWM and let's say grab a cargo container. Then walk a bit. Then just quit the game. The game won't save. It'll just delete itself. Which is why a manual SAVE FEATURE is needed!

[Raphael van Lierop]

7 hours ago, Fuarian said:

You can't just quit the game on any map if you haven't saved it for the first time that run. So if you start on TWM and let's say grab a cargo container. Then walk a bit. Then just quit the game. The game won't save. It'll just delete itself. Which is why a manual SAVE FEATURE is needed!

We just need to save as soon as you start a Sandbox game. At the moment, we don't save until you do any of the things that normally trigger a save. So, as pointed out, if you start a Sandbox game and don't do anything to save (Rest, or enter/exit an interior, or get an injury, etc.) -- all things that with a map like Timberwolf Mountain may happen rarely (as there are so few "interiors" to transition into), and then quit the game, your game will be lost. 

I think this will be our next fix to the Save system.

[AndyT]

Hi Raphael,

Thanks for that, I had reached the little cabin by the lake in TWM though and had rested a couple of times (I was a day or two in) so I don't believe that's the same scenario.

Also, if the issue was related to the game not saving at all would you expect to still see the save slot showing the map I was on, the game duration, difficulty etc.? Or is that stuff written outside the save? Remember that when the problem occurred I could see the save but it wasn't loadable, it was after I had tried to load it that that the save entirely disappeared.

Part of my day job is QA so let me know if you have any other working theories as to what might be happening and I am happy to spend some time trying to test them. It would be great to get to a point where this was reliably recreatable, will make it easier on your devs.

Cheers,

Andy

[AndyT]

Just lost another save (about 55 days I think), this one had lasted 10 real-life days. It was the usual scenario/symptoms...

a) Power on the Xbox and launch The Long Dark
b) Get to main menu
c) Select Sandbox mode
d) It lists the available save slots fine (I was only using one) but when you select it you get the "dink"/unavailable noise
e) Creating a new save (or just exiting the game) makes that save slot disappear entirely

...it's getting pretty depressing, we don't seem to have a handle on what might be causing this or why the save mechanism is fine on the other platforms. Makes me pessimistic about our chances of fixing this at the moment. I guess we don't even know for sure if the game is losing the save because it's being incorrectly written, or if something odd is happening to it when it's being read. 

Anyhoo, trying to be more constructive... things of note when the problem occurred (clutching at straws a bit here but figure I will share all the details I can)...

- I always wait 15 secs or so after the swirling "Saving" icon before I quit out of the TLD to the main menu when I stop playing (so it's not that the save isn't completing, unless the swirly thing disappears prematurely).
- I always wait 15 seconds or so on the TLD main menu (to allow for Xbox cloud save syncing) before I press the Xbox button on my controller to go back to the Xbox dash.
- I always get back to the Xbox dashboard before I turn the Xbox off via my remote.
- I don't use the fast power up setting so my Xbox takes a little while to shutdown and start up but once it's off it's properly off (eco warrior! ;)).
- The last time I used the console (last night), TLD was the last application in use prior to shutting the Xbox down.
- When I powered on the Xbox one today I went to Skype and made a video call before starting TLD (and finding my save had gone).
- While I was in the Skype app I had no Xbox controller powered up (I was using my remote control), it wasn't until I finished with Skype that I powered up a controller and launched TLD (then running into the problem).

As I said in a previous post, I've spent some time before trying to recreate the problem, and part of my job is Quality Assurance/Product Testing, but any clues you guys might have on possible causes/problem scenarios would be really helpful.

Thanks,

Andy

[The Long Chin]

I am in the same boat as Andy T.  Lost the save games at 145 days and 50 something days.  The pattern in both instances are I do a good save and then walk away from the game after the swirl is done for some time.  The first time I left the game on the pause screen and the second time I exited the game.  Although that is not a consistent trigger as I have done both multiple times over several weeks with it not occurring each time.  When I returned for both instances the game needed to be restarted and I found the save game just fine with all of the information to be accurate.  However, when clicking on the save a simple noise occur and it would not load.  If at any time after that point the game is navigated away from, upon returning the save game is no longer visible.  Of course, I can't see the file itself on XBOX ONE to see if it is corrupted or not.

Seriously love this game and want to play it forever (even got me away from Fallout) but with this save problem the frustration is too much.  

Thanks

        

[MMotion]

Echoing this problem here.  I love the game, but had lost many save games at multiple lengths of survival.  I quit for awhile hoping the game would get sorted.  I missed it and started a new game today (Xbox v.304) and played for a couple game days.  Stopped the game to take a short break.  I didn't even close the game down, just exited the Sandbox.  My Save game was listed, but when I clicked on it, it made the "error" noise.  I could open a couple of other saves that my kids did on the easy level, but mine wouldn't open.  Then I restarted the game and the new save game (that was making the error noise) was gone.  The other two easy level sandbox games were gone.

Hopefully the next version will take care of it, but I'm going to have to quit until it's taken care of.  Thanks for working on this.