REPRODUCED CONSISTENTLY - DATA LOSS: Offline characters overwritten by newly created ones under certain circumstances

[Exp0nent]

Myself and others are reporting consistent overwriting of offline characters when creating new ones. I also had a case where I created an online character with the same name as an offline one, and this deleted the offline one (EDIT: I think this is mistaken memory on the order from me. I think here it was also creation of an offline character that caused an overwrite). There is also one reported instance of attempting to delete one offline character and another getting deleted. This appears separate to another issue where new offline characters could be created as online ones.

My assumption is that somewhere, when duplicating the character list to separate online and offline characters, something got missed and is checking the wrong list before making changes. E.g. in the online list Slot 2 is free so a new offline character gets created in the offline Slot 2, overwriting any previous save there since it wasn’t checked. I’ll try to establish a pattern, my memory of exact slots and actions is likely mistaken.

Previous bug reports on what seems to be the same issue:

Character deleted in offline mode ! People BEWARE of playing different character of the same class!

Hello ! I play solo and I have a potato internet connection, so i play offline. I just noticed that my SSF mage, lvl 91 called Plasma got deleted once i rerolled another SSF mage for another build… And the new SSF mage can access the stash of the precedent SSF char level 91… is that normal ? I’m quite frustrated that my level 91 char got deleted, but i’m even more frustrated that its impossible at the moment to play SSF as a mage in offline… Please fix this

Chars Dissapearing

Hi, have posted screenshots in the Steamforum, so you are able to see that the problem is not on my side. I’m not able to create more then one offline char. The moment i create a new one the last is gone. Very annyoing and again: It is not the wrong TAB or something like that. (See Screenshots in STeamforum)

Characters disappearing in SC

I’ve lost 2 characters today. Both were low level (although one did have a couple of low level uniques) so not much time lost. I was trying out different archetypes so wasn’t hugely invested in any of them - yet. Now I’m worried that the character I’m currently leveling will also disappear when I log off for the night.

Character deleted

I logged out of a level 84 rogue due to the unable to empower monolith bug to level a new character until it was patched. After playing the new character for an hour or two I went to log back onto the rogue it was gone.

[Exp0nent]

So far I’ve not reproduced the issue where the same name for an online character can make it delete the offline one with that name. However, I have confirmed interference between the on- and off-line lists.

If I have no online characters, creating a new offline character will overwrite the SECOND MOST recently created existing offline character (and take that spot in the list).

If I have one online character, creating a new offline character will overwrite the MOST recently created offline character (taking its spot at the end of the list).

With two online characters I haven’t had anything overwrite yet. Continuing a bit more.

[Exp0nent]

I think I have it. From previous deleted characters, my offline saves folder starts at “1CHARACTERSLOT_BETA_3” and not at Character Slot 1. This is creating issues because the game is counting my TOTAL characters (online and offline) to determine where to place new offline characters, and it is doing this blindly without checking for existing files.

Say I only have this offline character in slot 3. If I create an online character, I have one character total, so it will take up the “next” slot, which it thinks is slot 2 (with no record in my offline saves, more on that in a moment). I now have two characters total, so if I create a new offline character it will try to go in slot 3 and in this case that means overwriting.

My situation with slots not starting at 1 is going to be reproduced by anyone who deletes older saves and creates a “hole” in their save slots, whether it’s an online or offline character deleted. Online characters will effectively “plug” these holes, as they can add to the character count without overwriting (they can occupy slot 4 on your server while I have a separate offline character in slot 4 on my machine), but this continues to add to the instability of it and just shifts the potential positions that will get overwritten.

[Exp0nent]

In summary, it seems the game is not checking whether there is an existing file before to trying to write to a location. It will just (EDIT3: naively? “Blindly” sounded rude on re-read) assume that if you have n total characters, online and offline, it can safely write to Character Slot n+1. This works only up until a character is deleted. Offline overwrites (EDIT: may*) happen if either an online or offline character, that is not the most recently created one, is deleted, and then an offline character is the next type to be made. (EDIT4: Clarifying the “may”, the overwrite will depend on whether the character in the slot n+1 is offline (overwrites) or online (survives))

EDIT2: The same steps do not appear to overwrite online characters, so presumably the storage of them is functionally different and working OK.

[Malestan]

i hope that the dev will see this… thank for your work mate

[collossusmd]

I lost my first offline character when I started a third one. Unfortunately that was my main character which I was relying on to be my dungeon and empowered monolith farmer to help gear subsequent experimental characters. In case the previous character slots are relevant, there were a few other characters from the last time I played a couple years ago that I had manually deleted. I’m mostly just posting to keep the thread alive, but I wish everyone good luck with their characters, and I wish the dev’s good luck with addressing the issues.

[nima1983]

Ill add my two cent so that the bug doesnt go unnoticed. I have tried to create a new offline character just now and the game still overwrite old toons. Hope a fix is incoming.