Freezing issue in RB Blitz (tied to # of songs played?)

[VampInc]

Hey guys, can any of you confirm you're seeing an inbox message in RB Blitz once this fix happens on your game? There should be a message going out that tells people what's up.

You are correct, I did have a message as soon as the game loaded "Update on your Game Data."

It's great that you guys and possibly gals fixed this issue for us, I thank you. However just to be clear to my understanding I will never be able to have my entire collection starred? Because 1000+ stars is the issue correct?

I don't want to sit here and try and replay all my songs if it's going to be reset each time I have 1000+ stars on my system. But I do however understand that there is no other way of fixing this unforseen issue.

Thank you all at HMX again.

[hmxhenry]

PLEASE tell me you've seen Office Space :'(

I have seen Office Space, no worries. Tried to make sure it was clear I knew it was a goof.

Would you patch the game if a lot of people were getting affected by it?

As I mentioned previously, it may not be an issue that we could conceivably patch given the fact that it's an engine code issue. It's certainly not something that we minimized or tried to fast track due to the fact that it doesn't affect the majority of players.

So the fix happens automatically at 1000 songs, or at the crash ~1020 songs? I made it to 1016, but decided I'd rather replay songs than not play songs at all. I'm not gonna beg for swag, just wondering exactly who qualifies. I wasn't affected by not being able to play crash-free, but I was affected in that I had to keep an eye on my song count and not play any new songs past a certain point.

Safe to say that we'll try to help out anyone that posted in the thread before we rolled out the fix. Even if people weren't directly affected everyone was helpful in providing info.

Thanks again for rolling this fix out. I know it's not ideal losing the visual cue of songs played, but at least we get to play freely again. Your work is appreciated, Harmonix. And if it weren't this thread would never exist in the first place. I can't speak for everyone, but if I could, I would say we all love you.

You are most welcome. All things considered, the process for responding to this issue was about as close to the ideal as we can get. Users provided the exact info that we needed, we weren't bombarded with extraneous or unrelated details, we were able to flag to production quickly, everyone was exceptionally patient during testing, we were able to roll out a fix relatively quickly, and we were able to keep everyone informed along the way. Other approaches could have been much less productive, so I want to thank everyone here for their help and patience once again.

[hmxhenry]

Thanks for clarifying, and sorry to nag, but I'm still a little bit vague on the meaning of one aspect of this. You say that once critical mass is reached again, the setlist star count will be reset once again. Does this mean that it will automatically be reset by the server at a certain threshold, say, 1000 songs? Or will there have to be another manual intervention?

The users in this thread are the only ones who received a manual fix. From this point forward whenever a user hits that ~1,000 song mark, they should receive a warning at 950 and then have the fix automatically deployed at 1,000 along with an inbox message alerting them to what happened. All future fixes should be automated from this point forward.

It's great that you guys and possibly gals fixed this issue for us, I thank you. However just to be clear to my understanding I will never be able to have my entire collection starred? Because 1000+ stars is the issue correct?

That is mostly correct. The stars aren't the issue, it's the overall save data file, but clearing that star data is the most efficient way to get the save data down to a playable size again. But you are correct is assuming that you won't be able to have your entire collection starred in the setlist (though you can on RB World), because the fix will automatically hit at 1,000 songs to prevent further file bloating.

[pmpboarder]

Unforeseen insult to injury: the tutorial and 'next Blitz song' things are back in the Recommended tab.

[Pankrazzo]

I would like to thank the HMX crew for fixing this bug. Trust me, as an RB lunatic it was a proper challenge to not be able to play it for such a long time. Now the madness can finally proceed

[Lowlander2]

Yeah, major props to HMX for being able to fix this in a relatively short amount of time. I was worried about what would happen when I hit that mark.

Now I have more motivation to play than ever before!

[GreatPunk]

It's totally understood that not having instantaneous visual reference for stars can be frustrating. Hopefully having all of that star data immediately accessible in RB World (go to My Profile -> RB Blitz -> Select the source in the drop down) will offer an acceptable solution. This was not a decision that we came to lightly, as preserving leaderboard scores, career score, coins and cred was a priority, and this was honestly the least disruptive solution.

finally got to play again and had no problems other then the star problem which isn't to big a deal but was wondering if it would be possible to add a category on rb world in the drop down list to show unplayed songs or 0 stars or anything to try and make it a little easier to see what we have not played

[hmxhenry]

finally got to play again and had no problems other then the star problem which isn't to big a deal but was wondering if it would be possible to add a category on rb world in the drop down list to show unplayed songs or 0 stars or anything to try and make it a little easier to see what we have not played

I'll pass that along to the Web Team and see if it's something they'd be able to implement or fit into the production schedule.

Glad to see folks are jazzed to be playing Blitz again. It's awesome seeing so much excitement from the people that have played more songs that anyone.

[Epsilon82]

The users in this thread are the only ones who received a manual fix. From this point forward whenever a user hits that ~1,000 song mark, they should receive a warning at 950 and then have the fix automatically deployed at 1,000 along with an inbox message alerting them to what happened. All future fixes should be automated from this point forward.

First, I'd just like to add to the chorus of thanks to you and everyone involved for making this a priority. One thing that I think gets lost sometimes in the hardcore echo chamber is the fact that despite spending so much money on a comparative basis on the DLC, we are such a tiny fragment of the overall playing population that it really doesn't make much business sense to focus on catering to us. I think a lot of companies would have just taken the relatively minor hit and moved along, and Harmonix really deserves enormous credit for handling this the right way.

I blasted through almost all the new goals last night, and even though it had only been a little over a week that I was Blitz-deprived, I felt just about as excited as I would have been if I were playing a brand new highly anticipated game. It's absolutely crazy that I could feel that way about something that I had already played for well over 100 hours not eight days prior.

I'm glad to hear that the fix will be automated from here on out, but I'd like to make a suggestion about the details in case the global fix is still in the works. It seems kind of odd to go all the way up to 1,000 songs and then suddenly have all of the stars deleted. Would it not make more sense to have the server just keep a certain number of star results on a rolling basis? I realize this would probably depend on the data structures, but if you chose a certain number (maybe 800 or 900 to be safe) of total stars to display, couldn't you just start deleting the oldest result to make room for the new one, sort of like a FIFO queue?

That way, it wouldn't be quite as jarring or ugly to suddenly have everything wiped out, you'd still have access to viewing the stars of a large number of the most recently played songs on a permanent basis, and the save file would never get too big. It seems like that would be the best solution under the limitations the game is under. Of course, it depends if the server has access to the information as to what the oldest remaining star result is.

Just thought I'd throw that out as a suggestion. Thanks again for the fix!

[hmxhenry]

Would it not make more sense to have the server just keep a certain number of star results on a rolling basis? I realize this would probably depend on the data structures, but if you chose a certain number (maybe 800 or 900 to be safe) of total stars to display, couldn't you just start deleting the oldest result to make room for the new one, sort of like a FIFO queue?

I know that this was definitely an option that was discussed with the coders. I'll try to explain the reasoning the same way they explained it to me: the Blitz save data is a blob. It is increasingly difficult to change any piece of data in that blob, and the smaller the info, the harder it is the alter. For that reason, a broader change like removing all the visible star data would be less disruptive than only changing star data for one song at a time.

It was most certainly something that came up in our discussions, but due to the way the save data is arranged it wasn't the most viable option.