Re: Lost a saved game!

Thank you for your reply, but I have now got to the bottom of things and my game is definitely lost - my husband overwrote my local save whilst on my PC in his Origin log-in!

Origin are now looking into how this could even be possible, because on his log-in he shouldn't have been able to have any effect on any saved games that were saved under my log-in details.

But he did have an effect - he overwrote a 340 hour game that was saved on my PC.

My game wasn't saved to the cloud, it was only saved as a local save on my PC. When he tried to come back out of his game on my PC he was asked what he wanted to do about the local saves that had been found. He didn't understand the technicalities of what he was being asked (he's not what you would call a techno-buff - he's not been gaming long), so he just chose one of the options, and he isn't even sure which one he chose or why he decided to go with one option over the other, but he must've chosen an option that basically meant 'replace'.

This, I suspect, is something that happens a lot in the computing world i.e./e.g. Joe/Jane Bloggs is asked a technical computing question or given technical computing facts, which he/she doesn't really understand. He/she is then given two action options related to the question that they didn't really understand. The option chosen by Joe/Jane is surely then no more than a stab-in-the-dark! My husband didn't understand the information given and, therefore, didn't know which option was the correct option for the situation and just took said stab-in-the-dark!

So, the outcome is that I've lost my game, and now when I log into my Origin I have access to a copy of his game, which is the only DA:I game on my account, and I can play it, and I can even play at the same time as he plays a copy of his game on his Origin log-in on his PC, sitting next to me! But my game doesn't exist anymore, not on my PC and not on the cloud.

Origin agree that he shouldn't have been able to even access anything saved under my log-in details and are now looking into how this could even have been possible.

What I would suggest to anyone who plays through Origin is that they ensure that the 'Enable cloud storage for all games' box is ticked before you start off playing through an Origin account - for those who aren't sure how to do this you can access this by right-clicking on the picture of the game concerned in your Origin account and choosing 'View Game Details'. This takes you to a page with two tabs - one labelled 'Details' and one labelled 'Cloud Storage'. Click on the 'Cloud Storage' tab and make sure that there is a tick in the 'Enable cloud storage for all games' box.

There is every chance that if my game had been saved to the cloud then my husband MAY not have been able to overwrite my game, but it doesn't change the fact that he did this under his log-in details and that my game, saved under my log-in details, wasn't securely non-accessible to him as I feel it should have been. This issue is now in the hands of Origin and hopefully will, further down the line, help to ensure that this can't happen on anybody else's account - it's a problem that needs fixing by Origin.

Hope this post helps others to safeguard their games by ensuring that they know how to save to the cloud and can choose to do so, ensuring that they have an external backup of their game that is safe from PC issues at home.

I now have to go try to gather together the motivation and heart to go begin a new DA:I game from the beginning - what a p****r!

Look in Documents/Bioware/Dragon Age Inquisition/Save and see if any save in there has a date from shortly before he used your computer. If so, that will be your game. Delete the other saves, leave that one and the two Profile Options files in there. You might loose some progress but, you may save most of your game. You may also need to use the LOAD option when you start the game to get that save to load, if it's still there.

DAI only allows for so many saves then it does overwrite them but, it should not have overwrote all of the saves from your game.

Thank you for your suggestions. However, whilst I was on the phone with Origin we did exactly as you have just suggested, but all the saves within the DA:I file turned out to be saves of different stages of my husbands game.

Within the game, the option to 'Load Game' accesses one game only which is the game that is my husband's character.  The option to 'Switch Character' has no alternative characters to the character that my husband created - my character is gone.

We spent a while moving files to a pen drive and leaving one file at a time for the game to access and each file that we used, one by one, were different files of different stages of my husband's game. None of the files at all were a save relating to my game. So we tried removing all of the saves from the file (I stored them on a flash drive, which I then unplugged from my PC) and we tried to force the Origin launcher to resort to a cloud save, but there were no cloud saves on my account for DA:I - it looks like all saves of my game had been saved to my PC only.

After a full hour of discussion, exploration and trying different things, both myself and the Origin advisor came to the conclusion that my game, and all saves relating to it, had been overwritten by my husband's save.

It looks like on the point of saving the PC found the existing saves of my game. My husband was asked whether he wanted to save his game over these existing saves, or save his game to the cloud. He didn't understand and must have chosen to save over the local files. He managed to overwrite the saved files found on the PC, even though he was using my PC through HIS Origin log-in. 

Origin agree that he shouldn't have been able to access saves made on a different log-in profile no matter what PC he was using. But he did manage to. And it looks like what made it possible was that I made local saves, not cloud saves, and the DA:I file that stores the locally-saved games doesn't distinguish between different log-in profiles and doesn't have separate  folders for each individual log-in profile.

And that's a problem, in my opinion. And it's a problem that has to be addressed.

Origin promote that their system allows the flexibility of playing on any PC, anywhere. I can make sure that, from now on, I save my games to the cloud, but not everybody sets up their games to save to the cloud. I didn't. Nor did my husband. This raises questions about how secure it is to log into your Origin profile on different PC's. Maybe it should be stressed that you can only do this safely and securely if you're profile is set up to save your games to the cloud, but that's it's not so secure, and can in fact cause problems, if your profile is set up to save your games locally.

But thank you for your advice - it's just a shame that I've already tried your suggested remedies.

I'm sure your advice will really help someone else who reads this thread whose situation differs slightly from mine - you have a very clear and concise way of putting advice across.

I can see how that could happen, the game does have only one Save folder on the computer it is installed on. I've got cloud disabled on mine both to prevent it form using bandwidth (metered connection) and to prevent cloud data from overwriting what is on my computer.

I keep one saved game at a time in the Saves folder and, move others to a different folder for each game. Makes it easy to swap out saves for whatever game I want to play. Once it's complete, if there is nothing I care to keep about a finished game, I delete all saves for that game except the first one made before the UI is available - in case I want to play that character again, or a friend wants to play them.