Re: Call for action on current crashing/freezing issue
@GladOS-013 Hi there. Not trying to spam. Just collating the obviously related issues. It would be a sad situation if someone who is clearly trying to help faces sanctions.
Forum Discussion
30 Replies
- @Resmi9793 Yet you filled up the entire board with a bunch of posts, driving all other issues off the front page. Trying to organize a group to collect crash data is good. Breaking forum rules is not good.
- @GladOS-013 Sorry. I assumed that was in reference to a single thread, i.e. don't keep bumping your thread just to get it to the top. Obviously, I won't be rebumping any of these threads again.
The problem here, as always, is the communication. Probably they are working on it, but they said nothing about it because maybe still they don't know when will be solved, but would be good an announcement in the main SWGoH EA Forum like they do sometimes with the title "known issue", by this way the players know that they are working on it.
As they not said nothing we don't know if they are working on it or if they ignored it, or if they not noticed it, because always it seems like if the developers not play the game to test if is working properly.This issue is happening in all devices, not only emulators. Also in iOS Apple devices and Android phone/tablet devices.
Exactly! I wouldn't even have started this thread if there was already anything that showed some progress on the issue, or had even just collated the myriad of recent bug reports.
- I have an iPhone XR and a Galaxy S8, and I haven’t had any crashes or freezes since the unity update. /shrug
I wish I could say the same! This isn't a simple bug that always reproduces by just following a few simple steps, so I have been trying to get stack traces that will help the devs fix this problem (as you can see in my other post).
Looking through the forum, I noticed that I was not the only one, but the coordination is lacking. Many people are seeing the exaxt same symptoms, but getting little advice on what to do. I have tried to help fill that void with this thread in order to get a quick resolution that we'd all truly appreciate.
GladOs - great. So because you're fine everyone else should be?
It's not. Hundreds (probably more) people are having issues regardless of emulators or not.
Typical CG and their awful communication and customer service. They're too busy buffing Kylo rather than sort out the issues with the game or acknowledging that they're aware of the problem.
Instead they blame your connection, or "checked and it seems to be you" type of response.
Pathetic.
- @grumpybear9000 I know this is incredibly frustrating and I totally sympathise with what you're going through coz I'm having similar problems. TBH, I was tempted to say something similar, but realised this isn't going to solve it. We have to find a way to engage with the devs. If we can just get EA/CG to acknowledge the issue by giving them enough undeniable evidence of the bug in their code, we will get better results.
- @grumpybear9000 If I play on a device and don't have issues, and you play on a different device and you do have issues, is the problem likely in a shared element (the code) or in one of our differences (e.g. the device and unique setup each user has)?
If the problem is device-related, is it up to CG to figure out which app, OS script, or hardware issue on that device is interfering with swgoh?
Hundreds of players may be having issues. Tens of thousands may not be. A simple code issue is easier to reproduce and troubleshoot. A crash that may or may not share meaningful log info, on a device that is mostly invisible to the devs is likely very difficult to troubleshoot.
I completely applaud the attempt to collect more detailed crash information in this thread. I did want to save people from wasting time with emulator logs though, because those won't likely be investigated. I play on ios and android and emulators. They all have the same symptoms. This isn't a post hoc fallacy, there are issues, and we don't know what causes them, but they are replicated over different devices.
I don't care if it's "hard" to work out. If you run a business that releases something that doesn't work for your clients, you fix it. End of. If ran my businesses with the same laissez faire attitude that CG did I would have folded many years ago.
I realise you have to be impartial because of your positions, but frankly you're blinded by loyalty.
- @Resmi9793 What I was meaning is, how EA/CG can retrieve clients logs ? There is now way unless, the application have root access or they have a handler catching those signals then writing the crash stack into their own files and I don't see any reports uploading when I play (hidden?).
I've also done a little more digging today... The crash followed the usual symptoms of some graphical glitches followed by a total freeze.
Looking through the rest of the log, I saw some systemic memory failures, which was interesting because the only application I had running was SWGOH. Looking at the stack trace, it is another example of a null pointer issue. This is often a failure mode in C/C++ applications when they fail to aloocate memory (and then don't check if the allocation failed). So my working hypothesis is that we still have memory issues.
Fortunately, this time I was running the adb shell at the same time, so can compare the memory usage of SWGOH at the time of the crash and after normal operation.
Crash:
PID USER PR NI CPU% S #THR VSS RSS PCY Name
30303 u0_a211 16 -4 3% S 102 3080860K 850216K fg com.ea.game.starwarscapital_row
Normal operation:
PID USER PR NI CPU% S #THR VSS RSS PCY Name
31616 u0_a211 16 -4 9% S 102 2137360K 638212K fg com.ea.game.starwarscapital_row
The key thing to note here is that the crash is trying to use nearly 1GB more memory (VSS) than in normal operation. I suspect that there is something causing the application to leak memory over time.
My guess is that the devices seeing more crashes are ones that have smaller RAM, or for some reason are hitting the condition that causes the memory leak more often.
Would anyone in Support like to review and comment on my analysis?
@Resmi9793it seems, the issue is now flagged for further investigation on this post:
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Crash-in-arena-match-SLKR-vs-SLKR/m-p/9332083#M40960
Finally !- Based on my own previous bug experience*, I'm not too optimistic that we'll get a timely or transparent response to this.
* frequent error code 106 crashes, for almost a year and a half now - my bug report was never even acknowledged, just merged into another thread where the only feedback given was a useless and ineffective cookie cutter response to try reinstalling ... and now I have a second type of crashing to deal with on a daily basis. Great.
1. Even in iOS, different devices have different configurations. It’s less dramatic than the fragmentation seen in Android, but it exists. Given that my Android and iOS devices have not had a single crash, it is not universally prevalent. Perhaps by identifying on which devices crashes do/don’t happen, these issues can be better investigated,
@grumpybear9000 wrote:
I play on ios and android and emulators. They all have the same symptoms. This isn't a post hoc fallacy, there are issues, and we don't know what causes them, but they are replicated over different devices.
I don't care if it's "hard" to work out. If you run a business that releases something that doesn't work for your clients, you fix it. End of. If ran my businesses with the same laissez faire attitude that CG did I would have folded many years ago.
I realise you have to be impartial because of your positions, but frankly you're blinded by loyalty.
2. Just because EA doesn’t give consistent status updates on this bug (or any bug really), it doesn’t mean they aren’t working on it. The Unity update was a good example - supposed to bring increased stability to the game, as a fix for pre-u it’s crashes. Since the update there has been one patch. For all we know they have identified the issue and are working in the patch right now.
3. I don’t have to be impartial, and I constantly advocate for players. I have not said EA doesn’t need to work on anything, or that there isn’t a problem. People online tend to get overly angry about things they feel should be done according to their preferences - like fixing a specific bug *immediately*, but that’s not a realistic expectation. I am trying to help people on these threads better understand the process and what challenges CG is likely facing for an issue like this. I,expect that if players understand more, they will have more empathy towards the people trying to,fix the game.I'm not angry, I'm just used to being disappointed by today's standards and in particular CG's lack of communication / involvement with its customers.
I've have several decades of being angry, it doesn't get you anywhere.
I've shared with them the bugs / issues, but we're not all techno geeks that can give exact technical issues.
Wealth management, stocks, shares, management consultancy - sure that's my forte, but I shouldn't have to spend time debugging things on a game I enjoy playing (mainly in the boardroom... or should that be bored-room?) [I injected that humour to soften my tone of my message!].
I appreciate that software issues are hard to find, but like anything that is built, whether it is a production line, drugs, concrete or anything else, there needs to be some timely and visible understanding/acknowledgement of the issue, and more overt path to solutions.
One simply shouldn't release things that have not been pressure tested enough or full due-diligence performed.
- @grumpybear9000 It's my understanding that CG (and other similar companies) face more community anger when timelines change.
For example, they announced development of a new raid. Then they announced it was put on hold, and people got really angry - likely more angry than if they had never mentioned the raid at all.
So I feel that they under communicate intentionally, because the baseline anger at that is less than the anger the community would throw whenever timelines shift.
"You promised Bug X would be fixed by today! You owe me hundreds of crystals per day until it's fixed" etc.
I would love to see more communication and a clearer glimpse into what the studio is working on, both in terms of fixes and improvements. But people being people, we can't have these nice things. with the change of the game engine, i've been getting new crashes very frequently.
1st type: most often in fleet arena battles. most of the crashes are instant and do not include an error at all. the app just closes.
2nd type: in random game menus, my buttons will no longer work. the game screen is just unresponsive to button clicking and forces me to close the app myself.- @shhfiftyfive Hi. Welcome to this thread! Can you try running the diagnostics in the original post?
- @GladOS-013 I honestly don't think it's the timeline for a fix that matters here. Having worked in the industry I know that it's impossible to predict when you will have a fix to a complex bug... However that doesn't justify telling your customers nothing at all. Doing so just polarises the community (as you can see on this issue).
The important thing is to set expectations appropriately. For example, to acknowledge a bug and (for majorly impacting ones) say when you might have an update on the matter. An ongoing dialog with both sides working as hard as possible for a swift resolution is the real answer here. I really hope that's all that any of us are asking for here.
Isn't that right @grumpybear9000 ? Spot on.
I don't like being treated like a mug. (British expression). Which currently is how I feel.
If people get angry they need to get to the root cause of it, and be brave enough to accept the criticism and yes you will get angry people but if the majority are placated then the rest will follow. You can't please everyone all of the time but if you can please a lot of people some of the time it's a much better strategy.
It's common decency and just normal customer service.
I would have liked a new raid. Being CG they'd probably had not been creative with it and done another copy and paste but still it would have shown something.
I don't understand the cryptic strategy. Sure, don't lay all your cards on the table, but also give us a clue. More people would be willing to invest in the game if they were more transparent and open.
