Character Delete theory. (and a round up of what I know)

[Luftwaffle]

So I am almost certain based on my own experience and from what I have been reading that the character delete glitch is caused when you leave a game when the cloud is down.

 

You exit out (even if you exit to single player) and the game initiates a autosave, but since the cloud is down there is no where for your save to go and thus it's lost and your character is lost.

 

Now for some Q&A

 

Q:How can you tell if the cloud is having trouble retrieving my character or if it got deleted?

A:If you try to join a online game and your character doesn't appear, either it's gone or the cloud cant retrieve it at the moment. To check, go to rockstar social club and check to see if your stats appear. If they do then you are fine you just need to keep trying till the cloud starts working again. If they don't, your character is gone and there is nothing you can do but hope R* can restore it.

 

Q:My character got deleted. Should I make a new one?

A: NO. If you do make a new character whatever is left of your old one will be wiped for sure and might prevent R* from recovering it at a later date.

 

Q:How can I prevent this?

A:Since there is no way to know if the cloud is down while you are already in a online game, there is no way to know if your character will be saved when you exit. The only surefire way is to not play until R* fixes the issue.

 

Hope this helps to clear up the confusion.

 

Update:For anyone who lost a character, if you get on the iFruit app and check the Los Santos Customs mini app your cars are still there (mine are at least). So it seems that not all of our data is lost and it may be recoverable. Just some info to give you guys a little hope.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Luftwaffle

[crashbandiqt]

you know your game is bad when people are theorycrafting reasons why their progress is being deleted

 

page 1 chapter 1 of making an online game with RPG elements is making sure progress is f*cking stored

 

how they haven't addressed this issue properly is beyond me

[blk95ta]

what i don't understand is if you have a character that's been saved multiple times, but then disappears, why wouldn't the cloud server still have your old save? i can understand losing progress since last save since that happened to me a few times, but why would you lose the whole character all together if your game tries to access the cloud but cant?

[Spitfirex007]

Fantastic. I was a level 9, almost a 10 and had about 17K in my bank account. (Didn't reply any missions or anything to get that. All from holding up stores etc) I went to rockstar's site, it has a blank space and says level 1. I'd assume this means my character is gone and I have to start over?! f*ck this piece of sh*t game. I can get $45 for it. Might just finish up the story tonight and trade it in

[Luftwaffle]

what i don't understand is if you have a character that's been saved multiple times, but then disappears, why wouldn't the cloud server still have your old save? i can understand losing progress since last save since that happened to me a few times, but why would you lose the whole character all together if your game tries to access the cloud but cant?

R* didn't add a revert to old save function or didn't bother to even store the old saves. Simply put INCOMPETENCE!

[KDDaniel]

So I am almost certain based on my own experience and from what I have been reading that the character delete glitch is caused when you leave a game when the cloud is down.

 

You exit out (even if you exit to single player) and the game initiates a autosave, but since the cloud is down there is no where for your save to go and thus it's lost and your character is lost.

 

Now for some Q&A

 

Q:How can you tell if the cloud is having trouble retrieving my character or if it got deleted?

A:If you try to join a online game and your character doesn't appear, either it's gone or the cloud cant retrieve it at the moment. To check, go to rockstar social club and check to see if your stats appear. If they do then you are fine you just need to keep trying till the cloud starts working again. If they don't, your character is gone and there is nothing you can do but hope R* can restore it.

 

Q:My character got deleted. Should I make a new one?

A: NO. If you do make a new character whatever is left of your old one will be wiped for sure and might prevent R* from recovering it at a later date.

 

Q:How can I prevent this?

A:Since there is no way to know if the cloud is down while you are already in a online game, there is no way to know if your character will be saved when you exit. The only surefire way is to not play until R* fixes the issue.

 

Hope this helps to clear up the confusion.

I agree. Checked Social Club before logging on and everything was fine. Played for about a hour. Decided to change rooms(sessions). Got timed out error. Tried again and then got the cloud server error. Exited out game. Came back to Social Club & no character, no rank, no stats, but still have my money. Don't think my dude is coming back.

[Alejc102]

So if your bank data stays intact.. Does it mean when u start over with new one your already rich? The money rolls over?

[MantisFang]

So far maybe 5 characters have been lost in the "cloud"

All of my cash has stayed the same, or rolled up from previous items spent on lost character.

All characters share the same bank account.

So if your bank data stays intact.. Does it mean when u start over with new one your already rich? The money rolls over?

[Legendstig]

If i play on slot 2 when my characters been deleted. Will that overwrite my deleted character???

 

 

Edit

It now says this "gta online saved data for character 2 has been corrupted" wtf. It then gives me the option to overwrite cancel or retry.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Legendstig

[blk95ta]

So if your bank data stays intact.. Does it mean when u start over with new one your already rich? The money rolls over?

 

Yes it does. I had $52k in the bank when i lost my first character which carried over when i started my second. now i have $180k after the loss of my second which is weird because i had $90k at the point of my last save with that character.

[MantisFang]

Yes but not your bank account sum.

If i play on slot 2 when my characters been deleted. Will that overwrite my deleted character???


Edit
It now says this "gta online saved data for character 2 has been corrupted" wtf. It then gives me the option to overwrite cancel or retry.

[blk95ta]

now my bank account in game is saying $63k while socialclub says $180k. $63k is closer to what i had when i lost my character. so hopefully that means it's starting to restore it? i think i had $63k after buying my $205k property and doing a mission or 2. i know i was up to $90k at my last save.

 

*edit* now social club is showing $63k too. this is either really good news or really bad news. good if my character gets restored, bad if it doesn't.

Edited October 6, 2013 by blk95ta

[Okiri]

 

what i don't understand is if you have a character that's been saved multiple times, but then disappears, why wouldn't the cloud server still have your old save? i can understand losing progress since last save since that happened to me a few times, but why would you lose the whole character all together if your game tries to access the cloud but cant?

R* didn't add a revert to old save function or didn't bother to even store the old saves. Simply put INCOMPETENCE!

 

Word, what kind of cloud is this? I have never seen something so weird as this, how come character gets deleted yet bank account is still there?

[Levano]

OP, I was playing fine. Cloud servers weren't down. I checked the socialclub multiple times after logout. Stats were exactly how they were supposed to be.

 

Hours later I tried to login, but the cloud servers were offline. During the time my character was still on the socialclub.

Then when the clouds went up, my character was gone, and instantly the stats on socialclub wiped aswell.

 

How would you explain that?

[Rails]

So if your bank data stays intact.. Does it mean when u start over with new one your already rich? The money rolls over?

 

Your only rich if you never spend your cash. The stats page for my vanished dude shows I had earnt 500K & spent 470K meaning I just have 30K to my name not mention the 23 levels I lost

[Rails]

OP, I was playing fine. Cloud servers weren't down. I checked the socialclub multiple times after logout. Stats were exactly how they were supposed to be.

 

Hours later I tried to login, but the cloud servers were offline. During the time my character was still on the socialclub.

Then when the clouds went up, my character was gone, and instantly the stats on socialclub wiped aswell.

 

How would you explain that?

 

This is how it happened to me too, all seemed like it was going fine, little orange circle saving all the time & then bang, 23 levels down the drain

[Luftwaffle]

OP, I was playing fine. Cloud servers weren't down. I checked the socialclub multiple times after logout. Stats were exactly how they were supposed to be.

 

Hours later I tried to login, but the cloud servers were offline. During the time my character was still on the socialclub.

Then when the clouds went up, my character was gone, and instantly the stats on socialclub wiped aswell.

 

How would you explain that?

How did you know the servers weren't down. The cloud has flicking on and off for me all day. There is no way to know that at the exact instant you log off the servers are either up or down.

 

I'm not a tech expert but it could be since the cloud was down it froze your stats, then when it came back on it uploaded the bad save.

[ShinobiFixer]

I already know this. I'm not creating any more characters and no one is creating a damn thing on my account.

[m33ts4k0z]

The feel that I have is that if the character fails to save once, then you are done. It looks like Rockstar don't use incrimental updates but they save the progress from the beggining. That's why we don't get an older state of our character but we got him deleted instead.

Edited October 7, 2013 by m33ts4k0z

[craMeh]

i think cloud just went down? every single player just disconnected from mah server

[Zwenkwiel]

all I noticed is sh*t kept dissapearing

characters, stuff I bought, levels and money, pretty much anyting and everything you could lose has been lost

untill the patch that is. now I can save cars and my progress seems to save pretty stable as well. haven't tried buying a house yet (don't want to lose that much work again) but I think it's more or less working as far as saving goes

[Luftwaffle]

For anyone who lost a character, if you get on the iFruit app and check the Los Santos Customs mini app your cars are still there (mine are at least). So it seems that not all of our data is lost and it may be recoverable. Just some info to give you guys a little hope.

[blk95ta]

For anyone who lost a character, if you get on the iFruit app and check the Los Santos Customs mini app your cars are still there (mine are at least). So it seems that not all of our data is lost and it may be recoverable. Just some info to give you guys a little hope.

I would check that but I'm on an Android phone so there's another thing that Rockstar hasn't done right.

[AJ Lee]

For every reason there is a counter reason, face it, there is no 1 answer.

 

I left when the cloud was down once, I didn't lose my character, I only lost progress since the cloud last saved, so explain that sh*t?