What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
I expected the annoying animation spam to play out. Instead, the game freezes sometimes, and the animation spam won’t play.
Luckily, I was able to exit out to the world map, even though the game normally won’t let us do that, since the last update (meaning that other people getting this bug might get soft-locked, where they can’t exit because the animation isn’t finished and can’t do anything because the animation isn’t playing)
Steps to make it happen again
Unclear. Play explore. Possibly tied to offers like the merchant, because I managed to capture this video after buying from a merchant, but I haven’t found another merchant to try and test this.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
Super unclear.
Began after the latest update made explore worse by making spammy animations unskippable.
This forced animation thing has actually made the game worse. I’ve managed to soft-lock the game 5 times in 1 GAP where the only thing that worked was looking at guild chat. Couldn’t move around in Explore.
By the 4th/5th time, I realized how easy it is to actually soft-lock. The game absolutely does not like button press interactions during the time period between choosing the difficulty to showing the animation to the first battle.
Guess what I’m doing when I play GAPs? Trying to go from battle to battle as soon as possible.
Feels like a design flaw that was completely preventable on the Explore revamp made even worse because the new “fixes” locked us into a state where these lockups happen when it was avoidable before.
Obligatory: that was a waste of a GAP and I want it refunded. (knowing that I won’t get it back ) It’s a good thing I don’t buy GAPs for real money from those flash offers.
) It’s a good thing I don’t buy GAPs for real money from those flash offers.