I don’t understand how the Explore soft crash is still a thing

I experience this bug on a daily basis, and it has been like this for well over a year. It is a known issue, so it’s not like the devs don’t know about it. How is having the game consistently lock up not a top priority fix?

I just don’t get it. It’s easily reproducible. Just go do some explore runs, exit back to the menu, and pow, you have to restart. I’m more confused than I am frustrated by why this hasn’t been squashed yet.

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UI softlocks happen in their other game too, much like in Gems of War. Seeing as this has been around for a long time, spans two of their games now and how they couldn’t or wouldn’t fix Xbox crashing for months, we can only conclude their ability or willingness to debug their games is rather limited.

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You should put in another bug report.

I remember when Mugen Souls Z came out on the PS3, way back in the day. And there was a freeze bug buried in the code that popped up under a particular, semi-common circumstance. But here’s the catch: it never showed up until after release because development and testing were done on a “developer’s kit” console that turns out to have some different parameters from the console that gets purchased by you and I and everybody else in the world.

I can’t speak for the PC side of things because there are umpteen million different ways to build one of those rigs and trick it out for darned near everything. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the Playstation/XBox side of things fell under similar circumstances, that it’s something the developers cannot re-produce internally because their consoles have different specs from ours.

The soft crash annoys the heck of out me and it’s something I’d like to see fixed as well. But I’m just saying here that it’s possible it’s something they can’t easily find and fix on their end. Because there may not be a way to isolate the piece of the code that’s creating the problem (on consoles) if it isn’t something they can re-create internally.

Going back to the Mugen Souls Z story, the developer (Nippon Ichi) eventually found and fixed what was going wrong. It just took a long time for them to figure it out and get it done, because some of the tools one should normally use to address the situation couldn’t provide any meaningful results or information.

And I suppose it’s possible that the same might exist here. At least for the console end of things, which is what I concern myself with the most because I play this title on a PS4.

Devs have said they are unable to reproduce the bug themselves so can’t identify it to fix it. I know why though, it usually only occurs after playing for more than 1 hour straight and we know devs have never done that.

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There is no way this is true. Do you have a link to a dev saying they can’t reproduce it? I literally encounter it daily.

I try to get in 4-5 explore runs per day and the UI softlocks at least once a third of the days :man_shrugging:.

The UI softlocks on other (all?) platforms, including PC, too. As for the game crashing on Xbox: Presumably they have the ability to upload crash dumps from player consoles and debug those, regardless of their own setup at the office. They chose to increase logging instead of debugging dumps.

Well, that would explain it. At least I understand now (thank you for the link). As mentioned, it seems to occur after doing a decent amount of explore runs, so they will probably never reproduce it if they are just doing a few then backing out.

This one is getting worse, not better.

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Maybe if they removed all the unnecessary (enforced) extra clicks it wouldn’t freeze…

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This is such an interesting bug to me since I have never experienced it. It’s not as easy to reproduce as you say. I wonder why the difference. Lots of people have the issue though.

I’ve also never experienced this issue, even when playing lots of Explore battles. Does it only happen when attempting to leave the Explore setup screen or also in other places?

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UI has softlocked on me after changing style options in my profile too

I’ve also had it softlock on me when going into the Shop screen, say to spend Glory on the weekly unit. (PS4)

It has something to do with the exact time tribute comes due. For me at least, whenever it happens it’s when my “tribute timer” on my phone goes off and I back out of explore a few seconds later to collect. But like I said above, devs won’t be able to reproduce because they never play for more than an hour.

That reminds me. The ‘Rewarded Ads → Watch Ad’ button will reliably softlock after leaving the game running in the background on Android.

E: Video

Happens on iOS the same. You get 2 ads, the third locks until forced closed.

This issue is something random…

For example, today it happened after very first explore run (15 minutes before tribute, so - nothing to do with ending explore simultaneous with tribute appearing), try to exit kingdom - and game is locked.
There have been days when it happens every other explore run, other times I can play ten explores before it crashes, yet another times - more.
You can play for as long as you want without crashing if you don’t exit the kingdom. It’s only when leaving (regardless, if after boss chest or in between battles) that the crash occurs. Kingdom, explore difficulty, the team you’re using - none of that matters.

Sure, it’s nothing game-breaking per se, there are no rewards lost or anything - only slight irritation and annoyance by being forced to close/reload Gems.

It seems the creators of this game have intertwined everything to make the programming easier. At this point there are so many problems that even when they fix one thing, another will mess up.
I imagine a giant tangled extension cord. I’m not talking a 10 footer, more like 10,000 feet. It has not been treated properly since the beginning and is now a huge knotted mess. You untangle a knot in the middle and it tightens the knots on each side of it. Only way to fix it is to start all the way at the beginning and untangle everything from the start.

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There is a kind of workaround - you enter the kingdom then click explore and exit the kingdom. When entering again, the game will not lock up