Platform, device version and operating system:
Switch, current (9.1.0.000)
Screenshot or image:
external captures required here, direct screenshots/video captures are not possible
Description:
At the end of a day, I tend to leave Gems of War on suspend mode overnight and check back on it in the morning.
Previously this resulted in weird side effects (from small useful exploits to full-on game crashes).
Now with 9.1, side effects are still present, but different.
Error A:
- Previously, if I suspended the game at the World Map, then returned next day (at least 1 hour later, but across a Daily Reset) and pressed the center button, the first thing the game did was attempt to collect an Hourly Income – which was itself successful, but then the game client would mostly crash when trying to display the Daily Welcome screen for the new day.
- As of 9.1, the game no longer immediately checks for an Hourly Income. It seems that the internal caching policy is different, so you must do something else (enter a battle, open Chests, etc) before the game client detects that an Hourly Income is available and signals that you can collect. Which is annoying, but arguably an improvement!
- But if this happens across a Daily Reset (again, usually after leaving the game on suspend since last night), the Daily Welcome screen will display two non-fatal system-standard error messages. It is not possible to (directly) capture screenshots of these, as they are a system overlay and not actually displayed “in-game” to snapshot. These error messages also interrupt the game’s video recording buffer, meaning I cannot (directly) capture them on video either.
Error B:
- Perhaps as a side effect of the above error, my immediate next attempt to make any Gem-based transaction (Boss Dungeon offers, Underspire Merchants, etc) causes the game to hang indefinitely. By which I mean: I press the button to purchase the offer, the game displays that six-gem “waiting” ticker, and … that’s it. It never resolves, not to a completed transaction nor to any failure message.
- Previously, if I had any instance of network errors resulting in indefinite waiting, I could temporarily toggle the system’s wi-fi off (via “airplane mode”) and the game would immediately display an error message (often, “Failed to retrieve data / Retry”). Once I toggle the wi-fi back on and it’s reconnected, I just Retry and the game picks up where it left off, successfully.
- Now, if the game client is left hanging (after having encountered error A), the tactic of disabling wi-fi to force a retry no longer works: the game is legitimately stuck in an endless loop. When it happened just this morning, I left to make breakfast, came back 10 minutes later to find system in auto-sleep mode, but otherwise still waiting. After 10 minutes.
The only recourse is to close and restart the game, at which point it is apparent that when the hang happened, the intended transaction never actually processed. No Gems spent (nothing gained nothing lost) and the game proceeds as normal.
Sure, the general recommendation is to just not leave the game on suspend through a reset, but what can I say other than “old habits die hard”.