darkSpyro

My son's game just got wiped out.

He played for about a year, then, roughly 6 months ago, stopped playing - he'd had enough. Last week, he decided on his own to start playing again and started from scratch. Tuesday, he came home from school complaining that his island had reset. At that point, I logged him into Activate and he got his original island back, and was very excited. I didn't think too much about why it reset.

Today, he came home again complaining that his island reset again. But this time, he was still logged into activate and the reset game saved before it let me access the screen to reach Activate. That stupid tutorial doesn't let you do anything else and takes too much time!

I figure the problem is that, both times, he tried to play on the bus - so no internet access. I haven't tried playing without internet access in a very long time - is that a guaranteed reset these days?

As soon as he saw it had reset, he exited the game. As soon as he returned home, we started the game, and it immediately logged him in, but took the local save as more recent (even though it should be smart enough to not over-write a level 40 game with a level 1 game!!) and used that.

So now it's gone and he is crushed. I may give him my island and stop playing myself. I was excited about doing some rearranging, but I feel like I let him down with his island.

I'm not sure if it was a factor or not, but he plays on an old iPod that can't update to iOS7, so didn't have Trap Team or any of the updates since then.

I think playing offline was a no-no.
But other than that, what should I have done differently?

Playing offline actually fixed a save issue for me once,but it's really different every case because after it I had to manually delete the local save to update the game. Only Activision can look into that if it's not a widespread issue like the Trap Team update was.

It happens to me 4 - 6 times a year . just Log directly into activision account and it should get back to normal .

Quote:

we started the game, and it immediately logged him in

Yes it will automatically set you to the last thing you did . Log in as in Type in your Acti account name and password then it will get you back to your old game . Possibly it will give you choice so be careful .

Playing offline is 100% safe. Many brave portal masters doing it here on regular basis when time traveling. In your case somehow your local save after reset was pushed to the Activate cloud overwriting your old save where you had level 40. You were logged in during the tutorial into your Activate account. Next time you should probably try first to turn off WiFi or 4G to prevent game from accessing Internet and then force application to close.
Usually game is asking what save to load if local save is different (has earlier date time) than save in cloud.

My game and tablet only seem to work online when home and often I like to bring my tablet with me and play outside of the home. However, there I have no kudos or special offers but the game still works just fine. Never had a problem with playing offline, course I have only been playing 2.5 months now.

Quote: Dark fhoenix

It happens to me 4 - 6 times a year . just Log directly into activision account and it should get back to normal .

Quote:

we started the game, and it immediately logged him in

Yes it will automatically set you to the last thing you did . Log in as in Type in your Acti account name and password then it will get you back to your old game . Possibly it will give you choice so be careful .

I logged him out of activate and then in again, but it had no affect on the reset game that was displayed.

When I look at my friends list, he still displays at level 40, so I still have some hope that it is still there. I'm tempted to logout of my account and in as him on my device, but he plays on an older iPod that can't update for trap team. If it loads on my current version of the game, I expect it will update his save and he'll then have no chance of loading it again on his device.

If the file on your device is different from the one in the cloud save, it will usually ask you which one you want to use. It would be odd if it didn't.

You wouldn't happen to have a backup of the iPod in iTunes that you could restore, would you?

Also, I haven't actually tried this, but there are PC apps that would let you copy your game data to your PC (and potentially restore the data from your PC). Like this one:

http://www.i-funbox.com/

Could be worse. You could have visited a friend's island, otherwise known as Activision's hidden but patented save game corruption feature.

Quote: obidawsn

If the file on your device is different from the one in the cloud save, it will usually ask you which one you want to use. It would be odd if it didn't.

I think the problem here is that it's the same device, so it simply sees the local game as more recent. If we could load his cloud save on a separate device, it would then ask 'hey, you play on multiple devices, which version do you want?'. But if we load it on my device, it would update for trap team and definitely never load on his again.

Even days later, I still see him in my friend's list as level 40, so I'm hopeful it hasn't had a chance to overwrite the cloud save yet. I've tried to do 'tests' as quickly as I can and not let it save to cloud, but that opening tutorial takes forever, so I'm not sure if it happened at that point or not. Call me a chicken, but I'm a bit hesitant to visit any island, let alone one that I know may be in a bad state.

At the moment, we're trying to find if we have a backup. If we can delete the app, then reinstall a pre-trap team version of it, I think he has a chance.

I could also, as others have suggested, switch back and forth between Activate profiles on the one device. See if I can load his game, then, if I can, just have us both use my device. Since others here say they do this on a regular basis, I shouldn't be so wary of it, but I am. But then, I'm excited about extra inventory space and simply playing at reorganizing my islands for aesthetics. I'm close enough to 'done' that it really shouldn't be that big a deal if I did lose my game through trying this. Right?