PSO XB crashess.. surely not!

[dc-arena]

Back in the day on the Dreamcast version, everytime you played the game there was a fear at the back of your mind. A fear of character death, a fear of losing items or just general crashing that ruined the experience. Will my character get corrupted today, or will I be ok?

Thats the risk you always took when playing the game. That was back then, and this is now.

I am quite honestly disgusted with PSO on Xbox. A game that is obviously approved by MS for Xbox as far as online gaming and security goes, and it has problems with it.

Last night during a Heat Sword download quest my Xbox locked up. The screen went black on the little FMV sequence, although the music was still playing, and for a short time I could still talk to my mate online. He said I was just standing there. This bug has been in since the ORIGINAL Dreamcast V1 release, and I just cannot believe that its still around now, on Microsofts console. This problem is server side apparently, and nothing to do with my stock PAL unmodded Xbox and 600k NTL broadband connection (which by the way is perfect, and never EVER has any problems on web serving on my computer or any other online games on XB Live).

The second crash last night was at the end of a HS quest later in the eveing. I think its known as Freeze Screen Of Death, or FSOD. Again, this is server side apparently, and nothing to do with me.

From the first crash I lost two VERY high level mags I was carrying for my other characters (obviously unequipped), and money I was caryying. I don't care about the money, but the time I put into the mags and the work involved is really very annoying indeed. To make matters worse I started with 2 more mags later in the evening, to then lose them AGAIN in the 2nd crash.

After this occurance, I really dont know if I want to play this clearly bugged and very unreliable game anymore. Its just not worth the pain if it happens again.


Anyone suffered from this on XB?


Thanks for reading.

[Remy_Basara]

Good god... as an avid (ie: sad) Mag raiser myself, I really feel for you there!

I actually had a BSOD (Black Screen of Doom or whatever you want to call it) twice, both offline though, so I didn't lose anything at all. I was absolutely crapping myself for a moment though, as I had 3 mags on me, all over lv100 and one lv200 Max Sync/IQ I might have lost... ;_;
I'd actually never seen anything like it on DC, but I never got to play that one online much.

Now these both occasions the BSOD happened to me trying to play the downloaded Central Dome Fire Swirl quest (which is incredible for Saturn fnas by the way - time for Burning Rangers GO!). They occured just as the quest began and I should have got the 'quest starting screen'.

This sounds like the exact same time that your BSOD happened to you -just at the start of a quest. So I am wondering if this is where all the bugs lie? To solve my problem I went online and downloaded the quest again, and then it worked fine after that. So I figured it must have been a corrupted download somehow. The only 'excuse' I can think for that was that I did download it within hours of the XB servers coming online.

Having read a lot of gamefaqs forums on PSO though, there are many people 'complaining' about FSOD/BSOD but very few actual accounts of it happening. It seems to be mainly used as an excuse by dupers/hackers for why they NEED to dupe their items etc. It would seem to be the only 'legit' reason to dupe/hack I can accept actually. (Only if such things really are only used as a backup, which I don't believe is the case for 99% of people who do it though!). There's also rumours on gamefaqs that it only happens on 'older' Xboxes, but I have no idea if that is true either.

Anyway, getting away from the point as usual. If the FSOD/BSOD is limited to quests then it won't be too bad at all for me, but I would like to hear more accounts/proof of how it occurs before I get as bothered about it as dc-arena seems to be.

If you get seriously into Mags of course, you'll always be popping them in (and out of) the Check Room to stop their Sync's from dropping.. so if the BSOD gets too scarey to me, I will just get in the habit of dropping my main weapons into the Check Room along with my Mags. That would then always leave me covered entering+leaving games+quests. Its something I do anyway with my top Mags already.

[Squirtle]

As an aside, I have experienced the Black Screen of Death several times on RTCW. It's not just PSO that it happens on. Check the thread a bit further down.

We were playing and Eightbit's character was just stood there, frozen. ANd then he disconnected after a little while. He had the black screen of death and sounds similar to what happened to you in PSO.

[mechamonkey]

I've had the same probs with RTCW and PSO with item loss.
Actually it happened to me 3 times on the day I got PSO so initial impressions wernt good.

[djtickle]

Ive had it on pso but it had the loading level stars on the screen and that was it!!! I lost everything apart from what i had equiped. ( Gutted! I heard though if u pull the network connection on the dreamcast, it kicks it back in and saves the game and then just goes to the opening screen were u can choose online or offline. Sadley this didnt work for me...

ft:

[Remy_Basara]

As an update to my previous post.. I have now seen this happen 1st hand! It happened to my housemate last night - and it was his birthday no less. He lost all unequipped items and all his meseta. Luckily he had my Mag I'd loaned him equipped (lv165) and only lost a lv40 one. He got the FSOD going down his own telepipe after 1 player had left the online game and 2 new players (one of them me) had joined his game. It just kept on doing the rings of light pipe screen and never loaded up the level.

I am now sh!t-scared of that FSOD!!

But I suppose I will forget about it and not worry for a while soon.. unless it happens to me...

There may be some truth in it being Xbox/game related, as I have played at least 10 times as much as him and never had it (other than the offline incident which seemed to be different), whereas he's only had the game a few days. But he reckons there's a few little scratches on his disk, so if it happens again in the same manner he might take it back. It did seem more like a 'failed to load' rather than a server problem for my friend.

The only 'glitch' I have noticed on my game that could be disk related is the intro movie is sometimes very choppy and skips along horribly. Does anyone else get that too?

[Remy_Basara]

Well I just experienced a full-on FSOD.. just walking about in Pioneer 2 - coming out of the medics in fact.

I tried to rejoin that game and FSOD'd on load up.. so I suspect it was something to do with the host/participants on that particular game.

How glad I was that I had just gone 'barehanded' Force and so everything I owned was in the bank just about! (apart from one of my, thank god equipped, lv200 Sato).

Any coincidence this happened to me on the night I also saw 1st hand evidence of ridiculously hacked items on the EU servers?!?

Oh well.. I'm going to have to lock down now and only play with my known legit mates. Such a very very sad experience tonight.
I shoulda gone clubbing instead as usual...
I'm quite depressed now.

[yashiro]

These tales are truly shocking.

I'd do two things:

1. Contact MS and complain big time.
2. Return the game to the shop for a refund.

Hit em in the wallet, it's the only way.

[Huggybear]

As a DC PSO veteran and GC PSO Ep I&II player I can tell you this is nothing new or Microsoft related. This has been happening since the Dreamcast days, and happens all the time on GC too.

What you should do: keep all your important and very rare items equipped at all times. Never carry more than one mag on you... why would you want to any way? Keep your Meseta in the bank! When FSOD strikes, you can lose all your unequipped items, weapons, mates/fluids/etc and meseta.

You should be very happy that they've apparently managed to eliminate the most serious threat of all: character corruption. I stopped playing PSO a month ago when my memory card was corrupted and I lost three level 70-95 characters with three level 200 Mags, and a **** load of legit rares. Character corruption occurs when you get FSOD while the game is saving (doubel saving to be specific). It's not fun I can tell you. Is it worth playing if you can lose everything at any time?

[Remy_Basara]

I know Huggy.. thats why I'd still choose to play it on XB as a preference. That does cheer me up a bit to remember that though, thanks.

Luckily as a Force I rarely have any great weapons on me anyway, although I do often have an unequipped gun, I will try and stop doing that online as much. And now I've finished my main mags, I won't have any high level unequipped mags either. I've heard there is a hack-free way to dupe even on XBox though. If thats the case, and anyone here knows, let me know as I wouldn't mind doing it to backup the odd weapon in case of FSOD. No way I am letting those items for trade though of course!!
So I can cope with the FSOD much more than I can with the ridiculous hacked stuff.

Maybe they should rename it Phantasy Hex-Editor Online or something?...

Al Rappy ???? Mag slot item indeed... the sad thing was, the leecher who had it, didn't even know what it did until I told him. I wish I hadn't. I am glad I'd read up on everything hack-wise on USA before I saw them on EU, so I knew immediately what I was dealing with. This guy almost had a full set of "America's Most Hacked".
And its horrible the amount of people that just don't care about the hacks/dupes...

As for complaining though, thats the problem. They've not done anything about it on USA or Japan servers.. so I do not expect any drastic improvement on EU for any reason. As yashiro rightly says, the wallet would be the only way I could vote here. But I'm still enjoying the game enough, I will just only ever play with my legit friends who I know share the same attitude as me. (handy that even my housemate plays it now!).

Any other hack-haters who want to play as a TEAM on PSO and share items found in a level (yes, even rares!) as fairly as possible or to the most needy/person who can get best use that item, look me up, gamertag: Remy Basara. Sadly 90% of my Friends list is Americans, so although I see them playing PSO I can't join any of them in it yet.