Game crashes during almost every match [Investigating]

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  • reaperuk
    reaperuk Posts: 20 Just Dropped In
    Just had 4th crash in event this time with white planeswalker.  Game just froze for no apparent reason. No card was actively being played at the time.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was mistaken about my wife not having the problem, her iphone 6+ does the same as mine.
    I tried my iPad 3 and that works better, crashes about 1 in 6 instead of constantly.
    1 of the kids iPad minis sort've works okish too.

    So it seems to depend partly on models. I would totally not be surprised if it's memory related.

    It does _NOT_ have to be because there is a leak, because not only has there been an update but we now have more sets and cards than ever before. I suspect the crashes have gradually been getting worse each set because more and more card art is in memory. (It's not a leak specifically because these assets are still in use, leaks are usually when the assets are unloaded but the memory doesn't get freed.)
    If this educated guess is correct then the game might have to change the way it juggles art assets rather than try and keep everything in memory at once depending on the device...


    (I will also point out that I had almost NO crashes ever until a few months back when iOS totally changed it's memory handling in the OS itself, so that might be part of the issue.)
  • Skiglass6
    Skiglass6 Posts: 149 Tile Toppler
    edited March 2019
    I shouldn’t mention this because I will jinx myself. I have not had a single crash in HOD. After having crashes all of the time I dropped out of my coalition. Then for the HOD event I created my decks which was an arduous task because the game would crash sometimes while scrolling through the PWs  

    Once that was done, I close the app, start the app, go straight to the event (without passing go) and play 1 node.  Then after 1 match I am closing the app and starting over. 

    The weirdest thing is that during this time I was also clearing Routes of Ravnica I would go throuh the same process but still the game would crash during the 1st match about 50% of the time. 
  • Grixis197
    Grixis197 Posts: 188 Tile Toppler
    Skiglass6 said:
    I shouldn’t mention this because I will jinx myself. I have not had a single crash in HOD. After having crashes all of the time I dropped out of my coalition. Then for the HOD event I created my decks which was an arduous task because the game would crash sometimes while scrolling through the PWs  

    Once that was done, I close the app, start the app, go straight to the event (without passing go) and play 1 node.  Then after 1 match I am closing the app and starting over. 

    The weirdest thing is that during this time I was also clearing Routes of Ravnica I would go throuh the same process but still the game would crash during the 1st match about 50% of the time. 
    Im doing the same only doing 1 match then close the app and go back in to do another, with Routes of Ravnica I did manage to do 2 matches at least.
  • reaperuk
    reaperuk Posts: 20 Just Dropped In
    Just crashed 3 times in a row in HoD.
    fiery intervention
    Expel from orazca
    And vraskas contempt.

    All froze game, had to quit out and enemy cast vraskas contempt which is 1st time games frozen on other players turn.

    It also means I cannot get enough points that finish event.
  • MomirQaViggy
    MomirQaViggy Posts: 10 Just Dropped In
    Kinesia said:

    I would totally not be surprised if it's memory related.

    It does _NOT_ have to be because there is a leak, because not only has there been an update but we now have more sets and cards than ever before. I suspect the crashes have gradually been getting worse each set because more and more card art is in memory. (It's not a leak specifically because these assets are still in use, leaks are usually when the assets are unloaded but the memory doesn't get freed.)
    If this educated guess is correct then the game might have to change the way it juggles art assets rather than try and keep everything in memory at once depending on the device...

    I think a memory leak *is* what we're looking at. In my experience of restarting my phone in between nodes, the probability of crashing goes up as I play more matches, from <10% on my first match, to >90% on 4th or later matches. This pattern alone is difficult to explain in terms other than a leak.

    It is somewhat less clear whether this is a new leak introduced in the latest update, or one or more pre-existing leaks exacerbated by increased memory usage. For example, suppose the game used to consume 50% of the memory that it would take to crash, and every match, an average of 5% of memory leaked. Now, the same 5% leak occurs, but the initial consumption is 80%. What used to take 10 matches, now takes 4. (Obviously, these numbers err on the generous side; the game used to crash and now crashes more than this.) I believe frequent device restarts have been common in the competitive community for a while. I doubt this is superstition, although I cannot rule out from my own experience that, in the past, the longer I played, the more likely I was to multi-task, taxing my phone's memory with unrelated apps, possibly with their own memory problems. I don't think that this was the case, but I don't remember sitting down and testing, "What happens if I try to play 10-20 consecutive matches without a restart and without multi-tasking?" I suspect, though, that the same pattern would emerge.

    Skiglass6 said:
    I shouldn’t mention this because I will jinx myself. I have not had a single crash in HOD. After having crashes all of the time I dropped out of my coalition. Then for the HOD event I created my decks which was an arduous task because the game would crash sometimes while scrolling through the PWs  

    Once that was done, I close the app, start the app, go straight to the event (without passing go) and play 1 node.  Then after 1 match I am closing the app and starting over. 

    The weirdest thing is that during this time I was also clearing Routes of Ravnica I would go throuh the same process but still the game would crash during the 1st match about 50% of the time. 
    I have always been a little nervous about merely restarting the app, because in high pressure events, I like to restart my phone. Have other people tried this? I ask because if this is a simple memory leak, restarting the app should probably be equivalent to restarting the phone. But if changes to OS memory management are partially to blame, then a phone restart would be superior.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    See I don't think it's leaking, I think it's been _meant_ to cache more and more of the art and get bigger and bigger but over time that became a strategy that didn't work in iOS anymore.

    The new patch didn't stop it crashes but I reinstalled and now it works (of course) and probably will until tonight when it's reloaded enough of the art to start dying again....
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    Oh, incorrect! It let me play _most_ of a single game before it died...
  • Thésée
    Thésée Posts: 239 Tile Toppler

    I have a teammate experiencing the same problems (using iPhone). he says today's update did not made things better...

    Did anyone found a solution ? Is there a way to avoid those repeated crashes ?

  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    Hi Everyone. The team made some adjustments in the 3.3.1 patch. Are you all still experiencing these consistent crashes / freezes?
  • Skiglass6
    Skiglass6 Posts: 149 Tile Toppler
    Yes. I never can play 2 matches in a row without a crash. It still crashes on the 1st match after app restart sometimes. 
  • sjechua
    sjechua Posts: 173 Tile Toppler
    Skiglass6 said:
    Yes. I never can play 2 matches in a row without a crash. It still crashes on the 1st match after app restart sometimes. 
    Same problem still exists, ☝🏽
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    sjechua said:
    Skiglass6 said:
    Yes. I never can play 2 matches in a row without a crash. It still crashes on the 1st match after app restart sometimes. 
    Same problem still exists, ☝🏽
    Is this even after clearing the App Cache? (NOT app data)
  • sjechua
    sjechua Posts: 173 Tile Toppler
    edited March 2019
    Brigby said:
    sjechua said:
    Skiglass6 said:
    Yes. I never can play 2 matches in a row without a crash. It still crashes on the 1st match after app restart sometimes. 
    Same problem still exists, ☝🏽
    Is this even after clearing the App Cache? (NOT app data)
    How do you do that on iOS?
    These are the options: 

  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    @sjechua Ah! My apologies. I was thinking of Android, where there are designated Clear Cache and Clear Data buttons.

    When it comes to iPhones I believe the only way to "Clear Cache" is to uninstall and then re-install the app.
  • Skiglass6
    Skiglass6 Posts: 149 Tile Toppler
    So I deleted app and then reinstalled. Started game went to TG and selected a deck I had prebuilt.  Game crashed before match started.  Started app again, went to TG, selected same deck and was able to play 2 matches before game crashed on the 3rd match. 
  • InfiniteChaos
    InfiniteChaos Posts: 26 Just Dropped In
    edited March 2019
    I am also still having crash issues following 3.3.1.  I have been playing on a first gen iPad Air that is current with iOS 12.1.4
    Before the latest release I rarely had issues - as in I could play many matches without restarting my device to clear cache/memory/etc.

    I was only barely able to get through the last coalition event after losing 2 matches from crashes and resorting to restarting my device before every match.

    I want to report here that the crashes continue for me via the daily guild events.  Here is a list of the sequence of things prior to a crash:
    1. Deck creation.  This was like one of my coalition event crashes from last weekend.  I was building a deck and the game crashed while building the deck before I saved anything.  
    2. In a match.  I was playing a match and the game crashed in the middle of play.  It may have been a specific card and I can't recall, but this didn't occur as frequently as the coalition event when I resorted to restarting my device before every match.
    3. At the end of the winning match outcome.  I had the game crash following the summary of objective completion.  The game would crash.  This happened on all three matches I was able to play and win.  2 of the results awarded me the points I earned - after I came back into the game.  
    4. On the 3rd win, the game crashed after the objective summary, but when I came back in, I did not get credit for the win and my PW health was like I quit the match.  I associate this outcome more with a possible internet connection issue more than the crash.
    So for now, the game (at least for the daily Rising Tension events) is not even making it to allow me to play more than one match in a row.  The game just crashes out.

    I'm hoping I won't have to restart my device on every match for this weekend's coalition event, but I will be doing that, and I recommend all iOS users go through that pain until we all start seeing posts that allow us to believe the game is stable again.
  • InfiniteChaos
    InfiniteChaos Posts: 26 Just Dropped In
    I uninstalled the app from my iPad, and re-installed.  Went o play the current Rising Tensions event and the game crashed out on me mid-match during my opponent's turn... :(


  • Thésée
    Thésée Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    Two teammates still plagued by those repeated crashes. Both on iPhone, nothing got better after  3.3.1
  • InfiniteChaos
    InfiniteChaos Posts: 26 Just Dropped In
    It is troublesome to know that the issues exist for iOS.  I am just hoping to have no crashes for this week's coalition event.  I will be restarting my device before every match to try to help it in any way I can, and I hope to hear from others that things are resolved.

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