House destroyed by glitch ???

Randy_Dood

Has anyone else experienced a catastrophic failure of their house furnishings?

I entered my house (Daggerfall Overlook) in the 2nd week of April and was shocked to discover my furnishings were strewn all over. I can't verify that my 698 items are still there. I can't verify the special items are there. Those accessible might or might not be functional. It is a real mess that reminds me of the aftermath of what Panama City FL looked like after Hurricane Michael (Cat 5) blew through and destroyed my real-life home.

I have not played much since this happened because I am afraid of making things worse. I don't want to further corrupt my inventory and lose unique items, such as the 2016 anniversary cake and my apex mounts.

Tech support has not been able to explain what happened. They tell me my PS4 ESO database failed, which caused a global failure corrupting the database on their server. Afterwards, everyone entering my home sees the mess. I asked if they had a backup from which they could restore the items to the location and orientation I took years to place. They advised me there is no backup from which they can relocate the items to their last good location. They also inform me in a standard reply that I can "recover" from this if I delete the local PS4 ESO database and then rebuild the entire PS4 database.

I am not sure what they mean by the word "recover" and cannot get an answer because they closed the ticket. I was also advised to inform the developers using the in-game contact system. I did this more than a month ago and have not yet received a response.

I am not attempting to denigrate EOS, Zeni, Bethesda, anyone, or any organization when I say that I feel abandoned. This isn't what I expected after having spent more than 4,600 hours in-game (Level >1200) and more than $1,500 on game items and packages.

All I want is for my house to be put back the way it was two months ago, before the glitch. But nobody on their end seems sufficiently interested to give me a method to accomplish this. Telling me they cannot is not a satisfactory answer.

My last resort is to ask this forum if anyone has a clue as to what I can do to repair the damage without having to expend hundreds of hours to fix this glitch.

Thanks, in advance, for any useful information or suggestion.

kaisernick

Have you been back sine logging out? i had a similar bug but it on a smaller scale, but once i relogged and went back in everything back in the right place.

bayushi2005

I am so sorry I had a situation when all my items but collectibles vanished. I understand your frustration and disappointment

While I have no idea about the consoles, what @kaisernick said is true - relogging and re-entering your house may help.

It is possible to verify which items are still in the house using the Retrive tab in the Housing Editor - all your house items should be listed there. You can also grab them using this tab even if they are buried underground/hidden in textures.

I hope this comment helps a bit, even if not directly, then at least by gaining some attention! There should be something in place to help us recover our houses! It takes money, time, and effort to get them done! Having your house ruined is like losing a substantial amount of CP and/or gear. "We can't help you" is not good enough an answer.

bellatrixed

I have no helpful advice but wanted to offer you some sympathy--that's awful! I'd be devastated if that happened to my houses. They really should have a means of restoring houses--I mean, if addons have an "undo" feature, you'd think the ZOS devs would on a larger scale.

Gilvoth

apologies, we were given the wrong address.

TheImperfect

That's horrible. Like has been said you can use retrieve to get back items and put them back into place. I was wondering if you accidentally had set permission for people to decorate and if some idiot has deliberately moved and messed with your things. It's probably just as you said though. I hope that it doesn't put you off and you manage to get your home back to a good state.

Randy_Dood

Permissions were restricted.

Access was limited to guild members.

Even if folks had access, they could not deactivate items or move items that far away or into other items like that.

But, thanks for the suggestions.

Randy_Dood

I might not have made it clear, but this happened in early April. I have been in my home several times since then, as have dozens of others from my various guilds. I have also logged into the system from that console with other accounts used by several family members. All see the same devastation.

And, yes, the PS4 database was rebuilt subsequent to a freeze while loading another application.



Again, thanks for all of your thoughts, especially the expressions of sympathy.

I spent some time pondering the suggestions before replying.

Retrieve? I have 698 regular items, 88 special items, and 10 unique items--call it 800 items.

Retrieving each item is a thought, but probably not practical.

• How long would it take to retrieve each item?
• How would you store these with limited inventory (bag) space?
• How would you replace each item to its original location and orientation?
• Why is it necessary for a paying customer to expend their game time fixing a Zeni/Bethesda/ESO glitch?

Do the math. If it takes 2 minutes to retrieve and replace each item, that is 1600 minutes--almost 27 hours. That 2 minutes might work if everything was itemized and could be replaced while standing in a single location. We all know this is not the case. If I could do all items in 5 minutes (each), I would be shocked. But it is a much better estimate. That's closer to 67 hours. Let's take an average and do some rounding, which means that 50 hours would probably be a compromise estimate. That is a lot of not-happy time to spend fixing the results of a glitch in a game I am supposed to be enjoying.

Before I retired, I made a whole lot more than minimum wage. But at a $15 minimum wage, that would still be $750 of my time. On the other hand, if I were to bill for my time at my usual rate, the IRS agent processing the government cut would be all smiles. Seriously, it would be a substantial down payment for a new car or a nice week of vacation in a COVIS-free location.

Which leads to a question: Why should I have to spend a substantial chunk of my virtual money to repair/fix something Zeni/Bethesda/ESO broke? Especially when I already spent $1500 on the game over the years?



Another thought: Just because an item appears in an inventory does not mean it is really available and still intact.

That is just too horrible a thought to even contemplate, isn't it?



I walk a thin line whenever I do anything. My position is that Zeni broke it and needs to fix it. But, can't they claim I made things worse and it is no longer their issue if I mess with things? Unless I do something, it seems to be their glitch and their obligation.

My only hope is that they get a zillion messages from users who worry that this might happen to them. How do you answer the question: What would you want from Zeni/Bethesda/EOS if this happened to you? Would you want others to demand something be done to fix their mess, or to compensate you for the loss they caused to you gaming experience?

Heck of a time for this to happen when they are hoping I spend my money on GREYMOOR, don't you think?

Hallothiel

Do you have any proper explanation as to what happened, as your op suggests that it was your PS4 that went wrong - though not sure how as thought most stuff saved on server not PS4?

You could post about this in the specific PS4 thread as you might get an answer there re:tech side?

But its not that hard to see what you have - as mentioned before, should be able to see in the ‘retrieve’ tab.

katanagirl1

First off, let me say that I can understand your frustration and disappointment of the whole issue. PC owners with EHT have no idea how long it takes just to place items using the default housing editor on console. If this happened to me, I am not sure if I could start redecorating again. It takes forever to do the simplest things. My most heartfelt sympathies to you.

There was a similar post about houses being vandalized a while back but that was when permissions were somehow getting changed without the owner’s knowledge. There was a patch that supposedly fixed it, but there has been at least one thread since then with the same problem.

It sounds like your permissions are still correct, though.

So supposedly your ESO database failed and caused this? Without any more details it is hard to know just what happened. Is anything other than your house affected, or are all of your characters skills and inventory intact, and your bank as well? If so, then I am not sure how only housing could have been affected. Do you have other houses that are still okay?

I know that PC’s EHT add-on can save your house settings somehow. It sounds like now is the time to add that to the base game so this never happens again to another player. I guess it would have to be a separate save file for your house or added to the save file that we already have currently. I know it doesn’t help in this case, but players spend many, many hours creating their homes and shouldn’t have to go through this.

Randy_Dood

Without specific details of their database structure and the specific message format used to transmit item information, as well as knowledge of their security protocols, it is impossible to give an authoritative answer to that (or any related) question.

But we can guess, starting with the premise that this is a long way from the days of The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. We are no longer able to control the environment and can't mod items outside of what crafting permits.

For starters, there are probably lots of separate databases because this is an efficient way to organize them. Items would be in one, or several, depending on what they are. Money in another. Mounts in another. Character state in yet another. And so on... The databases are separate but linked.

From the game's perspective, the items aren't really items. They are objects stored in their servers as data. Each object has a unique identifier. The program calls the identifier when mapping it on the screen. What is definately stored in their database is ownership and quantity of each object. This would be downloaded and verified during initialization, when you enter a new area, or when an object enters play either through trade, crafting, purchase, or a drop. Because others interact with you in your home, the master list of location, position, orientation, and quantity of objects in a home has to be on a database somewhere in their server. Otherwise, how could folks visit your home or a guildhall and use these items when you were offline or in another area?

Their database should have safeguards to prevent corrupted or unauthorized items from entering. Similarly, it should have provisions for identifying internal errors/corruption and initiating repairs of these items. There should be a lot of safeguards in their messaging and item entry. From their perspective, this is necessary to protect their revenue stream.

The revenue stream comment probably seems jaded, but they are in business to make money. If you could make and add items, there would be no market to sell you items. You also wouldn't need to worry about running out of item storage. Who would need to shell out $15 each month for double storage if you could just make items on the fly? They can't survive on selling the software updates each quarter. It is the price you pay.

So, it makes sense that they protect their investment by filtering out or restricting message traffic with suspect or bad data. That logically means anything sent from my PS4 with any form of corruption--from any source, including a scrambled data packet--should have been rejected with a retransmit request. Obviously didn't happen. What then are the odds that message traffic from my unit was able to successfully corrupt their database? Logically, whatever database glitches occurred had to happen internally, not from an external source.

Thinking about this from a parallel track: If the local ESO database stored on my PS4 contained this information, it would be possible to hack this and give myself lots of stuff. Apex and unique stuff. Desirable stuff you can sell for real-world dollars. It would be theoretically possible to raise the 700 item limit of my house to a much larger number. Also, along these lines, you could also create a GOD MODE for your characters. Would you like a healer with 250,000 health, regenerating four times per second, capable of buffing your party to 1000x their normal stats, and who can put out area spells doing 500,000 DPS? It would be obvious you hacked to get this, which would be a game killer for them.

This is why it is reasonable to suspect none of your items are stored in your unit: They lose control and their game becomes worthless.

Leaving speculation behind, they have indicated that this is not the case in an email dated May 1st:

Deleting your Elder Scrolls Online saved data file can resolve some issues on console. Please be aware that deleting the save data will only reset your Options settings, and that no character data or game progress will be affected.

While I note they did not specifically mention item data, it is hard to generate a reasonable scenario where the options stored on your local console could corrupt their protected database.

I reiterate: As long as I don't mess with the items, it is their Frankenstein; they need to control the beast they created.

Randy_Dood

katanagirl1,

Everything seems good except for the one vandalized house.

• Stats are unchanged.
• Still have my money and other valuables.
• Can still ride all of my mounts and summon all of my pets.
• Lvl 1216 healer still has gold gear and heals for 24k twice per second.

Good thought. Keep them coming.

katanagirl1

Randy_Dood wrote: »

katanagirl1,

Everything seems good except for the one vandalized house.

• Stats are unchanged.
• Still have my money and other valuables.
• Can still ride all of my mounts and summon all of my pets.
• Lvl 1216 healer still has gold gear and heals for 24k twice per second.

Good thought. Keep them coming.

That’s good news.

So do you have other houses that are okay or do you own only one house? If the former is the case, it would find it even more odd.

Randy_Dood

do you own only one house

I won several.
The others are smaller and are unaffected.

katanagirl1

OK, so for some reason only one house is affected, the others are fine and everything else seems to be alright.

Sure would be nice if one of the devs would chime in here with a comment, but I think they are rather busy with the new chapter bugs.

I am confused as to why the contents of your house have been completely displaced rather than just missing. It’s like everything exploded. I would have thought that a bug or glitch that was this specific would be nearly impossible.

I also cringe when the answer is to delete files. I have never had to do that with any game and it sounds like a really bad thing to do. Did the ESO support person say that would restore your house to what it was before? I have my doubts that would occur. I have no experience in this area so perhaps someone else could help.

ghastley

Tech support has not been able to explain what happened. They tell me my PS4 ESO database failed, which caused a global failure corrupting the database on their server. Afterwards, everyone entering my home sees the mess. I asked if they had a backup from which they could restore the items to the location and orientation I took years to place. They advised me there is no backup from which they can relocate the items to their last good location. They also inform me in a standard reply that I can "recover" from this if I delete the local PS4 ESO database and then rebuild the entire PS4 database.

This part seems to be inconsistent. If the (local) database error was copied up to the server, then rebuilding on the PS4 would just copy back the bad info from the server to the client, and you'd be in exactly the same situation.

But it's probably true that they don't have a good copy to restore from. You should not have lost any items, just their positions, so the retrieve function in the housing editor can pull them back from under the floor etc. You're still going to have all the work of putting them back where they belong.

Could this be vandalism? If another player got decorator permission (not necessarily legitimately) they'd be able to move everything but not remove pieces, and this would be a possible result.

Randy_Dood

ghastley,

Great point, the "inconsistent" observation.

I assure you, the only three people with decorator permissions are myself, wife, and son.

I didn't.
Wife wouldn't.
Son doesn't play ESO. Borderlands or nothing for him. He is also working 60 hour weeks as a department manager with a multi-million dollar budget and a few dozen under him. No time for this sort of stuff.

Kindly recall that the event transpired two months ago. I gave up any reasonable hope of Zeni restoring the positions and locations after 48 hours.

A critical thing to keep in mind is that I made a change to the decor the last time I had logged in, a dozen hours prior to seeing the vandalism the next day. I purchased a master crafter banner from a merchant and hung it in the barn where my crafting stations were located. 10 Writ Vouchers. Probably the worst investment of my life if this was the case.



I am wondering whether this item (#698) was the impetus for the dB glitch.

Who knows?

At this point all I can expect is for someone to acknowledge they messed up and to stop feeding me canned replies not applicable to my current situation.

Thanks for the continued interest and support, everyone.

katanagirl1

I have placed that banner in two of my houses (both notable houses) and haven’t had that happen, so I believe it is just coincidence.