Xbox 360 Update released - Achievement Issue & Freezing should be fixed

[jeffpobst]

Last night at 1am Pacific time, Certification officially passed our update and released it. I just learned about it this afternoon.

If you have previously earned achievements, go back to any mission and play through it, and it should award you all achievements that are due to you.

You shouldn't see the "can't award achievement" error message any more (unless there really is a LIVE service error - and remember those do happen right on and right after Christmas day because of the increased load on the service).

If you do get an error message hit the B button twice to exit it (rather than once).

Let us know your experiences with the update.

[Jaffa Cake King]

Just replayed a level in the You Monster DLC story mode but the Majestic Pony achievement still didn't unlock. No error message but no achievement. I'll try again later.

[fearoftomorrow]

I played a lvl. and still got the error messages. Once I finished the lvl. it froze. I rebooted the xbox, started a level and I quit right away. The achievements then unlocked.

[waffle]

I played a lvl. and still got the error messages. Once I finished the lvl. it froze. I rebooted the xbox, started a level and I quit right away. The achievements then unlocked.

yea, same problem here... still got the message mid-game... game froze after the level finished (waste of an hour)
I tried the reboot then quit thing, got the pony... and the failed to award message...

sadly, it's clear the game is still buggy... even more so now... I wasn't getting the crashes before

patch at least gave us the pony :/

Thanks for trying Jeff...

[jeffpobst]

So, the freezing in the past was caused by achievements trying to be awarded, and then not being awarded. Now, there is no reason an achievement shouldn't be awarded in the game code. If you are still seeing freezes and fail to award messages, I recommend deleting all Defense Grid content, and redownloading the game and DLC. I also recommend "recovering your gamertag" to make sure it is properly in sync with the data centers.

If after you do those things if you still see freezes, it would be great to get more details - which level(s) does it freeze on and which mode(s), does it happen on more than one level or just one level, which achievements do you have and don't you have, which achievements if any do you think you should have, but don't, etc. Also, tell us what city is your Xbox located in if you are still having issues - there could still be data center problems that are only affecting certain regions.

We did a lot of testing to verify that we stopped the achievement issue and we don't know of any remaining issues that would cause freezing.

Jeff

[Jaffa Cake King]

Replayed a You Monster level again today and this time my achievements unlocked. I didn't recieve any error messages.

I did however encounter a couple of problems when playing the Service Interruption level in story mode. Firstly when i used the back button to go back to an earlier checkpoint it took me all the way back to the start of the level. Going back to the main menu and starting again resolved this but later on in the level the game froze and the only option i had was to switch my Xbox off. It's a Gears of War 320GB Slim incase you wanted to know.

[jeffpobst]

Your symptoms sound like a corrupt save game for that level. I would try deleting the game saves - that doesn't delete your progress which is stored in your profile btw.

[waffle]

I tried deleting all things and re-DLing and I am getting the Error message more than ever... but no freezing now... played one level of each campaign to check... the messages pop up more often during play and still pop after the mission ends.

[jeffpobst]

Where are you located? I can ask MS if they can check your data center - because you shouldn't be getting any pop up messages any more.

[waffle]

Area Code 63146. is that enough?

[jeffpobst]

sorry, I'm not sure about 5 digit area codes - city name is fine.

[Birdorf]

Deleted and re-downloaded all, failed to start until I rebooted XB. Only played 6 or 7 levels, it's not crashed but achievement error message keeps popping up, it happend twice mid-level which it never did before and it pops up at the end of most levels. It did award the achievement I was owed though. I'll try to give you something more definite next time I play it, although that could be a while as I've just started Xenoblade Chronicles! Cheers, happy holiday to all.

[waffle]

sorry, I'm not sure about 5 digit area codes - city name is fine.

Saint Louis.

[waffle]

Deleted and re-downloaded all, failed to start until I rebooted XB. Only played 6 or 7 levels, it's not crashed but achievement error message keeps popping up, it happend twice mid-level which it never did before and it pops up at the end of most levels. It did award the achievement I was owed though. I'll try to give you something more definite next time I play it, although that could be a while as I've just started Xenoblade Chronicles! Cheers, happy holiday to all.

that was the same with me... I only sometimes got it once mid-level before, now it's twice... and still at end.

[flimflan]

I just deleted all Defense Grid content from my XBox 360 250GB Slim. Re-downloaded just the game (no map-packs). Picked a random level to play, and just as it has for a long time now (months), as soon as I kill the first alien, I get the "failed to award achievement" error. Note that I actually have the achievement that it is trying to award (I'm guessing it is Exterminator, as I think that is when it started). I have all of the achievements for the base game and the add-ons, not counting You Monster.

This error did NOT just start after the most recent (end of 2011) dash update, or the Defense Grid update.

[jeffpobst]

Yes, we know. The back end data centers for some people had corrupt data for many months. Supposedly Microsoft assures us that was fixed, but from some of the reports it sounds like it is only fixed for most of the people, not everyone. We've reported this to Microsoft. We aren't given any access to the data centers to make sure they have accurate achievement info ourselves. It is frustrating for us too.

[winger]

Got the new update. Still getting achievement error. In fact it's even worse than it was. Just crashed on wave 83 of super grinder (You Monster - Surprise Party). This really sucks! I'm in Ireland btw.

I've also uploaded a video of the ridiculous boot time I experience every time I load the game. I wouldn't mind as much but with the constant crashes it's really frustrating! It's been like this ever since you guys "fixed" the boot error back in 2010 where it crashed on launch.



Short of deleting all achievements, medals and everything to do with this game (which I'm not prepared to do) I can't see how I'm ever going to have the slightest possibility of Defense Grid running correctly because the fact is your programmers haven't got the necessary skills to find and fix bugs. No offence to you Jeff...your activity on this forum and determination to keep people updated is a breath of fresh air! But your company could really benefit from somebody who has expertise in bug finding. Maybe your programmers are great, but they're just inexperienced with coding for the Xbox. Either way I've never known any Xbox game to be so heavily laden with bugs.

The only other game I've experienced terrible bugs in was Medal of Honour. That company wouldn't bother their ass to fix errors that caused entire missions to be replayed over and over. As a result I will never buy another game from that company again. Now I know you guys are at least trying to fix these things but the fact remains that they're not getting fixed.

Anyway, sorry for being so negative but I just want to express my opinion over a game I once loved, now becoming a major frustration...for myself and many others.

[gearhead05]

I just wanted to throw out that I have run into every issue that has been described in this thread as well as the others. I have also tried every fix that was suggested and am still having problems. I hope you guys can find a fix for this. I love Defense Grid and really want to play the new "You Monster" content that I just downloaded.

"Fat" 360 Elite 120GB
Olympia, WA

[colllecionador]

Hi everyone.

I had every issue that everyone (or at least most of ppl here) described here, and more. Yesterday, after I patch my game, I started it, and, for some reason, the "You Monster" campaign was called "Scam.You Moster", and every map had several error msgs (even the maps pictures weren't loading) then I start it up and I saw a full pink map and then my xbox froze.

Also, after I clean my xbox cache, I got a msg telling me that the game file was corrupted and I had to reinstall the game.

[winger]

Hi everyone.

I had every issue that everyone (or at least most of ppl here) described here, and more. Yesterday, after I patch my game, I started it, and, for some reason, the "You Monster" campaign was called "Scam.You Moster", and every map had several error msgs (even the maps pictures weren't loading) then I start it up and I saw a full pink map and then my xbox froze.

Also, after I clean my xbox cache, I got a msg telling me that the game file was corrupted and I had to reinstall the game.

You didn't need to clear your cache. There's a thread dedicated to that error. All you needed to do was back out and wait a couple of seconds.