Information about Missions staying active

[spitfiresiemion]

Hello everyone,

I have some information about the bug that some of you reported - Missions not working properly. I will explain this problem to people who don't know what it is about and answer some question in advance.

What exactly does this bug cause?

All the missions finishing after the release of November 18 patch remain active, even though Missions tab says that they've ended. By the way, it says that they ended 44 years ago (just like on this picture: http://i.imgur.com/77cultW.png ). After refreshing the page it changes to 34 years ago, but that's it.

Yeah, it would seem that these missions are considered over as they're in 'finished missions'. That's not the case though. As I said, they're still considered active, and 3 things confirm it:

1) Number of active missions displayed on main page of Battlelog (as http://i.imgur.com/CDSPtpQ.png shows - I have 2 missions active and 2 missions that 'ended 44 years ago', ones shown on first screenie)
2) These missions don't count towards unlocking the mission dog tags

3) After 'finishing' 5 missions post-patch it's impossible to create new ones, as the game says that the limit of active missions was reached.

What triggers this issue?

Unluckily finishing any kind of mission after the November 18 update results in this bug. Factors like number of players, type of mission, number of attempts etc. do not matter.

Can we, the players, fix it?

I am afraid that it is impossible. If someone managed to fix it I'll be more than happy to know how it's done, but according to my current knowledge it can't be done from our end.

Does DICE know about this bug?

Yes. After few days of investigation I submitted the bug report on bftracker - an unofficial Battlelog and BF4 bug tracker. Battlelog section of this tracker is often checked by Upham, DICE employee. This morning he confirmed that the issue was recognized, so I am sure that the crew is already doing their best to fix it (especially when you consider that this issue makes the whole Missions feature unusable).

When will it be fixed?

Unluckily it's anyone's guess. However, from what I've seen so far reported major and critical issues with Battlelog usually get fixed within few feeks - it probably depends on factors such as severity of error that triggers the bug. Right now we can only wait and hope that guys at DICE will manage to repair it by the time of next Battlelog update rolls out. For now staying away from Misions seems to be a must though. Let's be patient.

Spitfire out.

[spitfiresiemion · Accepted solution]

Good news: it is confirmed that this bug is fully fixed. Everything should be fine right now.

[ragnarok013]

I've floated this topic to the stickies portion in order for users with this problem to see the latest news on the missions bug.

[spitfiresiemion]

UPDATE (Evening, 5.12.2014)

Missions with a limited number of attempts should work now as long as they finish before time expires. Right now I'm investigating if missions will also end normally if the timer expires (so it applies for missions with unlimited attempts or missions with limited attempts that weren't used up by all players before time expired). I will know the result in 48 hours. For now stay disciplined and pick misions with limited attempts and make sure to finish them in time. If you have 4 bugged missions, I wouldn't recommend using your last working attempt for now, as it cannot be fully confirmed that these work in 100% of cases, although I have reasons to believe that they do.

Bad news: Missions that already were affected by bug still are displayed as active, so I'm afraid that people with 5 bugged misions will be unable to do anything.

I will post another update when I get more information.

[spitfiresiemion]

UPDATE (Evening, 7.12.2014)

Well, bad news. Missions that end when timer expires still are bugged - they are displayed as 'Ended 44 years ago' and they take up active mission slot.

Also, it seems that for some people missions with limited attempts which end before the time runs out still don't work once in a while (although it's a minority of cases). Bugged missions still block active mission slots.

We're forced to wait. I recommend avoiding missions. I know, there is a chance that missions with limited attempts will work, but it still is a significant risk which isn't really worth it.

I will keep the updates coming.

[spitfiresiemion]

UPDATE (Evening, 11.12.2014)

Time for even more bad news. Before I start explaining, take note of one thing:

DON'T USE THE MISSIONS FEATURE FOR NOW!!!

Why? You see, there is no way to actually finish missions so that they count right now. It turns out that there are 2 separate issues:

1) All missions with limited number of attempts: these missions end without blocking the active mission slot, but they disappear into thin air. There is no saved result, no increase in number of wins, no progress towards the dogtag, nothing. I should have noticed it earlier, I'm sorry for that... it was easy to miss though.

2) Missions with unlimited attempts: they still block active mission slot after the time expires and they're displayed as "Ended 44 years ago" in Missions tab.

Just to make it clear, bugged missions from early days of this bug still remain there, blocking the mission slots.

Regardless of the setup you will not get any progress when it comes to missions, in best cae scenario nothing will happen, in worst case you will just block active mission slots until you won't be able to create missions anymore. That's why missions should be avoided until further notice.

I'll be back with updates when something happens.

Spitfire out.

[spitfiresiemion]

Another update:

Well, Missions are still broken in the same way as the last time I posted. However, I have noticed two things:

1) In-game Battlelog doesn't have the "Ended 44 years ago" bug - the time is displayed correctly, as this screenie shows: http://i.imgur.com/3iMYm0p.png

(the writing in Polish says "Ended 1 month ago"). I guess that it means that '44 years ago' isn't related to the cause as heavily as I thought... or at least I think so.

2) When it comes to missions with unlimited attempts it turns out that top score can still be improved. I'm not sure if it applies to the missions with limited attempts where some of them weren't used up, but unluckily I have no means of verifying it right now (not that verifying it woul change much).

So, well, still waiting.

Spitfire out.

[spitfiresiemion]

I have been fiddling around with Missions a bit. Well, first things first, I haven't found any workaround and they still don't work after plugin update from today. I have tried to use in-game Battlelog to create missions, but it did not change anything - mission still got stuck. It is still possible to improve the score even in tuck missions with limited attempts where all attempts were used up, but that's not really a consolation.

Okay, second part actually is a bit more interesting. Some of you may've noticed that Battlelog now displays missions as "Ended 45 years ago" (it still remains as 'Ended 34 years ago' after page refresh though and in-game BL displays proper date anyway). It made me wonder... what is the exact day when the mission 'ended' according to Battlelog? I decided to test it by changing the year in calendar of my computer. I assumed that it should be something around mid-January 1969 (for you curious types: exactly nothing happened then). Well, I was wrong (and even if I wasn't, calendar in my laptop can't set the date before 1980).

First of all, let me make one thing clear: dates in the entire Battlelog go full derp once you use a year before 2007-2008. For example with system date being January 1st 2001 new forum threads will display "Posted in 52 years". These dates are totally random. However, if you're careful and don't refresh Missions page you can pinpoint the date where Missions timer displays "ended X hours ago" (thus allowing to pinpoint the day of the 'real' mission end). After tinkering with it for about an hour I found out that the assumed day when these missions ended according to Battlelog is January 20th 1997, around 1 at night. I have absolutely no clue why this is the day. Missions that ended normally are shown as "Ending in 43/44 years" when system date is set on this day (early ones display as 43, newer ones show 44).

While I know that it only makes everything even more confusing for most of people reading this (myself included), I hope that it will give a clue to anyone who is capable of figuring out the broken piece of code.

[spitfiresiemion]

So, it seems that all the bugged missions were finished, including ones that disappeared from Missions tab when the bug was there, so you should be able to create new missions. Right now people (myself included) are testing if everything works fine. I'll update the thread when I'll get more information.

[spitfiresiemion · Accepted solution]

Good news: it is confirmed that this bug is fully fixed. Everything should be fine right now.