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[CLIENT] Custom Match Spectating Error

XLNC Jake Kelton·8/9/2018, 2:01:40 PM·9 votes·3,018 views

Hi Riot!

[Why this is Important:] I know that often things like custom matches slip through the fixing lines due to how few people play them and the greater importance for Ranked or Normals games, but there's been a pretty significant bug running through custom matches, specifically in spectator mode, that is really critical for content creators like myself. A small percentage, but still a significant one, uses Custom Tournament Draft to set up and run leagues and tournaments for different communities around the world. I know I am not the only one to have experienced this issue (RevenantEsports, GXPChampionship, PG_Esports, Ozon3_Gaming) and with a major convention tournament coming up (Dragon*Con 2018), the issue still existing is making me a bit nervous. It started about a month back (I spectate and shoutcast games every Tuesday) and has yet to disappear. As content creators, opening new opportunities for people to enjoy League of Legends is important to us and spectating the games or tournaments that bring unique compositions or play-styles is critical to that task.

[The Bug:] "Game Data unable to be downloaded. Game will now exit." About 60%-70% of the time I pull 10 players into a custom game lobby with myself in spectator mode, after picks and bans, after the load in screen, a white box appears with the above text. Once it happens, nothing can be done to get back to spectating the game. No right clicking of names to watch the game, no nothing. If you don't get into it, you're done. All 10 players must leave the game, remake it, and pray the spectating works THIS time. This is true of Tournament Draft and Blind Pick customs. The players aren't effected, though some had had connections issues to the game recently, but can always reconnect. But the Spectator is locked out completely. Occasionally the game loads enough to see the map (dark) with no champions spawning, but the same alert appears.

[Even worse:] I can't show you what it looks like atm. Going back over my stream, every time it did it, my stream cut. Like my upload ceased to exist. I realized this past Tuesday people were complaining that the stream was "dying" and I had to restart it several times (I use OBS) but I thought that it was on my end. Turns out in trying to find footage to show you the error, every time it errored was the same time the stream "died". OBS was running, but there was 0 upload. Will try to get it to happen again (shouldn't be difficult) tonight when I stream, and I will take a screenshot before clicking out, though as I said, catching video of it seems like that will be nearly impossible.

[Reproduce:] Create a custom 5v5 Tournament Draft game. Invite 10 friends. Move to spectate mode. Start the game. Wait. Has happened on Blind Pick. With and without passwords. With only friends and with strangers. That 30% of time it does work, I don't click on ANYTHING after the game starts. That means no communication with chat, no scene switching, no checking on player histories, no nothing (very frustrating for a shoutcasting spectator). Seriously though, if you are reading this as a random player, PLEASE test this and let me know if you get the same error. Do about 4 games (just have everyone quit after about the 1 minute mark into the game), and let me know how it goes. Might do some more testing myself tonight.

[Frequency:] As I stated about, about 70% of the time over the last 4 weeks, but I only shoutcast on Tuesday nights, so it's a limited sample. Will try to test tonight as well if my community is up to the challenge.

[What it feels like:] Pull 10 people into a game, get it balanced, and start the game. There's an atmosphere of excitement for the game to come as you carefully analyse (with a few jokes tossed in) the compositions both teams pick while in pick and ban phase, sometimes taking what feels like an eternity. Finally, everything is locked in. Then begins the 3 minute wait for the game to start, so there's more analysis, interaction with the chat, welcoming new people, and finally the counter ticks down and the game begins. Wait! Loading screen... look at some cool champion skins... wait... And just as everyone hits 100% and the excitement is at an all time high, a white text box appears "Game Data unable to be downloaded. Game will now exit." Like a balloon, the breath you didn't know you had been holding just fizzles into deflated defeat. Congratulations, 10 people have played 3 minutes of a game for no reason. GG

[Dear Riot:] Us content creators don't ask for much. We're not asking for use of the Tournament Realm. We're not asking for more spectator slots. We're not asking to be able to move people around in the custom lobby as the game maker. We're not asking to be able to hold Game Maker status while in spectate mode. We're not asking to have a role call option in custom lobbies so there's no fighting over game lanes. We're not asking for the option to limit the wait time to less than 3 minutes. We're not asking to have zooming out functions built into the spectator mode. We're not asking to have team name and score slots built into spectator mode. We're not asking for a few "fill" slots people can sit in and see if they are needed. We're not asking for any of the hundreds of things that would make our lives as positive content creators a thousand times easier. We're just asking to be able to spectate custom games our friends are playing in.

Thank you, from all of us at Excellency.

TLDR; Custom Tournament Draft and Blind Pick Spectator mode 70% of the time doesn't load game data. Fixing this saves the frustration of hundreds of content creators.

-XLNC Jake Kelton

3 Comments

XLNC Jake Kelton8/10/2018, 6:37:15 AM3 votes

Did not fix issue. UPDATE: This might be on my end. My Norton antivirus subscription ended about a month ago. Decided to delete it (going with Windows Defender instead) and tested the custom games a bunch tonight. So far, so good. If next Tuesday's stream goes smoothly, without issue, then I will conclude it was my fault. Not sure how that effected Salec or other people, but for me, things are doing ok at the moment. Thanks for everything and sorry if I wasted your time.

XLNC Jake Kelton8/15/2018, 5:19:45 AM2 votes

Nope. Still issues. 50/50 shot whether it errors or not, Tournament Draft custom or Blind pick. No way to know what it is that is causing it, nor has anything I have done been able to fix it. Makes shoutcasting games a REAL pain in the neck. Anything, anything at all that can be done to look into this would be amazing. Thank you.

To add more data to this:

[1: Initiate Full Repair] I have done this several times before, during, and post games attempting to fix whatever might be the issue. It has not fixed anything.

[2: Delete Config Files] I have done this as well, with client open and client closed. Hasn't done anything either, even with resets and restarts to computer.

[3: Download Hextech Repair tool] Attempting that tonight. Will update further when I have more info.

XLNC Jake Kelton8/16/2018, 1:37:19 PM1 votes

Alright, we've found a moderate workaround. Using RADS Registry Fixer, we were able to get the LoL Client in a place that even if kicked we can reconnect to the game, which allows us, while delayed, to spectate games. That, and with playing with OP.GG and downloading, even if kicked completely, we can download the spectator data and use that. Will be testing all of these tonight and will update with what I find. This is helpful for an upcoming tournament I will be running, so glad to be able to at least view the games even if late... hopefully.