Different players loaded when loading a saved shortlist

I am on iOS, by the way.
And I always have the same list of leagues added in all saves, and this still happens.

Edited November 24, 2023 by tonimodric

Thank you for raising this to us, we have placed under review. 

7 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Thank you for raising this to us, we have placed under review. 

Hi Zachary, thank you. Since then, I’ve tried putting together a new shortlist from a new save and the new shortlist seems to be loading fine for me.

Funny thing is that it’s loading weird players in the old saves now, so I guess the issue was that the player indexes are different from the one at launch? Not sure how it works under the hood but it seems be working now, thanks!

On 27/11/2023 at 09:20, tonimodric said:

Hi Zachary, thank you. Since then, I’ve tried putting together a new shortlist from a new save and the new shortlist seems to be loading fine for me.

Funny thing is that it’s loading weird players in the old saves now, so I guess the issue was that the player indexes are different from the one at launch? Not sure how it works under the hood but it seems be working now, thanks!

New Update on this Issue: After the latest update to the game yesterday, any new saves created after the update load up different players when a shortlist is loaded compared to loading it from a save that was created before the update.

This seems to happen every update (the list of players that are loaded from a saved shortlist is totally different)

PLEASE have a look at this issue as this makes saving the shortlist function pointless. I’ve had to go through the whole game putting together my own shortlist twice already, and it seems I gotta do it again now. I think this is a very serious problem. PLEASE!

Thank you!

We are continuing to investigate this and we will provide an update once we have a fix.

The shortlist format changed this year and is now based on the player record number (I believe SI call it ID), which is only guaranteed to be unique to that player for the particular save where the shortlist was created. 

Basically when the save is created it takes the players from the database and puts them into the save, giving them each a record number/ID. The first player added gets record number 0, the second one gets record number 1, etc. A shortlist will say for eg "get player 169", so once the order of players being added to the save changes, then player 169 will be a different person.

If you create a new save using the exact same nations you used for the original save AND it is using the same database version, then the shortlist should work because it should load exactly the same players in the same order (so they get the same record number).

If you load different nations from the original, then the record numbers will be different for many players (as soon as it gets to a nation that wasn't loaded last time or is now loaded in a different order, the player order will be different). And every time the database changes, shortlists are likely to break, even if the same nations are loaded - because players will have been added or removed, thereby changing the order for everyone after the first change... Not every update comes with a database change, but we've had 5 app versions this year and 3 database versions (v2403, v2404 and v2405). 

To demonstrate: I created a shortlist with one player (Paul Okon) in two separate saves:

With England and Spain loaded:

With only Scotland loaded:

The last 4 characters are the import ones. In the first save Paul Okon's record number/ID is E6 57 00 00, which translates to record number 22502. In the second one his record number/ID is 32 4D 00 00, which translates to record number 19762. 

If I use the second shortlist in the first save, a different player will be record number 19762. If they'd used the UID (the number you can find on sortitoutsi), then that would be the same across every save and database version and shortlists would always have the right player... For Okon, his UID in the first save is 1C F4 37 77. And his UID in the second save is 1C F4 37 77. It never changes...

I did mention this a month ago, asking whether they could change shortlist to work from the unique id (UID) which solve the problem, rather the record number (ID) which changes. However the SI representative said that it wasn't related to the new shortlist format... But it pretty much has to be... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't normally like to ping @Marc Vaughan about tickets, but I'm sure he'd understand the issue. Though perhaps I'm being unfair to the team looking into this and they already know this is the cause? Or perhaps I've misunderstood something (wouldn't be the first time! 😀)?

Makes sense and sounds accurate - I expect someone either accidentally changed that or did it because it has to loop the entire database array to find a player from a UID and they thought it was inefficient (which is it) but unfortunately its needed and done for a reason ..

(I'm on xmas break presently, but have asked the very capable Michael Gormley to take a look)

9 minutes ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Makes sense and sounds accurate - I expect someone either accidentally changed that or did it because it has to loop the entire database array to find a player from a UID and they thought it was inefficient (which is it) but unfortunately its needed and done for a reason ..

(I'm on xmas break presently, but have asked the very capable Michael Gormley to take a look)

Sorry for disturbing you on your break! And thanks to you and Michael for taking a look. 🙂

4 hours ago, StephenCronin said:

The shortlist format changed this year and is now based on the player record number (I believe SI call it ID), which is only guaranteed to be unique to that player for the particular save where the shortlist was created. 

Basically when the save is created it takes the players from the database and puts them into the save, giving them each a record number/ID. The first player added gets record number 0, the second one gets record number 1, etc. A shortlist will say for eg "get player 169", so once the order of players being added to the save changes, then player 169 will be a different person.

If you create a new save using the exact same nations you used for the original save AND it is using the same database version, then the shortlist should work because it should load exactly the same players in the same order (so they get the same record number).

If you load different nations from the original, then the record numbers will be different for many players (as soon as it gets to a nation that wasn't loaded last time or is now loaded in a different order, the player order will be different). And every time the database changes, shortlists are likely to break, even if the same nations are loaded - because players will have been added or removed, thereby changing the order for everyone after the first change... Not every update comes with a database change, but we've had 5 app versions this year and 3 database versions (v2403, v2404 and v2405). 

To demonstrate: I created a shortlist with one player (Paul Okon) in two separate saves:

With England and Spain loaded:

With only Scotland loaded:

The last 4 characters are the import ones. In the first save Paul Okon's record number/ID is E6 57 00 00, which translates to record number 22502. In the second one his record number/ID is 32 4D 00 00, which translates to record number 19762. 

If I use the second shortlist in the first save, a different player will be record number 19762. If they'd used the UID (the number you can find on sortitoutsi), then that would be the same across every save and database version and shortlists would always have the right player... For Okon, his UID in the first save is 1C F4 37 77. And his UID in the second save is 1C F4 37 77. It never changes...

I did mention this a month ago, asking whether they could change shortlist to work from the unique id (UID) which solve the problem, rather the record number (ID) which changes. However the SI representative said that it wasn't related to the new shortlist format... But it pretty much has to be... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't normally like to ping @Marc Vaughan about tickets, but I'm sure he'd understand the issue. Though perhaps I'm being unfair to the team looking into this and they already know this is the cause? Or perhaps I've misunderstood something (wouldn't be the first time! 😀)?

Very well explained, I’ve heard about the change to the shortlist format this year from another community online and suspected this is the reason as well.

Just like you said, the list of players loaded have changed with the updates for me, and I always load the same nations. I hope this gets fixed pretty soon because what I like to do is keep a big list of players (mostly youngsters) that I keep an eye on every save so that I get news updates about them, such as bids on them from another team, etc. This is a very important point for me playing this game, and I had to go through the whole game putting together the list with the same players 3 times already! And I like to start new saves pretty often rather than play a save for 10+ seasons :P

However, I agree with you that this can be unfair to the dev team who are already looking into this issue, and I believe them to come up with a solution some time soon so I’m just waiting on that before I start another save!

13 minutes ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Makes sense and sounds accurate - I expect someone either accidentally changed that or did it because it has to loop the entire database array to find a player from a UID and they thought it was inefficient (which is it) but unfortunately its needed and done for a reason ..

(I'm on xmas break presently, but have asked the very capable Michael Gormley to take a look)

Indeed, as a software developer myself I understand why they had to make that decision if that was on purpose. I trust the team to come up with the best and optimal solution!

Thank you for replying on your break, have a happy holiday!