So far, there is around ZERO confirmation whether this eventual problem is real or not ... isolated cases do not determine the experience of the majority. The fact is that, on the PC, the game has not had any problems with Save Files.
And problems exist when they arise, many here are commenting on such an 'about the eminence to arise', without even having had any problems about.
Avoid misinformation, avoid believing everything you read ... especially when what you read does not match facts or does not correspond to facts.
Okay, let's break this down.
"Avoid misinformation, avoid believing everything you read especially when what you read does not match facts or does not correspond to facts."
At it's core, that's good advice that I would agree with, and give to anyone else gathering information from a source like the internet. In this instance, here's the problem:
1.) There is save file bloat. I will not deny that what is causing the bloat is speculative, however, the bloat does exist. You can confirm this yourself by creating a new save, saving every hour or so, and keeping track of the save file size. This fact has been tested and reproduced, hence why it's a fact.
2.) The game has a hard save file limit of 8192KB. This is confirmed not only in the executable, but in .ini files found in the games files. This is universal across all players. So this is also a fact.
3.) When the game exceeds 8192KB of player data in memory, the game will not shut down. You can continue to play the game. This can be reproduced yourself by downloading any of the save files here that are at the very cusp of reaching 8192KB, loading that save, mass crafting something like 45k consumables, pushing you over the 8192KB save file limit in memory. This is a fact.
4.) When you try to save your game to file, let's say from the previous example, the game will cut off whatever data is in excess of 8192KB when dumping memory to file, rendering the save file corrupt. This can be reproduced by following the steps in numbers three and four, and then attempting to load the game. We know the game is cutting off all data after 8192KB because the file size is always 8192KB, and all affected files of that size are missing their end of file marker. Which means writing to the file was halted at 8192KB in such a way that the application didn't even get to complete the file. Hence the missing End of File marker. This is a fact.
5.) When attempting to load these saves, they will not load. There's not much more background I can give on this. There's no way to recover these saves because they are missing data that got cut off during the dump to file when it hit the max file size limit. This is a fact.
6.) This incident, at the moment, is isolated to PC. I believe out of the forty something pages in this post, we have had one PlayStation user with a corrupt save, and we cannot even verify if it's related to this issue in particular because of the way the PlayStation handles their save files. They allocate space for the file, and the actual file size is allowed to grow or shrink depending on the data being written. So as of right now, it's not possible for us to know what the exact save file sizes are for the PlayStation users. I don't even think we get accurate file size numbers from the Xbox users either, but, they can at least check their file sizes by deleting all of their other saves in the folder. This is just an estimate because we don't know if there are configuration files being bundled up with the save file.
So, according to your logic, there is a problem. This isn't a doomsday post where a bunch of people are swearing that the sword of damocles is about to drop on everyone's heads with little to no information to back it up. We've done the testing and looked at the numbers from as analytical of a standpoint as possible, because we don't want it to be true either. However, that's not what the facts are pointing to. The facts are pointing to a real issue that's going to hit everyone at some point or another, because eventually, everyone is going to spec into crafting and have a playthrough where they abuse the crap out of it, thus ballooning their save file size.
I can understand that you don't want it to be true either. However, here in this post, your experience is in the minority, as we have users who have less playtime than you who are affected by this. There are even cheating websites that have tested and confirmed that there is save file bloat related to crafting. That's two communities now that have confirmed something that you seem to want to dismiss as a non-issue.
You're entitled to your opinion. However, I can't in good faith agree with any part of it because that's just not what the facts point to. I'm sorry.
Edit: I'm not trying to come across as being mean about this. It may seem snarky, but, that's kind of the way I write. So if any offense is gleaned from this I do apologize. My initial reaction was to be very personal about it and attack your post, but, that's not what we're here to do, and hurling insults gets us nowhere.
