Possibly lost data

[Guidsmaster]

Hey all,

Im here visiting my brother, and first time I loaded up Nier: A.. I saw my 3 save files from the cloud sync.. I then family shared it to my brother so he could try it out and have his own save files.
I then switched back to my account, and all save files were gone (which was fine, since I just wanted to create a new game to mess around and would have had to delete one anyways).

However, next time i launched the game here (on my brothers PC), it now showed my new file, and 2 of the old files, with my 100% file having disappeared.

So the question is:
When I got home to my own PC, will my A-Z file still be gone, replaced by the new file?
When steam sees that my PC data is different from my cloud data, will it offer the possibility to replace one or the other?


Would really suck to have lost that file :(

[lessthanoff]

This same exact thing happened to me when I visited my dad. I bought him the game for his account, and, when he played, it overwrote my own saves due to the game not creating separate folders for different accounts. The way to prevent this from happening is to create a separate profile on your PC and switch profiles whenever you or he wants to play.

Since I had cloud save active on my own personal computer for the game, my saves were overwritten the moment I booted up steam. I'm not sure if there's a solution to this. I just accepted it and restarted the game on a different profile on his pc, and pretty much beat the entire thing before I went home, so it wasn't a huge deal to me.

[Guidsmaster]

T__T thats a bummer, especially because it wouldnt have happened if it didnt show all 3 files empty right when i wanted a new file. Dunno why it didnt load up my files that time, but after a relaunch it did.

(as in first time i loaded on his PC, my 3 files were there, i switch to his account and there are no save files, i create one. I switch back to my own PC, and now there are no save files. I create one, close the game to try to get the FPS counter to show, and when i come back, my new file and 2 of my old files now show)

QQ aside, do you know of way to manually import a save file? (If steam is automatically overwriting local data, im not sure that simply putting it in the saves folder would work).
Because if there is a way to import, once I get home I could just back up my local folder (assuming it exists) and import my major save file before it gets overwritten

[lessthanoff]

Originally posted by Guidsmaster:

T__T thats a bummer, especially because it wouldnt have happened if it didnt show all 3 files empty right when i wanted a new file. Dunno why it didnt load up my files that time, but after a relaunch it did.

(as in first time i loaded on his PC, my 3 files were there, i switch to his account and there are no save files, i create one. I switch back to my own PC, and now there are no save files. I create one, close the game to try to get the FPS counter to show, and when i come back, my new file and 2 of my old files now show)

QQ aside, do you know of way to manually import a save file? (If steam is automatically overwriting local data, im not sure that simply putting it in the saves folder would work).
Because if there is a way to import, once I get home I could just back up my local folder (assuming it exists) and import my major save file before it gets overwritten

I know that importing a save file from a different user requires a third party tool (I forget what it's called), but I believe copying your own save file prior to launching steam and then replacing it should work fine. I'm not 100 percent sure what would happen after doing this though. Ideally, steam would prompt you with a "Yo, it looks like your local data doesn't match your cloud data, which one do you want to keep?" box. But then again, I was under the impression it would do that when I booted up steam upon returning home, and it just straight-up overwrote it. So I dunno. Hopefully someone more familiar with this sort of issue will be able to add more insight.

[lessthanoff]

Of course, if you backed up your save data, booted up steam, turned off cloud sync, and then replaced the overwritten data with your backed-up data, that might do the trick. But you may want to get a second opinion on this, just in case. *shrug* There may be a better solution.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡⁧⁧the.jester]

If you've not yet started steam on your own pc, you could back up the contents of Documents\My Games\NieR_Automata, which will at least save the local copies of your save games
(and also C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<steam id>\524220 or where ever steam is installed)

That way at least you could disable steam cloud on your pc and then copy the save files back into Documents\My Games\NieR_Automata

hopefully that shoudl allow you to be able to continue with your save games

[Aemony]

NieR:Automata uses the SteamID64 of the user to identify whether to load an appropriate save file in the game or not. This, however, creates situations with multiple Steam users sharing the same Windows account basically overwriting their saves as e.g. user A will not be able to see user B's saves, but will still overwrite them when creating a new save in the slot that user B already uses.

You can use a save game editor like this one to replace the SteamID64 in the save files: https://github.com/Idearum/NieRAutomata-SteamID64-Editor

Depending on your case, I'd highly recommend making a backup of Documents\My Games\NieR_Automata before running the game, as the.jester said, and then trying to restore the files that way. Without a clear understanding of where the files might currently be located (e.g. you might have inadvertently uploaded your brother's save file if you ran the game after him on the same computer using your Steam account, or vice-versa) I can't really give more exact recommendations.

The tool mentioned above have a "Steam Community profile" link you can use to understand what SteamID64 the save file(s) are currently tied to. Basically just load a save, click the Steam Community profile, and see whether that is your own or your brother's account, then proceed accordingly.

[Guidsmaster]

Thank you all very much!! Will have to try it out once I get back, but it seems theres definitely hope as long as i dont accidentally launch the game before backing up.
Thanks again!

[fajikira]

Just in case this helps anyone, I had a similar issue. I switched accounts to show someone else the game, and it overrode save slot 1, not fortunately my save was on slot 2, but the game refused to recognize it. I got it to work by **first backing up the old saves**, creating a new save on slot 2, then killing the game and overwriting the new slot 2 file with the old one. Starting up the game again the time played meter was reset, but the save was restored!