The reward system in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer does awful, wonderful things to my brain chemicals. You earn credits by playing (or buying BioWare points), then spend them to buy kits: tiered booster packs that contain common, uncommon, and rare versions of weapons, attachments, new classes, and consumables. Mechanically, it's basically a way of gift-wrapping your unlockables and making you feel like you're having a birthday (where all your uncles are sci-fi weapons manufacturers) every few rounds.
But over the past week, players on the Mass Effect 3 forum noticed an issue with this system: their items, classes, and other unlocks were disappearing.
Update: As of March 19, BioWare has fixed this issue. Read more here.
BioWare is aware of the issue. In the 370-post thread, Community Coordinator Chris Priestly says you can do two things to reduce the chances of losing items:
- Avoid going into the Store while "Ready" for a multiplayer match. It's best to un-ready yourself before you go to the store.
- Don't accept invites while in the store/purchasing.
Many players within the forum are understandably frustrated—they've lost access to items they earned or purchased with real money. "Lost my Quarian Infiltrator and Asari Adept," says user TheLostOne3. "I already promoted my Quarian once so you'd think there'd be some record of it. I've been trying to unlock it again ever since with no luck." "I lost the Carnifex, a Geth Plasma Shotgun, and a bunch of mods/characters," says Kopikatsu.
Another player named Wozlynn, playing on PC, claims she lost unlocked content when she dropped from a multiplayer match. "I lost all of my multiplayer rewards on the early morning of March 10 and I can confirm that my case had nothing to do with accessing the in-game store. My game abruptly stopped playing during wave 11 of a multiplayer match and a message appeared to inform me that Origin is currently down. I did not lose my internet connection during nor was I doing anything else with my computer while playing the match. Perhaps unrelatedly, my teammate disconnected mere moments before I received this error message. He had no issues reconnecting but when I next logged in I was greeted by a welcome to multiplayer message and a new starter pack. I soon discovered that all my other acquired multiplayer rewards were gone."
Anecdotally, after unlocking four Spectre Packs and one or two Veteran Packs over the weekend, I don't believe I'm missing any items. Has this happened to you?
I've reached out to EA to ask for clarity on how many users the bug is affecting, and if this issue would require a patch or just a back-end fix on the Origin/ME3 store. I have not yet heard back. "We continue to investigate this issue and will update when we have more information," Priestly last wrote on the thread related to the issue.
