Possible Solution(s) For Freezing/Loading/Custom Data Issues

[CONight]

First a quick disclaimer: What I am going to explain in this thread is based upon my findings with WWE '13 on Xbox 360, and my knowledge of general issues with both the Xbox 360 and PS3. I have WWE 2k14 for PS3 and I'm playing it on a slim (NOT superslim) model with the included 250GB harddrive.

 

What I'm going to explain in this thread is something you can do that should alleviate issues with WWE 2k14 reading custom content, freezing when things are supposed to be loading--including when matches are starting and ending. This might not eliminate these problems completely, but things should at least run a little better for you than they have been.

 

Unfortunately the PS3 WWE 2k14 save data is copy protected, so I can't get it to my PC to go through it the way I went through WWE '13's save data. If anyone is able to get a WWE 2k14 save off their PS3, I will gladly explore it. At minimum I would be able to provide all the PS3 users here with a download that should help keep your existing save data safe--something I figured out how to do with WWE '13. One option is transferring the PS3 save to the cloud storage PS Plus users have access to. From what I understand you can access this cloud storage via your PC. I don't have PS Plus, so I don't have this option. In the mean time, PS3 users can still look through this post since we'll be doing essentially the same thing on PS3 once I've found a way to do it. (That pesky copy protection is the only road block, I know exactly what to do beyond that.)

 

So let's talk about what we can do on Xbox 360. As I already mentioned, I have no way to truly test & confirm this since I have the PS3 version of WWE 2k14, but things should at least work a little smoother by doing this. Also most people having issues seem to be those with the black phat "elite" model Xbox 360 system--which honestly doesn't surprise me. If you're experiencing trouble on a slim model, you're welcome to give this a shot. It certainly won't do any harm.

 

1. You're going to need an empty thumbdrive or USB harddrive. You really only need 1GB of space--maybe 2GB to account for the DLCs, (and that's being generous), but iirc the Xbox 360 plays nicer with atleast 4GB. (I use a 4GB thumbdrive, so if your 360 tells you it's not big enough, just ignore it and use it anyway.)

 

2. Connect the thumbdrive to your Xbox 360, go to system/storage select it and format it.

 

3. In system/storage go to your harddrive now, go to apps/games, and find WWE 2k14.

 

4. COPY (don't delete or move--unless it says you have to move instead of copy, then you can MOVE it) ALL of it to the thumbdrive.

 

Note: Don't worry about screwing up your save data. As long as you don't delete anything, if something goes awry when you start WWE 2k14 later and it say something is wrong, just copy/move everything on the thumbdrive back to your harddrive and everything will be back to normal. Definitely do that before trying to do this whole process over again in a second attempt.

 

5. Copy your profile to the thumbdrive as well. You can alternatively redownload your profile from XBL servers later if you want.

 

6. Once everything is on your thumbdrive, shutdown the Xbox 360. Remove your harddrive, such that the thumbdrive is the only storage device connected to the system. (Slim users don't worry about that 4GB internal storage. You're probably not using it anyway.)

 

7. Start your 360 back up without the harddrive and ONLY the thumbdrive. Make sure you're signed in to the correct profile if you copied it to your thumbdrive. If there are no profiles found, you can just go to the download profile option and redownload it, nothing will be lost.

 

8. Start WWE 2k14 and when it asks you to select a storage device, pick the thumbdrive. You can actually do this with the harddrive connected as well, but the first time you try using your thumbdrive it's easier and a bit safer to do it without the harddrive.

 

9. Go ahead and play the game for a bit this way, make sure all your stuff is there and see if everything runs a bit smoother. If all goes well you can reattach the harddrive, just be sure to select the thumbdrive as your storage device whenever you start the game.

 

EXTRA STEPS if you had to MOVE instead of COPY:

There is actually a way to still have your data in two places:

1. Once your data has been moved to the thumbdrive, take it to your PC and copy everything to a safe place. Don't worry about modio or any special data utilities, we're not actually doing anything with the data. Just copy it normally--everything, regardless of how it appears when browsing your thumbdrive on your PC.

2. Take the thumbdrive back to the 360 and move all your data back to the harddrive under settings/storage.

3. Take the thumbdrive back to your PC and copy all that stuff from before back to the thumbdrive. Now your data is in two places and everything is safe!

 

 

So what's the point of all this?

Most likely everyone has had their 360s for quite some time and have amassed a lot of content on their harddrives. WWE games have to read and write a lot of stuff to your storage devices--a lot more than other games do. This is especially true if you're using a lot of CAWs, custom arenas, belts, and so on. This is the first game in a number of years that we've had custom belts to a degree of any significance, (I don't really count the limited belt customization in WWE '13.) The game has to sift through all that other data you have amassed on your harddrive from all those other games to find all stuff you have saved for WWE 2k14. The same is true of PS3s, but since the WWE 2k14 save is copy protected there, we can't do anything about it right now.

 

What we've done here is essentially removed a variable. By moving your WWE 2k14 data to a thumbdrive/USB harddrive, you have that data on a storage device all by itself--nothing else that the game has to sift through to get to it. The process of loading all your content will now be easier and smoother. You might think that all this shouldn't be necessariy, and yes the game could certainly be made to load data more efficiently--something a patch could do. 15+ years ago when CPU & harddrive access speeds were much slower this was a much more serious issue. You might remember back in the days of Windows 95 and earlier when you had to defrag your harddrives to keep your computer running smoothly. Some of you might still defragment your computer today, though it's not that big of a deal anymore. When you add things to your harddrive, delete things, and then add more things, the data on your harddrives get jumbled up. Pieces of one file can be split into several different places on the drive. This is fragmentation, and defrag reorganizes your harddrive so all the bits of every file are in one place so the computer doesn't have to waste time searching the whole drive for all the different pieces. Your Xbox 360 and PS3 harddrives get fragmented too, All rewriteable electronic storage devices do. Do NOT try to defrag 360 or PS3 drives on your PC though. For one thing PS3 drives aren't normally even readable on a PC. Now in their twilight years, you might say it's a design flaw in the PS3 and 360 to not have a method of defragging storage devices. It's mainly a problem that only really effects games that have to load a lot of data like WWE 2k14.

 

Hopefully the game will be patched in the near future to optimize the loading process, but this should help in the meantime. You might still have some freezing/loading issues, but I don't think it will be quite as bad as it was before. Good luck, and hopefully if I can somehow get my hands on a PS3 save that I can access on my PC, I'll add a fix for everyone playing on PS3, (like me!)