It seems as though players are still having problems with data loss with GTA Online, and Rockstar is still doing its best to get all the kinks worked out, despite the recently released title update. But in the meantime, the company is advising players of a few basic tricks to avoid further losses.
When faced with the kind of losses like the ones certain GTA Online players have been dealing with, it seems logical to give things a fresh start and begin anew from scratch. However, if you do that, make sure you're careful about it. An update over at Rockstar's support forums is advising players against replacing characters with a new one in the empty slot.
"If you have previously created a character but see an empty character selection screen when entering GTA Online, please back out to GTAV Story Mode and try re-entering GTA Online through the pause menu (repeat or wait until Rockstar cloud servers are back up). Do not create a new character in the empty slot where your character should be," reads the update.
It goes on to say, " If you receive the message 'The Rockstar Cloud Servers Are Unavailable', please return to GTAV Story Mode and follow the steps above. Please do not press "Retry" on the message and do not proceed online with saving disabled, as this may lead to overwriting your existing character."
Unfortunately, it's not exactly the type of fix people are hoping for. Some of Rockstar's other bits of advice sound almost accusatory, and seem to suggest that player error is actually what's resulting in the loss problems: "When exiting GTA Online, please pause the game and choose to return to Single Player. This will trigger a save and ensure that progress since the last auto-save is recorded. If you purchase items and immediately power the console off or exit through console system menus, those items may not be saved."
No matter how it sounds, Rockstar is at least letting players know of all the possible causes. But arguably, perhaps the developer could've tried a bit harder before releasing the error-ridden GTA Online into the world.
Says Rockstar, "We apologize for this inconvenience and are working on a permanent fix for these issues."