The skill shuts down randomly while playing the game

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newuser-386d6f17-9136-43e7-9ba9-79ea0aff98cd asked Jan 19, '19

The skill shuts down randomly while playing the game

Hi,

since I've tried a couple of things, I would like to ask this in this fourm. Maybe somebody can help me out. I have a music quiz skill where the user can play and have a guess for songs for 7 rounds.

Lately, I receive several user ratings that the skill shuts down during the game randomly. The user is starting a game, but after playing a few rounds the skill just shuts down although the user did not end the skill. Obviously this is frustrating for the user.

Testing it on my device I never experience that. Is there anything I am missing here?

Kind regards

Paul

alexa skills kit alexa help

1

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newuser-40fad8f2-fc4c-46e0-af93-7d4d93f530f0 commented · Dec 05, 2020 at 08:22 PM

Have you found the solution? I have same issues.. The answers so far are wrong im troubleshooting the problem. Even if you keep answering immediately, it stiil the same problem

0 ·

Answer 1 · 2019-01-19T17:41:44Z

milanc answered Jan 19, '19

It sounds like your users can't figure out the answer soon enough. Alexa waits 8 seconds to hear any new input from the user; if there isn't any, it terminates. This applies to all skills.

You can extend the period by 8 more seconds using a reprompt. This way, you can get 8 seconds + time it takes Alexa to say the text in the reprompt + 8 seconds of waiting time when the quiz players can guess the song. However if they won't respond with anything, your skill gets terminated. In this case, the SessionEndedRequest is sent to your skill.

To keep the quiz going, you could, before the quiz itself start, ask the players to say "I don't know" if they can't guess the song. This way the flow of the game would not break.

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Answer 2 · 2019-01-19T21:36:12Z

newuser-386d6f17-9136-43e7-9ba9-79ea0aff98cd answered Jan 19, '19

Hi Milanc,

thanks for the support. I see where the issue is coming from now. In the case the user does not know the answer he/she intuitively says nothing. Therefore Alexa activates the SessionEndedRequest that you mentioned above.

I'll try the repromt approach + adding a sequence of gaming instructions to avoid this issue. Thanks a lot of your input!

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Answer 3 · 2020-01-21T12:37:06Z

newuser-386d6f17-9136-43e7-9ba9-79ea0aff98cd answered Jan 21, '20

Hi Milanc,

Thanks for your helpful asnwer. I've implemented that. However, my data shows that shut downs are still occuring. I am not sure what is causing those. The sessionendrequest shows that it is caused by either user_initiated shut downs and/or max_exceeded reprompts. My assumption is that something triggers a stop or cancel intent way too often. That's why user experience crashes. The data shows that most of them are coming back a few seconds later, which make sense, because the shutdown interrupted their game and they were not intentionally closing the game.

Kind regards

Paulos

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