Gradual Reduction in MF Effectiveness

[Crystalion]

And no, there is no problem with initialization in D2, that has been looked at by many  ;)

Well, various different things can be plausibly meant by using a phrase like "trouble with initializing".

Speaking using D1 as a convenient reference for example...

OTOH we have things like the shrine bug and the uninitialized variable, unsaved variable, unloaded variable.

OTOH we have things like bnet creating (at one time at least, no idea if they still screw up) games at the same second with the same master seed resulting in the same drops for players by high level mobs, as in the Laz room, resulting in "dupes" that are legit but can be acrimoniously auto-deleted nonetheless.

The second category of "improper initialization" is a more subtle one. It is very very hard, given the likely language and tools used, even with peer (or modder/code-reader) review to be absolutely certain of your statement for the first category. IMO it would be unrealistic to venture your statement for the second category, as the people and automatons examining the code to probe for the non-existance of such anomalies would have to be "godlike" in their abilities relative to me, for example.

Given that the code runs on hardware and an OS that is itself only 99.99%+ (metaphorically speaking) reliable there is also the category of "improper initialization" there to consider, as the D2 code may not be resistant to pass-along of flaws in its environment (indeed the D2 clone farmers and bnet crash dupers suggest that it is not).

Whether there are other categories of problems for which one might reasonably use the term "initialization" in a description of their nature I don't know. The problem here is that some portion of the forum reading public--despite any disclaimers you might have made as to infallibility--will take any statement from you such as the one I quoted for this post as gospel, and in a broader context than you likely intended.