1.10 2004?

[Dyntheos]

I have been wondering of late whether this beta patch will be the only beta version we see. It seems there are a myriad of problems with this patch and as such perhaps a second version of the 1.10 beta should be released, with all current errors fixed, or hopefully fixed.

Now if there is no second version, then it would seem blizzard have a lot of work ahead of them fixing the current beta errors and hoping the final release has gotten them all. If there are further versions of this beta patch then they too will have to go through a testing phase.

What this boils down to considering the volume of problems we are experiencing, is that I am starting to think that we will not see this patch live on the realms till early next year.

If that is the case how many of us after so many years, will have just given up on the whole thing?

Another question releated to this is that, can Diablo be fixed at all? Will there always be exploitable bugs and errors? Taking that further is it the nature of large games with complex ideas and systems to inherently have bugs that will never be fixed, and a public that will merely consume them anyway?

Just some random thoughts, not at all upset over the length of time it's taken so far, as a blizzard fan I've come to accept it, which I guess makes me a part of the public that merely accepts that's how things are nowadays.

[Brista]

I think we're too close to the trees to get a good look at the wood

There is only one bug which truly breaks the game regardless of access to rare high level equipment: the enhanced damage bug

Most bugs reported were either fixed in previous versions and have crept back in (eg Zeal bug) or are new bugs to things that worked fine before (eg Tir bug)

The game is basically, played through from level 1 in no-twink a terrific play experience

I might be wrong but I guess they're nailing down most of these, in fact have probably already nailed down most of these, and are likely to go final pretty soon

My impression of Blizzard is that the actual programming side is strong, it's the QA that is rather weak - and we've done that job for them

[ImpressiveOne]

Come on guys, give the one programmer assigned to 1.10 a break okay? :P

[Guest]

I agree the is becoming rather anticlimactic.

[Ignatz]

Out of sheer curiosity:

What Tir bug?

What ED% bug?

:o

[Obi2Kenobi]

The tir bug is where mana per kill is adding wrong and you get double when you die and recover your corpse, then triple the next time.

[MMAgCh]

Out of sheer curiosity:

What Tir bug?

What ED% bug?

:o

"Tir bug" most likely refers to the way "+Mana after each kill" items work right now; see Pren's thread in the Maggot Lair.

I don't know much about the "ED% bug", although I believe was mentioned somewhere around here as well. To the best of my knowledge, enhanced damage modifiers not on weapons multiply the total damage done, or something to that effect.

[Pren]

It's not a 'tir' bug... very misleading term for it.

It effects all +mana/kill and damage taken goes to mana as well. Presumably it effects health/kill, and other effects could possibly suffer from it too.

That too, is all I can guess would be the 'ED% bug', saw someone post that they have that effect now.


EDITED: According to Dagni's testing (reply to my thread in Maggot Lair), it effects crushing blow. Holy cripes...

[Ruvanal]

I am see four rather large problems that need to be fixed and another cycle of testing that needs to be done to find bugs that these three are obscuring from being noticed.

Brista noted one in that there are a few modifiers that seem to be getting calculated in at the wrong point. The most noticeable of these is the dmg% not on a weapon. There are a few other like this that do not even all together make half the impact that the dmg% one is making by itself.

A second one is what some are referring to as the misnamed "Tir bug". This is actually similar to the Angelic set bug that was in place at the release of v1.08; but in this case is applying to many of the item modifiers not being removed from the character when the item is unequipped. This is causing the modifiers to stack repeatedly when unequipped and re-equipped. There are probably more than the +mana/kill, damage to mana and crushing blow that as of yet have gone unnoticed due the effects not being as dramatic.

A third problem is probably the worst and at the same time the hardest for most to realize is happening. It ties into the second point and can be rather subtle to detect at times and all too obvious at others. Most have noted it too some degree but are assuming it to be several different problems specific to different classes or builds. There are several points in the game when your equipment is being unequipped and re-equipped with it always showing visually that it is happening. Necros are seeing when leveling at times when they leveled and all the extra minions gained due to +skill items would die. I also noted today that this is also happening at times when visiting the vendors. A little testing was showing that at the vendors this seems to be restricted to the weapon in the hands but needs to be check closer. Since I had been using a sorceress with an orb that had +4 mana/kill, things were slowly starting to get bad after enough visits to sell things. It can make it hard to determine what is bug when some of 'static' equipment really is not very stable at all.

A fourth problem is that there is some form of what I consider unacceptable desynchronization with the single player game. This is worse than what I normally experience through a pots to AOL connection to the realms. I can see my act 2 merc halfway to left side of the screen attacking nothing while halfway to the right side of the screen a monster is loosing life to his attack. The weird animation that can be seen from Leap Attack and the odd behavior of Whirlwind are present in SP mode but vanish if I start a TCP/IP game instead (some of the other desync problems are still apparently there though from my observations). With this kind of problem occurring, how can you be sure that you are getting good test results in some cases.

How many other bugs are being obscured from these four points masking what is really happening. Until these are adequately fixed it will probably be hard to find some of the other bugs that lurking in the wings. I would rather see at least one or two more beta test versions of the patch before the final version so that there is a good chance to squash most of the more major game breaking problems.