that’s because Blizzard doesn’t care about us customers, exchanging the Fmodex.dll files brings something. then they should just swap the files from blizzard but no. You don’t earn any more money with us if it were WOW that would have been fixed 100 times.
4 Likes
DED GAME … Prove me wrong ! … blOOzard forgotten us … Are we not worthy anymore blOOzard ? … or ActiPAYTOWINvision has a finger in this ? … Sorry i had to be this salty but fix ur stuff …
1 Like
yeah seriously why is this still not fixed? Had a teammate get a crash to desktop last night and we had to reset the GR run… Still getting random 5-10 sec freezes here, i did not do any type of fixes, im literally just waiting for the D3 team to release a fix for this since its a problem with them, pretty annoying when me or one of my teammates just freezes up and dies during a GR run. Is this seriously not going to be fixed at all till the end of season???
Can someone please help me out with this. I just recently installed Diablo 3 and now i’m getting this message.
B78270A7-426C-4DE7-B795-0C758F2D89E9
Thank you very much gentle people.
im having same problem 5 to 15 sec freeze more when in groups
also get stuck on loading screen coming out of grs and get game is not responding wait for game or close program and i have to close
If this next update after Season 22 does NOT fix these 2 issues (1) the constant freezing (which you have a solution on your OWN FORUM!) and (2), how you nerfed wizards. They need a major buff! (I’m not talking Seasonal buff cause that’s temporary). If neither one of these 2 are fixed in the next patch, then I’m uninstalling and never supporting this company. I’ll move on.
How can you let this freezing issue go on this long without using the ANSWER in your own forum? I’d rather have no sound if that meant better frames and NO freezing issues!
- judging with the dumb decisions they made in nerfing wizards in the past year… I’m pretty sure they won’t even make the necessary changes to either of these issues.
7 Likes
Hi peepz, EU player here, just wondering how many of you after Win update did full clean install D3? (Before you have to delete it via uninstaller and after via regedit to clear some paths).
Figured I would offer my two (million) cents here, as I’m still running the FMOD fix & now getting 3 sec lag spikes that have been killing off HC chars all week long.
I’m kinda frustrated with this thread beyond the obvious lack of customer support - the testimonials here are like ‘yea i fixed it with…’ (absolutely no need to update page file settings for D3, guys) and then days/weeks later, it’s clearly still there in the logs whether/not you observed it:
FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms
And while this thread looks abandoned by Blizz…
Whether that’s due to staff getting pulled for ‘all-hands’ on Immortal, or some version of “we fired our CS team + the 1 intern working on Classics to get some COVID loans, then outsourced to [insert cheap labor country here] which gave us this s*show season to begin with & now we’re stuck throwing debug statements into live code” - either way I’m fairly shocked at CS disappearance here.
…I guess I’ll stay hopeful that we get some update before End Of Season?
Even though it’s been a catastrophe? I’d wager that 3/4 user base gave up by NOV.
The initial season SERVER patch (hotfix) was not a good sign (there was something buried in that update’s logs that looked like a commit comment which maybe should not have been published).
The late DEC client patch seems to have put FMOD debugging lines into play (although perhaps this is only when I noticed them). It looks to me like the DEVs STILL cannot reproduce the issue & buying time by blaming upstream vendors (WIN + FMOD devs) which evidently fail.
Tristram event is baked-in at this point, and no end-of-season carrot to dangle (ie double goblins) I really feel like the DEV team is not available.
I can guess that they hope this to be swept-under-the-rug after this season without having to fix the root cause…
Furthermore, as a DEV myself, after 1 year tracking this, I expect they know the cause but unwilling to fix it - either PM says no, or this is regression smoke from an earlier fire / “fix” that takes priority over the subset of affected users’ complaints.
Then if I look at everything - massive uptick in catastrophic bugs, lack of support / transparency - genuinely makes me feel like Blizz is actively sabotaging this game, possibly to drive demand for Immortal.
I’ve got some hypotheses towards the end, but I’ll start with what I know as I’ve been debugging through all this suffering.
[at the risk of further ranting]
- the appendages in this thread with unrelated issues like ‘Start Game button grey & can’t get back into game’ remains off-topic (bordering lazy, if found elsewhere in forums), and leads to out-of-context responses. Like many D3 issues, that symptom may have been around for a long time (looking at you, Jar of Souls bounty that bugged out last night). Those deserve a separate tracking ticket if not already-known.
- Especially if you use Windowed mode, you’re going to be subject to Windows treatment of non-responsive apps - for example I cannot do the Kill Diablo bounty because the 2nd cut scene will time-out in Windowed mode.
- To that specific [cant start game] example, and from my experience here digging through logs, D3 client is using BNET’s response to flag whether/not your character is ‘party locked’ and exiting a game quickly can sometimes prevent you from rejoining (which itself would be a legitimate use of Blizz default response ‘check your router ports and look for dropped packets’) - but there are still some tell-tale poorly handled comments showing in logs to this day, so I’m not attacking anyone on the user side; simply noting the thread is hard enough to follow updates that are germane to the topic.
--------------
[Preface]
IMO this is not a new issue.
I’ve been dealing with this symptom for a long time, at least 3 seasons if not 3 years. Each season, the performance gets worse & at first, I assumed my now-aging rig / GPU was responsible.
I almost always play HC WIZ, and (likely because of skewed sampling) I would only observe freezes on the Wiz character - but this season especially, I’ve lost Barbs and DHs alike.
In previous seasons, I had narrowed this down to the electrical animation used by certain mobs: Serpent Magi (ele bubble) and ESPECIALLY Charged Constructs.
So at the time, I expected this was some texture-pack issue, and recall going down a forum rabbithole to move my installation from external HDD to SSD C, and eventually an entirely fresh install (WIN + D3).
Issue still occasionally persisted.
I would try things like whitelisting files for AV / Defender and various command-line/shorcut hacks for admin privilege.
All of this effort collectively seemed to deal with all issues I had up until this current season.
I suspect the issue has simply become more ubiquitous (widespread) because of the seasonal theme, and ultimately broken by the Windows update ~NOV/DEC (detailed above in earlier posts) which seems to deal with how WIN processes media requests.
That doesn’t make this Windows’ fault, and the rollbacks/updates to WIN in either direction do not fix this problem. I will try to follow-up with a proper demonstration of how to reproduce this effectively. Should some DEV or CS member want to “talk turkey” I could offer my assistance.
--------------
[My System]
Ignoring the exact specs,
Once I started tracking this thread, I had supposed I was contributing to the problem with my own setup.
I use 3 audio controllers: NVIDIA, Realtek, Generic USB.
- realtek chip exists onboard, patched by MSI, but NOT used by WIN mixer - all audio is set to use the USB (a Mackie mixer).
- occasionally I use the realtek IO for recording, so I have not tried disabling it entirely. Driver 6.0.1.8010 was provided by MSI, and have not yet tried the generic WIN replacement said to work.
- D3 set to use ‘Default’ audio as shown in app settings, which translates to 'SoundDriver “0” ’ within the D3Prefs settings.
- Curiously, switching to my specific device used (or nvidia) produces a large negative INT, yet switching to Realtek produces a 1 value (and where I deal with fixing lazy programming IRL there are lots of ways to end up with unexpected 1 value). That’s just speculative, but I was approaching a point where I was going to disable the realtek device entirely, yet I found I was able to deal without sound for short term.
--------------
[Maintenance to this point]
- various combinations of D3Prefs to disable sound
- various limits on channels and resources allowed
- update WIN + NVIDIA to current ~Nov
- update WIN + NVIDIA ~ Dec 17th D3 client patch
Supposed fix by MS (and driver vendors) to the underlying API fails to correct freezing issue - wipe D3 & manually remove all blizz/d3 REGEX entries
- reinstall + verify D3 on C drive
- applied FMOD .bat fix + every time launcher forces ‘update’
--------------
[Playable Setup]
ONLY current fix is to disable the sound system entirely by swapping in alternate FMOD DLL file. I can assure you no current WIN + driver update will prevent this within D3. I’m not sure that it matters which specific version, although I was unable to startup with the Hearthstone bundled DLL, instead using SC2.
However, this workaround does nothing except bypass a filename check, and then forces entire sound engine to disable itself while loading - and curiously attempting to do so in D3PREFS (to disable sound) DOES NOT fix the issue.
2021.02.06 14:31:32.186911700 Initializing sound subsystem... 2021.02.06 14:31:32.188123000 Error: fmod version mismatch! Api version is 00043420, dll version is 00044450 2021.02.06 14:31:32.189025400 Sound subsystem failed to initialize!
- this itself has become extra annoying with a recent Launcher update that is more aggressively trying to patch.
- one might think it would be trivial to patch installer to use the newer FMOD file found in other Blizz products (ie I am using fmodex64_4_44_23 from SC2) but anyone who deals with APIs, especially deprecated ones, knows otherwise. That’s WHY there’s a check on the file, they are likely incompatible.
I may eventually dig into those specific API changes, but it’s clear that:
- D3 makes an API call that sends FMOD into an iterative fail state.
- FMOD (probably WIN kernel) keeps blocking D3 execution in the critical 3 seconds of waiting (+ 2 retries), which causes the entire app to freeze, yet server does not care, it’s treated like client-side connectivity.
So my question becomes whether/not D3 is passing in garbage (which I suspect is the case with recent changes in client). Why not dump the full call, DEVS? Is it because you know you’re passing garbage from some recent change?
That puts the onus on Blizz to handle this issue with their API calls, and I can only come up with a handful of scenarios where they can’t/won’t and the latter probably wins.
–
[Tinfoil-hat ranting]
So let’s just call these conspiracy theories, as wholly unproven ramblings of a D3 addict who’s wasted a lot of time on the overall game, as well as this specific freezing issue, and the fallout & gem recovery from HC murders
(Yea, I’ve agreed to deaths, not murders).
I believe this is an old bug, which I’ve seen for a long time as a frequent player.
I’ve seen it as an issue with certain lightning animations (not all), and although there may be more ways to reproduce it, I can definitely say the Wizard is an easy demonstration.
I’m certain issue did not exist within that 1 glorious season when Manald Heal saved us all from Archon (and we freely spammed lightning).
- At some point with their repeatedly fail attempts to nerf wiz bazooka, I noticed a change in character movement. Suddenly, animations were forcibly completed & prevents further casting; wiz became less responsive (and all-around beat-down by nerf bats). I started getting input lag; I started to see rubber-banding behave differently, as it changed to be less elastic and more like I moved & the server replaced me 15 yds back into this inferno that I clearly want to stand in… Pretty sure this is described as ‘stuttering’.
- All that makes me feel like the classic team is either first-year interns, or some constantly changing offshore resources getting code for the first time. IDK.
Why so obvious this season? More wizards with the noob buffs, yea… but…
Don’t forget about seasonal clones.
If you’re a solo wiz (unloved outcasts), you’re getting wiz clones.
If you’re grouped with a wiz, you’ve got a chance to get ANY member’s clone.
If you see a wiz clone casting bubbles & disintegrate, get ready for a freeze with a full screen of mobs (pretty sure it’s this guy creating the issue).
You can easily see how that would narrow the conditions to reproduce, if not simply provide a false sense of security. Anything under GR85 is one-shot, so consider that a variable starting point.
- I have no idea what’s done to spawn these clones (copy+paste ammy code?), but I can bet that it was a cheap, available hack that didn’t get a lot of testing.
- Perhaps the seasonal buff is duplicating ‘actors’ whose base contains a pre-existing condition (some lightning animation); so why not have a steady stream of them emanate from our player?!?
- Perhaps the issue is not baked into the clones, but their presence contributes (ie maybe taking up sound channels), and perhaps completely coincidental.
That’s merely personal observation and not scientific, so I’ve been trying to track this better.
Once I started following this thread in Nov, having heard others complain of my longtime problem, I started following logs more closely.
The Dec 17th client patch made me hopeful for my specific occurrences due to changes in logs, and anecdotal evidence within this thread.
Before, I was always seeing a rendering error around TOD:
2020.12.10 22:02:08.167933400 ERROR: Unable to create attachment at hardpoint 'HP_aura' on ''. The hardpoint probably doesn't exist! 2020.12.10 22:02:17.817342000 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms 2020.12.10 22:02:21.777269000 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms 2020.12.10 22:02:25.767188500 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms
…but eventually noticed these errors were all over the place, like this in menu (commence dev shaming):
2020.12.10 22:02:47.156625500 >>* sSetPlayGameButtonText(): Setting PlayGameButton text to 'Resume Game' 2020.12.10 22:02:47.160097000 >>* sRefreshButtons(): play game button updated. 2020.12.10 22:02:47.259132900 ERROR: Unable to create attachment at hardpoint 'HP_FXCharacter_Ground' on 'Scene 'BattleNet_Act5Screen''. The hardpoint probably doesn't exist!
After the 17th patch, hardpoint issue is fixed (+1 to regression bug fixing skill) but here I’m dead ~10s into 2nd floor:
2020.12.19 11:46:18.330373100 Initializing client world X1_LR_Level_02... 2020.12.19 11:46:18.335068100 Enabling loading screen for 4, 4 2020.12.19 11:46:18.355512100 Disposing UI for World 2020.12.19 11:46:18.368530700 Disabling loading screen for 1, 4 2020.12.19 11:46:18.562256500 Disabling loading screen for 2, 4 2020.12.19 11:46:18.566451900 Disabling loading screen for 4, 0 2020.12.19 11:46:26.941928600 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms 2020.12.19 11:46:30.110992900 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms 2020.12.19 11:46:33.285866700 FMOD Error sound not ready in 200ms
Note this is AFTER Windows update + NVIDIA updates as well (noting that they both patched AGAIN a few days later) which had led me to believe Blue post suggestion that fix is in MS hands… meh.
So I gave up (partially) and started using the DLL hack.
I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t causing my recent lag issues.
I still see FMOD errors AFTER client init has disabled the sound system (!) likely meaning some detached process thinks it can blindly call FMOD (which again makes me think this could be avoided in Blizz code, but choosing not to).
2021.01.18 00:10:40.857825700 Client Disposed world. 2021.01.18 00:10:40.997536600 FMOD Error during 'FMOD_System_SetReverbProperties': An invalid parameter was passed to this function. 2021.01.18 00:10:41.002147100 FMOD Memory - total: 178257920 2021.01.18 00:10:41.006181300 FMOD Memory - allocated: 0, - max allocated: 43432
I’m still seeing DC deaths and lag deaths, particularly after recent BNET update, which is way more aggressively patching my DLL hack.
In the past, i sometimes employ a last-ditch effort to go AFK while paused and make the sever boot you. Always felt like 40% success, but likely getting lucky with whatever time buffer they give you (like 10s to exit game when you’re in combat).
This death was similar to a freeze, but with animations still looping in-place.
2021.01.18 00:08:48.109667400 Received pong with old sequence! 2021.01.18 00:08:48.114744700 >>> HCDC BnetParty::LockPartyForReason GAME_IS_PAUSED(4)
I hit pause to wait for latency to change, but it stayed green (will drop to red even while paused). 5 more pong messages. Server boots me:
2021.01.18 00:10:37.676287000 >>> HCDC Quit game reason=8 2021.01.18 00:10:37.688285900 ClientSocket Disconnect 2021.01.18 00:10:37.693580200 UIStartup_ClientDisconnected msg=The game connection has been lost: your client has been disconnected from the server.
Apparently that served up some more asinine, avoidable log errors like:
2021.01.18 00:10:45.322666600 ERROR: UICampaign - UIBattlenet_Campaign_DetermineJoinGamePermission() - Current hero was NULL!
So with new errors reporting & major lag spikes observed, I’m not really hopeful that this DLL workaround is not causing downstream issues itself - I mean 45ms to 1k almost instantaneously, without the latency meter moving (can see it in WIN > Resource Monitor > TCP Connections).
Shockingly, I think it’s the IP for BNET that caused the spike (rather than game server or the chat server). Will try to demonstrate that.
To be fair to the workaround though, I made it nearly a month without a murdered HC… these latency issues are new (especially on a premium isp).
So my babbling ends here.
I’d love to help out a blizz dev, should one actually exist & be free to work on this.
Otherwise, I’m stuck wondering why this is still not fixed, let alone given an update.
-
Blizz knows root cause
A) Blizz Can’t fix- genuinely caused by FMOD or WIN kernel, all API calls are correct when passed
- use of outdated FMOD API is tied to other subsystems, as noted in logs above
B) Blizz Won’t fix
- all-hands on Immortal?
- root cause relates to an earlier patch, that cant/wont be reverted?
- known to be isolated to this season, and thus will get fixed implicitly?
-
Blizz IDKWTF
A) Buy time for End Of Season- issue exploded in S22 maybe it goes away
B) Buy time for Immortal
- If Blizz demonstrates a decline in users, for whatever reason, at what point do they decide it’s too costly to host the servers?
C) Bounty ? Pray for MS kernel fix?
- I don’t want to blame devs, ever. I happily blame PM and middle management, plus an occasional QA. Yet, a server hotfix, plus obvious changes to debug log, (and open for 1y) gives the impression that current team may not be capable of fixing this. I think we’re all anxiously awaiting a Blue response here, would be great to get someone higher than CS rep to comment. Post a bounty somewhere? Just a thought…
D) Stop letting SolarWinds build your AMIs? (j/k but most of this ramped up around then)
-
D3 EOL
- I won’t be surprised if we get D3 EOL here soon.
10 Likes
Woot! Got another crash to desktop today, i wonder what will come first, fix for the random freezes and crashes or S22 end, place yo bets!
Seriously though, please fix this D3 team, this is really irresponsible and unprofessional and unfair to your customers. Thank you.
7 Likes
I never had much trouble with D3, except of a few Stutter Issues, but Season 22 Kills it, i’ve lost 2 HC Chars due to 3-4 Second Freezes, i’ve constant Disconnects, Lags, Freezes and Stutters, today i almost lost my third HC Char due a 5 Second Freeze / crash to Desktop…
BLIZZARD ITS TIME FOR A FIX!
2 Likes
99.9% it is not related to this topic.
Its finny that everyone keep posting in this thread. That this still is a problem.
- Blizzard doesn’t care about your problem.
- Blizzard doesn’t like their costumers in Diablo.
- Costumers, you should see how long this been going they will not fix it.
- I’ve also struggled but I’m sorry for you guys, but it’s just live with it.
6 Likes
If changing the fmodex64.dll file solves the problem, why not just post a link to a working fmod file with instructions on how to find the file and replace it?
1 Like
I have replaced the fmodex64.dll file with the one suggested in a previous post and the pausing/lag stops. But when I start D3 up again, it modifies the DLL back to the original one and the issue comes back.
You need replace again when this happen.
Oh I understand that’s the current “fix”, but seriously Blizz… this can’t be the solution??? Can it??? I’ve replaced this file 3 times today…
EDIT - And it also kills my sound when I replace the file. Once I close D3… it does an “Update” and reverts the file back to the original.
My game has become unplayable after paragon level 1200. I’m glad I didn’t invest the time in a HC char, because that fool would be dead as a doornail. I can’t even do solo play now without teh game freezing, and if you disable the sound and do something aside from GR, how will you find teh goblins? It isn’t like there is anything but a giggle when you come near them, and then you have to find them before they show on the minimap. Can we expect a patch or some sort of fix soon? This thread has been up since june, and I have no problems with any other game. I can do stukov/zagara with modest frame drop in SC2, but no crashes, no ridiculous lag spikes that almost inevitably result in death (Final Service is truly a gift from Rathma), and it isn’t worth the effort to keep playing d3 with such poor gameplay.
Was this their plan? is d4/immo dropping soon? Cheeky plan, blizz.
3 Likes
There are instructions for how to do this in this very thread. Indeed, there are even batch files / command files / scripts listed in the thread that will automate the process because it has to be re-copied each time prior to Diablo III being executed, as the launcher will repair it back to the old one each time otherwise.
1 Like
Problem is as explained. No different than when players were freezing upon entering Act2 Desolate Sands years ago. Players shouldn’t have to look for solutions elsewhere. Is Blizzard’s game to fix. If Microsoft, Realtek, Nvidia, AMD, or another company related, contact them for assistance. Teams work together, not separately.
I have the D3 PTR installed… I decided to take the fmodex64.dll file from there and copied it to my D3 Live folder. Not only did the game not pause for 3-10 seconds anymore… but I have my sound back!!! When I closed D3… it also didn’t seem to update and revert back to the old file.
Just a suggestion… but it seems to be working for me… for now… 
EDIT - Well… it took about an hour… but it paused again… so the PTR file didn’t fix the issue… (sad panda)