My awful Beta Experience

The sad thing is this is more likely true. They now have a descent idea what they need to prepare for network wise. Yet, they will not be prepared.

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They had a closed beta, not so much open beta.

I highly doubt they’d learn anything from Diablo III.

I understand that Diablo III may not have the same network infrastructure to support the gameplay, and that every game session is created (and thus actually taxes the Diablo server’s load) on its own and does not require too much communication between client and server, but now with Diablo IV constantly requiring active communication between client and server, they should have already placed measures to prevent rubberbanding and other lag issues, which they are only now acknowledging, this close to launch? Let’s not even talk about events that will have multiple players on the same screen/vicinity for it to work, even simple things like transitioning from an area to another has rubberbanding for a lot of people on their own. This network issue they’re going through is nothing new, and it’s no excuse for them to overlook this.

I know, launch is in less than 3 months but if they don’t even lay down the very foundation of what makes this game run as stable as it should be (online session for everyone at all time, every time), I have almost no hope for them to even fix other aspects of the game e.g. class balances, etc.

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Diablo 3 had a beta of sorts than a starter edition for people to try the game.

They’ve learned plenty from D3 otherwise servers would be so much worse.
Plus this isn’t the only beta they’ve run in the past. They’ve had closed tests.

Diablo 3 has a similar network infrastructure and net code hence client to server is constant even in Diablo 3. You forget the entirety of items were server based, and not client based so every drop required the server. Plus all items were hosted on their servers as well to prevent tampering (Diablo 2 mistakes).

We all know launch is going to be messy. It doesn’t matter how large the company is or how much experience they have it’s always bad the first few weeks. Even AGS with New World at it’s helm, with all their money and resources still had difficult launches. Including their brimstone expansion having stability issues, and queues for people trying to log onto a server (which they increased server capacity of individual server to 2500 concurrent players, but you would still have +10 hour queues… and that’s Amazon Game Studios…).

Yeah I’m well aware of it. When I said Diablo III Closed Beta, this was before the game was launched. Essentially Starter Edition was with the Closed Beta limitation of max level of 10 and up to the part where you’ll have to defeat the Skeleton King.

Yes, it is constant but doesn’t require every single player connecting to the same instance/session, and the game handles up to 4 players per session, while Diablo 4 seems to include larger numbers (as shown when we did Ashava battles, about 10 people within the same area?) so hence, that should have been a sign for them to prepare a better infrastructure to handle such a load.

I agreed, people makes mistakes but this is more than a hindsight issue with the game by a company that has pioneered (in a way) in terms of connecting people to play over a network. Battle.Net, a proprietary of Blizzard is considered a household brand in the early 90s that spearheaded multiplayer gaming, so really, this isn’t an excuse anymore and they should’ve been ahead of this curve.

How the might have fallen.

Theres also fine print associated with the beta but the game itself went on pre purchase sale months before any news of a beta invite. The front page says.

                                       PLAY THE FREE OPEN BETA
                                                MARCH 24-26
                               PRE-PURCHASE FOR EARLY ACCESS

Nowhere does it make the connection to purchase allowing beta. Early Access is for launch and the caveat there is on the order page.

Correlation does not imply causation. Your statement was because “Blizzard doesn’t care about you, they dont” when on the surface using just your examples (disconnects, que etc) its been my experience that they must since its been the opposite of yours, so who’s right and who’s wrong.

Believe it or not some of us do really like D4. Its what I dreamed and hoped D2/3 could have been since I played games such as Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 for reference.

I play from EU and have managed to play 50+ hours D4 during last weekend and still got tomorrow.

Op is judging the game and community because of BETA server tech, his ISP and probably CRAP wireless router, unless he/she still uses copper wire.

I’m guessing they’re using the same tech they created for wow with their shard infrastructure. I’m guessing there’s so many vm’s constantly connecting to one another that it’s causing desync and rubber banding with the sheer load of players concurrently active on their servers. Launch is going to be interesting as hell.

Well we now have a much larger gaming userbase than ever before, especially when everyone was stuck inside during covid a lot of people became gamers. Now our hobby has become mainstream. With giants like Blizzard who pioneered so many games online, it still doesn’t matter all that much since they’re still using the best of the best vps networks, and it’s still not enough. Microsoft, Ubisoft, Activision, 2k, Tencent, Sony etc all have these issues during product launches. I’ve been in the industry for a long time… no company regardless of it’s size is immune to server issues.

It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about pretending an issue not being an issue until it happens to you personally, that’s what all your comments are about. No point in elaborating on this any further.

The world of Diablo does in fact revolve around the experience I’m having in the game.

True enough, there has been a larger surge of people that got into gaming though most would be for console or mobile then it hit me, Diablo IV is a crossplay game between PC and also the other console platforms. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to actual launch, but currently this is only being tested on PC so it’s pretty much a lackluster in terms of the 2 weekends that we had the chance of testing.

Fingers crossed they really ramped up their services during launch.

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Test is running on consoles too I believe. A friend was playing on his Xbox last night.

Oh boy, that explains all the network issues all of us are having.

I’m really on the fence right now in terms of making a refund because honestly, I enjoy some aspects of the game but this network-related issue has a larger impact than just gaming performance in the perspective of a player who would be playing a lot of the content by myself (I detest any pvp-related content), so if they figured it out to get players to be able to play without worrying about random lag in crucial battles (I got a delay when I was fighting Ashava and died from that short desync) then I will continue to ‘support’ this franchise.

Like any online-only game, my honest suggestion (and my personal approach) is going to be to wait a week for things to settle down after launch. Every MP game I’ve ever tried to play on Day 1 has been a disaster. Doesn’t matter the developer. Going back 20 years of MMOs, online FPSes etc, launch day/weekend is always a crap show. No one has figured this out yet.

So I wait a week, and enjoy smooth gaming. And since I, like you, do not care about PvP, there’s no disadvantage to waiting.

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After a little testing (disable cross play in settings)
Haven’t had any disconnects so far, and while I still get some rubber banding it feels less often.

Is there a way to toggle between having crossplay and not? I thought crossplay was an ‘always on’ thing.

It does not happen globally. This was open beta.

Personally, I only had DC’s on the first beta Friday and the first half? of second beta Friday. I have disabled cross play in the settings to see if that helped and it seems to.

I just don’t get all the whining. Don’t beta test if all you are going to do is complain things aren’t perfect according to YOU. Don’t beta test if you want a smooth experience. Don’t beta test if you aren’t going to give constructive feedback. Don’t beta test if you are going to assume the company running the game is lying to you about stress testing.