Hey folks, since we DL’d the beta, can we keep those game files and it’ll simply be an “update” at launch or should we uninstall and then will need to re-install at launch? Just curious.
There will be a final version we download later.
I’ll admit, I still attempt to log into the beta, as I heard one guy managed to get in when they had the servers active for their own purposes but didn’t announce it.
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I really hope they merge this over with minor update download. 85GB was overnight insanity.
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You could seperate the HD textures making it 45gb in the beta.
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Most blizzard games nowdays look for other versions installed. For instance installing PTR for WoW doesn’t copy the whole game, just files that have changed. This might not be the case for Beta → launch for D4 though, but it’s possible.
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Game is supposed to release in 2 months I seriously doubt there will be a fresh dl. The game is pretty much done at this point there will only be an update download. The real “beta” test starts on release day and there will be patches for months and months and months.
You’re like a broken record.
No, beta is not the final product. It’s a months old beta, it’s only about 20% of the game or less and they’re not going to create a client that contains everything needed for live just for a beta.
They’re separate downloads, and likely completely different packages.
You’ll be able to have both the beta and the live game installed, so it’s likely that not uninstalling the beta will be of no benefit.
But given that it has early access, the download will likely be available a week before release and there’ll likely be a patch available the day before release too.
So you have plenty of time to download it before go live.
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I think there was a community guy who said the full game will look at similar files and download what’s missing.
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This doomer… they do beta builds on a daily basis. Lol
The beta contained the whole game, we just did not have access to it. He’s also correct in that it’s, for the most part, finished outside of tweaks, bug fixes, and other stuff they can actually work on.
It’s the same as World of Warcraft and their other games, with the Blizzard launcher it will copy files you already have downloaded for beta or live versions and then download what you don’t have. There will be an update for sure but most of the beta files will be copied over for the live version when you try to download it in a few months if you did not delete the files. I’ve made use of this feature many times already.
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As much as people dislike downloading ginormous installs, there are valid reasons to jettison the beta installation entirely before you install the launch version. First and foremost, you get a fresh set of files. As in completely fresh, non-corrupted game files (so long as you do not click Play until the installation finishes!), and the files are contiguous, meaning they load faster due to not having to enumerate every patch that happened previously. Having a clean slate also means much, much less troubleshooting in the long run or even the short term post-launch.
D4 uses CASC for its encapsulation container and while it lets Blizzard do things like slipstream patching (a.k.a. patching while live instead of only patching during maintenance cycles), it also is the most inefficient and frankly abysmal filesystem in terms of raw performance. Remember that enumeration issue I alluded to above? That’s CASC’s Achilles’ Heel. It’s the reason all Blizzard games now state SSDs are the minimum storage medium requirement. CASC is so inefficient that it even hampers NVMe drives. PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives eventually lose up to 80-90% of their throughput after just a few patch cycles with CASC, and even moreso if it’s WoW or D3 on macOS’ APFS filesystem, which like CASC has enumeration issues of its own (the macOS example is just there as a point of reference - D4 will not come to macOS, ever).
Just save yourself a metric crapton of headaches and slowdowns and install from scratch for the launch version. It isn’t worth troubleshooting leftover beta crud, especially once you realize that the time you would spend troubleshooting said crud would likely exceed the time it takes to download a fresh install.
Note: You must delete/uninstall the beta version before you install the launch version in order to guarantee fresh installation files. You absolutely do not want the Battle.net app trying to recycle the beta files and patching them.
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This is how a typical launch release works. A few days prior to launch, D4 full game will be downloadable to reduce server demand over time. On launch day the game will be unlocked and ready to play. You will likely have to download additional patches before playing. Over the course the the first and critical 2 weeks, you will get more patches to download. You might even have to download the full game on multiple instances if large changes/fixes are deployed which is highly probable given the obvious unfinished state during the betas. Depending on the outcome of sales and reception, Activision stock will reflect the results.
people have datamined loads of stuff from the beta files (example, many uniques apart the butcher axe) which weren’t accessible in the beta itself. that makes reasonable thinking we won’t have to redwld everything, just an update.
No, source files are packaged. Any changes to game files even without touching other things like unique items will still need to be downloaded as part of the package.
Beta is different you would just uninstall it and install the full client on release. The Beta =/= final release.
Only because the the download was slow on Blizzard’s end. I get about 20 MBps when downloading from Steam.
Likely just delta updates.
If the core files are already on our computer, I doubt we have to re-download the entire package over again but we’ll never know until launch day.
No it’s not downloaded from Blizzard. It’s torrented if you enable it from the launcher. I downloaded the Beta client with >100MB/s which is pretty much the limit of my connection.
But, people have data caps and stuff, so the 85GB is the important part here.
I don’t seem to have that as an option.
I’m holding onto my beta files till we get a launch version just in the off chance they want to throw a surprise beta at us, or only me. 
I personally would rather just install the whole thing again incase there is some corrupted stuff in my beta files or there is ever so much as a little hiccup due to being in two different file locations instead of one. Or there being a future post that says move X, Y and Z files from beta over to retail folder. Rather just save the headache from the get go.