Hhax wrote:
You say patching more often than once per year is bad, but I'm unsure as for why. I can't think of any other mods, or any game for that matter, which has success and only does an update once per year.
Perhaps resets are not needed in less time, but community feedback and hotfix updates benefit games...
Maybe it is because I'm in CET but there are many less players now than there were around 10-14 days ago. If a reset with more improvements would increase players then it should be done.
The main reason is quality. Doing anything major on such a short time scale is just bound to be problematic, with a never ending cycle of messupedness.
Also note that we patch have patched this mod more often that blizz has patched the original. I think that game did pretty well for itself.
Along with this, more robust patches don't get made overnight. It takes a lot of time to get it all right...and there are so many bloody ways to screw something up.
Hell, in one patch I recall Brevan restructuring a slew of files just so that syntax is more clear, stable, nonredundant, etc...how long do you think this alone took to do? This wasn't even 'called for' in that patch. It was done to mitigate the number of mistakes made (or left as artifacts from previous iterations)...this is but one tiny example.
Another is continuity. Each of the major patches since 1.3 has been a pretty big shift in design. This is for several reasons, including but not limited to 1)who is doing the patch, 2) what were the feelings about the last one, 3) what is being added that simply did not exist before, etc.
Lastly, many of us do not get to play like we did when we were younger. It takes me a lot longer to progress than before, simply due to time. Even then, I never was a fan of a lot of resets. I actually wanted to accumulate several characters worth of fancy gear.
I also like to explore many classes in a said patch in detail. This simply is not possible if the bar never stays still.
You may not agree with any of this, but there are many reasons why 2-3 month resets are not as great as they sound...at least to me
Edit: here are the dates of LoD patches.
Patch 1.09, released August 20, 2001.
Patch 1.09b, released September 5, 2001 (to fix connectionbug)
Patch 1.09c, released November 14, 2001. (to fix duping methods that were crashing servers, and fix HPT RAID drivers)
Patch 1.09d, released December 5, 2001 (connection bugs, and other bugs)
Patch 1.10, released October 28, 2003 (intro of Dclone world event). note more than 2 years passed from 1.09 to 1.10
Patch 1.11, released August 13, 2005 (intro of uber tristram)...another nearly two years
Patch 1.11b, released September 13, 2005 (two crash fixes)
Patch 1.12, released June 17, 2008 (lifted cd requirement, and essentially nothing else...almost 3 years
Patch 1.13 was released for Diablo II March 23, 2010. (respec, and totally screwed up changes to moncurse to make chaos sanctuary a joke..some other things too, but this is where I simply stopped playing LoD at all).
Patch 1.13d, released 27 October 2011. (message filtering to help users combat spam)
To many, the reason they will play a game adnaseum is because the replayability is very high...with zero other changes. This is the hallmark of finding fun the first time so to speak. Having to incessantly update cater to a following to not applicable to every game....nor is a single person getting paid to do a damn thing.
Maybe if the last part were to change, so would the patch rate.