Test Mode vs Play Mode

[raithwall]

Has anyone noticed any inconsistencies between test mode and play mode?

I had an odd one a while back: You would walk up to a boat and talk to the captain, then an event walks over to just outside the boat behind you.

In testing this was fine. The event approached, the camera turned around, and text began, but in play mode the game froze up every time I got to this point.

So I went back and turned the camera around before moving the event and this fixed the problem.

The point is, I'm getting paranoid about doing my playtrhough test in test mode. I would rather do it in test mode in case I come across any bugs, or need to balance weapons, stats, resistances, or fine tune the difficulty of bosses.

So I'm asking if anyone has had problems in play mode that don't show up in test mode.

[Dungeon Warden]

Well, there is the age old holding O to avoid battles in test mode that I'm sure everyone knows about; although, some people don't realize this doesn't work in play mode.

Another problem with Test mode is that you can save a game, change the data, and load that game file. Depending on what you changed, all kinds of weird things can happen. The most noticeable one is if you add a new character and try to play a game that was saved without that character in the database, all kinds of glitches can occur. There is no problem if you change an existing character, it's only when you add to the database that the problem occurs.

I have noticed other problems in games that were not tested in Play mode, but whither that was a problem with the design or with the game engine is unknown.