MXL launcher & Sigma Installation
Before Sigma release it was possible to install the launcher in any folder, why have you decided to make it a mandatory to install the launcher into the user profile folder now? You can move it to a different location afterwards and it works perfectly fine, why can’t I choose its destination during the installation process in the first place? What’s that urgent necessity to place it into such an obscured directory as
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Programs? I'm perfectly fine with the fact that the launcher cache is saved inside the
%USERPROFILE%\AppData, it's a browser after all, not a big deal. Maybe it’s just me, but I highly dislike any application which forces its way into the specific path and folder and you can’t change it without some obnoxious and occasionally even time consuming manipulations (looking at you
Discord!)
Save data & configurations
I would be fine with the fact that you decided to use
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming directory to save the game data, any modern game does it this way nowadays. Unfortunately, Diablo 2 is not a modern game and it can’t handle any non ANSI characters in the path to its data. Game throws you an
error that the new character is not from this mod if you try to start the game in SP and even more peculiar
exception if you try to host or join TCP/IP game. Needless to say it’s much easier to change game location rather than user profile name (it's quite advanced task for an average user), and even if it was not the case why do you ever need to change the path to your user profile or create a new one in order to play some game? What’s wrong with the good old save folder that served us by almost 2 decades for now?
Funny enough it became even worse in the last? version: apparently game creates a new user profile called
MedianXL (just a folder, to be more precise) inside the
C:\Users directory if it can’t access
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming. However the only difference is that now you can save your configuration if you play on TSW and it does nothing for a single player or TCP/IP game, you still can’t create a character. So it looks like a band aid for the realm players and it doesn’t address local save data issue (yeah, who gives a shit about these pesky cheaters anyways, right?)
MXL launcher & Sigma removal
There are no backups created during the installation process, so you definitely won’t get your game in the initial "virgin" state if you decide to uninstall the mod. Personally I haven’t tried it myself, although I saw a numerous number of threads and posts where people were complaining about the issues with the game after the mod removal, so I’m assuming that the launcher might screw up your game files and bnet gateways as well. And that’s why I’m wondering, how many players would try this mod again in the future after having so much troubles with its removal. You can’t count that everyone is smart enough to make a backup prior to the installation.
P.S. In conclusion I’m vaguely remember how the Devs were shit talking
D2SE and its creator
Seltsamuel, it was something among the lines how hard and painful it was to support these 3rd party tools and how poorly this utility was designed. I partially agree with them without speaking of the dev personality and his design choices. Turns out that clunky and mundane
D2SE is much more user friendly and less error prone than the remarkable and shiny
MXL launcher and
Sigma itself, as Todd Howard loves to say “It just works!” and unfortunately I can’t apply this phrase to the latter...