Mercenary bug IS an MXL thing

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Mangler
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It was so long since I played D2 LoD that I couldn't remember... but until a couple of months ago I played D2R for a while and one thing that I really noticed is that the merc bug isn't there.

Yes it can get stuck in the corner of a room, unable to find a path to the player, but it's always trying to get to you, it always teleports to you sooner or later and it never goes into that immobile state that can happen in Median.

There's a small possibility that they fixed it between d2 and D2R but there's no mention of it in patch notes anywhere.

So this seems to be a Median thing, I hope it can be fixed one day because it makes it painful to play most characters without tele (which seems to reset the merc). Using tp/wp (which also seems to reset it) is not really viable.
Siosilvar
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Not sure which patch notes you were reading for d2r, because 2.3 specifically made some improvements around this.

The bug does happen in clod as well, but it definitely feels more common in Median. Not sure if it's any changes that have been made to mercs or if it's just an average player speed thing.
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Mangler
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The 2.3 change was only to make it warp if far away (iirc it sort of did that anyway) - there's no fix listed for the thing that happens in MXL where it freezes and does nothing.

One thing I noticed with the freeze is that once it happens once, it happens more easily/frequently after that. Also seems if the merc dies and gets rezzed it becomes more prone to freezing.

There are some times in MXL where nothing fixes it. Sometimes you can bring mobs near it and it will re-activate, sometimes not. Sometimes it takes a new game.

I don't know anything about the game code but I wonder if it would be better to just replace merc pathing code with the code from another minion type that works well such as skeletons or paladin summons - even VK works well. Or just make it warp if it has any pathing problem at all.
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Zaraki
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So, having played a number of different D2 mods, I have a feeling the issue typically arises from certain animations (I.e. avoidance mechanics or Oskill procs) that don’t jive with the merc base model.
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Taem
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This whole topic is kind of pointless, don't you think? D2R is written with entirely new code with a 3D engine. Whatever bugs were present due to gfx or 3D limitations in d2 won't be present in d2r at all... you do realize that, don't you? Now if the issue you are describing is mod related, then that makes sense, but comparing MXL to d2r is pretty ridiculous.
DontDoDotDonut
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"Mercenary bug IS an MXL thing"
Mercenary only freezes in MXL, i don't mind this because i only had problem with act1 mercenary. When i played teleport/pounce, she never bugged herself. Good thing it's harder to bug mercenary in MXL and the outcome does not give you any benefits (like untargetable full hp/dmg act5 barb or act1 rogue). In D2 the merc bug is too strong for a "story mode" fast playthrough/speedrun so having ability to make mercs untargetable would be really strong for timer locked uber quests.
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Mangler
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Taem wrote:This whole topic is kind of pointless, don't you think? D2R is written with entirely new code with a 3D engine. Whatever bugs were present due to gfx or 3D limitations in d2 won't be present in d2r at all... you do realize that, don't you? Now if the issue you are describing is mod related, then that makes sense, but comparing MXL to d2r is pretty ridiculous.

But it isn't. The devs have said that they kept the old d2 code but the graphics have been redeveloped.


Your assumption that the freezing is purely a graphics issue is rather strange - I'm guessing you've never done any development work. The most likely reason for this is that when the bug occurs, it causes the engine to fail to issue commands to the merc. If it were purely a display issue there's a high chance of different symptoms, it would probably catch up at least some of the time, possibly on some hardware but not others, or the game might behave as if the merc were there even though he doesn't seem to be etc etc.

When you can go and stand next to him in a quiet place, even after taking a wp to an unpopulated area and he does nothing... under any circumstances... that's not likely to be a display issue.
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Mangler
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DontDoDotDonut wrote:"Mercenary bug IS an MXL thing"
Mercenary only freezes in MXL, i don't mind this because i only had problem with act1 mercenary. When i played teleport/pounce, she never bugged herself. Good thing it's harder to bug mercenary in MXL and the outcome does not give you any benefits (like untargetable full hp/dmg act5 barb or act1 rogue). In D2 the merc bug is too strong for a "story mode" fast playthrough/speedrun so having ability to make mercs untargetable would be really strong for timer locked uber quests.

Sorry, I didn't really understand what you wrote after the second sentence. The bits I did get:


I can say that I've had the bug a lot with act 2 mercs as well as act 1. I've rarely used A3 or A5 mercs so hard to comment on those - although the few times I've used A3... I don't remember it happening with them.

Re tele: Yes, as I said in the first post it's "painful to play most characters without tele (which seems to reset the merc)".
Meaning that using tele seems to stop it happening by effectively resetting it constantly by tele-ing.
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Taem
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Captcha wrote:
Taem wrote:This whole topic is kind of pointless, don't you think? D2R is written with entirely new code with a 3D engine. Whatever bugs were present due to gfx or 3D limitations in d2 won't be present in d2r at all... you do realize that, don't you? Now if the issue you are describing is mod related, then that makes sense, but comparing MXL to d2r is pretty ridiculous.

But it isn't. The devs have said that they kept the old d2 code but the graphics have been redeveloped.


Your assumption that the freezing is purely a graphics issue is rather strange - I'm guessing you've never done any development work. The most likely reason for this is that when the bug occurs, it causes the engine to fail to issue commands to the merc. If it were purely a display issue there's a high chance of different symptoms, it would probably catch up at least some of the time, possibly on some hardware but not others, or the game might behave as if the merc were there even though he doesn't seem to be etc etc.

When you can go and stand next to him in a quiet place, even after taking a wp to an unpopulated area and he does nothing... under any circumstances... that's not likely to be a display issue.


I do understand what you are saying, but I also disagree because even if they kept *most* of the origin code, all the gfx code was rewritten for a 3D engine from what I understand. It may look 2d and isometric, but it is not. If the issue is not present in d2r, but is present in vanilla, then I would argue the issue is exactly this. However, I don't pay too much attention to my Merc and I have never noticed my Merc freeze in place before, so I may not he the best judge of this behavior.
DontDoDotDonut
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"Sorry, I didn't really understand what you wrote after the second sentence."
There's no need to be sorry. It is my wrong and too quick explaination and bad english.
In D2 you can bug your mercenary to be untargetable (better explaination is invisible) so monsters do not see the mercenary.
But still, he s vunerable to dmg from spells, projectiles (for example arrow is flying on you, but merc stood on it so merc takes dmg), diablo casts lightning beam on you and merc is behind so merc takes dmg. It is used mostly for boss fights/ancients on nm/hell
What do i meant with mercenary on uber quests that has timer countdown? Necrolyte act3 mercenary which is invisible to monsters after bug. It would definitely be strong