Creature Handler Archive

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lammergeier wrote:
one reason the devs haven't fixed this yet is because they can't accurately recreate the bug. it happens SOMETIMES, to SOME PEOPLE, in SOME PLACES.

generally, pet disappearance comes from server overload and/or server boundaries. server boundaries are invisible: they aren't the edges of the map, and the only way to find them is to track bugs like this.

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your best bet is to keep an eye on THIS THREAD (In Testing: cannot reproduce bugs, help needed), and to add to it anything solid you find.

I'd suggest that /flushingshot isn't SPECIFICALLY the problem, but rather a 'general ranged AOE'... there are SEVERAL AOE bugs floating around right now, and they may or may not have a common link.

This happened to me not too long ago. I saw a gang of dark troopers and called out 2 pets to tank while I stood back and fan shotted. POOF! goes pet #1, wait a few seconds, POOF! goes pet #2. Uh oh, here come the dark troopers... incap.. deathblow. Well I wasn't going to stand for that from some evil stormies, so I clone, go back, call pets, attack, and again, POOF! POOF! INCAP! DEATHBLOW! Well anyway, this happened about 4 times in a row and I finally took them all down even without my pets in the end (nearly completely blackbarred by this point.) I attributed it to being near a server boundary because I was on the edge of a player city though.

I've suffered many other needless deaths due to this same bug however.

Wierdest thing that happened once though was on Dantooine and my grauls went POOF, so I pulled back from the attack and called some different pets and re-grouped. After a while, one of the grauls started showing up on the group bar and he was getting closer (my baby graul was coming home!) This gives credence to the 0,0 warp theory. I started running towards the direction of the graul on the direction indicator, but then he started getting farther away, so I never found him (which would have made me have 3 pets out exceeding my handling level.)

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lammergeier wrote:
one reason the devs haven't fixed this yet is because they can't accurately recreate the bug. it happens SOMETIMES, to SOME PEOPLE, in SOME PLACES.

your best bet?

mark all the WP's where it happens. start a thread, PET DISAPPEARANCE WP's, and post the server, planet, and WP. get the correspondent to sticky the thread, and religiously edit it to include other player's data. get a forum moderator to delete all the offtopic posts that the thread may generate.

the devs are aware of the problem, but until they can recreate it on-demand for the bug-hunting team, they can't fix it.

generally, pet disappearance comes from server overload and/or server boundaries. server boundaries are invisible: they aren't the edges of the map, and the only way to find them is to track bugs like this.

some examples of server boundary behavior:

shortly after mounts went Live, south of theed, past the river, I counted fifteen mounts without riders, all standing in a line east-west. the mounts had auto-stored and dropped their riders. moving 10m north, the mounts all became invisible. moving back south, they all appeared again.

during TC's move to 'mini-hardware', there were no spawns in the krayt graveyard. moving south and west (about 200m from the canyon's mouth), spawns re-appeared. the hardware seemed to have a limited number of spawns available... so parts (certain server zones) of tatooine were barren, while other parts spawned normally.

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Vertexon wrote:

I'm not sure how much it would actually help the Devs address the issue (I think it's pretty well known as a problem when crossing subserver boundaries at this point). But I'd be happy to start a thread for gathering specific waypoints if there's interest. Certainly couldn't hurt to have that information on hand.

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it wasn't entirely a serious suggestion, but the bug is there... SOMETIMES. sometimes it isn't. I think the only way they'll be able to track this down is with an enormous stack of data... or a flash of insight... or both.

since inspiration is a fickle muse, that leaves us with the 'big stack of numbers' option for getting this nailed as a repeatable (step 1), traceable (step 2), and fixable (step 3) bug.

I think it's important for players to know that the devs do a good job of fixing bugs they can recreate... but that there are bugs too elusive to fix nestled in the code, as well.

if a sticky can help fix this, then pop one up. if players don't faithfully record 'pet poofs' by server, time, planet, and WP... then the thread won't do any good.

ps... I'd love to have a rough map of server boundaries. right now, all the information we have is inferential.

This just happened to me -- I 'm writing this while waiting for my incap to end!

Not sure where the server boundaries are, but I am on my back at 1862, 167 on Corellia. My ravenous torton just disbanded and disapeared leaving me to get chomped by a pack of giant carions. I swear, if it wasn't for my GPS obsession, I'd probably bail.

Now this is weird...

Pulled out a rhoa kwi guardian to get my revenge on the carions. I took out the first one (there were three) and the other two disappeared exactly when it died. I'm beginning to wonder whether my GPS hunt is even worth the effort. The spats were on my areatrack list for 2 hours before I finally took them out. No other spawns at all in the area (even NPCs) near Nyax.