The Infamous Seer Marino Waypoint Bug!

Ah, yes, The Infamous Seer Marino Waypoint Bug. It's so famous, it's IN-famous. After you finish a certain mission (I forget which one), the Waypoint for the next mission is broken. Instead of pointing you to the door to the next mission, it instead points you to the doors that lead into the small inside-building area where your last mission was. As soon as you go back in, it points to somewhere outside the doors. And it never stops.

This bug has been around for, well, probably longer than I've been playing, and I recently hit 42 months on Vet Rewards. There have been occasional threads about the bug, and probably /bugs and /petitions about it, but so far, we've seen nothing done. To my knowledge, no redname has even commented on it, though I may be wrong, as I've not read every thread about it.

I think that the reason the bug is still there is because they've never been able to isolate what part of the arc causes it. They've probably gone over the code for the arc, and are stumped. It's a resonable guess. And what I'm about to reveal might make it even more reasonable...

You see, the problem does not lie with Seer Marino's Oh, Wretched Man! Story Arc. At least, not directly. The blame is instead to be placed squarely on the shoulders of the room inside the building behind Arbiter Richard.

I discovered this quite by accident. I was playing a new character, and I decided to log him out in that room, as I found that it gives you credit for the Arachnos Agent Day Job. The character I logged out had just gotten the Clear Snakes Out Of Casino mission from Mongoose. When next I logged in, and exited the building, I discovered that instead of pointing to the Casino, the Waypoint was pointing right back into the building. Just like it does on Seer Marino's Arc.

This bug is actually easy to reproduce. I made a brand new Stalker, skipped the Tutorial and chose Kalinda as my starting contact. I got her first mission, Take Out Operative Burch. I then activated Hide, and ran to the far end of Mercy Island, to the elevators by Mongoose. I went up them, and headed towards the building behind Arbiter Richard. I went to my left as I was facing the building, and entered the doors there. Not the round black door with the Arachnos logo, but the four glass doors under the canopy just past that, and on my right. I turned around, and came right back out, and sure enough, even though the Waypoint marker on the mini-map was showing in the correct place, the little yellow arrow was pointing me right back to the doors.

Hopefully, after Arbiter Kim sees this, it will be passed on to the correct person, and fixed. At the least, they can probably just move the door for that mission in Seer Marino's Arc.

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Oh, nice one, that's a great way of thinking through that one.

You can always tell who is fairly new redside when that mission comes up. All the confused ones haven't seen it happen. It is so reliable, that when I played lowbie characters on red more often, I had a little speach before I even set the mission. (Kinda like my little speach before a Mayhem mission to prevent some random dude from farkling up the ambushes.)

On a semi-related note, the waypoint in pocket D still always points to the Villain Elevator, even if you click on a Hero Exit. I believe the cause of this may be because that elevator's location is actually closer to those exits that are located severl feet above the dance area.

The same might be said for the "Seer Manino" waypoint. Because of that high fortress, the door inside the building (underground) may be closer to the mission door than the one on the outside, so it continuously points us in the wrong direction.

This is purely a theory, and would have to be tested further, but just giving my for consideration for now.

I had noticed it wasn't strictly a Seer Marino problem but it never occurred to me why it was happening. Good catch!

It happens on the Radio Contact Arc. The codebreakers. Sometimes the waypoint appears underground instead of pointing to the door of the SG Building. Everytime this happened I had been in PO when I got the mission, but if you are still in Cap and call it in, the waypoint was correct.

IIRC, the actual door for that bugged waypoint is across the street, at the next door to the left (if you're standing at the bugged waypoint facing across the street, as though you just stepped outside from the bugged door). I'm not sure exactly how we found this-- I guess we just started trying nearby doors-- but every time since, we get that bugged waypoint and the actual mission door is always in the same place; across the street, to the left.

But that door is not the problem. The problem comes from the doors that lead inside the building for the mission before. There's something about those doors that causes ANY waypoint to become messed up, and point directly back to them.

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Hehe, the first time I bugged it was during CoV Beta

One way I found around this is to use your mini map. Go to the mission location on it, and zoom in as much as you can so you can pinpoint the exact building. It wil point to the exact door. The same trick works for that other mission in St Martial too.

paragonwiki.com/wiki/Known_issues#Mission_Door_Waypoint_in_Port_Oakes

No mention of the Mercy Island bug. Is that the Official List, or just a list that you've been keeping track of every time a redname says, "known issue"?

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I'm not sure if it's a related navigation bug, the but compass seems to break down near the marcer that grants the Snake related badges (the exploration and gladiator badges.) I noticed this because I was using the Vidiot map overlays, and though I'd be clever and just thumbtack the badge marker. Started running towards the yellow compass indicator, and ended up somewhere in the middle of the island. Opened the map, and I was nowhere near the badge. There seems to be a fairly large patch of the zone map surrounding that location where the compass simply does not function properly.

It will point *anywhere* but at a location inside that area. If you open the map, the map does appear to update correctly. I was able to navigate to it by keeping the map open and making sure my marker stayed pointed towards the correct place, but that has the disagreable side effect of rendering me mostly blind, since at my resolution the map covers most of the center of the screen.

The thumbtack that you can add to the map has never been 100% reliable. I've tried to put one on myself, and found it anywhere but there. I've placed one in other places, and found it waaaaay above the map, floating in the air, or apparently off the map, as I could never see it.

I honestly couldn't say if it's related or not, but it is a PITA.

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True, but in every other area where I've actually used a thumbtack, it at least gets the compass to point in the correct direction. (In some zones, I suspect that the thumbtack sticks to the "zero" plane, which should be ground level, and often isn't. In Grandville, the thumbtacks will consistently hover about 200 feet in the air.) Mercy is the only zone where the compass will fail to actually point at the thumback, where ever it may have ended up.

If you don't use the Vidiot overlays, try this:

Go to the snake badge marker in Mercy.
Zoom in the map.
Place a thumbtack on your position.
Zoom the map back out.
Jump out of the pit, turn and face the badge marker.
Look at the direction indicator in the compass bar.

I can pretty much guarantee that it will *not* be indicating the point right in front of you, nor a point hundreds of feet too high or low. It'll be pointing at somewhere behind you, or at best some place half a mile away.