Thornmarch Hard Mode critical bug, SE thinks there's insufficient information.

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EDIT: Was watching the video.... the guy recording who dies only has 3,800HP which is barely over half what everybody else has. Like, seriously, he put no effort into even getting any Ironworks gear, which is buyable the moment you ding 50 (and there's a good bit of MSQ between Praetorium and Thornmarch, easily enough time to get some Ironworks gear). Heck the Praetorium run you go through the first time should be enough to buy at least 1 piece, and then the roulette would give you enough to get 2-3 more, and that's just the first day you ding 50. Not to mention adding Trials roulette to that, too. Also, they could buy some Lv50 craftables, too.

Definitely a player problem. Maybe they should just simply raise the I-level required to 100 or something.

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Ironworks gear didn't even exist when this fight first came out. That alone should be enough of a clue that something is wrong here.

Also, there's just 15 quests between The Ultimate Weapon and You Have Selected Regicide. They send you into three duties, Qarn and two guildhests, none of which are going to give you poetics. You're also assuming players even figure out by this point what the poetics are even for. I see it as easily possible for someone just chugging along with the MSQ (like people will continuously advise newer players to do), especially upon seeing the huge smattering of "!" quest markers in Revenant's Toll upon completing 2.0, to not even realize what the poetics are for or that there is a vendor for them there.

It's seemingly really hard for some people who've been around for a while and have more poetics than they know what to do with to put themselves in a newer player's shoes.

So wouldn’t the easy fix be to just raise the iLvl requirement? Say iLvl 90? 100? I think you also get the 90 set just from finishing your level 50 artifact armor quests. That with some ironworks jewelry or weapons should get you there fast.

I mean yeah, it USED to be you got the 50ish artifact armor, then had to grind out darklight set and eventually grind the i90 artifact set or crystal tower etc. but now it just hands you a i90 set..so shouldn’t that be a fair baseline?

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So wouldn’t the easy fix be to just raise the iLvl requirement? Say iLvl 90? 100?

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It would be the "easy" fix, but it wouldn't be the professional one, considering 90 already puts it at the minimum requirement for Steps of Faith/Chrysalis (the story trials way further ahead in 2.5) and there's still several other primal fights in the story inbetween Thornmarch and those that have much lower requirements.

In order for such an ilvl increase to actually make sense and not look like an unprofessional hack job, they would also need to up the requirements for Levi, Ramuh, Shiva Hard (among other things; probably several solo MSQ instances as well) so that the fights actually follow the general sense of level/stat progression that this game encourages.

3800 is pretty much you didn't kill the moogles in time mechanic fail hard enrage damage for p1. The "pass" damage is supposed to be around 800. Should be fixed for the off chance you somehow end up with a lot of people at min ilvl but not a huge deal otherwise and some people will die but since they nerfed the rest of the fight and echo exists anyway so it will still clear.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

3800 is pretty much you didn't kill the moogles in time mechanic fail hard enrage damage for p1. The "pass" damage is supposed to be around 800. Should be fixed for the off chance you somehow end up with a lot of people at min ilvl but not a huge deal otherwise and some people will die but since they nerfed the rest of the fight and echo exists anyway so it will still clear.

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Just ran it right now with a bunch of overgeared people. We for sure passed the enrage mechanic for Phase 1, if one even exists. He just comes out and drops a 3.4 - 3.8k on your head. Im talking when he FIRST comes out and NOT when you just try to Zerg kill him without killing Moogles when he's present.

Yeah, that's what the thread is talking about. When the mogs spawn one at a time at the beginning. It was possible to fail it at one point by not killing enough of them before you time out. They become untargetable if you run out of time. The King then spawns, and he wipes you if there are too many alive. It's just not seen anymore due to overgear.

Looking at the current damage, it really looks like they created a bug when they changed the fight recently, it's not counting moogle kills to adjust the first Memento damage.

It just doesn't matter as much anymore since they set a fixed amount of damage they thought would wipe the group back then but now since you overgear it by i70 ilvls everyone except the newer players with lower gear live, scrape them off the floor and life goes on.

It's possible they changed it to just be half of what overgeared people have as HP and left it at that, too but that would not be a good experience for newer players. Would be pretty easy to change if it's just a set amount of damage if they cared enough if that is the case.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

It would be the "easy" fix, but it wouldn't be the professional one, considering 90 already puts it at the minimum requirement for Steps of Faith/Chrysalis (the story trials way further ahead in 2.5) and there's still several other primal fights in the story inbetween Thornmarch and those that have much lower requirements.

In order for such an ilvl increase to actually make sense and not look like an unprofessional hack job, they would also need to up the requirements for Levi, Ramuh, Shiva Hard (among other things; probably several solo MSQ instances as well) so that the fights actually follow the general sense of level/stat progression that this game encourages.

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I’m not sure I really follow this. I had already leveled everything past 50 when they implemented it, but as I understand it as soon as you ding 50 and do the job quests to get the artifact armor, don’t you automatically just get the i90 set? So therefore shouldn’t the devs be able to reasonably expect all new players to at the very least have i90 armor (maybe 80ish due to accessories/weapons). They are spoon feeding a huge jump in iLvl...why would they need to balance as if that armor wasn’t given?

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I’m not sure I really follow this. I had already leveled everything past 50 when they implemented it, but as I understand it as soon as you ding 50 and do the job quests to get the artifact armor, don’t you automatically just get the i90 set? So therefore shouldn’t the devs be able to reasonably expect all new players to at the very least have i90 armor (maybe 80ish due to accessories/weapons). They are spoon feeding a huge jump in iLvl...why would they need to balance as if that armor wasn’t given?

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The answer is simple here; they're not simply assuming everyone is going to drop the MSQ right at 50 to get that i90 armor, even if that's what players really should be doing.

But like I said, the whole "just make Thornmarch require i90" is a sloppy! solution, because then it doesn't make sense for all the rest of the 2.1-2.4 trials to require much less than that and dish out far less damage with their ultimates, meaning they would all need to be adjusted too or they'll just look weirdly progressed.

Plus I'm also not really sure DPS/healers will necessarily survive this "new and improved" Memento Moogle even with just the i90 armor, to be honest. Maybe if their entire kit was i90, perhaps, but not just the armor. 3800~ damage is still a damn lot for an ultimate at that level.

Can we just face facts here and admit that Memento Moogle is Not Working As Intended and ought to be fixed? DPS/healers that have the "audacity" to try to progress the 2.1 storyline without Ironworks gear should not be barely surviving (or dying to) this attack even with the mechanic (killing the moogles) handled correctly. This is not, and should not be treated as, some kind of Savage-tier encounter -- this is a "cooldown" fight almost immediately after the big climax of 2.0's story. It's a silly fight and shouldn't be this potentially punishing.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I’m not sure I really follow this. I had already leveled everything past 50 when they implemented it, but as I understand it as soon as you ding 50 and do the job quests to get the artifact armor, don’t you automatically just get the i90 set? So therefore shouldn’t the devs be able to reasonably expect all new players to at the very least have i90 armor (maybe 80ish due to accessories/weapons). They are spoon feeding a huge jump in iLvl...why would they need to balance as if that armor wasn’t given?

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While you do get a full set of ilvl 90 left side armor, it's still not enough for casters to survive the AoE even if it's accompanied by whatever weapon/accessories the MSQ rewards (Which are ilvl 70).

The tuning of normal modes in general is designed such that you can comfortably survive all unavoidable damage in min ilvl stuff, so they should maintain that philosophy.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I’m not sure I really follow this. I had already leveled everything past 50 when they implemented it, but as I understand it as soon as you ding 50 and do the job quests to get the artifact armor, don’t you automatically just get the i90 set? So therefore shouldn’t the devs be able to reasonably expect all new players to at the very least have i90 armor (maybe 80ish due to accessories/weapons). They are spoon feeding a huge jump in iLvl...why would they need to balance as if that armor wasn’t given?

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As niche as it is, people like to do min ilv runs of content, this hard mode trial would be a wall.

That said i've taken gladiators through this (promptly reminded them of their class/job quests and not to use duty finder if intended to continue as gladiator) which means no job gear, they were lucky they were a tank because splat on the floor they would be otherwise.

This also sets up a bad expectation as this is the 1st new duty after 2.0 of ooh things hit harder and everything after this trial is tissue paper in comparison.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Ironworks gear didn't even exist when this fight first came out. That alone should be enough of a clue that something is wrong here.

Also, there's just 15 quests between The Ultimate Weapon and You Have Selected Regicide. They send you into three duties, Qarn and two guildhests, none of which are going to give you poetics. You're also assuming players even figure out by this point what the poetics are even for. I see it as easily possible for someone just chugging along with the MSQ (like people will continuously advise newer players to do), especially upon seeing the huge smattering of "!" quest markers in Revenant's Toll upon completing 2.0, to not even realize what the poetics are for or that there is a vendor for them there.

It's seemingly really hard for some people who've been around for a while and have more poetics than they know what to do with to put themselves in a newer player's shoes.

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Maybe they could, you know, pop a help text when they ding Level 50 that goes "HEY! There's this awesome thing called Tomestones of Poetics. You can buy really powerful gear from Auriana in Moar Donuts with these! Go check her out!" or what-not.

That might reduce the number of badly geared players showing up to future fights, not just Thornmarch.

Regardless of what they do with Memento Moogle, this would be a good idea to implement in general.

I submitted a more comprehensive description of the glitch in the bug report section after getting the fight in trial roulette earlier today.

The issue is that the king is simply not recognizing whether or not any of the moogles had been KO'd prior to his summoning so you eat a full-powered Memento Moogle regardless of whether you defeat all of the moogles or if you somehow fail to KO them all before they summon him automatically.

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Maybe they could, you know, pop a help text when they ding Level 50 that goes "HEY! There's this awesome thing called Tomestones of Poetics. You can buy really powerful gear from Auriana in Moar Donuts with these! Go check her out!" or what-not.

That might reduce the number of badly geared players showing up to future fights, not just Thornmarch.

Regardless of what they do with Memento Moogle, this would be a good idea to implement in general.

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I agree.

As far as other things that they could improve for the lowbie experience, I think the game should do a better job at teaching players about the Party Finder, too. They might not have felt compelled to force cutscenes on Castrum/Prae if new players were made to realize that these dungeons are cutscene-intensive and that the PF could be used to find a party of like-minded people willing to be patient and let them experience both the dungeon cutscenes and the dungeon itself as SE originally intended.

Buuuuut I'm digressing a bit

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

I agree.

As far as other things that they could improve for the lowbie experience, I think the game should do a better job at teaching players about the Party Finder, too. They might not have felt compelled to force cutscenes on Castrum/Prae if new players were made to realize that these dungeons are cutscene-intensive and that the PF could be used to find a party of like-minded people willing to be patient and let them experience both the dungeon cutscenes and the dungeon itself as SE originally intended.

Buuuuut I'm digressing a bit

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Now that I highly disagree with.

New players shouldn't have to sit around with their fingers up their unmentionable places waiting and waiting and waiting for a group to get through required MSQ content without being subjected to the worst dungeon experience the game has to offer. Especially when WoW requires manual matchmaking to get anything done in Endgame. I imagine I can't be the only player who despises manual matchmaking with a passion, who quit WoW because of the Mythic/M+ systems being manual grouping only. I think the last thing we need to do is shove a dungeon in their faces that gives them a very bad time unless they use a manual grouping system, IMO.

Seriously, the two MSQ dungeons used to be terrible for the newbie back when people would just speedrun the bosses and leave newbies in the dust. It was a very bad impression to leave upon the newbie.

Easiest fix ever?

If Newbie Bonus, Cutscenes.
If No Newbie Bonus, No Cutscenes.

Boom. Done. Everybody should be happy.

But anyhow. Back to the topic. Another thing they could do, to be honest, is tweak the MSQ slightly to require the Lv50 job quest, in a similar way that Shadowbringers did with the Role Questlines. Maybe... before you attack the Castrum, if you don't have the Lv50 job quest done, Raubahn tells you to see your job trainer for advice or something.

Believe it or not, I've seen newbies with Lv30 or less Job Quest progression in Heavensward and beyond. I remember seeing this one WAR who was a sprout in some late-Heavensward dungeon who was missing one of the abilities you get in the 40s and they were like "oh, I just never got around to it".

This would have the extra effect of making sure everybody has, at minimum, i90 left side.

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New players shouldn't have to sit around with their fingers up their unmentionable places waiting and waiting and waiting for a group to get through required MSQ content without being subjected to the worst dungeon experience the game has to offer.

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It is what it is. Sometimes to get what you want with old content most people don't really want to do anymore without an incentive, you need to show some initiative with finding like-minded people to get the kind of experience you want.

This doesn't just go for CM/Prae. Lots of people nowadays are using the PF to organize level synced (or even minimum IL) runs of content like Binding Coil, for instance, because trying to do this in the standard DF is going to get you a sub-optimal experience (namely that the queue won't ever pop, and even if it theoretically did, most people can guess how Coil with DF randos will usually turn out)

We can hope for complete overhauls like being able to do CM/Prae solo or with NPCs or something like that in 5.3, but for the way things are now, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with teaching people more about the Party Finder. The game doesn't do enough in this regard as it is; many players go by completely unaware of its existence.

The game already pops fourth-wall-breaking warnings throughout the MSQ at various points saying you're about to view a long sequence of cutscenes; I don't see what would have been the issue with adding a couple of those warnings prior to accessing CM/Prae and noting that you may wish to make use of the Party Finder to find like-minded party members who would let you experience the dungeons at a "normal" pace. Just that, again, the game would need to do a better job at actually teaching you about the Party Finder and how to use it in the first place.

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Easiest fix ever?

If Newbie Bonus, Cutscenes.
If No Newbie Bonus, No Cutscenes.

Boom. Done. Everybody should be happy.

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Except they won't all be happy, because not even new players necessarily want to see these cutscenes.

Forced cutscenes were a bad idea, period. Players had their own means to solve this problem; it's just that the game does a poor job of teaching you of its existence.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I submitted a more comprehensive description of the glitch in the bug report section after getting the fight in trial roulette earlier today.

The issue is that the king is simply not recognizing whether or not any of the moogles had been KO'd prior to his summoning so you eat a full-powered Memento Moogle regardless of whether you defeat all of the moogles or if you somehow fail to KO them all before they summon him automatically.

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Problem with this is we don't know definitively if this is indeed the issue and it shouldn't be on us, the player base, to bug check SE's game. We shouldn't HAVE to validate things.

Our only responsibility should be: "Hey, SE, we don't think this is behaving the way it should be could you check it out please?"

We shouldn't have to prove SE wrong. It shouldn't be this much of a fight / be this hard. It's like they can't admit they're in the wrong (despite it happening numerous times)

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Definitely a player problem. Maybe they should just simply raise the I-level required to 100 or something.

Nobody should have 3.4k health, I mean c'mon. Getting I-level 100+ is easy-peasy even for your first time through. Maybe, before going into your first (Hard) fight, you might want to actually make sure you're dressed for the occasion? Heck, they hand you i90 gear just by finishing your Lv50 job quest. Are you trying to tell me you're going in there without any sort of proper gear?

Not sure why people are acting like you should be able to walk into Thornmarch wearing Lv45 junk that you had on you while you were in your 40s and expect not to die.

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Looks like I’ll have to repeat myself. This game is designed so that it’s possible for a full party of minimum ilvl people to clear the fight. If this is impossible, then it is a bug/oversight on their end that needs to be fixed. Plain and simple.

There is also a minimum ilvl setting explicitly for players who want to try to clear with the minimum requirements, and players simply cannot do that atm in Thornmarch hard mode.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I submitted a more comprehensive description of the glitch in the bug report section after getting the fight in trial roulette earlier today.

The issue is that the king is simply not recognizing whether or not any of the moogles had been KO'd prior to his summoning so you eat a full-powered Memento Moogle regardless of whether you defeat all of the moogles or if you somehow fail to KO them all before they summon him automatically.

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I witnessed this problem in a trial roulette Thornmarch HM yesterday. Even wearing level 60 gear on my alt character, that first Memento Moogle in the second part devastated my health, let alone the rest of the party; some less geared people were brought very, very low. I spent a good thirty seconds going "What in the world hit for that much??" especially when the next Memento Moogle attack did a pittance of damage in comparison. Anyone who does the fight should be able to tell immediately that this can't possibly be "working as intended."

On the upside, it looks like they accepted your report!

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Maybe they could, you know, pop a help text when they ding Level 50 that goes "HEY! There's this awesome thing called Tomestones of Poetics. You can buy really powerful gear from Auriana in Moar Donuts with these! Go check her out!" or what-not.

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They already do this with an Active Help pop-up - when you unlock Castrum if I remember correctly, as this would be the first duty that you receive poetics first completing.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Seriously, the two MSQ dungeons used to be terrible for the newbie back when people would just speedrun the bosses and leave newbies in the dust. It was a very bad impression to leave upon the newbie.

Easiest fix ever?

If Newbie Bonus, Cutscenes.
If No Newbie Bonus, No Cutscenes.

Boom. Done. Everybody should be happy.

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Except it's only the "easiest fix ever" if the system can actually handle dynamically playing two different versions of cutscenes depending on the completion status of the current party.

Considering that even the version of the cutscenes played at the inn automatically plays at fixed speed with no manual advance option now, I don't think that variable option exists. It looks like they've had to reprogram the one version of the cutscene that exists in the game to be auto-advancing. Then they've combined that with something within the dungeon settings that doesn't permit skipping, as is the case in some other places like the door reveals in the treasure-map dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Problem with this is we don't know definitively if this is indeed the issue and it shouldn't be on us, the player base, to bug check SE's game. We shouldn't HAVE to validate things.

Our only responsibility should be: "Hey, SE, we don't think this is behaving the way it should be could you check it out please?"

We shouldn't have to prove SE wrong. It shouldn't be this much of a fight / be this hard. It's like they can't admit they're in the wrong (despite it happening numerous times)

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debugging isnt as cut and dry. the devs could spend hours playing the game and doing the most unthinkable stuff to try and find a bug, but even then things would slip by. thats why every single software ever has bug reports. SE's job is primarily to fix bugs, finding every single possible bug would take away all the time the use to actually make content

remember that one draconian light bug in the aery where if you got kicked for afked in the bubble the buff would carry over? imagine figuring that was possible by something other than chance

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

Looks like I’ll have to repeat myself. This game is designed so that it’s possible for a full party of minimum ilvl people to clear the fight. If this is impossible, then it is a bug/oversight on their end that needs to be fixed. Plain and simple.

There is also a minimum ilvl setting explicitly for players who want to try to clear with the minimum requirements, and players simply cannot do that atm in Thornmarch hard mode.

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Actually at the minimum ilvl for entry, with food, and with shields/mitigation it would still be possible to live through this bug. Its iLvl is i54, and at i50 HP values are about 4k for tanks, 3k for melee, and 2.8k for casters/ranged. Eat level apporiate food and each gains about 300~400HP, bringing us up to 4.4k, 3.4k and 3.2k. So everyone will actually probably have about 100 more HP than that still, due to having i54/party % bonus. Layer shields on the party and Reprisal on the king, and everyone will live through the bug. Minimum iLvl for challenge generally assumes a diverse composition too, so nothing funky like x4Sam, x2 DRK, and x2whm. If you have SCH you can reduce it further still with Sacred Soil.

Not to say that they shouldn't fix the bug, because they definitely should. Just, it's possible, that's all.

My report was evidently accepted, so I guess they just needed a more detailed explanation of what was off about the situation.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Actually at the minimum ilvl for entry, with food, and with shields/mitigation it would still be possible to live through this bug. Its iLvl is i54, and at i50 HP values are about 4k for tanks, 3k for melee, and 2.8k for casters/ranged. Eat level apporiate food and each gains about 300~400HP, bringing us up to 4.4k, 3.4k and 3.2k. So everyone will actually probably have about 100 more HP than that still, due to having i54/party % bonus. Layer shields on the party and Reprisal on the king, and everyone will live through the bug. Minimum iLvl for challenge generally assumes a diverse composition too, so nothing funky like x4Sam, x2 DRK, and x2whm. If you have SCH you can reduce it further still with Sacred Soil.

Not to say that they shouldn't fix the bug, because they definitely should. Just, it's possible, that's all.

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After messing with it for a while, it seems like the only thing that actually reduces Memento Moogle's damage is shields.

There was no noticeable reduction from either DRK's Shadow Wall or Reprisal (It was hitting me for around 3.5Kish damage consistently regardless of whether or not those effects were active).

After play testing it and some general monkeying around, I can say that I retract some of my earlier points. I still think players should be expected to get that sweet i90 armor, but yeah, point taken. Where Thornmarch sits in the story and compared to the trials before and after, it doesn’t make sense to nuke so hard in the transition phase.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

My report was evidently accepted, so I guess they just needed a more detailed explanation of what was off about the situation.



After messing with it for a while, it seems like the only thing that actually reduces Memento Moogle's damage is shields.

There was no noticeable reduction from either DRK's Shadow Wall or Reprisal (It was hitting me for around 3.5Kish damage consistently regardless of whether or not those effects were active).

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If that's the case, then single target shields on healers, AOE shields on everybody else. As long as food's eaten, should still be OK. Though I honestly don't know the healing numbers for i50 books with i54 overall.

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Considering that even the version of the cutscenes played at the inn automatically plays at fixed speed with no manual advance option now, I don't think that variable option exists. It looks like they've had to reprogram the one version of the cutscene that exists in the game to be auto-advancing.

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This was evident with the encounter with Gaius on the elevator.

"Tell me, for whom do you fight?"

You used to be able to actually give him an answer (for all the good it actually did); a dialogue box with choices popped up at this point. Ever since the forced cutscenes were instituted though, that choice was removed entirely.