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

[Maeka]

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.

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.

[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.

[Fynlar]

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 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

[Maeka]

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

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.

[Fynlar]

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.

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.

Easiest fix ever?

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

Boom. Done. Everybody should be happy.

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.

[Deceptus]

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.

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)

[NessaWyvern]

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.

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.

[sarehptar]

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.

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!

[Iscah]

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.

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.

[Iscah]

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.

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.