The following is a spoiler, please do NOT read it if not there ye t :

We encountered a problem it the 11th mission of the Arnor campaign. (in the french version !)

It isnt a bug in the code. Instead, it is a mix of issue with the French translation AND the game objective design. Both created a nasty and frustrated situation for the players.

PLEASE, remind yourself that the app game works in an "Iron man" mode. You cant just "go back" a few round back when you encounter the issue. When you notice the problem, it is too late for the players. AND you can even lose the campaign on that scenario ! (so yes.. it is important, as you dont play the game for an hour, but HOURS and lot of evenings and this can literally ruin your game)

ISSUE ? In short, the game objective let you deliberately suggest all along that you can "achieve" something. While in fact : you CANT. (and so, you lose the game)

(Also note that we had already done the other (normal) way to finish this scenario, we did it the first time under pressure. We went now for an alternative ending, suggested by the game itself, and encounter the issue.)

Here is the detail (spoiler incoming!)

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We managed to finish the 11th map, with the 7 Mirrors.

Situation? We are at 60/70 menace (2/3 turns left) and totally cleaned the board trying to save the mirrors instead of destroying them.

What did we do exactly ?
- both mirrors (tower + tomb) are still up and working
- no interaction left but "destroying the mirror" and activate the 7th one for help.

- destroyed both "Boats" menaces
- no standard enemies left on board
- we also killed Atarin at his first turn (or at least we made him "flee" from the field)

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So game board is clean. All this done, we don't have any specific action left BUT to wait. Why do we want to wait instead of destroying the items?

Because the actual objective (that the player follow) is literally in french : "Keep Atarin and his forces away from the mirrors"

If you look back at the quote here above, you will see that indeed, this is what we have done. Yet, without any other actions left, we just passed turns, and we even passed them to "the end" expecting that Atarin and his army would left the field. (We found it weird to do, but again : no other option, and objective is still suggesting us to just keep Atarin distant..)

The correct final objectives: "Destroy the mirrors and flee" ONLY pops in when .. you destroy a first mirror. This is counter intuitive ! Again, if the game just says "keep the enemy distant".. your natural reflex is NOT to destroy a mirror if you try to save them. Destroying them is only an alternative option, and usually in case you are under pressure. Even the specters dont encourage you to destroy them, they simply say that "IF" the enemy is too strong, destroying the mirrors might be a valid option. Again : if the players succeed pushing atarin back, they dont want to destroy "by default" the mirrors.

SOLUTION : if the game is to destroy the mirrors NO MATTER WHAT, replace the main objective SOONER by the " destroy the mirror" objective. The "Keep Atarin and his forces away from the mirrors" misleading objective really needs to be replaced sooner, trigger by anything you want that wont let players lose turns after turns, before realizing they cant save the mirrors, even with no enemy left. You just loose the game, feeling cheated by the objective.

Voilà, hope that Grace can read this, or that someone else already mentioned that issue.

It looks not that much, but believe me, for people spending hours in the game and that scenario, trying to unlock an alternative route that doesnt exist, it is really irritating and the "game over" punishes them. Because the same people, if they beated everyone on the map, had plenty of time to resolve the expected required actions...

That being said, have fun out there

I noticed this problem in the English version as well, which offers a similarly ambiguous statement of the mission objective. In my play-through, I fortunately opted to destroy one of the mirrors (with time to spare to destroy the other one) as a safer route to victory. Only after I destroyed the mirror did I realize that this was necessary, and was thankful that I (arbitrarily) chose this route!

In short, I agree that the scenario needs to be more clear that you MUST destroy the mirrors to win (and continue the campaign!).

Yes and no... They could have used one ring to beat sauron, but They did not even if it was an option. In short term even not a bad one. So there could be options in the game that will be followed by utterly losing the game. For me it is utterly fine, and even desireable. But I Also prefer options that when you chose ”wrongly” just make the next Gaming sessions different and more difficult.

Yeah... I find this interesting. It’s almost like, sure, you can try to do this without destroying the mirror... but it’s not gonna work out well in the end.

On 8/30/2019 at 11:51 PM, Hannibal_pjv said:

Yes and no... They could have used one ring to beat sauron, but They did not even if it was an option. In short term even not a bad one. So there could be options in the game that will be followed by utterly losing the game. For me it is utterly fine, and even desireable. But I Also prefer options that when you chose ”wrongly” just make the next Gaming sessions different and more difficult.

Hello !

Wait : I am not talking here about any Lore, logical or immersive situation ("should we, should we not" destroy it)

I am simply pointing out that in THIS specific mission, the GAME OBJECTIVE (which is NEUTRAL) is misleading the players, and you can get a situation in which Players (not characters) following the Main Objective (and SUCCEEDING at pushing back Atarin and all the menaces tokens) WILL then LOOSE their current campaign, no matter what.

This being said, if indeed saving the mirror was a valid option to "finish" the mission 11, and that it leads to other patterns/situation, I am totally fine with it.

But for now : strictly following the objective and succeeding at this objective : you LOOSE the game That is an issue . Not a choice for the player.

I had exactly the same ”issue”. I was already celebrating until I noticed that I actually lost. I truly love the game, but this one annoying misunderstanding almost completely ruined it for me. Since I felt I actually did succeed in the mission, I ended up loading my savegame again and cheated in order to pass. Still, I was so frustrated that I didn’t want to play for some time. Only after some time I was ready to ”forgive” the game and continued the campaign, trying to forget the story was actually supposed to continue differently.

Please, FFG, fix this and review all the objectives once again. They should be self-explanatory, or if you leave the players some room to interpret, please make sure that all ”correct” interpretations leade to some kind of success.

Maestrim : first time it happened (after a great and positive run on the scenario), we had to cheat too. (we felt a bit betrayed and frustrated by that so much..meh)

Again : getting so far in the game requires a lot of TIME, and it is a kind of Iron Man mode, so if you loose.. you loose. That is why this is a "nasty" issue.

Has this issue been point out by the designers? Grace? Galadriel? Sam? Anyone?