Clarence is as broken as Cybermind

aesica

How exactly is credit for defeating him determined? Logically, you'd think all you have to do is shoot at it with everyone else until it falls over dead, but that doesn't seem to work. I've fought him 5 (maybe more?) times so far tonight and each time, no credit was given. I tried all the things people suggest like "drop the quest and retake it" and "relog" etc. None of it works.

So what the hell is going on and how can I actually get credit for this stupid daily?

decorumfriends

I have also had this problem in very random application. Inconsistent doesn't begin to describe it. Sometimes I get credit for Clarence right away and it turns green. Sometimes I have to do it two or three times. Sometimes it doesn't matter how many, it won't work. This is happening across multi-characters with no pattern I can discern. I've tried a bunch of times to "just turn it in anyway" and it's NEVER worked for me unless I can get the Clarence part to turn green.

It's like there's two or three different requirements and some of them are randomly not being met or something.

xrazamax

This has been brought up in a lot of threads already, but if you have the daily mission and defeat Clarence then you do the Black Harlequin alert, you should be able to turn in the daily mission whether or not the sub missions are "green" and look completed.

decorumfriends

Again, I have tried this time and time again and it does not work. That it works for some people and not others speaks to the randomness of what's going on.

pantagruel01

Last night I did the daily across five characters. Only one Clarence failed to register, and that was one where I jumped in at the last second with lead tempest and did either negligible damage or none at all (it was enough to get OM credit, but you can do that by looking at him sideways).

It's possible that there's a minimum threshold of damage to get credit, I've seen some evidence of that for other fights, but if so the threshold is fairly low, probably in the vicinity of 1%.

decorumfriends

Today, it's worked fine twice, but those were both 40s. That's why I kept asking people if there's a damage threshold or if you have to place a certain part on the list.

My answers were always "Just turn it in, it will work." **eyeroll**

"Yes, Tier One Support, the machine is plugged in and the power is on."

roughbearmattach

As far as I can tell, getting credit or not is random, much like with Cybermind.

For every person with anecdote about doing this or that first, about doing a given amount of damage, etc., there is a counterexample.

It's just buggy.

beezeeze

Yep, seems pretty random to me. Did it a few ways in the various combos suggested...nothing worked, so I just kept on trying and eventually it did.

decorumfriends

Yup, I can find no patterns at all. Been going all day and no bugs, but I was getting plenty before this. Keep expecting the other shoe to drop.

williamkony

I've got it! The total damage you deal has to be a number comprised exclusively of even numbers, for example "240046". If you do 240056 total damage, NO CREDIT FOR YOU.

That's gotta be it.

aesica

xrazamax said:

This has been brought up in a lot of threads already, but if you have the daily mission and defeat Clarence then you do the Black Harlequin alert, you should be able to turn in the daily mission whether or not the sub missions are "green" and look completed.

Oh, interesting. Come to think of it, the Clarence objective was displayed in italic at one point after defeating him. I'll try again tonight, hopefully with more luck this time.

pantagruel01 said:

It's possible that there's a minimum threshold of damage to get credit, I've seen some evidence of that for other fights, but if so the threshold is fairly low, probably in the vicinity of 1%.

That occurred to me, but if it's something like 1%, then I'm definitely meeting at least that requirement. I even showed up on the list (despite being a crappy level 32) a few times at the end, so my damage not being enough to count as meaningful shouldn't be the issue.

We'll see in a moment!

guyhumual

I have no idea what's going on, the only time I didn't get credit for defeating Clarence was the time I came into the fight at the midway point. I will point out something about the characters I use though: I only bring a level 40 to the fight. They all have AoE and I try to help clean up the toys. Even my healers have decent damage output. I have self heals so I don't have to turtle very much. All or some of these things may be a factor.

This maybe a damage thing. At level 40 my DPS is pretty good, better with gear, but better then say a level 26. With an AoE attack killing toys may well add to my damage totals like it does in the Black Harlequin special alert.

There's also a possibility that it's a engagement issue. Perhaps you need to be attacking Clarence or within range of his attacks for a certain portion of the fight? I usually don't spend a lot of time blocking, most of the fight is me using heals on myself and occasionally others, but I'm usually dealing damage consistently for the entire fight.

Another possibility is that getting credit may hinge on killing toys. I've heard people claim that they received credit by opening a present near the Clarence battle and killing the toys that spawn from that present. I have no idea how credible this claim is, but all of my toons have an AoE attack and I always try to clean up the toys that Clarence spawns.

I have no idea what's going on. These are just suggestions as to why I seem to have great success. Maybe if you're not able to meet these standards perhaps that's one of the problems?

magpieuk2014

It'll be interesting to see whether the increase in Clarence's target cap resolves this issue. It's been noticeable that, with more people attacking him, there have been more going undamaged, and perhaps that has a bearing (hah!) on the whether or not credit is received for the mission?

jonsills

Jumped in on an alternate account last night. I got credit for the Finkle Foundry, but had to run Clarence three times before it registered. (And no, the Assistant wouldn't let me turn the mission in until both names were green.) I'll try it again on Starfall later.

nepht

Thats what you get when you buy robot bears from the same Taiwanese amazon suppliers Freddy Fazbear's Pizza gets theirs from ಠ_ಠ

biffsmackwell

So, I hadn't had this happen to me at all and I'd been doing Clarence first before doing the Black Harlequin alert. So I decided to do the alert first, and after I did it, the "Defeat Clarence" part wasn't italic anymore. I jumped into the tail-end of a Clarence fight and punched him like 5 times before he died. I got rewards from the reward circle, but "Defeat Clarence" didn't turn green. I tried to turn the mission in anyway, didn't work.

Edit: I decided to then put Making Naughty Nice as my primary mission, then went and fought Clarence. Got there right after Black Harlequin had been taken out already, and fought Clarence from almost 100% health. I placed 25th on the scoreboard and got credit for the mission.

roughbearmattach

It's just random.

biffsmackwell

That's a programmer's least favorite word.

serpinecoh

I have sometimes gotten quest credit when I jumped in during just the last 20 seconds of the battle and conversely have managed to not get credit when I personally killed BH and subsequently tanked the majority of the battle with Clarence. Tried it with both vehicles at longest possible range and melee fighters with just as much inconsistency.

Random really feels like the best guess... Almost like there is a valid participant cap or something.

And as above, the "turn it in anyway" method doesn't seem to work for this. That was indeed a solution for the earlier warehouse mission display issue, but in dozens of tries I've never once been able to turn the quest in if the Clarence component was not visibly shown as complete.

decorumfriends

biffsmackwell said:

That's a programmer's least favorite word.

I'll bet. I'm sure it's not really random, but until a pattern is found...

I've had no trouble since my initial post, but then I've run nothing but 40s since then (by mere coincidence, not a plan) so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it.

decorumfriends

serpinecoh said:

That was indeed a solution for the earlier warehouse mission display issue, but in dozens of tries I've never once been able to turn the quest in if the Clarence component was not visibly shown as complete.

And "complete" means "turns green". I have no idea what all that italic stuff is about, but it doesn't indicate something's complete.

biffsmackwell

decorumfriends said:

biffsmackwell said:

That's a programmer's least favorite word.

I'll bet. I'm sure it's not really random, but until a pattern is found...

I've had no trouble since my initial post, but then I've run nothing but 40s since then (by mere coincidence, not a plan) so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it.

I ran it three times with a level 6 without running the Harlequin alert (doesn't even show up because I'm too low level! :P), and all three times I didn't get credit.

aesica

biffsmackwell said:

That's a programmer's least favorite word.

No, "bug" is our least favorite word. Trust me.

biffsmackwell

Bugs are inevitable. Bugs with repro steps are better than bugs from a tester who says it's just random. :P

chaelk

as fr as I can see , it's random. same as my one character kept on getting the daily mission(8 times in 4 hrs), despite it being 'fixed' and made daily. The second fix seems to have worked.. I think

if clarence bugs- it doesn't want to let you hand in but if the alert bugs, it sometimes lets you hand in​​

roughbearmattach

Let me clarify: rather than say "random", I mean that the bug seems to occur regardless of user-observed variables.

pantagruel01

I don't think it's random, I think it's just that the information you need isn't visible. My best guess is that you have to do 1% damage to Clarence. That means a score of 100k if you use only single-target attacks and don't do anything else that generates points (not sure if healing counts in Clarence, but damage to adds and random other targets does).

biffsmackwell

pantagruel01 said:

I don't think it's random, I think it's just that the information you need isn't visible. My best guess is that you have to do 1% damage to Clarence. That means a score of 100k if you use only single-target attacks and don't do anything else that generates points (not sure if healing counts in Clarence, but damage to adds and random other targets does).

100k on the scoreboard? I've been doing the mission with Haymakers primarily and one to five or so Unleashed Rage thrown in whenever off cooldown, depending on how early or late I got to the fight. I've scored as low as like 16k when coming in late and still got credit.

I'm assuming you mean damage, which sounds more likely. The strange part is that you get credit for loot even if you're not on the scoreboard because you did like 4 damage to him, but no credit for the mission. I wonder why it uses such different criteria to judge whether you did good enough for loot versus good enough for the mission.

Edit: Disregard my dumbness. I've been doing like 250-550k. I was looking at the scoreboard wrong.

I had a brain fart and thought the scoreboard showed participation, not the actual damage or healing you did.

rap9

So this is my story.

Did the Alert maybe a couple days ago. Today did Clarence like 4 times (through a journey of seething anger and self-doubt eventually culminating into dour resignation and pessimism). Differing performance levels. Whatever the crude effort . . . 'twas no dice, Mon'Amie. That includes the 4th time getting 120k on the board which was still a ways down (s'okay - me gots room to improve, Baby). Also joined the open team. I will note these 4 times were all arriving at different times too, mainly late, from lack of familiarity with the locales ('what the hell is the Barlow building again..?' *frantic Googling*), but never when Clarence first appears.

So I drop the mish in disgust after the 4th time and restart it, hopes low as could be but Bon Jovi's 'Livin On a Prayer' plays quietly in the very back of mind, eliciting a philosophical nod, narrowed eyes and the faint hint of a lopsided grin. I decide to have myself some mighty fine homemade eggnog. Rum included. Do Clarence for the 5th time, over by the prison. Get there all quick like just as he materializes. Join the open team. Don't die. Get like 220k on the board. An' I got the bleedin' credit finally. Then I pick up the crappy loot, mumbling curmudgeonly to myself about the likelihood of the Alert breaking instead, this time, jaded from my experiences thus far and unwilling to BELIEVE.

Do the Alert immediately after, on the way back to Ole Ren Cen. Taunt01 emote at Dominique Ducard right before I hit Ready for the mish. Alert goes fine, get the credit, turned into the Apprentice for the reward. Bam.

So if I had to guess, it was the eggnog and/or Taunt01 that 'debugged' the thing. Best o luck, folks.

jonsills

It was the Bon Jovi. Springsteen would have worked too. Irreproducible bugs hate musicians from New Jersey.​​

roughbearmattach

I got credit today on my main, did less than 10K damage. I snuck in right before Clarence was defeated.

squirrelloid

If it is a participation cap (first n players to start racking up a score get credit), it would tend to result in players dealing below some damage threshhold not receiving credit (because they would tend to be those who arrived late), but still generate occasional low damage credit receiving and high damage credit fails (from early arrivals who just don't do much damage or low participation clarence fights on the one hand to super high damage toons who arrive late on the other).

To test this, you'd need to have an accurate log of when players start accruing score and whether they get credit or not. While that is player-accessible information, it is not *easy* to get (you'd have to basically coordinate with everyone and have them report time they started participating). But Cryptic should have access to that data.