About the achievements
1) It’s clear you’re talking about the Clock Tower complaint threads, so I don’t know why you bothered to try (and fail) to be subtle.
2) You have a point, achievements aren’t the end of the world. However, many of the more level-headed complaints have not been about the achievement, and more about the fact that the Clock Tower event is more frustrating than it could have been made simply because it has such a narrow window to be completed in. A legitimate complaint.
3) On a game that prized itself for the community feel it was trying to create, it should be considered a very serious problem when a feature has been released that causes players to actively go out their way to grief others and make their time playing the game miserable.
The Banner exploit needs to be fixed as soon as possible because I have caught a staggering number of people abusing the glitch in order to maliciously buff people mid-jump and cause them to fail.
There really does need to be some form of solo mode on the Clock Tower to try and ease the amount of bitter and nasty game-playing going on – it would also dramatically curb the amount of complaints about either Charr and Norn being too big, or at smaller races becoming bitter and nasty because they cannot see well.
I agree entirely that the Clock Tower doesn’t need to be nerfed in difficulty or made easy, but it does desperately need to be tweaked to allow players to play it on their own (or perhaps, if in a party, then with only the people in their party like story mode) and it desperately needs the exploits that allow use of speed buffs to be fixed. A game cannot use it’s community as a selling point if it releases a feature like this that ultimately splits the community into two bitter and mindless arguments of either
“If you can’t do it, you should just stop sucking and go quit”
or
“I can’t do it and everybody who can should just shut up because your opinions don’t count.”
Now can we stop making new threads like this and at least try contain it to one thread?
my concern would be with the one time event rather than the clock tower. Does attending it count towards the Halloween achievement?
If you mean the Emissary of the Mad King achievement and title – then no you don’t need to worry. Neither the Clock Tower’s achievement, nor the Carving Master achievement, count towards that.
Emissary of the Mad King requires five Halloween achievements and, discounting itself, there are exactly seven. Since Clock Tower and Pumpkin Carving do not count, this leaves you with the five achievements you will need to get in order to get the title and achievement for Emissary of the Mad King.
The narrow window to complete the event and putting players in a group is part of the difficulty and there’s no need for any particular amount of people to be able complete it. It’s just something extra the players can participate in for a few days and then it will be gone until next year.There’s nothing desperate about this situation. It’s a game.
The narrow window to complete the event and putting players in a group is part of the difficulty and there’s no need for any particular amount of people to be able complete it. It’s just something extra the players can participate in for a few days and then it will be gone until next year.There’s nothing desperate about this situation. It’s a game.
You don’t have the ArenaNet symbol by your name, so you are in no place to state which was intended to be difficult and which was not. Get out with that.
First things first, the narrow window to complete the event is entirely intentional, otherwise it wouldn’t be seasonal. However, this does also mean that a puzzle shouldn’t be entirely super challenging to complete due to that narrow window. If they made the puzzle entirely permanent, then it would be far more accepted amongst the entire community, given the rate of failure a lot of people are seeing.
Although some are far more skilled and have completed it within forty minutes to two hours of starting, others have been at this puzzle for almost ten hours. Their prerogative? Yes, entirely. However, something as challenging as the Clock Tower would probably benefit from being made permanent. Not only does it give a permanent challenge to new and old players alike, but it also sets a potential standard for other challenging jumping puzzles in the future.
Secondly, players are not supposed to make the game more challenging. The only time additional players are meant to be a challenge is when you are competing against them.
In this case, you are not. You are competing against the clock. The inconsideration to the difference in racial sizes was not intentional – it is the result of poor (or lack of) QA testing. No excuse you could pull out of your bottom would ever convince people otherwise. Beyond this, the exploitable bugs of taking banners into the actual puzzle and allowing people to maliciously buff others with Swiftness, causing them to fail their jumps and have to restart, is also not intended to make the puzzle more difficult. It is a bug that has caused very malicious griefing amongst players, in a game that used it’s friendly community to try sell itself.
No. The other players were meant to be there to make it fun, but poor QA testing combined with a buggy camera and an exploitable buff function have turned the Clock Tower into a secondary PvP zone, where the only difference is you can’t actually kill your other player. You just make them fail a difficult puzzle and force them to start over.
While my op was, of course, inspired by the complaints of not being able to complete this event. I meant it a more general sense, i.e rewards/completing content.
Now, about this event. Yes, you are probably correct concerning the banners, they were probably not intended to be that way. But it seems to me that you are over exaggerating the situation. I wouldn’t qualify it as “very malicious griefing.” I think that’s too extreme and I don’t believe that this is an issue of such magnitude that it is the main reason why players aren’t able to complete this event. I had someone in my group who was doing the same thing, but I was still able to complete it in about half an hour.
I also find it hypocritical of you to say that I am in no place to speak of the intended difficulty, but right after that you say “a puzzle shouldn’t be entirely super challenging” and “players are not supposed to make the game more challenging.” Why? I think it would be fine for the other players be there to make it more challenging. And how do you know that " inconsideration to the difference in racial sizes was not intentional – it is the result of poor (or lack of) QA testing." It may very well have been intentional. Or maybe, its not really something that’s import enough for consideration. It’s just a holiday event.
I also find it hypocritical of you to say that I am in no place to speak of the intended difficulty, but right after that you say “a puzzle shouldn’t be entirely super challenging” and “players are not supposed to make the game more challenging.” Why? I think it would be fine for the other players be there to make it more challenging.
Because of the way the puzzle has been designed. Your suggestion of players being there on purpose to make it a challenge suggests player versus player - aka you are being challenged by other players impeding your goals and you must overcome them.
No, the tower was not designed to be a PvP environment. This is clear because of how very precise the timing on the puzzle is. This is not designed with players being a challenge in mind, it was designed for the timer to be the challenge – aka PvTimer.
You really are talking out your kitten here, I’m sorry to say. Even the game isn’t with you on this one; the intentional design of the clocktower was made incredibly clear.
[QUOTE]And how do you know that " inconsideration to the difference in racial sizes was not intentional – it is the result of poor (or lack of) QA testing." It may very well have been intentional. Or maybe, its not really something that’s import enough for consideration. It’s just a holiday event. [/quote]
Again talking out your kitten If ArenaNet intentionally created a puzzle where you would not be able to see the Asura amongst a group of Norn or Charr, it would not have appeared in a puzzle where character placement was a necessity for players.
Basically, if what you said is true (which it’s clearly not) then you’re basically saying ArenaNet gives not a poop about any single one of it’s customers. Because that is what your proposed “intentions” amount to.
I don’t need to be a game designer to see ArenaNet’s intent with the Clock Tower. I definitely don’t need to be one to know when they made a terrible call and did little QA testing that would have been relevant to the actual amount of players playing their game.
To be honest with you, I did not make this thread to talk about the clock tower’s design philosophy. I’m talking about people’s attitudes. Things like this aren’t worth getting upset over. I just wanted to remind people of that, so that they won’t be so stressed out and get frustrated or depressed.
But also, I don’t know why because there is precise timing that there can’t be another component of where the other players add difficulty. Even if it wasn’t intended, that’s how it is and really its not a big deal. Players blocking other player’s views only take place on maybe the first 1/5 to 1/4 of the puzzle. After that most people fall off and it’s just you and maybe one to two others. It really is not a problem.