Guild Wars 2

and now I’ve bought Mad Moon. Now I don’t have money anymore! noooooooooooooo

I’ve done it all.

The Clock tower is my favorite jumping puzzle ever! I Straight up love jumping puzzles and this one I found pretty addicting. Made to end at about 25 runs.

The PvP event where you try to survive was awesome, creeped me out a bit with the ambient music playing and everything else silent but my footsteps. played this about 3 times

Tried the Rumble but wasn’t too crazy about it.

Costume brawl wasn’t too fun with a bunch of mad kings destroying everyone. 32-time Brawl champ

Mixing jumping in with the MK dungeon was genius and I loved it. ran MK 9 times (so far)

Teamed with zergs to chase and knock on doors and kill champs in a Labyrinth.

Also carved 150 pumpkins.

Absolutely love this event and wouldn’t dream of skipping anything.

I passed on the event, for the most part due to disappointment over bugged traits still not being fixed making me not really want to play. My girlfriend suggested we try it maybe half-an-hour ago, and I obliged; as it’s late in the event, we ended up just trying to ‘fight’ Mad King Thorn. I’ll clarify why there’s quotes around ‘fight’ later.

The Mad King Says game was…amusing. Aside from the part where he wants you to stand around doing emotes while things run up and beat on you. Oh, wait, my bad – that was the whole Mad King Says. Could’ve been mildly amusing, but the swarm of enemies trying to beat us up while we followed his orders killed it; not sure whether this was a result of my girlfriend trying to fight things (it took her a moment to realize that the trick was to /emote) or whether waves of enemies usually jump onto the field, really.

Then came the fighting bit. Amusing, in any way that only dying when Feared into running off a platform, which also happened to be the platform the waypoint in the area was on, and that the boss appeared to have decided to stand around and attack us from could manage to be. (For clarification: The boss wandered over onto the platform the respawn point was on, took a bit of damage, and then eventually Feared us into running to our falling deaths). Remember when I said I’d clarify the reason behind the quotes? (If you don’t, go back and reread, this ain’t that long, you ninnyheimer.) Yeah, this fight was about as much of a fight as hurling a tennis ball against the wall could be considered a game of catch – one-sided, uninteresting and repetitive.

Then he vanished for a minute, and neither of us gave enough of a hoot to keep going with it, so we left, I quit, she tried Lunatic Inquisition, didn’t seem to have a good time and quit shortly afterward.

So, y’know. Whatever.

@Anymras.5729
1. You don’t need to ‘/emote’ anything while playing ‘Mad King says’, skill bar of one randomly selected party member will be changed to a new one with emotes requested by Mad King. While he performs requests others can fight monsters.
2. This is a 5-man dungeon, you know? Not 2-man.
3. To keep yourself from falling you can use abilities with a ‘Break-stun’ effect. Also helps standing outside BIG RED CIRCLE and killing scarecrow.
4. He doesn’t vanish. He teleports on different levels of the dungeons. You should try jumping down.

So, y’know. Whatever.

Yeah, girlfriend just told me about the skill bar thing – it never showed up for me, as far as I noticed, though it’s entirely possible that I didn’t look, knowing that there were /emotes for each of the things he commanded. She agrees that it could’ve been fun, except for the whole ‘swarm of enemies’ thing.

So we beat up a five-man boss enough to get to the next stage with two people? I’d be proud, except that we pretty much just brute-forced it via respawn, since he decided to take up position -on the platform where you respawn.- Which was, incidentally, the same place we kept falling from when he used his big-red-circle-of-fear attack. Funny story, the AoE on that is about the size of the platform, with several parts of it scooping off into space – and getting off that platform would have just led to the army of minions he spawned during the Mad King Says ‘game’. Dunno if they’re tough at all, but I tend to be an aggro magnet, so large groups of enemies are just something I don’t mess with.

I didn’t much care whether he vanished or teleported to a different level – I’d wanted to just leave since about halfway through the Mad King Says bit. If I’d wanted to continue, I would’ve taken a look and figured it out, but the bit of the encounter we did left me so unenthused that I just didn’t care to.

It really did have the potential to be a fun Hallowe’en event, but being slaughtered by dozens of enemies while playing “Simon Says” was not what I’d had in mind.

Lunatic Inquisition wasn’t particularly fun either. Again, potential, but it felt unbalanced, and just overall left much to be desired. I think I’ll stick to Keg Toss.

@levelnine
Ever heard of Wheaton’s law?

I skipped the jumping puzzle (well I tried a few times, but I could rarely actually SEE MY CHARACTER so I figured “what’s the point?” after hearing about the many hours some people put into it) because this game isn’t a very good engine to have jumping in.

By that what I mean is – if my character’s model isn’t touching anything visibly, and I hit an invisible barrier and fail to make a jump (happens quite a bit in GW2), the engine itself shouldn’t be used for jumping puzzles. All I have to go on is what I see, and often I can see no visible reason why a jump is failing.

That’s the point where the player has to step outside the game to figure out how to do something in the game, and that’s a sign of bad design.

There are also too many times where I, as the player, am thinking “if my character could only use those EMPTY HANDS here, he could get up that little invisible incline”.

But yeah, after maybe 15 minutes, I skipped the jumping puzzle.

“One thing I think they could do better for next time is directing players on the event.”

Oh I wanted to echo this.

I thought the in-game prompts were severely lacking.

I assume this is because Anet assumes everything will be listed on websites, so they have no real need to put it in-game, but there was (it seemed to me) almost no direction in-game to what could be done.

It’s sad they are turning this game into a gear oriented game. At least for looks it is.

Personally I hate jumping puzzles/Mario Brothers. And I really dislike it when a game forces grouping in order to obtain items, especially for holiday events. And there is no way I will pay extra money to obtain them.

I didn’t buy a single Black Lion Key to open the 100+ chests I have. I open them when I get that super rare key drop or not at all. I get more exotics to drop than those blasted keys.

Aside from that I’ve done everything there is to do in the event quite often and on several characters, all with a smile. (Usually, some people just irk me)

I wanted to do the Book quest on my Necro (I kinda…can’t stand my 80 right now and I wanted the cosmetic look as it feels…fitting, for a Necro) but the areas they are in (Crypts, I’m looking at you) makes it impossible.

Thankfully I’ll never be able to get the title anyways since I can’t do the Jumping puzzle so I don’t ever have to get worked up about doing the book quest as a pre-requisite XD.

Neither the jumping puzzle or the book are required to get the title.

Rayean.8726:

Thankfully I’ll never be able to get the title anyways since I can’t do the Jumping puzzle so I don’t ever have to get worked up about doing the book quest as a pre-requisite XD.

Bad news then, the carving & tower don’t count for Emissary
And you don’t need the book quests either for that.

@Anymras
Only one of you had to do Mad King Says. The one with the emotes on the toolbar. I know, this is impossible to know until its too late, but, the trick is to stay at the entrance, until its over, so you don’t have to fight his minions, at the same time.

As for beating him with brute force respawns… yeah, there’s a lot of that in this game. It’s like losing, but being rewarded for it, anyhow. Just takes a lot of patience. I also did it with my gf, and really, could barely stand to get through it once.

Vzur.7123:

As for beating him with brute force respawns… yeah, there’s a lot of that in this game. It’s like losing, but being rewarded for it, anyhow. Just takes a lot of patience. I also did it with my gf, and really, could barely stand to get through it once.

Ever wondered if you’re playing the game the right way?
Get a group and it’s done in a few minutes.

And it’s not losing + rewarding, it’s rewarding you for the unnecessary amount of time you’re willing to spend on it.

I didn’t take a pass, but the writers did. The majority of the games make no sense in a bad way and have little or no in-game explanation. ANet is trying to make up for it with forum posts and such, but it is still confusing and fails to create any real atmosphere or motive to participate. E.g., entering an area and being told only “Hide!” and “Scare the villagers,” with no explanation of what villagers, hiding from what, what the goal is, etc. I got a bunch of points for literally just standing on top of a rock for 6 minutes doing nothing and wondering what I should be doing. It’s fine to be silly or light, but this is like asking a novice to play Monopoly and telling them only, “Trade money! Move spaces!”

Doubly disappointing because it’s such an original holiday event with interesting lore and villain. It’s well-paced and well-staged over the course of days, but poorly communicated.

I am not obsessed with getting awesome treasure, but likewise I am not obsessed with filling my inventory slots with utterly useless candy corn and crafting items in a game whose blown economy makes crafting pointless. And let’s not forget the Black Lion chest debacle. Bottom line, if you want to dress up, etc., you’ll likely be paying to play.

So far, I have had no more and no less fun with the Halloween event as I do grinding for my monthly and finishing up world exploration, with the minus that regular pve events are all much better explained than the Halloween stuff. Much of the event is basically a grind disguised as a holiday. I would have liked to see the ability to trick-or-treat with other players, not just NPCs. I would have liked to see everyone in some kind of costume besides microscopic devil horns. Something social beyond killing each other in new and mysterious ways and running a meh mini-dungeon (which I did not appreciate being told to rush home at a specific time for to see the “surprise” when it turned out to run for days).

I applaud the innovative approach and great effort, and Halloween is my real-life favorite holiday. But I have to look at what I actually did, and that was avoid the noisy spectacle frequently and head off to do normal game activities as soon as possible.

I finished both the scavenger hunts for the two variations of Mad Memoires. I did the Pumpkin Carving event, but for the last 30 pumpkins I had a little help from the internet. The Clock Tower was a huge challenge, but after about four hours of many failed attempts I’ve finally mastered it. The Mad King Dungeon was extremely easy, I’ve done that many times already. Over the past week I’ve collected close to 1,000 Candy Corn, so that wasn’t too hard at all. Best advice I can give is just mine every candy corn vein you see in the game and participate in everything to do with Halloween. The achievement for opening Trick-or-Treat bags was quite simple, considering you get multiple bags at the end of the Mad King Dungeon as well as an uncommon drop from mining Candy Corn and killing NPC’s. And finally (unless I missed something), completing 10 Halloween events can be done in less than half an hour. All you do is walk around an area like Queensdale looking for unopened doors.

So honestly, you really have nothing to complain about. Plenty of people have managed to complete all of the events that Halloween has to offer, and you’ve had over a week to complete it all, so I don’t understand what’s bad about this.

NVranya.5013:

Ever wondered if you’re playing the game the right way?
Get a group and it’s done in a few minutes.

And it’s not losing + rewarding, it’s rewarding you for the unnecessary amount of time you’re willing to spend on it.

Well yeah, I hate that kind of grouping. I’m a huge fan of this dynamic grouping trend. Guess that means I’m “playing it wrong” and should just be glad its possible to do some of this traditional group content at all. That’s one way to look at it, I guess.

Done it all , had a blast … with the loot i got, 5 mad king pieces and exotics and greens. sold 13g worth and since i have 5 characters… i pretty have greens line up for every few levels for all characters,

The event was a blast and hopefully today when we get final achievement.. something will happen…. more then just the title.

But either way.. had a blast

I actually really enjoy all the event places: the Labrynth is fun & getting its chests are super easy. Plus, it’s the perfect place to accomplish most of the achievements for the event: carving pumpkins everywhere, candy corn mining everywhere, halloween monsters everywhere.

Spent a little time in the PvP areas but PvP isn’t really my thing. They were fun though.

Scavenger hunt wasn’t hard but a little annoying. Did give me a fun item without much effort.

Clocktower….let’s not talk about the clocktower.

All in all, I enjoyed the event stuff. I didn’t get frazzled by the RNG of buying/opening bags for epic loot. Just enjoyed myself.

I’m kind of skipping on the pumpkins. I don’t think I can get them all by event’s end. Everything else, I want to try.

I skipped everything but the Mad Memoires quest on one character. The rest of the event mostly annoyed me more then anything.

yeah I mostly skipped the whole event.
Here’s what I did accomplish:
Ran around and mined candy corn.
Got the first 3 books and then didn’t feel like paying out the kitten to port around and get the others.
Carved a whole bunch of pumpkins but I guess not enough according to the npc, I had no idea how many more I needed so I gave up.
Never even attempted the clock tower cause I just didn’t care. I don’t like platforming.. I play MMOs instead……..
The costume brawl was chaotic and dumb and I’ve no idea what the point was.
I did do the Mad King dungeon about 6 times and that was ok.

I don’t even know what else there was to do. I didn’t really bother to explore it much. I’ve never been onto the holiday events, even going back to WoW. I do enjoy the look of Lions Arch though.

My boyfriend and I ran the MK dungeon in 30-45 minutes; I had started it solo but he insisted in joining in. And the only place where we actually fought a lot of mobs was that first platform, but that was only because his pet went in to say hello and pissed everything off.

Done it, regret it except the tower which is fun.

Just did the Mad King says event and it’s beyond pathetic.

I liked the lab, clocktower, and the story tid bits when you find the ghosts.
Costume brawl was not so great because of character modles not loading efficiently. I wish the doors spawned more enemies. The ones that did were exciting.

People just need to stop complaining. Most aren’t REAL gammers anyways.

I usually just do a few of the easy ones and skip the rest, I don’t feel the same drive as I did with GW1 or WoW to achieve anything of great note in this game.

It’s not too late for some of you, but you can actually get the meta achievement pretty easily without too much once you know what to do.

The majority can be done by farming mobs in the Mad King’s labyrinth. Dont do the gambling game, dont do the clock tower. After this visit the two other events in the realm via the boatmaster at the top of the labyrinth.

Pumpkins can be done, and if you have a guide you can do it pretty quickly. What i did was since it is an account wide achievement, i just took my main and all my alts through queensdale doing the exact same ones. Another trick is that the overflow maps will always reset pumpkins. You could in theory go to LA overflow map and get them all(about 20) very quickly when you know the way, then zone out and zone back into the overflow and they will be there again. This also nets you the Master Carver title.

Don’t let the weapon skins, the gambling game, or the frustrating to some clocktower event burn you out of the event. The event itself is actually very fun all in all, and in my 15 or so years of MMO’s its probably the best done event that I have seen.

Well now that all of the MK doors are permanently open, how are we suppose to get the Halloween events done for that achievement?

I’ve done a little of everything from the event. Except for fight the mad king… I was really busy the past couple days and didn’t get on to do that. I haven’t done any of the achievements except the candy corn one. I tried the clock tower… that was a lot of fun, but after 4 straight hours of failing, I was burnt out lol. Maybe next year. I’m looking forward to getting on a little tonight, to see what stage 4 is like :-)

asperbianca.3196:

Well now that all of the MK doors are permanently open, how are we suppose to get the Halloween events done for that achievement?

The events and hunting one can be done by farming mobs inside the labyrinth.

I did at first before phase 2. All there seemed to do was filling achievement bars at that point. I saw the groups chasing the trick or treat doors and that is something I don’t see as fun.

But when phase 2 was released that let you complete achievements while doing fun new instances, I completely changed my mind about this event.

Now looking back I have to say that I really enjoyed it so far and am looking forward to the next holiday event.