Guild Wars 2

Kaoss.3186:

As far as I’m concerned, this wasn’t a test of skill, but rather a test of patience. It has so much to do with skill as it does with patience to try it over and over again and, ultimately, luck.

This is most of the most accurate posts so far.

Having to wait for each player to die, as well as watching that cutscene over and over and over is what zaps a lot of people’s patience. Here’s the thing: when every player falls off the course, the timer (the event bar in the upper right) for the next round jumps ahead and goes faster. However, when it reaches about 90%, it crawls to a snails pace and takes like 7 seconds to reach the end! A full 7 seconds! Then you watch the cutscene for about 3 seconds before you can start. This may not seem like much but when you multiply it by all the tries one needs, it really adds up. Every 6 tries and you’ve wasted a minute. Attempt it 50 times? Almost 6 minutes is wasted just waiting to restart. And I haven’t even mentioned the worst thing of all – that 7 seconds can get longer if everybody dies not that far in on the course. In fact, unless you make it very far each time, you will have to wait for this “buffer” time, even when you are alone. The removal or speeding up of this one area would make it so much better.

As someone who was unable to complete it i still say it was a good jumping puzzle and of a difficulty I would like to see more of.

There were only really two problems with it.

For something that’s really a solo activity other people were generally more of a hindrance rather than a benefit, which goes against one of the main aims of GW2 (other people being either neutral to gameplay or a benefit)

So next time allow people to solo something like this if they want to and the other issue was, something of this difficulty should not be limited to an event duration, the added pressure of “event will end soon” definitely forced people to over do their attempt sessions leading to much of the rage

Didn’t give up…….Just ran out of time to complete it. Ran it the last night for six hours and only got to the end once, and missed a stupid easy jump. Never got back!!!!!!

Totally fun, hard and horrible………all at the same time.

Please give us back the clock tower……..I’m not gonna be ok until I get this!

Jumping is just agony for me so I avoid it, save for the Vistas which I need for map completion. Some of those I’d never get if not for my guildies (so very, very thankful for my guild mates). I lack eye / hand coordination, plus I seem to lack “keyboard awareness” so I have difficulty getting my fingers on the right keys without looking (was never any good at playing the piano for the same reason, even after years of lessons). It makes me way too slow for timed puzzles.

I did attempt it numerous times, but finally gave it up as a lost cause. Spent my time in the Labyrnith, which I did enjoy and managed to score some nice loot along the way!

A rough 200 retries yesterday and I finally got through it.

Perseverance, people! I was smiling with the power of a thousand suns due to the amusement I got from constantly failing.

I’m a Norn. We get no love in jumping puzzles.

Tried it for about 3 hours, never made it above about 10 jumps or so. Gave up.

I tried it for about 20 minutes, but just couldn’t see my tiny Asura amidst all the Norns, Charr, Humans etc. (especially after the first ‘checkpoint’ where everybody groups together). Not saying that I could have definitely done it solo, but I think that I’d have stood a better chance.

@Josh
I believe that this puzzle was perfect in every way. It was there, achievement just like any other JP, it didn’t give any titles but it did give the achievement. I think it’s good to make some challenging things that only a players who have certain skills can do it. Do not ever make the game too easy, it just gets boring, we do need challenge. I got good at clock tower because I spent hours on it, and I ended up completing it every single run, without being close to failing, but I did invest quite some effort in getting that skill, and I don’t regret it at all, it was kitten fun.
But again, I had no way of getting all the carving pumpkins simply because that’s not what I do, I don’t go around and farm, and I don’t mind it at all. I couldn’t do it, it’s just an achievement like any other, and it fits different players’ demographic, just like clock tower fits someone else.
Please DO keep making these kind of things man, you should be proud of what you made here.
Also, I see you’re concerned about players not liking it. Well, of course there will always be people who won’t like certain things, but you shouldn’t ignore all the people who actually loved it and want to see more. You can always make a poll or go randomly ask people for opinion and see the exact numbers and see if people in general loved it or hated it or simply weren’t interested in jumping stuff.

Honestly, I was shocked that you guys in Anet managed to come up with something this good, I really hope we’ll see more of these sorts of things

Good job.

I gave up on the clock-tower as it was a tiny bit too hard but not for the right reasons (jump difficulty). Indeed I feel like sometimes collision detection in JPs gets weird (probably amplified by client-server sync issues) and you get bumped down even though you thought you made it (the opposite being true as well).

The MK mini-dungeon though was quite nice. This idea of a mostly vertical layout needs to be reused in future dungeons or mini-dungeons!

Lashay.6581:

As someone who was unable to complete it i still say it was a good jumping puzzle and of a difficulty I would like to see more of.

There were only really two problems with it.

For something that’s really a solo activity other people were generally more of a hindrance rather than a benefit, which goes against one of the main aims of GW2 (other people being either neutral to gameplay or a benefit)

So next time allow people to solo something like this if they want to and the other issue was, something of this difficulty should not be limited to an event duration, the added pressure of “event will end soon” definitely forced people to over do their attempt sessions leading to much of the rage

Totally agree.

If this was a jumping puzzle I can do whenever I WANT then I would NEVER complain about it because I will have an infinite amount of time to complete it and it would be great to actually have a very difficult challenge in the game that only the patient people who are willing to make time for it to complete it.

Josh, those kind of puzzles are great really for the game as long as it STAYS there and not for a limited time. The kind of imagination for this is more than amazing, I love it. The time constraint on it is horrible. Not allowing us to solo this is a hassle too. I really can’t wait to see a jumping puzzle or a mini-dungeon this hard in-game that I can do everyday, we do need new challenges from time to time.

I hope we get to see more stuff like this in the future. Best feeling I had in a mmo was reaching the top of that tower!

For anyone who might care. The problem with the jumping puzzle was because of a bad design. The jumps were not hard. The problem came from 3 points:

1. We waited more than we actually played. It is a bad design decision to make us wait for 1+ minute until we can try again.

2. The hardest part of the jumping puzzle was the first wait for the platforms to raise. Norns and Charrs are too kitten large and you cannot see anything because of them.

3. Time. The worst thing you can do is time. Seriously. Make it hard because of the hard jumps not because you are pressured to jump as fast as you can. Lagg + bad computers = death. Bad camera + big characters = death.

Whoever made this puzzle needs to understand that time != hard. Time = annoying.

Give us our own instance and let us play the kitten game. Make it hard to jump rather than time pressuring.

Well the waiting sometimes was a bit tedious, but mostly we had so much fun while waiting it was quite nice. I loved Clocktower, played it even after finishing it for the first time just for fun.

Anastaziel.4968:

Whoever made this puzzle needs to understand that time != hard. Time = annoying.

Give us our own instance and let us play the kitten game. Make it hard to jump rather than time pressuring.

I agree with your points 1 and 2 but the third one I couldn’t disagree more with. Being fast does give it more challenge. A lot of it, too. I could probably do the clock tower on my first try with no timer on it. I enjoyed the fight against the clock. Was not annoying at all. Clock Tower gave me one of the best gameplay related experiences I’ve had in MMORPGs in the last 10 years that I’ve played them.

To make a hard jump for the real pros, you need to bring in the “abuse” of game physics. Such as jumping three times up a straight wall or using a leap skill while jumping. Josh, you should make a puzzle that requires you to “slide” jump. You know, that thing that happens when you jump down to water at the edge and it pushes you all the way to the bottom. Not sure if it’s possible out of water but I think you can do it with a really steep cliff to make the jump reach further. Not sure though.

I gave up on it too, I suck at jumping puzzles and tend to rage when I slip and fall to my death. Its cool though, I’m ok with not having done everything. I only have X hours a weekfor gaming, I’d rather log those towards something fun and enjoyable than partake in a jump puzzle that I know will give me an aneurysm lol.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

Tried 4 or 5 times, then said “nope, I’m’a farm some more candy corns.” Been happy since.

When I made this map I was HOPING that people who aren’t into jumping would do exactly this. They’d see a fun Halloween looking environment, maybe get to the first chest and snag a goodie, then be on their merry way. I see now it was a mistake to make the hardest jumping challenge in the game part of an in-your-face update like a holiday event. I’m not going to stop making difficult stuff like this, they just won’t be so prominent in the future. I honestly hate making people upset and have a very high level of empathy. So it’s been hard hearing all the people that are so angry, frustrated and sad because of something I’ve made. But it’s just another lesson learned.

It was the GREATEST Jumping Puzzle ever. I want more of them. Easy ones are just done in 2 minutes. Go On like that and MAKE THEM EVEN HARDER!!! Cause 95% are not really a jumping puzzle, the’re way too easy -.- That’s why I’m upset :-P so you have to make harder ones too^^ Keep going ;-)

@Josh
Clock tower was something that definitely improves the quality of this game. Unlike the personal story quests when after finishing them I was like: “meh, it’s done, I got rid of it finally, now I can have fun”, with clock tower I actually had that feeling of accomplishment, and I wanted more. Even though Guild Wars is one game, it in itself has many different game: for example: dungeons, or jumping puzzles, those could all be considered as mini games. And I can say Clock tower was the only thing that gave me feeling similar to one after finishing Limbo (you should know about that game), when I just wanted more and more. Those things are what makes the games better than the others, it’s what makes the game unique and special. There are hundreds of other games with dungeons, quests, grinding, trade posts whatever, but there isn’t any game with clock tower, and that’s what makes it good.
Also, griffonrook is also a similar puzzle, if it had same rewards as clock tower and was only on holiday I would’ve also kept doing it, as it’s kitten fun, people should try it if they liked clock tower
Last thing is: don’t keep these sort of challenges throughout the whole year, just put them on the event times, else they’ll kinda lose the meaning.

Roezz.5460:

As an aside, I would also like to add, as someone else mentioned, mouse turning versus keyboard turning probably makes a world of difference. I am not sure how someone could keyboard turn and do the puzzle, because with the mouse you can turn instantly versus the gradual keyboard turn.

That’s not so much a skill issue as it is reteaching one’s self a different way. When I switched many years ago it was very uncomfortable and took a long time. Now, though, it makes stuff much easier.

I cannot even imagine trying to do ANY jumping puzzle using the keyboard alone. I am curious to know how many actually DID get to the top with keyboard controls alone. As for me, mouse turning was absolutely imperative.

I gave up after 30 minutes. I realized that like Spekk’s lab jumping puzzle it was impossible to do using the keyboard maneuvering only and would be wasting my time. At least I was not stupid enough to waste n-hours on it like a lot of people did.

All puzzles should be doable without mouse turning.

Yah, I gave up. Part of frustration and part because of little reward. When I heard clocktower didn’t count towards title and that you couldn’t even salvage slippers for ectos/rune, it kinda killed it for me. Seems I made right call since come the next special event the h’ween achievement will be removed (titles and points stay though), so there will be no empty achievement to haunt me =P
I did read how they don’t plan to make anything that hard for a temp event again….good to know. Now the only question is if the clocktower will ever return…

Please don’t stop! You see making the content very hard is what made it very awesome. It meant that not everyone could do it and that dedication and skill was rewarded.

That is rare in many MMO’s and the idea of it makes it stand out. People will whine but I will always remember how good it felt to beat it.

I hate events where everything is just too easy and there is no sense of accomplishment. This event helped make the event, I wish there were more challenges like this!

So please keep making great and challenging things. The map was fair!

The only part that was questionable was having to jump back down, I still don’t know the “proper” way of doing it, it always seemed a bit finicky. The rest was perfect.

I also gave up after trying it for about an hour. I couldn’t get past the fact that there were all those Norn and Char blocking the screen for me. I am typically pretty good at jumping puzzles, but I need to see where I am jumping. I hope ArenaNet will consider a solo-friendly version next year.

I gave up on that blasted tower, but not because I failed over and over and over again.

I gave up because, when I failed, I had to wait to attempt it again. Then when I did attempt it again, so did twenty other people, which made it very hard to see the actual jumping course especially with Norn, Charr, and the Camera bugging out when it bumped into a piece of debris.

With most other jump puzzles, when I fail, I can run back and try again quickly (WvW jumping puzzles excluded from the “quickly” statement). The jumping puzzles also aren’t littered with other players blocking my view.

Maybe next year I’ll be able to do it, but this year I could not get far.

This is not to say it’s bad. Not at all. I thoroughly enjoyed the difficulty, I just wish it had a single-player instance to do it. Please Josh, keep up the good work.

I spent about 15 minutes on it before realizing that with all the other players I was pretty much screwed. And don’t even get me started on the camera problems, especially with an Asura.

I woud have been much more persistent if I could get GW2 to run with more than 10 frames per second in that area.

Honestly I think the difficulty was just right. Took me about 2hrs overall. Like everyone else I was annoyed at first. Thats just human nature – having your progress blocked causes frustration. However I immediately recognized it for the fun it was worth. Lots of chat, hanging out near the tower, trying to pick your lines up. A true test of not only jumping skill but problem solving (as in which objects to jump to/chests to loot/etc), and patience. Things that are hard just make the accomplishment so much more in the end.

Dont change a thing. You cant expect everyone on Earth to have the same experiences. Im pretty stoked when I have a good menage-a-trois. It wouldnt be nearly as cool if it happened every week you know? Oh you havent experienced a menage-a-trois? Well sorry, but dont try to belittle other peoples accomplishments or worse, prevent them from occurring because you were unable to make it happen yourself.

This tower was easy, took me only 3-4 tries to get it – just practice on some other jumping puzzles and watch a vid if you’re struggling.