Guild Wars 2

Strang. If it is not targetting russians, then why all the dredge names and places all use transliterated russian words? Post-soviet countries have a lot of languages of their own. Your point is invalid.

“Neither is Russia a race, it´s a nation. No race, no racism.” – Ok, nacism then.

What I am saying is, if stereotypes are ok, jabbing at specific nation is ok, then whats the point in trying to make all players be good to each other? The game clearly encourages inequality and disregard for other people feelings (as in – western people find dredge ok and funny, even if it is offensive for russian players, and no one seems to mind). Maybe we all should take a page out of your book and consider asuran troubles hilarious, laugh and point fingers.

@Ryth – hit “Esc” or the cog wheel in the very top left for the main menu. then his Options and on the first tab you can check-off “Double tap to evade”. that does help a lot! ;DD

Norn reporting here. i really want to try rolling a small character to see the effect large characters has on other players. i tend to feel bad when people comment and i’ve read it. though, i’m on the small scale of Norn and i’ve run alongside some pretty big Charr or Norn, even some who have their spiky shoulders on. and true sometimes they seem to get in the way but i’ve gotten to a point where i judge my jumps more based on the center of my screen (where my character is).. least in the beginning phase when it’s all a jumble. then later on, everyone gets spaced out and you can see clearly. after more than a handful (or two) tries of the first bit, i’d say it’s, not easy, but doable to have it under muscle memory.

i run without body armor so it’s easier for myself AND hopefully for others as well. the first time, i had people lash out at me. started calling me names. “if you’re not here, i make it to half way at least fat butt”. edited for sake of what have you. so i said “sure, i’ll sit out next race. feel free to make it to the top.” they come back to the entrance after no more than a few seconds. without a second thought, i commented “back so soon?” and they didn’t say anything more. that was based on first instinct. i know i’m nowhere near as large as a Norn IRL. but i guess a part of me can’t help but feel conncted to your toon in a way. it is your creation after all. an alter-ego. this IS an RPG. so i lashed out. cause i took offense. then someone else in the instance said “no need to be rude we’re all in this together.” and that reminded me. i shouldn’t have stooped to their level. so whoever you are, naked Human, i apologize for my actions.

last night, things were taken to a different level where i was given death threats. more name calling and wishing of diseases and misfortune directed at me, using my screen name. i thought that was taking it a bit too far. i guess i could have ignored them. i did see them sit out a few races after and stopped talking so maybe they calmed down a bit. but they’d constantly shoot at me (ranger) or harass me in the general vicinity. at which point, an even larger Norn came in. and that just made me laugh. after my first “incident” though, i’ve learnt to not pay these people any attention. it is just sad though to see this as my server and the population itself has been so awesome and such a great community is fostering. and then you still see players like these.

when i left to go to bed, i wished everyone good luck. and then two more people chimed in, who never spoke up before and basically told me to GTFO. which left a sour taste in my mouth. regardless of how well i’m dealing with it. i can handle it. but doesn’t mean i have to enjoy it.

THAT being said though, i’ve met many a great players while doing this! and it’s so good when someone you’ve been running with finally complete it. i’ve randomly given out anything from free dyes to free ectos for those that complete the race. and have made a few new friends out of it. and while there are whiners and fumers and unacceptable behavior, there are those that stand up for the good of.. i guess, humanity, if you will. and have compassion. and are there for the sake of gw2, for the sake of having fun.

- “if an asura can do make it further than you, i don’t see the problem”
- “don’t hate them for being big, but yourself for being small. it is harder while there are larger toons around, but they have a right to be here too”
- people whispering me words of encouragement
- and just general peopel giving tips when they see you falling off at certain places. i’ve even had players stop and wait for me to take a difficult jumping before just advancing together.

i’ve debated using my human engi to get to the clock tower. but now? i’m just going to stick with my Norn. because he IS my main. and i’d like to get the achievement using him. (also the fact that queensdale doors are bugged and my engi gets one shotted in kessex hills doesn’t help ; ))) )

regardless – those who feel they are being targeted. pay them no mind! and do the jump puzzle if you enjoy it. leave the instance, with your head held high, until you find a good group. if you like the group you’re in save one or two inconsiderate souls.. remain composed and level-headed and if they can come to terms with it, they’ll stay and work with you. if not, they’ll leave on their own. do take your armor off. running barefoot actually helps.

sorry to those i’ve ever blocked as well – but hey! just upping the challenge for you. so you can tell your grandkid’s kids the days of when you made it to the top of the mad king’s clock tower, even in the face (and walls for backs) or the giant Norn and Charr.

I’ve yet to complete the puzzle and likely won’t try again, and a lot of times (not all or even most, but many times) it’s been because I couldn’t see my character to be able to tell where I am on a platform, so I either run off the edge or I jump too far away to land the next platform. I do understand the frustration people are feeling toward the two large races, because it has basically made me decide not to continue trying. However, it isn’t the players’ fault and I would never direct my frustration at anyone else. I don’t like the mechanics of the puzzle because it’s so twitchy already, but the real reason I’m not bothering anymore is because I see no reason to frustrate myself constantly between now and the end of the Halloween event over someone else’s character choice. I’m genuinely sorry that players who chose Charr or Norn are getting grief from others; that is unforgivable. It certainly isn’t your fault your character model is creating problems for others. All I can say is to keep in mind that when someone is ranting at you, they’re not really ranting at YOU, they’re ranting at whoever designed the puzzle. Just try to be the bigger person and shrug it off. It isn’t fair that you should be the target of their anger at all. But, that’s the internet for you.

I was fortunate in that I wasn’t the target of any anger when I was doing the Tower on my Norn (who’s a slightly taller than average female) and Charr (who IS a max-size brute), but nonetheless, I did still remove my armor to make it easier for the other players. It doesn’t hurt me to help them out, after all.

@Sabo – “Just try to be the bigger person and shrug it off.”

ha, i see what you did there! lol.
i will make sure i /shrug next time any hate comes my way. haha thanks for that.
sorry to hear the experience has been so frustrating for you that you won’t attempt it again either. they did say somewhere the puzzle wasn’t meant for everyone, no?

People shouldn’t hate the Norns and Charrs. They should hate ArenaNet for coming up with a jumping puzzle where the size of a character can actually prevent you from seeing where you are going.

I started as Asura, switched to Charr and found it much easier. Norn may of been even a little easier still.

If you can, try doing it around 6am est, I was sometimes running with only 1 other person which helped dramatically. Of course I work 3rd shift, so probably not for most.

Also, I consider myself pretty good at these puzzles and it took me around 100 attempts. I would do it for an hour, then quit and try again later.

cmon man, look in options ….. -_-

@Ryth.6518

Despite my frustration with the Charr and Norn in the puzzle, I found a little bit of “elbowing” each other made it much more easy to withstand failure. I ended up making a friend in there too as we taunted each other in our race to the top. (I Asura, he Charr.. he won…)

I think people are too uptight over the comments made. I did grumble, but it was always meant in jest as it isn’t their fault the models are so big.

On Friday after release, this puzzle drove a friend and I to distraction, and yes, the Norn and Charr characters doing the puzzle did aggravate things, but we never voiced our anger.
Partly because it’s very hard for larger characters to judge jump distances, particularly Charr and their all-fours lope; partly because we knew we had characters of a similar size.

Yet on Saturday I cracked it, then proceeded to take all 9 of my characters through, even doing it first time on two of them.

What I found more than precision was that it came down to timing; my fingers eventually trained themselves to know what to press when, and it became easy.
It was simple muscle memory pattern training, and once my brain had the “template” remembered, I could do it on any character, no matter their shape or size; after all, they all move at the same speed and jump the same distance.
The trick is realising that and separating the visual cues from the rhythmic ones.
I’m guessing Guitar Hero players were probably some of the fastest people to crack this puzzle.

Aelaren.3784:

Strang. If it is not targetting russians, then why all the dredge names and places all use transliterated russian words? Post-soviet countries have a lot of languages of their own. Your point is invalid.

“Neither is Russia a race, it´s a nation. No race, no racism.” – Ok, nacism then.

What I am saying is, if stereotypes are ok, jabbing at specific nation is ok, then whats the point in trying to make all players be good to each other? The game clearly encourages inequality and disregard for other people feelings (as in – western people find dredge ok and funny, even if it is offensive for russian players, and no one seems to mind). Maybe we all should take a page out of your book and consider asuran troubles hilarious, laugh and point fingers.

Names?
No, they´re not all russian words. Not even most are.
There´s ukranian, czechish and serbian names/places, name dropping of some devs, famous writers names, puns about moles with slavic twist….

The jab i´m about is the similiarity of dredge culture to soviet union, or atleast western intertpretation of it. It´s a jabs at soviet union not russia, not russians. And it´s a jab only if you take offense being similiar with fantasy race, that´s actualy not offensive depiction.

Zanshin.5379:

People shouldn’t hate the Norns and Charrs. They should hate ArenaNet for coming up with a jumping puzzle where the size of a character can actually prevent you from seeing where you are going.

I don’t hate anyone for that. As a developer you cannot sometimes foresee how an issue which is below their threshold of paying attention to is actually scaling out in a real situation. It was more something they didn’t intend to happen anyway as part of the encounter more of a technical limitation. They could not make it available as solo because these events are dominated by high traffic and thus higher load. 1 million instances would probably have led to a lag-laden encounter (of course with people saying lags are no big deal, they are playing from planet Jupiter via wireless etc.) So the designer made the initial platform wider and they agreed on 20 people which they even lowered to 12 which is still tough on servers but was deemed better than 20. On Reddit he said next year he will look into several issues which were reported and the option to ghost out other players.

Ravenblade.7685:

Zanshin.5379:

People shouldn’t hate the Norns and Charrs. They should hate ArenaNet for coming up with a jumping puzzle where the size of a character can actually prevent you from seeing where you are going.

I don’t hate anyone for that. As a developer you cannot sometimes foresee how an issue which is below their threshold of paying attention to is actually scaling out in a real situation. It was more something they didn’t intend to happen anyway as part of the encounter more of a technical limitation. They could not make it available as solo because these events are dominated by high traffic and thus higher load. 1 million instances would probably have led to a lag-laden encounter (of course with people saying lags are no big deal, they are playing from planet Jupiter via wireless etc.) So the designer made the initial platform wider and they agreed on 20 people which they even lowered to 12 which is still tough on servers but was deemed better than 20. On Reddit he said next year he will look into several issues which were reported and the option to ghost out other players.

It’s nice if they are trying to find ways how to avoid this in the future.

But it’s a weak excuse saying they couldn’t forsee this.
of course they could: test it with a maximum group of different characters… that’s all it took to notice the issue.
I’m afraid they knew, they must have, but that they didn’t care enough till the complaints came in.
It simply can’t be that they didn’t see this while testing. And if they really didn’t, than they didn’t test very thoroughly… (which I don’t think is true).

First, they do block out parts of the platforms, but after a few tries the jump can be attempted by pure timing (without looking at the edge of the platforms)

I had a situation where I got a little hot headed. This woman kept saying stuff because I was a charr. After an hour and a half I finally just dyed my charr pink. I was an oreo colored charr. Got naked so I could see better. Someone else got naked and had same exact skin set up so I dyed my charr pink. They began to freak out. I was level 16 I think.

She actually went on to insult my coat. I was level 12, lol.

I had no problems with charr or norn.

The camera was stuck looking at the floor most of the time, so I couldn’t see them.
I couldn’t see my character either.
I couldn’t see anything but the floor.

And I still managed to complete it.

I just wish I could SEE the clocktower while going up. All of it, not just the floor. I’d love to see the other characters as they fall behind me too.
But I couldn’t.
The vertical FoV seemed to help a little, but not enough.

They really need to address these camera issues.

There are many other easier ways to earn Trick and Trat bags,
and an easy solution would be to log out players that have completed the puzzle.
In the long run it would help, though to start with, not much of a difference would
be to spot.

Raehvyn.4530:

I had a situation where I got a little hot headed. This woman kept saying stuff because I was a charr. After an hour and a half I finally just dyed my charr pink. I was an oreo colored charr. Got naked so I could see better. Someone else got naked and had same exact skin set up so I dyed my charr pink. They began to freak out. I was level 16 I think.

She actually went on to insult my coat. I was level 12, lol.

I was in a group with some people, and there was me (a small female Norn), and then another large female Norn. She had on hood, and people were complaining about it for a while. She then proceeded to dye it a really bright obnoxious yellow. It made me laugh.

Eh, I fell twice because all I could see was Charr kitten I fell dozens of times from me sucking, so I never complained about it much. =P

I like the challenge of jumping puzzles, even if they do frazzle me at times. But a challenge is a good thing. What kills me every time isn’t the inability to see thru Norn & Charr (i have tiny characters). It’s the time limit. Or more specifically, the fast-flowing ooze that always catches me. If we could highlight ourselves it might make things easier, but alas, that’s not a function of the game.

Ryth.6518:

Can someone tell me how to disable the double tap dodge forward (fell off multiple times because my W key was pressed too quickly)

if you didn’t figure it out yet..

you hit the “gear/cog” at the top left of your game window.. to open Game Menu.. then go to Options.. on the main tab, at the bottom for the Combat options.. the top check box.. turns “double tab to evade” on and off.

I’ve not seen the bashing but someone did ask the huge norn in our group to remove his armor. He did and then someone else said….ahhhhhhhhh put it back on!!!! Everyone lol’d and we had fun.

I think the suggestion to turn your chat off is best. We have nice mature people playing the game and then we have the opposite type. Nothing we say or do will change immature rude people into mature polite folks.

I have to admit after doing the puzzle for an hour or so I made a thread petitioning to ban Charr and Norn from the tower. It was a joke, but people took it seriously, so I avoided posting in it any further to avoid a flame war.

But they really do mess things up. Its really any and all bodies, but the bigger the body, the more difficult the puzzle becomes. ESPECIALLY at the beginning. For me the hardest part of the puzzle is that beginning part after the clocktower wall explodes and everyone starts hopping across the debris. Once I get through that it is fairly straightforward; especially after 75% of the group has failed at that point.

The first night I started doing the puzzle I got so addicted I stayed up until 3:30 am CST doing it knowing I had work in the morning. As it got later and later, it dwindled to where there was only me and 2 others running it, then me and 1 other, and then just me. These runs were so much better for a few reasons. Out of the 3 of us, I was the most experienced at running the gauntlet, so I was almost always the one that determined how long the clock ran, as they usually fell before me. Additionally, there were only 2 bodies that could potentially obstruct my view; a Human and a Charr. This was not near as bad as earlier in the day when there were 3 huge Norn and 3 Charr running about. After running it over and over that night and making it to the end many many times, I began to think that maybe it was just my inexperience, and not the big bumbling bodies that had prevented me before.

Fast forward to the next day after work. I log in at the clocktower and decide I am going to give it a few runs before going about some dailies and such. Of course I am in a full overflow. The runs start, and I find that I am having a hard time making some of the jumps because it is essentially blind guessing because of the mass number of bodies. I found myself lagging behind intentionally, because I knew I could do the run quickly enough if I could just see my character. This would allow all the other people to fail in the first 10 seconds of the wall exploding so I could trek along happily.

Basically, any sort of obstruction does make it more difficult, although not impossible. It IS possible to work through not having vision of one’s toon (I am the littlest sylvari male you can be), but it definitely is harder. For me anyway.

Of course, I also found that I performed better when my toon was naked than when I was wearing my robes. I don’t fully understand why, but I imagine it has something to do with me being able to see my legs rather then a skirt. Seeing my lean body running along rather than a pile of clothes somehow made it easier.

So basically, when you are first trying to learn the puzzle and the pattern you follow to jump it, it is extremely frustrating to not be able to see where you are going because there is a charr pucker in your face at all times. Once you’ve learned the puzzle, this is less problematic, although it does make it slightly more difficult still.

I’ve never hated out on a particular race in the puzzle. In fact, I find it useless to hate coz after the first explosion, in maybe around after 10 seconds everyone else starts falling out and you’re left with a relatively smaller group and more even spaced so the big sizes of char and norn are no issue.

I do hate out on people who bring in golems, avatar of nature thingy (sylvari skill I think) to the map with the purpose of distracting people. I’m slightly ok with people giving speed boosts (honestly, how do they even do that??).

I have been able to do the puzzle on two characters (both were small humans) without picking on the Charr and Norn characters who were in there with me. You guys have just as much right to be there as anyone else. Don’t let them bully you into quitting just because some players lack maturity. If they are lashing out at you and other large body type characters, the problem is with them, not you.

Frankly, they just need to grow up and get over it. The puzzle takes practice. If they put in the time, they will learn the puzzle well enough to beat it. The people who are blaming others around them for their own failure to complete the puzzle are revealing an ugly character flaw. Plenty of smaller characters have been able to complete the puzzle.

Besides, Norn and Charr only “mess things up” in the earliest parts of the puzzle, when it’s very crowded. But it’s so crowded there that ANYONE can end up blocking your view. Once you make it past the first couple of sections, people are spread out enough that it doesn’t really matter because you can just wait half a second to let the larger character get a step or two ahead of you — or if they are slow, you can run ahead of them.

When I was first learning the jumps, I went slowly, even though I knew I wouldn’t make it, because I wanted to be able to see well enough to learn the jumps. Once I learned the early parts of the puzzle, I was able to go much faster — so fast that I was usually the first in line….But even when I wasn’t first, I knew the jumps so well that I was able to do them, even when I was in the middle of the big zerg.

I will admit I found it frustrating when there were tall Norn/Charr in my group but I didn’t feel the need to ever be rude to them about it . At the end of the day it’s not their fault that Anet decided to make this a group puzzle. They had as much right to participate as much as anyone else. Some taller characters were kind enough to take their armor off to make it a little easier to see.

Also just want to say that when waiting for the puzzle to start, please don’t use skills that summon something e.g. a Golem as they end up in the puzzle too xD

They are the scapegoats.

The people that managed to finish it did it running around with the same norms and chars. The people that cant do it instead of blaming themselves blame the size of the races, that mattered little to nothing to the people that actually completed the puzzle.

Look I will put it like this I have completed the tower 3 times Human Asura and Norn (but hes at the shortest height for a Norn). All three times the runs that made there was not a Norn or Charrr insight. I specifically ran to rooms with the lowest numbers and no more than 2 Norns or Charrs or any combo between that.

Honestly no one is hating on your race choice just the design of the tower itself. None of us knew that the camera angles be wonky at times and we would have to learn to blind jump. So its not our fault.

AXEL.8362:

They are the scapegoats.

The people that managed to finish it did it running around with the same norms and chars. The people that cant do it instead of blaming themselves blame the size of the races, that mattered little to nothing to the people that actually completed the puzzle.

People really aren’t blaming the players. But if you have a bunch of huge avatars and the camera freaks out right after the tower blows out at the beginning it can make those next few jumps much much harder. It really is only a small section of the tower that has this issue.

AXEL.8362:

They are the scapegoats.

The people that managed to finish it did it running around with the same norms and chars. The people that cant do it instead of blaming themselves blame the size of the races, that mattered little to nothing to the people that actually completed the puzzle.

I have to say, I don’t agree with the sentiment that people are only blaming others instead of themselves. The complaint isn’t that it is impossible because of the big characters; the complaint is that the possible becomes more difficult than it already is as a result of congestion in the puzzle, and the big models make it worse. Sure a lot of bodies regardless of size are going to cause congestion, but when you have even just 2 norn wearing their armor, the field of view for everyone else is obstructed. I do the puzzle about halfway zoomed in, because I can fine tune my movements better, so when I see a mass of bodies, I can see little other than the mass of bodies. This is why I tend to fall back and watch all the people fall in front of me in their haste while I skip from rubble to cog to staircase. I have done the first part of the puzzle amidst a mob when I could not see my own character successfully, but it is definitely more challenging than when I have vision of my own character.

To say it mattered “little to nothing” is wrong. People just had to learn how to work within that extra difficulty. If they were the only ones in the puzzle, it would have been easier., and I know this from experience.

If you are a Norn/Charr you have every right to get the soulbound item as anyone else. Be considerate though, and “master” the puzzle with a smaller character first and you won’t be around long enough to bother anyone. For those Norn/Charr that have said they intentionally “grief” by obstructing view / using psychological warfare / bright dyes on large equipment, you are no better than the ones making the attacks and giving others a bad name.

Took me 4 tries for my Norn to breeze through after timing the jumps on my minimum size Sylvari, and I didn’t get a single complaint:

Kalea.9167:

mischwoof.9785:

I’m a charr. I think it’s hilarious that people freak out when I do Clock Tower. “GET YOUR FAT kitten OUT OF THE WAY MEDICAT” all the time ahahaha

Hey man, i’m just trying to get my treat bags. If you can’t see, that’s not my problem.

So players like this intentionally agitate other players who are struggling with the puzzle.

Then other players start spawning their elite summons, and dragging more trash into the puzzle.

Suddenly a minute or two is entirely wasted while excess pets are all over the screen.

I’m happy that some of you can do the puzzle blindfolded. That’s nice.

Many of us are visually oriented. No amount of telling us to do things ‘blindly’ is going to make it happen suddenly.

It might happen after a 30 or so successful attempts at something (30 or so being a ‘nice’ number at which something can become habitual); however, in order for this to happen, we’d have to be able to see what we were doing in the first place to be successful.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Why is their immediate response “sorry you fail and are incompetent, go do something else” ???

I like how you’re assuming that just because i’m trying to partake in the same event everyone else is, is that i’m intentionally agitating other people. What do you propose I do? Stay out of your way because I have a large character model?

I said I found it funny that people whine and moan about me doing the same event that they’re doing, and I stand by that. I said it’s not my problem because it isn’t; that doesn’t make my intentions malicious. I shouldn’t have to ‘stay in the back’ or ‘wait for other people to finish it’ just because i’m FLUFFY.

let’s ban all Norn and Charr from the puzzle!
/kidding

I admit it took me way to long to do this puzzle. I got frustrated and wanted to quit the game forever! lol
But when I finally did complete it I had 3 wonderful looking giant Norn ladies rears to follow the whole time. If you have to look at a group of characters for an hour these are the ones you want!
I think that made the difference.
Thank you to those semi-nude giants running the puzzle yesterday.

I had to post at this topic, as i have as well felt the hate. My main character is a Charr, and it took me quite a while to complete the puzzle. All the way through, i did get a LOT of complaints, that i simply brushed off, for the simple fact that, after that initial stage, everyone left gets enough space between them so that my size will not matter any longer, so the people complaining are just angry they are falling too early and trying to blame something.

After i completed it on my Charr though, i went back in with my asura. I was curious if maybe i really was getting in the way. There were a lot of norn and charr on this try, and the answer is, no. Simple as that, the problem with the asura is that the camera seems to be a little closer, so the jumps seem different, but the size thing, did not bother me, at all. I then completed with the asura, and went back with all my other chars, norn, human and sylvari. Believe it or not, it was a lot easier with them. Completed with 2-3 tries each.

You see, the Charr is kinda harder to jump with as it is kindda hard to say precisely where he is stepping, sometimes it seems you are at the edge of something, but you really arent yet, so you wont make it on a long jump. With the asura, there is the camera thing i mentioned. The rest, it was just following the script, same camera as the charr, easier to tell where i was standing.

tl;dr: People complaining are just looking for excuses for their own mistakes that make them not make it, just ignore them and be friendly. I managed to help a lot of people while doing it and even made a friend on the way while we were helping each other. The puzzle is a lot of fun!

Fatty fatty two by four, blocking the view of the whole kitten floor.

I’ll repeat what I said earlier: if you’ve already learned the puzzle, you don’t need to SEE the puzzle anymore because you’ve already seen it, already seen the jump you need to make, and already worked the timing out. Of course when you went back on another character you were able to do it, because you already knew what to do.

The problem is for those trying to learn, those that actually have to SEE the next jump.

I finished the tower. It only took me slightly more than an hour to do so. At first, I was there with two huge norn and a large charr. It was extremely frustrating. I then played overflow roulette to get a tower with less obstructive characters. Found one with only a single female norn who was naked. After finding this non-obstructed tower, it took me six tries to finish the puzzle.

I don’t hate the people who play norn and charr. That would be absurd. Except for the obvious examples (huge norn named U Cant See) they are only playing the character they like.

What I hate is that a majority of the puzzle’s difficulty is artificial – it was only hard because the other players were blocking my view. If it was a solo instance it would have been easy. Way too easy.

They should have costumed everyone to a semi-transparent ghost or skeleton or some other Halloween-themed creature. That would alleviate a large majority of the issues with the tower.

Finally sat down last night and played with the intention of trying to succeed (previously I had only given it 15 minutes to check it out). It took me roughly 2.5 hours – and frankly, a Norn wearing a robe was an issue for me.

It was like there were three things to focus on:
1. Positioning – don’t jump too quickly, don’t walk off
2. Timing – don’t be too slow
3. Norn in Robe – must outrun him, or I can’t see my character at all.

I failed exactly three times because my character (average height human male) completely disappeared into him, and I couldn’t tell if I was positioned appropriately for the jump, resulting in falling short. It was only after I got the beginning portions down perfectly, and was able to outrun him by 5-6 body widths that the challenge went from “see where I am” to “jumping puzzle”.

Annoying as heck, but I got my slippers so whatever.