Guild Wars 2

So I loved the first instalment of SAB in April. I thought it was awesome – it was an awesome retro-style, simplified jumping puzzle that wasn’t too simple to start with, but gave you an ability to improve the more that you played it.

I died a lot in World 1 when I first played through SAB and learnt how everything worked. I died the most at World 1 Zone 3, like you’d expect, as it was the most difficult of the first three zones. But the more I played it, the better I became and the less I died. Everything – everything - had a tactic to it. The zones themselves had paths you could learn to take to either increase bauble efficiency or simply take a shorter route through the actual zone itself. 1-3 implemented this particularly well with the falling leaves; it wasn’t hard to take the shorter path but it could seem challenging until you learnt how best to run it.

This SAB…

No. This instalment of SAB has thrown that out the window in favour of improving microtransactions through the gem store, as made very obvious by your Infinite Continue Coin. Even without Tribulation mode, this new installment of SAB just… takes the fun right out of what made it fun to begin with.

All of World 1, unchanged, and World 2 Zone 1 Rapids, is still manageable.

Then we have World 2 Zone 2 and I have no words for how ridiculously frustrating this section got. The poison traps were really quite neat at first, until you made a tower full of them at almost every turn and then, to add to that, decided to fill that tower with assassins who will knock you into those poison traps if they so much as brush you by a hair. The assassins themselves aren’t challenging to take down in the right terrain.

This is why the assassins at the Bridge in Rapids are a pain in the kitten – the shuriken (spelling? Eh) throwers don’t move much – but the assassins need space to be fought. If they touch you at all outside of a dodgeroll (and sometimes if you are unlucky, glitch out and knock you around even in a dodgeroll) then they knock you for a mile and you will probably fall off the edge. Yet somebody, somewhere, thought it was clever to make an entire zone based around small walkways and a general lack of space and then put this enemy type in it.

No.

I’m not the best at jumping puzzles, I’ll admit. But I had fifty five lives for that zone alone. And I lost all of them. Fifty five lives. That doesn’t include the lives my friends lost while doing it with me. Combined, we easily lost over a hundred, between making silly mistakes when we got frustrated with the ridiculous cruelty of the zone, and other times when we were legitimately murdered because of three assassins mobbing us on a tiny ledge where they’d knock us off if we so much as looked at them funny.

But we stuck with it. We tried, tried and tried again in the name of good fun and got the icey section. To it’s credit, the ice was a great gimmick and we really did chill out (oh the puns) and enjoyed the fight. It was fun to slide around on the ice, though I’m disappointed Charr didn’t get sliding animations (sad kitty inbound.) We were able to forgive the zone for the otherwise complete lack of sense in structure because it ended on a fun new mechanic and a good note.

Then we got to World 2 Zone 3.

And to that part where you have to spend 400 baubles on the torch.

You know.

The 400 baubles we didn’t have because we’d spent what baubles we’d collected on buying continue coins for the unreasonably difficult last zone?

Yeah, those 400 baubles.

So after two hours of try, try, try again, we’re actually forced to give up.

This isn’t the same style that SAB had in April. And it’s been made abundantly clear that your goal is to use SAB to maximise profit rather than to bring back something the players loved by that Infinite Continue Coin sitting pretty in your gem store. I’m disappointed and I’m angry. Please don’t bother with future SAB worlds if you intend to use it as a cheap gimmick to make more cash and can’t keep the heart of the original SAB we saw in April.

/opinion is opinion and not fact. Some of you may have found this super easy and don’t agree with me, and that’s cool! If you wish to voice such, please do so sensibly and maybe even explain yourself so as to enlighten me and engage in jolly old discussion.

They’re not really silly mistakes when World 2 is littered in dozens of instant-deaths. It’s trial-and-error.

Just drop gems on the Infinite Continue Coin if you enjoy the content and don’t recommend SAB to your friends. The continue coin makes the experience much less stressful and casual when lives are meaningless and you can overcome any challenge through throwing enough lives at it.

I would drop gems on that Infinite Continue Coin if I actually felt like I should reward ArenaNet for this royal hash of bringing back SAB. Honestly though, I don’t, so unless I can be bothered to scrounge up enough gold to buy the gems themselves, I’m going to be skipping the ICC and leaving SAB alone.

I’m just utterly disappointed that SAB went from something that I loved so much I would play it for hours and never get bored with it, and spent a good amount of time making sure I got all the achievements for it, into something that I just detest the idea of even trying.

Beyond this, I also wouldn’t be able to talk my friends into joining me in SAB even if I myself got the coin; they would die just as much and for them death still means that they eventually run out of lives and need to buy new coins. SAB was never meant to be cash-shop-or-don’t-bother. Sad that it has become that way on its return, I was looking forward to this content since the end of the last one.

tl;dr: SAB world 2 is too hard.

Yes, I agree, and probably so does Josh Foreman. The jump in difficulty is a bit too high, but keep in mind that we don’t know the dig spots yet, and you probably didn’t open many chests. Without knowing any spot I racked up 150 bubbles from 2-3, and getting 200-300 baubles from world 1 is pretty fast too.

All the rest I believe is just you trying to justify your anger due to the excessive difficulty. Notice how people don’t give a crap about design or mechanics as long as something is easy but immediately change their mind when something gets hard? For example, I believe that the lady guardian in queen’s gauntlet is possibly one of the worst designed fights, yet guess who got all the rage? Yup, Liadri.

P.s. calm down with the hyperboles, I just finished SAB normal mode without cash shop or bubble farming.

Wolfheart.1938:

tl;dr: SAB world 2 is too hard.

Yes, I agree, and probably so does Josh Foreman. The jump in difficulty is a bit too high, but keep in mind that we don’t know the dig spots yet, and you probably didn’t open many chests. Without knowing any spot I racked up 150 bubbles from 2-3, and getting 200-300 baubles from world 1 is pretty fast too.

The first problem here is that you have turned around and said that SAB requires you to grind to progress. The original theme of SAB was that it didn’t need you to grind to progress (as in, you didn’t need an item, though an item would make it easier). World 2-3 requires the torch, a 400 bauble item which also requires the Wallet from the previous worlds. Luckily, I actually enjoyed the last instalment of SAB due to it’s design of “Practise practise practise makes perfect” and got everything I could have done, including the wallet.

Since my argument was that this instalment of SAB isn’t true to the original and thus, I am disappointed, your argument that I should go and grind for an item (something that wasn’t an ideal of the original SAB) falls right into my point. I would be fine if the torch was needed for a shortcut or an easier, less perilous way. I would be fine taking a harder, more dangerous route because I didn’t have the torch; at least I can progress.

I can’t do that.

Wolfheart.1938:

All the rest I believe is just you trying to justify your anger due to the excessive difficulty.

Incorrect.

As I have just said above, I don’t mind difficulty provided that it makes sense. For example, World 1 SAB difficulty falls into the category of “Difficult until you learn it” which by extension fell into SAB’s in-game lore-based idea that it was designed to teach people. See? That all made perfect sense.

World 2 has mindless difficulty that isn’t there for any good reason. For example: I have learnt through playing Rapids repeatedly before this even came out that assassins were best taken on in semi-large areas where I could dodgeroll or sidestep. It was very clear that the Bridge where you first see these enemies is a bad place to engage them, but if you let them follow you to the end where you have a flat expanse, you can fight them all pretty easily.

World 2-2 has none of that, at all. It’s all based on tiny platforms or long and thin walkways; taking everything that we were originally taught and throwing it out the window in favour of making things hard.

As I also mentioned earlier, I would be fine with having to take a more perilous route in World 2-3 in order to progress past the frozen waterfall, due to not having the torch. This is for two reasons:
1) I can still actually progress, even if it’s more challenging.
2) I am given an incentive to buy the torch, not because I have to (which makes it a chore) but because I want an easier route than normal.

I am not able to do this, though. Instead, I’m forced to quit completely, because I didn’t have the foresight to save up 400+ baubles for 2-3, in a minigame where we previously never had to buy anything to progress.

Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at here, so we don’t have any more “justification for anger” assumptions that gloss over points.

Wolfheart.1938:

P.s. calm down with the hyperboles, I just finished SAB normal mode without cash shop or bubble farming.

Good for you; not everybody has your jumping prowess in SAB and if you’re using that to justify yourself, you didn’t read the footnote.

I get that people are finding this hard and we all have different skill levels (I’m in no way stating I’m pro) but it was a case of learning each path for me and my guildies, we ran world 1 followed by world 2 last night and came to the same part with the torch and didn’t have enough baubles so we all logged off @ about 2am after about 4 hours solid play and some of the best & most challenging times I’ve had on guild wars 2 (and any other game) since release. Lucky we all had some time off work/school this afternoon and all met up again, we restarted at world one and we got one guy to save baubles while the rest of us got us the items we needed to get through, we flew through it all back up until the frozen door, all last nights experiences stuck, we remembered paths and tricks and I’d say it took us less than half of the time the night before…then you get through the frozen door and my god it’s hard (no spoilers) lol but we beat it and the sense of achievement was amazing. I took 20 continue coins with me after loosing all the previous night and I left with 5 when finished so I wouldn’t say IMO it was too bad or you NEED the unlimited continue coin. I gotta say having the bunch of guys I did enjoying what I was enjoying not caring for rewards just playing it for the Lolz really made some of those death filled difficult areas feel fun as we all hammered each other every time we died :P

Reallysorry.6230:

I gotta say having the bunch of guys I did enjoying what I was enjoying not caring for rewards just playing it for the Lolz really made some of those death filled difficult areas feel fun as we all hammered each other every time we died :P

I was doing this with the two friends I was running it with, too. The problem is though, that after the amount of time we spent together and we did genuinely enjoy it, to get so cut off at 2-3 really stomped on everybody’s spirits. Neither of them are going to be touching the content again because they are understandably jaded about what’s happened to SAB and they don’t feel like otherwise wasting hours of their time doing something that they feel they won’t complete.

I can’t blame them, really.

But yeah, doing it with friends is definitely more fun, and it is most definitely the only way we even made it to 2-3 at all to begin with. Getting past 2-3, though?

If I dare touch SAB again, that’s probably going to have to be something I do solo. :T

Just give it a few days its here for a month next time go back through again get one guy to save and see the time you cut off your first run or even just farm w1 for baubles then just jump to that zone again you don’t even have to replay it we just fancied it. I genuinely hope more people stick with it and you get through it mate, beating something really hard is so rewarding and i know ill remember those runs for a long long time just like I remember how hard sonic was back when I was younger.

What I really dislike here is this is a false difficulty. It’s kinda like putting 20000000000000 hp to a boss and say “hey look that’s hard”. I mean there’s a point where challenge is no fun, even for those who like it, and that point is reached when there’s nothing you can do about your death. When there’s little to no counterplay to what you’re dealing with, it starts to get frustrating and stupid.

Now add the grinding. Grinding in a minigame like SAB in order to be able to continue just feels bad already, if I have to grind I want to do it in the real game where it is already more entertaining than this… yup, even more frustration.

But wait, now you can even go into nightmare/tribulation mode ! Where NOTHING is challenging, because you’re facing unseen threats in a pure try and die. “Hey look, you just felt in that hole which you absolutely couldn’t see 0,1 second before, funny isnt it ?” “No.” and so on.

Real problem with all that is it’s getting too frustrating while you’re playing a minigame in a videogame, aka a game in a game, aka something fun in something fun, or atleast it’s supposed to be. Grinding for some secondary ressources is NOT interesting, even less when you’re not really playing the actual game, going through some levels in which you can barely move before being knocked everywhere is NOT fun, playing a mode in which you have to die countless times to start to believe that you could imagine there’s something that will kill you two steps forward is the worst.

The idea of SAB is great, it could have been really cool, but all the fun has been taken away now. Just make something really challenging which doesn’t make you want to uninstall after a few try, and it’ll be fine again, I mean you did it one time, how is w2 that much harder ? How come tribulation is that stupid, did someone actually found that fun when you tested it ? Or did you just tested it in a SM-themed party ? That would be the most logical answer.

Dw I’m not actually angry at the game or anything else, just disappointed because I thought I would get something fun after this month of grinding-based event, and in the end it turns out I have to grind again, for a minigame this time, and I can’t even say it’s funny to do it one time atleast because I don’t enjoy having so few chances to go through. Let’s hope someone find a a miraculous solution or ANet with all this, otherwise I’m really affraid of the next SAB…

First of all thanks for the reply, I think I understood your post better now.

Airyll.7849:

The first problem here is that you have turned around and said that SAB requires you to grind to progress. The original theme of SAB was that it didn’t need you to grind to progress (as in, you didn’t need an item, though an item would make it easier). World 2-3 requires the torch, a 400 bauble item which also requires the Wallet from the previous worlds. Luckily, I actually enjoyed the last instalment of SAB due to it’s design of “Practise practise practise makes perfect” and got everything I could have done, including the wallet.

Since my argument was that this instalment of SAB isn’t true to the original and thus, I am disappointed, your argument that I should go and grind for an item (something that wasn’t an ideal of the original SAB) falls right into my point. I would be fine if the torch was needed for a shortcut or an easier, less perilous way. I would be fine taking a harder, more dangerous route because I didn’t have the torch; at least I can progress.

I can’t do that.

Very well said. SAB world 1 didn’t stop you from progressing if you didn’t have an item, while world 2 does. In this, there’s a clear cut difference in design choice. While I personally prefer your approach to items, you have to admit that many games of the past required you to grind for certain items to go forward, and that SAB is a throwback to those games. Now I won’t debate whether or not getting those 400 baubles is fun or not, but just point out that it’s pretty fast getting them through world 1 and possibly world 2 once you know the dig spots. Also notice that the roadblock is pretty early in zone 3, thus it doesn’t necessarily waste much of your time. So the issue exists, but it’s a minor one (in my book at least).

Airyll.7849:

Incorrect.

As I have just said above, I don’t mind difficulty provided that it makes sense. For example, World 1 SAB difficulty falls into the category of “Difficult until you learn it” which by extension fell into SAB’s in-game lore-based idea that it was designed to teach people. See? That all made perfect sense.

World 2 has mindless difficulty that isn’t there for any good reason. For example: I have learnt through playing Rapids repeatedly before this even came out that assassins were best taken on in semi-large areas where I could dodgeroll or sidestep. It was very clear that the Bridge where you first see these enemies is a bad place to engage them, but if you let them follow you to the end where you have a flat expanse, you can fight them all pretty easily.

World 2-2 has none of that, at all. It’s all based on tiny platforms or long and thin walkways; taking everything that we were originally taught and throwing it out the window in favour of making things hard.

As I also mentioned earlier, I would be fine with having to take a more perilous route in World 2-3 in order to progress past the frozen waterfall, due to not having the torch. This is for two reasons:
1) I can still actually progress, even if it’s more challenging.
2) I am given an incentive to buy the torch, not because I have to (which makes it a chore) but because I want an easier route than normal.

I am not able to do this, though. Instead, I’m forced to quit completely, because I didn’t have the foresight to save up 400+ baubles for 2-3, in a minigame where we previously never had to buy anything to progress.

Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at here, so we don’t have any more “justification for anger” assumptions that gloss over points.

If you are convinced of what you say, there’s no discussing further. We can at best agree to disagree. I don’t see this “mindless” difficulty (that has to have a reason?), nor do I see how world 2 doesn’t fall within the “difficult until you learn it” category. Case in point, dart traps: the first time you get a cheap death, whatever. From that point on, they get increasingly more frequent untill you learn to pay attention to your surroundings and safely avoid all of them. I thought zone 3 was incredibly hard at first, but now that I’ve done it 2 times I’m already able to clear it with minimum loss of lives. If that’s not “difficult until you learn it” then I don’t know what it is.

Oh and to that assassin example you made, how do you suggest they make the levels increasingly harder if not by making terrain harder to navigate? Besides, you can still apply the tactic learn in 2-1 (juke them circling around them), it’s just a bit more difficult.

I wish we could still farm baubles. I dislike the minor changes in the first world – the Frog Boss is nearly untargetable – and I just want my 40 for my two minipets so I can be done with it all. Loved it the first time out, but its become UN-fun.

I mean, I upgraded all my toons to play SAB. Why? I can’t dig with a different one anymore. Whats the point in buying the tools on multiple characters anymore? Or PLAYING it on multiple characters? There isn’t a point.

Play one. Run through. Get your baubles. Log off. =( I play for fun, not to get frustrated… so, since I can’t run it on more than one character and have it be worthwhile – I won’t be playing it as much. =( I was really looking forward to this again.