Guild Wars 2

Gee, how on earth could this be less live-costly?

Oh wait, you can do that if you pay money.

It’s “I Want To Be The Guy” obviously

I don’t know if i am not doing something right ,but when i reached the geyser zone at the end of zone 2-1 every time i jumped on a tall geyser i always ended knocked down from the top of the geyser, and then into the rapids being knocked back to death…zone 2-1 seems too long imho, when i got past the assassins’s part i couldn’t believe there was another checkpoint…

Completed zone 2 after 2 hours and using at least 7 coins. Not even arah path 4 is such a pain. I’m not playing this bullkitten anymore. This is not fun at all, devs.
@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

I don’t think it’s too difficult but I do think everyone should get an infinite continuation coin, especially Tribulation mode. As I mentioned above, part of the staples of the genre (that is, the genre for games that are excruciatingly difficult e.g I want to be the guy) is that you can just try and try again. You are expected to die so it is not treated kitten much of a punishment but for TM SAB your options are to either spend a long time farming baubles for coins or buy one from the gem shop – the former is a boring grind and the second is p2w.

Just for the love of god make the rapids either: Insta-kill you, or teleport you to the location you want them too.
I mean, watching my character be knocked back, then stay down for 1 second, then getting up, I try to move and then be knocked back, wait 1 second and on and on and on…
It is fun, for the first 30 minutes, but once I get knockedback the 7th time in a row and have to wait the most anoying second in the history of video games it is just frustrating and makes me wanna throw my PC out of the window.

I did this on infantile mode with 4 guildies. It was long, frustrating and unfun even with the clouds, but it could get better as we learn the ropes.

I have to complain about the part with the frogs that suck you into dart traps, though. One of us activated the checkpoint after it, and then it was a complete deathfest because we’d barely finish respawning and we’d get sucked back into death again, and again, and again, and again, and we collectively died some 50+ times before we managed to kill all the frogs just so we could all stand on the checkpoint to proceed. Plus, if you got even a little bit of lag on respawn, you’d get sucked back into the death trap before you could even do anything.

This is just world 2. I don’t even want to know what the difficulty level of world 4 will be. Even extremely punishing games like Super Meat Boy allow you to try again repeatedly and have a less harsh learning curve than this. People who mastered world 1 should not be dying 50 times in world 2 before they can even get anywhere.

Plus, the “you have to learn this blah blah” argument falls short when this is gated behind continue coins that cost 50 baubles each (not to mention the parts that need upgrades and you only find out when you get there) and you’re going to die a lot more often than the 5 lives you’re given with a coin until you learn anything.

I bought an infinite coin just to spare myself the headache of grinding to get past, and that’s p2w in my book.

Josh Foreman.8250:

StygSec.7163:

Zone 2: Dart traps can only be spotted at the last second..

Please look more carefully. If you dash through without looking around corners you will lose a lot of lives. As designed.

Was it also designed to force you to buy the coin?
I didn’t think people were serious until I tried, this is ridiculously stupid. Both W2 and trib mode basically say “buy the coin to win lol thx”

Josh Foreman.8250:

StygSec.7163:

Zone 2: Dart traps can only be spotted at the last second..

Please look more carefully. If you dash through without looking around corners you will lose a lot of lives. As designed.

You mean the extra pieces of wood on the walls that I thought was apart of the architecture?

neon.4863:

I did this on infantile mode with 4 guildies. It was long, frustrating and unfun even with the clouds, but it could get better as we learn the ropes.

I have to complain about the part with the frogs that suck you into dart traps, though. One of us activated the checkpoint after it, and then it was a complete deathfest because we’d barely finish respawning and we’d get sucked back into death again, and again, and again, and again, and we collectively died some 50+ times before we managed to kill all the frogs just so we could all stand on the checkpoint to proceed. Plus, if you got even a little bit of lag on respawn, you’d get sucked back into the death trap before you could even do anything.

This is just world 2. I don’t even want to know what the difficulty level of world 4 will be. Even extremely punishing games like Super Meat Boy allow you to try again repeatedly and have a less harsh learning curve than this. People who mastered world 1 should not be dying 50 times in world 2 before they can even get anywhere.

Plus, the “you have to learn this blah blah” argument falls short when this is gated behind continue coins that cost 50 baubles each (not to mention the parts that need upgrades and you only find out when you get there) and you’re going to die a lot more often than the 5 lives you’re given with a coin until you learn anything.

I bought an infinite coin just to spare myself the headache of grinding to get past, and that’s p2w in my book.

I completly agree and subscribe to this.

I’ve completed world 2 up to the point after the gong:

-Very, very few baubles in the world. Where are they?
-Some parts of the world 2 really need ranged weapons (the toads/trap room). Could use some melee alternatives, though I found a way past it (may not be intended)
-some mechanics (like the gong part) are really well down and thought out.

neon.4863:

I did this on infantile mode with 4 guildies. It was long, frustrating and unfun even with the clouds, but it could get better as we learn the ropes.

I have to complain about the part with the frogs that suck you into dart traps, though. One of us activated the checkpoint after it, and then it was a complete deathfest because we’d barely finish respawning and we’d get sucked back into death again, and again, and again, and again, and we collectively died some 50+ times before we managed to kill all the frogs just so we could all stand on the checkpoint to proceed. Plus, if you got even a little bit of lag on respawn, you’d get sucked back into the death trap before you could even do anything.

This is just world 2. I don’t even want to know what the difficulty level of world 4 will be. Even extremely punishing games like Super Meat Boy allow you to try again repeatedly and have a less harsh learning curve than this. People who mastered world 1 should not be dying 50 times in world 2 before they can even get anywhere.

Plus, the “you have to learn this blah blah” argument falls short when this is gated behind continue coins that cost 50 baubles each (not to mention the parts that need upgrades and you only find out when you get there) and you’re going to die a lot more often than the 5 lives you’re given with a coin until you learn anything.

I bought an infinite coin just to spare myself the headache of grinding to get past, and that’s p2w in my book.

Wow, I was kidding when I said it was I Want To Be The Guy but I guess it honestly is. Have the Devs actually played old NES games or just looked at Catmario and IWTBTG and said “this is old school gaming”? There’s quite a difference between Nintendo Hard and IWTBTG Style. Those games were purposely made to be punishing and near impossible and were advertised as such. I was expecting an old school Mario approach as in “This isn’t easy but the patterns can be learned if you take the time to do so”.

This sounds awful.

It is quite sad that people already complain about something being too hard when it has not even been out for a day.

Would you complain about soccer being too hard because you couldn’t beat Arsenal after a single training session?

just try to remove the rapids pulling you back midair and i am perfectly fine with rapids

Josh Foreman.8250:

Fhaeris.9237:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

I don’t want to sound like I’m “attacking” you but…
Fun is not missing 1 jump and going miles back / dieing.
Fun is not having to keep going back to farm Wold 1 to get more lives.
Fun is not having to fight monsters placed in very hard places.
Fun is not trying to hit something with a hitbox the size of a needle…

I found that I was annoyed and frustrated much more than I was having fun.
Yeah the rapids knocking you around while you are in the air jumping over them was really annoying. Especially when you get knocked back and have to do several tough jumps over again.
I liked exploring World 1 and searching the place and trying to hunt the baubles.
World 2, I just find myself wanting to get past an area just so I can get it over with.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Not to minimize your complaints but here’s my take.

1. The zones are too long

You are complaining about too much content.

You should know as a developer that making content that players don’t reach is wasted content. Too long here can mean the player doesn’t reach the end of the zone before giving up. Too long can also mean it’s too difficult to reach the end. Too long can also mean the reward for completing the zone is not worth the time invested.

2. Jumping on a flower can throw you into another flower and kill you

You can be more careful about the direction you are facing when you land on them.

The flowers could also be changed to require a key press from the player, so the player feels they have control of the situation of when and where they go.

3. Crocodile hit boxes are too little

You need to use tactical stratagy to find the spots to hit the from, just like old platform games.

Pixel perfection should not be required, especially when determining that distance is haphazard at best. This would be less of an issue if the bombs and slingshot were easier to accurately aim.

4. Too many enemies on all maps

Learning where enemies are and how to thwart them is part of the process of progressing in old platform games.

Fair enough. Though I still say some consideration should be given. There’s an awful lot of assassins in World 2.

5. World 2 spike traps are not fair, especially when you get to places where there are lots of cheap ones.

They are all visible. The darts shoot out of dart boxes. The assassin training grounds are meant to teach you to carefully observe your surroundings.

They teach that lesson poorly. I ran into a dart trap twice without realizing what was killing me. Then I saw the very hard to see darts flying around. One shots are never all that fun. Considering they already exist in the form of missed jumps, having them placed throughout the level too in normal mode is just cruel. One heart of damage would still teach the lesson without being overly punishing.

6. World 2 does not have nearly enough checkpoints and repeating the gong run is painful

The gong run is painful. I’d like to tap that difficulty spike down.

Checkpoints are pretty important, considering it’s the only way of making progress from bad jumps. Most 3D games decided to only remove some health from bad jumps instead of instantly killing because the spatial distance is very difficult to judge. With SAB, those jumps have to be very fine, which is even more difficult with things such as latency at play.

So far, it’s all far too difficult mainly due to some bad mechanics. In one frustrating example, I died about 5 times trying to cross the falling logs near the end of Zone 1. Not because the jumps were difficult, but because they were impossible to time across the full length of the waterfall. There’s simply no way to get any perspective, so one has to just jump to the next log. If you happen to wait a bit too long for a good jump (or no good jump comes), then you’ve fallen down too far and have to go all the way back. Except even getting back is difficult since making vertical progression can’t really be done. It was simply easier to die, get the checkpoint, and try again and hope I was luckier with timing.

First I would like to thank you for responding to my list and being open minded on this one. Maybe I’m just too not skilled for this new old school thing, but I would most definitely prefer old Mario or Sonic over SAB world 2. I just believe that sometimes you hit your own skill ceiling and when you’re playing to relax, but can’t beat something after infinite tries and continues it’s best to turn around and walk away. After all you’re playing a game for enjoyment, not to be tortured. SAB world 1 was enjoyment to me. SAB world 2 feels like torture, and that’s why I’m a little upset. Maybe I shouldn’t be complaining – I know what it means to put a lot of work into an update and have some whiny person criticize your work, however I felt like I had to get the sadness and frustration off my chest. Now I would like to address some of the responses.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Not to minimize your complaints but here’s my take.

1. The zones are too long

You are complaining about too much content.

Not about too much content, but rather about how many hours you have to put in it in one sitting and how likely you are to run out of continue coins before finishing a level. Old SAB took an hour to beat – all 3 zones of it. New SAB – I’ve spent 2 hours beating Zone 1, then perhaps another hour on Zone 2. I ran out of continues. I don’t want to have to do it all over again. For the content that’s out there – there could have been 6 zones instead of 3 to reduce the frustration of dying.

Josh Foreman.8250:

2. Jumping on a flower can throw you into another flower and kill you

You can be more careful about the direction you are facing when you land on them.

There are places where you barely not land on the second one and then there are places where the game teleports you on the second one without a choice. Really while I do understand the intention behind it, being forced to find an exact milimeter to land right next to the flower instead of on it is actually a bit too hard and some times glitchy for just the normal mode. It literally feels like the world is trolling you sometimes. Here you landed without touching the flower and there you go shooting into an opposite direction because the game thinks that you touched the flower.

Josh Foreman.8250:

3. Crocodile hit boxes are too little

You need to use tactical stratagy to find the spots to hit the from, just like old platform games.

In old platform games you actually see your reach and manage to hit a model while still standing on some sort of sprite. World 2 Zone 1, after the rapids part, you use the flower to get to the side that has the shopping hut on it, you climb on the log to hit the crocodile to be able to jump on the flower from it, you have to move off the log and stand on thin air to actually hit him, if you don’t find the invisible spot in the correct way you kind of fall to your death. That’s not really strategy. That’s guessing how far can you walk on invisible air before you fall.

Josh Foreman.8250:

4. Too many enemies on all maps

Learning where enemies are and how to thwart them is part of the process of progressing in old platform games.

As many as there are in some rooms on world 2 zone 2 and in the temple? That many have only be found on new age games that aim to be unforgiving, like for example “I want to be the guy”, such a difficulty spike is not characteristic of real old games, like zelda, or mario, or sonic. World 2 zone 1? Yeah, the increased enemy amount is fine. World 2 Zone 2? At times there’s simply too many of them.

Josh Foreman.8250:

5. World 2 spike traps are not fair, especially when you get to places where there are lots of cheap ones.

They are all visible. The darts shoot out of dart boxes. The assassin training grounds are meant to teach you to carefully observe your surroundings.

- the part where you have to push boxes to cover up the traps and jump over them, the one that shoots you at the end of it, as you’re jumping over one of them is simply not a fair one.
- the part where you’re climbing the temple that has the gong in it, in one area you pretty much can’t stop jumping and land, because the trap from the other side of the room will shoot you. That trap is not fair.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Fhaeris.9237:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

Keep in mind. You developed it. So you have advanced knowledge of pretty much everything in the level, as well as what route to take and where to time your jumps. You’re probably also dealing with a lot less latency/lag than some players.

Right now, it’s just feeling like you guys want me to die over and over again. Which is something I would have only expected in Tribulation Mode.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s most helpful to us if you are specific about areas that have difficulty spikes for you. (Such as mentioning the spin flowers above.) Also things are always laggy the first day of content release. So complaints about lag don’t help.

TEST YOUR kitten BEFORE YOU RELEASE IT! seriously where is quality assurance and control?

Love the difficulty but i hate crappy camera, picking norn doesnt help either guess charr is even more annoying.

Lag + jumping = tiny jump = death
Jumping into stuff hoping your character warps ontop which is pretty common but just overall looks wird and feels like a gamble more than yourself making that jump.

The 2nd squid feeding and first 2 clouds , 1 is fine 2nd one killed me several times if any lag happens from 1 cloud to 2nd its instant death.

But these are just first impressions gonna keep at it.

No, it’s not too hard. Sadly Super Adventure box is pretty much the only challenging content in the game.

For me the rapids killed all the fun, the clunky movement, hit detection and painful downtime for failing a jump is too much. A solid platforming experience needs solid controls and GW2 doesn’t provide that.

To summarize, frustrating experiences:

• Getting knocked down slowly on the water, I’d rather lose 2/3 of my hearts and start on a checkpoint.
• Getting knocked when a geyser does down even if you already made the jump.
• Hit detection on the weapons is too erratic, you have to find just the right angle to hit the targets and sometimes it doesn’t make sense.

This I believe sums up a lot of frustration people are having.

trif.6192:

• Getting knocked when a geyser does down even if you already made the jump.
  .

Forgot to mention the geyser part. While I fully figured out its pattern after some tries and it’s perfectly possible, there are last 4 geysers before the waterfall jump – I memorized their pattern, however if I would jump when the geyser I’m jumping to has appeared I would land on it and then get teleported off it into the water and essentially lose a life. In order to succeed I needed to do faith jumps before the geysers appeared. In my opinion they could use an extra second of being there.

The difficulty of World 2 compared to World 1, is insane. Every mistake you make in World 2 results in a death. The check points are also spread too far apart for how big the zones are.

I like a challenge and I’m not asking for World 2 to be nerfed but I would like it if maybe continue coins were alot cheaper or dropped as frequent as the voting badges during the election event.

Grimno.6172:

This I believe sums up a lot of frustration people are having.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKyKyJzfjXM

Yep.

That part was not fun. Especially because after the 10th time of getting knocked down in those rapids, I was beginning to question if I was even going the right way. There were no more friendly arrows pointing the way, and all I could see was the big waterfall.

Grimno.6172:

This I believe sums up a lot of frustration people are having.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKyKyJzfjXM

This sums up nearly all of my complaints.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Fhaeris.9237:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

No offense, but pretty much everything you’ve posted here sounds like an excuse. You can’t have a missions with hard-to-see traps, super precise jumps, tons of enemies & tiny platforms & just say “working as intended”. Especially on a difficulty level “normal”.
The fact that the hidden treasure chests are once a day & you sell an infinite coin just make the whole thing look suspicious.

One of the things there is DEFINITELY no excuse for is the horrible hit-detection & range on the sword & especially the whip. most fights I have consist of misses at ranges I can easily hit with a regular sword.

Additionally I’ve been killed by a snake AFTER it exploded.

The GW2 camera doesn’t really do this any favours, it collides on everything behind you, zooms in and out willy nilly, it’s not a camera that’s suitable for this jumping rubbish.

Alright, I would like to report a bug (maybe). I made it all the way to world 2 zone 2 (pain cliffs I believe) and made it to the part when you get the pushy hand thingy. I stopped about there to take a break. I came back, to find out I only got the option to go to the rapids, not the pain cliffs. I even have the item/skill (number 9) from pain cliffs, so why can I not choose it?

DarksunG.9537:

Josh Foreman.8250:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

It’s also pretty ableist. Sorry, Josh, but you ARE just that much better at jumping than I am. I have depth perception and spacial issues which make it near impossible for me to do a good 75% of the jumping content in this game, which I accept, but snotting on people is a lousy attitude to have.

I’m sad because I really wanted to play this, I love Mario games but if non-disabled players are having this much trouble – what chance do I stand?

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

EDIT: also what’s this about hidden treasure and once a day? Where do you find those?

As an older player who never did any of the mario thingies or whatever, this is just way too difficult. As it stands, I am not sure I will want to try it again. My husband and a friend and I spent a couple hours in there and afterwards my husband said, “I can’t believe I just wasted my evening on that.” That’s putting it mildly, I thought. It was incredibly frustrating and obviously not aimed at players like me, I think.

I did enjoy the last couple of living world patches. This one, though… way too difficult and frustrating to want to spend the evening ‘relaxing’ with it. And, we did do the previous SAB. I found it difficult in some parts, but nothing like this new one.

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

Candles have fire…

You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. I have to buy the candles right?

Much of the mechanics of SAB are buggy and laggy due to the limitations of GW2. I just wish that SAB was designed with this more in mind. The rapids are a prime example of this.

While I welcome a challenge, as others have said, the difficulty increase between W1 and W2 is far too hard. This is the difficulty I might expect out of W4, maybe W3. Certainly not W2. It went from happy happy joy joy to death death lag death. The dart traps need to be made much less subtle, both the trap itself and the killing animation. On top of that, taking into consideration that is is the world right after W1, and taking into consideration the massive amount of dart traps, dart traps should really only deal no more than 3 hearts of damage. The melee assassins need to evade and knockdown less often. Certain mechanics need to give you more than a fraction of a second to react – I’ve had times where I literally could not move my hand to the Shift key fast enough to dodge before getting hit by something that just came onto the screen. And you’re talking to someone who can type >140 words per minute.

There are a few jumps that are unnecessarily hard to make, i.e. where you have to start and land at the exact right spot and you need to move in 2-3 directions mid-air correctly. Then there’s the whip, which feels more useless than ever, as it rarely ever hits things. It’s unreliable, as sometimes it hits things and sometimes [most of the time] it doesn’t, even when I am hitting them in the same exact spot over and over. The slingshot is terrible to aim with. Targeting mobs does nothing. The slingshot is supposed to shoot where your character is facing, but often times this is not the case, and it just shoots wildly, with a mind of its own. Also unreliable.

The zones are very much so too long. A game designer claiming that this remark is player’s complaining about too much content is quite scary. That’s a ridiculous and naive claim. The zones are roughly twice as long as they should be. We would have been much better off if the zones were all split in half, and we had twice as many zones. It takes too long to progress through one zone right now. We can’t stop and take a breather. Which we really need to, as the latest mechanics are incredibly frustrating for numerous reasons already mentioned. I’m sure that simply splitting the zones in half would drastically decrease the amount of players that quit SAB W2.

I was almost near the end of Z2, went AFK for no more than five minutes, and got kicked out and put in the lobby. Atrocious. Now I’m even more fed up with it all, but because I love jumping puzzles and platformers so much, I personally am not going to give up. A lot of people in my situation will. This would have been much less of an issue if zones were half as long.

Overall, I think the designers went a bit overboard with the difficulty of W2, not so much in and of itself but in comparison to W1 and people’s expectations. This just isn’t a normal difficulty curve, it’s much steeper, and that’s not a very good thing, especially considering we have two more worlds. That combined with the limitations of the game engine, as shown in many of the buggy and laggy mechanics of both W1 and W2, though more prevalent in W2, makes for a less than stellar experience.

I hope some of these issues are addressed before this SAB closes. There’s still time to give people a great experience.

Cheers!

Holy BALLS that is difficult. I made it all the way up to requiring a Torch to break through an Ice Wall, as my candle wasn’t powerful enough. Of course by that point, I’d used all my baubles just on staying alive!

Is that World 3 Zone 1 then? I had 3 boss fights before hand.

@John – Rapids and the water mechanism just isn’t clear enough. For me (in Australia) the ping is AWFUL and really dissolves me enthusiasm being jerked all around the place even when I thought I had succeeded in my jump. Many of the crocs/turtles also seem just that little too far our of reach imo.

The vertical logs had issues. there were massive blank sections, where I seemed to be hitting empty air a lot, and in fact I could see them when I died at times, but not while playing. Bug?? Either way, once I fell into the ‘back path’ behind those logs, I took the long way up with the bears.

Lastly, those bleedin’ arrow spikes on the tower up to the gong. Do they HAVE to insta-kill? Can we just get a 1-2 heart damage and knock back?
It seemed I was going through lives far more than going through hearts.

Pro-tip to all – if you release the gong, JUST DIE. You will respawn at the bottom, AND the gong will still be coming down! Run to the last 3 spike traps and the gong will be just behind you on the way down.

Boss fights, not too difficult.. just right I think. Ice is fun! Good icy motion, but water makes me sad

I will have to bauble-up a bit in World 1 I think, then go back in with plenty for the Torch (and flute!)

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

Candles have fire…

You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. I have to buy the candles right?

By no means am I being sarcastic. I can’t give you a definitive guide on what to do here, but I’m trying to give hints. My apologies if I came off in any other way.

If that wasn’t sarcastic (the … made me think so) then I should be apologizing. Anyways, I’ll work my way back then. I thought I was stuck seeing as I didn’t have any upgrades.

I told you guys, I told you guys this was going to happen- but no, people were like ‘but we love artificial difficulty, random invisible things killing you is fun, stupid camera angles and being killed at random is a good way to do difficulty.’

I have to say bravo though- I thought it was going to be a bad idea to ramp up difficulty in the way they’ve been doing it lately- with a reliance on OHKOs and gimmicks rather than telegraphing and reactions. But, they proved me wrong- infinite continue coin.

Brilliant. Anet’s turning out to be far more cunning at making money than I’d once thought.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Fhaeris.9237:

@everyone: they made it this hard just to sell more infinite coins off the gem store. Don’t fall for this trap.

We made it so that it’s fun to play. It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player, but I doubt it. I want it to be fun. If MOST people think it’s too hard to be fun then I’ll reduce the difficulty. But like I said above, we don’t have good numbers on that yet.

How about the part in World 2, Zone 3, where to progress you have to drop 400 baubles on the torch upgrade, but you don’t find out til you get there, and the cost in baubles is so high due to using bombs to get there in the first place that unless you hoarded all your baubles from the first go around its very likely you won’t have enough. And that’s on INFANTILE mode.

On top of that, now SAB is account bound and time gated, meaning you can’t farm the baubles you need to buy the upgrades, not to mention the stuff Moto actually sells.

Yes, you MAY just be better at jumping games than the rest of us, but expecting us to have the ability to see the future, and infer run ending problems like the torch with no advance warning is ridiculous. Even the hardest 2D platformers don’t require the players to be psychic.

You want to make it more fun? Here:

1. Make the arrow boxes more visible, with sparklies or something.
2. Reduce the number of hits certain enemies take, World 1 was at most two I think, World 2 ‘s trash mobs should be three at most.
3. Remove the once per day restriction on digging for baubles, so that it doesn’t take weeks for players to acquire the necessary upgrades to actually be able to just complete the world. End chests can still be once per day per account.
4. Fun /= Frustration. You must be aware of all the innuendos flying around connecting the difficulty of World 2 with the “coincidental” appearance of the Infinite Lives Coin in the BLTC. I was able to solo World 1 with some practice, and get good enough at it that I both enjoyed it, and was able to stockpile some lives. World 2 I still haven’t finished Zone 2, and have spent almost 50 lives. Most of those lost lives are due to instant death mechanics, that makes the “hearts” moot.
5. Length. More is not always better, the quality of designed content can usually make small games/mini-games much better than a bloated mess. Take Liadri, was a very difficult fight for many, and I beat it on my Ele. Part of that was trial and error yes, but I was able to quickly kitten my mistakes and try again. Taking Zone 2 of World 2 as a good example, the zone is incredibly long, with few scattered checkpoints tucked in between tons of instant death frustration. One small mistake can erase a lot of progress, which amounts to more frustration. Its the old notion of “one step forward, two steps back” which should not be a primary design mantra of FUN games.
6. Bugs. Per above, the ninjas seem to be able to knock me much further when it would result in an instant death, and I get hit and take damage frequently even when they’re nowhere near me. Maybe its lag, but I have a stable connection, and many is the time so far that I’ve dodged an attack only for them to hit me while my character has “EVADE EVADE” over them.

In the old days, where games were at most eight hours of content, some of the best parts were the insane difficulty coupled with bugs that required thoughtful ingenuity. But Mario didn’t have to beat Bowser a thousand times to get a new skin for his backpack. If you want to reduce grind, great, but simply stretching out the time taken to grind out a skin or weapon from a couple days to weeks or longer isn’t reducing grind, just giving the illusion of such. And the addition of an infinite lives coin for gems with the addition of an insanely difficult “regular” world is a pretty obvious payto win ploy.

Infinite continue coin from the GEMstore. SAB has gone that way too -.-

my candle has fire to, but world 2 zone 3 i cant get past the frozen waterfall, i gues i need to buy the torch from the shop next to it but its 400 baubles, that means i need to collect 250 baubles first for the bauble bag. why isnt my candle enough.

i like SaB so much lol been trying over and over and over to get to where i am now :p if you ask me its not dificult at all, even the gong run. you just have to move slow and look at what your doing and you will be totally fine. saying that even tho i died 30+ times there

I’m intrigued by this thread to try this tomorrow should I get the chance.

Might have to play some more Mega Man first though just to get my “insane difficulty” eye in though

SoPP.7034:

Infinite continue coin from the GEMstore. SAB has gone that way too -.-

This is my primary issue with the SAB. You basically require a gemstore item to play tribulation mode, and some players may need it for the normal mode as well. The alternative is acquiring continue coins, which is time-gated (can get 10 per SAB zone per day via BB conversion, or a low chance at them from jumping puzzles), and largely a problem due to the fact that the SAB is temporary. A single checkpoint in TM can easily require multiple coins, giving gem purchasers a big advantage [avoids time-gate].

Could I get a confirmation on the dig spots, I just tried all the dig spots from world 1, with 4 other people digging around a spot, we got nothing, finally tried to speed run solo, and got a chest to spawn at the end of the worm short cut worth 5 bubbles, what I’m asking is

1. are the dig spots still there at all.

2. what are they tied to in mechanics, because as it stands its bugged then or just random hit or miss.

As for comments overall, World 2 is severe, where World 1 mistake = run back around a Word 2 mistake = death, so if you don’t want people to farm like last time fix the dig spots to at least be daily, or fix the fact they don’t seem to be in World 1 at all.

Completed world 1 zone 1 without realising that I could get extra checkpoints via clouds and baloons… Difficulty there seemed just fine for me, will continue tomorrow!