Guild Wars 2

@Josh:
THANK YOU, for all the responses in this thread.

Sadly I didn’t have time yesterday, but I can’t wait to get in SAB today

The basic problems so many are complaining about (hard to hit turtles/crocs, rapids, water spouts, etc.) stem from the fact that we are trying to get an MMO engine to do platformy things. Our engine is great for MMO content. But SAB is sort of like training a powerful but slow elephant to win a horse race. We’re always pushing the boundaries, and often get promising results that with some further iteration will bring cool things into GW2. But as is, we have to make a lot of compromises with the elephant to get it to run around our track.

Heh, and I can totally understand that and think you guys have done some wonderful things under the circumstances, like the jump pads and stuff. I think it’s important when working on these features to err more on the side of making them “fun” than “challenging,” and if it’s impossible to make a feature that works relatively airtight, then nerf it into importance until you can, so that while it may not be “challenging” to the players, it at least is not “fun killing,” and they can move on to other content that works more smoothly.

I spent a lot of time in the last few minutes in that river at points under the water line, bouncing around without any control, just hoping that I’d be able to get back out and try those ridiculous jumps again. I got to that portion of the level with little trouble, losing no lives and few hearts, but I spent several minutes in that one canyon, and lost all the rest.

That also goes back to the “level is too long” bit, if I go back in there, I’ll have to do the entire first bit over again because I wasn’t able to fully complete that stage. I’d rather not. Ideally players who have gotten as far as the end of the rapids ride would be able to start at that point when loading in from outside. It’s not that too much content was added, kudos on that, it’s just that too much was added with too few breaks, like if they added an entire full 4-part dungeon to the game, Story and Exploration modes, but made it all one single dungeon where you had to do all four parts in sequence and if you left at any point, you’d have to start it all over again.

Mid air knockbacks are OP. Specifically, if I jump a waterfall and it retracts even though i made the jump and am still in air, I still get a KB animation and fall right back to the start. This is probably related to a latancy issue that anet never concerns themself with.

I’m having major problems with World 2 Zone 1. I like to consider myself a proficient jumper, but I simply cannot hit some of the turtles to get past the river parts. I’ve tried various positions as well as using the whip (since it seems to have slightly longer range) to no avail. I’ve gotten as far as I have by jumping into the water while attacking, then relying on the fact that SOMETIMES you can hit the water and get a jump in before the rapids hurl you backwards.
I’ve had to do that twice, once early on, and again for the second turtle after the Bear.

I loved the SAB in April, and I mean LOVED it. I was so excited to hear about it reopening but so far it’s just been frustrating. Difficulty wise, the skill required to get all the secrets in World 1 Zone 3 was perfect. This zone feels more like a classic arcade cabinet designed to suck quarters out of me. Well, thankfully GW2 has no subscription :P

Also I’m sad that the awesome old Rapids music was removed and used only for the Raft because I don’t like the new one all that much. Oh well, guess it makes the raft music more special.

I love it. I just completed w2 zone 1 and 2 and i have to say that the learning curve for w2 is a bit of a jump compared to world 1. But that’s OK!

And also allot longer (its a good thing the new patch message still gave me 3 hours to finish zone 2 :p)

I saw a post a day or so ago from josh saying that we need to look at it as if they are trolling us. And because i have that in the back of my head now, i’m laughing allot more then raging when i die xD (used to be the other way aroud :o)

I do have 1 little complaint, world 2 (at least zone 1 and 2) seem to have ALLOT less baubles. I bought a infinite coin, but i’m still running out off ammo at the end. And that makes it difficult getting past some nasty placed assassin. (like the ones on the platform right after the gong temple, took me a while to get to the top, but was out off ammo then. had to melee the assassins on the platform, and since they knock back… :@ made me have to do the gong room 3 more times just to kill that one assassin)

Is it intended to farm baubles in w1 so we can play w2?

And the only thing that might need a lil fix is the jumping water sprouts. They seemed buggy and a little to hard for normal mode. Tho maybe it is intended to not jump on some of them?

But all in all its great fun, and id ask to leave the difficulty as it is. i’m off to zone 3, and looking forward to trying tribulation mode

I respect and love the work you guys do, but the difficulty this time has been increased a bit too much.

I used to find Super Adventure box quite relaxing, got all the achievements with only ever using one continue coin. This time we have instant kill traps, frogs that pull you into instant kill traps, ninjas that own you if you do not successfully hit them with your first whip attack and a number of other mobs and developer tricks that are quite infuriating.

SAB should be about a fine line between frustration and enjoyable success like with the first release. Unfortunately this time frustration wins thus removing the majority of the enjoyment for casual players like me, I am sure everything is doable but their is no laid back learning curve this time, something that SAB first release excelled at.

Keep the instant kill traps and merciless lack of learning curves to tribulation mode, most of us here loved SAB for some relaxing jumping and retro goodness, I would be grateful if you guys at Anet kept it like that for future updates.

Hey Josh,

Just beat Zone 2, and the difficulty is SPOT ON. Nerfs may be needed, but please don’t be overzealous! I love it! You and your beard and your chest and everything!

The needle traps are AMAZING. It forced me to do quite a bit of thinking and planning and mapping out patterns on paper, something I haven’t done in YEARS. Incredibly satisfying.

What I don’t understand is how infantile mode is being clamored as too hard. I only used it once in the first apparition of SAB and I remember it being exactly as advertised: something that allows the less able to see the content to the end.

Now it seems Infantile is Normal, Normal is Hard and Tribulation is Nightmare.

I am sorry but I will join my voice to the others saying this seems tailored to go hand in hand with the infinite continue coin. Which is okay. Except the part where the difficulty is raised purposefully for the coin to be bought.

You know, like Diablo 3 and the auction house. Lets have a minute of silence for that big flop (considered a huge success by sales’ standards) once it sunk in they nerfed gold farming and made things unfair (teleporting one hit kill ground-is-lava mini bosses) with terrible rewards so that the way to advance was to have a fantasy based EVE revolving around the AH.

Josh Foreman.8250:

DarksunG.9537:

I think you have misinterpreted what made SAB fun. It’s not the hair ripping “OG hard-coreness” it was cute fun puzzles with occasional tough jumping at a pace you can enjoy.

Well I don’t expect anyone to read this whole thread at this point so I won’t fault you for not having read the 20 times I’ve said I didn’t intend Normal Mode to be as hard as it appears to be to average players.

As to the pacing issue. What made you feel rushed? Is it the length of the levels? Or do you just mean specific timed puzzles like the rolling gong?

It’s not so much feeling rushed in terms of time. But feeling like I have to do everything perfectly or I lose a life. That’s not fun. I loved getting all the achievements in W1, now it’s gonna be grueling. Yeah, I feel good having achieved victory because it’s hard, but I don’t actually have FUN while doing it because i’m just stressed that this one stupid jump is effing impossible (ninja trees hitting invisible ceilings & landing on invisible edges) or I didn’t time every last attack perfectly at weird angles to kill the mob that can chain-kd on a tiny ledge, or because the stupid rapids jumps that (as far as I can see) I did perfectly, knocks me down in mid air & juggles me for 20 seconds then kills me.

How fun is that going to be when I’m trying to find every last bauble for the achievement? when I have to go over the same infuriating twitch-jump 10 times because I have to roam around & look for hidden areas? Also, Owls that steel baubles? seriously?

And why is almost ALL of world 2 bottomless pits? really? I liked jumping around on the leaves , figuring out how one thing leads to another & having an interesting zone & puzzle to figure out & explore, not “every inch is an insta-death chance”.

And making the hidden baubles once a day. really? Isn’t the punishing difficulty enough of a gate?

Josh, thanks for staying up and answering so many questions from people.

The feedback I want to give isn’t related to difficulty, but time. I’ve been on world 2 zone 2 for about two hours now. I really want to go to bed, but I know if I stop now my progress will be lost. (Also there is a patch available so it will kick me off soon.)

Basically I just want to go to bed and I wish I didn’t have to sacrifice my progress to do it. I think you misunderstood someone earlier when they said the levels were too big. We love content, and would never complain about too much content. I just wish some of these levels were cut in half so I could save in between. You know?

LMAO, just played world 2 and beat zones 1 and 2 with ease… honestly you ppl need to learn to play and suck it up. The difficulty is there for a reason and they did an amazing job…

Its nowhere near as hard as ppl are trying to claim it is… i have a few guildies that are the definition of vertically challenged and we all got through with ease…

so again i repeat… great job Josh and your entire team. Cant wait to get my upgraded torch and get through world 2 zone 3!!!!

Deroy.2457:

There’s a difference in difficulty and punishment.
Dark Souls or XCOM are games I consider great and difficult games.
Because they telegraph everything properly allowing the player to sit back and study the enemy and hazard behavior.

Tribulation mode? It’s exactly the opposite.
Most of the time you’re exposed to invisible hazards, hazards you need to be exposed to before you are even aware of their existence. Also, most of the time objects you thought aren’t hazardous to the player, in fact is. It’s like removing the visual differentiation between 1up mushrooms and poison mushrooms.

If anything, Arena Net should be ashamed of themselves for stooping this low.
As it goes against everything in the book of good game design.
Then again, it’s in their nature to make the poorest decisions possible.

Tribulation mode is a tribute to torture platformers like I Wanna Be The Guy, Kaizo Mario, Unfair Mario, I Wanna Kill The Guy and others in the same vein.

http://youtu.be/EzxJgWbm_3I?t=2m20s

http://store.picbg.net/pubpic/41/9B/be5feed7a7c9419b.jpg The hitbox on this is just kitten. Please look into it.

Josh Foreman.8250:

1. The zones are too long

You are complaining about too much content.

That’s not a very diplomatic response now, is it? It’s a bit of a smart-kitten response.

The zones are too long means that many people, including myself, don’t necessarily want to be caught up in an instance for hours at a time trying to complete just one zone. I’ve only tried all zones in Infantile Mode at the moment, to kind of get the lay-of-the-land, but going through Zone 2…. holy dwayna…. that’s seriously long, even when you’re skipping most of it with the rainbow tracks.

I get that it’s in ArenaNet’s interests to keep people playing the game as much as possible, but I don’t know of anyone who enjoys being locked in an instance for as long as you evidently need to be to complete Zone 2. Just makes people resentful, really, especially when the last living story’s actual story was so … disappointing. When (and more importantly, If) I finally come to try this legit I’ll need to put a whole day aside, methinks.

These are good points, Coldin. Those two examples do teach you through death. The pool possibly. (Many people can tell to stay away since they recognize the deadly piranha in it) and the Darts certainly. The reason I opted for instant death with the darts is because I wanted absolute consistency that they are kill planes because they are fundamental as blockers further in the level. This is a case of breaking a basic design rule in order to accommodate a larger vision. Like a film director breaking the 180 rule or a painter purposefully ruining perspective or composition for effect. The instant death to teach a mechanic was pretty common in 8 and 16 bit games, and while I’m not trying to slavishly copy their mechanics, I like to make a gesture towards them in various ways. Anyway, that was my thinking behind that. Feel free to be unconvinced that it was a good design choice.

There might be better ways. I know it’s hard to control what a player sees, short of a cutscene, but it might be cool to spawn an enemy who’s fate is to die running into the first of these deathtraps you’re likely to see. Alternately, yes, kill the player for running into it, but either respawn him free of charge somehow, like “whew, someone managed to save you from that inevitable death trap!” or place a one-up right after it, to say “yeah, we straight up killed you, we owe you one, here you go.”

I just spent maybe 3 hours and over 150+ deaths in tribulation for world 1 zone 1 alone. Then another 2 hours doing World 2 Zone 2. It was difficult, and frustrating at times, but it wasn’t too hard. For me, it was a perfect level of difficulty. Now I can’t wait to begin traumatizing myself by doing tribulation in world 2.

I’ve got to say though all the games I’ve played so far there’s never been a developer or anyone that cared so much about the content they released and actually cared about what the players want and need, so props to you Josh Foreman. Earlier it kind of ruined my day not going to lie, spending 4 hours trying to complete zone 2 of world 2 XD especially that gong house, that was such a mood killer (getting there got easy after doing it many times but when you have to follow the gong that’s when it gets tricky and a bit irritating)

Overall I like the new SAB but it’s insanely hard for me, not sure about others players though, and I rather not do infantile mode.

On the positive Side
—————————————
+1 to a whole new world of SAB
+1 to the amount of work you guys put into it, the levels are long and really thought out and detailed, but perhaps too long?
+1 for the great devs that made SAB
+1 for it being challenging (like really challenging)

On the Negative Side
——————————————
-The levels are too long in my opinion, I’ll be on the lookout for the shortcut eagle next time though
-Perhaps too challenging?
-A lot of risk and maybe not enough rewards for the time spent doing it

Overall I’m impressed with the work you guys did in making the levels, but I feel like it’s unnecessarily long, but many thanks for creating a nice world inside a world.

Hello
I had sweet memories of the first SAB and was looking forward to playing world two, I really like jumping puzzles and successfully completed most on them (had to give up on southsun as timed jumps are not my thing and there’s a couple I still haven’t attempted).
I’ve run zones 1 and 2 of world 2 tonight (didn’t have 400 baubles for the torch) ad I’m willing to share my thoughts.
Looking back, most of it was an enjoyable experience, but some parts were just frustrating and the whole world 2 could use some tweaks to make it overall better. There were some parts I didn’t dislike but I didn’t like either that could easily be turned into nice ones.

So, here we go:
-The rapids. They were just horrible. I think I’d still be there trying if I were alone, my guildmates carried me over thankfully as all I could do was fall in the water (I HATE the geysers with a passion) and be carried waaaaaaay back and that’s what I hated the most about it. Despite the frequent checkpoints falling in the water (when I could survive the chain knock backs) usually meant I had to redo huge parts of the puzzle, leading to more falls, leading to frustration, leading to a (usually) nice, sweet girl screaming and cursing before it was over.

-The log waterfall. Just couldn’t do it. But I was lucky enough to find the cavern and actually found it easier to fight my way up killing bears than do it the way it was meant to be done.

-The darts were ok and, once I figured it out, fun. But that diagonal one, after you use the second block to jump over some darts, is just unfair and I don’t think it belongs to normal mode. As for the gong run.. Well that’s another thing I wouldn’t be able to do all by myself. After the first disastrous try we decided only one of us was to go up there, while the others waited for the gong downstairs. Being that person, I attempted the run several times and always failed (got us a couple attempts before one of them could survive those two dart walls). It was nice and fun as a team but I’m sure I’m never gonna do it alone.

-About the invisible clouds. The first two clouds where you had to bring the fish on the roof were totally invisible, especially the first one. The clouds are white and so was the background, we fell to it several times. Might depend on the video settings. Maybe? Mine is mostly medium with most effects disabled.

-That hidden frog after two difficult jumps (you passed her in your preview). That’s the only other thing I think doesn’t belong to normal mode. The jumps are already hard without a frog hidden ready to suck me and throw me down to my death behind the last one. I finally did it realizing she didn’t suck me in as long as I was standing on the tiiiiiny little slope in front of her but that wasn’t funny.

(looks like I wrote too much and found the 5001 limit, continues below )

My experience so far:
- Completed World2 zone1. The part with the geyser where you end up jumping through the waterfall is the only one that really bugged me. I think the rapids are too punishing for fail jumps as you can end up behind the last checkpoint. It is also really annoying to see yourself getting up just to be thrown back again by the water without being able to do anything. This may improve with time as it will reduce the lagg (as Josh stated in this thread).
- Stuck in World2 zone2 where the starving squid wouldnt grow bigger than some point, even with a bazillion of fish. I’ll give it another try soon but this needs to be fixed
-Wasted like 40 lives in World1 zone1 tribulation mode (almost reached the 3rd checkpoint but I had to get some sleep^^). This thing is so ridiculously hard its extremely fun… like: “this way seems saf.. WTF THE FLOOR IS LAVA????” The tricks are so cheap (explosive flowers, really?) it makes them enjoyable.. I even forgot to rage!

Thanks for the awesome work!

Overall, as I said, I had fun but also experienced frustration way too much and of my original 4 companions, one gave up during zone 1 and one in zone 2.
I have to note that the experience was significantly different if compared to world 1 not just because of difficulty level. The first SAB was a nice stroll in the park with friends, you had to use your brain to get over some obstacles and explore to find secret zones, some jumps were hard, especially for some secrets, and failing meant you had to climb that tree all over again for the 10th time and sometimes insta-death but you didn’t waste lives on every fall.
World 2 felt unforgiving and I burnt a lot lives, to the point I didn’t care anymore about them. If you wanted us to care about lives, I’m sorry to say you failed at that, as lives were a lot more important to me in world one, where I was trying to run it all with just one coin, than in world two where I was having frequent conversations with moto and inserting coins like there’s no tomorrow.
I strongly think coins and baubles should be easier to come by.
I had 12 left from April and entered the SAB with 17 coins and around 100 baubles. Before world 2 I did a speed run (and I mean SPEED run, no secrets, no nothing, just running to the end) of the whole world one in infantile mode so you have to add what I got from it.
I bought only the slingshot and ended up with 5 coins and around 100 baubles. 70 from the beginning of zone 3 (I got a 50 bauble chest and two yellow baubles). Meaning I hardly gained anything in zone 1 and 2 and actually can’t afford another run w/o grinding some more coins.
It’s not a BIG issue to me as I don’t like the skins and minis and don’t need to save up baubles. I’m just running SAB for the fun, but if I’m having issues saving up to run it just for fun, I can’t imagine how the ones who want the skins feel right now.

(continues below)

Well, my client just crashed as I was climbing through the aforementioned waterfall bear cave. There goes 4 continue coins for nothing.
Everything except the River parts were great, but I REALLY don’t want to do those again.

Also, where are all the Baubles? There are very few along the beaten path, and the rewards for all the secrets I found so far were very underwhelming.

As a first timer to the SAB, I do love the environment design. It’s a nice place to explore and everything – but the difficulty wall is insane! Don’t mistake me, I’m always happy about challenge. I’d go at it for hours, really, because I’m a bit of a completionist. I was happy with Diablo 3 mobs one-shotting me back in the day because it was a thrill to kite them and figure out boss-fight mechanics. So it’s not really about that. I’m okay with well-hidden but still visible dart-traps or iffy jumps. Those are real cool.

(Less cool are the absurd river rapids that’s an absolute nightmare because of the strangled camera-angles and the mid-jump knockbacks. I was happy drowning in those waiting for someone /else/ to hit the checkpoint.)

However, in this case I feel like the reward just isn’t quite there. I’m getting a handful of baubles per hour — LOSING them at a /much/ faster rate from all the continue coins I’ve had to buy (to the point I’ve resorted to NOT buying them and simply re-zoning into the area using the party system).

My achievements are barely progressing (as a lone player, it’s hard to get into a party that’s like-minded in hunting down every last bauble on the map or letting you know about it) and…well. My hopes of getting a skin (20 × 250 baubles?! I can barely climb over 200 and I haven’t even been able to afford that shovel or next continue coin) are almost zilch I play for skins, if anything, and this saddens me a little.

…And I begin questioning my own existence. “What are we even doing here” I ask my party. And nobody knows. Ploughing through it bit by painful bit, barely clearing Zone 1 (with no bauble / secret room completion) after more than a very long hour.

I don’t understand some of the systems either – like why there isn’t a minimap. I often feel abandoned by my party as they jump off into the distance or around a heavily forested area and I’ve got no idea where they are on the map. Often times it feels like a solo-quest with a ginormous vertical death wall and not much loot at the end of the tunnel. (If I get knocked off at the last minute of a boss-battle I miss the chest I spent the last hour running towards – and that chest only gives a handful of baubles, too). It’s just slightly disheartening

First thoughts:

World 2 feels less polished. A lot of cheap deaths. There are breaks in logic. For example, I can have my character at the very edge of a log or a alligator, almost standing on air, without falling into the water. However, on the raft sections, I can fall into the water and instantly die while there’s still the wood of the raft beneath my character’s feet.

I would expect these sort of pranks in Trib mode, but not regular. In regular mode, it just feels janky, especially compared to World 1.

Also, the levels are too long and throws the pacing off from World 1. Baubles are also less common, so the “coin-up” feel is gone.

@Josh

I have a question pertaining to feedback on future releases of SAB and maybe other content in general.

Would a developer want and benefit from a ‘first time play through’ from a real players? Recorded like a stream.

I thought about this as I was going through the content for the first time today. Would it help the developers see how I reacted to this or that as I was seeing it for the first time. How I was able to figure certain things out, what I died repeatedly too and what I didn’t. What short cuts I took, where I was able to circumvent content maybe you didn’t intend. (ie: Killing yourself intentionally quickly after releasing the gong and meeting it at the bottom, avoiding the whole ‘gong run’.)

I thought about doing it for this release but I was just too excited to get into it, to set myself to record.

Would a dev like yourself have or take the time to watch something like this? Or is feedback on the forum all you need?

As an Asura/Charr/Human player who has attempted to play on all three characters, I must say that using a “non-standard size” character (standard size being human/sylvari) makes it seem… more difficult. On World 2 Zone 1 I spent a decent amount of time fighting the camera and its attempts at making me motion sick while I sat still in a motionless seat. It would zoom in to where I could see the backs of my characters eyeballs then suddenly be stuck behind a rock or some waterfall. I spent a great deal of the fight with the bears inside of the waterfall at the end of 2-1 looking at the back of my charr hoping his stick wakittenting things and trying to figure out why half my body was hanging off the log.

These of course aren’t new gripes to this game. Jumping puzzles have long since been ways to test your stomach’s endurance if you so decide, but the camera system certainly doesn’t do many players any favors in experiencing this content.

The fact that the zones are extremely lengthy, combined with their unforgiveness, doesn’t help as well. We never looked around for secrets and still took several hours to finish the two zones, it was so long and it was so much more difficult and full of deadly jumps we didn’t feel like exploring.
It has a lot to do with checkpoints and overall zone length. I’d have enjoyed several parts of world 2 a lot more if I didn’t have to worry about redoing huge parts of it due to a failed jump or a ninja and so on. Sometimes you pass a difficult part and you see there’s more and more and you just wish you had a checkpoint.
Not only that. The lack of baubles and the reward being the same at the end, even if the world is twice as long and a lot more difficult, were somewhat disheartening. I spent hours dying and jumping and stuff to get what? The same two big bubbles I get in world one, a lot less of the small ones and not even an achievement that’s the only reward I care about. I felt a sense of achievement for doing it, yet it looks like it’s not even worth 5 AP, while auto attacking Scarlet minions was worth tons in the last weeks. I Know you’re not responsible for rewards but someone needs to look at them because they’re just not right this way. Normal mode is harder than infantile mode, yet if you want some achievements you’d better run that one as normal mode has (I think) ONE achievement for the whole world.

I know I may sound whiny but I’m just trying to analyze what I didn’t like in world 2 cause I think it can get a lot better/more enjoyable. I find SAB as a whole to be awesome

Ps. English’s not my first language, this post was long and I didn’t sleep at all this night, so forgive me if you find some errors

Kaleban.9834:

Mere hours after the release you have videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKyKyJzfjXM which should give you a good impression of players’ annoyance.

LOL! I love this vid, it captures the moment perfectly.

Yeah…W2 Z2 is doable, I got to the gong, but using up 35 lives to learn trial and error via insta death is a pain…almost as if something is pushing me to buy that infinite coin…cough cough. Now when I’m out of continue coins..it’ll be 2 lives if I don’t use any baubles to buy more…whatever happened to the starter 5 lives from the first sab update? >_<

Echo Shot.6479:

Yeah…W2 Z2 is doable, I got to the gong, but using up 35 lives to learn trial and error via insta death is a pain…almost as if something is pushing me to buy that infinite coin…cough cough. Now when I’m out of continue coins..it’ll be 2 lives if I don’t use any baubles to buy more…whatever happened to the starter 5 lives from the first sab update? >_<

It’s not the coin. It’s not the difficulty. It’s not even the daily digging and chests.

It’s the combination.

No more digging means less baubles to be found. More deaths means you’ll need more baubles to continue. And there are purposes for baubles as well, namely the skins. But if you have to use all your baubles just to continue, how am I supposed to even get a shot at those skins? It’s a tiny chance that they drop from the chest, so you’ll have 30 shots at that (daily, for one month).

They just want you to buy that coin so you can use those few baubles you can get for the skins and mini. And that just hurts.

I’m in love with the difficulty. It brings me back to the old times of gaming where you actually had to put in time to overcome a level. Skill has become a factor again. World 2 Zone 3 now. With a little bit of determination, I believe all of you can do it on infantile mode. Don’t change a thing!

not particularly thrilled that we cannot farm baubles like we were able to in the original release. i’m talking world 1 zone 2 specifically. you guys at arenanet added a bunch of new skins but you crippled our farming capabilities. these skins are event account bound, so why do that? it’s not like we were going to flood the TP with skins as they are, again, account bound. many of us just want to complete our SAB skin collection and then go do something else in the game rather than spend the whole month doing SAB stuff.

also the difficulty, while a bit spiked up compared to world 1, isn’t that bad if you’d work on the collision detection (the whip especially). i know you wanted to make this as authentic as possible with the 8 bit era and the horrid collision detection that made up for most of the difficulty in those games, but come on, it’s just awful when you’re on a 3d plane instead of a 2d side scroller.

I just finished rapids in about 40 minutes. Good level, geysers were a pain because of the buggy rapids, logs down waterfall were OK once I landed the bear cave behind the waterfall.

Was at it for 2 hours in zone 2 (alone) until I hit the gong run. After running up to the gong over 10 times and failing to make the run down each time because the gong would outrun me/rubberband due to lag, I needed sleep, so I asked for help on guild. Nobody answered (most people asleep or already in SAB), so I quit. 2 very long hours wasted, and I definitely don’t feel like going back in there (because of how far in the gong is).

Perfectly doable in a group, a nightmare solo. Please at least make it so that running down with the gong can’t kill you. It’s absolutely impossible to spot the darts and position yourself correctly in time if you have lag. The run up is dangerous (and tedious) enough.

Dark Jericho.8609:

not particularly thrilled that we cannot farm baubles like we were able to in the original release. i’m talking world 1 zone 2 specifically. you guys at arenanet added a bunch of new skins but you crippled our farming capabilities. these skins are event account bound, so why do that? it’s not like we were going to flood the TP with skins as they are, again, account bound. many of us just want to complete our SAB skin collection and then go do something else in the game rather than spend the whole month doing SAB stuff.

I don’t get the daily accountbound digging sites.

Ok, in April, a lot of people farmed it, so they could get “easy” crystals, stones and shards. But they removed those. Why still punish those that simply want all skins? Which are accountbound in the first place…

(the chest, I don’t really mind, it’ll keep the rares that drop from there a bit more rare).

Faevius.9862:

I’m in love with the difficulty. It brings me back to the old times of gaming where you actually had to put in time to overcome a level. Skill has become a factor again. World 2 Zone 3 now. With a little bit of determination, I believe all of you can do it on infantile mode. Don’t change a thing!

I hate people like you. Stop referencing the old times of gaming that you probably didn’t even have a part of. If you did, you would recognize bad game design when you saw instead of mocking people that get destroyed by overly long, pointless game mechanics coupled with trial-and-error gameplay.

After playing Zone 1 and Zone 2, I’ve listed a few things that could be changed that could make the playthrough still challenging, but more… enjoyable.
Since this is still only just world TWO of FOUR.

Zone 1
Fix the issue where if the spout vanished from underneath you but you’ve already jumped off of it, it doesn’t cause you to get knocked around.

That’s about it for Zone 1.

Zone 2
Make it so that the Darts are not a 1-hit kill, but instead do 2 hearts worth of damage and knock you back (Not flying knock back, but makes you fall back on your butt kind).
This way, there is some room for trial and error, but you still can’t just run through the darts. This way you can’t just “skip” some areas.

And that’s really just about it for zone 2.

The darts really are the issue there, not cause truthfully the 1-hit kill, but because of the sheer number of them after a while…
(The Gong Tower.. was NOT fun.)

I’m not the most skilled at newer games, but I have a lot of muscle memory and experience from oldschool games and platformers, so I usually do fairly well in the SAB. It’s difficult like those old games were, which I appreciate. There are some posts in here about things that I didn’t find difficult at all. I haven’t played the Pain Cliffs area yet, but intend to tomorrow. I’ll have to see how severe that one is when I get there.
I made about 12 bauble bubbles today and used only two continue coins.

That said, I’ve run into a few issues.

- There are instances where you can jump on lily pads in poisonous water and still get hurt, even if you never touched the water.
- Sometimes when monkeys throw coconuts, there’s no red x to mark where they’re going to hit.
- The rapids on the raft are problematic. They make me dizzy and motion sick. That, and if you’re standing on the wrong part of the raft when it turns, you might just get pitched into the water. Which is somewhat unavoidable when an assassin is chasing you across the raft while you wait for your whip to cool down.
- You could be standing a good foot outside of the red center of the fly trap flowers and have them snap shut on you anyway.
- Rapids occasionally just punch you into the water even if you’re standing solidly in the middle of a rock, on a turtle, or on a crocodile without any part of your body anywhere near being in contact with the water. Hell, even when you’re just jumping over the water, sometimes. And the geysers just seem buggy.
- You can take a long time to line yourself up on flowers and get either tossed off to the side for no reason, or just drop like a stone in the middle of being launched.
- The log waterfall is nightmarish if you have below average vision. I can’t fault anyone too much for this, games just aren’t made for people with vision as poor as mine, but I figured I would point it out regardless. It would be helpful if the logs and the ground you’re to try to land on was a little more prominent for that section.
- There really are many spots where you have to stand in midair to hit a croc or turtle. I don’t mind it so much because I play a sylvari and know exactly how to plant (harr har) my ridiculously tiny feet, but I feel badly for charr players dealing with that.
- The whip loves to not hit things at all unless you’re standing so close you’re going to lose a heart anyway. Even then, sometimes not.
- There are so many jumps you’re required to make from tiny ledges while the camera is so far up your behind all you can see are your floating eyeballs and mouth plate that it’s crazy. It’s bad enough being blind on one side, and playing a max height sylvari makes it worse. I feel badly for anyone playing a character larger than mine.

I sincerely doubt these are latency issues as I’m a QA tester for another game and it’s pretty easy for me to recognize by this point when the trouble I’m having is due to lag, the only thing that I think could possibly be chalked up to that is dropping during a launch, but I have a few doubts about that because I’ve seen it elsewhere with the same launch mechanic with no one else around. I did have obvious latency problems with other things, but those are not listed here as they’re not relevant. As well, I’m almost thirty years old and I grew up with games more difficult than the SAB. The above problems really have nothing to do with difficulty, exactly, but more to do with design issues.

I find SAB really entertaining and fun.. except for when I barrel into one of those design flaws, usually with no forewarning. Then it becomes a mess of frustration and annoyance.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not plugging my ears and screaming LA LA LA here. If that’s not the issue, great. I’ll adjust. I’ve said multiple times now that my goal with Normal Mode is to make it a fun experience for average players. At this point you can believe me, or just keep calling me a lying fraud. Whatever.

Please don’t take this wrong. Defensiveness isn’t going to help. People are both offering advice and becoming a little upset (a cool head would help everyone here) because they care about the game. They really, really do care about what you made, and the sensible ones aren’t here to attack you personally. I have to deal with this stuff both as QA and as an illustrator and most people here mean well. Even I could probably use more tact in my post above, but I’m very tired. And rambled too much. I also apologize that I only made it to page 3, I need to go back and read the rest when it’s not 4 in the morning.

The sad truth is that the first iteration of SAB was welcomed with open arms by everyone. It was loved, it was a huge hit, people flocked to it and many, myself included and God knows I don’t like JPs, wanted it to become a permanent fixture.

And this done in part-time simply by some devs who wanted to present an April’s fool.

But, said sad truth, the second iteration was made to be milked. I bring back my Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 example. As with Diablo and with SAB the players wanted more of the same (in Diablo’s case, with better graphics) and in both cases the devs decided to change the winning formula and… do… something.. which is no longer that winning formula.

Now, take what I say with a grain of salt. I have not entered the new worlds. I only finished SAB’s april fool twice since, like I mentioned, I’m terrible with JPs and I avoid them, but by what everyone is saying this is what happened.

Not to World 2 yet but after a couple of hours (and a disconnect), I have a more solid impression.

There are two jumps in normal mode I can’t reliably do. One due to a timed speed item and crap camera angles and the other due to depth perception problems on my end. Aside from those and the boss camera angle bugginess, world 1-1 is kinda fun but it looks like I have to go with infantile mode.. not that I want to and not that most parties want to… and to be honest? World 1-1 was MORE fun with others (until I died and that 3 hours until update suddenly became 3 seconds – if one party member loses all their lives, does the ENTIRE group fail ala Battletoads?). I may have to invest in that infinite continue and it’s ten shiny lives but we’ll see.

I don’t think I’ll ever see World 2 or World 1-3 without investing in continues. When jumping is your weak point, this sort of content isn’t friendly. THAT SAID (and before the hardcores jump me and tell me to “suk it up”), I like that Tribulation Mode exists because I think the uber hardcore players who like tormenting challenges need their fill too but it’s clear “normal” is a bit too hardmode and buggy ATM (but good god, don’t hand it to everyone with no need for skill or time… I hate that anyone who says content is buggy, too hard, too frustrating or too much of a pain gets downtalked and told lern2guildwars2 – kitten , no one wants Cuddly Candy-Land but no one wants IWTBTG x 100 either).

I’ll keep at it and see if I can get any progress in. At the very least, it’s a time waster.

I can’t imagine how frustrating world 1 must be now for first timers with only one life at a time….

I doubt I would have enjoyed it nearly as much the first time around without the 5 starter lives.

Josh Foreman.8250:

These are good points, Coldin. Those two examples do teach you through death. The pool possibly. (Many people can tell to stay away since they recognize the deadly piranha in it) and the Darts certainly. The reason I opted for instant death with the darts is because I wanted absolute consistency that they are kill planes because they are fundamental as blockers further in the level.

This is an expensive lesson. The first death is random, unexpected. The second death is confirming what killed you. The third death is trying to see if you can dodge through it. The fourth death is the next door, after carefully circumventing the first door, because you still haven’t identified the difference between safe and trapped doors. That’s almost an entire continue coin in 60 seconds, lost not due to skill, but to ignorance. You made it into a toll.

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.

That jumping flower in w2z1 got me stumped a moment because there’s absolutely no indication they are a jump pad. And once I step on them randomly for the first time, down into the chasm!

Take a cue on the old Megaman games. Add one somewhere earlier on a flat ground so that you don’t get cheap deathed and put one bauble on top of it to lure players into them so that they learn how they work. Megaman games are very good at those kind of discreet tutorials.

Also, w2z1 has far far far far too few baubles around, it’s insane.

While the game is not ‘’too hard’’ when properly working, there’s a lot of nonsense going on that makes it harder than I feel it’s supposed to be.

o Pushblocks not blocking while being pushed. (Meaning instakill walls shoot through moving blocks)
o Shuriken hitboxes seemingly bigger than they’re supposed to be.
o Toad can swallow you up if you get hit by the suck-in animation in mid-air even if you land 2 floors below (meaning once you break free you pop out of thin air)
o The water spout knocking back after you jumped off if it turns off while you’re above it. This followed by a CHAIN knockback that can take ages if the game feels like trolling you.
o Instant kill walls triggering even if you’re not in their direct line of sight. (Main offenders are the horizontally placed walls in the big hole, might be that their line of sight is actually slightly wider than the spots on which you can stand without falling)
o Random deaths. (This might be due to lag? WvW suffered from lag a lot after the patch)

Then there’s 2 things that I dislike, which are not necessarily bad.
o Arbitrary instant kill walls forcing you to take things slooowwllyy until you see where everything is. This was a pain when solo’ing World 2 Dojo areas, especially at the gong part. I would’ve personally preferred a way to have a consistent knockback that makes sure you cannot cross the ’’walls’’, with an arbitrary amount of damage added to it if you wanted to punish the player for crossing it.

o Lots of stuff causes knockbacks, which in a level with small spaces tends to screw you over and instant kill you anyway. (Knockback into piranha pit, knockback off the map, knockback into instant kill arrow wall, swallowed by toad – spit out into the void, etc)

Then there’s the fact that some things aren’t dodgeable, while throughout GW2 we’ve learned to dodge a lot. Making you waste coins/lives on undodgeable things killing you.

Once you figure out all the stupid quirks SAB seems to have it’s easy enough to get through it, but being forced to realize them takes a lot out of the experience imo. I feel like World 2 is the warped vision of what 8-bit game difficulty was like back then. It is okay-ish, but it could’ve been better. World 1 then again is super easy for the big part, with King Toad being a proper boss.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

My girlfriend and I actually have a piece of paper on our desk with a “WTH Josh?!” tally for every time we curse your name. So far we have well over 30 ticks (most are with a smile). I want to thank you again for being so open and involved in the process.

Clearly you haven’t tried Tribulation Mode, or that would be a WTF Josh?!!!!11 list.

Haha, Crazylegsmurphy toned it down for you; we did try tribulation mode for a while and the “F” was definitely in there! But we still love you <3

I also want to give you the highest compliments for how you deal with feedback.

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.

After the part where you fall of the waterfall with the raft and jumped over the gap with the flower… The river with the turtles yu have to hit jsut seem impssobile to me. The turtles are out of my range, and i tried the whip aswell as sword. I died 20+ times before finally quitting :/.

Lagg on the flowers is fine for me. Sometimes it appears as if im falling, but i rubber band to the place i should be.

There arent enough checkpoints :/. There should be one after you cross the gap and kill the molotov bear imo. Jumping over the gap to the rapids with turtles gets old after 20 times.

That said, i really want to enjoy world 2, just as i did with one, i really do. Every single minute i spent there was 100% happiness, which is very rare in other placws of the game/life.

raahk.2786:

Faevius.9862:

I’m in love with the difficulty. It brings me back to the old times of gaming where you actually had to put in time to overcome a level. Skill has become a factor again. World 2 Zone 3 now. With a little bit of determination, I believe all of you can do it on infantile mode. Don’t change a thing!

I hate people like you. Stop referencing the old times of gaming that you probably didn’t even have a part of. If you did, you would recognize bad game design when you saw instead of mocking people that get destroyed by overly long, pointless game mechanics coupled with trial-and-error gameplay.

I simply gave my input, didn’t ask for what you thought of it. I have been around through all the flawed games in the past, and I enjoy this. Where was I mocking btw? I’m simply encouraging people. If you really think it’s that long, join my party and I’ll show you that it takes 20 mins to beat zone 2. If you still choose to hate me, that’s your choice. Life goes on. I’m glad you took the time to reply to my post which was regarding the topic not you.

Haters gonna hate.

I think most of whine comes from younger generation that didn’t get to experience this type of game. Obviously there are few of older guys too, but I think you guys got carried by the moment.
For me W2 is by far better then W1. W1 was just too, you could run it in about 10 minutes. After day or two of W1 everyone was just farming it multiple times with alts, and super adventure box became super farming box.
W2 reminds me on old school games and really brings up those memories.