Guild Wars 2

Josh Foreman.8250:

Dan.8709:

I don’t have the time to read the whole thread atm, so sorry for that.

Had anyone got this weird bug where SAB would kick you out after dropping a fish?
I FINALLY was getting at the end of the second level of world 2, I believe since it was a really long while, I was on the dojo puzzle where I have to put fish on the thing, the second one, I died some good times and was finally getting the fish into the thing, then I dropped it to reset the one time it can… and It kicked me out.

Maybe, maybe maybe my mouse went nuts and I clicked on leave instance, but I wasn’t even pressing it at the time. :|

Really sucked to lose all those hours inside it haha, but eh.
I also got two DCs during rapids…

Josh, would there be anyway to reenter where we stopped after a dc or something?
In world 1 was ok, but world 2 the levels are so much bigger it gets painful.

That’s terrible. I’m guessing the fish thing was a coincidence. I really wish there was a way we could detect disconnect as opposed to exploit. Sorry.

That’s “easy” to avoid, give temporal items, like the Arachno… Bow with a timer to be able to use, once used inside the instance they teleport to the last checkpoint. After the time expires, the ticket is just trash to sell for 1 copper. Problem solved. With a 5 minutes timmer, and only able to have 1 ticket (it could rewrite itself) there’s no longer the exploit possibility.

I do have some old games finished under my belt. The difficulty in world 2 and in tribulation mode isn’t right.

W1 is W1, it’s fine as it is for the difficulty. The zones are big but not very linear giving us the impression the zones are both big and short enough. W2Z1 is as big as W1Z3 and 100% linear. It’s long, it’s annoying. W2Z1 doesn’t give us any baubles. W2Z1 only give us one life when you restart.

Are we supposed to farm extra lives in W1? With the dig spots heavily nerfed?

Reading the comments, I"m afraid it’ll get dumbed down. World 2 has a steeper learning curve, but it’s fun. It took me 5 hours to complete both zone 1 and 2. I’ll be able to do it much faster as I know what I need to get from shops and know the zones.

Please don’t nerf it. Fix the bugs and it’ll be better already.

Zone 2 was HARD, but now I’ve done it once I certainly feel I won’t die as often anymore.

Just wanted to add that I have had bugs that gets me stuck inside of walls 2 times in a row now that forces me to re-log and restart the whole zone I am in. it happend once in the rappids where I got stuck inside a wall after falling in the water and once in W2Z2 at the bit where you have to feed the squid. When I jumped at the checkpoint I got teleported under it and had to restart the whole zone. What I think would be a good idea is to give us a ‘’restart at last checkpoint’’ option whitout having to kill ourself so if we get stuck inside of something we can manually kill ourself to get to the last checkpoint.

After a nights sleep I now think I know why the rapids are so frustrating, it is not that you fail but how you fail… what I mean is that when you do, you know you are dead but sometimes still have to wait up to a minute to to actually die. This makes failing more frustrating than it needs to be in my opinion.

Faevius.9862:

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.

Wow.. you weren’t mocking anyone really. In fact, you had one of the nicer replies

Duncanmix.5238:

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.

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

I am sorry but I do not find World 2 Zone 2 any fun at all
I bought Infinite countine coin to get griefed in TM, but I having a Harder time compleating World 2 Zone 2 than World 1 Zone 1 in TM and it is making me even more angry since in TM I can make progress and plan ahead what to do different but in World 2 Zone 2 I am hit with bad framrate, miliseconds short lagspikes making my jumps kitten, not only I find the water pillars hard to jump on but they also knocks you back if you are a little off, adding the lag and some delay on grafics respons to where I actually am and it makes it even trickier.

And also when I fall down in to the current and I try to get myself to a safe spot then sometimes the character wont jump, sometimes the character flicks away to another place in the current and my orientation is totaly off and sometime my character does a mighty bounce in the current and bounces down all the way down the current.

Ah, and also the camera here is messed up, please don’t do Jumping scenarios inside cramp places.

I loved SAB World 1 and World 2 Zone 1, they are perfect and I love how it get’s harder… but actually this is a brick wall and this isn’t fun. You did TM to grief us so let it stay there ^^

It’s actually not that hard if the camera zoom and angle is not so kittenty. also the lag .. oh the lag .. it’s a nightmare for SeA region. and that rapid water .. it keeps getting bugged and i have to relog because i’m stuck and can’t do anything. it means i have to start allover again x.x .. i play mario, contra , sonic, etc and i don’t remember getting this upset playing it even when i fail again and again. and pleaseeeee the baubles … let us farm it like before. plus i got this motion sickness when i enter sab. headache and nausea so i can’t play it too long.

RvLeshrac.2673:

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

Dude, different skill level, different opinion. Both his and your opinions are equal.

Personally I love world 2 alot more because world 1 was really really easy, World Zone 3 was the first zone I actually thought, oh hey, so it does get more into a platformer.
I don’t know, but I died loads and loads of times on mario, or rayman or any of those other platformers. Or maybe even Prince of Persia.

Maybe I’m way out of your skill level, because I played UT2004 puzzle maps (and really those jumps are three billion times as hard as this hopping from ledge to ledge.) But World two is not that hard at all.

Back in April I wanted to see more of world 2 because the jumping there actually required some skill. And really, I haven’t seen any super pixel perfect jumps in normal mode at all. TM , geez, some of the jumps are just another level of annoying.

Make world3 normal even harder, world2 is the most fun I have had in this game.

FrizzFreston.5290:

RvLeshrac.2673:

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

Dude, different skill level, different opinion. Both his and your opinions are equal.

Personally I love world 2 alot more because world 1 was really really easy, World Zone 3 was the first zone I actually thought, oh hey, so it does get more into a platformer.
I don’t know, but I died loads and loads of times on mario, or rayman or any of those other platformers. Or maybe even Prince of Persia.

Maybe I’m way out of your skill level, because I played UT2004 puzzle maps (and really those jumps are three billion times as hard as this hopping from ledge to ledge.) But World two is not that hard at all.

Back in April I wanted to see more of world 2 because the jumping there actually required some skill. And really, I haven’t seen any super pixel perfect jumps in normal mode at all. TM , geez, some of the jumps are just another level of annoying.

I’ve completed each and every Mega Man title (in every series). Zelda II. Pitfall. Super Meat Boy. IWBTG.

I assure you, this update is infinitely more IWBTG, a game designed expressly to be as hideous a game as possible, than anything else.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

We all have a broad range of experience with Atari – current games. I cut my teeth on NES Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden et all. When I reference one of these games I’m not saying “SAB is exactly like this game in every way.” SAB is a homage to ERA of games, not a single game or genre. SAB is LIKE Metroid in a couple ways. Like Ninja Gaiden in a couple ways, like Mega Man in a couple ways. We have items in shops you have to buy to progress like Zelda, we have instant kill spikes and pits like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can point to all the classic games that do things differently and say “See, that’s how you SHOULD do it.” The we we DID do it is based on the unique chemistry of our team and what we liked in old games and what we wanted to experience. Your milage may vary.

Bad josh…you made me spend money on my wii u for above mentioned games!!

Ps original metroid and zelda werent that bad…but feel free to never take battletoads as your inspiration for world 3 or 4

Went in for the first time yesterday. I’m an old player who started on c64/amiga so i’m used to the SID chip audio and blocky gfx. But man this is the first time i dropped out of an dungeon prematurly in my whole game career.

There is basicly no info besides a finger pointing in a direction. If u play a char the camera is borked most of the time.

Fortunatly the rewards of this event are horrible so I won’t miss out on things because I’m not going back in.

Randulf.7614:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

We all have a broad range of experience with Atari – current games. I cut my teeth on NES Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden et all. When I reference one of these games I’m not saying “SAB is exactly like this game in every way.” SAB is a homage to ERA of games, not a single game or genre. SAB is LIKE Metroid in a couple ways. Like Ninja Gaiden in a couple ways, like Mega Man in a couple ways. We have items in shops you have to buy to progress like Zelda, we have instant kill spikes and pits like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can point to all the classic games that do things differently and say “See, that’s how you SHOULD do it.” The we we DID do it is based on the unique chemistry of our team and what we liked in old games and what we wanted to experience. Your milage may vary.

Bad josh…you made me spend money on my wii u for above mentioned games!!

Ps original metroid and zelda werent that bad…but feel free to never take battletoads as your inspiration for world 3 or 4

I think it’s a wee bit too late for that, I’ve heard “Battletoads” hard all evening in the SAB map chat :p

RvLeshrac.2673:

Duncanmix.5238:

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.

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

Eh I can just name few games that this reminded me of:
Sega
- alex kid – was awesome game, it was hard and you had to finish it in one run. You couldn’t save, if u lose all lives you have to start over again.
- sonic – it was easier but it still reminded me with all those jumps
- psycho fox – another legendary game where I sharpened my jumping skills =).

SNES
- marios, donkey kong, zeldas all had their hard moments but that was fun, overcoming those challenges.

Also I remember playing Tomba on PS, Sab reminded me of that game too. True old school players will enjoy in SAB, and for others… I guess whining it is =).

Josh Foreman – i appreciate all your hard work both on SAB and of commenting this thread.

just wanted to say –
1.Regarding GW2 ability to store the user’s progress – you could create a bunch of items (“scrolls or whatever”) that allows the user to fastforward to a checkpoint. this way each checkpoint a user gets this item and can double click it to start from that checkpoint. (or just create WayPoints )

2.I learnt that alot of the times the jumping parts requires you to stand on the air. i’ll
try to upload screenshots

3.some parts of world 2 cannot be passed even with a whip – thats a bit of a bummer. you should state that to the players at the begining.

Finished up to 2-2 and these are my comments.

The one thing I would look at…
The pagoda with the gong is a bit of a mess.
1. Fighting and avoiding darts is frustrating because I can’t move around to dodge without running into darts. And the assassins require good dodging to avoid damage, but I am forced to sit there and absorb damage unless I want to roll into darts.
2. The gong is too hart to walk around, it is big and bounces the player off of it (or simply block the player) too much. In some places you have to transition to the other side of the gong in the span between two beams. I bounce of the back of it when trying to walk around it and can’t keep up with it after moving to the other side. And frankly, the best way to do the gong is, hit it, then die so that you can wait for it at the bottom floor.

I don’t know if making the insta kill walls discrete is a good idea. Especially when they span across a large area. In some cases they become nearly impossible to spot, because you are too far away from them, but they will still kill you. Perhaps the opposing pillar of a dart trap should have some darts stuck them, that would be nice.
Another idea, is if you want them to be impassible, they can knock you back, instead of insta kill you.

Anet is really shoving that infinite respawn coin in your face with this update………….. I like that w2 is hard, but going grinding w1 just so I can finish w2 is a no go for me.

Everyone’s making a big deal about the infinite continue coin but come on, think of the value it will have. There’s two more worlds to come and I’m fairly certain I’m going to blow tons of lives on them, not to mention TM mode.

It’s still a convenience item, but it’s finally one that’s really convenient.

RvLeshrac.2673:

Duncanmix.5238:

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.

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

I agree with this post.

In spite of peoples random attempts at remembering their childhood, I still play ‘old school’ games quite regularly. And the artificially inflated difficulty mechanics and pixel perfect requirements only exist in the absolute worst of them.

You had to learn what to do, and then you did it. That is “old school hard.”

It didn’t fail 4 out of 5 tries because the whip wouldn’t catch the hit box just right. You didn’t have to stand in mid air so the sling shot would hit the next turtle instead of repeatedly hitting the one you are already standing on. Falling in the water either killed you, or it didn’t. There was no random ‘will it send you half way back and then let you jump out? Or will it trap you in one spot while devouring your soul?’

W1 was a fun, colorful lighthearted and challenging homage. W2 could be but isn’t.
W2 suffers from the “Lets make it as hard as we remember those games being when we were five and sucked at playing video games.”

Sure, when I first played on my neighbors Snes, super mario world was hard and unforgiving. And when I tried to play Zelda on my best friends 64 and he had to help me through all the tough spots, it was sooo challenging.
But now they are just simple little games that, at most, take an hour or two to get used to them again. Then suddenly “This part was hard before? Took me like two seconds!”

sofar these devs have been nothing but rude kittenbags to the playerbase. Great customer service you have going on here

(Sorry, messed up my copy paste, this is a very lengthy post)

Okay, so, Played through levels 2-1 and 2-2 yesterday evening, slept on it, now I think I can throw a few lines here to add my own two cents.

I’d like to point that I love JPs, it’s probably my favourite feature in the game, by far. I created a Mesmer for the sole and only purpose of helping my friends and even perfect strangers through them.

I also love living story achievements. I got almost all of them, short a few here and there, usually because of time contraints, and real life issues. I never, ever, thought, entirely skipped one. Now for SAB, in april, I actually completed all of it, and loved every moment. I replayed it and pulled even my most JP-inapt friends through most of it. I really looked forward for the World 2.

Well, I admit, even if not outright spitting on it, I’m quite a bit disappointed by some of its aspects.

I came back to the SAB with 200+ baubles and 99 lives, from what I had back then. At the end of 2-2, I was left with around 10+- lives and no baubles. That, by itself is already a bit annoying. This is world 2 over 4, I really wasn’t expecting it, and it didn’t came as a good surprise to me. The difficulty leap, in the curve was totally crazy. It doesn’t feel like a World 2, at all, to me, it feels like another game entirely, or a final world.

To point it out, I played through it with a friend of mine who is only a bit under me when it comes to JPs.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about Area 1. The lack of music was disturbing, but not really had any impact on gameplay. I was a bit taken aback, thought, by the absolute lack of… .almost anything in it. I remembered most of the secret areas/paths so I guided my friend to them, only to find them empty. There was no reward at all for exploring. that, in itself took away a big chunk of fun from the whole experience. The only baubles found were the small handful of them scattered along the way. The incentive to explore, to tell yourself “Hey, a waterfall ! Maybe I can jump through it.. I might die trying, but what if there’s something behind ?” is bit by bit, entirely killed by the first area of World 2. The 4th time you actually manage to find one of the areas and it’s, once again empty, giving you nothing but the lives you lost trying, for putting effort into reaching an improbable location, you end up shrugging and going “Okay, whatever, thisis not even fun anymore, let’s just hit the end of the level…”

Second point, as I said, being relatively good at JPs, I usually bring pals along and help them through. You supressed each and every mushroom shortcuts from level 2-1. I can only imagine how distressingly annoying it could have felt for groups. Before, I, or for other groups, the best jumpers could advance, and tell the others, who didn’t aimed for all the baubles, but just wanted to have fun, and had a hard time with the crocodiles or the jumping in general “Hey, guys, backtrack to X, I’ll open the shortcut for you !” Now, the only way to ‘help’ them is to reach the organ checkpoint and telling them to go suicide. This is in no way near fun, and quite disheartening for them.

My next concern is about the croc’s and turtle’kittenboxes. Back then, the river area didn’t caused much problems to me. Nowaday, I just can’t seem to reach most of theirs. I end up backtracking and bombing my way through some of the passages concerned, because neither the sword or the whip reach them, whatever I do. The whole -being swiped by the water when you’re in mid air- thing, too, seems to have greatly increased in occurence since SAB in april, making all the river paths extremely drutrating, way beyond the “It’s a hard area, I’m having fun trying” to “It’s a stupid area, I’m getting fed up Dying.”

The rafting portion is also tearing a big frown out of me. Unless I am extremely mistaken, or the raft itself have been extremely shrunk. It’s surface seems like about one quarter of what it was in april. Yet, the assassins spawns on it haven’t been tampered with. This makes what was a funny battle on the river, a matter of sheer luck. AND there is now an achievement for not dying during the whole ride. In my own experience, the raft itself isn’t big enough anymore for us to dodge while standing on it, I tried dodging from a corner, to the other and still ended in the water. The only way I can think of getting the achievement, now, would be to be a five man party and praying not to be the focus of the assassins’ wrath… This is not a very staisfying way to get an achievement, to me.

After the ride, we finally reached the ‘new’ section. things get slightly more interesting, from here, admitedly. The jumping flowers are a fun addition, a few friends of mine, thought, reported them to be buggy and throwing them regularly in the wrong direction. I didn’t have thos eissues, thought, my only instance of having problems with those, is that I once have been propelled forward, totally out of the blue, while the nearest flower was like, a half dozen of meters from me.

I’d like to take a moment here, to add that I cracked and needed a couple minutes to recover from the maniacal laugh that took over me when I first met the Pyromaniac Smokey bear foe. Didn’t see that coming, hit me right into the zygomatics.

Sadly, right after that went another very buggy and frustrating river path, that made me groan a couple times. Same problems as the other one, KB’d by water while I’m in the middle of an incredibly safe jump, turtles ignoring my attacke, etc…

Before we reached the end of Area 1, I did managed to find a couple secret areas, well hidden, fun to find and access (Even if the second one was actually quite hard to reach)… But with absolutely underwhelming rewards. Even when not dying, risking to lose three or four lives, to only get a potion’s price out of it kindof take away the fun.

So, into Area 2…

I am a big fan of Dark souls. I love Tries&Dies. But there is a severe balance problem, here, in my opinion.

First, as numerously stated before, and it’s not complaining about Too much content, The area is way too long. We kept going because we ddin’t wanted to lose our progress, but toward the second third, we were getting both tired and very frustrated.
The problem is not the area in itself, it’s that it could easily have been split into two, and still give two areas longer and bigger than any of the World 1 ones.

The ennemies where infuriating and in too high numbers, or at least combined with the deathly layouts. Various places with strategically, deathly place ennemies wouldn’t have bothered me. Ennemies and traps or pits everywhere did.

The level design per se was good and fun. I remember some place, where a fading cloud was clearly placed here so, while jumping on it, you continue on your track and don’t realise there was a secret access to the roof behind you. That was good. I love such things, greatly ! And there was quite a few places like that in Area 2. BUT. We where in the SAB since more than two hours and a half, and really, started to slip into the “This is so hard, it takes ages to advance. We won’t waste time exploring. This has to end sometime.” mind set.

There is also a couple occurences of pixel precise jumps, where failure results in death. I don’t find it very fair, when we knows that the game engine itself actually tend to mess up jumps by itself, even when your timing and placements are perfects. Or am I the only one who sometime have only 2/3 of my jump’s heights and width for no real reason ? Attempting such in some JP, and having to leap back up a couple stones is okay. In others, or in some areas od SAB World 1, it’s frutstrating, because you lose some time climbing back up, but still, no big deal ! Now, when it’s a matter of dying if you fail, in a very dangerous area where you can’t stand still because of sheer number of ennemies and traps ? That’s a kitteneap in my tastes.

And now, a very important point, to me. Probably the center of the whole deal, I think for a lot of people.

The Risk/Reward factor.

I pride myself for being a bit of an explorator. Even if I dropped it a bit after the middle of Area 2, I did went into a lot of ledges, rooftops and such and grabbed the hidden baubles there. I ended up , as said, with around 10 lives out of 99, and only a handful of baubles, from the crazy amount of bombs and stones I had to throw to get through this.

I am aware that It was my first run, but really, is it on purpose that world 1, is layered in baubles (notably less than before, I admit, but even ?) and world 2 is pretty much devoid of any ? I’m pretty sure that even if by some miracle I could manage Area 2 without any bombs or stones, I probably didn’t got enough baubles out of it to buy more than, maybe a couple lives. I spent something like 90 lives on it. I didn’t knew the place, but even knowing what I am to do, I can’t imagine myself getting through that without losing at least around 30 to 40 lives (wich is crazy, imho), because, well, humans tend to lose their focus now and then, because sometimes, you’re too nervous, you sneeze, or the engin decide that no, you won’t be making this jump this time.

From this relatively intense experience, I would have came out finding, I don’t know, something like 20 or 30 extra lives(wich doesn’t exist in SAB) or enough baubles to buy back, maybe, the half of what I lost then I wouldn’t have minded that much, The whole thing would have had a sense, and in retrospect, I’d have been okay to go through hell again, knowing that If I’m carefull and if I do things right, I’m indeed winning more than I lose.

But here, the baubles are incredibly scarce, the chests offer poor to mediocre rewards (unless I really missed the big, big ones, but even then, I don’t think it would amount to even half of the cost most trained players going throught this would have to expand to buy their lives back) and to top it all, when already, the baubles are that scarce, you added -invincible- inavoidable birds stealing them off you ? I don’t even get what was the desired impact of the owls in the game, this feels like the second or third slap in the face saying “Haha ! You’re not getting anything out of this level aside from achievements !”,you intoduce new items costing incredible amounts of baubles and the level they are in doesn’t allow you to gather them. Not only because there’s not enough in them (Because you can rarely gather all the baubles for the bombs or the wallet in one go in world 1) but because the few in World 2 aren’t even enough already to cover your own survival. It’s not even that you need to farm world 2, that would be useless, you actuially have to go back to World 1, farm baubles here, and go back to world 2’s shops to buy from them.

And indeed, looking back, I don’t see what I can get from world 2 aside from achievements. close to no baubles. Extremely time lengthy. Lives swallowing. Plus leaving me the choice, If I really want to indulge into it either to regularly go back to World 1 to farm lives back up to 99, or to buy the infinite coin. And I agree with the players claiming it to be pay to win, because it’s not just a convenience ‘helping’ you going faster in the game, it’s either that or an absurdly tedious and repetitive farming between each game session.

(Sorry for triple post)

After I watched the youtube video and clean world 1 zone 1 hard mode
and normal mode world 2 zone 1, I have to say…

“It’s not fun but very annoying ! WHICH one noob design this patch? Are you SURE you want to make player fun but not angry and mad? "

ANET, this is the most bad patch until now, just after the 8 crystal achievement.
YOU GUYS REALLY HATE US(PLAYER) FEELING FUN AND EASY TO HAVE FUN, RIGHT?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Kaleban.9834:

Then, removing the ability to farm for bubble baubles by making digging sparser, fewer rewards, while keeping the same cost for the increased number of account bound, non trade-able skins is sort of a slap in the face.

A. No one at ArenaNet wants to slap players’ faces. That’s not good for business. There are probably other motives.

B. The reward structure is not my domain. I focus on making the in-SAB stuff. If the rewards don’t feel good enough to warrant playing the content I feel like I should work on making the content more fun. That’s my domain, and that’s all I will comment on.

Well who does control the rewards then? At the very least, world two should reward more BB, due to its increased length.

Josh Foreman.8250:

minbariguy.7504:

I wish it felt that way, but playing under the ticking clock of Living Story is certainly not relaxing or stress-free to me

Mm. Yeah, I see what you mean. Depending on your personality, how much of a completionist you are, that could be that way. I guess I was just referring to the general, 1-80 leveling, exploring, etc. There are plenty of exciting things in there, but overall we keep it pretty casual friendly.

I’m with the guy you quoted. Making us play under “the ticking clock of Living Story” is making this more stressful than it should. Especially since we know you can (and will) remove rewards with each release. I think thats my biggest problem, that theres now no way we can get enough BBs now to get a complete set of the weapons (blue versions) and minis. We have to resort to buying them on the TP, which is determined on the other players willing to sell them, and at what cost.

Josh, please do NOT change anything. And Frog King is perfect, since he’s a breeze once you master his pattern.

World 2 zone 2. Wtf is this. Not sure I even made it half way. Random darts killing me. The room with the box you have to push and jump over 2 dart areas… -.- Soooo cheap. Wouldn’t be as bad if you could tell where the darts were. But you cannot. So basically, you instantly lose a life unless you have done it before. Multiply that by the amount of hidden dart areas in Zone 2 and you lose at least 8 lives your first run through……

Hm, I don’t really know, how I feel abou w2 z1-2…
First of all: I had a lot of fun, even when I failed several times. The only really unfair thing was those water things in z1. They seemed a bit buggy, cause no matter what I did, they teleported me to strange locations and even when timed correctly sometimes the just throw you back.
Well after that Z1 was really nice.
Z2 is my favourite zone so far. I really love the zone and espacialy the “shortcut-minigame” in it. Really awesome.
I also loved the fight against the stronger assassin and the item reminds me of Zelda…
Well, after W2 Z1-2 I have two things to say, that are a bit too easy: First of all the two zone bosses. They aren’t really harder, just mor time consuming. There are too many easy safe spots, where you can just walk back and forward to kill it, without getting in trouble. the Z2 is a bit harder cause of the ice, but the same tactik works here as well, you only need to dodge sometimes, if you are too slow.
Managed to kill both bosses first try :/
Second thing, that is too easy: the random teleport platforms in Z2 you can avoid any combat and the teleport pattern is really simple.

Well, as I said I love the world so far, but I can understand the people who are complaing about w2z1 as being a big leap of difficulty.
But I think we should all keep in mind, that the SAB is there one month and once you managed to get through the zones, it is much easier the next time, cause you know how to do it exactly.
I really hope, World 2 keeps it difficulty and only the water thingi in z1 gets fixed. Cause the assassin zone is too awesome to get nerfed <3

Scizzor.8137:

World 2 zone 2. Wtf is this. Not sure I even made it half way. Random darts killing me. The room with the box you have to push and jump over 2 dart areas… -.- Soooo cheap. Wouldn’t be as bad if you could tell where the darts were. But you cannot. So basically, you instantly lose a life unless you have done it before. Multiply that by the amount of hidden dart areas in Zone 2 and you lose at least 8 lives your first run through……

You can tell,. where the darts are. there are small boxes on things with darts. Just wath carefully, where you go.

I ran this with 3 friends yesterday, and honestly the only thing that burned us out was the rapids.. by the time we made it to the zone with all the ninjas (zone 2) everyone was tired and gave up.

The issue with the rapids is as people are saying. When you land in water you do get randomly teleported. I landed right next to a rock once and could have saved myself but then POOF I got teleported backwards and to the middle of the water which sent me flying to my doom (more than once) lol.

That’s probably the absolute bottom line thing that I consider “wrong” with SAB 2. Most of the other stuff becomes a non issue when you learn the course and don’t just try to jumpjumpjumpjump speedrun your way through.

Other than that… I’m giving it another try when I get out of work! XD

Kain Francois.4328:

Josh, please do NOT change anything. And Frog King is perfect, since he’s a breeze once you master his pattern.

No one is complaining about W1. Why do you people keep bringing it up?

Poringosa.1804:

But I think we should all keep in mind, that the SAB is there one month and once you managed to get through the zones, it is much easier the next time, cause you know how to do it exactly.
I really hope, World 2 keeps it difficulty and only the water thingi in z1 gets fixed. Cause the assassin zone is too awesome to get nerfed <3

I also think we should all keep in mind that SAB normal mode is for the average player. I would like to put myself at the average player location. Not awesome, but coming along. World 2 is not only more difficulty in base difficulty, it’s also larger and has less spawning points. Add that all together, and it can become very annoying for the average player.

Duncanmix.5238:

RvLeshrac.2673:

Duncanmix.5238:

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.

Stop saying this crap. It does not. With the exception of some of the worst games of the era, no classic platformer, not even Pitfall, required pixel-edge-of-platform attacking and pixel-perfect jumping.

One of the alligators in SAB requires that you stand almost entirely off the level geometry in order to hit it, and there are several spots where you must stand in locations that are covered by rapids in order to make a jump, with no indication that these are actually safe.

Eh I can just name few games that this reminded me of:
Sega
- alex kid – was awesome game, it was hard and you had to finish it in one run. You couldn’t save, if u lose all lives you have to start over again.
- sonic – it was easier but it still reminded me with all those jumps
- psycho fox – another legendary game where I sharpened my jumping skills =).

SNES
- marios, donkey kong, zeldas all had their hard moments but that was fun, overcoming those challenges.

Also I remember playing Tomba on PS, Sab reminded me of that game too. True old school players will enjoy in SAB, and for others… I guess whining it is =).

Alex KidD and Psycho Fox were both kitten games, when viewed critically. Alex KidD had terrible, floaty control and an abysmal level design. Psycho Fox… well, I’ll just leave the rest of this at “The Master System was awful at platformers.”

Evans.6347:

Everyone’s making a big deal about the infinite continue coin but come on, think of the value it will have. There’s two more worlds to come and I’m fairly certain I’m going to blow tons of lives on them, not to mention TM mode.

It’s still a convenience item, but it’s finally one that’s really convenient.

It is an item that allows you to complete the content without any thought or balance on the part of the designers of the content. It is the definition of P2W.

Putting a cap on baubles with the account bound chests and digs and then scaling up the difficulty of world 2 to 50X that of world 1 can’t help but give players the impression you are forcing them to buy the continue coin from the gem store.

I did and 30g poorer, I was able to muscle through W2-2 which just has way too many insta-kills. It was more like Ghosts&Goblins and way harder than anything Zelda 1 threw at you-having a life bar that gradually decreases when you make a mistake helps you actually play. Dying because you rolled into instakill traps to avoid monkeys that will knock you back and are invincible half the time, made me feel like I was jumping over hoards of bats and skeletons without my armor again-not something I ever wanted to do.

As for other explore by death scenarios: There are traps at points where you are jumping up to that you have never explored that will kill you. There are bombs on precision jumps that seem unavoidable and will knock you off. Owls can tag you in midair jumps and kill you. The flower pads sometimes seemed to throw me in directions I wasn’t facing and also of varying distances.

The life bar is almost a non-factor in this map-if you get hit once most of the environment will cause it to be your death. Spamming lives at a map to get through doesn’t really seem like good design and it definitely isn’t fun gameplay.

The river and some fights would benefit greatly if bombs had ground targeting.

Treborlavok.3504:

People… People… People…

This content is entirely optional. It was also stated multiple times by josh that this was going to be like cat Mario type games and Nintendo kitten steroids…

It’s meant to be insanely hard and frustrating. That’s why those are called RAGE games… They’re to make you rage and get kitten ed off.

Seriously stop your kittening and whining and complaining about things being too hard. First it was the Halloween clock tower, then it was liadri, now this… Come on now.

“This is meant for only a small group of ppl who like this type of content”. That’s paraphrased but you get my point. If you can’t handle it then dont do it. Don’t come on here begging them to turn it down from 11 to 2 because you can’t do it. Lots of ppl love challenges like these(me included) so I say…

Great job josh and everyone else who worked on this!!! I can’t wait to tackle the rest of the tm zones and get them skins!!! From the sound of things hopefully it’ll be a select few of us with them.

No, Tribulation Mode is supposed to be like Cat Mario/IWTBTG, not the normal mode.

RvLeshrac.2673:

Evans.6347:

Everyone’s making a big deal about the infinite continue coin but come on, think of the value it will have. There’s two more worlds to come and I’m fairly certain I’m going to blow tons of lives on them, not to mention TM mode.

It’s still a convenience item, but it’s finally one that’s really convenient.

It is an item that allows you to complete the content without any thought or balance on the part of the designers of the content. It is the definition of P2W.

“P2W: Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.”

Hmmm, nope.

This f…u…cking water in W2 just made me rage quit the game.
Absolutely annoying. Wish I didn’t pay the gems for that stupid coin.

I have succesfully gotten to W2 Z3 to the part where there are a lot of teleporters, I honestly didn’t try all routes but I managed to get to a place with small Pillars and trampolines … I had to quit becouse I had too write this :P And I have to get ready for work. I have played World 2 this whole morning, that is 4 hours… 4 hours of death and continues, as I said before I bought the Infinte Continue coin knowing TM should be impossible and would probably need that but I never imagined that I would need it this much for World 2 O_o

Sorry but I honstly most say that to compleate World 2 you would have to farm Continue coins like a monkey or you have to pay 2 win.

No one is this good, to manage World 2 in just a few continues.

- Lagy buggy Currents.
- Instakill Darts that isn’t very visible until you have died once and get’s an aha.
- Levels filled with instakill darts.
- 2nd world is to early for fall and die IMO.
- Repeated content and to long levels (I can’t imagine the last level in this game and I wanna see someone do that on TM in the future).

Again I though TM where for those who needed extreme Battle Toads challange and worse… I though normal mode was supposed to be Mario World challange.
World 1 fealt so good and World 2 Zone 1 was also wonderfull and I love the parodies, well the idéa is so awesome it makes me wanna play more and I wan’t to play it with my friends… but no offence to them but they are not as good as little old geeky me so we will have to play on infant mode.

Edit: And I bet my friends won’t buy a Infinite continue token.

Ok i’ve had a chance to sleep and calm down after that disaster of an experience. Here is a more objective view of what I liked and didn’t like so far in W2:

1. Too long. In W1 each zone took 10-20 minutes on your first run through and then about 6 minutes on the subsequent runs. This made it enjoyable. If you were having a bad night you could quit and lose nothing. You had check points spaced approximately 1-2 minutes apart. Fast forward to W2 and that design was completely thrown out. I spent over 2 hours in 2-1 and eventually got angry at the geysers and gave up. 2-1 should be split into 2-1-1, 2-1-2, and 2-1-3. It is enough content for 3 full levels. If there was a way to save progress then it wouldn’t in an issue, but I can’t (and I imagine the vast majority of the playerbase also can’t) spend 3 hours in one sitting doing a single activity that has almost no rewards. Additionally the checkpoints seem to be spaced more like 5-6 minutes apart, which makes dying frustrating instead of a fun learning experience.

2. Enemies. In W1 enemies took at most 2 hits to kill and had dodgeable or avoidable mechanics. In W2 again this seems to be thrown out. Assassins are evading most of the time, they have a KD move they can spam, they move faster than you do, and they gang up on you. None of those are fun mechanics. Plus on top of their over the top KD, high damage and evasion they also take more hits to kill. This is something GW2 has always struggled with for some reason. Dangerous fast attacking enemies should have less health and armor then slower hitting tank like enemies. If they can’t take damage most of the time and are capable of doing massive fast attacks then they should take 1 hit to kill under most circumstances. The 3 hits wouldn’t even be so bad if you weren’t also trying to avoid multiple traps, and balancing on a cliff at the same time.

3. Pixel Perfection. Platform games in the past were hard because you had to have interesting solutions and quick jumping to succeed. in SAB you need to randomly guess how far off the end of the logs/stumps/rocks you can magically float in the air and still not die. This is not fun. The whip length should be extended and the perfection of the jumps greatly reduced. The fun is from the puzzles and design, not from hoping you get lucky with a combination of lag, guessing and magic to make the jumps. This is especially true when combined with point 1, falling means death which means all that positioning and luck wastes up to 10 minutes of your time getting back to try to get lucky again.

It is too hard, absolutely.
Josh, you are wrong, this is NOT funny, this is NOT good design, this is NOT happy.
This is very bad , this is very boring.

I hope I will not heard “aren’t you thankful ??”

Mystery.7392:

This kittening water in W2 just made me rage quit the game.
Absolutely annoying. Wish I didn’t pay the gems for that stupid coin.

If you lived in a place with consumer protection, why not try to lodge a complaint and have the product returned and get a refund?

After playing SAB World 2 Zone 1 and 2 i’m really excited about Zone 3!
Thank you Josh for this increased difficulty in World 2! I really enjoyed it
Some traps like the one-hit darts are new for me so i died the first few times because i tried to do it “fast”. Then i continued to carefully analyse my surroundings and finally i did it! Really THIS was great design
I know this might be “frustrating” for others but don’t you want to have a challenge?
If u play World 2 several times like world 1 you might know all the traps/jumps and this will be not as hard as you thought first of it.
We had this discussion after the Guild Wars 2 release where everyone found the fire-elemental boss in Metricia Province too hard!
Take your time and fix your knowhow about the level + jumpskills and you will succeed!
Most important thing: Don’t give up!

If you run out of lives redo World 1 on Easy/Normal mode to get more bubbles and buy more lifes with it. If you don’t have time for this use the infinite coin.

Btw. the music of SAB World 2 is released @ Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/arenanet
Thank you for uploading the music there in WAV and again thank you Josh for this great World 2!

That’s a clever thing to say in modern society. Good job.

Mirta.5029:

Josh Foreman.8250:

I would like this too. I think we don’t have a way to store that information on your character though.

There is a way though. It’s called dividing the big levels into small ones. Like SaB World 2 Zone 1 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Zone 2 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3…

I really really wish they would do it it this way. Having now way to go back through such long levels/zones is really really annoying. Have them only unlock each part after a person has completed it. Like 2-1, split it into 3 parts, section 1 is from beginning to end of the raft (like it was in the preview), section 2 if from there to probably after the piranha bend/waterfall, and section 3 being from there (frogger part, if I remember correctly) to the end boss/cage part. Would make it soo much better. I know I hated the thought of having to stop part way through 2-1, which is why I wouldn’t leave it it till I completed it (kinda glad I wasted gems on the infinite coin). Didn’t think I’d have enough time to do dailies after it.

Having given it some play time the things ive noticed echo th posters

1) the learning curve from W1 – W2 is too big a jump. If world 3 or 4 maybe. All those retro games quoted have a learning curve leading up to the hard bits. This has none and just pops you right into the hard parts. There’s also some horrible collision detection (i think thats the right term) in places

2) There’s little fun (for me) in replay value. Sure World 1 was over easy, but it was soooo much fun running back through. That’s a real testament to how amazing it was. World 2 lacks that. Once done, I have no wish to go back through over and over.

I’ve been a completionist from the start of GW2 completing all the achievements from the monthly/special themed contents.

But this. This is where it finally hit me. This one here is simply not fun at all.

The whole part about losing lives and eventually running out of coins where you either have to farm more coins or buy the gem coin to continuing trying.

Tribulation is just insane. It’s not fun or interesting, it’s simply sadistic. Also tying that with how you essentially need to buy the infinite coin to even consider trying it out is simply crazy. It would be the equivalent of ‘I Wanna Be The Guy’ getting players to pay $1 to retry every time they died but it doesn’t that’s why people can keep trying over and over.

Also if you try to throw out some analogy regarding old platform games and their difficulty, all I’d have to say is.

“I don’t recall my console/gameboy locking out the game cartridge after a month has gone by.”

Because of how GW2 is, it forces the player to do the current content ASAP before the month is gone and so is the content.

I even tried doing some of tribulation World 1 zone 1 while watching a youtube guide, while halfway in I just thought to myself “This is just stupid.” and exited while I was about 3/4 of the way to the boss.

I’m also really confused where they said that SAB would be fun and challenging like the Halloween Clockwork jumping puzzle. I loved that jumping puzzle it was the best experience I ever had in GW2 since then and most likely till the end of GW2 days. SAB doesn’t even compare to it at all.

I also wish you wouldn’t try to compare content with the Halloween JP, it’s always hits way off the mark. The Halloween JP was most likely a one time thing and GW2 got it perfect but you’ll never be able to match it with other stuff.

I don’t even know how this months content will even be remotely enjoyable to the average casual gamer. It feels as if this months content was designed for the hardcore sadistic players (whatever tiny percent that is).

It’s like dragonbash all over again where it kind of locked out new players because most of the content during dragonbash required large amounts of gold to take part and enjoy.