Guild Wars 2

Hi,

Personal Experience
completed my first run through world 2 tribulation mode yesterday, and I had a lot of fun! Great work!

I prefer the design from world 2 over the one from world 1. You can see, that it’s not pushed in after, but design from the beginning with the tribulation mode in mind.

There are a lot of different and hard mechanics, but which are also fun to play with, once you get the hang of it. f.e. the first run through normal mode i tried to jump up the ice berg i failed miserably, but now, in tribulation mode, where I already met the ice berg once, it wasn’t a problem any more. Numerous times I was had to laugh when I got killed by a hidden trap “yeah, it was kinda to be expected, that there was one haha”

After my run through normal mode, I hated the polarbears, but after coming through world 1 and 2 tribulation mode, I realized, they are not hard at all, just fluffy little teddy bears like I remembered them from my childhood!

Problems
1.) As it was already addressed here, the zones are very long, and it’d probably have been the best, if the zones’d have been split up. But I personally don’t think this is a huge problem.

2.) In W2Z2 after you feed the octopus, you come the zone with 1 to 4 teleporter on different platforms. After you picked the right teleporter you come to the pillar-road, where most of them are covered in spike traps. On the second jump you are landing on a red barrel, which can explode. From the barrel you can jump to the next pillar without a trap, but once the barrel is exploded, it only respawns optical. Due to this you can not jump on the barrel again, and jump to the next pillar. You are still able to continue the zone, due to jumping right between the next two pillars ‘standing in the air’ right to the left one with spikes, and the right one without, on which you were not able to jump to due to the exploded barrel.
(sorry for my bad english)

3.) The way above the bell: Personally there have been about ~10 locations where I preferred to use the dodge-jump. I’m not sure, what the design philosophy is behind the dodge-jump, and if you think this usage is legit or not. The jumps above the bell is one of the locations I think the dodge jump was really really helpful if not necessary.

Infinite Continue Coin
I think this coin is necessary to complete the tribulation mode. Maybe once guides are out, and you have collected numerous continue coins via JPs and normal mode, this might not be true, but I’d still suggest to buy one of those.

This is the first time, we have to kind of pay for the content we want to play, and this is a big point we should discuss about, if this is the right way we want to go.
Personally I think this time with the SAB it was a problem at all. The price performance ratio was very very good. But please be very careful with this sort of a thing, and don’t let it get out of hand.

At this point I want to note, that we SPvP players don’t have a lot of money, and really can’t effort anything. Please take a look at it!

This is a bug we are trying to track down. Do you happen to know what your audio settings are at?

Since I also have the bug, that sometimes (around 80% of all times) I have no bgm in w1z1, here are my settings. Btw, I never had such issues before and all other maps and zones are working without a problem. And fighting/jumping sounds still works.
I’m playing with windows 7 standart audio drivers.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Mirta.5029:

I re-ran some levels today, took me 3 hours again and 15 continue coins even though I knew what I was doing. Decided to photograph the perfectly visible clouds on a LED screen. It’s even worse on my BFs screen. The only way to get around invisible clouds is to turn gama to the lowest, but then the arrow traps are invisible. So I present to you the photo of “there are clouds out there!”

I’m putting in a rocky background there as part of a fix.

oh god, thank you!

Josh Foreman.8250:

Smaller team, actually. And the length was my own desire to get as many ideas as I could in there. I spent several months pulling 16 hour days and a couple weeks where I did a couple 36 hour stretches, went home, slept and came back and did it again. No one else wanted me to do that. In fact those sort of crazy hours are discouraged at ArenaNet. I did that because I freeking love what I do and wanted this release to be the best thing ever. Turns out I pushed too hard to get those new mechanics in there and I’m being told here over and over that all that work was wasted and it’s making people miserable. I’ve learned my lesson. Won’t happen again! And for that, my family thanks you!

To be fair, none of the ideas are bad, it’s just that people expected a short casual experience, but got an artificial difficulty spike with levels also being very long. To outline what I like – I love the frogger section in World 2 Zone 1, I like the music, I like the visuals, I like the placement of secrets, I love the feel of it whole. IT’s just that I’ve never been to level 3 yet, due to the money requirement and level 2 is tad on the long side unless you would use the shortcut eagle all the time (I watched a video of it, I think that the amount it skips is OP and that for some reason made me happy. )

Josh Foreman.8250:

rfdarko.4639:

To further illustrate the point : http://youtu.be/J9-aUFHIt7c

It’s not difficulty, it’s not even lag, it’s terrible detection. If Josh can watch this and claim everything is fine with the hit detection and the player was at fault in each case, then I really don’t know what to say.

No. That is clearly a terrible experience. Something is obviously terribly wrong there. If I saw anything like this during testing we would have reworked everything. I’ve never claimed anywhere that anyone’s poor experience is because it’s the player’s fault. I don’t think that way. I like to make people happy, believe it or not.

Is this issue (dying randomly and getting pushed off rocks constantly) happening to you? If so, is it happening as frequently as this video shows? If this is anything more than an edge case than we have a serious problem that will necessitate some serious solution. Thanks for pointing it out.

I experienced bizarre knockbacks in that river portion as well. It looked just like that. I am guessing it is a synchronization issue.

Well I got around to finishing W2 Z3 and I must say that one was much more enjoyable than Z2. It was still fairly long but it didnt seem as frustraitingly so due to every little mistake not being instantly fatal. Ya I got killed a few times and fell off ledges but none of those “surprise! KO” moments. I personaly think if all of W2 was close to Z3 in difficulty there would have been much fewer complaints. I also wasnt quite able to figure out what I was supposed to do with phase 1 of storm wizzard after I got him to 50%. After the palm reflect he’d just run over and try to body check me and I couldnt figure out what I was soposed to do to stop him. Dodgeing just delayed it for a second. In the end I bruteforced past him (wail on him while I’m invuln from his last hit on me)but I dont think thats how it was soposed to work out.

Z2 was easier the second time around when I did it with my brother but even knowing all the jumps I still burnt more lives than my first run throuhg of Z3. BTW that eagle ride was kinda cool although shocked the hell outa me when it started up.

I also managed to do tribulation mode w1z1. I think the only thing wrong with that one is the logo… that shield should have the trollface taped to the front :P took me a couple hours to work out how to navigate that deathtrap. prety entertaining but boy do you need that infinate coin when learning that place. Surprise rocks are quite surpriseing.

All the complaints about length really make me sad. I think the new vastness of the levels is awesome; don’t be discouraged, Josh!

I don’t know if it’s been suggested already, but could you use the flute (which I absolutely love) to help alleviate length issues, without having to scrunch every zone down to World One size? You could give larger zones some sort of halfway, ‘checkpoint’ statue that teaches you a zone-specific song the first time you reach it. You could then use that song to teleport to the halfway statue from the beginning of the zone, in the future. That way, people wouldn’t have to do massive zones all in one sitting (which is, I think, the main issue people have with the length. Really, who doesn’t like more content, so long as they can do it at their convenience?).

Kind of inelegant, I suppose, but I think something along those lines could help! I just love the lengthy, complex journeys offered by World Two, and I’ll definitely miss it if that feeling is cut back in the future. But alas, I am the minority! =(

Josh Foreman.8250:

Crise.9401:

Here is a suggestion, please create third mode… like infantile, but with the principle of “help on demand” rather than having it shoved in my face. Being someone who had 0 need for infantile mode before the notorious water sprouts in W2 Z1 I would really appreciate the ability to get helping hand when I hit a brick wall not have to choose to either go through the level on rails, or keep slamming my head against that wall.

Funny, I brought this idea up a couple weeks ago. I think I was told we couldn’t do it for some technical reason. I’ll ask again.

Nice to know someone thought about this

If you can’t spawn in rainbow bridges on demmand there are alternatives though. The Tribulation mode does unlockable checkpoints, and I see a teleporter is possible also.

Combining those two ideas you get unlockable shortcut portals that are static in the level. If you have enough disincentive in getting the keys for these (call then infantile tokens or whatever) then people will be unable to use them to speed run the level since getting multiple keys would eat away all profit (so for example if you have to buy such key for say 1 bauble bubble or more, it would already cut down the daily bauble bubble reward for that level in half, just for using one shortcut).

Also if you make sure each section with such shortcut has either an achievement tied to it for doing it the hard way, without the shortcut, and some baubles along the way as well (making getting the get all baubles achievement by using these shortcuts not possible), then in my opinion you have reached a middle ground in making these in world shortcuts a last resort and certainly something someone trying to get all the achievements wouldn’t want to use.

Also this might be assuming too much, but I don’t think every puzzle would need this kind of shortcut either, mostly those that require tricky precision and timing where latency can be a big factor. In the end if you have all the time to set up a jump then I don’t think you would need one of these.

Also to someone who said whether this was only tested with an Asura, I give you this: https://hostr.co/bvIdYMyMO3Wm

The point being that the size difference between model and hitbox makes it so that in order to make some jumps you have to stand on what looks like thin air as an asura (of course not the case for that screenshot, but if you want to reach the croc with the whip f.ex. then you have to stand past the edge). There are better examples for actual jumps unfortunately I don’t have screenshots of those. The point, however, is that the difference between visual feedback and what is actually terrain with collision is extremely jarring with the smallest asura.

Mr. Foreman, the actual truth is that this 16 page thread wouldn’t exist if we all weren’t so in love with the Super Adventure Box. If we didn’t love World 1 so incredibly much, we wouldn’t be complaining about World 2. We’d forget about it and go do something else.

So before you say you wasted your time, or feel bad about making World 2 too hard, remember that behind every angry person in this thread is a younger inner child that is absolutely giddy about a new world to explore, play though, and laugh out loud about.

matthewr.3980:

Mr. Foreman, the actual truth is that this 16 page thread wouldn’t exist if we all weren’t so in love with the Super Adventure Box. If we didn’t love World 1 so incredibly much, we wouldn’t be complaining about World 2. We’d forget about it and go do something else.

So very true, I have ascended weapons to get yet I spend hours inside the box instead, and I get it the jump in difficulty is intended… but it is just a little too extreme. It’s like world one being an experiment they were little reserved with it, then here they went at it not holding back in the slightest.

I love the concept of longer zones and actual puzzles too, but please make it so I can save the checkpoint I have reached in a certain zone persistently, so I can take breaks (rapids I am looking at you, and I have seen way too much).

If remembering the checkpoint itself automagically is not possible, why not employ similar thing that is done with zone selection, ie. after you reach a checkpoint allow you to talk to an in-level npc that would for a price send you to that checkpoint (provided you have reached it at least once with that character, resetting it when cage boss is beaten).

Alternatively you could use a long duration booster type “buff” where the timer is only active when logged on (since there are no regular character buffs in sab) which you are given for each checkpoint, then the buff is removed at the end of the level.

That last one is bit gimmicky and will naturally expire if user leaves the sab hub world, but it would allow you to log out in the hub area and take a break.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Yeah, I was too flippant in my response to that. Having read every post on this thread I understand what the real issue is. Personally I love long epic slogs. Long movies, long songs, long levels. I felt like I was going the extra mile making these levels so huge. I spent SO many all-nighters crafting these levels… and then I’m told it’s too much. Hahaha…. oh… …

I just wanted to say thanks so much for interacting as much as you have with the community. It’s gotta be hard reading some of this. So often in some other MMOs, when things take a negative turn, the devs and community managers go into hiding which actually make the situation worse. So what you’re doing is awesome.

I love the new world. I didn’t expect the new zones them to be that big, but it’s fantastic! And I just finished W1Z1 in tribulation mode with a friend. Very tough but fun. Some traps must be made from the devil himself.

I think you just have to remember that Tribulation mode isn’t build for the majority and only for the “hard core” SAB Fans. There are not much rewards so the other players doesn’t miss much. And the normal mode could be “rushed” for other peoples. But exploring it yourself or with your friends is really fun! Never had such a great time with my gw2 friends as in SAB. Thank you very much! And there are so many references to this old games we all loved. I love the design, music, graphics and everything about it!

I’m sad that the SAB will apparently close next month. Come on Moto, you can’t do this to me.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Epicrandom.5817:

Hey Josh, I’ve been following this thread for quite a while and I thought you might like some feedback.

Thanks for the quality feedback. I agree with most of what you say. One problem I’m realizing now is that when I first built 2-2 it was not a long level. I never changed the layout, but as we had more and more ideas for new mechanics they kept getting packed into that space. (and subsequently meant a bunch of 36 hour days for me and Lisa!) I’ve now come up with the ultimate idea: The Anti-Idea Helmet. (Please don’t steal this idea, I want to patent it.) It’s a helmet that the each member of the SAB team is given. Like a construction helmet, but it’s got brain reading electrodes or what-have-you that can sense when you start to get creative. At that point a spring loaded mallet pivots down from its mount on the top/front of the helmet, smacking you in the forehead, discouraging new ideas. With this invention I can guarantee that the next release for SAB will be shorter, less dense, and have fewer new mechanics. (and the subsequent bugs that accompany them)

Nah. Your creative ideas are great and don’t lose your enthusiasm. The love of what you do shows. Just put in some soft checkpoints like someone suggested earlier. Perhaps have more zones per world so that people can break their time up into smaller chunks.

I for one love the extra lengths you have gone to with the return of SAB, Josh. However, there is one thing I have not seen mentioned here that was actually a bit of a problem in world 1 as well. You keep saying how there are plenty of baubbles to be had via digging, but even when I already KNOW where a dig site is, I have a heck of a time actually digging the thing up. It seems as though for many of them it needs to be within just a couple of pixels to actually get it. On the 50 baubble dig site under the beginning of the long narrow bridge with the assassins in World 2 Zone 1, I tried digging the spot like 6 or 7 times, wondered if maybe it had been removed with this new release, watched a youtube video confirming the location, and then it still took me another 6 or 7 tries to actually dig up the baubbles.

Do you think you could increase the radius for these dig sites? I can’t imagine actually discovering for myself all of the dig sites when it takes me 13 tries to get one even when I know exactly where it is. I’m sure there’s been at least a handful of times I’ve suspected that there was a baubble dig site somewhere, dug several times, not found anything and given up when there was actually something there. It is made even more frustrating when there’s an awkwardly long 4-5 sec cooldown on digging.

But, keep up the good work. As a programmer, I feel like I can appreciate the monstrous beast you’re working with.

Water sprouts in the Rapid W2-1 is really unfair. I’m speaking about the specific stretch of spout jumping in the river section.

Spouts disappear on the server side before the client registers it, thus sending the player down into the rapids WHILE the player is still standing on top of a perfectly fine spout.

And the knockback mechanics on the water is rather crazy. I saw myself teleporting in 3 different directions while I’m stuck in forever-knockdown mode.

(edited for double post error)

Josh Foreman.8250:

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

I think part of the problem here, and with other LS content regarding difficulty, is that the people testing the content, as you stated, become immune to the problems after a while. This is problematic for 2 reasons:

1) By glossing over the problems with the engine because you are “very used” to them, the same issues crop up in all the LS content. If you, a Dev, have to develop strategies to avoid the issues, do you then expect all your millions of customers to do the same to accommodate flawed design? The problem is still there, strategy or not, becoming “used to it” or not.

2) You designed the content and you’ve played it repeatedly and therefore find it very easy. By extension, you seem to think other people will find it very easy once it is released. Again, the issue of difficulty pops up repeatedly with various LS mini games and challenges, so there is a flaw of perception here.

What has been asked many times in the past is for the implementation of a Public Test Server. This would allow for impartiality which I also believe is a big problem on your end. Having a fresh set of eyes from the actual players would give a more realistic check for difficulty, as well as weed out more of the bugs.

Josh I love your level designs start of world 2 was very fresh with the frogger style things and river ride absolutely beautiful stuff to the point I was giggling with tears in my eyes how great it all looked.

Also love the direct inspiration from the old style Zelda games etc.

Don’t give up because of the difficulty the ideas are great etc but can be improved as yes its crazy hard but that can be dealt with without sacrificing anything special as I outline below.

The level designs are tops but mechanics are frustrating and just too darn hard that w2 I ended up having to checkpoint my way through 80% of it all till where we couldn’t proceed without the upgraded torch, here are some mechanic changes that would make w2 more rewarding and more normal to those that have played such games on the N64 and prior like I have.

Combat: this is simply too hard in my opinion, I’m going out of my way to buy a Razor Naga 2014 mouse next week, specifically to get better access to pressing skill buttons.

I get hit and lose a heart or die before I can launch a skill most of the time which is not fun.

If its the game engine causing that because of the different combat mechanic in SAB its not a good thing and needs to be tweaked go back look at zelda and compare how hard combat is there to SAB, it is allot more forgiving in Zelda due to the engine of the game being more fluid, hard still yes but more forgiving.

SAB needs better combat responsiveness and more fluidity for how its designed if you can achieve this its a big plus to how it plays and will change everything combat wise.

The water area world 2: the constant rapids and bad ragdoll is not fun at all this needs to be fixed as no matter what once you fall off a spout or anything you’re dead regardless.

The way I would address this is if the engine allows it, a push backwards in the water for the currents soo you can still get out and retry that area a bit back without losing a life, not the crazy health loss and immobilization ragdoll that kills you currently.

This is how the other games work on N64 Zelda etc and how I expected it to be in SAB the instanta death in water is not good also heath degradation should be doubled or tripled for length in water so it takes longer to die allowing you to get out safely and continue on.

Air: While air has insta death I think a better option is instead falling into air you should lose 1 heart instead and if you fall 4 times you loose a life its more forgiving this way to the players but still is a thing you don’t want to do.

Mario had mushrooms where you fall you lose the bigger mario and any Mario upgrades like fire flower and go to small Mario, then if you fell a second time you lost a life, if you were on small you lost a life also lives were easier to get in Mario than here.

Zelda you lost a heart each time and you appeared next to where you fell open world or start of the room in a dungeon when you fell so you didn’t have to do it all again starting from the beginning, which I expected this to be as its based allot on Zelda.

Torch upgrade: we simply had no idea this was needed as we couldn’t even the gibberish’d npc talk to know what we needed to do, in the end I had to google it after we sat there for 40 mins trying to work it out.

More dialog in the SAB is needed in telling us what we need to do if it’s an Asura learning center then we need to be learning with hints and messages not left to work everything out ourselves.

This SAB really feels like buy a gem store item to play and progress as mentioned above, if this is how you guys at ArenaNet are planning to take the main Guildwars 2 game them we as players need to know that Gem store items are mechanical advantages in the game in order to somewhat progress which the infinite coin is to SAB.

Sure I could purchase the coin and made back the 31 gold I spent on it instantly, from opening my Scarlett stash and gearboxes from doing those events but other people allot of other people wouldn’t have that luxury of having soo much gold from doing game events etc as I have.

These things alone would really change peoples opinions on SAB and the difficulty without sacrificing your great game work and mechanics with the spouts etc which I absolutely love.

I know what I mention is probably engine limitations as you touched on that already, but if these things can be achieved and finer tuned would make it alot better overall.

Sophiera.1209:

Water sprouts in the Rapid W2-1 is really unfair. I’m speaking about the specific stretch of spout jumping in the river section.

Spouts disappear on the server side before the client registers it, thus sending the player down into the rapids WHILE the player is still standing on top of a perfectly fine spout.

And the knockback mechanics on the water is rather crazy. I saw myself teleporting in 3 different directions while I’m stuck in forever-knockdown mode.

I had this issue back in World 1 and never expressed it since the spouts only occured in the hidden rooms and it wasn’t such a huge loss.

Sometimes I’d be standing on nothing (spouts disappear but server still registers it as still up). Then sometimes I would fall through a perfectly fine spout on my end even if it literally just came up on my screen.

This occurs even more in World 2. With even more loss involved.

I used to just write it off as lag induced by my poor ISP. Which I don’t doubt has some interference with the issue. Really frustrating.
__
But yeah, I don’t want to beat the dead horse. But the difficulty is not so bad after a while, just the length is the main issue. I really appreciate the work put into it none the less. So I am in no means ungrateful for being able to experience it. So I hope you aren’t taking the criticism of all your hardwork badly. Just makes my “I’m getting too old” come to mind. I used to do hard stuff like this all the time as a kid and growing up. Can barely touch it now. xD

If there was just some way to avoid the terrible issues that may occur that attribute to the random death infection I seem to be getting, as with others.

The amount of QQ in this thread is sad. I’m having a blast in this box, on all 3 modes. W2-Z2 was long but some of those dart traps are placed beautifully where I wouldn’t have expected.

Like old games, you fail and learn. Even if it means getting game-over. If you noticed, none of the games have a game-over screen now. It’s suppose to be brutal.

I bought the infinite coin before I even entered the box. I enjoyed it so much the first time the SAB came around that having this coin means I can join any time I want! I’ll admit I’m slightly better than most platformer players out there so the coin wasn’t necessary but I bought it anyway.

I’ll be sad if any of the SAB gets nerfed.

I’ve read through the first five pages or so of comments and replies in this thread and I felt compelled to actually log in and post for once. Please be aware I have not read every page and every reply to this thread, so I apologize if there have already been multiple posts like this one.

The squeakiest wheel gets the oil, as the saying goes, and I think it’s safe to say the “squeakiest wheels” right now are those individuals who are unhappy with SAB World 2 and the difficulty surrounding it. By the same token, as is common in customer service, the satisfied or happy customers are much less likely to take the time to submit positive feedback.

I felt I should be one of those few. I personally enjoy the difficulty of World 2 and I hope it does not get made to be too easy. World 1 was the introductory world; it was World 1 of Super Mario Bros, in which you can essentially walk through the entire level without threat of death simply because the level is primarily for learning purposes. The difficulty of World 1 slowly increases as you progress through the zones but let’s face it, even Zone 3 has very few traps that are insta-death.

World 2 starts you off with the expectation of death, and a lot of it. This is something you must acclimate yourself to, and by understanding that one wrong move will result in starting over from the last checkpoint you understand and accept the increased difficulty. Using the same comparison to Super Mario Bros, the second level of the game (World 1-2) introduces a shift in difficulty as you encounter a large increase in insta-death fall traps compared to the first level. The game’s difficulty steadily increases, and when you begin encountering the cloud levels you have a sufficient understanding of what the game expects of you. In my opinion, this is what they set out to do in SAB World 2, and I like that.

Difficult games are overcome through repetition. You need to die, and you need to die a lot more after that first death in order to learn where all the traps are and what you should not be doing. Similarly, when you watch someone do a perfect speedrun of any Mario, Sonic, Ninja Gaiden or really any other NES action game, you can rest assured that they have spent countless hours playing those levels and dying at every turn so that they could learn what not to do. SAB is no different, and I like that.

Not everyone will like that, however, and for those of you who don’t, you are of course always welcome to share your opinions with the development team just as I’m doing now. But to the development team I say this: There are 16 pages of replies in this thread, and even if each reply was made by a completely different person, that would leave approximately 800 users commenting in this thread. If you assume that 90% of those commenters are unhappy with World 2’s difficulty, that leaves approximately 720 unhappy users. What are the statistics of how many players are currently active within the SAB content? I would be willing to bet money that there are easily over three times that amount participating in the content and as I said before, happy customers are less likely to give feedback—the unhappy customers are something around two to three times more likely to share their thoughts. Something to consider.

Regardless of what happens, I would like to thank those of you who worked hard to develop and perfect the second World. Similarly, Tribulation mode is a nightmare of a monster, and I love it. I still haven’t beaten W1Z1 in Tribulation mode, and I love that. Thank you!

This time around SAB has been designed to make you fork out money on the infinite coin, nothing more. What next, 1 silver for every footstep you take?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Lafiel.9372:

The biggest fail of this SAB is that it’s too long.

Lesson learned. I get it.

Its not so much the length/amount of content, at least for me. Its more that theres no way of restarting at a certain point (can’t leave and come back later), which you’ve already said can’t be done (which is a shame). I’d rather have 2-2 split into at least 2 separate zones, possibly 3. The distance between checkpoints is really disheartening. (like the one where you have to jump on all the pegs in a line, then go up that tower, then into the room with the frogs, only to kittening die to the arrow trap). Would rather have more checkpoints (like the one persons suggestion of doing the TM mini checkpoints) if you’re not gonna split the zone up. (already been in the map 2 hours already, and am only at the point I specified earlier)

Josh: I really appreciate you responding in this thread. You may be done reading it by now, but I have to admit that my personal opinion of you was positively corrected once you stopped being flippant and started honestly telling people about your vision for the SAB. Your passion is evident and I think it’s pretty clear Anet is lucky to have you.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s quite possible that we are just THAT much better at jumping than the average player…

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You are probably not that much better than a hardcore player or a hardcore jumper. But you are so much better than average, I think you sometimes don’t recognize that tricky jumps that lead to death are, in fact, difficult jumping puzzles for some people. I still remember the Mad King boss fight being a difficult jumping puzzle. I think at the time, the response was, “we didn’t realize it was a jumping puzzle.”

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder.

Here’s the thing: I have played and beaten Metroid, Super Mario Bros (most of them), Zelda (nearly all of them), and many of the games you love so much and are respecting here. I mean, I laughed out loud at the opening sequence – it was great! (I even beat Bionic Commando. Not Ninja Gaiden or Mega Man, though. Those games are for masochists.)

This is way harder. Part of the reason is because you can do more in 3D with a fully 3D world. Moving in 9 directions is way easier by default than moving in 29 directions. That’s why, when you got to Mario 64 and Ocarana of Time, those games weren’t as punishingly difficult in the jumping puzzle areas. Moving in 3D is already more difficult to start with.

You say you may have overestimated the “average” player. My question is: what average are you talking about? The average player who still goes back and enjoys playing through Castlevania 1 or Ninja Gaiden or Ghost n Goblins? Or the average player who plays Guild Wars 2? Modern games are different for a reason – you know that. Many people don’t enjoy “Nintendo hard” anymore. I get that this is what you’re going for here – and that’s great! But who is your real target for this minigame? If you ONLY want “Nintendo hard” people to be happy, then your goals for World 2 are perfect, and other than the engine stuff you mentioned, you shouldn’t change anything! If you actually want all of GW2 to play, then you are wildly off target.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to imply that one is right and one is wrong! I think you should 100% stick to your vision, because anything else will just upset everyone. But “average” player who plays GW2 and “average” player who would enjoy SAB are not the same, and they probably won’t ever enjoy the same content. And I’m sure you know this. I’m just putting it back out there.

As for the nights and weekends and ignoring your family: GAH! Don’t ever do that! What are you, young? I’m glad you’ve learned that lesson because it is never worth it – and this kind of “playerbase slaps you in the face” “reward” for your over-the-top effort should show you exactly how that kind of dedication is usually rewarded. Naw, man: keep your sanity, keep your family, and then when you’re all rested and on top of your game: THAT is when you design the best stuff!

Josh Foreman.8250:

rfdarko.4639:

To further illustrate the point : http://youtu.be/J9-aUFHIt7c

It’s not difficulty, it’s not even lag, it’s terrible detection. If Josh can watch this and claim everything is fine with the hit detection and the player was at fault in each case, then I really don’t know what to say.

No. That is clearly a terrible experience. Something is obviously terribly wrong there. If I saw anything like this during testing we would have reworked everything. I’ve never claimed anywhere that anyone’s poor experience is because it’s the player’s fault. I don’t think that way. I like to make people happy, believe it or not.

Is this issue (dying randomly and getting pushed off rocks constantly) happening to you? If so, is it happening as frequently as this video shows? If this is anything more than an edge case than we have a serious problem that will necessitate some serious solution. Thanks for pointing it out.

I had the same thing happen to me, random deaths and all. It was happening to my partner as well. Its strange standing still for almost 4 minutes then being catapulted down the rapids suddenly too. That video in particular illustrates the areas where the random deaths happens the most, at least in my case too.

I haven’t played the updated SAB yet, but watched the stream of the devs playing a zone. It’s looking way too difficult for what’s supposed to be zone 2 (out of a planned total of 6?) I did enjoy zone 1, it had that nice old school game feel to it without being unfair or ridiculous. What I got from watching the stream is that it’s going in the direction of having to memorise everything if you want to complete a zone without using a large amount of Continue Coins.

No, thank you very much.

Josh, don’t take it hard. I view the core issue here more as a difference in the intention of SAB itself.

I cannot speak on behalf on the entire community, but I believe I do speak on behalf of the older players here. We look at SAB as a fun trip down memory lane: a fun retro-style mini-game within GW2 that allows us to relive those old 8-bit days as we remember them (here’s the key part) through rose-colored spectacles.

Don’t look at the extra work as “waste” insomuch is that it was just more than what people were expected.

SAB is a kind of nostalgia, and nostalgia is very powerful. But, nostalgia needs to be handled carefully, and doled out in measured doses.

As a kid I remember my parent’s taking my down to Skip’s Hamburgers, where we’d get these great little burgers that were cooked on the griddle, wrapped in a paper napkin, and served with crispy fries and a cold milk shake. When I think back on that time, I think of sitting down with my family and how delicious that little burger and shake was. I don’t think back on the 15+ minute wait in line to order, or the mosquitoes or the crappy little uncomfortable plastic tables I sat in. Nor do I think back on the 20 minute drive back and forth. Nostalgia is the best 5 minutes of that 1+ hour experience: a burger and a shake and a good time with my family.

SAB is that little burger; it’s that trip to the beach, the walk to the candy store, or the time you spent playing Matchbox cars in the driveway.

Keep that thought your mind when you’re designing World 3.

Mirta.5029:

joshua valentine.2593:

I believe the ramp-up in difficulty has something to do with the Infinite Continue Coin in the gem shop.

-adjusts tin foil hat-

actually I believe that too. Not entering Sab again :/

I swore off this crap the first time around and I’m just as disgusted with it this time, too. SAB can go get a hotdog for all I care. Worst. Update. Ever.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Sorry to offend, but I think your offence is unwarranted. The reason I said ‘some’ is because I meant ‘not everyone’ You are clearly in that camp. You put in a lot of effort, therefore you are not in the group I was referencing. I think you’ll agree that there IS a group of SOME people who meet a little bit of resistance and give up, right? When this thread started yesterday morning and the content hadn’t been out more than a couple hours I had no idea how many people were in what group. 14 pages later I’m very clearly convinced that there’s a problem and I’m working very hard to fix it.

As an aside, there are several hundred baubles buried around the two Worlds, so getting those 400 was certainly possible. I don’t think you were completely blocked or forced to quit. But I understand that if you’re not having fun you won’t want to continue. So it’s on me to try to make it fun! Thanks for your feedback.

I wasn’t overly offended, though admittedly at the time of my posting that I was a bitter person because SAB’s views seemed to have shifted so greatly. It’s been made evident from your postings since that one (and perhaps some that I missed in the pages before my own post) that a lot of this difficulty was not intentional and that it has even less relevance to the ICC in the gem store than a lot of us originally thought. So, for that much, I apologise. I’ll also agree that there are a number of people who quit very early and they otherwise skew results, but the same can be said about people who come in here saying there’s nothing wrong with SAB and that everybody is just whining for no good reasons. Forum complaints are often treated with a slightly dismissive attitude because people like to accuse them of being the “1%” – so I’m naturally a little leery. Fault on my part, I suppose.

Also, more as a point of interest in regards to the comment about SAB being designed for play with a party…

In the original World 1 of SAB (which I completed to 100% and got every achievement under the sun for) there was no requirement to be in a party. In fact, arguably, being in a party made things longer and harder; if you were in a party with somebody who wasn’t as good at jumping or who hadn’t run it much at all then you were sat waiting at a checkpoint for an age unless they simply died. King Toad was given a percentile HP increase based on players in your group, meaning he was faster and easier to do solo because you weren’t having to rely on team mates to not make mistakes.

Overall, SAB originally captured the essence of a game you could play with your friends, but you didn’t have to.

You’ve already send in a post earlier that SAB is now meant to be focused on running it in a party of five and I just want to ask… why is this? Let’s be honest, SAB just isn’t designed to be like a dungeon; the bosses get harder the more people you have in your group, but you as a player can do nothing to help your friends. You can’t revive them, you can’t help them jump better, and you can’t heal them or throw them an item to aid them in that boss battle. Really, the only thing your friends do is act as a second target that, if you’re lucky, mobs will attack them instead of attacking you.

I love running SAB with friends but that isn’t because I feel like the content was designed for that purpose. I just love running it with my friends because it means I have people to chat to and laugh with when things get otherwise madly frustrating. I also don’t tend to do bauble runs on a SAB zone until I’ve beaten it to begin with, otherwise I just get myself hopelessly lost. A requirement of 400 baubles for somebody who didn’t go into World 1, having already done it, and instead leapt straight into the buggy and slightly broken World 2, was really never going to be met. (Though I appreciate you can’t tailor World 2 for the people who beat World 1 exclusively, but that didn’t make it any less of a slap in the face at the time.)

Hey Josh.

As I said before, the first time I went through z1 and z2 of w2 it was really really painful and took me a long time, frustrating and tiring, but now I’m able to almost breeze through them, it has became a lot easier on the second run and that’s a pretty good feeling.

The work you and your team did in this release is amazing, I like that the levels are long, it’s good, the only negative side of it it’s that a great deal of us don’t have that much time to play focusing on a long session. But when I do get the time for it, it feels great.

I just really want to let you know that all you guys did was worth it in my opinion, all the effort and all nighters, the passion you put in the game continues to show and it keeps the heart warmer when we’re dying non-stop.

Please don’t be discouraged, you do amazing work.

@Airyll: I feel the same way about SAB, in the sense that I love to play solo and think it’s perfect for it, it’s fun to play with friends, but for me the real deal is solo and I think it’s perfectly suitable for that, we do have the tools to work around enemies and beat them, just gotta use them.

This is an amazingly long thread and I believe much of the rage and disappointment is due to the fact the fun factor has been removed from SAB. This post is pretty much from a guild perspective.

World 1. Still great, but making rewards account bound vs. character bound means fewer rewards for everyone. Add to that most dig spots give fewer baubles which means even fewer rewards for playing.

SAB in April was a huge hotspot for our guild. The fact that you could get the chests on every character meant that we could introduce and pull many guild members into SAB and still get our baubles. There was the added possibility of getting a weapon which just made it fun! No more. Players do their one run per day, usually alone and that’s it. The group fun and activity is essentially gone. Why, why, why change this? Who cares if players farm for weapons? It just puts more out on the market for those who missed the whole thing.

World 2. Everyone was looking forward to it, now no one looks forward to trying to finish it. It’s entirely unforgiving; not at all like World 1. The really sad thing is the whole design looks great and looks like it would have been great fun if it wasn’t made so difficult and time consuming. Parts of it are fun but dying over and over is not fun! Seriously, people who finished it are spending hours at it, and even though they have learned it who wants to spend hours going through again?

The gathering hub for players was a nice addition and upon release was filled with players; now you find 1 or 2 players there. That pretty much says it all. It’s as though Anet decided they do not want to see the kind of activity in SAB we had in April so it was decided to reduce player numbers by 95%. Mission accomplished.

I am no longer looking forward to worlds 3 and 4 being completed.

yesterday evening i just finished the world 2 at normal dif.i really like it!!!very nice job anet!!some pretty cool ideas there!
i start my luck at world 1 hard mode.you die a lot but there are tactics and logic to everything to remain alive,just need to be extra careful and take your time!
once again pretty cool content guys!thanks

The only thing hard about tribulation mode is that having a high ping (200+) makes particular parts of what would otherwise be fairly simple content, next to impossible. But of course Anet doesn’t give a kitten about their international players and don’t test their content in a high ping environment.

Josh, what about the promise not to make dodge jumping required? I remember a post saying all jumps are designed so they can be done without it since it’s so buggy and can’t be pulled of consistently, yet in W1Z2 Tribulation mode you have to do a mandatory dodge jump from a jumping rock shortly after the first checkpoint.

Also like to say that even if I don’t agree with the design decisions for this iteration of SAB, I do appreciate and respect you for posting here and discussing feedback openly.

God, 3 1/2 hours to finish zone 2-2. Even knowing what to do, its takes forever. How much shorter does the eagle actually make it?

Ok, the gong chase is pretty difficult and was the end of my run yesterday out of frustration, but I don’t see this too far from stuff we did as kids, like having to remember left left right left right right and so on (no this isn’t the real directions for the gong).

The fact that it’s there right after the dart trap/push block and fish/assassin temple though the difficulty/frustration creeps a little fast. I feel like if they were more spread out it would have been better even with checkpoints after each temple.

The kid in me loves the nostalgia, but the adult in me says “I’m getting too old for this kitten.”

Josh Foreman.8250:

Lafiel.9372:

The biggest fail of this SAB is that it’s too long.

Lesson learned. I get it.

Lafiel.9372:

I guess the first one was successful because it was new, innovative and they wanted to get it right. Now when they made the second one, they’re just throw in a bigger team, a bigger budget and demand lengthier contents and say yup, that’s what players want. Like the say, the sequels are always crap until the next fresh reboot.

Smaller team, actually. And the length was my own desire to get as many ideas as I could in there. I spent several months pulling 16 hour days and a couple weeks where I did a couple 36 hour stretches, went home, slept and came back and did it again. No one else wanted me to do that. In fact those sort of crazy hours are discouraged at ArenaNet. I did that because I freeking love what I do and wanted this release to be the best thing ever. Turns out I pushed too hard to get those new mechanics in there and I’m being told here over and over that all that work was wasted and it’s making people miserable. I’ve learned my lesson. Won’t happen again! And for that, my family thanks you!

That last bit comes off a bit sarcastic (though maybe there is a better word). I understand you put in long hours and really dedicated yourself to this project, but you shouldn’t let others get you down – especially on a forum. There is a very good reason developers have to look at both the feedback AND the metrics. Complainers will always be more vocal. Just look at the Halloween jumping puzzle, so many people loved the challenge, but based on the forums you’d think that one of ANet’s better creations (SAB is at the top of that list FYI) was an utter failure. I’m bet once your numbers come in you’ll see that a lot of players spent a lot of time in the SAB.

The question isn’t if your long hours were ‘worth it’, what you and your team made is extremely impressive. What you’ve done is make a game within a game, and no matter the hours put into a game (MMO based especially) you WILL get negative feedback and there WILL be iteration. So don’t let it get you down or let negative feedback disappoint you. However, I will say that while I admire your dedication and appreciate your long hours – I’d rather you didn’t do it at the cost to yourself. Spend your free time with the family :-).

As to actual feedback – it’s fun! It seemed like there were more jumps that virtually required a kick flip to make it across, and I wasn’t happy with the content being gated by a 400 bauble cost item hidden in a secret shop. To me, things like that should offer short cuts or make things easier, not force you to search for a secret shop and farm baubles to continue. For example, the Glove is required to move forward, but you encounter and obtain it as part of the story, the Torch is different.

The only other feedback I have is that maybe the key to the ‘difficult’ complaints is to add more team play elements. For instance, If you could summon an ally a short distance using the wooden whistle that would encourage group play, letting you help allies past difficult jumps.

It is such a shame that a very common problem with the devs here first resort to the “suck it up” mentality. Only after many people expressed similar concerns was it admitted that you suspected it being difficult going in. Seems a little bit of a Kitten move to tell the players that we are just whiners/quitters and then admit to it being annoyingly hard.

First general blow-off comment:

*You may be right. I think it’s too early to tell. Some number of people hit a little resistance and quit and come to complain about it. And some number hit that same resistance and are inspired to overcome it and they are in the game right now doing that. I don’t have a good sense of those numbers are right now. I’m more than happy to adjust it when I have better data to work from. Thanks for your feedback.

About troublesome Jumping:

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

On the difficulty:

I had a gut feeling going in that it was. But since I wasn’t hearing it confirmed by QA or alphas I let it go. So the main reason I’m paying so much attention to this thread is because I suspected there was a problem to begin with. I really, really don’t want to alienate a ton of players by making them miserable and frustrated. We made a whole mode for people who like that sort of thing!

Getting Defensive after many pages of difficulty:

Sorry to offend, but I think your offense is unwarranted. The reason I said ‘some’ is because I meant ‘not everyone’ You are clearly in that camp. You put in a lot of effort, therefore you are not in the group I was referencing. I think you’ll agree that there IS a group of SOME people who meet a little bit of resistance and give up, right? When this thread started yesterday morning and the content hadn’t been out more than a couple hours I had no idea how many people were in what group. 14 pages later I’m very clearly convinced that there’s a problem and I’m working very hard to fix it.

It is difficult to take criticism on something you put much effort into, but your responses could use a few cycles through a sarcasm filter before reaching the public. In many other fields of work (mine included), talking to clients in such a manner would not result in long-term employment, regardless of the position.

Aside from the quality of communication, I felt SAB W1 was a great success. Easy enough to complete, while W2 is an effort in frustration and pain. Outside of the obvious 16 pages worth, I do have a few other items I felt were sparsely discussed.

1. Groups Vs. Solo: There is a reason most people go solo. Getting one person through is tough enough, let alone with 4 others. Guilds/Friends while may be great to play with, often do not have the same skill level required for this precision jumping event. While 5 people may make enemy/timed events go easier, trying to get all 5 people through the “fun” spots is often an effort in futility. So a more skilled jumper is likely to go solo, rather than risk the pain of getting a group.

2. “Not designed for you” attitude- The most common phrase being spewed first by devs, then by players everywhere. The addition of some more difficult content seems to be the increasing norm. There really needs to be a balance between the Spam AOE for loot content, and the Let’s try for the 100th time and still fail content. Applies outside of SAB box too.

3. W3/W4 – Hopefully the fix will tone down the difficulty for W2, but I fear for W3/W4. Should the difficulty increase again, only a few people will beat W3 and very few will beat W4. I liked SAB as a distraction from the normal game. It throws fun nods to classic gaming without causing screen-punching rage in difficulty level. It was a fun distraction to the main game. I might expect W4 (or whatever final world is) to be as hard as W2 is now, as you slowly increase the hard meter.

4. Split the zones. As others have mentioned, for W3/W4 or eventual remake of W2, just add more zones. It helps with the long/difficult sections. Not all zones have to have a boss/mini-boss. It could simply be a flag/mini chest like the castles at the end of Mario levels or the spinning sign on sonic.

Josh, I just want to thank you for the way you continue to interact with us. I can understand how rough it must be to hear criticism of something you are clearly very passionate about and put so much of yourself into. You’ve taken it well, and it says a lot about you. Hopefully you’re not too bummed

Anyway, I hope ArenaNet appreciates what an asset you are; it’s employees like you that create loyal customers.

Eowin Of Rohan.2619:

I’m currently dieing in infantile mode. Didn’t go normal yet.
Infantile doesn’t help avoiding those enemies that I’m saying are too hard for normal mode.

Some tips for the Assassins and Bears:

Assassins
-As someone earlier mentioned, Strafing is key.
-Keep an eye out for when the white Assassins pull back their arm and then move horizontally out of the way. Once you dodge the shuriken you can get in the two hits you need to finish them off before they throw a second.
-If you can get to them BEFORE they begin their throwing animation, you can just kill them outright.
-The Red Assassins only deal damage after jumping. Once they jump, strafe away from the direction they are moving and attack from the side or behind after they land. Their attack DOES have a deceptively large hitbox, but that might just be me playing a tiny Asura so I’m used to things hitting me when they “shouldn’t.”
-I have no advice on the pink assassins because I’ve just murdered them with wanton abandon.

As for the silent Ninja Bridge in Zone 1, I know you can’t really strafe. What I usually do is deal with the first two by dodge rolling the shuriken and then wait for my stamina to recharge after killing them. Then I just run. Dodge past the next two red guys and make a mad dash for the Raft.

Bears
-Are jerks
-The most effective way to to periodically stun them, but you seem to know that already.
-If they do toss a torch, roll out of the way and close the distance.
-If they threw the torch close range and are standing in their own AoE, I just run away until they drop aggro and the AoE fades.
-If you’re dealing with more than one Bear at a time, RUN.
-Release your Bear related frustration by stepping on and off the bear skin rug in the second store.

Lastly, for Josh: Are the red Assassins at all inspired by Mystical Ninja Goemon? It’s not like they’re fighting with Pipes and it could just be classic use of the primary colors, but they always remind me of Mystical Ninja. Either way, it makes me smile.

skullmount.1758:

God, 3 1/2 hours to finish zone 2-2. Even knowing what to do, its takes forever. How much shorter does the eagle actually make it?

If you stay on the eagle the whole time…drops you off right on top of the bell for the boss of the zone.

I realize this thread has kind of run it’s course, but I wanted to add my voice to the people who are disappointed with SAB2.

SAB1 was brilliant, and went above and beyond the typical April Fool’s joke, while still being a worthy piece of content, and fun to do multiple times for secrets, bauble farming, etc. I’ve been playing platformer games since I was very young, starting on the Atari, so this sort of content should be right up my alley, and SAB1 was, in a big way. It’s actually the update that got me back into playing GW2 regularly after several months away. So, I was looking forward to SAB2 once it was announced.

Having been through SAB2.1 and up to the gong tower in .2, if I had commented last night, I would have been one of the ragers from earlier in the thread. I do feel that the difficulty here is a massive step up from World 1, and almost certainly too high relative to it. Many people have pointed out the problematic spots, and I’m glad to see Josh acknowledge the constructive criticism (and some of the unconstructive criticism).

By far, I feel my biggest problem is the engine limitations, and how the levels were designed in relation to them. Bluntly, to me, it feels like the engine limitations were ignored, and the levels designed as if GW2 had a flawless platforming engine. I suspect that if SAB2 was a world inside, say, Mario Galaxy, with the engine of that game, there would be significantly less complaining. Josh’s responses have acknowledged the engine problem, but I don’t feel they’ve really acknowledged how the engine limitations will affect the player experience. By far, I feel the majority of my frustration in SAB2 has come from not being able to trust the engine and collision detection.

Also, I do feel the levels are much too long, for what they are trying to do. Ironically, both SAB2.1 and 2.2 seem to have natural level breaking points, 2.1 has the raft ride, 2.2 the Wisdom Glove (I think I see what you did there) miniboss. I would ask that Josh strongly considers splitting future SAB worlds into smaller chunks, for those of us who cannot necessarily dedicate an uninterrupted string of time to completing them at the current length+difficulty curve.

Also, a thought on the dart walls: Is it possible to have the darts start firing before the player would be killed by them as a warning? Comparing this mechanic to instant death traps in many classic games, in the best ones there is almost always some warning given (before the player would die from it!) that something bad is here and you should stay away. Currently, I agree with the many people who have commented that SAB2 Normal feels like it was designed more akin to what I expected Tribulation mode to be.

I will admit, my first impression of SAB2 has left me sorely disappointed, and unmotivated to attempt it again. If, when the patch comes, people feel that it improves the experience, I will try again. As it stands though, I will be giving the SAB2 content a miss. I do feel relieved, somewhat, to see Josh’s comments in this thread. Overall, I do think SAB2 missed both the intended mark of fun, and the expectations set by SAB1. I hope SAB2 can be repaired, and that future worlds are more enjoyable, and difficult!, without being frustrating due to circumstances outside the players’ control.

Wanted to toss in my two cents

People are, in my opinion, over-exaggerating the difficulty of world 2- it’s hard, certainly, and the meta for w2 will take me a lot of improvement (and I’ve already gotten a green weapon from w1 trib mode). From having been through once on normal, while I don’t normally object to more content, zone two is an overwhelmingly large time commitment with no way to take a break and come back later. I remember thinking back in April that I wanted the to be more zones in a world, not for the existing zones to be longer. But I’ll persist- w2 is not unfair.

Trib mode is unfair by design, and I get that, and on that note I would have made life count infinite in tribulation mode- someone done by both cat Mario and iwtbtg, the stated inspirations of trib mode. Trib mode can’t be played in a life conserving way, but rather in a super-meat-boy method of throwing your corpse and seeing where it lands. The dev’s themselves said its designed with a “lives are cheap” philosophy, which does not mesh with a lives-cost-baubles-or-600-gems. But w/e

Over all, despite small bug issues and a few nags about the very sharp difficulty curve and large time commitment (and time gating <_>), world 2 was very well designed in terms of gameplay itself, and looks GREAT, and I love the challenge with trib mode (did world 1, looking forward to world 2). – so excellent job, moto. I mean, foreman.

Not sure if this is intentional or not, but there seems to be spots in water that the game doesn’t ever detect. There was a similar spot that I fell into in world 1 zone 3’s poison water, a small corner that I lived in during tribulation mode but I had to step into the poison water that would kill me to get anywhere. Maybe some coordinates are off by a bit?

Edit: I also just did the log raft section and the raft never got to the waterfall, I just got a loading screen in the middle of a flat section. Which I’m entirely fine with because I had 2 hearts left and got the achiev for surviving the raft ride (Solo, which should say something about whether or not assassin’s require a 5man team. Altho I might be a bad example as I had to be the one to get the gong >.<).

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.

Josh you are now my favorite Anet dev ever since I found out you worked on the clock tower and SAB (my two favorite updates ever!). Just wanted you to know. :P

I love the challenge of SAB but there’s one thing that irks me to no end and that’s the hit detection of things while jumping.

Example: I’m jumping off of a water geyser. I clearly made it about 80% of the way from the geyser to the landing spot. The geyser disappears. I get knocked down and thrown sideways (usually to my death). This even happens after I’ve already touched the ground at the end of my jump in some cases. This may be lag, or some issue in the way the game calculates jumping, or a combination of both, but it’s extremely frustrating! This issue also occurs with the angry leaping rocks that pop up and knock you back in trib mode. I might run and jump past a rock and plant my feet on a tree 15 feet away and still get knocked down by the delayed reaction of that rock.

Also, the difficulty curve in normal mode up until w2z2 goes from a steady horizontal slope and slams headlong into a vertical brick wall. Seriously the dart traps in the gong tower are more frustrating than Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls combined. I’m terrified what trib mode will be like for that zone. The portal platforms right after that are a pain as well, but only because the portals seem random and confusing. In contrast I found w2z3 to be a cakewalk by comparison.

Other than that I still love the SAB!

800 replies o.o.. yea it’s cause Josh but btw.

World 2 is much more designed than world 1 but even harder :P. I stuck on zone 3 because i have to collect 400 bubbles, that’s not cool. I loved everything it was hard, challenging and surprising like the old Zelda/Mario but this is one of two point which i don’t like. I think this had to be less linear and their should be a way where you can get the item (better candle) but it’s just my opinion. Maybe i just compare it to hard with Zelda. The other one is one of the achievements: Collect all bubbles in Zone 1/2/3. I think their should be a display like you collected 60 of 100. I mean i spent like 90 min for world 2 collecting all bubbles. After finishing i noticed that i miss some… That was a pain in the a…. I guess it’s just my opinion

All in all i love it and it’s in my opinion the best content ever made in mmorpgs (i love jumping and rpgs)

Apologies if most or all of this was said already but I don’t have time to read the entirety of this thread right now but I did read the some of the first few pages.
Ok so mostly what I’m here to say is I really have a problem with the difficulty of the later parts of world 2 zone 1 >.> So much so that while I perhaps haven’t tried as much as some people complaining/discussing here, I haven’t managed to even clear W2Z1 yet.
My main gripe with it is the content immediately following the second(?) checkpoint that comes after the log raft section. Y’know, you get past the trees and the angry bear, hop along some crocodiles, turtles…and you come to a checkpoint. So, I may not haven’t actually managed that myself yet but it seemed kind of reasonable still. At the least, my gf managed to do it and so when i died i started at that new checkpoint.

But oh my kittening gods….like I trust quite a few people have already said/thought (with or w/o voicing on forum) this next part really takes the kitten IMO. Now, Idk maybe the platforming aspect of this part itself just maaaaybe is ok; I may have to just make sure that I’m doing things right and not going the wrong way….but the kittening part about it the really annoys me is the fact that if you screw up in this part you are likely to be swept back to the area BEFORE THE KITTENING CHECKPOINT that you just reached. =.= It just seems stupidly unfair to me that that should be possible, and that that outcome is pretty much inevitable unless you go frantically bashing a few keys or so like a kittening idiot, just hoping beyond hope that you can manage to crawl back up on a rock somewhere before you wipe out…

Really struggled with the water geysers in world 2-2. There is a series of four jumps onto geysers or so, when i made the third jump onto a geyser I would always be thrown back into the water. I thought there was some unknown mechanic that I was missing but other forum posts suggest latency may be an issue. With the pre content testing that takes place do devs test content with some latency? 250ms is around normal for AU & NZ players. The only way I see myself being able to get past the geysers is timing it so I jump before the geysers appear on my screen.

I know after the raft for me even on my pc it goes lag mode. Half the time I jump on a water spout and it pushes me off.
I don’t think I will even bother with world 2 besides the motion sickness forget that.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Draygo.9473:

My problems all stem from attempting it solo. Fighting assassins solo is a grinding experience. When I’m grouped up with guildies we can often kill them quickly, but when your fighting 2-3 of them alone its really hard to avoid taking damage.

It ends up being frustrating and tedious. With a group its much easier to deal with the assassin mobs.

This is as designed. Dungeons are designed for up to 5 people. If you choose to solo a dungeon you should expect this sort of thing. At leas that’s how I look at it. Maybe because SAB doesn’t look like a dungeon there are different expectations? We did clearly communicate when you enter a world that 5 are recommended.

I know this topic is a few pages old, but I’m just coming to the discussion, so there are two problems for me with this, in addition to all the problems with grouping that other people mentioned.

First, world 1 was easily, easily soloable; people are going to keep those expectations this time around whether you like it or not. Second, the last living story instance that said 5 players were recommended was Scarlet’s Playhouse, which was a joke. Sometimes I need a group of 5 for living story dungeons and sometimes I don’t; there’s no consistency, and I no longer trust the “recommended 5 players” things. That’s too bad, but I just don’t believe you any more when you say it’s good to have 5 people.

This isn’t, of course, to say that everyone was able to solo those things. Of course some people wanted groups for them, and that’s fine; different people play at different levels. I’m sure there are things I want a group for that other people solo. The point is just that recommendations don’t seem to me to track anything, really; certainly they don’t seem to me to track difficulty.

(For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced that World 2 is actually one of the places where I want a group; I think the assassins are fine solo, for instance.)

matthewr.3980:

Mr. Foreman, the actual truth is that this 16 page thread wouldn’t exist if we all weren’t so in love with the Super Adventure Box. If we didn’t love World 1 so incredibly much, we wouldn’t be complaining about World 2. We’d forget about it and go do something else.

So before you say you wasted your time, or feel bad about making World 2 too hard, remember that behind every angry person in this thread is a younger inner child that is absolutely giddy about a new world to explore, play though, and laugh out loud about.

I’m gonna agree. Despite complaining and being snotty, I actually like how this content was implemented and how it looks and I wanna play it – not to win but to have FUN