Guild Wars 2

Maybe add a suicide button on F1 key?

I did get stuck once by something that knocked me into a pit. And I had 2 guildies complaining about getting stuck in a wall. Since there are no waypoints, re logging kinda hurts.
A suicide button would solve all those problems. Don’t put it on the flute tho. Its kinda hard to play the flute if your perma knocked down cause of the water, or 2 or 3 rocks knocking you back in between them for a minute >.<

one slight issue with trib mode. W1Z3 right after the chest the launch from the checkpoint slamed me into the curved mushroom ceiling above and then directly down on top of a spike trap, not sure if that was intended or not.

Randulf.7614:

Josh, Ive noticed on the gong run, you can release the gong..die the run back and meet the gong at the bottom ramp. Possible exploit!

I was SOOO tempted to do that. Especially because I realized it could be done relatively easily compared to following the hard to follow gong. But then I got stubborn and wanted to do it the “right way”.

So I just gave this another try and still the first rapids/water spout section in Zone 1 constantly knocks me back. Impossible to continue. Just so frustrating.

Also a general note: making normal mode World 2 easier and doable for normally skilled players is by no means taking anything away from anybody’s work. Normal mode should – as the name states – be doable by the grand scheme of players. For everyone who thinks it’s oh so easy – you can go have fun in tribulation mode. No need really to frustrate all regular players TWICE…

Josh, I’m curious which effects you find are limitations of the engine, compared to the ones which are just the nature of the design.

Using the gong to avoid all the dart traps feels like it’s pushing the limitations on the engine. The dart traps themselves being instant kill is just part of the design. Though, I would argue the whole gong itself is more a design problem than an engine limitation.

During the “many” times I was killed doing the gong puzzle, I was thinking of how it could be made more forgiving while still keeping the challenge. I had a few ideas about that. One being that the puzzle just gets divided into two. You make it up to the top once and then immediately hit a checkpoint just before doing the gong. Then the player can keep doing the gong without spending the time to jump all the way back up the tower.

One way of just making it slightly easier is to keep the climb up full of deadly traps. The gong rolls down and can be followed to avoid traps (you could tie an achievement to this or something), but the gong’s real goal would be that it breaks down a door that needs to be passed. Then even if the player dies, they still make progress.

(P.S. I really need to figure out where this shortcut eagle is.)

Reacted.8190:

matthewr.3980:

When can we expect to see the changes to World 2?

Hopefully never!
I hope world 3 progresses in the same direction, I like it when I have to die repeatedly and find whacky ways to climb!
Completing Tribulation was a blast!

No.

One.

Is.

Suggesting.

TM.

Be.

Changed.

Are we clear? This is about bugs and glitchiness in Normal Mode which needs tweaking because more than 50% of the player base whom enjoy a challenge are having unintended issues.

Good lord…

Josh Foreman.8250:

Valmarius.4150:

I’d like Josh to gather points of view from places other than the forum before he decides to start hacking away at his work of art.

I’ve been developing games since ‘96. I’ve been around the block long enough to know that the forums are not the best place to get accurate readings of most player’s perceptions. The reason I’m adjusting the difficulty is 1. So much of it is from mechanics that surprised us with how poorly they perform out in the field. and 2. I never really felt good about how hard it was but didn’t get the confirmation of it until this thread. We’ve found ways to fix the major difficulty spikes in Infantile and Normal Modes, and we’ll do some more refining and maybe a systemic change (Making bottomless pits and dart traps reset you at the last waypoint with one heart removed.) by the time World 3 comes out.

Josh, I wanna thank you for realizing this, talking to players, havings bugs brought to your attention and staying fairly calm while working with frustrated gamers who aren’t often kind. Eh heh heh…

It’s appreciated that you actually care.

I have to wonder, how much of the perceived difficulty is due to the continue coin mechanic? I completed world 2 solo, so I know it is doable, but the question is did I lose too many continue coins for my comfort?

If you run a deficit on continue coins, the game will feel harder, because you will feel that you failed more than you can in order to continue playing. The continue coin mechanic adds more frustration to deaths and really ratchets up the tension for not wanting to die.

If anything needs to be balanced, I think it simply needs to be the number of lives. Each zone rewards 1 continue coin and 2 baublebaubles, theoretically the 2 baublebaubles can be converted into 10 continue coins for 11, but the reward baubles are really to allow the player to buy skins right? I think as it is, continue mechanics allow players to break even per run (if they want to use thier baublebaubles to buy more continue coins). I think this is where the real issue about difficulty arises.

In the rest of GW2 I still die quite a bit, and every time I die it costs me a few silver. However, in the rest of GW 2 I am still earning a lot more coin than I am spending on WP and repairs. This feeling of always making progress tempers death in the game as a small setback in progress. SAB world 2 on the other hand, feels like a constant fight to preserve your last remaining lives and a losing battle against running out of retries. I believe that this hemorrhaging of continue coins is really what people are talking about when they call SAB difficult.

Speaking of hemorrhaging continue coins, anyone know the trick for W2-3’s boss. I kinda just won by luck and dying a lot…

Josh Foreman.8250:

One thing you have to learn about how our jumping/collision works is that you can’t jump up against things and slide up and over the lip like any normal platformer. You need to start your jump further back.

One all too visible quirk of the jumping mechanics is that you can make considerably longer jump while in motion. However, in some cases where such longer jump is needed you are not in a place where continuous motion is natural or even easy to achieve consistently by “tiptoeing” on the platform (ie. go one step back then immediately switch to forward momentum). I suppose if you consider this initial forward momentum to be part of a jump then it adds up with above, however, normally you wouldn’t.

You can completely change direction mid jump, which is key in some places… but what you can not usually change enough is your initial momentum, up vs forward, jump mushrooms being the only exception due to the considerably longer jump duration.

Maybe I have assessed the behavior incorrectly, but really assuming I did not make any mistakes with that then there are plenty of jumps where being aware of the quirks doesn’t seem to help, especially if after reading above… I start jumps any earlier then I will never reach my destination. Because even now I have to jump slightly later than my eyes tell me to… due to difference in model size and hitbox size.

There is a solution to the difference between model and hitbox though. Give us an option to use an in-game (as in inside super adventure box) transform that normalizes / minimizes this difference for any puzzles that require high precision jumping… the key word being an option of course. You could even make different “avatar” transforms unlockable inside the box, many older platformers allowed you to play as more than one character. I bet you could sneak in more than a couple of references this way too.

Going with pits taking away one heart and resetting you is very Zelda.

I’ve yet to really try out World 2 yet (aside from some exploratory poking around in Rapids), but I just want to say thank you to Josh for being as responsive and open with us as he has been. It’s obvious you put a lot of love and attention into SAB (and were perhaps a little overly defensive of it at the start, as evidenced by some of your snarkier early responses ), and I want you to know that all of us who love SAB appreciate your efforts and enthusiasm in wanting to make it as fun an experience for us. Knowledge that you’ve taken note of places where the difficulty is harder than intended to be and are planning on fixing them soon goes a long way.

One thing I really like is the suggestion to travel back to your last checkpoint by paying a small bauble fee; would really help when we’re stuck in locations we can’t get out of due to bugs or an enemy knocking us into an illegal spot. Might I suggest tying this to the Flute item? Say, playing a specific tune will cost you 5 Baubles and bring you back to the last checkpoint? If you have no baubles, it warps you back there anyway. I don’t think this will be a large issue as players either:

a) are saving up baubles to buy Bubbles/items, and thus won’t be in situations where they’re on 0 baubles

b) having no baubles restricts your combat options with regards to bombs/slingshots, which is a handicap when facing more difficult enemies.

Is anyone else having a really hard time with the water spouts going up the river? I have completed every zone and this is by far the hardest part of the game for me. Everytime I do my last jump I get flung back even though I have already made the jump. it really doesn’t make any sense and I haven’t made this section again since the first time I did it.

Is it lag or is this area just buggy? I could use some help -.-

Suggestions for the clouds, change their color a tad bit or add color. Like add a bluish tint to the clouds will clear up the visibility issue, making it much easier to see where one cloud ends and another one begins. Also the fog on the bottom of the maps, where you will die instantly, change that color too so it doesn’t match the clouds color. Make it green which will not make the cloud blend in.

Another way to make the super adventure box better, make sure to make the traps seem a little more obvious what they will do. Some that are obvious but doesn’t show no apparent function, have a creature that will wander into it and end up getting killed by the trap so the players understand what it is.

That is all my suggestions for now.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

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.”

I’ve said it several times in this thread so far but I’ll keep repeating it since I don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing. The design intent was NOT to make Normal Mode as hard as it is. There are a combination of factors that are making it so, and we’re currently working on a fix. We want W2 Normal Mode to be slightly more challenging than W1. There are several obvious difficulty spikes that we are addressing by adding check points, removing the buggy waterspouts, making dart traps easier to spot, removing some of them, etc.

All the complaints about the randomness of the rapids, floaty platforming, camera issues, etc. are things I would literally pay a thousand dollars to fix. Maybe even two. I’d cut my salary if we had a way to fix them. We hate them as much as you do. We simply accept the pain of these engine limitations because we feel like the overall content is worth it. I totally understand if other’s find them too annoying to be able to enjoy the content.
I said earlier, we have a great engine for GW2. But making it do platforming stuff is like getting a powerful heavy elephant to win a horse race. It’s not always pretty. Finding the sweet spot between pushing the boundaries of the engine to create new old-school mechanics and keeping the gameplay perfectly smooth is a constant game of compromise. I’m not claiming we’re perfect at it. But we’re trying. Check back after we get the changes in and see if we addressed most of the difficulty spikes.
I’m really appreciative to have this interchange with you guys. Some of your ideas are going directly into our fix. Though most of the warranted complaints are just a limitation of what we can and can’t do with our engine. (Like making the dart traps knock back instead of kill. That was our initial intent, but there’s no way to make it work.)

What you need to do, is this:

Go back to the old ways of pre-Gauntlet. Where achievements were fun and relaxing and easy and interesting. Those were the days. Not this gauntlet, Liadri, Tribulation stuff when it’s just stupidly hard content.

GW2 was so much fun when it was nice and casual.

Reacted.8190:

matthewr.3980:

When can we expect to see the changes to World 2?

Hopefully never!
I hope world 3 progresses in the same direction, I like it when I have to die repeatedly and find whacky ways to climb!
Completing Tribulation was a blast!

You can lie to us but you can’t lie to yourself. You hated it, just like everyone else, because hard content is stupid and pointless and hard, while easy content(talking about pre-gauntlet times here) was Supah-Awesome . I don’t believe anyone that ‘’likes a challenge’‘. That’s like… masochism, lol

Dear Josh and the SAB team, I would like to thank you first of all for the close attention and frequent responses to this thread, as well as constantly and actively working to make the SAB better. It really helps players feel their concerns are being listened to.

I greatly enjoyed the SAB when it came out in April, especially the discovery and secret stuff aspects, and was initially quite dismayed when World 2 came around, between the bauble dig location nerfs, lethality even on Infantile (unfamiliar mobs with not yet upgraded weapons, rapids, dart traps, knockback off cliffs, etc.) and length of each level.

The 400 bauble torch roadblock and presence of the Infinite Continue Coin in the gem store were salt in the wound moments for me.

Having slowly ground baubles for said torch, then subsequently chain-sticks, mob fights are now feeling a lot more reasonably balanced (with better reach and faster attacks) than trying to poke them with a slow pointy stick.

I’ve been going through World 2-1 on Normal Mode and generally feeling the difficulty is now manageable in most places (if still time-consuming. I can spare the time, but perhaps others cannot) and enjoying the discovery aspects.

However, I would like to specifically point your attention to the one part where the difficulty is out of whack, and hopefully try to pinpoint further for you an exact problematic location. Especially for people with latency problems (I play at 200-300ms ping and have been doing my best to avoid the moving rapids as much as possible.)

The aptly named Piranha Bend with multiple geysers.

I was able to bypass the first part of it by using the secret route that takes you above the river and land directly on the checkpoint. (For which I deeply thank you for adding that alternate route.)

I was able to very slowly and gradually work my way from solid rock to solid rock, using as minimal geysers as possible.

Until the penultimate jump which requires you to traverse three geysers before landing on a rock.

I tried the simultaneous or continuous jump strategy as seen on Dulfy’s website, where you wait for all three to show up, then jump rapidly from spout to spout. This -consistently- failed to work for me. (http://youtu.be/P93wyLzxlTg)

The middle geyser would disappear and I would get knocked downriver, or just get caught halfway and flung off too.

To compensate for my ping, I devised an alternate strategy of counting off, where one waits for all three to show up, then jump onto the first, counting “1, 2, jump” and doing a faith leap onto the second even before seeing it. Rinse and repeat for the third.

This at least got me close on two occasions (http://youtu.be/y0N9AdykITs) before I failed the first by missing the subsequent jump from possible human error, and the second looked like a sync error where I touched the end of the waterfall (but still contacted water) and got flung back.

Sync errors plagued the rest of my count-off attempts, where I would get hurled off when a geyser disappeared much too quickly, or just randomly flung downriver for no reason at all. (http://youtu.be/pzVNNBCCt24)

In total, I started with 25 lives and 290 baubles at that checkpoint. I started video recording at life 12 when I managed to analyze where my problem area was. I was down to life 3 and 184 baubles (just from bombing turtles) when I finally managed to luck across the waterfall.

Of the 21 recorded attempts to get past the three geysers (if one got lucky and hung up against a rock, one could managed multiple attempts per life)

• 7 can be attributed to human error and not considered a major problem (assuming I am an average or poor jumper. For reference: http://youtu.be/e5IVnAK9fIo)
• 6 were tries at jumping the geysers continuously and failing consistently due to lag
• 6 were failures due to syncing/latency issues with moving water
• 2 got past the three geysers, then failed, one to human error, the other to sync/latency

Each attempt was further aggravated by the lengthy repeat of sequences already learned, and getting helplessly knocked downriver with barely any ability to control one’s character.

I believe such a difficulty is not at all what you intended for normal mode, and sincerely hope something can be done about this spot specifically – an alternate route or longer hang time for the geysers or some such.

Thank you again for reading, and I look forward to exploring and offering feedback regarding World 2-2 and 2-3 on normal mode later. Much appreciation for your hard work and constant iterations to make the SAB a fun and enjoyable experience!

Shpongle.6025:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

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.”

I’ve said it several times in this thread so far but I’ll keep repeating it since I don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing. The design intent was NOT to make Normal Mode as hard as it is. There are a combination of factors that are making it so, and we’re currently working on a fix. We want W2 Normal Mode to be slightly more challenging than W1. There are several obvious difficulty spikes that we are addressing by adding check points, removing the buggy waterspouts, making dart traps easier to spot, removing some of them, etc.

All the complaints about the randomness of the rapids, floaty platforming, camera issues, etc. are things I would literally pay a thousand dollars to fix. Maybe even two. I’d cut my salary if we had a way to fix them. We hate them as much as you do. We simply accept the pain of these engine limitations because we feel like the overall content is worth it. I totally understand if other’s find them too annoying to be able to enjoy the content.
I said earlier, we have a great engine for GW2. But making it do platforming stuff is like getting a powerful heavy elephant to win a horse race. It’s not always pretty. Finding the sweet spot between pushing the boundaries of the engine to create new old-school mechanics and keeping the gameplay perfectly smooth is a constant game of compromise. I’m not claiming we’re perfect at it. But we’re trying. Check back after we get the changes in and see if we addressed most of the difficulty spikes.
I’m really appreciative to have this interchange with you guys. Some of your ideas are going directly into our fix. Though most of the warranted complaints are just a limitation of what we can and can’t do with our engine. (Like making the dart traps knock back instead of kill. That was our initial intent, but there’s no way to make it work.)

What you need to do, is this:

Go back to the old ways of pre-Gauntlet. Where achievements were fun and relaxing and easy and interesting. Those were the days. Not this gauntlet, Liadri, Tribulation stuff when it’s just stupidly hard content.

GW2 was so much fun when it was nice and casual.

How dare you make content that is difficult! We must all be able to watch tv, eat popcorn, and play with just wasd and 1!

Sorry, go home, lots of people have been begging for harder content for ages. The only thing making pve not soloable is instances where you have to have people standing at X things.

Shpongle.6025:

Go back to the old ways of pre-Gauntlet. Where achievements were fun and relaxing and easy and interesting.

Ok, for one, Josh is not the collective of ArenaNet, and for seconds… I wouldn’t call hunting down 100’s of pumpkins/pinata’s/snowmen fun, relaxing or interesting, easy definitely though.

On the other hand Sky Crystals were definitely interesting and fun, easy and relaxing not so much (assuming you did not cheat). You can have either or, not all at once. Yes this means that GW2 will likely not be a game you can 100% when it comes to achievements (or maybe you could given infinite time and patience), or why do you think they started doing the whole daily achievements that count towards meta’s.

I can’t really tell if you are being sarcastic or just trolling, but in any case it is not like SAB is all there is, next patch (Sept 17th) will by the looks of it have something for those that don’t care for SAB, yet another nod towards the fact that yes it is okay to skip some living story content (since unlike previous living story stuff doesn’t look like both of this months patches are exclusively SAB, besides ascended crafting).

I have more or less been hitting my head against different walls in SAB since the day it came out, yet I am not going around saying that SAB has no place in GW2 or that it is unfair that I can not complete all the achievements for it (Most likely I can’t even complete the meta achievements, just because I don’t care to collect every single bauble in every single level in a single run).

To steer this back on topic, I would like to say though that now having watched a Tribulation run of W2 Z1, I would say that if there are several longish sections that you felt needed little to no change from normal mode then, maybe just maybe that should have been a hint that this topic was coming.

I am still all for normal mode being taken down in difficulty slightly, tribulation mode is fine though.

That said it does have one slight problem, which can also be applied to normal mode. Before the first beedog you have to jump on a rock then on a tree and escape. That jump is far too difficult, I am a fairly good jumper but this one can waste far too much time to be acceptable.

The problem is that the ledge is higher than you can naturally jump so you have to glitch your way up by doing an odd sideways longer jump. I am all for having tribulation mode as insanely hard, but having to use a glitch to accomplish a jump is just not on. Several other jumps in world 2 normal mode require this kind of glitch, specifically to get to secret areas.

Just finished W2 in Trib mode, it was hard and required all my Zelda and Mario experience but i loved it. The last boss is pure Zelda and i recommend doing it in normal mode just to see him. Fantastic content now please give pvp the same love and attention ^^

Josh Foreman.8250:

TheZoobler.8073:

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!

Now see, this is sad to read. I hate that anyone could spend so much time and put so much effort into something they love, only to be shrieked at by everyone and feel like it was “a waste”.

SAB is something special and forget anyone who can’t see it’s something that you’ve been absolutely dedicated to. W2 definitely needs some tweaks, but that’s all it is. Tweaks. Tweak it a bit, and it’ll be fun again, and we’ll all have a good time.

I’m sure MORE work is not what you were looking forward to, but it’s all that stands between this release and perfection.

As for everyone having a meltdown… maybe we should all relax for a little while, and go back to having fun after the tweaky-patch hits.

Hm. Let me specify, lest I be accused of whining. I meant all the EXTRA hours I poured in was wasted. I just put in too much stuff. I’m not crying here. I’m learning a lesson.

I like the new mechanics and puzzles put in, just maybe spread over multiple levels/worlds, the zones run a bit long in the tooth is all. I do appreciate the work you put into it though.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m trying to ease players into more difficult jumping. In the first case I want people to figure out that they can change direction while in the air. Yes, you can nudge yourself out into the air. Or just jump like normal, outward, then steer back in. Your second example is the first time I’ve included a sloped surface in the main path. They are all over the place, but this is the first time it’s mandatory. The point of doing this is to broaden the player’s horizon and possibility space. Teaching them to look more closely for ways to access secret areas and such. That being said, I’ve streamlined that room so most of the platforms are larger and falling won’t drop you all the way down in most cases.

Yes, and that’s one reason I really like SAB. It has made me into a better jumper. And without effect on my bank account (due to no WP and armour repair costs). That secret in level 2 of world 1 (at the end of the level, where you have to jump in a hole and then from root to root?) That one really taught me you could change direction mid turn.

It’s just hard enough, though I think it ramps up too drastically. More levels in between World 1 and 2 that ease into the higher difficulty.

Finally beat Zone 3 of World 2. That difficulty was actually a bit easier, though the bananas are a bit mean. So are the polar bears and yeti. Feels like I need those nunchucks with the greater attack range to stand a chance against them in melee.

Funny thing, I would say the Storm Wizard was the easiest thing out of the whole zone. Yeti was harder due to all the sliding around. Granted, the stormwizard did cost me a few lives, but I’m pretty sure I could do better. Only parts I really had issue with were the times he charges, and the lightning bolts.

Zone 3 was still very long though, and I know I missed a bunch of secrets because I was in a hurry to beat the zone rather than find hidden areas. (I did find the kingpin, but he really wasn’t worth the effort to kill.)

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m trying to ease players into more difficult jumping. In the first case I want people to figure out that they can change direction while in the air. Yes, you can nudge yourself out into the air. Or just jump like normal, outward, then steer back in. Your second example is the first time I’ve included a sloped surface in the main path. They are all over the place, but this is the first time it’s mandatory. The point of doing this is to broaden the player’s horizon and possibility space. Teaching them to look more closely for ways to access secret areas and such. That being said, I’ve streamlined that room so most of the platforms are larger and falling won’t drop you all the way down in most cases.

In retrospect I should have put that first experience out in the open, by itself and prominent. I’ll probably add that in next time we have an SAB release. Thanks for the specific and clam critique.

I think I understand what you’re trying to do and agree that was probably not the better place to do so. It could be worse tho, it could be raining a bottomless pit

As for the two jumps I have to admit none of us thought about steer jumping. I’ts not that we didn’t know about it, I can think of a lot of jumps in JPs and SAB itself where I had to steer a lot more than that, I guess the problem is it was counter-logical to me. It looked like you could do that jump just by standing on the edge (but the hitbox won’t allow it, perhaps my sylvari needs a diet) and it was high enough for me to think I had to do it in a straight line in order to make it.
I’ll try with the steer jump on my next run if it’s still there, thanks

As for the second jump.. I’m still skeptical about it. I get that you want to teach us a few tricks to reach secret areas but it just feels wrong to me (for the secret areas too). First, because the game still shows me as standing on the ground and second because I strongly believe in things like gravity and a jump like that goes against it. So you either put in a radioactive spider to justify the fact I’m basically hugging the wall or I’ll go on thinking that’s unfair :P

This or I’m missing something and we’re talking about two different jumps, with that one being doable without the slope <.<

There’s a thing I forgot to mention yesterday. It’s about the torch and ice walls. In my group I was the only one that could afford the torch and when we met a wall, I was waiting for them all to reach it to let them pass in case it closed. The problem arises when we progress in the zone and one of them dies. Unless I go back to open the way for them they’re stuck there until the next checkpoint, where they can suicide to reach us. Thankfully I never had to backtrack too much but the wall at the end of the room filled with ice spikes on the ground was painful. Is it really necessary for it to recreate every time?
I know changing it would make a second attempt easier but it seems like a fair trade to me, if it’s going to make a group run more enjoyable. Sometimes playing in a group in a MMO means running a less than optimal setup, you end up carrying someone around and being carried when you are the one that can’t make it and I think that’s part of what I like in group play.

On a side note, one of the reasons I like SAB so much is it’s really good when played in a group. You get to work together with your companions, helping each other in overcoming obstacles and brainstorming to figure things out and I find the whole experience to be a lot better in that regard than most GW2 dungeons. I know I’m not the only one feeling this way.
Just wanted to let you know it

Josh Foreman.8250:

MagnusLL.8473:

Congrats on designing one of the most blatantly obvious (but still devious) money grabs I’ve ever seen implemented in an MMO cash shop.

Cranking the difficulty all the way up to “insane” for world 2 NORMAL mode, implementing an hard mode based on trial and error, reducing lives from 5 to 1, brutally reducing the amount of baubles with which you used to be able to buy continue coins, AND introducing the infinite continue coin which can only be purchased from the shop.

I’m assuming you already have the “real” world 2 normal mode ready to go live as soon as the bean counters think they’ve gotten enough money off all of this.

You’re brilliant, Josh. In a different way from what most of the people here are meaning it, but still brilliant

Josh, this guy is a kitten. Moving past the complaints which are BS in my opinion, I did buy an infinite continue coin. I paid 30 gold for gems. I don’t understand why people can’t make themselves do that: at the moment that’s basically the cost for one of the previous super weapon skins. Or, it’s like 4 hours of dedicated farming. Maybe not even, I don’t know. But it’s really not that big a deal. So the whole money-making argument is stupid and dumb and I still support your game-making decisions.

PS: In this case, kitten rhymes with lick.

As I just completed Tribulation mode for World one, and actually sat through World 2 taking notes and sketching the kitten areas, Zone 1 and 2 (No more time for 3), I have to say, I hate and love you at the same time. The design of the SAB World 2 (And the hilarity of W1 Tribulation) is amazing. The ninjas of W2Z2 get to be a bit frustrating themselves as there are so many of them they just pop up, knock you off the cliff, just adding another death on top of the instant death wall that you just forgot about. However, I still believe that the level design in itself was great— Amazing even. Once the absolute paranoia of “Any doorway can kill me” on Zone 2 sets in, you start to check EVERY SINGLE ONE, or if you are more into it, you take notes and sketch it. If you aren’t, you’re doing it wrong and have no right to complain about difficulty, because if you aren’t paying attention, that’s not the Dev. That’s you.

The rapids level is extremely frustrating when you have to deal with lag, the registration of the pillars, crocs, sometimes even the turtles, where you jump off the platform, midair you get knocked back and I’d rather just die when I hit the water than get thrown around for 30 seconds, and THEN die, but other than that the level was great. Love the Frogger aspect!

Many props to the awesome level design Josh!

Yes, I died 300+ times in Tribulation Mode. No I don’t have an Infinite Coin. Stop crying. Play smarter.

Shpongle.6025:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

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.”

I’ve said it several times in this thread so far but I’ll keep repeating it since I don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing. The design intent was NOT to make Normal Mode as hard as it is. There are a combination of factors that are making it so, and we’re currently working on a fix. We want W2 Normal Mode to be slightly more challenging than W1. There are several obvious difficulty spikes that we are addressing by adding check points, removing the buggy waterspouts, making dart traps easier to spot, removing some of them, etc.

All the complaints about the randomness of the rapids, floaty platforming, camera issues, etc. are things I would literally pay a thousand dollars to fix. Maybe even two. I’d cut my salary if we had a way to fix them. We hate them as much as you do. We simply accept the pain of these engine limitations because we feel like the overall content is worth it. I totally understand if other’s find them too annoying to be able to enjoy the content.
I said earlier, we have a great engine for GW2. But making it do platforming stuff is like getting a powerful heavy elephant to win a horse race. It’s not always pretty. Finding the sweet spot between pushing the boundaries of the engine to create new old-school mechanics and keeping the gameplay perfectly smooth is a constant game of compromise. I’m not claiming we’re perfect at it. But we’re trying. Check back after we get the changes in and see if we addressed most of the difficulty spikes.
I’m really appreciative to have this interchange with you guys. Some of your ideas are going directly into our fix. Though most of the warranted complaints are just a limitation of what we can and can’t do with our engine. (Like making the dart traps knock back instead of kill. That was our initial intent, but there’s no way to make it work.)

What you need to do, is this:

Go back to the old ways of pre-Gauntlet. Where achievements were fun and relaxing and easy and interesting. Those were the days. Not this gauntlet, Liadri, Tribulation stuff when it’s just stupidly hard content.

GW2 was so much fun when it was nice and casual.

Um.

No.

I want the hardcore players have have hardcore content like the Gauntlet and Tribulation Mode even though I’ll never touch either one and I think a lot of players feel the same. I like that the Devs are thinking of them and giving them non-mandatory content and special cosmetic rewards, I like that this content isn’t forced onto the entire player base, and I like that their needs are considered.

Very few players actually want 100% easymode.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As to the Infinite Continue Coin I’ll repeat what I said several pages back. I think it’s a great item because it expands the number of people who can experience SAB. There’s probably a good-sized portion of players who don’t want to play it like a real stand-alone old-school game where you have to really learn the levels, find the secrets, earn the resources to get the power-ups etc. In that way it’s like a Game Genie.

In a way, this video explains the game:
http://youtu.be/wIDjnKJLrQg

I can’t tell how much time I spend falling into the river, being knocked down, getting knocked back and having to wait for the game to either glitch me to a safe sport or finally reset me at the start of the sequence.

To that end, the game would improve if touching rapids was an instakill. You reset faster to the point where you can try again. Trying and failing -> no problem. Failing and having to wait on the game to execute weird scripts until it finally resets you -> problem.

No problem with the infinite continue coin. Ask yourself: Would you buy this, if this was a kickstarter game with Steam early access?

Haha, thanks. It’s looking like W3 will be…. shorter. If anything I’ll do shorter primary paths and a lot more secret and alternate paths.

It would really be better if you could just “break” the existing structure of the worlds, so that for World 3 (and ideally retroactively to W2), instead of having 3-1, 2, and 3, have either W3-1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, or have W 3-1a, 3-1b, 3-2a, etc. Basically, the amount of total content in W2 is great, but there needs to be more “break points” where you can leave and come back and not have to do the whole thing in one go.

Basically, to take W2, make it so that the rapids ride is the end of W3-1a. Once you’ve done that, you can quit the game for the night, come back tomorrow, and you can go into that little hut and ask for “W2-1b,” and end up at the raft crash site, and continue on with the rest of W2-1. Likewise in 2-2, once you get to, perhaps, the “frog room” that’s the end of W2-2a, and the start of 2-2b. You can start there any time you like and continue the level from there.

Alternately, I understand that there’s a shortcut in 2-2, like in 1-2, but have not found it yet. Maybe build in unlockable shortcuts, ones that you cannot access the first time through, but can access once you’ve reached a certain checkpoint. These would not be hidden, they would be obvious and available right from the start of the level. So what I mean is, if you can’t change the system so that you can just straight from the hub to being at the raft crash site, then have it so that right after you reach that point, you unlock something. Maybe you get a new item, maybe a code, I don’t know, whatever works on your end, but then, once you have that, then the next time you load in to the starting valley for 2-1, you can activate this shortcut and jump straight to the crash site, just like with the Wurm.

But yeah, short of that a “hub and spoke” design would work well, allowing you to go from “start to finish” through the zone in a fairly short path, similar to the World 1 zones, but then allowing you to, from the start point of the zone, head off to the left or right instead of forward, and have all sorts of completely optional adventures for loot and challenge, designed in such a way that one night you could do one path, and then the next night do another, and so on. You should not be pressured to “do it all in one session” though.

That’s one thing I dread about SAB time, that it is a significant investment of concentrated time. I don’t want to set aside a couple of hours just to do SAB stuff in a row, and prefer to see options for doing smaller groups of activities in a single sitting. I never got the “bauble” achievements in April, not because I couldn’t get at them all if I wanted, but because I didn’t want to do them all in one sitting. If the achievement just tracked you getting each of the baubles at least once throughout any number of play sessions, that would be SO much better. Wouldn’t it be possible to rig up that achievement to function similarly to the Infantile achievement, where it ticks off credits each time you pass a given milestone?

Btw, I have no interest in Trib mode, not a complaint, I totally get it, I just know it’s not my thing, but I watched WP’s video of his attempts to get through 1-1 and it was HILARIOUS. Kudos to you sir for designing such a horrific gaming experience.

I will say this though, he had an infinite continue coin. He absolutely REQUIRED it to play Trib mode, and I imagine almost any player would in any reasonable sense. I do feel that the infinite coin is “pay to win” for anyone who want to “win” Trib mode. It’s certainly not necessary for normal mode, but it definitely is for Trib mode. I would suggest not in any way making trib mode easier, but just make it so that continues are free in Trib mode, just as if you had the coin. This should defray what is currently a very valid argument that the infinite coin is one of the first “P2W” items in GW2’s shop. I know that the gem store is not your domain, and I’m not blaming you for what they do, but this is something that may be in your power, not to change their item or how it works, but to not make it quite as necessary within the game content that you do control.

Yeah, the amount of content is not an issue, it’s the fact that doing a run in TM can take more hours than a player is willing to put in at once (this is a problem people who aren’t efficient with their fractal runs also experience). Issues multiple paths of one level would have would be the all _ in 1 run achievs and the fact that the end boss is a daily reward. Multipaths would significantly reduce the content worth doing each day.

Infinite coin is fine, it’ll be usable in future worlds and getting it shows the finance guys that you want more of this content. It’s like supporting an indy game within an mmo. Although even as some1 with the coin I wouldn’t be against any tweak to make it less necessary to run TM.

Is World 2 too hard?

Yes, yes, yes. But, to be fair, I’m not a Zelda or Mario World fan. Still, compared to the World 1, this is just brutal. Even in infantile mode, any misstep is just unforgiving. After so many deaths, and frustration, I finally gave up.

Maybe tomorrow I won’t be tempted to kick my dog over this, but much like the Queen’s Gauntlet, I’ll probably be skipping this event.

The bottom line is this: If it’s more frustrating than fun, then it’s a failure. And World 2 is definitely more frustrating than fun.

It definitely needs addressing.

The problem with many of the things (water spouts, jumping rocks, several other things) is that they register hits on the apex of the animations (up animation) instead of when they’ve reached the bottom of the cycle like the water spout kills you at the top, not the bottom when it is fully in the water where it should trigger it and the same goes for the jumping rocks in tribulation mode.

GameObjectThatMovesUpAndDown
.triggerEvent(upAnimation)
.onAnimationComplete(KillPlayer)
.triggerEvent(downAnimation);

The 1 second refresh for most of the animation cycles is bad too cause it takes you 1 second to go through your ‘get up’ cycle so you have .1 seconds to dodge/jump to safety.

It’s hard enough to get out of the water if you’re really fast, it should probably just sweep you back while taking 1/2 heart without the blowback mechanic. Since you now have the moving log mechanic, you can do that with water too. For some areas like the frogger thing, change the color of the water to indicate depth and insta-kill you there or put piranhas in it.

Screenshot (trib mode) I’ve spent more time and lives on this single aspect than the entirety of the game so far. This rock jumps and hits you before you can get out of your ‘get up’ animation cycle, this jump to the safe spot (that requires you to use the jumping rock itself to get to) is absolutely pure luck. Not to mention that if he knocks you to a spot left or right of the safe area and you’re still on it but your body hangs over the lava pit while downed, you die. So if my feet are still in the safe zone ( i could stand up if I weren’t getting knocked down all the time) I would be safe still but my hair is hanging into the pit so I die.

Lil Puppy, try walking towards the rock, then dodgeroll back and jump on to the rock.. you will be able to make the jump upwards and get knocked down when you reach the higher ground.

Lil Puppy.5216:

Screenshot (trib mode) I’ve spent more time and lives on this single aspect than the entirety of the game so far. This rock jumps and hits you before you can get out of your ‘get up’ animation cycle, this jump to the safe spot (that requires you to use the jumping rock itself to get to) is absolutely pure luck. Not to mention that if he knocks you to a spot left or right of the safe area and you’re still on it but your body hangs over the lava pit while downed, you die. So if my feet are still in the safe zone ( i could stand up if I weren’t getting knocked down all the time) I would be safe still but my hair is hanging into the pit so I die.

If you are fast enough, you can find a spot where the rock triggers – take a step back and then rush on to the rock and off from it. Even better you can run towards it (or object near it) and dodge towards it. Will make it easy to go up and to safe spot after the knockback is dodged (well easy and easy. You REALLY have to be fast). Or 3rd to way to do it is: Jumpdodge

Josh Foreman.8250:

Draygo.9473:

It didn’t go to waste, though I think you learned a lesson in pacing.

Haha… I feel like Peter Jackson should about the last hour of Return of the King.

Hey! That was like a whole third of the book he “skimmed” through for an hour!

(I think he was trying to make up for hatcheting the previous third.)

I have to agree with many of the posters now, the level design is extraordinarily well done, it’s mainly the overload of mechanics which don’t all work as intended, which highlights the length too much.

Every difficult spot or overzealous mechanic in one 10 second section of the map becomes a 10 minute section. Every 10 minute section feels 10 minutes longer than the one before it, and so on.

There is a HUGE amount of content here, it’s completely expected that it would have some crazy bugs and unintended behaviors in the live game. It’s just unfortunate that most of those are in the first “ten minute” section which becomes hours of frustration before you even get to see just how much cool stuff there is ahead.

Then you get to the spike traps and all that frustration comes back.

With all your interaction and willingness to work with our feedback, I’m really looking forward to the patch and hoping to enjoy this content.

Thank you for all your hard work on still the best addition since launch (which wasn’t all that smooth itself).

I had to come here and give my own feedback about this since I feel like so many ppl are hating this content.

Foremost: Thank you so much. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. First when we went trough W2Z1 & W2Z2 (normal mode) with my mates, the latter felt really long and challenging. At the end we were just rushing it, hoping it to be over asap. I thought I would never even try tribulation mode. (Extra hours were lost on trying to find everything hidden. I love trying to find them!)

Oh well, I take a good long sleep and came back. Decided I will do most of the achievements by myself. I felt like I don’t need to worry about others when I’m alone, making me go trough the maps way faster. Also I felt like I wouldn’t be slowing anyone down by trying to find these hidden places (ps. Ty for the flute btw! I love it – helps so much)

So to the point: Tribulation mode first ~30 minutes: ‘’This is crazy, there is no way I will have enough lives and patience to even try other maps. They must be insane! And I don’t want to waste my time farming more lives’’

And then at the end of W1Z1: ‘’Yes! Finally did it!….Holy smokes the reward! So much loot, yay I totally deserve this!’’
Also then I realized that buying continue coins only with Bauble bubbles (Don’t care about the blue skins) I actually started getting more lives back at the end than I lost in the encounter.
Also since I got the 1st piece to craft green weapon and how happy I felt at the end I couldn’t resist going forward and trying the next map.

Skipping to this day, Green weapon achieved, Yellow weapon achieved, tribulation achs soon done and I feel so happy. After a while you start getting the point of how to do this mode correctly, allrdy foresee what paths you most likely have to take, allrdy guess how and where there would be spike traps. Going trough W1 on tribunal now feels easy and fast. Does not take long at all and gives tons of baubles at the end (And green weapons to alts, well why not).

Seriously finally getting W2 done felt…. so amazing. I felt like I seriously achieved something. Also I felt like I achieved this totally by myself, not with random luck or just mindless rushing till I got it trough.
Crafting the yellow weapon almost felt like making my kudzu 8-9 months ago. Actually
it felt better better in a way since it was not gotten with time spent into the game (farming), it was gained with skill.

I am in love with this, thank you SO MUCH! Finally I felt like having a REAL challenge in this game – I felt like finally I got a weapon not many ppl cannot have only because they just can’t do it.

Also the extra checkpoints – Perfect, works so well and gives you enough to puzzle trough until you reach the next one, not too few and also not too much to handle.

Also W2Z2.. My GOD was it long (Yes still talking about tribunal mode). At the end I actually got really scared what if I DC, I’ve been on this for 3 hours AT LEAST!
Getting it trough felt so good, told everyone ‘’kitten this level – finally got it, never coming back!’’ (Actually I’m going back today bcos of the stump I missed… and since it’s so close to the end I might as well make another yellow weapon, since Z1 and Z3 didn’t rlly take that long to go trough, especially since I now know exactly what to do and since I now heard that the warhorn has special sound – I am so making it! A bit disappointed about the yellow GS not having the cool smoke effect which the green shield had. Or anything different beside the color change – but don’t mind that much since I feel like it’s allrdy a trophy to show off.

I actually loved Z3 after Z2. Lots of precise challenging jumps instead of being afraid of the spikes. Climbing on the walls all the time trough whole level was so much fun and the darkness gave lots of feel to it (Tho it felt too easy after Z2 at times. I felt like it was rushed, prolly bcos of so few invisible spikes killing you compared to other maps. Things replaced with clouds Still I liked it, A LOT! After Z2 it felt so much fun to go trough. Z2 burned me out at the end bcos it was a 3-4 hour long puzzle which I had to solve. Z3 didn’t take so much brain work, just good eye to realize the paths. It felt refreshing and fun again after burnout from Z2.

Hope some of you who worked on this content reads this wall of text, because I am SO happy about this new SAB. Thank you so much! Seriously haven’t had this much challenge and fun in a long while.

Ps. Can’t wait to get my second yellow today! Warhorn with different sound? Want! I wonder how many other weapons have special effects, since the GS didn’t. Any hints?

tl;dr
Thank you devs for making a real challenge. Thank you for finally making weapon skins which are hard to get because of the skill cap and not because of the farming required.
One of my top favorite patches.
W2Z2 a bit too long

FourthVariety.5463:

No problem with the infinite continue coin. Ask yourself: Would you buy this, if this was a kickstarter game with Steam early access?

Great perspective. Funny, I was just talking about this with a buddy of mine who also loves SAB. We would buy SAB as a standalone game on Steam right now for $10 easy. All 4 worlds completed? $15-20. Less than that for an ICC in a fully developed MMO where I have already paid for and played the heck out of the rest of the game? Yes please!

Playing through W2 now with an infinite continue coin, and I don’t think having the dart traps take one heart and reset you to the last checkpoint is going to be enough. Because that’s what I effectively have with the infinite coin: a reset to the last checkpoint with no ill effect. And it is still mind numbingly boring to continually walk around all of these pointless arrow traps.

Making mazes out of invisible death walls is just a bad idea. Make them impassable arrow walls that take a heart when you touch them, and make them always active for visibility, or at least make the traps themselves a more obvious color. Squinting at every pillar is not fun. Rote memorization of trap locations is not fun. Having to do it for 5 identical repetitive floors is torture.

Failth.2935:

I had to come here and give my own feedback about this since I feel like so many ppl are hating this content.

Search your feelings young skywalker…. that’s not really the case at all.

There are a few haters for sure, most are just venting frustration/disappointment with the bugs.

Maybe you were lucky and didn’t have them, maybe your ping is so high you didn’t get them, or maybe you were patient enough not to even notice they were bugs in the first place.
Either way, most of the ‘hate’ has diminished knowing some fixes are coming tomorrow. (As evidenced by this thread slowing waaaay down.)

If the youtube vids are any indication, some people can’t get ten feet in the rapids without being thrown back for no reason. For me its completely random if I will or not, practically can’t progress at all.

I’m sure there will be plenty of praise to go around if the fixes tomorrow work.

The rapids weren’t the biggest problem to me. The pattern(?) didn’t seem off at all.
There are a few tricky jumps that need to be done by dodge jumping( like right after the checkpoint where the stone on the far left hits you, that one you can dodge jump onto the rapid). It’s just patiently waiting for the pattern to be seen.

One thing I did do though is if I died and didnt get pushed back all the way (which happens sometimes) quickly jump to one of the sides so that way you dont get pushed back all the way but end up against a wall or rock :P

Hey Josh,

• First of all some bugs that i encountered (I also made a bug report). You can easily get stuck in SAB. You just have to take out your whistle and run into the next flytrap you see. You won’t have any melee skills and will be stuck in the flytrap forever (muhahaha). This happened to me in TM in w1z3 quite far into the level. Since there is no /kill or /reset command the only way is to leave SAB, loosing progress. Another place that i got stuck, was at w2z1 in the piranha geyser hallway. I think it happened because the geyser knocked me back into a stepping stone. So maybe the issue happens if stepping stones and geysers are too close to each other. Again: Some form of suicide command would be nice for those cases. I’m playing sylvari if this is of any importance.
  Also I dunno if this is a bug or not, but if you get too close to a stunned foe you get knocked back.

Now for feedback:

• W2Z1 difficulty was fine. Though i was disappointed that the mushroom shortcut was gone. I enjoy little secret shortcuts like this. I kinda didn’t do the last segment with the wood logs waterfall right. Instead of jumping all the way across I jumped into the secret bear cave. The amount of bears on the cramped space was a bit unfair at first. But looking back it is fine, seeing that all secret places were made like this (Hillbilly cave, Banana cave).

• W2Z2 was really up a notch in difficulty. The first time I did it, i found shortcut eagle. The issue here was that i was able to jump up there without issues even though I did not have the Glove of wisdom yet. And since i beat the Minigame i was at the end of the level without any way of reaching the cage (can’t use the Bell without glove) and also no possiblity to go back. It would be nice if you would add ways to backtrack in your leveldesign. So I had to restart, but I would have done that anyway, since I skipped 2/3 of the zone. I think i lost over 100 lives in that level and it took me hours (though I was hunting secrets too, so it’s not only the lvl that kills). The Gongtower took me the longest. I wanted to complete it the legit way, but after i started running out of lives, i just suicided after using the gong. This way i could skip the gong escort until the end of it, since there is more than enough time to reach the gong after respawning. I have to say that I also lovehate the arrowtraps. Dunno how often i was happy i got past one arrowtrap just to get hit by the next one.
  So all in all: A bit too long (arrowtraps make the level waaaay longer than it actually is, since you can’t just rush through. It slows down the player considerably and causes paranoia)

• W2Z3: This was by far my favorite level. Much easier than zone 2, way more Jumping Puzzles (that tower was awesome). It was not too easy and not too difficult and the limited view was also nice. Had some nice puzzles too. This level hit my sweetspot and made all things from zone 2 forgotten and forgiven.

• Tribulation Mode:
  I only did World 1 so far and i quite like it. A little bit scared of world 2 though.
  Only thing I don’t like are random deaths at places with lava around it. Example would be W1Z2 the shroom section at start. I died multiple times Mid-Air when i wasn’t even hitting the floor. Mushrooms in general seem to cause strange mid-air deaths. there where some other cases where I seemed to die without reason.

• Reward vs. Effort:
  This is my big gripe. In W2 there might be plenty of hidden digspots, but those are often also risky and uncertain. It would feel more rewarding and fun if there are more baubbles in plain sight. Higher difficulty should give more rewards and not the opposite. You have more foes to combat so you also use more baubbles for weapons, lives and health potions. Maybe also give a random chance for more baubbles to drop from those foes. Maybe give us a buff from the barrels that makes it that you can use your slingshot and bombs for free for a short amount of time. And the end chest reward should be higher. Only TM reward is really worth it. Though a infinite coin is almost necessary for the first try of each TM zone. I hope Anet doesn’t go down a path where items like the infinite coin will be common. Infinte lives in Tribulation Mode, or buyable from Moto would have been the better alternative. Or maybe as reward for beating World 2.
  Also if you are going for the new skins, the baubble bubble reward feels like a joke. You limited the numbers you can get per day and still kept the old skin prices, making it time gated. Was the drop chance of the skins from the chests increased?

Sorry for the long wall of Text and also it is awesome that you respond to so many Feedbacks. I wished this was more common in these Forums.

Adamantium.3682:

FourthVariety.5463:

No problem with the infinite continue coin. Ask yourself: Would you buy this, if this was a kickstarter game with Steam early access?

Great perspective. Funny, I was just talking about this with a buddy of mine who also loves SAB. We would buy SAB as a standalone game on Steam right now for $10 easy. All 4 worlds completed? $15-20. Less than that for an ICC in a fully developed MMO where I have already paid for and played the heck out of the rest of the game? Yes please!

I was thinking the same.

I haven’t run out of normal continue coins yet, but I will absolutely buy the infinite coin, if only to support the idea of the SAB.

Well done ANet, allowing your devs, designers and writers this degree of freedom for their creativity.

I just hope Josh remembers that for every vocal whiner, there’s somebody like me who doesn’t post very often because they’re having a blast playing the content.

I love everything about SAB 2.0. Rock on.

I still think the difficulty of W2 is just fine and can’t understand the lot of complaints made here.. Some ppl are asking for fixes that I totally can’t agree with…

For example instant reset or back-port after falling into the rivers in w2-1 wouldn’t be good at all.. U can use the rivers to knock you back and stop at a stone/crocodile to save a lot of time what is a really fun mechanic that I do not want to miss…

Also I don’t see a problem with the instant-kill traps in W2-2.. you can spot them quite easy and if you don’t open your eyes it’s your fault you die…

Dodge Jumps are absolutely not necessary in normal mode.. you need them in tribulation mode but can finish w2 normal mode without using that mechanic once…

The easiest way to make it through the gong tower is to just activate the gong and instantly die once.. then run to the exit and wait there for the gong.. finishing it the normal way is kinda hard but absolutely manageable, too.

Rewards are fine, too.. I would even play it without any kind of reward.. if this was a standalone game for 10-15 bucks I’d totally buy it! Josh, you guys did such a good job! The design is just awsome! What’s wrong with playing just for fun?

Also ppl have to realize that just not every content is made for everyone.. I find most of the content to be to easy in gw2 to such an extend that it isn’t even fun to do.. I’m glad that there is finally something challenging as tribulation mode (witch I intend to finish the 3. time in world 2 today..)

You could argue that playtime is “too long” an maybe split the whole thing up into maybe 4 zones (don’t have to be 3 imo) but if you’ve finished normal mode once the time it takes to finish it a second time is way shorter.. I can imagine that after a few runs some ppl can finish world 2 in 1-1.5 hours (I intend to speedrun it at some point as well).

Many ppl seem to play SAB only because of the achievements (which can all be obtained at easy mode) or the skins (well this time it’s not just a free farm living story.. and if you finish easy mode a couple of times you should be able to get some skins as well) but not because playing stuff like this is fun for them.. I guess all ppl that played old platformers know what I mean and compared to many of them w2 normal is just a joke..

Please keep up the good work and don’t give to much about all those whiners.. I’m looking forward to W3 an I would be sad if W3 gets dumped down in difficulty and made as easy as world1.. Difficulty should rise even more in W3.. Maybe you could also just add in a new difficulty for W3.. like easy (~as hard as easy w2), normal (as easy as normal w2), hard (harder than normal w2), tribulation (please try to stop me..)
There’s need for more content with that level of difficulty (also loved queens gauntlet and the diving goggles at the etherblade jp).. We need more of this 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 am having similar problems. It was painful trying to get through the rapids because of these issues constantly occurring . I was about ready to stop playing. I enjoyed the first SAB, but this one has been a horrible experience so far. I managed to do World 2 Zone 1, but I am done for now. Probably would have been a lot more enjoyable if it played correctly :/ Would love to see a fix for this.

josh, I know it has been mentioned before but requiring the torch to get to the wizard in order to complete infantile mode is a bit much.

I go through infantile mode first because:
1. it introduces me to the content
2. there is an achievement associated with it.

I’d like to only have to go through it once though so I can get on to the real modes. I see some jump opportunities that I will try to use to bypass but I hope you will consider this for future content: Dont make your players do the dumbed down version of anything more than they want to

Josh I think W2 dificult is fine, but maybe when you “fail” it shouldn’t cost a live but a heart and teleport to the last checkpoint.