Guild Wars 2

Warning! Lots of text here. T.l.d.r. version at the bottom.

The good:

1: The new lobby is a great improvement. Feels more alive now.

2: Three separate difficulty settings.

3: Pretty much every weapon that didn’t get a skin the first time around has one now, save for the underwater weapons.

4: Mini Moto/Miya. Nice to have minis that don’t require the Trade Post or the Gem Store to obtain.

The bad:

1: Account bound, once a day glorious chests for bauble bubbles at the end of the zones now. Unless you play on Infantile Mode, in which case they aren’t there at all.

2: Account bound once a day dig sites, which have also had the bauble amounts reduced in most cases.

3: 50 bauble bubbles for a weapon skin is too costly, especially now that bauble bubbles cannot be gathered as quickly as before.

4: The previous skins from the initial release are not sold by Moto anymore, with no valid reason as to why they are not back.

5: No Obsidian Shards.

6: World 2’s zones are ridiculously difficult and long compared to World 1’s. I eventually gave up and used Infantile mode to get through the zones, until—

7: The 3rd zone, requiring an item that costs 400 baubles (more than I can carry/use inside the Box) to get past an obstacle that blocks you. While I’ve read of an item that increases your bag capacity, I have not found this item at any of the shops I have been to.

8: New items costing ridiculous amounts of baubles, meaning you have to run certain parts of zones over and over to farm the baubles.

9: From what I’ve read, Tribulation mode is like I Want To Be The Guy, or any game designed to kill you off in cheap ways and 1 hit kills. I don’t consider that challenging or difficult in a good way.

10: The skins from Tribulation Mode are basically the same skins except they recolored the glowing parts to green and yellow. While most of the new skins look fine, it starts to look bad when you look at the recolored skins from the original release, which still have blue handles and other parts that they didn’t change to match the new glow colors better.

11: The skin designs that Moto sells work with the Mystic Forge, except you’re not told what they work with. After asking around, I am under the impression that they work with items obtained only in Tribulation Mode. Apparently it is faster to obtain skins that way—if one can stand all the cheap deaths.

12: The Infinite Continue Coin. I see no reason for this to exist at all. I’m not using gems on something that only works with temporary content.

T.l.d.r. version here.

They made a few good changes but way too many bad ones. All the bad stuff killed the fun for me on the first or second day. I want to like this, but they went out of their way to make it not fun or worth it, and restrict the amount of worthwhile effort you can give. They changed it too much in all the wrong ways, now it sucks.

I pretty much agree 100%. I’m really glad they finally got the message and made the “hardcore” content completely separate from the casual content. Having another Liadri debacle would have sucked. That being said, the poor design choices, especially requiring you to buy expensive items to progress while nerfing the ability to farm baubles has made this edition of SAB not nearly as fun as the previous.

Also, I personally don’t care for any of the skins, which honestly is a good thing. I’d be even more upset if I wanted some of them considering the crap you have to go through for them this time around.

Nilkemia.8507:

9: From what I’ve read, Tribulation mode is like I Want To Be The Guy, or any game designed to kill you off in cheap ways and 1 hit kills. I don’t consider that challenging or difficult in a good way.

11: The Infinite Continue Coin. I see no reason for this to exist at all. I’m not using gems on something that only works with temporary content.

This. The game is going this way, I’ve noticed this at Liadri.

This is where it’s going.

Well i found the first version of the Sab more fun than this one. Done all the achieves for that one and i was happy. Didnt farm that mutch of bubbles ( got 2 skins) and yea it wuz cool.
This one is not harder with jumping skills. Its only harder and more stuffed with loads of annoying stuff that doesnt do anything with jumping. Its just doing useless stuff that i hated very quickly.
First off, a toad on a cliff. Woa you stand there get sucked in, half of yur lives down. get out (get spitted out) and you get trown of the cliff. Great design. Nothing to do with jumping.

Second. Trap woho!! Awsome idee. Jumping ah hell no. First watch every step you make and check every door before you go trough. I didnt find that alot of fun to be honest.

It had great potential but i like it less then the first edition.

If you don’t like the recoloured skins why do you care about Tribulation mode? That’s the only thing you can get out of it. And achievement points, I guess.

Not into the Box at all (loathed this style of game when I was a kid, and still don’t have much patience for it), but I like the way they handled this update. Working on World 1, have no intentions of even setting foot in World 2 after what I’ve heard about it. Do a little every day and should have the title by the end of the month.

The one slightly critical point would be that Infantile Mode is not easy enough. Take out the jumping and leave the stupid enemies, which are the actual challenge? Can only assume it’s just meant to be a joke. Other people were saying they got the achievements in IM, but it really isn’t any easier. Might as well just do it on normal and get the reward.

I don’t care about Tribulation Mode. As I pointed out, I just feel that modes designed to kill you off in cheap ways don’t really count as challenging or hard in a “good” way to me. However, I am aware that is the way it was intended by the developers, and that my idea of hard doesn’t fit with others’ ideas of hard. So I simply stay out of it, and don’t talk about it much, if at all.

I’m glad it’s there so that the people who complain about things being too easy. Although, the recent patch seems to have them up in arms again.

As for the skins themselves, I just feel like they could’ve done more to make them more special than just taking the original/new skins and switching the glow colors. Maybe design them to be more themed to the bosses they represent.

The yellow “Storm Wizard” skins could’ve had tiny 8 bit clouds with lightning around them, have a yellow lightning pixel effect, or something more than just being yellow recolors. Same with the Toad King weapons, though I’m not sure what effects they could add that would fit the Toad King..maybe something with those lilypads, or the poison water effects? Eh..

I do however agree with your point that Infantile Mode really isn’t easy enough. It’s less of an easy mode than it is a “Skip most of the annoying jumps” mode, while the enemies/bosses/traps will still mess you up all the same regardless.

(Hmm, do the difficulty modes affect damage from enemies? That might be worth another thread.)

Also, the fact that you get no glorious chests in Infantile Mode really just says: Ok, you can play it on easy if you just want to get to the end…just don’t expect any rewards at the end. Makes Infantile Mode kinda pointless, really.

13: Another thing I noticed when I switched to an alt for the Super Adventure Box is that unlocked items inside the Box are still character bound, while the chests and dig sits were made account bound.

While this was the same the first time the Box came out, and the solution is simple (Use only one character for the Box to keep things easy to keep track of), it still sends a bad impression that they couldn’t be bothered to make the character unlocks account bound too (which would’ve been a nice touch), while they went to all the trouble to make it harder to get bauble bubbles.

I don’t like to complain, but it’s things like this that makes it feel like they lost the original point of the Super Adventure Box, which was to be a neat fun thing to go through for players who might like that sort of thing. Now they think that since people liked it the first time, “let’s try to milk this for all its worth!”

I’m sure they don’t all think that way, but still..things like this and all the other stuff I mentioned before really just give off that impression.