Guild Wars 2

Nebilim.5127:

Excuse me? There is the normal mode that was made for the broader audience. So we have that to appeal to the majority and tribulation to appeal to the minority. Everyone is happy. Are you telling me that the minority should be ignored because the resources could be used for something else for you guys? Nice hypocrisy mate.

I’ll explain a bit, Mate. Nothing I mentioned that needs fixing is related to a small elite group of players. Everything; meta, balance, buggy releases, applies to everyone, so what I’m suggesting is that instead of continuing to stroke their egos and do stuff that makes it into the trade journals, they need to focus on the core of this game and get it right. Until they do that, all the resources they expend elsewhere is a ridiculous waste.

Hire someone that understands how to fix the meta. Hire someone that understands how to balance professions through a method other than “whack-a-mole”. Hire someone that knows how to run a quality assurance program and stop publishing horrendously buggy content. Stop using the live servers, and us, as their test bed.

So do I think all of that is more important than catering to a very select few of platform jumpers? Yes, I do, most definitely.

Omg I was gonna ask whether if Tribulation Mode would be similar to “I wanna be the guy” and you linked it haha! I would be looking forward to this lol, my friends and I spent months on that game only to give up after two/three bosses.

I guess this we will be expecting to die every 5 seconds :P

What I especially love about this kind of difficulty mode, is that it actually changes the challenge itself. It’s not some cheap trick by just scaling up numbers. No, it becomes a whole new game of “how can I out-smart the sadistic developer”. And I can only imagine that it must be a lot of extra work for Josh and his team to implement a hard mode of this kind, because there’s so much extra stuff you have to add into the existing levels.

There’s going to be a lot of rage when people see that there’s achievements for completing this mode. I hope there’s a title at least.

The one problem I’m expecting is respawning. In the example games, it’s instant, no problem. In the SAB however, you’ll either have to get hundreds of continue coins and go through the death sequence or reset the instance and go through all that loading/motos speech.

Healix.5819:

There’s going to be a lot of rage when people see that there’s achievements for completing this mode. I hope there’s a title at least.

Well, with an achievement tied to beating Liadri, this wouldn’t be much more different. If you survive Tribulation Mode, I think you deserve one.

Healix.5819:

The one problem I’m expecting is respawning. In the example games, it’s instant, no problem. In the SAB however, you’ll either have to get hundreds of continue coins and go through the death sequence or reset the instance and go through all that loading/motos speech.

Yeah, that is a good point. Going through Moto’s speech was annoying before. Imagine having to respawn countless times for TM, and also needing enough continue coins. At least games like Cat Mario and I wanna be the guy, had the advantage of an instant free respawn. I hope the team takes this into account. By all means, make TM as hard and evil as you possibly can. But try and make retrying the challenge a bit forgiving and quick.

Pedra.4381:

Nebilim.5127:

Excuse me? There is the normal mode that was made for the broader audience. So we have that to appeal to the majority and tribulation to appeal to the minority. Everyone is happy. Are you telling me that the minority should be ignored because the resources could be used for something else for you guys? Nice hypocrisy mate.

I’ll explain a bit, Mate. Nothing I mentioned that needs fixing is related to a small elite group of players. Everything; meta, balance, buggy releases, applies to everyone, so what I’m suggesting is that instead of continuing to stroke their egos and do stuff that makes it into the trade journals, they need to focus on the core of this game and get it right. Until they do that, all the resources they expend elsewhere is a ridiculous waste.

Hire someone that understands how to fix the meta. Hire someone that understands how to balance professions through a method other than “whack-a-mole”. Hire someone that knows how to run a quality assurance program and stop publishing horrendously buggy content. Stop using the live servers, and us, as their test bed.

So do I think all of that is more important than catering to a very select few of platform jumpers? Yes, I do, most definitely.

There are different teams in the company working on different projects. Things are done in parallel. Josh’s team, mostly content designers, some artists, and a minimal amount of programming support, would never be responsible for meta, balance, loot, QA, progression, or any system that touches the entire game. Nor would hiring a bunch of additional devs dramatically increase progress on those fronts; there is a diminishing return to additional developers. It’s a choice of SAB or some other content, not of SAB and gameplay improvements.

Keep in mind that ANet has actual metrics about how many players spent time in SAB, and you don’t. They clearly feel it’s popular enough to warrant continued content resources.

I’m glad they’re taking this approach with the SAB TM. Looks fun, hope they pulled it off.

Chopps.5047:

Blude.6812:

LostInSmoke.2590:

I think most of the people in this thread complaining never played anything in the 8bit generation or earlier. Not everyone thinks candyland-easy games are fun. That’s why ultra-hard games exist in the first place.

Absolutely true, and I have played a few. That being said, the problem for me is that I didn’t purchase the game (and a few Gem Cards) to play a ‘candyland’ game. I bought it to play a fantasy mmo. If I wanted such a game I would get one or pull out the old DS. If you like that sort of game that’s great. It has no place in the GW2 world imho.

Well, you have a point. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but platformer content has been extremely popular with the community and the first SAB received nothing but accolades from reviewers and players. So, naturally, ANET builds on that foundation.

CJohansen has said that SAB is part of their seasonal rotation they’ve defined after the first year. I take that to mean permanent fantasy content is on the way. These mini-games are just seasonal things done by very small teams.

Note: I grew up in the 8-bit era and am a huge fan of games like Super Meat Boy (that’s a newer game) so I’m a sucker for this. If they even make it remotely as hard as the games in that genre—but translated to 3D successfully—I’ll be very impressed.

I’ll guess I date myself—-I started playing when PONG was in on Magnavox Odyssey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey

and have played just about every system since then . I hve been playing GW2 from just about day1 as well GW1.

Have fun with it, I was hoping for new content that was actually related to game genre. (and game fixes that have been ignored or put on the back burner).

Blude.6812:

Chopps.5047:

Blude.6812:

LostInSmoke.2590:

I think most of the people in this thread complaining never played anything in the 8bit generation or earlier. Not everyone thinks candyland-easy games are fun. That’s why ultra-hard games exist in the first place.

Absolutely true, and I have played a few. That being said, the problem for me is that I didn’t purchase the game (and a few Gem Cards) to play a ‘candyland’ game. I bought it to play a fantasy mmo. If I wanted such a game I would get one or pull out the old DS. If you like that sort of game that’s great. It has no place in the GW2 world imho.

Well, you have a point. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but platformer content has been extremely popular with the community and the first SAB received nothing but accolades from reviewers and players. So, naturally, ANET builds on that foundation.

CJohansen has said that SAB is part of their seasonal rotation they’ve defined after the first year. I take that to mean permanent fantasy content is on the way. These mini-games are just seasonal things done by very small teams.

Note: I grew up in the 8-bit era and am a huge fan of games like Super Meat Boy (that’s a newer game) so I’m a sucker for this. If they even make it remotely as hard as the games in that genre—but translated to 3D successfully—I’ll be very impressed.

I’ll guess I date myself—-I started playing when PONG was in on Magnavox Odyssey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey

and have played just about every system since then . I hve been playing GW2 from just about day1 as well GW1.

Have fun with it, I was hoping for new content that was actually related to game genre. (and game fixes that have been ignored or put on the back burner).

I think you missed the important part of his post…the part that mentions that this is a smaller team doing the seasonal event stuff. Meaning the game fixes and new permanent content that deals with the game itself are 2 other departments.

Ugh. I Wanna be the Guy level of cheap gameplay mechanics and artificial frustrating difficulty?

Yeah, I don’t consider that kind of gameplay fun when things kill you instantly and unexpectedly, and the only way to win is to know the entire thing before hand perfectly.

I get that some people like that kind of thing. I don’t really get it. I don’t really consider it good game design, but I guess I can agree there’s an art to figuring out ways to actively trick players into falling into traps. I guess it’s the same type of people who like playing with DMs who have unwinnable encounters.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Blude.6812:

Chopps.5047:

Blude.6812:

LostInSmoke.2590:

I think most of the people in this thread complaining never played anything in the 8bit generation or earlier. Not everyone thinks candyland-easy games are fun. That’s why ultra-hard games exist in the first place.

Absolutely true, and I have played a few. That being said, the problem for me is that I didn’t purchase the game (and a few Gem Cards) to play a ‘candyland’ game. I bought it to play a fantasy mmo. If I wanted such a game I would get one or pull out the old DS. If you like that sort of game that’s great. It has no place in the GW2 world imho.

Well, you have a point. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but platformer content has been extremely popular with the community and the first SAB received nothing but accolades from reviewers and players. So, naturally, ANET builds on that foundation.

CJohansen has said that SAB is part of their seasonal rotation they’ve defined after the first year. I take that to mean permanent fantasy content is on the way. These mini-games are just seasonal things done by very small teams.

Note: I grew up in the 8-bit era and am a huge fan of games like Super Meat Boy (that’s a newer game) so I’m a sucker for this. If they even make it remotely as hard as the games in that genre—but translated to 3D successfully—I’ll be very impressed.

I’ll guess I date myself—-I started playing when PONG was in on Magnavox Odyssey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey

and have played just about every system since then . I hve been playing GW2 from just about day1 as well GW1.

Have fun with it, I was hoping for new content that was actually related to game genre. (and game fixes that have been ignored or put on the back burner).

I think you missed the important part of his post…the part that mentions that this is a smaller team doing the seasonal event stuff. Meaning the game fixes and new permanent content that deals with the game itself are 2 other departments.

Didn’t miss that at all. My only response is that their priorities are mixed up. Some things (like clipping, optimising, targeting, camera when jumping) among other things have been around for months if not longer and still not addressed or they are ignored. And sure they have different depts. but as to their budget and number of people working in them— I would imagine limited and much less staff.
But as I have said—if you enjoy it—have fun. It’s just not for me.

LostInSmoke.2590:

I think most of the people in this thread complaining never played anything in the 8bit generation or earlier. Not everyone thinks candyland-easy games are fun. That’s why ultra-hard games exist in the first place.

You know, 8-bit generation games were hard. But the good ones were usually fair.

Games like IWBTG and it’s like are designed to not be fair at all, and to punish player who might rely on accepted gameplay mechanic. (Like you certainly never expect an apple to fly sideways after the previous 3 apples fell downwards)

(Also, what is “earlier” than 8 bit games? Pong?)

Well he said it may seem like bad game design. That means he’s one step closer to admitting that it is bad game design. We are getting somewhere…..

So you need to grind the lifes in normal mode before going in TM to randomly die. Enjoy awesome design))))

Wait, continue coins still drop?
Got none out of my 12 monthly jps.

I’m looking forward to this but I think having a grind for continue coins is a mistake, and as others have said I hope we don’t have to go through that intro dialogue each time.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Krugan.7901:

Interesting. So TM is not really difficult but just time consuming?

If you play Cat Mario or IWTBTG you will understand that those games are half trial-and-error, and half precision platforming. Even when you know where all the traps are the routs are still difficult. There are a few sections that give me Ninja Gaiden/Ghosts’N’Goblins flashbacks. We have a particular enemy that appears from time to time in TM that is reminiscent of the infamous Red Arremer. http://youtu.be/IQ2kMK_4kHI?t=3m58s

Except that ours is completely invincible. So yeah, there will be plenty of places where you’ll know exactly where to go and what to do, and you’ll still be slamming your face on the keyboard after your 30th try.

And if that’s not enough to sell you on the idea that TM will be difficult, I’ll just leave you with this equation: Sliding Ice Platforms + Instant Kill Spikes = ?

Challenge Accepted.

So Josh is this kind of Limbo style? Where you just have to keep dying in order to get to the finish. If it is then I like it already!

Thanks for explaining your thoughts behind all this, Josh. It will hopefully calm my nerves as I keep dying
And I’m just curious, will you create jp’s that are plain and simple really difficult and not this type which you’re doing now? You know, more like super meat boy where you know what you’re getting into and can only blame yourself if you screw up. Maybe this will be created for the later chapters, or maybe sidepaths that you have to take to get all the bubbles (and btw, will there be any notification now so that you can be sure you’ve taken them all before you end the level? That was pretty frustrating in the last sab).

Mid evolution school mario (not the sodding original, its still giving me a sense of rage rarely seen by mortal men) and/or early mega man = awesome
I wanna be the guy trial and error crap = kitten you a-net

Hard mode concept might be nice on its own as a challenge. But I am still extremely concerned about something else. When you play IWBTG or Boshy, you always have an objective of reaching the next save point. If you die, you respawn instantly and start another try. And again and again and again. By making baby steps you may finally reach your goal after lots and lots of failed attemts. And what about SAB? Not only after a death you will be kicked out and forced to regrind your continue coins (or spend real money to buy them via gems?) but the SAB as a whole is time limited so if you wont focus on it enough during those few weeks, you need to wait another half year to retry. Which creates more tension and time pressure. And as far as I remember IWBTG is very hard but it never forces you to “buy” new lives, do corpse runs or prevents you from progressing at your own pace (ie. not limited to certain calendar periods).

Josh – I love what you said so much that I put it in a blog post on my comic’s site. Artists need to stand up for niche design!
http://mistergkids.com/2013/08/31/a-bit-of-validation-from-an-odd-source/

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

Yeah, I don’t think this TM will be for everyone. But I don’t think it’s bad design. You know exactly what you’re getting into. Someone made the comparison with a dungeon master setting up unwinnable encounters, well I don’t think that is what this is.

It’s more along the lines of stumbling upon a treasure chest and knowing it’s probably trapped. Or stumbling on a bridge that seems suspiciously quiet. You just know the designer has set up something devious. And maybe you will die horribly, and have to learn through trial and error (and yes, I am a big opponent of trial and error). But hear me out. This is more than just memorizing things. It’s a game of trying to second-guess the designer, which makes it more than just trial and error.

In both Cat Mario and I wanna be the guy, any platform over a pitfall is likely to result in giant spikes popping up, or the platform itself falling down instantly. You learn these rules quickly, and death is not punishment, it is actually entertainment. Granted, you have to see the fun in dying repeatedly in increasingly cruel and sadistic ways. But that is the fun-factor of this sub genre.

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

JayMack.8295:

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and furthermore the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Josh Foreman.8250:

kdose.5309:

Josh – I love what you said so much that I put it in a blog post on my comic’s site. Artists need to stand up for niche design!
http://mistergkids.com/2013/08/31/a-bit-of-validation-from-an-odd-source/

Awesome man. Great strip. You should sign up for next season’s Strip Search!

Thanks for checking out the comic! Lots of my readers are reading your quote now and loving it. Keep up the good work!

I wasn’t responding to you, so I don’t quite get why you’re responding to my post as if I’m saying Tribulation Mode and the style they’ve delivered SAB in is perfect. I was responding to a user expecting anything other than cheap death mechanics.

Also it’s available for a month, and if I play it all month long and can’t achieve that difficulty then I probably (personally) won’t achieve it anyway.

Awe.1096:

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and further more the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Yeah, and then imagine if the game even reduced your maximum health when you died, and took all of your collected coins, and you had to pay for armor repairs with the money that the game just took away from you. That would be horrible. No one would want to play that…. right?

Point being, even Tombraider 1 and 2 on the consoles did not allow you to save just anywhere. There were fixed save points on Playstation, and dying meant having to redo a lot of the level. So what you’d do, is second guess the traps, or try to spot them before blindly wandering into some seemingly safe corridor. That is what TM is. You know every floor is trapped. Deal with it. Out-smart the designer.

For people that want challenge but ala Super Meat Boy style I suggest trying normal mode, especially the later worlds ( when they come out ) as judging by the difficulty curve we’ve seen they won’t be a cakewalk by any mean.

Josh Foreman.8250:

timidobserver.7925:

Well he said it may seem like bad game design. That means he’s one step closer to admitting that it is bad game design. We are getting somewhere…..

I’d never claim to be an amazing designer. Only that I do think carefully about the design choices I make. Any time an artist chooses to do something that will be less popular than an alternate choice they know that they will be called a bad artist by many. Goes with the territory. It’s like (and I’m not comparing myself here) film makers such as David Lynch and Kubrick who makes movies/shows with purposefully ambiguous symbology and unsatisfying endings, or musicians like Bjork who will randomly release a virtually acapella album. These decisions limit the audience and make a lot of people who do stumble across their media angry, disappointed, annoyed, etc. And then say “That was bad.” Again, I’m not saying that my work is anywhere in the same league as Bjork or Kubrick. Only that there is a common phenomenon where people who don’t like a particular style, or find something that doesn’t fit in the popular established mold tend to assume that it is therefore ‘bad’.

Hey, maybe my work IS bad. I’m just trying to make stuff that I personally love to play. and it seems like there are others like me. At least enough to keep my quirky little project going!

To better define my statement, I finished the original SAB exactly once and never thought about going back into it again. I’ve got it set in my mind to finish the new version on normal difficulty mode exactly once. I couldn’t even begin to imagine trying to do it with some crazy difficulty mode that is designed to be unfair with illogical mechanics, which is what tribulation mode sounds likes to me.

I think that making game content that is painful enough to exclude the vast majority of the player base is bad game design. Then again, you get paid for it not me, so what does my opinion matter.

Overall, I am just tired of the new insta kill mechanic trend. I imagine that tribulation mode will be brimming with insta kill stuff.

Awe.1096:

JayMack.8295:

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and furthermore the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Well it’s available for a whole month out of the year and it may even be available multiple times a month (last time it came out was in APRIL aka less than a year ago), not to mention there ARE check points, every 5? Deaths are the ones that’ll make you restart the level.

Not to mention they flat out said (in this same thread I believe) not everyone is meant to beat TM, so yeah…. Don’t get your hopes up.

timidobserver.7925:

I think that making game content that is painful enough to exclude the vast majority of the player base is bad game design.

Are you implying that everything niche is bad?

Josh Foreman.

I consider myself a master puzzle jumper. I will put your SAB world, and tribulation mode to the test.

Cheap mechanics or not, whatever people call them. Instant death, unforgiving vanishing platforms, apples or cherries that flies sideways and kills you.

The word cheap is for people who can’t bother learning the mechanics behind it, and counter it. I will go through it all, and I will beat it all.

I’m just outside the box, Josh. OPEN IT, I DARE YOU!

Durzlla.6295:

Awe.1096:

JayMack.8295:

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and furthermore the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Well it’s available for a whole month out of the year and it may even be available multiple times a month (last time it came out was in APRIL aka less than a year ago), not to mention there ARE check points, every 5? Deaths are the ones that’ll make you restart the level.

Not to mention they flat out said (in this same thread I believe) not everyone is meant to beat TM, so yeah…. Don’t get your hopes up.

Not everyone can beat X content is nothing new. Its been always there even if games considered to be easy. The question is, where do you place the cutout point? Will you add a content which is supposed to be completed by 50% of active players? 10%? 1%? Everything is in the eye of the beholder. That being said, I shall watch what Arena will keep doing. I think the best thing is to make balanced stuff. The content should not be as easy as it nearly completes itself (aka current Scarlet world invasions) becouse it then becomes boring. It should also not be so hard that only few % of active players can complete despite trying hard becouse it becomes frustrating and disheartening. I am curious if Arena will be able to strike the balance.

Awe.1096:

Durzlla.6295:

Awe.1096:

JayMack.8295:

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and furthermore the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Well it’s available for a whole month out of the year and it may even be available multiple times a month (last time it came out was in APRIL aka less than a year ago), not to mention there ARE check points, every 5? Deaths are the ones that’ll make you restart the level.

Not to mention they flat out said (in this same thread I believe) not everyone is meant to beat TM, so yeah…. Don’t get your hopes up.

Not everyone can beat X content is nothing new. Its been always there even if games considered to be easy. The question is, where do you place the cutout point? Will you add a content which is supposed to be completed by 50% of active players? 10%? 1%? Everything is in the eye of the beholder. That being said, I shall watch what Arena will keep doing. I think the best thing is to make balanced stuff. The content should not be as easy as it nearly completes itself (aka current Scarlet world invasions) becouse it then becomes boring. It should also not be so hard that only few % of active players can complete despite trying hard becouse it becomes frustrating and disheartening. I am curious if Arena will be able to strike the balance.

Uh, they HAVE content there, the SAME content minus the 1 shot gimmicks for people to complete, if you want to nut up and do Hard Mode the Tribulation Mode is there for you, if you don’t want hard mode there’s the new world + the old world (6 levels, 2 bosses) to fully explore, baubles to find, and SAB weapons (both actually in the box and outside it) to obtain via baubles.

Wolfheart.1938:

timidobserver.7925:

I think that making game content that is painful enough to exclude the vast majority of the player base is bad game design.

Are you implying that everything niche is bad?

I don’t see that anywhere in my post. Having an update that has majority niche rewards and majority niche content might be bad though.

Awe.1096:

JayMack.8295:

fungihoujo.8476:

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

You act like this is a rarity among older games and that ANet have invented it. It’s a style Josh is purposely going for.

I remember games like Tomb Raider 2 where you’d turn a corner, and a boulder would hit you in the face and kill you. You’d load a save(hopefully having saved close enough), do it again, dodge the boulder and then land in a spike trap, which kills you in one hit.

Yes, many consider them cheap deaths, but it’s a style of gaming I grew up with and love.

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and furthermore the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

This sounds exactly like my days of renting games from that lil shack-like shop down the block and around the corner from my house when I couldn’t afford to buy NES/SNES/Sega carts for myself. I mean, seriously, some of my fondest memories were of those rented games I never got a chance to beat though I had just gotten the hang of them.

And I do second the notion that MOST really hard 8-bit and 16-bit games had an element of fairness to them. The Mega Man series, for instance; start with the first one and second one (I find the second one to be nowhere near as difficult as people insist it is though).

But it’s also like shmups. There’s standard sorts which are difficult but not crazy. And then there’s “Bullet Heck”.

There’s RPGS. And then there’s Roguelikes with permadeath.

Every genre has it’s point where all the difficulty has been tuned and sharpened down to a nice stiletto to shove in some player’s kidneys. Some players enjoy it, and we do mock people for their masochistic tendencies. But there’s also some feats we do look at in awe:

“I beat Contra off an emulator with no Code.” “Solo White Mage run.” “Yellow Devil, no pause trick.” “Quick Man, no Flash Stopper.” “Battletoads.”

They aren’t for everyone. That’s never the point of determining to make something that controller-breakingly frustrating. They may not be fun, but it’s not about the fun, it’s about the challenge.

Some of you may understand that, and a lot of you probably will think that sounds crazy (I do too). But that’s because you are NOT the type of guy trying to pull off something most people would declare impossible just to one day go “I did that”.

Josh Foreman.8250:

timidobserver.7925:

Well he said it may seem like bad game design. That means he’s one step closer to admitting that it is bad game design. We are getting somewhere…..

I’d never claim to be an amazing designer. Only that I do think carefully about the design choices I make. Any time an artist chooses to do something that will be less popular than an alternate choice they know that they will be called a bad artist by many. Goes with the territory. It’s like (and I’m not comparing myself here) film makers such as David Lynch and Kubrick who makes movies/shows with purposefully ambiguous symbology and unsatisfying endings, or musicians like Bjork who will randomly release a virtually acapella album. These decisions limit the audience and make a lot of people who do stumble across their media angry, disappointed, annoyed, etc. And then say “That was bad.” Again, I’m not saying that my work is anywhere in the same league as Bjork or Kubrick. Only that there is a common phenomenon where people who don’t like a particular style, or find something that doesn’t fit in the popular established mold tend to assume that it is therefore ‘bad’.

Hey, maybe my work IS bad. I’m just trying to make stuff that I personally love to play. and it seems like there are others like me. At least enough to keep my quirky little project going!

Ant.3415:

I’m looking forward to this but I think having a grind for continue coins is a mistake, and as others have said I hope we don’t have to go through that intro dialogue each time.

I remember back in the day grinding for gold in Final Fantasy 1 and Dragon Warrior 1 to be able to buy enough potions to beat the bosses and dungeons. That’s essentially what you’ll be doing. The time invested in doing so ratchets up the tension.

As for the intro cinematic, it’s only an issue in 1-1, but we did make a special TM short version.

Rezz.8019:

So Josh is this kind of Limbo style? Where you just have to keep dying in order to get to the finish. If it is then I like it already!

Funny. I was literally just watching my son play Limbo. But yeah, like Limbo on steroids. And where the spiders dance.

Josh, THANK YOU for making something like this. I have literally never been so excited about an update for any game, ever. My friend and I are jumping puzzle/platformer fanatics and are dying for Tuesday to no life Tribulation Mode. You create my favourite content by far, keep doing what you’re doing! Looking forward to my yellow skins.

I did have one question though that I hadn’t seen answered, you stated that to create a TM skin, we’ll collect an item from each zone in a world. Will we be able to do this repeatedly to create a second skin from the same world? I really hope so. Thanks a ton!

Good to know that Anet is dedicating resources to an IWBTG ripoff that a minority of people will play and even fewer will enjoy instead of spending those resources on things that more people will enjoy and the game, frankly needs. Like GvG, or making sPvP better, or improving dungeons, or reworking the incentives to get more people into WvW/PvP instead of running in circles in Frostgorge killing champions.

Maybe next year I guess.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’d never claim to be an amazing designer.

But being involved with Descent 3 makes you instantly amazing and old school.

HappyPrimes.3904:

Good to know that Anet is dedicating resources to an IWBTG ripoff that a minority of people will play and even fewer will enjoy instead of spending those resources on things that more people will enjoy and the game, frankly needs. Like GvG, or making sPvP better, or improving dungeons, or reworking the incentives to get more people into WvW/PvP instead of running in circles in Frostgorge killing champions.

Maybe next year I guess.

Good to know you have all the internal information on who’s working on what for exactly how long, hmm? Seriously, they may not be working on your list of “needs” but to assume they’re only ever working on one thing, ever . . .

You know why we don’t hear things about other plans? Because they’re not yet ready to talk about them, either because the list of things they’ve come up with haven’t worked out or because it’s still a crude outline on the whiteboard they’re trying to flesh out.

I rather thought they’d made it clear a while ago they don’t announce anything until they know for sure what they’ve got.

Eolirin.1830:

There are different teams in the company working on different projects. Things are done in parallel. Josh’s team, mostly content designers, some artists, and a minimal amount of programming support, would never be responsible for meta, balance, loot, QA, progression, or any system that touches the entire game. Nor would hiring a bunch of additional devs dramatically increase progress on those fronts; there is a diminishing return to additional developers. It’s a choice of SAB or some other content, not of SAB and gameplay improvements.

This is a false argument. You are correct, that in the current distribution of the company “resources”, there is Josh’s team and others. And in that model what you say is true, they work in parallel. However, and here is the falsity, there doesn’t have to be such a distribution of “resources”. Companies have a finite amount of money to pay people and put together teams. They could use monies currently being spent on this niche development team and add more resources to fixing existent problems. From listening to the guys talk on the ArenaNet PAX panel this evening, I don’t think QA and other sections are overwhelmed with so many resources that they’re in danger of hitting diminishing returns.

All I hope is that TM won’t be full of bugs. Hell, even one “carefully” placed bugcould be extremely annoying.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Awe.1096:

Would you still love it if every death placed you back at the start of the level (and not cheap save point) and further more the game would only be available to play for one week every 6 months? That is what my gripe is about, not the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

Yeah, and then imagine if the game even reduced your maximum health when you died, and took all of your collected coins, and you had to pay for armor repairs with the money that the game just took away from you. That would be horrible. No one would want to play that…. right?

Point being, even Tombraider 1 and 2 on the consoles did not allow you to save just anywhere. There were fixed save points on Playstation, and dying meant having to redo a lot of the level. So what you’d do, is second guess the traps, or try to spot them before blindly wandering into some seemingly safe corridor. That is what TM is. You know every floor is trapped. Deal with it. Out-smart the designer.

Despite how much i loved both dark souls and demon souls, their type of player instakills shouldnt really be a option, with how bugged jumping tends to be, the terrible hit detection in the first SAB and the general theme of the dev team sucking to actually show aoe indicators/different particle effects or small model changes on traps… well lets just say that if they cannot rip off a boss like Flamelurker or and their Ornstein and Smough (aka naked bluecharr group torpedo arm and gay-team dbz reference transformer rat) had the same bloody weaknesses, i doubt that creative, hard but fair puzzles will come out of the new SAB worlds.

Oh so its just gonna be trial and error? Eh.. no thanks. I prefer real difficulty. More Super Meat Boy and less IWBTG please.

Edit: Also Andele makes a good point. The game isnt really precise enough for this kind of thing is it? I mean even using the player vs developer logic, you would be fighting both the developer AND the game itself. And I cant imagine how frustrating it would be to play IWBTG while having to deal with latency…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

“Quick Man, no Flash Stopper.”

I have done that, and although Megaman 2 is certainly one of the easier in the series, that section is pure terror. Doing it without Flashstopper is scary as can be, yet also rewarding, since the weapon can then be used against the boss (and won’t be completely depleted).

/Megaman fan-rant off

Andele.1306:

Despite how much i loved both dark souls and demon souls, their type of player instakills shouldnt really be a option, with how bugged jumping tends to be, the terrible hit detection in the first SAB and the general theme of the dev team sucking to actually show aoe indicators/different particle effects or small model changes on traps… well lets just say that if they cannot rip off a boss like Flamelurker or and their Ornstein and Smough (aka naked bluecharr group torpedo arm and gay-team dbz reference transformer rat) had the same bloody weaknesses, i doubt that creative, hard but fair puzzles will come out of the new SAB worlds.

I think the SAB team resolved a lot of issues with jumping the last time around, and I’m sure they’ll have improved on it further for this (or at least I hope). And terrible hit detection? That was not my experience with it. Also, I think the superb boss designs of Demons Souls and Dark Souls are not a fair comparison to the kind of obstacle course we’re talking about here. My point was only that this type of punishing game play as described can be a lot of fun to a niche group of gamers. I don’t think it has to rely too much on the mechanics of the game itself, but more on the anticipation factor (although I also expect some really hard jumps obviously). Also, I think the Mad King’s Clocktower showed that the team can definitely make insanely hard platforming challenges that do not suffer from the game’s mechanics.

But of course, this is a special hard mode. It will only be for that small group of players who wants things to be really REALLY hard. Anyone that doesn’t like it, can still enjoy it in normal mode. I expect world 2 to be hard enough already in normal mode.