Guild Wars 2

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

By the way, here’s my suggestion for that one; how about putting one of those rooty trees on ground level somewhere in zone 2, so you can use that to practice the corner jumping without losing a life every time? It is world 1 after all (If there is one, I haven’t spotted it, at least not in zone 2.)

Keep up the good work, the SAB is amazing and I love it, no matter how frustrating.

Actually the best place to try this is probably the fast path to the worm. After you jump out of the water, using the lilypad, immediately turn right. There is a root sticking out over the water and a tall bush near it. The jump from the bush to the root is pretty much the longest corner jump you can make, and you can easily do it over and over if you want.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The 180 degree jump is for one of the secret doors in world 1 zone 2, where you have to jump full around a root 180 degrees to reach the hidden area in the roots near the abyss. Let’s be real, though; it’s not that hard of a jump, just takes a bit of practice.

Sorry, I got all the secrets and I know the one you’re talking about but I never did anything like that. I just jumped straight down from the ground to the root from the other side, then jumped along to the door and got it on my first try. It sounds to me like you’re taking a much more difficult path than you need to.

I’ll admit I have no interest in ever trying it again, but it still wasn’t that much of an ordeal.

Suggestions
1. I would really like it if rushing wasn’t so optimal in the SAB
2. The cost of health and lives is very out of whack. I don’t see a benefit from buying lives vs buying continue coins (continue coin 20hearts for 50 baubles vs lives/potions 20 hearts for 100 baubles)
3. Loosing a whole life for falling is very harsh punishment I’ve seen many players wipe because of one area that is too hard for them to jump

Bugs
1. jumping next to certain trees causes the character to hit an invisible ceiling/wall a good example of this jumping to the first tree that leads out of the first dog bee queen battle
2. lag effects SAB in some very negative ways at native im running at about 50fps and I have a strong internet connection that works very well in the rest of the game but here the lily pads do nothing to stop the poison damage, most enemies will get a hit in before they realize they’re dead, targeting seems off, and some jumps become impossible. When I put it to subsample I get a bit over 60fps and everything works fine (hopefully its just me)
4. The plants keep eating my keys is it a bug or intentional
if its a bug please fix it
if its intentional I hate you guys

thanks for your time, love what you have created here

Lag IS something that can be addressed. STOP MAKING CONTENT AS THOUGH THERE IS NO LAG. Oceanic players have to contend with a minimum of 200ms as there are no local servers. This also applies to evasion mechanics.

Edit: This is a real head-in-the-sand response. Lag is a very real part of the environment that they are trying to market the game in. Making a product that ignores its market environment not real smart. To me the focus of the response above (1&2) is more about “don’t rock the system boat” than player enjoyment. They need to find an alternative for content tuning rather than purely reaction-time mechanics if they want to enhance the play experience for ALL their clients.

So far I think the Super Adventure Box is great fun. Here are two suggestions for improvement:

1. The chest timer of World 1 Zone 1 should be more in line with the other zones. If I remember correctly, it is 10 seconds. I think it should be at least 20 or 30 seconds. Or maybe players should just talk to the NPC (Shopkeeper) when they are ready to travel to the next zone.

I was playing with a friend who fell off the ledge right as we destroyed the cage. He didn’t have enough time to make it back up and missed out on opening the chest. Not the end of the world, but a little annoying—especially since the harder zones give you more time to open the chests.

2. Players should be invulnerable while loading into the next zone. After I defeated the boss in World 1 Zone 2, I jumped down to try to get a bauble I missed and was standing in the green water when I travelled. By the time Zone 3 loaded, the green water had killed my character, wasting one of my lives. I don’t know if this is intended or not, but I thought I’d mention it.

Only thing I did not like was, like others have said, the lag. Makes me unnecessarily miss jumps. The SAB would be pretty much perfect in its niche if this was fixed IMO.
How does SAB lag anyway? It’s less detailed than Minecraft! O_O

According to the tooltip on the pointy stick its range is 150, while the range for the key is 200. Is this correct? Because I find with the key I have to get much closer to enemies to hit them than I do with the stick.

Also, plants eating keys is just evil. :P

I live in Australia and have learned to deal with most of the lag and get around it. There is however one set of jumps that I simply cannot do to get to one of the hidden areas, other than that the jumps can be done when you get used to the lag.

Tip for other Aussies that miss longer jumps because of lag: Don’t jump until your character’s foot (one foot, not both) steps off the side. If you time it right you won’t walk off, and you will jump far enough to make it.

As for the vines eating keys… That’s what the candle is for. Drop your key, burn the vines with the candle (#5) grab your key again and proceed. If you are playing with other people have one person run ahead and clear the way for the key holder(s).

Josh Foreman.8250:

4. that was just a brutal, happy accident that we all liked. That’s how the plants in the kingdom of fungus eat. They need the delicious minerals in the metal of the keys to survive. It’s the circle of life. … And it moves us all…

+1 made my day

Keep in mind you are scaled down unless you are an asuran.

Yes, but his point is a valid one, regardless of which character I’m using the key’s attack has an effective range of half the stick’s. Maybe it’s got something to do with the stick having an arcing cone attack, while the key is perhaps a single target thrust? If this is working as intended, fair enough, it probably should have a reduced range, but if it’s a bug. . .

That’s not lag. That’s the player collision cylinder being a bit wider than your feet.

It’d almost be nice if the player’s collision cylinder were depicted on screen, like the new banner-circles that show the buff’s effective range. just a small permanent circle around your feet to show exactly where you’d start to fall.

Oldbugga.7029:

Lag IS something that can be addressed. STOP MAKING CONTENT AS THOUGH THERE IS NO LAG. Oceanic players have to contend with a minimum of 200ms as there are no local servers. This also applies to evasion mechanics.

Edit: This is a real head-in-the-sand response. Lag is a very real part of the environment that they are trying to market the game in. Making a product that ignores its market environment not real smart. To me the focus of the response above (1&2) is more about “don’t rock the system boat” than player enjoyment. They need to find an alternative for content tuning rather than purely reaction-time mechanics if they want to enhance the play experience for ALL their clients.

I live in NZ and I play fine hmm.

Same. I live in Australia, play on Tarnished Coast (US) and lag for the most part is very manageable.

Hah, this is how devs should respond to community suggestions. Take note of suggestions and acknowledge them, but stick to your guns about your vision for the game.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

but this particular area pushes the limitations of the engine too far in my opinion. We eventually got the achievement, but in the end it was difficult for all the wrong reasons.

You’re probably right. We don’t have much lag at the office, so I never ran into the problem. I’ll see if I can break that up a bit and compensate by getting some super annoying monkeys in there.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I personally wish there was a half second longer delay between the coconuts the monkeys throw.

I wanted to see if we could make our knockdowns much shorter. I can’t remember what came of that. I’ll add that to the list. If not we might go the rout of slowing the bombs down.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

In my opinion, every jump in the game should be able to be done by anyone, regardless of what method they use to play.

Ok, I gave you two, now I’m going to deny you one. I like your Power Glove simile, but I think limiting all jumps for all 4 worlds to accommodate keyboard-turners would be overly restrictive creatively. As the challenge level must go up, I need to have full access to all the tools available to keep things interesting. If I excluded corner jumps from the game then I’m not sure I could keep the right balance for the majority mouse-turners. Sorry.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

When you are standing right next to an object, you are unable to jump onto it.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of this either. Sadly, it is such an embedded part of the fabric of our physics engine that there’s probably no way it’s going to change. If that combination of values changed I guarantee that every map would suddenly sprout about a thousand world-outs. Just another quirk to learn to work around.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Walking right up to a log means your character will be unable to jump out,

Right. So you gotta learn not to walk right up to things you want to jump on. Counter intuitive? Yes. Fixable? No.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

As others have mentioned, a bauble counter would be a welcome addition.

I admire your purist approach to tackling the game as designed. I’d love a Bauble counter as well. For technical reasons we couldn’t make one. I’ll add it to the list of things to bring up again when we start World 2.

1. Just wanted to add in I don’t have any problems with the mushroom jumps, but I have absolutely no lag.

2. I’ve only been owned by a monkey once. He knocked me down and kept me down until I was dead. All the other times I have been able to avoid their coconuts or have been able to dodge the second throw.

3. I use my mouse to turn. Always have. I don’t have a problem with the corner jumping. I don’t understand why some people can’t or won’t use their mouse? It’s really not that hard.

4. I just work around being too close to an object to jump onto it. Just start your jump before you get too close to whatever it is you’re trying to jump on.

Josh Foreman.8250:

WatchTheShow.7203:

3. I use my mouse to turn. Always have. I don’t have a problem with the corner jumping. I don’t understand why some people can’t or won’t use their mouse? It’s really not that hard.

Well it IS hard if you have bad lag, have arthritis in your hands, only have one hand, or perhaps some kinds of dyslexia. I honestly wish to make my content accessible to as many as possible, while still retaining difficult optional parts. Easy mode was really important to me as it provides some form of access to the content for those who wouldn’t normally be able to succeed in this kind of content due to whatever reason. But ultimately not everyone can do well in Super Mario Bros. Not everyone can do well in SAB.

I understand the Infantile Mode/reference, but it seems that most players (typically the ones that end up opting for this mode) don’t seem to understand it. Perhaps there should be a method of making it seem less of a “baby/noob” mode and more of a “normal” mode, and then setting the “normal” to be the “hard” mode.

A lot of complaints (not me, I’m fine with jumping puzzles and can’t wait for hard mode) are from people stating that they don’t like being forced to go into “baby -inserthomophobicwordshere- mode” to be able to get achievements/titles/skins. While I understand that they may not be good at jumping puzzles, I also understand that the infantile mode IS MADE FOR THEM. It’s just it does kinda sound bad for people who are unable to see/create the connection/reference.

I guess an option is to start new players in that mode, and then they can talk to the baby cloud to “upgrade” if they feel they wish to have a challenge. The cloud will then turn into a different model to reflect what mode they are currently on. If it saved what mode you were on through entering/leaving, I think that would solve a lot of problems. That way, instead of it being baby mode, it’s just “easy/normal” mode and then without it is “normal/hard” mode. Depends on how you look at it.

Then again, it might not do anything at all.

Incidentally, we call normal mode “hard mode” in this household.

At first I didn’t really get the point of baby mode inside a jumping puzzle, but I am really glad now that you can do most achievements in this mode without having to worry about everything else on top of bubble collecting. I’m also glad that you have to go through normal/hard mode to get the chest rewards. I think the balance is just right.

It’s just, sometimes I think about the fact that this is only world 1, and this is going to be “the easy level” as soon as world 2 is released… and then I get scared. A little bit anyway.

Lane.3410:

According to the tooltip on the pointy stick its range is 150, while the range for the key is 200. Is this correct? Because I find with the key I have to get much closer to enemies to hit them than I do with the stick.

Funny enough, I am also under the impression that the stick has a better range than the key, not worse…

Josh Foreman.8250:

We could not make jumping puzzles. and we could make combat so there are no timing elements. Not sure that would make our game better though. When I say “we” can’t do anything about it, I mean our little SAB team. I have no idea how servers and lag work. I’m sure like every other department here, the server team is always working to improve the current system.

Josh, I’m sorry, I really like SAB but you are dead wrong here.

You can do something about lag, further, the server team will NEVER be able to fix this issue, because it’s not in their power to do so.

What you can do is making anything involving very tight timing more generous. If the lilypads stay up for 0.X seconds after you land on them, make it 0.X +0.2 seconds. Will that make it a little easier for people with perfect connections, like the one you use at work? Yes. However, that is the cost to making it work far better and seem more reasonable and fair, or in some cases, even be doable for people with less-perfect connections, which, given your audience, will almost certainly be the majority.

What I am saying is, testing in a zero-lag scenario, as you admit to doing, and balancing accordingly, is a very bad idea when you are designing a game around timing and jumping.

You may want to speak to the network team and get them to find a way so you can test this stuff by going outside your network (not via a VPN or the like) and testing it on the EU servers from the US. That should give you a more clear picture of what you are doing.

Again though, you can do something about it, and it is not a case of “don’t make jumping puzzles” or “no timing elements”, that’s overdramatic and wrong, it’s a case of “be slightly more generous when making timing-based scenarios or max-distance jumps”. Not a lot more generous. Just very slightly. Even that would make a huge difference to the playability. Ultimately, if you balance solely for the players who have perfect ping, you will find fewer and fewer people enjoying SAB, especially if it gets harder as things go on.

Esplen.3940:

I understand the Infantile Mode/reference, but it seems that most players (typically the ones that end up opting for this mode) don’t seem to understand it. Perhaps there should be a method of making it seem less of a “baby/noob” mode and more of a “normal” mode, and then setting the “normal” to be the “hard” mode.

A lot of complaints (not me, I’m fine with jumping puzzles and can’t wait for hard mode) are from people stating that they don’t like being forced to go into “baby -inserthomophobicwordshere- mode” to be able to get achievements/titles/skins. While I understand that they may not be good at jumping puzzles, I also understand that the infantile mode IS MADE FOR THEM. It’s just it does kinda sound bad for people who are unable to see/create the connection/reference.

As I understand it, the use of the word “infantile” is primarily because it was made by an asura. They tend to use condescending language whenever the opportunity presents itself, and I don’t think it’s always intentional. It’s just something they do. They understand “everything,” so they assume everyone should. So as they would see it, if one can’t manage to complete such a simple task as they’ve presented, how inept must one be?

However, I don’t think they’ve said anything homophobic. I don’t think anyone did. I’m pretty sure that was just presumption on the part of a particular end-user. Please try to avoid inflammatory remarks, regardless of your preferences. As far as I can tell, neither the asuran inventor nor anyone else meant for you to take the phrase “infantile mode” as a criticism of your (or anyone’s) sexual orientation.

My thoughts:

1. “It would help a lot if the achievement for collecting every Baubel in a stage, tracked them as you collected them. Right now its always stuck on 0%, and jumps to 100% after collecting them all. It would help if we could see how many Baubels were left in a stage.”

Agreed

2. “Some jumps, especially the one in World 1 Stage 1 (the secret cave behind the waterfall) are too tight. They are barely doable, even with a running jump. And with the camera backed in a corner like that, that jump is way harder to make than it should be. Please make this jump a bit easier. I am of course talking about the jump that comes after the two jets of water. Try and not make jumps that are exactly at the maximum jump distance.”

I don’t know what jump are you talking about, sorry.

3. “While we’re at it, fix that camera please. When ever it is too close to the ground, or any object comes in between it and the player, it goes insane. It bounces back and forth constantly, and that’s very nauseating. And it makes platforming way harder than it needs to be.”

It’s not been a problem to me as a human. But maybe to larger characters is it.

4. “The big slam attack of the Frog boss is nearly impossible to dodge, which is very frustrating. Even when you know its coming, it still hits you as you dodge-roll. I think this could be made a bit easier.”

You need to bee in the rocks when the splash happens.

5. “Fix the targeting! It is really hard to select the frog boss, or the necklace. And if the wrong one is selected, your character will throw every gem into the ground!”

It’s not been a problem to me. Maybe I’m used to GW2 targeting system.

6. “Make cinematics skippable please.”

Yes, please.

7. “Please provide a quick way for people to rejoin the final boss battle after using a continue coin.”

It’s close enought to me.

8. “The bee queens aren’t much of a threat, due to the fact that they can be stun-locked so easily with the whip.”

I’ve never done this as a group, so I don’t know.

9. “Waiting for a character to stop talking, before being able to use their services, is a bit annoying. This mostly applies to Moto when you want to hand him your coin.”

Agreed.

10. “Please don’t make us whip a turtle or crocodile from a sinking lily pad in hazardous water. Those things sink instantly, which means we sacrifice health to hit the kitten animal.”

I just hit it in mid air. Not a problem to me.

11. “Allow us to smash pots and furniture by hitting them, instead of picking them up.”

Agreed.

The couple suggestions I have:

1. As already known, camera awareness when designing areas, we’ve already discussed the little gap between the cage and the tree in world 1-2. Yes you can work around not falling into the gap but when you do it’s not just possibly going to get you hit, but the camera jumping in and out is, well it’s not nice to do to players. Be especially aware with boss arenas not to put miscellaneous landscape objects that can come between the camera and your character.

2. Some jumps seem very odd in that you actually hit the edge of the platform and then find yourself suddenly teleported on top of it rather than falling off. I’ve never made these jumps without hitting the edge like that so it seems intended, and as a result, I die sometimes when I hit the edge and DON’T teleport on top, but just slide off the side. I’d suggest lowering those jumps (they happen oddly enough in world 1-1 the most) just a smidge so that when you land you clearly land on top of the edge of the platform.

3. I don’t know about making the queen beedog unwhippable as a solution, as it’s one of the only uses for the whip now that you can’t use the whip on chests to get the baubles. I agree stunlocking is cheap, but would suggest a longer cooldown on the whip so that it has to be used tactically rather than spammed. If the queen can’t be whipped at all I’ll probably just skip it, as it is I just skip it because it has too long of a healthbar to whiddle through just for a few baubles.

4. Queen Beedog should drop 100 baubles considering how long her life bar is, consider shortening it to 250 for those doing the game solo, and raising it by 250 for each party member or something.

Josh Foreman.8250:

WatchTheShow.7203:

3. I use my mouse to turn. Always have. I don’t have a problem with the corner jumping. I don’t understand why some people can’t or won’t use their mouse? It’s really not that hard.

Well it IS hard if you have bad lag, have arthritis in your hands, only have one hand, or perhaps some kinds of dyslexia. I honestly wish to make my content accessible to as many as possible, while still retaining difficult optional parts. Easy mode was really important to me as it provides some form of access to the content for those who wouldn’t normally be able to succeed in this kind of content due to whatever reason. But ultimately not everyone can do well in Super Mario Bros. Not everyone can do well in SAB.

True, and I was thinking about war veterans and elderly folks when I posted, but I figured that was what the infantile mode was for. Really there’s only 1, maybe 2 corner jumps in all of the zones combined, so sucking it up and mouse turning for that 1 jump really isn’t so bad (again, only referring to people who have no disabilities). I was more or less aiming my post at the people who just prefer keyboard turning, and won’t even give mouse turning a try. It’s not for the people who can’t, it’s for the people that won’t.

I feel all of yours complaints about the lag issue, I mean, the mushrooms jumps to get those last baubbles and Moto’s Breath were hell for me, it took me way way way too many tries because I would suddenly be teleporting all over the place, get fall damage mid air, get poison while on a mushroom then suddenly I’m on the poison floor etc.

It was the most annoying kitten, but it happens, I understand their restraints and kept doing it till I finally got that freaking motherkitten.

Thanks for everything Josh and team, SAB’s been an incredibly experience for me since it’s start and I always have fun playing it.

As always, looking forward to more of your work! Hopefully I won’t have to jump through so many mushrooms in a row again. =p

Obs: I think pretty much everything is REALLY well balanced and at the right pace, the annoying monkeys, the secrets, the bosses, prices of stuff, upgrade progression and where’s at etc. Just add a achievement glider really for those that don’t want to use guides.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Josh Foreman.8250:

WatchTheShow.7203:

3. I use my mouse to turn. Always have. I don’t have a problem with the corner jumping. I don’t understand why some people can’t or won’t use their mouse? It’s really not that hard.

Well it IS hard if you have bad lag, have arthritis in your hands, only have one hand, or perhaps some kinds of dyslexia. I honestly wish to make my content accessible to as many as possible, while still retaining difficult optional parts. Easy mode was really important to me as it provides some form of access to the content for those who wouldn’t normally be able to succeed in this kind of content due to whatever reason. But ultimately not everyone can do well in Super Mario Bros. Not everyone can do well in SAB.

True, and I was thinking about war veterans and elderly folks when I posted, but I figured that was what the infantile mode was for. Really there’s only 1, maybe 2 corner jumps in all of the zones combined, so sucking it up and mouse turning for that 1 jump really isn’t so bad (again, only referring to people who have no disabilities). I was more or less aiming my post at the people who just prefer keyboard turning, and won’t even give mouse turning a try. It’s not for the people who can’t, it’s for the people that won’t.

I have given mouse turning a try. In fact in other games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum/City I have no issues using the mouse in this manner. The difference for me (and I assume others) is that mouse movement in GW2 just doesn’t “feel” right.

Believe me, having completed all but three jumping puzzles, there have been times I wish I could control my player with the mouse. I still have Skipping Stones ahead of me and I’m pretty sure it’s a lost cause with the keyboard.

For the most part though, by taking my time and aligning my character perfectly, I’ve been able to get by. The jump around the roots in SAB is one of the only jumps I’ve encountered where no matter how hard I tried, the keyboard just didn’t work.

For those with disabilities I don’t know if they’ll ever pass that part. I wouldn’t argue so much if the secret room contained an additional bonus, but because it’s part of the bauble completion, it does mean that for some, that achievement will have to be abandoned.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

…
For the most part though, by taking my time and aligning my character perfectly, I’ve been able to get by. The jump around the roots in SAB is one of the only jumps I’ve encountered where no matter how hard I tried, the keyboard just didn’t work.
…

Hey! You’re talking about the one in zone 2 right? I use Q and E to turn the camera, since I mostly play on my notebook while on bed, it’s not optimal, obviously, but I still get around to do pretty much any jump/pvp etc (that doesn’t count clocktower/wintersday/skipping stones though lol, but that’s because I have fps lag that helped in their case, but I got skipping with some mesmers at the first week when it debuted).
I was able to get that jump without moving the camera that much, tip: try jumping by the other side. I honestly don’t know why in every guide or person I saw doing that did by the left, but when I went there solo I tried from the right and got it on my first try where I failed 2 with friends on the other side.
Hope this helps!

Boy did people jump on the lag comment. My comment was directed at the response provided not the issue itself.

I personally realise all the issues associated with lag and personal abilities or the lack thereof and it was not my inability that I was focusing on. I was more incensed by the fact that Josh dismissed the lag issue as though they had no responsibility at all for it tainting player experience. Any game design which ignores or overlooks a primary operating environment variable is bound to cause issues. Of course ANet can’t do a lot about net lag itself, BUT they can make it so the content is less sensitive to the negative impact of lag.

It is obvious that this game relies a lot on reaction for movement and avoidance and uses that movement mechanic to assist in the game’s balance. But there is a problem with that as the movement mechanic and requirements rely on timing which unfortunately is not uniform due to lag and possibly other factors. All I am saying is when designing content, please do not assume all timing mechanics are uniform, because the very nature of the game’s operating environment means that this is not necessarily the case. Therefore you can do something to lessen the impact of lag.

Josh Foreman.8250:

There is no assuming happening. I’m very well aware that this variable exists. As stated above, the more we accommodate bad lag, the less of a challenge we are providing to those without it. That is a huge part of the reason we made easy mode.

Thank you for keeping this in mind, and please continue to keep it in mind. I have great latency, and I love a good challenge. I don’t want the entirety of SAB to be kiddie difficulty because a minority of players have poor connections or what-have-you. Infantile mode is perfect for them, and enables them to enjoy the content just as well as the next person. We players-who-seek-difficulty need more challenging content! Hard mode cannot come soon enough (I hope it is super rewarding, so it’s actually worth it to run HM).

Josh Foreman.8250:

I understand that forum response is not a perfect gauge, but it’s all we have to go on.

Well, since the majority of forum feedback in general seems to be negative, while the majority of ingame chat is usually positive (at least on my server), I think the amount of positive feedback about the SAB on the forums is actually a REALLY good indicator.

And I don’t believe I has seen any negative feedback for SAB in-game.
Except for maybe Super Greatsword now being the second most common skin after Twilight. lol

Personally I love the fact that everyone has equal access to the SAB weapons.

(As an aside, there seems to be a pretty common consensus in-game that the forums are a nasty, vile place and most of us would rather be playing the content. Could just be my experience, but I hope all of you guys know that more people come to the forums intent on complaining, while those who appreciate tend more to just log into the game and have fun. So to me, the amount of positive feedback on SAB is a pretty amazing thing.)

I am not totally unsympathetic to those with a poor ping, either do to location, or internet connection but I will say this…

..or maybe rather.. I’ll ask a question..

What are the stats on the average ping? I get that some content is harder if you have a poor ping but if you are the minority I’m sorry but asking for content geared for those with a poor ping is quite selfish.

If they trivialize the content for people with average to great pings because people with poor pings that is just bad design. I am sure Anet has statistics that show the pings at which people are connected and I would like the content designed with those statistics in mind.

Camera bug

I found a bug in SAB right after the frog boss battle. If you don’t wait for the cart bonus level, and go straight back to Ratasum, it is possible for the camera to remain in the zoomed out position (with no way to zoom back in, unless you relog). This problem persist to other zones. I went to Lion’s Arch, and the camera was still zoomed out as much as it was during the boss fight (causing the camera to clip through the ceiling of the auction house and bank. It was that far away).

I’m not ruling out the possibility that lag was a factor here as well, because the server was getting a bit choppy at this point.

Respawn bug

If the server is lagging a bit, the damage from the green water can persist for a while, even after respawning. This means that after dying, you can respawn with not your full amount of hearts. So either the lag is causing the damage from the water to not stop in time, or SAB skips refilling your health upon respawn (or something else entirely, I’m just guessing here). This happened to me in the last stage before the frog boss, when it respawned me at the checkpoint at the end of the previous zone.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Eurhetemec.9052:

What I am saying is, testing in a zero-lag scenario, as you admit to doing, and balancing accordingly, is a very bad idea when you are designing a game around timing and jumping.

Fair point. Though I may be wrong about zero lag here. I’m not sure where the servers for our dev build lives. I think it might be in Texas. But I’ll have to look into this.

How about testing it WITH some simulated lag/packet loss? This can be done with a router running openwrt(should be around $60 …).

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Funny enough, I am also under the impression that the stick has a better range than the key, not worse…

Since a picture is worth 1,000 words I did my best to show the discrepancy. I know it’s not an Asura, but having played SAB with every race I find it’s the same range issue on everyone regardless.

The clip on the left is the max range I could get from the monkey and still hit it with the Key (range 200). The clip on the right is the max range I could get with the Pointy Stick (range 150) and hit it. (The monkey obviously died on the second hit, but the apple shows where he was and I aligned the hands perfectly. I’m sure someone could have found a better way to illustrate this though.)

At any rate, this is why I asked if the tooltips were correct.

how about 8 bit versions of all the races? we’ve seen asura as thats moto. what about the rest ?

The larger issue here is the fact that we are building a particular KIND of game on a platform that is not optimized for it. To me, the question is: Does the experience given outweigh the quirks of being on a less-than-ideal platform? The answer is that it varies depending on your lag. Overall the feedback has been very positive, so I think the answer for most is that the experience given does outweigh the quirks. I understand that forum response is not a perfect gauge, but it’s all we have to go on. I absolutely would LOVE to widen the net, to include as many as possible in that positive experience category, and as stated above, I’m happy to look into tweaking some values if that will do so.

I’m going to make two suggestions, no clue whether either might work. The first would be, could ANet ping a player, determine the relative lag, and then adjust the timing necessary? That is, if a player is right near the servers, and gets near zero lag, then he will need tight timing, while if a character has a very poor connection and a ton of lag, then it doesn’t expect as much from him, and as long as he gets it relatively close, it works out?

The second would be, why not make positioning more client-side, so that lag isn’t a factor? If I tell it to jump, I jump, I stick the landing, all client side, and then my client tells the server that I nailed it.

I’m well aware that both could be abused in various ways, and who knows how viable either would be, but maybe it’d be worth it?

Hej Josh, i think i read somewhere that you posted that World 2 would accompany the next release. I know i shouldnt be pushing but what youve done with this is truly great and nostalgic, so i thought i would chime in. You said it wouldnt be out in the next month, or even after that, but you mentioned it would accompany the next release, will it accompany the next release; Frost and flame, retribution you just announced?? Or are you still months away? :O

First of all, thanks for SAB as it’s great!

Only one request of more group puzzles. I noticed the video mentioning teaching people to work together but you can run world 1 solo. Maybe some more puzzles in world 2 onwards where you all have to stand on switches for doors to open/activate an attack on a boss etc.

I guess people do like to solo and there is the problem of what do you do if you can’t find other people to group with when you play. Maybe a way around it would be limit it to needing only 3 people to do the switches which means people not as good at jumping puzzles could still join in but stand somewhere safe and a semi-fix for the group situation mentioned above.

Ack the joys of designing games Good luck making the rest of SAB…

Josh Foreman.8250:

CryxTryx.9208:

What are the stats on the average ping? I get that some content is harder if you have a poor ping but if you are the minority I’m sorry but asking for content geared for those with a poor ping is quite selfish.

I’ll have to do some research. I’m sure there’s a bell curve and we can aim for the lump in the middle.

Yes, this. I was just about to suggest the median ping rather than the average.

RoyHarmon.5398:

Josh Foreman.8250:

CryxTryx.9208:

What are the stats on the average ping? I get that some content is harder if you have a poor ping but if you are the minority I’m sorry but asking for content geared for those with a poor ping is quite selfish.

I’ll have to do some research. I’m sure there’s a bell curve and we can aim for the lump in the middle.

Yes, this. I was just about to suggest the median ping rather than the average.

Pedantic comment: a median is a type of average, as are mean (what most people mean by ‘average’) and mode.

Serious comment: with a data set as large as sampled pings over hundreds of thousands of players, and whose distribution will likely resemble a normal distribution (bell curve), the median and mean will likely be the same.

I think the biggest design flaw of the SAB is that it came across as a demo for a bigger game, which would be fine but the other aspect of it is that the encourages farming/grinding. The path of least resistance it just running to the boss chests as fast as possible on alts, which after a while just leaves a bitter taste in your mouth for such otherwise amazing content.

The rewards should have been tied to achievements instead, to flesh out what you can do with the limited content. 1 skin for beating SAB, another for 50% achievements and 2 more for 100%. You might think, What about using baubles outside of SAB though, and alternate ways to get the rewards for alts? – Crafting recipes involving baubles would solve this, only instead of ludicrous amounts of baubles make it something like 5 bbs + lodestones/ectos/eldritch scroll/etc, and make bbs sellable on the TP (this way just getting to 100% completion would net you enough bbs to craft some skins for your alts if you want, if not you could just sell them)

Josh Foreman.8250:

KaptK.9608:

Only one request of more group puzzles.

I’ve got several sketches for group mechanic puzzles just waiting to be implemented. It’s certainly tricky to design group puzzles for anywhere from 1-5 players! But I think we’ve got some decent plans in place.

Hell no! https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab/Keep-Super-Adventure-Box-Casual/first#post1769112

Big appeal of SAB for a lot of people is that it can be done solo. Dont turn it in just another dungeon like Fractatals and other useless stuff that a lot of players frankly dont care about. Multilayer running with party should be just fun – not a requirement.

Adding group puzzles that cant be solved solo would be as frustrating as in the end of Personal story having group dungeon.

My comments/suggestions:

1. I don’t like the cost of keys. Trade 25 baubles for 40? I better just go kill random mobs for the key or just not bother with the chest at all, since buying a key from a store and carrying it over to the chest aren’t much convenient anyway, especially for zone 3. Also, for zone 1, it’s 25 baubles for 20, totally not worth the deal. My ideal cost for a key is 15 baubles.

2. In Rapids, sometimes I can’t hit those alligators with my stick (I have to switch to bomb), and it happens several times that I get pushed off from the rock in the moving water for no reason while standing on it. Please move the alligators closer to you and make the rock a little bigger.

3. It’s unfair that a player can receive another 2 bauble bubbles by playing a different toon. It strongly encourages farming SAB. For example, I have 8 toons. Basically, I just play all of them and get a skin within 2 days. Comparing to my friend, she plays only one toon, so she can earn only 7 baubles per day unless she farms baubles. And because she hates farming, she just buys her favorite skin from TP. My suggestion is to make those drops from chest account bound and increase the reward of bauble bubbles to 5 per chest AND per account, not per toon.

Anyway, thanks for creating such a cool game, Josh.

SlaYer.2138:

My comments/suggestions:

1. I don’t like the cost of keys. Trade 25 baubles for 40? I better just go kill random mobs for the key or just not bother with the chest at all, since buying a key from a store and carrying it over to the chest aren’t much convenient anyway, especially for zone 3. Also, for zone 1, it’s 25 baubles for 20, totally not worth the deal. My ideal cost for a key is 15 baubles.

2. In Rapids, sometimes I can’t hit those alligators with my stick (I have to switch to bomb), and it happens several times that I get pushed off from the rock in the moving water for no reason while standing on it. Please move the alligators closer to you and make the rock a little bigger.

3. It’s unfair that a player can receive another 2 bauble bubbles by playing a different toon. It strongly encourages farming SAB. For example, I have 8 toons. Basically, I just play all of them and get a skin within 2 days. Comparing to my friend, she plays only one toon, so she can earn only 7 baubles per day unless she farms baubles. And because she hates farming, she just buys her favorite skin from TP. My suggestion is to make those drops from chest account bound and increase the reward of bauble bubbles to 5 per chest AND per account, not per toon.

Anyway, thanks for creating such a cool game, Josh.

1. Key cost is ok. If you want to minimize RNG and optimize baubles income in run, they serve good purpose – otherwise you`d have to run around killing every mob hoping for drop. Additionally – chests are requirement for achivement unlocks, so in zone 3 for example, its convenient to just buy keys to open the chests.

2. Use whip.

3. Multi-character farming is only issue because of chance of drop of Skin (pretty low one though, so you`ll have to do really lot of runs) that can be sold on TP. If what you want is babubles – just getting a shovel and running world 1 zone 2, beginning of zone 3 would net you 500 baubles easily and fast, giving you 2 bauble baubles. You dont even need to kill the boss. Just dig, and rerun.