Not So Secret JP

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Posted by: SkyBound.7490

SkyBound.7490

I just wanted to dedicate this episode to the developers who designed the ‘Not So Secret’ jp.

Specifically, I’m talking about the aspect of the puzzle which forces players to redo the whole level again when they failed a jump in the later parts of the puzzle. I’m not saying difficulty isn’t good, it’s just that the artificial difficulty is pointless and is plainly just not fun.

I do hope everyone can learn from this and make Guild Wars 2 a better game :-)

http://youtu.be/ea6UuRTjkKs

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Posted by: Wolfheart.1938

Wolfheart.1938

I don’t understand. Dark Souls is quoted as a good example of difficulty is actually pretty punishing when it comes to check points. I also believe that the JP is short enough not to warrant a checkpoint.

“We have no first-person view because stupid people would lock into it”
“You can’t have more than 10 HS decks because that would confuse people”
“30 fps is more cinematic”

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

What I find harder to forgive, is the completely blind, trial and error, dive from the top with the diving goggles. It is impossible to see where you are jumping, and you will hit a beam several times before you finally get it. That is dumb design. Every single time the player will be forced to redo the entire jumping puzzle again, just to take another stab in the dark and see if they’ll land in the pool this time. It is impossible to see the pool.

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

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Posted by: BuD.7851

BuD.7851

It is impossible to see the pool.

Not from the pipe connected to the platform with the goggles on it. It’s just a bit lower than the platform.

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Posted by: AveryFarman.2973

AveryFarman.2973

I’m just irritated that I “lost” a completed achievement, Dive Master, and that the only way to re-complete it is to run a complex, risky jumping puzzle without a single waypoint within it, only to jump largely blind (I haven’t tried the last poster’s hint yet) into a bucket of water.

Bugs Bunny got a better deal when it comes to diving contests.

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

It is impossible to see the pool.

Not from the pipe connected to the platform with the goggles on it. It’s just a bit lower than the platform.

Will you still get credit towards the diving achievement if you jump from this spot?

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

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Posted by: Luna.8603

Luna.8603

This puzzle isn’t really that hard or punishing compaired to the WvW puzzle. There are no “hard” jumps just a lot of room for silly mistakes. It was a fun and not to hard puzzle.

If you want to find a harder and more unforgiving one then obsidian sanctum is sitting right there in eternal battlegrounds for you. You find a group of enemies you’ll have to redo the entire thing.

I want more amazing puzzles LIKE obsidian sanctum just not in WvW or PvP. :P

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Posted by: Weirwynn.2390

Weirwynn.2390

This puzzle isn’t really that hard or punishing compaired to the WvW puzzle. There are no “hard” jumps just a lot of room for silly mistakes. It was a fun and not to hard puzzle.

If you want to find a harder and more unforgiving one then obsidian sanctum is sitting right there in eternal battlegrounds for you. You find a group of enemies you’ll have to redo the entire thing.

I want more amazing puzzles LIKE obsidian sanctum just not in WvW or PvP. :P

The Obsidian Sanctum is, honestly, a poor puzzle to compare it to. Apart from enemies, failure in the Obsidian Sanctum is actually really forgiving. It’s a chain of separate, relatively easy puzzles, the only one of which that can send you back to the beginning is the well, and the only one with even slightly tricky jumps is the Colosseum pit.

Failing Not So Secret, on the other hand, results in both death, and losing all your progress, most of the time. I consider it the harder puzzle, enemies in OS notwithstanding.

I do think Not So Secret is fine, though (the dive point is another matter.)

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Posted by: Andele.1306

Andele.1306

Mad Kings Clocktower still the best (and probably will be for the next year) jumping puzzle that is/was so far in GW2

When life gives you lemon, ask if its from a anime or manga.

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Posted by: RedStar.4218

RedStar.4218

Having to take a waypoint and walk back to the ship is incredibly annoying (but not as annoying as having to wait for everyone to finish the instance during the Clocktower JP…)

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Posted by: Dual.8953

Dual.8953

I was actually gonna make this exact post. Vid and all. This is after finally getting past the rudder to this launcher thing, and falling to my death. It’s not fun having to struggle through all that and come to a poorly marked crossroad, where the penalty for screwing up means you have to start from scratch.

Registered Altaholic
Part-time Kittenposter

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Posted by: cranked.3812

cranked.3812

There should at the very least be a wp in the room where the jp starts. If you die in a bad spot you have to go all the way to the wp outside and jump up the mountain again. I don’t think it needs a ton of extra wp’s, just this one.

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Posted by: Meriem.3504

Meriem.3504

I don’t understand. Dark Souls is quoted as a good example of difficulty is actually pretty punishing when it comes to check points. I also believe that the JP is short enough not to warrant a checkpoint.

And that game also causes a lot of people too scream and quit or to make an OP character which isn’t hard given how the armor system works among other mechanics.

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Posted by: Draknar.5748

Draknar.5748

I used to look at the JP like OP here, but then I realized that the difficulty is being able to do the JP perfectly. You make a mistake you very well may end up dead or restarting. That isn’t artificial difficulty, that is compounded difficulty and makes for great challenges!

I won’t stop because I can’t stop.

It’s a medical condition, they say its terminal….

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Posted by: EnemyCrusher.7324

EnemyCrusher.7324

The difficulty of the “Not So Secret” jumping puzzle was great, but I would strongly recommend doing two things differently in the future:

1. Make it more forgiving. Obsidian Sanctum is great because it is split into sections, and falling in any of those sections won’t kill you (that’s what enemy players are for) and you don’t have to go all the way back to the start. Goemm’s Lab is great because it provides checkpoints in a way that makes sense (buggy implementation, but it has the right idea). The problem with “Not So Secret” is that it is extremely unforgiving. There are no checkpoints, essentially any fall will kill you, and there is no waypoint nearby. This is enough to frustrate most players, but it’s enough to make solo players feel like the situation is hopeless.

A waypoint below the airship would be nice, checkpoints would be great, friendly NPCs that could res players who fall to their deaths would work well too. In its current state, the optimum way to complete this puzzle, even for those of us who want to do it ourselves, is to hope that there is a mesmer to portal you to the end. That should not be the case.

2. Less repetitive fighting. After I’ve died for the tenth time, having to fight the same enemies for the tenth time is just a pain. It’s even worse when I try running past them and they hit me in the air, putting me “in combat” and making me fall to my death. Killing a boss or a group of enemies to move on to the next section is fine, just don’t make us fight them again and again.

Fewer enemies would be nice, easier-to-avoid enemies would be better, but an interaction to avoid enemies would be best. If we’re in a field, let us hit a nearby bee hive with a rock and have the bees chase away the enemies. If we’re in an inquest lab, let us trip an alarm that sends the enemies rushing into a different room. If we’re sneaking down a dark corridor, let us pick up a cudgel that can stun enemies that we hit from behind. Just don’t drop enemies in a puzzle with no purpose but to annoy players who want nothing more than to get back to jumping or solving the puzzle.

Light of Honor [Lite] – Founder / Warmaster
Sorrow’s Furnace Commander
“You’re the mount, karka’s ride you instead, and thus they die happy!”-Colin Johanson

(edited by EnemyCrusher.7324)

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

If you want to find a harder and more unforgiving one then obsidian sanctum is sitting right there in eternal battlegrounds for you. You find a group of enemies you’ll have to redo the entire thing.

Apart from the WvW thing, Obsidian is a way better jumping puzzle than the Aetherblade one. It is indeed hard, but divided into stages. It’s really hard to die in those (again, not counting WvW), and failure only resets you to the beginning of a stage.
Aetherblade JP is both much harder in jumps required, and any failure either kills you or drops you to the very beginning. Add to that several buggy mechanisms (like the rotating springs sometimes sending you at downward angle, or in the wrong direction), camera problems, terrain glitches and the goggles blind jump of faith with no visual guidelines, and you get a jp that is at the same time at best meager, and incredibly irritating.

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

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Posted by: CorneliusCoffin.3169

CorneliusCoffin.3169

I give up.
While every other puzzle that came out so far (including the Mad King’s clocktower) had this sort of “practice makes perfect”-learning curve to it -which, admitteldly was sometimes steeper than others – this one is the first where after more than a week of trying to play it, I still feel like I’m not considerably closer to being able to complete this puzzle in a reliable manner. Sure, I’ve improved in some parts, got to know the mechanics, learned the way (actually managed to complete the puzzle a couple of times), managed to time my jumps, but there are still too many jumps where you’re being jerked into the air in a direction you can’t really control and required to land on a toothpick while your camera is having an epileptic seizure and if you don’t manage you’ll die and have to start from the beginning.
This really is the first time where I know the way of the puzzle but I’m not relaibly able to complete it after a while and I hope puzzles like this won’t ever happen again in the future.

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Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

I enjoyed the new jumping puzzle and only one part ever gets me. That’s the part where you have to scale part of the rock wall to get to the last blue platforms to the goggle. I figured out once you make the jump to the first rock shelf, you have to jump and then move to the last one. For some reason there’s not enough room to move and jump which is why you often see people that appear to just walk off.

I occasionally get shot downward from the rotating discs but that’s because I’m hitting it from another disc. If I do one at a time then I don’t have a problem. The disc shoots you in the direction that you’re facing. In the countless times that I have done the puzzle, I have yet to see it shoot me in a random direction that I wasn’t facing. I suggest you take your time a d jump immediately after it stops rotating.

You’re scaling a ship from above ground so it’s believable that falling should result into a death. That’s part of the challenge. For the goggles, you can figure out where to jump instead of doing it blindly. I still see the same people doing a long jump when you have better luck by just walking off.

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Posted by: Toggles.1783

Toggles.1783

What’s funny is if you apply that video to the frizz encounter…

:D

Level 80: Elementalist Engineer Guardian Mesmer Ranger Thief Warrior

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

I don’t understand. Dark Souls is quoted as a good example of difficulty is actually pretty punishing when it comes to check points. I also believe that the JP is short enough not to warrant a checkpoint.

And that game also causes a lot of people too scream and quit or to make an OP character which isn’t hard given how the armor system works among other mechanics.

Dark Souls is only punishing to people that don’t understand the mechanics. Checkpoints wise, Dark Souls and especially Demons Souls have one after each boss. Even the sub bosses.

Dark Souls and Demons Souls are always consistent with their mechanics. There are clear rules, and the game faithfully sticks to those rules. Enemies do not turn invulnerable, or revive health automatically (but some can use a health potion), and they receive damage from traps and falling, just as players do. They are not immune to anything (hello Defiant!) and can be defeated with every weapon in the game. Even if it means taking cheap shots with your bow from a safe spot (Hello Fractal Harpies). Aggro mechanics are also consistent (Hello Mai), and all bosses clearly telegraph their attacks (Hello every boss in GW2). All of them hit exactly where you’d expect their attack to hit (Hello creatures of Orr).

Seriously, the amount of things GW2 could learn from Demons Souls and Dark Souls is staggering. /rant off

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

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Posted by: Sir Black.7423

Sir Black.7423

So the wiki says that the Dive Master achievement requires only 38 of the 39 possible dive jumps. I sure hope that’s accurate, because I don’t ever want to waste my time and silver in this puzzle again trying to get to those stupid diving goggles.

Today I made one little mistake very near the end that resulted in my death… And with no other players around, the means both paying a waypoint cost as well as doing the entire puzzle all over again. Nope. It’s not worth the frustration.

It’s amusing yet disappointing that the one piece of content from this Aetherblade event that they decided to make permanent is something that I will NEVER want to do ever again. (And this is coming from someone who’s a fan of jumping puzzles in general, including the Mad King’s tower.)