Guild Wars 2

My suggestions are these.

First. Correct the lighting effects and range in this game to allow for better sighting and use of light. Torches are weapons in the game… but they’re also supposed to be sources of light. A character should hold them as such, as if using them to see where they’re going as much as to bash some potential foe with it.

Second. Please consider and discuss with game designers, dungeon and puzzle makers the concept of “fun”. There is a distinct difference between “challenging” and “frustrating”, and after running Obsidian Sanctum, I am officially too stressed to play the game. And I’ve noticed I’m not the only one who feels this way, nor is this the only puzzle I’ve ended up wondering what kind of sadist designed it, and how unfulfilling their life must be to want to torture people paying their bills, no matter how indirectly.

Obsidian Sanctum. I had never done Obsidian Sanctum before, and though I heard it was hard, I also heard it was fun. I don’t know why someone would lie to me like that. At first, I was having trouble adjusting to all the hairpin turns where you’re hanging on by the pixels of your character’s toes, the long jumps that are made more by odd platform coding that lets you stand in midair sometimes, and repeated falls to your death, or taking heavy damage, but after a little while it was fun; I was learning the jumps and they became easier with repetition. This lasted for all of two minutes.

After falling… and falling… and getting further and falling… and being really careful and falling… and getting attacked while trying to climb the platforms and falling… I made it to a new area. Anyone who’s done it knows the one. The Dark Room. The Dark Room is all that came before… in the dark. Long, barely reachable jumps become long, barely reachable BLIND jumps. There are traps, and the path is convoluted to say the least. And people are attacking you at the same time.

“But they give you torches! Why are you complaining?! GOD!” you might say. Well, I stood there for a bit, holding my “torches”. Even in D&D a torch will give you 20 feet radius of light and let you see indistinctly out to 40 feet. Holding my two torches and looking at the screen, I could see… nowhere. It was dark right at my character’s feet. Literally RIGHT THERE. No radius of light.

Throwing torches would give more light, but only barely, and due to inaccurate collision with walls and pillars, sometimes the light would be muted as it would be getting produced from BEHIND a wall you hit, or INSIDE a pillar. Having perfect aim didn’t guarantee good light as the torches just went into whatever you hit and then winked out before you could really see what was in front of you.

And then there’s the people looking to troll. They run up on you and even though the majority of people are just trying out the puzzle, they’re trying to kill you while you do it. Why is this even a factor in such a hard situation? Why would I be forced to deal with PvP on a platform less than 5 inches wide when I can’t see 2 inches in front of my feet?

honestly, i agree with you, i have completed this many times. But, your still right. It is frustrating when you fall and tense all the way through… if they had more points on to where you fall you don’t lose that much progress it wouldn’t be so stressful. also the stress from the competition is the only way i got threw this the first time i don’t know why it just helped.

do they know the difference between fun and frustrating? when it comes to jump puzzles i don’t know.
Obsidian is by far my favorite jump puzzle.(probably cuz pvp)

I think its a hard balance between challenging and just nasty. Alot of the dungeons are that way as well. Too hard to be fun, They just end up being a grind treadmill from the armor repair anvil back to the new place you will die this time to rinse and repeat. I have been in groups where people have to bail out just because they cannot afford the repair costs to keep at it. and now with the everyone has to out of combat to rez.. Its stopped most of our players from doing dungeons unless they are quick easy ones to do. Oh and torch radius is a joke..

You can also just equip a torch offhand or a flaming weapon such as Fiery Gladius, Fiery Greatsword, etc.

Related link is related.

There are some parts in this game which are “Punishing” and not “Challenging”. That annoys me.

A lot of jumping puzzles are really badly designed. I like doing JP’s, and I’m quite good at them. But I can recognize bad design when I see it. Platforming is often made frustratingly difficult due to the camera spazzing out (a result of leaving not enough room for the camera to move around), poorly visible platforms, or platforms that are just too small, skewed platforms of which the player can’t tell if they’ll slide off or not (and sometimes its a bit of both depending how you land on them). And of course the in-combat slow down that ruins all platforming in the entire game.

Wow… it took you 1 title and 3 paragraphs to finally tell you were speaking about Obsidian Sanctum?

I actually like this jumping puzzle – some of the jumps are rather creative, and the dark room adds some interesting aspects.

The only thing I absolutely loathe is the gargoyles that knock you off and that I find very, very, very hard to time my dodgerolls properly for.

The combination of the gargoyles, the difficulty finding the stairs leading up in complete darkness, and the risk of PvP encounters has led me to now do this JP anymore, which is a shame, because I do really like the rest of it.

Oh I agree Pixelpumpkin, it is a good jumping puzzle with a lot of cool ideas and mechanics. A bit too long for my taste, and I don’t like fighting other players in it, but still a lot of fun. I didn’t like the arena near the end very much, because the jumps are so silly. These really tiny platforms, and unreliable collision, just make this way harder than it needs to be. Oh, and camera problems of course. But overall… I kind of like this JP.

One tip for jumping puzzles in the dark is to try and equip an AOE skill of some sort. This will mark out the ground in front of you when you aim it as if to target something. Then you can just jump right through and know where you’re going. It doesn’t solve the other issues, but it helps.

While running in “Fullscreen” mode, just open your options and boost your Gamma setting…no more darkness; it actually highlights edges of platforms also.

For “Windowed Fullscreen” users, you can boost your gamma in other ways, like your Catalyst settings, nvidia settings, or even with the buttons on your monitor.

I was about to say, I think his monitor isn’t calibrated correctly. If your playing on a laptop then, yeah you might have even more issues.

I’ll agree with the sentiment that, the Dev’s appear sadistic at times. It seems they are catering to a small sec of gamer’s that love to be frustrated. The more ire they can amass, they more they claim to like it. I’d be interested in having their physical responses tested while gaming. I imagine they are still having a very high stress responses. Which is entirely not healthy at the level of exposure people play this game. But, that a whole other topic

For now, try to bring in a friend who’s a Mesmer. Pop portals alone the way as safety nets. And yes, adjust your screen settings to bring up the brightness.

You want to know sadistic developers, play demon souls, took me 5 hours to finish the first stage, basically, you die, you get back to starting point and repeat the whole stage, mobs can 3 hit kill you, if you die, all the souls (currency) that you got are gone and you revive with only 50%, you can only get the other 50% hp until you finish the stage, there is 5 chapters and each chapter has 4 stages, something like that, main point is, 5 hours on the first stage, I couldn’t even finish the tutorial, if you think obsidian sanctum is frustrating and not challenging then go back to playing games on easy mode, I’m not saying I’m good at jumping puzzles, I’m saying it took me 1 hour to get to the 3rd part the first time I did it then someone killed me, you don’t find me b*tching about it in the forum.
PS: Writing advice, always write what your talking about in the first paragraph, as Fror said, it took you 1 title and 3 paragraphs to say what the topic was about

Practice makes perfect. Run the JP when server populations are at the lowest. Early morning is usually a good time. I’ve run that JP more times than I care to count, and routinely finish it in under 10 minutes with only one or two failed jumps (that actually set me back) if there’s no one around to jump me.

Lots of the jumps are very long and do push you to the edge of your limits. Use a character with a 25% speed boost signet or swiftness. That trivializes most of the “difficult” jumps in this puzzle.

It’s the most intimidating puzzle so far (excluding the halloween one, missed it). If you want to be able to do it, you need to practice and find a way to avoid getting frustrated. My first successful run through without enemies killing me half-way in took easily 45+mins due to failures. It’s not intended to be easy.

In regard to the dark room specifically, I’ve found torch #3 much more helpful than #2. The fire field at your feet stretches your visibility plenty, and is always enough to see the next jump.

Bismuth.3165:

You want to know sadistic developers, play demon souls, took me 5 hours to finish the first stage, basically, you die, you get back to starting point and repeat the whole stage, mobs can 3 hit kill you, if you die, all the souls (currency) that you got are gone and you revive with only 50%, you can only get the other 50% hp until you finish the stage, there is 5 chapters and each chapter has 4 stages, something like that, main point is, 5 hours on the first stage, I couldn’t even finish the tutorial,

The tutorial was meant to teach you the vital game play mechanics, But everyone always dies at the end of the Demons Souls tutorial. You are meant to die there, because it teaches you perhaps the most important aspect of the game: You will die a lot.

The first stage of Demons Souls is very easy, but the first time you play it all players have a lot of difficulty with it. This is because they are still learning the mechanics. But the game doesn’t get much more difficult. The rules remain the same, and once you get it, the game becomes a lot easier. You quickly learn in Demons Souls that:

A: You should always keep your shield up, especially when entering a new room
B: You should not spam attacks, because you need stamina to block attacks as well.
C: You should always expect a dirty trap.
D: You should study the combos of your enemies before attacking them. So you know when to strike.
E: You should always remain on the move, and back away from enemies to avoid losing too much stamina from blocking.

With those rules in mind, the game becomes much easier.
Dragging this back to GW2 a bit, in GW2 I feel the challenges are often not so fair. The rules are often inconsistent, and I often die due to bugs, unfair mechanics, or trial and error game play. It’s not just the lack of respawn points, but the general lack of being able to learn from your mistakes. A lot of encounters in GW2 cannot be learned while doing them. You have to fail them first, and then again, and again, and then you make it. And that frustrates the hell out of me.

I thought the same thing as you in the beginning. However, after you’ve run Obsidian Sanctum several times, you will learn that it slowly gets easier. The only thing that doesn’t get easier is surviving the twelve man fighting squad firing everything in their arsenal at the top of the Arena at you, while springing the traps. A nice thief or two could lay down a Shadow Refugee and you simply sneak past them after you’ve climbed it.

tl;dr

Keep doing Obsidian Sanctum and you can do it within five minutes if you don’t run into trouble.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Bismuth.3165:

You want to know sadistic developers, play demon souls, took me 5 hours to finish the first stage, basically, you die, you get back to starting point and repeat the whole stage, mobs can 3 hit kill you, if you die, all the souls (currency) that you got are gone and you revive with only 50%, you can only get the other 50% hp until you finish the stage, there is 5 chapters and each chapter has 4 stages, something like that, main point is, 5 hours on the first stage, I couldn’t even finish the tutorial,

The tutorial was meant to teach you the vital game play mechanics, But everyone always dies at the end of the Demons Souls tutorial. You are meant to die there, because it teaches you perhaps the most important aspect of the game: You will die a lot.

The first stage of Demons Souls is very easy, but the first time you play it all players have a lot of difficulty with it. This is because they are still learning the mechanics. But the game doesn’t get much more difficult. The rules remain the same, and once you get it, the game becomes a lot easier. You quickly learn in Demons Souls that:

A: You should always keep your shield up, especially when entering a new room
B: You should not spam attacks, because you need stamina to block attacks as well.
C: You should always expect a dirty trap.
D: You should study the combos of your enemies before attacking them. So you know when to strike.
E: You should always remain on the move, and back away from enemies to avoid losing too much stamina from blocking.

With those rules in mind, the game becomes much easier.
Dragging this back to GW2 a bit, in GW2 I feel the challenges are often not so fair. The rules are often inconsistent, and I often die due to bugs, unfair mechanics, or trial and error game play. It’s not just the lack of respawn points, but the general lack of being able to learn from your mistakes. A lot of encounters in GW2 cannot be learned while doing them. You have to fail them first, and then again, and again, and then you make it. And that frustrates the hell out of me.

Yeah, but when you die, there is a checkpoint and you don’t come back with 50%hp, also in demon souls you lose all the souls you had, imagine losing all your gold when you die and the only way to get it back is to go to where your dead body is, also, what you say is true, the game is systematic and after a while, killing mobs become easier, but when you have to pass through a bridge with archers at the other side slowing you down and mobs on the bridge trying to kill you, and if you don’t pass fast enough, which is super fast, you’ll get killed by a dragon

Bismuth.3165:

Yeah, but when you die, there is a checkpoint and you don’t come back with 50%hp, also in demon souls you lose all the souls you had

Fortunately, souls are like exp in Demons Souls. So you can also just spend them and level your character, so there is less to lose. A lot of souls can also be found as items, and you won’t lose those if you die.

Bismuth.3165:

but when you have to pass through a bridge with archers at the other side slowing you down and mobs on the bridge trying to kill you, and if you don’t pass fast enough, which is super fast, you’ll get killed by a dragon

Oh but that is the fun part. When ever Demons Souls throws something like that at you, there are multiple solutions.

1: Run as fast as you can, with your shield out to block arrows
2: Find a safe spot halfway, where the fire doesn’t hit you
3: Run halfway, then run back, and watch as the dragon fries all the archers, while you get the souls.
4: Use a bow and kill them from far away
5: Wear fire resistance items
6. Go underneath the bridge
7. Go through the internal tunnels of the bridge
8. Kill the dragon from one of the towers

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Bismuth.3165:

Yeah, but when you die, there is a checkpoint and you don’t come back with 50%hp, also in demon souls you lose all the souls you had

Fortunately, souls are like exp in Demons Souls. So you can also just spend them and level your character, so there is less to lose. A lot of souls can also be found as items, and you won’t lose those if you die.

Bismuth.3165:

but when you have to pass through a bridge with archers at the other side slowing you down and mobs on the bridge trying to kill you, and if you don’t pass fast enough, which is super fast, you’ll get killed by a dragon

Oh but that is the fun part. When ever Demons Souls throws something like that at you, there are multiple solutions.

1: Run as fast as you can, with your shield out to block arrows
2: Find a safe spot halfway, where the fire doesn’t hit you
3: Run halfway, then run back, and watch as the dragon fries all the archers, while you get the souls.
4: Use a bow and kill them from far away
5: Wear fire resistance items
6. Go underneath the bridge
7. Go through the internal tunnels of the bridge
8. Kill the dragon from one of the towers

I was at stage 2, I didn’t have fire resistant armor or a bow, dragon’s attack 1 shotted me and I can’t block it, and there was a lot of arrows, and sad thing is, there is no margin for error, I ragequitted at the 4th or 5th try, the game was good but like gamespot said, punishingly difficult, my point is, saying anet are sadistic devs when these guys are out there is like saying how scared you are of a rabid dog when a godzilla is roaming free, they even made a sequel, dark souls

As painful as it was to read your whole complaint regarding Obsidian Sanctum, I was like you at the beginning frustrated to hell and I avoid it due to my short temper.

If you’re alone it can be frustrating, but fun when with friends/guildies cause you can cover each others backs and finish it. I happen to be one of those people that doesn’t want to kill players in WvW however there are times where I’m forced to do it especially those that come in groups.

Being your first time in the dark room it can be hard but with enough practice you won’t even need the torches. You can use ground targeting to see the platforms (don’t use the skill just aim) such as Ranger’s Barrage, Guardian’s Symbol of Swiftness, this way you can also fight back which is the disadvantage the torches have.

The people that kill you aren’t trolls, first of all you have to realize it’s a PvP puzzle and if they’re alone they probably think you’ll attack them so they defend themselves.

The only solution to this problem is to make everyone as an ally but this would also deteriorate the puzzle’s difficulty (I can finish it in about 5mins without enemies) and I doubt that’s ever gonna happen.

obsidian sanctum is bad but personally I think trying to complete griffonrook run with the bomb has got to be the WORST.

smezmer.1206:

obsidian sanctum is bad but personally I think trying to complete griffonrook run with the bomb has got to be the WORST.

Definitely agree on that. Griffonrook Run with a bomb is the hardest JP in the game. At least Obsidian Sanctum has plenty of moments where you can rest and retry a small bit. Griffonrook sends you back to the start every time you fail. I’m not even sure if a mesmer portal works if you are carrying the bomb in Griffonrook Run, but I had to do it the hard way.

When I am on my thief I use either pistols or cluster bomb to help light the way for me. If you find light to not extend far enough out you could always try using a ground targeted skill and moving the symbol around in front of you, or you could just adjust your gamma, but those are sort of “cheating” I suppose.

I like Obsidium Sanctum.

The user that began this thread, DracosBlackwing.3174, could not have made the point more eloquently. Not only does Obsidian Sanctum need to change, but the team behind making this content and recent content need to be replaced. This pandering to a select crowd is driving people away in droves. Guild Wars is not meant to be an elitist franchise. It was built on the free-to-play, widely-cast-net model. This sudden shift, in violation of everything your PR campaign had to say about the accessibility of the game during its advertising before launch, is tiring. Myself and many others are preparing to leave this game for good. In fact, today is my first time on the forums, despite being a Beta tester for both Guild Wars games. The players on the forums do not accurately represent your fan base! They represent a small section of it! Have your team rewatch the PR you put out, such as your manifesto video and other promotional material, relearn your vision and start sticking to it once again, or this game is going to sink worse than its predecessor.