Guild Wars 2

I thought this deserved a thread of its own just for a very short discussion of a specific aspect. It’s been rightly pointed out that while many users (inc. myself) judged the clocktower too painful to bother with, others were ‘farming’ it. So it’s been suggested that there should be two difficulty settings, so that everyone feels invited to take part, without nerfing the challenge for others.

My suggestion instead (after sorting out the camera, player visibility and collision detection issues) would be a gradually increasing level of difficulty, so that people don’t feel completely thrown in the deep-end and spend more time waiting in a holding pen than playing an actual puzzle. As the puzzle became trickier, so too would their skills for handling it improve.

My feeling is that successful game design is all about teaching the player how to be good at playing your game. Many of you will have come to GW2 with ingrained skills from other, similar games. Others are trying MMOs for the first time. The key to not making it too ‘easy’ whilst also not excluding those who haven’t been taught how to play by other games is the difficulty ‘ramp’. Make it so that by the time the challenging content emerges, those beginner players know almost as much as those who are already experts.

This is exactly GW2’s approach in terms of its general game layout; they just need to transfer the philosophy to event items like the Clocktower.

IMO this is a bad idea. It still means that the less-skilled player won’t be able to complete the puzzle, and its the not-completing that’s the source of frustration. Compare to existing dungeons where you ‘complete’ the dungeon in story mode, even though you haven’t completed it in the harder explorer mode.

If you only make it part way through the CT, then you’ve still failed, even if you get partial award for it.

Hm… I could see a Puzzle with a single achievement with ranks instead several different achievements like Morgan’s Leap → Dark Reverie.
Get higher, and higher, and you unlock the levels of the achievement.
There could be checkpoints after certain spots, but if you log out, you have to start again from the bottom.

Now, at the top of the puzzles like that there should be something really, REALLY worthwhile, like a Quaggan singing GW’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody or something.

Of course, camera and controls must be honed so they no longer give so much problems to so many people before even considering such a thing.

I would not call the clocktower, or by that mean any other jumping puzzle, a puzzle.
They mostly test your movement skills, but hardly your mind, at least not little more than “how do I get there?”…

The only issue I had with the clock tower was the visibility. It frustrating to try & do it, make progress then fall because I could not see where to jump due to the amount of people crowding the jump spots. It’s hard enough that you have to practically run with no room for error, to not be able to see the platforms manifest and where to jump just made me give up and say screw it lol.

I have a suggestion too.
when i was doing the clock tower, one of the beatiful things was challenge whit the other players (the one who collect the major number of bag in a limited number of runs, or the one who finish the tower faster etc etc…)
So why dont create some type of Jumping PVP, like and huge area with a lot of platforms, where players can challenge to collect i defined number of flags, that spawn in random place. The winner of the game is the one who collect the flag in less time.
This can be an idea for the next holiday event

While I agree with Wreave overall, the Clocktower had a couple really difficult jumps right in the beginning. This made learning them a little easier as you didn’t have to get far to get to them, but it discouraged some people. Also, the timing was a little fast in a couple parts, also near the beginning.

3d geometry in a 2d computer doesn’t always translate well, so things like running up stairs isn’t always fluid. Some places that look like you should be able to run through easily you get caught on.

i suggest a compromise: allow us to carry each other. literally.

refer to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Noble_Intentions_Plan_B

we already have bundles implemented in the game. allow us to carry another player as our bundle as we traverse through a jumping puzzle.

what does this do?

altruism – encourages players helping players
conciliatory – ‘skilled’ players are recognized as being ‘good’ and ‘unskilled’ players are getting achievement
placatory – see above, no reason to whine for any crowd
community – for every 1 person charging gold for a run there will be 10 offering to ‘carry’ for free
awesomeness – it would be so fun to watch a guildy run a puzzle…with you as their (very) pesonal cheerleader :P plus it gets them a 1st person view of how the jumps should go

also bear in mind the longterm benefits of implementing this:

challenge missions – a la gw1 — timed quaggan carry race
tag team functionality – at checkpoints players ‘switch’ – bundle becomes runner, runner becomes bundle
observer mode – its kinda like observer mode…
endless imaginative opportunities for functionality in pve and observing wvw/spvp

i personally enjoyed the challenge and the feeling i got after 4 hrs when i finally completed it was unmatched so far in this game. but i can see how some just aren’t able to complete it. however, i dont think char models are an excuse…you can easily use the center of your screen to tell where your char is and you also get used to the feeling of ‘being too close to the ledge’ right before you fall off so you know when to jump. the worst thing, imo, is landing a jump with a char….it’s deceptive. but the puzzle was great and i look forward to more challenges in the future. all in all great job event team.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Quaggan singing GW’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody

This MUST be made! Seriously, Anet can we please, please see this?

As to the suggestion, I like it. I am a horrible 3D platformer. I have been bad at them since the first one. Super Mario Sunshine I think it was. My wife is vastly worse then I am, to the point where she has difficulties with easier jumps puzzles.

I dislike seeing the whole “unskilled” thing. We have been playing video games for over 25 years and are pretty good at them.

Having smoother difficulty ramps is generally a good thing, though I would argue that this should be done for jumping puzzles in the game as a whole, rather than inside an individual one. If you’re going to do timed spinning jumping puzzles that are hard, you should have smaller timed jumping puzzles that are easier. Any mechanic that shows up in the big complex jumping puzzle should show up in a few other easier jumping puzzles that have less going on.

This was the core failing of Psychonaut’s Meat Circus, the later part of which the Clock Tower seems to have drawn heavy inspiration from (not sure if that was intentional, but there’s even the little graspy hands!). Every other bit of even remotely difficult platforming in Psychonauts had plenty of simpler moments for you to learn the mechanics from earlier on, but the Meat Circus introduced multiple new mechanics and was timed on top of it; bad combination.

But you aren’t really going to solve much if you just do this in a single jumping puzzle; you need multiple exposures spaced out over wider ranges of time to really learn the skills. You’re not going to get sufficient repetition in a way that reduces that feeling of failing over and over by cutting the puzzle up into increasingly difficult bits; you need hours worth of the earlier stuff, and that means multiple easier puzzles for every mechanic you’re planning to introduce. So expanding on the Vista jumping puzzles, which are generally quite simple, by having something of more moderate complexity, and having a wider range of mechanics in both those and the more complex jumping puzzles would do far more than having the jumping puzzle get harder in stages.

As more and more jumping puzzles are added to GW2, it definitely would make sense to make sure that there’s a good spread of difficulty and complexity among them, so that there’s a good ramp between “learner” jumping puzzles like we see on some vistas, and the really complicated ones like the Clock Tower or Obsidian Sanctum. And you would probably want some sort of gating mechanics, stuff that rather explicitly tells you “don’t even try this if you haven’t completed these other puzzles”. But it really needs to span the entire game.

Heck, that’d be a good thing that we could do: sort the jumping puzzles that are already in the game by approximate difficulty. (And maybe call out the ones that have more gimmick/puzzle elements than just platforming) It’d be nice if that tracked similarly to the level of the zone, but I assume there’d be some outliers- I hear the one in Metrica Province is really nasty, for instance.

And one Clocktower-specific remark: when you have a forced wait/repeat, add a little variety. I suspect the Clocktower wait would’ve been a bit less grating if you’d just randomized the order of the taunts, so that we could hear the Charr talking about apples without having to die in the first five seconds.

I would LOVE to see more clocktower type content put in the game. At first it was very annoying, but once I got the hang of it I really kind of enjoyed it. I ran it once a day on each of my characters for the entire halloween event. I really kind of miss it now that it’s gone, and do wish we could get a more permanent version added into the game!

it needs to be
1) Instanced
2) checkpoint based 3-10 stages
3) rewards at each checkpoint
4) increasing difficulty as continuing stages
5) check point save point

I actually really loved the clock tower! Yes, the first few hours were extremely frustrating – it’s a difficult jumping puzzle after all and my reaction times aren’t exactly top-notch. Still, it was very enjoyable and once I managed to beat it once, I turned it into a daily of sorts for all of my characters just because I had so much fun running it. Truth be told, I’m sad to see it go and I hope it returns next year.

I think the only real problem with this jumping puzzle was the time limit on it. By that, I don’t mean having to run it quickly: I mean players only had a few days in which to complete it. While I actually think a few days is plenty of time for most people to figure out and complete the jumping puzzle at their own pace, I believe this placed a psychological pressure that may have caused players to perform more poorly than if they were able to complete the puzzle on their own schedule. My reasoning for this is that platformer-style areas like jumping puzzles rely heavily on muscle memory and twitch reactions; what makes them more “difficult” often has more to do with the player’s emotional state and reaction times rather than an ability to analyze the situation and take the appropriate action. Even if someone knows the puzzle back and forth, if that person becomes nervous, angry, or frustrated, they may not be able to complete the puzzle because a natural reaction to all of these emotions is for the person’s fingers and hands to spasm or shake, making it that much harder for the player to control his or her character properly. To an extent, this sort of reaction is expected with any timed game, but it is usually offset somewhat by the knowledge that the player will at least be able to try again later. So, while “ramping” the content may in fact be a pretty good idea, I think another alternative would be to simply reserve extremely difficult puzzles like the clock tower for permanent installations into the game rather than something tied to a limited event.

Ah, this post was longer than I expected! In any case, I mostly wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the clock tower and would love to see more jumping puzzles of its caliber implemented in the future, hopefully in a more permanent capacity!

Focksbot.6798:

…successful game design is all about teaching the player…

Personally, I do not feel that this was skipped. I think the problem in this area was that the Clocktower was far too easily accessible for people who would not be ready for it.

I think the Mystic Cauldron (as I’ve just now named it, but I can imagine the devs involved may have already called it that) was a pretty brilliant Halloween feature. It wasn’t necessarily hard, but it was still enough that people would give up on it. The feature was nice because for those that could complete it, they’d have a free easy-to-work-with transformation while players that would give up on it would need to consume an item. I think that was a good tradeoff that neither party would contend. It was low-difficulty, low-reward, and was presented so casually.

The Clocktower however with its higher difficulty and reward should not have been presented casually. The chests in the course were supposed to balance things out, but I don’t think those worked out, they pretty much required giving up the current run to claim their rewards. So the Clocktower wound up as everything-or-nothing, high-incentive and high-accessibility.

If instead the Mystic Cauldron served as the entrance to the Clocktower, or a whole additional jumping puzzle of lower difficulty, filtering would have been achieved making people better understand what they were in for and have a clearer judgement of how suited they were to participating in it. Many jumping puzzles are already like this, some sort of preliminary jumping challenges before getting to the meat of it.

I say that “teaching” was not absent because much of the world’s jumping puzzles is well arranged in terms of difficulty, and are educational. This puzzle was high-end, not entry-level. But with a big neon sign inviting people in, probably tons of people that have otherwise avoided them got in and were frustrated.

As a Sylvari, Morgan’s Leap was the first proper jumping puzzle I completed. I had been introduced to the platforming concept thanks to tricky vistas. Upon completing Morgan’s Leap, you’re given a great reward, but introduced to the Dark Reverie jumping puzzle immediately after that. A full jumping puzzle as an entrance to another jumping puzzle? I loved that idea! What’s better is that the start of Morgan’s Leap, though easily accessed, tossed-off struggling players very quickly (with very quick restarting) so most players would go no deeper than was reasonable for them. Morgan’s Leap as a starter-zone jumping puzzle was a BRILLIANT educational experience. But, again, the Clocktower was high-end, people should have gotten lessons before rushing into it.

“Multiple difficulty levels” in a jumping puzzle sounds very difficult to implement to me. They’re terrain based, while difficulty level usually is number manipulation.

I’m a huge fan of the Clocktower (still listening to its awesome track on Maclaine’s Soundcloud), and still want yet higher difficulty jumping puzzles (more with time-pressure like this). Not all content needs to be accessible by all, and the Clocktower was appropriately a side thing. I would be disappointed if they tried to make it “accessible for all” as that largely means a reduction in difficulty.

The Clocktower was definitely not the best application of its idea, but it was the first of its kind. I don’t think any “extremities” are appropriate, such as never doing it as a part of a big event again. Not to mention, a hellish difficulty is more appropriate for Halloween than anything else in the year in my opinion. Though I enjoyed racing, having a huge Char in oversized heavy armor colored vibrant red no less admittedly added far more artificial difficulty than the main sources of difficulty. Ultimately I was running from players more than I was running from the vortex, and that was fun since I was capable of that. But it was still a problem, and I think it’s safe to bet they’ll avoid having us all stack onto each other in the future. That alone solves a lot. Make accessibility proportionate to the difficulty and I think you’re all set. Minor changes, not extremities.

Or maybe add more obvious jumping puzzles that are mild in difficulty in the starting zones? That would improve the players ability to…..I dunno, jump?

I honestly don’t see what was so hard about the clocktower JP

The biggest problem I seen talked about is the presence of other players. For many different reasons. The common link to those reasons they distract to the point of removing the ability to complete it when otherwise you could complete it if they weren’t there. It’s like being at a sporting event and some big fat guy is constantly standing up blocking your view of the game. You would otherwise be able to watch the game if the big fat guy weren’t there. Probably not the best analogy but it makes my point. The skill needed to complete it has nothing to do with the presence of others. Since the presence of others only does one thing: make it so you need to be able to do it as if they aren’t there. Which excludes people types. One such type is those like me who when there is a lot of movements in the visual focus area are unable (not for lack of skill but because it is a disability) to focus on the focus area and only see the movements. By removing this problem it allows players to climb the difficulty ladder (to put the OP into a phrase) without having to alter it in any other way. That way the skill level needed to complete it doesn’t change. Part of the learning process is to be able to see what you did wrong and by repeatedly failing due to the presence of others this is not possible because the point of failure isn’t a fixed point that can be analyzed to overcome. Unlike a oh I needed to jump left instead of right, or down to that spot instead of up to that one, or I need to pause for 1 second because if I don’t I get eaten by a whale that jumps up and swallows me if I jump to the next landing as soon as I hit this one.

“Now, at the top of the puzzles like that there should be something really, REALLY worthwhile, like a Quaggan singing GW’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody or something.”
-MithranArkanere.8957

Haven’t read the rest of the thread yet; this was just such an awesome mental image that I had to reply immediately. I’m not really a “laughed so hard I fell out of my chair” sort of guy, but if I were, this would’ve done it. I can’t seem to stop grinning.

“Quaggan sees a little silhouette-o of a man. Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Quaggan does the fandango!”[insert .gif of Quaggan doing fandango here.]

Difficulty levels in the same puzzle are possible with instances.

All you have to do is remove and replace pieces of the puzzle until there’s only a very basic skeleton.

In lower difficulty levels you can place wider ramps and alternate paths, and no enemies, checkpoints and instant respawns, in higher ones, you can put stuff like narrow bars and champions and having to start from the beginning.

It should be possible with the tools they have, as the can dynamically place and remove collisions and parts of the terrain and enemies, and script repsawns and checkpoints through NPCs that may or many not appear or respond depending on the level.

It’s a lot of work, but I’m possitive it should be possible.

nothing wrong with it, leave it as it was. if everything in the game was easier to complete the challenge of the game would be gone.

the fact is, it was able to be completed. it was incredibly frustrating at first, but after i did it the first time, subsequent tries were much easier.

there were no collision issues. you would sometimes get stuck on a gear, and the gear has protruding parts, that’s what a gear is.

I really like the idea of a jumping puzzle everyone does at once. It just needs to be performed side by side, not in a big pile. Although obviously the clocktower was intended to be done solo, and the group thing came as a surprise.

I’d like a puzzle that is expected to take you about ten minutes to finish if you know what you’re doing, but is full of checkpoints along the way where people restart if they fail, all at the same time, and it’s laid out so that the players can see one another but they aren’t jumping on the same positions as one another. Like all the jumping pieces are the same model, but positioned about ten feet apart at all times so you’re all jumping on your own segments, but you can still feel some sense of competition. And of course, you’re rewarded with enough money to warrant the time. Probably about 5-8 silver, like it’s a tiny dungeon.

I for one spent about 3 hours trying my best to complete the Clocktower, I never made it past the very early stage (where the first chest was)…. and I’m ok with that. I hate that most MMOs try to give everything to everyone and all that ends up is everyone gets nothing. Yes, keep the difficulty. The main issue my friends and I had was that we rarely could see where we were going due to so many characters grouped up in such a tiny spot. Instanced would have be nice as the tower was hard enough on it’s own.

The greatest thing was I wasn’t forced to complete it to get my Halloween title, thank you very much for that. I would like to see it either instanced or done in stages of difficulty with the really good loot reserved for the really hard stuff. Either way, even though it was hard as heck, and I eventually gave up, it was still fun.

My hats off to you guys that made it, great job!!

The key to avoiding frustration is to have players understand what went wrong and how to fix it.

Jumping puzzles rarely yield worthwhile treasures but instead are done for the experience and achievement. They’re honestly the only thing in the game that is even close to being challenging. I’m against nerfing jumping puzzles.

If different difficulties were to be added those jumping puzzles that are only available for a limited time, I suggest that all of the easier difficulties only give you the achievement with the chest giving only junk event items. If someone wants the “big item” (i.e. MK slippers) then they complete the puzzle on normal mode.

I am someone who never finished the puzzle. After about five tries I determined that further attempts would be a waste of time. The reason for that is because from my perspective the biggest challenge was the existence of other players and the enforced waiting time between each try. The cutscene at the start of each try was another time waster. The NPC chatter in the waiting area only made it more irritating.

That being said I think as a piece of Mad King related content the puzzle was spot on. It is exactly what I would expect a creation of the Mad King to be like. As a piece of game content it was far from enjoyable. I can’t pinpoint why but it’s in the general area of “wrong kind of challenge”.

As for the tiered difficulty suggested, I don’t think that would have changed much even if it was in place. In fact it might have the opposite effect (on the other hand messing with people who are already bad at jumping puzzles seems to be part of the jumping puzzle design philosophy).

Part of doing jumps is muscle memory. Getting conditioned with the easier jumps
from a lower tier could easily interfere with attempting to do the “same” jumps at higher tiers. I experience a version of this from switching between ele/thief and warrior/mesmer where ele/thief typically have a passive speed boost while warrior/mesmer do not.

I think something like an tiered and instanced practice mode would be more useful. In the case of the clock tower the easiest practice level would be like a regular puzzle, stationary and untimed. The next one could start moving and for the last one add in the timing and the arms. In all cases failure in practice mode should restart instantly and ideally without a loading screen. Aside from the instanced part it seems to me like each of those stages would have existed during the creation/testing process for this puzzle.

I don’t like things too easy, too easy is not fun since it wont represent an challange.

I would like to choose if I want to play like “Normal or Hard” way of an dungeon, puzzles (like clocktower) before enter. BUT the rewards should be scalled to that.

This way Hardcore players will have hardcore things with more chance of good rewards.
And more causal players can also do samething but with an lower setting, also with chance to good rewards but an lower one.

WHY something like this is wrong?

Just give us Clocktower back, but with changed chest drops!

Josh Foreman.8250:

Good idea. Not sure if it’s something we could do at this point. But I’ll keep it in mind on my next JP.

Josh I know that a lot were upset about the group thing, why didn’t you let the group succeed if one person made it?
If I was the designer I might have made it so that if one person made it, the ones who fell off would get to open the chest for like 1ToT’s per for each person in the group to make it and not finish the achievement no slippers, and ones who completed it got the slippers, ToT’s, and the achievement. That way I would not made so many people feel like it was a waste of time to even go for the finish.

Or just not have a jumping puzzle and give out items to everyone for free instead.

Gummy.4278:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Good idea. Not sure if it’s something we could do at this point. But I’ll keep it in mind on my next JP.

Josh I know that a lot were upset about the group thing, why didn’t you let the group succeed if one person made it?
If I was the designer I might have made it so that if one person made it, the ones who fell off would get to open the chest for like 1ToT’s per for each person in the group to make it and not finish the achievement no slippers, and ones who completed it got the slippers, ToT’s, and the achievement. That way I would not made so many people feel like it was a waste of time to even go for the finish.

As I mentioned above I didn’t finish it but I don’t see the point of that. Well at least it would save me from the annoying lobby NPCs.

“Or just not have a jumping puzzle and give out items to everyone for free instead.”

Sorry I lost you on that, the point that I was trying to make was, that the major complaint was that it was designed as a group thing, but in the end it was not a group effort that got you a reward.
The way I was looking at it, is you would at least gotten something for someone making it so you would not feel terrible for each of your Individual Failures.

I particularly liked the group aspect of the clock tower, as frustrating as it was to run it in a group, because it made the puzzle also feel like a race.

Gummy.4278:

“Or just not have a jumping puzzle and give out items to everyone for free instead.”

Sorry I lost you on that, the point that I was trying to make was, that the major complaint was that it was designed as a group thing, but in the end it was not a group effort that got you a reward.
The way I was looking at it, is you would at least gotten something for someone making it so you would not feel terrible for each of your Individual Failures.

It wasn’t directed at you and I was just being sarcastic. I just see so many people wanting things to be so incredibly easy that it’d be no different than them just being handed the items for free.

I don’t see how it could be considered a group event. It seems like what they were doing was conserving server(s) bandwidth or whatever. If everyone had their own instance then just imagine how much load that would have on the server(s). They were trying to run people in batches which is more efficient although it makes it difficult for the users unless they know the trick. (Your character’s feet never change location on the screen so you technically don’t need to see your character.)

I think the major issue people had, besides not being able to see themselves, is that they failed to learn and adapt. They just keep running the puzzle, failing, and then do the same thing again hoping to get lucky. Most (just a guess) that likely were able to complete it did so by figuring out the best course to run and learned from their mistakes. I saw people who kept complaining who consistently ran on the outside which substantially slowed them down.

The difficulty was reasonable considering that you got an exotic out of it. I did the puzzle several times and kept getting candy bags so I don’t know what the big hype was for people to farm it. Granted, I could’ve had horrible luck.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with the clocktower event except 1 thing.

You should be able to go at it alone (maybe in an instance) and have faster respawning so when I do it 150 times i don’t spend countless hours waiting in the lobby. It was measurably harder in a group to see where you were jumping and when to jump. I felt pretty bad for the asurans on that one.

Only if they add some sort of indicator to jumping puzzle difficulty in the game. It’d be easier to decide if the puzzle will be short to complete or I should leave and come back when I have a day to kill.

Ualtar.5047:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Quaggan singing GW’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody

This MUST be made! Seriously, Anet can we please, please see this?

Agreed. That would be absolutely adorable.

“Any way the tide fllooooooooowwws”

MithranArkanere.8957:

Now, at the top of the puzzles like that there should be something really, REALLY worthwhile, like a Quaggan singing GW’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody or something.

Best idea on the internet EVER!

Anet make this happen. Ill give ya 100quid just to purchase a mini that does this

sooooo… this is what we got with FoTM?

really guys, is that what you wanted?

I’m all for more puzzles that require more then just a lil hopping, I loved the new one in Mount Maelstrom where you had to gather the 4 elemental essences to open the chest, the area was amazing, one of the best views anywhere in the game is from the lil perchs and vistas in the Garden, would love to see more of them.