Guild Wars 2

Just saw a post by a Dev in a different topic.

“There is absolutely going to be Halloween this year. The Mad King wouldn’t miss out on an opportunity to come back and share his latest batch of terrible jokes. And open a spot for you in his lovely tower.
With the first update for October hitting on the 1st, the next update afterward would hit with plenty of time to spare before Mad King’s day.”

So the tower will be returning, I personally would like some changes not so much to the tower itself, but how you go about playing. Such as…

-The ability to do it in a private instance
-Reduced wait times between each attempt

I can’t remember much of it from last year as I got it pretty quickly, but did anyone else have any issues regarding the clock tower they would want changed? And I’m not looking for “it was too hard” or “remove the timer” things, but more things to do with joining it ect.

Well, with a private instance you wouldn’t have to wait at all. Not to mention you wouldn’t have to jump at the same time as 10 max-sized norn/charr. This was my biggest problem last year.

imagine yourself being the only one doing the clocktower at any given time. yes, not very interesting anymore, is it?
the other players you do it with serve the purpose of putting psychological pressure on you whenever someone behind you gets swallowed by the swirling nether, its basically the ONLY reason why the tower is alot more interesting than other jumping puzzles.

so make it a private instance you can bring your party into if you like to?

what about both versions?

solo and public.

solo and public rewards differ.

Onshidesigns.1069:

A private instance would ruin what makes the tower so much fun.

This.

It killed the charm of SAB a bit when every one is just solo’ing it even though it’s meant for 5 players.

Only thing I’d change is the reward. The boots from last year ain’t going to cut it.

How about just 3 different difficulty scales/settings this time and new rewards , i see that as fitting and nothing over the top.

Onshidesigns.1069:

A private instance would ruin what makes the tower so much fun.

I cant agree with this. Even when I got the puzzle down to almost guaranteed success, my fail percentage when up tremendously whenever I couldn’t see myself for a major portion of the race. It got so bad people were actually griefing the puzzle making the largest characters they could and using items that made it incredibly hard to see the next jump. Your ability to win shouldn’t at all depend on horrible camera mechanics including the inability to see yourself because of others.

Scale everyone to the same size IMHO and no useable items or abilities. Or Let me run it alone.

I cant believe I still have this screen shot… It wasn’t fun is was just annoying.

I think one of the biggest issues last year (and one that the developer addressed very sincerely) was the difficulty that Norn/Charr were having with the jumps. Hopefully those players are rectified this year.

A large part of the appeal for me was the fact that it was public. The king of the hill style JP was a lot of fun.

The only change I would like to see is the enabling of costume brawl during the tower:)

The madness would be fantastic.

I would like it to be single, yet still partyable instance.
Pros:
+ No irritating wait times. (Unless you party)
+ Ability to see much better where to jump
+ No trolling with banners/costumes.

Cons:
– Ruins the feeling a bit if you solo it. Partying would still give you better feeling of it.

I’m actually looking forward to see everyone falling off the tower again. That’s what actually made it fun in the first place too … there being so many people and you see them all dropping down. It just made me laugh. And for your information I was myself pretty bad at it too.
It just wouldn’t be the same if it was a single instance or even only a party instance.
Now now scaling everyone to the same size I would not mind though.

Sithaco.4673:

I can’t remember much of it from last year as I got it pretty quickly, but did anyone else have any issues regarding the clock tower they would want changed? And I’m not looking for “it was too hard” or “remove the timer” things, but more things to do with joining it ect.

Not to be a stick in the mud, but asking for changes NOW is not going to be very productive as they likely have the release finalized and are testing it. Very unlikely requests and changes are doable at this point in the process.

Reduced wait times is all I would want. Other than that, this JP is my favorite. Each step further that you would make, you get that sense of accomplishment and it pushes you to go further up to the top. Once you get to the top, it’s like riding a bike and you never forget your steps. I hope when they release the Clock Tower again that I don’t forget my steps and where/how to jump

simple solution, everyone who enters the clocktower is transformed into a human size scarecrow. Nobody will be bigger nor smaller than another person.

see you guys at the top

ColdDarkness.9371:

imagine yourself being the only one doing the clocktower at any given time. yes, not very interesting anymore, is it?
the other players you do it with serve the purpose of putting psychological pressure on you whenever someone behind you gets swallowed by the swirling nether, its basically the ONLY reason why the tower is alot more interesting than other jumping puzzles.

I agree with this.

Doing it with other players made this jumping puzzle much more fun. I also completed it first on my norn. It wasn’t always about seeing where you were going, but eventually just memorizing the motions. A lot of players dropped off of the puzzle within the first 30 seconds. The only thing I would change would be the reward.

I think it should be much harder, was too easy last time.

Not sure how it would be done, but it would be cool if they made a mode that requires team work.

I also agree with people saying making it private would just make it even more boring, SAB is quite fun when playing in a group but there’s no need at all to do it in a group and I always run SAB alone now because it’s quicker.

Also, people saying big characters ruined their run, I don’t see why… I did it on a small Asura and while I couldn’t see my character at times, it was still easy.

A video of me doing it last year on my Asura… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZIa4BzsWgY

I don’t think private instances are necessary.

I think the other players with gigantic characters were part of the challenge for me, and I still feel badly for all the crap people gave them for wanting to complete the puzzle on their favorite characters.

The most difficult part of the puzzle was memorizing the first half of the puzzle and then getting out in front early on so you could see what the heck you were doing. lol

Besides, it was really cool to wait at the top and see who else from your pack of lemmings would make it.

Being able to see people fail was part of the novelty of Mad King. Especially when they failed at the last jump. No to instancing.

There was a rock right at the start that bugged out your camera if you jumped near it. That rock was responsible for most of the deaths in the Clocktower. Since death o bugged camera is not fun, I hope it was fixed.

Mad King’s Clocktower was super easy on the “wait time”. It either paced with the completion of the whole thing, or completely reset when everyone on the map failed.

This is fully paced:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMxV_RaThlk

That’s only 3 minutes wait time max. That’s not bad -it’s 20 attempts in an hour, which is a lot more than I can say for Tequatl.

As for instancing it, I’d say “Please, no.” The whole point of an MMORPG is to be a social experience. This is especially the case when it comes to holiday events in-game. Clocktower, much like Winter Wonderland, is more than just a jumping puzzle; it’s a race too. It’s a chance to play with your fellow gamers while also setting a personal goal too.

I imagine they will take the SAB route (if they address this at all) and make everyone marginally the same size.

While I’m not a HUGE fan of JPs, turning this into a solo instance would be a lot like turning Sanctum Sprint into a solo instance … in many ways, it would destroy the point. And while I’m sure there are some folks that wouldn’t mind running Sanctum Sprint alone (conceivably, other players could be replaced with NPCs/trash mobs, and “winners” could be determined by total time taken to run it), I personally don’t think it would have been as enjoyable an experience.

But, by the same token, unless char sizing, and the likely lag-fest that will ensue, are addressed, I could see how some return participants, as well as new ones, will be a little dissatisfied with it.

If they make the clock tower a single player instance, I’ll punch a baby seal. I swear by the six, ill punch that baby seal right in the face. Is that wat you want? Do you hate baby seals?

Lokki.1092:

Onshidesigns.1069:

A private instance would ruin what makes the tower so much fun.

I cant agree with this. Even when I got the puzzle down to almost guaranteed success, my fail percentage when up tremendously whenever I couldn’t see myself for a major portion of the race. It got so bad people were actually griefing the puzzle making the largest characters they could and using items that made it incredibly hard to see the next jump. Your ability to win shouldn’t at all depend on horrible camera mechanics including the inability to see yourself because of others.

Scale everyone to the same size IMHO and no useable items or abilities. Or Let me run it alone.

I cant believe I still have this screen shot… It wasn’t fun is was just annoying.

With pets and potions, Anet learned their lesson and applied it to the Wintersday jumping puzzle.

Anet may have disabled pets and portion of this years version.

As many others I do not want it instanced. Big fun came from the other players.
But it would help if everyone gets transformed so chars have the same height and will not block each other too much.

i tried for 8 hours, failing. then I RAGEQUITTED the game for 2 months

There was a NPC within the clock tower that would put you into another instance. I would do this to get back to back runs with minimal waits, maybe 30s at most.

The tower probably was updated. The original version was their first attempt at this kind of thing after all. Maybe they normalized everyone’s character size or went with multiple starting points, making the start a spiral up the tower. I think they were against simply transforming people into a standardized model.

The clocktower should stay the same, it was fine. The clocktower wasn’t only a JP, it was a race.

As for being able to see where you can jump, nah. I mean yeah the clocktower had that problem, but it was part of the charm. and now if you do a JP, you can tell the difference between watching a person who has done the clocktower and who hasn’t. It made you better at the game. If anything they should increase the difficulty, but i’d be happy with it how it was. Maybe a hard mode for it…

am I the only one who was made physically sick by the swirling waters? that’s all I want changed

I would like more than one path, like in dungeons.

Leave the clock tower as it is, best jumping puzzle in the game as of yet. Maybe make other characters semi-transparent though, especially norns lol.

Though it was kinda short, and the rewards were not even worth it. A soulbound exotic that couldn’t be salvaged or thrown in the forge, yay

I’m not pleading for a super long jumping puzzle, but maybe as the person above me suggest: more than one path.

Max size charr character.

Did it in less than half an hour.

Never saw a complaint my character was taking up to much space.

I think people use that as a poor excuse to justify their failing the puzzle. After 3 or 4 jumps most people die and it’s clear sailing the rest of the way. Learn the first 1/4 of the tower and it’s pretty easy from then on.

You shouldn’t actually need to see the jumps to make it. Besides that if you stop to look for the next jump you were going to slow anyways.

I’m not trying to rag on people who had a hard time with the puzzle but the difficulty of it was it’s charm.

I would agree with less of a waiting time after a failure though. Waiting is the worst part.

P.S. I would love to do it as a clockwork knight, but ya know…that kitten thing only lasts 5 minutes. Food for thought Anet!

They need to make sure that they remove the Elementalist passive speed buff trait whilst inside the Clocktower.

Or allow everyone to retain their speed buffs inside. Either one is fine by me.

Got a lot of abuse from people accusing me of cheating on my Elementalist last year.

A Massive Headache.1879:

am I the only one who was made physically sick by the swirling waters? that’s all I want changed

You don’t know the half of it. If you jumped outside of the boundaries, there were lots of things constantly spinning around in the background, it was actually kind of disorienting and I lost where I came from at times if I didn’t look at the map to see where I was and what direction I was pointing.

Lodovicus.1562:

They need to make sure that they remove the Elementalist passive speed buff trait whilst inside the Clocktower.

Or allow everyone to retain their speed buffs inside. Either one is fine by me.

Got a lot of abuse from people accusing me of cheating on my Elementalist last year.

Well the clocktower was time based (hehe), the water always came up at the same speed even if someone was ahead, so a speed buff wouldn’t affect it.

Clocktower shouldn’t have any changes despite having different difficulties maybe.
I’d like to see it harder but i don’t think everyone will agree on that :p
What i did like is see people falling while i farmed the reward over and over.
So private instance would ruin the fun.

Mad Kings Clocktower remains the hardest thing I’ve ever done in this game and i hope they have made zero changes to it apart from fixing the bug that sometimes caused failure when jumping into the very top.

The only thing I would change is the pathetic useless reward at the top, an exotic pair of I think condition boots that couldn’t even be salvaged or traded. Epic…

ANet sure knows how to reward its players.

I know exactly why I failed it despite hours of effort: I turn by moving my mouse on the pad. Constant turning to the right = running out of pad. Time tolerances are too tight in the Tower to let me lift my mouse back to the left as I can in any other part of game play.

That’s on me, I’ve never mastered WASD (and on an aside, it perplexes me that the same people touting WASD laugh at keyboard turners, at least in other games). I doubt I ever will. The Tower certainly made me exponentially better at all other puzzles, though! Nowadays I use my mesmer to help JP impaired people get JP achieves on a regular basis and it feels soooo nice to have the skill to help.

So for me -personally- a revamp that has the path twist right and left would be better than a racing spiral in one direction but then it wouldn’t be the Tower any more.

I hope they make the clocktower a little bit harder this time!!

AFAIK, your character does not move position on your screen. The same spot he’s standing on your screen is the same spot on the screen he’ll be standing after you make a jump.

A lot of people who know this have zero issues making jumps when it’s crowded.

Lokki.1092:

Onshidesigns.1069:

A private instance would ruin what makes the tower so much fun.

I cant agree with this. Even when I got the puzzle down to almost guaranteed success, my fail percentage when up tremendously whenever I couldn’t see myself for a major portion of the race. It got so bad people were actually griefing the puzzle making the largest characters they could and using items that made it incredibly hard to see the next jump. Your ability to win shouldn’t at all depend on horrible camera mechanics including the inability to see yourself because of others.

Scale everyone to the same size IMHO and no useable items or abilities. Or Let me run it alone.

I cant believe I still have this screen shot… It wasn’t fun is was just annoying.

lmao…the “You’re all bookahs” comment had me rofl’ing

Ascii.9726:

i hope they have made zero changes to it apart from fixing the bug that sometimes caused failure when jumping into the very top.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPMQ_ilrxd0

This, but for a different reason for me. I didn’t get the chance to try the clock tower last year and have always regretted that I missed this jumping puzzle, which has acclaimed legendary status in the mean time. Please bring it back as it was, or if anything make it a bit harder, NOT easier in any way (including other players)! I’d love to get my chance to experience it as it was last year

How come no-one think of this solution?

Remember back in Christmas JP how did A-net solve the problem with people all crowded together and unable to see their own characters?
They simply just make more starting points and make people start at different locations.

Mad King Tower can use the same method to address the issue.
Makes multiple Mad King tower accessible at the same time.
Makes the timer for entering the JP much shorter, much more frequently, I’d say, about 20 secs per JP, so there’re actually 6 Mad King Tower hosting at the same loop period.

Lokki.1092:

Onshidesigns.1069:

A private instance would ruin what makes the tower so much fun.

I cant agree with this. Even when I got the puzzle down to almost guaranteed success, my fail percentage when up tremendously whenever I couldn’t see myself for a major portion of the race. It got so bad people were actually griefing the puzzle making the largest characters they could and using items that made it incredibly hard to see the next jump. Your ability to win shouldn’t at all depend on horrible camera mechanics including the inability to see yourself because of others.

You’re doing it wrong, Luke.

I had a few hours of trials and errors while doing this crazy jumping puzzle. I still made it even thou the adrenaline had its peaks now and then and some confusion at one point.

It isn’t that kittence you get the hang of it!

I liked the original clock tower. It was very hard to start, true. But the fun part for me was, that you actualy had to jump blindly and you had to rely only on your memory to know where to jump.

On the other hand, It can be a pain in the kitten . I suggest Anet starts doing 2 types of puzzles. One witch is mechanicly hard and the other witch is mentally hard (riddles etc).

Here’s hoping they change the rewards at the top indeed – would be nice to see some changes to the actual JP as well; although I loved it as it was.

Introduction of ascended armor at the top for example could be nice, ascended boots for completion?

I am wondering if the majority of the player-base will find the Mad King’s Clocktower as difficult as they did this same time last year?

In the heady days of the game’s launch, myself and I imagine many others were spending those first weeks before halloween levelling characters and enjoying all of the other content in the game whilst it was still fresh. With the exception of the harder to reach vistas, I hadn’t really experienced many jumping puzzles. I certainly hadn’t worked my way through each of the jumping puzzles in the game for the achievements, so the Mad King’s Clocktower was my first real experience of a jumping puzzle.

With all the other hellish jumping puzzles that have been trampled on and released since then, surely we’re all going to be dab hands at the Clocktower now?