Guild Wars 2

Clark Skinner.4902:

PopeUrban.2578:

The game as a whole is designed around the principal that you can get equivalent rewards for playing the parts of the game you like—

I’mma stop you right there.
The champ me and several others waypointed to to kill today, taking 10 minutes of our time rewarded a blue glove for me. Worth 59c. I can make more than that gathering in 10 minutes. Work and reward are not correlated in GW2.

They are. You had the same roll to get the same quality of loot finishing a dungeon or killing a larger number of easier monsters, one of which is more difficult and time consuming, one of which is simply more time consuming. The rewards, however, and equivalent. If you don’t like killing Champions you don’t have to do it to get the things champions drop. That’s an equivalent reward. That champion also had a higher base chance to drop high-value items gained from world PvE like exotics or precursors. You can’t make that 2+ gold in ten minutes of gathering. The difference is that gathering is a reliable baseline, and mob loot is a gamble.

The drop from a random table based on a simple size of one kill is not an accurate measure of the entire time/reward scale of that champion, however I will agree that for the most part champion and vet drop tables are a bit lackluster and should be buffed (again) to reflect their difficulty.

The Wintersday Jp is quite easy. The halloween one was a great challenge but, since I always played and liked platform games, I really love this jumping game portions.

Silver.9578:

There you have it. WW is still too hard for a lot of players and frustratingly easy for those who loved the Clocktower.

Which is probably where it ought to be. I can’t do either the Clocktower (along with the other 97%) nor the Wintersday (along with I’ll guess the other 50%). I am ok with that. I do usually get all the other jumping puzzles done as they are not timed. I don’t mind they are hard for many of us as they have extra rewards. I do sort of wish there was an untimed version without rewards, just so I could see the whole thing.

I think the problem is that some people have problems with timed jump puzzles (especially when there are a bunch of people jumping at the same time). The puzzle is really only difficult until the two candy canes. By that time the snowflake jumps become much more linear (less moving the camera/eating time). There are only a couple traps after that which are easily learned (e.g. avoiding the frost traps and the snowballs). Just my opinion (the three times I made it to the gift boxes I first ran the wrong direction for the snowballs because I didn’t see the ramp turned up, the second time I didn’t have the gift box pattern down and the third time I made it to the end and stopped doing the puzzle…something like 99% of my attempts I fell before the two candy canes due to the camera or mistiming my jump).

Edit: As far as the halloween puzzle it had a similar problem with front loading the difficult part even though the puzzle had a much less forgiving timer.

I don’t imagine the puzzles will change much in the future. The biggest trouble I see with them (besides being timed), is that other toons block vision upping the difficulty, and anyone with slow camera turn speed or that keyboard turns will be horrified by them (assumption, I know). Fortunately, the JP’s are one of my strong points. Took me about 3 hours to get Halloween done (mostly bad timing, my keyboard is sticking, and large toons blocking my poor little asuras). Christmas took about 30 minutes, as the quaggan path sucked and I kept getting it.

Depends on the person, I guess. I found this JP EXTREMELY easy. Farmed it maybe 250-300 times during this event.

In over an hour of trying I never made it up the outdoor Halloween jump puzzle around the cauldron in the center of LA, so I haven’t even bothered to try the Wintersday one with my limited play time.

I tried this puzzle for hours, every day. I have yet to make it past the presents. I do not like the timer at all, not only is it the reason I keep failing, I also do not like to rush things like that at all.

It’s so weird hearing what people have problems with. The timers never got me. I thought they gave you plenty of time. What got me is just falling off/not jumping to where I should jump. I tend to fling my camera around a lot when jumping.

Considering how easy it is, Id say 80-85% of people who tried finished it.

jumping got introduced in this game in the most annoying way. one more example of anet over thinking things.

TBH people who fail JPs this easy only have 2 excuses.
1) bad comp so bad fps.. i can understand this.
2) they just are not good at JPs/platforming, .this i can also understand.

What i hate the most though is when some of these people then going on to say that “JP’s should then be easier” >.<
Games r not meant to change to suite u .. u are meant to practice and get better to suit THEM !
Seriosly gamers these days, i hate what the EZMode games of the past decade have done to people ..i rly do.

I use keyboard for movement , impossible for JPs like this one, you need to use mouse for turning !

There isn’t really anything wrong with the level of difficulty (except for being disappointing for vets of the clocktower), it’s more how the difficulty is implemented. The snowflakes at the start are the hardest part of the puzzle and the disappearing platforms make it necessary to wait for the puzzle to reset before it can be attempted again despite having a perfectly valid time limit in the dot it puts on you.

The way I think special event JPs could be improved would be to have a casual mode that allows people to experience the content and practice it in a low stress environment, then the puzzle itself with all the difficulty raising mechanics and the standard reward, and finally a hardcore mode that brings things up to clocktower difficulty with an increased reward.

I don’t think anyone would have any reason to object to that layout.

I enter a rage induced state every time I see any timer in this game before I can try it again. I have spent far longer on harder jumping puzzles in this game (and other games) and I’ve completed them because they didn’t require me to sit around for absolutely no reason.

Every time the game makes me see this timer (hint: Halloween and Wintersday jumping puzzles) all I can see is a sand glass saying “you can’t have fun or do anything until this runs out,” and few things make me angrier. So I do maybe five minutes before I can’t stand it any more and I’ve reached a point where I hate the developers, the puzzles and the experience in general.

I can stand in a take away line behind an indecisive person during when I’m in a rush, I can cheerfully shop on Christmas Eve and spend 20 minutes in line at a check out, I can sit for two hours at a doctor’s office waiting for my appointment which was one and a half hours ago and not one of those things will annoy me anywhere remotely as these jumping puzzle timers. Why? Because no-one designed those things to happen that way, someone at ArenaNet designed this experience to be this way. They made a bad design decision to have a timer which forces you to share with other people, which can’t be run multiple times without waiting, which has a core design feature which means you have to wait out the entire sequence of the puzzle events before it can be started again. Several other puzzles in the game have timed sequences similair to this, the gusts of wind, disappearing platforms etc. For some reason these holiday jumping puzzles have to be the most horribly designed ones in the game which suck away your time and have you constantly waiting and waiting to have fun. I don’t play games to wait, when you have control over the game environment making me wait longer than I play (if you miss the first jump, you wait about 50 times longer than you played) and you don’t design it to remove such a horrible experience, I can’t bear to play it.

I’d rather 100% of the resources spent on this JP be put into fixing bugged events like the Maw or the hidden hylek dungeon in Caledon Forest.

Reaper.1695:

I would like to know what percentage of the GW2 population can complete this jump puzzle. …

I would dearly love to know that, too. I finished it … just, with scant hours before the event ends (I think?), after easily upwards of 50 or 60 tries, with just a sliver of health left, limping across the finish line after a skritt ice-blasted me halfway through the giant snowball ramps. This was not my idea of fun. This was my idea of “Tixx is trying to reduce the amount of materiel that gets diverted from the war effort to toys by showing people that toys are insanely, relentlessly deadly, by demonstrating to people that toys are, secretly, from an endless-Purgatory mist fractal.” But I gave it a dozen or twenty last-minute tries because I was at 11 of 12 achievements and I seriously wasn’t improving, even a tiny bit, on the stupid bells.

If we start a betting pool, I’ll bet that of the people who attempted it at least once, no more than half ever completed it. I’ll be somewhat surprised if it’s more than that. I won’t be at all surprised if it’s way, way less.

The entire event was a pile of marketing pooh and I’m glad it is over.

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

I am unable to even complete most vista’s where much jumping is required
I really dislike jumping.

I hear you. I still hate it and I still feel that anything more than jumping up some rocks belongs in Mario, not Guild wars, although I’m getting better at the jumping, and even completed a couple jumping puzzles a few times.

Not to make anyone feel bad, but the other day I let my brother (who’s never touched an MMO before) try the holiday JP. He completed it in ~40 mins and was able to complete the JP daily after that. He’s clearly better at platforming than I am, but I feel that GW2 has made me a better platformer in the few months I’ve played it. I wasn’t good enough to complete Mad King’s Clocktower, but I look forward to smashing that puzzle next year.

I would say that if you find JPs too difficult now, just give it time and practice on the other JPs in the game. You will get better through practice.

To all the people who say “It’s easy—you just aren’t trying hard enough”: while any skill can be improved by practice there is also an upper bound which each person has based on their own limitations—reflexes, hand-eye coordination, translation of a computer screen into a 3D visualization that they react to, etc. Those limitations both enforce an upper bound on what that individual can accomplish, and impact the amount of practice required to get a skill level to a given point. If it’s easy for you—great, but that doesn’t mean telling people they just need to try harder is helpful. It’s easy for some people to dunk a basketball, but no matter how hard I try and no matter how much practicing I do, I just won’t be able to do it. I also, regrettably, was born without the “twitch” gene and that makes many of these jumping puzzles simply unattainable for me. At some point, continuing to “try harder” becomes frustrating, not fun.
To the OP and others saying “Because I can’t do this jumping puzzle this game is unfair to me”: Many people (like you and me) can’t do everything in this game. If something is just frustrating to you, and any satisfaction you get out of what you do accomplish in that area doesn’t outweigh that frustration, why let that sour you on the entire game? There’s lots to do in GW2. Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with other parts of the game. Find what’s fun for you. But please don’t let the fact that you don’t enjoy a particular aspect of the game become a crusade to prevent the people who do enjoy it from having their fun.

Too easy? I wish they made it harder, this one was so easy compared to the CT one and the rest of them in game are somewhat just as easy, but i suppose it’s an MMO and not a platform game so they can’t make them too hard or else only afew people would complete them. As for the guessed 1-2% who have completed this i really hope not as not only did i complete it on my second try, the two people I did it with also completed it on their second try. We failed the first time as when we got to the end we didn’t know we had to jump down from the presents

This one is hardly even timed. You can stand on each snowflake for a second or two while you line up the jump and still manage to get to the end, it isn’t as much as a race as the cloak tower was where if you stand still for more then afew seconds that’s it game over.

Keep practicing and you’ll learn how to do it. It isn’t a physical ability to click space and move your camera around, most jumping puzzles have no time limit and therefore you can spend 5-10 mins making sure that the jump you’re about to do can’t fail and miss if that’s what it takes to complete it.

EliteZ.1682:

Too easy? I wish they made it harder, this one was so easy compared to the CT one and the rest of them in game are somewhat just as easy, but i suppose it’s an MMO and not a platform game so they can’t make them too hard or else only afew people would complete them. As for the guessed 1-2% who have completed this i really hope not as not only did i complete it on my second try, the two people I did it with also completed it on their second try. We failed the first time as when we got to the end we didn’t know we had to jump down from the presents

This one is hardly even timed. You can stand on each snowflake for a second or two while you line up the jump and still manage to get to the end, it isn’t as much as a race as the cloak tower was where if you stand still for more then afew seconds that’s it game over.

Keep practicing and you’ll learn how to do it. It isn’t a physical ability to click space and move your camera around, most jumping puzzles have no time limit and therefore you can spend 5-10 mins making sure that the jump you’re about to do can’t fail and miss if that’s what it takes to complete it.

I wish people who find it easy would stop giving explanations like “It’s easy, you’ve just gotta jump on all the things and line it up right and then you’re done! Simple!”

It’s obnoxious and unhelpful. This post isn’t as bad as others, but still. If it’s hard for some people, it’s hard for some people.

I just did it, most of the time I fell off pretty much at the beginning where you have the disappearing snowflakes and have to pass two red bars, I just fell between them :p
I guess it’s relatively easy though, I’m really not good at such things and it took me 20 tries maybe. One time I actually yelled at my screen as I died the moment I jumped into the exit If you can’t make it through, you might want to increase mouse sensitivity / camera rotation speed and turn off some detail for increased FPS. I really liked this JP as it was a slight challenge but really not too hard at all. Also you can skip some platforms to gain some time. You can actually just jump through and don’t need any special timing. They really shouldn’t make such things easier, please don’t remove anything from the game that’s even remotely a challenge. The only thing that may be reconsidered is where you have to jump up the stairway of dissolving packets, the randomness seemed a bit unfair if you were unlucky. Not too much of a problem though.

PS: one thing you could do is not to make random paths but let the player choose which one to do and if he does a harder path, give him a better reward. Everybody could complete the JP that way.

I would guess that 60-70% of the people who’ve tried it have been able to complete it. Like many others said, the Mad King’s Clock Tower makes the Winter Wonderland look like a cakewalk.

Based on the ‘its really easy’ and ‘its really hard’ responses, it seems like making different difficult versions would make sense. They could do it like the fractals – choose your difficulty going in, and the higher difficulty gets better stuff. Perhaps have a special achievement if people achieve the really difficult version.

For this particular puzzle, just adjusting the timing would be all that is needed. If really easy gave people 5 seconds longer, that might be enough even for keyboard turners or those not particular skilled. And if it was 5 seconds shorter, I suspect that would pose a pretty good challenge for even the best players. Each level could basically chop 1 second off the time allowed – at some point, there will be a best possible time.

Problem with the timing isnt so much the HP its the snow flakes going poof. People with lower end computers cant load up the level in time b4 the snowflakes 1st appear then the timer for them starts ..some people have posted stating when they load up the snowflakes are already there and few even said the 1st snowflake is already gone mkaing the JP pritty much impossible.

2 things come to mind here for me:
1) what kind of slow a*s computer could they possibly be trying to play GW2 on if it takes that long to load.
2) changing the timings to determin difficulty would not work for these people.

I think it should be like this:

The 3 starting points in the winter JP should be changed to easy,medium,hard..within the same zone though like it is now.

Easy: should have the HP timer like the rest but the snowflakes never disapear, and there should be some kind of pedistal that gives a HP regen buff to counter the HP Dot. The reward is at the end like it is now.(good for keyboard turners, and the unskilled, and those with slow computers)

Standard: As it is now bassicaly but with an extra small rewards chest half way through bit like the clocktower.. (good for the average joe blogs)

Hard: should have the same HP dot but the snowflakes disapear MUCH faster.And there are 2 small rewards placed throught the JP. (good for those who enjoyed the CT)

All 3 end in the same place with the same reward. but doing it on Standard and Hard ‘can’ give u extra rewards if u are fast enough to get to the chest and open them.

Its bassicaly taking the CT and Wintersday JP and mashing them together somewhat.

This would be relativly easy to mod the current JP

Future JP’s just need to take the template.

And tbh i dont see any reason why any1 could complain about that layout. Though its inevitable som1 wil lfind somthing :P

Finally made it to the very end of the JP today and made my last jump into the glowing box at the finish line. Guess what? It booted me back to the lobby and I didn’t get my reward.

I wasted two hours today trying to beat it only to be robbed of my reward and achievement. I’m pretty sure I didn’t die from frostbite because I had about a 1000 HP leftover, and I sure as heck did not miss the jump. Countless retries after that the first snowflake always disappeared so I quit.

This caused more headaches than the Clock Tower.

ophidic.1279:

EliteZ.1682:

Too easy? I wish they made it harder, this one was so easy compared to the CT one and the rest of them in game are somewhat just as easy, but i suppose it’s an MMO and not a platform game so they can’t make them too hard or else only afew people would complete them. As for the guessed 1-2% who have completed this i really hope not as not only did i complete it on my second try, the two people I did it with also completed it on their second try. We failed the first time as when we got to the end we didn’t know we had to jump down from the presents

This one is hardly even timed. You can stand on each snowflake for a second or two while you line up the jump and still manage to get to the end, it isn’t as much as a race as the cloak tower was where if you stand still for more then afew seconds that’s it game over.

Keep practicing and you’ll learn how to do it. It isn’t a physical ability to click space and move your camera around, most jumping puzzles have no time limit and therefore you can spend 5-10 mins making sure that the jump you’re about to do can’t fail and miss if that’s what it takes to complete it.

I wish people who find it easy would stop giving explanations like “It’s easy, you’ve just gotta jump on all the things and line it up right and then you’re done! Simple!”

It’s obnoxious and unhelpful. This post isn’t as bad as others, but still. If it’s hard for some people, it’s hard for some people.

Not being funny but what do you want us to say? “Oh i’m so sorry that it’s too hard for the minority of the players so instead i’m just going to be slient and hope anet don’t read the moaning and make them stupidly easy.” You find it hard so you say your opinion, i want them to be if anything harder, so i’ll say mine. That way anet don’t only read bad feedback and nerf them to the point where anyone can do them without any challenge at all.

Furthermore, if you’re not good at them what else do you expect to get when you write about a jumping puzzle being to hard other then people say keep trying and you’ll get the hang of it. Do you think we just woke up with a natural ability to do jumping puzzles easily? No we had to start from scratch too. I’ve never been great at that sort of things and yes it took me afew hours to do the cloak tower the first time, but after i did manage to do it, i then did it on all 4 of my alts first time without any problems. I wish gamers now adays stop expecting everything handed to them on a plate and are made to work abit more.

I hated the music event and wasn’t very good at that, but i didn’t come on the forums and moan about how hard it is, i kept trying untill i got to the point where it became easier and i managed to get my monthly, never went back after that.

i went to check it out and attempt it, once. i got into the waiting area, there was a timer that did not decrease for a minute (maybe i lagged) and there were no snowballs left to occupy the waiting time, so i returned to lion’s arch without trying it.

Based on all my guildies and allied guilds success, I would guess 75% success rate on the Wintersday Jump Puzzle.

Made it on the 5th attempt using a track pad on a laptop utilizing embedded graphics and a tethered phone connection while on vacation in Hawaii. I enjoyed it greatly but wish it was harder. The sprawling landscape was a nice change from the scrunched up mad king tower.

“Anyway, just frustrated how this game only caters to the skilled elite who can dedicate 10-12 hours per day on it, and not the casual player like me (5-6 hours per week).”

This is literally one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever read. This may be a legit complaint in some other field, but not this one. For one, you aren’t drastically set behind in your progress on the game just because you can’t do the Wintersday Jump Puzzle. It doesn’t give some extra-super special reward that enhances your gameplay in any way. I’m a casual player like you and I didn’t find this to be too challenging. Just because you and a number of other players found this too difficult doesn’t mean everyone else did. Seriously, the “catering to elite players” excuse is getting so annoying, and it’s clearly used by people who want to blame their own failure in skill on the development on the game whether they know it or not.

I think splitting it into 3 short but unique jump puzzles would be great. Completing the first, easiest, one would provide a small reward and unlock the next puzzle. Completing the second puzzle would provide a slightly greater reward and unlock the final puzzle. The final puzzle would be the toughest and provide the greatest reward. This would help a lot with wait times and player satisfaction.

Was actually my 1st JP when I hit 80 with my 1st char and it took me a few tries +-10 but did it within a hour :O

ElixireL.5190:

The entire event was a pile of marketing pooh and I’m glad it is over.

Welcome to Christmas!

The Wonderland took me 5 tries to complete, so about 15 – 20 mins. I then farmed it once every day for the extra karma item. For comparison, the Clocktower took me 2.5 hours of trying before I finally beat it.

The Wonderland is definately a lot easier, and I think it strikes the right balance between difficulty and accessibility for the majority of players. Based on my guild’s experiences, I believe 90% of us managed to complete it, and the last 10% basically don’t like/enjoy JP’s so I think they ignored it altogether.

ElixireL.5190:

The entire event was a pile of marketing pooh and I’m glad it is over.

i agree, i got tired of it real fast

Took me 3 attempts my first time, and everywhere from 1-5 attempts every other day to complete (maybe 7 on a bad day). Completed it a lot over Wintersday (though not as much as I would have liked to, due to family time over the holiday). I think it is a wonderfully fun jump puzzle, and I am so happy that we keep seeing more added to the game (even if only for events).

Although I am one of those who loved the Clock Tower (2hrs first completion), and I simply love Jump Puzzles in general. I have given moral support on many friends who get frustrated with the jump puzzles and many who consider them “impossible” were also able to complete this one (albeit after several hours of focus and determination). I think the more determined you are and the more patience you have with learning the mechanics of jumping the better you will develop this skill.

I wasn’t that great when I started, but I enjoyed doing them, so I’ve been determined to work on them. Now, I find I can do all of them that I find with ease (or a fond challenge at toughest!).

Rosen Myst.7641:

I finally managed to complete the jump puzzle. I’m a 64 year-old lady

Whoa, we have a real life Grande Dame here among us! Nice to have you

I think we had at a conservative estimate about 10% of our guild who completed this.

If people would step away from their personal experiences for a moment and look at the spread of responses here, I think we’d see a pattern and possibly a solution. First off, we don’t all find the same things easy, while one person may have found the Wintersday puzzle trivial, another will find it overwhelmingly difficult … criticising anyone in either camp just makes you into that guy please don’t do it. Instead why don’t we look together at how to resolve the situation so that the largest number of people can leave the event glowing with seasonal good cheer?

Frankly the most obvious solution is to have more than one level of difficulty (three seems to be the favoured number) with the easiest level having (to take Wintersday as an example) no time limit, no damage (essentially the same thing) and Rare rewards in the chest; while the hardest has a really stiff time limit but Ascended rewards.

If there is only one level of difficulty to the jumping puzzles then a significant proportion of the player base will find them either too hard or too easy, the number of people in the Jumping “Goldilocks zone” is likely to be too small to make it worth while. With multiple levels, that Goldilocks zone gets much larger and the number of people at either end (too easy, too hard) can be reduced to a tiny fraction of the player base.

Did it. Here’s proof. Its not hard if you can go quickly enough. I know that’s a toughie.

Enjoy!

I wasn’t able to get this one. I only tried it about a dozen times before I gave up, I think the time limit on it is just too frustrating. I normally love jumping puzzles in this game but so far I haven’t enjoyed either of the holiday ones.

EliteZ.1682:

Not being funny but what do you want us to say? “Oh i’m so sorry that it’s too hard for the minority of the players so instead i’m just going to be slient and hope anet don’t read the moaning and make them stupidly easy.” You find it hard so you say your opinion, i want them to be if anything harder, so i’ll say mine. That way anet don’t only read bad feedback and nerf them to the point where anyone can do them without any challenge at all.

Furthermore, if you’re not good at them what else do you expect to get when you write about a jumping puzzle being to hard other then people say keep trying and you’ll get the hang of it. Do you think we just woke up with a natural ability to do jumping puzzles easily? No we had to start from scratch too. I’ve never been great at that sort of things and yes it took me afew hours to do the cloak tower the first time, but after i did manage to do it, i then did it on all 4 of my alts first time without any problems. I wish gamers now adays stop expecting everything handed to them on a plate and are made to work abit more.

I hated the music event and wasn’t very good at that, but i didn’t come on the forums and moan about how hard it is, i kept trying untill i got to the point where it became easier and i managed to get my monthly, never went back after that.

Oh I guess only good opinions are allowed.

You know what? Some people have REAL lives and can’t waste hours perfecting these stupid hoop jumping diversions. I can see from halloween the loot was VERY VERY REAL however seeing as how there’s stuff from that’s better than anything i’ve earned yet. The book back piece I got was free, and it’s currently sitting with better stats than the guild backpack that costs THREE GOLD. Did someone not think about this? I mean that’s some pretty poor planning, especially when you can count the amount of back pieces on one hand practically.

You people keep talking about wanting a challenge? Why not go do something thats actually supposed to be challenging like pvp or dungeons? Holiday events USED TO BE and SHOULD be easy and should be completed within a few minutes..