but that inevitably brings up the question: Why kitten does everything have to be rewarding to be worth playing instead of simply playing for fun. Seriously, this mentality makes game business a tough one.
But i guess i´m the only one who played the SAB simply and exclusively for lolz and personal kitten (´cause Tribulation mode was, well, kinda tribulating, thus challenging)
1+2)
The rewards in the first iteration were the same. Bauble aquisition was as easy as in the first iteration, you just had to do a fullrun, and you could do it just once a day instead of farming a section of a level over and over again. THATS what was broken in the first place, the “i-must-farm-dis-thing”-mentality. In second iteration the rewards were perfectly balanced and apropriate. If anything, the firts time it was way too much you could acquire with way too less effort, again drawing too much “i-must-farm-dis-thing” into the SAB. Even though i was quite disappointed about the removal of obsidian shards, too, its not that much of a no-no here as there are enough other ways to easily acquire them, albeit not as easy as it was using baublebubbles.
3.)
W1 was too short and too easy, W2 with its length and difficulty was perfectly fine, although W2-2 was indeed drawn out too long. Since the whole thing got nerfed by making all inbox-rewards accountbound, why the hell would you even want to complete it within 15 minutes? granted, the problem of disconnects should really be addressed here and that can be easily done by saving the waypoint progress until you reset the instance by changing characters. But aside from that, W2 was what W1 could have been if it wasnt just meant as an April Fool´s joke.
4.)
Thats also good as well. Difficulty should increase, thats the case in any video game. For those who want it supereasy, there´s Infantile Mode. but normal should be challenging at the very least, with Tribulation mode being for those hardcore masochists. Once again too many players went into SAB with “i-must-farm-dis-thing” instead of “let´s-play-dis-for-fun”.
I had tons of fun solo. I had tons of fun in groups (guild groups here, but still – i didnt join any foreign group when W1 was released either.) Especially in groups the SAB shined. There´s tons of deaths, fun, and malicious joy when a wild rabbit appeared after digging and kicked a mate down into the endless abyss below, or when you got random-owled midflight in W2-2. Hilarious all over again.
So i do hope if Josh and his team decide to release W3 that its difficulty is at least on the same level as W2. And i do hope people stop going in there and feeling entitled for having the biggest reward for lowest skill. No “i-must-farm-dis-thing” anymorte please, as that ruins great content such as the SAB.
