Guild Wars 2

Alex Gabriel.3074:

I would like to say a huge thank you to Josh

Seconded. Especially for actually caring for the players, it is really nice to see some presence on the forums!

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to read all 25 pages of this. Some people are complaining about difficulty, the same people who complained last patch and the patch before that all the way to Halloween. Having difficult, even tortuous content is just fine, you’ll never please everyone.

The valid points are the ones talking about bugs and finicky mechanics. I’m glad things like the rapids and water spouts were fixed – but the bugged checkpoint in 2-2 TM that kills you 2-3 times per respawn and the following cloud checkpoint doesn’t work…yeah that’s enough to give me an ulcer.

At the end of the day, it’s a really ambitious project that is really unique. Seeing as it’s a free release, I can forgive the bugs. Good job, keep it up.

So I was today again in W2Z2 after the mini patch in hope, that I’ll get now the achievement for collecting all spheres in that area…

I even double checked again the guide from dulfy and really found one mistake I did cause of 1 single sphere which I misinterpretated yestersay as monster drop from a kll and that was the reason why I didn’t collected it..

Now I did that single sphere today.. torture mysel again through the huge map full of assasins, skipped as many as possible using infantile mode to speed up things a bit, collected again all chests, went into all hidden rooms that contain spheres, like the last one with the 50 in where you need to play on the flute.. traveld all the way again back to the stupid eagle, beated the boss.. and guess what..

I didn’t got the dumb achievement again >.< WTF was my first reaction…
This can’t be serious. I saw today multipßle people running around with the magna kitten laude title.. so this must have been doable once…
I followed today an other guide, which was very identical to that of dulfy, both do it in infantile mode…

Can it be that some of the latest bug fixes maybe bugged that achievement that you can’t get it more in infantile mode ? In the SAB forum I’ve also seen someone having made a thread about the problem, (posted also in yesterday)
So I seem to be not the only one at last who can#t get currently the achievement as also many people are talking actually about that they are waiting for a fix on that master of spheres title for collecting all spheres in W2Z3, which many people say is also bugged right now and that nobody would have this achievement currently due to that…

However, I also noticed today some changes in the pagoda (of personal hell)
Lesser dart traps. I accidentaly went im my run today in the line of that trap where normally that shortcut stone is that you need normally to push in front of the trap to pass by safely. It didn’t shot me . First i was at shock cause i saw the death coming, then I was very surprised when nothing happened and I was ohly like

No no noo noo NOOOO, oh ..strange ^^, went by aside the block and collected the sphere behind it and went then further as if nothng happened before …

I’ll give this place one last chance, if needed with pictures to show the collected ones , if I then don’t get the achievement again, we have one clear proof that the achievment is bugged

As proof, here for once the guide i’m talking about, that clearly shows at the end, that you get the achievement in infantile with 42 spheres after breaking the cage up!!
http://dulfy.net/2013/09/07/gw2-bachelor-of-baubles-world-2-achievement-guide/

As said, yesteday i followed that one, made 1 mistake, did it today again without the mistake and didn’t got the achievement. If you don’t go for the assassins to kill all, theres not much to do to collect all 42. The most tedious part is only to run back for the eagle at the end and to run up 3 times one of the pagodas to make 3 things , last chest and 2 jumps where 1 jump is a bit harder and where dodge jump is basically required or luck.

I’ll report, once i’m done with my 3rd try and if it will be successful… maybe are all good thigns for me 3…. wish me luck

So, I’m not sure if Josh is still reading this thread, but that patch a week ago really fixed up most of the issues I had with World 2. The rapids are a lot more friendly. I’m earning baubles for defeating tough monsters and feeling rewarded for it. Some of the jumping is a lot more friendly. And now I can much more appreciate just how much hidden stuff there was in World 2.

Frogs and Bananas are still pretty aggravating, but at least they aren’t just outright killing me now. There’s still some jumps which I would say are too hard. The dart traps are pretty annoying and difficult to see, but the gong puzzle isn’t nearly as frustrating now. So, while I think there are still improvements that could be made in the future, all in all, it’s an awesome update to SAB.

I’m a bit sad that the communication dropped off from Josh after the patch, so hopefully he’s at least still reading some of the positive feedback here. I have to say the besides that initial post, the rest of the posts really highlighted some great communication with players to isolate the issues and difficulty spikes. Without that, I don’t think we would have gotten the fixes we needed.

So, thanks to Josh and the rest of the Arenanet team.

I just want to thank ANet for fixing that last checkpoint cloud in W2-2.

/s

Now if you’ll excuse me, i’ll go and patent all the new swear words i made up during this hell ride.

-_-

I’ve been having a blast with SAB. In the 4-5 months I’ve been playing GW2, this is the most fun I’ve had. Love the music & the atmosphere. Had visions of Kid Niki, Conquest of the Crystal Palace and Shadow of the Ninja in my head during World 2-2. When I made it to the rapids-gator section of 2-1, “Maigono Maigono Koneko-chan. Anata no ouchi wa doko desu ka” was all I heard. I didn’t jump into SAB right at launch, so I missed several of the problems mentioned in this thread.

Thanks so much Josh & crew for all the hard work in making this possible.

While I can understand why the length of the the zones in World 2 is frustrating, I enjoyed having more content as opposed to less. Additional waypoints may have alleviated some of the burden.

I like the slingshot, it was a godsend for those peanut butter-jelly pests. The chain-sticks are powerful. They make circle strafing very effective. The bomb AoE is generous. Handy for taking out assassins.

The only gripes that I feel are significant are:

-hit box detection for the assassins can be a bit random.
-the “Wings of Justice” jump, which was hosed due to the flower update. Not impossible by any means, but annoying.
-platforms in the way of jump locations, which push you sideways mid-jump, resulting in a cheap death. You can find a couple in 2-2, near the octopus, some in the trees as well.

Did Josh get silenced?

Charak.9761:

Did Josh get silenced?

Reddit has the answer you’re looking for.

3 seems to work miracles, finally got it.

Followed again dulfys guide, made a stop before every single sphere, took a picture just to get sure ive my proffs, if something should fail at the end and did the whole thing in desperation a 3rd time and et voila.. it worked now suddenly

Charak.9761:

Did Josh get silenced?

roque.5162:

Reddit has the answer you’re looking for.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/SAB-is-dying/first#content
The answer is closer than that.

There’s a link to the source a few posts down.

Charak.9761:

Did Josh get silenced?

ANet criticized his commentary with the community on this thread. He speaks about it in his blog as well as his feelings about how World 2 was received. Given the circumstances, and it’s conclusion, I think it’s a safe bet he’ll hedge his responses from now on . . . if he’s ever allowed to speak again on these forums.

On that note, I follow Ayin’s guide on YouTube and got the Secrets and Bauble achievement for World 2, Zone 1. But, to be honest, I doubt I’ll even bother for Zone 2.

Even the video looked frustrating and too long.

in regards to zone 2 of world 2.. i find it to be extremely frustrating. i started it w/ 6 lives and i lost 3 lives right next to the shopkeeper. right before i lost another 2 lives standing in a tree. odd thing is nothing was attacking me. and then i lost my last life due to an assassin knocking me off a ledge… and this was on infantile mode.

To the higher-ups in Anet: let the man speak, his interaction with the players is EXACTLY what your game needs to thrive and build a player community that is as invested in your game as you are.

To the fellow colleagues of Josh; read this thread and see how he communicates with the fans – don’t be afraid to do the same with your own area of responsibility, more of you should take the Community Posting 101 class and tear up those papers and then go talk with Josh Foreman on what he does. That’s how you REALLY communicate; you tell people about your design choices, your concerns, and you listen. Not to the rage and trolling hyperbole, but to the thought through player feedback, those that really care about what you have done but are struggling maybe due to some design decision that didn’t work as well as first intended.

But most of all, Josh, keep posting and stay involved, you are awesome!

Josh you are the man, I always appreciate your honest and straight forward answers.

The Arenanet devs and Community team have it wrong, they are way too strict and never give straight answers.

I finally got to W2 post patch (I’ve been working on W1 achievements. So nice that they brought those back!). Z1 was a lot of fun, and for me at least, not too hard. I loved jumping across logs at the waterfalls, and the bears really cracked me up. I can see myself getting back in that zone to work at finding all the secrets. Z2 definitely suffers from being a bit long. There are lots of fun, challenging jumping parts that I would have enjoyed a lot more if I hadn’t died like 50 times to the assassins as well. Why can’t I figure out how to freaking kill them??? Grr. -_- I imagine they would be easier if I wasn’t playing solo though.

At any rate, I am really enjoying W2 for the most part. Looking forward to tackling Z3 with fresh eyes tonight. I think this is great and fun content, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the whole thing! Thanks Josh and team for all the hard work and creativity.

most of the problems people are complaining about here could be fixed with a slightly more beefy character, maybe an extra heart? or extra life? just for entering world 2? that way we can still have that steep learning curve the mods want but also be punished less for doing what is expected, and fail

Ace.1726:

Josh you are the man, I always appreciate your honest and straight forward answers.

The Arenanet devs and Community team have it wrong, they are way too strict and never give straight answers.

^ This.

As it stands, this is what that forum posting class probably consists of:

1. If it’s a simple to fix issue that is already slated to be fixed sometime in the next 12 months, respond with “This is a known issue that is already being tracked.”

2. If it’s an issue that we are unable to fix, an issue that will not be fixed within the next 12 months, or an issue that becomes moot because the Living Story event will be over before it can be fixed, then do NOT respond.

3. If you respond, even with sympathy, you create a precedent that makes life more difficult for other departments that are following these rules. They receive negative feedback for their lack of response while you are attempting to be helpful. Be a team player and maintain the blanket of silence whenever possible!

The sad thing is Josh’s interaction is exactly what we, as customers, want from ANet. Most of the time, even the pretense of sympathy is sufficient to smooth over issues and concerns. The silent treatment they’re clearly teaching in their forum posting class is only creating negative sentiment. I can only hope that there is sufficient negative sentiment sooner than later so they wake up and realize that something needs to change. Perhaps I’m not really voting with my wallet by continuing to play and buy gems, but almost every time I’ve bought a gem card from Gamestop or Walmart, the clerk has commented, “Oh, how is this game? I’ve heard great things about it,” and I just cannot recommend this game in good faith anymore. Instead, I usually shake my head and sigh, while telling them they’re better off not wasting their money. Josh did a good thing and ANet only reinforced their negative image by effectively silencing him. What a shame.

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Adamantium.3682:

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Hidden?

Player Character.9467:

Adamantium.3682:

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Hidden?

I don’t remember which one it was in, I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt for not finding it themselves…

Player Character.9467:

Adamantium.3682:

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Hidden?

Well, you do have to search for that door in the wall, behind the NPC…

Adamantium.3682:

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Thanks for the info, but my point is, that if play infantile, I probably just want to experience the content, which is already hard enough, because I keep getting knocked off the level on the way to my rainbows, now I’ll have o go to dulfy, to look for the dig spots, where to get the shovel and so on, most of the more casual peeps won’t even bother going to the forums, they’ll just quit and never play SAB again.

I bought the candle because I didn’t know I needed it, before I encountered some trees in world 2, and then the only option intuitive for me was to buy it from the shop, if I was supposed to get it for free why was it selling for 180 baubbles?

Edit : you said “it takes 15 minutes” , even with a guide it took me 3 hours seeking for the dig spots and dying repeatedly and that’s only to get 150 bubbles, because apparently you can’t dig in infantile mode.
After almost throwing my keyboard out the window I’m still 100 bubbles short of buying the torch…

Seveleniumus.5973:

Adamantium.3682:

Seveleniumus.5973:

So I get to last level of world 2 in infantile mode and I find out, that I need 400 baubles to get the torch to progress, too bad I have only 100, as I already spent 180 on the candle and bosses just don’t give you enough, how was I supposed to know that? Do I need a guide to play infantile? O.o So now I have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds

The candle is free. If you paid for it, I’m sorry you didn’t find the hidden shop where you get it for free.

You do not have to GRIND just to see the rest of the worlds. Do the dig spots in 1-1 and 1-2 alone and you’ll have enough to buy the torch. That takes about 15 minutes.

Thanks for the info, but my point is, that if play infantile, I probably just want to experience the content, which is already hard enough, because I keep getting knocked off the level on the way to my rainbows, now I’ll have o go to dulfy, to look for the dig spots, where to get the shovel and so on, most of the more casual peeps won’t even bother going to the forums, they’ll just quit and never play SAB again.

I bought the candle because I didn’t know I needed it, before I encountered some trees in world 2, and then the only option intuitive for me was to buy it from the shop, if I was supposed to get it for free why was it selling for 180 baubbles?

Edit : you said “it takes 15 minutes” , even with a guide it took me 3 hours seeking for the dig spots and dying repeatedly and that’s only to get 150 bubbles, because apparently you can’t dig in infantile mode.
After almost throwing my keyboard out the window I’m still 100 bubbles short of buying the torch…

Yeah you can’t be in infantile mode… I understand your frustration at just wanting to experience the content, but you can’t expect to have done hardly anything in World 1 and still proceed right?

I mean I can’t just create a character and expect to jump straight into dungeons, I have to do a bit of work to get prepared even if I only want to casually experience the content.

Sounds like changes are being worked on, and it’s possibly my specific points are already addressed (skimmed over significant portions of the thread), but I’m saying them anyway

If I could change just one thing about world 2 it would be to quite simply make the darts in normal mode (and infantile) damage instead of instakill. Does this mean people can just facetank the darts for a “shortcut”? Yup. And that’s fine. Same way people can bunnyhop through poison water. They’re sacrificing hearts for not doing it right, that’s all.

Honestly, normal mode shouldn’t have a single instakill other than missing jumps over bottomless pits. Why the heck is the water of the koi ponds instakill in normal mode? That doesn’t even… Some other things to reduce the general “That’s BS!” feel from normal mode would be to make sure all icy edges in normal mode that would drop you to either a bottomless pit or a significantly earlier part of the level have a snow perimeter. On the big icy slope in w2z3, in normal mode either those bears need to go or those ledges need to be big enough to actually fight on.

You might notice that I keep saying “in normal mode”. What about tribulation mode? Change nothing, it’s wonderful just as it is, love it. Fully endorsed.

(for reference on my perspective, I’ve beaten all zones in normal mode, beaten all of world 1 and world 2 zone 1 in tribulation mode, working on the last 2)

EDIT: Having now beaten world 2 zone 2 in tribulation mode and spent a bit of time on world 2 zone 3, I now take back my “don’t change a thing about tribulation mode” comment. Change the (lack of) lighting in 2-3. I’m sure you think it adds atmosphere, but what it does is make me crank my monitor’s contrast to eyeburn-max to be able to remotely see anything before finally having to just give up. Not cool.

Adamantium.3682:

Yeah you can’t be in infantile mode… I understand your frustration at just wanting to experience the content, but you can’t expect to have done hardly anything in World 1 and still proceed right?

I mean I can’t just create a character and expect to jump straight into dungeons, I have to do a bit of work to get prepared even if I only want to casually experience the content.

That would be fine, if this was permanent content, however since it will disappear again after a month I don’t exactly have a lot of time to “get good at it” or “prepare.”

Seveleniumus.5973:

Adamantium.3682:

Yeah you can’t be in infantile mode… I understand your frustration at just wanting to experience the content, but you can’t expect to have done hardly anything in World 1 and still proceed right?

I mean I can’t just create a character and expect to jump straight into dungeons, I have to do a bit of work to get prepared even if I only want to casually experience the content.

That would be fine, if this was permanent content, however since it will disappear again after a month I don’t exactly have a lot of time to “get good at it” or “prepare.”

Fair enough. Just keep in mind that for better or worse this game mode is designed to pay homage old school games like Legend of Zelda, where you absolutely need to buy/find items from early levels to proceed in later levels. If you didn’t need to really do anything more than just follow the infantile rainbows to progress through all the levels, it would take something away from the type of game it is supposed to be.

I sympathize for you temporary content concerns, and that is something I wish could be changed but if/until it does it’s just something we have to live with. Keep in mind though it is here for the whole month, not just for 1 LS update. You still have over 2 weeks.

im a pretty patient person, actually im very patient, far more than the average raging human being. but the new adventure box stuff makes me want to grab a grizzly bear and rip its head off with my hands then shove my fist down its neck rip out its spine find the nearest arenanet dev and cram it into their eye socket. Properly gift-wrapped of course, because like i said. im patient.

Since Josh seems to be reading this forum:

World 1: Everything was fun. Everything. Even death—jumping into the middle of the flowers, or getting stuck in the weeds (which could be destroyed with fire), or falling into acid and desperately trying to get to a rock so I don’t die. The dancing spiders were silly and fun. Avoiding acid. The labyrinth in Zone 1 (the second one is fun too, i forget which zone it was in though)! My BF loved to watch me struggle from the top as I tried to get out. Every group I was in would frantically run around trying to get out of that thing, and it was funny to keep running into each other because we were going around in circles. Each zone was memorable with a healthy dose of shops to keep us excited about new weapons we could get and hidden areas that you could find if you explored. My deaths were memorable, not random.

World 2: Seriously, 2 lives? I felt like I spent more time getting sent to the lava, then the hub, then the loading screen as I re-enter the game than I did actually playing. The only thing I did enjoy was the Q-bert area, the darts, and the slippery ice. Yes, I actually did like the darts, I thought it was fun to make you slow down and if you didn’t, then your death was your own fault. The only issue people most likely had with the darts is the environment makes you rush, so the ‘slowing down’ just seems pointless and unnecessary at times. Especially with all the jumping. I love challenging jumping, but it is really unnecessary to make us jump EVERYWHERE!! How about some explorable areas we can walk around and when we DO have to jump, it’s a challenging stop for a moment and pay attention because it’s about to get serious type jump. I think having to jump anywhere and everywhere made people struggle with the whole stop and think for a moment.

The ninjas were annoying with the knock-backs and I rarely stood a chance with my stupid stick. I spent half the time just wanting to get out of those little dojos which brings another point to the environment. The little designs were neat, but the overall zone was just not memorable or exciting. It was chaotic and just various platforms which kept the group separated and struggling.

Why make ALL the enemies do stupid knock-backs? Can we have more interesting combat. Can’t the ninjas stun you for a few seconds while you frantically hope it breaks before you die? Can’t the polar bears freeze certain areas and if you don’t move fast enough you get stuck to the ground? Or if you freeze, a teammate has to come and knock you out? Just ANYTHING other than constant stupid annoying knock backs EVERYWHERE.

Zone 3 was not fun. I enjoyed the slippery ice, I thought it was fun watching people slip around and having to attempt to gain traction but everything else was boring and tedious. I completed it and nothing was memorable at all like World 1. It was just a bunch of jumping, rock, and ice with a wind pushes, portals, and enemies thrown in. Again, we do NOT need to jump anywhere and everywhere.

World 3: Haven’t tried it.

But…I like to jump

too hard is a bit much to claim. I think people just find its to much of a skill gap from world 1, I’d understand if this was world 3 or 4 but comparing world 1 and 2 the level is a bit over the top for a lot of people. My only real complaint is how much longer the world 2 zones are compared to world 1. I feel like I could do all of world 1 in the time it take me to get to the halfway point in zone 1 XD

Just wanted to drop by to say that I absolutely enjoyed SAB and share my personal opinions on a lot that I’ve read. 4 days into the patch, I had already completed all of TM mode (as well as normal), any time spent after that was just for collecting skins/achievements. No, the content here is not too hard, though some bugs were a Little frustrating. I think that the majority of the complaints aren’t even pointing out problems, people are just complaining about things that you can get past if you practice more or take your time to take in observations and apply yourself. The ONLY thing that I think was too hard for the average player/jumper was the pre-nerf gong tower because of how often you had to switch sides, but you could still mostly cheese it by dying right after hitting the gong and just waiting around at the bottom. “Too hard” is relative to the player and if you’re a casual, you shouldn’t be expecting to ace this entire PATCH. Guild Wars 2 already offers enough for casual players to the point where hardcore players are often being harmed on the side. A lot of you are also failing to realize that SAB=/=GW2. It’s a mini-game within the game that doesn’t support many of the normal mechanics you would see in GW2, although some progress in skill faster than others, everyone starts out as a newbie here. If you don’t like the mini-game, you don’t have to play it. If you’re going to argue that you’re doing SAB for the skins and nothing else, stop expecting to be able to get them for walking along a red carpet and being handed a cake. Hell, you could ask guildies or friends who enjoy the content to piggyback you through the entire thing unless you’re going to aim for TM skins. Don’t act like you’re entitled to something when it’s supposed to show that you have mastered this specific content.
PS I didn’t even buy an infinite continue coin until after I cleared Everything the first time.
@Josh – I know you may not be able to respond but still, huge thanks to you and your team, keep up the great work. It may be obvious, but I definitely still want to say that there are plenty of people that 100% love what you bring to the table but it is an acquired taste. If people don’t like what you do, then they just don’t and that’s on them. As much as you might want to, you can’t please everyone and there is absolutely no reason for you to feel bad about that. With regards to the lower number of players participating in SAB this time around, there are reasons other than “I don’t enjoy this.” Please remember that this was already guaranteed to happen when it was decided that you wouldn’t be able to run World 1 50 times a day just to get your farm on. My most sincere apologies for ANet silencing you the way they are and their inability to notice everyone saying that they want dev’s responding like people.

It wasn’t too hard at all. Only problem are all the bugs…

Orpheal.8263:

I saw today multiple people running around with the magna kitten laude title.. so this must have been doable once…

You only have to complete the meta achievement, which means you only have to complete one of the 3 ‘Master of baubles’ zone achievements (do W2Z1! The dulfy guide is impeccable!) and then the rest of the achievements.

A big thank you to Josh Foreman.

Thank you so much for the bug fixes and… game-engine-wierdness fixes. I know not everyone encountered those things, but those changes made a huge difference for me. Suddenly I could experience the amazing design of the levels, instead of being distracted by lag and hit box issues. The change to the water spouts is not what I would have wanted, in an ideal world (I love recognizing patterns and timing my jumps), but I understand there was nothing much that could be done in so little time. Perhaps when w3 comes out, the spouts will be back without the mysterious knock back effect .

Anyway just wanted to leave an update – after the awesome feedback I had here, I decided to show my support and bought the infinite continue coin and tried my hand at tribulation mode. After many hours and many, many deaths later, I have two new staff skins. I’ve seen a lot of the green skins around la, and a handful of the yellow ones – don’t be discouraged, people are definitely playing! Even some of the hard core PvE guilds that had all but given up on the LS are playing (8:30 min speed run of w2z1 trib mode on a charr).

A rocky start is sometimes the price paid for testing limits – but playing it safe will get you no-where interesting. Keep doing what your doing, people on forums (me included) can get worked up over tiny hiccups. From where I’m standing, this update was a success story.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Just to refresh anyone new to the thread/topic: We accidentally made World 2 too difficult. We released a patch that helped as much as we could afford to risk mucking around with the Live game. We’re keeping tabs of all the feedback and incorporating that into any future releases. Thanks everybody!

PLEASE for the sake of SAB

Look into the thread about Master of Spheres World 2, that either seems to be bugged from begin on, our your community is just too stupid to find a last sphere that must be somewhere super duper hyper mega ultra hard hidden, that even an Asusa like Moto finds no words for that !!

@about the title: ya, I’ve seen that in the mean time and I’ve the title now too, after I made from last friday night to saturday midday my 12 hour hell ride try to get that master of spheres title, meta achievement and master of secrets title maybe in just 1 go done … sadly it worked only for the meta and secrets T_T

Silly bugs and I still can’t believe, what for super crazy jumps I’ve made somehow successfully to reach the most unwelcoming for life places in that zone to reach spots where I thought could be hiding maybe a sphere just to find over and over again ….NOTHING..believe me, this makes you mad after 12 hours of this mind numbing SAB melody and hundreds of deaths

SO please josh, if you can help us somehow ou,t please relief us..post a number that indicates the amount of spheres that have to be found for W2Z3 or look into that zone, if it maybe really is a bug … pretty PLEAAASE

I just wanted to take an opportunity to chime in. As someone who has now S-ranked SAB (with the exception of the bugged W2 bubble ach) here are my thoughts. I should also add, I missed SAB W1 as I was on hiatus so it was great to get a chance to play it. So, without further ado:

1.) W1 is fun. W2 is long.
W1 is a bite size and delicious throw back to a time of gaming long since past that many whippersnappers never had the chance to experience. The subtle nods and visuals to these classics games and genres was a pleasure.

W2 often gets called hard. It is certainly more challenging, but the spirit of W1 is still there. I think the devs tried to be too clever by half and forgot that their game engine is an MMO and not a platformer. Discrepancies in 3D terrain and hit boxes often led to much frustration. That said, if the W2 zones were more in line with the length of the W1 zones, this difficultly may not have been as apparent. It is sorta like increasing the HP and the attack power of a mob. It may only need one, and not the other. If these levels had been only more difficult, I think it would have been much more palatable. Pre-patch, I often found myself asking, “Am I close yet?”

2.) The Trouble with Tribulation Mode
In my humble opinion (and sprinkled with some indie game design/map generation experience) Tribulation mode’s difficulty and frustrations can be summed up in one word: Arbitrary.

I get what you guys are trying to do here. Very Super Meat Boy meets Super Hexagon meets classic platformers. Players are thrust into Tribulation mode and expected to feel their way through the level. In 2D, this is way more palatable. In 3D, with the afore mentioned terrain and hit box issues it starts it wear on you quickly when those two things fail to align properly. Add this to a continue coin mechanic (and by proxy the infinite coin) and you can see where folks just want to throw their hands up.

If I may be so bold, I would consider adding a three things in a future update: a tribulation tutorial offered by virtual Moto, a flute song that will reveal hidden dangers, and a consumable (for bubble baubles) that will give you a path to follow (similar to Dead Space). The flute song is something the player has to earn and if the price is right people can get the consumable. This also give baubles more value then they currently have. Which leads me to…

3.) Bang for Your Bauble
While I wasn’t here for the first SAB, I think taking away things like the shards, philosopher stones, and original SAB weapons/items was a mistake. Content should always be additive whenever possible. The former two items encourage end game folks to stay active in your addon content, the later just felt arbitrary. What harm is there in letting people get the original SAB items. This establishes a baseline in a purely color perspective. If you have a blue item, you have mastered normal mode. The additional colors establish overcoming Tribulation mode. Also, sitting on stacks of baubles (maybe a future wallet entry since they are basically dungeon tokens) with nothing to use them on is weird.

Best of luck on SAB W3.
-Qwerkk

P.S. – Unrelated to the SAB directly, if it was not for Josh’s open, receptive, and thoughtful comments this would have been a PR disaster for you all. Far to often, game devs would rather remain silent and it is just perplexing to see that happen. Especially in MMOs that thrive by having a strong and well informed community. I know that everything they say can seem/feel like Prometheus bringing fire to humanity, but that is only cause of how infrequently it happens; so people hang on every word. More frequent and meaningful dialogue, time permitting, changes the culture to a more reciprocal one, rather than one of hanging on every word.

… my two copper anyway…

First, I would like to add my thanks and appreciation to Josh Foreman and team for their attention to this thread and the game itself.

While I was among those cursing you for the first implementation of World 2, I merely chalked it up to my lack of capability, a poor PC and a disagreement with the direction that was taken. I was sadden by it but accepting that not all decisions a developer makes will be in my favor, nor should they be. An mmo is great due to the sum of it’s parts not any single mechanic or idea. The same goes for the people that are brought to an mmo and there must be a little for everyone.
That said, I can’t help but be a bit giddy over learning that it wasn’t all me after all but rather Mr. Foreman just got to excited and ….“let loose” a bit early. May I just suggest some game design Kegels*, good sir?
I have now gone from thinking, “Well, it was fun while it lasted.” to “Cool, I’ll look forward to World 3 after all.”

I do still have a few suggestions that I think I would like to see but won’t be hurt if you decide not to use them.
1. I feel infantile mode should be more of a training simulator with guard rails, like the gutter guards at a bowling lane, than a bypass mechanism. I am aware that you already have somethings that are meant to train but reality dictates that not all human brains work the same or reason as quickly as others. Some folks just need more, like a loud, obnoxious npc vendor (similar to the one by the poison water in W1) attempting to walk through seemingly safe doorways, only to be killed by a flurry of darts. Or taking leaps into pools of water with piranha in them. Perhaps something in the form of Wildstar’s telegraphs may also work. You might be thinking “Seriously?” and I say, “yeah.” and then smile at you dope-ly. I realize that may seem like a lot but the more you can do to train people, the more likely they will “get it” later.
2. Get up out of your chair and walk over to whoever decided to remove SAB Fun Boxs from the Moto vendor and punch them in the gut. I mean, really? Putting them only on the Gem Store is major lame. I continued running the box during last release for those, not the weapons. (I might have kept running for the weapons if we had that storage closet for skin collecting. Hell, I’d continue to do a lot of things if we had that.)
3. uh….

After reading all your post in this thread so far, Josh, I believe you have everything else covered and I am again looking forward to the next release of SAB.

*yeah, I know it was bad joke but it’s the first thing that came to me when reading your post.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Just to refresh anyone new to the thread/topic: We accidentally made World 2 too difficult. We released a patch that helped as much as we could afford to risk mucking around with the Live game. We’re keeping tabs of all the feedback and incorporating that into any future releases. Thanks everybody!

Mr Foreman, I tried the new SAB only once but I played the original SAB every day because I enjoy speed runs. I have friends who still do regular speed runs of old Sonic games (those take ~25 seconds per level) and SAB was my own little island of joy in the horrible dungeon design that GW2 has. I agree with most of the problems you and the players have pointed out about the new SAB levels, but I’m sure you can fix this. Please stay as positive as you are and thank you for the awesome content!

It’s funny. Since SAB W2 was released I haven’t followed its content after I gave up on it. What was interesting is I didn’t sit here and complain to myself about how unfair the Dev’s made it, or that I hate it and it was their fault for not making it fun. I simply realized that I didn’t have the interest or patience to force myself to suffer more than was necessary over the content. W1 was great and I love it, but W2 made me realized that I didn’t HAVE to complete/enjoy it at all. So I didn’t and I haven’t looked back. Finding out that it was changed slightly after an update, I have interest to complete it, but I still feel it was unnecessary. Lag or bug fixing I think is. But the difficulty was what it was. It wasn’t for me and that was simply it. Granted, as a player immersed in GW2, I’d love to completely experience and finish all content, but I know I won’t always love new content, so I just get over it. I can sit here waiting for awesome, permanent Halloween/Underworld/Mad King content, but I’m much happier with RPing it in my own 2-person guild, which I also have yet to feel obligated to expand. It expands if it wants to, not from me pleading others to join.

Just my two cents. Kudos to the Dev’s and their patience, their hard work on new content, and to the messes they deal with daily. After raging on Z2W2 from assassins, fish ponds and distant checkpoints, I figured they must be masters of serenity to put up with most players…and still keep going strong.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Orpheal.8263:

Look into the thread about Master of Spheres World 2, that either seems to be bugged

Hmm. Not sure which thread that is. But this problem should be fixed in tomorrow’s patch.

I think he is referring to this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/Bauble-Checklist-for-W2-Z3-INCOMPLETE/first

Josh Foreman.8250:

Just to refresh anyone new to the thread/topic: We accidentally made World 2 too difficult. We released a patch that helped as much as we could afford to risk mucking around with the Live game. We’re keeping tabs of all the feedback and incorporating that into any future releases. Thanks everybody!

Thanks for being the only developer to actively seek criticism and actually improve what he’s made.

It’s a shame that you were reprimanded for it.

Josh, I want to say that I really appreciate all the work you put into Super Adventure Box. I personally feel that World 2 is amazing in its own unique way, even compared to World 1.

I think Super Adventure Box as a whole, is such a great idea, and World 2 greatly adds to that.

My favourite area of World 2 are the moving logs on the river. I don’t think there is anything else like this in GW2, yet those logs feel so realistic, natural, and fluid when I jump along them. When I first tried out the log river section, I thought it was very new, fresh, impressive, and fun!

It’s a bit funny though. After doing a lot of Tribulation Mode in SAB, I kind of wonder how much more difficult jumping can be made in World 3. I feel that World 2 has already taught me the mechanics of how jumping works in GW2. So it has become a lot easier for me to consistently make max distance or max height jumps.

Although, one definite way to increase the difficulty of a jump is to add some external pressure / rushed feeling, like with the Halloween JP mist. For me, that added pressure ads a lot to the intensity of the experience and gets my adrenaline going. But I suppose that should be reserved for future Tribulation Modes rather than Normal Modes? XD

Anyway, both Super Adventure Box World 1 and World 2 are amazing! I can’t wait to see World 3, and I will be very sad when SAB leaves GW2 again at the end of the month.

It’s really impressive what you could do with the GW2 engine. A ton of respect and appreciation!

Hey Josh

I hope that you won’t make SAB too easy next time, now that people got angry. The difficulty has to increase over the worlds.
The changes you made are fine though. Only thing I don’t like are the geysers being always up. I hope you find a solution to the problem with them, so they can be moving again next time they are around. How about you put in an alternate path with a switch, that makes the geysers frozen..or an upgrade to the slingshot that freezes stuff.

In general several paths of different difficulty could be a solution to prevent too long lvls, without cutting content. it would make the baubble and secret achievments harder i guess. Also please allow us to backtrack at all points of the lvls. When I did the w2z2 the first time i used, shortcut eagle and got skipped to the end. I was stuck there though since I didn’t have the glove (eagle skipped it) and i had no way to get back.
Also a manual respawn key or chat command would be nice, in case you get stuck.

Out of all the zones W2Z3 was my favorite. It has really nice jumping parts, some small puzzles and really nice secrets.

Keep up the good work and don’t drop your difficulty too much.

P.S.: You better bring back the Clocktower for Halloween. If possible more difficult than ever.

I hope that what we get in the future is either a bunch of different paths (of varying difficulty) through the levels with different achievements tied to going through them.

Alternatively levels that have lot more secrets or nooks and crannies to otherwise explore and find. Look at what was added to Zone 3 of World 1 (the area you need the glove for) for examples. Although, that feels a bit incomplete. However, the point is that it is not required to go through the level yet is a major part of the level still. That zone also already has several ways to get from point A to B as well, more of that would be nice.

JanoRis.8703:

Hey Josh
The changes you made are fine though. Only thing I don’t like are the geysers being always up. I hope you find a solution to the problem with them, so they can be moving again next time they are around. How about you put in an alternate path with a switch, that makes the geysers frozen..or an upgrade to the slingshot that freezes stuff.

I too would love to see the geysers come back. Instead of making them an on/off mechanic you could turn them into moving plateforms, so that timing the jumps would still be required but you could stay on a geyser while waiting for it to come back up. The “down” position for some of them could be in the water to add a bit of pressure, but I think it would be more interesting than the current rocks while less punishing/frustating than the old system.
I dont know if the game engine allows moving plateforms (the only place I remember those is the 2nd part of the wizard boss, but the environnement seems kinda special there), but I think they’re what geyser should be
Anyways, keep up the good work! I can’t wait for w3 TM

I finished trib mode yesterday with all achievs and while it was frustrating and i cursed a lot i loved every minute of it coz hard stuff is memorable.

I would really say it’s not hard at all, just time consuming.