Guild Wars 2

Josh Foreman.8250:

Mirta.5029:

I would prefer us to be able to find those baubles as we go trough World 2, instead of getting to World 2 Zone 3, seeing that we can’t continue without a torch, having to exit the instance, farm in World 1, then enter World 2 Zone 3 and do it all again from the beginning. With levels being as long as they are, it just feels a tiny bit tedious.

I guess I would liken that to Metroid. Where you could zip along to the Mother Brain and get totally wiped out. Whereas if you dug around, found the secret health tanks, then it gets a lot more reasonable. Also, 2-2 is pretty short. If you find the Shortcut Eagle.

I don’t understand the obsession with old school mechanics – you’ve followed them close enough that you’ve made a really awesome novelty thing not fun, seemingly in the name of ‘well that’s how it worked zelda/mario/metroid’ etc.

Can’t you just make something that fits and works within the current game engine? Those games are ‘old school’ for a reason, we have much better technology now, and trying to replicate any odd issues those old games did just seems.. silly. In Mega Man the screen used to slow down and grind to a halt occasionally.. is skill lag GW2’s version of this?

Many of us have done World 1 one million times and have no desire to farm baubles in there again to buy stuff for World 2.

SAB v1 was an amazing lighthearted romp which really blew my mind at the time.. v2 is just not that, and it’s not because I’ve seen it before. I am sure you worked very hard (on) this and I’m sorry about the negative feedback.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Mirta.5029:

I would prefer us to be able to find those baubles as we go trough World 2, instead of getting to World 2 Zone 3, seeing that we can’t continue without a torch, having to exit the instance, farm in World 1, then enter World 2 Zone 3 and do it all again from the beginning. With levels being as long as they are, it just feels a tiny bit tedious.

I guess I would liken that to Metroid. Where you could zip along to the Mother Brain and get totally wiped out. Whereas if you dug around, found the secret health tanks, then it gets a lot more reasonable. Also, 2-2 is pretty short. If you find the Shortcut Eagle.

What version of Metroid were you playing because the one I played required beating two mini bosses and finding the power-ups to beat them before the passage to Mother Brain even opened up. There was no “zipping” to Mother Brain unless you used a cheat code and you better hope you had the freeze beam before you even went down there.

But then again, the freeze beam didn’t require grinding away or real cash so…

Your name dropping of popular, well thought out and classic games which are in no way comparable to this to cover poor design and prove how “hardcore” you are is getting really old. Apparently the jumping is more akin to The Wizard of Oz, the difficulty curve like Transformers: Mystery of Convoy and the play control and hit boxes like Action 52.

Only did full W2S1 in normal mode, W1S1 in tribulation and the whole W2 in infantile.

W1S1 Tribulation:
-Not going to comment much, if IWBTG, Cat Mario or Rick Dangerous was the goal then it’s pretty much well done. Thanks for the challenge.

W2S1 Normal:
-Difficulty in comparison to W1 in it’s globality is really higher, personally it’s a good thing for me but i can see why people would get frustrated.
-Not only is it insanly harder but it’s also longer, from infantile this seems to be the case for all stages. While i don’t think it will be much of an issue in normal mode (and if anything it is good, more content as you said), in tribulation mode it will probably be hell.
-The rapid part which ends with a jump inside the waterfall was frustrating, i will try it again when i go for full secret + baubles but it didn’t felt as precise as the rest of the game, i don’t know if it’s lag or bad plateforming (or me which simply sucked, it’s a possibility after all). What i’m sure is that i’d rather be one shotted when failing a jump , being knockbacked constantly while hoping to get out made me want to punch some baby seals.
-No camera issue, no precision issue if you exclude the rapid part.
-Overall it left me a good impression, i think it might need a nerf for the average player though, sadly…

Infantile mode:
-Well it’s easy as can be as designed but… i have to do it again because i didn’t got all the achievement steps. Tip: when reaching a checkpoint go back and enter the checkpoint at foot, do not fly above it else you’ll get ripped off.
-Thanks god i add enough baubles to buy the torch, imo it should have been given after a fight/puzzle or something, being stuck because you don’t have enough ressources feels bad.

After i’m done with W2 normal as a whole + all secrets i’ll try to give another feedback.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I wanted W2 to have a longer learning curve.

Forgive me for asking this, but…why?

The first SAB seemed to be really popular, and it was clear that people were for the most part really enjoying themselves with the established difficulty/time to master.

I ask because it seems to be a recurring theme with content design in this game.:

“We wanted this to be more challenging…”
“We expect that only a small portion of the player base will complete this…”
etc., etc., etc.

As someone earlier in this thread mentioned, “Frustration =/= Fun”. Why must it always be assumed that players don’t want stress-free fun? I realize that some gamers like to be constantly challenged and die repeatedly because it gives them a sense of satisfaction when they finally beat something. That’s cool. I get it.

But more and more this game is leading me to feel as though, as far as the Devs are concerned, if I just want to have relaxing, stress-free fun, I’m not a “real” gamer and therefore do not matter. It’s not simply that this game “isn’t for me”. It’s more like this game actually regards players like me with disdain.

My two cents. Flame me if you must.

EDIT:

Josh Foreman.8250:

[SNIP] …That creates tension. Causes you to be careful. To THINK about your environment, enemies, and how you approach jumps. It is fundamental to creating the experience I want to create.

[SNIP] …The tension, awareness and thoughtfulness slip to the wayside because it doesn’t matter how often you die.

And this is exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t want to be tense. I want to relax and have fun and enjoy the world and the experience. Why is it so important to you that we have “tension”?

Honestly my whole expierience of SAB was fun.

The waterflows were a bit annoying but my team was very helpful (pugs too can you believe it?) But it was challenging and fun working together.

The ninja, oh my god the ninja that was so fun, and it was 100% learning, a few people raged on my team but i told them to look at the walls and they’ll see dart holes, again we worked together and finally did it.

I have not done zone 3 yet as i had to do something irl and left the group, but sadly cant find more people who are on zone 3, but i cant wait!

Only thing is i just wish i could do SAB on all my other characters too without restarting, i hate being a giant norn (My SAB character) it makes things alot harder, still a bit fun, but more annoying.

First I would like to simply state that the difficulty of World 2 is clearly too much considering 98% of the posts in this thread state as such.

Onto my personal story. I don’t consider myself amazing at jumping puzzles but I am fairly good. I did clock tower, 100% of SAB the first time around, the cove, etc. That being said, I was super excited for SAB to come back because I absolutely loved it the first time around. I figured I would start out with infantile mode to get some easy achievements out of the way but I was in for a shock when I discovered that I still had to actually work hard to stay alive whereas last time I had to work hard to kill myself. Finally after making it to zone 3 I discovered I didn’t have enough baubles to continue so I went to normal mode and that’s where all the trouble started.

1. Been stated before but the geysers are ridiculous as is the whole river for numerous reasons. Sometimes I get knocked the whole river, sometimes I get stuck on a wall and knocked down constantly, sometimes I can jump onto a ledge.

2. Why bother giving us hearts at all if everything one shots you or knocks you off cliffs? I hardly ever died the first time SAB was around. If I fell off a cliff I just had to run around back to where I started. Now if I fall anywhere I die. Spike traps are everywhere. Fish death traps are all around.

3. You can no longer stun the bee queen for some easy baubles. Additionally, you can apparently only get a chest once a day. This makes getting baubles that are required to proceed much harder.

4. The first SAB was about exploring and having fun. The new SAB is about how many times can you kill a player before they throw their monitor out a window. I managed to beat all of SAB world 1 in about two days. I spent 6 hours trying to work my way through world 2 zone 1/2.

5. Infantile mode should actually be easy, not hard. Normal mode should be doable not impossible. Tribulation mode is where it should be in terms of difficulty.

I hate to say it but it seems like the whole purpose of the SAB difficulty is to get players to buy infinite coins. I had 0 difficulty with world 1, hardly ever died. In world 2 though I have died upwards of 150-200 times in 1 day. SAB is supposed to be fun but world 2 turns that fun into a nightmare.

Get better.

/15 char

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ben.2685:

Stop being swayed by potential cash grabs (as evidenced through the limiting of baubles and one life given on map restart).

If I cared about cash grabs I’d be working at Zynga where they design based on MTX. We don’t do that here. I’m trying to make SAB (And I mean SAB, not the GW2 rewards, achievements, titles, MTX, etc) a good, solid, fun game. That’s my focus. If W2 is not fun I will make sure it is changed so that it is fun. As I said above, the one-life thing was to add fun. I don’t find mindlessly throwing away lives to be fun. I want death to matter in SAB like it mattered in Mega Man and Metroid. That creates tension. Causes you to be careful. To THINK about your environment, enemies, and how you approach jumps. It is fundamental to creating the experience I want to create. But if you can jump back to the hub, then back to your group at the end of a zone with 5 lives again those lives are next to meaningless. The tension, awareness and thoughtfulness slip to the wayside because it doesn’t matter how often you die. It has nothing to do with selling anything.

You can’t one shot die in Metroid, you have a health bar, there are no one hit kills, you cannot die from falling plus you have energy tanks brimming with health points that you can refill and passwords to save progress. What Metroid are you playing because it’s obviously not the NES one. And everyone who plays Megaman thinks the 1 hit deaths are cheap, we always have… Megaman also has three lives and a health bar which can be refilled by finding E tanks. Megaman also has passwords.

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

So far, My biggest complaint is the Water knocking me down when I’m actually in the air or landing on a rock.. it’s infuriating when you’re doing it right, but it’s not working because the collision is bad.

also,
W2 L1 music.. ughh..
W2 L2 music: cool

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ben.2685:

Stop being swayed by potential cash grabs (as evidenced through the limiting of baubles and one life given on map restart).

As I said above, the one-life thing was to add fun. I don’t find mindlessly throwing away lives to be fun. I want death to matter in SAB like it mattered in Mega Man and Metroid. That creates tension. Causes you to be careful. To THINK about your environment, enemies, and how you approach jumps. It is fundamental to creating the experience I want to create. But if you can jump back to the hub, then back to your group at the end of a zone with 5 lives again those lives are next to meaningless. The tension, awareness and thoughtfulness slip to the wayside because it doesn’t matter how often you die. It has nothing to do with selling anything.

How is dying to an unforeseen, unpredictable pit, “throwing lives away”?
If you want tension, then why isn’t 1 life the default?
If it’s to stop people from leaving then returning at the end with their group, why does it affect single player and tribulation mode then, in which such an exploit is impossible?
How do lives have value when you can essentially purchase an unlimited supply of them from the gem store? Doesn’t this mean the gem store item detracts from the fun of the SAB?
What fun is there in the limiting of baubles to the extent that it’s difficult to afford anything beyond living?

Thanks for actually responding to people’s criticisms/ annoyances, too.

Hello Josh….we meet again!

Before I get into some of my thoughts on SAB 2.0, I would like to take a moment to remind you (and everyone), that you are by far the most amazing designer ANet has. No other dev stands by their work, or interacts with the players like you, and I think this is reflected in the popularity of the SAB.

I’m going to try and break this down and keep it as short and sweet as possible.

1. Bauble Counter/Kill all/Destroy All

Many mentioned this in 1.0. We now have achievements that require players to kill/find/destroy an undetermined number of things, but absolutely no way of knowing ones progress.

For those of us who want so badly to explore the SAB and find all the cool secrets, it can be super frustrating to have no way of tracking progress. With the length you’ve made some of the worlds, missing a single bauble, or assassin (and not know how many), and only finding out at the end is ridiculous.

All this means is that we are forced to use online “cheats” to get the achievements. This takes out most of the fun of exploration, and pretty much just makes it a chore.

2. Time vs. Difficulty

While I do agree with many that the difficulty from world to world does seem to be a tad inconsistent, I am not actually opposed to really challenging content. The problem, is when that content is only available for a limited time.

I want to experience every nook and cranny of the worlds you’ve created. I want to challenge myself to find all the secrets, and to try all the modes. I want to learn the worlds and figure out how to experience them with your vision. The problem is that SAB (and GW2) are not the only things going on in my life.

I realize this may not be in your control, but I feel that if the SAB isn’t going to be permanent, this needs to be considered.

3. Fighting The Game

When SAB 1.0 was released many players expressed their frustration and concern with certain mechanics. The jumping mushrooms, and the rapids level were two specific areas where players with higher latency were experiencing issues.

What we have now, is an extended version of that, with even more mechanics. I would personally have shorter (punchier) levels that require a few difficult jumps, than a long level filled with interesting mechanics that fail multiple times if my latency isn’t perfect.

I realize that you have a difficult situation in which you want to make interesting levels, but are constantly dealing with varying levels of latency/lag. My advice is try and design multiple solutions whenever you add in a mechanic that could fail.

If I can take a longer route, but bypass potential issues, at least I have a fighting chance. The SAB is difficult enough without having to deal with fighting the game.

As with SAB 1.0, I have a few nitpicks, but all n’ all I find it to be some of, if not the best content available in SW2. It sucks to see so many people having so much difficulty this time round.

My girlfriend and I actually have a piece of paper on our desk with a “WTH Josh?!” tally for every time we curse your name. So far we have well over 30 ticks (most are with a smile). I want to thank you again for being so open and involved in the process.

Josh, just wanted to say a large majority of us appreciate your work. The only reason why you’re not hearing it is because we’re actively playing it and trying to beat it ;p

I realistically think it’s fine, I find it gives enough of a challenge to be challenging, but I wouldn’t say it’s to hard. Yeah unlike other jumping puzzles you need to pace yourself but I think it’s a good challenge.

I’d say the assassin’s that run at you with a sword are a little cheap, I find myself unable to hit them when they are flat on the ground not doing anything and then, them being able to just jump at me and hurt me so I spend my time avoiding them.

Also after a death the game randomly kills me and takes another life

Well, I enjoyed the 1.0 version very much and I’m sure I’ll enjoy 2.0 just as much if not more. Don’t let the negativity get to you. You can’t please all the people all the time. Most of the people that enjoy it won’t take the time to praise SAB. Just know that many, many people love it.

during the SMB-esque part where you have to run across logs with the piranhas swimming up. is it intentional that the logs just stop spawning once you fail to get to the checkpoint fast enough? i thought the whole point of the mushrooms and those rocks were so you could make your way back and try again if you survived but were too slow.

5 minutes later, and not a single log showed up, so i killed myself and started over.

Mirta.5029:

Too hard. Normal is simply too hard.

Yeah I can’t be bothered to finish the first world. I’m glad this is just as crappy as it was the first time around, running about getting lost with no obvious direction on where to go. I don’t like just making jumps if i’m not sure that’s even the direction i’m supposed to be going.

An exercise in frustration. I won’t be doing this one any more.Like… I appreciate the look and the work and all that, but good god all this jumping and garbage makes me rage.

Finished all 3 zones. Sadly, I doubt I’ll ever do any of them again. It’s not that it wasn’t fun as I wouldn’t have played through all of it if it wasn’t, but it’s very frustrating with far too much reliance on one hit kills, getting knocked off ledges where you have zero room to dodge, and confusing mechanics. The Guild Wars 2 engine does surprisingly well as a platformer, but the design of SAB release 2 just highlights what it does poorly.

Some of my (least) favourite parts:
1.) terrible cameras and collision detection on the rapids. Can I hot the enemy? Maybe. Am I standing on the rock or in the water? Clearly on the rock but whoosh there I go. Am I lined up for this time sensitive water geyser jump? Your guess is as good as mine.

2.) Ninja garbage.
They attack, I evade.. they hit me anyway. He’s running around with his sword behind him or just holding it out in front of him? Too bad, he can still hit you. Want to dodge that shuriken or leaping attack? Good luck since you’re on a 1 foot square platform or surrounded by insta death arrow traps.

3.) One hit kills everywhere.
Arrow traps, turtles/fish that knock you into infinite juggling water, frogs that swallow you and spit you off ledges, ice blocks that freeze you and drain your life in seconds, etc.

4.) Collision detection? What’s that?
Hey that giant icicle is falling, better get out of the way! moves to another zip code, but still gets hit There are examples all over the place, but that’s the most egregious one. The weird part is that when you fight the ninja that gives you the Push skill, the collision detection is perfect as you can literally dodge the boxes by pixels and be totally fine.

I thnk that covers the worst of it. Once again, there is fun to be had. The Frogger, log fall and Q Bert sections were great, as were some of the more puzzlish or jump heavy areas. There are, however, so many issues that artifially ramp up the difficulty in what is supposed to be the normal mode that I wouldn’t blame anyone for quitting on it.

I’m just very curious about what processes and methodologies your testers are actually following if they didn’t encounter the buggy and frustrating mess that is the rapids. 5 people spread across europe on different kinds of connections and levels of computer hardware and ALL could reproduce on a consistent basis: teleporting, spouts etc not being at all in the state the client showed you, getting stuck in infinite knock down loops in the water until dead, getting knocked back by… well, no way to know since the screen didn’t show anything, as well as camera angles going crazy.

There are parts of the new content that are good (the arrow traps were fine, when the horizontal ones didn’t just decide to kill you when standing on the floor beside them of course), but other parts, rapids among them, are just a battle with with frustration and a glitchy game engine that simply doesn’t seem to allow for what you are trying to make it do. You managed to make 5 people that were great fans of the last SAB release and that were so very much looking forward to this one simply loath it and the time it stole out of our lives.

But why make it so punishing? This isn’t comparable, as many have said, to games like Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, etc…

If I fail a level in Mega Man 2 (which I should note, gives you more than one life- wtf is the deal with that?) it’s mere minutes to get back to where I was- I don’t have to grind up coins, or go through everything all over again.

Your inclusion of OHKO at every corner, painful jumps, invisible kills, etc… isn’t like Mega Man 2 or NG or Contra or whatever else we’re going to compare to- it’s more akin to ***hole Mario. But even that had working mechanics that made sense, including the invisible blocks and worked off of a very successful 2D platformer. With the exception of invisible blocks, you could always see what was coming, and those blocks weren’t willy nilly- they had very particular placement.

Also- that game was meant for extreme hardcore, and it gave you infinite lives. When you have even infantile mode being packed with OHKOs, when you have bauble grinding and enemies that steal baubles thus making you regrind, when you have only one extra life to get through such a massive world where everything one hits you, when you have a 3D platformer using a KB and mouse and knowing as an mmo you’ll have lag with many users, and when you’ve made a separate hard mode that was supposed to be meant for those who were the insane ones who would do things like ***hole Mario- making it not only extremely precise, but extremely time consuming/punishing should have been an obvious warning sign that this was going to get negative reaction.

If you’re going to make a super hard platformer, fine- but when you make a death pretty much be a zone reset, unless you pay real money for infinite continues, then of course most people are going to look at it and say ‘well, I wonder what their priority is here.’

Josh,

I would like not to think that but look at the drastic changes that occurred. Previously, the coin didn’t exist, baubles were easy to come by, dying was not as frequent, when you didn’t use a continue coin but came back you had 5 lives. Now however, the coin exists and baubles are much harder to come by, deaths happen every few seconds, chests are account bound instead of character bound and when you die but don’t use a continue coin you only have 1 life.

Also, it is interesting that out of the entire post you only picked out that instead of the numerous legitimate complaints.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Great feedback. My answer would be that MOST of GW2 is relaxing stress-free content.

I wish it felt that way, but playing under the ticking clock of Living Story is certainly not relaxing or stress-free to me, not to mention some of the difficulty spikes that occur in the Personal Story. Obviously, I’m aware that this is my personal opinion, not a “fact”. Of course, that’s getting outside the scope of this thread, so I won’t continue down that path. I just wanted to respond to your statement.

In any case, I do appreciate your many responses in this thread. It is obvious to me (and many others, I’m sure) that you are extremely passionate about this game and your work. Thanks for listening.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s most helpful to us if you are specific about areas that have difficulty spikes for you. (Such as mentioning the spin flowers above.) Also things are always laggy the first day of content release. So complaints about lag don’t help.

This is the area that I can’t get past currently. It’s right after a checkpoint. I can get close to the waterfall near the end but I keep getting flung all over the place all the time. If I make any mistake it’s pretty much instant death because it’s so hard to get out of the water. I feel like I’m playing tribulation mode right now. I guess it’s a good thing I got the infinite continue coin. It doesn’t help that it feels so cramped and there’s so much stuff going on.

I feel that World 2 has robbed me of the pleasure of playing SAB. I grew up with those “hard” games back in the day, many of the mechanics were designed to burn quarters in Arcade machines or add artificial replayability. We don’t live in those times anymore and designs have improved. IN this case the argument can be made that the infinity coin adds suspicion that the content was designed around using it.

Bugs In World 2 Zone 1:

- Rapids lock you out of control of your character for a good 3 seconds and severely reduces movement. This is up from the last time.
- Geysers has a random problem where you can get locked down, missing a jump. I’ve tried and reproduced it numerous times. The lockdown robs players of their jump. Falling into the water that robs of complete movement forcing you to eat a life.
- Assassins are Overpowered. There’s no time to dodge them anymore. Especially on a raft. In addition Sword Assassins hit reach is very far. Purple Assassins have that ball and chain that has a very wide arc. Can’t dodge them in time either.
- There is no TELEGRAPH for the circular laser movement of the cage boss at the end when he does a 360 board flush. (Coin Robber)

Bugs in World 2 Zone 2:

- Some Tree Platforms have an invisible edge that makes it harder to jump at from below.
- Thief Owls have two short a cooldown, the will rob you blind after sitting there for 30 seconds trying to figure out the jumps.
- Dart traps do not telegraph and blend in with the background making them near impossible to avoid. One hit kill = Arcade Coin Robber.
- Dart Traps can sometimes hit you through the gong when in the trap tower running next to it.
- Assassins again, extremely OP and often unavoidable. (Coin Robber)

That’s all I got. The dart trap tower ensured that we couldn’t progress due to randomly getting shot through the gong.

For anyone trying to do this for the rewards, just farm World 1. Its less frustrating and slightly better designed.

People… People… People…

This content is entirely optional. It was also stated multiple times by josh that this was going to be like cat Mario type games and Nintendo kitten steroids…

It’s meant to be insanely hard and frustrating. That’s why those are called RAGE games… They’re to make you rage and get kitten ed off.

Seriously stop your kittening and whining and complaining about things being too hard. First it was the Halloween clock tower, then it was liadri, now this… Come on now.

“This is meant for only a small group of ppl who like this type of content”. That’s paraphrased but you get my point. If you can’t handle it then dont do it. Don’t come on here begging them to turn it down from 11 to 2 because you can’t do it. Lots of ppl love challenges like these(me included) so I say…

Great job josh and everyone else who worked on this!!! I can’t wait to tackle the rest of the tm zones and get them skins!!! From the sound of things hopefully it’ll be a select few of us with them.

Mirta.5029:

Lande.5782:

Hard is good. We need more content like this, so please don’t listen to the people complaining.

It’s based on old Nintendo games. Of course it’s going to be hard.

old Nintendo games are not that hard. It might have seemed hard to us back then, because we were children, but I challenge you to pick up old Mario or Sonic

Silver Surfer for the NES do you know it? Now go play it and come back when you beat it.
Visual aid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnRBywkUZ0

In short, yes. The difficulty is extremely out of control.

I say this as someone who absolutely loved the first SAB release. I actually used to hate GW2 jumping puzzles wholesale. The first SAB release taught me to enjoy them. World 2 is teaching me to hate them again.

That said, I’d like to offer some feedback as constructively as I can.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Not to minimize your complaints but here’s my take.

1. The zones are too long

You are complaining about too much content.

Actually it sounds like a complaint about the compartmentalization of that content. Considering that we are talking about content where “lives” and “continues” are a thing, if the stretches are too long, complaining about that is valid.

Josh Foreman.8250:

2. Jumping on a flower can throw you into another flower and kill you

You can be more careful about the direction you are facing when you land on them.

True. But the level of precision required sounds like something for Tribulation mode.

Josh Foreman.8250:

3. Crocodile hit boxes are too little

You need to use tactical stratagy to find the spots to hit the from, just like old platform games.

The places where the crocodile hit boxes become an issue the most, are incredibly tiny pieces of land in the middle of rapids where positioning and strategy are complete non-issues. That aside, again…the amount of difficulty sounds like something for Tribulation mode.

Josh Foreman.8250:

5. World 2 spike traps are not fair, especially when you get to places where there are lots of cheap ones.

They are all visible. The darts shoot out of dart boxes. The assassin training grounds are meant to teach you to carefully observe your surroundings.

The main thing that I’d add here is that the insta-kills are way out of place in Normal mode. I have no hesitation at all saying they belong only in Tribulation mode. Also, personally, I had a great deal of difficulty spotting the traps for whatever that’s worth.

To sum up:

When you think “Wow, this is really white-knuckle challenging!”, it probably belongs in Tribulation mode. The terrifying difficulty level in Normal makes me hesitate to even try playing it with friends. Unless we’re all operating absolutely perfectly, people are going to get left behind, it’ll end in frustration, and the point of playing this online in the first place disappears.

Carefully picked groups of the best of the best (and given the design, occasionally luckiest) individuals shouldn’t be the only way to finish the content as a group. That’s probably my biggest complaint about World 2.

As an addendum, I really loved SAB World 1, and I’m glad that you’ve decided to bring it back and add more content. That part’s great. I’d just like to see that new content something that can be enjoyed with friends, and that allows me to turn the difficulty to 11 or leave it at a far more comfortable number when I don’t want to. (Without the complete cop-out of infantile mode.)

Treborlavok.3504:

People… People… People…

This content is entirely optional. It was also stated multiple times by josh that this was going to be like cat Mario type games and Nintendo kitten steroids…

It’s meant to be insanely hard and frustrating. That’s why those are called RAGE games… They’re to make you rage and get kitten ed off.

Seriously stop your kittening and whining and complaining about things being too hard. First it was the Halloween clock tower, then it was liadri, now this… Come on now.

“This is meant for only a small group of ppl who like this type of content”. That’s paraphrased but you get my point. If you can’t handle it then dont do it. Don’t come on here begging them to turn it down from 11 to 2 because you can’t do it. Lots of ppl love challenges like these(me included) so I say…

No, the tribulation mode is a thing meant to be completed by few (just like Liandri), the normal mode one would assume by previous SAB and previous living stories having casual friendly categories should be completable by almost everyone.

You know, I played Atari and Nintendo platformers extensively.

My first gaming consisted of Mega Man, Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Zelda, etc.

World 1 was a fun homage to them. Yes, I blew through it on infantile mode and had no trouble on normal mode. I had fun doing it, and went back to grind out all the achieves.

World 2 seems like taking all the most frustrating aspects of those old platformers and piling them all into 1 game while adding a couple new aspects of difficulty.

Things I’m talking about are the pixel perfect jumps coupled with poor targetting on weapons added to grinding for items joined with unforgiving 1 shot mechanics all wrapped up in long slogs of zones with no save points.

The added dimensions are taking forever to die(hello rapids, I’m actually writing this as I’m tabbed out dying in the rapids) plus lag adding to difficulty plus client/camera issues.

I’ll beat it eventually and get the achieves eventually, but I won’t enjoy it. If I feel like I’m getting trolled by a developer, I equate that to poor game design.

Lastly, ratchetting up the difficulty so far between world 1 and world 2 at the same time as adding an infinite continue coin to the cash shop is definately perceived as a cash grab.

Josh you gotta tell us the secret now. How do we get the moto plush backpack? Gotta express my love for SAB by carrying that little dude on my back.

Dikeido.8436:

Silver Surfer for the NES do you know it? Now go play it and come back when you beat it.
Visual aid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnRBywkUZ0

So was SAB supposed to be a tribute to games like Mario and Sonic, or to games like Silver Surfer? Excusing the difficulty this way on normal difficulty and not the extra kittene is the same as saying “oh look, that game gave you epilepsy so it’s okay if this game does it too, right?”

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

We all have a broad range of experience with Atari – current games. I cut my teeth on NES Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden et all. When I reference one of these games I’m not saying “SAB is exactly like this game in every way.” SAB is a homage to ERA of games, not a single game or genre. SAB is LIKE Metroid in a couple ways. Like Ninja Gaiden in a couple ways, like Mega Man in a couple ways. We have items in shops you have to buy to progress like Zelda, we have instant kill spikes and pits like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can point to all the classic games that do things differently and say “See, that’s how you SHOULD do it.” The we we DID do it is based on the unique chemistry of our team and what we liked in old games and what we wanted to experience. Your milage may vary.

The main difference is those other games didn’t require you to either A: farm a different game for continues or B: purchase an item that allowed you unlimited lives; C: no matter how much you spent buying the game or how much you loved/hated it, someone you never met was going to take it away in 30 days, and the material rewards of the game were there to help you beat it, not purchase skins for the other game you were farming continues for.

I realize SAB is free content added on, but if you’re going to ask me to stop referencing “slapping players in the face” you might want to stop doing it.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ok. Thanks! It’s amazing how much I’ve reduced the difficulty of Piranha bend over the last week or so. Sounds like it needs a more radical solution.

Ah, I’m not necessarily asking for a radical solution. If anything I just feel that the river is annoying because of how much it pushes you back. Also sometimes it feels like I get flung for no reason (like there is no fish or waterfall thingy and I just get flung randomly as I’m trying to jump on a water spout).

My problem is also with the water in w2z1. It’s really frustrating to land in and the recovery time (to jump out) seems inconsistent. I almost felt like giving up here, but a party member made it to a waypoint. The other zone’s weren’t as frustrating as this.

Zone 2 was a lot of fun, learning all the traps etc. The gong part was hard but not frustrating and made easier by multiple party members. Zone 3 was also really enjoyable!

I really feel like the first zone is much harder than the rest of the content, which seems off. It’s really frustrating to land in the water and keep getting knocked back.

All in all we enjoyed the content much more after the water zones.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s most helpful to us if you are specific about areas that have difficulty spikes for you. (Such as mentioning the spin flowers above.) Also things are always laggy the first day of content release. So complaints about lag don’t help.

The whole rapids!

What’s wrong with Final Fantasy 13? It’s one long straight gantlet path with no exploration. Just like World 2 in the SAB. One mandatory route.

Zone 2 also eats up bubbles! Without many bubbles to be found in the zone.

Players want exploration with multiple routes.

I just finished world 2 normal and have just started doing tribulation mode. I have to say this is a lot of fun and I cant wait to see what worlds 3 and 4 will be like.

I found the difficulty challenging but overall fair. There were a few places which gave me trouble which seemed almost unfair, like the water spouts on 2-1 and the pyramid switches in 2-3 playing solo this took awhile and seemed to be more luck based then skill.

I think my biggest complaint/suggestion is that there is no way to know how many baubles there are in a level so the title for collecting them all seem impossible with out cheating.

Please dont dial back the difficulty we have infantile mode for those who cant complete this and we need more challenges like this for players like myself.

If the difficulty jump for world 3 is like 1→2 I cant wait for the challenge keep up the great work and well done creating something so fun and enjoyable.

I finished through 2-3, it probably took 4 hours. I found the content to be impossible and my party carried me.

In April I was annoyed that the shops stopped selling monkey lives, or hearts. I now see why. You had no intention of making use of those mechanics after world one. Every fall is fatal, and every trap is fatal, and the river is fatal. I quickly used up my free coins, last spring’s free coins, and all the coins I’d won.

A fundamental problem in ALL jumping puzzles is that when you jump up, your camera tends to move down, so now you don’t know when you landed, or where you landed, or where you have to jump next. This is even worse now because time spent looking around after a jump counts against timed platforms like geysers.

Geysers in still water are hard. The geysers in the river are impossible. A mistake there sends you all the way past the previous checkpoint and you die. I never got half way.

I never did the log waterfall, I fell down and I couldn’t get back to the top.

I never did the fish room.

I used up entire continue coins on the exact same long jump.

I never made it to the top of the trap tower.

I spent a lot of time in Moto’s death room. And when I continued without a coin, I only had 2 lives, so now I’m spending over twice as much time in the death room.

I finally got to the end, and didn’t have any baubles to spend.

It was hard to get a party for this (on the first day!) This party only had 3 people. I don’t expect to be able to get another one.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As I said above, the one-life thing was to add fun. I don’t find mindlessly throwing away lives to be fun. I want death to matter in SAB like it mattered in Mega Man and Metroid. That creates tension. Causes you to be careful. To THINK about your environment, enemies, and how you approach jumps. It is fundamental to creating the experience I want to create. But if you can jump back to the hub, then back to your group at the end of a zone with 5 lives again those lives are next to meaningless. The tension, awareness and thoughtfulness slip to the wayside because it doesn’t matter how often you die. It has nothing to do with selling anything.

What I don’t like about it is it leaves little to no room for error. I went in to infantile mode honestly not expecting to even need any continue coins (it’s infantile mode), so I didn’t bother with any.

I got to just before the final boss where those spinning flowers are, which was the first time I’d encountered them. I thought it was kind of odd there wasn’t another rainbow cloud to go over that part, but I didn’t see any or any hands leading to one. The first time I stepped on the flower I got flung into the other flower, which spun me right off the edge. Death #1. The second time I was very careful to aim myself and yet I was not flung far enough and missed making it onto the clear platform. Death #2 and subsequently game over. Now I have to start all the way at the beginning because of issues with one new (to me) feature at the very end that didn’t really have anything to do with the list of things you want us to be conscious of while playing.

Plus, I still feel like the Infinite Continue Coin negates all of that anyway and, unfortunately, I very much see it as a requirement to play SAB in any sort of enjoyable manner. I do not and did not want to have to farm World 1 anymore. I thought that was behind me and unfortunately I see it’s more important than ever. So, my choice is to pony up for gems to buy this item (which makes all the reasons for the limited lives in the first place moot) or re-farm content I’ve already farmed to death so that I can play through the new content.

Also, I can only speak for myself, but limited lives takes away the adventure. Even just going through infantile there were several places I didn’t explore because I didn’t want to risk unnecessarily losing lives. Where’s the fun in that?

Yeah world 2 after the raft made me quit. I’m not rage quitting or anything its just the type where you don’t even want to bother getting worked up over all the bs the “game” will give you. I’ll just forget this SAB part of the patch ever happened.

Shame considering how much I loved SAB when it launched.

Also how you could not expect this to happen with how disliked world 2 zone 1 was back during the other SAB. People would always state how much they hated the rapids.. so you continue giving us more of that. Smart, real smart.

Then I noticed the unlimited continue coin for 600 gems and it all fell into place. I sure hope nasty practices like this don’t continue into the future. I mean its not like Wildstar is coming out..

It makes me sad when this is being called to get nerfed after a DAY of being out there.

There are some hard parts but my goodness people, at least give it more than one day’s try before you decide it’s too hard and needs to be summarily whacked by the nerfstick.

Otherwise I’m worried what’ll happen when/if MK Clock Tower comes back.

I have to agree World 2, Zone 1 is really doing a number on me, then funny thing is… the problems start only after the raft segment, before that it is fine (seeing as I had to run it several times now to that point).

As the smallest asura I have to literally stand on thin air to have the reach needed, only in some places I get knocked off if I try to position myself as such (ie. standing on the log way past the end of it is fine, but doing the same on the crocodile after burning the trees is not, yet without doing that there is not enough reach).

Other similar segments of the level (ie. before the raft section) do not have this issue.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Seriously, what versions of these games are you playing?

We all have a broad range of experience with Atari – current games. I cut my teeth on NES Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden et all. When I reference one of these games I’m not saying “SAB is exactly like this game in every way.” SAB is a homage to ERA of games, not a single game or genre. SAB is LIKE Metroid in a couple ways. Like Ninja Gaiden in a couple ways, like Mega Man in a couple ways. We have items in shops you have to buy to progress like Zelda, we have instant kill spikes and pits like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can point to all the classic games that do things differently and say “See, that’s how you SHOULD do it.” The we we DID do it is based on the unique chemistry of our team and what we liked in old games and what we wanted to experience. Your milage may vary.

Then please don’t say “I wanted a life to be valuable like in X” when “X” treated lives entirely different. I never worried about dying in one hit in Metroid because I had energy tanks and Samus couldn’t die from a fall or a knock back into a pit ever. I already DO value a life in GW2 and often get that “you could die here and not get this skill point/vista/etc” feeling all the time.

I’m going to try SAB but I’m hoping for a challenge more on the level of NES Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 2. I may not be a complete “noob” but I have always really hated games that punish you for even trying =/