Guild Wars 2

Josh Foreman.8250:

The design intent was NOT to make Normal Mode as hard as it is. There are a combination of factors that are making it so, and we’re currently working on a fix. We want W2 Normal Mode to be slightly more challenging than W1. There are several obvious difficulty spikes that we are addressing by adding check points, removing the buggy waterspouts, making dart traps easier to spot, removing some of them, etc.

Josh, you’re as awesome as always. I hope you’re able to find the right balance now.

Josh Foreman.8250:

All the complaints about the randomness of the rapids, floaty platforming, camera issues, etc. are things I would literally pay a thousand dollars to fix. Maybe even two. I’d cut my salary if we had a way to fix them. We hate them as much as you do. We simply accept the pain of these engine limitations because we feel like the overall content is worth it. I totally understand if other’s find them too annoying to be able to enjoy the content.

This is why I have a very strong opinion that there should be multiple ways of accomplishing the goal when mechanics with known issues are introduced. No one should be punished for not having the ideal setup.

Imagine if we took this attitude towards disabled people. Telling a paraplegic that we understand if not having a wheelchair ramp is too annoying, but it would have messed with the esthetics of our storefront.

If you know that the engine has limitations, then either use them very, very sparingly, or offer alternatives. The SAB has many, many different paths a player can take, what is one more? Who cares if it is a 10 min journey around the back of a mountain, its going to be a lot less frustrating than having a twirly flower toss you back to square one to the point of rage quitting.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Though most of the warranted complaints are just a limitation of what we can and can’t do with our engine. (Like making the dart traps knock back instead of kill. That was our initial intent, but there’s no way to make it work.)

Forgive my ignorance here, but I don’t understand this. There are multiple instances of where the game outside of SAB uses mechanics that would work just fine. For example, the water spouts are buggy, but in the Vexx’s LAN jumping puzzle there are platforms that fade in and out causing the player to fall. Why not just place one of these at the top of a water spout animation, and fade it out at the same time the animation ends?

The dart traps…well, I spend 90% of my time in GW2 getting knocked back by something or rather. There must be a mechanic available that allows this. In fact, I just remember playing 200000 rounds of some Living Story mini game where characters could knock me back with a force field. I know there are many examples of where knock back mechanics are used in the game, why can’t these be applied here?

I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job or anything, but other than those super annoying twirling flowers, and bouncy mushrooms, I don’t see any mechanics that aren’t part of the normal game.

Either way, aside from the Bauble achievements being super annoying (yes, I’ll complain about this until its given a proper counter, or until you at least just tell us how many baubles we need to find), I think these changes will be great. I started working my way through again, but I haven had a giant chunk of time to dedicate to the 2+ hours it seems to be taking people.

Ok I just did the rapids at the start of world 2. I don’t understand what people are complaining about other then your stick can swing a bit farther then it shows and you sometimes need to target what you wanna hit and not just swing wildly.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder. Even so, I certainly don’t want to punish anyone for playing anything I make. Quite the opposite. I really, truly, honestly only want to make people have fun when they play my content. Some people have fun with brutal instant kill stuff like Tribulation Mode. But Normal Mode should not feel like that.

…

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

Aerlen.5326:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder. Even so, I certainly don’t want to punish anyone for playing anything I make. Quite the opposite. I really, truly, honestly only want to make people have fun when they play my content. Some people have fun with brutal instant kill stuff like Tribulation Mode. But Normal Mode should not feel like that.

…

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

I think he means when you played Zelda back in the day without cheating ie guides and google. Nowadays Zelda is a joke, back in the day it was not.

Josh Foreman.8250:

StriderShinryu.6923:

especially since Josh did seem to initially think the complaint (particularly about the size of the levels) was a complaint about the amount of content.

Yeah, I was too flippant in my response to that. Having read every post on this thread I understand what the real issue is. Personally I love long epic slogs. Long movies, long songs, long levels. I felt like I was going the extra mile making these levels so huge. I spent SO many all-nighters crafting these levels… and then I’m told it’s too much. Hahaha…. oh… …

I can definitely sympathize with putting a ridiculous amount of time on a project and getting unexpected or unpleasant feedback after it’s done. Here’s hoping the 13 pages of feedback help influence the next patch as well as future updates so we can all have a fun time in SAB

Meriem.3504:

Aerlen.5326:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder. Even so, I certainly don’t want to punish anyone for playing anything I make. Quite the opposite. I really, truly, honestly only want to make people have fun when they play my content. Some people have fun with brutal instant kill stuff like Tribulation Mode. But Normal Mode should not feel like that.

…

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

I think he means when you played Zelda back in the day without cheating ie guides and google. Nowadays Zelda is a joke, back in the day it was not.

You mean when I originally beat it in 1988?

I give him that Zelda was a challenge but it didn’t make me ragequit then or now. But like I said.. no perfect jumping, no instant death, no lag, no latency, no tiny hitboxes.. etc etc…

Aerlen.5326:

Meriem.3504:

Aerlen.5326:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder. Even so, I certainly don’t want to punish anyone for playing anything I make. Quite the opposite. I really, truly, honestly only want to make people have fun when they play my content. Some people have fun with brutal instant kill stuff like Tribulation Mode. But Normal Mode should not feel like that.

…

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

I think he means when you played Zelda back in the day without cheating ie guides and google. Nowadays Zelda is a joke, back in the day it was not.

You mean when I originally beat it in 1988?

I give him that Zelda was a challenge but it didn’t make me ragequit then or now. But like I said.. no perfect jumping, no instant death, no lag, no latency, no tiny hitboxes.. etc etc…

Well this is easier then Zelda for me. I just ran pass all the assassins on the bridge without getting hit once and without stopping first time through. I played games where you have to be near perfect in hitting. Then again Zelda wasn’t a platformer, this is.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The way things work in SAB is, like the engine compromises, are not the way I would design this thing if it wasn’t part of GW2. There are so many issues that come with building this in an MMO, the amount of logistics we have to deal with is a nightmare. I would love nothing more than to let you go back to your last check point.

I take it by that quote that it is impossible to save progress up to checkpoints, then. That’s a shame if so, because thus far that’s been my #1 problem with the new stages. A little too much stage all at once with no way to take a break. Going through 2-1 I ended up forcing myself to stay on the computer 20 minutes longer than I “should have” because I didn’t want to quit and lose my progress on the stage.

Likewise today I opted not to even try 2-2 a second time (after getting bugged out of my first attempt) because I only had an hour or so before I would have to eat dinner with the family and figured I probably wouldn’t be able to do it in that amount of time, at least based off of the time it took for my first run of 2-1.

And I can’t even imagine how long Tribulation Mode might take in one sitting.

Mind you, there are other parts of GW2 (and games in general) that require the same sort of time sinks all in one chunk and the time required goes down once you know the stage, so I’m not saying its the end of the world or anything like that. Just that it’d be a nice convenience and its a shame it can’t be done, if I’m indeed reading into that correctly.

Hey Josh, I’ve been following this thread for quite a while and I thought you might like some feedback. For reference, I love your work and love SAB. I am also a fairly skilled jumper (I’ve beaten tribulation mode 1.1, which I also loved).

I want to briefly touch on tribulation mode. It’s awesome. Tricky, creative, lots of fun figuring out where to go, then lots of difficulty actually doing it. I really really love it, and I want to see more content like it. However – it really really really does feel like the Infinite Continue Coin is required. Not an optional quality of live upgrade. If you want to play tribulation mode you need the Infinite Continue Coin – end of story. I know you want to keep the feeling that lives are scarce and tense, but honestly deaths are too unpredictable for this to realistically be the case (hidden lava pits, etc…) and I also ran into a bug where I was on a safe platform client side, but the server thought I’d walked off said platform into spikes servers side – causing my death. These deaths felt cheap and annoying – and they would have been infinitely more so without the Infinite Continue Coin. Just to beat World 1 Zone 1 took me about 200 deaths, or 40 continue coins (if I wasn’t using the infinite). Not impossible to farm, but extraordinarily unpleasant – and not in the fun, IWTBTG way.

My suggestion, although I don’t know how feasible this is, is that after you beat say World 1 in Normal Mode you are given a Tribulation Mode World 1 Infinite Continue Coin as an achievement reward.

Onto other feedback. World 2.1 felt and played great – just the right difficulty level, if not for the bugs. But the bugs were bad. Waterspouts were very tricky, for all the wrong reasons. There was also one point (where you are crossing the river on the moving logs) where when you jump on solid rocks in the river you are swept away anyway. The other problems were that it was simply too long, and there weren’t enough obvious baubles. I know you’ve said that there are plenty of hidden baubles – but they are too well hidden (and tricky to find without a guide). Some semi-obvious 20 baubles need to be added throughout, or else it is too depressing. As for length – the solution to that is to not stick rigidly to the Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3 format you have been following. Have six zones a release, and split World 1.1 up into two zones – that would be the perfect length. Also, the rapids were very buggy, unpredictable, and irritating. Generally falling in meant you would either teleport unpredictably about, be flung backwards, or be stuck in the middle of the river until you finally died.

World 2.2 – This world was much much trickier than the previous. World 2.1 felt a little trickier than 1.3, but world 2.2 was a massive difficulty spike. I still beat it without too much difficulty, but I can definitely see how people would struggle hard. The sword assassins have too much health, I’d suggest making them take two hits – their evade is quite irritating as well. I often had to just zerg them out. Some of the jumping towards the start is quite finicky, instead of fun with a little challenge. It was mainly climbing trees that were guilty of this, but there was one part rounding a mountain pillar on ledges that felt the same way. Checkpoints were also too far apart – it generally shouldn’t take you more than a minute (if that) too get back to where you were, any more is just too long. Darts – I like the concept, but (especially in the gong building) they felt cheap, not fun. Again, I’d imagine this would be even worse without the infinite continue coin. Either make them knock back or act as a solid wall (leave the insta-kill for tribulation mode). At the very least add lasers where they aim. Again, it was too long. I’d honestly split up World 2.2 into three smaller levels. Two hours for a first playthrough is too long to not be able to leave the computer.

The gong was (imo) too tricky. I managed to beat it by dying and respawning, not by following it all the way down. You could fix it either by reducing the number of floors you have to go down, or by making it so that you can stay on one side the entire way down. Baubles were also as scarce as in world 2.1. It just isn’t as fun without collecting baubles. Perhaps adding 1/10 of a bauble coins, and scattering them everywhere would help. It’s the sensation of collecting that is awesome, not necessarily getting large amounts.

Not trying to be a backseat game designer, but in my opinion the difficulty level of normal mode should be such that getting through it isn’t even slightly a struggle. It should be a fun romp, with some (optional) challenging side areas for baubles, with the real difficulty in Tribulation Mode.

Haven’t done World 3 yet, so can’t comment there.

As I said before, I really love your work. I hope my feedback help you continue to design great things for GW2 in the future!

Meriem.3504:

Aerlen.5326:

Meriem.3504:

Aerlen.5326:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I would challenge anyone who thinks SAB W2 is harder than Zelda 1 to beat the last couple of dungeons! Zelda is WAY harder. Even so, I certainly don’t want to punish anyone for playing anything I make. Quite the opposite. I really, truly, honestly only want to make people have fun when they play my content. Some people have fun with brutal instant kill stuff like Tribulation Mode. But Normal Mode should not feel like that.

…

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

I think he means when you played Zelda back in the day without cheating ie guides and google. Nowadays Zelda is a joke, back in the day it was not.

You mean when I originally beat it in 1988?

I give him that Zelda was a challenge but it didn’t make me ragequit then or now. But like I said.. no perfect jumping, no instant death, no lag, no latency, no tiny hitboxes.. etc etc…

Well this is easier then Zelda for me. I just ran pass all the assassins on the bridge without getting hit once and without stopping first time through. I played games where you have to be near perfect in hitting. Then again Zelda wasn’t a platformer, this is.

Yeah, I don’t think the comparison flies for that reason alone. Zelda was a top view adventure game that didn’t rely on timing or perfect reflexes – it uses a different gaming skill-set, one I happen to have in abundance. W2 of SAB requires platforming and reflex skills – which I have trouble with thanks to disabilities. I’m having enough issues in 1-2 and 1-3 ATM, I’d liken it more to Wizards and Warriors TBH…

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

Awesome. You play through every year? That’s still my favorite game. It’s responsible for my career. I’m working on a re-make with my own high res graphics. Here’s some of the sculptures I’ve done for it so far.
http://scrybe.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

And thats what I was trying to say to him, hes comparing a game hes beaten over and over to a game brand new to him. Was Zelda super duper easy for him the first time through with no guides or google?

Those are Iron Knuckles you mean, the ones you can only hit in the back : P I hate the Wizrobes and they also scared me lol OO the Like-likes, I hate them. The scared me the most, I am like AMG I just bought this bloody shield!

EDIT: AMG YOU DIRTY RAT.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Electro.4173:

Just that it’d be a nice convenience and its a shame it can’t be done, if I’m indeed reading into that correctly.

You’re reading it right. Can’t be done. Wish it could be.

In sanctum sprint when you fall off and die, you’re teleported a few steps back from there. Why can’t this same mechanic be implemented here?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

Awesome. You play through every year? That’s still my favorite game. It’s responsible for my career. I’m working on a re-make with my own high res graphics. Here’s some of the sculptures I’ve done for it so far.
http://scrybe.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

Yep! It was the first video game I ever really beat. It took me a month and about two hours a day, it’s sort of a tribute to what really got me into gaming to play it once a year – my old NES cart still has my original saves though I’m real sure the battery will die shortly. Woe for old technology but I owe that game a lot.

And awesome models I know I sound snotty at times but I gotta give credit where credit is due. Ah Lynels… always loved those guys.. until they sworded me..

The Darknuts are kinda kittens… it took me a while to learn how to move around the room, make use of bombs, and take them down before they knocked my hearts out. Like I said, I have a great adventure game skill set.. platformer not so much… and figuring out how to beat Ganon was really fun. I knew I had to use the arrow but not when to use it. I was used to the games of my childhood kicking my butt, when I finally KOed Ganon, it was a party.

I’m just not a platformer/insta-death person. I will admit, playing today, I did make jumps I thought I never could. World 2 will hopefully be patched by the time I see it and hopefully the sort of challenge I can have fun with. I actually don’t care about achieves, I just want to enjoy the content. You don’t have to finish a game 100% to love it.

Couple other things that just occured to me – it’s obvious how much work went into SAB, and the fact that you are spending so much time responding and trying to fix it shows that you care – and the fact is that this episode of SAB is so so close to being great – but it just misses the mark. It would be sad to lose the vastness of the stages – I agree, but it is unfortunately better than the alternative. Could you possible give everyone an item once they reach a checkpoint allowing them to travel to that checkpoint whenever they want be double clicking it at the cost of a life, and then make them give that item to the next checkpoint/the boss chest to move on and finish the level? Don’t know how feasible that is, but that could be a long term fix for next time.

Meriem.3504:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

Really? I accept that challenge. I play Zelda 1 100% through every November, takes me 6 hours. Game on. The last dungeon dungeon in Zelda 1 doesn’t require perscision perfect jumping for one thing and by then, you have a full complement of hearts plus a red potion plus the vest which cuts damage and the best sword in the game. I can clear that dungeon in 15 minutes tops, how does that even compare to laggy design, instant death, cheap enemies, messed up hit boxes, pixel perfect jumping and the heck I’ve heard others going through?

I will find a group to play world 2 with and we shall see if I clear it in under an hour then.

Awesome. You play through every year? That’s still my favorite game. It’s responsible for my career. I’m working on a re-make with my own high res graphics. Here’s some of the sculptures I’ve done for it so far.
http://scrybe.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

And thats what I was trying to say to him, hes comparing a game hes beaten over and over to a game brand new to him. Was Zelda super duper easy for him the first time through with no guides or google?

Those are Iron Knuckles you mean, the ones you can only hit in the back : P I hate the Wizrobes and they also scared me lol OO the Like-likes, I hate them. The scared me the most, I am like AMG I just bought this bloody shield!

EDIT: AMG YOU DIRTY RAT.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

I didn’t know where to go after the bridge with the ninjas, so I said out loud leap of faith thinking Indian Jones Style and just jumped blindly and made it by complete RNG

it’s Her.

Yes, the mythical gamer girl exists.

/sarcasm.. for fun :p

Did anyone else get stun locked by the water when you fall in? I usually can jump right out but I just lost like 3 hearts because my invisibility wore off before I could even to try jump out. Just pointing this out incase its a bug.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

my old NES cart still has my original saves though I’m real sure the battery will die shortly.

That’s amazing. I remember reading the instruction manual as a kid and seeing that the battery life was supposed to be 5 years and being worried about losing my saves!

Yeah, I recall that too but every year I plug it in, the save is still there. 25 years and still there… Nintendo is amazing.

I have to say that I do like the new world for SAB, but Zones 2 and 3 have serious problems with pacing, at least in terms of how long it is since the last checkpoint, which Zone 3 is horribly notorious for near the end. The difficulty makes me think of Alundra, where it was challenging, and winning made you feel so good, so I do like the challenge. I did love that Wizard fight btw, though it took me and my friend a while to figure out that you could slash him while he’s running at you during the first form.

One last thing – you sound disheartened.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Thanks for the quality feedback. I agree with most of what you say. One problem I’m realizing now is that when I first built 2-2 it was not a long level. I never changed the layout, but as we had more and more ideas for new mechanics they kept getting packed into that space. (and subsequently meant a bunch of 36 hour days for me and Lisa!)

snip

With this invention I can guarantee that the next release for SAB will be shorter, less dense, and have fewer new mechanics. (and the subsequent bugs that accompany them)

Please don’t be – the game is great and your work is great. Easy to forget that on the forums – please don’t. Keep being awesome.

Aerlen.5326:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Aerlen.5326:

my old NES cart still has my original saves though I’m real sure the battery will die shortly.

That’s amazing. I remember reading the instruction manual as a kid and seeing that the battery life was supposed to be 5 years and being worried about losing my saves!

Yeah, I recall that too but every year I plug it in, the save is still there. 25 years and still there… Nintendo is amazing.

The nintendo has proven to be far more durable then most things like the PS and Xbox. Those things seem to break way to easy but a lot of stuff is cheap as dirt anymore. Computers for example, my old one has been beaten and abused still works fine. The new super duper awesome gaming god computers?! Break after like a year or 2 -_-

World 1 is very nice, fun, and done right.

World 2 was just a kick in the face, it’s too big/long. Dont make dungeons/instances take the average player more than 20mins to complete, we’re not playing WoW here. All the worlds reward the same, so why was w2-z2 so long?

Charak.9761:

World 1 is very nice, fun, and done right.

World 2 was just a kick in the face, it’s too big/long. Dont make dungeons/instances take the average player more than 20mins to complete, we’re not playing WoW here. All the worlds reward the same, so why was w2-z2 so long?

You mean you don’t want a zone to take as long as 2 episodes of Dr. Who?!

Just wanted to login and say, I love the difficulty of SAB W2 (although some of the water spout and traps are agonizing). The length and complexity of the levels are fun and immersive. Myself and my guildies all really enjoy normal and troll mode…er Tribulation mode, and for the next while it has become our new guild activity.

Thank You!

Josh Foreman.8250:

Sadly that is the case with all jumping puzzles. Our QA embed plays as the largest fattest Norn possible with the crazy giant shoulder spikes. Generally when I test my JPs I rotate between all the races, and near the end I usually play as a giant Charr.

+1

My mains are all Charr and I have to be honest, I find jumping on them easier than on an Asura because their momentum in-game makes more sense to me and I work with it better than the Asura, who I feel rocket off at the speed of Sonic the instant you so much as think of pressing the W key.

While I’m here, I also don’t agree with this notion of pixel precise jumps in Trib mode. Sure, I’ve died over 100 times just to get to the third checkpoint in W1-Z1 so far, between silly mistakes, getting too confident and miscalculating my own jumps stupidly or being fooled once (or twice or three times when I forgot at 4am what I was and wasn’t meant to avoid) but it hasn’t been because a jump needed precision. It’s just because I went the wrong way or I vastly miscalculated where I was to jump from and where I was to jump to.

For the record, despite 100+ deaths in Trib W1-Z1, it was less frustrating and more fun than W2-Z2/3 was. Some of the deaths do feel very random, it’s true, but once you’ve found the random “death” areas (such as a floor being lava) then you can quickly avoid those areas in future. The mental pathway formed for Trib mode is still easier than a mental pathway to form for the vast majority of World 2 beyond the bits of Rapids we already had access to prior.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I can’t always dedicate hours at a time to GW2, and it would really, really, really help if we could start playing at unlocked checkpoints rather than the start of each zone, in all modes. That way I could focus on a smaller chunk at a time and progress in the SAB even when I “only” have an hour to play in the evening.
.

I would like this too. I think we don’t have a way to store that information on your character though.

I would like this too.

Me and my girlfriend have kind of hated World 2 Zone 1 for quite some time now, and have been unable to beat it. After 2-3 hours of trying, we were at our wits end at the obnoxious geyser segment. After trying there another 45 minutes, I disconnected just as my girlfriend game over’d. We now have to start. The entire zone. Over.

Not fun. Period.

I’m sorry x.x I know it must be stressful to hear all this negative feedback. I think its awesome how much heart and love has been put into SAB and all parts of it. It’s just that, for me and my girlfriend, Zone 1 of World 2 is not fun whatsoever, and it sounds like from what others are saying its just going to get more frustrating from there….

Edit2: I just want to say, reading through this thread, I really do appreciate how hard you’ve worked on all of this, and really want to say thank you again. I really don’t mean to come off as too harsh or whiny. I’ve just been having a bad night. I can imagine your night is going about as “well” and stressful. I hope you get it fine-tuned to where you want it so we can all be happy.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Awesome. You play through every year? That’s still my favorite game. It’s responsible for my career. I’m working on a re-make with my own high res graphics. Here’s some of the sculptures I’ve done for it so far.
http://scrybe.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

just looked though the link, both demon hunter AND zelda!

anyway back to the topic, i’v personal not had any major gripes with W2.

yes it might be long and yes it might be too hard for some people but if it was short and easy it would be a very boring W2 now wouldn’t it?

and to all the people complaing about the lag, I play on a EU server from New Zealand (long story) and so i get lag with EVERYTHING but i can still get though this no problems, yes there are some cheep hits and jumps will lag out now and again to i just keep on going.

i’m not going to let a few minor issues spoil the fun of SAB

Josh Foreman.8250:

Epicrandom.5817:

Hey Josh, I’ve been following this thread for quite a while and I thought you might like some feedback.

Thanks for the quality feedback. I agree with most of what you say. One problem I’m realizing now is that when I first built 2-2 it was not a long level. I never changed the layout, but as we had more and more ideas for new mechanics they kept getting packed into that space. (and subsequently meant a bunch of 36 hour days for me and Lisa!) I’ve now come up with the ultimate idea: The Anti-Idea Helmet. (Please don’t steal this idea, I want to patent it.) It’s a helmet that the each member of the SAB team is given. Like a construction helmet, but it’s got brain reading electrodes or what-have-you that can sense when you start to get creative. At that point a spring loaded mallet pivots down from its mount on the top/front of the helmet, smacking you in the forehead, discouraging new ideas. With this invention I can guarantee that the next release for SAB will be shorter, less dense, and have fewer new mechanics. (and the subsequent bugs that accompany them)

It’s okay to be creative, but you have to be careful when applying that creativity. Like the woman that ruined that 19th fresco painting of Jesus. People enjoy seeing new things, and new mechanics in this game is a welcome plus, but when those mechanics are seemingly unfair and cruel, it isn’t very entertaining to those who are at the other end of them.

I feel like World 2-2 would’ve been better if it was a rather large trick tower that you work your way down from, or up, if checkpoints led into portals to put you at the correct starting position for the next area. But that’s just me.

Well I just finaly had time to beat W2Z2. Still havent found that shortcut eagle btw. Anyway asside from the rather tediously long length when your trying to learn this level (took me a couple hours over 2 sitings) there were only 2 points where I thought the difficulty was a bit too much.

The first trouble spot was close to the hidden shop with the shovel and health potion upgrade. On the opposite side of the hill the shop is on the only path I was able to locate to progress involved a couple of very tricky jumps onto extremely narrow ledges. they were little more than small green patches just bairly wide enough to stand on. The very last jump killed me many times because you can just barely make that jump and the platform your leaping from you tend to almost skid off of.

The second spot was the gong tower… my goodness you’ve got a twisted mind comeing up with that thing :p While I agree that the traps are all visable if your careful its quite a long climb up there picking your way very slowly to then have to deal with that gong roll event where you’ve got to do it all in reverse very quickly. A checkpoint at the gong would alleviate alot of the frustration should you fail the gong (and fix a cheesy way to exploit that event) one way or another your avrage player WILL fail that gong the first time they see it, you dont have time to take it slow and careful and the camera issues do not always allow you to actually see the traps so you need to do a few from memory alone. being able to go start the gong over agian without haveing to spend a couple minutes carefuly reclimbing the tower would be a godsend after the 4th or 5th time you’ve failed the gong.

Speaking of the gong roll because it keeps rolling even if you die if you dont mind eating the death you can just kick it off, walk into a dart trap, revive at the waypoint and easily get down to the bottom of the gongs path before it gets there leting you end run the whole event.

Also you may want to add a warning to the tooltip on the medium health vial upgrade. I would have been nice to know in advance that health potions would be significantly more expensive after buying that upgrade before I forked over for it. If I’d known that (and realized I’d find the chain stick shop shortly) I’d have put off buying that one. going from 5 boubles a heart to 12.5 boubles a heart just to be able to heal 2 at a time and carry more health with you is a tad steep.

I missed out on SAB the first time, so I came in with no pre-built love for it. I was excited for it based on all of the hype around the game, but nothing more.

I completed all of the achievements for World 1 this morning, and it was pretty fun.

I started World 2 this evening and completed Zone 1 on my first run through. It was quite a bit harder than anything the first World had to offer, but nothing anybody who has done some of the difficult jumping puzzles can’t complete.

And then I got to Zone 2. The SAB went from a fun, semi-challenging throwback to the oldschool, to a complete wreck. Instant kill mechanic after instant kill mechanic combined with a length that is far too long for anybody with any sort of adult responsibilities.

If the Zone 2 challenge was left as is, I would cut the length of it by over half. Length is fine if the content is like strolling through the park (W1 Z1)… but not this.

So, in closing, I guess the biggest thing I have to say doesn’t seem right, is the length. I failed at the multiple floating island portals, and I simply won’t attempt it again. I can’t spare another 2+ hours just to give it a shot. Disappointing.

The Queen Pavillon update left a bad taste in many’s mouth, especially with the lack of concrete answers toward the glitches that could occur during Liadri’s fight (I’ve beaten her nevertheless).

So, I recall having a great time in SAB World 1, especially the whole “let’s embark on an adventure” feel of discovering new areas, new challenge, new gameplay. I had tons of fun, even had the patience to farm for two skins.

Today I jumped directly in SAB World 2.
Oh god.

Oh god.

Oh god.

This summarize my experience in World 2, zone 1

[…]

13 lives (including two continues) only for the first zone. Eight lives in world 2 before I give up lol. I wont repeat what was already exposed in the thread, since it has already been said and re-said AND heard by our almighty Josh.

I also want to express my gratitude to him for taking the time to answer our concerns and explain his position. We don’t see this much often. Plus, I don’t feel like needing to repeat in detail what went wrong since we know that they know.
And also thank you for taking the game’s engine to its limits to offer something new. Keep up the good work and great attitude toward feedbacks.

Now, instead of making a list of what is bad, I’ll instead offer suggestion.

1- Less Ninjas
They’re interesting enemies and they also fit the themes of world 2. It’s also normal to get slightly more challenging enemies in World 2.
That said, we got used to use the stick as a weapon for 3.5 worlds in the first SAB update in April and suddenly we’re thrown into areas filled with 2-3 ninjas, swallowing frogs, that have way too much health for the weapon we have. Granted, we can unlock an upgrade, but as far as I know, it costs 400 bubbles, it’s hidden in a secret shop somewhere, so it’s easy to miss and by the time we find it, we’ve already been kicked in the nuts countless of time by them.

So, since they knock us back (often to our death) with little to no possibility to dodge and since we’re also stuck with a cheap stick to fight them, less ninjas would be a good balance.

2- Password checkpoints?
It might be a bit late to incorporate a such system, and maybe too hard I don’t know, but it never hurt to ask.
I’ve seen a couple of people complain about the fact the levels were too long and the need from our beloved Josh to make them ‘epic’. Granted, since the zones work as “dungeon instances”, there is no way to take a break and continue later… We already have Arah path 4 suffering from that, making it unpopular for a reason.
A good solution for Super Adventure Box would be to create an additional room to the one where we choose the difficulty and the zone. In it, put a giant keyboard.
Then, generate random passwords at each checkpoint. Each instance/zone run would have different passwords, they’re randomly generated so no way to cheat… And make them account bound too (I suggest that to find a way to link a password to certain party members).
So if your party disband or need to take a break, you could start again at the exact spot with passwords.

It’s a clumsy suggestion, not perfect, but it’s an idea that could eventually become something better. Don’t hesitate to discuss it.

3- Less expensive upgrades
400 bubbles per upgrades , we don’t even get that in one single zone and we’re still getting 1 bubble max per kill… As far as I recall, it was approximatively 150 per upgrades (for a total of 5) in the first world. Why the sudden boost of 400 per items now? Considering we’re still getting the same amount of loot per killt here is obviously something wrong. Either make the monsters from World 2 drop more (since they’re harder) or make the upgrades less expensive. We have 10 upgrades to do, I don’t know if they all cost the same amount, but so far I know three of them costs 400, it’s too much.

I also link this suggestion to my 1st one: anyone who completed all of world 1 with all upgrades won’t have the required amount to complete word 2…
And since W2-Z123 are hard as hell, it’s a clear “go back to farm the end chest once a day until you have the needed amount”. We should need to go back to easier levels to have the right amount to progress. Just make the zones more rewarding, less painful and it will already be better.

All the other things I wanted to talk about has already been adressed like I said so I won’t talk about them. In a summary:

• Too many enemies in world 2, not prepared
• Levels too long
• Not enough rewards from killing foes/finishing levels
• Upgrades too expensives
• Difficulty spike too big from world 1 to 2
• Collision issues
• Unfair knock backs
• Rapids…
• Invisible traps
• Flowers being unfair, resulting often in death
• etc

My biggest complain of difficulty:

- Where’s the sword?

Sure, we originally get the Pointy Stick in W1-Z1, but how come it hasn’t upgraded yet? The torch has an upgrade, the shovel has an upgrade, but the stick is still a stick? Why? Especially when it comes to the bears -polar and forest- as well as bananas, hillbillies, and raccoon mafia. Those things just laughing at the player’s Pointy Stick.

(Oh, and if there is a stick upgrade that I’m completely overlooking, please point it out and ignore this post).

Siphaed.9235:

My biggest complain of difficulty:

- Where’s the sword?

Sure, we originally get the Pointy Stick in W1-Z1, but how come it hasn’t upgraded yet? The torch has an upgrade, the shovel has an upgrade, but the stick is still a stick? Why? Especially when it comes to the bears -polar and forest- as well as bananas, hillbillies, and raccoon mafia. Those things just laughing at the player’s Pointy Stick.

(Oh, and if there is a stick upgrade that I’m completely overlooking, please point it out and ignore this post).

There’s a hidden shop in world 2-2, all I’m gonna say.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Epicrandom.5817:

Hey Josh, I’ve been following this thread for quite a while and I thought you might like some feedback.

Thanks for the quality feedback. I agree with most of what you say. One problem I’m realizing now is that when I first built 2-2 it was not a long level. I never changed the layout, but as we had more and more ideas for new mechanics they kept getting packed into that space. (and subsequently meant a bunch of 36 hour days for me and Lisa!) I’ve now come up with the ultimate idea: The Anti-Idea Helmet. (Please don’t steal this idea, I want to patent it.) It’s a helmet that the each member of the SAB team is given. Like a construction helmet, but it’s got brain reading electrodes or what-have-you that can sense when you start to get creative. At that point a spring loaded mallet pivots down from its mount on the top/front of the helmet, smacking you in the forehead, discouraging new ideas. With this invention I can guarantee that the next release for SAB will be shorter, less dense, and have fewer new mechanics. (and the subsequent bugs that accompany them)

Might I recommend a rotation of external play-testers for experimental content? Some of the people who have captured video for this thread, for example.

A big part of the problem seems to be that there’s a bit of blindness on the team(s) that produce the experimental content WRT design issues which aren’t bugs. That’s something I see a lot of in my day job. Too much focus on “This will be cool when it works!” and not enough on “How often will this work?”/“What happens when it DOESN’T work?”

Another big issue seems to come from sitting on the Near side of a pipe. Double-digit pings are great, sometimes even triple-digits, but someone should be testing content when connected via a fairly crappy cellular link, low-speed DSL, or the like. I see a lot of complaints (not just re:SAB) from EU and Asian players about game mechanics that don’t work properly on a poor link to the servers. I know my company released a product that worked GREAT on our internal servers, then failed miserably when it worked on real, off-the-shelf/not-configured-by-permanent-$50k/year-IT-staff servers over the dodgy wireless links that most small businesses use — we never tested ANY misconfiguration on the grounds that ‘we can’t test ALL misconfiguration!’

As someone who got all achivements for world 1, I am honestly not enjoying world 2.

It’s too hard, too long and too cheap.

Seriously, zone 2 and 3 are too big. Please split them. I’m currently doing zone 3. I am too tired after all the cheap deaths. But I am way too far to stop because if I stop, I will have to repeat it. World 2 zone 3 is longer than 3 zones of world 1 combined

It is now not fun anymore. It’s an punishment. I dont want to play anymore. May be try again tomorrow. But I cant because I would waste my last hour effort.

I like to discover all the secrets. But I cant see myself exploring zone 2 and zone 3. I will just wait for a guide.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Is this issue (dying randomly and getting pushed off rocks constantly) happening to you? If so, is it happening as frequently as this video shows? If this is anything more than an edge case than we have a serious problem that will necessitate some serious solution. Thanks for pointing it out.

I didn’t die randomly in Zorld 2, but I can confirm I was knocked back in exactly the same spots in zone one – every single one. I remember thinking at the time, I wish I was recording this to see what I was doing wrong, because at times I felt totally powerless to the RNG of the knockback.

Twice I was also knocked back behind the waterfall – once at the first waterfall (the one part that spills off into the abyss) and the second right under the crocodile. (See pictures below) Fortunetly I was able to get myself unstuck, but that combined with the random knockbacks and the flowers really soured an otherwise awesome level.

I really do appreciate you’re trying to get a rhino in a tutu here in terms of this engine, and I don’t want to point these things out just to harp on and on about it. I want to document instances that seemed a little funky, and figure out if they were player error, a bug, or just a quirk that we have to live with. But believe me when I say, the cool design of your level still shines through – I wouldn’t be here trying to fix the experience for others if I didn’t think it was worth fixing.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Is this issue (dying randomly and getting pushed off rocks constantly) happening to you? If so, is it happening as frequently as this video shows? If this is anything more than an edge case than we have a serious problem that will necessitate some serious solution. Thanks for pointing it out.

That’s pretty much exactly it. Everyone I know has problems like that in the rapids. That would be the “frustrating” part.

Josh Foreman.8250:

This is as designed. Dungeons are designed for up to 5 people. If you choose to solo a dungeon you should expect this sort of thing. At leas that’s how I look at it. Maybe because SAB doesn’t look like a dungeon there are different expectations? We did clearly communicate when you enter a world that 5 are recommended.

The problem is that the SAB doesn’t work as a dungeon:
- You can’t rez your teammates (though maybe you can, I don’t recall well about doing it in team)
- You can’t help them neither to do difficult jumps (would be cool if we could carry people around)
- No mesmer portal
- Each death costs a certain amount of continue coins/bubbles
- In many parts of World 1 you could unlock bouncing mushroom shortcuts, but they seem fewer in world 2, which doesn’t help at all for less experienced players in jumpings.

So it’s all “to each their own” except during fights and puzzles, unlike the dungeons where you can do all of the above PLUS use waypoints (and if someone lacks money for repairs or whatever, you can send him the amount, unlike bubbles that are account bound). You can’t really expect people to consider SAB as a dungeon, it’s a complete different gameplay.

Therefore, by doing it in group, you expect them to be good enough to complete it otherwise they can become a burden… And we all know what kind of experience random grouping can give. Luckily we’re getting the LFG tool soon, but that doesn’t help the above issues.

Now if there were a proper way to help other players otherwise than by encouraging them, it would be a good start in the matter.