Guild Wars 2

Taikanaru.5746:

You don’t understand why it’s too easy? Let me tell you – because I did it on my first try. My sense of achievement was nowhere near that of completing the Clock Tower. Still, it was not a bad puzzle, just easy.

A number of people have said that in this thread, so let me rephrase my quandry: I don’t understand how so many people got through the JP on their first try, when I’m failing miserably repeatedly. Have you (and the others) practiced JPs in the game so much that this winter-themed one was second nature to you? Do you have your camera angled in such a way that makes it incredibly easy? What about your controls and mouse sensitivity settings (in regards to the latter, both in and out of GW2)? Do you have a monster gaming rig that chews up GW2’s scenery with no problem? (My GeForce 560ti blew up right around the end of the Lost Shores event, so now I’m using my old 8800 GTS, which surprisingly does pretty well – but the game definitely isn’t as smooth as before, so that’s not helping).

There’s so many variables involved (and yes, I am overthinking it!) that I’m downright curious how so many found this JP a breeze. There’s got to be what, a couple hundred jumps from start to finish, and I’m honestly surprised that so many people made it through perfectly without mis-timing at least one jump along the way. I think the farthest I’ve made it so far is the point where the snowflakes take a sharp 90 degree turn to the left on the Gingerbread course (probably some 30-40 snowflakes in), so I clearly (mostly) know what I’m doing in order to make it that far, but I still always end up miscalculating a jump somewhere along the way each time, where I either jump forward too far or not far enough, or bump my head on an angled snowflake and then plummet to my doom, etc.

Anyway, I completely agree with what Agyaggalamb said above, how the controls in GW2 are not set up with controls tailored to a platforming game, which is why I believe so many are finding this JP frustrating, much to the chagrin of those here that had no problem with it. I beat Super Meat Boy, so I certainly know my way around platformers, and I even have played through many a Mega Man game back in the day with the (usually hated) disappearing platform parts. The controls for those games, though, are specifically designed for this type of game play.

Soapies.9671:

I actually find this puzzle really hard. I’m nearing 10hrs (which is so sad, but I’m currently unemployed and stubborn) and I still haven’t gotten to the end. I know I’m not the only one because I’m always hanging around people who have been there just as long as I have and fail every single time also!

I wonder if the people who find this too easy are the only ones logging onto this forum to say something, because there sure are a lot of us to are having a really hard time.

Please don’t make them harder.

I hate the fact it’s timed in multiple ways – your health, the snow flakes and the presents.

I hate that you can’t play this solo, and you’re constantly trying to see yourself through other peoples avatars (I’m an asura, so I can never see where I am)

And I hate the kitten candy canes, lol.

Ah well, c’est la vie. I’ll probably keep going for another 20hrs if I have to.

I completely agree with you Soapies. I honestly don’t understand why so many people are saying this JP was too easy, and yet the number of those saying it’s really hard seem few and far inbetween when I see a ton of people attempting it time and time again too. I’ve probably given this at least 100 attempts so far, and I still have yet to make it to the peppermint section.

In fact, I’m wondering if maybe something is slightly off with my keyboard, because I notice a very tiny yet noticeable lag between hitting space and my character jumping on screen (I’m using an 8 year old PS/2 Microsoft Multimedia keyboard) – anyone else have that experience, or is it completely lag free jumping for you? Maybe it’s something with my space key, as all the other controls seem good.

I’m getting quite good at jumping through the snowflakes, but every single time, I’ll mis-time a single jump. Sometimes it’s within the first 10 or so snowflakes, but usually I can make it 20-25 in. But inevitably, I still miss a jump somewhere, and it’s INCREDIBLY frustrating. I’d love for one of those folks that says this is too easy to try it on my computer so that I can find out once and for all if it’s me, or if it’s my hardware causing me trouble. I have a spare USB keyboard at work – I’ll have to bring it home for a day and see if that helps any.

Thanks @SolarNova and @Nemui – great tips. I’ll keep practicing a bit more before permanently giving up.

Azure Prower.8701:

Anuka.5876:

Any aspect of fun is removed by other people being present and there being a time limit. Very disappointing this is just a frustrating mess.

The time limit they give you is actually quite generous. Out of the 200 runs farming this thing. Health draining away is a non issue.

I respectively disagree with you about the time limit being generous. I like to be extra careful with my jumps to make sure I don’t mis-time them or go too far, so I need to take a brief pause every other jump or so to make sure I’m centered on my current platform (I realize that’s not a recommended technique by the experts here, but I’ve never gotten more than 12 snowflakes into this JP when I’m plowing ahead and jumping without abandon), and there’s just not enough time to take more than a couple pauses like that.

I really don’t mind the static JPs, but these specially-timed ones drive me insane. I’m going to try it a little bit more but then probably give it up because it’s just not worth the frustration. For those of you saying that this JP is incredibly easy, can I ask what control scheme you’re using to do it? Are you simply holding down the right-mouse button the entire time like someone suggested? How do you ensure that you angle your jumps perfectly each time? Thanks!

Actually HalcyonBrush, if you have an Nvidia card, chances are that Microsoft update is adversely messing up the normal Nvidia drivers, and I bet uninstalling GW2 and then reinstalling it will be a waste of time and cause needless throttling of your hard drive.

Before attempting that, you may want to view your installed updates (in the Windows 7 Start menu search box, type “View installed updates”) to see if you have the one I pointed out. It looks like you should be able to right-click it and select Uninstall to try to remove it (note that I haven’t tried this, since after doing a System Restore to get my system back to a good state, I told Windows to ignore the update and not install it in the first place). I hope this helps!

For those of you with an Nvidia card, you might be running into an issue I pointed out in a couple other tech support threads about recently starting to get odd errors and BSOD issues with GW2. See more here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/nvidia-graphics-adapter-wddm-11-graphics-adapter/8a4be740-7848-40ca-b799-1427bc053aa3

and here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/1250-73-windows-update-failing-install-wddm-wddm

A recent Windows update listed as Important was pushed out by Microsoft that is causing all manners of grief for owners of Nvidia cards. If you can, you may want to try to do a System Restore back to before you started having problems to see if that update is the cause.

Hi Dorden,

See the reply I just posted to this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Crashes-to-BSOD-while-playing-GW2/

Since you have an Nvidia card, you might have that problem too. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s possible to uninstall the Windows update in question, but if you have System Restore turned on and can turn back the clock to prior to this recent update, you might be able to fix this somewhat easily.

Hi Jemmali,

Microsoft recently pushed out an “important” Windows Update that has been causing BSOD for people with Nvidia cards, and I have a feeling that might be your problem. There’s a little bit more information about it here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/nvidia-graphics-adapter-wddm-11-graphics-adapter/8a4be740-7848-40ca-b799-1427bc053aa3

I ran into this too, which got so bad that once I got a BSOD in GW2 (which never happened EVER prior to this update), rebooting my PC would cause a BSOD immediately upon starting up Windows, which was quite scary and something that made me think my video card was going bad. However, I was able to do a System Restore to just prior to when I got the update. I had to do this a few times, trying different versions of the official Nvidia drivers for my GeForce 560 Ti card, still eventually getting this BSOD problem, until I finally noticed that a Windows update was labeled as something like “Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2” was being pushed out to my PC after I restored it back to a state a few days earlier.

Researching this update, I came across the above forum posting and then hid that update so that it wouldn’t be installed. So far, it’s fixed my recurring BSOD. It’s always made me incredibly paranoid about Microsoft’s updates, since I’ve never had reason to distrust them before.

I should also mention that I have an MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card, for those that are curious, and I’ve never had a problem with GW2 over the two months that I’ve been playing it, up until today.

I just started having a similar problem after downloading the latest patch an hour ago, and then playing for about 25-30 minutes. My screen started freaking out, and my PC ultimately locked up (though I could hear the Guild Wars 2 music in the background, even though the screen had gone black by that point). I forced my computer to shutdown, and upon starting up the game after rebooting, it freaked out again after less than a minute.

THEN, after forcing a reboot again, I now started getting the blue screen of death immediately once Windows booted up (I didn’t even touch the game). Yelp!! I had just upgraded the Nvidia drivers a day or two earlier, so after seeing the BSOD happen 2 or 3 times in a row, I rolled back to an earlier restore point in safe mode (which came up just fine). I can get into Windows just fine now, but I’m worried about starting up GW2 again…