Guild Wars 2

I hadn’t been playing through most of the LS where those two got introduced, since I mainly came back to defend Lion’s Arch. I didn’t even know they were a couple or anything, but really, I just thought it was cute. They were friends who were fighting together, and when one got injured, the other was utterly overjoyed to see that she was alright.

If anything, I dislike Rox. Her huge eyes look totally weird, and she doesn’t even sound like she has her own unique voice actor. She sounds almost exactly like the Female PC Charr to me.

I do echo the sentiment that they need to involve the PC more in the story though. Guild Wars 1 had the PC participating and speaking in cutscenes, and I guess the quick release of the LS makes it too difficult for them to bring the VAs back in to record new lines…

So… you stopped paying attention to the game, and it’s Anet’s fault?

Turtle.4130:

Barabbas.8715:

showtime.9175:

Is there even any reason to have different difficulty modes, if the hardest difficulty gets nerfed to the point where anyone can complete it given a few hours of time?

Trololololololol! Keep trying kid. No one in their right mind thinks that just anyone can beat TM in a few hours. So they added three checkpoints and fixed some broken crap and now it’s EZ mode? ROFL, that’s a good one.

I retried it and beat it in less than an hour, I’m not really enjoying this SECOND Storm Wizard skin though, felt like I put no effort into getting it, and I feel extremely disappointed after all the effort I put into getting my Storm Wizard Greatsword knowing a bunch of casuals are just going to crawl along (When they eventually finish W1Z1 TM) and faceroll SAB TM W2.

….the fact that it’s your second skin means that even without the nerfs to the buggy sections, it’s going to be easier than the first because on your second time through, you KNOW HOW TO CLEAR IT ALL ALREADY.

Treeckoluv.3742:

With flowers and geysers going the way of the dodo, they’ve been replaced by brainless jumps and pre-determined flight paths. But because they were patched in, they kind of butchered the feel of W2Z1 because now we have a level comprising of a lot of empty gimmicks. I’m hoping the current flowers/geysers are just placeholders until SAB rolls around again. The zone badly needs something to make it unique again, rather than world 1 V2.

I imagine they’ll get worked on when it goes on hiatus again, but it’s not like there’s nothing new. Moving platforms (frogger, the waterfall, the raft) are a big addition, plus the new enemy types.

Bragdras.9572:

FoxKelfonne.7691:

The spike traps you can learn about and plan to avoid. This makes them cheap the first time, but possible as long as you remember to account for them. The waterspouts however, sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t, and it was nothing down to player skills. It was completely dependent on whether the engine and latency combined to decide to punish you. That’s not something that skill can overcome. It’s luck.

Not true, you have to die to the trap to know it’s there, there is no possible way to otherwise know it’s there.
I understand the idea behind the change to the watersprout: for people who play the game while always lagging, I simply don’t agree with the way it was handled, they could have increased the timers, instead of outright removing it, but I don’t really care about the change in the first place.

What’s laughable is how tacked on this whole update was, what with the checkpoints spawning you directly on spikes, it feels about as polished as the idea of tribulation’s “difficulty”.

Right, but once you know it’s there, if it kills you again, it’s your fault. It’s exactly like the games its trying to emulate. Like some of the Mario hacks. You go to make a jump, then hit your head on an invisible block and die. Now you know it’s there, and you avoid it next time. IWTBTG, something comes out of nowhere and kills you, next time, you avoid that something. All memorization and learning the levels, not fighting against the controls and randomness of the game.

I’m sure there will be a few more tweaks to the balance, and when SAB goes on hiatus again, maybe they will come up with a way to get waterspouts to work as originally intended, but there was probably no way to do it well and test it completely on short notice, hence why they were simply removed for now.

The answer is no.

Bragdras.9572:

While I personally couldn’t care less what happens to SAB now that I’ve finished tribulation, here is why people say they don’t like this new update, OP:

They changed a part of it that demanded a certain aptitude at jumping and timing (namely, the watersprouts) instead of changing idiotic things such as instant, no-warning spike traps and similar traps that have no signs or warnings.

That really is all they’re annoyed about, you can’t really blame someone for wanting a legitimate difficulty amongst this sea of cheap deaths that is tribulation, and then not expect them to whine when Anet changes one of the very few actual skill-demanding part of tribulation, and leave the rest of the cheap deaths untouched.

The spike traps you can learn about and plan to avoid. This makes them cheap the first time, but possible as long as you remember to account for them. The waterspouts however, sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t, and it was nothing down to player skills. It was completely dependent on whether the engine and latency combined to decide to punish you. That’s not something that skill can overcome. It’s luck.

I had finished World 2 before the updates, and it was a grueling, stressful, and annoying endeavor. I feel like the iteration done on world 2 has greatly improved many things.

I’ve only done World 2-1 since the patch hit, but already things are much nicer. I don’t feel rushed during piranha bend anymore, and having the harder enemies drop more valuable baubles means that I can actually use my ranged weapons without feeling like I’m wasting baubles. Also, given that I’m losing fewer lives due to fighting against the mechanics, I feel like it frees me up to do more exploring. Now I can attempt that tricky jump that might have something hidden behind it, because I don’t need to conserve all of my lives just to get through the level.

This is exactly the sort of thing I would have expected to follow after world 1. Thank you for listening to feedback, and thank you for continued work on something as awesome as the Super Adventure Box.

Josh Foreman.8250:

neon.4863:

The mindset that something seemed to be fairly easy for some players and so it needs to be made more difficult will only eventually lead to content that’s so difficult that only a tiny fraction of players will be able to complete it. But complete it they will, and some of them in a day.

I don’t think I’m of that mindset. My only goal was to make a World 2 that felt appropriately more challenging than World 1. Like Sonic or Mario’s World 2. When I said I wanted it to have a longer learning curve I meant in terms of exploration and discovery. One of the reasons the levels are as long as they are.

neon.4863:

Basically it’s a ton of elements, and they’re all pretty much thrown at you simultaneously, rather than introduced slowly with each level.

Hm. That makes me sad panda because of how hard I worked to make sure I was introducing the elements in gradual stages.

First rapid you see is off to the side. Second can be crossed by a bridge. NPC gives you hint about rapids. THEN you actually have to navigate rapids.

First piranha pool kills you if you jump in it. Next ones have the piranha jumping out. THEN you have to clobber the ones that land on the ground.

First dart trap is on a very simple piece of architecture, very close to a check point. Second one also close to a check point in a slightly more complex area, etc.

First push block goes from A to B allows you access to higher area. Next one lets you jump over darts. Next ones are a dependency puzzle to block darts.

Etc.

neon.4863:

I know you probably meant it for it to be fun, and I appreciate the effort, but perhaps some of these mechanics are best saved for world 4 (or the end of world 3).

So too much stuff. That’s interesting. I’ll ponder.

I think part of the issue with teaching people though, is that you’re teaching them by instantly killing them. The piranha pools, for example, are standing water pools with a mob in them. Nothing before that point made me think that standing water would kill me, so I walked into the pool to try to swing at the mob and instantly died, wasting a life. Now I know that the pools kill me, sure, but if I hadn’t walked in with 10 lives from the continue coin, I’d be a little more upset about having lost that life while doing something I previously thought was okay.

Everything else aside, I know I’ve made a few comments in here so far, and I’d like to say that I really do enjoy the idea of the Super Adventure Box. I loved World 1 when it came out, and I was completely excited for World 2, I just think there’s some things that can be addressed that feel unfair for a normal mode run. It’s good to know that you’re listening and working to make things right though, so keep up the good work.

My next little criticism is that World 2 is stressful enough without having to worry about having my baubles slowly siphoned away by owls….

Upon further play time, my other problem with world 2 is the sheer number of instant death possibilities. There were bottomless pits in World 1, yes, but they showed up sparingly, and if you fell into one it was because you were trying to make a tricky jump for more baubles. I had gems laying around, and so I got the infinite coin. I’ve gone through at least 40 lives already and am still in zone 1 because of the sheer number of places where if I make one mistake it’s back to the checkpoint. I can’t imagine how people without the infinite coin could do this…

I think my biggest gripe so far is that missing a single jump in the rapids is a death sentence, even if you’re slammed against a rock. The knockdown keeps you down too long, and by the time you’re able to stand back up again, you have no invulnerability, and it just knocks you right back down again.

Requiring skill is one thing, but watching my character helplessly ping-pong around the river is just frustrating and annoying. SAB World 1 was great fun, and it had a learning curve, but it was cute and a great time. SAB World 2 is like you switched from Super Mario Bros to Ninja Gaiden.