Guild Wars 2

Fungalfoot.7213:

neon.4863:

…I hadn’t heard about this. I can’t think of a way to mitigate this, though, other than have in-game GM assistance that can ban these guys. :\ Obviously scammy, since you can’t guarantee someone will get a spot…

They just party up with the other player and have him spam join until he gets in for a small fee. As things work right now join overrides the normal queue. This is why it’s impossible to get into the main instance normally. But yeah, it’s pretty scummy since these individuals prevent legitimate players from ever getting in.

I figured this may be it, but even then, spamming join isn’t 100% guaranteed… so scummy and potential scam. Gross no matter how you look at it. Maybe this hasn’t brought out the worst in the community as a whole, but we’re sure seeing the rotten apples come up. :\

Fungalfoot.7213:

neon.4863:

Maps have a population cap. People doing their own thing count toward the population cap. Someone across the map from Tequatl gathering herbs is taking up a spot that someone in an overflow could be trying to get.

That’s what that has to do with this.

That isn’t even the worst of it. Apparently squatters have taken up residence on several of the high population servers and sell slots to players wanting to participate. This update has brought out the very worst in the community.

…I hadn’t heard about this. I can’t think of a way to mitigate this, though, other than have in-game GM assistance that can ban these guys. :\ Obviously scammy, since you can’t guarantee someone will get a spot…

Oolune.4357:

neon.4863:

But any reasonable person should want everyone who likes this type of content to be able to participate in it and enjoy it as is, and everyone who does not like it and does not want to be in it to be able to freely do their own thing (consider Sparkfly Fen is part of the open world, and people have every right to be there to level or do map completion, too) and it’s not what’s happening.

Instancing it gets rid of all the benefit to the community. It also brings up the probable necessity to reduce the amount of people required.

As for people doing their own thing… Of course they are able to. They can do zone completion in an overflow just as well as the main, and they can do what they need to in the main if they get in there as well. What does that even have to do with this?

And that is why on the same post I offered a solution that isn’t instancing (although I disagree it rids it of all the benefit or that the cap would need to be lower). Open world, just separate from the rest of the map, so that people doing their own thing in the map don’t inadvertently take up spots that could go toward people who are trying to do the event.

Maps have a population cap. People doing their own thing count toward the population cap. Someone across the map from Tequatl gathering herbs is taking up a spot that someone in an overflow could be trying to get.

That’s what that has to do with this.

Oolune.4357:

neon.4863:

Oolune.4357:

neon.4863:

There’s a certain FYGM mentality in saying “I don’t see why you’re complaining, my experience has been great.”

That goes both ways, and it is coupled with a ridiculous tendency to think anything that you don’t enjoy shouldn’t be there.

Aye. But the chief complaint from me, at least, isn’t that people don’t enjoy it, but rather that people want to enjoy it, but can’t because overflow, underleveled, undergeared, afkers, trolls, not enough server population to organize, guesting taking up spots in organized servers, etc etc. This is great content… if you are able to do it the proper way. Right now, plenty of people who want to, who take their time learning the fight, adjusting, listening, can’t, due to limitations that are well beyond their control. Even rallying people on your server to organize only works when there’s enough of an interested population for it.

So, in other words, nerf him so that the people currently enjoying him CAN’T enjoy him because he is another stupid easy theme park boss that isn’t worth wasting the five minutes it would take to zerg him down?

No.

A nerf would partially solve the problem, sure. But it would, as you say, make people who are currently enjoying him unable to. And it would make people who want to enjoy him the way he is now (but can’t because of this and that) unable to, too.

The solution is to leave the encounter mechanics nearly exactly as they are, and fix ‘this and that’. AKA take measures to ensure people who want to participate in the content the way it’s meant to be played are able to, without trivializing it.

Examples:

- Instance it, so that big organized groups don’t need to camp the map to be all in one place, and so that guesting becomes a non-issue, and anyone from any server can cooperate without kicking anyone else to overflow.

- If instances are a problem, at least take steps to mitigate overflow problems. Make it an open world area, but separate from the Sparkfly Fen map, so that someone across the map doing map completion can’t take up a spot that could be used by someone wanting to do the event. Have the AFK kick be stricter for the area with the boss.

- Have an in-game tool for coordination at such a massive level. As it is, the only way is to make a new guild. Having some way to form “parties” or just groups with a private chat channel for this level of organization within the game would be cool.

- Redesign the turrets so that they still have the same level of importance strategy-wise, but that this responsibility is less focused on individual players manning the turrets, so that a group of trolls can’t just waltz in and ruin the entire strategy for everyone. This can be done in a few ways, but it would need some thinking/tweaking to keep the experience close to what it is.

- Adjust scaling so that lower population servers don’t have the same minimum number of players required as higher population servers. Tie the minimum to number of players online, if needed. Increase as usual if more people than the minimum show up. This would effectively allow servers that can barely get 30 people to show up to do the fight, while still scaling it in case more people show up. Tweaking and balancing would be necessary to ensure the exact same amount of skill is necessary with 30 people as with 80 people, so the fight would still play the same, and there’d be no advantage/disadvantage in numbers. Have an absolute minimum of say, 25-30 players, if you must – as long as the number isn’t completely daunting to lower population servers, they should still be able to manage. This would also help mitigate overflow problems caused by guesting.

There would still be some issues while it’s shiny and new, of course, but it could at least help others enjoy the content without ruining the enjoyment of those currently able to do it, too. Nerfing is not the only way to make content accessible to a larger number of players.

I mean, I’m sure some people would complain anyway because, again, FYGM mentality of being able to do something others can’t. But any reasonable person should want everyone who likes this type of content to be able to participate in it and enjoy it as is, and everyone who does not like it and does not want to be in it to be able to freely do their own thing (consider Sparkfly Fen is part of the open world, and people have every right to be there to level or do map completion, too) and it’s not what’s happening.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

3) True, Turrets are important, so is defending them, and killing tentacles, etc.

The argument is that turrets are by far the most important single player role. And they are. Any other role can have someone messing up and any number of people to pick up the slack. Which doesn’t mean the other roles aren’t important – but they’re not single player roles. They’re group roles. It takes a big part of the group failing to jeopardize it, whereas it takes just one turret messing up to do the same.

Oolune.4357:

neon.4863:

There’s a certain FYGM mentality in saying “I don’t see why you’re complaining, my experience has been great.”

That goes both ways, and it is coupled with a ridiculous tendency to think anything that you don’t enjoy shouldn’t be there.

Aye. But the chief complaint from me, at least, isn’t that people don’t enjoy it, but rather that people want to enjoy it, but can’t because overflow, underleveled, undergeared, afkers, trolls, not enough server population to organize, guesting taking up spots in organized servers, etc etc. This is great content… if you are able to do it the proper way. Right now, plenty of people who want to, who take their time learning the fight, adjusting, listening, can’t, due to limitations that are well beyond their control. Even rallying people on your server to organize only works when there’s enough of an interested population for it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Did you know that if you take your lv 80 to a lower level zone, that your level is adjusted accordingly, so that it remains a challenge?

If there’s Elite Content in a lower level zone, anyone can participate, because this is Open World. Level appropriate players and higher level players can all give it a try. However, if you want to win, that takes skilled players working together.

No. It takes skilled, max level, well geared, coordinated players working together. Try this without any downscaled characters and tell me how it goes.

Gear doesn’t downscale, only level-related stats do. A level 80 with full exotics/ascended level 80 gear will do a lot more damage to a level 60 mob than a level 60 with max tier gear for their level. They’ll also have more HP, absorb more damage, heal more. They’ll also be more likely to have invested in sigils, runes, have all trait points unlocked, and likely every skill they need, too. This can cause stats to double or more even when downscaled.

Tequatl was very obviously not designed with level 60s in level 60 gear with level 60 traits in mind when you have dozens of fully geared 80s and not enough DPS to even get him past phase one. You can see the discrepancy in the old lower level area world bosses, which were designed with the area’s level in mind – at one point, the Great Jungle Wurm was so full of level 80s hacking and slashing at it (when it probably was designed for maybe a group of level 15s) that it would die before its health bar even appeared. Old Tequatl and Shatterer would take 2, 3 minutes to kill. Jormag and temple fights generally took longer because, unsurprisingly, they were designed with level 80s in mind.

There’s a certain FYGM mentality in saying “I don’t see why you’re complaining, my experience has been great.”

That’s wonderful your experience has been great, that you’ve met more people, that it brought your community together.

It’s a jerk move to rub it in the face of everyone else who can’t do it and say it’s because their community just isn’t good enough.

That said, Tequatl is open world content. Open world content should be for everyone, not “the elite”. There are instances and endgame content for the elite. This “elite” would lose exactly nothing if Tequatl was an 80 man raid instance. People would still group together to try and take it down, in particular since there are very few guilds that can actually muster that many people online and organized simultaneously.

And OK, even if not all open world content needs to not be elite – you do realize Tequatl is in a level 60 or so area? Where, reasonably, one would expect people who are level 60 or so to be? As opposed to people who are 80, fully geared, and used to endgame? Sure, level 60 or so exotics exist – does the average player bother with full sets, or just tunnel vision to 80 when it actually matters?

Putting a level 80 elite event in Cursed Shore is one thing. That’s a level 80 area. It’s an endgame area by default. Sure, it’s open world, but it also, by design, assumes you are at least level 80. Tequatl is more ‘elite’ than any endgame content the game has to offer, yet it somehow is… not in an endgame area? If you want this type of boss, why not Jormag, who is in an endgame area (and has the crappiest reward out of all word bosses)?

I can understand defending this type of boss mechanics. Hell, I’m sure I’d have fun in the fight if my server had been able to coordinate. I enjoy this type of content, too. But I just can’t defend such a poorly thought out release. Endgame content has no place in open world areas that are not endgame. There are plenty of good places to put it, and the open world Tequatl fight is not it.

KOPPER.1458:

“Unless you are going to kill teq, the boss is a pointless waste of time. No reward at 25% health with a failed phase.”

So you should get rewarded for getting an enemy to 25% health? You should never be rewarded for failing anything. Sorry If you disagree but why should anyone be rewarded for failure? I realize this is probably not a popular stance.

Mostly because people need to feel that something was worth their time, or eventually they’ll stop bothering. And of course, whether someone feels like attempting Teq over and over is worth their time is subjective, but if you add a reward for failure, proportionate to the amount of effort and time invested overall, chances are more people will feel like it was worth their time.

For instance, I’ll attempt Teq once a day for the daily, because that feels like it’s worth my time. Otherwise, I won’t bother, because my server hasn’t even gotten close to beating it, so I won’t spend a long time waiting and a full 15 minutes fighting for nothing. There are other things I could do in that time that would be more rewarding, like champ farming in Queensdale, or grabbing a couple of JP chests.

Which isn’t to say every content should reward for failure, but if it’s content that requires a large number of players to show up to even be doable, is on a long spawn timer and has a time limit, it’s reasonable to try and entice them with rewards, even if they fail.

I’d 100% support adding this fight as an instance and having an easier, timer-less open world version (with lesser rewards).

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Maybe if all bosses started out this hard at release this conversation wouldn’t be here.

Exactly. This conversation wouldn’t be here because everyone would expect bosses to be this hard, and most likely, the people who don’t like this type of content would’ve quit playing long ago. The players would, for the most part, be people who enjoy content like this. People who are willing and able to coordinate on such a scale and go in expecting coordination, rather than being able to do your own thing and not miss out on any open world content.

What happened in this patch is comparable to the game starting with bosses this hard, being up for a whole year like that with only some minor tweaks to rewards and scaling, and suddenly all of them getting nerfed, with Tequatl being reworked into “stand here and autoattack” mode.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Its not Tequatl that is the failure… It is the players. Tequatl is beatable. Players just need to stop being selfish and carebears.

Have that mindset if you must, but don’t complain if they suddenly change their boss design to “make every boss soloable”, because then it won’t be the sudden shift that’s the problem, either. It’ll be you, and you’ll just need to stop being so selfish and hardcore.

You realize GW2 has non-English speakers playing, right? People who can’t “hop in a voice chat, meet people and discuss”, because they don’t speak English? These people can’t coordinate with their whole server – they can only coordinate with smaller groups of people who also speak their language.

You realize some people have hearing disabilities? Impaired speech? Can only coordinate through text? Some people have social anxiety and would never be able to just hop into a stranger’s voice chat and start talking?

And that even if these people just hopped in and started fighting, they could end up getting in the way due to the inability to coordinate? What if one of them took control of a turret?

The “don’t like it/can’t do it don’t do it” mentality that would apply to an instance can’t even be applied here, because a person who is doing map completion and just happens to be there is actually taking up the spot of someone who wants to do it. By not doing it. So not only would they have to not do it, they’d also have to remove themselves from the map, which is open world, so as to not get in the way of everyone else.

Yeah, some amazing community building you got there.

That’s wonderful that you got a great experience out of it, but assuming your great experience applies (or could apply) to everyone else is naive at best.

epoc.7941:

I don’t see the problem I mean, to say that we can’t do this because most people aren’t capable is ludicrous. Events like this help us get together for a single cause are awesome. It gives us a chance to show people who don’t know how to do these raid style bosses how to coordinate and communicate with others. This promotes server unity and creates a chance to meet new people and allow you to have an overall better gaming experience. I think this is a great thing it’s far better than stupid attack sponge bosses (for example shatter is the coolest most awesome lookin dragon in game but he’s like toddler difficulty.) In conclusion i say if you want easy attack sponge bosses go fight sb or wurm, but the dragons should be dragon difficulty. Oh my only complaint about this is the time limit….it takes time to gather 80 ppl especially in smaller servers.

Promotes server unity? Allows you to have an overall better gaming experience?

I don’t know which server you’re on, but on mine, I’m seeing anything but.

I’m seeing people yelling at each other for not taking the WP and running back. If anyone says anything about it, they need to “stop being lazy because it takes one minute to run back”.

I’m seeing people yelling at each other for not manning the turrets properly. If anyone says anything about it, they should “leave the turrets to people who know what they’re doing”.

I’m seeing people yelling at each other when the event fails. Because the people in the turrets sucked, because the DPSers sucked, because people didn’t WP back, because people didn’t dodge enough…

People yelling at players who just got in from overflow asking where Rox is. Yelling at the DPSers for not “stacking right”.

And that’s not to mention people purposefully running into the OHKO pods to down others around them, people purposefully sitting on the turrets to ruin the strategy…

Content that requires coordination is fine. Content that primarily relies on most players in an open world environment working together is stupid.

I keep seeing people saying they don’t want this instanced. You realize maps have a population cap, right? That if you don’t join in fast enough, you don’t get to be a part of it? You realize people who are guesting can take up the space of those who aren’t?

How is that any different from an instance?

Oh right, the difference is that you can’t choose who’s in the map with you, which means camp it for hours so that most of your organized group can be in it, or hope that whoever you end up with knows what they’re doing and doesn’t want to troll.

An instance would be the exact same, except you’d have an easier time coordinating, wouldn’t need to worry about overflow, and be able to weed out the trolls disrupting everyone else’s experience.

I would agree, except that you can’t stop people not interested in doing him from showing up, since it’s open world content. Leaving the dragon to those that want to kill him works… individually. You can stop yourself from doing it, but you can’t expect others to do the same. And that would be fine, if others not doing the same didn’t actually affect the people who want to kill him. As it is, someone leveling across the map is affecting the people who want to kill him.

Players who don’t like or want to do content should never be able to actually get in the way of players who do, intentionally or otherwise.

Nerfing him isn’t the best solution, but it sure would allow the people who want to fight him to be able to win without relying on the most unreliable thing in existence: strangers.

I’d rather see a different solution altogether, though.

Teq has good rewards, but unless there is a secret strategy to beating him that hasn’t been discovered yet, not even good rewards are worth the hassle. Way too many things in that fight are completely outside of your control.

Also, title, achievements and challenge are the only things in that list that are guaranteed rewards. A ‘chance’ at an ascended weapon, mini, or unique skin… no, thanks.

I’m still stuck at 32/33 myself. Did all zones multiple times, and I have no clue what I’m missing, too.

I also died when King Toad died on my first attempt at z3. The second time I didn’t die – I find that if you are too close to him when he dies, the acid will bubble up (or something) and kill you. Stay closer to the outer edge of the big lily pad and you shouldn’t die.

@Zaxares: I’m in Brazil.

You can get a buddy with a torch to melt the ice in zone 3 for you, if you know anyone. Otherwise yeah, you’ll need the 250 bauble wallet for the 400 baubles for the torch. The candle’s free in W1-2, though.

World 1: 2 shops – one after the first checkpoint and one just before boss.
World 2: 3 shops – one left of 2nd checkpoint; another between checkpoint 2 and 3 behind a big fallen log (there’s only one path to it and it’s surrounded by lava); one just before the poisoned water which is booby trapped (this one does count now).
World 3: 6 shops – two behind acid waterfall (burn carpet and bomb ground for 2nd); one requiring a dodge jump, near a yellow bauble along a wall; one in a big trunk; one with Moto’s Breath (up the hollow trunk with the bouncing shrooms); one near King Toad.

That should be all of them. Z3 shops are easy to miss; see Dulfy’s World 1 guide for where they all are. You need to take an alternate path for shop #3 though.

The slingshot apparently counts as a World 2 upgrade, which would be why you got no credit for the W1 achievement with it. Purse or heart SHOULD work, though – not sure why they aren’t. ): I got this achievement successfully during the first release, so I really have no other advice.

Exactly what the title says. I only have the log song so far, but it seems to have a maybe 50% success rate for me. I’ll be in front of a wall I know has a secret, and have to play the song 2-3 times most of the time for Moto’s face to appear. Not sure if latency has anything to do with it, but I do hear all 3 notes being played. Not sure if this happens with other songs, either, but it seems likely.

Found three bugs which make you get stuck, either inside objects or just unable to proceed:

- When doing W1Z3, I was holding the whistle, and got caught by those plants that stun you. I couldn’t get out of them (normally I’ll swing the stick and that works, but since I had the whistle on hand and not the stick, I had no skills whatsoever – dropping the whistle did not work) or move/dodge. Since I was alone and didn’t have a shovel (you can dig until a hostile bunny kills you), I had to restart.

- When doing W2Z1, I was trying to bomb the waterfall with the logs for the hidden room, and a log came down on my head as I was close to the waterfall messing with the camera trying to find where to jump. I got stuck inside the log for the entirety of the sloooooow ride down to death. Anything I dug up would get stuck above me.

- I’ve also seen a party member get stuck inside the logs you hit the bells with in W2Z2, but I’m not sure how it happened (it was after the bell was struck). He managed to suicide via digging up bunny to get out.

If this had been there from the start, sure. This started after the patch that was meant to balance normal mode. That’s what the complaint is about. The normal mode patch ended up affecting TM in obviously unintended ways, since the only change mentioned for TM is the addition of checkpoints to 2-1.

World 2 is incredibly long compared to World 1. It is also much harder than World 1, even post-nerf. I can understand why someone who isn’t experienced with or very fond of this type of content would be frustrated. I can tell you, though, that after going through it the first time, it gets less frustrating.

The length really is a problem, though, especially since this is an online game (meaning disconnect solo or in trib and you’re done – unlike a console where it’d take a blackout, something much more infrequent than a disconnect, or a portable device, which would just take running out of battery power, even more infrequent if you have a power supply available). I hope there are ways to return to checkpoints you’ve already unlocked in the future.

If you enjoy playing bugged content, that’s great, but don’t assume other people suck just because they want bugs fixed. Wanting bugs fixed isn’t whining – but if you still think so I wonder if you’d change your mind if you lost all your items and gold to a game bug. It legit wouldn’t be that hard to get everything again, after all, and thus wanting it fixed would be whining. Right?

“It’s Tribulation Mode” really is not an excuse for unintended difficulty caused by bugs (and/or poor design, which isn’t the case here). If it’s bugged, it needs a fix, regardless of whether or not the bug can be bypassed.

Basically you keep trying over and over and eventually you get lucky and don’t die. There is seriously no other alternative. If you have latency issues, it may take even more tries.

Took me about 2 continue coins, but I finally managed eventually.

It does seem like most of it is caused by latency. Sucks to be us, I suppose. I agree with SoPP though – I wish the devs would be more sensitive to latency as a whole when designing these. I realize it may trivialize content for those with low latency, but it does seem to amp up the difficulty to an extreme amount for content that was already difficult, if you have higher latency. I had problems with Liadri, too, to the point that I had to get lucky and not need to dodge out of AoE at all to be able to beat her (gave up on 8 orb entirely).

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Having done W1 in Trib mode a few times, I encountered a couple of issues which I’m not sure are bugs, problems due to my latency, or as intended. If anyone could share their own experiences or clarify, that’d be great and I would send you my internets.

Hidden spikes (and sometimes visible spikes) – I constantly find myself dying outside of their range. I can literally see my character collapse on the ground, next to the spikes, but not actually touching the spikes. I also occasionally get killed by visible spikes while still mid jump.

Acid – same problem as the spikes, but happens much more often. I’ve had deaths by acid anywhere from just above the surface (in which case my guess is I must’ve touched it slightly) to on a lotus pad immediately after jumping on it (before I have time to jump out of it) to on top of a gator or a rock to on top of a bouncy mushroom to on top of a disappearing leaf before it’s vanished (I was checkpoint’d and the leaf was still there). It’s similar to the problems people were having with the rapids (which I also have), except with insta death instead of being knocked around.

Rocks that knock you back – probably the most frustrating issue (in particular in the portion of W1Z1 with several of them over a pit/spikes). The rocks’ slam is completely inconsistent – it’s impossible to tell when they’ll start their slam, and I can’t dodge when they’ve already started (I can only dodge if I do before the rock’s angry face appears, which means I pretty much never know when to dodge, and if I successfully manage I’ll get the “evaded!” message well after the slamming animation’s done). I’ve tested how off the timing is, and I ran past the same rock multiple times in the exact same way (just running ahead past the rock from the same starting point) and managed to get myself knocked back at various different points in time and not get knocked back at all.

The W1Z1 series of jumps part is very problematic since it feels like pure luck whether or not I’ll get knocked back before I get past (and I invariably die when launched, even if I land on top of shrubs). As an example, today it took me 3 continues to get past that part, whereas I barely died at all in other parts except for when I forgot where a spike set was and so forth. Either one of the rocks would fire off as soon as I landed or just as I was leaving and kill me, or I would dodge too soon at a certain part and miss the timing (which meant the rock would then slam down and kill me) or I wouldn’t even be given time to dodge. Sometimes the rock would start slamming down while I was still in midair jumping towards it.

Is this part of the design, is it a bug in general, or is my latency really messing with the rocks’ timing/where I land? I’m in S. America and normally my ping is about 220, but can reach 300 or higher at peak hours.

Thanks in advance!

JayMack.8295:

I’ll miss the difficulty, too, but I understand Josh didn’t intend World 2 to only be completed by the best jumpers, so I don’t mind. I still have tribulation mode and world 3 and 4!

This comment is a good comment.

Difficulty progression needs to feel natural. It didn’t. This was addressed. There were buggy mechanics that couldn’t be fixed due to engine limitations. They nerfed these mechanics so that the bugs would be less damaging.

Perfect patch in terms of game design. You’ll get your difficulty back in World 3 and 4, let people who are still learning the ropes actually be able to learn them.

Thank you for the balance patch. I haven’t tried W2 after the patch yet, but it does seem to address pretty much every issue it possibly could without making things overly trivial. It’s a shame geysers stay permanently up (I’m guessing the knockback issue couldn’t be fixed), I would not have minded them continuing to work the same (them being gone from piranha bend is a blessing, though, since the rapids bug – which I’m guessing also couldn’t be fixed, but has likely been made less punishing by the rapids nerf – was enough to make that part very frustrating).

I think the future update to pits/darts taking one heart rather than causing death will really help with the difficulty curve, too. Overall great patch that should greatly reduce frustration while still keeping W2 at a reasonable difficulty level.

I agree with the request for a counter for the bauble achievements.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Puru.4217:

Question:

Would it be possible that instead of simply reducing the longevity of the next levels, you could divide them in two parts?

I’m thinking of just making a lot of alternate paths and more secrets. That way a casual player can run through the main path with ease and those who want tougher content can opt into it.

This sounds brilliant to me, and closer to what the levels in W1 felt like – straightforward if you wanted to just go on, but with nooks and crannies to explore. I wouldn’t mind dozens more nooks and crannies.

Also, regarding the dug up baubles: I’m not sure if the upgraded shovel affects this, but even if they are there in quantity, they’re hidden within massive levels with no indication whatsoever of where. Finding them all would likely take far more time than completing the zone. I found only one dig spot in my first run through all 3 zones, and that’s with the whole party digging wherever they felt baubles could be hidden. So while there may be lots of baubles around, most of them are hidden, or inside chests.

I think it would be cool to award a larger amount of baubles the first time a player opens a chest, or digs up a spot. The one spot I found after a couple of high precision jumps had only 20 baubles, so it didn’t feel very rewarding. My party was gathering up keys for a chest in zone 2 and we were missing one, but I knew there were only 20 baubles in the chest, so getting that extra key felt like a waste of time compared to getting a move on. 1500 baubles is only 12 bubbles – a single skin costs 50. A full run of w2 takes a while even if you know what you’re doing, and stopping to dig up all the baubles would make it take even longer. It’s really not worth the effort right now. With how much effort/time it takes, it feels like I should be getting a skin just for doing the entire thing, even if it was soulbound rather than account bound.

I’m going to keep hammering the key that World 2 is too hard in comparison with the World 1 release. The amped up difficulty coupled with the new bugs and the reduction in baubles does make it too hard within the context of the first release.

That said – Penny Arcade has a video on why people “don’t make difficult games anymore” that nails the problem.

The “Nintendo hard” classics were made by developers who had, largely, migrated from arcade gaming. Arcade games are intentionally designed in a way that makes players insert more coins to play. And more coins, and a couple more coins. They’re money grabs. That’s why continues exist – to make you spend an extra coin. These days, continues still exist, but usually they don’t require inserting a coin, because… they’re on platforms where coins aren’t required for play. The continue mechanic has also been replaced with saves, checkpoints, and generally anything that will allow a player to continue from where they left off, or to easily respawn on death.

Back in the day, games were few and far between, so it was acceptable to expect your players to die 100 times to learn a mechanic, because you would want to extend their gaming time in any way possible or you’d run out of games to play. So you could spend weeks on a game which actually only had about 5 hours of content.

Nowadays, things are different – gamers who were kids back then are now adults with income and the means to buy their own games, who lack the time to play games as often as they could back then. Ask any adult gamer about their gaming backlog. I have 100 games on Steam, of which I’ve played maybe 20, and finished, at most, 10. Most of my gamer friends are the same. The gaming market no longer tries to cater just to kids with free time and quarters, but to adults with money and less free time, too.

Thus you go from extremely challenging games with punishing mechanics that force you to start a long level over to extremely challenging games with levels that are only 30 seconds long each, so that when you die, you just go right back in and try again. You go from RPGs with one save point in the entire dungeon to the ability to save anywhere. Longer levels are separated into checkpoints which are, at most, a minute or so apart. Stretching gameplay time by making someone repeat a lot of content they’ve already mastered just to get to the part they can’t do yet is, largely, a dead concept, except to a select few who actually enjoy that kind of gameplay (and generally turn to indie games for it).

The fact SAB is temporary content is what really complicates things, though. World 2 was specifically designed with punishing features (e.g. death for failure) to make people have to learn and master each individual section to proceed. The average gamer is going to get frustrated and quit long before they can get far enough in each zone to learn anything, and this coupled with the pressure of the content being temporary gives you a feeling of “screw this, I won’t be able to learn it in time, so I won’t bother”.

If SAB was permanent and everyone had the time to progress through it at their own pace, like fractals, or dungeons, things would be completely different. To me this is similar to the Clock Tower issue – it was very challenging (at that point, the hardest JP in the game). It was also temporary, not giving players who aren’t good at jumping time to master it. And thus it effectively excluded part of the playerbase from being able to do it – not through difficulty alone, but through limiting the amount of time people had to get good at it.

Hawkeye.4698:

Finished all zones twice in the same day, first time around for myself and second time to help a friend.. it’s not hard…

You know what else isn’t hard?

Speaking a second language fluently. Having a generally better grasp of grammar and vocabulary than most native speakers. Being able to infer the meaning of words from context. Thinking in a second language. All this without ever leaving your country.

I can do that, so it isn’t hard. Oh wait.

Once you do something enough, it becomes second nature. You can process new information much more easily than the average person. That doesn’t make it easy. It just makes you good/experienced at it.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Smaller team, actually. And the length was my own desire to get as many ideas as I could in there. I spent several months pulling 16 hour days and a couple weeks where I did a couple 36 hour stretches, went home, slept and came back and did it again. No one else wanted me to do that. In fact those sort of crazy hours are discouraged at ArenaNet. I did that because I freeking love what I do and wanted this release to be the best thing ever. Turns out I pushed too hard to get those new mechanics in there and I’m being told here over and over that all that work was wasted and it’s making people miserable. I’ve learned my lesson. Won’t happen again! And for that, my family thanks you!

Your work was not wasted. It really sucks to work hard and get overwhelmingly negative feedback, I can’t say “don’t let it get you down” because it will, but honestly, this was not a waste.

A waste would be the entire update being rolled back and World 2 completely scrapped.

What you’re doing is changing/scrapping some parts, that you may or may not be very attached to, and that may or may not be mistakes (sometimes you do everything right, it just doesn’t work). That doesn’t make the work you put into this update was a waste. That’s like saying editing an already edited book further is wasting the work put into the original draft and the first edited release. If a chapter gets removed, the rest of the book is still there.

As a JP fanatic: I would have enjoyed this more if I didn’t have high latency, if there weren’t bugs, if the levels were split OR you could start at your last checkpoint, if the bauble farming in world 1 hadn’t been nerfed into oblivion, if the rewards were better, if the infinite continue coin was not a gem store item and if there weren’t various issues with the camera, and moving in general. Most of which, if not all of which, are not, in fact, part of your design.

The erratic difficulty curve compared to world 1 (and from one zone to the next) is the only thing I think was truly a design fault (but not one that stopped me from being able to do it, given time – it was just very, very jarring). Any other complaints I have regarding difficulty (e.g. too many ohko mechanics) end up stemming from that.

Player Character.9467:

all the sizable slopes had bits of land along them for you to use to regain momentum.

Yeti did not (and had things being thrown at you to knock you back, to boot). Also even reaching the bits of land can be tricky, I found myself losing momentum just by trying to steer my character left or right (although I suspect latency may have something to do with it).

LinkR.6190:

You don’t need bauble bubbles if you take the time to get good at tribulation. Hell, you can get a weapon skin once a day even. Much more efficient than saving them up. Unless of course, you prefer the blue version which is understandable.

You’re speaking from the perspective of someone who is highly skilled at this kind of content. Most people aren’t. I doubt the average player would even consider attempting to get good at tribulation.

I’m a collector by heart, but I’ve run out of things to collect because the game insists on not allowing me to have a full collection of anything.

Can’t collect all minis because of the account bound Wintersday ones, and now the mysterious Mr. Sparkles one which you need to live somewhere specific for (or pay $700 on Ebay, apparently).

Can’t collect all skins because the majority of them are account bound, have an abysmal drop rate, are time gated and thus in limited quantity. (I got a full set of the original SAB skins, will not bother with a single skin this time.)

Can’t collect all event achievements because of how prohibitive some of the temporary ones are. Missed my first temp achieve during Dragon Bash (couldn’t be online for fireworks). Missed Liadri with 8 crystals because latency won’t let me beat her. Will not bother with the current SAB ones.

Event achievements were honestly the last thing in the game I still cared about collecting, since I couldn’t collect the cosmetic items, but now even those have become too unreasonable.

Unfortunately, the only way I found to enjoy the temporary content now is to stop caring about collecting. I would suggest you do the same, OP. :/

Overall impressions that I haven’t already repeated to exhaustion:

- It’s doable. Grouping is highly recommended. Soloing only for really hardcore players. Leagues above World 1 in difficulty. Feels more like World 3 at least.
- Potion upgrade is laughable. World 2 has death mechanics everywhere and only rarely do you die from low health. 300 baubles best spent on 6 continue coins.
- Baubles are way too few, way too far between. Not nearly enough to buy the upgrades, lives and continue coins you need. All of us had infinite coins, so coins were a non-issue to us, but we were constantly musing that we would not want to waste actual lives on this.
- Overall rewards are extremely underwhelming for the length and difficulty. Would not do this in normal mode again unless I was helping someone.
- Head bumping as a way of reducing jump precision needs to go. Accurately gauging distance is extremely difficult due to camera mechanics, so you end up bumping your head and falling a lot in spite of knowing where to go.
- Checkpoints need to be safe and easily available after difficult areas.
- Darts are used excessively and are overly sensitive and overly punishing.
- It’s unnecessarily difficult to climb up the icy slopes. If you slide down even the tiniest amount you can’t gain the momentum back and need to slide all the way down before you can start climbing again.

OK, got a group of 5 jump fanatics together today and we did a full World 2 run. Zone 1 and 2 we knew where to go (except for after the gong in zone 2), Zone 3 was new. Had Infantile Mode knowledge of all zones though.

Zone 1:

Good area, except for the buggy rapids/geysers. Every area went smoothly with few combined deaths, including the waterfall logs. Generally one of us could make it through a tricky area if the others couldn’t, so grouping was beneficial (while it wasn’t very in World 1). Geysers part had us stuck for a long time because we kept getting hit when safe, on air, and so forth. We would’ve gotten through quicker without bugs and if the geysers weren’t so finicky with knocking you back. Took maybe 30-40 minutes overall.

Zone 2

We had issues with a few tricky jumps on trees where you’d bump your head and fall. Also had issues with flowers sending us flying when we weren’t stepping on them, which made some parts take longer than they should to complete. Owls in tree areas made this more frustrating since we were sitting ducks for them. Otherwise, the area went smoothly (largely because I knew where to go/what to do). Octopi were a bit annoying due to the amount of fish you had to feed them, but otherwise went fine. The part with the block puzzle just before the frog room and the gong, I did alone. By the time I finished everyone else was still scrambling trying not to die. Frog room was OK because we knew to bomb it. Gong itself actually went faster, mostly because we could split up and have some wait at the bottom for it. Died a few times trying to do it right, but managed. We were pretty surprised that instead of a checkpoint we were greeted by tricky jumps and assassins who could knock us off the walkways before actually reaching the checkpoint. Considering the dificulty level of the gong run when solo, this was off-putting. At the warp puzzle, some of us went for the pillars, which would’ve been better without the bouncing – with higher latency bouncing is very inconsistent and you can’t tell your exact position, making it more punishing than necessary. No further problems. Run was much longer, around 1h30, perhaps.

Zone 3

With everyone new to it, we got lost quite a bit. Paths were often not obvious. One of us had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do in the icy slopes. This was the level where we killed ourselves a lot whenever someone hit a checkpoint, just to get past things without trouble (at this point we were all pretty tired). Some of us didn’t have the torch, so that delayed things a bit whenever one of us died and was stuck behind the frozen waterfalls. The part with the long vertical jumping puzzle was an exercise in frustration – I found it first, and spent a good 30-40 minutes just trying to find the next platform to jump to with the camera constantly zoomed into me. Everyone else couldn’t even find the cave for that good 30-40 minutes. Once they did, one of us managed to climb and get to the checkpoint. I finally saw a platform where I was supposed to jump and also finished making my way up (platform was hard to see with my character’s eyeballs obscuring everything. It was also impossible to accurately gauge distance due to camera issues). Another of us fell on the last jump and gave up, and the other two didn’t even bother trying. Ledges were very tiny, lots of places where you could bump your head and fall. Overall a frustrating climb. After that things went fairly smoothly, problems with inconveniently-placed bananas and the falling icicles/goats aside (there’s a checkpoint where you just constantly get pelted by the icicles and another where you get pelted by goats while waiting for everyone else). Yeti was more frustrating than wizard. Wizard’s charge felt cheap, the rest of his mechanics were great. We had trouble telling when a platform would be eaten/reacting to it. Overall time about 2h+.

Full run time was nearly 4 hours. This with a group of people who really love jumping puzzles. Solo runs would be much more frustrating, and take much more time. We were glad to be done. Rewards were extremely underwhelming. Walked out with 150 more baubles and a couple bubbles for something that took longer than raids in some MMOs. Two of us had headaches by the time we were done. All of us had the infinite continue coin, and the rewards (or lack thereof) did not feel worth the purchase of the coin.

I just finished rapids in about 40 minutes. Good level, geysers were a pain because of the buggy rapids, logs down waterfall were OK once I landed the bear cave behind the waterfall.

Was at it for 2 hours in zone 2 (alone) until I hit the gong run. After running up to the gong over 10 times and failing to make the run down each time because the gong would outrun me/rubberband due to lag, I needed sleep, so I asked for help on guild. Nobody answered (most people asleep or already in SAB), so I quit. 2 very long hours wasted, and I definitely don’t feel like going back in there (because of how far in the gong is).

Perfectly doable in a group, a nightmare solo. Please at least make it so that running down with the gong can’t kill you. It’s absolutely impossible to spot the darts and position yourself correctly in time if you have lag. The run up is dangerous (and tedious) enough.

I’d like to stress I really love SAB, too. I was also very excited for the update. I did SAB to exhaustion during its original release and I still think it’s the best update this year. I really appreciate that you’re taking the time to communicate with us, and I know how it feels when it seems like everyone hates what you worked a lot on (especially since negative comments usually feel like they have more weight than the positive ones).

You’re an especially good developer/designer for putting yourself out there for people to talk to. Thank you. I mean it.

Edit @Rayti: Not doable if you’ve already reached the checkpoint, which was my problem – I was with 4 people, and we couldn’t all stand on the checkpoint because we’d respawn, die, respawn, die, respawn, die. There are darts facing the checkpoint – if you respawn and linger you get sucked into them.

Josh Foreman.8250:

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.

I see; thank you for clarifying!

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.

I did become more aware of what could kill me as I progressed through the levels, so I believe you did that much right, at least! What I meant was more tied to the last point you quoted:

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.

That there were just too many new and very punishing mechanics introduced per level, so while there was progression for them within the level, there wasn’t overall progression like you could see in, say, turtles and crocodiles in world 1 zone 3 and turtles and crocodiles in world 2 zone 1. Or the acid introduced in zone 2 being more prominent in zone 3. That was done perfectly, I think – you have one level that is less punishing when you’re getting the hang of the mechanic, and then another where if you fail to hit them correctly you get punished more.

I think a good, simple example of this leap in mechanics is the world 2 zone 1 boss – it’s the same head as the other worlds, so you expect the same behavior, but then it turns around and does a circle laser, and you’re surprised by the new mechanic – but you can’t even get back up and go back to smacking at him, since he knocks you into certain death, and then you need to do the tricky flower leap to get back to where you were. I personally feel like a more natural progression would’ve been to introduce his new attacks first, then make those attacks kill you if you failed to dodge them on the next level.

Mostly I think the problem is the number of ways in which you can die rather than lose some health for failure. I think you mentioned the bauble reduction not being your area, but it unfortunately did affect what you made a lot – you need a lot more baubles and coins to make up for all the times you die while learning the new level, yet it’s a lot more difficult to get them now. I went through World 1 Zone 2 hoping for baubles for a slingshot on an alt to get past the rapids, only to find every dig spot I knew but one missing, and the one that wasn’t missing had a green bauble instead of a red one. I had to go back to bank and grab the 400 baubles I’d saved from last time for the torch – if I’d been alone I’d have lost my progress on that level. That sort of thing.

I actually think you did an overall good job, but it feels like there’s no middle ground between world 1 and 2. If world 2 was actually world 3 and lives weren’t so costly now, you’d have no complaints from me, except for that room with the frogs and the darts; that checkpoint really needs to be moved outside (or the darts removed where they currently face the checkpoint). The way it is, unless you killed all the frogs, you respawn right in the face of death, which is just not very checkpoint-y.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Well I said this earlier, but I don’t mind repeating. I wanted W2 to have a longer learning curve. I saw how people mastered W1 in a day or less and thought to myself: “Hey Josh, how can you make W2 take longer to master?” The answers were multitudinous, and the results are what you see. From day-1 response it appears that I pushed that goal too far, so that it overwhelmed my primary goal which was to make a really fun new SAB World. And if that appearance bears out over the next day or so I’ll make changes. Not sure how much more accommodating I can get!

Josh, no matter how challenging you make something, there will always be a group of players who masters it in one day and shares the result, leading to making it easier for more people. Someone’s gone through W1 in Tribulation mode and posted videos already, and it hasn’t even been a day since the patch. Some people are just that good.

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 feel like you had good intentions, and I know that it really sucks to work kitten something with the intent of making it fun for others, only for it to be met with overwhelmingly negative reactions. Adding one or two elements to increase difficulty is one thing, but pretty much everything under the sun was added here: small hit boxes, large number of trash mobs (some with a lot of HP and some which can easily kill you), enemies with block/evasion mechanics, platforms you can be knocked off of to your death (constantly) by enemies, water that knocks you to your death, jumps requiring extreme precision (else you die) to just progress (I think those are nice for achievements, but not regular progression), hard to see OHKO mechanics, very long levels, fights in small enclosed spaces which can lead to death upon the slightest failure, timed jumps, mandatory upgrades without warning which cost a lot of baubles, baubles getting stolen, fewer baubles overall, etc etc—

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

That aside, I was really fond of the fight with the wizard. It felt like the kind of spot where you should be spending your continue coins. It’s not without its issues – lag messes with the timing of reflects and, in infantile mode, the clouds get in the way of the first half more than help (they block his projectiles, so you have to get up close and personal to reflect them). Overall, though, that fight was pretty great, and in general actually felt less punishing than the boss in rapids, who would essentially send you flying to your death pretty much every time you got hit.

I agree with OP. I have a coin, so I could pretty much kill myself over and over. I would never even dream to attempt this without a coin unless I had a guide. This mode isn’t about skills, it’s about dying repeatedly until you find the path. First zone is doable in minutes – if you know where to go, and get lucky that legit jumps to the right spots don’t kill you anyway. Which would be OK, except, again, impossible without the infinite coin (or a guide from someone with a coin).

I did this on infantile mode with 4 guildies. It was long, frustrating and unfun even with the clouds, but it could get better as we learn the ropes.

I have to complain about the part with the frogs that suck you into dart traps, though. One of us activated the checkpoint after it, and then it was a complete deathfest because we’d barely finish respawning and we’d get sucked back into death again, and again, and again, and again, and we collectively died some 50+ times before we managed to kill all the frogs just so we could all stand on the checkpoint to proceed. Plus, if you got even a little bit of lag on respawn, you’d get sucked back into the death trap before you could even do anything.

This is just world 2. I don’t even want to know what the difficulty level of world 4 will be. Even extremely punishing games like Super Meat Boy allow you to try again repeatedly and have a less harsh learning curve than this. People who mastered world 1 should not be dying 50 times in world 2 before they can even get anywhere.

Plus, the “you have to learn this blah blah” argument falls short when this is gated behind continue coins that cost 50 baubles each (not to mention the parts that need upgrades and you only find out when you get there) and you’re going to die a lot more often than the 5 lives you’re given with a coin until you learn anything.

I bought an infinite coin just to spare myself the headache of grinding to get past, and that’s p2w in my book.

Master Stumpy.4263:

neon.4863:

Honestly, the problem is that completing minion events advances completion by only a tiny amount when compared to AB and molten. If minions advanced completion faster, the events would not fail 90% of the time (since most of the time farmers do, indeed, end up killing all of the AB on the map). Every time I’ve seen it fail, AB were all dead with 8+ minutes to spare on the clock. Sure, the AB wave generally takes 20 or so minutes because people focus on them rather than the minions, but it’s really disheartening to run to a minion event with a group of 3-4 people, finish it, and watch the progress bar tick by what, 2%? Especially compared to molten drilling machines which can be soloed without even taking any significant damage.

Edit: Also it’s worth noting that the AB waves are much, much more difficult than the other waves, and not just because of the zerg upscaling – all the mobs are vets by default, which only happens with AB, and with stunlocks and the high damage output of Strikers, small groups are mowed down in seconds by pirates (so the only real way to kill them is, you guessed it, zerging).

A group of 5-6 can take down an AB event without issue. The champion spawn after is a different story, but they waves stay vets until more people show up. Vets are easily enough handled. Now, if there is a zerg in one area and 5-6 people try the area next to it, it may have some scaling issues.

An organized group, yes. Since most of this event relies entirely on cooperation with strangers, that’s… considerably harder. Especially since not everyone is level 80 with full exotics. As is, you may end up in a group full of people below the zone’s level, dressed in greens, or it may be just that people don’t all reach the event at the same time, due to the lack of organization – by the time the 3rd or 4th person gets there someone’s already down from all the CC and bleeds/confusion/striker damage (nevermind how likely it is people won’t res the downed). Different from minions, which can be held off (and even completely killed) solo long enough for backup to arrive (with minion champs being killable with a group of 3-4 people).

And yeah, the excess amount of people nearby doing other events/idling really does mess with scaling.

I’ve never had the fight crash while fighting Scarlet – it might be an issue with the number of people on the screen (or near you), since everyone flocks to it (a whole map’s worth of people)? Mostly a guess since, again, never really crashed, myself.

Have you tried getting to her, leaving your auto attack on and alt-tabbing away from GW2? If it’s your graphics processor freaking out, that might prevent a crash.

I’d also set graphic settings to best performance just in case. Everything will look terrible, but if it might help…

I think what they’re worried about is the fact that they’d be putting something on their movement keys so that their character would be moving around, thus bypassing the idle check that kicks you when you’re inactive.

Edit: Welp, obsolete comment with Esplen’s clarification above. The more you know!