Guild Wars 2

A couple of them maybe, why not, but sincerely, I doubt it was more. Not that much in such a short amount of time.

Actually, I think it’s very simple to understand. Anet changed the way password reset is handled, and the new security seems harder to break for Gold Farmers. This thread is obviously a scam posted by them, to (laughingly badly) make it look like players want the old system back.

Hence why everything seems awfully translated from a language without latin roots (otherwise the sentences structure would make more sense even after a passage to google trad) But.. I won’t name a country, I think we can all guess, right ? and also why all the ‘totally posted by somebody else aggreing with me" messages have been posted minutes if not seconds one after the other.’

Shocking fact : Actually, no, it’s been deployed over a whole load of maps already. Check the devlogs or just, I dunno… Login ?

Lesbian couple fighting crime…
One serious, the other with a lighter mood…

’nough said !

Josh Foreman.8250:

rekim.5296:

The difficulty leap, in the curve was totally crazy. It doesn’t feel like a World 2, at all, to me, it feels like another game entirely, or a final world.

You are right. I agree. It was unintentional. We’re working on a fix.

rekim.5296:

Firstly, I’d like to talk about Area 1. The lack of music was disturbing, but not really had any impact on gameplay.

This is a bug we are trying to track down. Do you happen to know what your audio settings are at?

rekim.5296:

My next concern is about the croc’s and turtle’kittenboxes. Back then, the river area didn’t caused much problems to me. Nowaday, I just can’t seem to reach most of theirs.

It’s interesting, because I added about 50 new rocks to make hitting these guys easier. We made their hit-boxes almost 4 times bigger. If you look at the Crocodiles hit-box you could fit three of them inside it. Refer to to my post above about how we have to compromise how we would LIKE to make things, with what our engine is being tricked into doing. I’ll add even more rocks.

rekim.5296:

The only way I can think of getting the achievement, now, would be to be a five man party and praying not to be the focus of the assassins’ wrath… This is not a very staisfying way to get an achievement, to me.

Try whipping the first assassin and keeping him stun-locked the whole ride. No more will spawn.

Thanks for your feedback.

Thank you for your answers, and for taking the time to read my humongous wall of text !

I really want to enjoy SAB, for it is one of the game’s feature my platformers genes want to love the most. I’m going to wait a bit, do a few other things in the game, and watch for the hotfixes/updates to it, I promise to give it another go as soon as it’s live.

Thanks for your patience and dedication Josh !

And now, a very important point, to me. Probably the center of the whole deal, I think for a lot of people.

The Risk/Reward factor.

I pride myself for being a bit of an explorator. Even if I dropped it a bit after the middle of Area 2, I did went into a lot of ledges, rooftops and such and grabbed the hidden baubles there. I ended up , as said, with around 10 lives out of 99, and only a handful of baubles, from the crazy amount of bombs and stones I had to throw to get through this.

I am aware that It was my first run, but really, is it on purpose that world 1, is layered in baubles (notably less than before, I admit, but even ?) and world 2 is pretty much devoid of any ? I’m pretty sure that even if by some miracle I could manage Area 2 without any bombs or stones, I probably didn’t got enough baubles out of it to buy more than, maybe a couple lives. I spent something like 90 lives on it. I didn’t knew the place, but even knowing what I am to do, I can’t imagine myself getting through that without losing at least around 30 to 40 lives (wich is crazy, imho), because, well, humans tend to lose their focus now and then, because sometimes, you’re too nervous, you sneeze, or the engin decide that no, you won’t be making this jump this time.

From this relatively intense experience, I would have came out finding, I don’t know, something like 20 or 30 extra lives(wich doesn’t exist in SAB) or enough baubles to buy back, maybe, the half of what I lost then I wouldn’t have minded that much, The whole thing would have had a sense, and in retrospect, I’d have been okay to go through hell again, knowing that If I’m carefull and if I do things right, I’m indeed winning more than I lose.

But here, the baubles are incredibly scarce, the chests offer poor to mediocre rewards (unless I really missed the big, big ones, but even then, I don’t think it would amount to even half of the cost most trained players going throught this would have to expand to buy their lives back) and to top it all, when already, the baubles are that scarce, you added -invincible- inavoidable birds stealing them off you ? I don’t even get what was the desired impact of the owls in the game, this feels like the second or third slap in the face saying “Haha ! You’re not getting anything out of this level aside from achievements !”,you intoduce new items costing incredible amounts of baubles and the level they are in doesn’t allow you to gather them. Not only because there’s not enough in them (Because you can rarely gather all the baubles for the bombs or the wallet in one go in world 1) but because the few in World 2 aren’t even enough already to cover your own survival. It’s not even that you need to farm world 2, that would be useless, you actuially have to go back to World 1, farm baubles here, and go back to world 2’s shops to buy from them.

And indeed, looking back, I don’t see what I can get from world 2 aside from achievements. close to no baubles. Extremely time lengthy. Lives swallowing. Plus leaving me the choice, If I really want to indulge into it either to regularly go back to World 1 to farm lives back up to 99, or to buy the infinite coin. And I agree with the players claiming it to be pay to win, because it’s not just a convenience ‘helping’ you going faster in the game, it’s either that or an absurdly tedious and repetitive farming between each game session.

(Sorry for triple post)

After the ride, we finally reached the ‘new’ section. things get slightly more interesting, from here, admitedly. The jumping flowers are a fun addition, a few friends of mine, thought, reported them to be buggy and throwing them regularly in the wrong direction. I didn’t have thos eissues, thought, my only instance of having problems with those, is that I once have been propelled forward, totally out of the blue, while the nearest flower was like, a half dozen of meters from me.

I’d like to take a moment here, to add that I cracked and needed a couple minutes to recover from the maniacal laugh that took over me when I first met the Pyromaniac Smokey bear foe. Didn’t see that coming, hit me right into the zygomatics.

Sadly, right after that went another very buggy and frustrating river path, that made me groan a couple times. Same problems as the other one, KB’d by water while I’m in the middle of an incredibly safe jump, turtles ignoring my attacke, etc…

Before we reached the end of Area 1, I did managed to find a couple secret areas, well hidden, fun to find and access (Even if the second one was actually quite hard to reach)… But with absolutely underwhelming rewards. Even when not dying, risking to lose three or four lives, to only get a potion’s price out of it kindof take away the fun.

So, into Area 2…

I am a big fan of Dark souls. I love Tries&Dies. But there is a severe balance problem, here, in my opinion.

First, as numerously stated before, and it’s not complaining about Too much content, The area is way too long. We kept going because we ddin’t wanted to lose our progress, but toward the second third, we were getting both tired and very frustrated.
The problem is not the area in itself, it’s that it could easily have been split into two, and still give two areas longer and bigger than any of the World 1 ones.

The ennemies where infuriating and in too high numbers, or at least combined with the deathly layouts. Various places with strategically, deathly place ennemies wouldn’t have bothered me. Ennemies and traps or pits everywhere did.

The level design per se was good and fun. I remember some place, where a fading cloud was clearly placed here so, while jumping on it, you continue on your track and don’t realise there was a secret access to the roof behind you. That was good. I love such things, greatly ! And there was quite a few places like that in Area 2. BUT. We where in the SAB since more than two hours and a half, and really, started to slip into the “This is so hard, it takes ages to advance. We won’t waste time exploring. This has to end sometime.” mind set.

There is also a couple occurences of pixel precise jumps, where failure results in death. I don’t find it very fair, when we knows that the game engine itself actually tend to mess up jumps by itself, even when your timing and placements are perfects. Or am I the only one who sometime have only 2/3 of my jump’s heights and width for no real reason ? Attempting such in some JP, and having to leap back up a couple stones is okay. In others, or in some areas od SAB World 1, it’s frutstrating, because you lose some time climbing back up, but still, no big deal ! Now, when it’s a matter of dying if you fail, in a very dangerous area where you can’t stand still because of sheer number of ennemies and traps ? That’s a kitteneap in my tastes.

(Sorry, messed up my copy paste, this is a very lengthy post)

Okay, so, Played through levels 2-1 and 2-2 yesterday evening, slept on it, now I think I can throw a few lines here to add my own two cents.

I’d like to point that I love JPs, it’s probably my favourite feature in the game, by far. I created a Mesmer for the sole and only purpose of helping my friends and even perfect strangers through them.

I also love living story achievements. I got almost all of them, short a few here and there, usually because of time contraints, and real life issues. I never, ever, thought, entirely skipped one. Now for SAB, in april, I actually completed all of it, and loved every moment. I replayed it and pulled even my most JP-inapt friends through most of it. I really looked forward for the World 2.

Well, I admit, even if not outright spitting on it, I’m quite a bit disappointed by some of its aspects.

I came back to the SAB with 200+ baubles and 99 lives, from what I had back then. At the end of 2-2, I was left with around 10+- lives and no baubles. That, by itself is already a bit annoying. This is world 2 over 4, I really wasn’t expecting it, and it didn’t came as a good surprise to me. The difficulty leap, in the curve was totally crazy. It doesn’t feel like a World 2, at all, to me, it feels like another game entirely, or a final world.

To point it out, I played through it with a friend of mine who is only a bit under me when it comes to JPs.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about Area 1. The lack of music was disturbing, but not really had any impact on gameplay. I was a bit taken aback, thought, by the absolute lack of… .almost anything in it. I remembered most of the secret areas/paths so I guided my friend to them, only to find them empty. There was no reward at all for exploring. that, in itself took away a big chunk of fun from the whole experience. The only baubles found were the small handful of them scattered along the way. The incentive to explore, to tell yourself “Hey, a waterfall ! Maybe I can jump through it.. I might die trying, but what if there’s something behind ?” is bit by bit, entirely killed by the first area of World 2. The 4th time you actually manage to find one of the areas and it’s, once again empty, giving you nothing but the lives you lost trying, for putting effort into reaching an improbable location, you end up shrugging and going “Okay, whatever, thisis not even fun anymore, let’s just hit the end of the level…”

Second point, as I said, being relatively good at JPs, I usually bring pals along and help them through. You supressed each and every mushroom shortcuts from level 2-1. I can only imagine how distressingly annoying it could have felt for groups. Before, I, or for other groups, the best jumpers could advance, and tell the others, who didn’t aimed for all the baubles, but just wanted to have fun, and had a hard time with the crocodiles or the jumping in general “Hey, guys, backtrack to X, I’ll open the shortcut for you !” Now, the only way to ‘help’ them is to reach the organ checkpoint and telling them to go suicide. This is in no way near fun, and quite disheartening for them.

My next concern is about the croc’s and turtle’kittenboxes. Back then, the river area didn’t caused much problems to me. Nowaday, I just can’t seem to reach most of theirs. I end up backtracking and bombing my way through some of the passages concerned, because neither the sword or the whip reach them, whatever I do. The whole -being swiped by the water when you’re in mid air- thing, too, seems to have greatly increased in occurence since SAB in april, making all the river paths extremely drutrating, way beyond the “It’s a hard area, I’m having fun trying” to “It’s a stupid area, I’m getting fed up Dying.”

The rafting portion is also tearing a big frown out of me. Unless I am extremely mistaken, or the raft itself have been extremely shrunk. It’s surface seems like about one quarter of what it was in april. Yet, the assassins spawns on it haven’t been tampered with. This makes what was a funny battle on the river, a matter of sheer luck. AND there is now an achievement for not dying during the whole ride. In my own experience, the raft itself isn’t big enough anymore for us to dodge while standing on it, I tried dodging from a corner, to the other and still ended in the water. The only way I can think of getting the achievement, now, would be to be a five man party and praying not to be the focus of the assassins’ wrath… This is not a very staisfying way to get an achievement, to me.