Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

I’m just saying, even in their modified states the W2 maps are much harder to navigate successfully than W1 maps in normal mode. I just feel bad for people who’ve never heard of Dulfy.

Sure, but then again… level one of Mario is easier than level two and so on and so forth… I think some change in difficulty is fair game. As long as latency or engine limitations are not the cause of it.

As for rock climbing sections, with the new shortcut from the start of Z1 don’t you skip past most of that, I mean there is the bit with the rapids after the first bear you encounter (the waterfall obscures your vision, or it might depending on camera settings) but the rest is pretty straightforward if you are not going for all the baubles or something like that.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I’ve convinced people to buy GW2 specifically on the basis of SAB, because it represented so much possibility and diversity within the game. I can’t think of anything else in the game that has a similar dev input to consumer output.

That is sort of impressive, however, convincing people to buy something on a basis of content that is around for two weeks or a month (depending on when you did this) is not maybe the smartest thing to do unless they could also like the rest of the game.

But who am I to judge, maybe two weeks of fun is all they needed to get their money’s worth.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

To put it in context, even if the 6 man legendary team had produced every single one of the new legendaries in six months, rather than one, that still isn’t a game seller. No one outside of the game cares about a second set of skins. Nor is a third of a raid particularly appealing.

Things like SAB and the Living World were things that I could go to other people with and say “Hey! Check out how alive and exciting the world of GW2 is! It’s all free too!” Since they abandoned that model, put most mini-games on a weird rotation and stuck them in LA, and the NPE gutted a lot of the starter zones of variety, there just isn’t that kind of feeling any more. It’s really hard to tell people that Tyria is a world of possibilities, which didn’t use to be the case.

I guess you have a pretty good point, something like SAB is such an unique thing nowadays you won’t find it anywhere else, certainly not in an MMO. All the new platformers out there are either 2D or high def 3D/2.5D. SAB has sort of an unique aesthetic. Kind of like a Nintendo 64 game but still its own style.

SAB has enough substance that it could in theory be its own game, sure the audience from general GW2 player population might be just a subset, however, like you said it has potential for broader appeal. Especially from the age group that grew up with classic platformers.

Ohoni.6057:

Is W2 really that bad? Even with the new obvious shortcuts?.

Honestly, it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be, I manage to beat both on normal mode last night fairly easily, which I had eventually given up on last time around. Still, I think parts might still be out of the “casual” range, especially 2-1, which has some tricky jump timing, and while beating them might be easier, some of the achievement objectives take you off those beaten paths.

Fair enough, as for Z1 and tricky jumps, which one are you talking about the Frogger section or the logs on the waterfall? Both of those can actually be sort of skipped.

The Frogger section can be skipped with a sneaky little secret and Hillybilly maze just near where the Hillybillies are before you get turn to go for the Frogger area. Getting down there is bit tricky and the cave is dark, but it is an optional path past it (btw. the torch can be used to light candles on the wall, just found that out today going through it).

As for the vertical logs as long as you can get to the second log, you can basically screw up and fall to the first pillar in the center and there is an edge much lower down you can use to get across to another pillar. So long as you make it to the second to last or last gap you can just hang around on the log running against the waterfall (if you are on the last gap it is the very rightmost edge you need to be on) until you are in another dark cave full of bears that you can navigate to get back up near the checkpoint before the boss.

Just an example, there are two paths, basically you are choosing between jumping or combat in both instances. The Frogger skip is a bit tricky, however, since they made the rapid knockback less frequent it is fairly easy to get to the cave without dying though it can be bit fiddly.

As for the achievements, I guess that is all relative… I did most of mine when the long slog through the levels was the norm with Back to School (hence why I remember those secrets off the top of my head anything to make things easier and vary it up you know, although I consider the Frogger bit fairly easy). So I guess I can’t really relate that said, I suck at jumping in general, but it didn’t get me that long to get used to how jumping works in SAB again.

The only thing I recall having real tough time with W2 back then was funnily enough the Piranha Bend just after the raft section in Z1, however, that was with the old version of it with the timed geysers (I think I must have had some lag). Sure, the dart traps where a kitten in Z2, but once you knew them you knew them.

TexZero.7910:

You can still get it even in infantile mode. You just have to do so more jumps and not use the clouds exclusively. You can even backtrack or just flat out suicide to get back to a prior checkpoint or area.

I know that, but the point was that they weren’t consistent with the changes they made to infantile mode in relation to the new shortcuts they added. I have nothing against making earning some achievements harder, or easier for that matter (see the ice skater one using the new content skip), but they should at least be consistent in how they change things in my opinion.

Carighan.6758:

Looking at the map we’re only lacking 3 zones, anyhow. 3-2, 3-3 and 4-1.

The three 3-1 we saw with Back to School wasn’t really a zone per se, just a place for our old fried the genie to hang out. If anything it was a demo of the aesthetic of 3-1 moe than any actual part of the zone itself. It did not have any real progression through it, just a way to chat with the genie.

Renkencen.6127:

Granted as off today, they change it but still I prefer if they keep it most of it in world 1. I want to stayed away from world 2 as much as possible.

Is W2 really that bad? Even with the new obvious shortcuts?. I guess having all the upgrades really makes it that much easier then. I guess the “Gatekeeper Lullaby” really does make W2 Z3 a lot easier too. And knowing some of the secrets like the existence of the bear cave in the section before the boss in Z1 probably also saves a lot of frustration.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Yeah, I found that odd. I’m not accusing anyone of lying or anything, but I’d like clarification. The story I had heard was that SAB was essentially done in Josh’s spare time. I’m sure that was an exaggeration, but I’d like to know what exactly would take world three so long?

Quoting myself from elsewhere because I am lazy like that.

Crise.9401:

Blaeys.3102:

Remember, SAB was never intended to be serious content. It’s an homage to old console games that started as a bit of an April Fool’s Day joke by a developer in his spare time.

Correction, SAB was an April Fools joke that Josh came up with and pitched to the company and while doing so he said he had an idea of the people he’d want to do it with. They prototyped it for a while and eventually got the full green light for that first April Fools.

SAB was conceived by Josh, but created by a team of people (4-5 if memory serves) with Josh as their coordinator. So please let’s debunk this one developer spare time project theory once and for all… yes Josh deserves a lot of credit for SAB but not all of it. Even for the first release, while it was that small team for most of it towards the end bunch of other people at the company pitched in (like the composers for the music and cinematics team for the trailer, and obviously QA).

If I had to guess, Josh is talking about in relation to what it took to make W2, which is fine… but compared to W1, W2 is gigantic with way more mechanics (perhaps too many mechanics even). Also, unlike W1, W2 uses mostly unique asset set for each zone which is nice but very ambitious. While W1 used lot more of the same assets, or palette swaps of them, yes it shows it was made by a small team, but it is also smart and cost effective.

Flailing for all around… I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but it would just be plain wrong to discriminate the Super maces because of colour :P

Alternatively, what you could always do is change the blue mace to not flail around and make an exact copy of the blue mace and call it Super Flail for all colour schemes. That way we get best of both worlds (yeah, I know collections… rabble rabble, changing existing skins, too much love for maces etc. but it is a valid option to consider with minimal work, just throw it in as a little extra).

At the end of the day, I think all colors should at least have identical behavior at the very least.

SkyShroud.2865:

iirc, production on SAB was stopped because world 2 was considered unpopular by the mass due to the difficulty

cant find the source though =X

I basically linked it above, even if it is not that exact post… it is somewhere in that hidden forum section. You can also probably find Josh’s personal musings on the subject in his personal blog somewhere on the web (not linking that here, because it is as I said his personal blog).

Khyan.7039:

Clouds from the long way are still there.

No they definitely are not… at least around the gong temple and afterwards there definitely are no clouds. For Z3 the clouds are there, but not for Z2. In Z2 although some of the helpful hands are still there eg. around the cong temple in infantile mode, the clouds they are supposed to be pointing to are not.

@Greymantle: looks like we were basically talking about the same thing then.

@Esquilax: Of course you can reach them the normal way, that is not the point, the point is ANet wasn’t consistent about this, see the clear difference between Z2 and Z3. Plus it sucks that this invalidates bunch of guides, other than those two things I am all for more participation in the actual level.

I mean infantile mode is a bit of a cheap way to get achievements after all, but they should have at least been consistent about it then.

It works eventually, but simply doing 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3 isn’t enough most of them time.

I find that most consistent way to get it to work is to play the sequence three times… ie. 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3.

Just a minor inconvenience if you don’t know about it… I am not sure but this might have been happening the last time SAB was around too. I have been testing this in the furniture shop under the Yeti mountain and so far it remains consistent.

Thank god there is no Moto’s Finger style secret that requires a precise timing with this song.

Avador.8934:

Anet,PLEASEEEEE!! We need more SAB!!! More SAB means less grind and more happy people!!!!

I agree, more time to get those super(ior) skins. With SAB the true end game, for me, is finally here (disclaimer: kitten at jumping, and still loving it).

drunkenpilot.9837:

I miss this guy. Maybe he’ll return in the form of a mini? :o

Oh yes please… with sugar on top. Super Genie Mini, what do I have to do to make this happen?

Rauderi.8706:

Also, Trib mode is there to sell Infinite Continue Coins. [/tinfoilhat]

That is definitely a popular theory but if Josh is to be believed that is not the case.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sab-bts/Is-it-too-hard-Respect-the-awesome-work/page/19#post2785093

Note: this is from a time before the generous shortcut over the clouds in W2 Z2 or the teleport to Yeti on Z3 or even the skip over one of the rivers in rapids were ever a thing, those are all new for this release. The Piranha Bend was also significantly different with a pattern puzzle with geysers going up and down. Same with the flowers they worked differently (if you know Not So Secret they worked the same as there, and in the dragon ball arena).

Ticky.5831:

Crise.9401:

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

It actually took about 2 weeks. They talked about it in Guild Chat.

Two weeks to fix issues yes, but what about the new stuff they went in and added or QA?

While this is not an universal truth, when you ask a developer how long will doing something take, the response you usually get is a rough estimate on how long it will take to get something implemented or done for the first pass. As a programmer I can tell you most of the time when estimating our own work we don’t account for QA time or any other high level things that have to happen before deployment.

There is a saying that I am quite fond of. When you ask a developer for an ETA be prepared to at least multiply it by two, maybe even move it up once to a larger unit of time to get a more realistic estimation.

For example, I have said once that we’d be to push a release for a project of ours in a day… well as it turns out the more realistic estimation is usually one or two weeks from the time I said that.

Also, to be specific about what Josh said was that they got two weeks to pursue things that they are passionate about some time after HoT crunch. He didn’t exactly say that preparing this release only took them that two weeks.

Blaeys.3102:

Remember, SAB was never intended to be serious content. It’s an homage to old console games that started as a bit of an April Fool’s Day joke by a developer in his spare time.

Correction, SAB was an April Fools joke that Josh came up with and pitched to the company and while doing so he said he had an idea of the people he’d want to do it with. They prototyped it for a while and eventually got the full green light for that first April Fools.

SAB was conceived by Josh, but created by a team of people (4-5 if memory serves) with Josh as their coordinator. So please let’s debunk this one developer spare time project theory once and for all… yes Josh deserves a lot of credit for SAB but not all of it. Even for the first release, while it was that small team for most of it towards the end bunch of other people at the company pitched in (like the composers for the music and cinematics team for the trailer, and obviously QA).

inubasiri.8745:

I tried Bachelor of Baubles in W1 with Dulfy’s guide and with Ayin Maiden’s vid in both infantile and normal modes and didn’t get it. Betty keeps telling me I missed some. I tried it 3 times total since April 1st. While it is possible I’ve missed some bauble somewhere, after the 3rd run, I’m confident that I haven’t.

I had the same thing happen once in W1 Z3, while wrapping up my missing achievements from last time SAB was around. It was infuriating. The bit where Moto’s Breath lies is pain to do, which is one reason I skipped doing the baubles the first time around, since I messed up and didn’t do it at the same time as I got that skill.

What I noticed is that the first time around I got one bauble with the whip and I am guessing that didn’t register or something… because the second time it worked fine (or I might have missed a random bauble but I doubt it).

Greymantle.9168:

I can confirm that you can still do everything (Baubles/Secrets/Become the master in infantile mode…The issue is it isn’t really infantile mode by the time you reach the first push puzzle, but rather normal mode stuff that they just seemed to now neglect lol. I mean, from the Dulfy guide they did at one time have rainbows that ran throughout the whole thing, but no longer from what I’ve seen. It’s kind of a moot point now seeing as I slogged my way through both the W1/2 metas for the past two days, but it’s more of a heads up for those still doing them that the guide Dulfy has shows things that aren’t there anymore.

That is good to know, however, since the rainbow bridges are only a thing on infantile mode the rest of your post is a tad bit confusing. Yes you can get through the level in infantile mode just fine. But the infantile clouds from the long path have been removed in favor of the new shortcut. Which is why dulfy’s guide is not applicable anymore because she used the old infantile mode that ran through the long way for the most part.

What makes this interesting is that the W2 Z3 infantile mode by comparison is mostly intact.. both the long and short paths (well they did swap some rainbow clouds for a straight up teleporter in one of the caves but that is only a minor inconvenience if you are going for baubles. Otherwise the dulfy guides for W3 remain mostly accurate (sans the issue with bombs that sometimes manifests but the slingshot or better yet the flute can seriously help with that).

Ellie.5913:

vesica tempestas.1563:

once a year is perfect, if SAB was available all the time it would be dead after a few months. Imagine if xmas was every day :P

Personally I would LOVE if it was Christmas or Halloween every day since those festivals are really fun.

I agree with you on this one hundred percent, though my reasoning is bit different… I have seen people say that SAB is fine as a yearly festival (which it is, to be fair) because if it was around more it would siphon away players from the rest of the game.

Well for me, if SAB wasn’t around I wouldn’t even be logging in until the new story updates kick off… I have actually been playing bunch of other games instead. I tried this PvP thing everyone kept talking about with the seasons and I quite quickly decided not engage as soon as I had gotten out of amber and had my face kicked in.

So for me SAB is bringing me back into the game, when I haven’t really been present ever since after wrapping up HoT story and map completion… and once SAB leaves I will not have any reason to login until the narrative content starts rolling again.

Ticky.5831:

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

It’s “hard”.

<snip>

I think that what the part about Masochists is for.

It is deliberately parroting games like IWBTG and Cat Mario, I personally don’t like that kind of difficulty either but it is literally wearing its inspiration on its sleeve.

See here for some old clarification by Josh himself: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sab-bts/Tribulation-Mode-I-am-ready/first#post2739003

The whole Back to School section is a treasure trove of old dev posts by Josh, and among other things it sadly also likely hides the real reason why future worlds basically got axed this time around.

Ticky.5831:

Does the Whistle have any practical use?

The whistle is only the most useful item in SAB. Shatter Serenade and Gatekeepet Lullaby are two of the most useful songs out there and they make W2 Z2 so much easier (if you are going the long way especially).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wooden_Whistle_%28skill%29

alleriapython.4159:

I’m having the same problem. The icicle breaking song doesn’t work. I can get the doors to open, but I can’t get the icicles to break. Also when using the bomb to target the icicles, it doesn’t work at all.. My bombs tend to go down instead of up, or land on top of me.

The shatter serenade does work, but it is sort of glitchy… it is like its area of effect is smaller than it used to be.

Just dig until you get a rabbit and let it kill you…

Khyan.7039:

There is (was?) an hidden achievement from a possible world 3 (on the API) but I can’t find it in game.

There are some new SAB assets that aren’t used yet. I think the devs tried to do the world 3 but they didn’t get the time to finish it before 1st april.

Are you sure it is not just the genie stuff from last time that was unceremoniously cut from this release. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Q9iAx_8Wk

I mean they couldn’t actually just remove the achievement, because people had it already so they just hid it (it might have been at least partially hidden during the original release as well, ie. at least one of the two was).

Miss Lana Too.5794:

I believe it was /stuck, which I am all for bringing back!

There was also /resign now that I think of it a bit.

Tomoyo.3482:

— The grind to get 35 bad. i dont play on trib mode and that doesnt help at all but when you limit it like it is i just see no point in playing. i played all worlds a day or two ago on normal and seen i only had 12ish of the currency and said to heck with it.

You actually get 14 per day, plus at least one or two if you do the SAB dailies. So with minimal effort it is 2-3 days for a skin depending on how many baubles you grab in the levels. Usually after my daily run I have enough for one or two extra bubbles from Moto, and still 60 left over from converting Continue Coins to baubles.

The new short versions of the latter zones are so generous in terms of time investment required that at leas for me the daily run hardly registers as a grind. But for me it has become a routine already, I guess it helps that I enjoy chip tunes so it ends up being pretty zen experience.

Though I do have all the possible upgrades from SAB, from last time it was around… so W2 Z3 is probably a lot easier for me than it is for someone who doesn’t have that stuff (regardless of whether you take the long or the short path). Also I use both of the classic shortcuts, the eagle in particular beats even the new shortcut in W2 Z2 by a mile if you know how to stay on it to the end.

I mean they can’t exactly hand you 35 bubbles a day or more… since that would mean you run out of rewards before the festival is over, so what did you actually expect?

Edit: if you blindly follow dulfy’s or someone else guide from three years ago you are taking the long way through the later zones. Which you really should not do, unless you are gunning for achievements or secrets/upgrades (the nun chucks and the flute are so worth the extra trip) since you have the option to avoid that now.

Lord Erik.6903:

I’ve had this bug too. No sound comes out, and it looks like the flute isn’t opening any hidden doors.

The sound bug I have had as well… but for me the doors open regardless (I do still hear a tiny bit of the last note usually, so maybe it is different one than the one you are talking about).

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

I don’t think they are having problems in the idea department… I mean it is pretty obvious from the SAB map that they had bunch of ideas for later zones even as early as when W1 was just a one off experiment.

I think, the team for SAB had a vision and it sucks that they don’t get to realize it, but I doubt we can help them with that as unfortunate as it may be. I mean implementation is a huge part of the work.

DoctorDing.5890:

Not enough folks would pay for it. Really, they wouldn’t.

Maybe not from the GW2 player base but if it was a proper game release aimed at general public at a competitive price point there might be more of a target audience out there.

Malediktus.9250:

Rejoining is not possible with the current gw2 instance system without making tribulation mode selling possible. Just get good than you no longer need hours to finish a zone. You can probably do 2-2 in tribulation mode in 20min or less with practice

Also, they don’t have the ability to retain empty instances in memory at all anyways… which means no grace periods so even if they allowed rejoining, it wouldn’t help solo runners one bit.

Yoroiookami.3485:

I’m sorry but that makes no sense. To finish tribulation mode in groups, all team members must get to the checkpoint. To get a checkpoint, all team members must be by the checkpoint. Also, not sure what does it have to do with getting disconnected.

Except if you join an instance that has already been completed or is about to be. Think of it this way, the way rejoining instance works in this game is that anyone can join an instance as long as they get in a party (normally that is). So in theory if SAB Tribulation mode allowed this people would only have to go from the last checkpoint to the end, provided someone was selling TM runs like dungeon paths.

What does this mean… that the original group that created the instance is not tracked by the server (the player that owned the instance used to be tracked, but that is only 1 player not the entire group). So, in short… you can’t join any SAB TM instance that is in progress because the game doesn’t know if that instance was “yours” or not.

What I am saying is that the way Tribulation mode works right now is a side effect of working around this limitation in their instancing technology. Yes, it is rough… but at the same time SAB has never had a lot of engine development behind it. They had one engine programmer for W1, they didn’t have any programmer/engine support for W2… and Tribulation mode was introduced with W2.

By engine support, what I mean here is support for changes that the game cannot already do for some other reason (ie. behaviors and code changes that are not doable through their regular content creation tools, basically map/event scripting).

For example, the reason why the dart traps in W2 Z2 are instant kill regardless of difficulty mode is because their engine could not have the dart traps impede player movement the way Josh wanted them to and only have the player take damage. To make them work differently would have required engine level support which they did not have. I am putting this example here because it was the one example used by Josh himself back when SAB was around the second time and the dart traps were criticized heavily as a cheap way to cheat player out of lives on normal mode.

In order for TM to work the way you are suggesting, they would need the ability to hold full group info for instance AND retain instances, and the progress within, for a period of time after the instance has become empty. Both things that not only require additional resource from the server hosting the instances also ones that definitely need engine level support.

SAB is, or at least it was, a marvel of jury rigging systems to do something completely different than for what they were meant to do. I have no idea what they might have changed since the second release of SAB, however, seeing as this was a minor release by comparison… I think this is still mostly true.

Let me put it this way, in my opinion SAB has the best reward structure of any event in the game.

I mean, there are cool rewards and lot of them plus bunch of them are tied behind some real skill gates. This means real prestige (I am saying this knowing I will never have the skill to go for some of those rewards). Additionally, playing SAB is the first time going for event rewards doesn’t feel like a grind to me (yes it is still technically a grind, just as all the rest, but it doesn’t feel like it).

This is probably the only 20 days I will ever do my daily achievements without break on concurrent days, that is how much I think of SAB. I think it is a fantastic change of pace.

It sucks that it will forever remain just this, but all the while I am still insanely happy for Josh that his once wacky experiment has now been made a permanent yearly fixture of the game thus immortalizing it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I would want more, a lot more…

In memoriam of the one lost in the sands of time, and as something for those that could not experience the wonders of his friendship.

Enjoy

Yoroiookami.3485:

I grinded a bit for the torch, I bought the torch. I made my way through all the areas I finished before and I made it to the waterfall. After a few tries, I got disconnected from the server. At this point I’m done. Apparently getting disconnected and starting over is a part of this difficulty setting, because it happened to me twice now.

Replied to you elsewhere, but it is an unfortunate side effect if the code that exist people to stop selling “finished” Tribulation mode runs, this was an important consideration for Josh back when Tribulation mode was added so that getting the Tribulation skins is a true sign of being able to properly complete the mode rather than being able to ride on the coattails of the skill from someone else.

I don’t think they have a tech for that… maybe they could repurpose some tech from the PvP match thing. But they can’t use any of their regular systems because they don’t want TM runs to be up for sale, without having to go through the whole run that is.

Mostly maintenance overhead, Josh touched on it on this Fridays stream. The way SAB is made, makes it prone to breaking when changes are made and since GW2 engine is forever in flux there is no way to know when/if it will break again.

They may have done some work to prevent it from breaking, since they do say it is now a yearly festival on the release page itself. However, it is likely that there is still parts of it that might break when changes are made elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong I would love SAB to be, if not permanent a more frequent thing, however, I do get why it being recurring festival benefits them, as not only with maintenance but also in keeping it fresh for players.

It does suck that its only here for two weeks though, for the first time it was around whole april, and same might be true for the second time it was around… can’t recall the specifics on that.

they should just add a /reset command for killing yourself. I know there was similar command in GW1, but the name escapes me.

Mystic.5934:

infantile mode for world 2 involves a lot of skipping. Like, a rainbow will take you past a building that would normally need completing, for example. If there are no rainbows, you took the normal way. There were likely arrow fingers with happy/sad faces to show the two paths.

What he is referring to is the fact that in W2Z2, the infantile clouds for the long way have been removed whole sale. This is not true for Z3, don’t know about Z1.

The rainbows have changed… and some of the old guides rely on the old rainbows. There is even talk of the bauble one for Z2 being impossible, since you can’t backtrack without infantile clouds… that are no-longer there.

guildabd.6529:

None of the songs seem to work anymore. Doors will not open, icicles will not fall.
Wooden Whistle songs

Make sure you have actually visited the secrets for the songs on that character…. all songs work for me, although shatter serenade can be bit glitchy.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Malediktus.9250:

If they never make world 3 and 4, it will be just another unfinished and half baked project in a long row of unfinished and half baked things in GW2. Would be a real evidence of incapacity.
And I am still waiting for those purple and red tribulation skins (or whatever colors were promised when tribulation mode was introduced) of world 3 and 4

purple and red is correct.

Also, would be nice to have that “Kaiser Snake” the current set is actually based on… cough

red and purple :P

Anyways, at least they made an additional colour for these extra rewards rather than using the red or purple colors…. so maybe, just maybe there is a slim hope they did that in the hopes that they might be able to do future worlds.

That said, I am far too much of a pessimist to think like that.

Entenkommando.5208:

He said on the stream that it took 8 devs almost half a year for one world.

That is indeed quite huge for such a small part of the game.

I don’t want to dispute his words but, he himself has said before that when W1 was built ie. SAB was made, it was less people than that… don’t recall what the timescale was like but I do recall it being three to four people for W1 (including the engine stuff to support their UI etc.). W2 was huge by comparison (without the shortcuts) and they also added Tribulation mode for all zones in that (or added it to W2, finished it in W1).

It is all about scale and pace… I guess, I have no doubt it could take exactly as much time as he said it does, however, what about only releasing one zone of W3 at a time then, surely that will cut down the time required to, well a third.

Also, so far all world have had entirely unique aesthetics, I mean for some zone’s the aesthetic is used only in that zone (see rapids), so maybe a bit of asset reuse mixed in with new props could also used to cut development costs.

I mean, it is pretty obvious Josh had a vision of some kind for all four worlds, because even when SAB was fresh off the oven he said that the super explosive finisher was actually the last upgrade for the bauble bombs inside the box. If he is not willing to compromise at all on that vision, then yeah I can see how SAB updates would be cost prohibitive. I mean it even shows on the map now that at some point there would be an underwater level in W3 or W4 (well it is sort of obligatory considering the subject matter), it really sucks that we might never get to see that. However, I would take something over nothing, because no matter how great SAB is it will eventually get stale as the years go by if nothing changes… which would be a huge shame.

RosiesRed.1974:

I fell through the 3rd checkpoint in world 2, zone 2 (Pain Cliffs). After feeding the octopus I used the trampoline to bounce up the checkpoint. Instead of landing I fell right through and got trapped in the mountain underneath. In order to free myself I had to leave and restart from the beginning of the level.

That checkpoint is a doozey, has been doing it ever since W2 was originally made… too bad you can fall to a spot where you can’t kill yourself. I don’t know what causes it, but if it happens it usually happens as you activate it.

If I were to speculate I am guessing the gap between the beams and the checkpoint is just the right kind for the games latency compensation to randomly decide sometimes you should be falling through it rather than standing on top of the checkpoint.

If memory serves that is why you respawn on the scale rather than on the checkpoint itself for this checkpoint, it was their hotfix for the problem during the previous SAB release, sort of… and turns out it stuck around.

Doggie.3184:

The flute should break the ice.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wooden_Whistle_

Disclaimer: you have to have visited the secrets to make the songs work (and triggered the NPC dialogue perhaps when there is one).

But yes, the flute is a most useful item, it can not only help with the icicles (both kind) in Z3, especially useful since bombs are funky now. It can also put the blowing mouths to sleep with the Gatekeeper song (works on one at a time).

Yoroiookami.3485:

RoseofGilead.8907:

If I recall correctly, you have to have a torch to get past the waterfall in normal mode, too. It’s just part of the whole upgrade thing that you’re meant to do as you play the zones. But I do sympathize with the frustration you must feel.

Actually I finished it in normal mode without a torch, but that path isn’t accessible in tribulation mode as far as I know. So I never even stumbled upon that waterfall until now.

They added a shortcut past that bit too, I must have missed something. I mean the crazy teleporter content skip in normal mode to the Yeti I saw, but the bit with the waterfall I went through as normal. Where is this new shortcut around it. I thought these would be impossible to miss, but I apparently managed to do so.

I will say one thing on the subject, they could monetize SAB more heavily… really easily too but instead this marks the first time when previous gem store items have actually been made into in-game rewards. So kudos to them for that.

I will say one thing here, dunno if this would apply to anyone but me, however, I would pay gems for future worlds in SAB in a heartbeat… like you can for LW episodes. That being said I can also see that this would perhaps be a poor choice and cause a major backlash for paywalling content like this. Then again, it seems we might never get any more SAB content outside some new rewards if Fridays dev stream is anything to go by, which sucks (but it is also the reason why I am writing this, I mean if they can not create them for free, maybe they could monetize them in some way).

Standalone game would be cool too, however, one reason I like SAB so much is because I can play something like it while earning some kind of progress in GW2. Granted this would not be impossible to do with a standalone game somehow, though. Unfortunately a standalone game from ANet that is not GW seems like something that would never happen (prove me wrong by all means please, ANet).

DinoToss.4810:

This is an issue because you need to backtrack to the eagle shortcut to do a 100% bauble run, This is currently impossible due to missing rainbow paths.

Good point, never though of it that far…

However, in retrospect any chances that impact the old ways of completing the level sort of sucks because not only does it make some things harder, or impossible as it turns out, it also invalidates lot of old guides made by the community that were relying on the infantile clouds for easier time with some achievements.

It took me a while to realize that dropping the piranhas was no longer a thing for example. I spent at least a few minutes trying it and wondering where the kitten did the piranha go. Dropping it regularly was just such an automatic thing for me.

This SUCKS, I never knew I could be this happy and disappointed at the same time.

I am really happy to be playing SAB again, and right now I am having a blast, I am also happy for Josh because now what begun as his wacky experiment has been sort of immortalized as a permanent, albeit just once a year, fixture in this game.

Then you have to go and make me feel like this, I know W2 was controversial, but what you have done to it now is a nice compromise. Fast daily runs and the “expanded experience” for achievements. You made mistakes and you learnt from them, however…

Josh Foreman

This release [Back to School] taught us a lot about what SAB fans really wanted from this kind of content..

How can you say this, and follow it up with below…

Josh Foreman

Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB.

Yeah we learnt a lot about what to do and not do, but we aren’t actually ever going to get a chance to put that into effect on any new SAB content. So after the tweaks to World 2 it doesn’t really matter.

This makes me sad, because I remember from Back to School, you might have made some miscalculations, however, back then and even now I feel sad because I remember that the things W2 was criticized about were mostly you guys being way too enthusiastic and trying to do too much (I hate that this can be seen as a fault at all, but unfortunately sometimes too much is actually too much).

Now that, as you say, you have learned from all of that. I really would love to see what W3 would be like. Because while the compromise to W2 is nice. What would happen if you took what you have learned and applied it to a totally new world would be countless times better. So yeah, it sucks… it really does.

I know I will play SAB for years to come, but one of the draws for me personally was that it was an evolving piece of content, and say what you will about the lore around it. I liked that SAB both inside and outside the box was a play on gaming and developing games. The back story about the shadow box and the in-game plot about princess Miya and Lord Vanquish. I hate cliffhangers…. I will play SAB, but without the development and conclusion of SAB and those stories, it won’t be the same, it just won’t. It is sad to see the whole Genie bit was also removed, but I guess in light of everything it was to be expected.

I know you sort of said unlikely but never say never during the Guild Chat, but at the same time what you said is the closest thing to saying never without actually saying it.

I will go enjoy SAB, while holding a silent vigil for the content that could have been while I am at it now. Sorry for waffling on like this, but I just had to get it all out of my system.

Rococo.8347:

Thanks Crise

making more sense now, the shovel allows me to dig for more bubbles I guess? I can go back into world 1 zones 1+2 multiple times can I and collect bubbles but not baubles after the first time that day?

What you can grind for are baubles, any bubbles you get are daily. I think the so called “dig spots” are also daily as well. You are quatanteed 2 bubbles and 1 continue coin for completing any zone once a day. Any regular baubles on top of that can be converted to bubbles at a rate of 250 baubles = 1 bubble.

So doing the quick math for two zones a day you’d need to do that for nine days for one blue skin.

Rococo.8347:

So I can just run world 1 zone 1+2 once a day and do you think that would be enough? I need 25 bauble bubbles for backpack and 35 for a GS – that’s a lot of bubbles

Also what is the shop about? Dulfy videos unfortunately seem to presume you understand the basics and just crack on with achievements..

Thanks

Shop is for upgrades for your character inside the box… f..ex. you get a whip and some bombs pretty early, candle for light…. stuff like that. The optimal thing to do would be to go for the bauble capacity upgrades first, however they cost a lot of baubles. So unless you really want to get into it you should just keep hoarding them. Shovel might be worthwhile investment though.

The bottom line SAB shop primarily unlocks things on your skill bar and sells, for baubles, keys and health potions if you need them.

With just two zones from world one it might be tough to get enough bauble bubbles with just quick daily runs, you get two per zone completion per day, plus bonus for end of world bosses (I think). You can also convert 250 baubles into a bauble bubble, which is what you need for skins.