Guild Wars 2

Didn’t give up. Just postponed it.

Ziggy.7319:

[…]
For those complaining about your race for being too big or too small, i really don’t get it. the only issue there was is that everyones characters were covering each other in the beginning, but that effected everyone and had nothing to do with race. after the first few seconds it didn’t matter as others fell and things started to spread out more. to solve this, there can be individual instaces, though i actually prefer being with a group of people/friends cause it makes it more fun.[…]

I still have that screenshot of my Asura being buried beneath a heap of Norn and Charr. I’d say it affected everyone but more so if your character was literally invisible for a moment. Also keep in mind a lot people fail early because exactly for the reason that they cannot cope as good with this as others. Which is no problem since it is neither a game mechanic nor intent of the encounter. Thus removing it from the equation will in no way diminish the difficulty at all.

By the way the reason why they had to do this that way was because they could not do individual instances for technical reasons.

BraxKedren.8941:

As for people complaining about the Norns/Charr blocking their views and it being impossible on smaller characters, not so.[…]

It’s not impossible but harder. Is driving your car with a cow sprawling on top of your windscreen impossible? No but it’s definitely harder.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I do, truly feel bad about this. From the ground up, we designed our game mechanics to encourage cooperation and altruism in the community, and this JP’s mechanics broke that design aesthetic. It was an accident, but I still accept responsibility for it.
[…]
Well, ideally we will continue tweaking our camera until this is not a problem. Throughout the development of GW2 I was very purposefully pushing the boundaries of spatial layout and mechanics, because I believe you can’t know what your limits are until you pass them. One of the themes I tried to explore in a couple places was claustrophobia.

Heh, I figured out after first time I chilled that it must be an accident and not intent. It wouldn’t make sense philosophy-wise! To be honest in the end I liked having players in the lobby. Just after they became a temporary nuisance during the first jumps. I know the effects have been…controversial but I have trust that you’ll iron out the issues over time.

The phase I usually have most troubles with is the beginning phase as it has a spike in difficulty factors namely camera, weird blocks and player models and thus I fail most at start. After that I am forcing myself to slow down and then it feels just like a normal jumping puzzle again which are definitely doable even by the lesser skilled ones.

As an Asura player I find it frustrating that camera snaps at several parts in the beginning and I figured it’s because their vertical position exceeded the body height but I think camera is something more of a generic problem at the moment and been my main nuisance,yes, more than player models which I could avoid through choosing an overflow with smaller people.

Otherwise I have to say I like the tower concept. I was able to get as far as the part where you have to jump down to the first chest and even if I can’t make it before event ends today I know I will next year if you keep this kind of challenges coming for more training.

I am playing with a motoric impairment which I have since childhood so I have to rely on visual factors more than muscle memory so to speak but I genuinely and harshly blame all mistakes I made on myself and that’s the most of them. So I think the issue was more that we lacked time to practice this, some people do this puzzle with eyes closed at their first visit to the instance, some people need days of relentless practising to beat it. Lacking these days makes them feel more emotional about this I believe.
So I have to say: Please not less of those but more because the more we are doing these the more we learn the easier it gets the more likely we will laugh next year about these silly mistakes we made!

I have two ideas myself which I may post at some point in suggestions forum.

paulthepage.6385:

^
I think people are really scapegoating the character models (external attribution) in place of their own ability to perform well under pressure (internal) as it’d be a threat to their self-esteem.

Yeah. I believe that you are thinking that but I can assure you that it is incorrect. Why? Because it assumes all the players are pretty incapable of self-criticism and tend to reflect faults on others. While this may be true for some you can’t just deflect that on these grounds. As a developer anyway because a lot concerns have a high possibility to be genuine if they are brought forward from all ranges of their demographic playerbase. I know what’s my fault and what is not. Comes with my job – I am happy to add that by the way.

The pressure or stage fright that you experience is to be expected – its social facilitation – that is easier tasks are better performed when in a group whereas harder more complex tasks (this puzzle) are harder to perform when in a group.
It puts strain on us and makes the task that much more difficult. I’m sure arenanet set the puzzle up this way with this social psychology principle in mind.

No. Apparently the setup was a compromise rather than an elaborate social scheme.

Because the Griffonrook can be done at any time whereas this one has a 1 year lockout obviously. Some people don’t plan for years of playing some do. So there’s a feeling of missing out. Besides my complaints are pretty generic and not exclusive to this encounter. It’s just I’ve experienced them there in focused form for the first time.

Ageia.5843:

Yeah, I have a serious problem when trying any jump puzzle when someone else is there. I think I get stage fright or something. So having 8-12 people in there with me… no way I can do it. I have high hopes that if it happens again next year, they’ll consider at least having smaller groups if not allowing it to be a solo climb.

Yeah. It’s the same here. But it is more the added effect to people posing a visual distortion to me either due to their frantic movements already challenging your vulnerable tactile and timing abilities or simple occlusion (like suddenly cannot see that rock). Throw in awkward camera and actual mistakes of your own and becomes a giant clusterkitten – not trying to take a jab here.

Been trying since days, now I used the whole day so far but I think I am giving up which is something I really loathe doing lol. What’s been annoying so far I got into the purple zone and failed to jump onto some stair there and still fail due to simple misjumps in the beginning. I am sure if that were singleplayer I might have had a few hours of cursing but at the end beaten it. It’s not the first challenge ever I’ve beaten and I am usually harder towards myself than others. Every failure shames me a little. Takes longer to get a distance and realize it’s a game ’why u haff to be med?".

Lunar Sunset.8742:

[…]

What Anet should do is exactly what they are doing, nothing. I’m not gonna be the person who says “it’s just an achievement, deal.” because people take it much more seriously and they do become defensive when you say it’s just an achievement when you yourself were doing the clock tower puzzle for over 3+ hours.

It’s been already said that they are looking into the issues next time. They would be a pretty poor developer if they didn’t iterate and try to improve at all. It’d be as bad as removing all difficulty from it.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Not really in that regard. There’s some minor circus themes involved (masks, performers, etc), but the basis of the holiday is rooted in religion… Catholicism, specifically. Carnival was meant as one last chance to enjoy all of the indulgences of life before the fasting season begins.

Actually Carnival has its roots in ancient Roman traditions, it just got christianized over time. Same for Halloween actually with its obviously Celtic roots.

No, the zerg is a byproduct of their limitations. It was supposed to be singleplayer but technically impossible right now.

Mario.6309:

No one’s forcing you get all the achievements, it’s all self-imposed. Anyone that get’s overly frustrated about an achievement really only has themselves to blame. If there’s something I can’t complete, I accept it and move on.

Self-imposed or peer pressure. Both are possible depends on how you feel about it. I’ve got only half-way through it then to fail all over simple issues at start again – and people spawning big pets and the usual issue with camera and occlusion but I am getting better at ignoring them. I quit and solo’d MK instead. Still I feel if I can do 50% of that JP then I could most likely do the rest as well. From what I have seen it gets much easier after and especially without people clogging your vision.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

I completed that 36 times atm.

That tower is simple amazing.

On a side note , if people cant even do a simple jump challenge , how they hope to beat harder stuff?

Depends on the nature of the “harder stuff”. Twitch mechanics are not the only way to make things hard.

They should make a jumping puzzle with reversed mechanics.

Your character is upside down and instead of jumping you have to try to stick to the ground otherwise be pulled into that swirling giant black hole the entire scene is spinning around. Instead of getting to a chest the chest will come to you and you have to catch it. If you’re missing the catch the chest will be sucked into aforementioned black hole. Also the longer you take for it the closer you get to the aforementioned black hole. Meaning your actions will become slower and slower…and slower. However you may cast Mad King’s Clock Tower in order to get out of it but that will also end your try.

There more justified issues. Why are you so defensive anyway? Fixing the technical issues which have even been acknowledged by the designer won’t break any challenge. It may just make people who could do it in singleplayer also beat it or are you afraid that the mysterious 5% suddenly becomes a disappointing 100%? Which I can assure you it won’t. Also because you are not experiencing things at the same severity does not mean it’s not justified. It applies to all things in life. Luckily the decision about whether some complaint is justified or not is up to the developers not the players. So I don’t see what the reason is behind insulting players and calling them feeble and whatnot. I don’t agree with their complaints about difficulty either, doesn’t mean I am going to drop the hammer on them.

Brunners.7251:

Ravenblade.7685:

Brunners.7251:

Yep that’s what he said. He created it with the intention that only about 5% of the playerbase would be able to finish it.

Huh? He said “maybe 5% of people” not “5% of playerbase”. It was an ad hoc guesstimate not a statistical constant. Meaning the real number is probably a bit higher.
—-

Here’s his exact quote:
“I designed it with the goal of having only ~5% of the population able to get all the way”

Also, he actually said that when he first dreamed this puzzle up he wanted it to be single player, which is why it’s all zergy at the bottom, because there was only meant to be one of you.

Okay. Then he said it on two places with two different wordings because you can check his comment on the video here. Although we could further quibble whether he meant participating population or the entire playerbase with it

And I am aware of his post on Reddit. I posted a link to it on several places where people claimed the zerg was a design intent actually which it wasn’t.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Yep, the got it right including the camera bugs, the falling thru platforms, the cut scene keeping people lagged at the end just long enough so that they fail before they start, the getting hung up on graphic edges, the bouncing off the face of the broken clock face, the random ports out…yep….balanced to utter perfection.

Actually as pointed out before the designer had to change towards a bigger group it was designed as singleplayer before.

There are two layers to look at:

The design layer which dictates the difficulty of the content.

The technical layer which dictates the accessibility and the difficulty for those relying on accessibility in order to beat the difficulty of the content.

Design-based difficulty is perceived individually, you are fine with it and crown it as symbol of perfection, I am fine with it and crown it as symbol of creativity. So no dispute here.

But when it comes to the technical side you can’t just dismiss it based on your experience, it’s up to the designer to see how often but more importantly how severe it can get into the way. In this case we have issues which sporadically pop up in the main game but end up in a condensed state in this content. Depending on which part you rely on when beating such games this may or may not affect you as much. People with strong muscle memory can do it no problem. Others require more visual clearance and they run into problems. It’s not necessarily that they deliberately blame their failures on technicalities even though it is common and gives players with genuine issues a bad reputation. But it all gets sorted out when these issues are fixed and suddenly wheat is separated from the chaff.

WoW philosophy is not about it being hard, in fact these days it’s the whole opposite because WoW’s content is balanced around the lowest common denominator.

That being said it’s true that you have to make cuts somewhere the problem is that most people using that term do not have a real clue where it actually is located on the demographic scale. There are fringe groups on both ends which if catered too strongly for may alienate the core demographics. So if they make content exactly doing that they always take a huge risk and it has to be compensated somewhere which I think they did well by offering excess amounts of doable content easily beaten by hartcore players.

However I would not dismiss any concerns raised in a constructive manner being related to difficulty balancing which is what many people erroneously are doing.

Zanshin.5379:

People shouldn’t hate the Norns and Charrs. They should hate ArenaNet for coming up with a jumping puzzle where the size of a character can actually prevent you from seeing where you are going.

I don’t hate anyone for that. As a developer you cannot sometimes foresee how an issue which is below their threshold of paying attention to is actually scaling out in a real situation. It was more something they didn’t intend to happen anyway as part of the encounter more of a technical limitation. They could not make it available as solo because these events are dominated by high traffic and thus higher load. 1 million instances would probably have led to a lag-laden encounter (of course with people saying lags are no big deal, they are playing from planet Jupiter via wireless etc.) So the designer made the initial platform wider and they agreed on 20 people which they even lowered to 12 which is still tough on servers but was deemed better than 20. On Reddit he said next year he will look into several issues which were reported and the option to ghost out other players.

You can do the puzzle with minimum graphics. Don’t forget to press Ctrl+Shift+H to hide the UI for additional FPS increase and less visual clutter.

mrsrachelm.7618:

Which only supports my statement that the puzzle was designed knowing that a great majority of the players would not be able to do it (aka they get the shaft)…and on a “holiday” event, no less.

Depends what you are understanding as “doing”. You can participate, even get the credit towards your achievement for having visited it and it does not count towards the main achievement.

Beating it is another thing and yes, it maybe unfair to those who expected a light-hearted experience but it was never advertised as such. I hate to pull the “optional content” card but I believe they were very sensitive here. Yes, you may have an empty 10 pts. bar taunting you and I can relate to that myself. But at the end of the day it’s nothing you couldn’t compensate elsewhere unless indeed you are a completionist or loot/skin collector.

Ryknow.6045:

Come on though seriously, For the past almost 2 moths people have been complaining that the games too easy, no challenges… Anet decide to put a challenge in and there’s more people raging about it. Hand eye co-ordination… And yeah…. 6 hours preping for 2 in a row. hah.. good one.

Way to miss the point really. The complaints about a lot Asura players having a harder time to spatially coordinate with all the big models flying around and standing on you are not even remotely related to complaints about challenge. They are in a completely different league. By this level designers own words it was originally intended to be singleplayer meaning the challenge wasn’t beating the model game, or a race or anything. It was really beating the puzzle. I know this is quite a letdown.

Actually according to this the instance was supposed to be singleplayer but MMO server limits especially during high traffic times like these made it impossible. But seems ghosting out other players seems like a nice idea they followed up on. Maybe they could just phase them out if in fact being in competition with others was not the intent of the design. I think I will rest my case then. I am sure the camera issues will be ironed out as well. At least then we can fail in peace.

mrsrachelm.7618:

Brunners.7251:

Yep that’s what he said. He created it with the intention that only about 5% of the playerbase would be able to finish it.

Which, imo, tells me quite a lot about how much the player base as a whole was deliberately shafted when making something for a “holiday” event.

Actually he said “5% of the people” and the 5% has no statistical value in this context. He just said he expected that of many people trying this will have many people failing at it. Since you can participate at any level it doesn’t diminish your experience unless you are a completionist and will miss those 10 points indefinitely. The same goes for the loot. Don’t worry, it will be there again next year, in an improved version. So you will get a chance again.

Grim.6415:

Those who want to see the jumping puzzle changed or removed should instead ask themselves why, if others very much enjoyed that content, should it be changed to accomodate you when instead you could simply ask Anet for more content that you like instead next time and not force out or alter the content you don’t enjoy.

The puzzle may be fine or not – it’s not the puzzle itself I am criticizing anyway or the thing I want to see changed. There’s like a short list of things which would be universally applicable to the game: camera and character model stacking/occlusion.
I pretty much lean towards making it soloable, if not directly then maybe by turning other players into ghosts :p

The idea of more content is nice so the issue of missing out an achievement (I never care for the loot anyway) diminishes. Maybe they could introduce some sort of puzzle which challenges the mind instead your fingers once. Like a complicated tactical puzzle with no preset condition (so you couldn’t youtube your way out of it).

Right now camera and people alongside/occluding your view is a very annoying thing which I am forcing myself to cope with before I actually manage to do the real tries. It’s an agonizing process devoid of fun still I feel like I have to do it out of my ambitious nature which is driven by being unforgiving and merciless towards myself! And…10 kittening points…

I am not blaming the people behind so the racism or discrimination isn’t on personal level and it’s only a specific isolated case.

Zefiris.8297:

[…]
See, these people don’t actually fail due to model size. They just didn’t manage the jump and BLAME model size for it. Arenanet can do nothing here. They’d blame something equally silly if there were no norn or charr.

Not true. If the issues weren’t there and I’d fail due to lack of timing, direction and force I would blame myself. Simple as that. Yes, some people are capable of self-criticism.

The difference between a whiner and a critic is that the critic knows the boundaries of his/her complaints whereas the whiner would do as you say.

The other jump position is working as well but alas I avoid it for reasons related to random “stuck camera” reasons. It was actually my initial jump-off point. The other side is easy if you jump and actually from the right position which may get blocked entirely by models. I feel for people with slower machines because they couldn’t get ahead of these big guys. Seen a lot people slipping off the border because of that. My issue is that and the fact that due to the wall-effect of the characters the initial jump phase is just wonky and a matter between not getting my sight blocked on the fly and not getting the camera in the way either.

To reiterate: It’s got really nothing to with the players and they are not at fault which means I won’t attack players over it – in fact I just leave, re-enter, leave, re-enter until the group mix is okay. The fault lies in that while the idea was nice on paper the issues weren’t foreseen. Which means you could hold it against designers or not. But it’s something to iterate on. The result won’t be an easier puzzle which is what most people are dreading.

I liked it. The Lion’s Arch part is pretty fast and I connected the Queensdale, Kessex Hills and Gendarran Fields parts with the map completion and helping out in events. Net me almost 40k karma, tons of mats, some gold and finding areas I haven’t been to before. So at least this years it didn’t feel like a grind to me.

Crispyseaweed.4870:

Again, I feel sorry for anyone frustrated at not being able to finish this puzzle but please don’t ruin everyone’s fun by demanding all future events are designed for your level of skill. Dumbing down is a major blight of MMOs and this is the kind of place it starts.

Nobody is doing that some people are exaggerating the numbers of those who actually do want that. Most people have reasonable criticisms which don’t conflict with the idea of the challenge at all. You know how these threads go. They grow more by people being concerned that the developer will listen and than by those actually agreeing with that sentiment which people are so concerned about.

Brunners.7251:

Yep that’s what he said. He created it with the intention that only about 5% of the playerbase would be able to finish it.

Huh? He said “maybe 5% of people” not “5% of playerbase”. It was an ad hoc guesstimate not a statistical constant. Meaning the real number is probably a bit higher.
—-
Still it’s not wasted content as everyone is able to try, yet it would probably be even higher without the technical issues in place which is not completely the designer’s fault but this is the first year so issues are expected. How many years did WoW have to improve their events? They still get overhauled a lot. I don’t see why ANet would be different here, any serious developer values feedback, positive and negative so they have a basis to iterate on their concept. Maybe next year the tower will be harder with the Mad King interjecting with a “Mad King Says” mini-game before you can jump onto the next piece? Maybe next year 100 people are allowed per game because some people don’t see the occlusion as big deal. We don’t know but I am sure constructive criticism doesn’t drag down on the overall positive experience for most players so far.

Mikura.1890:

I would be VERY VERY disappointed if people just went there, tried a couple times and got to the top in 5 or 10 minutes.

Who seriously suggested such a change anyway?

Yes, making them ghosts was an idea I had in mind as well. It would also be sort of in line with the Halloween theme!

http://imgur.com/pscWi.jpg (as you can clearly see I am that Asura in the front center)

PS: Don’t take it personal if you’re Norn or Charr. It’s not your fault.

Astrid Crow.1275:

I really don’t see the big problem here.
Yes it’s a hard puzzle, took me about 1.5 hours to do, don’t expect to do it in a few minutes.
I didn’t notice a big camera problem, what control settings are you all using? I have it set so I just hold right click and move my mouse to turn, that way I wan just hold ‘W’ down and keep turning my mouse to navigate the puzzle.
The problem of other characters shouldn’t matter once you’re past the first section because if you aren’t at the front of the pack you simply aren’t going fast enough, you’ll never make it anyway.

You might not have experienced the camera issue but others have. Others are also more sensitive to it. I am sensitive to it as well for the reason explained in my initial posting in this thread. I have tried playing zoomed out to max. (which I still prefer), zoomed in, camera right, left and center, free camera/fixed camera. The camera would still focus on the edge like when doing the first jump to that stair-like block making it wobble back and forth rapidly. That is highly irritating and frustrating. If it were a camera with proper behaviour then it would not even flinch and keep that distance

The second suggestion is a bit off. I am always jumping ahead and miss that jump more often than not if my toon was occluded. So I followed the most common suggestion of waiting 1s – which is still a compensable amount of time – until the big guys jumped. The problem is that this assumes the big guys have lightning fast jumping reflexes but more often than not if playing with other big guys the “I can’t see my feet!” issue is also a problem for them. So the jump becomes an uncoordinated mess – exactly the opposite what a jumping puzzle is about.

I think you’re all just trying to justify your inability to do the puzzle.

If it were just as easy to simplify that then I would simplify it like that. I am very capable of self-criticism and I can shake head about myself. I don’t need other people to fill that role for me. I don’t see why people are so eagerly defensive about their previous challenge thingie anyway. It’s not going away if you fix those issues but I can finally have a chance to improve based on my own failings. The very essence platform/arcade games are about.

Godslayer.1203:

I’m glad it’s hard, and I’m glad they did it in groups. I liked having my guildmates with me as we did it, kinda motivated us like it was a race. Once I got the hang of it the mass group of people really wasn’t a problem.

I’m also glad it’s not something for someone to just run and do in 5 minutes, and actually takes a few tries. I don’t want spoiled brats who think they should have what they want when they want it the way they want it getting my hard earned achievements (not implying the op is that, just saying in general).

Can’t buy your way up this tower either.~

I think a guild can coordinate far better than a crowd of random people. If you are bunched up with randoms that “mass of people” tends to become confusing hence why I think they should either address that in a way that people do not get confused by occlusion and camera. Or find a way to make sure you are seeing your character properly all the time because of that you can truly see whether it’s a personal skill cap issue. It’s really the only issue I have and in general it seems a widespread criticism. Most people I have seen in chat were okay with the difficulty just raging a bit about character sizes. I have made it a habit of leaving-reentering in order to find a small-to-medium sized group (by bodysize). It was the only time I actually had some decent tries.

I liked the event as well so far. I will grant them that it’s their first year and things need to be ironed out for the next time. It’s not perfect by any means and I have yet to be that tower – which is the hardest part due to camera and character occlusion issues but I think I am getting the hang of it and just need a time where not many people are online. But the fun so far was indeed the greatest I have had in a long time of playing MMORPGs.

http://i.imgur.com/pscWi.jpg

I am the Asura in the front center in the image above.

I really think the tower is a cool idea. A fast-paced event with no room for slacking. It’s however immensely confusing when your character is occluded. The camera issue has cost me many tries as well and I have tried every camera trick so far it just won’t stick. I am also running with the new vertical FOV setting activated.

misshap.1045:

Not that I don’t have criticisms. Sure when I was running with two norns, and a char it became very difficult to see; perhaps next time normalize all of the characters into a costume—like a skeleton. That way they are all the same size and it would eliminate 90% of the complaints. It was an optional event with rewards that were good, but not by any means game breaking.

I think a lot players are overly defensive about this challenge thing anyway like it’s a precious thing and everyone voicing criticism is potentially threatening in that their logic could sway ANet into nerfing it Blizz-style. But your suggestion is actually in line what I have suggested as well. Being able to see and control your character might be an elitist and whiny attitude to some but I don’t see anything wrong with it nor do I see it as resounding call for a nerf. Same for camera not randomly flipping around.
I would probably suggest that your character’s and ground geometry’s outlines become more visible at least if obstructed in the same way you can see units behind walls in some RPGs or strategy games.

Other than that I think it is fine and maybe my other suggestion about removing the ooze and introducing a timed appearance for pieces would be more detrimental hence my focus on camera,visibility and response all hindered by technical issues.

Some disabled are more like just having a disorder which means they can still do that but it is harder. They fail more often than the average player, and much more if the challenge is actually not seeing yourself and having your viewing direction blocked because the camera just started wiggling around. But these issues have been an annoyance for players without physical issues so in this manner it would even the ground for both parties. It’s again not even close to a call for a nerf.

As for introducing an easy mode, I would not mind if it were experience-only something like exploration and real mode and the achievement and reward would reflect that but I am having a feeling that this game will rather address technical issues than making it easier in any form. Making it available for truly disabled players is a challenge for every developer because between trying to cater to color-blind, deaf and/or epileptic players you have to eventually make a compromise because of resource or technical constraints. Maybe one day when mind-to-machine control works we can have truly equal ground here.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

I have to spend extra time readjusting the camera to line up a jump or to look ahead. It’s terrible when I’m playing my Norn. I find that unfair that Asura gain an advantage over other characters because they’re smaller and the enviroment does not zoom in on the character as often as a Norn would.

I am agreeing with you but from the opposite/Asura point of view. I find it unfair that Norn get to see their characters. I don’t know about race-specific character issues because they have been confusing for me as well on every character.

Korrigan.4837:

The clock tower has a few characteristics:
- It’s harder than your average jumping puzzles. This is good for those who breezed through the other puzzles.

Which is what I am fine with as well! I fully understand even the design behind this.

- It’s in no way mandatory to complete the full Halloween event, or even the “Emissary of the Mad King” achievement. At no point you are stuck with “must do the clock” to be able to fully enjoy the rest of the content.

Which is what I have addressed as well. Simply put I am fine with it the problem is that my issues have nothing to do with optional or not. Because even in an optional state they should not exist in this manner. So people willing to do optional content shouldn’t opt out on the basis that they can’t enjoy the challenge because it is buried beneath technical issues.
If it were a normal jumping puzzle I’d just come back when I got the nerves for it but for a seasonal one with a 1 year lockout? That’s preprogrammed frustration.

For info, I’ve started working with 3D graphics on an Amiga something like 25+ years ago, and I my work in part consists in programming real time 3D effects for video and movies. I’ve seen no 3D problem in this puzzle, and I play a Norn.

See, we are not so far apart then. Despite me mentioning gaming on it I programmed far more on it. My daily’s job is revolving around 3D and 3D programming (apps) and I am familiar with OpenGL. Now that we have exchanged credentials I want to add that I play an Asura. A small statued one even. So I am seeing camera issues and obstruction a lot.

So yes, I disagree with the people asking for this or that part of content to be nerfed or changed just because they didn’t manage to do it. And I repeat, I’m in the same camp for now, didn’t do it yet, and I possibly won’t manage to do it. I still don’t go out of my way and ask ANet to nerf it – because fact is many people did it, some even repeated it several times, so it CAN be done.

If you have understood my agenda so far you would know by now that I am actually not even remotely asking for a nerf
All I am asking for is that they iron out the technical/QoL issues for the next time while retaining the intended level of challenge. That’s basically it in a nutshell.
All of the things I am mentioning have been mentioned in chat while I have been trying this with groups. So I am not just purely talking out of selfish motives to have an easy game here. In addition to that the camera issue is known already and the effects of character stacking known since MMOs exist.

Korrigan.4837:

@Ravenblade – then just don’t do it. As I said, it’s not mandatory. There’s a ton of other content you can enjoy. Fact is, not every single piece of content added to a game as large as a MMORPG has to be tailored to be fun for YOU – there will always be tons of other people who will enjoy it.

All the issues you list (camera orientation, acting partially blind (which is almost military skill requirement) and avoiding invisible collision zones) are only YOU failing, and not the game’s fault. I have guildies who already done it, and none mentioned the problems you list. I’ve made it pretty high in the tower even though I’m not done yet, and I never noticed those problems either.

PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard). Practice more, improve, and you’ll do it… or just do something else, as it’s not a mandatory activity.

No doubt a lot people have done it, there is always someone who stands out as proof. You are still reading my post as “I want it easy” and that’s not fair because as I have repeatedly stated I don’t want that. Everyone experiences the issues differently just as every human being is different. The camera issues are even an acknowledged problem and it would have been a surprise if they vanished just for this content, the differently sized characters is a byproduct of design and would not be an issue for those having issues with if people could space out a little bit more and as someone working with 3D design for almost 15 years now it’s no surprise if geometrical issues exist they are however fairly easy addressed.

However as I have emphasized already it shouldn’t be up to the player mastering these three metagame aspects. Yes, I will go back and try it until I have done it but I will still come back kindly pointing out these issues. Because otherwise I am fine with the encounter. Besides if you had read my initial posting on this you would have seen that I am never backing down on a challenge even if it’s culminating into silly scales on a personal level. I am usually no quitter even if things aren’t perfect. Although I don’t understand why people would be so adversed against alleviations. After all it’s also beneficial for those already fine without them taking away any form of the challenge they liked unless these issues were part of it. It would be a win-win from my point of view.

Korrigan.4837:

What a surprise, whining about something “too hard” for some people.

First, let me tell you I haven’t managed to complete the tower yet. I’m still trying, in short sessions. I find it challenging and interesting, games NEED stuff you don’t complete on the first try.

Second… it’s not mandatory at all to complete. Not even for the “Emissary of the Mad King” achievement. You do NOT need it.

The latest MMORPG player generations seem to think everything in game must be able to be completed by them without breaking a sweat. I say ANet, do NOT cater to those spoiled players – keep on adding stuff some will not be able to complete easily. Something to look forward to.

I don’t belong to the latest generation at all and I don’t want it easy. The claim of that is as generic as old. Most players vocal about difficulties do have a very differentiated opinion on what constitutes as hard. I have been playing platform games since back on the Amiga which were ruthless and I beat them. Why? Because the chance to win was granted by the mechanics while the rest was taken care of by the invisible layer incl. QoL features.

That layer being visible and part of the game mechanic is exactly what is causing the problem. I would never blame my lack of timing, my lack of coordination and force direction on the game. But when among all these things to master I have to add mastery of camera orientation, acting partially blind (which is almost military skill requirement) and avoiding invisible collision zones then this becomes a very frustrating experience.

You are right that it is optional and in fact playing this game is optional. But that is not part of the issue, the worst thing which may happen is if Anet is ignoring this because some players dismiss these issues as non-existent or not as aggravating as those suffering from it. I want a challenge but I want it based on the same mechanics as they are in the world already and I mean that in an uplifted form so if it is fast-paced I am absolutely fine with it. But I don’t want glaring design issues which also exist in the real world also added in an ‘uplifted’ form to it.

Twaddlefish.6537:

Ravenblade, I am sorry to hear about your disability and I do hope you have been enjoying the events thus far.

As fair as your ideas sound, it would mean they’d have to completely rehash a puzzle that they’ve probably been working on since well before release in an afternoon for that will only be up for Halloween week.

I didn’t really have issues with the camera, right-click and move the mouse, adjust on straight parts.

I usually don’t even mention it because people tend not to notice it unless taking a jab at my performance because I have to work twice as hard to achieve what others see as norm. I’ve raided with this in WoW, healed and tanked, and that’s because I’ve learned to accept the challenge in itself. However since you are more vulnerable to distracting/obstructing factors in these situations your performance rapidly declines as their impact adds up exponentially.

The biggest issue I am seeing is: Crowd-jumping while nothing new is one major factor, everyone who’s done encounters like Thaddius knows that but here the designers were aware of it by splitting up the number of people and allowing spacing out as well adding no time constraint to it. The thinking is that everyone jumps as you do and they jump as everyone does which means there’s a chain-lagged reaction which gets visual obstruction by bigger characters super-imposed on it because you have to time your jump on based on the timing of others while not knowing where your character is looking at. Therefore this enforced break as everyone rushes to the same spot at the same time is the first hurdle. The question is: Is this design really without alternative? Is it intended with the side-effects and negative factors in mind?

But you are right it would require a rehash but I would not suggest it if I hadn’t seen developer companies overhauling a design based on feedback. It’s part of the iteration and they have got a whole year to do that. I realize the principle of the encounter is that the whole group gets one try and then resets which is fine on paper and would work out if they addressed camera issues which exist and are completely randomly occurring (unless someone has a secret recipe for how to make the camera stick). Also the character obstruction issue needs to be tweaked, heck it would be as simple as making all ground pieces to jump on visible from the start.

As a person which is affected by a motor skill disorder I can sympathize with the issues. Here the challenge becomes a real challenge because you absolutely have to focus and coordinate harder. However I enjoy a good challenge even under such circumstances and despite all this I tend to play the role of a sniper in FPS games.

With that said I think the problem should not be a decrease in difficulty as a whole.
But the whole encounter feels like a raid with a mini-lockout on a boss.

First I am suggesting to remove the ooze and have the ground pieces you stand on vanish the same way as they appeared. You could really have a time window depending on the length of the piece for both appearing and disappearing which means the player still has a lot of time to coordinate, jump and collect their bearings. This would also remove the need for a timer because now each ground piece to jump on is on a different timer.

Secondly I suggest all races being turned into a random ooze at the beginning with your own one being a red ooze and all others shown as transparent greenish version. At the risk of being asked what I am smoking: It removes the character size issues and does not remove ooze from the design formula. It also removes the character occlusion/obstruction issues.

Thirdly the camera issues need to be resolved. It feels like the final boss of the encounter really because a lot tries I have failed were because the camera locked onto an edge of a model and I had to wiggle around to get it back in place and thus losing time. It’s really not fun doing jumping puzzles with that camera in general. Least of it this tone.

I believe that’s all there needs to be done and turned into what I believe a fun encounter. I am sure I will go back and try again but not as form of fun or entertainment but as challenge to beat in order to get those 10 achievement points.

Asus DirectCUII GTX 580 but I am planning to upgrade to a GTX 690. The only slowdown I experience is when activating Supersampling and in Black Citadel as there are some unoptimized areas (the entrance to the stockades one of them).

As an Engineer I agree. It was nothing short of frustrating after one point until I discovered that grenades and bombs function underwater. Now I am just using bombs and having a blast (no pun intended).

Alternatively fill in some crafting and gathering. It’s what I did on my Mesmer when even storyline missions weren’t enough. On my first character I actually did some WvWvW to close the gaps.

SW:TOR forums were worse than this actually. I pretty much feared if they kept up that anger and vitriol the fabrics between reality and the Warp would breach and create a rift unleashing the forces of Chaos upon the world.

WoW forums are usually a pool of anger but it’s died down over the years but it was very much the same in the beginning. Rift forums were also rife with controversial debates.

I pretty much think it’s the usual suspects here, inbetween jaded MMO nomads who can’t be stimulated into a positive reaction anymore and people experiencing withdrawals after hype levels in their bloods are dropping you usually have a bunch of constructive posts. Usually your sight may however be clouded at those because of the monsoon of negativity which is blocking your sight.

There are many type of bots. The ones playing by the rules i.e. not bypassing any game mechanics using regular attacks and auto-attacks as well as pre-programmed paths, the ones partially bypassing game mechanics by teleporting around and the ones completely bypassing them i.e. those you’ll never see at all. 66% of these would then never be affected by a hardmode of sorts while the rest will just require more resources.

There seems to be a dissonance here because people want hardmode for different reasons botting being one of them. Hard-mode wasn’t part of the original GW1 package and a post-production feature meaning in due time they probably listened to complaints from players. Since both games are differently structured, one being primarily instanced while the other is primarily open-world, I don’t see how it would work in the same flat manner.

That said I would not mind if major open world encounters would be harder and more easy to fail than to succeed.

I had a Norn Warrior. Found out their battle cries are not my thing to say the least and I found them very dry. They lack edges and ‘my legend this, my legend that’ made me cringe a lot. So it’s a Charr Warrior now.

Oh, and Asura are definitely a good choice. Their exaggerated self-esteem paired with sarcasm is usually recipe for much hilarity.

Been left in utter disgust about the future prospect of MMORPGs after SW:TOR I was highly skeptical at first, not really following the hype train at all because hype is just conditioned lack of pragmatism and loss of perspective and I didn’t read much manifestos. I watched however a lot of Totalbiscuit’s videos covering GW2. Played the first Beta and I was actually surprised that it was playing out like that. I didn’t like some of the chaos in DEs and WvWvW. I also was disappointed about dungeons still requiring full five player parties. Yet I felt positives outweighed negatives. Especially the one saying there are no exclusive high-end raids.

PS: I am still not swayed by dungeons and open world dragon encounters. I feel like there’s a cognitive dissonance between the game’s design principles and the way these are designed still.

Every once and then a ceshire cat should appear and raise an interesting point for which the player has 10 seconds to formulate an equally interesting point countering it. Otherwise permaban.

Hard enough?

Knote.2904:

I actually thought botting was going to be really difficult in this game because of the difficulty and action style of gameplay.

Boy was I wrong, the fact that bots can do so well just shows how stupid easy the game is.

Actually it’s not hard to program a fixed set of responses to a limited set of events.
Most solo-bots don’t appear in areas which prove to be deadly. For bot clusters it’s easier to overwhelm areas through quantity since mob numbers or strengths do not scale by the number of players around and as little as 2 are enough to deal even with fairly serious threats. Still they would not farm veteran giants.

Also in regards: “I thought it would be hard!!!”. Remember programmers of the sophisticated bot programs are fairly intelligent as well more often than not up to the level of a game programmer. Behind them you can even find former game programmers, network specialists and simply talented freelance programmers. It takes a Beta invite to get a lot of groundwork and understanding. After that it’s a matter of adaptation and iteration until it really becomes too expensive and generally resource-consuming to continue by the most of them.

Actually I did the Unguent Den on my level Engineer back then and bit the bullet and dealt with overpowered trolls. Guess running a vit/toughness-intensive build paid off then. 2nd time on my Mesmer I noticed why the area is that way. The signs do serve a purpose as you travel your way down and go around to reach that area from the other side it becomes much clearer and easier.

There are bugged DEs and events but this isn’t one of them. I’ve had some rage-inducing incidents as well but if I gave up over them I’d not be playing games at all. Sometimes rage can be a form of entertainment as well especially if you look back and shake your head about what you went through to achieve this.

As for bug priorities. There’s a good link which will explain way things are sometimes not getting fixed even though they should. I’ve played MMOs which had the same bug in it for 4 years (incl. beta) before it got finally addressed.

flyinpoons.6481:

What this game really is, whether the defenders of GW2 want to admit it or not, is a home for those that dislike other MMO’s because they frankly were bad at them, and never got to see the endgame because of it.

If anyone remembers the Rudolph the red nose reindeer Christmas special, this is the Island of misfit toys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SH1j1luFOw

There is no real endgame because it would fracture their tiny ego’s knowing that once again nobody wants to play with them because they are sub par.

You can thank the “trophies for everyone” “no keeping scores” mentality that starts in school these days for the new breed of gamers who hate to see someone get shinies they cannot get because they are bad, and would actually have to work to get better.

So let them feel superior by saying “you don’t get it” and move on, misfit toys need homes too.

I wouldn’t brush off all people who like the game as challenge-haters and “bads”. That’s as unfair as saying all people who are negative about this game are plain haters.
I used to raid since early days in WoW when there was actually only one high-end dungeon and it took us a long while to get there. I even rerolled in order to be a better benefit for the guild class-wise until they buffed my home class again. I did stop quite early in 2010 though because I simply couldn’t fit in work schedule with the stringent demands of raiding anymore unless I wanted to do PUG raiding which I frankly didn’t. It was below my level to group with people who want to be carried while commenting negatively on my job of carrying them.

Now that’s out of the way I wish that PVE challenges would be much harder as well. I just came off another dragon fight and they are nothing short of boring considering I’ve really fought dragons for years. They are loot pinatas. Not quality loot but considering the scale of the encounter they should be harder and reward better. A 75% chance of failing if you zerg should be okay.

The only way I see to achieve this is: Better scaling of spawns. Less announcements of what the dragon is about to do. The art of looking at its animations is lost. Side tasks which would mitigate group damage should have a much bigger impact. If we don’t have roles then the emphasis on tasks should be much more important.
Of course it doesn’t help with the current camera and FOV issues but that’s a different story.