Guild Wars 2

If it isn’t resolved after running the client repair tool, and it isn’t a matter of him being set to Invisible, he may just want to go ahead and submit a support ticket. Response time from support is usually pretty quick.

Have him check his chat settings. Click the little drop-down box next to the “Main” at the top of the chat window. There should be a series of checkboxes, and he won’t be able to see any messages in chat channels that are unchecked.

EDIT: Good call on the free account, mrauls. That’s probably it, although I thought guild chat was available for F2P accounts. I might be wrong there though.

If he’s on a free account, you’ll need to add him to your friends list before he can whisper you.

Players complain that the new WvW maps are bad, they don’t like them, nope not one bit. “Bring back the old maps!” they shout. ANet announces they’re bringing back the old WvW maps. Players complain that they’re being “forced” to play on the old WvW maps again.

Players complain that there isn’t enough transparency, that they aren’t getting any news updates and—what’s going on? we want to know! we deserve to know!. ANet responds with more transparency and unfortunate bad news. Players demand ANet give them all refunds because this news is clearly the end of the world and oh my god what’s happened to Tyria oh no we won’t get shiny skins ever again omguhhh.

Kittened if you do, kittened if you don’t.

I bet if ANet released Super Adventure Box on April 1st, with 4 additional worlds, players would shout and complain even louder than usual, because “this isn’t the game we paid for” and “if I wanted to play mario I would hook up my nintendo” and “Mo needs to be fired and I want all their jobs and the world is ending omguhhh I’m going back to Maple Story omguhh.”

Something tells me that even if ANet released a full new set of 16 legendaries, people would find something totally new to be upset about. And the development team would likely feel even less appreciated than I assume they do now. Boy, for such a friendly community, some of you folks sure do a great job of treating the devs like dirt.

I hope ANet trolls the crap out of us on April 1st with a truly epic prank. Some of the naysayers and vitriol-spouting angerbots around here really deserve it, in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks for the continuing updates, Mo. The non-vocal majority of us are still loving the heck out of this game.

Based on that description, I’d say either Mesmer or Thief. It sounds like you want a class that is always on the move and requires a bit of concentration to master. Those two classes, in my opinion, most closely fit the bill.

Keep in mind, though, that you can customize just about any class to suit your preference. And also remember that each and every class in GW2 has its own unique game mechanics. If you’re just starting out, I’d highly recommend that you keep a character slot open to use as a “test” slot, and put in a few hours with each class to see how they work. You might be surprised to find that you prefer a more “repetitive” class to one of the others. I never really thought I’d like Guardian or Warrior, as in other games I found the heavy armor classes to be “boring tanks” in some way, but that’s really not the case here. Similarly, in most MMO’s I nearly always play a spellcaster as my main character, and the closest thing to that here would be Elementalist I think.. but I really don’t care for Ele as much as a lot of folks do. It all comes down to personal preference, and you won’t really know if you like something or not until you try it out.

Good luck! If you’re new to the game and have any questions, feel free to message me in game. I’m by no means an expert but I’m happy to help where I can. And welcome to GW2.

Over the course of 33 pages, I’m sure this has been discussed, but I don’t have time to read through every comment here as that would take me all evening. Felt I should add my two cents though.

I think this change in focus is for the best. With the introduction of the legendary journeys and precursor collections, Arenanet has had to revisit a LOT of old, previously released content and tweak it a number of ways to get them to align with some semblance of a “journey” or storyline. In doing so, they’ve had to spend a lot of hours working on ways to make the collections accessible to all players, yet still difficult and time consuming enough to warrant the final legendary reward. That’s a really delicate balance, and getting it wrong would not only mean angered gamers because the new legendaries were too easy to acquire, but it could also have seriously negative repercussions on the game economy.

But read that again. They’re working on old content. They’re putting countless hours into re-balancing content that is already in the game and re-purposing it for the use of these new collections. Doesn’t that seem silly, especially with the admitted drought of new content we’ve been facing since the release of HoT? It absolutely makes sense to me that these developers should instead be given the freedom to work on new content for us (and them!) to enjoy. New adventures and journeys for us to go on.

I understand many feel that Anet should instead release the legendaries “as is” with a few new recipes thrown into the mystic forge, sans legendary collections, but this would be a step backward, I think. Consider also, these “shiny weapons” aren’t just weapon skins, but they all have to be unique, wholly different from every other legendary, else players will grump and groan that the newest sword or GS legendary is too similar to the others.

Legendaries are clearly a lot of work. It makes way more logical sense for that workload to be shifted to something with more substance. We don’t need more shiny weapon skins, we need new, fresh content to keep new and veteran players engaged and entertained for months (and ideally, years) to come. The glitz and glamour of your shiny new skin wears off after the first week.

Also, please folks. Enough with the personal attacks. Mike and the rest of the development team at Anet are doing their best to bring us quality content that they’re confident we’ll enjoy. Let’s cut them some slack and give them a chance to do that. Put your pitchforks away, at least for a few more weeks, and let’s see what they’ve got in store for us.

Anyway, tl;dr: content > skins.

Just my opinion. I’m sure I’ll be flamed for it, but c’est la vie.

On a more personal note: Mike, thanks for all your hard work. Please don’t let the vitriol here get you down. I’m confident that the majority of us look forward to what you have coming. You folks do good work—keep it up!

SAB Boombox – both worlds

Would love to see these make a return. I’d buy em up so fast.

..But those are all choices that you’ve made, based on the way you like to play. You are not required to keep your siege blueprints in your bank. You could very easily move that to your main WvW character and free up those bank tabs for other items.

Similarly, BL chests are supremely cheap on the trading post, and keeping a stack of them in your bank is unnecessary. That, again, is a choice you’ve decided to make because you prefer to hang onto them. Many players, on the other hand, will sell their BL chests to free up inventory space, and instead simply repurchase them from the trading post when they decide to buy BL keys (and yes, there is a slight loss here, but the loss is minimal, likely less than 1 silver). Would you hoard Aetherkeys that you acquired through the course of playing, taking up one or two additional slots for them? Or would you instead sell them as the relative junk they are, and repurchase them just before you decide to run the Aetherpath in Twilight Arbor?

The same can be said of many other items in your bank tabs. The upgrade items in the third tab are also extremely cheap to purchase directly from the trading post, and dumping those will free up several more slots. The plethora of boosters you have could be converted, for a small fee, to two neat stacks, freeing up 5 or 6 more slots. The materials (wood/ore) you have in your bank tabs, as well as your mail, can be crafted down into their refined forms, too.

There are many ways to manage inventory and items you’d like to hoard. Take this from a person who hoards countless useless soulbound trinkets simply for the sake of nostalgia. I hold onto those things because I choose to, and because that’s what I like to do, just as you like to organize your bank tabs and inventory the way you do.

It all comes down to personal preference. I’m sorry to say, but you aren’t entitled to anything, here.

It’s reasonable to expect a free legendary backpiece? Nah, disagree.

Matchmaking may need some work, and yes we all have bad games and losing streaks, but it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to have to work for the wings.

Nah. There would just be a new “unbalanced” meta to replace the current elite spec metas, and players would take issue with that one just like they do now.

Supreme.3164:

…

Great advice, all of it. Particularly the bit about coordinating with your team and not arguing. Time and time again, I’ve seen one player on the team throw a CAPS LOCK rage-fit in /team chat, and inevitably the team starts performing even more poorly than they were.

Similarly, I’ve seen several instances of someone raging in team chat, and one or two others on the team try to assuage them and build confidence back up (“We’re doing okay, focus on the ele and stomp downs and we’ll turn it around, keep it up all”, etc), and even if we still ultimately lost the match, we would generally fare better than if we’d all given up and run ourselves into the mid meatgrinder.

Communication. Is. Key.

Before the match, tell your teammates what your strengths are (“I’m heal tempest, stack on me at mid”), but more importantly tell them of your weaknesses (“I will lose in 1v1 against engi every time, pls assist if you can”) and the other players on your team will keep this in mind during the match.

Also important: Don’t let the troll on your team get you down. You will inevitably get the person who decides it’s over before the match even begins. Ignore their negativity and play your best to the very end of the match. Also, be ready to change your tactics on a whim if they aren’t working out. Just because you’re down by 200 points doesn’t mean you’ll lose. I’ve been on several winning teams who barely scraped together a win from a 200 or 300 point deficit. It can definitely happen, and trust me when I say that those wins will be the most rewarding and memorable wins you’ll have.

And yes, if you lose 3 in a row, take a break—even if it’s just for an hour or two. Come back with fresh eyes and a cup of coffee and fight your way out of the losing streak.

Good luck!

I’m thoroughly enjoying season 2, in fact I’m enjoying it much more than season 1. I find the matches to be balanced significantly better, and I’m seeing far fewer “shut-out” losses or wins than I did in S1, at least that’s been my experience in sapphire and, thus far, ruby. Maybe things will change for me in diamond, I can’t say.

Amber and emerald were a breeze to get through this season, I duo queued with a friend and we got on a few quick win streaks to blitz our way through in a couple of play sessions. Admittedly, I started a few weeks late into the season, so by the time I’d begun queuing, most high tier players had probably already moved into ruby or diamond.

I should note, I don’t consider myself a high tier player. I’m not bad, but I mostly stick to the current meta builds as they’re the most effective, so I really can’t claim full credit. Playing easy-mode DH bunker on home is, well, easy—most of the time.

Regarding MMR and pips, I think the current system works great. No, I don’t deserve an extra pip because my team beat the other team in a horribly unbalanced shut-out of 500-23, nor should that losing team lose an extra pip because they got matched against a more organized group of opponents. I’ve heard a few gripes in map chat recently about people being angry that they can’t get 3 pip wins anymore. Nope, you can’t. Work for it like the rest of us, even us “bad” players have to struggle through.

And realistically, if the sole reason you’re participating is to get the backpiece, and you don’t actually enjoy playing PvP, then no amount of good matchmaking or amazing rewards are going to make it fun for you. I’m an achievement addict just like so many others, and I do want the wings, but I primarily play PvP because I think it’s fun.

TL;DR: Season 2 is great. Play ranked if you enjoy it, wait until season 3 if you don’t.

Also encountering this issue. Completely unable to enter Wonderland instance.

EDIT: I relogged, then waited about 20 minutes and attempted entering Wonderland again. I was able to get in after a few tries, so give it some time and you might get in.

(tl;dr incoming. I’m long-winded, sorry). There are a couple of great ways you can tag lots of mobs with mesmer, actually. I don’t even have Chronomancer fully unlocked yet, and I primarily run GS/sword+focus as I don’t like the long cooldown of the staff skills, and sword skill 2 does a lot of decent close range AoE with a relatively short 12s cooldown.

I think a lot of mesmers forget to take advantage of the greatsword’s auto-attack being able to hit any 3 targets in a line. Trick when auto-attacking is to always be sure you are targeting the mobs furthest from you, and position yourself so that you are hitting 2-3 targets at all times. GS skill 3 is basically instant cast and tags 5 mobs at a time, also with a pretty short cooldown of 12s. Also, change targets often—right clicking on enemies is a godsend here. Hit each target no more than twice with the GS auto-attack before changing to the next, as two cycles of skill 1 should do enough damage to get loot credit for the kill.

Basically my approach when following zergs or farming mobs is to get in close to the enemies and pop at least 1 clone before using shatter skills. Use GS skill 2 on approach to drop a clone, then get in close and switch to sword, strafing circles around them while autoattacking to pull them into a tight group. Works pretty well.

With shatter mesmer you just want to make sure you aren’t popping all your shatters or clones at once. You can get into a great groove of consistently creating clones/illusions and shattering them every few seconds to tag lots of mobs. If you’re soloing a large group of enemies just use GS 1 to agro them all and pull them into a tight group, then shatter+sword to down them fast.

For utilities I generally run decoy and mirror images for all of the instant clones, and I alternate blink or signet of illusions depending on the mob farm. Blink is great for getting in close and quick, but signet of illusions is ideal if you don’t need to rush as it doubles the frequency of your shatter skills. Set your traits up for typical shatter mes build.

Running in small mob farming groups of 2-3 players is ideal in most cases I’ve found, You maximize your ability to tag everything and also do enough damage to it to get “credit” for the kills before the other players melt them.

Relatedly, though, I finally made a necro and I must admit that it is significantly easier to farm kills and tag everything with necro staff and wells. Stupid easy for maximum profitssss.

That being said, I still love farming with a mes. It may be a bit more frantic and it may require a bit more work, but it can be a lot of fun, constantly dodging and shattering. Also, there are probably easier ways to farm with Chronomancer now, but I haven’t really experimented with that yet.

I’m worried about my future with Guild Wars 2. I’m worried that I’m not going to have a social life anymore after avoiding all my friends and family because I’m playing HoT too much.

No, seriously. I felt compelled to post this because I see a LOT of threads up with people discussing how disappointed they are with HoT. I’m really hoping this is the vocal minority, and that the majority of happy players are spending their time playing the new content and simply don’t see these threads or check the forums, and thus aren’t contributing their positive opinions. Really hoping this is the case, surely the entire playerbase can’t be this upset? I’m not the only one having fun with all the TONS of shiny new stuff stuff stuffy stuff?

I know I speak for most of my guildmates as well as myself when I say that we absolutely love the new content. At first I was also disappointed that we were only getting 4 new maps with HoT.. but after having played on the first two (VB and Auric) for a rather considerable length of time I’ve really come to love them. It’s pretty clear to me that the developers really put their hearts and souls into the design of these maps and exploring them is just, well, fun. I’ve only briefly delved into Tangled Depths and Dragon’s Stand simply because I like to take my time in each new map and explore them fully (not just by doing map completion, mind you), taking in all of the “sights and sounds,” as it were.

Maybe I’m the rare breed of gamer that doesn’t mind a little time sink, but even the “grind” that I hear so many people complaining about is something that I enjoy. To me, things like masteries and elite specializations are end-game rewards and unlocks that give me something to work toward. I don’t like instant gratification in all things—that has a time and place for me, but on the whole I really do enjoy the feeling of having finally completed something I’ve been working on over a relatively long period of time. I’m even one of those rare folks who was disappointed when they dropped the elite spec requirement from 400 HP to 250 (although I do understand their reasoning and think it was probably the right call).

Regarding empty maps, I honestly think the two biggest reasons you’ll find there aren’t many people on the later maps (specifically TD and DS) are Halloween, and progression. I know of quite a few others like myself who haven’t really explored much in those two maps yet simply because we’re still spending all of our time in Verdant Brink or Auric. Combine that with the Halloween content which is only going to be around for another day or two—I imagine when players are no longer able to farm the Mad King’s Labyrinth and Halloween has been put back on the shelf until next year, the new HoT maps will get a big injection of players to liven things up. As for Verdant Brink and Auric, I can’t say that I’ve really seen much emptiness in either of those maps. They always seem to be populated, in my experience.

I really hope all the negativity on the forums lately isn’t disheartening to the folks at Anet who have been working their butts off to bring us the beautiful new content we’ve been asking for. If any devs are reading this and they’re starting to feel downtrodden by this vocal minority, please know that there are a LOT of us who would love to thank you personally for all your hard work. It shows. Heart of Thorns is awesome and my guildmates and I are absolutely loving it. Thank you!

EDIT: ^^^^ Glad to see that in the time it took me to write this post, two other players took time to comment with their own positive opinions. All is not lost!

Omne.4603:

I think this is comical.

I do feel for the players who are stuck in queue for several hours at a time as I’ve been there myself, but I have to admit I’m guilty of chuckling at this a bit too. This goes through my head whenever I read the plethora of forum posts about long queues lately:

“Your WvW participation is important to us. Please continue to wait in queue for the next available Borderlands slot. We appreciate your patience. "

Sadobado.1936:

EFWinters.5421:

The problem is that if they don’t have achievements PvE players won’t go into WvW.

I acknowledge that in my original post, and I think it is a good thing that more people are getting into wvw. It is just this particular achievement that promotes very harmful behaviour (and a a lot of it with a requirement of 500 supply spent on repairs).

Come to think of it, the Demolition Expert achievement is also terrible. People purposefully run ahead to drop their regular rams before the commander can drop his superior rams. Inattentive players then waste their supply on paper siege. Also, they deny siege to people who actually have points invested in ram and catapult mastery.

This slows down groups greatly, giving defending forces additional response time, and is harmful to all servers.

I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with this. Definitely great that more players are participating in WvW, but a few of these achievements are downright detrimental and, simply put, teach bad habits.

I’ve always thought it would be great to have a tutorial instance new players are launched into upon their first time joining a WvW map, similar to the Heart of the Mists tutorial instance. I think that would go a long way toward getting new players up to speed on the mechanics of the supply chain, defense/offense, placing siege, etc. Maybe we’ll see something like that with the new Edge map in the near future.

Hmm. Certainly I can’t be the only person who takes pride in his server. I have met a lot of good people in my home server and have made a number of friends both within WvW and PvE (yes, I PvE as well, let the hate fly my way), most of which are not a part of my guild.

Most of our commanders are not only great at what they do but are very approachable, and the majority of individuals I’ve met are happy to help out new players who journey into WvW for the first time. Even with the influx of all the new players at the start of the season (“achievement hunters” as most people call them), a number of veterans were going out of their way to be patient with the recruits and helpfully answer questions along the way. To me, that speaks volumes about the server I’m representing and instills me a sense of pride.

I could go further and discuss other facets such as PvE or even just general camaraderie but as this is the WvW subforum I’ll avoid that for fear of boring you all to death.

Of course, we have our share of trolls too, but that’s to be expected.

Have they even announced what rewards will be given at the end of the season? If so, where? I haven’t seen anything officially stated anywhere.

Tribulation mode is not meant to be fair and it is not meant for everyone. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t play it.

Oh, good call. kitten on my part then, disregard. It’s the weekend and I’m hungover, my brain no worky.

It’s the final zone of World 2, so of course it’s more difficult than World 1. This is to be expected.

I assume that at the time of your posting, it was your first time playing through that zone. First time through a level in Super Mario Bros and you’re probably going to die a lot, too. I bet if you were to go back and play through that zone again you would find that it isn’t as outrageously difficult as you previously thought, because once you’ve learned the layout of a level and what to expect, you can tackle it fairly easily.

I myself got extremely frustrated at zone 3 in normal mode when playing through it the first time, but after the second and third playthroughs and I’d figured out where to go and what to do, it’s a fairly straightforward zone now.

Practice, practice, practice!

Congratulations! That’s truly an achievement to be proud of, in my opinion.

I will likely be finishing Tribulation mode for W1, but I don’t see myself tackling W2 anytime soon.

Color me impressed! Also, 13k AP? Nice.

I see a number of groups forming on Fort Aspenwood server as well, though I have been doing solo runs of SAB simply because it’s easier to get the bauble and secrets achieves when you’re alone as you can take as long as you like to backtrack and really search thoroughly.

I usually do group runs of W1 and W2 normal mode for the “daily” chests though. More fun that way.

While I also thought they were slower to gather in World 2 at first, after reading the forums I came across a post by Josh giving a quick rundown of baubles you can get from digging in World 2 as compared to World 1. There are something like 400-600 baubles in W1 you can dig up, while in W2 there are something like 1600, meaning there are actually more baubles overall in W2 than W1, you just have to look a bit harder.

Try it, go to W2Z1 and just look around for hidden dig spots. There are a large number of them that give you 20 or 50 baubles chests and after locating them, many are not hard to get to so you can run through the zone gathering baubles fairly quickly. Also, they have adjusted the enemies in W2 to increase baubles dropped—bears now drop 10 baubles and assassins all drop 5, for example.

Keep in mind, however, that these changes only really apply to normal difficulty. Infantile mode doesn’t allow for diggable baubles and bauble drops from enemies is somewhat more rare in that difficulty. This is how it was it W1 back in April, too, so it’s perfectly normal.

Go hunting for dig spots in W2, you’ll be surprised how many you come across.

EDIT: That being said, I do agree that bauble bubbles and baubles should be account bound. The continue coins from end-of-zone chests are account bound, but that’s it.

Relatedly, does anyone know if skins still sometimes drop in the end-of-zone chests as they did back in April? I haven’t had a single one drop since the event started. Just curious.

If you’re having trouble getting through the fight with King Toad, send me a message in-game and I’ll be happy to help you get to world 2! We can speedrun it and get you caught up.

RyuDragnier.9476:

ITT: Elitists QQing because a miniscule percentage of other players have a higher chance of being Elite.

QFT. Trib mode is still hard, and I still haven’t completed all of the zones in tribulation mode, not even in world 1.

The definition of achievement, according to Google, is as follows:
1. a thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
2. the process or fact of achieving something.

Seems to me that the tribulation mode achievements match up perfectly with the definition of the word. In reality, you should feel that your yellow and green skins are even more valuable if you earned them pre-patch simply because it was more difficult for you to obtain them during that time. You should feel more proud of yourself for having completed these achievements when the difficulty was slightly higher. But unfortunately, a vast majority of folks still seem to think that they should be the only ones allowed to have these skins because they are somehow inherently better than the rest.

Sigh.

Tribulation mode is still hard. The majority of us are still unable to beat these zones in tribulation mode. Your shiny skins are still shiny. (and it’s at this point that I realize I’m speaking as if a five-year-old is the recipient of my words.)

I love zone 2. It’s probably my favorite zone in world 2.

Can’t please everyone.

Yes! The music in World 2 is great, and I completely agree about the Pain Cliffs theme. It has hints of Ninja Gaiden or Shinobi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, they really outdid themselves with this update. Couldn’t be happier.

I’ve seen you posting your hate of the latest SAB update for a few hours now, Applehack, and I have to say, every one of the posts I’ve seen you form has been negative in one way or another.

Do you have any positive feedback you could contribute to the development team, or are you only capable of telling them how much they’ve “failed” and expressing your extreme disappointment in them?

Do you even like Guild Wars?

Why play if you are this dissatisfied?

How nice for you that you completed Tribulation Mode in World 2 and got your yellow skins by being such a badkitty. How great for you. Please, by all means, show us your screenshots of your characters and how awesome they are with their new skins so we can boost your ego even more, because it’s well-earned and well-deserved.

Nevermind, forget all that. Please troll more.

I love SAB worlds 1 and 2, I agree with the reasoning behind the latest update, and tribulation mode world 2 is STILL hard. Those folks out there who say it is easy have probably already completed it multiple times so it’s fairly obvious that any slight decrease in difficulty is going to be immediately noticeable to them. Rest assured, folks, there are those of us who have yet to complete tribulation mode (even on World 1) and we can attest to its difficulty.

Also: if you think that having a yellow 8-bit weapon skin somehow makes you better than the other 95% of the playerbase that doesn’t have that skin, you have much to learn. That skin simply shows your dedication to Super Adventure Box, and to be completely honest I find it offensive that you would think other people somehow do not deserve this skin simply because they completed the extremely difficult challenge with a very slight handicap.

Skins do not make you “cool.” Lucky had it right: Being a pleasant person makes you cool.

Can’t please everyone though, I suppose. C’est la vie.

I walked two of my friends through the bauble achievements for both zones 1 and 2 of world 1 and they both successfully got the achievements. You may have just overlooked one or two baubles, or thought you picked them up but didn’t. I did that on W1Z1 during my first time going through the achieves and felt awful silly for missing the one right at the start.

The only changes to Tribulation mode listed in the patch notes are as follows:

“Fixed a bug that allowed players to enter World 2-3 in Tribulation Mode before completing Worlds 2-1 and 2-2 in Tribulation Mode.
[…]
Two Tribulation mode checkpoints have been added to World 2-1.”

Two adjustments to tribulation mode, one being a bugfix and the other being two checkpoints added. Tribulation mode is still exceedingly time consuming and difficult and is truly a test of patience. I really don’t think fixing a bug and adding a couple of checkpoints to the first world negates the “value” of the yellow skins.

To my knowledge, this is normal. You’ll get the Academic achievement for successfully completing the three zones in normal mode, but not infantile. This was the case for the first world as well. Infantile mode didn’t count toward Scholar achievement in World 1, you had to complete it in normal mode to earn it.

EDIT: Most other achievements are able to be completed in infantile mode, such as the secrets and baubles achievements, as well as Professional Ice Skater, It Was An Ambush, Tiptoe and all the rest.

The Academic achievement is for completing the world in normal difficulty.

I am also a huge fan of this world. I’ve spent the last few hours going over every inch of Zone 2 to try to find the last two secrets I’m missing and am having a great time doing so.

Increased difficulty is great, as well. In April’s patch when we only had World 1, SAB was a fun mini-game for us to participate in and breeze through its entirety in an hour or two. With the addition of World 2, however, SAB has now essentially become a full game within Guild Wars for us to devote hours to playing, discovering and exploring.

Thank you, Josh, and everyone else on the team behind this phenomenal update! Don’t let the naysayers get you down, there are a large number of us who absolutely love this world you’ve created. Seriously, thanks.

I’ve read through the first five pages or so of comments and replies in this thread and I felt compelled to actually log in and post for once. Please be aware I have not read every page and every reply to this thread, so I apologize if there have already been multiple posts like this one.

The squeakiest wheel gets the oil, as the saying goes, and I think it’s safe to say the “squeakiest wheels” right now are those individuals who are unhappy with SAB World 2 and the difficulty surrounding it. By the same token, as is common in customer service, the satisfied or happy customers are much less likely to take the time to submit positive feedback.

I felt I should be one of those few. I personally enjoy the difficulty of World 2 and I hope it does not get made to be too easy. World 1 was the introductory world; it was World 1 of Super Mario Bros, in which you can essentially walk through the entire level without threat of death simply because the level is primarily for learning purposes. The difficulty of World 1 slowly increases as you progress through the zones but let’s face it, even Zone 3 has very few traps that are insta-death.

World 2 starts you off with the expectation of death, and a lot of it. This is something you must acclimate yourself to, and by understanding that one wrong move will result in starting over from the last checkpoint you understand and accept the increased difficulty. Using the same comparison to Super Mario Bros, the second level of the game (World 1-2) introduces a shift in difficulty as you encounter a large increase in insta-death fall traps compared to the first level. The game’s difficulty steadily increases, and when you begin encountering the cloud levels you have a sufficient understanding of what the game expects of you. In my opinion, this is what they set out to do in SAB World 2, and I like that.

Difficult games are overcome through repetition. You need to die, and you need to die a lot more after that first death in order to learn where all the traps are and what you should not be doing. Similarly, when you watch someone do a perfect speedrun of any Mario, Sonic, Ninja Gaiden or really any other NES action game, you can rest assured that they have spent countless hours playing those levels and dying at every turn so that they could learn what not to do. SAB is no different, and I like that.

Not everyone will like that, however, and for those of you who don’t, you are of course always welcome to share your opinions with the development team just as I’m doing now. But to the development team I say this: There are 16 pages of replies in this thread, and even if each reply was made by a completely different person, that would leave approximately 800 users commenting in this thread. If you assume that 90% of those commenters are unhappy with World 2’s difficulty, that leaves approximately 720 unhappy users. What are the statistics of how many players are currently active within the SAB content? I would be willing to bet money that there are easily over three times that amount participating in the content and as I said before, happy customers are less likely to give feedback—the unhappy customers are something around two to three times more likely to share their thoughts. Something to consider.

Regardless of what happens, I would like to thank those of you who worked hard to develop and perfect the second World. Similarly, Tribulation mode is a nightmare of a monster, and I love it. I still haven’t beaten W1Z1 in Tribulation mode, and I love that. Thank you!

I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried retraiting, I’ve changed the order in which I kill them, no matter what I do I can’t beat all 4 of these guys within the time limit. Now speaking to a couple of other rangers in the pavilion and they have the same problem—even if you do consistent DPS and don’t let yourself get downed, you run out of time before the last enemy is dead.

Any rangers out there that beat this? How did you do it?