Shadow of the Mad King - first content patch 10/22/12

[Fencers]

Are you saying casual equals bad, Fencers? ;-)

No.

Really though, what kind of metric should they use to determine how easy or how difficult? Say if 100% of the playerbase gets it on the first try too easy, 100% of the players can never do it too hard.

That's up to them. Clearly Anet felt it was too frustrating for a prominent feature of a holiday event.

We have a dev [puzzle designer] telling us us flat out it was a mistake to put that kind of puzzle as a major feature of an event. Can't get any clearer than that.

[Karizee]

I understand that, I'm just asking a rhetorical question.

How easy should a jump puzzle part of a holiday event be? If you reduce it to the lowest common denominator so that everyone gets the achievement you'll end up with something like that one jump vista in The Grove. Or a simple staircase with no bumps, breaks or jumps - just run 'round the tower and collect loot!

[Fencers]

How easy should a jump puzzle part of a holiday event be?

Answer is "easy enough so it frustrates the least amount of people". That's what you write on the sticky note sent to QA.

We already have lite jumping puzzles in the game. There is no reason to go to the extreme of just as well not having a jump puzzle.

I Wanna Be The Guy with a nausea inducing camera, also another best avoided extreme.

[Kaenroh]

I actually never opened the first chest on the jumping puzzle... I didn't even know there /was/ a chest early on until after an hour of trying to do the puzzle. I was too busy trying not to be swallowed by the rising green badtouch water to pause or look around at anything.

I like jumping puzzles that are difficult. I don't like jumping puzzles that are difficult because of a time limit.

[Svifnymr]

I actually never opened the first chest on the jumping puzzle... I didn't even know there /was/ a chest early on until after an hour of trying to do the puzzle. I was too busy trying not to be swallowed by the rising green badtouch water to pause or look around at anything.

I like jumping puzzles that are difficult. I don't like jumping puzzles that are difficult because of a time limit.

I didn't complete the halloween puzzle, but I also didn't put hours into it. I think the hectic feel that the rising ooze gave it is perfect for a halloween event though, and not completing it doesn't leave me feeling like the holiday sucked or I failed at it though. It was a fun romp.

It's like the Lunatic thingee, you're a villager running for your life. It fit the theme fine, but some people might not like being set up as a "victim to be griefed". Same with the Labyrinth, I'm sure there were some folks that whined that it was too hard (everyone is bumped to 80, but gear is gear).

Hell, during Mad King Says, there were groups of 30 of us following him around, and at least 3 people in each group saying "is there a reward for this?" and 1 person saying "this sux, this is so stupid". They kept doing it anyway, but people whine.

The only thing with the dungeon (aside from folks not knowing ahead of time that it was closing), was me rushing forward to jump down a yawning chasm to hell and getting inside before realizing it was a dungeon and I'd get beat.

So yeah, maybe the ooze could have risen a little slower, and the blocks could have been better defined and camera angles fixed, but there's always going to be complaints. Overall it's a fun holiday, though I wish they hadn't taken out my lion statue! I loved the fountains.

[Bovinity Divinity]

We have a dev [puzzle designer] telling us us flat out it was a mistake to put that kind of puzzle as a major feature of an event. Can't get any clearer than that.

I still maintain that the puzzle itself wasn't that hard, it was battling all the little dumb things like camera issues, weirdly placed invisible barriers, and giant charr blocking your view that made it frustrating.

Remove all that stuff and I bet you 95% of players would beat it.

[Tommo]

I thought the jumping puzzle was piss easy (and this is coming from someone whos keyboard doesnt allow them to jump whilst pressing another move button).

But what dissapointed me about the event as a whole was the scamming from ANet and the fact it was impossible to get any of the cool skins.

[Fencers]

Scamming? Come on now.

[Durzlla]

I thought the jumping puzzle was piss easy (and this is coming from someone whos keyboard doesnt allow them to jump whilst pressing another move button).

But what dissapointed me about the event as a whole was the scamming from ANet and the fact it was impossible to get any of the cool skins.

They changed it so you pretty much got a better chance for a skin every 2 chests you open, one of my builders bout 20 keys and got every single skin, so it varies per person...

PS: yes there were ample death threats aimed at him... And a lot of the skins were on TP too some for dirt cheap (like the rifle)

[Tommo]

Scamming? Come on now.

Its not like im being outlandish, there was an estimated 1% or less drop chance from chests at the start surely you saw the public outrage on the forums.
Then they added the second chest but it has the same drop chance.

@Durzlla Theres a handfull of lucky people, compared to thousands of pissed off players, RNG eh?

[Bovinity Divinity]

This conversation has me thinking that "Clock Tower" = "Raiding" now, in terms of the whole, "No one does it, waste of development time." concept.

So you should all be asking for no more Clock Towers!

[Fencers]

Its not like im being outlandish, there was an estimated 1% or less drop chance from chests at the start surely you saw the public outrage on the forums.
Then they added the second chest but it has the same drop chance.

Yea, but how is it a scam exactly? Its a gamble. Roll the dice, see what happens.

[Bovinity Divinity]

I suppose on the scam thing you could draw a line somewhere on how much "chance" is too little.

If they said, "There's a chance you can get skins from chests!" and then the chance turned out to be one of those, "If every player opened 10 chests a minute, the sun would run out of fuel before someone got a skin." chances...well, naturally people would be cranky.

Not that I'm saying they did that, before someone leaps on me. =D

[Tommo]

Yea, but how is it a scam exactly? Its a gamble. Roll the dice, see what happens.

Yeah but unfortunately they made no indication of how low the chance would be, even the store page said "discover the secrets of the chest" and had pictures of weapons next to it. So those people that rolled the dice 80 times and got mystery potions should be fine with that? Considering the absolutely rediculous price of gems atm.

[Fencers]

Yeah but unfortunately they made no indication of how low the chance would be, even the store page said "discover the secrets of the chest" and had pictures of weapons next to it. So those people that rolled the dice 80 times and got mystery potions should be fine with that? Considering the absolutely rediculous price of gems atm.

Yes, they should be fine with it. It's just the same as an Asian cash shop gasha.

[Durzlla]

Yeah but unfortunately they made no indication of how low the chance would be, even the store page said "discover the secrets of the chest" and had pictures of weapons next to it. So those people that rolled the dice 80 times and got mystery potions should be fine with that? Considering the absolutely rediculous price of gems atm.

Like I said, they made it so if you put 6 tonics, 2 different buffs and a candy corn (essentially the contents of 2 chests) into the mystic forge you'll get a chest that you can just flat out open that has a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER chance of dropping those items, so the chance from the chest was abysmal yes but for very 2 you opened you ended up with a chest with about a 1/15 or so chance for them which is pretty fair IMO

[Tommo]

Like I said, they made it so if you put 6 tonics, 2 different buffs and a candy corn (essentially the contents of 2 chests) into the mystic forge you'll get a chest that you can just flat out open that has a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER chance of dropping those items, so the chance from the chest was abysmal yes but for very 2 you opened you ended up with a chest with about a 1/15 or so chance for them which is pretty fair IMO

No its a crappy bandaid fix and the drop chances were the same. Infact I got more useless crap from those chests than I did from the BLC.

I know GW2 are against everything to do with learning how to play a game but at the very least they could have added some kind of token system to get the skins since the core design philosophy of GW is not to have a gear treadmill but to waste time on pointless vanity sets. So they make their vanity sets RNG? Aye right.

Also @fencers most forms of gambling tell you the odds, such as the lottery. ANet knows they scammed their playerbase otherwise they wouldnt have panic added a chest in the middle of a planned out event. Plus im almost positive they apologised somewhere on the forums, or at least admitted their fault.

[Kaenroh]

It's still not a scam. It might be an unpopular gamble, but does the fact that you didn't know the exact % chance of getting the items make it a scam? If that were true, then wow. Pretty much every game with drops was made by a company full of SCAMMERS!

[Fencers]

Also @fencers most forms of gambling tell you the odds, such as the lottery. ANet knows they scammed their playerbase otherwise they wouldnt have panic added a chest in the middle of a planned out event. Plus im almost positive they apologised somewhere on the forums, or at least admitted their fault.

Heh. Is it an apology? Or clever marketing?

[Svifnymr]

No its a crappy bandaid fix and the drop chances were the same. Infact I got more useless crap from those chests than I did from the BLC.

I know GW2 are against everything to do with learning how to play a game but at the very least they could have added some kind of token system to get the skins since the core design philosophy of GW is not to have a gear treadmill but to waste time on pointless vanity sets. So they make their vanity sets RNG? Aye right.

Also @fencers most forms of gambling tell you the odds, such as the lottery. ANet knows they scammed their playerbase otherwise they wouldnt have panic added a chest in the middle of a planned out event. Plus im almost positive they apologised somewhere on the forums, or at least admitted their fault.

I wanted the skins as much as the next guy, but that wasn't the entirety of the holiday or anything. I got backpieces for a few of my alts, 1 greater and 2 lessers, and the books are very nice looking. A friend that I helped got the books and he's only hit level 20 now. In addition there was plenty of drops from the dungeon and the labyrinth, more traditional ways of getting loot.

So yeah, it may have been nice to have a better shot at the chest, but there was other stuff as well.