Content Should Never Be Gated Behind Jumping Puzzles

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Sindust.7059 said:

The goal is not farming gold but playing together. And neither of us is particularly into metas, because there is 0 skill involved. Just follow the tag and do auto attacks, and you win. Fractals are way more engaging. And so is WvW (which is what she does instead, because JPs ruin fracs for her). And now we barely ever play together.

So the skill to do jps is somehow not good enough?

[xandrella.2953]

1 hour ago, Sindust.7059 said:

The goal is not farming gold but playing together. And neither of us is particularly into metas, because there is 0 skill involved. Just follow the tag and do auto attacks, and you win. Fractals are way more engaging. And so is WvW (which is what she does instead, because JPs ruin fracs for her). And now we barely ever play together.

Go and tell this to everyone who's still heavily overwhelmed with DE Meta^^

Besides that I never heard before that someone would not play fracs because of a few jumps. Especially when u don't even have to do them if u got any issues, there are 4 other ppl in the group.

Also u can just skip these particular fracs and just do the others?

And btw do I not consider a few jumps in a fractal or story mission as a Jp....

[Redfeather.6401]

Whoever laughed at my last post is a meanie. 😂

I never used to struggle with things like this. I'm almost 50 now and someday you'll know firsthand what happens over time. When I was young, I was good at fighting games and never had to wear glasses. Who is this strange person in the mirror I see each day! Such is life!

Edited April 29, 2022 by Redfeather.6401

[Sindust.7059]

43 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

So the skill to do jps is somehow not good enough?

It's not a skill that helps kill stuff, so no, it's not.

33 minutes ago, xandrella.2953 said:

Go and tell this to everyone who's still heavily overwhelmed with DE Meta^^

She didn't buy the last expansion yet. But even then individual contribution doesn't really matter when there are 50+ people around. Also the 10fps slideshows that these fights turn into aren't exactly fun.

36 minutes ago, xandrella.2953 said:

Besides that I never heard before that someone would not play fracs because of a few jumps.

Now you have. If you love JPs, more power to you, but please do them on your own time, they have no place in group content where if someone can't get through long enough they either get kicked, or are unable to ress because someone like you ran ahead and started the boss fight already. In Solid Ocean that happens a lot.

49 minutes ago, xandrella.2953 said:

Also u can just skip these particular fracs and just do the others?

Out of 21 fractals there are 6 with some form of JPs + 3 more where it's as good as having a JP (the 3 you listed + solid ocean, volcanic, shattered observatory, twilight oasis the way most groups do it, cliffside because those thin planks are as good as a JP, and arguably swampland if you're unlucky with the walls and have to climb a tree to make it in time, and the timer doesn't make this last one any less stressful for her). That's almost half of them. And each day there are 6 dailies. Would you like to do the math about the chances of having no JPs in fractals on any given day?

[Lottie.5370]

I hate fractals.

 

No content should be gated behind fractals!!1!!

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I understand the frustration and not gonna trivialize the statement.

I have heard many complain about things like that, and have helped many through them to get what they need, done.

99% of the JP in core tyria are indeed in the daily rotation. So with that in mind: Look at achievements you are doing. Specially long term ones. Are you working on Return To? Are you working on a legendary? If you know upfront what to expect and see that what you need in the future is a daily today, get a least played character and park it there. 

Unfortunately doesn't work with all (chalice for example and the Siren's landing one require checkpoints) but it is helpful to know what to expect upfront.

Don't shy away asking in Map Chat, specially not in hated ones like Chalice.
And do get yourself a Prototype Positioner Rewinder, just in case you need to tackle one on your own.

 

[Ravenmoon.5318]

I'm not wrong, it's the game that needs to change 😛

[adrunkmunkey.6059]

Gonna throw my bone in here to balance this out.

 

I love the jumping puzzles. Sure, they're a bit out of place, but it adds to the environment in such a cool way. It adds that missing element from Skyrim of "ok, how do I get up there now?" I don't even need Tyria mastery anymore and I still love doing vistas and such when I come across one I haven't done (I don't even cheat with the bunny... most of the time). 

 

Having said that, I don't think they should never be seen in any form of quest, but at least have some kind of option in story missions to skip after a few fails. I can see how that would feel like a gate. On top of that, having enemies that slow or knock you down on the fractal puzzles is obnoxious. Wind or platform mechanics are welcome, stupid enemy aggroing you is not

[victoruas.9732]

On 4/28/2022 at 12:32 AM, Bronze Centipede.5230 said:

One of the great things about Guild Wars 2 is the degree to which it lets you do your own thing rather than forcing you into activities you don't enjoy.

One of the worst things about Guild Wars 2 is content gated behind jumping puzzles. It can often be impossible to pass the story or access an area without doing them.

As a casual player to HATES jumping puzzles, my free time is limited and valuable and the last thing I want to do is spend long periods of my leisure time having a bad time.

You can use a Gizmo, which helps a lot in jumping puzzles;

Prototype Position Rewinder - Equip a position rewinder, which can be used to rewind your position to a previously marked location.

[victoruas.9732]

You can use a Gizmo, which helps a lot in jumping puzzles;

Prototype Position Rewinder - Equip a position rewinder, which can be used to rewind your position to a previously marked location, for me the most useful Gizmo in the game.

Edited April 30, 2022 by victoruas.9732

[Labjax.2465]

8 hours ago, adrunkmunkey.6059 said:

Gonna throw my bone in here to balance this out.

 

I love the jumping puzzles. Sure, they're a bit out of place, but it adds to the environment in such a cool way. It adds that missing element from Skyrim of "ok, how do I get up there now?" I don't even need Tyria mastery anymore and I still love doing vistas and such when I come across one I haven't done (I don't even cheat with the bunny... most of the time). 

 

Having said that, I don't think they should never be seen in any form of quest, but at least have some kind of option in story missions to skip after a few fails. I can see how that would feel like a gate. On top of that, having enemies that slow or knock you down on the fractal puzzles is obnoxious. Wind or platform mechanics are welcome, stupid enemy aggroing you is not

Yeah, my personal pet peeve with JPs in this game is mobs in so many. Sometimes I just want to chill a moment and get my bearings. It's a puzzle and a 3d landscape that wasn't inherently built for platforming. Give me a few seconds. And before someone says "JPs have been part of this game since..." what I mean is that in platforming games, the terrain is typically built from the ground up to be relatively simple, so that jumping mechanics are more or less the same experience each time. With this kind of 3d terrain game where platforming is built atop it, there are times that jumps are kind of janky and you have to really get the most out of the jump length just right to make it, without any explicit signaling in mechanics that would make such clear. Or you have to hold back on a jump a bit with the same kind of issues.

It's still a way better platforming experience than how I saw it in another MMO, but yeah, this is a lot of words to say, I hate mobs in JPs.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[BeardedBacon.9328]

An MMORPG is supposed to be a game you can play long term, there's so few in the game that if you don't think you have the time to spend an hour or two on a jumping puzzle in the span of the average player routine repeatedly, when things like WvW and PVP tacks exist; Pale Mother's grace, I wish you luck. I barely do either of these gamemodes myself and am a super casual player but every once in a while when I'm doing map completion I really enjoy coming across them. Maybe it's not the most immersive but I think jumping puzzles are a strange thing to point fingers at as to why the game might feel a lil unrealistic nowadays

 

[Dante.1508]

I used to like jumping puzzles but then Southsun and after Anet went full kitten.. I gave up doing them.

[divineDerivative.5194]

What frustrates me the most about jumping puzzles is the inconsistency. You can just tell that some JPs were made by different people with very different ideas about what a JP should be. There's some where you can pretty easily see where you're supposed to go next, the jumps are reasonable, and it's not too hard to restart if you mess up. Then there's some where the next step is not logical at all, like a blind jump around a corner, or the obvious path ends up being a dead end and you have to double back; jumps that have to be done exactly perfect, and god help you if you don't use the jump button in exactly the same way as the designer did; and if you fall off you just die, and have to run all the way back just to start over.

The position rewinder is great, and I would recommend it to anyone who has trouble jumping sometimes, but then there's JPs that are designed so that you can't use them!

To be clear, I'm not saying that hard jumping puzzles like Chalice of Tears shouldn't exist. There are people that enjoy the difficulty, and that's fine. But when you put something like that between me and a legendary, I start to get pissed. And to everyone saying, "you can pay someone to get you to the end," you're missing the point, which is that you shouldn't have to do that. There needs to be a distinction between difficult, potentially frustrating JPs that are entirely optional, and more standardized JPs that are required for some other content.

[Labjax.2465]

14 minutes ago, divineDerivative.5194 said:

What frustrates me the most about jumping puzzles is the inconsistency. You can just tell that some JPs were made by different people with very different ideas about what a JP should be. There's some where you can pretty easily see where you're supposed to go next, the jumps are reasonable, and it's not too hard to restart if you mess up. Then there's some where the next step is not logical at all, like a blind jump around a corner, or the obvious path ends up being a dead end and you have to double back; jumps that have to be done exactly perfect, and god help you if you don't use the jump button in exactly the same way as the designer did; and if you fall off you just die, and have to run all the way back just to start over.

The position rewinder is great, and I would recommend it to anyone who has trouble jumping sometimes, but then there's JPs that are designed so that you can't use them!

To be clear, I'm not saying that hard jumping puzzles like Chalice of Tears shouldn't exist. There are people that enjoy the difficulty, and that's fine. But when you put something like that between me and a legendary, I start to get pissed. And to everyone saying, "you can pay someone to get you to the end," you're missing the point, which is that you shouldn't have to do that. There needs to be a distinction between difficult, potentially frustrating JPs that are entirely optional, and more standardized JPs that are required for some other content.

Heh, I started reading your post and wondered if you were thinking of Chalice of Tears. I think I'm in agreement with you and it's part of the reason I don't do JPs more, is the inconsistency of the experience. I kinda enjoy platforming sometimes, but like... running through lava isn't a puzzle. Idk if there was supposed to be a route that doesn't involve that, but every video I've seen of people doing that puzzle involves running through the lava at one point or another, and that's... idk what that is, but it's not platforming or a puzzle.

Perhaps a better name for this topic would be: "content should never be gated behind Chalice of Tears" XD

But in general, I'm not a fan of JPs with checkpoints you have to cross (not to be confused with checkpoints that help save your progress). For me, that just kills any sense of creativity out of the gate and I look up a guide instead of risking wasting my time accidentally doing the "wrong" route through it.

[Tom.6032]

On 4/28/2022 at 12:32 AM, Bronze Centipede.5230 said:

One of the great things about Guild Wars 2 is the degree to which it lets you do your own thing rather than forcing you into activities you don't enjoy.

One of the worst things about Guild Wars 2 is content gated behind jumping puzzles. It can often be impossible to pass the story or access an area without doing them.

As a casual player to HATES jumping puzzles, my free time is limited and valuable and the last thing I want to do is spend long periods of my leisure time having a bad time.

Not sure I count as a casual player, but I couldn't agree more.  I personally find jumping puzzles tedious and would rather be doing other things in game, but the good loot (legendary trinkets etc.) gates behind them makes them kind of a necessity.

 

Would be great if AN just treated them as their own thing with decent loot and AP for people that want to do them but let those of us who dislike them ignore them. 

[Xerxez.7361]

1 minute ago, Tom.6032 said:

Not sure I count as a casual player, but I couldn't agree more.  I personally find jumping puzzles tedious and would rather be doing other things in game, but the good loot (legendary trinkets etc.) gates behind them makes them kind of a necessity.

 

Would be great if AN just treated them as their own thing with decent loot and AP for people that want to do them but let those of us who dislike them ignore them. 

 

Legendary Trinkets etc. already fall into side activities as they are only a QoL improvement and not needed at all. The game provides the means to skip these Jumping Puzzles with the help of other players.

[Valisha.8650]

Fully agree with OP, I absolutely despise jumping puzzles. I think SAB should be available 24/7/365 for all those super mario enjoyers, so that the remaining 99% of playerbase can enjoy the game without such "content" in regular game activities. 

[kharmin.7683]

59 minutes ago, Valisha.8650 said:

 I think SAB should be available 24/7/365 for all those super mario enjoyers, so that the remaining 99% of playerbase can enjoy the game without such "content" in regular game activities. 

Or maybe the Super Mario enjoyers should just play Super Mario.  🙄

[Zoid.2568]

On 4/28/2022 at 2:03 AM, Ashen.2907 said:

I dislike jumping puzzles. They feel out of place in an epic fantasy adventure RPG. If I want to play a platformer there are plenty of old Nintendo games.

Ehm... so in fantasy novels or movies usually there arent some absurd obstacle in the way they have to pass? You're so wrong dude.

[divineDerivative.5194]

3 hours ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

Legendary Trinkets etc. already fall into side activities as they are only a QoL improvement and not needed at all.

I wish people would stop saying this. That QoL improvement is massive, especially for players that want to mess around with different builds and don't have the resources to make 20 different sets of ascended gear.

[Valisha.8650]

1 hour ago, Zoid.2568 said:

Ehm... so in fantasy novels or movies usually there arent some absurd obstacle in the way they have to pass? You're so wrong dude.

In fantasy novels or movies characters can, you know, CLIMB ON STUFF. Here your character cant just grab a rock shelf and climb on it like in, say, Dying Light.

[Solvar.7953]

I enjoyed most of the JPs in the original release.  They were reasonable of 'I wonder how I get up there', and they were typically not very long (with a few exceptions).  Then at some point JPs went hardcore - as others have said, not obvious what the goal is, and also quite a bit longer.  Fortunately, with addition of mounts, several can be skipped, or at least partially bypassed.  Skyscale lets you skip the hard part (steam rocks) in skipping stones.

I do wonder of the really hard ones, even for those players that enjoy hard JPs, how often they repeat them.  While I will often do the JP for the dailies because they are for the most part quick, and I don't really have much inclination to do any of the long ones.  It seems like a fair amount of development work for a feature that the majority of players will play at most once.

My other annoyance is that just because this is an MMO game with latency, jumps can fail due to that or the jump not registering or something.  For platformers you play locally, not an issue.  For short JPs, I can just be annoyed but know I only lost 15 seconds.   But for long JPs, to lose that progress because of a glitch (or a disconnecting) is just really frustrating.

 

[eyelogix.1654]

On 4/28/2022 at 3:00 PM, Mutisija.5017 said:

i hate most jumping puzzles, and they are extremely difficult for me due to my disability that causes fine motor control issues which get much much worse if i am agitated by repeatedly messing up in jumping puzzle... but usually simply asking some nice mesmer to help out does the trick (though often i am too stubborn to ask for help). if you just politely ask in map chat if someone could help you out, chances are that you will find someone.

my point is that while jumping puzzles definitely can be an obstacle, there is a very easy workaround.

There is always a mesmer at your disposal at least for the daily one hopefully.

[Dante.1508]

1 hour ago, eyelogix.1654 said:

There is always a mesmer at your disposal at least for the daily one hopefully.

No there isn't.. And the mesmer actually has to pass the area as well.