Does anyone with less than 1000 hours on roller beetle enjoy Roll into Madness?

[Player.2475]

Obviously I don't enjoy this race since it is very unforgiving and touching the pixel of a grave or a bump where you don't expect will completely veer you off course and if it happens to you more than once, there's no chance of getting gold.

It's just 1 minute long but if you get stuck or slown down once you might as well reset and try again. I can't imagine how many years of their lives the people who speedrun this race have spent on repeating the same time trial.

 

[Peregrine Falcon.5496]

I don't have anything even close to 1,000 hours on a Roller Beetle and I enjoyed the Roll into Madness race.

I did spent a solid hour learning how to pilot my Roller Beetle when I first got it. If you read the wiki and then practice in a wide open area, I recommend Crystal Oasis, you'll actually become quite good at it.

I'm old and my reflexes are shot. Because of this I suck at PvP, jumping puzzles, raiding, and anything else that requires fast reflexes. So if I can learn to pilot a Roller Beetle fairly well then you can too.

[Qys.5937]

I have to use the rental beetles. No clue what I am doing but man did I ramp myself off one of those headstones and across the map. No where near the course but it was still funny. I can do a great impression of a pinball as well!

[stormemperor.3745]

I have at most 20h on beetle, this race is quite forgiving I even made several mistakes and still got 56 seconds.

[Kiof.5710]

I suck on the beetle and dislike using it, so I just use the raptor.  It takes 1:25 or less per lap.  True, I can not get gold for the time trial, but I get the daily time trial (silver and bronze) and the annual achievements done.  I've even done more racing so I could get the weekly done due to less time due to work this week.  This is absolutely not a complaint about the beetle or race, just my workaround for content I do not enjoy much.

[Ashantara.8731]

6 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

it is very unforgiving and touching the pixel of a grave or a bump where you don't expect will completely veer you off course

Most players who haven't mastered the Rollerbeetle are not aware of these two factors:

1. Steering the Beetle into a curve requires you to turn the camera along with it, precisely into the direction you want to go. If you don't do that, you will be "veered off course". This is not a problem with the Beetle mount but with the player. 😉
2. When you take a curve, don't hold the Drift key down for too long. The longer you hold it, the more you will slide off-course. The shorter you hold it, the faster you will get back on track. (And again, turning the camera is the main thing to successfully change directions.)

Hope that helps.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Luthan.5236]

I remember that it took me some time. I first ignored this with the rental beetle (without masteries probably not possible or a lot harder) and when I had my own beetle I focused on the open world races first. Some took a lot of training.

Then 1 or 2 years ago I think I focused on training this festival achievement. But not too much. Maybe like 30-60 minutes each day. At one point I got lucky and managed to do it. Did even get gold a few times after that. (Mostly silver though.) Nowadays just silver. I don't want to re-train just for the gold for a few more ToT bags when it is not realyl worth the time. 😄

It is certainly one of the hardest race achievements in the game. (And compared to getting gold here ... doing the clocktower in normal mode - not the new explore mode - is pretty easy.) The griffon ones imo are easier to learn cause they are shorter. And the hardest ones imo are the longer beetle races. (Some are targeted at like 2 mins or so ... taking you through the whole map - Brisban one is annoyingly long ... not too hard but the length makes it harder to train it.)

Best advice (that also needs a lot of training) though is that yo need to actually change direction before the checkpoint - if you are already at it it usually is too late and/or you need to press the drift key too long. The halloween one has 1 or 2 pretty annoying points where you immediately need to change into the opposite direction.

I still wonder why some other nice races do not also have at least a lil bit harder requirements lol. 😄 I mean outside of the real hard stuff there is only stuff where you can go 20 seconds faster than required for gold ... on the 1st try with no training. (A lot of the labyrinthine cliff ones except the new skiff race and the griffon stuff. Skimmer and the dolyak could need a plating chest. :D)

[Shikigami.4013]

On 10/22/2023 at 8:10 PM, Luthan.5236 said:

I remember that it took me some time. I first ignored this with the rental beetle (without masteries probably not possible or a lot harder) and when I had my own beetle I focused on the open world races first. Some took a lot of training. [...]

It is entirely possible to get silver with a rented beetle without any mastery and even completely without drifting - which is exactly what I did in the first year when I simply did not understand yet how to drift AND did not have the beetle unlocked. Probably took like 1-2 hours practice to figure out where to use the boost and what wall to slam into instead of drifting. And I actually did make a video back then just to prove someone wrong who claimed it would not be possible without drift 🙂  It's here.

And to answer the original question from the headline: Oh yes, I had fun with the beetle from hour zero, no matter where. I did not get gold with my rented "noobeetle" but I didn't have to. It was easy enough the second year when I had my real one and knew how drifting works.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I don't play it. I usually do the bunny race with my griffon or with my turtle with my alt in the back seat. Fast and easy annuals. No skills required.

[Solvar.7953]

I'll do it because I can get silver easily enough on that race (which still gets some rewards), and maybe someday I'll be lucky and get a run where everything is perfect and I get gold.  But I only do 1 run/day.

I don't really like the beetle races in general - the GW2 engine was IMO not designed for that high speed action (rapture, bunny, etc, are slow enough those are not an issue - but some of the griffon adventures also have issues with the fast speed, but not quite as sensitive as the beetle ones).  But for myself, if I want to play a racing game (and repeat a course multiple times to try to get good times, etc), I'll play a game that was designed for that from the ground up.   One that is a few years old can be found on steam for a few bucks, and is a 10x better experience than the racing in GW2.

 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I strongly dislike roller racing and it breaks my immersion every time a roller beetle zooms past me. imho adding them in open world was a really bad idea.

that said, I dont mind the races during helloween event. there is enough other stuff to ignore this tiny part of the festival.

[Tiamat.8254]

I like it. Bit more challenging than other races. I got gold and I am not any where near 1000 hours. Just keep trying.