The Gauntlet of the Khan-Ur - that's how JPs should be designed

[Luthan.5236]

Yesterday I started Icebrood Saga. (Playing in order of release trying to do most of the achievements. And I think I can catch up by the time the next expansion gets released.) The map is nice. And I saw that meta event where you have to carry torches. (Have not tried it yet.)

Nice that the JP also uses something with torches. Fits in the map. It remembers a bit of the Griffonrook Run. But less annoying/hard. The jumps seem not too hard. (You need to notice that there also is a skill for the torch to get swiftness - which is needed I think. Or at least it makes certain jumps easier.)

Wiki mentions some alternative route - have not tried it yet. Don't know if that route was intended. And I have not tried the timed achievement.But I like the small checkpoints (braziers to lit) and that you have a timed achievement: So people can do it and get at least the normal achievement even if the can not do the timed one.

(For the meta achievement I have not counted how much leeway there is ... if it is possible to get it even if you can't do the timed achievement. But then again: For the reward there is the PvW/WvW reward track for the rockout emote.)

Imo that is how JPs should be designed. Also nice that you can't use mounts. I grew tired of the stuff that required mounts and/or gliding in the previous maps. (S3 had some annoying ones.) Nice to see a "classic" JP that also uses similar mechanics than some older JPs ... but not too hard.

I think JPs like that one also could have an optional time trial or race (no achievements) just for players to compete with each other.

[kharmin.7683]

Glad that you find it entertaining and "not too hard." For me, it is next to impossible.

[aspirine.6852]

It would be a nice JP if not for the torches :)

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

JP in gw2 should have perfect terrain/objects.. some spots look like they can support a footing only to realize later the spot is not what it seems to be... eg.. between two branches diverge and the mushroom heads so hit or miss and sometimes after u stand in the spot, u just slide off of it for no reason. Good example is some footing spots in dessa's lab fractal lobby jumping puzzle shortcuts which are... Idk what to say... Are they intentional? If so why constrict the players to stand on one pixel? Is managing to stand on one pixel considered a skillful gameplay? Even if the spot looks it won't give a footing. And some spots look like it gives nice footing but actually they don't.

Few more examples are... When pursuing Joko in his castle, we need to avoid lasers... If game is calculating collision detection, lasers should be a single thin line and not a slim planar rectangle. You can notice getting blocked by something invisible if you try to jump across near the lasers. Maybe they polished/fixed it now but my point is... JP is not perfectly designed in terms of terrain but in terms of jumping distance, height and some challenging aspects are nicely done I appreciate that. Eg Coddler's Cove JP, hidden garden mushroom path towards the cantle of sun have some challenge in terms of deducing the height and length of your next jump

[Luthan.5236]

I understand that for some people it still is pretty hard. (The ones that probably are not that good at jumping in general.) That is why I liked the design with the optional timed achievement. The ones that are good at it ... can get this. Others can just get the normal achievement. The checkpoints (braziers) help making it a bit easier. (Otherwise it would be too hardcore ... remember Griffonrook Run?)

Some harder pathes (the path with the 2 frogs) probably were needed to make it not too easy on the other hand. They tried to find some kind of balancing. Without the torches even longer ways might have been necessary to make it not "too easy".

Has anyone tried if Mesmers are possible? I understand that there is an item from season 4 that allows to reset your position. Simlar than playing an own mesmer. (As long as you do not fall into the water.) And of course a friendly mesmer could help. (As long as porting does not remove the torch/fire. Have not tried this.)

Compared to the volcano and the one in Draconis mons (and Griffonrook Run) it feels a lot easier to me. Not too easy though compared to others that are easier - that exist as well especially in the core maps. Not as punishing as Griffonrook. And easier to find the way without guide - compared to volcano. Yeah ... the small wooden bars need good precicse jumps. And I understand that it is hard for some people. For some reason I can manage those without problems though. Hardcore timed stuff is more of a problem. (Luckly the few frogs are not that much here.)

I have less a problem with "short" jumps. More troublesome are the ones where you need to jump upwars ... then moving forward (not forward+jump at the same time otherwise you will be too low at height). At the last mushrooms at the tree after the 2 frogs ... I saw AyinMaiden video where she managed to to it without swiftness. I can try tons of times until I get "lucky" ... wasting time there. If doing it without swiftness. But the swiftness from the torch made it somehow easier.

[ugrakarma.9416]

• Gauntlet of khan ur should be the exception, not the rule.
• Also they should stop lock metas behind the over annoying jumping puzzles, i will left "Vixen SteelShot footsteps" because its requires it.

Whats make Gauntlet worse inst JP itself, its worse because its invalidate optional bundles to make it easier like portals or teleport guns.

The designers should remember not every type of player like jump, im kind of player that hated "jump" based games since SNES Mario Bros, so they should stop lock metas with thick requirments behind it.

Luckly all other requirments for Forging Steel are doable, but have 36 requirments and we have only 37 achievs on table, so have 1 space only to left behind.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Luthan.5236 said:I understand that for some people it still is pretty hard. (The ones that probably are not that good at jumping in general.)Let's put it that way - i actually found Not So Secret and Chalice of Tears to be less frustrating than this. And i truly hated Chalice of Tears.

[Randulf.7614]

The JP isn't too bad, although there's a couple of jumps up a tree which seem for some reason to be trickier than intended. I've often spent ages just trying to jump up one part with others, for all of us to fail.

The timer achievement is well beyond me though, but otherwise it is more in keeping with some of the old school JPs which is generally a good thing

[Ayrilana.1396]

I found it to be one of the more annoying ones as you would only find the unsafe spots through trial and error. Several spots look safe, are safe elsewhere in the game, but slide you into the water here.

[Luthan.5236]

It's interesting to see the different opinions. I guess sometimes you just happen to have different views. I remember when for some other stuff that was considered easy ... it took me ages to manage to complete something.

The Not So Secret mainly the jumping was hard. (Diving with the googles when you died and had to redo it again. Can't just train the jump repeatedly.) Chalice of tears took hours of training and using a video to find the way. (Since I do not use TaCO and had to alt-tab out to check the video.)

The main think that I liked here was: Not mobs that attack you (compared to Griffonrook Run) to put you into combat slowing you down. And - an advice from me - you can just explore the way slowly without the torch ... trying to find out where you might have trouble ... to take a few mins to train the jumps there. (Instead of going with the torch and then restarting with the torch ... takes more time to go to the place where you had problems = less training of that jump while taking more time. As compared to training the jumps without torch first.)

I think it took me 1-2 hours without video (way not too hard to find) yesterday when I tried it first. Not done the 5 min achievement yet though.

So: That's another thing I liked: Being able to train the jumps without having to restart (no jumps where failure would kill you) ... even though the "real" completion needs you to take the torch and you need to restart on failure. (And yes: I know for other older puzzles you could use the mesmer portal or the item from season 4 to train specific parts. But sometimes falling down killed you. And then the portals had cooldown making you wait before trying again - to ready up the portal again.)

Safe spots ... hm I guess the main problem I found was with the branches near the water when you had to jump to another one that was close to the water at the bottom ... where it almost looked like you were touching the water a bit. (I was afraid a bit there. Nervous. But then I just did it and it was enough not to affect the torch.) Other stuff (small wooden platforms) - no problems for me. The volcano was most annoying there.

(And 1 or 2 of the coins in Silverwastes - when trying "as intended" without gliding/mounts ... that rope on the skritt's ship is really buggy. I do not know how people back then managed to do this without destroying their computer out of rage. :D I mean ... you needed to walk on that rope where every pixel counted and 1 pixel too much to the left/right ... and you dropped down. I resigned there and used the glider/mount later then. After trying for hours. Must have been a lot of discussion about this in the forums back then when it was new and no glider/mounts available lol.)

[Nilkemia.8507]

Another annoying jumping puzzle among many. And before anyone asks why I put up with it, it was for that POI near the end...because someone thought putting that in there was a good idea. It wasn't.

[Ayrilana.1396]

Technically you could have skipped all but the first part of the jumping puzzle to get what you needed for map completion. Anything after the second brazier wasn’t necessary.

[Fueki.4753]

Remove the torch part and it'd be decent.

[Cuks.8241]

I like it. One of the better ones.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I like JPs that force you to be on foot and not exploit abilities or items to complete, without outright disabling mounts for those who don't care about interacting with JPs.

[voltaicbore.8012]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Luthan.5236 said:I understand that for some people it still is pretty hard. (The ones that probably are not that good at jumping in general.)Let's put it that way - i actually found Not So Secret and Chalice of Tears to be less frustrating than this. And i

truly

hated Chalice of Tears.

How... how is that possible? How could anything be worse than Chalice of Tears? I force myself to forget that exists in this game, so I can continue to convince myself to give ANet money.

[Quench.7091]

It's one of those puzzles you can do quickly on a daily basis, which is what the rewards can encourage you doing. The only complaint I might have is that the frogs throttle people by having them pause before jumping. I can imagine that the frogs would be quite annoying if a person were to farm it each day. Other than that, good puzzle.

[Astralporing.1957]

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Luthan.5236 said:I understand that for some people it still is pretty hard. (The ones that probably are not that good at jumping in general.)Let's put it that way - i actually found Not So Secret and Chalice of Tears to be less frustrating than this. And i

truly

hated Chalice of Tears.

How... how is that possible? How could

anything

be worse than Chalice of Tears? I force myself to forget that exists in this game, so I can continue to convince myself to give ANet money.

Difficulty is not universal. Some people find some things to be easier (or harder) than others. Although, yes, i can fully understand your feelings toward Chalice, and i share them. I still find the gauntlet to be even more frustrating.

[voltaicbore.8012]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Luthan.5236 said:I understand that for some people it still is pretty hard. (The ones that probably are not that good at jumping in general.)Let's put it that way - i actually found Not So Secret and Chalice of Tears to be less frustrating than this. And i

truly

hated Chalice of Tears.

How... how is that possible? How could

anything

be worse than Chalice of Tears? I force myself to forget that exists in this game, so I can continue to convince myself to give ANet money.

Difficulty is not universal. Some people find some things to be easier (or harder) than others. Although, yes, i can fully understand your feelings toward Chalice, and i share them. I

still

find the gauntlet to be even

more

frustrating.

Now that you mention it, I remember doing the timed challenge for Khan Ur when the Prologue was still kinda new, and feeling quite frustrated by a number of the jumps. To make matters worse, familiarity hasn't made those parts any easier for me, while Chalice got marginally better for me the second time I went in there. But yeah - as terrible as Chalice is, I can definitely see Khan Ur having its own special place in JP hell along with it.

[ugrakarma.9416]

@Randulf.7614 said:The JP isn't too bad, although there's a couple of jumps up a tree which seem for some reason to be trickier than intended. I've often spent ages just trying to jump up one part with others, for all of us to fail.

The timer achievement is well beyond me though, but otherwise it is more in keeping with some of the old school JPs which is generally a good thing

yeah the hardest part is tree.

[aspirine.6852]

It is one of the best looking ones for me. I love the scenery, but then again I am a sucker for the whole map. It's brilliant..

[Luthan.5236]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Difficulty is not universal. Some people find some things to be easier (or harder) than others. Although, yes, i can fully understand your feelings toward Chalice, and i share them. I still find the gauntlet to be even more frustrating.

Yeah, I understand that. I also mentioned in one of my other posts: Sometimes I had problems with other stuff that a lot of people found to be easy. Some stuff you might try for hours ... making some mistake you do not recognize at first. Then figuring it out and thinking "wow it actually is pretty easy". For other stuff you might still think it is hard.

Then you have those times where it depends on your mood. (And/or if you are tired or not.) Just for the "simple" fractal jumping with the platform and harpies in uncategorized fractal a lot of people seem to have trouble. (Probably because a lot of people that do fractals are not too focused on jumping and JPs.) I myself mostly have no problem. But then again ... every now and then I have those days where I seem to fail at every jump lol.

(But that is also why I thought it was okay here in combination with this map and the map meta that offers a lot of other achievements to complete it. Didn't know about the other achievement someone mentioned - I think from Forged Steel - where it is pretty tight with the requirements. I can understand people being annoyed by t his.)

[LONGA.1652]

The gauntlet is fine except the part that you do multiple precision jumping on a sliding terrain. The pond and the tree climbing part really does make your finger tired which lead to multiple fail.

[Astralporing.1957]

@LONGA.1652 said:The gauntlet is fine except the part that you do multiple precision jumping on a sliding terrain. The pond and the tree climbing part really does make your finger tired which lead to multiple fail.There are also some of weirdly glitched positions there, where some jumps that should work do not. And some that shouldn't are possible.

[Ashantara.8731]

I also liked the torches/time trial part of this particular JP. I found it entertaining to do.