Shadow of the Mad King - Oct 22-31

[rk47]

my daily dungeon grp decided to just do MK tomorrow.
10 mins per chest. Shit's too good to pass up. The Ranger got the Arachnophobia Bow...
3 out of 5 got an exotic each. Level 78, but whatever.

I'll keep going till I got something cool too. so I can fund my Divinity Rune set.

[Ingmar]

Did you not see the "suggested players: 5" on the zone message?

Group not required, I soloed him 3 times last night and by the third time I had it down to 20 minutes and only died twice from being feared off platform.  You can easily get out of combat with him, just walk away far enough, regen to full and go back in.  I modified my build to add some healing so I could stay in longer and boom...dead king.  I would of done it all night but rewards seem to get worse with each kill. 

Only the 'quest' rewards get worse, the chest stays the same.

[Sky]

I meant the name of the person spamming 'lfg/lfm mad king'.

Ah. Unless they do it in /say I wouldn't see it, as I have the area chats turned off.

[Ingmar]

I just made a new tab with guild, party, and say on it, so I can go back and look at map if I need to, it comes in handy surprisingly often (for an MMO) outside of the place where I actually want to use it - I left it on since it is pretty much required for WvW.

[kildorn]

I find it a bit funny how many Mad King groups are demanding 80s for an encounter that is pretty trivial to run quickly as long as people are above like, 10.

[murdoc]

I just made a new tab with guild, party, and say on it, so I can go back and look at map if I need to, it comes in handy surprisingly often (for an MMO) outside of the place where I actually want to use it - I left it on since it is pretty much required for WvW.

This is exactly what I do too - I go to the /map tab when in WvW or I want to know what's going on in the area I am in.

[Venkman]

I'd do the same except the only chat I ever see is /map and /say. The three guilds I've represented have been dead quiet until dead completely

[veredus]

Only the 'quest' rewards get worse, the chest stays the same.

Thank you for posting this. I had ran it once already and figured had to wait to run it again. So after doing three more runs I lucked out with two of those exotic spider shortbows. I went from broke to having over 40 gold after selling them both. Also me (80 Warrior) and an 80 Elementalist were able to easily duo it.

[Threash]

Dev responsible for the clock tower apologized for making it too hard:

When I made this map I was HOPING that people who aren’t into jumping would do exactly this. They’d see a fun Halloween looking environment, maybe get to the first chest and snag a goodie, then be on their merry way. I see now it was a mistake to make the hardest jumping challenge in the game part of an in-your-face update like a holiday event. I’m not going to stop making difficult stuff like this, they just won’t be so prominent in the future. I honestly hate making people upset and have a very high level of empathy. So it’s been hard hearing all the people that are so angry, frustrated and sad because of something I’ve made. But it’s just another lesson learned.

Personally i think he and the complainers are completely wrong and i hope they continue making stuff like this.

[Ingmar]

There's no problem if they do it in a fixed world type thing. I can totally understand being upset when you tie it to a limited time event and aren't transparent about whether it counts for the meta achievement, etc., though.

[murdoc]

Dev responsible for the clock tower apologized for making it too hard:

When I made this map I was HOPING that people who aren’t into jumping would do exactly this. They’d see a fun Halloween looking environment, maybe get to the first chest and snag a goodie, then be on their merry way. I see now it was a mistake to make the hardest jumping challenge in the game part of an in-your-face update like a holiday event. I’m not going to stop making difficult stuff like this, they just won’t be so prominent in the future. I honestly hate making people upset and have a very high level of empathy. So it’s been hard hearing all the people that are so angry, frustrated and sad because of something I’ve made. But it’s just another lesson learned.

Personally i think he and the complainers are completely wrong and i hope they continue making stuff like this.

That's disappointing. I thought the Clock Tower was awesome and would love to see more things like that.

[Ingmar]

Well it's a good thing he said he wasn't going to stop making stuff like that, then.

[Lantyssa]

The clock tower was awesome, but I took me a day of frustration to get to the point where I actually liked it, and I still groaned when a Norn or a Charr was around, which wasn't very fair to those players.

Once I had the beginning down to the point I could ignore everyone else, it was great.  I even got my Mesmer through it in one try.

[Ingmar]

Next year I will pay you a shiny gold piece to run one of my dudes through then. 

[Fordel]

Like you'll have a shiny gold piece to spare. 

[Ingmar]

I have almost 10 right now!

[Fordel]

and how many helms full of antlers do you own!

[Ingmar]

None yet, I need my exotic suit(s) before I transmute!

[tazelbain]

Seems like it wouldn't have been that big of deal to have a version with a slow timer and a small reward, so people could experience content and not feel like they missed out on part of Halloween event.

[Modern Angel]

Oh, come on, now. I didn't do it, couldn't do it, will probably never be able to do it, and I certainly don't feel cheated. I haven't done any of the jumping puzzles, save the pirate one in LA. I'm not good at them.

This isn't even like a WoW dungeon which tells a part of a story. It's the top of a tower and a pair of crappy shoes. It's okay to have some things in really big games which are geared to different competencies.

[Sky]

I like the jumping stuff but I didn't even see the clock tower, no idea where it was.

[Rasix]

I didn't bother to even get into the Mad King's Realm.  Then I forgot that I hadn't done parts of this holiday.  Oh, well. 

Part of why I like GW2 is because I don't really have to care about anything in GW2. 

[Sky]

Yeah, the whole thing kinda messed with the flow of the game. Suddenly there was a reason to be someplace, to do something in a limited amount of time. Like, woah, man, harsh on the mellow.

[Zetor]

I tried for about 20 minutes, got to about 50% (according to the progress bar anyway), and decided to do other stuff instead. The timing is really tight*, so my Euro -> US ping was a big hindrance -- not being able to see my asura in a sea of norn and charr was getting old (even though most of the pack tended to fall off at about the 3rd-4th jump in the second part). OTOH the rest of the event was really solid fun, and there was an insane amount of content for what was basically a one-week thing (recurring, but still). 2 pretty-fun unique pvp minigames, a public dungeon, a 5-man dungeon, a jump puzzle, all those event chains in the newbie area, the trick-and-treat mechanic, etc. It was just really impressive, especially for a f2p game.

(*NB: this was before I knew of the 25% passive move speed elementalist air trait trick, but it didn't move me from the "meh" position. Maybe next year when guesting and/or personal instancing for puzzles like this will be working?)

[Threash]

Run speed is not much help, if at all.

[Tannhauser]

This was a decent holiday event.  I enjoyed the book hunt but I didn't bother with the tower jumping puzzle.  I knew it would piss me off.  Failed to do the MK dungeon due to scheduling and prior experience with GW2's dungeons.  

Overall, I think the event was great, but their communication SUCKED.  They give a list of achieves and then half are not explained.  They make areas and then don't fucking bother to tell anyone.  I have to google and search around.  Give me a bread crumb ffs.

fake edit: I'm much more pissed off by this than I should be.

[Venkman]

I appreciate him apologizing. To me they could have made it group-only, group-timer only, or timer only (and therefore singleplayer). All three and it being a signature piece was too much.

I like the jump puzzles but I need to approach them at my own pace or I just won't bother.

Customr of one of course...

[Tmon]

I don't do jumping puzzles but i did take a shot at the clock tower, fortunately one failed try was enough to finish out the Halloween title.

[Mattemeo]

I couldn't do the Clocktower. I had a damn good go at it though, and I really appreciate the effort that went into making it so unique. But as an EU player on a US server, my latency was always the elephant in the room and I had to accept (after many attempts where it looked to me like I was doing well to suddenly find myself flat on my arse in the waiting area) I wasn't ever going to beat it because of that.

That said, as the designer notes a few posts later in that thread, no one told him it was going to be treated as a general zone - he thought he was making a puzzle for a solo encounter. Hell really was other people at the Clocktower.

[Lantyssa]

Next year I will pay you a shiny gold piece to run one of my dudes through then. 

Sure.  I'll run several of them through for a gold piece each.