Shady Wildwood Match Three challenge needs to be nerfed

[anarchy]

Seriously? 60 seconds to solve 20 advanced match 3s, many of which need up to 6 or 7 moves in the correct order? Trying to memorise those when they all look so damn similar is genuinely beyond realistic expectations for 99.99% of players. Having to sit with a guide open with screenshots TELLING YOU THE ANSWERS, and that still being far from fast enough is ludicrous.

At least with the perfection obelisks I feel like I'm being rewarded for my ability and skill. This reskinned candy crush crap just feels cheap and unfulfilling.

[Pro-Zak]

I'm kinda glad that it's not a Mystery (or achievement). I bet there are some people out there who knocked it out, and they're feeling damned proud of themselves. Remember finally getting the Challenge achievement in The Witness?

[Osmium]

Originally posted by Pro-Zak:

I'm kinda glad that it's not a Mystery (or achievement). I bet there are some people out there who knocked it out, and they're feeling damned proud of themselves. Remember finally getting the Challenge achievement in The Witness?

That brings back memories! My mother lives in another state but she was visiting me when I was attempting that challenge. I'd been trying for a few days beforehand with no success. She was watching me play while sitting behind me on my couch. I was on a good pace and was halfway through as "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was ramping up before she decided that'd be a good time to slooooooooowly and loudly unwrap a piece of candy. I had to take my hands off my keyboard, turn around, and say "Do you mind?! " She said "Not at all, go ahead " I turned back around and went on to beat the challenge on that same attempt.

[Pogo]

I wasn't "proud" when i beat the advanced match3, i was just relieved. It was literally hours of memorization and hours of repeated attempts after i had the memorization down. I wasn't solving anything, just reciting. I had several failures where I was halfway through solving the 20th puzzle when it locked me out.

I wouldn't mind an achievement for it if they ever add achievements, but the challenge is unnecessarily demanding and I agree that it should be relaxed somewhat, whether that's an increase in the starting time or an increase in the refund per solve. Or honestly, just make it count UP instead, like other speed challenges in the game, and only give the mirabilis at a declared goal time. People might not resent it so much if they weren't forcibly kicked out.

[Mommson]

Honestly, even though I like the Match 3 puzzles in general, I think these Match 3 speed challenges are not a very good fit in the game. As someone states above it is only about memorisation and not really about solving something. I know the game caters to all sorts of people but I personally could live with maybe putting the Mirabilis at 10 solves and everything else is for honor and/or a leaderboard :-)

[󠀡󠀡]

I don't mind because I don't "need" to do anything in the game. You get almost twice as many mirabili as you need, so the few you don't get by puting off this puzzle are unimportant. I see it as content I can do later when I get bored with the rest of the game. Then it'll be a fun challenge. Until then there are funner things to engage with in the game.

[RiccTheThicc]

I used the steam guide so I wouldn't have to excruciatingly slowly solve all of the puzzles and then memorize them. Took me about an hour with the help of the guide to memorize all the puzzles, and even after I had execution was still difficult. Multiple times I failed on the very last puzzle, but at the very least because you have to complete all of them there's no randomness from puzzle lengths. Personally, I think there should be a way to do a kind of "free play" where the puzzles keep coming at you in random sequences of 20 and you have as much time as you want to solve / memorize each one.

I get that it kind of takes away the challenge of having to solve them on the fly, but you already can't do that anyway with how tight the timer is. It's practically just a memorization challenge, and at that point I think it should be treated like one.

It would be nice to also have something similar to this but with a much more lenient timer so it's actually feasible to solve the match 3s for the first time on the fly within the time limit. It would be a very different puzzle but much more enjoyable, and it could pull from a huge pool of puzzles so if you fail its fresh every time. This would be easier to "cheese" with a guide, but most of the game is completely trivial with a guide anyway, so I don't see it as a down side.