Why Are Jumping Puzzles Like Catnip For MMO Players?

Despite feeling in a bit of a Final Fantasy 14 slump recently, I found myself returning to finish up the seasonal events. The completionist in me couldn’t possibly miss an event and its related rewards. After grabbing my seasonal goodies, I lingered around without much motivation to undertake the usual duties. No dungeons, no trials, no grinding levels, not even trying to make some quick and easy gil. Instead of the usuals, I decided to try and tackle some of the jumping puzzles I’d missed.

There are many areas in Final Fantasy 14 where players periodically drop near you as they fail to complete a jumping puzzle – Kugane’s Shiokaze Hostelry puzzle sticks in my mind as a particularly difficult one. Jumping puzzles are oddly captivating considering how much they frustrate us. They’re not necessarily enjoyable, as you can spend hours repeatedly failing, getting angry, but ultimately refusing to give up. That’s their true appeal; they challenge us and we want those bragging rights for getting to the top.

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I’m Still Not Over The Original FF14 Jumping Puzzles

I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder over FF14’s jumping puzzles because of the Fledgling Apkallu minion. You had to travel all over the game collecting sightseeing logs to earn this minion, and some of these required completing mini jumping puzzles to get to the vista.

As an obsessive minion collector, I had to get that minion and despite not being as evolved as later jumping puzzles, mastering some was downright painful. I’m looking at you, logs in the North Shroud. Because of how challenging and time-consuming it was to get the Fledgling Apkallu, it meant fewer players had it. There are those bragging rights again.

That was before the Heavensward expansion though, which added flying mounts for the first time. Players can now easily complete these by simply flying over to the log or ledge or wherever they need to be. Owning the minion doesn’t have the same prestige as before since it’s much easier to get, and I’m trying not to think of how much time I could have saved if I hadn’t bothered to get it until after flying was introduced.

Jumping puzzles in MMOs always remind me of Attohwa Chasm from Final Fantasy 11, which (despite not including any jumping) was very similar in that players had to navigate their way up a mountain across thin ledges, including parts that blended into the background. It was painful. I spent hours climbing that damn mountain.

We All Love Jumping Puzzles

Despite feeling sour about the Apkallu, it hasn’t put me off jumping puzzles. In fact, they were one of the first things I did when Dawntrail launched, and they’re a great way to distract yourself while waiting for duty queues.

Square Enix is well aware we love a good jumping puzzle. Those original mini jumping puzzles from A Realm Reborn were popular enough that later expansions saw more complicated and lengthy puzzles included, and that’s just to snag a vista – there’s no minion rewards now. Some give nothing as a reward, not even a vista to marvel at, yet we still tackle them just so we can brag about it, or be that player sitting as the king of the castle on some high point others will look up to with envy. Some of the GATEs in the Gold Saucer are pure jumping puzzle minigames with the added complication of a timer. No one can resist the call of a jumping puzzle.

Final Fantasy 14 isn’t the only MMO to tap into this obsession. I played Guild Wars 2 many years ago, and other than a vague memory of my character, the only thing that stuck in my mind was all the jumping puzzles I did there. There’s a good chance I focused on these far more than proper game progression, which is why I remember little else.

And those aren’t the only two examples. Throne and Liberty features a few jumping/platforming challenges, including its Voice Behind the Mask mission, which challenges players with a jumping puzzle that has to be entirely restarted if you miss one step. New World’s Eye of Horus mission has players scaling an Ancient Egyptian construction site by jumping from platform to platform. I’m beginning to wonder if there are any MMOs that don’t include jumping puzzles at this point.

They might be frustrating, and they may take us ages to complete, but we all love a good jumping puzzle. If you have yet to tackle your first and wonder what the hell I’m chatting about, go and try one. Come back to me four hours later when you’ve completed it successfully and tell me you didn’t both absolutely hate it but utterly become obsessed with it.

Systems

Released

August 27, 2013

ESRB

T for Teen – Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence