10 years to destroy and a second to build

Yeah in all of the knight-archer balance crying it's always been the unassuming builder that has been the true powerhouse. Like I was just saying in another thread builder is so incredibly strong but its effects are so subtle that it escapes public eye- the reverse of how the archer's relatively weak triple shot ability elicits undeserved cries of "fucking op".

In a big old thread named The Problem we talked a lot about this. I and others felt that it would lead to an overall more satisfying game for everyone if terrain manipulation (both construction and destruction) were slower. Under certain circumstances it's incredibly frustrating how easily your 20 minutes of hard work can be toppled. However you've also noted here this is often not an easy task and how powerful even a few minutes worth of building can be. Slower construction and destruction would mean that your hard work would have some lasting power and even though it would take longer to build, that in and of itself can make building a more meaningful experience. Compare for example actually mining and laying out a structure brick by brick rather than doodling it out into MSPaint then uploading the mapfile. The former is vastly more satisfying than the latter. Likewise actually destroying stuff would be much better as while it would be more difficult the struggle would make the accomplishment that much sweeter and you wouldn't have to dread your work being undone by the time you respawned.

Unfortunately as demonstrated time and again players and developers tend to be strongly against this idea. Maybe people's minds have changed now?

 

Nahh, that sounds iffy at most.

 

I just want to see a chubby little builder plodding along with a block in his hands. Seriously though this does sound like an interesting way of building, it might force more players to help out as builders at the start of the match (or everyone will be too lazy and it will just become tdm).

 

actually, i strongly discourage anyone from reading this thread. bar posts of couple of people (probably only blueluigi and contrary) its full of shit, its literally shitty players playing one overpowered class making walls of text and shitty players playing other overpowered class making even bigger walls of text. honestly, its one of the worst threads in history of this forum

 

Yeahhh this was the problem with the other thread as well, people dismissing other's ideas without any kind of supporting reason or evidence.

 

Builder has been disgustingly powerful for a long time.

KAG is a game of attrition. Sure a knight bomb jumping into a tower is cool and stylish but the sheer power of a builder spending a few minutes making the route to the frontline as fast as possible can have a massivd impact.
Reinforcement speed is an oft neglected, if your knight and archers take 10 seconds to reach the frontline and theirs take 15 then you're at a huge advantage in one aspect. This can easily snowball a game in one teams favour quite easily - ever felt you were outnumbered constantly no matter how many you killed? Theres a good chance is was your attrition was higher. This is even before you consider the effect of the actual defensive structures that are present on the front.

We've had endless discussions on this subject. The solution is simple depending on who you ask, and for some there isnt a problem at all.

Im more of a hand free kind of guy when it comes to thinking developer balance intervention. (Which is why I was very upset when bomb jumping - what I viewed as a perfect mechanic was removed aeons ago. I digress) The problem as Contrary put it this is probably one of those times the dev needs to intervene in some way. Most balance issues are brought and highlighted from metagame. If there exists no counter to that metagame then it is a solved game. And once a game state reaches that point it can become very stale.

 

Geti, I honestly have no idea. Game design is hard yo.

Sometimes I wonder even if it is a bad thing, maybe we do want the game to snowball in one favour to faster pick out the victor - hell maybe we want the game to snowball even MORE? Creating fast paced mega games? Who knows, maybe if it snowballs more we'd get more action packed fast rounds instead of the slow grind into the enemy base?

We really have to consider the myriad of options. If buildings being overpowered is a problem then I see some possibilities.

- Better map design, from a community standpoint a lot of maps could be suffocating this and causing even more problems, with better designed maps this could be alleviated to where the "OPnees" of buildings is reduced and more easily gotten around.
- Nerfing the builder/buildings somehow.
-- Construction cool down of 0.5s or something between each placed block, ladders and wood unnaffected. Thus trade off is possibly made between speed and defense. Stone is slower to build, but wood can be spammed.
-- Better offensive items, could be a problem as when you're behind it can be hard to get these, and the attackers probably have much more access.
-- Building limits, can only stack so high before the blocks beneath start to crack. They take damage every x seconds for every block that is weighing on them, forcing more distribution and mainanence whilst forcing thinner towers. This one is tough not only to implement without increasing how much work a server has to do but also in communicating it to the player in some way so that hes not just like "Wtf my tower broke this game is gayer than richard simmons".
- Different win conditions. For CTF - make it so the flag is always 10 is blocks from spawn towards the enemy, cannot be submerged in stone and will pop back to its pedastel in 10-20 seconds of not being picked up.
- Grappling Hooks!? New class, has warhammer attack like knight but no shield, right click fires a projectile that pulls him up to the where he hooked, can jump at the end of the hook. Can carry 1 bomb. No charge slash, instead does an AOE damage to blocks in a 3x3 after 5 seconds of charging.
- My suggestions are starting to get silly! :D

Raycast change should be awesome, did I mention you've been doing a great job? :D

 

My main problem with the state of building is that in many situations the easiest time to win a game is in the first few minutes. Games will generally move really quickly at the start but get more and more stalematey over time as builders have time to build up big defenses. This is really backwards IMO and it means that games rarely reach that sweet satisfying ~20 minute length but instead are usually either finished immediately or after 2 hours.

Some way of slowing down the building process is definitely necessary, first and foremost. For reasons mentioned this is the first thing that needs to be done, and is not even necessary a change that will make things feel less fun.

Beyond that more/better anti-building tech could definitely play a role, though I feel that sort of thing is best handled as diffused down a very long tech tree. At the start of the game buildings should definitely stand tall and be intimidating but they need to come down at some point. Maybe there could be a tech that takes at least 40 minutes from game start to research that allows knights to slash at stone? The tech tree has a lot of potential with stuff like enhancing the damage of various tools against building or siege machines or with new ways of passing buildings such as airships or digging machines.

 

Lol are knights really compaling that they can't get over a tower and kill everyone. I'm not talking about rainbows situation; in that case I think it was because of bad map design. Halls should never be at the bottom of hills. Also I think ballisatas should be less damaging to terrain and better for taking out catas. So anit-siege, we really need a antisiege thingy!

 

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Watch carefully.

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