My -opinions- on current (897) and classic KAG.

Hey guys, old school player here. If you look at my join date you'll see I joined only a few months after this forum was first created (And I'm even one of the original 2000 players! Admin edit: Actually, you're player 42082) as well as that I bought KAG in the second month it was on sale. I had a ton of hopes for this game and was very excited to see how it had progressed, after being busy for the last year and a half. And so, I will present a short summarized review of what I think of both the new KAG, and the available-to-download classic KAG.

Classic KAG:

I started playing this back when the builds were in the 200's, and for about 3 or 4 months I played up until around build 400 I think, then of course I recently replayed it to try and get back "in the zone". I have to say, aside from bugfixes and etc from way-back-when, it doesn't really seem to have advanced much but it's still the same KAG I fell in love with.

Builder: Still a great staple on the team, decent fighting capabilities, good survivability, etc. In classic KAG, there are many things that bugged me about the builder, like the terrible workshop creation UI, (It's hard to tell at a glance what workshop is what, you have to learn them and then rely on muscle memory) but I'll get to those in a bit.

Archer: I feel that if the classic archer had the hookshot present in the beta version, it'd be about perfect. I really have no complaints. Oh, but they don't ever start with even 5 arrows so that makes them useless on immediate spawn, so maybe giving them +5 arrows on spawn would be nice.

Knight: I apparently forgot how to bomb-jump or the mechanics were drastically changed, but otherwise they are the powerhouses on your team. I like the simple way they function, they work well and they work hard.

Mining: Smooth, works well, visually easy to tell what rocks are what.

Chopping down trees: Very intuitive, maybe a tad ugly but it's not confusing at all. You watch as the tree gets chopped down and as your resources go up. Simple.

Placing blocks: Works well, and I like that we can't make unlimited towers that stretch over the whole battlefield. Also seems difficult to grief so that's a thing too. However, it's not very intuitive telling just how far out you can build or what the limitations are, until you actually reach said limitations. Is there a guide on this?

Overall, I'd rate the classic game about an 8/10. Archers could use ported hookshots, and the UI for workshop creation and pretty much any other menu could stand to look better, but those are my only real complaints. It's a simple game of rock/paper/scissors and choosing what unit to use in what situation.



Beta KAG:

Builder: Keeping in mind that it is a beta, I try to ignore annoying glitches, but blocks are very difficult to place for me. I try to place a block, and there's a weird glitchy animation much of the time where the preview before placing sort of... glows red and falls to the ground over and over, even though it's still place-able? And then sometimes it actually isn't place-able. Also, builders feel extremely weak and vulnerable. They aren't competent at fighting anymore, and the jumps feel more "floaty" so stomping on enemies is way harder and more frustrating than before.

Archer: The new charge mechanics are probably supposed to give them different ways of fighting, but it comes off clunky. Also when firing an arrow, there's always lag from when the arrow fires and when I let go of the button. This means 100% of my shots miss unless at point blank range, and I'm already not doing so great on the aiming front as it is. They don't really have any purpose once they utilize their hookshot to scale walls, since once they're in the enemy base they can't do... anything. I'd like to see them able to place bear traps in the future, maybe toss smoke grenades and do other things like that, then rename them from "Archer" to "Assassin" or "Saboteur". Aside from the hookshot though, they're pretty much useless in the new beta.

Knight: Knights are terrible in this update, at least for me. Thanks to the camera swinging all over the goddamned place, my view is constantly flying all over the screen as I try to aim my charged strikes at enemies. In the clasic game, your charged strikes were like a 360 attack so you didn't have to aim as much, but now that they're focused on aiming, which I admit is a good idea, the camera should be locked in place for this class, whether zoomed in or out. Aside from that, they're probably really good, but that terrible camera means I have no interest in using them, ever. I also get motion sickness so that doesn't help much.

Mining: Works well enough. Same as classic.

Chopping down trees: I hate it. Hate, hate, hate. I chop down a tree, it breaks and scatters all over the goddamned place. Then I have to run around and cut up the pieces to get wood, it's really unintuitive and while I DO think the trees look way better and the falling over is realistic and cool, functionally it's extremely annoying. I vastly prefer the old twig trees.

Placing blocks: As I said about the builder, the blocks all have annoying glitches where occasionally they turn red and say they're unplaceable (but actually aren't) and start faling all over the place. I'll make a video if need be. Buildings seem extremely difficult to build in the beta, they can't be built out very far at all (And against archers with hookshots, this presents an especially annoying problem.) and overall it's much harder to build anything (Read: less fun) than in classic KAG.

I also very much dislike many of the UI functions that I have to put up with as I play. How about no toggle-button UI for changing classes and etc? Press and hold E at base/workshops, then click to change classes or buy items and the menu stays up as long as you don't move away or as long as you hold down the button. Also, the lag on menus popping up, especially with toggle-button UI, is extremely frustrating. It takes a full second sometimes, which leads me to press the button again because I think I mis-pressed it originally. This of course leads the the UI closing.

Also, why do workshops pop up the moment I click on them when trying to build them? It would be much better if you got a red outline that appeared on the ground that you could move around and place instead.


As of right now, the beta is slow, the camera jerks around like a squirrel on speed, the UI is clunky, and the game seems way slower paced than the fast and frantic old KAG did. Yeah, it's a beta, and yeah it'll be improved in time, but I'm hoping this criticism will help the devs improve the game in at least a few of the areas I outlined.

I'll give it a 5/10 for now.

 

Also wow, I'm in the 42,000 players? I was actually referring to my forum member number but huh that's interesting. Probably a ton of banned and duplicate accounts in that case. I joined the forums the same time as I started playing the game.

(Why didn't this merge with my previous post lol)

 

If that's some... clever way of insulting me by saying I think I'm the center of the universe... okay. Maturity at its finest.

 

Yeah, in the beta Archers start with 30 arrows, it's the classic game where they start with 0. Also I didn't know you could change classes at their base, that's pretty neat.

You must be the kind of person who only slightly moves their mouse around. I move my mouse around constantly, mousing over foes to see their names, mousing over trees to try and spot hidden archers, mousing around with right mouse button held down to block blows and arrows, not to mention to aim my attacks, etc. If you move your mouse around more you'd notice the effects I'm betting.

 

True, motion sickness doesn't affect the majority of people out there, so those who don't have it don't understand what it feels like.

On a side note, nice joshua sig.

 

I like how any post about "kagbeta not the best game of all time", or that "classic was good" attracts trolls like Ej. People are entitled to their own opinion...

 

The joke/reference didn't go above his head since he clearly stated what ej meant. Although I guess you just want to jump on the likewhore bandwagon.

 

(Half of my posts on the forums are made on drugs I'm 90% certain)


Getting used to the pacing of beta compared to Classic was a real refreshing experience (War was the only game mode when I started really messing with betA). Sword fighting I feel relies a little more on skill now due to how fast paced it is (add lag in there somewhere)

I recently went back to trying classic and it feels like half of the knight combat is based on lag or actually being legit good. Classic and beta are legitimately 2 different games now to me.

 

I did that though, and it didn't change it at all. I think that option may be broken.

Also I played a bunch of KAG classic again and I still enjoy playing it (The camera doesn't bug me nearly as much as a knight, though it does still move around when getting near to the edge of the screen. It just doesn't move as far as the camera in Beta.) so I think I'll just stick to classic, until the bugs in beta are worked out and the combat has its own feel. I think I understand now that KAG classic and beta are indeed two entirely different games that simply have similar graphics, but I'm gonna be classic4lyfe.

 

Any plans to release Classic Code to open source geti?

On some of the older builds at least?

on the Customizability vs Simplicity scale, classic had nice fluid motion (before the notch update), and I'm pretty curious about just what exactly you had changed.

As for beta, it's a completely different game, it's hard to compare the two, but I do believe that having a complex and detailed configuration setup for fine tuning tiny variables would benefit beta greatly.

 

Who needs open source classic, when we can mod it in beta? Just give us scripted notch, classic-style movement (im not about speed here) and maybe bomb-throwing and I assure you, soon many of classic players migrate to beta.
I can not sit still when I think of what would happen if you merge the classic movement and new knight combat

 

I dunno Geti, I'm a pretty stubborn motherfucker who has worked on some monsters before, (It was practically all I did for my 24/7 optimizer job), but it's not like you don't comment on the code in a modular fashion/format?

Besides, a shitload of reading isn't that bad when there's no deadlines to commit to.

In either case, I was just curious about your opinion on that.