Restricting Class to builder at start

As the title suggests, I think it would be a great idea that everyone started as builders at the beginning of the match, thus eliminating the kind of players that prefer to wait in front of red boundary before the start of the match. This will then force at least some kind of contribution from each player until a barracks is up and running. In earlier stages of the beta this would be a problem, but now that we have a literal red "no man's land" in the middle of the map, we wont have to worry about bum rushing knights at the start of the match.

Its understandable that then, we would have to get rid of the class changing ability available at tents. However, class could be restricted on the tent only during the building phase of the match.

Its just aggravating to see that everyone is slaving away, while there are knights sleeping on their shields. Better castles can be built if everyone works on it. Also to put more emphasis on what I am saying, this is only a small solution to the problem, at least until the team builds a barracks for workers to change into knights.

 

Just realized that this thread could have been situated in a more reasonable section. Sorry for the inconvenience.

//edit from Kouji: Moved to Suggestions

 

I faintly a remember looooooooong ago this was randomly suggested in a thread about classic. Don't remember much but I don't think it was all that well received. I'll see if I could find it.
E:
Couldn't find the thread, but heres sauce shutting it down in a random thread:

 

Forcing people to play builder would just encourage bad building. The initial rush is important too.

 

Not the best idea, although the people doing nothing and getting in the way are annoying, and I would rather have people at least gathering materials, limiting something like that would get in the way of those preparing for a starting rush.

Also less people will remember to switch back, resulting in less fighting and more Minecrafting...and more cases of either one super pro player destroying the team all at once or more impossible to cross bases being built earlier in the game, those being the things that result in standstills...

 

I love being builder. It is by far my favorite class in the game. In my experience having a lot of builders building at one time is a lot more trouble than it is worth. By having more than say 4 builders at any one time, it causes them to build over something you are making and causes trouble working together to create a easy to defend base. Plus, those who are really good at building defenses (like myself :3) lose a lot of resources to other players on maps where resources are scarce. If I end up having to use wood, I know that there was too many builders and that we will now lose the game.

TL;DR Quality over Quantity is the best way to go.

 

*builds a wall around the flag with the intention of making the top into a double layer stone door*
*le random noob appears*
"hi im locked into builder class so lemme help you by sealing off that top section and lining the outer wall with wood and hey a mill-saw would be good in the flag too and don't you think that we could really use spikes on like ALL the walls"

Spoiler

I just want knights and archers to get the fuck out of the way while I'm building. Find a magical way to enforce THAT and I'm game for anything.


//EDIT: Put that large images into spoilers next time. ~Galen

 

I'm with the idea that with time and practice even bad builders learn a thing or two and improve their skills at building but if there's limited space then that might become a problem when builders try to help each-other but they don't agree on the building design.

I think the real problem might be the fact that the archers and knights just stand around being unproductive or worse yet, get in the way. Therefore I'd suggest perhaps giving something for the archers and knights to do during the building phase and one idea that came to mind is perhaps adding some small underground cavern system that contains chests filled with resources and guarded by zombies or some other vicious creature.

This idea is similar to the alpha zombie mode where you explore underground caverns and find chests or stumble into zombies. Mind you, the game itself shouldn't revolve around that idea but having a mini dungeon under the two main bases that need to be cleared out for extra free space and resources like stone, wood, bombs, arrows, coin etc. could give archers and knights the opportunity of being productive during the building phase.

Alternatively, there could be a portal that ports knights and archers into a dungeon where they search for the coin and once the building phase ends, they get kicked out. A bit of a bonus if you will, the best knights and archers bringing more resources for their team and giving them a slight advantage. I do recall there was a dungeon crawl server in alpha with permanent hotel rooms. Something along those lines!

Plus, who doesn't like a bit of spelunking?

 

That... is a interesting idea. If they had shit to do, they'd be out of my hair, they wouldn't be bored, and they'd be helping with the base.

 

Raelin's idea is really great. But why not just make maps that have traps and like in the solo short campaign. Pit falls traps. Boulder drops. All built into the map.

I was thinking about getting into map making, maybe ill go ahead and do this, see what the community thinks. Anyone up to help design it?

 

Traps wouldn't be very efficient since you can just have a builder go down there and take them apart, thus making the idea of going as an archer or a knight useless and taking away the fun of actually learning how to dodge the trap.

Instead I would advice having the archer and knight play on their strength, which is destroying enemies, reason why I suggested zombies since they seem like the best fitting foes when exploring underground caverns or maybe even crypts?

Alternatively, if some sort of portal is inserted where it ports ONLY archers and knights in some small dungeon covered in bedrock, then traps could be used efficiently since builders wouldn't be able to reach the location or mine through bedrock. But that would require some scripting.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing such a thing be implemented, it sounds like a nice little mini adventure that helps your team with resources and is fun.

 

Why do people's solutions seem to be so technical and full of unneeded features...?

It sounds pretty cool, and a mod of it could be done, but it seems a bit excessive of a solution and going to cause troubles of its own...
Not only does it sound like something you can't entirely fit within 100-200 seconds of pregame gameplay, but instead of encouraging people to go builder, to mine stone or cut trees for other builders, it takes a step back and discourages more people to go builder because more would rather play some fun dungeon adventure! Also would teleporting people into this dungeon teleport them into a new map or just a bedrocked area deep into the map? I can see some map design issues with that...

Simple encouragement solution would be to simply make people spawn as builder at the start of the game. Of course if they change class and then die they should respawn as whatever they changed to, like normal, but that first spawn in a game should simply be as a builder...

 

If only it was that simple. As much as I would like the "spawn as builder" idea to be implemented, the community will simply reject it as they did in the past. Not to mention that even though you spawn them as builders, most would either stubbornly refuse to build under the excuse that they aren't good (some don't even seem to even try and improve) and could still get in the way by jumping around like headless chickens. Limited space might also cause problems (depending on map and player size) as two builders might start working on the same project but not agree with the design, thus wasting time on needless bickering.

 

Needless bickering does happen, and is why I rather have a limited amount of builders building while the others gather supplies, in-fact needless bickering turns into people building bad things and then breaking someone's redesign when someone tries to improve it (this literally just happened to me in a game I just had to ragequit from terrible team).

No amount of features are going to solve this issue, bad players will be bad players and bad players will always exist...This is a sorta game that relies on the players learning more than the game being wrapped around preventing them from being dumb. Thus, might as well not put the effort into features that will probably only be used by more skilled players who know about it and...already know how to build and thus would be a better choice as builders anyway...

To me I feel it is a case where people will always be sitting around doing nothing, so why bother making it complex, spawn as builder(saves people who aren't paying attention to their class some time on new match), and add messages like "Go build! Or gather materials!" or "Can't build? Gather materials!" or something along those lines...

 

I do like the idea of simply having everyone start as a builder, then they can change class at the tent. If they change class, they drop their materials and then another builder can grab and utilize those materials.

I also think

This is another simple, rock-solid idea that isn't difficult to do.


Yeah instead of forcing people to be a builder, just have them soft-start as a builder for every match, then they can change back to being a knight or an archer.


On that note, it'd be nice if there was a simple hud addition that showed how many knights/archers/builders were on the team at any given time. Maybe three icons with numbers below them at the top left?

 

It seems we just need an incentive for people to build. For example emphasizing the fact that when you build you get gold. Which is used to purchase awesome stuff.

 

The problem isn't communication but the fact that people are stubborn and just don't listen no matter how much you might go in chat "Gather materials!". You can spawn that message all you wish but if some jackass just wants to be a nuisance and sit around dancing, then there's nothing you can do really. Mind you, it sounds like a good idea for when you're in a good team and require aid but that doesn't solve the issue of knights and archers being useless during build phase.

People need to be motivated, a proverbial carrot on a stick, which is why I suggested the mini dungeon since that sounded like a fun idea that would motivate knight/archer players to do something. Alternatively much simpler methods of motivation could be sought:

Such as the above or anything that would make building/resource gathering even more worthwhile for the player.