1. Hey Guest, is it this your first time on the forums?

    Visit the Beginner's Box

    Introduce yourself, read some of the ins and outs of the community, access to useful links and information.

    Dismiss Notice

Tell me im wrong (noob thread)

Discussion in 'Balance' started by Shambls, Dec 30, 2013.

  1. Shambls

    Shambls Tree Planter

    Messages:
    65
    I like the concept of this game but It feels like it all boils down to who has the best knight on their team. Obviously every game needs a character that can bust through the front lines, one shot people, and have great mobility but shouldn't there be a way to stop him beyond very high walls and other knights?

    Both the archer and the builder feel like really weak support classes. The builder main function is to build defenses so you can have a game worth playing and if he is lucky enough to survive in a forward position can actually help you win the game by constructing forward towers and mine tunnels (also lets not forget siege weapons) The builder is so inherently weak he/she basically has no way to defend the structures that they build relying on both the archers and knights to do that job but primarily knights. Archers are a class that seems to be designed very poorly, cause what makes them great is there amazing mobility yet because of the slow attack speed and terrible melee combat they just stay perched on a tower trying to kill people from afar. Don't get me wrong I'm sure there are some amazing archers that can grapple and shoot on the go but compare that to the great skill of holding a key and releasing it at the right time there no contest as to who people are going to pick.

    I wish there was a legitimate weapon (beyond the pickaxe) for the builder so he could be more offensive and defensive. As well as some sabotage elements/abilities for the archer. They both feel like lack luster classes.

    You may backlash now. (most communities are overly protective of "their" game)
     
  2. Contrary

    Contrary The Audacious Paramount of Explosive Flight Donator Tester

    Messages:
    2,196
    This is not a bad OP but I can tell it will generate a shitty thread.
     
  3. Trumbles

    Trumbles Bison Rider

    Messages:
    458
    Builders are meant to be a noncombat class, and are meant to be guarded if they're on the frontlines. However, boulders and drills can make pretty effective weapons if you can catch a knight offguard with them.

    I agree that archers really have something lacking... My biggest complaints are that knights can slash your arrows out of the air, and their shield hitboxes are way larger than they appear to be, especially while gliding.

    Archer needs some sort of change, but nobody is sure on what that change should be. There's a really fine line between buffing and overpowering.
     
    Arcrave, Beelzebub and Nighthawk like this.
  4. Boea

    Boea Such Beta

    Messages:
    653
    Generally my thoughts are revert attacks back to b800 (can't be slashed out of air (unsure if you could slash arrows out of the air back then), 2h max charge, no overcharge), add 1h to the class, and keep the special ammo, stun, grapple hook (honestly, fuck the knife), .

    The most glaring issue for builders right now seems to be that boulders can still wtf-obliterate doors, when you are standing next to the door. (35? stone to obliterate any doors?)
     
  5. Trumbles

    Trumbles Bison Rider

    Messages:
    458
    It ranges from 35-30.. i think it's 35 for CTF and 30 for TTH.

    I wish i had started playing back then, this is exactly what i want.
     
  6. kedram

    kedram Drill Rusher Tester

    Messages:
    449
    As long as your a good archer and you know how to play well you can almost certainly 1v1 knights given you have the space to do so. however unless you can get away as archer while a knight is cooking a bomb your fucked and thats fine because is a bomb and yea boom dead big deal. I do feel like arrows shouldnt be jabbed or slashed out of the air. that makes it extremely annoying when you shoot the knight at one heart but oh he jabbed the arrow and kills you anyway... water ammo needs a nerf like geti said he would do soon. and boulders shouldnt 1 hit stone doors but only wood doors. in the end it boils down to the knight being the best offensive class because in reality it is the only offensive class. archer is support for destroying structures and helping other knights. builders are obviously only for building, and trust me, if your builder sucks ass your not going to win no matter how good you are unless the opposite team is equally dumb.
     
    Sponncx likes this.
  7. Boea

    Boea Such Beta

    Messages:
    653
    BACK THEN
    There were no stuns or grapple hooks, just a useless fucking knife which was only good for harvesting arrows.
    Fire arrows and bomb arrows were very weak, but water arrows were more powerful.
    And archers had 3h.

    To be a good archer around b800, you have to be a good knight now, except without the shield.
    That is to say, timing your shots perfectly while dancing with a knight that could probably kill you in one combo (a hell of a lot better than one hit).
    The main issue at that point was that you had no mobility option (we now have the grapple, so hooray), and there was no way you could stun a knight like they could with others (but now we do). (And the knife is now gone)

    Those issues were solved, but others were put in, and archers have become Goddamn Bats.
    ---
    As far as slashing arrows out of the air, I think it was supposed to give a knight a fair chance against camping/spamming archers, butt pushes archers to hide in even more annoying spots, or simply come in legions, and it's just silly.

    The interesting thing is that you can counter bombs with an arrow spam, it only really comes up when you have more than one archer spamming arrows.
    ---
    Kedram, honestly, I think even with wooden doors, they should be able to hold up against a few hits.
     
  8. Rubixxcube

    Rubixxcube Bison Rider

    Messages:
    66
    I'm going to type a lot.
    [​IMG]
    Having a good knight can only go so far. Slaughtering everyone coming at you only works for so long, and once you die the team needs to be good enough to at least sustain until the knight get back. However, if they can do nothing but sustain, then it will become a war of attrition and then shit gets ugly as your base is slowly ground down from the sheer number of kegs that find their way to it.
    This game is the story of the knight wall and their companions. Everything is done to support the knights, because they're the workhorse. Imagine if archers could one shot people from range, with grappling. You might think knights are bad, but at least they have to get up in your face to fuck you up.

    This is the part where I facepalm and sigh because you're doing what countless people have done before you on this forum since the time before Beta, which is expressing the point of view of something that you don't have much experience with. Getting any sort of combo killing going takes a considerable amount of skill. If you don't believe me, take a look at this BASIC guide. Put in some time spectating someone who gets 4:1 or 5:1 and watch how he keeps from dying. (And no, k/d is by no means the only indicator of knight prowess, don't start flaming me here guys. It does, however, give a good approximation of how many fights he wins.) There's velocities, timing, slash extensions, height, awareness, health, inventory and parkour that all has to be considered while in the heat of the moment, under fire from archers and surrounded by charging knights. If you think that's easy, then you must be a goddamn savant.

    Also, archers can knock down walls and doors with a single shot of a bomb arrow. They can burn down entire bases with the fire variant, and they can shoot three of these arrows in a single volley. Knights have to spend five seconds focusing an attack just to tear down a single block of wood, and stone doors/blocks are completely invulnerable to them if they don't have a keg that takes away all offensive capabilities and slows them down. Sounds like siege to me.

    Builders are for building. They have the ultimate offensive and defensive capability. Yes, they're squishy, but if you had ever played Classic you would know just how scary a good builder is. Build speed is limited, but the reason fire is focused on builders so quickly is that they're so dangerous. They can seal up your doors and scale your skyscrapers, all the while a pack of knights tears things up around them.


    Also, I don't think that we're overly protective. I may be biased, but many people here have put tens and hundreds of thousands of hours into this game and have a right to be protective. That being said, I think I can speak for the entire community when I say that we're always open to improving the game that we love. If the majority of people here treat you like shit, it's most likely be because you're an asshole. If not, you'll fit right in. :wink:


    [​IMG]
    Play more knight before you speak on how easy it is, archers have boom and burn, builders are amazing in the right hands, and we love this game.


    E: quite a lot of bad showed up in the time I was typing, the prophecy is coming true. Also, my post seemed so much longer when I was typing it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2013
  9. I'd have to agree - at the risk of incurring wrath, each class has a combination of attributes that helps it function as a cohesive whole. A knight cannot rampage through a stone base without assistance from an archer to take it down, a builder to knock it down or build over it. An archer cannot fight effectively if an ally knight is not down drawing attention away from the archer, and having a hole to plink fullcharge (NOT LEGOLAS) shots through is impossible without a builder.

    Builders are too flimsy in combat to be able to defend themselves without the offensive powerhouse of knights removing threats and the archer assisting in holding them back with water or fire arrows.

    Hence, you can see, all classes have innate strengths, but ALL THREE must work as a cohesive whole to be a real, major threat.

    Ever faced down a group of a competent archer, knight and builder? The knight holds off your team, the archer pins them down with extra damage / crowd control, and the builder does what he does best - builds, or almost best, destroys.
     
  10. Shambls

    Shambls Tree Planter

    Messages:
    65
    Okay. Thanks for all the replies.

    Its hard to get to know a game when you've played it so little so it's always best to ask the community what's what. I do these occasionally and i've found that most communities (not the KAG) can be somewhat overzealous in defense of "their" game. So it's just habit to expect the worst not a reflection of the KAG community.

    This post came out of several games where there was a knight on the enemy team that would slay everyone. He would die occasionally but usually it would take like four or five guys. Then he would come back with a keg slay 4-5 and do it over and over again. one guy is basically taking on our half our team. Now i never professed to be good at knight but there are people that are unbelievably good at it.

    I like playing builder but if you don't have solid knights on your team your hard press to keep anything standing forget trying to make forward outposts or winning the game for that matter.

    I just wish there was more I could do to kill knights as a builder.Traps are lack luster and can be seen from a mile away. Trying to pickaxe kill a knight is a death wish. drills can be blocked or break easy(both maybe?) and building defenses in itself can feel futile cause you just hope to god your knights are mopping the floor with the enemy knights. What usually happens is i have to switch to knight which is not ideal but I have to do something.

    Anyways I wanted to play some more archer before I responded because I felt I gave the archer a pretty harsh critique. I do love that grappling hook. If your able to get yourself in a high position or if your lucky enough to have a builder that can build archer nest it makes a world of difference. Killing a knight is what i would really like to learn.

    The real question is where and when do all the experienced players play? Cause from the sounds of it I'm missing out. I'm in Canada on the west coast. Is this game popular in EU? Where are you From KAG community? Cause right now i either need to find good knights to learn from or play with it seems.
     
    hierbo, -Tj- and FuzzyBlueBaron like this.
  11. Rubixxcube

    Rubixxcube Bison Rider

    Messages:
    66
    I understand the knight rek frustration. It seems that what you want is the support to do your job, without having to make up for the lack of skill in others. I think what you need is competitive gaming. If you're inventive and cunning with your building, try to get into a good clan. Good builders are usually much harder to recruit because the majority of players like the action classes. Joining a good clan will get you that support and experience that you so desire in your games. Clans are a bit shaky right now, as a result of the move to Beta and the subsequent Steam release, but it's still a really good base for teamwork.

    There are talks about reviving the Gather community from Classic. It's basically an invite only group of experienced players who get together and arrange to play structured clan war style games with each other. It's an interesting experience because it shows just how far the game can go in the right hands.

    In terms of your question about where and when the good players play, try getting into those really full US servers. In my personal, limited experience, (because I'm a ping whore that doesn't like it when my hits land three seconds later) those are usually the places you can depend on finding some good players. You can usually tell by looking at clantags whether anyone on the teams can do any damage. There are also quite a lot of players without clans at all, but you'll have to find those yourself since you haven't been around for long. The problem with this, however, is that the better the players, the more scared everyone else gets, and the faster the server empties itself out. It's a dilemma.

    You're doing all you can as a builder, and ultimately the burden of pushing doesn't come down to you. If you don't want to join a clan, befriend a few people that you feel that you play really well with, and just join servers as a group. If you use a VoIP service then you'll even be able to coordinate your attacks. It's the basic principle behind clans, minus all the titles and fanciness.
     
    hierbo and norill like this.
  12. Kouji

    Kouji Cold, Uncaring, Sadistic, Evil and Cruel Meanie Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator Tester
    1. MOLEing Over Large Estates - [MOLE]
    2. REKINS OF SEAS: Super Crew of Ultimate Havoking 2: Return of King of KAG: Chapter 420blazeit - REKIN

    Messages:
    2,910
    I think most of "Good" people from the US play on Hierbo's server's right now. The better Aussies tend to play on Kaizo's servers. For EU, you'd have to ask Monsteri, Hella or Beef cause I can't remember of the top of my head. I can't comment on the Aus population so I wouldn't know where to rank it along with the US, but I do think it's pretty safe to say that EU has the biggest population. If you play on the weekends in the morning, you'll see.

    I'm not going to comment on balance in this thread because I'm tired of it as this point cause that always end no where (as you can see in these threads: https://forum.kag2d.com/forums/balance.110/ )

    As far as learning to be a better player, I've kind of have been getting this feeling recently that maybe one of the official servers for each location should run a "Casual" mode where either more rng is involved or game is slower in some way. If it's rng based, maybe there's a power up that temporarily makes you invincible, gives you a bunch of random items (random special arrows for archers, random explosives for knights and random mats for builders) or something. If the game ran slower in some way, you'd be able to see more of how combat works, be able to have a faster reaction time and if you are up against someone better, you'd see how they are better. Not saying that this sort of mode should replace our current game modes nor am I saying that there should be the default for everything. Just saying that it'd a server type that would help new people learn to play the game (since the tutorials are pretty bad for playing real games).
     
  13. Monsteri

    Monsteri Slower Than Light Tester

    Messages:
    1,916
    I pretty much second Rubixxcube, but mainly I wanted to drop in and say that I really like your approach to this thing. Most people would've made a thread on the S&I forums crying how the knight is OP.

    By the way, there once was a defensive tool for builders (or any class, but builders would use it the most) called Mounted Bow. It shot 2h arrows in a pretty rapid succession, but it generated endless stalemates and kinda stepped on the archers territory, and so it got nerfed quite a bit and made an upgrade to warboat only.

    I certainly wouldn't mind a buff to drills, they are the coolest weapon in KAG, plus it's still likely you win a drilling builder if you pay attention. They shouldn't break on a single slash, and drilling entities shouldn't cause them to heat.
     
    FuzzyBlueBaron, Rubixxcube and hierbo like this.
  14. Sir_Walter

    Sir_Walter Haxor Staff Alumni Tester

    Messages:
    273
    DISCLAIMER
    Take my opinions with a grain of salt- I am a total noob archer. Carry on.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I think that the reason archers are so flimsy is that they aren't meant to be able to take on knights. Imagine a world where archers fly around one shotting everything in sight, causing legions of raging knights, or even worse, terrible stalemates of whole teams of archers firing volley upon volley of spam arrows in a vain attempt to hit the other team of archers, who are doing the same. However, if you can grapple to somewhere a knight can't reach and shoot from there, knights are pretty powerless to stop you, aside from a well timed bomb or not so well timed water bomb. Archers can also be effective terrorists, taking lit kegs from knights and grappling into the enemy's base to destroy them from the inside. I too get frustrated with powerful knights just slaughtering everything, but with some tactics and cooperation (and a healthy dose of kegs) you can beat them.
     
  15. Boea

    Boea Such Beta

    Messages:
    653
    The reason why the Mounted Bows shot such powerful arrows was because of how arrows seemed to be coded (2h max, at high speeds), and were probably the reason why the arrow stun was non-existant because the Mounted Bow actually shot fast enough to still kill Shielding Knights.

    It was dumb, but they were nuked; I would've preferred that the ability to spew arrows was entirely squashed so archers could do substantial damage without having to out right channel the ancestral spirits of the b800 mounted bows.


    Drills, I would rather have them be strong against doors/platforms, as opposed to the vastly cheaper boulders are now, and make them weaker against unnatural blocks.
    ---
    The first underlined section: three archers can already do that if that coordinate their overcharge, and sit on top of a tower or over a slight hill; it's very frustrating because you'll take constant damage even if they are alone and pin you on the inside doors. Hell, they make doors even less approachable since they can gun you down. (The worst part is that you can't block that many arrows even with a double slash, and arrows can deflect bombs)

    In b800, to charge an arrow to 2h you had to take longer than a Knight takes to charge a slash, nowadays they are probably closer together, but even now, even with the guaranteed close-range stun you have nowadays, you'd at most be able to shoot a 1.5h shot at the Stunned Knight.
    If overcharge were removed, and arrows did 2h max damage again, you'd pretty much make an archer roughly as strong as a Knight that can land a Slash-Stab combo on a Shielding Knight. To make up the difference, give the class a third heart, and you now have a class that can't camp/spam, and has a good reason to make up for it.

    If an archer can hold itself up on the field, maybe they'd on the front line a hell of a lot more.

    The second underlined section: that's the norm, and although it makes them good flag runners, their propensity towards camping generally lends them to be dead weight unless they are guarding a wall, or volleying.

    The third underlined section: The reason why archers really haven't discovered this is because knights don't let go of their kegs. They more over want a guaranteed detonation even if it means suicide, and massive coin penalties.
     
  16. Sir_Walter

    Sir_Walter Haxor Staff Alumni Tester

    Messages:
    273

    A
    I agree that archers can be very annoying if their are 3-4+ spamming arrows at the battlefield, but one archer can't really do much pure damage-wise, aside from getting an occasionally potshot on a distracted knight or one who doesn't know how to use shield. However I think that is how it should be, as I mentioned before. Maybe if you could turn it into a class that, when used correctly, is highly effective at crowd control/infiltration/destroying buildings. (Dunno how- maybe they can fit through small gaps?)

    B
    By norm do you mean what normally happens? Because I meant hanging on a natural feature of the map and just picking off people below.

    C
    If you buy a keg and give it to another player, you still get kill credits (and probably coins, I'm not sure). This tactic might work better with a friend though.
     
  17. Kouji

    Kouji Cold, Uncaring, Sadistic, Evil and Cruel Meanie Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator Tester
    1. MOLEing Over Large Estates - [MOLE]
    2. REKINS OF SEAS: Super Crew of Ultimate Havoking 2: Return of King of KAG: Chapter 420blazeit - REKIN

    Messages:
    2,910
    Lol, that's what they are best at. I'm guessing you haven't used grapple or the special arrows effectively.
     
  18. Klokinator

    Klokinator Such Beta
    1. Aphelion's Roleplay

    Messages:
    1,443
    If you think the pick is your only default weapon, you're wrong. There's also stomping+pick combo which can deal 1.5 hearts, and if done twice (Ie leaping off a structure) can sometimes take out a knight in 5 seconds. This is assuming the knight has taken a heart of damage already but most knights do take some damage by the time they get to your tower. My best record is three knight kills in one life without any assists, but that was on a pub server so I don't really count it.

    I should really upload a video sometime of how I play as an offensive builder. I think it'd lend a lot of insight into how one can be a badass while being a "wimpy" class.
     
  19. Sir_Walter

    Sir_Walter Haxor Staff Alumni Tester

    Messages:
    273
    Nope I don't really play archer- I prefer knight, as I feel they make more of a tangible impact on the game. No hard feelings towards builders or archers though- I'm probably just bad at using them.
     
  20. Archer sabotage
    V1:Carry around a drill to grapple up and slice through enemy towers
    V2:Carry a boulder, hide in a tree, and drop it on a group to thin the ranks of knights
    P.S. Use Triple-Shot in water combat, avoid flat ground confrontation
     
    FuzzyBlueBaron likes this.