How KAG should be according to Ej

ok so I was thinking of making this thread in S&I but it doesn't really fit there I feel so I dropped it here, later it can be moved

As some of you might know, my relationship with KAG is love/hate. I find the game itself very enjoyable but there's a lot of stuff that's borderline broken and that what really ruins the game for me and causes that I play it on/off.
For some time now, I've been playing KAG again. This time with a more casual approach. I tried to enjoy the game without tryharding and also tried to pinpoint what I exactly dislike and I feel should be changed. This post is my thoughts on what breaks KAG and how it should be fixed.
1. The Shield

Spoiler: the shield

knight's shield is a free get-out-of-the-jail card. Period. Shield has a huge hitbox which makes killing a knight ever after surrounding him not easy, it has very short recovery time (you basically need to double slash to do any damage to a person behind a shield).
If you combine that with the fact that there's a lot of knockback in KAG (esp. since slash is by far the most used knight move), shield basically acts as a way of escaping any situations after you fuck up. Any.
What's the most reliable way to get out of a knight fight? Shield down.
How do I stall out before my teammates join me? Shield down.
What do I do to trap my opponents in infinite stun chain? Shield down.

exhibit 1:
The red guy at one point was being slashed by 3 knights (2 of us under him and another guy on the right of him). He laughed it off as he was shielding and just kept his bomb lit. You want to know how he died? We luckily managed to force his shield down (still didn't land a single hit, double slashing meant we could take bomb damage at any point) as the bomb went off. The guy was nigh untouchable and he was actually surrounded by 3 knights constantly punching him.
That happens all the time in KAG. Shielding down and running away is the way to absorb any damage and use the knockback to get even further. The ease of escaping from any situation makes even taking engagements idiotic for any good player. The loser can always just shield down and boost away. I've seen people do it (and have done it myself) while facing 4 people or more.

My proposed solution:
1. Remove all the delay from knight combat. You know what I'm talking about. That thing when every action happens a millisecond after you press the button and that thing when you can't cancel your action because of the execution delay. This isn't in particular broken but I want to get rid of it because
2. Extend the stun after shield drop significantly. This time should be at least long enough to land a jab after a single slash.

Now the reason I want those 2 changes is:
-with 2., we would be able to somehow punish people who just spam shield. They would not be able to run away as you charge a double slash and could be punished with only single. That's actually a big change.
-the reason I want 1 is that the shieldbash and shield in general were tweaked in early beta to counter mass slash. I think that if we remove all the delays on execution and cancel in knight combat you could still do it with canceling your slash mid-air and straight up shieldbashing/slashing (I believe you've never been able to do in KAG before). You could also counterattack from behind a shield without having that minimal delay when you drop the shield. I think it would make entire knight combat much smoother and would make a lot of space for players to improve (currently it's stale between shieldsurf and slash dancing).

2. The Grapple

Spoiler: the grapple

As most of you know, the grapple (also known as the bungee or grapple hook or w/e) was given to the archer so he could engage knights in mid-range combat and not fucking die, instead grappling away from hits and bombs. However, that does not work as:
a) it is hard to consistently grapple and you have to do it a lot, which does not encourage going offensive. While better players can abuse archer in mid range properly, it's impossible for your usual johny98
b) as expected, people quickly learned to abuse the grapple in the most rage inducing way:
exhibit 2:
(had to show it myself since i apparently didnt screenshot getting ganked by 4 hanging arches)
THIS FUCKING CAMPPPPPPPPPPPPPP. archers hanging like this can dodge swords, bombs, arrows and cata rocks while spamming shitload of arrows underneath. It's basically archer camping 2: revenge of the tree monkeys
Now that is troublesome because, grapple was supposed to make archers favor offense over defense. Sadly it turned out the other way around. The grapple actually made camping easier than ever while at the same time still not solving the issue with skill entrance level of arches being too high for most players.

My proposed solution:
1. Accelerate the grapple hook so it shoots itself and pulls you faster. It wouldn't buff the grapple where it currently has a cruel reign (wallhugging) but would make it much easier for low-level archer players to escape from knights and hopefully it would make archer more viable in pub games.
2. Make the grapple drop itself after 5 seconds of being attached to surface. Simple idea, makes camping much harder (since you'd have to regrab often, messing with your timings and positioning) while not disrupting any legit play.

this post is WIP and more stuff will be coming, for now only this. thread name is also wip

incoming: triple shot, special arrows


discuss

 

>the shield always activating a second after the bomb has gone off because "lol shield delay skill"

Spoiler

please @Ej, save the game from shitty concepts.

 

#150+ping problems

 

I can live with "bad" ping as you call it, but it's when the pin fluctuates, and never really stabilizes that fucks me raw.

Anyways, as far as shielding goes, I think you are focusing on extremely bad situations for aggressors.
I find that when I'm holding shield, pretty much every god damn knight in a 5b radius can just march up and jab me when I'm slashed.

I find grapples overly effective when it comes to vertical locomotion, which trivializes chasers, and buildings, but I otherwise don't care about horizontal movement.

I find the combination of special arrows/stuns, and overcharge for archers too be an exploitative combination. (And Ironically Knockback trivializes Archer fire...)

 

the only rly bad thing I can think of with shields are so endless head jumps - perma stun

bad ping:
-no bomb jumps with more than one bomb
-cant hit shit as archer
-abusing bad ping, builder can steal flag through walls

I wonder if that Knight wall climbing will ever get fixed

 

Yeah, that. That's something that makes me pretty upset. Not just the glitch that allows Knights to bounce up walls, but the fact that Knights can easily pop over towers that are something around EIGHT blocks tall with a combination of slashing and wallrunning. Only way to counter their absurd mobility is to build stinking overhangs on everything.

I feel so damn sorry for the builders in KAG Beta. They've really gotten the short end of the stick.

Oh, look - more stuff to make me mad. Yeah, please, let's remove the only things that give Archers any sort of edge.

If you think that grappling up buildings trivializes chasers, I don't think you've ever thrown a bomb. Also, the overcharge takes ages to prepare, and all you have to do to deny it is either keep some distance and shield, or slash most of the arrows away while simultaneously murdering the Archer, which nets you back a heart if you lose one.

Water ammo is still kind of unfair, but then again you get what - two arrows for 25 coins in CTF? In TTH I can understand the annoyance, but I've always disliked TTH anyway, so I never play it.

If Archers are making you upset, it's probably because they're just better at Archer than you are at Knight.

 

updated for grapple



please refrain from bringing all random shit to this thread, thanks in advance

 

I would love grappling hooks to be changed in the way you suggested. I've always found it frustrating when I'm fleeing from a Knight, I jump, shoot my hook perfectly at the top of the wall and-

SLASH... right before it reels me in.

I'm the type of guy who plays Archer and tries to go offensive, and gets killed all the time because of it, while I watch other Archers camp camp camp all day and have great KDs because of it.

These changes need to happen.

 

It's not that Archers have supreme elite skills, I generally come at them unscathed, but the main issue is that you presume that every knight ever has bombs on them at any given time.
As opposed to knights, archers have the capacity to circumnavigate the map many times over, while spamming arrows for days to come, so the issue of overcharge being slow is hardly an issue. Less so, when they camp, or corner.

You overestimate the power of the double slash, the speed of a knight while charging up to a double slash, and the intricate manner in which server lag and ping bias give hit detection the benefit of the doubt, and a reach around.
It is more uncommon than getting hit by an archer.
(And as it turns out, fencing is the better than shotgun stunning anyway, knockback makes it harder than it should be.)


And then you also ignore the seemingly overly easy, and rewarding fire/bomb hails archers can do against any structure; builders summarily get fucked there, especially since explosions give mini stuns. It is worse than knights can do with kegging.
Structures are melted, builders are melted, and people are left in awkward corners because there are more arrow stuns and arrow hails than there are chances to "uber double slash arrow kills".

 

oh man if only someone made a server that was supposed to be balanced and fun, kinda like classic was towards the end

if only someone would do that

 

Tediousness and difficulty are not the same thing, though I do like this idea.

 

@Boea
I'll address each of your arguments separately, shall I? This will be pretty sizeable, so I'll spoiler it, too:

Spoiler

 

I am any good, and I don't need bombs most of the time; majority of times, bombs are most useful for non-combat purposes in my experiences.

As far as the slash in concerned, you still over estimate the power of the slash.
Its range does increases with speed, but that is inconsequential to the mobility of an archer. Especially an archer that understands fencing (a strange concept from the 800's), that spamming arrows is not the ideal way to go about attacking knights, and in fact counter-intuitive, because it drives them to doing things you don't like.

Given that, I think overcharge, more or less easy mode by means of trying the dumb method hard enough, (and its dependents: damage reduction, health reduction, and arrow slashing) are unnecessary. (And trust me, I don't like arrow slashing as much as you do, but it keeps overcharge in check. Chasing people across the map to have them camp is no picnic , without this n-tuple of stupidity, archer-knights would be more stationary)
Overcharge is most effective with special arrows due to how effectively an opportunist can set up shop and simply ruin days from afar. Yes kegs have that sort of power too, but you forget that taxiing kegs has no "safe/sure method", bomb hails do, and it happens all too commonly.

And I am not one of those people that say an archer should be a bottom bitch to the other classes, like builders, they should be able to counter each other offensively, or defensively.
Builders end up being the worst off because they have no inherent defense, and their main abilities require them to march through archer and knight hails without any practical modes of defense... they come off as neuter to the impotence of Archers. And their main abilities are easily negated by a stray hail, or keg from some speedster.

 

Overcharge is bad with fire or bomb arrows. You only need one fire arrow to cause a fire and one bomb arrow to break a wall(unless its thick). There is no need to waste arrows.

 

action

 

water arrows and fire arrows should yield only 1 arrow per buy. As it is water arrows are 20 coins (which is nothing. they are essentially bombs to knights) and they can completely determine the outcome of a knight battle. if you fuck up you could have another 5 attempts to do right.

as far as knights the only major issue i have is with continual shield stunning. as much as i love and appreciate bomb jumping and wall climbing, reducing their effectiveness might be the only way to give builders more of an edge.