Cooldown on Jabs

Jabspam. You've seen it. You've used it. You know that it is too effective for taking no skill. The reason it should be nerfed is that this game has skill, but when there are mechanics that undermine that skill it takes away from the game. So Jabs are a nice feature that throw a paper into the slash/double slash rock scissors combo that knight combat is. However jabs at the moment are plagued by spamming. Why is this a bad thing you ask? With slash spam there is space/time in between slashes that allow for dodging, maneuvering to different position, to slip in a jab, or land a slash first. With jabs all that exists is rapidly clicking to try and slip through latency, with shield alteration.

Nearly all the dedicated skilled knights that play this game agree that something needs to be done about jabs. What I suggest is that there be a "cooldown" on jabs. When a knight jabs four times within one second of each other the knight is stunned. This isn't a set in stone number open for balance and tweaking.

 

I agree with your premise. Jab spamming is too effective and too easy. I know this is a subjective statement, but it is a sentiment that is shared by what seems like pretty much everyone knowledgeable enough to hold an opinion on it.

I know its not nearly as easy to put in as a simple delay, but what about the inclusion of a stamina bar that refills pretty fast, but all the knight actions subtract from it, including shielding, slashing, shield surfing, shield gliding, etc. You could then use this new stamina value to enforce certain behavior by adjusting the stamina costs of these various moves based on how badly you want to discourage them. So, jabbing could cost a lot of stamina, while slashing does not. Shield camping could get increasingly costly if you wanted to discourage that, and so on.

I don't necessarily think a stamina bar is the best thing ever, I was just throwing it out there as an outside the box solution. I feel it is important to make sure that the game's interface makes it obvious why you can't do something that it seems like you should be able to do. I think KAG falls down on that in a lot of areas, so its worth mentioning here. If you are trying to jab spam, and are on a cooldown, or stamina outage, or whatever, there should be some sort of visual cue.

 

What if the time between each jab got raised for every jab you do in succession. For example: Jab.Jab..Jab...Jab.... etc. I am really bad at explaining things but I hope that makes sense

 

I do understand you. You're saying that you want each jab to happen incrementally slower than the last, until the person stops jabbing for some pre-determined period of time, which resets the delay to zero. That could certainly work, but I think it would be difficult to visually represent that in a way that makes sense as to why that is happening, particularly to a new user.

Sometimes I try to look at this game from a new user's perspective, and am appalled at how arcane it is. There are just TONS of undocumented features, quirky interactions, counter-intuitive best practices, arcane game-mechanics lore, and no tutorials to mitigate the mess. We don't see them because we are veterans, but this game is an absolute pain in the ass to pick up for a newbie. This could all be eliminated by making events more obvious as to why they happened the way they did, including this. If something can't be graphically represented in an intuitive manner, then reworking it so that it can be should be considered.

 

You shrug off dealing with jabs as a knight, but also take into account archer and builders interaction with them, if they are annoying to a knight, just think how they are to builders and archers who don't have a shield.

 

Out of curiosity @kodysch did you get this idea from:

Spoiler: Here?

I'm all in for a cooldown, maybe only able to jab a few times then it regenerates?
You know along with slowing the speed between jabs as well.

 

It's been in the mumble conversation for a while, but yeah that's what motivated me to post.

 

Lol I was the one who recommended the half heart jabs to begin with. Oodle steals ideas. Jk I'd much rather have this being seriously discussed. I hate jabs

 

I think that having shield do way more stun to jab would work fine. It would be easy to implement. Shield becomes hard counter to jab. Rock-paper-scissors mentality reinforced.

 

The only thing I'm afraid of with that is how quickly a player can shield. If someone has one heart and they know they'll most likely get jabbed all they will do is shield when the person gets to close (The enemy would think that they're safe to go in for a jab). I don't think people would have that fast of a reaction because the shield comes up instantly.

 

I do believe this is some form of solution, but I'd rather just see the angle of the jab decreased and shields fixed so that they actually work

 

My issue with jabs isn't that it's somewhat effective and it lacks skill and better players can't rek with impunity, but rather that i think it's actually detrimental to the KAG community. What I mean is this: Let's say you're a new player, you pick up KAG, do the tutorial (or not), and you join a game. Unsure what the best course of action is, you jab spam, clicking over and over because it's easy and it works. Now, jab spamming doesn't have too high of a skill ceiling, so there's a good chance you'll simply stagnate your own playing style, and you won't be able to get much better, causing you to eventually stop playing. This is discounting the pretty sizable amount of insults players lob at jab spammers, which are, 95% of the time, unaccompanied by "do this, it's better". From a jab spammer's perspective, KAG is a pretty hostile place.
Even if you do decide to make the change, and you tentatively enter the world of slashing, there's still quite a few places where jab spamming can cause you to uninstall. Let's say you're a new knight, you do the tut, maybe you have a more experienced friend who guides you away from jab spamming. Even then, jab spammers can cause new knights a lot of trouble. If you're not sure how to navigate slashing and shielding, a jab spammer is a real pain in the ass.
tldr: jab spamming makes new players stop playing.
I think Swine's idea of slowing down jabs as you use more would fix this, but Hierbo is right that it would fall under the umbrella of difficult to visually represent that a lot of features do.
However, I think that both of these problems would be better solved by better tutorials and more incentive to complete tutorials. If the new singleplayer build included tutorials on how to shield, slash, jab, etc correctly, and completing all the tutorials unlocked a head or something, it would solve a lot of problems and make KAG a generally more accessible game.

 

Personally I like a longer stun time on jabs, especially with those laggy shite. Jab Spam itself isn't bad, but when it's accompanied with 200ping, it becomes unstoppable.

Also, fix shields.

 

I've definitely got a minority opinion here but I don't think jabspam is a problem at all. A skilled knight can destroy a jabspamming noob 95% of the time.

Like guys? Have you pressed your right mouse button? Just shield bash and back out of jab range.

 

i dont think the problem lies in good players getting jab spammed, but in noobs jab spamming because it's easy and not getting better. my opinion

 

They do know how to use a shield. The thing is, most of the time, it doesn't stun the jabspammer.