Next Build Changes (most likely 1570something)

Hey guys and girls,

Figured the forums is the best place for a discussion about these sort of changes.

As you know, most of our time is going to trench run at the moment. We'll start with more regular news about that as soon as we can, we've just had weeks of at least one member of the team being away on leave or sick and progress has been slow, so have kept most of the news and previews over on twitter. We'll try to aim for weekly devlogs as we come up to the initial online release; there's a lot of testing and fixing to be done still but we're looking forward to sharing!

However, work on KAG is still being done, and the noise on the forums is not falling on deaf ears.

The following changes are currently slated for the next build:

• Trap block changes reversed
  While I still personally think that (with bugfixes to stop falling through when you weren't pressing anything) the current trap blocks are much more team friendly, the number of complaints we've received is enough for a revert to be the simplest option at the moment.
  A real discussion about this needs to take place though and some solution to the issues with trap blocks found; at this point I'd rather remove them forever than leave them as they were for very long.
  Note: A few of you might find "trap sharking" fun, the rest of us don't. A few of you might think the idea of punishing that "really creative" builder for building a trap is worthwhile, but I'd encourage you to keep that in competitive; the majority of the game is played in the public, fairly casual sphere. "Press E to open" is not going to happen either. I welcome your feedback on where you think our efforts would be best directed.
  
• Bomb Radius Reduced
  I've reduced the bomb radius to 48px from 64. This amounts to a two-tile range reduction in all directions. Most of the "carry knights" I've seen talking about bombs thankfully seem to think this is a good change and every single "scumbag archer" is of course in favour of knight-nerfs ;^) This should also give builders a little more forward survivability in lieu of canopies being absent. The change has been tested to some extent as part of the "rebalance" mod, and moves bombs from more of an area denial/carpet bombing role to a more precise "grenade" role.
  
• Damage to Boulders Reduced
  Damage from knight's swords and archer's arrows is reduced by 50% on boulders. This is in response to many complaints about the previous boulder damage reduction - they tend to smash before you can get anything done with them. This lets them survive a full 3 slashes, 6 jabs, and 6 full charge arrows - still very manageable to clear, but doesn't vanish in one double slash. We'll look into a more long-term solution if keeping them viable is important to people, but we feel that giving them much more attention is a waste of time currently.

Let us know what you think about these changes, if you think any require more attention is needed or any more small quality of life fixes you'd like to see. Keep in mind that our time is limited and any big changes would push a patch timing well outside of acceptable ranges, and so wont be considered for the next build.

Cheers,
Max

 

Though I understand peoples dislike for the trap block changes. Coming back to kag after about a month and playing with the new trap blocks already feels a lot better. I almost feel likes a loud majority. As for the other changes I'm pretty excited for them. Can we also get the corpse blocking movement removed; I already have a fix for it! :D

 

Of course, we're talking about KAG here; the bugs with falling through when you're not pressing anything aren't trivial to fix though as far as I can see so I'm happy to sit on the old version rather than something that works ok 80% of the time and inconsistently the rest (rather than something that's at least consistently sub-par).

Sure, send the files and I'll make sure the diffs are sensible.

There is a spectator font colour, what would you like to see done with it?

This should be a hint to you that the content following could go somewhere else :) while we're here though, the sand has been there for quite a while. MM tried and failed to implement it and we didn't remove it from the files. Could probably be done simply enough in a script tbh, the idea was to have a non-removable, construction-blocking block that would "cave in", and that you could use to enforce beaches beside water (rather than your usual clean-shaven castle cliffs)

 

The spec color (black) makes it impossible to see against system msgs and is disregarded mostly. Makes admiring harder as you have to go into the opposite team or something just to be heard.

Then from a clan leaders perspective when your trying to train your clan in spec.... Makes it impossible, and just to be heard I have to use caps, every time.... And most often then not no one listens anyway.

@RadioActive

A new color would be best (pre sure this is what your referring to), something that isn't mistaken for system msgs etc. Gonna leave it there, let someone else suggest the color.... ( my choices seem a tad girly... Pink and purple.... Dunno if anyone would agree with me there).

 

Just fyi heres the thread with discussion on bomb radius, it's scattered through out. https://forum.kag2d.com/threads/rebalance-mod-discussion.23226/page-5#post-339406 But it was tested at 32, 48, 56 when had the server. We tested with about 8-12 people a certain times. And a had a good week of testing.