Problems List for Tweaking Combat

Everyone has been complaining about problems with combat and Geti keeps on saying the current reports are not helpful for tweaking combat. We all keep on talking about the general problems but I have not found a thread that pinpoints exactly what is wrong. We all know there is a problem with combat. We all need to talk about it begin to provide constructive criticism as to what we all believe to be wrong with combat. Below is a list from my last play through that I believed to be wrong with combat.

Important: When posting your lists or criticisms please post the build number you are reporting about

(Build 368)
Archers

• Arrows sometimes do no damage (I rained like fifty arrows down a ladder where guys were climbing and none of them hit. I charged my arrows and they didn't hit. Just flew right through them )
• Arrows go through doors
• Arrows go through shields

Knights

• Slashing goes through doors
• Slashing hits everything at a full 180 degree angle even if you are behind stone
• Shielding only works after you shield after an attack (so its a jab-fest and turtle-party now instead of shielding exactly at the right moment to stop people's attacks)
• Jabs are able to reach you super far away if you are lagging

Builders

• Anti grief auto-turns on sometimes (stuff just doesnt want to fall sometimes...)
• Buildings with background and drawbridge tiles auto generate dirt background making building invincible.

Spikes

• Spikes sometimes do no damage (I fell on some spikes and they did nothing. I jumped up and down directly upon them and they did nothing)
• Spikes sometimes do damage when not facing you (spikes were facing up, I hit the side of the wall where no spikes were jutting out... I died)

Items

• The white arrow (if it is to continue to be implemented) needs to move full circle. Currently it jerks either left or right and makes the whole screen jolt.

Corpses

• Corpses don't damage people.
• Corpses don't do anything except make combat a clunky atm.
• Corpses when they are on top of you make movement impossible until the corpses somehow miraculously fall off of you.

Falling

• Ladders don't catch falls
• Trees don't catch falls
• Nothing catches falls
• When falling on someone's head you still permastun

 

Well some of this is in mantis but i guess a thread wouldnt hurt :p

That is reported and devs are working on it.Problem is that drawbridges stop arrow in servers but sprites keep flying making false arrows which dont do anything.

Please report at https://bugs.kag2d.com/my_view_page.phpalso if you can make a vid so devs can easly reproduce it.

Im afraid thats lag. No known cure in any online game. Maybe the netcode can reduce it but this will probebly always be present.

Realy? Well in that case report to mantis please.Could it be that you jumped in from <2 blocks

Errr... what?

Corpses are supposed to stund people but not damage them. This is due to corpses being overpowered in 353. And do you think that a falling corpse will kill a person or stund him.

Could you report bridges and trees on : https://bugs.kag2d.com/my_view_page.php please. That way devs can look on 1 spot while bug fixing.

 

370 knights:

• Clashing is a very lag-prone feature. Even in unlaggy conditions it makes knight combat too much jab-encouraging, instead of a well-timed slash. Good timing with shield + jab combos has been unnecessary and a stupid thing to do from the day clashing got implemented. If you remove it, I will commit myself to you.
• No hits register from the angle of 80 to 60 degrees.
• Shield bashing shouldn't be so random. Sometimes it pushes enemy away, sometimes it does nothing. Sometimes it kills 3-hearted enemies on tiny falls. Shield bashing should imo push the victim away for 5 tiles, and stun for one second. No stuns should stack though.
• Slashes very often don't register at all. At least half of the slashes don't. It's caused by many different bugs I think, of course by lag too though, but at one point it wasn't this bad.
• Slashes still clash with jabs at times.
• Jabs go through shields. Yet another thing that encourages just going jab-spamming. "Who'll have the most luck?"
• Jabs don't often register right next to the enemy when running away, but will register slightly above him (not in the angle of invicibility). This is probably caused by hitboxes being in a wrong position due to lag.
• Jabs sometimes instakill, no matter how much health the enemy has.
• Weird permastuns when falling on enemy
• Collidion with enemies is bad. Especially with Zombies; You'll barely be able to move when you're next to one or on one. Very frustrating.

370 archers:

• Arrows go through doors.
• Arrows go through shields.
• Arrows sometimes do no damage at all.
• The lowest arrow charge should do only 0,5 hearts damage and not increase by velocity.
• Getting a full charged shot shouldn't stun the enemy, only have a little knockback and shield drop.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

Falling:

• stomping hurts both the stomper and the stomped

General:

• doors are incredibly lagged. I constantly see people going and attacking through half open door and even going through just placed doors. Terrible when your building is based mainly on insane timings.
• I believe that door problems are cause of arrow and slash problems too.

 

I already reported the one's you told me to put onto Mantis straight to Geti in the Tester forums. I started this thread mainly because everyone kept on complaining about combat but no one compiled a definitive list of what they felt was wrong.

 

I know, but my knowledge doesn't change fact that it sucks.

 

Play kags now its impossible,

the last patch have a lot combats bug, like :

* Normal hit dont cancel enemy slash and sometimes dont make damage in enemy ( i need hit archer 4 times to kill it),

*My slash don´t works , if try kill some guy with 30 ping less than me dont make damage..... ( shield bash dont exist in my world in this last patch... normal ping 166)

* If i hit dirty ground or slashing in the ground i die...same if i falling 2 squares...( like pinball )

Now i just can kill others with bombs..or spamming arrows with archer, i play kag since december and i never seen that....

In the firsts patchs had more competitive now are ping killer game... guys with best ping are imortals...

Kags now is unplayble for me. :(

 

Sigh. Well I might as well add my two cents as well. Just as a pre-rant warning, I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to how to program shit and what not. The terminology might be wrong, but I hope that I can get my opinions across without making people with actual tech knowledge face palm.

err woops accidently posted it early, editing now

Knights:

1: Shields feel like paper. You can chalk it up to lag all you want, but the difference between builds is drastic in how shields react. Again, most of it probably is lag, but the difference is that in previous builds this was not present.
Currently you can hit a person through their shield and vice versa. It happens in nearly EVERY fight. This is especially evident with jabs, as shielding is one of the mainstays in jab fights. Nearly each fight with each knight is different and suspect to their individual flavor of lag. As a result, the only thing that truly works in knight combat is slashes because shields play a much, much smaller role in how a fight plays out.
-As a symptom of this, counter attacks (where when you shield and jab immediately after) are extremely broken.

2: Slashes are broken as fuck. ALright, that's an over exaggeration. Slashes work great in the present build. The main problem comes in the form of every once in a while for entirely inexplicable reasons, slashes do not deal damage. I genuinely cannot find any related factor in the situations in which they do not work. Honestly this seems very much related to the arrow bug. What's even worse is that in situations in which your slashes don't work, you can actually double slash which is evidence that it is registering , just not dealing damage!
- As an addendum, slashes currently allow you to jump 4 tiles instead of just 3 (2?). It seems like their might either be a little bit of a double jump thing going on or it just increases your speed to launch you vertically. I dunno.
EDIT: Another addendum, slashes do indeed increase fall damage by a pretty drastic amount similar to the previous builds in which you are able to essentially insta-kill or almost insta-kill enemys you were able to slash from above (which was a good thing). The problem is that it deals all that extra damage to you.
- Another one is slashes are still able to send you flying off another player if they don't get hit by your slash. This seems to happen more when you're slashing down at a player and you essentially over-reach him with your slash. Your character will collide with the top of his hitbox and slide you off with the momentum of your slash, usually sending you into a wall and insta killing you.

3: Vertical hitboxes are broken. Me and strathos and a few other dudes actually tested this. What seems to be the issue is that, in a situation like:






The red player cannot slash the blue player (represented by flags) as the blue player is one tile apart from reds slash hitbox. HOWEVER, if the red player moves even slightly onto the ladder, his hitbox is quite literally extended to where it's as if he's on top of the ladder to begin with. This makes him able to slash the blue player and vice-versa. This also works with jabbing as well. In other words, hitboxes of both players and their hits are extended when they slightly occupy a tile that's diagonal in relation to an enemy! This is a major, major deal and effects quite a lot of fights.

The extent of this bug? I don't know. I also tested it when the red player of this example was on top of a trap bridge. His hitbox wasn't extended when he poked his head out! It could work on differing heights and classes as well, but we only tested it with 2 knights! It might work on natural tiles and doors, but again, I don't know.

4: Bombs are super, duper fucked. They are desyncing like crazy, far, far far more than in previous builds. I will repeat this again; most of it probably is lag, but the difference is that in previous builds this was not present. Disagree if you wish, I understand. However, I almost exclusively play on the mole server with a 35 MBPS connection. The difference between the bombs in the recent builds and this one has been drastic, to say the least. No real explicable reason, they just do ;(

5: Shield bashing. Shield bashing in conjunction with stuns made knight combat quite literally a chess game. It worked, it was beautiful.

shield bashes desynced an assload and insta-killed people the last 3 builds since you introduced corpses, so your reaction was to remove shield bashes entirely. The ramifications on combat are absolutely game-breaking for me. What in the fuck. This is, to me, the biggest reaffirmation of most of it probably is lag, but the difference is that in previous builds this was not present.

In a game with an extremely complex system of wall damage, corpses and just general physics, a single tweak on an area can have a huge impact on the entire game. To the naked eye these minor tweaks and their translation in-game might seem like "lag", but through the last few patches it's pretty evident that lag isn't the issue. The results are pretty bad for the game if you ask me. However, instead of fixing the underlying problem you just removed an integral part of combat that added a layer of complexity that I haven't seen in a game for years.

Now I can't read your mind and I don't know your intentions or your plans with regards to shield bashing. I don't know if you know how to fix it or even plan on fixing it. I also know you're a two man team. I'm just pointing it out, the more complex the game becomes, the more additions you add (corpses, zombies) the more shit gets thrown in that ends up having unintended repercussions on combat.

As for what causes the insta-killing and desyncing BS on shield bashes since the corpse patch? Well, I might as well throw in again that I am no professional and have zero experience with anything tech that's related to the game. That said, I believe that there was a fundamental change to hitboxes with the patch that introduces corpses and that collision is now entirely fubar'd. This seems to be related with a few additional bugs.


6: For one, if you noticed, perma-stuns are STILL in the game. After dicking around for a while last night, it seems like on the top of player's hitboxes there's a semi-circle that pushes players off that wasn't present before. Alright that's a neat little fix for it, but the problem is that when you're being pushed, you're still stunned. If you're getting pushed off a player and collide with anything else in the direction you're being pushed, be it another player's hitbox, a wall, a boulder etc etc you're perma-stunned. What makes this a good bit less obvious is that knights can now shield out of it instead of being stuck forever in addition to shielding up as a knight entirely removing the semi-circle push thingy (which removes the opportunity for a perma-stun)
-Another thing semi-related, and one that also makes me think a lot of these issues might be collision/hitbox related, is that when a player is pushing to occupy another tile that's already occupied, the player seems to spaz outt and end up possibly getting pushed half-way into the occupied tile entirely! It's hard to put into words, but the best example is when a knight tries to smash a person in a 2x2 tunnel. You can see the player getting smashed spaz out and end up half in the floor below and half where he should be. This is a phenomenon that is pretty common, and it was, in my estimation at least, the main contributor to the insta-death when you touch a wall issue that was present in the last few patches. This seems to be most related to the shield bashing phenomenon where if two players shield bash another they wig the fuck out and go flying through the air like mad men.

EDIT: Seperated the two classes because I doubt anyone would even take another glance at this wall of text

 

I don't really understand why we cant throw stuff directly down? :< we can throw items every single direction but down.

 

Sorry for seeming like an ass, I'm a bit more crass than most people and I don't mean to come off as one. I really, really love KAG and appreciate your work else I wouldn't spend and hour typing massive walls of text But I'm not happy with shield bashes removal. And yes, in the current build it IS removed. As in, there is quite literally no stun on a shield and there is literally no push with a shield. The only thing it really does is give another player priority to move another, like if I'm shielding and a dude isn't and we walk towards each other I'll move him. That's seriously all it does in this build. I hope you'll go play a game for a few minutes and test it, because I haven't seen it since 370 and I explicitly tested for it last night. The ramifications for this on knight combat are massive and turn knight combat into a shit show of slashes and jab spam. As far as tweaking it based on player feedback, that's fine and all, but it was balanced pre-353 and only borked because it was so damn bugged in 353-370. The way shield bashing worked pre-353 was near perfect, with stuns being complex and balanced and hardly subject to lag at all.

As far as the diagonal hits around corners, well, the bug IS present in this build. If that's what you call the phenomenon I described above then it certainly is. If I can get a server and a test subject I'll make a video. Hell, I'll make a video of every bug I know of if you want. I know for certain, however, that that bug is present

And on the last point, collision might not be what causes what I'm describing, but there seems to be an issue regardless. I have no idea what causes it, but if collision hasn't changed in the last few engines then I really don't have a clue. Whatever changed, it seems to have brought along a few undesirable bugs that seem somewhat related to each other just by their nature. Sadly, I can't pin-point a particular engine or build as I don't know the intricacies of the changes, All I know is that since 353 it seems like a lot of issues sprouted up with how players interact with occupied tiles.

Again, I could be completely wrong. It's just the observations of a single dude with a lot of spare time to play kag ;p

 

Another bug I noticed since the latest build came in: I sometimes fall 2 or 3 blocks down (the heigt of a character) and I immediatly lose all my 3 hearts and die! It probably has to do with corners and stuff, but it happened 3 times already now.

 

A glitch I noticed here:

When the player (indicated by the blue flag) slides down the wall, as soon as he touches the spikes, he gets instakilled. I think this is because the spikes are also on the corner, aswell as the ground. So when he leans against the wall, he's actually leaning against the spikes, which hurts him some. However, he doesn't get knocked back. Therefore, he takes damage without any time interval in between "hits".

 

That might be the explanation for what I pointed out.

 

That's not true I think. I believe that parachuting actually did more damage to a guy bomb jumping from my experiences. What parachuting did was remove the ability of a bomb jumper to go super duper crazy far and land on top of a tower. If you hit a wall you'd get bounced off and probably end up dead anyways instead of land safely against it and slide down as you're saying (that never happened). If you parachute and land on the ground you're more than likely gonna die. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but I think it's because a parachuting bomb jumper spends far more time in the air. I'm not really familiar with the fall damage formula, so I dunno.

If it was the devs intentions to nerf a bomb jumps "safety", then they shouldn't have looked at parachutes. As it stands all it really did was make it so that you can't go as far, which is good I guess. If they were trying to nerf a bomb jumps accuracy, then they probably shouldn't have looked at parachutes either because between lag and the absurd speed a parachuting bomb jumper had it was extremely suspect to porting and hardly accurate in the slightest when compared to a standard bomb jump.
</br>--- merged: Apr 29, 2012 9:27 PM ---</br>



MMMM stupid merges, here's my list for builders:


Builders/Siege

I don't play builders very often, but I have noticed a few things that are a bit odd.

1: At times you're able to build on top of other players. Yea, it's probably just lag at the end of the day, but I'm sure that there has to be a fix for this. I've seen it both ways, too, as the builder and the guy getting built on. It usually has to do with the builder running from a dude and trying to place a tile to save his ass. It'll basically land on the chasing player and will then squeeze him through to the other side.

2: I'm not a spike master, but what I have noticed is that spikes are little bit fubar'd in general. In what seems to be in relation to the "collision" problem (which you mentioned isn't collision in a post right below), if you walk/slide into a spike on a wall, you'll get an absurd amount of damage which usually instantly kills you. It's like as if you're registered walking into it 10 times in a second. This, again, is in my eyes some sort of problem with how occupied tiles function, but I dunno. Also, spikes bordering on a wall have the same effect, I.E.:




Vid for the crazy spikes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxHB2rNWL4g

Another one: If you're jumping up a notched wall such as:



It will deal damage to you even though the spike isn't oriented in your direction

3: Backwalls are a bit screwy. I'll compile a little list of minor bugs here I guess.

1:They can be repaired for free (not sure if it's a bug?)

-As far as bridges are concerned, they do a whole lot of different things with backwalls

2: Backwalls can be placed behind bridges for free

3: When you create a bridge supported by a solid tile (as in, a tile that supports you, such as stone, other bridges, doors etc) with a backwall behind it, it'll leave a dirt wall when it is destroyed. The backwall can either be present on construction of the bridge or it can be placed after the bridge. If you then place a backwall on the dirtwall and destroy it, the dirt wall will be destroyed too. The caveat to this being that if there is another backwall next to the backwalled-bridge when you destroy the bridge, there will be no dirt tile left behind. In addition, however, you won't get refunded 10 wood for the bridges destruction, instead you will lose 1 stone and 1 coin instead of gaining 10 wood and losing 2 coins. Backwalled bridges don't count as straight up backwalls with regards to this, so essentially you can make a chain of backwalled bridges for a chain of straight up dirt.

4. Also related, spikes placed on backwalls cannot be destroyed for stone, instead you lose 2 stone and 2 . Same goes for workshop pieces (except you lose 1 coin), but not ladders.

5. Placing anything that overlaps on a partially broken backwall will repair it (it'll repair for free, too). Ladders, workshop pieces, bridges, spikes, they all work.

6. You can't place a ladder/bridge on a damaged backwall unless there is a tile below it that can support it ASIDE from a backwall. For example:

- tile 3
- tile 2
- tile 1


If tile 3 is damaged, you cannot place a ladder or bridge on it unless there is something that can support a ladder or bridge on tile 2. If you have a stone/door/bridge on tile 2, you can place either on tile 3. If you have a stone/door/bridge/ladder on tile 2, you can place a ladder on tile 3. Adding to that, you can reverse tiles 2 and tiles 3 for this example and the same phenomenon will happen. The same thing can happen laterally as well. The damage level on tile 1 does not matter at all. Funny enough, you can place a workshop piece or spike on any damaged tile with or without support.

Kouji reminded me of another:
7:

8: it's also impossible to repair team bridges on backwalls using the bridge as the repairing block. You can only use backwalls.

4: I have a video I'ma upload that shows a bug with how the ladder "support" system works. It's a bit screwy to favor a building on the left which prevents you from supporting ladders on the right.

Here we go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cizdbsi2L48&

5: Catas have a few bugs that go along with em, so here's another list

1. Sometimes catas can be used when they reach 0 HP, and even well, well afterwards. If anyone could clarify how this happens that'd be cool.

2. Sometimes your screen will literally become centered on the cata instead of your character which makes it so that you can't really do much until you die, as the cata and the immediate area is all you can see. I can't really say what causes this, but I suspect it has to do with when somebody else loads up a cata with and item. I've never seen it happen when I'm using a cata alone, though.

3. Catas can be picked up when charged. Once dropped they will throw the rocks depending on how much charge they have.

4. Catas can be hit while you're carrying them by your teammates, specifically knights/builders. If it's not a bug it's very annoying. Archers also deal their customary extra friendly fire damage to catas. Also very annoying.

5. When you drop a cata it goes forward a decent ways, this is very annoying when trying to make a cata ledge, as a cata will often just fall off :(

6. The really big one is that catas (like outposts!) can get "stuck" so to speak. Sometimes when you drop one you're not able to interact with it until you pick it up, but the trick is that it can get stuck up on ledges or ladders or it can just fall off ledges! If you're unable to interact with the cata via the menu system in the proximity of where the cata is "stuck", the cata is essentially worthless.

7. Catas, like anything that clips into objects when you carry them (flags, outposts etc) can be dropped into occupied tiles which sends them into the object. If the object is more than a couple tiles it will literally float all the way up until it finds ground to sit on. This can allow people to shoot catas through walls!

Tested this for a little while today, here's a vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa8sQ0riHc&

Edit for new stuff

8. Cata stone often times doesn't deal damage to players. I've seen players take 2-3 rocks to the face and walk away like bosses and I've seen the opposite happen as well.

9. Catas one shot archers with a single stone, but not builders (intended)

10. Catas have trouble firing kegs. Kegs also need to be lit before entering catas, which makes it even worse because when a keg decides it isn't gonna fire people have to scramble to throw the keg away from the cata/tower.

Save, posting more soon!

 

Also if you put a backwall over a broken bridge it turns blue. I haven't tried it recently but last build it worked like that. Even if I was on red team.

 

Weird, the build before this one I could change it blue as a red builder :p reverse traps were fun