Remove Boulder Drilling [984]

Kouji, this is not a duplicate. The "nerf boulders" thread was vague, unspecific, and requested that boulders in general be made weaker, I am asking for a certain aspect to be removed. They are not the same thing.

Please, remove the feature by which boulders can be used to destroy a set of stone doors in a fraction of a second when dropped/thrown from just a short distance away. I firmly believe this to be a glitch, however, Contrary believes it to be an intended feature, so I am putting it under suggestions, instead of reports.

This "feature" allows a single player to destroy entire hallways filled with door spam in a matter of seconds, by throwing a boulder at the doors from just a block away, with no real momentum. This effectively allows a single player to destroy in seconds what may have taken a multitude of builders minutes to create, with a single boulder which cost them a fraction of what the tens of stone doors cost. Thus, a single archer can grapple up to an enemy's base, wait for them to all leave and progress towards his base, pull out his boulder, cap their hall and win the game just seconds later, within a single minute of build time ending.

Stone doors can be broken instantly by this tactic regardless of their orientation, making any defenses that a team has completely useless against someone abusing this feature, unless they just completely encase themselves in stone, which wouldn't allow them to, you know, leave their hall.

There is no real way to defend against this tactic either, as oftentimes going through the doors about to be destroyed will place one in a position to get insta-killed by having a boulder thrown at them, and if you go around your base to get the drop on your foe, he will have already broken through all of your doors and be in your hall, that is literally how fast it is.

This "boulder drilling" allows a single player to break through tons of doors which cost way more stone than the boulder in no time at all, effectively rendering a team's entire defensive structure completely useless. If someone on the other team knows how to abuse this, then you literally might as well not build anything at all. It is ridiculously unfair and over powered, and it has completely ruined all of the games that I have played where someone used it.

It takes all of the fun out of kag for the team it is being used on, as all of their hard work building defenses is made completely useless, and they are forced to keep someone in their base at all times, lest a single archer grapple past the rushers, as well as for the team which has an abuser using it, because they don't get to play out a real game, as a single person grapples past the fighting zone and ends the game before it really begins.

In addition, regardless of Contrary's beliefs, I do believe this to be a bug in the game, not an intended feature, as when dropping a boulder from much, much higher heights than 1 block, giving it much, much more momentum, not only does the boulder do NO damage to the doors, it also ends up breaking a lot of the time, as shown here:

Spoiler: Boulder Does No Damage To Doors When It Has MORE Momentum

yet when it has practically no momentum, and is thrown from only a block away, it saws doors apart.

I am unable to replicate this feature, but I recall people posting in other threads giving guides on how to use it, and there are a good deal of people who can and will abuse it to ruin game after game on a server. Thus, seeing as how it's incredibly unfair, and illogical, I request to have it removed as soon as possible, so that boulders thrown from short distances will no longer be able to destroy doors.

P.S. If this IS considered to be a glitch, please, someone tell baddie contrary, so that next time when someone is abusing it game after game, he bans them, rather than sitting there telling people that it's a fair feature to exploit.

//edit from Kouji: You should tell that to Galen or Unnamed, I personally don't really care.
//EDIT: I don't really mind. ~Galen
//EDIT: Seems good to me ~UP

 

Alpaca, you missed something very important in your testing. You can't break your own team's doors with a boulder! Thus, testing this in sandbox is impossible. Boulders do in fact cause damage with momentum.

That said, I agree they shouldn't rek doors at point blank range. It's absolutely ridiculous.

 

I guess periodic damage (repeated hitting from a boulder on a door) would be fine, but the insta breaks just don't seem right. I mean I guess a giant stone ball hitting a wooden door and breaking it instantly would make sense. But it should at least take some time for a stone door.

 

You should still be required to have at least a 1 block distance away to do any damage. Pressing a rock against a door should not give the rock momentum. lol.

This would also make it harder to boulderbash a sky-door, because grapplers would be too close.

 

Muscle wizard would be sad if we can't smash doors with boulders using brute force D:

 

Yeah, I was afraid that that might have been the case, but I figured it wasn't because boulders are a completely team neutral object XD . Plus you can tk with them.

 

Okay, I need to say this as some people don't seem to get it.









This entryway will stop Boulder-dashers dead in there tracks, a boulder carrying Knight or Archer will never breach this entryway alone.

How about before you start complaining about something, look for an In-game solution to your problem. You don't want Boulders ruining your halls? build these on either side and they won't.

 

An archer with a boulder could get through that with hardly a moment of delay... All that stops is knights, and they're not the real problem when it comes to boulders.

 

Umm no, there is not enough room for the archer to through the boulder at the-

You may be viewing it backwards.

the spiked hall way is the entry into the base not the elevated doors.

 

The spikes are a deterrent but the point is the same, if there is not more then a 1 block between you and the door the Boulder won't break it.

meaning it would require at least two bombs, which neither your archer nor a boulder carrying knight can have on them. this design will keep them out, the spike are just there to hurt the risk takers.

 

To be sure, that is a tactic that appears like it would work to deter boulder drilling.

That said, just because there are ways to thwart it with existing in-game tactics does not mean that everything's cool. Right off the bat, I see that entryway and think "Wow, that's an awful lot of stone defenses to stop one paltry boulder."

The boulder drilling problem is mainly that it is very powerful at very little cost. Personally, I think it should be removed outright, but a number of lesser tweaks could work, too. For example, making the boulder not fit in inventory would work fine, as would prohibiting boulder throwing, as with the keg.

 

Yeah... that entrance in that exact design would cost 500 stone, not counting backwall.

500 stone to stop something that costs 30-35 stone depending on the gamemode.

If you could deal with suffering the movement penalty, and carried two bombs, you could go over the little death hallway and bomb through the side, using the boulder to take out the second set of doors.

Edit: Or if the base is designed poorly, you could grapple/wall float to the other side and boulder through the likely weaker doors, unless it has none, or you wanna spend another 500 stone making the entrances symmetrical.

People usually tend to be lazy on doors that aren't facing the enemy side of the map, though.

 

I see your point and raise you this.






Cost= 200 stone, placed under hall and block side doors. +40 stone.

No Boulder is breaking this and its cost effective, though a little more situational.
The point remains that the Boulder, while it may seem overpowered to some, is actually just as strong as anything else available to units.

it breaks in three seconds under attack from a pick. 2-4 seconds under attack from a sword.

While it may seem extreme to doors, think about what it compares too.

The drill; more expensive, but it'll rip through anything bar bedrock quickly, if a knight is skilled enough to lug a boulder across the field it means he'd be able to take a drill for sure.

Bombs; enables bomb jumping, stone block destruction, slaughter of archers and builders.

Water bombs, basically, a cheap way to win any fight.

Boulder, good against doors and can instakill in a fight, but incredibly weak to attacks.

now heres something interesting.

the boulder costs 30-35 stone, blocking of doors with stone blocks when you see a boulder knight/archer coming costs 20.

that said the archer could be sneky and get around without being noticed.

What I'm trying to say; the Boulder is meant to be used in this manner, its just another one of those things you've gotta watch out for, like bomb or fire arrows, kegs and whatnot.

 

dark, first off, that new more cost efficient design is going to be a pain in the ass for the knights who have to defend it, because you aren't going to be able to stomp invaders, taking away a huge tactical advantage that you should ALWAYS have when defending.

As for a builder just blocking over the doors every time a knight comes close, yes, please, stone over your doors, seal your team inside of their hall EVERY time a knight comes withing 15 blocks of it. You will win that game so fast. It's not like you want the ability to, oh, I don't know, get out of your hall, or anything. And the enemy totally won't come and keg you while you're stuck or anything.

Finally, you made a list of individual features and some of the things that you can do with them, but you did not compare or contrast them, you did not use some sort of reasoning to show that they are all equal in strength to OP as fuck boulder drilling, you just listed them. 1 list does not an argument make.

 

Sigh- Look, If you have allies inside then they can kill the bloody knight/archer with the boulder before they can break anything.

As for the list well, I was rambling tbh; Sorry I have a tendency to trail off and forget where I'm going.

As for the cost effective design well, if you wanna be cheap with your base there are other, hidden costs, it's why I showed you the costly one first.

As for Boulders breaking doors, really? what else do they do? In combat they are so bloody fragile a single miss or interception will destroy it.

I suppose I'll compare it to to something now. They are just as strong as drills, in ability to take down they're respective blocks (Stone blocks for drills, Stone doors for Boulders.) the main difference is that you can still carry bombs when you use a drill.

Finally, a Boulder is only as good as the player who wields it, my guide on the subject helped a few people out, but the true skill with it arises in practice, have you ever tried using a Boulder in a multiplayer match? It is actually pretty difficult. You also feel really weak without bombs/arrows to back you up in combat, all for the sake of breaking some doors.

@Auburn You know very well Kag makes little sense, and a good builder will patch up the intrusion and have traps waiting inside the front door anyway.

 

It's honestly just too cheap for what it can do. It costs less than half of a drill, and can do infinitely more if no opposition is met. A drill is useless vs. doors, will overheat before it even breaks a single one. It overheats after around 2-3 layers of stone wall.

A boulder can rip through an infinite amount of doors unless it's either dropped too far/intercepted/broken by impatient allies.

My point is, it's ridiculously unbalanced for how much it costs, and it completely ruins the meta if people know how to use them.

The only way to build completely boulder-proof doors is to make them extremely counter-intuitive for defending. You have to basically build a death funnel for your own team.

 

I think some people greatly under estimate the strength of a boulder in combat as well: while it can be easily destroyed if your opponent is sitting still and not trying to attack you, it's considerably harder to destroy a boulder when your enemy has already used it to kill you.

Even if you were on a map that was completely flat, boulders can still be used to deal substantial damage per blow, if not killing someone instantly. Combined with a knight's regular slashes, this can give any knight with even semi decent timing a considerable advantage.

On maps that have even the slightest of hills, or otherwise un level areas of ground, ie. EVERY MAP EVER, if you have a boulder, all you have to do to kill someone without taking damage or risking your boulder is retreat up the hill a little when they approach you, then if they try to attack you you can just throw the boulder down on them, killing them instantly. Worst case scenario, they retreat and refuse to enter 1 hit ko range, forcing you to engage them in a real fight where you do not have a terrain advantage, but will still have the previously mentioned boulder advantage.

tl;dr: killing someone who has a boulder is way easier said than done. Anything that gives someone a considerable to insane advantage in close combat for such a low price is already considerably powerful, throw in the boulder drilling and it's just blatantly op.