Why KAG Classic might be "dead"

Hey all,

I played this game in 2012 briefly when it was super active and picked it up again a few months ago and it's clearly not so active now. I mostly stick to myself and don't chat on the forums much, but I've heard a lot of talk about the game being "dead" and wanted to chime in with some friendly input from an outsider's perspective. Don't want to step on any toes here but hope this can turn into a productive discussion on the game's state and future.

First of all, it's worth pointing out KAG Classic is not "dead," at least not in the literal sense. I play a multiplayer game sometimes that has about 25 active players in the community -- in total. Servers are empty 23 hours a day and 3v3 is something to get excited about. That is a dead game -- KAG Classic, with 20-40 players on at nearly any given time, is definitely not dead! Be grateful for what you have. :)

So I've been trucking along learning how this game works and noticed a few things that might be cause to blame for the less than ideal player population size. The bugginess is not at all an issue, it's pretty funny actually, and the character emoticons are adorably appealing. The class system is neat and I picked up on the builder pretty fast. But there's a pretty massive learning curve for the knight. Figuring out how not to die instantly in a skirmish has been woefully difficult. It doesn't help that lag plays a rather considerable role in this game -- lag can seemingly teleport players through closed doors or account for an enemy knight not losing any hearts despite multiple direct hits. But I realize there's not much most of you can do about that.

A big thing I picked up that I think people can do something about is the community environment. I mostly rely on the character emoticons for communication and don't pay much attention to the chat, but when I do, wowzers. All sorts of nasty things are constantly being said, not just your average curse words but actually hate speech and racism and homophobism. I like to consider myself pretty chill but this stuff hit me pretty hard. Sometimes players are just speaking this way to each other, like in a playful teasing sense, but it's tough to tell and can be easily misinterpreted. Daresay I speak up – asking someone to politely tone it down and just have a good time – causes the hailstorm of hate to lock target on me.

It gets worse with all the griefer talk. It seems building in a way not agreed upon by all parties is a fast track to a cry in the chat, "griefer! ban!" when I'm just trying to make the tower more efficient or adding some doors. More than once I had to talk myself out of a freeze because some player jumped the gun in thinking I was trying to sabotage the team. Yikes!

The final thing, major thing, that worries me is that there are a lot of... ahem, communication problems, with the admins. A lot of admins participate in the death-threat-hate-speech-filled banter, don't communicate rules properly, or ban without any kind of warning or heads up. I get day banned every now and then completely randomly with no explanation, and by the time I get back on nobody can tell me what happened. I don't know what I did wrong or how to fix it so I fear I just make the same mistake over and over again. :(

I stick with this game because it's wonderfully addictive and the character emoticons are a one of a kind mechanic. But I imagine people less engaged than I will be more affected by the problems I listed above, and more likely to play once and never again. The way you get a community to grow and stick is to be open and inclusive, not hateful and confusing. Cleaning up the chat and improving communication and professionalism in admins I think are two big, easily accomplishable things that can have a major boost on community numbers. Sorry, I know this is unsolicited feedback – just want to help out. There' s a bright future for KAG Classic if the pieces can fit together.

Respectfully,

- Jomsky

PS. I wil like to point out that although there are a lot of rotten eggs, there are a lot of really good people in this community too. Folks like Bugsy and Guru stand out though I'm undoubtedly missing some. :)

 

Doors are actually client side, which is why this occurs. But yeah I think the biggest issue with KAG right now are the admins, there are far too many unstable ones, I'm thankful we have hosts with admins but holy shit are they horrible at finding these admins.

If you're ever banned the way you describe it's typically this kind of guy. This is an example of a game where someone was teleporting but instead the admin freezes and gives the wrong player no time to explain. There's essentially not much you will ever be able to do about this, if they're a bad admin they were given the rank on a whim/circlejerk.

Spoiler

[01:56:16] <ADMIN> must be hacker
[01:56:16] <passkeykz> more, MORE TELEPORT
[01:56:36] <Thief mattmann111> kick aditor
[01:56:41] <ADMIN> and what he did
[01:56:53] <ADMIN> i didint see shit
[01:56:53] <Thief mattmann111> slayed like 3 of team mates
[01:57:12] <ADMIN> aditor ok you have 10sec to explain
[01:57:24] Max50 aditorens left the game
[01:57:31] <ADMIN> ok he griefer wtf

 

Well I had situation when I goes by door and admin frozen me and wanted to gave me a ban. I will not said his nick but that was so bad *cought* @Orikami . I was playing on eu servers I live in middle of Europe so I am able to have good ping on eu servers and when he had 233 or close to it. I do not remember did i get 10 mins or one day and Chidori unbanned me but that was quite uncomfortable.

 

Are you sure it wasn't a pingban

--- Double Post Merged, Aug 3, 2015, Original Post Date: Aug 3, 2015 ---

@Jomskylark I am a very active member of the classic community, and on some parts I do see your point. There's a lot of offensive talk that goes around, even though it's mostly just friendly inside jokes. I have to admit, I myself often apply such talk, but it's not that bad. Honestly, to me the chat seems pretty ok. There isn't many just straight up insults (unlike League of Legends, for example) where someone calls you a retard for making a bad tower or accidentaly throwing a bomb on your own structure.

 

I am sure. I have asked Chidori and he said so.

 

what a fricken lier. I didn't ban you, I froze you for one minut or so but that is it.

 

Honestly I think the admin and chat situation is better than it ever has been since the player base has gotten a lot smaller. I remember back when every single game there would be entire crews of admins not playing the game, just standing around chatting, building swastikas and permabanning people for destroying them, and filling the chat with a lot more racist and homophobic stuff than I've seen since. I tried to complain about it even on the forums and got shut down. Fortunately most of those people have moved on to different games.

 

Kag classic may not be dead yet but there are many people who play classic saying its better then gold and theres "not much difference" mostly cause they dont want to pay for gold and try to convince themselves that kag classic is on par with the full one.

 

You're right it's not on par, it's 10 times better. Notice everyone in this thread is a gold member. Typically about half or more of the players in a game are gold.

 

The thing is, I am a gold member, yes. And I've had a lot of time in Beta. But I play classic 6 times as much. I personally like Classic more than Beta, and that's my personal opinion. But you can't say one game is better than the other, when the two games are very, VERY much different, not only in looks, but gameplay and other features. Some people prefer classic. Some people prefer beta. Each one offers different elements. Therefore you can't just straight up say one game is better than the other.

 

But the thing is Kag gold and classic isnt all about different elements its about more elements. Kag gold is basically kag classic but way way more indepth. Kag classic is basically a demo if you think about it. But I wouldn't know since I barely played classic.

 

How is a knight scaling towers without bombs or builders just by running up against them more indepth? Or archer arrows going exactly where the cursor is?

 

Well, that's an interesting topic. I want to react about 2 points.

Spoiler

I agree that sometimes players say lot of bullshit on the chat and most of time for no reason but in my mind, it's something to go through.
Really, when you begin to look up the chat, there is something like 40% of insults 20% of useless stuff and fighting indication ("For the king !", "go to front")... And 40% of people who talking about there life. I think the insult are most of time never thinked and I confess that I trew up a "Noob" sometime without explain why.
Anyway, don't focus on insults and look up on the "community talk", maybe it's uninteresting-life-people but it's give a link to the community (the classic need it most)

Finaly, when I go on Beta (or Kag Realease lul), I never read the chat... and when I do it, I think exactly as you on classic. And I think it's a mistake (even if the Beta community is quite different)


The second point is :

Spoiler

In fact, I'm totally agree. Lot of time, I seen admin saying me "Why do you freeze him, just ban".
It's a big problem, because it's hard to choose good admins so the selection have to be made AFTER the choice. I mean that if you see a non suitable behavior, just report it to the owner of the server (you can find him on server directory), so he can have a feed back about his admin.
I agree is non easy to do for the players who don't go on forum but I think it's the good thing to do.

Anyway, about the freeze when someone say "Griefer", It's normal. I prefer stop a griefer rather than ask 1 minute of his game to an innocent people.

Finaly : Of course the classic isn't dead, Long life to Classic !

 

I officially am agreeing with kag classic being dead......... Kag is so boring now so I quit and I'm pretty sure that's why others quit too.

 

Look at you people. The same thing is happening to World of Warcraft right now. Just because you quit the game doesn't mean it's dying. That concept is very primitive. KAG is as active as it was 2 years ago. 30-60 players at CET evenings.

 

in 2011 it was the beggining of kag and there always were 5 full 64 slot servers at a time

 

The death of a game is more then just population decline. Lack of support, increase in overall community toxicity, increase in repeat unpunished cheaters, increase in Russians, and loss of novelty can show that a game is dying. There are other factors aswell such as the game changing too much which is why people consider the MMO giants Maplestory and World of Warcraft dead/dying games.

 

Huéhuéhué

Go to fight guys !

 

Europe pls

 

Kag has realy good community for me. I mean, for example look at Minecraft, and collate it's community, with "our" (I mean Kag's). For sure 8/10 years old kids, are worse, than perverted dudes*. For me, the culture level of talks on chat, has been increased, since Kag has been released.

*Just kidding.
**Sorry for grammar :|.
***I wrote it, from my phone.