[Rant] Game Balance And The Community

This post was spurred by the recent update, which reverted trap blocks to their old state, I believe after a majority of people stated that they wanted them back. (Edit: This is not the only reason for the post, I am aware that the new trap blocks were buggy and frustrating)

In my honest opinion, the community should not always be considered when making mechanic/game balance tweaks, and their opinions should be more of a second thought in development, rather than something immediately paid attention to.

99% of balance related suggestions, or mechanic based suggestions/opinions in these forums are made by someone who would benefit directly from the change, by making the game easier for them, making playstyles that they dislike less effective, by keeping a bug in the game that they abuse, etc etc.

Not many people suggest things that are good for the game as a whole, and honestly, the game is worse off for it. For a long time, infinite wall climbing was left in as a sort of "unofficial feature", because the community begged for it to stay. They didn't do this because it made the game more enjoyable for everyone, but because it made the game more enjoyable for them.

Sorry guys, just a little rant after taking a long hiatus from the game. I do really believe that the developers should look to the community for ideas and potential balance tweaks, but the selfish suggestions really need to be filtered out/ignored.

TL;DR: Balance is a bad topic for the community to have an influence on, no suggestion is 100% pure.

 

This community is resistant to change(because alot of us like parts of the game and dont want them changed). It is what it is. Irregardless the trapblocks needed reverting because they had rage-inducing bugs and it has been stated the developers dont have the time to bother fixing it. It was a rapid change to a block that gave us an even buggier thing and i feel it is more their fault for refusing to fix something, and instead just reverted it. You are mad at the wrong people. Honestly, it is obvious from the threads, regarding the trapblocks, that most builders were vehemently against the buggy blocks while knights loved them. I dont see why changing building to help a fighting class is the top priority.

 

In my opinion, the better option would have been to remove the blocks entirely, until a more effective solution was made.

This post was made as a broader rant, rather than just about trap blocks, sorry if the first sentence or two made that unclear. Since I started playing in the ~800 builds, I've seen community suggestions and complaints heavily influence the game, some for the better, but a lot, in my opinion, either did nothing for the game overall, got put in over something more important, or made the game somewhat worse.

Hell, some of those changes were things that I myself was asking for.

 

ITT: opinions are subjective

 

As you say, the devs removed a lot of things that made the game's already steep learning curve steeper, and I'm still sad about that. I haven't been around for very long (1.5 years, maybe?), but the days when you could hide in a crate were the best.

 

I can still recall a few people here and there that complained when a stop building button (a very minor addition) was added a build or two ago so it is no surprise that people would complain about trap blocks getting reverted too. There is no way to make everyone happy and past builds and this build in particular is proof of that.

 

There is definitely no way to make everybody happy, especially in a community where there are so many ways to play the same game. The problem that I see, is that popular opinion can sway the implementation of common-sense tweaks or fixes.

The largest example that I can think of, is definitely the infinite wallclimbing bug. All of the "pro" knights wanted it to be left in the game, as it gave them even more direct advantages over new players.

 

Community's influence to strong, plz nerf...

I partly agree because I saw a community destroying a game before.

The problem is that sometimes changes come to the benefit of bug fixing and balancing but also at the cost of fun and strategy/skill.
(satchel, crates, legolas shot, climb glitching, trap block, corpses, drill class restriction, boulder nerf, shopkeeper arrow shield, bombjump stacking, jab buff, fall damage) -> Sure a lot of this stuff were factors of imbalance, but none the holy grail of victory. The trap block simply were broken (it even destroyed one of my TDM maps). Making the game more newcomer friendly is one thing, making a KAG for Dummies another.

 

yo dawg, i heard you like complaints, so i put a complaint on your complaint about people making complaints...

 

I have found that games have been destroyed by developers that listen to everything suggested, why this is? The gamer doesn't know what they want, they think something like adding 12 more classes or making knights OP would make the game better, but it won't. Sure there are some good suggestions from time to time from a gamer that actually thought about why their suggestion would help the game in some way instead of having the mindset of ,"It would be cool," or ,"It makes it easier for me," but that isn't a large percentage of gamers. The verdict is that Developers are given a job because they know how to design games among other things, and they know what makes a game fun, they don't need the audience of their game to control the development and ultimately kill the game.

This isn't to say that some community suggestions shouldn't be considered by the developers, but the devs should remark the following before even thinking about adding it: "Would it help the game in some way?" and/or, "Is it necessary?". The developers of KAG are not new to this idea, but in the past they have removed perfectly good things, looking at clips of classic it seemed that alpha had a lot of raw content, which is never a bad thing for a game to have, and it didn't seem unbalanced, either, in fact in gave the game more charm. And that sadly may be why the player base is lower simply because the replay-ability is directly affected by the lack of content. I know most people will say that content =/= quality, but in a good amount of cases this isn't the case, content adds more variety to game-play and thus adds replay-ability. Items like buckets, drills, and boulders used to do this, but they were nerfed thus rendering them useless to replay-ability and ultimately the fun of the game. I imagine this is what happened in classic, except some of them got flat out removed.

 

haha as a super biased knight let me say i miss infinite wall jumping so much

 

I never really understood the problem behind the new trap blocks. You need to be pressing a direction to move through them, like doors. Despite the bugginess, it helped prevent traps from being used against your own team by allowing you to move through the trap blocks.

Flat CTF implemented this in an even buggier fashion and it was great.

 

Bring back Legolas!

 

How some the community reacts to EVERY new build:
"THIS IS AN OUTRAGE"

On a serious note, people with either adore the changes that are made, or they grab the pitchforks and start rioting. It's happened numerous times in the past (trap block reverting, jabspam etc.), and it will probably happen again in the future. No matter what is changed, there will always be at least one person that is against it

 

No matter what the devs do, or what the community wants the devs to do, there will always be a group of majority (no matter how large or small they are), against the implementad idea. Don't take your anger out on the devs.

 

You forget that these are humans on the forums.

 

I also miss it very much and to be honest i think it should be added back in, just because archers have been way too powerful lately and its quite easy to prevent knights from climbing your tower making it not hugely overpowered, its just useful but not game breaking.

EDIT : and please just add hiding in crates back, I know there were weird people that stayed in crates the entire match but make it so there is some sort of timer of how long you can be in a crate until it breaks, this way archers can still transport knights over walls and you could still goof around with them a bit and disallowing people to stay in a crate the entire match.