The Problem

You should start using kegs on those big zombies and you'll see what I mean.

 

Ok I don't think everyone got what i meant i haven't been around this game long i say i have only played this game for about 11 week's now but i thought the last build was almost perfect in my opinion but then this build came out and i haven't really seen any improvment just nerfing all i want to see is this craze with nerfing stop.

stop thinking of way's trying to make thing's redundant and offer counter's this is a team game not a game were people can solo the whole way to the flag cause everything has been nerfed so people who conmplained about it can get there way but there for i can't say geti do this or that it is his decision but looking through the forums there is knights complaining about archers saying nerf them then there is here archers and knight's saying nerf builders then you got archers saying nerf bomb's which pretty much means nerf knights then you got people saying nerf jumping i see no major problems with the last build and quite frankly i would rather see it come back than this build at the moment

Also building it may be instant but all it takes is one builder and u have a ladder over if you work as a team dosen't matter if there is a building in your way as long as you protect your builder's and dont do anything stupid also i can tell you already building's arent OP a man named Snickering Gentleman makes offensive building look OP you make building harder he will make building's topple faster.

So one last time stop the nerf, and start offering counter measure's

 

Yes this.

Yes this.

 

The Problem: Builders are overpowered because they create balance problems via buildings
The Solution: Stop buffing the builder

 

Magicking buildings out of nowhere should not be possible - I agree with that for a few reasons.
Builders should not be able to:
1) Build a 4-tall tower and stop every singe attacking Knight with a few seconds of work.
2) Jam a wall in between themselves and an enemy.
3) Entomb themselves against a tower and proceed to collapse it.

Buildings should take longer to make, for sure, but if you make it take longer for builders to build AND eliminate Build Time, you're going to cause another problem. You know what that is? The nonexistence of buildings. Nobody's going to want to be a puny little defenseless builder when they CAN'T magick buildings out of nowhere. Especially considering the fact that without Build Time, the enemy will attack right off the bat. Nobody's going to sit back and BUILD stuff when they can kill people. Why do you think there are shortages of builders in the heat of a battle? Not many people like building. Especially when their hard work can be easily destroyed or their materials easily knocked right out of them.

 

You underestimate the tenacity of minecrafters.

There is certainly some kind of problem contained therein, but I do not think it should be chalked up to disinterest at all; most new players will tell you that they came for the building part, hence why you see most builders squirreled away amidst team defenses. I believe it's less lack of interest and more lack of forward thought; why progress when you've got all the resources you need in the comfort of your own home? Frontline players compromise this by going builder themselves; then the problem of teamwork and coordination steps in, but that's a whole other argument.

Build time certainly needs to be nerfed-I am quite partial to Cont's suggestion of resources distributed on a timer--, but removing it entirely should just be left as a server variable.

 

Every one of those things you just said, is like my favorite thing about builder.


Well I agree builders are overpowered at the moment, but in the future we will get more siege devices/ways to counter things that builders build. If builder gets no more buffs and all the other classes continue to get buffs, we will regain balance again.

 

Yeah. The diplomatic solution is in fact to make everyone overpowered... thus everyone is equal.
I don't know what the devs intend to do. But I'm sure they'll come up with something.

 

It is much more fun to be overpowered, and countered by more overpoweredness than to have everyone be the same dull underpoweredness.;)

 

Wouldn't overpoweredness steepen the learning curve even more on KAG, since new players wouldn't be able to do more advanced things that are considered overpowered, like bomb jumping?
But you're right, overpoweredness IS way more fun :p

 

That's not correct. There is a sweet spot when it comes to how many powers you want classes to have. If you had a game where classes could only move one square every five minutes that would be dead boring, but so would a game where everyone could reach the other end of the map in a second. Making a fun class is way more complicated than simple buffs and nerfs - every change affects game mechanics, which is where the heart and soul of every game lies.

I don't want a situation where updates turn into an endless progression of adding buffs to classes so that they can counter other classes. It is vital that every class has weaknesses as well as strengths. If the builder has to be nerfed slightly for a better game then so be it. But as I am sure devs are aware, the constructable/destructible scenery is what makes this game so special, so don't go overboard :P

 

Knights can't destroy tiles?

Use grenades, my friend.

 

Haha reading back to the pages with Spoolooni and Quiles it reminds me of the days where Neat and I would go on about knight versus archer for days. I'm really glad this is stirring up some debate, though I am also fairly disappointed that there weren't more clan war veterans piping up.

Other people can and have offered great insight, but I think it's a little different when you've actually played with two full teams of veterans, even in a relatively simple game like this. For example I see Spoolooni often asserting the idea that we have been playing it wrong this whole time and that all our problems would be solved if we adopted his strategy of slowly inching forward with our buldings. This may very well be the case but has anyone actually tried this? Upon reading it I immediately dismissed the idea for several reasons, but I think it would be good for this mindset to be applied to a real game. Spoolooni, you have drawn a fair amount of attention to yourself recently, I think you could drum up some teamies for such a thing without too much hassle.

A lot of people have also been saying that this is silly to argue about as the game is constantly evolving and that stuff like new siege weapons will change the game. This is a very good point, but I think this problem is still relevant. Sometimes Geti comes on IRC to talk about future plans and I heard him on several occasions expressing that CTF was pretty much done as far as he was concerned. Naturally I took this idea with a grain of salt; it's ridiculous to assume anyone knows what they want or what will happen in the long term even when only considering themselves, at least doubly ridiculous to assume this when you consider he has a partner (MM). Nevertheless, its a strong possibility that CTF a year from now might not look all that unfamiliar to us. Even if it were changed dramatically, there's no guarantee the problems of today would be fixed unless specifically addressed. And really, with zombies and what appears to me to be a strong desire to get started on overworld, paradigm shifting updates to CTF may be a long time off. Strong competitive gameplay now is not only good for us oldfags looking for something to do, but as advertising for KAG. I know I wasn't the only one glued to my laptop watching pro Starcraft 2 Beta games.

I think that the problem stems from the fact that as you remove the factor of incompetence the game changes significantly. In recent times experienced players have started congregating in choice servers (Rayne's severs, for example), and you can see the problems discussed here all too apparent. In a sea of scrubs what matters is the outstanding individual, the knight relentlessly charging through the hordes, sending their skulls askew solely on the merit of his skill and excessively furious clicking. You have the blazingly swift worker springing up immense bases and shepherding his herd of knights with ladders that spring into the air like reverse lightning. Also there's little bitch archers like Carver who hide in their base and get fat KDs. Anyways the point is that in pubs, the individual has so much power that games can be majorly affected by one player. But organized games aren't like that, the focus moves away from the micro (players) and on to the macro (buildings).

The problem is and isn't buildings. The fact that defence overwhelms offense is bad, but the alternative is only slightly better. There was a time in the game's life where we had just gotten a large enough playerbase that full games of people who didn't just come to build was possible, but also before build time. What happened was a reverse of the current situation- Offence ruled. If you were a good archer (probably knight too, but I never played knight back then) you could grape the entire enemy team before they even got defences up. Minecrafting was also a much much bigger problem back then; it wasn't unusual to see 80% of your team committed to building their pretty castle, up to and during the point the enemy was gangraping your spawn and running off with flags and bags. This would still be a problem with all skilled players, as the fact remains that as the game progressed your enemy's defense would only get stronger and your offensive power would never increase. The outrage of people like Spoolooni has merit, it would be a shame if the effect of buildings was marginalized.

The Real Problem, I think, is that when good players come together at the game shifts from micro to macro, it becomes an RTS. Well I wouldn't go so far as to say it's shuffled off the genre of action platformer entirely, but the RTS-like qualities of KAG become much more pronounced. And if you haven't already clued in to what I'm trying to say, a fundamental of RTSes is the cycle. Rush, Turtle, and Boom. We have rushing (offence), turtling (defending), but we have no third option.

So in a very roundabout way I have finally reached my conclusion. I applaud any of you that have managed to slough your way through my mangled rhetoric. I would elaborate more but I've written far too much already. If you are unfamiliar with RTS dynamics I recommend a couple minutes on Google, and I leave the rest of you to point out how obviously misguided I am on a fundamental level.

 

Hey Contrary, remember when I said the builder was overpowered and I ended up getting him nerfed? Good times. Block dropping was a nightmare back then.

This very loosely pertains to your post.

 

This is a problem that all multiplayer games face once they reach a certain playerbase. I've little experience of competitive play in any online game, but I'd agree with your findings as regards the distinction between public and competitive games. What I would say is that competitive games are far more controlled experiences. I know in TF2 only certain maps were played competitively, game settings thoroughly controlled and certain weapons banned. Not to mention that players all had the same basic goal - to achieve the wincon. I expect this is true of all competitive games. Pubs are inherently more chaotic; game settings vary depending on the whims of the host and most players are working at odds to one another - one guy tries to cap, the other works on his KD, another minecrafts. With that in mind I think it is important to focus on improving the public game, safe in the knowledge that the competitive game will make its own rules to ensure a good play experience.

 

Kegs are pretty sweet

 

On phone so no walls from me: Offence rules when there are no unit limits, and the game becomes more to playing by the objective; a castle is not a place to hide behind of, a castle is the thing that stops the enemy from getting your flag.

Unit counter, I believe, was introduced to solve the stalemate problem that came with unlimited lifes.
But as we know, it made defence to be usually a little too viable option - archers don't lose much lifes.
Kegs have partially solved this, but we certainly need something for the classic CTF too (Which imo isn't even near to complete).

Perhaps the enemy could lose two lifes for one death when 50% of your team is in their half of the map?

Or what if touching the enemy flag while it's in tent would give your team 50 lifes?

I'm not sure, these ideas sound a little exaggerated, but playing with the tickets could be a simple fix.