Moving Backwards

Am I the only one that has noticed how buggy the game has been since the zombie update?
The physics are incredibly fiddly since the update. I'm often ricocheting off of walls and being flung across the map by the enemy's shields. Combat seems to have taken a hit as well. Fully charged swings seem relatively ineffective against shields, and sword swings will sometimes completely pass through an enemy. My friends are experiencing these same issues, so I don't believe that it has to do with my setup/connection.

 

I am all for refined gameplay, and the devs are releasing updates hoping to fix these bugs. For the game to move forward though, the devs must change and improve certain things, and when doing that bugs arise. The game is hardly moving backwards, but in it's inevitable journey forward it might stumble at points.

 

It has been buggy long before the zombie update.

 

I've took a look at the videos I made in September : swordfight was already broken. You teleported for no reason, some hits weren't registered...

It's nothing new. What's new is shield bashing that works TOO MUCH. Sometimes it push you so far away, it doesn't make sense IMO :/ But MM and Geti will fix it, surely. :)

 

It IS moving backwards if you take a glance at the build before 353 (the name of it escapes me). It was incredibly stable, rarely any teleporting and hitboxes were beautiful. Then 353 came and it was literally unplayable for a few days. Then 360 fixed the worst of the bugs, but left knight combat still broken as piss with absolutely horrid hitboxes and projectiles not working a quarter of the time. I think corpses were supposed to be implemented with 353, but they're literally worthless in 360 aside from the possibility of them doin 2 damage to you when you pick them up on accident.

I switched to archer because knight combat is so retarded in these recent builds. It's far, far, far worse than a few builds back.

 

Well it is only alpha stage. Its not like they released a fully finished game and this is happening.
Even after this there is still beta stage. But I have a feeling for a while it might just be improvements to the game.
Like slashing working all the time, better hit boxes, etc. This is a very promising game and just needs to be given time to reach its full potential.

 

Yes, we all know the game is in alpha, and that's a perfectly reasonable point. But alpha for KAG isn't alpha for EA or activision. The longevity and success of the game is tied to how satisfied the current playerbase is. The more people are happy the more people buy the game the more people talk about it. It's reasonable to point out flaws in the game not present in previous builds. At the end of the day, the sheer abundance of minor issues is what is driving people away from the game. Since 353 the amount of people I've heard complaining about every day bugs has jumped drastically as well as those who claim it's just not worth it to play until the issues get resolved. That is not a good thing in the slightest. Yea, the game needs improvement because it is in alpha and there will be issues, lots of them; the game aint done and everyone realizes it. All we're asking is for relatively stable builds to be released so that people won't hit the uninstall button out of frustration of dying to the bug that was "fixed" for the 30th time.

I just wanna enjoy KAG ;_;

 

True, More stable builds would be wonderful. I have noticed some bugs happening less often but still not at a satisfactory level. All I can think of is to tell people "Don't let this build decide if you like the game. It gets better." Imagine the bugs that will come up when those new classes are put in.

 

The new classes are gonna be in an entirely different game so to speak. IIRC the overworld will be separate from CTF. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I wish that they'd polish CTF first before they get to the meat n taters of the overworld.

And as far as telling people "it gets better", that's the point. It has BEEN better. I understand that the devs aren't gonna release perfect builds every single time, especially since this isn't a major game company with a lot on the line. Even so, the last few have hit an unprecedented low for quality combat and general bugginess. Anyone who disagrees must not be playing the same. The sad thing is that a hit to the playerbase this early in a games life-span can be an absolute killer. I've learned that from experience beta-testing fortress-forever, a beautiful mod based on TFC that immediately got overshadowed by TF2 and never recovered from the hit in population. No matter how good the development was, no matter how great the progress, the game just didn't have the momentum to make it a popular game.

As far as what to do about it, I'd suggest that you offer a reward system (ZOMG HATS PREMIUM RAFFLES!) for those who participate in a test build event and those who generally play-test on the test build. The people who actively participate and report bugs on the live build are the ones who'll take part. The people who would quit in sheer frustration won't.

It's a win-win. You get the play-testing and you get to have a live-build that's stable enough to not cause casual #6371 to uninstall

 

In making a game, Theres only ONE road.
the problem is, that the road is bumpy like hell,
the best way to see it, is that the devs have fallen flat on their faces, and they are takin us with them.
wait for them to get up, and you'll see that the rest of the road will be paved.
(METAPHOR FTW!)
EDIT!
Also, now that they've did that, they'll be closer to the bumps in the road,
making it easier to fix them.
(METAPHOR FTW)

 

I agree with you Ostrich in principle, it would be good if the more risky stuff was tested in the test build program and then a more solid build could be retained. However the only problem with that will be players getting equally pissed off they aren't seeing new content because they need to fix bugs. I dunno if you have to be premium to access the test build, since I bought premium about an hour after playing the game, but maybe keeping the free version a little more solid might be a good idea. Either way though, splitting the game like that might well cause a divide and stun development, you'll have people that want solid gameplay playing the most solid release, and people that want to try new stuff and features on the test build, so the player base will effectively shrink been split between 2 versions, also there will be less people playing the newest build that are gonna find bugs for the devs to fix, so that part of development will take a bit of a hit too.

 

Personally I'd rather have that option than be forced into a build that adds new "content" but is so incredibly buggy that it ruins quite literally everything in the game, including the new content. 353 was an unparalleled disaster and a travesty. Corpses were implemented at the cost of quite literally everything in the game receiving absurd bugs that still remain to this day. I still can't play a knight without losing my mind because over half my deaths are inexplicable and complete bullshit. Even new people see it, I see white dudes complaining all the time about the blatant BS that plagues knight combat.

All of this can be avoided with a better implemented system of testing and releases. I just hope to the KAG gods that they're focused on fixing combat, because as of right now it's ridiculous to the point where it's hardly playable on any class. It's even worse when you start comparing it to some of the previous builds, which I'd guess is where the "moving backwards" came from.

And as far as the testers themselves, I'm not quite sure the people"testing" would be playing the new build to be able to play new content, but rather actually attempting to have a footprint on the progress of the game with bug fixes and suggestions. Anyways, I'm not so sure they're too worried about splittign the community because they're releasing more server configs out to the public next patch that give near complete control of class balance to server owners.

And just as a little bit of warning, I have no clue what kind of testing and release system they have in place. I don't know jack shit about it to be frank, but all I know is that it doesn't seem to be working because they went from an incredibly stable build to FUBAR'd in a single patch where it's remained fubar'd for almost a month now.