Dead game is dead...

I actually agree that as a released game, KAG is pretty much not presentable at all. The crashes and bugs would only be overlooked by people like me, who are addicted to the game. If it ever got "official" reviews in this state, its metacritic score would probably hang around 60 at best (a similar thing happened to Natural Selection 2, a very fun game held back by technical flaws that its fans were willing to overlook, but reviewers were not). There hasn't been a hotfix for months, and you can't even join two consecutive servers without the game insta-crashing most of the time. I doubt that polishing the game to attract new players was ever that high of a priority. They would have to choose between hiring a bunch of koreans to rewrite their game's engine or adding features to their slightly broken but functional game. Intentional or not, the result seems to be that they are trying to consolidate rather than expand their fanbase.

 

30 players online...

 

>6:05 AM

 

PLEASE READ ALL OR GO TO TLDR
The common problems which everyone seems to agree on spotting are a) the bugs/lags/crashes, b) the extremely steep difficulty curve and c) the community and player base

I've had this game for months, I was not a classic player but I noticed the game in its early state (only played in it's current state though), but now with ~500 hours played and considering myself as a "experienced noob" (which everyone pretending to be pro or superior is basically), I can give a honest opinion about this. I think that 3 issues are the basic reasons to say "dead game is dead", other shit is just personal preferences (both people who want new classes or veteran players who think they know better than anyone what needs to be nerfed (which is something related to your experience but not a guarantee of being always correct in your suggests). Now I will express my mind on that three said problems:

A) BUGS N CRASHES

Lag is not really a problem; you can play decently with a normal internet connection, a normal router/wifi network and a normal laptop (my own experience). Lag problems come when someone has 300 ping or simply bad internet and they teleport/ show delay / etc. The only thing you can blame on the game is the OBVIOUS crashes and bombs going through terrain, etc. I think this is the lesser problem, maybe the devs should fix things, maybe not; I can play almost always without seeing my experience compromised by this stuff. The crashes do need to be fixed (devs said they have problems with update servers or something so maybe in near future).

B) EXTREMELY STEEP DIFFICULTY CURVE

I bought the game, played the tutorials, played Save the princess (several times because I sucked hard; not a hundred), then went online and got rekt once, twice and many MANY more times. I thought I had to learn, I learned how people play and became better at timing, watching enemy action and finding shit to do that actually works as expected. But you can't expect this from everyone, as I am a shameless obsessive player. Still I got mad, still I find myself getting rekt when I don't keep focused and still that's exactly what I love of this game.

My point is: the game is meant to be difficult; then new players have to get the idea before playing. They don't need a tutorial for jabbing, slashing and building in order to be competent in games, they need a tutorial on being safe, teamwork and thoughtful mechanics such as bombjumping, stomping, bouncing, bouldering, etc (talking about combat and movement; building is learnt basically by trial and error and that's okay for me). Maybe it is too much to ask for a little game, maybe we shouldn't expect that much about noobs, maybe actually BEING HELPFUL AND NICE to them and not blaming their every fail would be enough for them to grow up and do better. Which leads me to the final point...

...C) COMMUNITY AND PLAYER BASE

The main problem of the game is player retention, as I've read somewhere in the forums (kedram or dualchicken posted I think). It's obvious: newbies arrive at their XPLOSIV BALLISTABOLTS experience recently watched in amusement at the trailer video and they find something very different: people rekin their ass and the impotence to do shit because they don't know how to counter, rush, defend, pass walls, build useful stuff or even staying alive for a minute in the middle of a match. That's it for the newbies: obvious shit is obvious.

But on the other hand we have this massive group of veteran players, the other side of the coin. People who love this game and have become pretty good (...mostly...) at rekin and not crying in frustation over plebs spamming shit at them. Ain't that pretty. Well it isn't, because they are usually (not always, theres some lovely people in kag) hostile and boastful, and like being offensive, insulting, blaming and generally being a little dick (which is OK because it is a game and we are adults... right?...) to almost everyone (specifically noobs because they are easy targets.

I'm not only talking about the people who say rekt, scrub, faggot, ffs, noob, fucking noob, nub, stfu, etc... I find that shit funny; I mean the ones who act superior and better just because they have played more. It seems so stupid to me: you guys ARE better and more experienced, yet you can't stop acting like that and relax (most people do this, dont get me wrong; I refer to those who don't and there's a lot of them).

The funniest part is that this people generally are in a clan and play a lot of KAG, if not everyday. They take the game so seriously yet they fall for trolling and overreacting. Then, in the forums, they just launch ad hominems at people just because they dont agree with them, insult freely and grow a angry, explosive community that you can feel as a whole when you take part; everything seems about to blow, just like when you are playing (aint that beautiful, though?)

Well, I like that. I love a hard, angry community where you will get insulted (or not) just because someone wants to. If you dont like it, then you can duel whoever and rek or be rekt. But then I find that a community like that will stay and decay, and then these threads saying the game is dead are just proof to this insight: people ranting and claiming over each other, getting offended and offending, not taking each other words into account and instead diminishing their value as posters, etc, etc

ENDING (TL; DR)

KAG community should be tight and friendly, just as the game is meant to be. We should not want to win matches, rek plebs and being better than anyone, we should just have fun and be nice to everyone if we can. And even though I love rekin and being an angry hating fuck to people in the servers sometimes, I still have no problem in getting a new player and helping him when he bitches in a game, because that is beautiful and you can feel it. One thing is the fun you get when you are this much into a game; another thing is having respect and maturity to recognise another person behind the screen. I dont want a perfect happy world but I think these two things are possible and can exist in balance...

Given the case that we want to be a healthy community that loves a indie little awesome game and grows at that idea. Otherwise, we can be any other kind of community; it's just that KAG has something special, doesn't it?

 

62 servers with 67 players. Yeah this game isn't dead. Anyone with strong math skills wanna do the average player base per server for me?

 

The main issue with the KAG community is 1) abusive admins who still have power complexes from 1995, and 2) people treating this game like it's Quakelive.

This is KAG, it is NOT, nor will it ever be, a competitive online game with sponsors and tourneys and famous gamers. It's Terraria with PvP mode, and somehow it is filled with a bunch of shit talking idiots who think they're CoD pros or CS sponsored teams. Right now there's 62 players for 67 servers online. That's ludicrous. I just joined Red something or other server and got called a 'faggot nigger engineer' when I told a knight on my team to stop standing in flag area with a keg and to go fight off the influx of enemies in our base. We all know about LK and their bullshit, and the famous assholes this game has to offer new players.

New players don't like this game. I have tried to get all my gamer friends, of which I have many of varied interests, to play this game w/me, but nobody sticks around for more than a week. Why? Because all the tips and tricks you need to learn, like dropping spikes, ways to place doors, how to use platforms, how to use trap blocks to get up walls, horizontal ladders etc. are not obvious, hard to learn, no one answers your questions, and then you hear "rekt" and "shitter" every five seconds from some kid who thinks they're hardcore, because they play the overpowered Knight class on an unreleased indie game that would get a 6/10 at best on review sites.

The game is filled with bugs and frequent crashes.
Admins are assholes and bias.
Veterans are assholes and hostile as hell to new players.
Tutorials don't prepare you for actual online play.
Joining as a new player has an insanely steep learning curve, especially considering knights one hit kill anyone that isn't a shielding knight.
Knights are OP slightly to everyone, and insanely OP to anyone who is new.

Basically if this game is going to survive and thrive in any way what so ever the bugs and crashes need to be solved, there need to be official servers with actual admins who aren't assholes, and something needs to be done with class balances -- whether that means nerfing, beefing up a class, adding a class ie. splitting knights into 2 or archers into 2 or builders into 2 or whatever, and beefing up the tutorials, or this game is going to have a core base of 30 people and it will die.

 

Go ahead and dislike all you want. Just do it while you display the very behavior I describe and watch your flawless game die.

If you had a dislike button on you I'd press it.

 

Why do many frequently say KAG has this huge learning curve that only the most skilled of gamers can play? Is this on the part of the ego of the hardcore players or the casual gamers who would be more at home on Candy Crush?

I never had someone sat next to me telling which buttons to press and how to do certain tricks, and I doubt did many other players. If you want to know how to do something you could always ask in a quieter game, which I imagine is how much of this knowledge is passed around. Despite the trash talking if something is easy to explain in KAG (it often is, as you have a whopping choice of around seven buttons) then someone will tell you because it will help them win, this is especially true if they are bored in build phase. Everything you see players do in KAG is something that you can do, all players have the same controls, the flying around and gymnastics is just someone being much more familiar with the controls than you are.

KAG will have very little to offer if it is gutted of these mechanics, which stem from knowing the controls rather than any hidden functionality, in order to appease the huge crowd it will never draw having now solidly passed release date.

That said, I do know that there are some niche tricks in every update. Newer players are probably killed in all these mysterious and magical ways which they don't understand because they don't yet have a feel for the engine and haven't picked up any other tricks by watching or asking other players. Many of the players killing them in these various ways probably won't know all the tricks themselves, but will know enough to be intimidating.

 

I personally said that it has a extremely steep difficulty curve. Which it has; not only the most skilled can do it or any casual can, it's just difficult, that's all. The point is that a "normal" player, the target which this game aims to, is not used to that difficulty (I personally am, but I don't think I am the target of this game) and that makes it harder for them to STAY in the game after a while (remembering you that one great problem of KAG is with retention -players staying after playing once-.

 

Games like SS13, Dwarf Fortress and X have steep learning curves, you can get to an even K:D standard of fighting within six hours of playing KAG I reckon, depending on which server. Maybe not so much nowadays because there are more long term players online more often than the newer players, but it's still not steep.

Why though? I've noticed a few new players on but I've not seen anything that would drag them in. Has there been a sale somewhere? If there has, the problem of retaining them remains. The game needs to focus on dragging new players in through new content, not chasing the Steam bargain hunters (of which I am one, but there are plenty of other games in my library which have been given as much thought as many of them have given KAG). One of the things that I enjoyed most about KAG was the abundance of players of different skill levels trying (and often failing) to cooperate and crush the other team. Now it has become very victory based competitive gaming because of its smaller player base and this in turn can drive away more players. Bringing in more content which would give more experimental and unpredictable gameplay would make playing the same handful of maps not only bearable, but fun. This game needs content, not balancing and tweaking.

 

I think KAG just needs a little introduction of its spirit for newbies to understand how it is.

On the other hand, SICK STUFF MATE, that lever and mechanism ideas have so much potential

 

Link please.

 

The fun in a game which includes PvP is competitivity. Aspiring to be the best is what drives me to keep playing this game, I almost certainly will never get there, or anywhere near there, but that's why I play. Just because there are no sponsors or people who play 9 hours a day every day for 5 years to get $10k doesn't mean people can't have a competitive spirit. Although, I do think mindless flaming of other players is completely unnecessary so long as it's not a joke.

Just because you went to the LK servers and got shat on by them doesn't mean other admins are anywhere near as bad. From what I've heard, LK no longer has a server, so newbies are free to play on Official, Black Death and other servers with far less abusive admins rather than going to LK, hating admins, hating the game, leaving the community.

 

Thanks! Awesome news! (Builder will get overpowered?)