General Knight Changes

you guys act say balance as if it isnt balanced already. what do you even want archers to do, completely reck knights no questions asked? i just dont get it......

 

If this ever gets anywhere I'll have to get some good archers to try to break it. Pretty sure @kodysch would be up for it at least.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 30, 2014, Original Post Date: Mar 30, 2014 ---

Nah, I want to try smoothing out the little things that archers seem to suffer from. Maybe something to stop archers from being dead in the water (perhaps making the grapple a little faster in water, upping swim speed may be overkill), making it slightly less picky about the momentum needed for stuns (Once in a while, a fully charged arrow just wont stun, I'm wondering if making it slightly more liberal would help that.)

The main thing I want to try though and the only really hard change to the game is a bit of momentum to crouching for archers. So that, with some grapple momentum, archers can slide past an enemy. You can already do this by grappling while crouching but it's really awkward and looks dumb as hell. I'm thinking if the archer maintained a bit of his momentum when crouching, it would be more intuitive and viable, plus look pretty badass.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 30, 2014 ---

@kedram I should also add, that during yesterday's Zen challenge game, ~90% of the players were knights (And this doesn't seem to be an exception). When a game is THAT dominated by one class, something is wrong; maybe it's not a balance thing, but having multiple archers just doesn't seem as viable as having a TON of knights.

 

I hate to get involved in a balance topic considering my complete absence from the game these last few months, but from playing a few matches here and there (and learning my computer runs the game at only 5-10fps now) I can clearly tell that not much has changed since I was last super active.

So, though I don't hold any strict "THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN" thoughts on the game's balance I do have little things I'd love to see tested one day, some/a lot of these are things people have already mentioned before.

Generally I find the Archer to be currently nicely balanced aside from one nerf and one buff that might help, Builder is an important role during matches but has really annoying points and sometimes lacks being efficient, Knights are generally well built but I have a good many issues with some of their abilities and power and the Knight's issues cause the other two classes to be stunted. Generally it isn't the Archer who needs a buff, but instead the Knight needs a slight nerf.

Spoiler: Rest of post in spoilers for space!

So, because people are talking about it, I will say Archer is generally well rounded and can infact take on Knights if they know what they are doing. There are only two issues I have with the class that I kinda wanna see if we could have tested.
A) They are a Midrange to Longrange unit. They crumble at Closerange and that is good, they are hit-and-miss at Longrange and serve as nice slowdown/support and that is good, however their Midrange is poor and their Midrange is where kills happen, they need something for midrange such as f.e. increased shield stun if the arrow has flown for (assuming the game runs at 20 ticks a second) like 30-35 game ticks.
B) I'd like to see Grabbles tested with a "5 second" or so time limit that you can grapple onto something until you fall off, Archers camping under ledges are dumbs.

Just to mention them, because this is about balance, there is the Builder...and more importantly the buildings he builds! So currently the builder has two BIG issues, building near the front lines is nearly impossible unless you tunnel, and smaller buildings are quickly made into rubble because they are weak and can be gotten over in a matter of split seconds.
I could bring up a sorta long example of an issue with builders, but the easy explanation for these two issues is small walls and forts are as weak as not even having one, meaning there is no way to extend them to actually make a proper base. I don't have many ideas on how to fix this, but maybe walls should be more durable while staying weak at the same time (...that is almost redundant...), f.e. If a KEG goes off next to a wall all the blocks that would break should instead go heavily damaged so that if any bomb or keg hits them THEN they should break. This means 1x thick walls wont insta-crumble at every single bomb that is thrown at them but 3x walls would go down in the same amount of hits.

And then there are Knights, generally my biggest issue with Knights is the fact that even after 2+ months of not playing the game I can still double bombjump over nearly any tower...I know I will get a lot of flack for saying it but I think bomb jumping is both too easy and too effective. Heck, I can simply run up like what...12 blocks without needing a bomb?
Knights in general should be a LOT less vertical in their ability to move, maybe nerf bomb jumps, or shield gliding, or just make them heavier...if they wanna get somewhere high they should start from somewhere high or get a cata!

Ugh I hate making walls of text when I am inactive but I felt like putting my thoughts out there. Keep in mind this is mainly me pondering things that might be good to test on a mod server or something.

 

@Crabmaster aside from a minor fix or 2 like she shield hitboxes. I can't see many nerfs that wont spark an anrgy mob of knights. Insane bomb jumping is annoying as hell, but I can't see it going anywhere. I'd rather see the other 2 classes brought up a bit than have something generally considered to be a benchmark of skill taken away from knights.

 

But it's not even hard... you can literally tell someone who just bought the game that they can bomb jump by shielding the bomb, and they'll figure it out in seconds. Double bombjumping isn't much harder.

You literally learn all there is to bombjumping (except that fucking crazy inventory juggling method), by watching it 1~5 times.

Of course, refining it and getting the timing down takes longer, but it's not exactly the paramount of knight skill.

 

I was referring to the double as a benchmark but maybe it's way easier than I think.

 

@PandemicCommander Well I did also suggest the slight semi-buff to buildings and the improved midrange archer. Bring the two classes up a tiny bit and bring the one class down a tiny bit instead of bringing a class down a lot or up a lot.
@Trumbles Exactly, and then you play a match where nearly every Knight knows how and boom, buildings are useless. Not only that but double bombjumps only require throwing a single bomb on the ground and lighting and holding the second one, you can get better tricks than this but for a new player that is pretty simple. Heck, I've triple bombjumped before.

Important thing for everyone to remember when it comes to balacing, btw, is to tweak it very slowly until it is just right instead of all at once. It is like making pancakes, if you notice the batter is too dry you slowly add and mix water into it until it has the right consistancy because if you put a bunch of water in all at once it might make it too wet and wont cook right. No one wants soggy pancakes.

 

I think it just seems hard because many knights don't take advantage of it.

 

i know from experience that bomb jumping is easy to do but some knights do it the wrong way, they will put the bomb on the ground and instead of getting a good bit of distance horizontally they just go way into the air then drop back down, not allot of people know how to consistanly do perfect horizontal bomb jumps. i feel thats where the line is drawn in terms of skill.

 

I've been doing some work with my "slide dodge" idea. This could be pretty fun with some tweaking.

 

If you have an open classes clan match and don't pick any archers, it's either because every member of your team sucks at archer, or because your team as a whole sucks at communication and shit. Going against Warrfork in a competitive match used to scare the shit out of me, because one skilled archer can screw over an entire team of knights as long as they play their cards right.

This thread really shouldn't be about individual mechanics, what's important is how everything comes together when you play as a team, and a team of 1 builder 1 archer 3 knights will beat an equally skilled team of 1 builder 4 knights any day of the week, no questions asked.

 

But seriously.
If you going to fight vs 2 knights with your friend you will choose archer and knight? In my opinion it SHOULD be that way but it isnt. That's simple you will choose 2 knights beacouse 2 knights can teamwork much better than 1 knight and 1 archer. And for me, that's the main problem in kag combat.

 

false.

There haven't been any tournaments in beta yet, so it's impossible to know for sure what works best; my point was that people are focusing on 1v1 mechanics in a multiplayer game, which is stupid.

 

FUCK ACHERS BUFF THE GOD DAMN BUILDERS

 

>bring back alpha builders

 

@Trumbles GG

 

Pffhahahhahaha
So please explain how the tactic of suicide bombing isn't OP when it actually involves no suicide on the Knight's part? Or the fact that an Archer-Builder-Builder/Archer-Archer-Builder team will never beat a Knight-Knight-Builder team of equal skill? Currently Knights are the Call Of Duty class: Throwing Bombs endlessly pretty much destroys everything in time, no matter how good the defense, as they run out of stone; Shields block basically any method Archers and Builders have of killing them [even Bomb Arrows can be shielded against] and doubleslash kills any class instantly if it connects.

Needed nerfs for the Knight:
>ACCURATE Shield hitbox so holding shield up won't block arrows on both sides and vice versa
>Forced shield and sword down when holding or cooking a Bomb or Keg
>Loss of the ability to shield while swimming
>Make Bombs and Kegs fizzle out when submerged in water, necessitating the use of a Boat to transport Kegs across bodies of water, and stopping Bombs being "bowled" underwater at enemies
>Make fully charged Arrows [not legolas shots, just a fully charged 2 second Arrow] to penetrate a Knight's Shield for 0.5 Heart damage [this could potentially kill a Shielded Knight, but only over the course of 16 seconds with 8 shots landed by the Archer]

As compensation:
>Make Knights place Burgers or Hearts into their inventory automatically if they have room and 4 Hearts of Health, and consume them automatically if trying to auto pick something else up [e.g. a Bomb] or after taking damage. This can effectively allow a smart Knight to play in full-tank mode, able to have 4 hearts reserve for a grand total of 8 hearts.

Knights are then no longer OP and nobody can say so, because they would actually have effective counters by the other classes.

 

changes you are suggesting would make knights unable to do anything aside of suicide bombing

 

You apparently don't know what support means.
- Archers put holes in walls out of no where
- Archers rig small fights with other special arrows
- Knight/Knoght/Archer beats Knight/Knight/Knight
- et cetera

In case you ever got the impression that the game was designed with teams of mostly knights in mind, it is.

As to that kegs in water thing, they *do* deal less damaged when in water.

And that heals thing, just learn to inventory.
Unless I'm carrying four bombs I usually have three to five hearts and one to two (dead) fishey in my inventory.

I"m not even going to address the other points because contemplating them causes by brain to bleed.