Priority problems

Here are some problems with the current build and in general that I think are priority to fix, aside from the issue of griefers already mentioned.

1. Head-shots and inconsistent damage.

It may be due to lag, but lag or not, it has got to go, because it makes the game unplayable if there's no consistency. One moment you're a knight on a roll because an archers shots don't seem to be doing any damage to you... the next you're a dead weakling as a builder comes out and hits you once and you die... WITH THREE HEARTS. (Yes this HAS happened to me)

2. Class balance

There are some serious issues with knights and archers. Personally i'd like to see their traits switched. Knights should have the fast attacking speed, while archers have a slower firing speed to make up for the fact they have range. This means that archers confronted up close with knights don't stand much of a chance. WHICH IS HOW IT SHOULD BE. Currently archers are too strong. Now don't get me wrong, knights need to be nerfed too if I'm giving them this buff of faster attack speed. Knights would start with 0 bombs, which is already being implemented. That way, they are the only class which starts with 0 resources, which would balance out their high strength in other areas. You could perhaps also give archers more starting arrows, as currently it's a pretty low amount. It certainly isn't equal to 3 bombs worth.

I also think builders should be balanced out. They should be able to break through blocks at the same speed as build 51. BUT their melee attack would be slowed down for whenever they are not attacking a block. This way you don't get stupid scenarios where builders all gang up on a knight and rape him because a knight can only block from one side. Builders should be absolutely pants in combat, and currently they can be used in combat for sneak attacks. Make them better at what their supposed to be for (building/mining) and worse at what they're not supposed to be for (combat).

3. Random disconnects in ALL servers.

There's no server you can get away from this, all servers will eventually disconnect after about 3 hours, 5 or 6 if you're lucky. Why are they so unstable?! Honestly.. There's nothing worse than getting through a game where you're almost about to win and you're having so much fun on the map and... BAM disconnected from server, map wiped out, score, and players. This NEEDS to be fixed or reduced in prevalence.


EDIT: Well even though some things are contested, at the very least we have majority agreement so far that:

Knight's melee attack is too slow,

Builders need changing, preferably their HP,

Headshots are in the game and are inconsistent due to lag, so something should be done.

 

1. F12- all that stuff has happened to me lots of times. Have no idea was this problem before. I personally noticed it only after the last build.

2. Have no comments about that. There are lots of ways how to rebalance class and your doesn't seem to be the best one...

3. F12 here too.

 

I agree with 2, knights need a faster attack speed because even though half your army gets wiped out by archers and a couple guys make it to the archers they would probably still die and your knight has that brief pause + moves slower when attacking, because of this I always see peasants being able to kill knights because their attack speed is crazy and the archers just spam a hellstorm of arrows that go no distance but still hurt you.

 

Without headshots it would take way too many arrows/ too much time to get rid of a single opponent.

What is the point of having range when arrows can't penetrate shields and it is possible for knights to block every arrow coming from any direction? It takes less than a second to rightclick and get the shield up. Don't forget that knights can dig through and destroy anything whereas archers cannot do that, meaning that the sole purpose of archers is effective hunting and killing. If you remove an archer's ability to effectively kill, they become obsolete.
Fewer starting arrows = less arrow spam.

Builder's HP -1

 

No it really wouldn't, I have killed many knights before they have got to me using three full speed arrows, which is the arrow where you wait for the sound to finish (as you probably know) which means i'm not even spamming arrows like archers can do. If the speed of arrow fire was taken away, i'd still be able to kill knights effectively.

Don't forget also that "headshots" are rarely even headshots. Basically you can lose all your health with a simple attack ANYWHERE on your sprite. If you really want headshots to stay, they should at least be headshots, and be hard to pull off (small hitbox) but because of the reward of killing your opponent in one hit, it might be worth it. Currently, whether you pull off a headshot or not is RANDOM.

I see your point, and I do agree, being unable to penetrate the shield is another problem. If knights shields were eventually degradable then this would balance it perfectly. But seriously, do you really think archers are supposed to spam arrows right next to a knight in order to get the kill? That's not even in the spirit of the game! What happened to archers that stand on defensive platforms and ready their shot and fire? You may dispute my changes, but at the very least, arrow spam should not be possible. It is too similar to the ridiculousness of skybridging which 90% of the community want a fix for anyway. What's the point in having a ranged class when their only hope of killing knights is spam while up close? That's like saying to knights, forget using your melee attack, the only way to kill anyone is to throw your bomb as far as possible... As for your quick fix for arrow spam, it simply wouldn't work because archers arrow spam anywhere on the map. If they do that, then that means they are getting a ton of arrows from wood anyway, it would just increase the amount of archers sitting at spawn, mining wood for longer, which is what you don't want and would also negate the point of increasing the wood supply. Needless to say changing the amount of wood we have is a good thing and won't be removed. No need to negate it uselessly.

I really can't tell what you're trying to say here. Are you trying to tell me that my point about combat effectiveness is obsolete because builders have 1 less hp than knights? Or are you saying that a quicker fix to the builder problem is to reduce their HP? Either way, the former: It isn't obsolete due to the damage inconsistency. The latter: I agree with you, that would work.

 

1. FIRST OF ALL. There are no headshots in the game's code. Geti has confirmed this. The problem is that health display still isn't properly synced and I'm pretty sure heart pickups are bugged and do nothing. I noticed that I can tank shots after spawning, but on long streaks I die in one hit at 2 hearts. Though I think that some really hardcore testing should be done before we formally voice this complaint.
sorry nvm

2. I agree that knights attack speed should be raised, but not because any sort of DPS deficiency (though a DPS boost wouldn't hurt). I think the main problem is with lag it becomes very difficult to land shots accurately. This is also what contributes to the counter intuitive effectiveness of worker berserking. As much as I agree that archers are waaay OP, Geti said that with such a spread of opinions, ie. us vs ArtCrusader who claims that knights are unstoppable juggernauts of instant free win, no changes will be made to balance. I think as it is knights do have use, and even if they don't lots of people are using them (probably more than archers) so I don't really see a problem. Plus I don't think knight skill and technique has developed as much as archer technique, maybe a really great knight will come around a find some great things.

3. That's not a game problem, it's a server problem. I honestly haven't experienced this very much except on a few servers that are known to be unstable. Just find a good server.

 

Huh really? I could have sworn... Maybe an earlier build? My bad! Sorry. I better check my sources better next time.

 

F11:
a) Nobody likes to die in one hit. Especially when it's near-guaranteed.
b) Engineers/builders (what the difference in KAG? Meh vocabulary :P) are great with offensive (when with a group with knights & archers). Having only one heart will make it so more engineers in a group attack are necessary. Engineers aren't meant to be the majority (of classes) in the [near] front-line of a battle.

 

That's the point, builders are great with offensive. They're not supposed to be! Noone likes to die full stop but we can't complain about that can we?

It's not near guaranteed, it would just stop builders from being so aggressive and would require more careful play on the front lines. Besides, builders are supposed to be protected by the other two classes. It would encourage more teamwork because knights would want to protect builders from arrows while they set up ladders to get over a fort, and archers would want to protect builders more because then they can build for them cool fortresses to fire from. Why do you want to have builders attacking anyway? Just because they are in a forward group does not mean they should be the ones actually attacking!

Not to mention builders look like they'd only ever take one hit, they look like they're topless in game. Whereas archers seem to have some sort of leather armour. It would make more visual sense.

 

I disagree for the most part. Engineers by themselves should fail miserably at any sort of offense. When you have a engineer or two, and a cluster of offense-based classes, THEN I expect more success compared to that which is without any engineers in the offensive party. With engineers having only one heart in the party, and being a knight myself apart of the party, I would worry about the engineer's life probably more than I should. I'd rather not have the engineers being the very weak point where somebody can easily demolish a full strategical offensive strike from one lucky blind arrow.

I do agree there is a problem where if you send 6 engineers to go offensive and attack, they will be more successful than wanted. But I think cutting the engineer's health by a full heart would drastically damage the engineer's ability to work in the field, whether building a away-from-home fort, or an offensive party needing to get through some stone faster.

I did not mean to imply that engineers should be attacking. I meant the role of the engineer in the [near-]front-line is to help get through obstacles at a faster pace. A single heart puts them at a, in my opinion, too high risk to be out there doing that. Two hearts can disappear pretty quickly there is a skilled enemy archer shooting at the engineer, even with a knight there to attempt to protect. Having a single heart would encourage needing many more engineers out in the offensive party in order to be successful (assuming teamwork and communication is taking place).

Graphics should be determined by gameplay (among other things), not the other way around :)

 

If your builder is taken down by one lucky blind arrow (or several in the current case) either the knights are not doing it right or the builders aren't. Builders should stick right behind the knights and should only ever emerge to build ladders and fortifications once everyone is dead for a bit. The closest he'd get to being shot was if an archer popped out during this moment. If you play builder any other way you're seriously asking to get killed right then and there. 1 HP builders wouldn't change this, but what it would change would be builders taking down knights on their own when that should NEVER happen. Pretty much every other RTS game has builders that basically serve only one purpose... To build. Often they don't even have a melee attack. Personally I feel a builder should find himself lucky he can even attack other enemies let alone having two points of HP! Granted, the builder in other games are not actively controlled. Even still, I think that you can never worry enough about a builders survival.

This is why I proposed their building speed be increased again. Also you forget that builders ability to work is not affected by their hit-points. They can quickly set up a wall before an archer even gets close. They should be running from knights anyway. The only time they'd die from knights is if they're close, which they should never be. Archers will never get line of sight due to their constant walls. It is probably the most well defended hit point in the game, besides the knight sitting in a wall with his shield up.

It really doesn't, presuming the builder has stone already, he can just build a wall above his head while he mines horizontally through a vertical tower created. No biggie. If a skilled archer wants to shoot the builder.. lets just say put one knight behind the builder facing the opposite direction shielding, the builder can never be hit, both move to the right. Sorry how is this whole thing difficult again?

This was an attempt at bringing variety to my argument for a change. It's clearly not my main point, especially since I put it right at the bottom of my post. It was more of an afterthought.

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EDIT: You know what? Never mind all that. My initial idea wasn't even to take away builders hp, it was to make their attack slower when not hitting materials, but noone ever commented on that now did they? -_-

 

Well, about knights and archers, I think they are fairly good at the moment. Right now if its a 1v1 with archer v knight, the knight has to be quite bad to die. Take away attack speed for archer will mean they can hardly defend themselves at all. Giving knights faster attack would also mean they can mine faster, which shouldn't be how it is.

About builders, I don't know what the speed was in build 51, but with your example of builders gangin up on knights, isn't that good? Teamwork is good and the fact that it can take 3 or more to kill 1 is a sign that the knight is strong enough to defeat most builders attacks.

 

Not really, even the best of knights have to take their shield down sometime, and an archer can easily jump out of the way of a bomb, soon as a knight takes his shield down, good player or not, archer can spam arrows. Yesterday I killed 3 knights in a row just by spamming arrows atop a ladder, all had to try and get me via melee because there was no other way of killing me. They had absolutely no chance due to the speed of my arrows. Honestly it's fairly easy figuring it out too... All you need is one archer to panic and start spamming when a knight gets too close for comfort and you've got an archer who knows how to kill a knight easily. Couple that with the slow attack speed of the knight and they never even get a hit on the archer when they DO get close, a slight move to the left prevents the archer from ever getting hit. They literally never die. It's so easy to get 3 to 4 kdr as an archer but as a knight it's ridiculously difficult. You do the math.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. The example of three builders raping a knight just goes to show that one builder who catches a knight by surprise actually still stands a good chance of taking him out! I had a 1 to 1 kdr as a builder just by using this tactic and this was mainly on knights and archers. Why are builders considered in use for combat anyways? I keep saying this but no-one seems to realise, why are they even able to fight at all?! Their job is to MINE AND BUILD. Call me a hypocrite for even attacking as a builder but you know, what do you do when you've got a distracted archer or knight killing all your teammates? Naturally you'd try and get the kill. It's not even like the knight is good at ambushing either, due to slow attack speed.

 

I had another thought: Have 'half hearts', and have engineers only damage by half a heart. Alternately, and equivalently, have everybody do double damage and have double health, except engineer, who only does one heart of damage. Despite their equivalence, I prefer the first idea, as it avoids players believing they have more health than they really do. Besides, it would take less room on the screen (not by much though :P).

F12. It makes engineers less wanting to directly battle, but without hurting their ability to take a single bullet in the foot.

I disagree. I've actually witnessed (and took part in for a period of time as a knight) an archer running in 'circles' shooting arrows at a knight (or two), not dieing since he was good at maneuvering around the terrain in the area.

The archer is pretty powerful class, especially when the terrain is such that it is difficult to get to. I was playing as an archer in the offense standing on top of a small cliff in front of the enemy fortress, I got many kills against knights and such just standing there shooting, occasionally returning back for wood, or needing to retreat for a period of time, or whatever.

I believe the walking speeds should be equal (except when arrow or shield are in use). In a 1 archer vs 1 knight, this makes it so if an archer wants to attempt to kill the knight, he has to fire his arrow, slowing himself down; whereas if the knight wants to not get hurt, he has to bring up his shield, slowing him down. It could cause some cool 'chase scenes' without completely outrunning the other person :P

 

Having played a few rounds as a knight and holding a 3ish KD for some of it, I think the knight isn't quite as bad as I thought if you become very precise at bomb cooking, you can loot lots of dead knights, and you have lots of patience. But I don't see how anyone can argue that one on one on open ground a knight will ever kill a competent archer. Unless the ping difference is like 150+ the archer (assuming competence) will never die.

 

Agreed. This is why the lag needs to be sorted and the knights attack speed increased so that an archer up close is mincemeat like they should be.